Dogmatic, Exegetical and Polemical Works

Saint Maximus the Confessor · the golden age of the Fathers

Dogmatic, Exegetical and Polemical Works

Copyright © 2026 Theologians Press. Translation copyright © 2026 Tyler Rhain Holliday. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Purchase of this volume conveys no license to reproduce, distribute, or commercialize its contents, nor to republish it, in whole or in part, under this or any other name or imprint. DOGMATIC, EXEGETICAL & POLEMICAL WORKS The Ambigua, the Scholia on Dionysius, the Questions and Responses, the Disputation with Pyrrhus, and the Record of the Trial and Exile Translated by T.R. Holliday This volume gathers the exegetical, philosophical, theological, dogmatic, and polemical writings of Saint Maximus the Confessor (c. 580–662): his labors upon the difficulties of Holy Scripture and the Questions and Responses; the Ambigua to John and to Thomas, and the Scholia on the works of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite; his minor theological and polemical works and the Disputation with Pyrrhus; and the record of his interrogation at Bizya and the Exposition of the Movement — the official minutes of his trial and exile. This has been prepared for purchase in Theologians Bible by Theologians Press, translated by T.R. Holliday. PART I — EXEGETICAL WORKS 3 TO THALASSIUS, ON THE DIFFICULTIES IN HOLY THE QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES 586 PART II — PHILOSOPHICAL & THEOLOGICAL THE AMBIGUA TO JOHN, ARCHBISHOP OF CYZICUS 786 THE AMBIGUA TO THOMAS THE CONSECRATED 1181 SCHOLIA ON THE WORKS OF SAINT DIONYSIUS THE PART III — DOGMATIC & POLEMICAL WORKS 1653 MINOR THEOLOGICAL AND POLEMICAL WORKS 1653 THE DISPUTATION WITH PYRRHUS 1916 PART IV — THE TRIAL AND EXILE 1986 ON THE BIZYA INTERROGATION 1986 EXPOSITION OF THE MOVEMENT, BETWEEN THE LORD ABBA MAXIMUS AND THE OFFICIALS, IN THE PART I — EXEGETICAL WORKS To Thalassius, on the Difficulties in Holy Scripture Maximus the Monk: Prologue on the Scholia Set in the Reason (logos) is naturally the beauty proper to rational beings; and the beauty of reason is the exact understanding, according to reason, of rational beings; and the beauty of understanding is the fruitful habit, joined with reason, of rational beings according to virtue; and the beauty of this habit is the unerring contemplation concerning true knowledge, of which the

end is wisdom, being the clearest fulfillment of understanding, inasmuch as it is reason perfected according to nature — namely, the pure mind, which, through union with the Cause, has attained a relation beyond understanding; according to which, having ceased its manifold natural motion and relation toward the things after the Cause, it cleaves, unknowingly, to that alone, having come to be within the ineffable inheritance of the mostblessed silence that is beyond understanding, which reason or understanding can in no way declare, but only the experience, through participation, of those found worthy of the enjoyment that is beyond understanding — of which a well-known and, to all, manifest sign is the soul's complete insensibility and separation, in disposition, from this present age. Hence, knowing that nothing is by nature more proper to rational beings than reason, nor anything more fitting to those who love God, for their good repute, than practice in and understanding of it — I mean not the reason that comes from art, in utterance, elegantly beguiled for the pleasure of the ear through eloquence, which even wicked men, if they take pains, are able to cultivate, but that which nature holds hidden, essentially and without instruction, according to disposition, for the unerring discernment of things that are and the discrimination of the truth in all things; which the Holy Spirit of God, too, is wont to bring, once it has been well fashioned by the virtues, into companionship with itself, and to fashion into a divine image of its likeness and beauty, lacking nothing of what naturally belongs to the Godhead according to grace (for it is an instrument that gathers together, with understanding, the whole reflection of the divine goodness that shines forth, in a noetic manner, within the things that are, through which, entering into the great working of the things that are, it bears, and is borne, toward the begetting Cause of the things that are, those who have wholly assimilated to it the entire impulse of the desire that is theirs by nature, held fast by nothing at all of the things that come after the Cause) — this reason, cultivating it, we become masters over all evil passions, enslaved to nothing contrary to nature, and are shown forth as workers of all the divine virtues, scraping away, plainly, with every good thing, the shame of the soul that comes from

matter, unto spiritual beauty; for where reason holds sway, the dominion according to sense-perception naturally ceases to be — in which the power of sin is somehow mingled, dragging the soul down through pleasure, out of pity for the flesh akin to it in hypostasis; according to which, having entrusted to it, as its natural work, the passionate and pleasure-seeking care of the flesh, it leads it away from life according to nature and persuades it to become the maker of a wickedness that has no true existence; for wickedness is the forgetfulness, in a noetic soul, of the good things according to nature, which arises from a passionate relation to the flesh and the world — which reason, when it takes command, causes to vanish, and, through spiritual knowledge investigating the origin and nature of the world and the flesh, and driving the soul toward the region of intelligible things akin to it, to which the law of sin makes no passage, having no longer, as it were a bridge carrying it across to the mind, the sense-perception, which has already been dissolved in its relation to the soul and cast away among sensible sights — the mind, having crossed over relation to and nature of these things, has no perception of them at all. Knowing this, as I said, I thought it necessary to give the present discourse of this treatise some further help: the writing of the scholia set in the margins, which both complete the discourse itself unto beauty, and render sweeter, for those who shall read it, the feast provided in its thoughts, and bring about, simply, complete clarity of all the meaning conveyed by the treatise.

For after the publication, having read through the whole work, and having found some passages needing clarification, others needing an addition of thought, and others some moderate afterthought upon the text as published, I made, as I said, this writing of the scholia, fitting to each place the appropriate reflection. Wherefore I entreat all who shall read it, or even transcribe it, both to read the writing of the scholia set outside the text and to append it according to each one's notation, that the discourse may be complete in every way, mutilated by nothing at all left unattended.

1. Scholia are called those things taken from Scripture and found, in some manner, outside the book, as headpieces, whose exposition has an inward connection. In its proper sense, “scholia” is said of hymnody, that is, of notable discourses.

2. By “notable rhetoric” he means that which is produced rather from art than from nature.

3. Since reason is corrupted by sense-perception, it draws the soul away, as much as it is able, from the flesh akin to it, and makes it its own to God. The soul is said to be akin to the flesh in two ways: either as together with the flesh completing one hypostasis, or as showing disobedience to reason and being bound to the flesh through the medium of sense-perception.

4. By “power” he means the divine illumination itself, which is always present to reason, as light to the eyes, teaching the soul the natural virtues and calling it back from fleshly desire.

5. The law of sin is the passionate disposition of the soul toward matter, that is, toward bodily things.

6. The “bridge” of the soul is the sense-perception separated from sensible things, through which it ascends to reason, through reason to the understanding, and through the understanding to God.

7. By “those who shall read” he means those devoted to the pursuits of spiritual philosophy.

8. By “treatise” he means all the questions of Thalassius, to which, answering in order, he set forth each of the responses — that is, the scholia — for each exposition, which he showed to all readers and copyists to be what makes up this book.

9. By “clarity,” I think, he means the interpretive manner of the exposition; by “addition,” not only what Thalassius puts forward from Scripture, but also whatever he further adds and interprets himself; there is a “reminder” wherever, with special clarity, he introduces, by the manner of the exposition, the loftiest thoughts. Preface to the One Who Commissioned the Writing To Thalassius, Most Holy Presbyter and Abbot, Concerning Various Difficulties of Holy Scripture To the most holy servant of God, lord Thalassius, presbyter and abbot, Maximus, a humble monk, sends greeting. Having rationally separated your soul, in its relation, from the flesh, and having wholly drawn out your mind from sense-perception through the Spirit, O man of God, you have made it the fruitful mother of the virtues, and shown it to be an ever-flowing spring of divine knowledge, making the conjunction of the soul with the flesh serve only the economy of better things, and possessing sense-perception as an instrument for the understanding of the greatness of the work of visible things: the one, in practice, molding your life, put forward for imitation, into a form that receives, through character, the glory that accords with virtue, and displaying it to those outside, that we might have an image of virtue; the other, symbolically engraving, by means of the forms of visible things, the principles (logoi) of intelligible things, and through them raising the mind up to the simplicity of intelligible contemplation, released purely from all the variety and composition found in visible things, that we might have your knowledge of the passage to intelligible things as an unerring road of truth.

Hence, after the complete laying aside of relational attachment to sense-perception and the flesh, swimming strongly and with skill, according to the mind, in the boundless sea of the oracles of the Spirit, you search out, with the Spirit, the depths of the Spirit; from whom, having received the manifestation of hidden mysteries, out of great humility, as it seems, you have filled a paper with many difficult chapters of Holy Scripture and sent it, seeking from me too — who am destitute of all virtue and knowledge — a written response to each chapter according to anagogical contemplation. Having received and read it, astonished in mind and hearing and understanding both, I begged you, entreating pardon for declining this, saying that the things sought are scarcely accessible even to those who have advanced very far in contemplation and have arrived near the end of that highest knowledge unattainable by others — let alone to me, who am cast down upon the earth, and, like the serpent, according to the ancient curse, have no other food after the earth of the passions, and wallow, worm-like, in the corruption of pleasures. And having done this often, and for a long while, when I found that you would not accept my entreaty on this matter, fearing lest the treasure of love should suffer some harm — that love by which, mingled with one another, we have one soul, though we bear two bodies — my refusal being reckoned by you, as was likely, as a pretext for disobedience, I dared, even against my will, what is beyond my power, judging it better to be accused rather of rashness, and to be laughed at by those who wish it, than that love should suffer any disturbance or diminishment in any respect — than which nothing that comes after God is more precious to those who have understanding, or rather more dear to God Himself, since it gathers the divided into one, and is able to fashion, out of many, or even out of all, a single, undisturbed identity of judgment.

And do you yourself first forgive me, honored father, for this undertaking, and ask the others to release me from the charge of rashness, and by your prayers render God gracious to me, and, more than that, a helper of what is said — or rather, a supplier of the whole and correct response concerning each chapter; for from Him is every good gift and every perfect gift, as from the fountain and Father of all the illuminating kinds of knowledge and powers granted in proportion to the worthy. For it was in you that I trusted when I undertook your command, expecting, as the wage of my compliance, the divine favor that comes through you. Setting forth each of the chapters in the order and sequence in which they were written by you, I shall make my response in due course, as concise and definite as I am able, so far as I am capable and so far as grace and power are granted me from God to think and speak piously, that we may not burden the hearing of those who shall read with a multitude of words — especially since I am addressing my discourse to you, who are truly knowing and exact beholders of divine things, and who have passed beyond the disturbance of the passions, and have gone beyond the whole relation of nature, and possess reason as your leader and most just judge over what is fitting, and have established the mind, through unknowing of what is higher, in the innermost place of divine ineffability, where alone it is given to lay hold, unknowingly, of divine gladness, which alone has, as teacher of its own greatness, the experience of those found worthy of it, and who therefore need only a small indication, pointing ahead to the all-radiant beauty of the mystical visions borne within the divine oracles, and to the spiritual magnanimity that comes from them — if indeed it is even lawful for me to say this to you, who are already, according to the Lord's word, the salt of the earth and the light of the world, on account of the wealth of virtue and the great outpouring of knowledge, and who cleanse, by the manners of the virtues, the corruption of the passions found in others, and illumine, with the light of knowledge, ignorance, which is the blindness of the soul.

I entreat you, most holy ones, and all who, as is likely, shall read this writing, not to make what is said by me the limit of the spiritual interpretation of the chapters; for I fall far short of the meaning of the divine oracles, and need, for this, the teaching of others also. But if you should be able, either from yourselves or from others, to grasp or learn something more, judge that, rather, rightly to be preferred, and attain to the higher and true understanding, whose work is the full assurance of the heart for those who desire spiritual discernment of the things inquired into. For the divine word is like water, which, to plants of every kind and shoots and various living things — I mean, to the men who are watered by the word itself — is manifested proportionately to each, both cognitively and, through the virtues, practically, being shown forth as fruit according to the quality, in each, of virtue and knowledge, and becoming evident to different people through different means; for it is never circumscribed by one, nor does it endure being confined within a single understanding, on account of its natural infinitude. But since you have bidden me first to speak concerning the passions that trouble us — how many and of what kind they are, and what beginning, what intermediate stage, they come to their proper end; and, implanted in what power of the soul or member of the body, invisibly forms the mind to itself and makes the body, dyelike, wholly colored, through the reasonings, toward sin, staining the wretched soul; and the force and operation belonging to the name of each; and the times and forms, and the deceits of the unclean demons worked through them, and the unseen interweavings and pretenses, and how, through some things, they secretly put forward others, and through some things plausibly drag us toward others; and their subtleties and smallnesses and greatnesses and bulks; their retreats and advances, their approaches and incursions, their withdrawals and contractions, their persistencies and attendances, swifter or slower; and, as it were, their pleadings against the soul as in a courtroom, and the verdicts, so to speak, rendered in the understanding, and the seeming defeats or victories; and what the disposition is toward each, and for what cause one or many passions are permitted to assault the soul, whether

by themselves or together with one another, and by what reasoning they bring up together with themselves, timelessly, their own matter, through which they secretly weave against us their bitter war, as though laboring hard over things present when these are in no way present at all, and as it were rushing upon their matter or fleeing it, suffering the one through pleasure and the other through pain; and the manner of their existence within us, and the manifold and various fantasy that occurs concerning them in dreams during sleep; and whether they are confined to some part of the soul or of the body, or to the whole soul and the whole body; and whether, being within, through the natural passions they persuade the soul to be drawn toward things outside, through the medium of the body, and deceive it into becoming wholly a thing of sense-perception alone, abandoning what is proper to it according to nature — or whether, being outside, through external contact with the body, they give shape to the invisible soul toward material things, imposing upon it a composite form, molding onto it the appearance of the matter taken up in fantasy; and whether there is order and sequence among them, maliciously devised, so as first to make trial of the soul through certain passions, and thereafter accordingly to war against it through the others, and which precede which, and which again follow or accompany which, or whether they trouble the soul confusedly and without order, at random, through whatever passions happen to occur; and whether the soul is permitted to suffer such things from them apart from providence, or according to providence, and what is the reasoning of providence's abandonment of the soul in the case of each passion; and what is the manner of the removal of each of the passions enumerated, and by what works or words or reasonings the soul is freed from these and shakes off the defilement of conscience; and by opposing what virtue to what passion it will conquer, putting the evil demon to flight, and, together with him, utterly abolishing the very motion of the passion; and how, after deliverance from the passions, it will be able to survey properly what belongs to it; and by what reasonings or manners, having made the passionless relations of sensible things to the senses its own through the reason according

to nature, it will form itself unto the virtues, just as it was formerly formed, through the passions, unto sin; and how it will duly make the good reversal, using, for the begetting and establishing of the virtues, the very things through which it formerly transgressed; and how, again released from these relations, it will gather, scientifically, the principles (logoi) of things that have come to be, once these are set free, through natural contemplation in the Spirit, from the sensible symbols attached to them; and how, again, after these, applying itself to intelligible things, the mind, having become purified of the understanding that pertains to sense-perception, will receive the simple acts of understanding, and will take up the simple knowledge that binds all things together with one another according to the originating reason (logos) of Wisdom; after which, having passed through all things that are, together with the thoughts proper to them, released purely even from its own power for understanding, it will undergo union, beyond understanding, with God Himself, according to which, receiving from Him, ineffably, the teaching of the truth that truly is, as a kind of seed, it will no longer be turned toward sin, there being no longer any room for the devil to draw it plausibly toward wickedness, through ignorance of the good that exists by nature and adorns all things capable of participating in it.

Since you have asked that the reasonings, manners, and causes of these and such matters be set down for you in writing, at your bidding, let the discourse concerning these things wait a little while for now — to be examined, God granting, more opportunely elsewhere, and investigated more diligently — if indeed I perceive in myself any power of swimming, according to the mind, and able to venture upon this great and deep sea. For I am not ashamed to say that I have not yet come to know the hard-to-escape methods and arts of the unclean demons, having as I do the dust of matter overshadowing the eyes of my soul, and not permitting me to contemplate purely the nature of things that have come to be, and to discern, with reason, among the things that are, those that only seem to be, deceiving only the irrational senseperception — since it belongs, in truth, only to those exceedingly contemplative and lofty in understanding, and have gained, through much experience, the discernment of good things and of things not such, and — greater and more honorable than all the rest — have received from God the grace and power both to understand well and to state clearly what has been understood, to investigate and speak of such things. Yet, that the discourse on these matters may not be left utterly without some comfort in the present undertaking, having said a little concerning the origin of the passions, and so much as may show forth to those knowing among you the end from the beginning, I shall proceed accordingly to the exposition of the chapters that follow.

Evil neither was, nor is, nor shall be, subsisting according to its own nature — for it has no substance, nor nature, nor hypostasis, nor power, nor operation whatsoever among the things that are — nor is it a quality, nor a quantity, nor a relation, nor a place, nor a time, nor a position, nor an action, nor a motion, nor a habit, nor a passion, naturally beheld in any of the things that are — nor indeed does it subsist at all, by natural appropriation, in any of these — nor is it a beginning, nor a middle, nor an end; but, that I may speak comprehensively, as it were within a definition, evil is the deficiency of the operation of the powers implanted in nature with respect to their end, and nothing else whatsoever. Or again, evil is the irrational movement of the natural powers, by mistaken judgment, toward something other than their end; and by “end” I mean the cause of things that are, which all things naturally desire — even though the evil one, above all, having covered his envy with a pretense of goodwill, and having by deceit persuaded man to move his desire toward something else among the things that are, rather than toward the Cause, thereby produced ignorance of the Cause. The first man, then, having failed in the movement of the operation of his natural powers toward their end, fell ill with ignorance of his own cause, supposing, through the counsel of the serpent, that to be God which the word of the divine commandment had ordered him to forswear having.

Having thus become a transgressor, and having become ignorant of God, mixing his whole noetic power tightly into the whole of sense-perception, he drew to himself the composite and pernicious knowledge of sensible things that operates unto passion, and was likened and compared to the senseless beasts, both acting and seeking and willing the same things as they in every way, and having, more than they, an exchange of the reason that accords with nature for irrationality that is contrary to nature. As much, then, as man attended, by sense-perception alone, to the knowledge of visible things, so much did he draw tighter upon himself the ignorance of God; and as much as he tightened the bond of this ignorance, so much the more did he cling to the experience of the sensory enjoyment of the material things known; and as much as he was filled with this, so much the more did he inflame the desire of the selflove born from it; and as much as he anxiously procured for himself the desire of self-love, so much the more did he devise many ways of establishing pleasure, since self-love is both its offspring and its end; and since every wickedness is naturally corrupted along with the means that constitute it, finding by experience itself that pain is altogether the successor of every pleasure, he had his whole impulse toward pleasure, and his whole avoidance toward pain, contending with all his power for the one, and struggling against the other with all his zeal, supposing — what was impossible — that by such a method he could separate these from one another, and have self-love, joined to pleasure alone, wholly untouched by pain — being ignorant, as it seems, through the passion, that it is never possible for pleasure to exist apart from pain.

For the travail of pain is mingled with pleasure, even if this seems hidden from those who have it, on account of the domination, in the passion, of pleasure — since that which dominates is always wont to show through, concealing the perception of what lies alongside it. Hence the great and countless throng of the passions broke into the life of men; hence our life became full of groaning, honoring for itself the occasions of its own destruction, and, through ignorance, discovering and cherishing for itself the pretexts of corruption; hence the one nature was divided into countless fragments, and we of the same nature devour one another like savage reptiles. For, laying claim to pleasure on account of self-love, and again striving to flee pain for the same cause, we devise the unspeakable births of the destructive passions. For instance, if we take thought for the pleasure of self-love, we beget gluttony, arrogance, vainglory, self-inflation, love of money, greed, tyranny, vanity, boastfulness, senselessness, madness, self-conceit, selfimportance, contempt, insolence, buffoonery, coarse jesting, profligacy, licentiousness, ostentation, restlessness, dullness, affectation, scornful mockery, talkativeness, ill-timed speech, foul language, and whatever else is of this kind. But if the manner of self-love is rather tormented through pain, we beget wrath, envy, hatred, enmity, remembrance of wrongs, reviling, slander, false accusation, sorrow, hopelessness, despair, complaint against providence, listlessness, negligence, dejection, discouragement, faintheartedness, illtimed mourning, weeping, gloom, lamentation, envy, jealousy, and rivalry, and whatever else belongs to the disposition deprived of the occasions of pleasure.

And from the mixture, or rather depravity, that arises for certain other causes between pleasure and pain — for so some call the composition of wickedness out of its opposite parts — we beget hypocrisy, irony, deceit, pretense, flattery, manpleasing, and whatever other inventions there are of mixed cunning. For it is not bearable to enumerate all of these now, and to speak of them together with their proper forms, manners, causes, and occasions — their examination, God granting the power, being reserved for its own separate treatment. Evil, then, as I have said, is ignorance of the good cause of the things that are; which, having maimed the human mind, but having opened wide the sense-perception, wholly estranged man from divine knowledge, and filled him with the passionate knowledge of sensible things; sharing in which without restraint, given over solely to sense-perception like an irrational beast, and finding, through the experience of his apparent bodily nature, that the participation in sensible things constitutes it, man, having thus already missed the noetic beauty of the divine comeliness, fittingly mistook the visible creation for God, deifying it on account of its usefulness for the constitution of the body, and, as was likely, loved his own body, which is naturally akin to the creation supposed to be God, worshiping the creation rather than the Creator with all zeal, through care and attention devoted to the body alone.

For one cannot otherwise worship the creation without cherishing the body, just as one cannot worship God without purifying the soul through the virtues; according to which, man, performing this destructive worship of the body, and having become, on this account, a lover of self, had unceasing pleasure and pain at work in him, ever eating of the tree of disobedience, which has the knowledge of good and evil mixed together at once, according to sense-perception, through experience. And perhaps one would not err from the truth in saying that the visible creation is the tree known as of good and evil; for it has, by nature, the capacity to produce both pleasure and pain. Or again: since creation also has spiritual principles (logoi) of visible things, which nourish the mind, and, in turn, a natural power that delights the sense-perception but distorts the mind, it was named the tree known of good and evil, having the knowledge of the good when contemplated spiritually, but the knowledge of evil when taken bodily. For it becomes a teacher of the passions to those who partake of it bodily, bringing upon forgetfulness of divine things. Wherefore, perhaps, God forbade man, deferring for the time his participation in it, that first — as was most just — through participation in grace, having come to know his own cause, and having, through such participation, tempered toward dispassion and unchangeableness the immortality given by grace, having already become god by deification, he might, without harm, in safety, together with God, survey the creatures of God and take up the knowledge of them as god and not as man, having, by grace, the same knowledge of the things that are, together with wisdom, as God has, through the transformation of mind and sense-perception unto deification.

Thus, then, one must here understand the matter concerning the tree, according to the anagogy that can fit all; the more mystical and higher account being reserved for the understanding of the initiated, and honored by us through silence. I have now mentioned the tree of disobedience only in passing, wishing to show that ignorance concerning God deified the creation, whose plain worship is the self-love of the human race with respect to the body, around which there is, as it were, a mixed knowledge — the experience of pleasure and of pain — through which the whole mire of evils was introduced into the life of men, variously and diversely, and, as no account could fully attain, in manifold ways constituted, in proportion as each who partakes of human nature has, living and active within himself, according to quantity and quality, the affection for his visible part — I mean the body — which compels him, slavishly, through both the desire for pleasure and the fear of pain, to devise many forms of passions, as occasions and circumstances happen to fall out, and as the manner of such things admits — with a view to being able always to secure pleasure for his companionship, and to remain wholly untouched by pain: teaching him to pursue the impossible, and something that cannot come to its intended end. For since the whole nature of bodies is corruptible and dispersible, by whatever means one contrives to establish it, he only makes its corruption the stronger, fearing, and unwillingly and against his judgment, unwittingly cherishing, through what he loves, that which he does not love, being bound to things that are by nature unable to remain fixed, and thereby altering, along with the things that are scattered, the disposition of his soul, swimming along, unstably, with the things that flow, and not perceiving his own destruction on account of the complete blindness of the soul toward truth.

But deliverance from all these evils, and the short road to salvation, is the true love of God according to full knowledge, and the complete renunciation, in the soul, of affection for the body and for this world; according to which, casting off the desire for pleasure and the fear of pain, we are freed from evil self-love, being raised up to the knowledge of the Creator, and, having received a good, noetic self-love in exchange for the evil kind, separated from bodily affection, we do not cease to worship God through this good self-love, ever seeking from God the constitution of the soul. For this is true worship, and truly pleasing to God: the exact care of the soul through the virtues. He, then, who does not desire bodily pleasure, and does not at all fear pain, has become dispassionate with respect to these, and has, together with the self-love that begot them, put to death at once all the passions that arise through and from them, along with ignorance, the chief author of evils; and he has become wholly one with the good that is fixed and abiding and ever the same by nature, remaining altogether unmoved together with it, and, with unveiled face, mirroring the glory of God, beholding the divine and unapproachable glory from the light-like brightness within himself. Since, then, the discourse has shown us the right and easy road of those who are saved, let us, so far as we are able, renounce the pleasure and the pain of the present life, and teach those under us to do this with much exhortation, and let us be altogether delivered, and deliver others, from every device of the passions and demonic wickedness; and let us lay claim to divine love alone, and no one will be able to separate us from God — neither tribulation, nor distress, nor famine, nor peril, nor sword, nor whatever else is enumerated by the holy Apostle in that passage — through knowledge in operation, love remaining unmoved within us, being supplied by Him with the eternal and ineffable gladness and constitution of the soul.

Being counted worthy of this, we shall have, toward this world, the saving ignorance, no longer, as before, without sober reasoning, looking with unveiled face of sense-perception upon the outward appearance of sensible things as glory — around which the passions plainly have their origin — but rather, with the unveiled face of the understanding, freed from every sensible covering, mirroring the glory of God in virtues and spiritual knowledge, according to which union with God comes to be by grace, rousing the mind from all ignorance and fall. For just as, being ignorant of God, we made a god of the creation known enjoyably by sense-perception, on account of the body's constitution from it, so, receiving the knowledge of God attainable by the understanding in operation, on account of the soul's constitution from Him for being, and being well, and being forever, we shall be ignorant of every experience of every sense-perception.

1. By “flesh,” he means that it is receptive, through its visible dispositions, of the soul's disposition according to virtue, being an instrument yoked to the soul itself for its manifestation.

2. By “sense-perception,” he means that which conveys to the mind the imagination of visible things, for the understanding of the principles (logoi) within the things that are, as an instrument for the mind's passage to intelligible things.

3. He says it is proper to love to show one purpose in those who live according to it.

4. That the mind, having passed beyond the being of the things that are, becomes “unintelligent,” in approaching God, who is above all being, both in knowledge and in 5. That the Word of God makes the distribution of gifts according to the dispositions of souls, in those who receive Him.

6. That the demons, by our own understanding, as though the matters of the passions were present, weave against us their unseen wars.

7. That it is on account of pleasure, he says, that we love the passions, and on account of pain that we flee virtue.

8. That just as reason, when it rules over the passions, makes the senses instruments of virtue, so also the passions, when they rule over reason, form the senses toward sin.

9. That the soul, once united to God by habit, after being freed from its natural relation to the things that are, receives an unshakable steadfastness with respect to the good.

10. By “things that are” he means the substances of the things that are; and by “things that seem to be,” the flowings and effluxes according to quality and quantity, around which the fashioning of the senses is constituted, working sin.

11. That man, being midway between God and matter, and not having been moved toward God as the cause and end of his own coming-to-be, but toward matter, fittingly became ignorant of God, having grounded his mind in earth by his inclination toward matter. He called it “composite knowledge”: the experience, according to sense-perception, of sensible things, as naturally having pleasure on account of coming-to-be, and pain on account of corruption.

13. The creation of visible things, he says, has both spiritual principles (logoi) with respect to the mind, and a natural power with respect to sense-perception; the thoughts of which exist as it were a tree in the midst of the heart, paradise being understood figuratively.

14. One is ignorant of the experience of sense-perception according to pleasure and pain, whenever he binds his mind to God, having become free of bodily relation. Since God has granted you the grace to command me to write down and send you what I had noted of the chapters that were doubtful to me, I have set first those that appeared to me most necessary.

1. Concerning Grief and Pleasure and Desire and Fear Are the passions themselves evil, or evil only according to their use? I mean pleasure and grief, desire and fear, and what follows upon these. These passions, like the rest, were not created together with human nature in the first place, since otherwise they would have contributed to the definition of nature. But I say, having learned from the great Gregory of Nyssa, that they were introduced on account of the fall from perfection, being attached to the more irrational part of nature; through which, instead of the divine and blessed image, immediately with the transgression, the likeness of irrational animals became manifest and evident in man. For it was fitting that, the dignity of reason having been veiled, human nature should be justly punished by the marks of irrationality which it had willfully drawn to itself, God wisely arranging that man should come to a perception of his rational greatness of mind. Yet the passions also become good in the virtuous, whenever, wisely separating them from bodily things, they employ them for the acquisition of heavenly things — for instance, they will make desire into the appetitive movement of the noetic longing for divine things; pleasure, into the unhurt gladness of the mind's captivating operation upon divine gifts; fear, into the guarding care against future punishment for transgressions; and grief, into the corrective repentance for a present evil.

And, to speak concisely, according to the wise among physicians, who, from the body of the destructive beast, the viper, remove the harm that exists or is anticipated, using it as a remedy — so also they, using these passions for the removal of present or expected wickedness, gain and guard virtue and knowledge. These, then, as I have said, are good on account of their use, in those who take every thought captive unto the obedience of Christ. But if any of these things is said in Scripture of God, or of the saints, it is said of God for our sake — as manifesting to us fittingly, through our own passions, the saving and beneficent progressions of His providence; and of the saints, as being unable otherwise to express their noetic relations and dispositions toward God through bodily speech, except through the passions known to their nature.

1. That Scripture depicts the various manners of providence toward us by means of the passions known to us.

2. That Scripture signifies, by these same names, a certain relation of the saints toward God.

2. Concerning What Is Meant by, “My Father Works Until If the Creator made all the forms that fill up the world in the six days, what does the Father work after these? For the Savior says, “My Father works until now, and I work.” Does He perhaps mean the preservation of the forms that have once come to be? God, having once, as He Himself knows, completed the first principles (logoi) of the things that have come to be, and the universal substances of the things that are, still works, not only the preservation of these very things unto being, but also the operative production, procession, and constitution of the parts within them that exist potentially, and, further, the assimilation, through providence, particulars universals, until, having united, by the more generic reason according to nature of rational substance, the selfdetermined impulse of particulars through their movement toward well-being, He shall make them concordant and moved together, both with one another and with the whole, no longer having the distinction, according to judgment, of particulars from universals, but one and the same reason (logos) will be beheld throughout the whole, not divided by the manners of the subjects of which it is, in like manner, predicated — and thus He shows in operation the deifying grace of all things; on account of which, having become man, God the Word says, “My Father works until now, and I work” — the one well-pleased, the other Himself working, and the Holy Spirit essentially completing both the good pleasure of the Father over all things and the working of the Son, that God, who is in Trinity, may become, through all things and in all things, one, being beheld, in proportion, wholly in each of those found worthy by grace, and wholly in all, just as the soul, without diminishment, is naturally present, whole, in the whole body and in each member of the body.

1. “In matter”: that is, in the universal substance of the things that are, existing potentially, are the particulars that come to be from matter, whose coming-to-be, he says, God plainly works.

2. By “the assimilation of particulars to universals” he means the union, according to a single movement of judgment, of all men toward the reason (logos) of nature, which God works through providence, that there may come to be, of all, as it were one nature, so also one judgment, all being joined to God and to one another through the Spirit.

3. Concerning Him Who, in the Gospel, Carries the Who, according to the Gospel, is he who carries the pitcher of water in the city, and why of water, whom the disciples sent by Christ meet and are bidden to follow? And who is the master of the house? And why is the name passed over in silence by the evangelists? And what is the large upper room, furnished, in which the awesome mystery of the divine supper is accomplished? Not only did Scripture pass over in silence the name of the man to whom the Savior sent the two disciples for the preparation of the Passover, but also that of the city to which they were sent. Whence, at first approach, I suspect that by the city is signified the sensible world, and by the man, the universal nature of men, to which are sent, as disciples of God the Word, and forerunners preparing His mystical feast for the nature of men, the law of the first covenant and that of the new — the one cleansing nature of all defilement through the practical philosophy, the other, through theoretical mystagogy, raising up the mind knowingly from bodily things to the kindred spectacles of intelligible things. And a proof of this is that the disciples sent were Peter and John; for Peter is a symbol of practice, and John of contemplation.

Wherefore he who carries the pitcher of water fittingly meets them first, signifying in himself all those who, according to the practical philosophy, carry upon their shoulders, as it were in a pitcher, guarded by the mortification of the earthly members of the body, the grace of the Spirit that cleanses them of defilements through faith; then, after him, second, the master of the house who shows the furnished upper room, likewise teaching in himself all those who, according to contemplation, have spread out the height of their pure and magnanimous understanding, as an upper room, in a manner befitting God, with cognitive thoughts and doctrines, for the reception of the great Word. And the house is the state of piety, toward which the practical mind journeys, conducting itself in virtue, but over which he is master — having now acquired it, as it were, by nature as his own — who is the mind illumined by the divine light of mystical knowledge, and who, on this account, together with the practical man, is counted worthy of the supernatural presence and feast of the Savior, the Word. The man, then, is spoken of both as one and as two, since the one is written as carrying the pitcher, and the other is called the master of the house: one, as I said, perhaps, on account of the one nature; but two, because this nature has been divided, according to piety, into the practical and the contemplative — whom the Word, again mingling through the Spirit, both calls and makes one.

But if one should wish to contemplate what has been said with respect to each individual man, he will not have departed from the truth. For the city is the soul of each individual, to which are ever sent, as disciples of the Word and of God, the principles (logoi) concerning virtue and knowledge. And he who carries the pitcher of water is the steadfast manner and reasoning that bears up, upon the shoulders of self-control, unassailed, the grace of the faith given in baptism. And the house is the condition and habit of the virtues, built up out of many and various firm and manly characters and reasonings, as out of stones. And the upper room is the broad and spacious understanding and aptitude for knowledge, adorned with divine visions of mystical and unutterable doctrines. And the master of the house is the mind that is enlarged by the brightness of the house that accords with virtue, and by the height, beauty, and greatness of knowledge; to whom, together with his disciples — that is, the first and spiritual thoughts concerning nature and time — the Word, sojourning, imparts Himself. For truly the Passover is the passage of the Word to the human mind, according to which the Word of God, coming mystically, grants the fullness of all things to those who are worthy, through participation in His own good things.

4. Concerning Not Acquiring Two Tunics How did the Lord command the disciples not to acquire two tunics, when He Himself possessed five, according to the holy evangelist John, as is clear from those who divided them among themselves? And what are these garments? The Savior did not have five tunics, but one worn on the body and an outer wrap, of which the inner one worn on the body they call the “chiton” (tunic), and the outer wrap they call the “himation” (mantle). But the great evangelist John, through the Spirit, delivered, mystically, in the letter of the history, the ineffable meaning of contemplation, that he might guide our mind, through the things narrated, to the truth of the things understood. The seamless tunic of the Savior, woven from the top throughout, which those who crucified Him did not tear, though they were permitted to strip Him of it, is the mutual, undivided cohesion and interweaving of the virtues, a covering fitting and proper to reason on our part — or the grace of the new man, woven from above, through the Spirit, according to Him. But the outer wrap is the sensible world, divided into four elements, which those who noetically crucify the Lord within us divide as four garments. The demons, then, divide the visible creation of the four elements, preparing us to look with passion, according to sense-perception, upon it, being ignorant of the divine principles (logoi) within it.

But the tunic of the virtues, even if they lift it from us through the inactivity of good works, they cannot persuade us that virtue is wickedness. Let us not, then, make the Savior's five garments an occasion for covetousness, but let us know what is the will of Scripture, and how the Lord is crucified and stripped naked within us when we are negligent of good things, and how, through our idleness in good things, the demons divide His creation among themselves, as it were garments, for the service of the passions; and let us become secure guardians of the good things granted to us by God; and let us behold creation rightly, only for His glory; and let us keep the tunic of the reason of knowledge — I mean the virtues — unstripped, through zeal for good works. But if you wish, in addition to what has been said, to understand the tunic woven from above as the world of incorporeal and intelligible substances, and the outer wrap, which the discourse divided into four parts as elements, to understand as the bodily nature, you will not fall short of the truth; of which they dissolved the body through corruption, taking strength against us from the transgression of the law of the commandment, but did not tear the soul, as belonging to the kinship from above.

5. Concerning the Cursed Earth in the Works of Adam What is the earth that is cursed in the works of Adam, according to the anagogy? And what is meant by eating it in sorrow? And what is meant by, after it brings forth thorns and thistles, eating the grass? And what, finally, is eating bread in the sweat of his face? For indeed, man has never been seen eating earth or grass; nor do those who eat bread, according to the statement of the history, eat it in the sweat of their face. The cursed earth in the works of Adam is the flesh of Adam, ever becoming so through the works of Adam — I mean, the passions of the earthed mind — cursed with the barrenness of the virtues, which are the works of God; which he eats with much pain and grief, enjoying its small pleasure. Which flesh, for the sake of this corruptible enjoyment, brings up for him cares and anxieties, like thorns, and great temptations and dangers, like thistles, painfully piercing him on every side, in reason, and irascibility, and desire, that he might scarcely be able to procure its health and well-being, like withering grass, and eat it — that is, obtain it — and then, after much circling round of these terrible things, in the sweat of his face — that is, in the toil and labor, according to sense-perception, of the anxious investigation of sensible things — have, like bread, the means of sustaining the present life, either through art or through some other contrived method of livelihood.

Or rather, the earth of Adam is the heart, having received, through the transgression, the curse of the removal of the heavenly good things. Which earth, according to the practical philosophy, he eats through many afflictions, once it has been cleansed of the curse, according to conscience, of the works of shame. And again, cutting away with reason the thoughts that spring up in it like thorns concerning the origin of bodies, and, like thistles, the entangled reasonings concerning the providence and judgment of incorporeal things, he spiritually reaps natural contemplation, as it were grass. And thus, as in the sweat of his face, by the scientific manner of the understanding, according to knowledge, he eats the incorruptible bread of theology, the only truly lifegiving bread, which preserves unto incorruption the comingto-be of those who eat it. The earth, then, well eaten, is the purification of the heart through practice; the grass is the knowledge of the things that have come to be, according to natural contemplation; and the bread is the true mystagogy according to theology. By “the works of Adam” he means the passions of dishonor; for the virtues are worked by God alone in those who are willing, taking, as an instrument for the manifestation of the virtues, only the purpose of those who are willing.

6. Concerning “He Who Is Born of God Does Not Sin” If, according to holy John, “he who is born of God does not sin, because His seed remains in him, and he cannot sin,” and “he who is born of water and the Spirit is born of God,” how can we, who have been born of God through baptism, still sin? There is a twofold manner in us of the birth from God: the one giving, in potency, to those born, the whole grace of adoption; the other introducing this whole grace as present in operation, and transforming, according to judgment, the whole free choice of the one born toward God who begets him. And the one has the grace present in potency according to faith alone; the other, besides faith, works in the one who has come to full knowledge the most divine likeness, according to full knowledge, of that which is known. In those, then, in whom the first manner of birth is beheld — because their judgment has not yet been purely stripped of fleshly attachment so as to be wholly conformed to the Spirit, through the operative participation in the divine mysteries that have been known according to it — it is not impossible for them, if they should wish, at some time to incline toward sin. For the Spirit does not beget a judgment that is unwilling, but transforms, unto deification, the judgment that is willing; and he who has partaken of this by experience, according to full knowledge, cannot fall away from that which has once, in truth, in the proper sense, been recognized by act, toward pretending to be something else besides that — just as an eye that has once beheld the sun cannot mistake it for the moon or for any other of the stars in heaven.

But in those from whom the Holy Spirit, at their birth, has taken their whole free choice, and has wholly transferred it from earth to heaven, and has, through true full knowledge in operation, transformed the mind by the blessed rays of God and the Father, so that they are thought to be another god, suffering, by habit, through grace, what God is not by suffering but by being, according to essence — in these, plainly, the free choice has become sinless with respect to the habit of virtue and knowledge, since they are unable to deny that which has, through experience, been recognized by them in operation. Even if, then, we have the spirit of adoption, which is a seed forming those who are born unto the likeness of the one who sowed it, yet we do not present to it a judgment purely free from inclination and disposition toward something else, and for this reason, even after being born through water and the Spirit, we sin willingly. But if we should prepare our judgment to receive knowingly the operation of these — I mean, of water and Spirit — then, through practice, the mystical water would effect the purification of conscience, and the life-giving Spirit would work, through experiential knowledge, the unchangeable perfection of the good within us. What is lacking, then, in each of us who are still able to sin, is the will to present ourselves purely, wholly, according to judgment, to the Spirit.

1. Through the one manner, he says, the grace of adoption is given only in potency, since to all the baptized is given the possibility of becoming sons of God; for He said, “Unless one is born of water and Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” And again, “But as many as received Him, He gave them authority to become children of God.” But through the other manner, through the fulfillment of the commandments and the knowledge of the truth, is given the perfection of the same adoption, that is, the inability to sin, through the deification that does not exist in the first manner. For on account of man's free will, the possibility of sinning is not removed from him, since his whole desire is not yet turned by grace wholly toward God.

2. Idle faith, he says, has the grace of adoption only in potency, since those who have it are not moved through the commandments.

7. Concerning “for This Reason the Gospel Was Preached What is meant by, “For this reason the Gospel was preached also to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit”? How are the dead judged in the flesh? It is the custom of Scripture to interchange the tenses and to substitute one for another, and to speak of the future as past, and the past as future, and to express the present in terms of the time before and after it, as is clear to those experienced in it. Some, then, say that Scripture here calls “dead” those men who died before the sojourn of Christ — those in the flood, those in the time of the building of the tower, those in Sodom, those in Egypt, and others who, at various times and in various ways, received the manifold justice and extraordinary visitations of the divine judgments; who paid the penalty not so much for ignorance of God as for their outrage against one another; to whom, it says, the great proclamation of salvation was preached, having already been judged in the flesh according to man — that is, having received the penalty for their offenses against one another through their life in the flesh — that they might live according to God in the spirit, that is, receiving, in soul, being in Hades, the proclamation of the knowledge of God, believing through the Savior who descended into Hades to save even the dead.

But for the understanding of the passage, let us take it thus: for this reason the Gospel was preached also to the dead, having been judged according to man in the flesh, that they might live according to God in the spirit. Or again, perhaps he means, in a hidden way, by “dead” those who bear about the mortification of Jesus in the body, to whom, fittingly, in truth, the divine Gospel has been given through their very works — since the Gospel introduces the renunciation of fleshly life and the confession of spiritual life, to those who are ever dying according to man — I mean, the human life in the flesh according to this age — but living according to God by the spirit alone, according to the divine Apostle and those like him, who live in no way their own life, but have Christ living in themselves according to the soul alone. Thus those who are dead in the flesh for God's sake are judged in the flesh, having many afflictions and torments and distresses, and enduring persecutions and countless kinds of temptations with joy.

8. Concerning “God Is Light” Since holy John says again, “God is light,” and again, a little after, “if we walk in the light, as He is in the light,” how is He Himself called both light, and also said to be in the light, as one thing in another? God, who is truly light according to essence, is in those who walk in Him through the virtues, having themselves truly become light. Just as, then, the light that exists by participation — as all the saints, through love of God, become in the light that exists by essence — so the light that exists by essence becomes, through love of mankind, light in the light that exists by participation. If, then, we are, according to virtue and knowledge, as in light, in God, God Himself also, as light, is in light in us. For God, who is light by nature, becomes light by imitation, as archetype in an image. Or rather, God the Father is light in light — that is, plainly, in the Son and the Holy Spirit — not being one light and another and another, but one and the same according to essence, threefold-shining according to the manner of existence.

9. Concerning “Brethren, Now We Are Children of God, and It Has Not yet Been Manifested What We Shall Be” What again does holy John mean, “Brethren, now we are children of God, and it has not yet been manifested what we shall be”? If it has not yet been manifested what we shall be, how does holy Paul say, “But God has revealed it to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God”? And how does he philosophize thus concerning what we shall be? The holy evangelist John says he was ignorant of the manner of the future deification, through the virtues that accord with faith, of those who have here become children of God, since the self-subsistent hypostasis, according to form, of the future good things has not yet been manifested. For here we walk by faith, not by sight. But holy Paul says he received, through revelation, the divine purpose concerning the future good things, yet did not himself know the manner, according to that divine purpose, of deification. Wherefore he says plainly, interpreting himself: “I press on toward the goal, for the prize of the heavenly calling” — evidently wishing to know, from suffering, the manner of the operative fulfillment of that divine purpose, made known to him here through revelation, concerning the deifying power granted to those found worthy.

The apostles, then, agree, breathing together with one another through their seemingly contrary teaching, as being moved by one and the same Spirit. For the one confesses ignorance of the manner of the future deification according to grace, while the other magnificently introduces knowledge of the purpose. And that the great apostle holds to this judgment, he himself, through all his divine words, stands as witness to himself — at one time saying that all knowledge and prophecy will be abolished, at another reckoning that he has not yet apprehended, at another saying that he sees the things to come through a mirror and in riddles, and that there will be a time when he will enjoy, face to face, the great and incomprehensible grace of the things hoped for; at another confessing that he knows in part and prophesies in part; at another crying out expressly that he must know even as he is known — as evidently not yet knowing that which shall be known. And, to speak concisely, what is said by the Apostle, “when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part shall be abolished,” seems to me the same as what is said by the theologian, “it has not yet been manifested what we shall be.”

10. Concerning “He Who Fears Has Not Been Perfected in If “he who fears has not been perfected in love,” how is it that “those who fear Him lack nothing”? If they lack nothing, it is clear that they have been perfected. How then has he who fears not been perfected? The good order of the divine Scriptures, distinguishing, according to the saving law of the Spirit, the stages of those moved from the external multitude of the passions toward divine unity, has called those who are being introduced, and are as it were still at the outer courts of the divine hall of the virtues, “those who fear”; and it knows how to name those who have acquired a measured habit of the reasons and manners of virtue “those who are advancing”; and it calls the summit of those who have already, according to it, come to be knowingly in the revelatory truth of the virtues, “the perfect.” Neither, then, does he who fears the Lord, having wholly turned away from the ancient conduct according to the corruption of the passions, and having, through fear, given over his whole disposition to the divine commands, lack any good befitting those being introduced, even though he has not yet acquired the habit in the virtues, and has become a partaker of the wisdom spoken among the perfect; nor does he who is advancing lack any of the good things assigned to his own degree, even though he has not yet acquired the same knowledge of divine things that surpasses that of the perfect.

And again, let those who valiantly pursue the practical philosophy, but have not yet released their soul from fear and the remembrance of the future divine tribunals, be understood by us as “those who fear” — lacking nothing, according to the blessed David, of those who contend for the truth against the opposing power, yet still falling short of the pure transmission, according to the mind of the perfect, of the mystical visions. But let those who have already been mystically counted worthy of theoretic theology, and have made their mind pure of every material fantasy, and bear the whole unfailing imitation of the image of divine comeliness, be understood by us as “those who love.” There is, then, no lack in those who fear, according to the blessed David, insofar as they fear, even though he who fears does not have the fullness and perfection of immediate union with the Word equal to that of those who love the Lord. For each, in his own rank, has the perfection allotted, his proper abode, even though one is higher than another in the quality or quantity of spiritual stature. But since fear is twofold — according to, “rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna,” and according to, “the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever and ever, and He is great and terrible above all who are round about Him” — it must be asked how love casts fear outside, if it endures forever and ever, and how God will remain terrible to the ages without end to all who are round about Him.

Or rather, since, as I have said, fear is twofold, the one pure, the other not pure — for instance, the fear that arises from transgressions, in expectation of punishment, having sin as the cause of its own coming-to-be, being not pure, will not endure forever, vanishing along with sin through repentance; but the pure fear, which is ever established apart from the remembrance of transgressions, shall never cease to be, since it is somehow essentially implanted in God with respect to creation, making manifest to all His natural awesomeness, the transcendence that is above every kingdom and power — he, then, who does not fear God as judge, but reveres Him on account of the surpassing transcendence of His infinite power, does not rightly have any lack, being perfect in love, loving God with reverence and fitting awe; and this is he who has acquired the fear that endures forever and ever, and there is no lack in him whatsoever. The prophet and the evangelist, then, agree with one another: the one saying that there is no lack in those who fear the Lord with pure fear; the other, that he who fears as a judge, on account of a defiled conscience, is not perfect in love. According to this understanding, perhaps, God is also “terrible to all who are round about Him,” as making the love of those who love Him and who shall come to be around Him mingled with fear.

For love, separated by itself from fear, is naturally wont, for the most part, to fall away into contempt, the boldness that is naturally born of it not being, as it were, tempered by fear. Let us also consider, if it seems good, what is meant by “round about Him.” For he who is encircled has those who surround him in front and behind and on the right and on the left. Since, then, the Lord also has those who surround Him, let us understand by those behind, those who have gone blamelessly behind the God through the commandments, according to the practical virtue; by those on the left, those who have rightly accomplished natural contemplation in the Spirit, together with the pious apprehension of judgments — for the book of Proverbs says of wisdom, “in her left hand are riches and glory” — by those on the right, those who have received the immaterial knowledge of intelligible things, pure of sensible fantasy — for it says, “in her right hand are years of life” — and by those in front, those who, on account of the surpassing erotic fervor of their noetic desire for the divine beauty, have been counted worthy of the enjoyment face to face. But if there is also another, greater and higher, account of this matter, it is to be grasped by you and by the divine men like you.

11. Concerning What Is the Beginning of the Angels Who What is the beginning of the angels who did not keep it, and what is the dwelling place which they left, and what are the eternal chains, and what is the darkness under which they have been kept, and what shall they suffer at the judgment of the great day? Let the exact account concerning these things be reserved for the understanding of the apostolic men alone, who were taught directly by the Word both the unerring knowledge of the things that are and the good and just administration of the wise providence over the things that are, as men who leave no hindering partition between themselves and the Word according to the mind. So far, then, as it reaches to me, who am below, and have many hindrances to the Word's passage to me, the beginning of the angels who did not keep it is, perhaps, the reason (logos) according to which they were created, or the natural sovereignty given to them for deification according to grace, or again the rank of standing according to the worth of grace. And the dwelling place is either heaven, or the wisdom, according to habit, of the good things beyond conception, which they were made to inhabit — for the word knows how to call wisdom a house also — or the guarding oversight of the undefiled Godhead over the natural and acquired good things given to them, which they abandoned when they rebelled.

And the eternal chains are the complete and continual immobility, according to their judgment, with respect to the good, according to which they never at all enjoy divine relief; or again, the power that, for our salvation, restrains their madness against us according to the providence of God, not permitting the machinations of their wickedness against us to advance. And the darkness is the complete and entire ignorance of divine grace, according to which, having been wholly formed according to their judgment, they have been deprived of the transmission of the blessed and all-radiant, undefiled light, having spent, upon what does not exist, the whole noetic power given to them by nature. And what they shall suffer on the fearful day of judgment only the just Judge knows, who apportions to each, according to worth, the just recompense, distributing, fittingly, a form of judgment equal to the measure of wickedness, and pronouncing, together with justice, the fitting sentence for endless ages, in accordance with His good decrees.

12. Concerning What Is the Tunic Defiled by the Flesh The life defiled by many offenses arising from the sufferings of the flesh is a defiled tunic. For as if from a kind of garment, the manner of life's conduct is naturally wont to shine through in each man, whether righteous or unrighteous — the one having a pure tunic, namely the virtuous life; the other possessing a life defiled by wicked works. Or rather, the tunic defiled by the flesh is the habit and disposition that shapes the soul, according to conscience, through the remembrance of the wicked movements and operations arising from the flesh; which, ever seeing this about itself as a kind of tunic, is filled with the foul odor of the passions. For just as, from the spirit, through the virtues woven together with one another according to reason, a tunic of incorruption comes to be for the soul, which, being clothed in it, becomes beautiful and glorious, so also, from the flesh, the passions being woven together with one another according to irrationality, there comes to be a certain unclean and defiled tunic, showing the soul recognizable from itself, having implanted in it another form and image besides the divine one.

13. Concerning “for His Invisible Things from the Creation of the World Are Clearly Seen, Being Understood by the Things That Are Made” What is meant by, “For His invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and divinity”? What are the invisible things of God, and what is His eternal power and divinity? The principles (logoi) of the things that are, having been prepared beforehand in God before the ages, as He Himself knows, being invisible — which it is the custom of divine men to call also “good acts of will” — are clearly seen, being understood from the things that are made. For all the works of God, when contemplated by us according to nature with due understanding, secretly declare to us the principles according to which they came to be, and manifest together with themselves the divine purpose for each work — according to which also “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of His hands.” And His eternal power and divinity are the providence that holds together the things that are, and the deifying operation, according to it, upon those cared for by providence. Or perhaps the invisible things of God are nothing other than His eternal power and divinity, having, as their loud-voiced heralds, the surpassing magnificences of the things that have come to be.

For just as, from the things that are, we believe that God, who properly is, exists, so also, from the essential differentiation of the things that are according to species, we are taught that His essential and innate wisdom subsists, and is that which holds together the things that are; and again, from the essential movement of the things that are according to species, we learn that His essential and innate life subsists, and is that which fulfills the things that are — receiving, from the wise contemplation of creation, the doctrine concerning the Holy Trinity, I mean the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. For the Word is God's eternal power, as consubstantial, and the consubstantial Holy Spirit is His eternal divinity. Condemned, then, are those who have not been taught together, from the contemplation of the things that are, the cause of the things that are, and the properties, according to nature, of the Cause — I mean, the power and the divinity. Creation, then, cries out through the works within it, and, as it were, proclaims to those able to hear noetically its own Cause, hymned in Trinity — I mean, God and Father, and His ineffable power and divinity, that is, the Only-begotten Word and the Holy Spirit. For these are the invisible things of God that are clearly seen, from the creation of the world, by the 1.

That from the things that are, he says, we know the cause of the things that are; and from the differentiation of the things that are, we are taught the subsistent wisdom of Him who is; and from the natural movement of the things that are, we learn the subsistent life of Him who is — the life-giving power of the things that are, the Holy Spirit.

14. Concerning “and They Reverenced and Worshiped the Creation Rather Than the Creator” What is meant by, “and they reverenced and worshiped the creation rather than the Creator”? What is reverence, and what is worship? Reverence is worship with faith of the divine; and worship is service through works. This reverence, that is, faith, men transferred to the creation, and worshiped it rather than the Creator, believing in demons; and they served it, offering it service through wicked works. But let us, revering God through faith in Him, be zealous also to offer Him pure worship — the manner of life perfected through the virtues.

15. Concerning “for Your Incorruptible Spirit Is in All What is meant by, “For Your incorruptible Spirit is in all things, therefore You correct those who fall away little by little”? If it speaks of the Holy Spirit, how is it that “wisdom will not enter into a deceitful heart, nor dwell in a body enslaved to sins”? I have noted this on account of the simple statement “in all things.” The Holy Spirit is absent from none of the things that are, and especially none of those that partake of reason in any way. For He is the one who holds together the knowledge proper to each, since God and the Spirit of God, according to power, providentially pervade all things, and stir up the reason according to nature in each, and, through it, lead him who perceives it to a perception of what has been wrongly done contrary to the law of nature, when he has his free choice pliant to receive the correct reasonings that come from nature. Indeed, we find many, even among the very barbarous and nomadic peoples, laying claim to nobility of character, and setting aside the savage laws that had from of old prevailed among them. In this way, then, the Holy Spirit is in all things simply. But in a more determinate sense, and by another consideration, He is in all who are under the Law, as legislative and as foretelling the mysteries to come, producing in them a perception of the transgression of the commandments, and a knowledge of the perfection foretold according to Christ.

Wherefore, from these too, we find many abandoning the old worship, lying in shadows, and readily changing over to the new and mystical worship. And there is, beyond the manners already mentioned, also in all who have received, through faith, the truly divine and deifying name of Christ, not only as guarding and, through providence, stirring up the reason according to nature, and as pointing out the transgression and observance of the commandments, and as proclaiming the foretelling concerning Christ, but also as the maker of the adoption given by grace through faith. For, as a maker of wisdom, He comes to be only in those who have been purified in both soul and body through the exact joint practice commandments, conversing with them as His own through simple and immaterial knowledge, and imprinting their mind, unto deification, with the undefiled understandings of things ineffable. He is, then, in all things simply, insofar as He is the one who holds all things together, and provides for them, and stirs up their natural seeds; and, in a more determinate sense, also in all who are under the Law, insofar as He points out the transgression of the commandments and illumines the promise foretold concerning Christ; and in all who are of Christ, besides what has been said, as the maker of adoption. But as the maker of wisdom, He is, simply, in none of those mentioned, except in those who understand, and who have made themselves, through godly conduct, worthy of His deifying indwelling.

For everyone who does not do the divine will, even if he is a believer, has a heart that is “without understanding,” as a workshop of wicked reasonings, and a body “enslaved to sins,” as ever held fast by the defilements of the passions. Scholia 1. That, as the maker and provider of all things, the Holy Spirit is in all things.

2. That, as legislative and foretelling, the Holy Spirit is also in those who are under the Law.

3. That the Holy Spirit is, in a special manner, among Christians, as the maker of divine adoption.

16. Concerning the Molten Calf in the Wilderness What is the molten calf, and why does it say “calf” in the singular, but “these are your gods, O Israel” in the plural? And what is meant by its being ground fine and scattered upon the water? And what are the earrings and the other ornaments? The mind that, like Israel, comes out of Egypt, that is, of sin, and has, coexisting with itself, still departing along with the error of sin, as an imprint of wickedness in the understanding, the imagination — whenever it grows a little careless and falls short of rational discernment, as Israel of old fell short of Moses — sets up the irrational habit, mother of all the passions, as a calf. As earrings, it melts down the reasonings it has naturally received concerning theology from the pious contemplation of the things that are; as neckornaments, the God-befitting opinions concerning the things that are which have arisen in it from natural contemplation; as bracelets for the hands, the natural operations, according to the practical philosophy, of the virtues — melting these, as in a furnace, in the fiery heat of the passionate disposition of irascibility and desire, and, in accordance with the preexisting imagination and form of evil already laid up in the understanding, effecting sin through its own operation; sin which is ever scattering and, together with itself, scatters the mind that works it, and cuts it off from the unitary identity concerning the truth, and pours it out over many and unprofitable imaginations and opinions of things that are not — thus constituting the irrational habit, which the presence of the divine Word smooths and sows beneath the water, smoothing, by the fineness of contemplation, the coarseness of the understanding, present at the surface of the passions with respect to sense-perception, and clearly distinguishing the change and confusion, brought about by passion, of the natural powers into one another, and bringing it back again to its own principle of knowledge.

For this is what “sowing beneath the water” means to me. The discourse, then, has set forth, in summary, the whole contemplation of the things narrated in this passage. But that the passage may become clearer, let us, if it seems good, consider each point distinctly. The molten calf, then, is the mixing and confusion of the natural powers with one another, or rather, a passionate and irrational assembly, productive of the irrational operation of the passions contrary to nature; and it is one calf, because there is one habit of vice, though it is scattered into many forms of vice; and it is called a “calf” on account of its enduring, laborious, cultivating, and, as it were, ruminating and inventive character, as though chewing the cud, with respect to the wicked disposition concerning the passions; and it is “molten,” because the habit and operation of the passions is brought to completion according to the form of the evil imagination already laid up in the understanding. And “these are your gods, O Israel,” spoken in the plural, is said because evil is by nature scattered, unstable, multiform, and divisive. For if the good is, by nature, unifying and cohesive of things divided, then evil, plainly, is divisive and destructive of things united. The earrings are the principles concerning theology naturally present in the mind from the pious understanding of the things that are; and the ornaments about the neck are the correct doctrines concerning the things that are, according to natural contemplation; and the bracelets are the operation, according to practice, of the virtues.

Or again, the earrings are the innate reason (logos) — for the ear is a symbol of reason — and the neck-ornament is the irascible power — for the neck is a figure of loftiness and tyranny — and the bracelets of the hands are desire, signified through the activity that comes by pleasure. All of which the mind, casting them, according to the notion given for each, into the fire of the passions, produces the irrational and senseless habit of ignorance, the mother of all evils. And it grinds it fine, whenever the mind, having examined with the understanding the coarseness of the passion that appears at the surface with respect to sense-perception, brings back each of the things that constitute the composition of the passion, having divided them, to its own principle; and thus it sows it beneath the water — I mean, the knowledge of the truth — bringing what has been discerned, and freed from its mutual evil interweaving and composition. What I mean is this: every passion is constituted altogether by the interweaving of some sensible object, and senseperception, and a natural power — I mean, perhaps, irascibility, or desire, or reason turned aside from what is according to nature. If, then, the mind, having contemplated the end result of the composition, with respect to one another, of the sensible object, the sense-perception, and the natural power exercised upon it, is able, having discerned each of these, to bring it back to its own natural principle, and to contemplate the sensible object by itself, apart from its relation to sense-perception, and the sense-perception apart from its affinity to the sensible object, and desire, for instance, or any other of the natural powers, apart from the passionate disposition toward sense-perception and the sensible object — which the particular movement of the passion prepares to be contemplated — it has ground fine, having smoothed the constitution of the calf, that is, of whatever passion happens to occur, and has sown it beneath the water of knowledge, having utterly abolished even the bare imagination of the passions themselves, through the restoration of the things that naturally constitute it to themselves.

May it be granted also to us, having ground fine the molten calf of the soul, to abolish it, the soul having only the unadulterated divine image, defiled by nothing at all from without. What follows, “and Moses made the sons of Israel drink it,” signifies the manner of the teaching that abolishes the passions, given to those who learn from those who teach.

17. Concerning the Angel Who Threatened Moses with Death on the Road from Egypt If God sent Moses into Egypt, for what reason did the angel of God seek to kill him whom God had sent, and would have killed him, had not his wife hastened to circumcise the child and, by herself, stopped the angel's onset? And if the circumcision of the child was necessary, why did God not, before sending him, gently command him to circumcise the child? And why, when it was an offense, did the good angel not gently admonish him who was being sent by God to such a service? He who, in the fear of God, searches out the mind of the scriptural riddles, and for the sake of divine glory alone, removing the letter as a kind of veil from the spirit, will find all things, according to the word of wisdom, “plain,” no obstacle being found to the blameless movement of the understanding toward divine things. Let us, then, set aside the history already fulfilled bodily in the times of Moses, and understand with noetic eyes the power of the history in the spirit, ever coming to pass, and flourishing the more by its coming to pass. The wilderness, then, from which Moses is sent into Egypt to lead out the sons of Israel, is either human nature, or this world, or the habit deprived of the passions; according to which, and in which, the mind, instructed through the contemplation of the things that are, receives from God a hidden and mystical commission, to lead out from Egypt — I mean, from the flesh and sense-perception — according to the unseen part of the heart, as it were Israelites, the divine thoughts concerning the things that are, which are toiling fruitlessly in the clay — I mean, the passions of the flesh.

The mind, entrusted with this divine ministry, together with the wisdom joined to it as a spouse, according to knowledge, and the noble manner and reasoning born from her, thereupon travels altogether the road of the virtues — the venerable conduct of life — which by no means admits of standing still for those who walk in it, but requires that the soul's course, ever moving and swift toward the goal, be directed to the prize of the heavenly calling, since standing still is the beginning of vice in virtue, whenever the mind, occupied passionately with some material thing lying on either side of the road, renders uncircumcised and profane the pure and wholly circumcised manner and reasoning of pious conduct. Wherefore it immediately beholds the reproving word, as an angel, threatening death according to conscience, and testifying that the cause of the threat is the standing still in virtue, which produces the uncircumcision of reasoning — which reasoning the wisdom that dwells with the mind puts to shame, by the vote of the word of faith, as Zipporah, circumcising the material fantasy that has arisen in the reasoning-child, and drying up all thought of sensory life. For it says, “the blood of the child's circumcision stood still” — that is, the passionate life and fantasy and movement ceased, the defiled reasoning having been purified through wisdom according to faith; after which purification, the word that strikes the sinning mind through conscience, and accuses every thought of it moved contrary to what is fitting, ceases, like a certain angel.

For, in truth, the road of the virtues has been filled with many holy angels, who work each virtue according to its species — I mean, reasonings and manners — and with the angels who invisibly cooperate with us toward good things and stir up such reasonings in us. Good, then, and magnanimous is the word of Holy Scripture, ever presenting the things understood before the things narrated to those who possess the sound eyes of the soul, and having no slander either of God or of His holy angels. For Moses, when sent by God, did not have, according to the understood sense of Scripture, an uncircumcised son — that is, reasoning — since, in that case, He would have commanded him first to circumcise before sending him; nor was the divine angel harsh, announcing to Moses the death that befell him from the wrong standing-still he made on the road of the virtues, which death, perhaps, the faintness of the virtues during the course brought about. For if you too will look more closely into the history, you will clearly find that it was not at the beginning, nor in the middle, nor at the end of the road, but meeting him at the lodgingplace, that the angel threatened death for the passion that had secretly befallen him according to the understanding — as, if he had not stopped his course and halted his journey, he would not have been accused, having received, through the angel, the indignation over the child's uncircumcision.

Let us entreat God, if we are on the road of the commandments, not to cease, at every transgression of ours, sending, as it were an angel, the word that reports the death arising from it, according to conscience, so that, perceiving it, we may learn, through innate prudence, to circumcise, as an uncircumcision, the impurity of the passions that secretly befalls us on the course of life.

18. Concerning “If the Doers of the Law Shall Be Justified, How Does He Who Is Justified in the Law Fall from If the doers of the law shall be justified, according to the Apostle, how does he again say, “as many of you as are justified in the law have fallen from grace”? Not simply the doers of the law shall be justified, but those who do the spiritual law, understood spiritually and according to the inner man, in the spirit, shall be justified according to the law that is according to the spirit, not falling from grace on account of the passage, through the purification of the word, into the depth of the soul. But those who serve bodily according to the outward appearance of the law altogether fall from divine grace, being ignorant of the perfection, in grace, of the spiritual law, which purifies the mind of every stain, and of Christ, its end.

19. Concerning “as Many as Sinned Without Law Shall Also Perish Without Law” What is meant by, “as many as sinned without law shall also perish without law, and as many as sinned in the law shall be judged through the law”? And how does the same say again, “when God shall judge the secrets of men according to my Gospel, through Jesus Christ”? If they shall be judged through the law, how through Jesus Christ? The Word of God, Jesus Christ, as maker of all things, is also the maker of the law according to nature; and as provider and lawgiver, He is also, plainly, the giver both of the law in the letter and of the law in the spirit, that is, in grace; for Christ is the end of the law, plainly, of the written law understood spiritually. If, then, both the law according to nature, and the written law, and the law of grace, are gathered together into Christ, as creator, provider, lawgiver, and propitiation, the divine Apostle speaks truly, saying that God is about to judge the secrets of men according to His Gospel — that is, as He proclaims through Jesus Christ, His own Word, consubstantial and only-begotten, who pervades all things, both convicting some and fittingly receiving others, and distributing to those under nature, and law, and grace, what is due, according to worth, through the onlybegotten, ineffable Word, consubstantial and coexisting with Him.

For the Word of God is the maker of all nature and every law and ordinance and order, and the judge of those under nature and law and ordinance and order; for apart from the Word who ordains, there is no law. Whether, then, one is judged in the law, he shall be judged as in Christ; or whether without law, again he shall altogether be judged in Him; for of all things that are, and are spoken, and are understood, the Word, as creator, is both beginning and middle and end.

20. Concerning the Fig Tree Withered in the Gospel What is the fig tree that, unreasonably, so far as appearances go, was withered in the Gospel? And what is the intemperance of hunger seeking fruit out of season? And what is the curse of the unfeeling thing? God the Word, who wisely arranges all things for the salvation of men, having first, through the Law, which had a more bodily worship, instructed nature as a child — for it was not able to receive the truth naked of typical veils, on account of the ignorance and estrangement toward the archetype of divine realities that had come to be in it — later, having openly become man Himself, coming through the assumption of flesh possessed of a noetic and rational soul, and having transferred nature, as the Word, to the immaterial, cognitive worship in the spirit, did not wish, once the truth had appeared in life, that the shadow should still hold sway, of which the fig tree was a type. Wherefore it says: returning from Bethany to Jerusalem — that is, after His hidden, typical, and shadowy presence according to the Law, again sojourning among human nature through the flesh (for thus “returning” must be understood) — He saw a fig tree by the road, having only leaves, which exists in shadows and types — namely, the bodily worship of the Law, according to the unstable and transitory tradition, as lying by the road, and consisting only of passing types and ordinances; which the Word, having beheld, elegantly and lushly adorned, like a fig tree, with the outward coverings, as it were leaves, of the bodily observances of the Law, and, not finding fruit — namely, of righteousness — as it did not nourish reason, He cursed, or rather commanded that the truth no longer be covered, ruled over by the types of the Law; which indeed, as it proceeded, was shown through the very facts, the legal comeliness, which had its being only in outward forms, being utterly withered, and the pride of the Jews concerning it being extinguished.

For it was neither reasonable nor timely, once the truth of the fruits of righteousness had been plainly shown, that the appetite of those who run past the present life, as a road, should still be deceived and led astray by leaves, forsaking the edible fruitfulness of the Word. Wherefore it says, “it was not the season for figs” — that is, the time during which the Law held sway over human nature was not a time of the fruits of righteousness, but was figurative of the fruits in righteousness, and, as it were, indicative of the future, all-saving, divine, and ineffable grace to come; which grace the old people, not having reached it through unbelief, perished. For Israel, says the divine Apostle, pursuing the law of righteousness — that is, plainly, the one in shadow and types — did not attain to the law of righteousness — the one perfected in the Spirit, according to Or again, since the multitude of priests and scribes and lawyers and Pharisees, sick with empty glory through the display of manners feignedly pious, nourished, under the appearance of pursuing righteousness, the conceit that arises from self-opinion, the discourse says that the self-opinion of the aforementioned is a fruitless fig tree, luxuriant only in leaves; which He who desires the salvation of all men and hungers for their deification withers, cursing it as fruitless, so that, preferring being to seeming to be righteous, having stripped off the tunic worn in hypocrisy for the display of manners, and having, as the divine Word wishes, unadulteratedly pursued the virtuous tunic, they might conduct their life piously, displaying to God rather the disposition of the soul than, to men, the outward show of their manners.

But if we too, being Christians, are of such a sort, feigning piety through our manners apart from righteousness in works, let us expect the Word, who, out of love for mankind, hungers for our salvation, to wither the seed of wickedness in the soul, self-opinion, so that man-pleasing may no longer bear the fruit of corruption. You have, according to my meager ability, the meaning of the passage, according to the narrative delivered, showing the Lord rightly hungering, usefully cursing the fig tree, and opportunely withering it, as an obstacle to the truth — whether the old tradition according to the Law of bodily types, or the self-opinion of the Pharisees and of us concerning our manners.

21. Concerning “Having Stripped Off the Principalities and Powers” What is meant by “having stripped off the principalities and powers,” and so on? And how had He put them on at all, having become without sin? The divine, sovereign Word, who, in every way like us except sin alone, unchangeably put on our nature, having become perfect man, had the first Adam appearing according to the manners of coming-to-be and of birth. For instance, the first man, having received being from God, and having come to be according to the coming-to-be proper to being, was free of corruption and sin — for corruption and sin were not created together with him — but when, having transgressed the commandment, he sinned, he was condemned to a birth constituted through passion and sin, having, on account of this, the passible element of sin belonging thereafter, as by law, to nature's coming-to-be — according to which no one is without sin, being by nature subject to the law of the birth introduced, after the first coming-to-be, on account of sin. Since, then, through the transgression, sin, and through sin, the passibility attaching to birth, entered into the nature of men, and the first transgression, through sin, ever kept pace with the passibility of birth, there was no hope of freedom, nature being bound, indissolubly according to judgment, by an evil chain. For as much as nature hastened, through birth, to establish itself, so much the more did it tighten itself in the law of sin, having the transgression at work according to the passible element.

For, having, in this very passible element, through the natural circumstance, the increase of sin, it had the operations of all the opposing powers, principalities, and authorities, hidden, according to the general sin in the passible element, within the passions according to nature, through the passions contrary to nature; through which every evil power operated, driving, through the things according to nature, the judgment toward the corruption of the passions contrary to nature, in keeping with the passible element of nature. The only-begotten Son and Word of God, then, having become, out of love for mankind, a perfect man, in order to deliver the nature of men from this evil helplessness, took from the first constitution, according to Adam's coming-to-be, the sinlessness apart from incorruption, but from the birth later introduced into nature on account of sin, He took only the passibility, apart from sin. Since, then, as I have said, in the passible element, according to Adam, on account of sin, the evil powers had their operations invisibly hidden within the circumstantial law of nature, fittingly, beholding in the Savior God, on Adam's account, the passibility that belongs by nature to the flesh, and supposing that the Lord too, of necessity, through circumstance, possessed, as a mere man, the law of nature, but not one moved by judgment according to His will, they assailed Him, hoping that they might persuade Him too, through the passible element according to nature, to imagine the passion contrary to nature, and do something akin to themselves; who, having, through the first experience of the temptations that come by pleasure, allowed them to be mocked by their own deceits, stripped them off, thrusting them out of nature, remaining inaccessible and untouched by them, winning the victory for us, plainly, but not for Himself; for it was for us that He also became man, offering, as good, the whole achievement.

For He Himself had no need of the trial, being God and Master, and by nature free of every passion; but it was that, by calling forth the evil power through our own temptations, He might catch it in its assault, having put to death the power that expected, as at the beginning with Adam, to catch Him. Thus, then, in the first trial, He stripped off the principalities and powers that assailed Him, driving them far from nature, and healing the passibility of pleasure, and blotting out in Himself Adam's handwriting of the willing consent to the passions of pleasure — through which man, having his judgment inclined toward pleasure, silently proclaimed, through his deeds, its evil dominion over himself, not being freed, by the fear of death, from the liability incurred by pleasure. Since, then, through the first experience by pleasure, the Lord defeated and rendered vain the evil powers, principalities and authorities, He also permits them to make a second assault, and to bring the remaining trial of temptations through pain and toil, that, having completely emptied in Himself the corrupting venom of their wickedness, He might consume it, as fire, utterly effacing it from nature, having, at the time of His death, on the cross, stripped off the principalities and powers, remaining unconquered by the toils — or rather, appearing terrible against death itself — having thoroughly rooted out the passibility that comes by pain from nature; which passibility, man's judgment inclining away from it through cowardice, ever tyrannized, against judgment, by the fear of death for the sake of living, he clung to the slavery of pleasure.

The Lord, then, stripped off the principalities and powers at the first trial of the temptations in the wilderness, having healed the passibility of pleasure belonging to the whole of nature; and He stripped them off again at the time of death, having likewise rooted out from nature the passibility of pain, making what was accomplished for us His own, out of love for mankind, as though He were the debtor — or rather, as good, reckoning to us the glory of the things accomplished. For since, having taken, like us, apart from sin, the passibility of nature, through which every evil and destructive power is naturally able to operate, He stripped them off at the time of death, when, for the sake of testing, they came upon Him too, triumphing over them and making a public example of them on the cross at the departure of His soul, since they found nothing at all their own in the passibility of His nature — which they especially expected to find, on account of the natural passibility according to the flesh, something altogether human — fittingly, He, through Himself in power, and as through a kind of first fruits of His holy flesh from us, freed the whole nature of men from the wickedness mingled with it according to the passible element, having subjected to the passible element of nature itself the evil dominion that once, I mean in the passible element, reigned over nature.

It was possible also to consider the discourse concerning this in another, more mystical and higher way. But since, as you know, the more ineffable of the divine doctrines ought not to be committed to writing, let us be content with what has been said, restraining our inquisitive thought concerning this matter. And, God granting that we may also be counted worthy to see you face to face, we shall, together, with love of learning, examine the apostolic understanding. Scholia 1. By “coming-to-be” he means the first formation of man from God; and by “birth,” the later succession from one another, arising from condemnation on account of the transgression.

2. He calls “wickedness” the operations of the unclean spirits. The passions are of two kinds: the one, the passions contrary to nature, which are wickednesses ever opposed to the virtues, unable ever to be made manifest within the virtues; the other kind are those passions which, even though not created by God in the nature of men, nevertheless entered it together with the transgression; wherefore, considered in themselves, they are evil, yet capable of being changed into good by those who use them well — namely, pleasure and pain, desire and fear, in which wickednesses lie hidden, through which the opposing powers are naturally able to do unjust deeds.

3. He calls “movements of the soul” pleasure and pain, desire and fear, taken as good or evil, in which wickednesses secretly exist.

4. He names the succession of men an introduced birth into our nature, by bodily union, like that of animals. For if the nature of man had not fallen, through the first man, by the transgression, the multiplication of the human race would not have come about by the union of bodies, which is the penalty of the transgression, but by some wonderful, divine manner, without the defilement of any seed.

5. He names “succession” the birth of men through union, from seed, which was not in his nature, but is a penalty introduced upon nature.

6. The unclean spirits are naturally able to drag men away, suggesting deceitfully the passions contrary to nature under the form of those according to nature.

7. He who by nature is without passion in respect of pleasure, and, as man, dispassionate, made trial of our passibility with respect to pleasure his own, for the provocation of the tempter; for He was passible in flesh according to nature, as man, on account of mortality, but not subject to passion according to judgment, as sinless.

8. He calls the devil's incitements toward the Lord, in the wilderness, in the temple, and on the high mountain, “temptations.”

9. He calls “the passion of the cross” that by which the devil was defeated and the nature of man was freed from death and sin.

10. The passibility of pleasure is one thing, and the passibility of the flesh another; the passibility of pleasure — that is, sin — was not in Christ.

11. He has called “proper to nature” the slipperiness, according to judgment, after the transgression, toward sin, arising from weakness; which the Lord did not have naturally, even according to the flesh, being sinless in flesh according to essence.

12. That the interpreters of Scripture ought not to interpret anything as though it could not be interpreted otherwise.

22. Concerning “If in the Ages to Come God Will Show His Riches, How Have the Ends of the Ages Come Upon Us?” If in the ages to come God will show His riches, how have the ends of the ages come upon us? He who established the coming-to-be of every creature, visible and invisible, by the sole inclination of His will, before all the ages, and before the very coming-to-be of the things that came to be, had, concerning them, His ineffably surpassing-good counsel; and this was, that He Himself should be unchangeably mingled with the nature of men, through a true union according to hypostasis, and should unite to Himself, unalterably, human nature, that He Himself might become man, as He Himself knows, and might make man god by His union with Himself — wisely dividing and delimiting, plainly, the ages, some for the operation of His becoming man, and others for the operation of making man god. The ends, then, of the ages foreordained for the operation of His becoming man have come upon us, the divine purpose concerning the incarnation having received, through the very facts, its outcome; which the divine Apostle, having considered, and having beheld the end, according to the purpose of the ages, of God's becoming man, through the very incarnation of God the Word, says that the ends of the ages have come upon us — the ages not being understood by us simply, but those which, plainly, for the operation of the mystery of the enfleshment, have received their own end according to the purpose of God.

Since, then, the ages foreordained, according to the purpose, for the operation of God's becoming man have received their end in us, God having truly worked and fulfilled His own perfect enmanment, it remains for us to await the other ages that are to come, for the operation of the mystical and ineffable deification of men, according to which God will show us the surpassing riches of His goodness, having worked deification perfectly in the worthy. For if He Himself has received the end of the mystical operation concerning His becoming man, having been made like us in every way except sin alone, and having descended to the lower parts of the earth, where the tyranny of sin had thrust man, He will surely also receive the end of the mystical operation concerning man's being made god, in every way — except, plainly, only the identity according to essence with Him — having made man like Himself, and having raised him up above all the heavens, where the greatness of grace, existing by nature, calls, on account of the infinitude of His goodness, the man who lies below. Teaching this mystically, the great Apostle says that in the ages to come the surpassing riches of God's goodness toward us will be shown. Let us too, then, by consideration, divide the ages, and set apart some for the mystery of the divine enmanment, and others for the grace of human deification, and we shall find that the ones have already reached their own end, while the others have not yet arrived.

And, to speak concisely, of the ages, some belong to God's descent to men, and others to men's ascent to God. Understanding thus, we do not stumble at the obscurity of the divine words, thinking that the divine Apostle has fallen into contradiction with himself. Or rather, since our Lord Jesus Christ is the beginning and middle and end of all the ages, past and present and to come, fittingly the end of the ages that is to be, in operation according to grace, for the deification of the worthy, has come upon us in potency through faith. Or again, since the principle (logos) of making is one thing, and the principle of suffering is another, the divine Apostle has mystically and wisely divided, between past and future ages, the principle of making and the principle of suffering. For instance, the ages of the flesh, in which we now live — for Scripture knows of ages measured by time also, as in, “and he labored unto the age,” and, “and he shall live unto the end” — belong to the property of making; but the ages that are to be of the Spirit, after the present life, belong to the transformation of suffering. Being here, then, as making, we come to the ends of the ages, our power and operation with respect to making reaching their limit. But in the ages to come, suffering the transformation unto being made god by grace, we do not make, but suffer; and for this reason we do not cease being made god.

For then the suffering is beyond nature, and has no defining principle limiting the endless being-made-god of those who undergo it. For we make, so far as we have naturally operative the rational power productive of the virtues, and the noetic power receptive of all knowledge, unrestrictedly, in potency, passing through the whole nature of things that are and are known, and putting all the ages behind itself; and we suffer, whenever, having completely passed through the principles of the things that are from what is not, we come, unknowingly, to the Cause of the things that are, and bring our own powers to rest together with the things that are by nature limited, becoming that which is in no way an achievement of natural power, since nature does not possess a power capable of comprehending what is beyond nature. For nothing that has come to be is by nature productive of deification, since it is not even capable of comprehending God. For this belongs, by nature, only to divine grace: grant deification proportionately to the things that are, and to make nature resplendent with the light that is beyond nature, and to raise it above its own limits by the excess of glory. The ends of the ages, then, have fittingly come upon us, who are, before very long, through the grace in Christ, to receive the gift of the good things that are beyond the ages and beyond nature, of which the manners of the virtues and the principles of the things capable of being known by nature are types and preliminary sketches, through which God, ever willing, becomes man in the worthy.

Blessed, then, is he who, after making God man in himself through wisdom, and having fulfilled the coming-to-be of such a mystery, suffers the being made god by grace, since he will not receive an end of ever becoming this. For He who works this in the worthy, being indeterminate according to essence, has indeterminate — and beyond all indeterminacy — the power that works this, never ceasing together with those brought about by it, as we do, but rather ever holding together with itself those who have received their being from it, who are unable to be apart from it. Whence he also spoke of “riches of goodness,” as the divine and all-radiant disposition toward us in goodness, with respect to the transformation unto deification, never ceasing. The union of the Word with the flesh according to hypostasis manifested the ineffable purpose of the divine will: in not confusing the essence in the union of the flesh, but showing one hypostasis, even in the enfleshment of the Word — that the flesh might remain flesh according to essence, and yet become divine according to hypostasis.

2. Of the ages, he says, some have become declarative of the divine enmanment, whose ends have come upon us; but others are demonstrative of our deification, whose riches of glory have not yet been manifested.

3. It is, he says, a sure confirmation, for the nature of men, of the hope of deification: the enmanment of God — making man god to the same degree that He Himself became man. For He who became man without sin will, plainly, apart from the change into divinity, deify nature, and will raise it up, on His own account, to the same degree that He, on man's account, lowered Himself.

4. This is the contemplation by which he shows Christ to exist, without interval, in circumscribed fashion, as the beginning and the middle and the end of the ages — who has come upon us as the end of the ages through the incarnation, having by nature the fullness of the paternal goodness, of which He has made us partakers by grace in Himself, having set faith as the confirmation of our hope.

5. The principle of making is the natural power for the operation of the virtues; and the principle of suffering is the grace of the things beyond nature, or the compact of the things contrary to nature. For just as we do not have a natural power for that which is beyond being, so neither do we have by nature the power for that which is not. We suffer, then, deification, as being beyond nature according to grace, but we do not make it; for we do not have a power receptive of deification by nature. And again we suffer wickedness, as being contrary to nature by judgment, according to compact; for we do not have a natural power for the generation of wickedness. We make, then, he says, being here, the virtues, having by nature the power to make these; but we suffer deification in the age to come, receiving this suffering as a gift by grace.

6. We cease, he says, making the virtues after this life; but we do not cease suffering, by grace, the deification that comes on their account. For the passion that is beyond nature is indeterminate, because it is also active; but the passion that is contrary to nature is non-existent, because it is also inert.

7. Reason (logos), governing irascibility and desire, makes the virtues; and the mind, applying itself to the principles of the things that have come to be, gathers the unerring knowledge of them. Whenever, then, reason, after the casting off of the opposing things, finds what is lovable according to nature, and the mind, after passing beyond the things known, lays hold of the Cause that is beyond being and beyond the knowledge of the things that are — then the passion of deification by grace supervenes, leading reason away from its natural discrimination, where there is nothing to be discriminated, and bringing the mind to rest from its natural understanding, where there is nothing to be known, and making, by the identity according to standing-still, god the one counted worthy of divine participation.

8. That the manners according to virtue, and the principles of the things that are, are types of the divine good things; by which God ever becomes man, having, as body, the manners of the virtues, and, as soul, the principles, in the spirit, of knowledge, by which He deifies the worthy, giving them the subsistent character of virtue, and granting them the essential existence of unerring knowledge.

9. He interpreted “riches of goodness” to be God's disposition of goodness toward us.

23. Concerning “and God Will Give Him the Throne of If David reigned only over Israel according to the flesh, and Israel according to the flesh rejected the kingdom of Christ — wherefore He also passed over to the Gentiles — how shall it stand, according to the word of the archangel, that “God will give him the throne of David his father, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever”? This difficulty seems to me to have a plain and evident resolution. For if “not all who are of Israel are Israel,” nor, because they are the seed of Abraham, are all children, but God reckons the children of the promise as the seed — and even if the number of the sons of Israel should be as the stars of heaven and as the sand of the sea, only “the remnant shall be saved” — it is clear that the faithful people, who see God both through works of righteousness and through true knowledge according to faith, are Israel, whether they bear their race according to the flesh from Israel, or belong to the portion of the Gentiles. For he who bears in himself the clear and undefiled character of the faith of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the faith of the true Israel, is not estranged from the calling and grace of Israel. But indeed David himself, the blessed one, held the kingdom of the faithful in Israel.

Wherefore, at the very moment Israel extinguished for itself the light of faith, at that same moment it also immediately fell away from the kingdom of David. Is it not, then, David's spiritual throne, and the noetic kingdom of rational souls, and the faithful house of Jacob, and the holy and great nation, over which God, prophetically speaking to Moses instead of the bodily and rebellious Israel, promised to establish him — that is, the one understood typologically through him — saying, “let Me alone, and I will blot out this nation once for all, and I will make of you a nation great and terrible, rather than this one” — but not the unfaithful and rebellious house of Jacob, and the sinful nation, and the evil seed, and the lawless sons, and the rulers of Sodom, and the people of Gomorrah, and those who turned away with an evil turning, and forsook the Lord, and provoked the Holy One of Israel, and did not know Him, nor understood, and were struck with the incurable stroke of unbelief, admitting no method of rational healing that could cure the soul's unbelief — for it says, “Woe, sinful nation, evil seed, lawless sons; you have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger. Why will you be struck yet again, adding iniquity? There is no place to lay a poultice, neither oil nor bandages” — not those who limped upon both their hips and turned away from the truth and were cast out from the divine inheritance, after the pattern of Cain and Ishmael and Esau and Reuben and Er and Onan and Manasseh and Eliab and Amnon, the firstborn of the patriarchs and prophets, cast out and disapproved — for it says, “My son, my firstborn, is Israel” — not “only-begotten”; for the introduction of another was hoped for, unto the adoption of a God-fearing and pious people, being created according to God and brought unto the adoption that is by grace, through the casting out of the firstborn and unbelieving Israel, who rose up against the noetic Abel out of envy and killed him, after the pattern of Cain; and mocked the divine manner of the noetic Isaac, after the pattern of Ishmael; and raged against the noetic Jacob, as Esau; and poured out the seed of faith and of the righteousness that accords with it

upon the earth of error and of the passions, after the pattern of Er and Onan; and denied the Church of God, as they denied Tamar; and made a home for forgetfulness of the virtues, after the pattern of Manasseh; and, over the noetic David who received the kingdom, was tormented with envy out of arrogance, and for this reason was set at naught, after the pattern of Eliab; and became the author of a strange transgression, after the pattern of Amnon — not these alien sons, who limped from their own paths, who breathe madness and murder, who are truly carnal and sons of flesh alone, strangers to grace, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, whose memory of unbelief may it perish with a noise — but, as I have said, the faithful and spiritual Israel, who sees God through faith, gathered together from all the nations according to the election of grace, unto a people for His own possession, and a holy nation, and a royal priesthood, He promised to give, speaking through the angel to the Virgin concerning Him who was to be born of her, the Savior of all — which promise received, through the very outcome of the facts, its own confirmation, the Lord having fulfilled the promises to the fathers, and having blessed and adopted all the nations in the noetic Abraham, and having established Abraham, through faith, as father of all the nations in the Spirit, and having sat down on the spiritual throne of David, and reigning over the faithful house of Jacob forever, with a kingdom that has no end.

Scholia 1. Under Jeroboam, Israel fell away from the house of David, disbelieving God.

2. An enumeration of the firstborn who were cast out from the beginning of the age, to whom the Israelite people are also compared. And even if we grant that “My son, my firstborn, is Israel” is said of him in an accommodated sense, he was rejected as firstborn on account of the calling, through faith, of the people of the nations who were adopted after him.

3. He says that the brothers plotted against by the firstborn bear the type of the Lord and of the new people according to faith.

24. Concerning “Having Passed Through the First and What is meant, in Acts, concerning Peter, by “having passed through the first and second watch, we came to the iron gate”? The faithful and practical mind, after the pattern of holy Peter, held fast by Herod — that is, by the leathern law, for “Herod” is interpreted “made of skin” — which is the mind of the flesh, is shut up under two watches and one iron gate, warred upon both by the operation of the passions and by the assent, according to the understanding, to the passions; which, as watches, that is, prisons, having passed through by the reason of the practical philosophy, as by an angel, it comes to the iron gate, which leads to the city — I mean, the hard, harsh, and hard-to-overcome relation of the senses toward sensible things; which the reason that opens natural contemplation in the Spirit, of its own accord, sends the mind onward, thereafter fearlessly, to the kindred intelligible things, free from the madness of Herod. Scholia 1. By “watches” he means the habit of wickedness and its operation — for assent is the character of habit — under which the evil one strives to hold the saints captive. And by the “iron gate” he means the natural relation of the senses toward sensible things, from which the truly faithful man is delivered, as by an angel, by the reason of practical knowledge.

25. Concerning “Christ Is the Head of Every Man,” and What is meant by, “I want you to know that Christ is the head of every man, but the head of a woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God; and every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, disgraces his head; but every woman praying or prophesying with her head unveiled disgraces her head; for it is one and the same thing as if she were shaven”? And again, what is meant by, “for this reason the woman ought to have authority over her head, because of the angels”? It must be known that the divine Apostle, saying that Christ is the head of every man — plainly, of the faithful man, according to the practice of the divine commandments and the contemplation of pious doctrines — declared Christ to be the head of man, the comprehensive meaning of the term not including, in this saying, unfaithful men as well. For how could Christ be the head of those who do not believe? According to one approach, then, proceeding by the reasoning of anagogy, we say that man is the practical mind, having as its head the reason (logos) of faith; looking to which, as Christ, having its own life built up through practice with the graces of the commandments, the mind establishes its own life, not disgracing its head — that is, its faith — with any of the external coverings that pertain to matter, by setting nothing above faith among the things temporal and dissoluble.

And we say that the woman of such a mind is the habit of practice itself, luxuriant and covered with many and various practical reasonings and characters — or rather, the mind itself, having, as its own head, this same mind, covered by the density and comeliness of such reasonings and manners. And we say that Christ is the subsistent faith, whose head is clearly God, toward whom the reason of faith leads, showing to him who is led up the God who exists, by nature, in that reason. And again, man is the mind that attends to natural contemplation in the Spirit, having as head the reason according to faith that is shown, from the ordering of visible things, to be the creative principle of the whole; whom the mind does not disgrace by covering him, as it were, and subordinating him to some visible thing, making anything else at all higher than he. And the woman of such a mind is the sense-perception that dwells with it, through which it makes its way into the nature of sensible things and gathers the more divine principles within them, not permitting it, once uncovered of its rational coverings, to become irrational and a minister of sin, the mind exchanging, for its head, through the casting off of the more divine principles as coverings, the passion of irrationality. And the head of Christ — that is, of the creative reason that is shown, according to faith, proportionately to the things that are, through the contemplation of the things that have come to be according to nature — is the ineffable mind that begets him according to essence; toward whom Himself, establishes the mind that is led up through the pious contemplation of the things that are, supplying to it, in measure suited to the knowledge of visible things, the noetic manifestations of divine things.

And again, man is the mind that has come to be within mystical theology, having as head, unveiled, Christ — that is, the reason of faith that is unknowably understood by unprovable mystagogies, or, more properly speaking, unintelligibly known — above whom nothing among the things that are is set — not sense-perception, not reason, not mind, not understanding, not knowledge, not the known, not the understood, not the spoken, not the sensible, not the sensing — the mind that practices the praiseworthy and surpassing, complete, and especially deifying privation of both itself and the things that are. And the woman of such a mind is the understanding purified of every sensible fantasy, having, as it were a head, the mind, thickened by the beginningless and beyond-understanding approaches to the ineffable and unknown doctrines. And the head of Christ — that is, of the reason mystically pronounced by way of transcendence — is the Mind that is absolutely and infinitely removed, in every way, from all things, whom Christ, being by nature the Word of Mind, when understood, makes known to the worthy. For “he who has seen Me,” it says, “has seen the Father.” For indeed, in truth, the understanding of the Word is the plainly evident knowledge of the Mind that begot Him, since He shows in Himself the Mind subsisting according to essence, to whom He leads up the mind that desires identity with God according to grace, once it has been released from the difference and quantity, according to understanding, found in the multitude of things that are, and gathered into a god-formed unity by the identity and simplicity of the intensive, ever-moving activity concerning Every practical mind, then, praying or prophesying — that is, seeking out the reasons of the virtues (for thus “praying” must be understood), or manifesting their manners in works (for thus “prophesying” must be taken) — ought to look only upon the naked reason of faith, understanding or reasoning or doing nothing that, by invitation, covers the head, setting something else above it.

And every woman — that is, the habit of the practical mind — praying or prophesying, that is, moved invisibly according to disposition, or shaping virtue by outward manners without rational discernment, disgraces her head, going over to passion instead of the good, as one deprived of the reason that adorns her, as it were a covering. And every mind practices contemplation, praying or prophesying with covered head — that is, cognitively seeking the principles of the things that are, or handing these down to others in a teaching manner, together with an inclination toward something else in any way, apart from the aim of piety — disgraces his head, as setting some passing thing above the correct knowledge that accords with piety. And every woman — that is, senseperception — naturally attending to sensible things, not having over her head the noetic principles of visible things covering her, disgraces her head, going over to passion, on account of natural relation, in the contemplation of visible things that comes upon her. And every mind that has become a lover of mystical theology, praying or prophesying with covered head — that is, entering unknowingly into the innermost contemplations, or teaching and initiating others into theology — if it should take on any form of understanding, being mystically initiated, or initiating others, into the reason that is beyond understanding, disgraces his head, subordinating the simple reason that is beyond all understanding to some one of the things that are and are known, when it ought to behold the true God the Word, naked of all conception and knowledge, with eyes closed, knowing clearly that, concerning God, the negations by way of transcendence are rather true, indicating, in some measure, the divine positing through the complete removal of the things that are.

And every woman — the understanding of such a mind — praying or prophesying with head unveiled — that is, released from the noetic power upon it, thickened with many mystical contemplations — disgraces her head, casting away the divine and ineffable knowledge that, as a head, covers the mind. Every man, then — that is, the practical, or natural, or theological mind — praying or prophesying, that is, being taught or teaching, should have his head uncovered — Christ — the practical man, preferring nothing to faith and virtue; the natural man, making nothing else higher than the first Word; the theological man, in no way giving shape, by understandings derived from the things that are, to Him who is beyond understanding and knowledge. And every woman — that is, the habit of the practical mind, or the senseperception of the natural mind, or the wise understanding of the theological mind — should have her head covered: the practical habit, having the discernment of reason set over the things to be done and not to be done; the sense-perception, the scientific power of reason concerning visible things; and the understanding, the wholly unprovable knowledge of the things beyond understanding. For every habit, or senseperception, or understanding, not covered in the manner set forth, differs in no way from the shaven — that is, from one who has no reason at all of virtue, or piety, or mystical and divine knowledge and love.

Every such woman, then, ought fittingly ever to have the authority of reason over her head — I mean, the rational oversight — and especially on account of the angels, who behold both our manifest and hidden movements, and record every thought and deed, for our praise or our conviction on the fearful day of discernment; and on account of the reasonings according to conscience, themselves too figuratively understood as angels, which accuse or defend what we do, both now and afterward, on the day of judgment; and on account of the wicked angels who watch our habit and sense-perception and understanding, that, whenever they see it stripped of rational and noetic discernment, and of piety and knowledge, they may attack, producing in it the birth of the opposites of these — I mean, lack of discernment, and impiety, and ignorance — through which the wicked demons are naturally able to work wickedness and error and godlessness. And the head of Christ is said to be God, as, by nature, the Mind who is, as cause, the origin of the Word.

1. That the mind that pursues the practical philosophy is also “man.”

2. He called Christ “head,” as the hypostasis of the good things to come. For faith, according to the divine Apostle, is the hypostasis of things hoped for, and the proof of things not seen — which He Himself is, in whom are hidden the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge.

3. Subsistent faith is the active and operative faith, according to which the Word of God is shown embodied in the practical commandments; through which, as Word, He leads up those who practice them to the Father, in whom He exists by nature.

4. That the mind which piously practices natural contemplation is also “man,” having as head the Word of God, contemplated according to faith by the understanding, as the cause of the coming-to-be of visible things.

5. Since, he says, together with the Word who is the generative cause of the things that are, a Mind is also necessarily conceived, to whom the Word has, as cause, His reference — he has called the Father the head of Christ, as the Mind who by nature begets the Word.

6. That the one who is taught mystical theology is also “man.” Understand “unintelligibly” as meaning “by way of transcendence.” For that which is believed — namely, God — is beyond understanding.

8. He who has received, unknowingly, immediate vision, by the privation by way of transcendence of created things, of the Word who is beyond every reason — he has, as head, the Word who is altogether and solely alone; above whom, or with whom, or after whom, no other reason at all subsists by nature, of whom the one Mind who is by nature His begetter exists; toward whom, leading up as to a head, through the Spirit who is consubstantial with Him, He establishes the mind that follows.

9. Of the practical man, he says the wife is the habit, as generative of the manners according to virtue; of the natural man, the sense-perception ennobled by the principles of the Spirit, as bringing forth the dispassionate imaginings of the things that are; of the theological man, the pure understanding, singularly receptive of the one, threefoldshining light.

10. He calls “Christ” the supra-essential Word, even when supra-essentially made flesh, since the mind did not comprehend even His incarnation by natural reason. And he says the head of this is the Mind who is by nature cause, conceived together, as cause, by nature, with the Word. For he who has seen the Word by faith has mystically seen together, timelessly, along with the Word, the Mind who begot the Word, as existing in Him according to essence. But some say that “Christ” is said of the human element of Christ, as the head of the whole — that is, of the whole nature — of which human element, plainly, the divinity of Christ is the head. For, calling the parts by the name of the whole, they have given a correct sense.

11. The identity, according to grace, of the perfected mind with God is the simple and undivided movement concerning that which is, by nature, the same, concerning which there is no taking up of intelligible things, since they differ in quantity according to essence and in quality according to power; but rather an ineffable enjoyment, having a perception that is beyond understanding.

12. He calls “prayer,” for the practical man, the seeking of the virtues; and “prophecy,” the true teaching of the reasons within them. And he says that prayer, for the natural man, is the seeking of scientific knowledge concerning the things that are; and prophecy, the transmission of this, according to true teaching, to others. And he says that prayer, for the theological man, is the ineffable silence, according to which the mind, by way of transcendence, through the privation of the things that are, becomes worthy of union beyond understanding and knowledge; and prophecy, the initiation of others into this. For prayer effects the union of the one praying with God; but prophecy persuades him who prophesies, for God's sake, to share with men the good things given to him.

13. He understands God as the Word who grasps nothing — that is, none of the things capable of being grasped — or is understood in nothing — that is, none of the things capable of being understood, that is, of coming into reasoning — or does nothing — that is, none of the things subject to generation and corruption, for these are properly called “actions” — he understands that this is the Word.

14. When we affirm the divine, he says, we conceive it together with the things that are, but as their productive cause. But when we altogether deny it of the things that are, we do not conceive it together with the things that are even as cause, since it truly has no relation at all to the things that are — with respect to which relation we are naturally accustomed to bring to mind together the notion of relation on both sides of what it is a relation to. Therefore the good theologian makes the unknowing that comes by way of transcendence a positing of true knowledge: the complete unconceivability of God.

15. The negations by way of transcendence, then, take this kind of position. For they show that God alone exists, denying that He is among the things that exist, or that can be grasped, or understood, or spoken.

26. Concerning the King of Babylon and Judah and the If the king of Babylon is allegorized as the devil, what is the meaning of what he threatens, through the prophet Jeremiah, against the kings of the nations and the king of Judah — collars, and bonds, and famine, and death, and the sword, and captivity, if they do not serve him, but that those who serve him willingly shall have ease upon their own land; and that He calls him His servant, saying, “I have given all the land to Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, My servant, and I have given the beasts of the field to serve him”? What, then, is the devil's servitude, and what are the beasts, and what are the six kinds of the threat, and who are the kings of the nations, and the king of Judah? The devil is both an enemy of God and an avenger. He is an enemy whenever, hating Him, he seems, in a way, to have a destructive love for us men, persuading our judgment, through the manners of voluntary passions, by means of pleasure, to prefer temporal things to eternal goods, through which, stealing the whole desire of the soul, he estranges us completely from divine love, making us willing enemies of our Maker. And he is an avenger whenever, having bared his hatred toward us, as though we had already become subject to him through sin, he demands the punishment against us.

For nothing is so dear to the devil as a man being punished. And, being permitted this, devising the successive infliction of involuntary passions, he brings them, like a tempest, harshly upon those against whom he has received authority through God's permission — not wishing to fulfill the divine command, but desiring to nourish his own passion of hatred against us, so that, under the great weight of painful misfortunes, the soul, buckling through weakness, may cut off from itself the power of divine hope, making, instead of correction, the occasion of what befalls painfully a cause of atheism. For God, being good, and wishing to root out entirely from us the seed of wickedness — pleasure, which robs the mind of divine love — permits the devil to bring upon us toils and punishments, at the same time scraping away, through the toils, the venom of the prior pleasure from the soul, and wishing to produce in us hatred and complete aversion toward present things and toward whatever fawns upon sense-perception alone, since, in their use, they have gained nothing more than punishment; and He wishes to make the devil's punitive and man-hating power a circumstantial cause for the return to virtue of those who have willingly slipped from it. As, then, punishing sinners by permission, the devil is called God's servant, though he is an apostate and a wicked robber, and has a judgment altogether suited to those who willingly depart from God through pleasure — for it is fitting and just that those who have gladly received his wicked counsels of voluntary sins should be chastened by the devil — thus, then, the devil is both a sower of pleasure through voluntary passions, and an inflictor of pain through involuntary ones.

When, then, those who dwell in Judea and Jerusalem — that is, those who have taken up the practical habit or the theoretic knowledge — pursue human glory with these, sketching, in outward manner, the appearance of virtues, and speaking only words of wisdom and knowledge apart from works of righteousness, and displaying to others the pride that accompanies virtue and knowledge, fittingly they are handed over to the fitting toils, relearning, through suffering, the humility that was unknown to them through their vain self-opinion; which the wonderful Apostle also knew, and handed over to Satan the transgressing Corinthian for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. For this reason the king of Judea and Jerusalem is handed over to the king of the Assyrians — that is, the theoretic and gnostic mind is delivered over for punishment to the devil, who justly inflicts upon him toils and misfortunes, that, suffering, he may learn to philosophize rather about endurance and the bearing of toils than to be vainly puffed up over things that are not. Everyone, then, who willingly endures, out of a perception of what he has done, to receive the toilsome inflictions of involuntary temptations, with due thanksgiving, is not banished from the habit and grace that accord with virtue and knowledge, like those of old in Judea and Jerusalem — as one who has willingly submitted to the yoke of the king of Babylon, and, as paying a debt, accepts the inflictions of torments — but, remaining in them, he pays to the king of Babylon the forced toils arising from the passible element of nature, and the assent thereto, understanding, as a debtor for prior offenses, while to God he offers, through true worship — I mean, humble disposition — the correction of what was neglected.

But he who does not accept, with thanksgiving, the misfortune brought upon him by involuntary temptations, according to God's permission, for correction, and who, having repented, does not lay aside his self-opinion of seeming to be righteous, resisting the divine decrees of just judgments like the ancient inhabitants of Judea, and who does not willingly accept to come under the yoke of the king of Babylon according to the divine ordinance, is delivered into captivity to the king of Babylon, and to collars, and bonds, and death, and famine, and the sword, and is utterly deported from his own land — that is, from the habit that seemed to be according to virtue and knowledge — being condemned, through captivity, for the apostasy from divine things; through the collars, for the false opinion concerning the things that are; through the bonds, for the complete inactivity toward good things; through the famine, for the deprivation of divine teachings; through death, for the complete callousness and insensibility toward good things; through the sword, for the passionate and unrestrained reasonings that destroy the divine remembrances. For all these things, and more than these, he who is deported, as from his own land, from the habit that accords with virtue and knowledge, suffers, because he is unwilling, out of pride and vain self-opinion, paying the penalties for his offenses, to take pleasure in afflictions and necessities and distresses, according to the divine Apostle, even though he is, on account of righteousness, free from all such debt.

For the great Apostle knew that the humiliation, constituted externally around the body through toils, is protective of the divine treasures according to the soul, and for this reason he willingly endured it, both for himself and for those to whom he stood as a type of virtue and faith, that, even though they suffer as debtors, like the reproved Corinthian, they might have, for their comfort and as an example of endurance, him who suffers without being a debtor. But the kings of the nations, I think, in this passage of Scripture, are the men who rule over the remaining passions of dishonor, who are themselves also justly subject to the punishment of their own debts, and are therefore handed over to the king of Babylon as to a punishing power that rejoices in the torment of nature. The Egyptian king, then, is the pleasure-loving and unrestrained mind; the Moabite is the luxurious and effeminate mind; the Ammonite is the covetous mind; the Syrian is the superstitious and disputatious mind — for it is written that only Syria is opposed to Solomon, that is, to peace and wisdom; the Tyrian is the world-loving and life-loving mind; and all the remaining kings, whom the man of knowledge will recognize by their own signification, from the interpretation of the names, or the position of the places, or the general tradition that prevails among them, or their mutual dealings with one another, or their particular antipathy toward Israel.

For they are not always and in every instance taken in the same one signification, but according to the underlying need and the force of the prophecy — since indeed Scripture also knows how to take Pharaoh for the devil, when he becomes the destroyer of Israel, and again for the law of nature, when Joseph serves him by economy, prophetically signifying through himself the God the Word who willingly served our nature and its passions, except sin alone; likewise also the king of Tyre is understood as the devil, when he wars against Israel through Sisera, and again as the natural law, when he makes a treaty with David and contributes greatly to Solomon for the building of the divine temple. And each of the kings enumerated in Scripture is taken in many other significations besides, according, however, to the force underlying the prophecy. And the beasts, which God gives to the king of Babylon, are the demons, each ministering according to the aptitude inherently underlying him for this or that infliction of temptations. For one is productive of one kind of wickedness, and another clearly more defiled than another, and more suited to this or that species of wickedness. For the demons themselves cannot, apart from divine permission, in any way serve the arch-evil devil, so that, as God Himself knows, with the fitting, loving, and good providence, He may permit the devil, through his ministers, to inflict various punishments for our sins.

And this the account concerning Job clearly shows, recording that the devil could not approach Job at all without divine permission. But Nebuchadnezzar himself, the king of Babylon, is often also taken for the law of nature. And this those who were unable to cherish the spiritual law, and were therefore dragged down to the land of Babylon — I mean, the state of confusion with respect to matter — show, writing to those in Jerusalem: “pray for the life of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and for the life of Belshazzar his son” — that is, plainly, for the natural law, and for its habit according to movement, under which they had then come to be — “that their days may be as the days of heaven” — by these words entreating those who had remained in the dispassion of virtue and the truth of knowledge to pray that the thoughts of the law of nature, and of its habit according to movement, in which, having abandoned the spiritual law, they had come to be, might be as the divine thoughts of the law of the Spirit — calling the thoughts “days,” and the spiritual law “heaven.” For they sought that the natural and toilsome law, under which they had come to be, might not be discordant with the spiritual law. With this agrees also what was mystically said to him, according to the divine threat, by the great Daniel, interpreting the dream that was seen: “and they shall drive you out from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the wild beasts, and they shall feed you grass like an ox, and you shall be lodged with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules over the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomever He wills”; and that He said, “leave the stump of the roots of the tree in the earth; your kingdom shall remain to you, from the time you know the kingdom of heaven” — meaning, perhaps, by “driving out,” the expulsion into this world, through the transgression, from paradise, and the estrangement from dwelling with the holy angels — that is, the relation from intelligible visions to the sense-perception of the law of nature — and signifying, by “dwelling with the wild beasts,” the abiding with the passions and the demons who

work them, that is, dwelling and conversing with them. And the grass, which they fed him — the men, plainly, not the beasts, with whom he had his dwelling; for these do not feed but tear — is the natural understanding, according to senseperception, of visible things, and the toilsome practice according to virtue, which the angels supply to men as grass; and “to be lodged with the dew of heaven” is to have had, through divine providence, one's abiding among the things enumerated — for the discourse called providence “the dew of heaven” — through which man, that is, the law of nature, had his preservation in this age among the things enumerated, being in no way corrupted; or perhaps the measured knowledge concerning the things understood, coming through visible things, by God's grace, on account of which man is here held fast by the hope of the things to come. And “seven times shall pass over you” signifies the sevenfold extension of time in this age, under which the law of nature came to be, having abandoned the guarding of his own habit and operation, and after the completion of which, at the expected resurrection, through the casting off of the irrational properties, he shall return again to himself, receiving back the original good fortune of the kingdom, having recognized, through the providential economy of this age, the might of the true kingdom.

For to say, “leave the stump of the roots of the tree in the earth,” signifies that the seed and the powers of goodness were not utterly destroyed from nature through the transgression; according to which, receiving growth again, it is brought back, through the resurrection, to its former natural magnitude and beauty. But it is better for us, keeping to the law of the commandments, to train ourselves by voluntary toils for the destruction of the mind of the flesh — and not only better, but altogether philosophic and fitting for those who have established innate reason as ruler over the passions. But if not this, at least the next best thing: being disciplined involuntarily, let us embrace the counsel of Him who disciplines us, with due thanksgiving, accepting, as it were the yoke of the king of Babylon, the chastisement for our sins. And the noetic king of Babylon does not remove our mind from our own land — that is, from faith and hope and the habit that accords with virtue. In this way, then, according to the manner already given, the devil is also called God's servant, and to him are handed over the kings of the nations and the king of Judah and the beasts of the field.

1. In what manner, he says, the devil is an enemy of God and an avenger.

2. The soul, separated by the devil from God, being ignorant of or despising the divine threat conveyed through the temptations — that is, the punishment — makes this an occasion of impiety against the commandment. For it forsakes God and flees to the devil, regarding the enemy as a redeemer.

3. That toil, he says, purifies the soul rusted with the filth of pleasure, and completely strips away its attachment to material things, once it has relearned the harm of friendship toward them; for which cause God permits the devil, by a just judgment, to press men down with torments.

4. Present things, he says, only flatter the senses, bearing away no profit; but the punishment through the devil, by God's permission, makes us hate and despise them.

5. He who suffers, he says, for grace that has been transgressed, if he recognizes the reasoning of the divine providence that heals him, receives the misfortune gladly, with thanksgiving, and corrects the offense for which he is being disciplined; but he who is insensible to this healing that has been given is justly led away from grace, and is handed over to the confusion of the passions, being left to come to the practice of those things toward which he had, in disposition, the desire.

6. Solomon had peace according to the designation of his name, but he had wisdom according to divine gift, as the fruit of prayer.

7. Here he takes Nebuchadnezzar for the natural law, and his son Belshazzar for the habit of that same natural law.

8. From the prayer it is clear, he says, that Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar here signify the natural law and the habit born of it, and not the devil; for no one at all explains that a prayer is offered on behalf of the devil. For the prayer that the word of prophecy did not condemn ought not to be thought to have been offered to God on behalf of the devil.

27. Concerning the Revelation of Peter Concerning Since the Lord, after the resurrection, openly commanded that all the nations be made disciples, how did Peter still need the revelation concerning Cornelius for the sake of the nations? Or how were the apostles in Jerusalem, hearing of the matter concerning Cornelius, in dispute with Peter? The all-holy Peter, chief of the apostles, indeed greatly needed the divine revelation concerning the nations. For he did not know that there is no distinction, according to faith, between circumcision and uncircumcision, nor indeed did he clearly know that the Lord had said the nations should be made disciples apart from the visible worship according to the Law, until He manifested to him the mystery through revelation of the ineffable counsel — persuading him both through the example of the sheet, and through the grace of the Holy Spirit given equally to the nations by faith alone, that in Christ there is no distinction between Jew and Greek. This the apostles in Jerusalem also, being ignorant of it, disputed with him about, until they too learned the riches, hidden in secret, of divine goodness toward all men. For the grace of the proclamation was an introduction of divine life and new worship, apart from the legal one, and it was a teaching of the soul's willing release of itself, in judgment, from the body, and a prefiguring of another, more divine, principle of coming-to-be.

And for this reason those entrusted with this ministry needed, at every word, the teaching of Him who commanded it. And if I do not seem to anyone to be more curious than is fitting: every word of divine commandment altogether needs, for its operation, the manner determined for it, taught by teaching and revelation. For there is no one at all who discerns the manner of a word without the revelation of the one who spoke the word — which the all-praised Peter, knowing this, having already received from the Lord the word concerning the proclamation to the nations, did not undertake, awaiting to be taught, by Him who gave the word, the manner of the word. And perhaps there were other things too, besides these, which the great Peter was taught through the sheet let down from heaven and the various animals in it — or rather, the whole race of men, or he who had, like him, laid hold of the divine summit according to faith — learning to extinguish utterly all his own sense-perception; according to which, so long as it sees the things that appear, it understands God's creation to be, for itself, subject to corruption, unable to be pure of corruption and confusion. Through the sheet, then, and the animals in it, He who spoke to him, who was suited also for spiritual food, showed beforehand either the visible world understood, through the principles, by means of the invisible world, or the invisible world appearing through the types of sensible things.

Wherefore He says, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” From what is he bidden to rise? From what else than from the habit and relation according to sense-perception, and the more earth-bound preconception concerning the things that are, or the righteousness supposed to be according to the Law, that, with the mind alone, released from all imagination according to sense-perception, being able to behold, naked of forms, the principles of sensible things, he might recognize the types of intelligible things, and learn that nothing made by God is unclean. For he who beholds, from the intelligible world, the visible creation shown forth in advance by its principles, or the types of intelligible things from the ordering of visible things, as it were a sheet let down from heaven, will believe that none of the visible things is unclean, seeing no antipathy at all manifested in the principles of the things that are. For corruption lies in sense-perception, and the war of the things that have come to be with one another; but in the principles there is absolutely nothing contrary. The sheet, then, is the sensible world, itself too held together from four principles, as elements; and the creeping things and the wild beasts and the birds are the various principles of the things that have come to be, unclean with respect to sense-perception, but pure and nourishing with respect to the mind, and constitutive of the life that is understood; and the voice that came a third time teaches practical and natural and theological philosophy.

For it is necessary, not once, but twice and thrice rising, for him who is altogether genuinely following God, to sacrifice the creation of visible things and eat it knowingly. For he who has risen from the passionate disposition toward visible things has sacrificed the movement of visible things, and, having achieved the practical virtue, has eaten it; and he who has risen from the false opinion concerning the things that are has sacrificed the outward forms of visible things, and, eating the unseen principles, has achieved natural contemplation in the Spirit; and he who has risen from the error of polytheism has sacrificed the very essence of the things that are, and, eating the cause of the things that are according to faith, has been filled with theological power. Every contemplative mind, then, having the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, having killed within itself the movement of visible creation, has achieved virtue, and, having cut off from itself the imagination of sensible forms, has found the truth in the principles of the things that are, according to which natural contemplation is constituted, and, having come to be above the essence of the things that are, receives the illumination of the divine and unwarring Monad, according to which the mystery of true theology is constituted. Or perhaps the summit of the apostles, all-glorious Peter, was bidden by God, having risen from the power commensurate with nature to the good fortune, according to grace, that is divine, to sacrifice, with God, by the sword of the word, the wicked passions among men, and to make of them good food, both suited to reason and fit for spiritual digestion, through the laying aside of the former passionate and bestial life.

For they say that blood is a symbol of life, which altogether flows from an animal that is slaughtered. And perhaps the difference of the animals shown signifies the variety of the passions among men. For the creeping things prefigure those who have their whole desiring part dragged along toward earthly things; the wild beasts, those who have stirred up their whole irascible part madly toward the destruction of one another; and the birds, those who have lifted their whole rational part up to the insolence of pride, and speak, out of it, haughtiness and injustice on high, and have set their mouth against heaven — all of which the great Peter, as a fellowworker with God, having sacrificed by the word of the Spirit, made some desirous of heavenly things, and others gentle and loving toward mankind and mutually supportive, and others God-loving and humble-minded. Let us also consider what Joppa signifies through the interpretation of its own name, in which this vision was seen by the great foundation of the Church, all-holy Peter. “Joppa” is interpreted “watch-tower,” signifying the guard fitting for practical men. For, lying by the shore of the sea, it would have been struck by many waves, had the city not had its position on a height. Whence it seems to me to signify one who, on the height of knowledge, as it were a city, builds virtue, and is not far from involuntary temptations, having near at hand, as it were the sea, the relation to sensible things not yet completely cast off, and for this reason needing watchfulness, lest the unclean demons, escaping notice through involuntary temptations, make an assault of voluntary passions.

But also, Joppa, belonging to the portion of the tribe of Issachar — which is interpreted “wages” and “toil” — gives further to understand that Joppa is the guarding habit of practice, watchful against the invisible attacks of the spirits of wickedness. From this, then, having risen, the great apostle was, perhaps, bidden to transfer his mind to the knowledge of lofty things. Let him, then, who dwells on the height of watchfulness of the practical philosophy, be said to be in Joppa; but he who dwells in the Zion that is in Jerusalem — that is, the watchpost established, according to the vision, in peace (for this is what “Jerusalem” is interpreted) — has become far removed from all relation to sense-perception, as far as, historically, in position, the sea is from the place of Zion, and, being on the height of knowledge, watches only the intelligible visions of the things that are, by the noetic removal of the forms appearing in the things that are, and receives the manifestations of divine things, made manifest as is lawful, forming his governing faculty toward what is more divine. He, then, who dwells in Joppa is the practical man, watching over the snares of his adversaries; but he who dwells in Zion is the man of knowledge, beholding, with the mind alone, the comeliness of divine things. And if the vessel of the sheet was again drawn up into heaven, let us understand that, after showing the great Peter that the spiritual principles of sensible things coexist with intelligible things, God draws them back again to Himself, teaching that nothing of which the principles remain with Him is unclean at all.

Wherefore, having learned the meaning of the things seen, the great apostle learned to call no man unclean, nor that there is partiality with God, which makes the division of things unjust. Whence, without delay, he fulfilled the divine command, sacrificing unto spiritual life those who willingly circumcised their heart by the word of grace, and who cast off, as an uncircumcision, all the impurity of unbelief, wickedness, and ignorance, without circumcising anything of the natural properties belonging to the flesh, whose constitution is not from a passionate judgment, but whose coming-to-be is from divine creation. For nothing according to nature is unclean, since it has God as the cause of its existence.

1. He speaks of a transposition of life, and angelic worship, and a willing estrangement of the soul from the body; and he proclaims the mystery of the New Covenant, the coming-tobe, in the Spirit, of the divine transformation.

2. The reason of the commandment, he says, is one thing, and the manner in which the commandment comes to pass is another. Peter, then, having received the commandment concerning the proclamation to the nations, but not knowing it, was taught, through the sheet, the manner of the commandment: that the calling of the nations must come to be apart from circumcision and the remaining, more bodily, customs of the Law. For the word knows of a spiritual circumcision, the cutting off of the soul's passionate relation to the body.

3. He who does not remain fixed on the forms of visible things through sense-perception, but seeks out, according to the mind, their principles, as types of intelligible things, or beholds the principles of sensible creatures, is taught that none of the things seen is unclean. For all things, by nature, are exceedingly good.

4. He who is not altered together with the movement of sensible things, he says, pursues the unadulterated practice of the virtues. And he who has not shaped his mind by their forms has laid hold of the true opinion concerning the things that are. And he who has passed by, with his understanding, even the very essence of the things that are, as the best theologian, has thereafter, unknowingly, made contact with the Monad. He, then, who has thrice sacrificed within himself the creation of visible things has become worthy of the rank of the perfect.

5. Joppa, he says, is the habit of virtue, guarded against the harm from the sensible things nearby. And Zion is the gnostic habit, watching for the reception of intelligible gifts.

28. Concerning “Come, Let Us Go Down and Confuse To whom did God say, “Come, let us go down and confuse their languages”? We find that Holy Scripture fashions God according to the underlying disposition of those cared for by providence, whence it also calls Him lion, and bear, and leopard, and panther, and man, and ox, and sheep, and sun, and star, and fire, and spirit, and countless other things, none of which He is, being spoken of according to the notion conveyed by each expression. To Abraham, then, being perfect in knowledge, God appeared, and in the discourse concerning the Monad taught the immaterial discourse concerning the Trinity, to one whose mind had already wholly escaped matter and its types; and for this reason He appeared both as three and spoke as one. But to Lot, who had not yet purified his mind of the composition of bodies, but was still dependent on the coming-to-be of bodies from matter and form, and believed God to be the maker only of visible creation, God, appearing, appeared dually but not trinitarianly, showing, by the manner in which He fashioned Himself, that the mind that was being led up had not yet gone beyond matter and form. Thus, examining with understanding, in each passage, the reasons why Scripture fashions God in many manners, you will find that the cause of the many variations in the divine representations is the disposition of those cared for by providence.

Since, then, those who built the tower, having first moved from the region of the light of the east — I mean, the one and true knowledge concerning God — came into the land of Sennaar, interpreted “blasphemous teeth,” and fell into many opinions concerning deity, and, having put together, as it were bricks, the reasoning of each opinion, built, as a tower, polytheistic godlessness, fittingly God, who scatters the wicked concord of the confession of these erring men, names Himself in the plural because of the disposition of those cared for by providence, having been scattered and torn apart into countless opinions — showing that He, being one, was divided into many in them, just as He is also seen to say of Adam, “behold, Adam has become as one of us.” Toward the underlying cause, then, God is either pluralized or gathered together in the utterances of the Scriptures. As for to whom God speaks: it is the custom of Scripture to fashion in bodily terms the unutterable and hidden counsels of God, that we might be able, from words and expressions akin to us, to understand divine things, since God is an unknown Mind and an ineffable Word and an incomprehensible Life, and neither speaks nor is spoken, being, according to essence, His own Word and His own Counsel. And if we understand the words of the divine Oracles thus, we shall stumble at none of the things written, on account of their obscurity.

But if someone should say that the plural signification concerning God is not altogether set down by Scripture as a reproach, and should adduce, in confirmation of his own argument, “and God said, let us make man according to our image and likeness,” saying that surely by this expression we do not understand the discourse to introduce a suspicion of polytheism — we say that, whenever Holy Scripture piously uses the plural discourse concerning God toward the pious, it makes manifest the all-holy three hypostases, mystically signifying the manner of existence of the all-holy and beginningless Monad, since the all-revered and worshipful and all-praised Trinity of hypostases is, according to essence, a Monad — for our God is Monad in Trinity, and Trinity in Monad — but whenever it uses the plural discourse concerning God toward the impious, it refutes, I think, their reprehensible notion concerning deity, of those who have supposed the difference in the properties to be natural but not hypostatic, which clearly introduces the polytheistic error into those who so hold concerning deity. But if, saying even this, we do not persuade, since it is dear to the Spirit, and beloved of those who love the Spirit, not to contend, let us receive Holy Scripture as being consistent with itself, introducing the all-holy Trinity in Monad, at one time as creator, as in “let us make man” — for the hypostasis of the things that are is clearly the work of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit — at another time as receptive of those who have conducted themselves piously according to its laws, as providential over those who have received from it the coming-to-be of their being, as appearing to Abraham trinitarianly and speaking with him as one; at another time as punitive, that is, judicial, of those who corrupt the laws of nature, and corrective of those who have erred from the fitting law of nature, as in “let us go down and confuse their languages.”

For the holy and consubstantial Trinity is not only creative of the things that are, but also cohesive and distributive of what is due to each, being, as one God by nature, creator, provider, and judge of the things made by Him. For it is common to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as it is to create, so also to judge and wisely to provide for the things made. Scholia 1. God appears to each, he says, according to the opinion of God underlying him. To those who have passed beyond material composition in desire, and who possess the powers of the soul equally ordered to one another, according to one and the same ever-motion concerning God, He appears both as Monad and as Trinity, so as to show forth His own existence and to teach mystically the manner of it. But to those who have their desire moved only with respect to material disposition, and whose soul's powers are unconnected to one another, He appears not as He is, but as they are, showing that with both hands they have laid hold of the material duality according to which the bodily world is constituted from matter and form.

2. He who says that the difference of properties in God is natural, but not hypostatic, is not a believer in one God, but a polytheist, saying that the divine admits of enumeration by the properties of essences, but not of hypostases.

29. Concerning “Those Who, Through the Spirit, Told Paul Not to Go up to Jerusalem” What is meant, in Acts, by “those who, through the Spirit, told Paul not to go up to Jerusalem”? Why did he disobey the Spirit and go up? Holy Isaiah the prophet, in his prophecy, says that seven spirits rest upon the Savior who arose from the root of Jesse, not knowing seven spirits of God, and thereby teaching others to understand it so, but calling the operations of the one and the same Holy Spirit “spirits,” because the Holy Spirit who operates is wholly present, without deficiency, in every operation, proportionately. And the divine Apostle calls the various operations of this one Holy Spirit various “gifts,” worked, plainly, by one and the same Spirit. If, then, the manifestation of the Spirit is given according to the measure of the faith in each, each of the faithful, in the participation of such a gift, receives, plainly according to the analogy of his faith and of the disposition underlying him according to soul, a measured operation of the Spirit, granting him the habit fitted for the operation of this or that commandment. As, then, one receives the word of wisdom, and another the word of knowledge, and another faith, and another something else of the gifts of the Spirit enumerated by the great Apostle, so one receives, through the Spirit, the gift of perfect and immediate love toward God, having nothing material in it, according to the analogy of his faith, and another, through the same Spirit, the gift of perfect love toward one's neighbor, each having, according to the same Spirit, as I have said, his own gift operative in him.

And one who calls these gifts, according to holy Isaiah, “spirits,” does not, I think, fall short of the truth. For the Holy Spirit is wholly present, proportionately, as operative, in every gift, whether greater or lesser. Paul, then, who was truly great, and became a minister of mysteries beyond man, having received, immediately, the perfect grace of love in God, according to the measure of the faith with which he received the Spirit, when those who had received the gift of perfect love toward him told him, through the Spirit — that is, through the gift of love toward him operating in them by the Spirit (for the Spirit is the same as the gift, as I said, taking this from the prophet) — not to go up to Jerusalem, he disobeyed, preferring, incomparably, the divine and beyond-understanding love from God over the spiritual love toward him from others — or rather, he did not disobey by going up, but rather drew those who were prophesying, through the operation of the Spirit measured to them according to their gift, toward the desire, according to his own type, for what is beyond the whole. Great Paul, then, did not disobey the Spirit, but taught those who were prophesying about him, according to the gift of love, to be transferred to the higher from the lesser Spirit — that is, gift.

And again, if the prophetic gift is much lesser than the apostolic gift, it was not fitting, by the reasoning that directs the whole and determines the rank of each, that the greater should yield to the lesser, but rather that the lesser should follow the greater. For those who were then prophesying, through the prophetic spirit in them, but not the apostolic, were signifying to holy Paul the manner of the suffering that would befall him for the sake of the Word; but he, looking only to the divine purpose, reckoned all the intermediate things as nothing, having zeal not for how he might escape what would happen, but for how he might become another Christ, having, by imitation of Christ, accomplished all the things for which Christ, out of love for mankind, chose the life in the flesh according to the economy. The apparent disobedience of the great Apostle, then, is a preservation of the good order that governs and directs all divine things, and that keeps each in its own unfaltering abiding and establishment, and a clear teaching that the ranks of the Church, well determined by the Spirit, are in no way to be confused with one another. Scholia 1. That which operates differently in each of those variously energized by it is whole, and, in all together, not divided. For, he says, without mixture, in the whole and in each part, undividedly, according to one and the same power, the Holy Spirit is shown operating, since He is also the fulfillment of all things that are; for He is God, and uncontained by all things that are, since He is supra-essential.

2. Every habit of a commandment in operation, he says, is a gift of the Spirit.

3. He who loves God with his whole heart and soul and strength is, he says, greater than he who loves his neighbor. It is not, then, reasonable for the greater to be legislated by the lesser, but rather for the lesser to be led by the greater. Wherefore the divine Apostle did not permit the apostolic dignity and rank to be justly ruled by the ranks over which it presides, lest the good order of all things that are, and especially the order of divine things, be dissolved.

4. By “intermediate things” he means the kinds of temptations, which those who prophesied to holy Paul about his contest for the truth saw beforehand, through the Spirit, by foreknowledge; of which he took no thought at all, hastening to be united with Christ, according to the subsistence in form of the good things, after the passage, in faith, through the things that are.

30. Concerning What Is the Difference Between the Cup and Baptism What is meant by, “Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, and to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized”? What is the difference between the cup and the baptism? The baptism of the Lord is a type of our voluntary toils, undertaken on purpose for the sake of virtue, and our own; through which, washing away the stains according to conscience, we accept the willing death of our own choice toward visible things. But the cup is a type of the involuntary temptations that rise up against us, apart from our choice, through circumstance, for the sake of truth; through which, preferring the divine longing even to nature itself, we willingly submit to the circumstantial death of nature. This, then, is the difference between the baptism and the cup: that the baptism, for the sake of virtue, makes the choice dead toward the pleasures of life, while the cup persuades the pious to prefer truth even to nature itself. And He set the cup before the baptism, because virtue exists for the sake of truth, but truth does not exist for the sake of virtue. Wherefore he who practices virtue for the sake of truth is not wounded by the arrows of vainglory, but he who pursues truth for the sake of virtue has, dwelling with him, the selfopinion of vainglory.

The baptism of the Lord, he says, is the complete mortification of our choice toward the sensible world; but the cup is the denial even of our present life itself, for the sake of truth.

2. He says that truth is divine knowledge, and virtue is the contests of those who desire it for its sake. He, then, who endures the toils of virtue for the sake of knowledge is not vainglorious, knowing that truth is, by nature, unencompassed by toils. For the first is not, by nature, circumscribed by the second. But he who pursues knowledge for the sake of the contests undergone for it is altogether vainglorious, as one who seems to have received the crowns before the sweat — not knowing that the toils exist for the sake of the crowns, but not the crowns for the sake of the toils. For every method is, by nature, without further practice once that for the sake of which it is naturally pursued has been accomplished, or seems to have been accomplished.

31. Concerning “If God Does Not Dwell in Temples Made with Hands” If God does not dwell in temples made with hands, how did He dwell in the temple of the Jews? God, who wisely attends to the proportion of those cared for by providence, first, through types naturally suited to those who were being led toward the truth by means of senseperception, mingled Himself invisibly with all the types given to the old people, working the ascent of those being trained. God, then, dwelt in the temple of the Jews typologically, but not truly, circumscribing, by such a dwelling in the temple, the ineffable counsel of the whole mystagogical training of those cared for by providence. For only the pure mind is most suited as a dwelling-place of God; for whose sake He permitted the typical temple to be built, wishing, through the very coarse symbols, to draw up out of matter the mind of the Jews, made much more coarse than the insensible types, so that, perceiving from the material and unfitting nature of the temple that it was unsuited for God's habitation, he might, from this, come to a complete perception of what naturally belongs to himself. Which the Jew, who knew only how to nourish, out of pride, the conceit that accords with piety, did not perceive, and was both rightly deprived of the type and wickedly estranged himself from the truth.

1. It is not fitting, he says, for a temple to be built for God out of house-building material and a fleshly soul. For these are coarser symbols, unsuited to God; wherefore a temple must be built for Him out of elements suited and fitting to His 2. He who pursues only the form of knowledge, which is the bare word, and the image of virtue, which is the bare character, is, he says, a Jew, himself too puffed up by the types of truth.

32. Concerning “If Perhaps They Might Feel After Him and Find Him” What is meant by, “if perhaps they might feel after Him and find Him”? How does one, by feeling, find God? He who does not view all the visible bodily worship of the Law according to sense-perception, but, examining each of the visible symbols with the approaches of the mind, is taught the divinely-perfecting reason (logos) hidden in each, finds God in the reason, rightly feeling, by the noetic power, as it were amid the rubbish of the matter of the legal ordinances, whether he might find, hidden in the flesh of the Law, the pearl — the Word who altogether escapes senseperception. And likewise, he who does not circumscribe the nature of visible things by sense-perception alone, but wisely searches out, according to the mind, the reason within each creature, finds God, being taught, from the displayed grandeur of the things that are, the very cause of the things that are. Since, then, discernment is proper to one who feels, he who approaches the legal symbols cognitively, and views the visible nature of the things that are scientifically, discerning Scripture and creation and himself — Scripture into letter and spirit, creation into reason and outward appearance, and himself into mind and sense-perception — and, taking the spirit of Scripture, and the reason of creation, and his own mind, and uniting them indissolubly to one another, has found God, having come to know, as is fitting and possible, the God who is in mind and reason and spirit, having been delivered from all the things that lead astray and drag one down into countless opinions — I mean, letter, and outward appearance, and sense-perception, in which there exists a differing quantity, and which is opposed to the Monad.

But if one should mix together, entangling with one another, the letter of the Law and the outward appearance of visible things and his own sense-perception, he is blind, though he seems to see, being sick with ignorance of the cause of the things that are.

1. He who has beheld only the spirit of Scripture, apart from the types, and the reasons of creation, apart from the outward forms, with the mind alone, freed from the operation of sense-perception, has found God — in the spirit of Scripture, as goodness; in the reasons of the things that are, as power; and in himself, as the cause of wisdom. For the reasons of the things that came from what is not declare the power of the Creator; and the spirit of Scripture, leading back to deification those who had gone astray, proclaims the goodness of Him who wrote it; and our noetic faculty, which without interval comprehends the reasons of the things that have come to be, openly proclaims the wisdom of the Craftsman.

33. Concerning “Amen, I Say to You, Whoever Says to What is meant by, “Amen I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, be lifted up and cast into the sea, and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says comes to pass, it shall be to him whatever he says”? What is “and does not doubt”? The great and divine Apostle, defining what faith is, says: faith is the hypostasis of things hoped for, and the proof of things not seen. And if one should also define it as an innate good, or as true knowledge, demonstrative of the ineffable good things, he would not fall short of the truth. And the Lord, teaching concerning the ineffable good things, both hoped for and not seen, says, “the kingdom of God is within you.” The faith of God, then, is the same as the kingdom of God, distinguished from the kingdom only by consideration. For faith is the formless kingdom of God, and the kingdom is faith divinely given form. So that, by this reasoning, faith is not outside us; which, being put into operation by the divine commandments, becomes the kingdom of God, known only to those who have it. And if the kingdom of God, put into operation, is faith, and the kingdom of God effects the immediate union with God of those over whom it reigns, faith has plainly been shown to be a relational power, or an operative relation, of the believer's perfect and beyondnature immediate union with the God who is believed.

Since, then, man, being of soul and body, is shaken by two laws — the flesh, I mean, and the spirit — and the law of the flesh has its operation according to sense-perception, but that of the spirit according to the mind, and the law of the flesh naturally binds one to matter, operating according to senseperception, but that of the spirit, operating according to the mind, effects immediate union with God — fittingly, he who has not doubted in his heart, that is, who has not, in his mind, divided or cut off the immediate union with God that has come about through faith, being dispassionate, or rather already become god through this union by faith, shall say to this mountain to move, and it shall move — indicating demonstratively, by “this,” the mind and the law of the flesh, truly heavy and hard to move, and, as far as concerns natural power, altogether immovable and unshakable. For so deeply rooted in the nature of men, through senseperception, is the power of irrationality, that most people think man to be nothing else but flesh, having senseperception as a power for the enjoyment of the present life. All things, then, are possible to him who believes and does not doubt — that is, who is not divided from the union with God that has come to be in him, according to the mind, through faith, on account of the soul's relation to the body according to sense-perception — as many things as estrange the mind from the world and the flesh, but bring it into kinship with God, perfected by right achievements.

1. He calls bare faith a formless kingdom, not having the divine likeness that comes from the virtues. And he calls the kingdom the faith that has, through works, the divine form of goodness.

2. Faith, he says, is unprovable knowledge. And if it is unprovable knowledge, then faith is a relation beyond nature, through which we are united to God unknowingly, but not demonstrably, according to the union that is beyond understanding.

3. The mind that has received immediate union with God has the power of thinking and being thought of, according to nature, altogether at rest. Whenever, then, it dissolves this by thinking something after God, it is divided, having cut off the union that is beyond understanding; according to which, so long as it is joined to God, as beyond nature, and has become god by participation, it transfers, as it were an immovable boundary, the law of nature to itself.

4. It must be understood as implied, he says: “all things are possible to him who believes” — as many things as estrange the mind from the world and the flesh. For these are the things possible to the believer, from God.

34. Concerning “for This Reason I Say to You, All Things Whatever You Ask in Prayer, Believe That You Receive What again is meant by, “For this reason I say to you, all things whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you receive them, and it will be to you”? How can one believe that he altogether receives what he asks, when only God knows whether the thing asked is beneficial or not? And if out of ignorance he asks what is not beneficial, how does He grant it? And if He does not grant what is not beneficial, asked out of ignorance, how can one believe, in the case of every petition, that he receives it and that it will be to him? All the matters of the present chapter have already, in summary, been resolved in the one before it. For it belongs only to those who have come to know how one ought to believe, to know what, and how, and concerning what things, one ought to ask. For knowledge does not belong to all, any more than faith does. Yet the Lord, saying, “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness” — that is, before all things, the full knowledge of the truth, and thereafter the exercise of the fitting manners — clearly showed that believers ought to seek only for divine knowledge, and for the virtue that adorns it through works.

Since, then, there are many things that believers seek for the sake of knowledge of God and virtue — release from the passions, endurance of temptations, the reasons of the virtues, the manners of their operations, the eradication of the soul's disposition toward the flesh, the estrangement of sense-perception from its relation to sensible things, the complete withdrawal of the mind from all things that have come to be — and, simply, there are countless other things that pertain to abstinence from wickedness and ignorance, and to the achievement of knowledge and virtue — fittingly the Lord said, “all things whatever you ask, believing, you shall receive,” meaning that the pious should seek and ask, with knowledge and faith, only for all the things that tend toward the full knowledge of For these things are altogether beneficial, and the Lord altogether gives them to those who ask. He, then, who, for the sake of faith alone — that is, immediate union with God — seeks all things that tend toward that union, shall altogether receive them. But he who, apart from this cause, seeks either other things, or even the aforementioned things, shall not receive; for he does not believe, but, as an unbeliever, contrives his own opinion by means of divine matters.

35. Concerning How We Are Commanded to Eat the Flesh of the Word and Drink the Blood, but Not to Break the Since the Word became flesh, and not only flesh but also blood and bones, and we are commanded to eat the flesh, and drink the blood, but not to break the bones, I ask to learn what is this threefold power of the incarnate Word. Willing to come into being, as He Himself, the supra-essential Word and Creator of all things that are, knows, He brought with Him the natural principles (logoi) of all the things that are, both visible and intelligible, together with the incomprehensible conceptions of His own Godhead; of which the principles of the intelligible things would be the blood of the Word, and the principles of sensible things would be the visible flesh of the Word. Since, then, the Word is the teacher of the spiritual principles both in the things visible and in the things understood, fittingly and reasonably He gives to the worthy, as flesh to eat, the knowledge in the principles of the things seen, and, as blood to drink, the knowledge in the principles of the things understood, which Wisdom too, through the mixing-bowl and the sacrificial victims, prepared long ago, mystically, in the Proverbs; but the bones — that is, the principles concerning deity that are beyond understanding, equally and infinitely removed from every created nature — He does not give, since the nature of the things that are does not possess any power admitting a relation to them.

And again, the flesh of the Word is true virtue, the blood is unerring knowledge, and the bones are ineffable theology. For just as blood, according to species, is changed into flesh, so also knowledge, through practice, is transformed into virtue; and, as bones are constitutive of blood and flesh, so also the principles concerning deity, beyond all understanding, being present within the things that are, unknowably both make and hold together, unto being, the essences of the things that are, and constitute all knowledge and all virtue. But if one should say that the flesh and the blood are the principles concerning judgment and providence, as things that shall altogether at some time be eaten and drunk, and that the ineffable principles concerning deity hidden within these are the bones, he would not, I think, have gone outside what is likely. Perhaps, again, the flesh of the Word is the complete return and restoration of nature to itself through virtue and knowledge, and the blood is the deification that is destined, by grace, to hold this fast in perpetual well-being, and the bones are that very unknowable power which holds nature fast in perpetual well-being through deification. And if one should say what is more readily grasped — that the flesh is the voluntary mortification through the virtues, and the blood is the perfection, through circumstantial death for the sake of truth, and the bones are the first principles concerning deity, unattainable by us — he too has spoken well, and has by no means fallen short of the fitting meaning.

Scholia 1. Ineffable theology is the complete unknowing by way of transcendence, which is unknown in the same measure as the things naturally known are known.

2. He has taken the blood to mean deification, as being the life that is to belong to those found worthy of it. For blood is a symbol of life.

36. Concerning What Are the Bodies of the Animals What are the bodies and blood of the irrational animals, by which the Israelites, worshiping, ate the bodies but no longer the blood, but poured it out around the base of the altar? Those who, long ago, worshiped God according to the Law, in shadow, bore a type of those being introduced to piety, being scarcely able to understand even the visible ordinances of the typical symbols. Since, then, the Law was given, not primarily to them, but to us, being spiritually perfected through us according to Christ, let us examine the reasoning of those sacrifices in relation to piety. He who is being introduced to piety, being taught concerning the works of righteousness, accomplishes only the practice, with all obedience and faith, eating, as it were, the visible flesh of the virtues, but yielding to God, through faith, the reasons of the commandments, in which lies the knowledge of the perfect, not yet being able to stretch himself out to the full length of knowledge. For the altar is a symbol of God, to whom we are all spiritually sacrificed, and to whom we yield the knowledge of things beyond our power, that we may live. And the base of the altar is a type of the faith that pertains to Him. For faith is the foundation, bearing the whole edifice of divine works and thoughts; to which everyone who is unable soberly to enjoy the intoxication, according to knowledge, of the divine mixing-bowl of wisdom, does well to pour out the reasons of the knowledges not attainable by him — that is, yielding to faith the knowledge of the reasons beyond his power.

As bearing, then, a type of those introduced to piety, the old people, eating the flesh of the things sacrificed, poured the blood at the base of the altar, being unable, because of their infant understanding, to attain the mystical knowledge of the things done. But Christ, having come as high priest of the good things to come, sacrificing the ineffable sacrifice, gives Himself, together with the flesh and the blood, to those who have their soul's senses trained, through perfection, to discern good and evil. For the perfect man, having run through not only the rank of those being introduced but also that of those advancing, is not ignorant of the reasons of the things done by Him according to commandment, but, having first drunk these in the Spirit, eats, through works, the whole flesh of the virtues, raising up, to knowledge according to the mind, the movement of the things done according to senseperception. There are also many other explanations concerning these matters, especially fitting for you, most God-loving men; but let them be passed over now on account of their multitude. Scholia 1. By “the visible things of the virtues” he means moral training.

2. He has taken the blood, by contemplation, to mean knowledge, as nourishing the body of the virtues.

37. Concerning the Viper That Bit Paul It says in Acts concerning holy Paul: “so that even handkerchiefs and aprons were carried from his skin to the sick, and diseases departed from them.” Did this happen for the sake of the ministry, even for unbelievers, or were these things accomplished from his skin because his body had been sanctified? And if, for this reason, he also suffered nothing from the viper, for what reason did the body of the saint not fall victim to the venom of the beast, yet did fall victim to the sword? I ask the same question also concerning the body of Elisha. And what are the “aprons”? Neither on account of holy Paul's holiness alone, nor on account of the faith of those who received them alone, did the skin of his body, through the handkerchiefs and the aprons, accomplish the healings, but because divine grace, apportioning itself to both him and them, out of love for mankind, made the apostle's holiness effective in them through faith. Thus, again, his body remained unharmed, by grace's will, not corrupted by the venom of the beast, whether by grace changing the corrupting quality within the venom of the beast, or by making the saint's body incapable of consuming such corruption, or by some other manner of economy known to God, who does and arranges these things. But he fell victim, again, to the sword, by grace's will.

For he was not immortal by nature, even though he was a wonderworker by grace. If he had been immortal by nature, we would rightly seek the reason why, contrary to nature, he fell victim to the sword; but if, by nature, even after his holiness, he remained mortal, it is not necessary to seek the reason why the divine apostle passed through his life in the flesh in this manner rather than that. For in whatever manner God, who has determined beforehand the beneficial life of each before the ages, wills, He leads each to the fitting end of his life, whether just or unjust. If, then, the principle of nature and of grace were one and the same, it would have been a wonder and an astonishment for that which is according to nature to occur contrary to grace, or that which is according to grace to occur contrary to nature; but if, rather, the principle of nature and of grace is different and distinct, it is clear and evident that, as saints, they worked wonders through grace, but, as men, they suffered through nature, since grace did not abolish the passibility of nature, the principles that are in nature and in grace being in no way confounded with one another. Thus let us receive that God's grace does all things, by economy, in the saints who are cared for by providence, both living and dead, as in fitting instruments, providing for the salvation of others, but that the saints do not work these things in others by nature, on account of grace.

This, then, holds also for the body of Elisha. But since the things understood in the narratives more delight the soul of those who love God, we say that the skin of the great apostle is his piety, according to which he was, to some, a fragrance from life unto life, and, to others, a fragrance from death unto death; and the handkerchiefs are the manifest principles of his gnostic contemplation; and the aprons are the venerable manners of the practical philosophy that accords with virtue; for they say that aprons are hand-cloths. Which principles and manners, breathing forth and sending out, as it were a fragrance, from the skin — that is, from the great piety of the blessed apostle — those who received them obtained healing of the sickness that pressed upon them, some pursuing away the disease of ignorance through the principles concerning contemplation, as handkerchiefs, others utterly banishing the infirmity of wickedness through the virtuous manners of practice. And thus I conjecture that the gloomy storm that befell him is the weight of involuntary temptations, and the island is the firm and unshaken habit of divine hope, and the fire is the habit of knowledge, and the sticks are the nature of visible things, which he gathered together with his hand — I mean, the mind's touching power according to contemplation — nourishing, with the thoughts that come from it, the habit of knowledge, which heals the dejection brought upon the understanding by the storm of temptations; and the viper is the wicked and destructive power secretly hidden in the nature of sensible things, which bit the hand — that is, the mind's touching activity of contemplation — but did not harm the far-seeing mind, which immediately, by the light of knowledge, as if by fire, destroyed the destructive power that had attached itself, from the contemplation of sensible things, to the practical movement of the mind.

Likewise also I understand concerning Elisha: that every man who is dead in his transgressions, whenever he is laid upon the tomb of the prophet in which his body was — that is, the remembrance, bearing the trace of the prophetic life, in which the body of the virtues was well guarded — is made alive, by the imitation of his manners, in his manner of living, being transferred to the virtuous life from the deadness of the wickedness of the passions. Scholia 1. The faith of those needing healing, he says, called forth the power of the Spirit in the saints, that, through faith, the power which had until then been hidden might become manifest, and the hidden faith might, through this power, become clear to all. For then the true manner of healings is naturally shown, whenever, through the faith of those upon whom it works, the power of those who work in the Spirit comes to pass in every case.

2. He who, in judgment, is pure of the corruption that comes through sin, corrupts the corruption of those things naturally able to corrupt. For the incorruption of free choice is naturally able to keep the corruption of nature incorrupt by providence, not allowing it, through the grace of the Spirit within it, to be mastered by the opposing qualities.

3. Since, he says, the principle of nature and of grace is not one and the same, it is not a matter deserving of perplexity how some of the saints at one time overcame the passions, and at another time rather fell victim to passions; we knowing that the wonder belonged to grace, but the suffering to nature.

4. The Apostle was a fragrance from life unto life, either preparing the faithful, by his own example, to be moved through practice toward the fragrance of the virtues, or, as a herald, leading those who obeyed the word of grace from life according to sense-perception to life in the Spirit; and a fragrance from death unto death, to those who had advanced from the death of ignorance to the death of unbelief, giving them a perception of the condemnation that awaited them. Or again, a fragrance from life unto life, to those led up from practice to contemplation; and a fragrance from death unto death, to those passing from the mortification, through the inactivity that accords with sin, of the members that are upon the earth, to the praiseworthy mortification of passionate thoughts and fantasies.

5. He who, through imitation, holds the remembrance of the conduct of the saints, lays aside the mortification of the passions, and takes up the life of the virtues.

38. Concerning the Question of the Sadducees to the Lord Did the Sadducees, then, speak of the number of seven brothers concerning the one woman by chance, or does it have some deeper meaning? And if it does, who are those, and who is she? Some say that the reasons of censured persons in Scripture are not to be allegorized. Nevertheless, since it is better to labor diligently and to ask God unceasingly to grant wisdom and power for the whole of Scripture to be spiritually understood, trusting in your prayers, I say the following also concerning the present difficulty. The Sadducees are, according to the reasoning of anagogy, the demons or reasonings that introduce spontaneity (chance); and the woman is the nature of men; and the seven brothers are the laws given to her by God, at various times from the age, for training and for the bringing forth of the fruits of righteousness; with whom, having consorted as with husbands, she had a son by none of them, being barren of the fruit that accords with righteousness. And the first law is the one given in paradise to Adam; the second is the one given to him, after paradise, in the form of a penalty; the third is the one given to Noah at the time of the ark; the fourth is that of circumcision, given to Abraham; the fifth is the one given to him concerning the offering of Isaac; the sixth is the one according to Moses; and the seventh is that of the prefiguring grace, that is, of prophetic inspiration.

For nature had not yet, through faith, been joined in cohabitation to the Gospel, to the man who abides for all ages. These, then, the demons continually put forward, through reasonings, against the reason within us, arguing plausibly, from the things written, against faith, and raising difficulties, as: “if there is a resurrection of the dead, and one must expect some other kind of life after the present, according to which of the laws given from the age will the nature of men conduct its life?” — so that, if we should say according to one of the aforementioned, they might add, saying: “then the life of men will again be vain and unprofitable, not being delivered from its former evils, if nature will again be vexed with the same matters” — which clearly introduces spontaneity, and casts out providence from the things that are. But the Lord and saving Word silences such demons and reasonings, indicating the incorruption of nature that shall be manifested hereafter, according to the Gospel, and showing that human nature shall conduct its life according to none of the preceding laws, having already been deified and joined, through the Spirit, to the Word and God Himself, from whom and unto whom it has received, and shall receive, the beginning and the end of its being. But if one should take the seven thousand years, that is, ages, to be the husbands with whom the nature of men has consorted, he will not take the passage without reason and due contemplation; of none of which shall nature be the wife according to the life to come, since the temporal nature shall have received its end, and an eighth husband, the age without end and without limit, shall have taken her.

39. Concerning the Three Days During Which the Crowds Remained with the Lord What are the three days during which the crowds wait upon the Lord in the wilderness? The wilderness is the nature of men, or this world, in which those who suffer hardship through faith and the hope of the good things to come wait upon the reason (logos) of virtue and knowledge. And the three days are, according to one manner of contemplation upon them, the three powers of the soul, according to which they wait upon the divine Word for virtue and knowledge; with the one seeking, with another desiring, with another contending, they receive incorruptible food, and the knowledge of the things that have come to be, which fattens the mind. According to another manner, the three days signify the three more generic laws — I mean, the written, the natural, and the spiritual, that is, the law of grace. For every law is, in its own way, illuminative of human nature, having as maker of its light the sun of righteousness. For just as it is altogether impossible for day to come to be without the sun, so, apart from the essential and subsisting Wisdom, there cannot be a law of righteousness, this Wisdom making its own rising in each law, and filling the noetic eyes of souls with intelligible light. Which knowing, blessed David says: “Your law is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my paths” — calling the written law a lamp, since it artfully kindles the burning light against the wickedness of the passions, by the various combinations of bodily symbols, riddles, and types, for those who, through practice, against the opposing powers, widen the soul's steps; and calling the spiritual law of grace “light,” since it artlessly, apart from sensible symbols, shows the eternal paths; in which the contemplative mind, making its course, is led to the utmost limit of good things, God, bounding the movement of its understanding by none of the things that are.

For the light of the law of grace is unsetting, having no knowledge whatsoever that bounds its all-radiant rays. Or perhaps the prophet called “feet” the whole course of life according to God, or the movements, according to the soul, of good reasonings, guided, as by a lamp, by the light in the letter of the law; and “paths,” the manners of the virtues according to the natural law, and the reasons of knowledge according to the spiritual law, shown by the presence of God the Word, and leading nature back to itself and to its Cause, through virtue and knowledge. Those who have their desire turned toward salvation, having waited upon God the Word for these three days, that is, laws, and having eagerly endured the toils for each, are not released fasting, but receive abundant and divine food: for the written law, the complete deliverance from the passions contrary to nature; for the natural law, the unerring operation according to nature, according to which the mutual relation is constituted, driving out all scattered otherness and division of nature; and for the spiritual law, union with God Himself, according to which, having gone beyond all created things, they receive the glory that is beyond nature, through which God alone, shining forth in them, is made known. You have this more broadly treated in the Difficulties, in the discourse on holy Pentecost of holy Gregory.

1. He means reason, irascibility, desire. For by reason we seek; by desire we long for the good sought; and by irascibility we contend for it.

2. He has also called the powers of the soul “days,” as receptive of the light of the divine commands, and the three more generic laws, as illuminative of the receptive things, plainly of the souls. For just as the Scripture of Genesis called the light “day,” saying, “and God saw the light, that it was good, and God called the light Day,” and again the illuminated air, saying, “and there was evening, and there was morning, one day” — so he has called not only the powers of the soul “days,” but also the laws that illuminate them. For the complete interpenetration of these into one another makes the composite day of the virtues, not distinguishing, from the divine light according to reason, the powers made wholly like it.

3. The Word of God is, at once, both lamp and light: as illuminating the natural reasonings of the faithful, and as burning up those contrary to nature, and as dissolving the darkness of life according to sense-perception for those who hasten, through the commandments, toward the hoped-for life, and as punishing, with the burning of judgment, those who cling, in judgment, through love of fleshly pleasure, to this dark night of life.

4. The law, he says, understood together with its symbols, is a lamp, destroying the depravity of the passions through practice; but understood apart from its symbols, it is light, raising up, through contemplation, by grace, those who are led, to divine kinship.

5. He who has not first been led up to himself, through the casting off of the passions contrary to nature, will not be led up to his own cause — that is, God — through the acquisition, by grace, of the good things beyond nature. For he who is truly gathered to God must be separated, in understanding, from the things that have been made.

6. The work of the written law, he says, is deliverance from the passions; of the natural law, equal rank with all men according to equal honor; and the perfection of the spiritual law is likeness to God, so far as is possible for man.

40. Concerning the Six Waterpots at Cana of Galilee What does the number of the six waterpots at the wedding in Cana of Galilee signify? God, who created the nature of men, together with the act of willing, gave it being, and fitted to it also a power productive of the things fitting for it. The six waterpots, then, are the natural power productive of the divine commandments; the knowledge of which, men, having emptied it in vain zeal for material affairs, had this power empty and waterless, and for this reason did not know how to cleanse the filth of wickedness. For he who has no share in knowledge in no way understands the virtuous manner of cleansing wickedness — until the Word, the maker of nature, came and first filled the aforementioned productive power of what is fitting with the knowledge according to nature, and thus afterward changed it into wine — I mean, the reason of knowledge that is above nature, both the law and the reason of nature; which those who drink go out of the whole nature of the things that are and fly up to the hidden place of divine indwelling; according to which they receive the gladness and exultation that surpasses all knowledges, drinking the good wine — that is, the ineffable reason productive of deification — last of all, after all the providential economies concerning mankind.

The productive power of nature is taken as the number six, not only because God made heaven and earth in six days, but also because this number alone, among the numbers within ten, is most perfect, being constituted from its own parts. And the discourse says the waterpots held two or three measures each, as the natural, practical power holds, according to natural contemplation, as it were two measures, the whole knowledge of the things that have come to be — of the bodily natures composed of matter and form, and of the intelligible substances composed of essence and accident — that is, the comprehensive knowledge of bodies and incorporeal things; and, according to the theological mystagogy attainable by nature, as it were three measures, the knowledge and illumination concerning the Holy Trinity, that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. You, then, as men of knowledge, contemplate what remains: how the generic productive power of nature for higher things is divided into six, and these too being generic manners of the virtues, and what is the universal and more generic virtue, relative to the universal productive power of nature for virtues than the others, and how it too is divided into six species, themselves generic, that it may, fitted to the power of nature, be contained, given form sixfold through its manners; and, besides these, who are the servants who drew the water, who is the bridegroom, who is the bride, who is the master of the feast, who is the mother who boldly announced to the Word that they had no wine.

For all these things remain for examination by the initiate and mystagogue of divine words and thoughts, if indeed he altogether delights in the manner of anagogy according to the mind. Yet, that the discourse concerning these things may not be left utterly voiceless for us on the present occasion, giving no part, even partially, of the spiritual feast to those who rightly hunger, I will speak according to my power, not promising to reveal the whole understanding in what has been said — for my mind is weak to comprehend the intelligible visions in these matters — but only so much as the power of my understanding is naturally able to hold. They say, then, that love is the most generic of the virtues, and that reason is the most generic productive power of nature for it; which, taking firm hold of its own cause, being put into operation, is distinguished into six more generic manners, comprehensive of the species by which the reason of love is naturally distinguished, caring for the hungry and thirsty and strangers and naked and sick and those in prison, both bodily and spiritually. For the reason of virtue is not circumscribed by bodies alone, nor is the power of nature occupied only with sense-perception. The most generic power of nature, then, is formative of the most generic virtue, distinguishing virtue, by its own six manners, into as many species, through which nature is united to the oneness of judgment, showing the reason of formation, equal in honor and undivided in all, gathered to itself in doing and suffering well; which reason, taken up again in strength through the fitting toils, the mind circumcises of all the excesses and deficiencies of nature, which self-love, devised by the judgment of each, has made the most gentle nature savage, and has cut the one essence into many opposed, and — it is no worse to say — mutually destructive portions; and, bearing it, shows the stable mean, according to which the laws of the virtues were, from the beginning, written by God according to nature.

And perhaps, indicating this mystery, the Word introduces the six waterpots empty and waterless, hinting at the inactivity of the most generic power according to nature with respect to the good. Thus, then, the most generic power according to nature, divided into six manners according to practice, forms the most generic of the virtues into as many species, wholly comprehending it whole; according to which, having come to be, nature receives its own most generic law, the unerring judge of truth, whom the discourse called the master of the feast, who knew clearly that the good wine, which the Word later mixed through His own presence, human nature had first to drink at the beginning and be intoxicated with — I mean, the greater and higher Word concerning God — and thus afterward to be initiated, as into lesser wines relative to the first Word, into the reasons of the things that have come to be. For it was most just, and truly most fitting, that nature should first be initiated into the reason for whose sake it came to be, and thus afterward seek the reasons of the things that came to be for its sake. And those who drew the water are the ministers of the Old and the New Testament — I mean, the holy patriarchs and lawgivers and generals and judges and kings and prophets and evangelists and apostles, through whom the water of knowledge was drawn and given back again to nature; which the Word, who as good created nature, and, out of love for mankind, deified it by grace, changed into the grace of deification.

And if one should say that the natural, scientific, and pious reasonings are the servants, drawing the water of knowledge from the ordering of the things that are, at the Word's command, he would not, I think, have fallen short of the truth. The bridegroom is clearly the human mind, being led, as a bride, into union with virtue; honoring whose cohabitation, the Word comes eagerly when called, binding tight their spiritual marriage covenant, and, with His own wine, spiritually warming their desire toward spiritual fruitfulness. The mother of the Word is true and undefiled faith. For just as, according to the flesh, the Word is, as God, the natural maker of the mother who bore Him, whom He made His mother out of love for mankind, having deigned to be born of her as man, so also the Word, first creating faith in us, afterward becomes, through practice, the son of the faith in us, being embodied from it in the virtues, through which we accomplish all things, receiving from the Word the gifts unto salvation. For apart from faith — of which the Word is, by nature, God, and, by grace, Son — we have no confidence to make our supplications to Him. But may it be that we too always celebrate such a marriage, and that Jesus, with His own mother, be present, that He may restore the knowledge that flowed away from us through sin, and change it into the deification that removes the mind from the coming-to-be of the things that are, tempering and, as it were, giving sinew for unchangeableness, as water strengthened by the quality of wine, to the knowledge of 1.

By “power” he means the movement, essentially sown in nature toward the operation of the virtues, but manifested, according to use, according to the will of the one who possesses it, by judgment.

2. The nature that had been emptied of the knowledge given to it, God the Word, having become man, again filled with knowledge; and, having tempered it toward unchangeableness, He deified it, not in nature, but in quality, characterizing it, without deficiency, with His own Spirit, as water blended, for strength, with the quality of wine. For it is for this reason that He also truly becomes man, that He might make us gods by grace.

3. He calls the reason ecstatic of nature toward deification “good wine”; which the transgression did not permit Adam to drink; but He Himself, by grace, out of love for mankind, having, as God, emptied Himself, later, through the incarnation, made it drinkable, as He alone knows. For He Himself is both providence, as the cohesion of the things that are, and the reason of providence, as the method of the healing of those cared for, and the provider, as holding all things together by the reasons of their being.

4. The power of the mind is, by nature, receptive of the knowledge of bodily and incorporeal things, he says; but it receives the manifestations of the Holy Trinity only by grace, since it only believes that it exists, but does not presumptuously seek what it is according to essence.

5. That the total power of nature is also divided into six manners and operations; and total love is divided into six species of virtue. For he who comforts the hungry, and thirsty, and naked, and stranger, and sick, and imprisoned — whether bodily or spiritually — has fulfilled the love, constituted from the six virtues, toward both God and neighbor, having kept the soul's desire formed for God alone.

6. He calls God the cause of reason; whom, seeking, man has received the power of reason.

7. Into these the matter of love is divided, in which it also consists.

8. He who has become equal, in judgment, according to virtue, toward all, shows in himself the impartial God, who, just as He created the one nature of all by one and the same reason, so also legislated for all one movement of judgment, according to which the reason of nature, which seems scattered, is naturally gathered together.

9. By “mean” he means the state that has been delivered from the passions contrary to nature, but has not yet laid hold of the good things beyond nature. For he shows the judgment as equally ranked with nature, having nothing selfinclined and opposed to the reason of nature, and therefore knowing all men as one, since it has the law of nature as a divinely-written book.

10. That we have the natural law as a natural criterion, teaching us that, before attaining the wisdom in all things, our desire needed to be moved toward the mystagogy of the Maker of all things.

11. Faith, according to anagogy, is the Mother of the Word; who, being first created by Him, afterward, embodied in the virtues, gives birth to the very Word who created her.

41. Concerning the Five Husbands of the Samaritan What is the reasoning of the five husbands of the Samaritan woman, and of the sixth who was not a husband? Both the Samaritan woman, and the woman who took the seven brothers in marriage, according to the Sadducees, and the woman with the flow of blood, and the woman bent down toward the earth, and the daughter of Jairus, and the Syrophoenician woman signify both the universal nature of men and the soul of each individual man, each signifying both nature and soul according to the disposition underlying the affliction. For instance, the wife of the Sadducees is nature, or the soul, which cohabited barrenly with all the divine laws given from the age, but does not accept the expectation of the things to come. And the woman with the flow of blood is likewise nature and the soul, pouring out into matter, through the passions, the power given to it for the begetting of works and reasonings of righteousness. And the Syrophoenician woman is the same nature and the soul of each individual, having the understanding as a daughter grievously torn, epileptically, by the love of matter, out of helplessness. And the daughter of Jairus is likewise the nature and soul according to the Law, having died completely through the inactivity of the legal commandments and the non-operation of the divine ordinances.

And the woman bent down is nature or the soul, which has, through the devil's deceit, bent down entirely the noetic power concerning practice toward matter. And the Samaritan woman, likewise to the aforementioned women, signifies nature, or the soul of each individual, which, apart from the prophetic gift, cohabited with all the laws given to nature, as with husbands; of which five had already passed, and the sixth, though present, was not a husband of nature or of the soul, not begetting from it the righteousness that saves unto completeness. Nature, then, had, as its first husband, the law in paradise; the second, the one after paradise; the third, the one at the flood, in the time of Noah; the fourth, the law of circumcision, in the time of Abraham; the fifth, the law concerning the offering of Isaac. All these nature received and cast off, they having died through the barrenness, with respect to it, of the works of virtue. But the sixth, the law through Moses, it had as though it did not have it, either because it did not do the righteousness ordained by it, or because it was destined to pass over to another law, as to a husband — the Gospel — since the Law was not given to the nature of men forever, but by economy, training it toward what is greater and more mystical; in which sense, I think, the Lord said to the Samaritan woman: “and now the one you have is not your husband.”

For He knew that nature would be transferred to the Gospel. Wherefore, also, about the sixth hour, when especially the soul is illuminated on all sides by the rays of knowledge, on account of the Word's presence to it, the shadow that is in the Law having departed, He conversed with her — and by the well of Jacob, that is, by the spring, standing together with the scriptural contemplations. Let this, then, be said concerning this matter for now. The well of Jacob is Scripture; and the water is the knowledge in Scripture; and the depth is the hard-to-traverse position of the scriptural riddles; and the drawing-vessel is the learning that comes through the letters of the divine word — which the Lord did not have, being Himself the Word, and not giving to believers the knowledge that comes from learning and study, but granting to the worthy the everflowing wisdom that comes from spiritual grace, which never fails. For the drawing-vessel — that is, learning — taking only the smallest part of knowledge, leaves the whole uncomprehended by any account. But knowledge according to grace has, whole and without study, the wisdom attainable by men, welling up variously according to needs.

42. Concerning How We Are Said to Have Committed Sin, but the Lord to Have Become Sin, yet Not to Have Known How are we said to have committed sin and to have known it, but the Lord is said to have become sin, yet not to have known it? And how is it not heavier to have become sin and not known it, than to have committed and known it? For it says, “Him who knew no sin He made to be sin for us.” Adam's free choice, having first been corrupted with respect to the reason (logos) according to nature, corrupted nature together with itself, laying aside the grace of dispassion. And there came to be sin: first, and easily reproved, the fall of free choice from good into wickedness; and second, on account of the first, the unreproved transformation of nature from incorruption into corruption. For two sins came to be in the forefather, according to the transgression of the divine commandment: the one reproved, the other unreproved; the reproved having as its cause the free choice that willingly laid aside the good; the unreproved being that of nature, which involuntarily, on account of the free choice, laid aside immortality. This mutual corruption and alteration of nature, then, our Lord and God, correcting it, having taken the whole of nature, had also Himself, in the nature taken, the passible element, adorned with the incorruption according to free choice, and became, by nature, on account of the passible element, sin for us, but did not know the gnomic sin, on account of the unchangeableness of His free choice; and He corrected the passible element of nature, on account of the incorruption of free choice, having made the end of the passible element of nature — I mean, death — the beginning of the natural transformation unto incorruption.

And it came to pass that, just as through one man who willingly turned his free choice away from the good, the transformation of nature from incorruption into corruption came upon all men, so through one man, Jesus Christ, who did not turn his free choice away from the good, the restoration of nature from corruption to incorruption came upon all men. The Lord, then, not having known my sin — that is, the turning of my free choice — did not take my sin, nor did He become it, but, having taken up the sin that came to be for my sake — that is, the corruption of nature that came about through the turning of my free choice — He became, for our sake, a man passible by nature, having, through the sin that came to be for my sake, abolished my sin. And just as, in Adam, the property, in wickedness, of free choice took away the common glory, in incorruption, of nature, God having judged it not good for man, whose free choice had become wicked, to have an immortal nature, so, in Christ, the property, in goodness, of free choice took away the common shame, in corruption, of the whole nature, nature being transformed, at the resurrection, into incorruption, on account of the unchangeableness of free choice, God having judged it reasonable that man, whose free choice had not been turned, should again receive back an immortal nature.

And I call “man” the incarnate God the Word, on account of whom He united to Himself, according to hypostasis, rationally-ensouled flesh. For if the transformation of free choice introduced, in Adam, the passibility and corruptibility and mortality that are according to nature, fittingly the unchangeableness of free choice brought back again, in Christ, through the resurrection, the impassibility and incorruptibility and immortality that are according to nature. Condemnation, then, of Adam's sin of free choice is the transformation of nature toward passion and corruption and death; which man did not have from God at the beginning, but committed and knew, having produced the sin of free choice through disobedience; of which the condemnation through death is clearly the offspring. This condemnation of my sin of free choice, then — I mean, the passibility and corruptibility and mortality according to nature — the Lord, taking it up, became sin for my sake, according to the passible, corruptible, and mortal element, willingly submitting to my condemnation in nature, being unaccused in free choice, that He might condemn my sin and condemnation of free choice and of nature, driving out from nature, at once, sin and passion and corruption and death, and that there might come to be, concerning me, who had fallen through disobedience, a new mystery: the economy, concerning me, of Him who is above me, out of love for mankind — He who, for the sake of my salvation, willingly made His own my condemnation through death, and through it granted me the recall to immortality.

In many ways, I think, it has been shown, in summary, both how the Lord became sin, yet did not know sin, and how man did not become sin, but committed and knew sin — both the sin of free choice, of which he was himself the beginning, and the natural sin, which the Lord accepted for his sake, being altogether free of the first. In no way, then, is it better to become sin than to commit and know it, according to the intended meaning of the passage rightly understood, and with the fitting distinction observed in the homonymy concerning sin. For the one effects separation from God, the free choice willingly rejecting divine things; but the other, often, becomes an obstacle to wickedness, not permitting the wickedness of free choice, on account of natural weakness, to advance into deed.

1. He says that the sin of nature is death, according to which we depart from being, even when we do not wish it; and the sin of free choice is the choosing of what is contrary to nature, according to which, though we wish to be well, we fall away from it.

2. That the Lord, having been made flesh, was, according to nature, corruptible as man — according to which He is also said to have become sin — but incorruptible by nature, according to free choice, as sinless.

3. The death of the Lord, he says, became the beginning of the incorruption of the whole nature.

4. The sin that is for our sake is the corruptibility of nature; but our sin is the mutability of free choice. Wherefore man became mortal, undergoing the natural death, by just judgment, for the abolition of the death of free choice.

5. He calls the first sin the turning of free choice, which the Lord did not have, though He truly took on the passibility according to nature, which is the penalty of Adam's turned free choice. Wherefore He alone is free among the dead, not having the sin for which death came to be.

43. Concerning the Tree of Life and the Tree of If the tree of life is said by Scripture to be wisdom, and the work of wisdom is to discern and know “the tree known of good and evil,” what, then, is the difference from the tree of life? Though the teachers of the Church were able to say many things concerning the proposed question, through the grace within them, they thought it better to honor the passage rather with silence, since the understanding of the many is unable to attain the depth of what is written, and so refrained from saying anything deeper. But if some did speak, having first discerned the capacity of their hearers, they spoke in this way a part for the benefit of those taught, and left the greater part unexamined. Wherefore I too intended rather to pass over the passage in silence, had I not suspected that this might grieve your God-loving soul. Yet, for your sake, I will say what can be fitting for all, suited in understanding to both small and great. The tree of life and the tree that is not such — from the very fact that the one is named the tree of life, and the other not of life, but only known of good and evil — have a great and ineffable difference. For the tree of life is altogether also productive of life, but the tree that is not of life is clearly productive of death.

For that which is not productive of life, from the very fact that it is not called the tree of life, would clearly be productive of death; for nothing else at all is set in opposition to life as its contrary. And otherwise too, as wisdom, the tree of life has the greatest difference from the tree known of good and evil, which is neither wisdom nor named such. For proper to wisdom is mind and reason, but proper to the habit that is opposed to wisdom in contrariety is irrationality and sense-perception. Since, then, man came into being constituted of a noetic soul and a sentient body, let, according to one approach, the mind of the soul, in which the matter of wisdom exists, be the tree of life, and let the sense-perception of the body, in which the movement of irrationality clearly exists, be the tree known of good and evil; which man, having received the divine commandment not to touch its experience through operation, did not keep. Both trees, according to Scripture, are discriminative of certain things — that is, the mind and the sense-perception. For instance, the mind has a discriminative power of intelligible and sensible things, of temporal and eternal things — or rather, being a discriminative power of the soul, it persuades the soul to cling to the one and to rise above the other.

And sense-perception has a discriminative power of bodily pleasure and pain — or rather, being a power of animate and sentient bodies, it persuades the soul to draw toward the one and send away the other. If, then, man should come to be of the sentient discernment of bodies according to pleasure and pain alone, having transgressed the divine commandment, he eats the tree known of good and evil, that is, the irrationality according to sense-perception, having only the discernment that constitutes bodies, according to which, as of the good, he clings to pleasure, and, as of evil, abstains from pain; but if he should come to be entirely of the noetic discernment alone, which discriminates eternal things from temporal, having kept the divine commandment, he eats the tree of life — I mean, the wisdom constituted according to the mind — having only the discernment that constitutes the soul, according to which, as of the good, he clings to eternal glory, and, as of evil, abstains from the corruption of temporal things. Great, then, is the difference of the two trees, and of their natural discernment, and of the connatural manifestation in each, expressed homonymously without distinction of designation of good and evil, and it can produce great error for those who read the Oracles of the Spirit without wisdom and consideration. But you, being wise through grace, know that what is simply called evil is not altogether evil, but evil relative to one thing, and not evil relative to another; likewise also what is simply called good is not altogether good, but good relative to one thing, and not good relative to another; and guard against the harm that comes from the homonymy.

1. For the mind, the good is the dispassionate disposition toward the spirit; but the evil is the passionate relation toward sense-perception. And for sense-perception, the good is the passionate movement toward the body according to pleasure; but the evil is the disposition that comes upon it according to virtue.

44. Concerning “Behold, Adam Has Become as One of Us” To whom does God say, “Behold, Adam has become as one of us”? If to the Son, how is Adam compared to God, not being of His essence? But if to angels, how does He again compare the angel to Himself, saying, as to an equal in essence, “as one of us”? I have already said, in the chapter concerning the building of the tower, that Scripture fashions God as speaking according to the disposition underlying, in the soul, those cared for by providence, hinting at the divine counsel by means of manners connatural to us according to nature. Here, too, then, Scripture shows God not simply saying “behold, Adam has become as one of us,” but, plainly after the transgression, having added also the cause of the expression, which you omitted to include in the chapter, though it is clarifying of the whole meaning. For, having said, “behold, Adam has become as one of us,” the passage added, “to know good and evil, and now let him not perhaps stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and live forever.” For since, together with his counsel, the devil taught him polytheism, saying, “in whatever day you eat of the tree, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,” for this reason, with a kind of hypocrisy — one might say ironic and reproachful, for the conviction of the man persuaded by the devil — God makes the utterance “has become as one of us” in the plural, in relation to the notion concerning deity implanted in Adam through the serpent's deceit.

And let no one think the form of ironic speech alien to the custom of Scripture, hearing Scripture, speaking in the person of God to Israel, say, “if you walk crookedly toward Me, I too will walk crookedly toward you,” knowing that “crookedness” differs in no way from irony; and again finding how He contrived Ahab's deception, proposing the lie to him as truth, bringing upon him, justly, the punishment for the sins he committed through it. For if Scripture had not introduced God as speaking “as one of us” with reference to Adam's delusion, how could it have added “to know good and evil,” as though He had composite knowledge, composed of opposites — which it is impossible even to conceive of God, let alone to dare say, since He alone is simple in essence and power and knowledge, and has knowledge of the good alone, or rather is Himself essential goodness and power and knowledge. But not even any of the rational substances from God and after God has, at once and in the same simple movement of understanding, knowledge constituted by composition from opposites. For the knowledge of one of two things opposed to one another is naturally such as to constitute ignorance of the knowledge of the other. For the knowledge of opposites is unmixed and altogether cannot coexist, since the knowledge of the one constitutes ignorance of the other of the opposites — just as an eye cannot perceive both the upper and the lower, and the things on either side, at the same time, apart from its particular turning to the one, wholly separated from all the others.

Scripture, then, appropriating Adam's affliction, shows God, or rather convicts Adam, for his counsel taken from the serpent, leading him to a perception of the nonsense concerning polytheism inflicted on him through deceit. And if this is well said, enough of the questions. Since, indeed, if you yourself, on your own, should discover something greater, share with me too the grace concerning the things that are, granted to you from God. And “and now let him not perhaps stretch out his hand and take of the tree of life and live forever” makes, I think, a providential division, in practice, of things that do not mix, that evil might not become immortal, preserved by participation in the good. For He who made man wills that, concerning the same man, the knowledge of opposites should not mix, with respect to relation. Scholia 1. That God speaks to Adam with reference to the notion concerning deity that he had, having been taught it by the devil.

2. He who loves the lie is delivered over to it for destruction, that he may know, by suffering, what he willingly embraced, and learn by experience how, without noticing, he embraced death instead of life.

3. That God alone has knowledge of the good, as being, by nature, both the good and the knowledge of the good; but ignorance of evil, as having no power for it. For of whatever things He has the power by nature, of these He essentially possesses knowledge.

4. That wickedness is beheld in rational beings according to a passion supervening contrary to nature, but not according to a natural power.

5. By turns, he says, the existence of opposites is naturally beheld in those receptive of them.

6. He who has persuaded his conscience that the very worst thing, when done, is by nature good — this man, having stretched out, as it were a hand, the practical faculty of the soul, has reprovably taken of the tree of life, having supposed the very worst thing to be immortal by nature. Wherefore God, having naturally implanted in man the accusation, according to conscience, of evil, separated him from life, since he had become evil by free choice — that he might not, in doing evil, be able to persuade his own conscience that the very worst thing is by nature good.

45. Concerning the Breast and the Arm of the Heave What does the breast of the wave offering and the arm of the heave offering, in Leviticus, dedicated to the priests in honor of God, signify? I think that the better and lofty contemplation is signified by the breast, and practice by the arm — that is, the habit and operation of the faculty of thought, or knowledge and virtue — since knowledge brings the mind immediately near to God, and virtue, through practice, removes it wholly from the coming-to-be of the things that are; which things the passage set apart for the priests, for those who have acquired God alone, through all things, as their inheritance, and possess nothing at all earthly. Or again, since those who have been wholly formed, by the Spirit, in knowledge and virtue, make the hearts of others, through the reasoning of teaching, receptive of piety and faith, and, taking away their practical habit and power from zeal for the corruptible nature, transfer it to the operation of the incorruptible goods that are beyond nature — fittingly the passage ordained that the breast of the wave offering — that is, the heart of those who bring the offering — and the arm — plainly, the practice of these same — be dedicated to the priests, of those brought as a sacrifice to God.

1. The breast is a symbol of contemplation, and the arm of practice. For contemplation is naturally the habit of the faculty of thought, and practice its operation. By both of these true priesthood is characterized.

2. He who, through pious teaching, offers as a sacrifice to God the hearts of others — to which the breast corresponds — and, setting apart their practical faculty, to which the arm corresponds, for the operations of the commandments, has become a priest, receiving, from those who offer themselves as a sacrifice to God, the breast and the arm.

46. Concerning the Mirror and the Riddle What is the difference between the mirror and the riddle? The mirror is, to speak as it were by definition, conscience, having the form, without deficiency, of all the good things according to practice, through which the one pure in understanding is naturally able to see God; or it is the practical habit, which encompasses the composition of all the virtues into one another uniformly, as it were a divine face. But the riddle is knowledge, through the complete comprehension, attainable contemplation, of the by nature, according to reasons, manifestation of the things beyond understanding. And, simply, the mirror is the habit indicative of the archetypal form of the virtues that is destined to be manifested to the worthy; for the mirror foreshadows, to those who have it, the coming end of the practical philosophy; but the riddle is an indication of the archetypal reality of the things understood concerning knowledge. All righteousness here, then, compared to that which is to come, holds the character of a mirror, having the image of the archetypal realities, but not having these realities themselves subsisting according to species; and all knowledge here of lofty things, compared to that which is to come, is a riddle, having the manifestation of the truth, but not having subsisting in itself the truth that is destined to appear. For since divine things are held together by virtue and knowledge, the mirror is indicative of the archetypes according to virtue, and the riddle is manifestative of the archetypes according to knowledge.

This, then, is the difference between the mirror and the riddle: that the mirror signifies the coming end of practice, while the riddle manifests the mystery of contemplation.

1. That the mirror is manifestative of the good things proper to practice; but the riddle is indicative of the mysteries to come, concerning knowledge.

47. Concerning “a Voice Crying in the Wilderness” What is “a voice crying in the wilderness,” and what follows? What is the wilderness, and what here is the way of the Lord, and what is its preparation? What are His paths, and what is the making of them straight? What are the valleys, and what does it signify that “every valley shall be filled”? What are the mountains and hills, and what is their being made low? What are the crooked things, and how shall they become straight? What are the rough places, and how shall they become smooth ways? And what is meant, after all these things, by “and all flesh shall see the salvation of God”? The voice of Him who has cried from the beginning in the wilderness — I mean, the nature of men, or this world — of God the Word, is clearly every saint, whether, after the pattern of Abel, rightly offering, out of sincerity, the first movements of the soul's contemplation, fattened with the virtues; or, after the pattern of Enosh, having, with the firm hope of faith, laid hold of the good things to come, and acquired a vigorous invocation for that which he hoped for; or, after the pattern of Enoch, having been well-pleasing through every virtue, having wholly lifted his mind from relation to and knowledge of the things that are, transferred it, without relation, to the very Cause that is beyond understanding; or, after the pattern of Noah, having, by faith, foreseen the coming forms of the divine judgment, prepared for himself, as an ark, a manner of life and asceticism, secured on every side by divine fear, delivering him from the wrath to come; or, after the pattern of Abraham, having seen, with the pure eye of faith, the comeliness of the good things to come, obeyed the call to go forth eagerly from land and kindred and father's house, leaving behind relation and attachment to flesh and sense-perception and sensible things, and being, in the time of trial and contest, higher than nature, preferring the Cause of nature — as great Abraham preferred God to Isaac; or, after the pattern of Isaac, on account of extreme dispassion and the soul's noble insatiability concerning contemplation, having remained unmoved from the truth, and, warred against by the wicked spirits, kept the habit of virtue and knowledge; or, after the

pattern of Jacob, having purified his mind of the roughness of material things and the confusion concerning them, made it smooth, and, by the laying on of goatskins — I mean, the roughness, with respect to the flesh, of life according to God — receiving from God dominion over the mind of the flesh, and, out of fear of the passions' uprising and desire for higher learning through experience, moved to Haran — mean, contemplation — from which, having gained, through practical toils, the whole spiritual knowledge of the visible world, gathered in various reasonings and thoughts, he returned to his father's own land — I mean, the knowledge of intelligible things — bringing with him, as wives and maidservants, the firm habits and operations of the practical and the theoretic that had come to be in him, and the sons born to him from these, who are these that follow. And, simply — that the discourse may not be lengthened more than is fitting by going through the life of each — every saint, through his own conduct, having, as it were, the word crying his own wishes to other men, is clearly a voice of the Word and a forerunner, according to the analogy of the righteousness and faith in him. But of all, most especially the voice of the Word and forerunner is great John, both the announcer and herald of the true presence of God without types and symbols, and its manifester to those who did not know it, showing openly Him who takes away the sin of the world, and, by the economy, contributing his own ministry toward the fulfillment of the mysteries in baptism.

But since, on account of the richness of grace, every syllable of divine Scripture, even the chance one, can be taken in many ways for the benefit of those who desire virtue and knowledge, let us, so far as we are able, consider what has been proposed also in another way. The wilderness, then, as I have said, is the nature of men, and this world, and the soul of each individual, on account of the barrenness of good things that came about through the ancient transgression. And the voice of the Word crying is the perception, according to conscience, of the offenses committed by each, as it were crying, in the hidden part of the heart, to prepare the way of the Lord. And the clear and evident preparation of the divine way is the change and correction, for the better, of one's manners and reasonings, and the cleansing of former defilements. And the good and glorious way is the life according to virtue, in which, as in a way, the Word makes His course of salvation in each, dwelling by faith and walking about among the various ordinances and doctrines that accord with virtue and knowledge. And the paths of the Word are the various manners of the virtues, and the various conduct of the life according to God, that is, the pursuits that accord with God; which are made straight by those who pursue virtue, or the study of the divine words, not for the sake of glory, nor on pretext of covetousness, nor for the sake of flattery and manpleasing and display, but doing and saying and thinking all things for God's sake.

For the divine Word is not naturally wont to dwell in paths that are not straight, even if He should find the way ready in some. For instance, I mean this: someone fasts, and abstains from the diet that inflames the passions, and does the other things that can contribute to deliverance from wickedness — this man has prepared the way, as it is called; but if he pursues such manners for the sake of vainglory, or covetousness, or flattery, or manpleasing, or for some other cause apart from divine good pleasure, this man has not made straight the paths of God, and has endured the toil of preparing the way, but has not had God walking about in his paths. The way of the Lord, then, is virtue, and the straight path is the manner that is right and guileless according to virtue. “Every valley shall be filled” — plainly, of those who have well prepared the way of the Lord and made His paths straight; for not simply every valley, nor of all — for not of those who have not prepared the way of the Lord and made His paths straight. And the valley is the flesh of each individual, hollowed out by the great flood of the passions, and cut off from the spiritual continuity and connection with the soul, according to the law of God who joined them.

It is also possible to understand the soul as a valley, hollowed by the great storm of ignorance, and having laid aside the beauty of the good levelness in the Spirit through wickedness. Every valley, then — that is, the flesh and soul of those who have prepared the way of the Lord and made His paths straight — shall be filled, through the casting off of the passions that make in them the unevenness of a valley, and, receiving back the natural surface through the raising up of the virtues, shall be leveled by the Spirit. “And every mountain and hill shall be made low.” The mountains and hills, it seems, are naturally somehow constituted especially with the valleys. A mountain is every height lifted up against the knowledge of God, and a hill is every wickedness rising up against virtue. If, then, the mountains are the spirits at work in ignorance, and the hills the spirits productive of wickedness, whenever clearly every valley — that is, the flesh or soul of those who have prepared, as I said, the way of the Lord and made His paths straight — is filled with knowledge and virtue through the presence of God the Word, who walks about in them through the commandments, all the spirits of falsely-named knowledge and of wickedness are made low, the Word treading them down and subjecting them, and casting down the wicked power that rises up against human nature, and, as it were, razing to the ground the size and height of the mountains and hills, and bringing them to the filling up of the valleys.

For in truth, if one should receive, through the power of the Word, all that the demons, having received from nature, made into the ignorance and wickedness contrary to nature, no height of ignorance or wickedness would in any way stand, just as no mountain or hill of visible things would stand, if there were some device for men to raze to the ground the very mountains and hills, and to fill up the valleys. The lowering, then, of the noetic and wicked mountains and hills is the restoration, to themselves, of the natural powers of the flesh and of the soul; according to which, being naturally guided by the wealth of virtue and knowledge, the God-loving mind travels smoothly through this age, and is borne headlong toward the ageless and incorruptible world of the intelligible and holy powers, neither led astray by the voluntary passions of the flesh through the many-formed windings of pleasure, nor roughened by the involuntary temptations through pain, refusing, out of sparing the flesh, the way of the commandments as hard to travel on account of the roughness of the toils of the flesh. The crooked things, then, are made straight, whenever the mind, having freed the members of the body from the passions — that is, having cut off the senses and the rest from the operation according to pleasure — teaches them to move according to the simple reason of nature, directing them toward the Cause for which they came to be.

And the rough places — that is, the inflictions of involuntary temptations — become smooth ways, whenever, especially, the mind, rejoicing and being glad, is well pleased in weaknesses and afflictions and necessities, removing, through involuntary toils, the whole dominion of the voluntary passions. For he who desires the true life, knowing that every toil, whether voluntary or involuntary, becomes a death to pleasure, the mother of death, will receive all the rough inflictions of involuntary temptations with gladness, rejoicing through endurance, making the afflictions easy and smooth ways, and, in them, piously making his divine course, which unerringly conducts him to the prize of the heavenly calling. Every man, then, who has, through self-control, dissolved the many-coiled and multiply-woven pleasure, entangled in many ways with all the senses together, has made the crooked things straight. And he who has trodden down the hard-to-travel and rough infliction of toils through endurance has made the rough places into smooth ways. Whence, as a prize of virtue and of the toils undergone for it, having contended well and lawfully, and having conquered pleasure by desire for virtue, and trodden down pain by love of knowledge, and, through both, nobly borne the divine contests, he shall see the salvation of God. For it says, “and all flesh shall see the salvation of God” — all flesh, plainly the faithful, according to “I will pour out of My Spirit upon all flesh,” plainly, that has believed.

Not simply, then, shall all flesh see the salvation of God — for not the flesh of the impious, if the word that declares is true: “let the impious be taken away, that he may not see the glory of the Lord” — but, in a determinate sense, all faithful flesh. And by a part, the flesh, the scriptural word customarily signifies the whole man, as though crying, “and every man shall see the salvation of God” — every man, that is, who has heard the voice crying in the wilderness, and, according to the meaning of contemplation given, has prepared the way of the Lord, and made His paths straight, and filled, through the casting down of the noetic and wicked mountains and hills, the valley-soul that, through its own hollow, provided height and stature, at the transgression of the divine commandment, to the aforementioned wicked mountains and hills, and made the filling of it the lowering of the wicked powers, and has made straight, through self-control, the crooked things of the voluntary passions — that is, the movements of pleasure — and, through endurance, has leveled the rough inflictions of involuntary temptations — that is, the manners of pain — and made them smooth ways; such a man shall fittingly see the salvation of God, having become pure in heart; by which, through the virtues and pious contemplations, he sees God at the end of the contests, according to “blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” having received, for his toils undergone for virtue's sake, the grace of dispassion, than which nothing more manifests God to those who have it.

According to which, perhaps, it is also possible, for those seeking the loftier of the contemplations, to see, in another way, as in a wilderness — that is, in the soul deprived of the passions — the voice, through the virtues, of divine wisdom and knowledge, crying invisibly, since the one and the same reason becomes, according to the analogy of each, all things to all, passing through each, and bestowing beforehand, as a forerunner voice, the grace that prepares each for His presence — in some, repentance that comes to be, as a forerunner of righteousness to come; in others, virtue, as a preparation for the knowledge expected; in others, knowledge, as the character of the deifying habit that is to come. And, simply, time will fail the contemplative mind that would knowingly go through the divine ascents of the Word, and His supernatural and loving devices fitted to each, according to which He becomes all things to all, that He may save all, on account of the riches of His goodness.

1. He who pursues knowledge fattened with the virtues, that is, put into practice, has become Abel, having God look upon him and upon his gifts.

2. He who knows, and truly hopes for the things to come, never ceases the invocation, through practice, for that which he hoped for; and becomes a new Enosh, calling upon God.

3. He who has been well-pleasing to God through practice transfers his mind, through contemplation, to the region of intelligible things, that he may not, through some fantasy, behold death in the passions according to sense-perception, being found altogether by none of those who wish to seize him.

4. He who, on account of the wrath to come, has pursued the manner of life through affliction, has become Noah, fleeing, by the small distress of the flesh, the coming condemnation of the impious.

5. He calls the flesh “land”; the senses, “kindred”; and the sensible world, “father's house” — from which the patriarch went forth, laying aside the soul's relation to them.

6. Only Isaac is written as not having moved from the land of promise; whereas his father Abraham went out from Mesopotamia and entered Egypt, and his son Jacob was driven to Mesopotamia and afterward sojourned in Egypt, where he also died.

7. He took the wives to mean the habits of virtue and of knowledge, and the maidservants their operations, from which he begets, as it were sons, the reasons in nature and time.

8. Just as the flesh becomes a valley, being struck by the assaults of the passions, so also, he says, the soul becomes a valley, hollowed by the streams of wicked reasonings.

9. The casting off of the passions contrary to nature, and the taking up of the virtues according to nature, fills the soul that has become a valley, and lowers the rising dominion of the wicked spirits.

10. He has called the movements of the senses contrary to nature “crooked things,” which are made straight whenever the mind teaches them to move according to nature, toward their own Cause — I mean, God.

11. He has called the occurrences of involuntary temptations “the rough places,” which turn into smooth ways through endurance accompanied by thanksgiving. The mother of death is pleasure; and the death of pleasure is toil, both the voluntary and that apart from choice.

13. He who loves virtue willingly withers the furnace of pleasures; but he whose mind has been formed by the knowledge of the truth is not held back by involuntary toils from the ever-motion that bears him, in desire, toward God.

14. That the soul, hollowed by the transgression, gave to the demons, as to mountains, its height — that is, its power against itself.

15. Virtue, put into operation through practice, becomes the voice of knowledge crying, as in a wilderness, in the state of the soul deprived of the passions. For virtue is the forerunner of true wisdom, announcing the truth that is to appear after it by economy, though existing, as cause, before it.

48. Concerning the Pits and Towers of Uzziah, King of Concerning Uzziah, the second book of Chronicles says that he did what was right before the Lord, and sought the Lord in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the fear of the Lord. And the Lord prospered him. And Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem, and at the corner gate, and at the corner of the valley, and at the corners, and prevailed. And he built towers in the wilderness, and hewed out many cisterns, for he had many cattle in the Shephelah and in the plain, and vinedressers in the hill country and in Carmel, for he was a farmer. What are the towers, and what is the corner gate, and what is the valley and its corner? And again, what are the corners, and what are the towers in the wilderness? And what are the hewn cisterns, and what are the cattle? And what is the Shephelah and the plain, and who are the vinedressers? And what is the hill country and Carmel, and what does it mean that he was a farmer? Come, all-hymned Word of God, grant us the fitting revelation of Your own words, and, removing the coarseness of the veils, show us, O Christ, the beauty of the things understood. Take hold of our right hand — I mean, the noetic power within us — and guide us in the way of Your commandments, and lead us to the place of Your wondrous tabernacle, unto the house of God, with the voice of exultation and the sound of thanksgiving of one who keeps festival, that we too, having been counted worthy, through the thanksgiving of practice and the exultation contemplation, to come to Your ineffable place of feasting, may join in song with those who feast there spiritually, singing, with the unceasing voices of the mind, the knowledge of things unutterable.

And forgive me, O Christ, and be gracious, for daring, at the bidding of Your worthy servants, things beyond my power, and illumine my unilluminated understanding for the contemplation of the matters proposed, that You may be the more glorified, giving sight to the blind and making the tongue of the stammerers clear. I think, then, that just as Solomon was, up to a point, a type of Christ God, so also Uzziah was, up to a point, a type of the Savior. For the name “Uzziah,” translated into the Greek tongue, signifies “strength of God”; and the natural strength and subsistent power of God the Father is our Lord Jesus Christ, who has become the head cornerstone — I mean, of the Church. For just as the corner effects, by itself, the joining of two walls to one another, so also the Church of God becomes the union of the two peoples, the one from the nations and the one from the Jews, having Christ as the bond, who builds the towers in Jerusalem — I mean, the vision of peace — the divine and unshakable first principles concerning theology, that is, the fortifications; and at the corner gate, the principles of the doctrines concerning the incarnation. For He Himself is again the gate and door of the Church, who says, “I am the door,” which has the towers, that is, the fortifications of the divine doctrines concerning the incarnation, as a gate; through which, guarded, those who wish to believe rightly must make their entrance into the corner — I mean, the Church.

For he who is armed with the towers of the divine doctrines, as with fortifications of truth, does not fear the assailing reasonings or demons. And at the corner of the valley. The valley is the flesh, and its corner is its union with the soul according to the connection in the spirit; upon which the towers, that is, the fortifications of the commandments, are built, and, upon these, the doctrines according to discernment, for the preservation, as a corner, of the indissoluble union of the flesh with the soul. And upon the corners he built towers. The passage, perhaps, meant by “corners” the various unions of divided creatures brought about through Christ. For He united man, having mystically removed, in the Spirit, the difference of male and female, and having made the reason of nature free of the properties in the passions on both sides. And He united the earth, having thrust away the difference between the sensible paradise and the inhabited world. And He united earth and heaven, having shown the nature of sensible things to be one, inclining toward itself. And He united sensible and intelligible things, and showed the nature of the things that have come to be to be one, joined together according to some mystical reason. And He united, according to the reason and manner beyond nature, created nature to the uncreated. And upon each union, that is, corner, having fortified the doctrines that hold together and bind the union, He built towers.

And he built towers in the wilderness. The wilderness is the nature of visible things, that is, this world, in which the Word naturally builds towers, granting to those who ask the pious opinions concerning the things that are — that is, the correct principles, in the Spirit, of the doctrines concerning natural contemplation. And he hewed out many cisterns, for he had many cattle in the Shephelah and in the plain, and vinedressers in the hill country and in Carmel, for he was a farmer. The Lord hews out cisterns in the wilderness — I mean, the world and the nature of men — emptying and cleansing the hearts of the worthy of material weight and mind, and making them spacious for the reception of the divine rains of wisdom and knowledge, that they may water the cattle of Christ — that is, those who need, on account of the soul's infancy, moral instruction. And the cattle in the Shephelah. “Shephelah” is interpreted “narrow basin.” It signifies those who are being purified through involuntary temptations and whitened of the defilements according to soul and body, who need to be watered, as with water, with the reasoning concerning fortitude and endurance. And in the plain: those, plainly, who thrive in the breadth of favorable circumstances flowing to them, or those who run well in the virtues and are dispassionately enlarged by the law of the commandments, who themselves too need to be watered with the reasoning concerning humility, and the sharing and sympathy with the weaker, and thanksgiving for the things given to them.

And vinedressers in the hill country and in Carmel. The vinedressers in the hill country are those who labor over the divine and ecstatic reasoning of knowledge, gladdening the heart, in the height of contemplation. And the vinedressers in Carmel are those who cultivate the reasoning concerning perfect dispassion and purification, through the removal of all things, as it were a kind of uncircumcision lying about the fruitful part of the soul, and who, as it were with knowledge, circumcise completely the mind's relation to material things. For “Carmel” is interpreted “knowledge of circumcision.” And he says Uzziah was a farmer, since every mind that has the strength of God for contemplation is also a true farmer, keeping, through his own zeal and care, the divine seeds of good things free of tares, so long as he has the remembrance of God preserving him. For it says, “and he was seeking the Lord in the days of Zechariah, in the fear of the Lord.” And the discourse knows Zechariah, translated into the Greek tongue, as “remembrance of God.” Wherefore let us always beseech the Lord that His saving remembrance be kept in us, lest what has been achieved, once the soul has been lifted up on high, and has dared things beyond nature, as Uzziah did, corrupt it. And Uzziah built towers in Jerusalem. He who is well prospered in the search, through contemplation, for the Lord, together with the requisite fear — that is, the practice of the commandments — builds towers in Jerusalem, lifting up, plainly according to the simple and tranquil state of the soul, the principles concerning theology.

And at the corner gate. The gate of the corner — that is, of ecclesiastical faith — is the pious manner of life, through which we are introduced into the inheritance of good things; upon which, as strong and noble towers, the gnostic mind builds the fortifications of the divine doctrines concerning the incarnation, as though composed of stones — the various thoughts — and the manners of the virtues, for the guarding of the work of the commandments. And at the corner of the valley. The valley is the flesh, and its corner is its union with the soul through the law of the commandments; upon which, as a tower, he builds the discernment, according to the law of the Spirit, that subjects the flesh to the soul. And at the corners. He says there are many corners, upon which the mind that is strongest according to God is said to have built towers. A corner is, not only within the same nature, the union of parts with universals according to the same reason of being — as, for instance, individuals with the species under which they fall, and species with genera, and genera with essence, joined to one another singularly at the limit of their extremities — upon which the universal reasons of the parts, having appeared, make, as it were corners, the many and various unions of things divided; but also of mind with sense-perception, and of heaven with earth, and of sensible things with intelligible, and of nature with reason — upon all of which, having fixed, according to his own understanding, the true opinions concerning each, the contemplative mind wisely builds, upon the corners, the noetic towers — that is, upon the unions, the doctrines that bind the unions together.

And he prevailed, and built towers in the wilderness, and hewed out many cisterns. He who has been able to root out the passions from the senses, and to separate the soul from relation to the senses, has prevailed to wall off the entrance that the devil had made to the mind through the medium of the senses, and for this reason has built, in the wilderness — I mean, natural contemplation — as it were secure towers, the pious opinions concerning the things that are; in which he who takes refuge does not fear the demons who plunder in this wilderness — I mean, the nature of visible things — leading the mind astray through sense-perception and dragging it down to the darkness of ignorance. And he hewed out many cisterns — that is, plainly, the various habits of the higher things, receptive of the teachings granted from God according to knowledge. For he had many cattle in the Shephelah and in the plain, and vinedressers in the hill country and in Carmel, for he was a farmer. He who contends lawfully for the truth with the weapons on the right hand and on the left, from the various habits concerning virtue and knowledge, as from hewn cisterns, anoints for endurance the cattle in the Shephelah — that is, the movements concerning the body of the soul, trained through the experience of involuntary temptations — watering them with the reasonings concerning fortitude; and he waters the cattle in the plain — that is, the movements that thrive on the right hand, by the breadth of the virtues of the soul — with the reasonings concerning humility and moderation of passion, that they may neither fall on the left nor be lifted up on the right.

And vinedressers in the hill country and in Carmel. The vinedressers in the hill country are the pious reasonings that remain at the height of contemplation and cherish the ecstatic and ineffable knowledge; and those in Carmel are the reasonings that cultivate the reasoning concerning perfect dispassion and purification, through the removal of all things, and, as it were with knowledge, completely circumcise the mind's relation to material things. For “Carmel” is “knowledge of circumcision.” And he says Uzziah was a farmer, since every mind that has the strength of God for contemplation is also a true farmer, so long as it has the remembrance of God preserving it. For it says, “and he was seeking the Lord in the days of Zechariah, in the fear of the Lord.” And the discourse knows Zechariah, translated into the Greek tongue, as “remembrance of God.” Wherefore let us always beseech the Lord that His saving remembrance be kept in us, lest what has been achieved corrupt the soul, lifted up on high and daring things beyond nature, as Uzziah did.

1. He calls the wondrous tabernacle the holy flesh of God from us, as having received its being in Him without seed; and the house, the noetic soul. For the Word, having become man, united to Himself ineffably a rationally-ensouled flesh, purifying like by like. And the place is the Word Himself, who has, according to hypostasis, unchangeably fixed nature in Himself. Toward this tabernacle-flesh, then, we pass through, sanctifying our own flesh through the virtues, by which it becomes conformed to the body of His glory, according to the grace of the Spirit; and unto the house of God, through unmixed contemplation, according to simple and undivided knowledge, arriving at that very noetic soul of the Lord; that we too may have the mind of Christ, according to the Apostle, by participation in the Spirit, becoming, by grace, on His account, all that He, by nature, has by economy become for our sake.

2. He has called the cornerstone the bond of the corner, that is, of the Church.

3. He calls “the gate of the corner” the incarnation, it being the gate of the Church; and “towers,” the correct doctrines concerning the incarnation.

4. He called “the corner of the valley” both the union of the flesh with the soul according to nature, and the connection of the soul with it, according to the Spirit, as a minister of virtue.

5. He simply calls “corners” the various unions of the things that are — that is, the unions of the various more generic natures into one, inclining toward one another.

6. That every union of the aforementioned creatures has a reason of wisdom, according to which it comes about; which reasons the discourse called “towers of the corners.” For the fortification and tower of each of the things that are is both the knowledge, according to essence, of them, and the reason that binds all things together with one another into one inclination.

7. He calls the principles concerning nature “towers in the wilderness.”

8. He called “cisterns” the hearts receptive of the heavenly gifts of holy knowledge, hewn out by the firm reason of the commandments, and casting off, as it were calluses, both friendship toward the passions and the relation of nature toward sensible things, and filled with the knowledge, in the spirit, that comes from above, cleansing of the passions, and life-giving and, as it were, nourishing of the virtues.

9. The cattle of the Shephelah, he says, are those trained in moral philosophy through many afflictions, needing the reasonings that teach endurance.

10. The cattle of the plain, he says, are those who run well in the virtues and remain dispassionate toward what is worse, needing the reasonings and teachings concerning thanksgiving.

11. He simply calls “the hill country” the lofty contemplation of nature in the Spirit, which those who have gone beyond sensible fantasies, and have passed through the virtues to their intelligible reasons, cultivate.

12. Carmel is the height of the full knowledge according to circumcision. And circumcision is either the removal of the disposition according to nature toward coming-to-be, or the cessation of the mind's relation, according to disposition, to the things that are. And of this state, clearly, the vine is the reasoning that gives sober ecstasy of providence, which the men and reasonings that are moved only concerning the simple and beginningless Monad cultivate. For he who is moved only toward this alone has cut off from himself, as it were an uncircumcision, the disposition that veils the cause of the coming-to-be of the things that are.

13. He has called the practical philosophy “the fear of the Lord,” the end from the beginning. For the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.

14. The lofty reasoning concerning deity is, according to the soul, a tower, fortified by the operations of the commandments.

15. The particular reasons, he says, joining the universal ones, effect the unions of things divided. For the more universal reasons uniformly comprehend the more particular ones, to which the particulars have their natural reference.

16. That there is also a certain relational reason, in the Spirit, of these, which gives them their union with one another.

17. He who has acquired the pious opinion concerning each thing does not fear the demons who lead men astray through the things that appear.

18. The vine makes wine; wine, drunkenness; drunkenness, ecstasy. So also the operative reason, which is the vine, cultivated by the virtues, begets knowledge; and knowledge begets the good ecstasy, which removes the mind from its relation according to sense-perception.

49. Concerning What Is Again, in the Same Book: “and Hezekiah Saw That Sennacherib Had Come” What again is meant in the same book: “and Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come, and his face was set to make war on Jerusalem, and he took counsel with his elders and mighty men to stop the waters of the springs that were outside the city, and they helped him. And he gathered much people, and stopped the waters of the springs, and the river that runs through the midst of the city”? What do these things mean according to contemplation? The mind that pursues the practical philosophy with knowledge, and is girded with all divine discernment against the opposing power, is Hezekiah, interpreted, according to his name, “strength of God,” and for this reason reigning over Jerusalem — that is, the soul, or the vision of peace, that is, the gnostic contemplation delivered from the passions; who, whenever he sees the opposing power stirred up against him, fittingly takes counsel with his elders and mighty men to stop the waters of the springs outside the city. Now the rulers of such a mind are the reason of faith, and of hope, and of love, ruling, as elders, over all the divine thoughts and reasonings according to the soul, and wisely counseling the mind, at once helping it against the opposing power, and pointing out the manners of its overthrow.

For apart from faith and hope and love, nothing of evils is completely abolished, nor is any good achieved at all. For faith persuades the mind, when warred against, to draw near to God, becoming, for it, a whole preparation of incorporeal weapons, a comfort toward confidence. And hope becomes for it the most truthful surety of divine help, promising the overthrow of the opposing powers. And love makes it hard to move, or rather altogether unmoved, in its divine affection, even when warred against, riveting all its power of desire to divine longing. And the interpreted names of the rulers accord with these words. Now the rulers of Hezekiah at that time were Eliakim son of Hilkiah, the steward, and Shebnah the scribe, and Joah son of Eliakim is interpreted “resurrection of God,” and his father Hilkiah, “portion of God.” The son, then, first and only, of the divine portion — that is, of true knowledge — is the reason of the divine resurrection within us according to faith, well distinguishing, with the requisite economy according to knowledge, that is, discernment, uprisings of both voluntary and involuntary temptations. And Shebnah the scribe is interpreted “turning,” clearly signifying, by itself, the most complete reason of divine hope, apart from which no turning toward God can naturally come about for anyone, since it is proper to hope to record — that is, to teach and bring before the eyes, as present, the things to come, and to persuade that God, who defends those warred against by the opposing power — for whose sake and on whose account the saints wage war — is in no way absent.

And Joah son of Asaph, the recorder, is interpreted “brotherhood of God,” and Asaph, his father, “gathering.” The offspring, then, of the gathering and union, into one, of the powers of the soul concerning divine things — that is, the rational, irascible, and desiring — is love; according to which, those who have already received, by grace, equal honor with God, inscribing on the memory the beauty of divine comeliness — for “brotherhood” clearly signifies the grace of equal honor — have unforgettable, for the governing faculty of the soul, the desire that records and imprints the undefiled beauty of divine love. Since, then, these matters are of this manner, the discourse has to some extent conjectured the truth from the interpretation of the names. Every mind, then, girded, like Hezekiah, with divine strength, has acquired, as it were certain elders and rulers, both the rational faculty, from which the gnostic faith naturally comes to be born, according to which it is taught, ineffably, that God is ever present, and consorts, through hope, as with things present, with the things to come; and the desiring faculty, according to which divine love is constituted, through which, having willingly riveted itself to the desire for undefiled deity, it has an unloosed desire for the beloved; and further, also the irascible faculty, according to which it clings tightly to divine peace, whetting the movement of desire toward divine longing.

These powers, then, every mind has cooperating with it toward both the abolition of wickedness and the constitution and preservation of virtue — as elders, since they are the first powers of the soul, and complete its very substance; as rulers, since they also have the origin of the movements arising from them, and the authority, by the will of the moving mind, over the operations subject to them. These both counsel it and help it, that it may stop the waters of the springs that were outside the city — or rather, more properly speaking, that are; for the past, having occurred through history, is ever mystically present contemplation. Having these sound and undeceived, it gathers the great people — plainly, the pious movements and thoughts arising from them, according to nature. And the waters outside the city, which make the river that runs through the midst of the city, are the thoughts, according to natural contemplation, transmitted through each sense from the sensible object proper to it, and flowing into the soul; from which, passing through the soul as through a city, is constituted the reason of the knowledge of sensible things, like a river; which, so long as the soul has passing through it, it does not cast off the images and fantasies of sensible things, through which the wicked and destructive power is naturally wont to assail and war against it.

Wherefore Hezekiah says, “let not the king of Assyria come and find much water and prevail” — as though the discerning mind were saying to its own powers, at the time of the passions' uprising: “let us cease from natural contemplation, and cleave only to prayer and to the bodily affliction that accords with the practical philosophy — of which prayer, the king's going up into the temple of God bore the type, and of the bodily affliction, the putting on of sackcloth — lest the evil one, secretly and maliciously joining with the thoughts of sensible things, insert the forms and shapes of sensible things, through which the passions are naturally wont to be produced concerning the surfaces of visible things, the rational operation within us coming to a halt in its passage to intelligible things, through the medium of sense-perception, and lest he prevail to plunder the city, that is, the soul, and drag it away to Babylon — I mean, the confusion of the passions.” He, then, who, at the time of the passions' uprising, has nobly closed his senses, and has utterly repelled the fantasy and memory of sensible things, and has wholly restrained the mind's natural movements toward the investigation of external things, has, after the pattern of Hezekiah, stopped the waters of the springs, which are outside the city, and cut off the river that runs through the midst of the city, the aforementioned powers helping him, and the great gathered people — I mean, the pious reasonings according to each power — and, having conquered by the divine hand, he has put to shame the wicked and tyrannical dominion that rose up against him, and, by the divine command, as by a certain angel — the reason naturally able to destroy the passions — has killed the hundred and eighty-five thousand — that is, the productive habit of wickedness, unreasonably grafted upon the three powers of the soul through the senses, and the operation of the senses upon them.

It is necessary, then, that the mind that knows how to escape the unseen entanglements with knowledge should neither pursue natural contemplation, nor do anything else at the time of the assault of wicked demons, but only pray, and subdue the body with toils, and, with all zeal, effect the destruction of the earthy mind, and guard the walls of the city — I mean, the protecting virtues of the soul, or the guarding methods of the virtues, self-control and endurance — by means of the innate good reasonings, no reasoning at all answering back to any of the external noetic enemies, lest, having deceived through the right-hand things, he who waters the soul with a turbid subversion should estrange it from God, stealing its desire, and, through the things supposed good, understanding drag that commander-in-chief away, seeks of toward the good, Sennacherib the worse, the Rabshakeh, the king of Assyria, speaking in Hebrew. “Rabshakeh” is interpreted “much for drinking, with kisses,” or “having great kisses.” For the wicked demon, who is accustomed to war against the mind through the right-hand things, speaks in Hebrew, through the supposed but non-existent virtue, watering the soul with a turbid subversion, showing it the deceived and destructive friendship, whose wounds are better than the friend who strikes; for it says, “faithful are the wounds of a friend, more than the kisses of an enemy.”

And “Sennacherib” is interpreted “temptation of drought,” or “sharpened teeth,” who is the devil, who, truly, through reasonings sharpened toward wickedness — for this is what “sharpened teeth” means to me — dries up in us the inflow of the divine streams of knowledge, according to the operation he is naturally able to produce in those who receive him, having received a name fittingly matching his call, being and being called, truly, a temptation of drought, making desolate of all vital spiritual transmission those who fall victim to his deceits. Or perhaps Sennacherib — that is, the devil — is called a “temptation of drought” since he is destitute and poor, deprived of all private power for the uprising against us, and unable to harm us at all apart from the sensible things through which he is accustomed to war against the soul, and for this reason needing, for his contrived tyranny against us, the springs outside the city — that is, material thoughts — with which he is naturally able to insert into the soul the shapes and forms of sensible things; through which senseperception, naturally formed on account of its relation to them, often becomes for the devil a wicked and destructive weapon for the destruction of the divine comeliness according to the soul, betraying wholly to the enemy, through the flattery according to pleasure, the power of reason within us.

But he who has nobly closed his senses through reasoned self-control, and has walled off, through the powers according to the soul, the entrances of sensible forms to the mind, easily destroys the devil's wicked devices, turning him back with shame by the way he came — and the way by which the devil comes is the material things that seem to be for the constitution of the body — to his own land, I mean confusion, killing him with the wicked reasonings begotten from him, transferring these to the encampment of rest. For he who has been able to subdue the devil with his own reasonings, through their good use in contemplation, killed Sennacherib through his own sons, and banished them to the land of Armenia, having transferred, plainly, to the encampment of rest, the reasonings that confused the soul through sense-perception. For “Armenia” is interpreted “encampment of rest.” And the encampment of rest is the display of the divine virtues, to which the mind, transferring the reasonings that once dragged it down to the passions of dishonor according to sense-perception, kills the devil who begets these for the destruction of human nature. Well, then, and very wisely, according to the understood meaning of Scripture, has Hezekiah acted, stopping the waters of the springs that were outside Jerusalem, on account of Sennacherib, king of the Assyrians. The springs outside the city — that is, the soul — are all sensible things; and the waters of these springs are the thoughts of sensible things; and the river that runs through the midst of the city is the knowledge, according to natural contemplation, gathered from the thoughts of sensible things, passing through the midst of the soul, being, as it were, a border between mind and sense-perception.

For the knowledge of sensible things is neither wholly estranged from the noetic power, nor is it wholly assigned to the operation according to senseperception alone, but, being, as it were, in the middle of the meeting of mind with sense-perception and of senseperception with mind, effects, through itself, their mutual connection, being formed, according to species, according to sense-perception, by the shapes of sensible things, but transferring, according to the mind, the types into the reasons of the shapes. Wherefore the knowledge of visible things was fittingly named “a river that runs through the midst of the city,” as being a middle ground between the extremes — I mean, mind and sense-perception. Stopping this, at the time of the passions' troubling, on account of the incursion, harmful to the mind, of material shapes, he who dissolves, with knowledge, the unseen entanglements of the wicked demons kills the hundred and eighty-five thousand — I mean, the productive habit of wickedness, unreasonably, as I said, grafted upon the three powers of the soul through the senses, and the operation of the senses upon them — that is, the unreasonable operation of the natural powers upon the senses. For the number six, whether it has its composition from units, or from tens, or from hundreds, or from some other number, signifies the productive habit of virtue or of wickedness, according to the analogy of the multiplication of its composition, showing the disposition that completes this or that habit, to those who apply themselves to the numbers with understanding; to which sixfold number the number five, joined, or added, or composed, indicates the senses — that is, the power or habit or operation of sensible things, lying beside, or upon, or composed with the natural powers of the soul.

For instance, if the number five is joined according to units, as simple to simple, to the number six, it represents the aptitude, in potency alone, for producing effects upon the senses; but if the simple number five, from units, is added to the number six composed of many, it signifies the productive habit in power upon the senses; but if the composite number five, from many, is composed with the composite number six, from many, it signifies the effecting production, in power and habit and operation, upon the senses — that is, the completion of virtue or of wickedness, whichever way the number happens to be, whether reprovingly or approvingly, according to the passage of Scripture contemplated, that is, examined. The number six, then, composed from tens, makes sixty; and sixty, tripled on account of the three generic powers of the soul, with five added on account of the innate senses, makes the number one hundred and eighty-five, and signifies the wickedness-producing habit of the natural powers upon the senses, since this number is set down, in this passage of Holy Scripture, in a reproving sense, which the mind, leaning more upon its own power in prayer, and ascribing to God alone the cause of every achievement and of every victory over the demons, kills, as it were by a certain angel of the divine Word of knowledge. He, then, who, at the time of the uprising of temptations, abstains from natural contemplation, and clings to prayer, according to the mind's withdrawal from all things unto itself and unto God, kills the wickedness-producing habit of the natural powers of the soul upon the senses, moved contrary to nature, and turns back the devil with shame, having cast off the aforementioned habit, on which, trusting, together with his own arrogance, he came against the soul, exalting himself against the truth through proud reasonings.

Which, perhaps, having both known and suffered and done, great David, who of all men most had experience of the array of noetic wars, says, “when the sinner stood before me, I was made deaf and was humbled and kept silence from good things.” And after him, holy Jeremiah, commanding the people not to go out of the city on account of the sword of enemies dwelling round about. And this, if the blessed Abel had guarded and had not gone out with Cain into the field — that is, into the breadth of natural contemplation before dispassion — the law of the flesh, both being and being called Cain, would not have risen up and killed him with deceit, stealing, through the right-hand things, the contemplation of the things that are before the perfect habit; whom the first man Adam, according to the meaning of his own designation, first acquired as the fruit of the transgression, having begotten the law of sin, which God did not create for him in paradise; for “Cain” is interpreted “possession.” Likewise also Dinah, the daughter of great Jacob, if she had not gone out with the daughters of the local inhabitants — that is, with sensory fantasies — Shechem son of Hamor would not have risen up and humbled her. “Shechem” is interpreted “back” or “shoulder,” and “Hamor,” “donkey” — that is, the body.

The back, then — that is, Shechem — of Hamor — that is, of the body — is a posterior, not an anterior law, that is, a later, not a first, law. For at the beginning, that is, anteriorly, before the transgression of the divine commandment came to be, this human body — that is, Hamor — did not have the law of sin — I mean, Shechem — but the law grew upon the body later, through the disobedience of sin; which the true discourse, considering, named, on account of its later coming-to-be, Shechem — that is, back, which is posterior; for the back clearly signifies, by nature, what is behind. So that it is good, before the perfect habit, not to touch natural contemplation, lest, seeking spiritual reasons from visible creatures, we unwittingly gather passions instead. For in those not yet perfect, the appearing shapes of visible things exercise more dominion over sense-perception than the reasons of the things that have come to be, hidden within the shapes, exercise over the soul. Scholia 1. The unerring contemplation of the things that are needs a soul delivered from the passions; which is called “Jerusalem,” on account of both complete virtue and immaterial knowledge; which comes about not only through the privation of the passions, but also of the sensible fantasies, which the discourse called “the waters of the outer springs.”

2. Faith comforts the warred-upon mind, strengthened by the hope of help; and hope, bringing before the eyes the help believed in, repels the incursion of the opposing things. And love renders dead, to the God-loving mind, the assault of enemies, utterly obscured by the desire toward God.

3. The first resurrection in us, he says, of the God who was dead in us through ignorance, is faith, well administered by the works of the commandments.

4. The realities, he says, accord with the names. For apart from some expectation, whether difficult or easy, no turning toward the good naturally comes about for anyone.

5. Nothing, he says, gathers the scattered as love does, and creates one judgment for them, held together by a common breath; whose character is the beauty of equal honor.

6. That apart from the rational power, he says, there is no scientific knowledge; and apart from knowledge, faith does not consist, from which the good offspring, hope, proceeds; according to which the faithful man consorts, as with things present, with the things to come. And apart from the desiring power, longing does not consist, whose end is love. For to be enamored of something is proper to desire. And apart from the irascible power, which gives sinew to desire for union with what is pleasant, peace by no means naturally comes about, if peace is truly the untroubled and complete possession of what is dear to the heart. Reason, he says, rules the gnostic reasonings, just as irascibility and desire rule the irascible and desiring reasonings.

8. He contemplated Hezekiah, according to anagogy, as the mind that philosophizes according to practice. And the city, the soul; and the springs, the various species of sensible things; and the waters, their fantasies, or thoughts; and the river, the knowledge gathered, according to natural contemplation, from the thoughts of sensible things; and the river, the opinion, that is, supposition, gathered from them, to which the senses must be completely closed, whenever the passions rise up against reason.

9. One must not, he says, if not yet purified of the passions, touch natural contemplation, on account of the images of sensible things, which are able to form the mind toward passion, in one not yet completely delivered from the passions.

10. The mind that remains, in fantasy, at the surfaces of sensible things, on account of sense-perception, becomes a maker of unclean passions, not passing through, by contemplation, to the kindred intelligible things.

11. Whenever reason becomes mindless, and irascibility rash, and desire irrational, ignorance and tyranny and licentiousness rule the soul; from which the habit of wickedness naturally comes to be put into practice, entangled with the various pleasure of the senses. For this the number of 185,000 signifies. For, having composed three times sixty, on account of the complete movement of each power in evil, and adding also five, on account of the operative pleasure upon the senses, you fill this number, which signifies the productive habit of wickedness. Which habit having, the devil fastens tyrannically upon the soul; which God, as by a certain angel, the reason according to gnostic wisdom, slays, and saves the soul, truly Jerusalem, and the mind in the soul unenslaved to wickedness.

12. He calls 'innate reasonings' the people upon the walls.

13. Here the friend is the Lord; and his wounds are the kinds of discipline brought upon each for salvation, unto the punishment of the flesh — that is, the fleshly mind — that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord. And the enemy is the devil; and his kisses are the kinds of pleasures according to sense-perception, by which, deceiving the soul, he persuades it to be separated from the love of its Creator.

14. Sennacherib is interpreted 'temptation of drought,' in one respect, because he dries up the hearts of those who endure him, cutting them off from the fountain-grace of holy reasonings; and in another respect, because he himself is dry, as poor and destitute, having nothing of his own. And for this reason he deceitfully, as a kind of thief, hides himself in the surfaces of sensible things for his uprising against us.

15. He says that every excess, and whatever is beyond natural need, is intemperance, which becomes the way of the devil to the soul, by which he returns with shame to his own land, self-control training nature. Or again, the way is the natural passions themselves: in the manner of use beyond need, leading the devil to the soul; but in the manner of use according to need, turning him back, of themselves, to his own land. And his land is the firm habit of wickedness and confusion, into which he has ever gone, and to which he leads those conquered by friendship for material things.

16. He who has transferred his reasonings to virtue has given them rest, having made them far from the unstable confusion of the passions.

17. The mind, having joined sense-perception to itself according to nature, through the medium of reason, gathers the true knowledge from natural contemplation, which is called a river, bounding the soul, on account of the understanding directed upon the senses.

18. The power according to aptitude lies naturally beside judgment; and habit lies upon it — for it supervenes upon aptitude; and operation is always composed with habit, even if it is not always readily shown, on account of the frequent lack of materials.

19. By 'the joining of number' he means the expression of the simple numbers within ten, distinguished by the conjunction 'and' — for instance, six and five; and it signifies, whether set down by Scripture for evil or for good, the potential productive aptitude for virtue or for wickedness. By 'the addition of number' he means the addition made to the simple number composed of units, by the number multiplied into itself, distinguished by the conjunction 'and' — for instance, sixty and five, or a hundred twenty and five, or a hundred eighty and five, as the present number has it. And it signifies not only the production according to aptitude upon the senses, but also the productive habit of virtue or of wickedness upon the senses. By 'the composition of number' he means the meeting, with one another, of numbers multiplied from themselves into themselves, distinguished by the conjunction 'and' — for instance, sixty and fifty, or six hundred and five hundred, and the like; and it signifies not only the production according to aptitude in potency, and the habit, but also the operation, according to habit, of virtue or of wickedness upon the senses. He, then, who knows the power of each of the numbers within ten — how the unit signifies the unmixed; and the two, difference; and the three is equal and noetic; and the four, sensible; and the five, sensory and cyclical; and the six, active and perfect; and the seven, circular and unmixed; and the eight, stable and unmoved; and the nine, a border of matter and form, that is, of sensible things and sense-perception; and the ten, most complete — will know what each number signifies according to Scripture, whether by joining, or by addition, or by composition.

20. Cain is the law of the flesh, whom Adam, transgressing the divine commandment, first begets. And Abel is the mind of the spirit, whom the same man later begets through repentance, but whom Cain kills, before the perfect habit, as he ventures into natural visions; whom, having killed, God says, 'seven vengeances shall be loosed.' This same one the Gospels call an evil spirit, and the one who takes along with him seven spirits more wicked than himself. And this, perhaps, is the self-loving, that is, gluttonous, reasoning, which is followed altogether by the reasoning of fornication, and of love of money, and of grief, and of anger, and of listlessness, and of vainglory, and of pride. He, then, who, by divine sentence, kills Cain — that is, gluttony — kills together with it also the passions that subsist alongside it on its account, according to: 'he who kills Cain shall loose seven vengeances.'

21. That the law unto generation and corruption of the body, he says, was later imposed upon the nature of men, according to which we beget and are begotten, on account of the transgression, since we did not keep the deifying law of the Spirit that was according to the first commandment.

50. Concerning the Prayer of Hezekiah and Isaiah What again is the meaning, in the same book, of “And Hezekiah the king, and Isaiah son of Amoz the prophet, prayed concerning these things, and cried out to heaven. And the Lord sent an angel, and destroyed every mighty man and warrior and ruler and general in the camp of the king of Assyria, and he returned with shame of face to his own land”? The word of Holy Scripture, even if it admits of circumscription according to the letter, ending together with the times of the narrated events, remains, according to the spirit, forever uncircumscribed in the contemplations of the things understood. And let no one, chafing at this, disbelieve, knowing that the God who spoke nature uncircumscribed; and it is fitting for those who genuinely wish to hear the will of Scripture to believe that the word spoken by Him is rather like Him. For if God, who spoke, is Himself uncircumscribed according to essence, it is clear that the word spoken by Him is also uncircumscribed. Contemplating spiritually, then, the events that occurred typologically in the days of Hezekiah, and reached their conclusion in the outcome of the things then narrated, we shall marvel at the wisdom of the Holy Spirit who wrote it, how He set for each one who shares in human nature a fitting and suitable meaning of what is written, so that everyone who wishes to become a disciple of the divine word, and to have nothing among present and dissoluble things equal in weight to virtue, may become, in the Spirit, another Hezekiah and another Isaiah, hindered by nothing from praying and crying out to heaven and being heard and receiving from God, through an angel, the destruction and ruin of those who war against him noetically.

But since one who receives Holy Scripture gnostically, toward the soul, according to Christ, must also diligently train himself in the interpretation of the names, which is able, of itself, to clarify the whole meaning of what is written — if indeed he cares for the exact understanding of what is written — and not, in a Jewish manner, drag down the height of the Spirit to body and earth, and circumscribe the divine and undefiled promises of intelligible good things by the corruption of things that pass away, as some of those called Christians among us have unwittingly supposed, applying to themselves the falselynamed designation from Christ, whose power they are shown, through the very facts, to have utterly denied, and plainly walking the road contrary to Christ, as the discourse will briefly show. For if, among the other mysteries, which no discourse could attain, God, having become man, also came for this reason — that He might fulfill the Law spiritually, in the abolition of the letter, and might establish and make manifest its life-giving element — I mean, of the Law — by the removal of the killing element (and the killing element of the Law, according to the divine Apostle, is the letter, just as the life-giving element of the Law, according to him, is the spirit; for he says, “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life”) — then those who have buried the power of their understanding in the letter alone, and are unwilling to be according to the image and likeness of God, but rather to be earth, according to the threat, and to go to earth, through their attachment, as it were to earth, to the letter, preferring the letter, rather than being caught up, through the spirit, into the air — that is, noetic illumination — in the clouds — that is, lofty contemplations — to meet the Lord, and thus to be always with Him through knowledge, have expressly taken up the party opposed to Christ, and have been ignorant of the whole mystery of His incarnation.

Concerning whom it is right to be grieved, since they endure, out of ignorance, the intolerable loss of the fall from truth, and to be sorrowful, since they provide the Jews many occasions for the confirmation of unbelief. But let us leave them to have it as they wish, and return to ourselves and to the discourse, making the beginning of the spiritual investigation of the proposed chapter from the interpretation of the names. “Hezekiah,” then, is interpreted “strength of God,” and Ahaz, his father, “strength.” And “Isaiah” is interpreted “exaltation of God,” that is, “height of God,” and Amoz, his father, “people of toil.” Now the strength of God is the virtue that destroys the passions and guards pious reasonings, which the practice of the commandments — strength understood figuratively — begets, by which we destroy, with God's cooperation, or rather by God's power alone, the wicked powers opposed to the good. And the height of God is the knowledge of the truth, which the toil of the contemplation of the things that have come to be, and the sweat undergone in the practice of the virtues, becoming fathers of the toil, beget, by which we utterly efface the power of falsehood opposed to the truth, humbling and casting down every height of the wicked spirits that rise up against the knowledge of God. And prayer is the request for the things God is naturally wont to grant to men for salvation.

And rightly so, indeed. For if a vow is a promise of good things brought to God by men, according to a pledge, prayer, according to a fitting analogy, will clearly be the request for the good things granted from God to men for salvation, bringing in return the good disposition of the things vowed. And crying out is the increase and growth, at the time of the uprising of wicked demons, of the virtuous manners according to practice and the gnostic contemplations according to theory, which God, more than all else, naturally hears, receiving, instead of a loud voice, the disposition of those who take care for virtue and knowledge. And “heaven” is often called, according to Holy Scripture, God Himself, as the great herald of truth, John the Forerunner, somewhere says: “a man can receive nothing of himself, unless it has been given him from heaven” — instead of, from God — “because every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights”; according to which sense the passage of Scripture in the proposed chapter must be understood. And Scripture again knows how to call the heavenly powers “heaven,” according to, “heaven is My throne,” as resting, plainly, upon the holy and incorporeal natures. But if one should also say that the human mind, purified of all material fantasy, but adorned with the divine reasons of intelligible things, is “heaven,” he has not gone outside the truth, as it seems to me.

And if one should call the height of noetic knowledge in men “heaven,” he would not miss the fitting sense. For, in truth, true knowledge becomes, as heaven, the throne of God, receiving God enthroned, according to the unchangeable habit of the firm and lofty desire for the good; just as pure practice of the virtues is also called a footstool, receiving upon itself the divine footsteps and not permitting itself at all to be defiled by the filth arising from the body, as from earth. Since, then, King Hezekiah bears a figure of virtue according to the interpretation of his own name — for this name, translated into the Greek tongue, signifies “strength of God,” and the strength of God against the opposing powers is virtue alone — and Ahaz, Hezekiah's father, is interpreted “strength,” which the discourse handed down, prior, into practice, from which the divine strength according to virtue is naturally begotten; and the prophet Isaiah signifies the knowledge of lofty things — for, being interpreted, he is called “height of God” — showing, through himself, the height of the knowledge according to God, begotten from the toil of the various contemplations concerning the things that are — for Amoz is called “people of toil,” as was rendered above — since, then, as has been said, the signification of the names has this force, every philosopher and pious man, guarded by virtue and knowledge, or by practice and contemplation, whenever he sees the wicked power risen up against him through the passions, as the king of the Assyrians rose against Hezekiah, has one help for the release from evils: God, whom he propitiates, crying out inarticulately through the greater intensification of virtue and knowledge, and receives, as an ally, or rather for salvation, an angel — plainly, a greater reason of wisdom and knowledge — destroying every mighty man and warrior and ruler and general in the camp of the king of Assyria, and turning him back, with shame of face, to his own land.

The wicked and destructive kingdom of the devil, typified by the kingdom of the Assyrians, stirring up war against men over virtue and knowledge, contrives to turn the soul through the powers innate to it: first stirring up desire to appetite for things contrary to nature, and persuading it to prefer sensible things to intelligible; then rousing irascibility to contend fiercely for the sensible object chosen by desire; and teaching the rational faculty to devise the manners of sensory pleasures, and appointing the earthy law to rule over these powers — that is, to lord it over the powers of the soul, through sensible things. Scripture, then, called “mighty man” the wicked demon who lies upon desire and inflames it toward unseemly appetites for shameful pleasures — for nothing is more mighty or more violent than natural appetite. And it named “warrior” the demon who sits upon irascibility and prepares it to fight unceasingly for pleasures. And it named “ruler” the demon who invisibly grafts himself upon the surfaces of sensible things and deceitfully calls out to himself, through each sense, the appetites of the soul; and the discourse called this one “ruler,” since the connatural sensible object naturally rules over every passion; for apart from some underlying object, stirring the powers of the soul, through the medium of some sense, toward passion for itself, no passion could ever be constituted.

And it called “general” the demon who misuses the power of the soul's rational faculty for the devising of evils and the discovery of all the methods of wickedness. And the face of the devil is the smoothness of pleasure, through which every soul that endures him is naturally wont to be mastered, preferring the enticing sensible objects of the senses to the contemplation of intelligible things that fattens the mind; which face is put to shame by him who, through prayer, receives from God the word of wisdom that destroys every wicked power — that is, the word that completely effaces the wicked tyranny that troubles the soul. For, the discourse says, “he utterly ground away,” but not merely “ground.” For “grinding” is the abolition of the passionate operation alone in act, but “utter grinding away” is the complete effacement even of the wicked movements according to the understanding. And the land of the king of Assyria — I mean, of the wicked and arch-evil demon — is the hard and harsh habit of wickedness and ignorance, deprived of all the vital warmth that accords with virtue, and of all the noetic light that accords with knowledge, to which the devil alone withdraws, when, after the trial of his assault, he is unable to migrate into the habit of the man himself — that is, Jerusalem, that is, the God-loving and most dispassionate soul, having in itself both the perfect reason of practice, like Hezekiah, and the illumined mind of knowledge, like Isaiah, propitiating God and effacing the wicked power through an angel.

I, then, have understood these passages thus, according to the power that is in me. But if anyone is able to receive what has been said in a loftier way, he does both himself and us a favor, revealing, as is right, the more honorable meaning of what is written. For I have said before that the word of divine Scripture remains ever uncircumscribed, circumscribing all who speak of it, but itself in no way circumscribed by those who speak of it, so that even if I have said something according to my power, and this boldly, I have not comprehended the whole force of what is written, which is infinitely beyond my power. Scholia 1. That just as God, according to essence, does not fall under knowledge, so neither is His word comprehended by our knowledge.

2. Those who, in Jewish fashion, have bound their understanding to the letter alone, he says, expect the promises of the undefiled good things in this age, being ignorant of the good things according to the nature of the soul.

3. He who bears the image of the heavenly man, he says, hastens to follow the Spirit in all things of Holy Scripture; in which the preservation of the soul consists, through virtue and knowledge. But he who bears the image of the earthy man attends only to the letter; in which the worship, sense-perception, toward the body is constituted, producing the passions.

4. Practice, he says, begets virtue, as Ahaz begot Hezekiah.

5. Contemplation, he says, begets knowledge, as Amoz begot He who knows with practice, and practices with knowledge, he says, is both throne and footstool of God: throne, on account of knowledge; footstool, on account of practice.

7. The camp of the king of Assyria is the gathering of wicked reasonings, in which is “the mighty man,” who moves the natural appetites toward pleasure; and “the warrior” is he who stirs up irascibility for the guarding of pleasures; and “the ruler” is he who provokes the senses by the surfaces of visible things; and “the general” is he who gives shape to the passions, and devises the matters and manners of their operation.

8. That apart from a sensible object, he says, a passion does not consist. For if there is no woman, there is no fornication; and if there is no food, there will be no gluttony; and if there is no gold, there will be no passion of love of money. Every passionate movement, then, of the natural powers within us, is ruled by the sensible object — that is, by the demon who, through it, provokes the soul to sin.

9. Grinding, he says, destroys the operation; but utter grinding away also effaces the very intention of wickedness.

10. For just as the north wind, he says, does not have the sun passing through it, so neither does the evil habit, in which the devil dwells, admit the illumination of knowledge.

51. Concerning “and Many Brought Gifts to the Lord and Presents to the King” “And many brought gifts to the Lord, at Jerusalem, and presents to Hezekiah, king of Judah, and he was exalted in the eyes of all the nations.” What are the gifts, and what are the presents? And why gifts to God, but presents to the king? And what is “to be exalted in the eyes of all the nations”? God, having established all visible nature, did not leave it to be moved by sense-perception alone, but sowed into each of the species that fill it up spiritual reasons of wisdom, and manners of graceful conduct, so that not only might the Maker of creatures be loudly proclaimed through the silent creatures, being announced by the reasons of the things that have come to be, but also man, being instructed by the natural ordinances and manners of visible things, might easily find the way of righteousness leading to Him. For this was proper to the utmost goodness: not only to make the divine and incorporeal substances of intelligible things images of the ineffable and divine glory, wholly receiving, so far as is lawful, proportionately to them, the inconceivable comeliness of the unapproachable beauty, but also to mingle into sensible things — falling much short of intelligible substances — echoes of His own majesty, able to ferry the human mind, mounted upon them, unerringly to God, becoming above all visible things, as one who has stepped upon the utmost blessedness and has left behind all the intermediate stages, by which he cut such a passage; and not only this, but also that no one who has worshiped creation rather than the Creator might have ignorance as a pretext for excuse, hearing creation proclaiming its own Maker more clearly than any voice.

Since, then, nature has, naturally sown in it by the Maker of visible things, spiritual reasons of wisdom and manners of graceful conduct, every mind, fittingly crowned with virtue and knowledge, having, as it were, obtained, like great Hezekiah, the kingship of Jerusalem — that is, of the state that sees only peace, that is, the condition deprived of all passions (for “Jerusalem” is interpreted “vision of peace”) — such a mind has all creation subject to it, through the species that fill it up, offering, through it, to God, the spiritual reasons of knowledge within it, as it were gifts, and providing to itself, as it were presents, the manners toward virtue existing within it according to the natural law, and through both, welcoming, to what is most excellent in both respects, the philosophic mind that has been perfected in reason and in the life of practice and contemplation. The passage, then, says that gifts are brought to the Lord and presents to the king, distinguishing them, since, as those who have made this their study say, “gifts,” properly speaking, are those things brought to those who need nothing, but “presents” are those given to those in need. Wherefore also the general custom of men has called the things offered to kings “gifts,” perhaps considering the freedom from need of those who receive them. One of those who love honor in all things might say that, for this cause, the things brought by the magi to the Lord, who became like us out of love for mankind, were also called “gifts,” saying this without departing at all from the truth.

Bringing, then, the spiritual reasons from the things that have come to be to the Lord, we offer gifts, since He is, by nature, in need of none of these; for we do not bring the reasons of the things that are to the Lord as though He needed them in addition to other things, but that we, so far as we are able, might, from His own creatures, praise Him as is His due. And he who eagerly pursues the divine philosophy receives presents, as one who, by nature, needs both manners for virtue and reasons for knowledge. Or the gifts must also be understood in another way. Since a gift, again, is that which is given to those who have brought nothing beforehand, the gnostic mind receives, as gifts, from the contemplation of the things that are, offered through it to the Lord, the reasons that hold together faith without rational demonstration, for which no one at all brings anything beforehand, naturally, and apart from all technical method in reasoning, beholding his own Maker, creation making it known (for what could one bring beforehand that could be made equal to faith, so that one might bring faith in God as a debt, rather than as a gift?); and he receives presents, in that he imitates, in his manners, the natural laws of the things that are, plainly bringing beforehand, for their acquisition, the toils of repentance, through which it is natural to strip off the old man first, and thus to go out to the gathering of the fruits of righteousness, gathering the manners made for virtue in the things that are; to which he could never draw near, unless he had first, like a serpent its slough, utterly cast off and stripped away the old man.

Wherefore the gnostic mind rightly receives, as gifts to God, the reasons from the things that are, which hold faith together, bringing and giving beforehand none of these at all (for who, it says, has given to Him beforehand, and it shall be repaid to him?), and receives, as presents, the laws that accord with the nature of the things that are, which he imitates in his manners. For instance, I mean this: the discerning mind, imitating the natural law of heaven, receives presents, keeping within itself always the most level and unchanging movement of virtue and knowledge, firmly bearing, like stars, the luminous and most translucent reasons concerning the things that are. And imitating the natural law of the sun, which changes places one after another for the needs of the whole, he receives another present: the understanding of fittingly adjusting himself, with wisdom, to all that befalls, yielding nothing of his own illuminative identity according to virtue and knowledge. And he receives, again, also from the eagle the straightness of the eyes toward the divine radiance of the undefiled light, his noetic pupil in no way pained by the all-radiant ray. He also imitates the deer, pursuing, as mountains, the heights of divine contemplations, and destroying, by the reason of discernment, like venomous creatures, the passions that lurk in the nature of the things that are, and quenching, with the many and various springs of knowledge, the venom of wickedness taken in by circumstance in the memory.

He also imitates the sharp-sightedness of the gazelle and the safety of the bird, leaping over and bounding past, like a gazelle, the snares of the demons that war against virtue, and flying over, like a bird, the traps of the spirits that fight against knowledge. Some say that the bones of the lion, striking against one another, cast forth fire. The gnostic and God-loving mind also imitates what belongs to it by nature, striking, through the mutual inquiry concerning the truth, the pious reasonings against one another like bones, and kindling the fire of knowledge. He becomes wise as the serpent and innocent as the dove, keeping his faith, as a head, unbroken through all things, and clearly laying aside from himself, after the pattern of the dove, the bitterness of anger, as one who does not know how to bear a grudge against those who afflict and are zealous to do him harm. He also receives, from the turtledove, as it were a present, the imitation of self-control, making all the things that of necessity belong to natures into works of judgment. Thus, then, according to the reason and manner of each thing's nature, the most philosophic mind, having gone through the coming-to-be of the things that are with knowledge, as gnostic, receives the spiritual reasons of the things that are, offered to God by creation, as it were gifts, and, as practical, receives, imitating in his manners the natural laws of the things that are, presents, unveiling in himself, through his life, the magnificence of the divine wisdom invisibly borne in the things that are.

And if one should also say this — that the discourse determined that gifts should be offered to God, that it might show the infinitude of divine goodness, in that, as though we had brought nothing beforehand, He receives presents from us as gifts, reckoning the whole of the offering to us — he would not have spoken outside what is fitting, showing that God's goodness toward us is great and unutterable, since He receives, as ours, His own things offered to Him by us from ourselves, and acknowledges the debt for them as though they were another's. “And Hezekiah,” it says, “was exalted in the eyes of all the nations.” He who has achieved virtue and knowledge to the utmost, through practice and contemplation, after the pattern of Hezekiah, is fittingly exalted above all the nations — I mean, of the fleshly and reproved passions — becoming, through practice, above the passions, and above the natural bodies, and, simply, to sum it up, having, through contemplation, passed through all the spiritual reasons within all the species under sense-perception, these too being figuratively called “nations” by Scripture, on account of their alien and foreign nature, according to nature, in relation to the soul and the mind — which, so long as they do not war against the mind, God did not command to be warred against at all. For we were not commanded to war against the creatures outside, with respect to sense-perception, but were bidden to fight always against the passions of dishonor dwelling within us, contrary to nature, in the land of the heart, until we utterly destroy them from it, and possess the land alone, remaining unshaken by the removal of the alien passions.

Wherefore, also, guardedly, in the passage concerning the bringing of the gifts of God and the presents of the king, Scripture did not simply say “all brought gifts to God and presents to the king,” but “many,” that is, not all the nations, but many nations, it being clear from this that there are socalled nations from which nothing is offered to God or to the king. For it fittingly says that only the creatures that fill up the nature of the things that have come to be bring, as gifts to God, the more divine reasons within them, according to which they were also created, as having come to be from God, and, as presents to the king, their own and natural laws, plainly, as having subsisted for man's sake, according to which the human mind, being regulated, establishes the manners that hold virtue together. But it is not the hypostasis-alongside of the nations in us that are not from God — I mean, the passions — that offers anything to God or to men, since it did not come to be from God. For the passions of dishonor had their coming-to-be from us, who disobeyed the divine commandment, but not from God; of which no one at all offers anything to God, since they have altogether no reason of wisdom or knowledge, having their hypostasisalongside come to be through the rejection of wisdom and knowledge.

But at the passage, “and Hezekiah the king was exalted in the eyes of all the nations,” he has spoken markedly of “all the nations,” the discourse showing that he who has obtained, like Jerusalem, to dwell in dispassion, through the toils of practice, and is delivered from all disturbance from sin, and both practices and speaks and hears and reasons only peace, after receiving, through natural contemplation, the nature of visible things, which offers, through him, the more divine reasons within it, as gifts, to the Lord, and brings its laws to Him, as it were presents, as to a king, is exalted in the eyes of all the nations, becoming plainly above all — both the passions according to the flesh, through practice, and the natural bodies and all the species under sense-perception, through contemplation, having passed through the spiritual reasons and manners within them. Thus have I understood “many brought,” but not “all” — that is, the external nations, that is, creatures, but not the internal nations within us, that is, the passions. For all the creatures that fill up the world hymn and glorify God with inarticulate voices. And their hymn becomes ours; through which I too receive the hymning, says Gregory, the great one named for theology. Holy Scripture, then, as has been shown, having set forth its own meaning freely open to all who wish to be saved, has by no means enclosed itself in a single person.

For each can become Hezekiah, imitating Hezekiah in the Spirit, and, through prayer, cry out to God and be heard and receive an angel — I mean, the reason of greater wisdom and knowledge — at the time of the uprising of wicked demons, and grind away every mighty man and warrior and ruler and general — that is, the passionate movements of desire and irascibility, and the attachment to sensible things, and the reasoning that, like a general, devises the manners of sin — and thus come to be in peace, through deliverance from the passions, and have leisure for the contemplation of the things that are, and receive the reasons that hold knowledge together, as it were gifts, and the manners constitutive of the virtues, as it were presents, offered to him, for the glory of God and his own advancement, by all creation, and after this be fittingly exalted, in the eyes of all the nations — that is, above all the passions according to virtue, and above all creatures according to knowledge — and guard, through moderation, the grace of salvation, and not suffer what, according to Scripture, follows upon these. For three reasons God sowed into visible nature spiritual reasons and manners of graceful conduct: that the Maker of creatures might be proclaimed; and that man, being instructed by the natural ordinances and manners, might easily find the way of righteousness leading to Him; and that no unbeliever might have ignorance as a pretext for excuse.

1. The sensible and the intelligible are midway between God and men; above which the human mind, passing through, comes to be, going toward God — not enslaved, in practice, to sensible things, nor at all mastered, in contemplation, by intelligible things.

2. That creation becomes an accuser, he says, of impious men: proclaiming, through the reasons within it, its own Maker; and, through the natural laws within it, particular to each species, instructing man toward virtue. The reasons, then, are recognized in the stability of the permanence of each species; and the laws appear in the identity of the natural operation of each species — which, not applying ourselves to, with the noetic power within us, we have been ignorant of the cause of the things that are, and have become glued to all the passions contrary to nature.

3. Man, considering the spiritual reasons of visible things, is taught that He is the Maker of the things that appear, leaving the notion of what He is like, as unattainable, unexamined. For creation, wisely viewed, provides the apprehension that He is the Maker, but not what the Maker is like. Wherefore Scripture has called the reasons of visible things “gifts,” as declarative of His mastery over all things; and “presents,” their natural laws, it teaches man, recognizing what each of the things that are is according to species, not to corrupt what is according to nature by an alien law.

4. By gift, he says, we have received faith in God, which is knowledge immediately grounded concerning God, having unprovable understanding. For it is the hypostasis of things hoped for, of realities not yet comprehended by knowledge of any of the things that are.

5. Faith, he says, is brought beforehand for virtue; and virtue, for knowledge; but for faith, nothing at all. For faith is the beginning of the good things among men, of which nothing is naturally brought beforehand by us.

6. Nothing, he says, is equal in weight to faith.

7. The gnostic mind receives, he says, the reasons of the things that are as advocates of faith in God, but not as makers of faith. For the reasons of the things that have come to be are not the beginning of faith, since otherwise that which is believed would also be circumscribed. For that of which the beginning for demonstration is comprehended by knowledge is, of course, naturally comprehensible by knowledge.

8. The law of heaven is to move always in the same way, in a circle; from which the gnostic receives the firm movement in the good, imitating, concerning the identity of virtue, the ever-motion of heaven.

9. The natural law of the sun is to work the difference of the seasons by its transitions; from which the gnostic receives the fitting adjustment to various circumstances, keeping, by reason, the brightness of virtue, obscured by none of the things that happen unwillingly.

10. The natural law of the eagle is to receive, upon its pupil, the ray of the sun striking it; from which the gnostic receives, according to judgment, that his mind be ever lit up by the divine light.

11. What is the gnostic taught also from the natural law of deer, examining the nature of the things that are?

12. What, taking by imitation also from the gazelle and the bird, does he who cuts the road of knowledge according to practice keep his virtue impregnable?

13. What good does he who philosophizes on divine things learn, transferring, according to judgment, rationally, to himself the natural contemplation of the lion?

14. How must one, imitating the serpent and the dove, become a philosopher?

15. What can we also profit from the turtledove?

16. He who transfers, to his own law, the laws of the things that are by imitation, is virtuous, reckoning the movement of things deprived of reason. But he who changes his own law to the laws of others by imitation is passionate, bringing forth the power of reason unto irrationality.

17. He calls “natural bodies” all things subject to generation and corruption.

18. A good observation: that it is not creation, of which God is the maker, that we must war against, but the disorderly and unnatural movements and operations, upon it, of the powers within us according to essence.

19. The practical philosophy, he says, makes the practical man above the passions; and contemplation makes the gnostic man above visible things also, raising the mind up to the kindred intelligible things.

52. Concerning “Not According to the Recompense That God Recompensed Him, Hezekiah Recompensed” “And not according to the recompense that God recompensed him did Hezekiah recompense, but his heart was exalted; and wrath came upon him and upon Judah and upon Jerusalem. And Hezekiah was humbled from the exaltation of his heart, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah.” What is the recompense, and what follows? Since, after many and various benefits, which God, granting at various times, preserved Hezekiah, having delivered him from every necessity and circumstance, he himself did not, as he ought, ascribe the whole grace of salvation to God, but some human blemish touched him, and he apportioned to himself a share of the achievements' power, fittingly, “not according to the recompense that God recompensed him,” did Hezekiah recompense. For he did not weigh out thankfulness, gratefully, equal to the greatness of the divine achievements concerning him, but his heart was exalted, not escaping the sickness of the self-opinion that puffs one up over virtue and knowledge. “And wrath came upon him, and upon Judah, and upon Jerusalem.” The wrath of God is, according to one approach, the toilsome perception of those being trained. And the toilsome perception is the infliction of involuntary toils, through which God often leads the mind that is puffed up over virtue and knowledge to contraction and humility, giving it to come to know itself and to be conscious of its own weakness; perceiving which, it lays aside the vain swelling of the heart.

For it says: after the wrath came to be, “Hezekiah was also humbled from the exaltation of his heart, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah.” Or again, the wrath of the Lord is the withholding of the supply of divine gifts, which fittingly comes upon every mind that is lofty and lifted up, and greatly boasts over the good things given to it by God as though over its own achievements. It is worth pausing to consider why the wrath came not only upon Hezekiah, whose heart was exalted, but also upon Judah and upon Jerusalem. This will especially persuade those who diligently cling only to the letter of Scripture that God-loving men must make every effort concerning the spiritual contemplation of what is written, if indeed the word of truth is more precious to them than all things. For if we adhere only to the letter, we shall, as is likely, charge the divine judgment with much injustice, unjustly punishing together with the one who sinned those who did not sin at all. And how shall the word be true that says, spoken by David to God: “a father shall not die for a son, nor a son for a father; each shall die in his own sin,” and “the soul that sins, it shall die,” and “You shall render to each according to his works”?

“And Hezekiah's heart was exalted,” it says. But it does not add that also the heart of the inhabitants of Jerusalem and Judea was exalted. How, then, He punished, together with the guilty one, those innocent according to that same account, I cannot see. For it says: “and Hezekiah's heart was exalted; and wrath came upon him and upon Judah and upon Jerusalem,” concerning whom the passage has not written that they were exalted. Since, then, the resolution of the difficulties is impossible for those who insist upon the letter and prefer the literal to the understanding, let us come to the spiritual understanding of what is written, and we shall find, without toil, the truth veiled by the letter, shining forth beforehand, like light, to those who love truth. Every gnostic and philosophic mind, then, has both Judah and Jerusalem: Judah, understood spiritually in the manner of confession, that is, the habit of repentance, together with the reasonings that hold it together, growing, in practice, together with the progress of the ascent according to the mind — for “Judah” is interpreted “confession” — and Jerusalem, understood allegorically as the peaceable habit of dispassion, together with the divine contemplations that fill it up; and, to speak concisely, it has Judea as the practical philosophy, and Jerusalem as the theoretic mystagogy. Whenever, then, through divine grace, the God-loving mind, having repelled, according to both the practical and theoretic philosophy, every power opposed to virtue and knowledge, has entirely bound about itself the dominion over the spirits of wickedness, and does not ascribe the due thanksgiving to God, who is the cause of the victory, but is exalted in heart, having reckoned itself the cause of the whole achievement — then, as not having recompensed God according to the recompense which He recompensed him, it receives not only itself the wrath of abandonment coming upon it, but also Judah and Jerusalem — that is, the habit of practice and of contemplation — immediately, by God's permission, the passions of dishonor rising up against practice, and defiling the conscience that was until then pure, and false conceptions becoming entangled with the contemplation of the things that are, and distorting the opinion of knowledge that was until then correct.

For truly a divine boundary and law, according to providence, exists within the things that are, permitting those who appeared ungrateful for better things to be trained, through opposites, unto gratitude, and to make the experience of the opposing things a divine recognition of the power that achieves good things — so that, lest, altogether unshaken in better things, we should be permitted by providence to have self-opinion, we might slip into the disposition of pride, opposed to God, thinking the possession of virtue and knowledge to be by nature our own, and not acquired by grace, and be found using the good for the birth of evil, and, through those very things by which divine full knowledge ought to have remained more firmly bound and unshaken within us, having, as we ought not, fallen sick with ignorance of it through those same things. For he who supposes that he has himself apprehended the end of virtue will no longer at all seek the fountain-cause of good things, having circumscribed the power of desire to himself alone, doing damage, by himself, to the very boundary of salvation — I mean, God. But he who perceives his own natural poverty concerning good things does not cease running headlong toward Him who is able to give the filling of his want. Wrath, then, justly comes upon the lofty-minded mind — that is, abandonment, or rather the permission for it to be troubled, both in practice, as Judea, and in contemplation, as Jerusalem, by demons — that it may perceive its own natural weakness, and come to know the divine power and grace that shelters it and achieves everything good, and be humbled, putting entirely far from itself the alien and unnatural height, so that the other wrath — the removal of the gifts given — may not come upon it, which did not come upon Hezekiah, since he was immediately humbled, from the first wrath that came upon him — that is, the abandonment — and came to a perception of Him who supplies the good things.

For it says, after “and wrath came upon him and upon Judah and upon Jerusalem”: “and Hezekiah was humbled from the exaltation of his heart, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the wrath of the Lord did not come upon them in the days of Hezekiah” — plainly, the other wrath, of the removal of the gifts, since the first abandonment became for him a teacher of good self-knowledge. For he who is not brought to humility, disciplined by the first kind of wrath, that is, abandonment, clearly receives the other wrath that comes upon him, taking away from him the operation of the gifts, and leaving him destitute of the power that had until then guarded him — “and I will take away his fence,” God says of the ungrateful Israel, saying, “and it shall be for plunder, and I will pull down his wall, and it shall be trampled down, and I will let go my vineyard, and it shall not be pruned nor dug, and thorns shall come up on it as on barren ground; and I will command the clouds not to rain upon it” — just as Saul, the first king of Israel, is recorded as having suffered. For he, having received, together with the kingdom, the grace of anointing and of prophecy, since he did not guard it, receives, first, the wrath of the operation of the wicked spirit; and, having received no perception of this, he ended together with the other wrath, having become, through folly, stripped of all piety before death.

And this he shows in what he suffered, being first worked upon by the demon, and later of his own accord deserting to the demons through the woman with a familiar spirit, and, similar to the godless, performing the rite of divination with the demons. Since, then, we have taken Hezekiah to mean the philosophic mind, and Judea, practice, and Jerusalem, contemplation, whenever we understand that the mind has suffered something in any manner, we shall altogether believe that both its practical and theoretic power have suffered together with it, according to the reasons that hold them together; for it is not possible for the subject to suffer without the things in the subject suffering together with it. The reasoning of contemplation, then, agrees well with the letter of Scripture, not bringing any accusation against the divine sentence of judgments, nor making an overthrow of any other commandment. For only Hezekiah, according to the given contemplation of the passage — that is, the mind — is exalted, being lifted up over his achievements, Judea and Jerusalem — that is, practice and contemplation — not being lifted up together with him, since they are not naturally able to suffer this, not being contemplated as subsisting by themselves. And wrath comes not only upon Hezekiah alone — that is, the mind — but also upon Judah and Jerusalem. For practice and contemplation are altogether tainted together with the mind, which is in some way defiled, even though they are not sharers in the cause of the wrath.

Let us too, then, come to the understanding of what is written. For even though those things happened to them typologically, according to history, yet they were written for us, for spiritual admonition, to whom the things written ever happen, the opposing power being ever arrayed noetically against us, that, translating, if possible, all of Scripture to the mind, we may illumine it with divine thoughts, and brighten the body with the manners of the more divine reasons understood, making it a rational workshop of virtue through the casting off of the innate passions. Every God-loving and virtuous man, then, having girded on, gnostically, like Hezekiah, the dominion over the demons, if there should come to be some assault of wicked spirits, invisibly weaving war against him according to the mind, and he should receive, through prayer, an angel sent to him from God — I mean, a greater word of wisdom — and, having utterly ground away, scatter the whole phalanx of the devil, and should not ascribe to God the cause of such victory and salvation, but ascribe the whole victory to himself — such a man has not recompensed God according to His recompense, not equating the multitude of his thanksgiving with the greatness of his salvation, nor measuring his own disposition against the benefit of Him who saved him — for recompense is the disposition of the one saved toward the one who saved him, measured out through works — but has exalted his own heart, being proud of the gifts he received as though he had not received them; such a man justly receives the wrath that comes upon him, God permitting the devil to entangle him noetically, and to shake the manners of virtue according to practice, and to muddy the clear reasons of knowledge according to contemplation, that, learning his own weakness, he may come to know the one power alone that wrestles down the passions in us, and be humbled through repentance, casting off the swelling of self-opinion, and propitiate God, and turn away the wrath that comes upon those who do not repent, which removes the grace that guards the soul and leaves the ungrateful mind destitute.

And “the days of King Hezekiah” Scripture perhaps called the various illuminations that every pious and God-loving mind receives, applying itself to the contemplation of the things that have come to be for the understanding of the wisdom variously proclaimed through all things; for which, so long as practice and contemplation are regulated, no deprivation of virtue and knowledge is naturally wont to come upon them, the sun of righteousness, in such a mind, creating such days through its own rising. Scholia 1. That dishonor of the passions succeeds him who is puffed up over practice; but the just judgment permits him who is exalted over knowledge to stumble concerning true contemplation.

2. By “boundary and law existing divinely in the things that are” he means the cohesive providence of the things that are, which, by a just judgment, trains, through the scarcity of good things, unto gratitude, those who appeared ungrateful toward the giver of them in the abundance of good things, leading them, through the opposites, to a perception of the recognition of the One who grants good things; for selfopinion over virtue and knowledge, remaining untrained, naturally begets the sickness of pride, which bears the disposition opposed to God.

3. He who perceives the infinitude of virtue, he says, never ceases from the course toward it, that he may not deprive himself of the beginning and end of virtue — I mean, God — having fixed the movement of his desire upon himself; and unwittingly suppose that he has apprehended perfection, undergoing a falling-away from that which truly is, toward which every movement of the earnest is hastened.

4. That the road to impiety, he says, is a headlong one: the insensibility concerning the loss of the virtues. For he who has accustomed himself, for the sake of the pleasures of the flesh, to disobey God, will also deny God Himself, when a suitable pretext calls, preferring the life of the flesh to God, whose pleasures alone he has held to be better than the divine wishes.

5. He calls the mind “the subject,” as receptive of virtue and knowledge; and “in the subject,” practice and contemplation, which hold the reason of accidents in relation to the mind; wherefore, in every way, they also suffer together with it when it suffers, having their particular movement as the beginning of their own alteration.

6. The innate passions of the body, governed by reason, have no reproach; but moved without this, they bear reproach. He says, then, that we must cast off, not those passions of which the movement is innate, but of which the use often becomes contrary to nature, not being governed by reason.

7. The saving wrath is the divine permission for the loftyminded mind to be warred against by the passions through the demons, that, suffering dishonor while boasting over the virtues, it may come to know who is the giver of these; or that it may become stripped of the alien things which, as though it had not received them, it supposed it possessed.

8. He calls, according to the reasoning of anagogy, practice and contemplation Judea and Jerusalem.

9. The sun of righteousness is the Lord and God, and Savior of all, Christ Jesus.

53. Concerning “and They Buried Him at the Ascent of the Tombs of the Sons of David” Again concerning Hezekiah, it says: “and they buried him at the ascent of the tombs of the sons of David, and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem gave him glory and honor at his death.” What is “at the ascent of the tombs of the sons of David,” and what follows? The noetic David is our Lord Jesus Christ, the stone which the priests and rulers of the Jews, building, set at nought, rejecting it, who has become the head of the corner — that is, of the Church. For the Church is a corner, according to Scripture. For just as the corner becomes the union of two walls, binding them tightly to one another for indissoluble cohesion, so also the holy Church has become the union of the two peoples, binding together, by one reason of faith, those from the nations and the Jews, and knitting them tightly into one common breath, of which the head cornerstone is Christ, as the head of the whole body. For “David,” interpreted, signifies “setting at nought,” who is the Word and Son of God, who, for my sake, put on the form of a servant, and became the reproach of unbelieving men and the scorn of a people full of sins, the good shepherd who lays down His soul for us, His sheep, who killed the lion and the bear — I mean, having rooted out irascibility and desire from nature, which tear apart the form of the divine image within us according to reason — the ruddy one, on account of the suffering of death, with beauty of eyes — that is, with the glory of the loftier reasons concerning providence and judgment (for the eyes of the Word would be judgment and providence, through which, even suffering for our sake, He effects oversight of the whole) — the slayer of the noetic Goliath, the proud one — I mean, the devil — who had a height of five cubits, on account of the passibility of our fivefold sense-perception (for the devil has his stature raised in wickedness to the same extent that the power of senseperception, in us, is passionately extended toward sensible things) — the king of the true Israel, and of him who sees God — even though Saul, the

old people according to the Law, rages, consumed with envy through unbelief (for he cannot bear the deprivation of temporal glory), from whom David, my king, though persecuted, takes away the spear and the flask of water — that is, the dominion of practical virtue and the grace of gnostic contemplation (though again he lends and gives these to those who cross over to him according to faith, for the sake of those from the Jews who are destined to inherit salvation, receiving the proclamation of the kingdom) — from whom again, sitting in the cave for the casting off of superfluities, He removes the flap of the mantle — that is, the height of comeliness according to moral philosophy, or the loftiness, in thoughts, of the covering of legal symbols and riddles — judging it neither worthy nor just that the people of the Jews, sitting as it were in a cave in this age, or in the dark letter of the Law — truly earthly and body-loving, and circumscribing the divine promises of the incorruptible things by the corruption of things that pass away — should be destroyed by the use, but should have the understood comeliness of the mystical legal ordinances, as it were the flap of a mantle. This is the noetic David, the true shepherd and king and destroyer of the opposing powers: shepherd of those still pursuing the practical philosophy and grazing, like grass, on natural contemplation; and king of those who have been renewed, by laws and spiritual reasons, toward the archetype of the beauty of the image given, and who stand immediately, according to the mind, before the great King of the ages Himself, and mirror, as is lawful to say, the unapproachable beauty.

The sons, then, of this David are all the saints from the age, begotten from Him in the Spirit. And the tombs of these sons are the memorials of their manner of life according to God upon the earth. And the ascent of these tombs is the height of their knowledge and love concerning God, where all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem bury — that is, the manners according to practice and the reasons of knowledge that dwell in true contemplation establish, in the place befitting it, of blessed abiding, the mind that has died, praiseworthily, to all the things that are — to sensible things, by the laying aside of the operation according to sense-perception; to intelligible things, by the cessation of noetic movement. Hezekiah, then, interpreted “strength of God,” as a mind mighty in practice and most radiant in knowledge, all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem — that is, plainly, his practice according to virtue and his true contemplation according to knowledge — bury, once dead, that is, once departed, in judgment, from all things that are, and come to be toward Him who is beyond the things that are, at the ascent of the tombs of the sons of David — I mean, at the height of the memory of the saints from the age — having given him glory and honor: glory, as being above all things according to the noetic knowledge of the reasons within the things that are; honor, as having become pure of all passions, and having acquired a movement, according to senseperception, unaccountable with respect to the natural laws within the things that are.

Perhaps one of those exceedingly devoted to beauty will say, with love of honor, that glory is the utmost beauty according to the image, and honor is the unvarying imitation according to likeness; for true contemplation of spiritual reasons naturally produces the one, and the exact and unadulterated practice of the commandments produces the other; which great Hezekiah, having had, was buried at the ascent of the tombs of the sons of David — as if one, taking the saying more clearly, should say, instead of “they buried him at the ascent of the tombs of the sons of David,” “and they set the memory of Hezekiah at the height of the memory of the saints from the age.” Let us consider how it is not said “in the tombs of David,” or “at the ascent of the tombs of David.” For incomparable to the things that are — not only to men, but also to angels — and altogether uncontainable, is the very reason of the Lord's life according to the flesh, and the manner of His life, let alone the unattainable conception of His infinite Godhead. It is welcome, then, to everyone who has even greatly perceived His majesty, to be even in the tombs of the sons of David, or, at the very best, at the ascent of the tombs of the sons of David. For no one is recorded by Scripture as buried in the tombs of David, let alone at the ascent of the tombs of David; for the life according to the flesh of our Lord and God and Savior is, as I have said, incomparable in every reason and manner.

For it says, “His virtue covered the heavens” — that is, even the righteousness of the Lord according to man, through the flesh, covered the powers above by the excess of His superiority in righteousness in all things. For He was not a mere man, but God made man, in order to renew, through Himself and in Himself, the nature of men that had grown old through itself, and to make it a partaker of the divine nature, having laid aside, plainly, all corruption and alteration, through which, having been made like the beasts, it had sense-perception prevailing over reason. To Him be glory unto the ages. Amen. Scholia 1. The devil, he says, is of five cubits, on account of the senses. For, apart from these, the irrational movement of his wickedness concerning the soul admits no advance of increase.

2. The spear, he says, is a symbol of the strength according to virtue; and the flask of water is a proof of the mystery according to knowledge.

3. He calls this world, and the letter of the Law, a cave; and says that Saul is the people of the Jews, whose mind, having turned away from the divine light of intelligible things, sits together with the darkness of sensible things and the shadow of the letter, making the creation and law of God serve for the generation of corruption. For he who, by the letter alone, and by the surfaces of sensible things, circumscribes the immortal promises, makes his excretion fitting corruption, as for food, showing, from the end, the beginning of his own opinion concerning God. And he calls the mantle the covering of the legal riddles. And its flap is the preeminently lofty thing, in thoughts, of spiritual contemplation, cut off from those who receive Holy Scripture with senseperception alone.

4. That the Lord is called shepherd of those who are led, through natural contemplation, to the fold above; and king of those subjected to the law of the Spirit, and who stand before the throne of God's grace, through the simple approach of the mind, in undivided knowledge.

5. He calls the manners of practice according to virtue those who dwell in Judea; and he calls the reasons of knowledge according to contemplation those who dwell in Jerusalem.

6. He calls “the praiseworthy death of the mind” the departure, in judgment, from all the things that are, after which it is naturally wont to receive the divine life by grace, having, instead of other things, unknowingly received back the cause of the things that are.

7. He calls “glory” the indefinite knowledge, bounded by no reason; and “honor,” the unrestrainable movement of judgment toward virtue, according to nature.

8. Unforgetting knowledge, he says, having, concerning the divine infinitude, a movement, according to the mind, beyond understanding, indefinite, images, through its indefiniteness, the surpassingly infinite glory of the truth. But the voluntary imitation of the wise goodness according to providence brings honor: the manifest assimilation, according to disposition, of the mind to God, so far as is possible.

9. According to anagogy, he says that David is Christ; and his burial is the memorial in righteousness, incomparable to every rational nature. For the Word of God, having become man, did not measure His righteousness by the natural laws of the flesh, but exercised, through the flesh, the righteousness that naturally belongs to Him as God, natural operation not being lacking.

54. Concerning Zerubbabel and His Prayer It is written in First Esdras concerning Zerubbabel: “And when the young man went out, having lifted up his face to heaven, opposite Jerusalem, he blessed the King of heaven, saying: From You is victory, and from You is wisdom, and Yours is the glory, and I am Your servant. Blessed are You, who have given me wisdom; and to You I confess, O Master of the fathers.” What does it mean to lift up the face to heaven opposite Jerusalem, and what follows? “Zerubbabel,” according to the precision of the Hebrew, admits both a rough and a smooth breathing, and composition and division, and stichic reading. And with rough breathing, this name signifies “sowing of confusion”; with smooth breathing, “rising of confusion”; composed, “a rising in confusion”; divided, “a rising of dispersion”; and read stichically, “he himself is rest.” Zerubbabel, then, is the philosophic mind, first, through repentance, sown in righteousness in the “confusion” of the captivity of the passions; second, “a rising of confusion,” making manifest the shame of the confused passions; third, “a rising in confusion,” giving illumination through knowledge in the confusion of the senses' operation toward sensible things, and not permitting them to assault sensible things apart from reason; fourth, “a rising of dispersion,” furnishing to the powers of the soul, dispersed concerning sensible things, a rising of works of righteousness, according to which practice with reason is constituted, not lacking gnostic contemplation, which leads the dispersed powers back to intelligible things; and fifth, “he himself is rest,” as having made all peace, and joined the practical to the good according to nature, and the theoretic to the truth according to nature.

For all practice naturally comes to be for the sake of the good, and all contemplation seeks knowledge for the sake of truth alone. Once these are accomplished, there will be nothing at all that strikes the practical part of the soul, nor indeed that pains its theoretic part through alien contemplations, it having come to be beyond everything that is and is understood, and having entered into God Himself, who alone is good and true, and is above all essence and understanding. Such a mind, having come, by the various advances of the virtues, when it goes out, after the victory, from Darius the king — that is, the law of nature — having shown him the power of love and truth, in comparison with the virtues against the passions, and receiving a lawful vote, confirming its own proposal and invalidating those of the others, recognizing whence the grace of victory came to it, lifts up its face to heaven, opposite Jerusalem, and blesses the King of heaven. The face, then, of such a mind is the disposition understood according to the hidden part of the soul, in which all the characters of the virtues exist; which it lifts up toward heaven — plainly, the height of contemplation — opposite Jerusalem — that is, the habit of dispassion according to condition — or again, “to heaven, opposite Jerusalem,” seeking the dwelling-place in heaven and the city of those enrolled in the heavens, concerning which the glorious things were spoken, says David.

For it could not otherwise bless God, unless it had lifted up, to the height of contemplation and knowledge, according to the habit of dispassion — that is, the untroubled and peaceable condition — the face of its soul's disposition, composed, as of characters, from many and various virtues. And what does it say as it lifts up its face? “From You is the victory” — declaring, through victory, the end of the practical life against the passions, and, as it were, the prize of the divine contests against sin — “and from You is wisdom” — the end through contemplation, plainly according to knowledge, which removes all ignorance from the soul — “and Yours is the glory” — having called “glory” the beauty of divine comeliness, so far as is lawful, manifested from these — which is the union of victory and wisdom, and of practice and contemplation, of virtue and knowledge, of goodness and truth. For these, united to one another, flash forth one glory and radiance of God. Wherefore he fittingly adds, saying, “and I am Your servant,” knowing that God accomplishes in us, as in instruments, all practice and contemplation, virtue and knowledge and victory and wisdom and goodness and truth, we contributing nothing at all except the disposition that wills the good things. Having this, great Zerubbabel says, in addition to what has been said: “Blessed are You” — speaking to God — “who have given me wisdom; and to You I confess, O Master of the fathers.”

As a grateful servant, he ascribed all things to God, who granted all things, from whom, having received it, he had wisdom, confessing to Him, as Master of the fathers, the power of the graced good things. And he calls God “blessed,” as having infinite wisdom, or rather being wisdom itself, from whom, having received it, he confesses the grace. And he calls Him “Master of the fathers,” wishing to show that all the achievements of the saints were clearly gifts of God, no one at all having anything except the good given, as from the Master, God, measured in proportion to the gratitude and goodwill of the recipient, and possessing only those things which stand at the disposal of the Master who grants them. And he calls the saints from the age “fathers,” whose faith he received, and whose life he imitated, willing to be begotten from them by the Spirit, having achieved this, becoming a willing son of willing parents, which is, to God, as much more precious than fathers and sons who come to be from the flesh against their will, as the soul, in excellence of essence, differs from the flesh. This Zerubbabel is one of the young men standing before Darius the king — I mean, the natural law — and, having circumscribed the whole power of the divine good things among men in two arguments, and having scattered the rashness of the others, and having drawn to himself the reigning law of nature, decreeing release for the powers of the soul held in slavery to the alteration of the passions.

For, of the wicked spirits set over the body, as more material, there being two, by the very property of the number was signified their passionate and mortal character. But the mind that champions the soul, being simple according to essence, being one, bore the manifestation of the undivided monad, which death by no means naturally touches at all, since it has no division at all. For the one, that is, the first young man, bringing forward the passionate good living of the body, says, “wine is strongest” — calling by “wine,” in comprehensive terms, all the derangement and drunkenness that occurs together in the pleasures of the passions, as ecstatic of the understanding, and corrupting the use of the reasonings according to nature. For it says, “their wine is the venom of dragons, and the incurable venom of asps” — calling the ferment of fleshly pleasures “the wine of dragons,” and calling the tyrannical and proud contempt of disobedience “the wine of asps.” For this beast, they say, alone of all the beasts of the earth, stops its ears against enchantments, tyrannizing, out of pride, those who enchant it. The other, that is, the second, says, “the king is strongest” — calling “king,” likewise, in comprehensive terms, all the empty glory in wealth and power and other conspicuous displays, which is generative of ignorance, according to which the dispersal of nature comes about, all being ignorant of one another and all clashing with all for one thing — the wanting to be glorified more than one another by power, or wealth, or luxury, and the other manners by which those who have been ignorant of the divine and abiding glory, and who despise the dominion that accords with it, wish to be glorified.

These, having circumscribed, so to speak, all the mire of the depths of the passions contrary to nature within these two propositions, made King Darius — the one holding sway, as I said, over the law of nature — the judge of the things spoken, hoping that he would incline to their doctrines. But the third, who is the mind that champions virtue and knowledge, and has resolved to deliver the soul from the wicked slavery of the passions, says, “women are strongest, and truth conquers above all” — calling “women” the deifying virtues, from which the love that unites men to God and to one another is constituted, snatching the soul away from all things subject to generation and corruption, and from the intelligible substances above them, and entwining it with God Himself in a kind of amorous mixture, so far as is possible for human nature, and mystically fashioning the undefiled and divine cohabitation — and calling “truth” the one and only cause of the things that are, and their beginning and kingdom and power and glory, from which and for which all things have come to be and come to be, and by which and through which they are held together unto being, and for the sake of which is all the zeal and movement of those who love God. And, to speak concisely, through the women he indicated the end of the virtues, love — which is the unfailing pleasure and undivided union, according to desire for the good that exists by nature, of those who partake of it — and through truth he signified the limit of all knowledges, and of all the things known themselves, toward which, as beginning and limit of all the things that are, the movements according to nature are drawn together by a certain generic reason, truth, as the beginning and cause of the things that are, conquering all things according to nature, and drawing to itself the movement of the things that have come to be.

Having thus discoursed with the law of nature, the philosophic mind repels every deception of the wicked demons from it, persuading it to vote freedom to the reasonings and powers of the soul held for slavery to the passions, and to proclaim release and remission from the bonds of noetic captivity to those shut up in darkness — I mean, the attachment to sensible things — so that they, going up into Judea — I mean, virtue — might build, in Jerusalem — I mean, the habit of dispassion — the temple of the Lord, that is, the knowledge receptive of wisdom. Wise, then, and very wise is great Zerubbabel, since he received wisdom from God, and through it was able, against each of the propositions put forward for deception, to the corruption of the human race, by the wicked spirits championing the body, to put forward a counter-proposal, and to conquer and overturn it, and, through each of his own propositions, utterly to efface the proposition of each of the opposing things, and to ransom the soul from the wicked slavery of the passions. For since they sought, through wine, to honor the ferment of fleshly pleasures, and, through the king, confirmed the dominion of worldly glory, this man introduced spiritual pleasure that has no end, through the women, and, through truth, showed the dominion that is not shaken, and persuaded to despise present goods and to cling to those to come.

This is the meaning that the propositions have, in my judgment, good and wise, and not unworthy of the Spirit to have been written for our admonition. But if anyone should be able to see the meaning of what is written more loftily, according to the power granted to him for understanding divine things, there is no envy, since the grace of the Spirit is not naturally diminished in those who share in it — for which cause especially the passion of envy is born — even if one has more of the grace and another less. For each has acquired the operation of the Spirit manifested according to the analogy of his faith, so that each is a steward of his own grace, and no one of sound mind would ever envy another who is wellreputed for his graces, since the disposition receptive of divine good things lies in his own power. Let us come also to another mystical contemplation, showing forth the primary truth of what is written. Zerubbabel is the true and new — though typologically signified through the old — our Lord and God Jesus Christ, who was conceived and carried and born in the confusion of our nature, and became, according to nature, a perfect man, that He might lead nature back to Himself, from the confusion from which it had fallen — He who did not become, together with us, a captive, and was not deported to the confusion of the passions (for He did no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth), but who, born among us captives as a captive, and reckoned with us the lawless, having, out of love for mankind, come to be in the likeness of sinful flesh, and concerning sin: in the likeness of sinful flesh, since, being by nature dispassionate God, He, unchangeably, by economy, deigned to become man passible by nature; and concerning sin, since, for our sins, He was led to death, and suffered pain for us, and was wounded for our sins and was made weak because of our transgressions, that we might be healed by His bruise.

For “the Spirit before our face,” it says, “Christ the Lord, was taken in our corruptions, of whom we said, in His shadow we shall live among the nations.” This is the righteous “rising” of our “dispersion” from sin, concerning whom the Holy Spirit says, through the prophet, that “a righteous rising shall dawn for you, and behold, a man — his name is Rising — and from beneath him it shall rise,” and “the sun of righteousness, and healing in his wings” — the “from beneath” declaring the ineffable mystery of the Word's incarnation, from which arose the salvation of all things; and the wings of the sun of righteousness would be the two Testaments, by which the Word, flying among us, heals the wound of the transgression, and grants the perfect strengthening according to virtue, effecting, through the Old, the removal of wickedness, and, through the New, working the establishment of virtue. Or again, the wings are providence and judgment, by which the Word, flying, unknowingly makes His way among the things that are, healing, by words of wisdom, those who are willing, and healing, by manners of discipline, those hard to move toward virtue, and cleansing, for some, the defilement of the flesh, and healing, for others, the stains of souls. This is He who leads back the captivity of the true Israel, not from land to land, as the old Zerubbabel did, transferring the people from Babylon to Judea, but from earth to heaven, and from wickedness to virtue, and from ignorance to the full knowledge of the truth of God, and from corruption to incorruption, and from death to immortality, and, to speak concisely, from the visible and flowing world to the stable and understood, and from the dissoluble life to the indissoluble and abiding.

This is the true builder of the rational temple that had flowed away in transgressions and had been burned by alien fire — which we ourselves kindled, walking by the light of our own fire, and by the flame that we kindled — not only having prepared the noetic part of the soul to follow slavishly the fleshly mind, but also having freely kindled, through operation, the matter of the passions. This is He who, through wisdom, persuaded Darius the king — that is, the law of nature — for it is not lawful, at this passage, to take Darius for the devil, who became a willing helper of the grace of the people's release, and was persuaded that nothing is stronger, nor more profitable to nature for salvation, than faith and a good conscience. For faith holds the reason of truth, and a good conscience bears the place of the divine love, allegorically understood through the women, in which there is altogether no transgression of the divine commandments. This is He who built in Himself, by an ineffable and undivided union, the fallen tabernacle of David — I mean, the nature corrupted by death through sin. This is Zerubbabel, who raised up with glory the fallen house of God, concerning whom the Holy Spirit says: “the glory of this latter house shall be greater than the former.” For the Word shared a second fellowship with nature, much more wondrous than the first; inasmuch as, having first imparted of what is better, He later willingly partook of what is worse, that He might both save the image and make the flesh immortal, and, having utterly effaced the word instilled in nature by the serpent, might present nature again, as at the beginning, pure of wickedness, surpassing, by deification, the first formation, and, just as He had made it subsist when it was not, so might He save it once it had flowed away, tempering it toward unfallingness by unchangeableness, and might accomplish the whole counsel of God the Father concerning it, having deified it by the power of the enmanment.

For it says, “the hands of the noetic Zerubbabel have founded this house” — that is, man — “and his hands shall complete it,” meaning the first formation and the final, ineffable reformation in it by union. This is the true Zerubbabel, the redeemer of the captives, who has in his hand the stone of tin, adorned with the seven eyes of the Lord, by which God looks upon all the earth. According to history, Zerubbabel is nowhere shown to have had in his hand a stone of tin having seven eyes, and these the eyes of the Lord, looking upon all the earth. Since, then, it is altogether impossible for this to stand according to the letter, let us proceed to the understanding of what is written. Zerubbabel is, as I have often said before, our Lord and God Jesus Christ. His stone is the faith in Him; and in the hand, since the faith of Christ is made manifest by the practice of the commandments; for faith without works is dead, just as works are without faith. And the hand is clearly a symbol of practice. Bearing, then, the stone in the hand, the Lord teaches us to have faith in Him operative, adorned with the seven eyes of the Lord — that is, the seven operations of the “And there shall rest upon him seven spirits: the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of might, the spirit of the fear of God.”

And the spirit of the fear of God is the abstinence from evils in operation; and the spirit of might is the eager impulse and movement toward the operation and practice of the commandments; and the spirit of counsel is the habit of discernment, according to which we do the divine commandments with reason and distinguish the worse from the better things; and the spirit of knowledge is the unerring knowledge of the manners of practice according to virtue, by which, acting, we in no way fall short of the correct judgment of reason; and the spirit of full-knowledge is the comprehension of the reasons within the commandments, according to which the manners of the virtues are constituted; and the spirit of understanding is the assent to, or, more properly speaking, the transformation toward, the manners and reasons of the virtues, according to which a mingling comes about of the natural powers with the manners and reasons of the commandments; and the spirit of wisdom is the taking up and union with the cause of the more spiritual reasons within the commandments, according to which, unknowingly initiated into the simple reasons of the things that are in God, so far as is lawful for men, we bring forth, as from a spring welling up in the heart, the truth in all things, variously, to other men, ascending, by way and order, from the last things — those from God, but near to us — to the first things, far from us, but near to God.

For from the idleness of evils, through fear, we come to the practice of the virtues through might; and from the practice of the virtues to the discernment of counsel; and from discernment to the habit of the virtues, that is, understanding; and from the habit of the virtues to the knowledge of the reasons within the virtues themselves; and from this to the transformative habit toward the known reasons of the virtues — I mean, understanding; and from this to the simple and exact contemplation of the truth in all things — from which, setting out, we shall render many and various pious reasonings concerning the truth, from the wise contemplation of the sensible and intelligible substances of the things that are. Ascending, then, through these eyes of faith, that is, illuminations, we are gathered together unto the divine monad of wisdom, gathering, by the individual ascents of the virtues, the division of the gifts that came to be for our sake, back to the cause of the gifts, omitting none of what has been said, with God's cooperation, lest, neglecting little by little, we render our faith blind and without eyes, not having the illuminations that come through the works of the Spirit, and be justly punished for endless ages, having, as far as depended on us, blinded the divine eyes of faith within ourselves. For everyone who has, within himself, through the idleness of the commandments, dug out such eyes of faith, is altogether condemned, no longer having God looking upon him.

And I think it is for this reason that Scripture calls faith a “stone of tin,” because it is both punishing of those who do not adorn it with the commandments, and preservative of those who keep it resplendent with the operations of the Spirit. For it shall be, says great Simeon, speaking concerning the Lord, “for the fall and rising of many in Israel” — the fall of unbelievers, and the rising of believers. For some say that tin is composed of silver and lead. Lead, then, bears a symbol of discipline, punishment, chastisement, and the weight of condemnation; and silver, likewise, is a type of brightness, glory, and conspicuousness. If this is so, then faith too, signified through tin, both disciplines and punishes and chastises and condemns those who become unworthy in it through the idleness of the commandments, having, perhaps, as lead, the weakness of the flesh strengthened in the Word according to the union; and again, it brightens and glorifies and illumines and leads to deification those who become worthy in it through the working of the commandments, having, perhaps, as silver, the Godhead of the Word shining forth wholly, so far as possible, upon the worthy. Some have taken the stone of tin to mean our Lord Jesus Christ, as composed of two natures, divinity and humanity. But if one wishes to contemplate the faith of Christ, or Christ Himself, more gnostically, faith, and Christ Himself, is lead, as disciplining the soul and chastising the flesh and punishing the passions and condemning the demons; and He is silver, as brightening the mind with the virtues and glorifying it with knowledges and, by deification, making it light, an image of the first light.

According to this understanding, the fall and the rising that come from Him must also be understood: for He makes a fall of the flesh, that is, of the fleshly mind, and of the passions, and of sin, and of the demons; but a rising of the mind, that is, of the spiritual mind, and of the natural powers, and of virtue, and of the reasonings that hold knowledge together. And, simply, the Word makes a fall of the whole old man according to Adam, and of the letter of the law, in the worthy, and a rising of the new man according to Him, and of the spirit of the law. Perhaps also for this reason faith is likened, according to Scripture, to a stone of tin, in those able, by repentance, again to brighten, through practice and contemplation, those things in it that blacken virtue or knowledge, and to receive back their own luminous clarity of life. Scholia 1. They say the end of practical virtue is the good; and this is the fulfillment of divine operation, toward which the rational faculty of the soul leads, using irascibility and desire according to nature; in which the beauty according to likeness naturally appears. And they say the end of theoretic philosophy is truth, which is the undivided, uniform knowledge of all things concerning God, toward which the pure mind is borne, having entirely extinguished its judgment according to sense-perception; in which knowledge the unadulterated worth of the divine image is clearly shown.

2. He contemplated the women as meaning the virtues, of which the end is love; and he led up truth to knowledge without end. Of these — love and knowledge — the law that reigns over nature, recognizing their character, casts off, like wine, the pleasure of the passions of the flesh; and, like a king, the passion for glory that possesses all without restraint.

3. The disposition according to virtue, he says, is the face of the contemplative mind, as lifted up, like to heaven, toward the height of true knowledge.

4. Another contemplation concerning the same, according to which he says the enrollment in the heavens belongs only to those who present themselves wholly to be enrolled by the pen of the Spirit; for the Holy Spirit enrolls in the heavens the willing, but not the compelled.

5. No one, he says, can truly bless God, without having sanctified the body with the virtues, and illumined the soul with knowledges.

6. He says that victory is the end of the divine contests of the practical part of the soul, which is the unmixed good; and he declares wisdom to be the end of the mystical visions of the gnostic part of the soul, which is the simple truth, toward which the mind, having become pure of the fantasy according to sense-perception, is led, and reason, having yoked to itself the vital part of the soul; the meeting of which — victory and wisdom, that is, of goodness and truth — shows, in those in whom it comes to be, one glory, flashing forth the undefiled likeness.

7. The fathers according to the spirit, he says, become fathers willingly, of willing sons, through teaching, fashioning them by reason and life according to God; and the sons according to the spirit become, by will, through learning, sons of willing fathers, being willingly fashioned by them, according to judgment, by reason and life according to God. For the grace of the Spirit works a voluntary begetting of those who beget and are begotten according to it, which fathers according to the flesh do not have, becoming involuntary fathers of involuntary sons; for the fashioning of those who naturally beget and are begotten is the work of nature, not of judgment.

8. The number two here signifies matter and form, of which the meeting effects the coming-to-be of the body, and the dissolution naturally effects its corruption. The things composed of matter and form, then, have their end naturally opposed to their beginning, if corruption is the abolition of coming-to-be. The two powers, both the desiring and the irascible, champion coming-to-be and corruption: the one desiring, through itself, to prevail toward being, that is, coming-to-be; the other, in a struggle, repelling the dissolution that comes from corruption. Advocates of these powers are the wicked demons, some proposing to the law of nature the desiring part of the soul's ecstasy from divine things, of which wine is a symbol, and others the tyranny of the irascible power over material things, of which the kingdom is an image, wishing to persuade it to vote for the passionate life that accords with these. And the monad signifies the soul, simple according to essence, as an image of the supernatural monad, threepersoned according to essence; whose mind — I mean, the soul's — as one, is the advocate of the one, demonstrating faith in God, through truth, and love for Him, through the women, to be stronger than all things, to the law of nature, and persuading it to vote for the dominion that accords with them.

9. That by the privation, by way of transcendence, of the many, truth naturally appears as one and alone, he says, covering the cognitive powers of all who are able to think or be thought of, as being, in existence, above the things that think and are thought of, being supra-essential, and, by infinite power, circumscribing the utmost limits according to the beginning and end of the things that are, drawing to itself the movement of all things, giving to some the manifest knowledge of which they were deprived by grace, and granting to others, according to sense-perception, the ineffable goodness of which they had the desire, making manifest, by participation, the full knowledge.

10. By “the people in Babylon” he understands, allegorically, the reasonings held in slavery to the passions; and by “Darius,” the natural law; and by “Zerubbabel,” the gnostic mind; and by “Judea,” virtue; and by “Jerusalem,” the habit of dispassion; and by “the temple,” the knowledge receptive of wisdom; and by “the ascent to Judea from Babylon,” the transfer of the understanding, through repentance, from bodily things to spiritual things.

11. He says that the measure of each one's faith is the cause of the distribution of divine good things; for as we believe, so we have the increase of readiness for practice. He, then, who practices, shows, according to the proportion of his practice, the measure of his faith, receiving, as he believed, the measure of grace; but he who does not practice shows, according to the proportion of his inactivity, the measure of his unbelief, receiving, as he disbelieved, the deprivation of grace. Wickedly, then, does the envious man act, being jealous of those who achieve success, since the choice of believing and practicing, and of receiving the grace that comes according to the measure of faith, lies clearly with him, and not with another.

12. The type has been well shown to correspond to the truth. For just as Zerubbabel did not become a captive, but was born from those held captive, then enslaved in Babylon, and became their redeemer, so also the Lord, being sinless, was reckoned from us, in us, as one of us, willingly submitting to the passibility of our nature, according to which, having endured our natural weakness unto truth, He freed us from the corrupting dominion, and led us up from earth to the heavens: by the power of His incarnation, having taken up the whole of nature to Himself, without deficiency, by an ineffable union; but by the calling of grace, only those who joyfully received the calling, and who, through works, revered the grace of the reformation.

13. Flesh of sin is that which has its coming-to-be from the sowing of a man; for it has, at once, in potency, both sin and corruption according to nature, having the one as beginning, and the other as end, of its own coming-to-be. But “in the likeness of sinful flesh” is the flesh of the Lord, constituted without the sowing of a man, having, according to nature, the corruption according to which He was like us; but having, according to power, by nature, sinlessness, according to which He was unlike us.

14. Since, he says, as compared to the pure and utmost theology, the reason of the incarnation is second — for the one belongs to the utmost reason concerning essence, but the other is the cohesive reason of the highest operation according to providence — it is called by the Spirit “a rising from beneath.” For in the reason of the divine incarnation is comprehended the coming-to-be of the ages and of the things in the age; and the extension, unto indefiniteness, of the life of the things that are, beyond the ages, according to grace.

15. He who loves the good, he says, is willingly hastened, by the reasons of wisdom according to providence, toward the grace of deification; but he who does not love these is, by just judgment, unwillingly led away, by the manners of discipline, from wickedness — the one, as God-loving, being deified through providence; the other, as matter-loving, not being permitted, through judgment, to come condemnation.

16. Our reproved fire is the law of the flesh; and the light of this fire is the movement, in the habit of the passions, that accords with this reproved law; and the reproved flame is the kindling, through operation, of the passions. Or again, the reproved fire is wickedness; the reproved light is the habit of wickedness; and the flame is its operation. The mind, then, ought not to be warmed by this fire, nor illumined by this light, nor burned up by this flame; for the light that accords with pleasure, with respect to senseperception, is, to the mind, the deepest darkness.

17. True faith is constitutive of truth, having no falsehood; and a good conscience bears the power of love, as having no transgression of a divine commandment.

18. The resurrection is a reformation of nature, surpassing the formation of nature in paradise: generically, by the total unchangeableness of all things; specifically, by the ineffable deification, by grace, of the saints.

19. Perhaps the discourse meant by “hands” of the noetic Zerubbabel both the creative power, according to which we receive our coming-to-be unto well-being, and the renewing power, according to which we receive the grace unto ever being well; or His good-working grace within us, according to the practice of the virtues, and the undissipated outpouring, upon it, of knowledge, according to contemplation.

20. Faith was called a stone, on account of the firmness, unchangeableness, and stability, and the utter immovability, of the truth that accords with it, and its yielding in no way to the uprisings of falsehood. And “in the hand,” on account of practical character in operation, and its being comprehensive, by circumscription, of all the virtues. And having seven eyes, on account of its being discerning and contemplative, and comprehensive of the complete, unerring knowledge of the things under time, and receptive of the unmixed, sevenfold, as in numbers, operation of the all-holy A distinction demonstrative of the property of the spiritual gift. For proper to fear is abstinence from evils; to might, the practice of good things; to counsel, the discernment of things opposed; to knowledge, the undefiled understanding of what is fitting; to full-knowledge, the comprehension, in operation, of the divine reasons within the virtues; to understanding, the disposition, throughout the soul, that accords with the things known; and to wisdom, the indistinguishable union with God, according to which, for the worthy, desire becomes enjoyment, making, by participation, the partaker god, and establishing him as an expositor of divine blessedness, according to the ever-flowing, unhidden offering and outpouring toward those in need of the divine mysteries.

22. The good that is first for us in operation, he says — which is fear — Scripture's discourse enumerated last, as the beginning of wisdom, from which, being moved, we ascend to the end of wisdom, understanding, after which we become near to God Himself, having wisdom alone mediating our union with Him. For it is not possible for one to attain wisdom who has not first, through fear, and through the remaining gifts in between, shaken off from himself entirely the bleariness of ignorance and the dust of wickedness. For this reason, the scriptural order has arranged wisdom as near to God, but fear as near to us, that we might learn the boundary and law of good order.

23. Wisdom, he says, is a monad, beheld undivided in the various virtues that come from it, and gathered, uniformly, into the operations of all the virtues; and again shown to be a simple monad by the restorations, to it, of the virtues that come from it, whenever we, for whose sake it makes its procession according to the coming-to-be of each virtue, are gathered back up to it through each virtue.

24. He who does not work the divine commands that accord with faith has blind faith, he says. For if the commands of the Lord are light, it is clear that he who does not do the divine commands is without divine light, and bears the bare, but not the true, name of faith.

25. If, he says, the operations of the Spirit are called by the discourse “the eyes of the Lord,” he who does not open these by the practice of the commandments does not have God looking upon him. For it is not God's nature, presumably, to watch over those on earth by other eyes, if indeed our illumination according to virtue is a ray of the divine vision.

26. Tin, he says, naturally having the property of both silver and lead, characterizes faith. For it punishes, if not kept, having, as lead, the accusation, for the ages, of those who have not kept it; and it glorifies those who keep it, having, as translucent and bright silver, the advocacy, for the ages, of those who have kept it.

27. No one who sins, he says, can have the weakness of the flesh as advocate of his sin. For the union with God the Word has restored strength to the whole of nature by the loosing of the curse, making our attachment, in judgment, to the passions inexcusable for us; for the Godhead of the Word, ever present by grace with those who believe in Him, withers the law of sin in the flesh.

28. Just as tin, he says, when blackened, is brightened again, so also believers, even if they are blackened by sinning, are brightened again by repenting; for which cause, perhaps, faith too was likened to tin.

55. Concerning the Number of Men and Cattle That Went “And all together, from Israel, from twelve years old and up, apart from male and female servants, were forty-three thousand three hundred sixty; their male and female servants, seven thousand three hundred seven; male and female singers, eight hundred fifty-five; camels, four hundred thirty-five, and horses, seven thousand seven hundred thirty-six; mules, eight hundred forty-five; beasts of burden, five thousand five hundred twenty-five.” Make clear the connection of such great and lofty things, spoken by the Holy Spirit through the prophets concerning the return from captivity, with this: what is this great lowliness and untimelyseeming, unworthy-of-the-Spirit exposition, to mention camels and horses and mules and donkeys, and this with numerical precision? To speak with precision concerning these matters belongs only to those who, through great purity of mind, have received from God the whole grace of the Spirit attainable by men, according to which, swimming knowingly in the sea of mystical visions, they see the reasons of what is written alone, naked of the typical signs attached to them, taking no account at all of the symbols that typify them, unless they should wish, wisely, to typify them bodily for those who, through infancy of mind, are unable to rise above senseperception, that, first exercised in the types according to sense-perception, they might come to desire the archetypal reasons without sense-perception.

But to apply oneself to the loftier things by conjecture, on account of the power naturally desired in us for divine knowledge, is not inappropriate, two good things being shown forth from conjecture to those who possess sincere reverence for divine things. For either he who makes the conjectural approach to divine things attains the truth of the things understood, and offers, rejoicing, the sacrifice of praise — thanksgiving to Him who granted the knowledge sought — or he finds the meaning of what is written eluding him, and reveres divine things the more, learning that they surpass comprehension of his own power. I too, then, applying myself conjecturally to what is proposed, call upon God to become a helper of what shall be said, finding the power of my own understanding weak, in every way, for the height of the scriptural riddles. For whether I succeed, the whole achievement belongs to God, who, through comprehension, leads me to thanksgiving; or whether I do not, so again, in this way too, the good of non-comprehension belongs to God, who checks beforehand the pride that would likely be born in me from knowledge, and makes the non-comprehension for me an occasion of moderation. Approaching, then, by conjecture, as has been said, the meaning of what is written, I begin here the exposition of what is proposed. In the chapter before this it is written concerning Zerubbabel: “and when the young man went out, having lifted up his face to heaven, opposite Jerusalem, he blessed the King of heaven.”

It is clear that, after the advancing of the propositions made to Darius the king, he went out from the presence, plainly, of Darius the king. Darius, then, is, as I have already said before these words, the reigning law of nature. And, understood thus, it agrees clearly with the interpretation of his own name. For “generation,” or “genealogy,” or “one being genealogized,” the name of Darius signifies, as those who know the precision of such a word say. And the name “generation” and “genealogy” is proper to the natural law; for race and the things genealogized belong to what is under nature, and genealogy belongs to the things around nature. Fittingly, then, Darius was taken to mean the law of nature. For the law of nature comprises both the genera and species referred to nature, and the things contemplated around nature — I mean, time and place. For with all things that have come to be, the things without which they cannot be are naturally beheld together. Darius, then, is, as I have said, the law of nature, and Zerubbabel is the contemplative mind, who went out, as from Darius, the law of nature, and, having passed beyond the ordering of visible things under time and place, and having lifted up the face of his gnostic disposition according to virtue toward heaven — that is, the height of intelligible substances — opposite the Jerusalem understood in the heavens — I mean, that Jerusalem which has, upon the hands of the Lord, its walls painted, in which is the dwelling of all who rejoice — toward which the true return of the captives comes about, of those who seek the dwelling-place from heaven, according to the divine Apostle, of those who are able to say, with great David, “if I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten; let my tongue cleave to my throat, if I do not remember you” — meaning, perhaps, by “right hand,” the spiritual and praiseworthy practice of divine things, and by “tongue cleaving to the throat,” the gnostic operation of reason within us, cleaving, through ignorance, to the throat — that is, fixed, on account of passion, about the throat, and remaining unmoved concerning the desire for the ineffable good things, and for this reason unable to taste the goodness of the Lord.

But if Zerubbabel, hastening from time and nature toward Jerusalem, transcends words — whether the contemplative mind that is according to us, or the Word who is above us, the Creator, having become, in us, according to us, and for this reason having become man, that He might lead back to Himself, through the incarnation, those who had thrust themselves from dispassion and life to the passions and death of the flesh — fittingly He brings out, together with Himself, those who have become, so far as is lawful, like Himself, and leads them to the heavenly Jerusalem, whose utmost virtue and knowledge the discourse has, in a variegated symbolic manner, likened to the proposed species and numbers. For every God-loving and righteous man, making his return, noetically, to the Jerusalem above, fills up the proposed numbers of the various species, gathering the reasons of each species and number into a single fulfillment of virtue and knowledge. And the discourse of the passage before us for examination clearly shows this, reading thus: “and all together, from Israel, from twelve years old and up, apart from male and female servants, were forty-three thousand three hundred sixty.” Well said, for the precision of the Oracles of the Spirit, noting that none of those numbered in Israel, who had come out of Babylonia — I mean, the confusion of the present age — was at all under twelve years old, the discourse signifying, mystically, that only he who has come to be above senseperception and time — for this the number twelve clearly signifies, being gathered from five, on account of the senses, and seven, on account of time — and has cut off the soul's relation to these, comes out of their confusion, hastening toward the city above, having, apart from male and female servants, forty-three thousand three hundred sixty.

The “servants” are, perhaps, the reasonings concerning the natural and blameless passions, not in our power, and the “female servants” are either the thoughts or the natural appetites and pleasures, bearing no reproach to those who have them, since they stand as a necessary accompaniment of natural appetite. For pleasure comes about naturally, even when we do not wish it, from even chance food, comforting a prior want, and from drink, repelling the disturbance of thirst, and from sleep, renewing the strength expended by wakefulness, and from whatever other natural things pertain to us, necessary for the constitution of nature, but useful, for the earnest, toward the acquisition of virtue; which, even if they are not counted with the men, nevertheless come out together with every mind that flees the confusion of sin, lest, on their account, it remain held fast in slavery to the passions in our power, reproved, and contrary to nature, which have no other beginning in us except the movement of the natural passions. They are not counted, since the passions that hold nature together for the present life are not naturally such as to pass over together with us into the immortal and long-enduring life. And the forty thousand are the tetrad of the generic virtues, with which the mind, having passed through nature and time, is restored to the blessed portion of dispassion. For just as the myriad is recognized only by the letter of the unit, being altogether unable to be signified by another letter, as being the same, with respect to the subject, as the unit, though it admits a difference by consideration alone, as end to beginning — for the myriad is the end of the unit, and the unit is the beginning of the myriad, or, more properly speaking, the myriad is a moving unit, and the unit is an unmoved myriad — so also every generic virtue has the divine and ineffable unit, I mean God, as beginning and end, beginning and ending from Him and in Him, and being the same as God, differing from the Word only in consideration, from whom and in whom and unto whom every generation of virtue clearly subsists.

Or perhaps the discourse means by the four myriads the four advances of those proceeding, in length of contemplation and knowledge, through the decad of the divine commandments. For instance, the first advance is simply the practice of the commandments in those being introduced, after the flight from wickedness, making full the first decad, which is also a unit. The second advance is the mutual inclusion of the rest through each operative commandment, making the same decad also a hundred, filled up by the operation of each commandment through one another. For the decad, operated tenfold, makes the hundred. The third advance is the tenfold multiplication of this hundred, according to the law of nature. For the law of nature is also decadic, as consisting of ten — I mean, the three powers of the soul, and the five senses, and the vocal operation, and natural fruitfulness; for it employs the rational faculty for the seeking of the cause and of the good things concerning the cause, and the desiring faculty for the longing for the things sought, and the irascible faculty for guarding and cherishing them, and the senses for discernment, fivefold divided itself, knowledge is naturally wont to arise — for universal discernment is divided into things begun and not begun, things to be understood and not to be understood, things to be spoken and not to be spoken, things to be done and not to be done, things corruptible and incorruptible — and the vocal faculty for manifestation, and fruitfulness for the increase of the good things sought and desired and cherished and known and manifested.

The hundred, then, multiplied tenfold according to the law of nature, becomes a thousand. And the fourth advance is the ascent, through contemplation and knowledge of the natural law according to the given division, to the more originative reason of each commandment, according to which the myriad is beheld, gathered, recognized by the letter of the first unit. For he who has simply operated the commandments, and again, according to the operation of each, has included the others, and again, by their comprehension, has joined the discernment of the natural law, and has again knowingly raised this up to the reason of each commandment, has gathered the four myriads, honored, at each advance, by the mystery of the unit, toward which the reason of the myriad is gathered. Or again, the four myriads signify the four so-called generic states of dispassion. For the first dispassion is the complete abstinence from evils in operation, beheld in those being introduced; the second is the complete casting off, according to the understanding, of the reasonings that assent to evils, coming about in those who pursue virtue with reason; the third is the complete immobility, according to desire, concerning the passions, in those who noetically behold the reasons of visible things through their forms; the fourth dispassion is the complete purification even of the bare imagination of the passions, constituted in those who have made their governing faculty a pure and clear mirror of God through knowledge and contemplation.

He, then, who has purified himself of the operation of the passions, and freed himself of the assent to them according to the understanding, and stopped the movement concerning them according to desire, and made his mind unstained by the bare imagination of them, goes out, having the four myriads, from matter and material things, and hastens toward the divine and peaceable portion of intelligible Thus, then, let the four myriads be understood by us. And the three thousand signify the perfect and correct and pious theological reason concerning the holy and consubstantial Trinity, according to which the holy, three-personed Monad is hymned and believed by us as one God. And the three hundred signify here the reason concerning providence, not only because, by the shape of the letter, is signified the power that extends from above to below, and comprises the extremities of the sloping sides on either hand — which signifies the providence that ineffably binds together the whole — but also because it has been honored by the form of the cross, in which the great and first and hidden mystery of providence was accomplished. For the great mystery of God's enmanment is the ineffable manner of providence; by which form, together with the name of Him who was nailed upon it for our sake, great patriarch Abraham, perhaps, taking courage, with three hundred and eighteen — that is, the form and the name of Jesus — went out and overthrew the opposing powers signified through the kings.

For Scripture often knows how to manifest its own purpose even from the shapes in the letters, to those purified for this. But if one should wish to consider the meaning of Holy Scripture also from the number, he will find providence signified through it in this way too. For the work of providence is not only to keep nature undiminished according to its own reason of being, but also to show it possessing, without deficiency, the acquired reason of wellbeing by grace. Joining, then, the hundred to the two hundred, one makes up three hundred, signifying nature and virtue. For they say the number two hundred often signifies nature, as consisting of matter and form, since matter is fourfold, on account of the four elements, and form is fivefold, on account of the sense-perception that shapes the material mixture toward form. For, composing five times forty, or four times fifty, you make two hundred. And the number a hundred signifies perfect virtue, as having the divine decad of the commandments multiplied tenfold; to which Abraham, having attained, becomes father of great Isaac, dead according to nature, but having become, according to the Spirit, a begetter of life and joy. Joining, then, the hundred to the two hundred, you would fill up the number three hundred, signifying providence, which holds nature together according to the reason of well-being. And the sixty signifies the productive power of nature for the commandments, perfected by the reasons of the virtues.

For if the six signifies the productive power of nature, as perfect and constituted from its own parts — wherefore also God is written to have made the world in six days — and the ten signifies the perfection of virtue in the commandments, then sixty clearly signifies the natural power receptive of the divine reasons within the commandments. Then (43,360): the four myriads plus three thousand three hundred sixty signify the perfect reason concerning virtue, and the venerable mystery of theology, and the true purpose of providence, and the practical power of nature made one with virtue; with which the mind, having distinguished, by the Spirit, from the flesh, sense-perception, and the world, altogether goes out, leaving their mutual mixture and confusion, like those of old leaving Babylon, and hastens toward the city above, having its mind free from relation to anything at all. “Their male and female servants, seven thousand three hundred seven.” The Law, discoursing on the passage concerning male and female servants, says that Hebrew male and female servants serve six years, and are released free in the seventh, but that foreign male and female servants serve forever — I think it calls the fiftieth year of release “forever.” The Hebrew male servant and Hebrew female servant are the reason and understanding that serve the practical philosopher for six years, toward the devising of moral comeliness and the discovery of the manners of virtue.

For, to every practical man, reason and understanding toil like a male and female servant, devising and fashioning the manners of virtue according to practice, and, as it were, having their whole power arrayed against the spirits of wickedness opposed to the practical life. Having fulfilled, then, the practical philosophy, which the number of six years signified — for it has been said that the number six signifies the practical philosophy — reason and understanding are released free unto the spiritual, plainly returning to the contemplation of the kindred reasons within the things that are, whenever, in the seventh year, that is, the habit of dispassion, according to which, tamed by the great toil of reason and its accompanying understanding, the passions of the soul withdraw and give way. But the foreign male servant and female servant are irascibility and desire, which the contemplative mind ever yokes to the mastery of reason for the service of the virtues, through courage and self-control, not giving them at all the release unto freedom, until the law of nature is entirely swallowed up by the law of the Spirit, as death by infinite life, wretched flesh, and the whole image of the beginningless kingdom is shown purely, having the whole form of the archetype through imitation; according to which the contemplative mind, having come to be, makes both irascibility and desire free, transforming the one toward the undefiled pleasure of love undefiled enchantment, and transferring the other toward spiritual fervor and fiery ever-motion and sober madness; according to which, it seems, great apostle Paul, having become a great ray of the undefiled light, heard, in Acts, from King Agrippa, “you are mad, Paul,” and again, he himself, writing concerning himself to the Corinthians, “whether we are beside ourselves, it is for God; or whether we are sober, it is for you” — calling the sober madness that accords with God “ecstasy,” plainly, as placing the sober mind that accords with it outside the things that are.

And I suspect that their number signifies the temporal providence, according to reason, together with the dispassion of manners, according to which the mind, presiding over reason and understanding, serving in practice like Hebrew male and female servants, determines the measures of their ministry according to virtue, transferring them to contemplation, and, caring for irascibility and desire as foreign male and female servants, as a master over slaves, leads them, at the end, to freedom of equal honor, making desire an enjoyable longing for divine things, and irascibility an unceasing tension of the enjoyable longing, and making the foreign slaves true Hebrews according to grace. “Male and female singers, eight hundred fifty-five.” Singers are those who, in practice, proclaim the divine word by the manners of the virtues, without contemplation. Female singers are those who, in the manner of a mystagogue, initiate others into the divine word by the manners of the virtues, together with the gnostic delight of contemplation, and sweeten their noetic ears. And their number signifies the knowledge of eternal things attainable by men. For the eight hundred and the fifty foreshadow the reasons, respectively, of knowledge and of the virtues to come; and the five represents the knowledge concerning these, as we have rendered a little before concerning the number five. “Camels, four hundred thirty-five.” Camels, going out together with the sons of Israel, released with great freedom from bitter captivity, are the various natural contemplations of visible things, having, like the camel, with respect to senseperception, as it were feet, the unclean surfaces of visible things, but, with respect to the mind, as it were a head, the pure and loftier reasons within them, in the Spirit.

And perhaps, concerning these camels, great Isaiah, prophetically foreshowing the glory of the Jerusalem understood, said: “and camels of Midian and Ephah shall cover you” — that is, the spiritual contemplations of the natural passions. For “Midian” is interpreted “excretion,” or “bloody clay,” or “human and maternal sweats,” and “Ephah,” “possession of the back,” which is contemplation raised to the height above the passions of the flesh, and the flesh is, as it were, the back of the soul, as posterior; with which, as with a holy city, the discourse says the spiritual portion of the peaceable and untroubled knowledge of mystical visions is covered, as with walls. And the number itself signifies the given force, signifying the rational movement concerning nature and time. “And horses, seven thousand seven hundred thirty-six.” A horse is he who, in the course of the virtues throughout life, has the whole vigor of irascibility. For they say the horse's gall is in the natural scars of its feet. Wherefore it was judged more suited and more powerful for the course than all the other tame animals yoked to the nature of men. To which great prophet Habakkuk, through the Spirit, likened the holy apostles, saying, “and You mounted Your horses upon the sea, troubling many waters,” calling the holy and blessed apostles “horses,” as bearing the saving word of truth before nations and kings throughout the whole world, which he figuratively called “the sea”; and he likened the nations to waters, troubled and shaken by the great power in the word of the Spirit, and transferred, by the saving shaking, to faith from unbelief, and to full knowledge from ignorance, and from wickedness to virtue.

And the number of the horses itself signifies this, typifying the habit, according to virtue, of the practical philosophy. For the number seven thousand seven hundred, as temporal, signifies the swift movement in the virtues, and the thirty-six signifies the practice of nature that runs together with the virtues. “Mules, eight hundred forty-five.” A mule is, according to the praiseworthy reason, the habit altogether barren of wickedness. Wherefore, very fittingly and appropriately to the spirit of Scripture, he who obtained the kingship of Israel was ordered to sit not on a horse but on a mule, the discourse showing that the contemplative mind, reigning over the thoughts and visions within the things that are, and over its own movements, must have a habit barren of wickedness — that is, wickedness neither conceiving at all nor bringing forth — upon which it must be borne, moving concerning contemplation, lest, in making the spiritual investigation of the things that are, it should unwittingly fall into some wicked spirit naturally able, through some sensible thing, to corrupt the pure disposition of the heart. But we also know the mule to be set down by Scripture reprovingly, as in, “do not become like the horse and the mule, in which there is no understanding,” the discourse calling “horse” the habit that neighs after the pleasures of the passions, and “mule” the habit that neither conceives nor brings forth the good, which the discourse forbade equally to those who desire salvation, the one as productive of wickedness, the other as having inactivity of virtue.

And Absalom's mule too is taken reprovingly, upon which, sitting, he went out seeking the death of his begetter, the Spirit signifying, in this, that he who has been wounded by some vainglory for virtue or knowledge, vainly cherishing a hair of self-opinion, elaborately arranged and mixed, displays, like a mule, for the deception of those who behold him, moral conduct; hanging on which, he thinks to overpower his begetter, through the teaching of the Word, as father, wishing, proudly, to draw tyrannically to himself all the glory of virtue and knowledge that belongs, from God, to the father. But such a man, having gone out into the breadth of natural contemplation in the spirit, for the rational war on behalf of truth, is caught by his hair in the thicket of the oak of material visions, on account of living sense-perception, having his empty self-opinion binding his mind unto death, hanging him between heaven and earth. For the vainglorious man has no knowledge, as it were a heaven, drawing him up from the self-opinion that drags him down, nor, again, has he earth — I mean, the base of practice in humility — drawing him down from the pride that draws him up; whom, having died, the begetting teacher mourns, out of love for mankind, as God-loving, in imitation of God, not wishing the death of the sinner, but that he turn and live.

That we may also consider the passage in another way: David clearly foreshows the practical mind, and Absalom, the selfopinion born from the practical mind through the mind's intercourse with sense-perception. For sense-perception is the daughter of King Geshur, whom David took and begot Absalom. And “Geshur” is interpreted “guidance of a wall.” And the wall is clearly the body, and the guidance of the body is the law of the body, that is, sense-perception, from which Absalom is begotten, interpreted “father's peace, so reckoned” — which is clearly self-opinion. For, thinking we have peace from the passions, we constitute self-opinion; which, when great David knew it had risen up against him, since he was accomplishing practice with knowledge, leaving the tabernacle and Jerusalem and Judea, flees across the Jordan to the land of Gilead — that is, into “the migration of mourning,” or “the migration of testimony,” or “their revelation” — judging himself unworthy, on account of the self-opinion that had risen up, of the holy tabernacle — that is, mystical theology — and of Jerusalem — that is, the peaceable and beholding knowledge of divine things — and of Judea — that is, the confession, with joy, of practice. For the mind, having migrated its own powers to mourning, and the conscience, as it were a testimony, of the things previously done, and the memory of the offenses committed in kind — for this is “their revelation” — and, simply, having come, in understanding, to the time before grace — for this is “to be across the Jordan” — during which it had been estranged from the grace that accords with virtue and knowledge, and, having recognized its own weakness, and having acquired humility, strong and opposed to selfopinion, crossing over to it, through the perception of what is proper to it, being in good mourning, kills the tyrant selfopinion, and returns again to its own glory, and holds the land of Judah and Jerusalem, and reigns, and offers to the holy tabernacle of God the undefiled and unblemished worship.

But let us return to the number of the mules of the Jews released from captivity, that we may look upon the spiritual reason within it, according to our power. Mules, it says, eight hundred forty-five. This number signifies the mind's, according to the barren habit of wickedness — that is, the habit not bringing forth wickedness — with respect to sensible things and sense-perception, perfect dispassion. For the eight hundred signifies the characteristic dispassion of the age to come, taken in a laudatory sense, and the forty signifies sensible things, and the five, the senses. “Beasts of burden, five thousand five hundred twenty-five.” A beast of burden is the body, yoked to the soul for the carrying of the burdens and toils undergone for virtue's sake, according to practice — that is, the habit of the body according to virtue. And perhaps, having such donkeys, the sons of great Jacob carried the grain from Egypt, for provision, to the land of promise, laying upon the bodies, through practice, the spiritual knowledge shut up, as grain from Egypt, in the sacks of the understanding, from natural contemplation, and transporting it to the life to come. And the number of these donkeys, being altogether spherical, signifies the ever-uniform movement of the bodily habit according to virtue, concerning practice, and its being carried along unchangeably with the reason of knowledge. For those skilled in these matters call the spherical movement alone unchangeable, as having levelness throughout, unlike the remaining movements of the things that are.

Let these things, then, be said by us in this manner, not falling short of our power of understanding and speaking. But if anyone wishes again to say that the different ranks of believers, and, as it were, their dispositions, are prefigured in these — the men are those who have reached the measure, so far as attainable, of the stature of the fullness of Christ, and who, by love, with self-determined judgment, accomplish virtue; the male and female servants are those who, through fear of the threatened eternal punishments, submit to the burden of the practical philosophy; the singers are those who rightly expound the reason concerning practice and heal the passions of others; the female singers are those who, through contemplation, manifest the beauty of the knowledge of divine words and drive away, from others, ignorance as darkness; the camels are those who tame the crookedness of their judgment, by reason, toward virtue; the horses are those who run well the course of the life according to God; the mules are those of mixed character, who display, harmlessly, in common, their philosophic nature; the donkeys, that is, the beasts of burden, are those who have, in practice, toil, and who receive reason mounted upon them through contemplation. For whoever gathers these will assemble the fullness of the holy Church, adorned with the many and various beauties of virtue.

The spiritual contemplation of the matters raised, then, has here, in my own judgment, reached its end. But if anyone should be found abounding in the riches of gnostic grace, and, like great Samuel, seeing noetically the things ahead, he will clearly reveal to us the meaning veiled by the letter of what is written, the lofty light of the truth in all things gnostically flashing forth, persuading those able to learn that nothing has been written by the Holy Spirit untimely or in vain, even if we cannot comprehend it, but all things mystically and opportunely, and for the sake of human salvation, of which the beginning and end is wisdom — beginning by first creating fear, and later, being perfected, constituting longing — or rather, being itself, at first, fear, coming about for our sake by economy, that it might stop the lover of wickedness, and, later, being found, by nature, longing, for its own sake, at the end, that it might fill with noetic laughter those who exchanged its companionship for all the things that are. Such men, I have believed, are recorded by the Spirit; such male and female servants; such male and female singers; such camels; such horses; such mules and such donkeys — which the Holy Spirit knows how to write, not those which bodily sense-perception is naturally able to circumscribe, but those which the pure mind receives, being typified by the pen of grace.

1. The fullness of the grace of the Spirit is the wisdom that comprehends, according to power and habit and operation, all the knowledges that come to perfect men according to Christ; through which the mind, having come to be outside the types according to sense-perception, applies itself, naked of all variety, to the reasons both of the things that have come to be and of the things written, gathering the divine characters within them into the fulfillment of one Godbefitting form about itself; according to which it receives, uniformly, so far as attainable, the undivided knowledge of all things, through which the splendor of truth is naturally wont to be shown flashing forth.

2. Those who are truly gnostic, teaching the reasons of the mysteries in the Scriptures, he says, use the types according to history as examples, for the anagogy of those taught, fitting the spirit of contemplation to the letter of the history, that both the type, for the sake of sense-perception, and the reason, for the sake of the mind, may be preserved concerning man, who is of soul and body, around which the mind and the sense-perception are naturally found, as belonging to one man.

3. Praise is a word declarative of divine beauty; and praising is the relation of the one who praises and the one praised — that is, the recounting of the words declarative of divine comeliness — according to which the habit of knowledge is naturally constituted, transforming the one who praises toward the one praised. And the sacrifice of this praise is not only the complete mortification of the passions contrary to nature, and the transcending of those according to nature, but also the complete offering of the one who praises to God.

4. Knowledge in practice not bridled by divine fear, he says, produces pride, persuading him who is puffed up by it to put forward the borrowed as his own, making the loan of reason a matter for his own praise. But practice, growing together with divine longing, not taking knowledge above what is practicable, makes the practical man humble-minded, drawing him back to himself by reasonings beyond his own power.

5. He who, through faith and love toward God, has conquered the irrational movements of the passions contrary to nature, comes to be, he says, outside the law of nature itself, and is wholly transferred to the region of intelligible things, and casts off, together with himself, the alien slavery, along with what is akin to it by nature.

6. Everything that is under nature is whatever is naturally either a subject, or predicated of a subject, or in a subject; from which the definitions of things defined are gathered. For the things that complete the various natures of the things that are, are naturally included in their definitions, for the exact indication of what is signified, as subsisting in the subject, and together with the subject naturally — and from which the subject is, and in which it has its coming-to-be, but not observed from without. And the things around nature are the things preconceived and conceived together: the one, that the coming-to-be of the things that are altogether subsisted somewhere and at some time; the other, that, together with the first coming-to-be of the things that are, the universal position and movement of the things that are was also considered together, which are time and place, in which, according to their external position, and their movement toward a beginning, nature is, but not according to hypostasis; for nature is not from them, but has, in them, from without, the beginning of its being and its position. Whenever, then, we consider only the reasons of the being of genera and species and individuals, we take along, with them, their constitutive differences according to the reasons of their essence; but whenever we genealogize, we necessarily take along with the things that are the “where” and “when” altogether — that is, time and place — considering beginning and position, apart from which nothing of the things that have come to be at all subsists.

For none of the things that are is free of circumscription according to beginning and position. Jerusalem, and the heavenly dwelling-place, is the dispassionate habit according to virtue, and the knowledge that has no thought of error warring against it.

8. The tongue, he says, is a symbol of the gnostic operation of the soul; and the throat is a proof of the natural self-love toward the body. He, then, who reprovingly has glued these to one another cannot remember the peaceable habit according to virtue and knowledge, taking delight, through zeal, in the confusion of bodily passions.

9. Darius, he says, was taken to mean the law of nature; and the law of nature comprises both nature and time, having authority over the use of all things both according to nature and around nature. The mind, then, that goes out, as from Darius, the law of nature, becomes, plainly, above time and nature, mastered by none of the thoughts under nature and time, lest, carrying about the images of corruptible things, it become a temple of idols instead of the one God, having many worshiped forms of unclean passions.

10. He contemplated the male servants, not counted, but going out together with those who have them, as the reasonings of the passions not in our power, of which, even if the coming-to-be is not, yet the use is in our power, as masters; and the female servants, as the natural appetites, without reproach, arising from the passions not in our power; which he leads out together with himself, driving on to the life according to God, lest they become held fast in the slavery of the passions contrary to nature.

11. He states the cause for which the discourse did not count the male and female servants with the men.

12. Just as the myriad is the end of the moved unit, and the unit is the beginning of the unmoved myriad (for the beginning of every end is clearly the immobility that accords with it; and the end of every beginning is the fulfillment of the movement that accords with it), so also faith, being by nature the beginning of the virtues, has as its end the fulfillment of the good that comes through them; and the good according to nature, as the end of the virtues, having faith as beginning, is gathered, inherently, to it. For faith is an inherent good, and the good is faith put into operation. And God is, by nature, faithful and good: the one, as the first good; the other, as the last object of desire. And these are, in every way, the same as one another, distinguished by no reason except that of consideration alone, on account of the movement of the things that begin from Him and end in Him. The myriad, then, bearing the type of the last object of desire, circumscribes the perfect desire of those moved toward it; and the unit, bearing the symbol of the first good, brings the perfect basis for those moved from it. There are, then, four myriads, the perfect good shown, according to each generic virtue, proportionately, in operation.

13. He who, after the flight from wickedness, kept the decad of the commandments simply by the idleness of sin, and again, having shown the practice of each commandment to be a perfect inclusion of the others, since all are beheld in each according to the practice of each, made the decad a hundred (for the perfect keeping, in operation, of each commandment is the fulfilled practice of the rest), and again, having had the perfect, scientific discernment of these according to nature, made the hundred a thousand, and finally, applying himself, with the mind bare, to the reasons of these according to contemplation, made the thousand a myriad, being gathered, from the distinction according to practice, to the unitary monad according to contemplation. And, to speak concisely, he who has kept the commandments unbroken by the perfect flight from wickedness, and has shown their perfect practice, and has achieved their most complete discernment according to nature, and has completed their perfect spiritual contemplation, this man had the four myriads, gathered by the perfect reason at each advance; for the perfect has, without interval, together, both the reasons of the beginning and of the end.

14. He calls evil “begun” (for it has as beginning our movement contrary to nature), but the good “not begun” (for the good exists, by nature, before every age and time); he calls the good “to be understood” — which alone must be understood — and evil “not to be understood” — which alone must not be understood. He calls the good “to be spoken” (for it alone must be spoken), and evil “not to be spoken” (for it alone must not be spoken). And he calls the good “to be done” (for, existing, by nature, unbegotten, it, by grace, out of love for mankind, endures being done by us, for the deification of us who do and speak and understand), which alone must be done; but evil is “not to be done,” which alone must not come to be. He calls evil “corruptible” (for corruption is the nature of evil, having no existence at all in any respect), but the good “incorruptible,” as ever being, and never ceasing to be, and preservative of all in whom it comes to be. This, then, we seek with the rational faculty; we long for with the desiring faculty; we guard inviolate with the irascible faculty; we discern, with the sensory faculty, according to knowledge, unmixed from its opposites; and, speaking of it with the vocal faculty, we make it manifest to those who do not know it; and with the generative faculty, we multiply it — or rather, to speak truly, we are multiplied according to it.

15. He calls the first dispassion the untouched movement of the body toward sin in operation.

16. He calls the second dispassion the complete casting off, according to soul, of the passionate reasonings; through which the movement of the passions withers, according to the first dispassion, the passionate reasonings that kindle it toward operation no longer having it.

17. He calls the third dispassion the complete immobility of desire concerning the passions; on account of which the second also naturally comes to be, being constituted by the purity of the reasonings.

18. He calls the fourth dispassion the complete laying aside, according to the understanding, of all sensible fantasies; according to which the third has taken its coming-to-be, not having the fantasies of sensible things that give form to it the images of the passions.

19. The thousand is a unit not in need of perfection; for it has, most fully, the reason of all the units before it, and of itself. Wherefore, when composed, it is again productive of a unit, but not of a decad. For the unit succeeds the composition of the thousand, as those who have precisely worked out the power of numbers say. Fittingly, then, the triad of the thousand signifies the triadic reason according to theology, which, together with perfect virtue, he who leaves the understood Babylonia goes out having.

20. The letter Tau is a type of the cross, preserving, in its shape, the impression of the cross. And the Iota, as the initial letter of Jesus, signifies the fearful name. And the Eta, likewise as an initial letter, indicates the most firm character of virtue; which, mystically converted into a number, patriarch Abraham, taking courage, went out against the opposing powers, having three hundred eighteen home-born servants — that is, the reason that comprehends the whole of theology, through the three hundred, and the ineffable mystery of the divine incarnation of the Word, through the ten, and the perfect manner of the firm habit according to virtue, through the eight — which the discourse called “home-born,” as being divine offspring, by grace, of the heart of him who possessed them.

21. The number a hundred is the tenfold multiplication of the divine decad of the commandments; for it is the perfect inclusion of all, each operated through the others. And the inclusion of the divine commandments, operated through one another, each, is complete and entire virtue. And perfect virtue is wisdom. And wisdom is the unerring knowledge of the truth. He, then, who has unerringly known the truth has become a hundred years old, after the pattern of great Abraham, considering also his own body as dead — that is, he sees the life according to sense-perception as departed, and begets the joy that lives in the Spirit. For this is what “Isaac” is interpreted. It belongs to providence, then, not only to preserve nature according to its own reason, but also to make it divine, its judgment having been perfectly formed by the virtues, according to the acquired wisdom, with which nature, when contemplated, naturally makes up the number three hundred.

22. The number six has the perfect indication of the being of the things that are. And the number ten signifies the constitution of the well-being of the things that are. Multiplying, then, the six tenfold, or the ten sixfold, one makes sixty, signifying the operative constitution of the wellbeing of the things that are.

23. When dispassion comes, he says, which the seventh year signifies, reason understanding return contemplation of the kindred things, having received freedom from the ministry, in bodily manners, of the virtues.

24. The image of the beginningless kingdom is the mind's unchangeableness concerning true knowledge, and the incorruption of sense-perception concerning virtue, the soul and the body being bound to one another, in the spirit, by the sole divine law of the spirit, according to the transformation of sense-perception toward the mind, according to which they have the ever-moving and ever-living operation of reason pervading throughout, in which there is altogether no discord toward the divine.

25. They say pleasure is desire in operation, if it is, by its own definition, a present good. And desire is pleasure not in operation, if it is, by its own definition, a future good. And irascibility is the movement of madness being rehearsed; and madness is irascibility in operation. He, then, who has subjected these powers together to reason will find desire becoming, for him, pleasure according to the undefiled embrace of the soul with the divine, by grace; and irascibility, undefiled fervor, guarding the pleasure concerning the divine, and a sober madness, completely ecstatic, from the things that are, of the enchanting power of the soul's desire concerning the divine. So long, then, as the world lives in us, according to the soul's willing relation to material things, we must not grant freedom to these powers, lest, mingled with sensible things as with kindred things, they war against the soul, and take it captive, made a prey to the passions, as the Babylonians once did Jerusalem. For the age during which the law commanded the foreign male servants to serve, the discourse signified the soul's judgment-relation toward this world, that is, the present life, showing, through the things narrated, the things understood.

26. The number seven thousand, laudably set down here, signifies the temporal and present life, adorned with virtue and reason. For if the number a thousand signifies the written and natural law, according to the meaning given in the myriads, befitting one another concerning the life of the God-loving man, it is clear from this that the number seven thousand signifies the whole life of the God-loving man under time, guarded by these; and the three hundred signifies the providence, concerning being according to nature and well-being according to grace, of those cared for; and the seven signifies the dispassion in manners. He, then, who has kept his own life dispassionate, through his own natural powers, as providence wills, having male and female servants, seven thousand three hundred seven, goes out from the confusion of the passions.

27. He calls “end” both the dispassion here, according to practice, and the deification there, by grace.

28. He calls “singers” those who have their life, in practice, crying out the wishes of God.

29. He says “female singers” are those who become, not only doers of the divine wishes, but also expositors, to others, of the mysteries within them.

30. The number eight has both rest and movement: rest, when considered by itself (for every even number is unmoved, having no center); movement, when composed with the number before it, or after it; for it makes an odd number. For every odd number is, in itself, movable, on account of the equal distance of its extremities from the middle. What, then, the eight does among the numbers under ten, the eighty does among the numbers under a hundred; and likewise the eight hundred among the numbers set under a thousand. Considered, then, by itself, it has rest, circumscribing the movement of the odd number before it. For the seven, and the seventy, and the seven hundred, happen to be manifestative of a temporal property. Since, then, sense-perception has apprehension rather of the things under time and coming-to-be, it remains for the perfected mind to receive the unerring knowledge, that is, the science, of eternal and intelligible things; for they define science as the unerring knowledge of the subject. And the number fifty, bearing an odd unit after the sevenfold multiplication of the week into itself, signifies the completion of the making of the virtues in the worthy. For he no longer is moved concerning the making of the virtues, who has attained the good according to nature, and has taken his rest in it; for the unit is the beginning and end of every movement.

And the number five signifies the knowledge concerning these; for it comprises the reasons of intelligible and rational things, of sentient and living and existing things; which only divine wisdom is naturally able to circumscribe, which they define as the unerring knowledge of the truth.

31. He says the camels of Midian, as “Midian” is interpreted “excretion,” mean the true contemplations of the things coming to be and passing away; and as “bloody clay,” he has understood the reasons of providence concerning this transitory and unstable life; and as “human and maternal sweats,” the reasons of divine judgment concerning the present life, which the reasonings according to the understanding, and the sensory fantasy of visible things, gather; from which — I mean, reasonings and fantasy — is gathered the true opinion of the things that are, being the fruit of the understanding upon the senses. He calls, then, “human and maternal sweats” the reasonings put forward by the understanding with toil, and the fantasies, senseperception nourishing us as it were a mother. And the camels of Ephah, that is, of the possession of the back; and the back is the flesh of the soul, as coming to be for the soul's sake. If, then, we possess the flesh well, we have it serving the soul for the generation of virtues, and we understand only its divine reasons, for which it came to be; with which, having also gathered, as camels of Midian, the reasons of visible things, we cover our Jerusalem, the soul, clothing it with the divine contemplations of the things that are, and making it unseen by the passions and impregnable.

32. The number four hundred signifies the nature of the bodily world; for four elements complete it. And the thirtyfive signifies the temporal movement, with reason, of virtuous men. For the seven, taken five times into itself, makes the number thirty-five. The seven, then, is significative of temporal movement; and the five, of rational science. Joining, then, the four hundred and the thirty-five, you have signified the rational science, according to nature and time, of the divine men living within them.

33. The things numbered agree with the numbers. The horse is swift in the course, having the ever-moving and upwardtending element in its feet; time is sharp in movement, making its own corruption without interval; the practice of the things numbered is active; for a cyclical number makes it manifest. For the six, composed under itself six times, begets itself sixfold. The swiftness, then, and sharpness, and activity of the habit according to virtue, of the divine men mystically signified, the discourse of the Spirit has signified through the horses and their number.

34. He who gives, he says, to those who behold him a foreknowledge concerning himself, by the mere utterance of the words he has stolen, deceiving, like Absalom, the ears of the unintelligent, and, by intercourse, tyrannically defiling, unto uninitiated ears, the good, God-loving wives of the teacher — I mean, contemplations — according to the counsel of Ahithophel, which, interpreted, is “a brother who plasters” — that is, a brother who deceitfully befriends — is convicted of madness for glory, falling under the hand of the servants of David, in the breadth of the variety of natural contemplations, arraying himself against the better with his own presumption. For he is shown neither treading upon earth, as not having the fixity of the character of virtue, nor at all laying hold of heaven, as not having touched at all the truly lofty habit according to knowledge; and he dies, receiving three arrows against his heart — I mean, the memory of the transgression against his teacher, and the shame at his self-opinion of a knowledge that does not exist, and, upon these, the inescapable expectation of the coming judgment. Caught by these barbs, the vainglorious man dies, shot; whom Ahithophel, the evil counselor, who teaches sons to rise up against fathers, anticipates, being carried off, as was just, by death through hanging, seeing his evil counsel dispersed. For he cannot bear to live any longer, having lifted the veil of his reproved friendship toward David, and being unable to show that the vainglorious and falsely-named gnostic has the mastery of reason.

35. “Gilead,” interpreted as “migration of mourning,” he says, signifies the hardship of repentance; and as “migration of testimony,” it signifies the reproof of conscience concerning offenses; and as “their revelation,” it typifies the specific confession of sins committed. Having undergone this condition, the mind that has self-opinion pursuing some good kills the self-opinion begotten from it by the union with foreign sense-perception; and again returns to Judea and Jerusalem and the tabernacle — I mean, the confession of the divine mercies concerning him, and the perfect dispassion over the virtues, and the peaceable contemplation, in the spirit, of the things that are, and, upon these, as it were a divine tabernacle, mystical theology, in which the beauties, altogether unseen by others, are mystically covered.

36. The eight, being one of the numbers within ten; and the eighty, of those within a hundred; and the eight hundred, of those within a thousand; and the eight thousand, of those within a myriad, considered by themselves, signify immobility, though with a relaxation and intensification of quantity. Laudably, then, set down by Scripture, they signify complete immobility with respect to the passions — that is, the departure of the passions. This characterizes the condition of the age to come, in which there is no coming-tobe of passions. And the forty bears the image of sensible things; and the five, of the senses, to which the sensible world is subject, according to natural science. Fittingly, then, does the present number signify the barren habit concerning wickedness, and the perfect deposition, of the divine men, of the relation of the senses toward sensible things.

37. He says the five is a spherical number, as cyclical and returning to itself, in every composition of it with every odd number. For if you compose the five five times with each odd number, you will find the resulting number ending in five. For instance, five times three is fifteen; five times five is twenty-five; five times seven is thirty-five; five times nine is forty-five. Proceeding thus to infinity, you will find, composed five times with each odd number, and fifty times with the fifty, and five hundred times with the five hundred, and five thousand times with the five thousand, it is restored to itself according to the resulting number — which is proper to cyclical and spherical movement. Fittingly, then, those wise in such matters have called the number five spherical and cyclical, as never at all departing from itself in its composition with the so-called odd numbers. And it also signifies the generic science, which never departs from itself in the unceasing movement concerning knowledge of the whole, and comprehends all things by the power of reason.

38. Wisdom, freeing from the punishment of the passions by hope, produces fear; and, accustoming the mind to the acquisition of the virtues, produces longing, by seeing the things to come.

39. Wisdom is fear, coming about, according to flight, as a deprivation for those who do not desire it; and it is longing, found as a habit of enjoyable operation, for those who love it.

56. Concerning the Enemies Who Came Against Judah and Benjamin Again it is written in the second book of Ezra: “And the enemies of the tribe of Judah and Benjamin heard, and came to know what the sound of the trumpets was, and they came to know that those from the captivity were building the temple to the Lord God of Israel; and, coming to Zerubbabel and Jesus and the leaders of the fathers' houses, they said to them, ‘Let us build together with you, for we hear your Lord just as you do, and we sacrifice to him from the days of Asbacaphath king of the Assyrians, who brought us here.’ And Zerubbabel and Jesus and the leaders of the fathers' houses of Israel said to them, ‘It is not for us and you together to build the house to the Lord our God; for we alone will build it to the Lord of Israel.’” What then does this signify, and especially the envy on account of which they were unwilling to let those who worshiped the same God build together with them? “Judah” is interpreted “confession”; and the reason of this word is twofold: the one coming about in thanksgiving for good things given, the other spoken in reproof and examination of things wrongly done. For “confession” is said both of the enumeration, with thanksgiving, of the divine benefactions by those who have fared well, and of the avowal of things wrongly done by those who are culpable.

And both are productive of humility; for both he who gives thanks for good things and he who is examined for offenses is humbled, the one judging himself unworthy of the good things given, the other needing to receive remission of the things transgressed. “Benjamin” is interpreted, according to the precise force of the Hebrew word, “mourning,” or “groaning of the mother,” or “measure of the mother,” or “son of the right hand,” or “building of the people.” Every one, then, who confesses in one of the said ways is of the tribe of Judah; and every one who mourns for the sake of virtue, or who, after the manner of a mother, has righteousness defining his own life and reason rightly, or who, from an abundance through virtue and an outpouring of teaching in reason unto salvation, is a way and a building of the tribe of Benjamin. For the discourse knows such men to be those who receive freedom from the captivity of the passions, and who go out from relation to sensible things, and who are able, having come to be in the habit of dispassion, to build a house to the Lord — and by “house” I mean the mind built up of the various virtues and reasons, both in practice and contemplation, into a dwellingplace of God in the Spirit. And the enemies of these are the four nations who were resettled into the land of Israel by Asbacaphath king of Assyria; for he was the first to settle in the land of Israel Babylonian men, and men of Cuth, and men of Hamath, and the Avvites.

The Babylonians signify pride, being interpreted “confused understanding.” The Cuthites signify vainglory, changing their mind toward barren self-opinion away from virtue — for “ecstasy,” interpreted, is what their name also signifies. And the men of Hamath signify men-pleasing — for “Hamath” is interpreted “sight of things that appear” — through which the more substantial takings are devised by those who falsely pursue virtue for the sake of men. And the Avvites signify the deceit of hypocrisy; for they are interpreted “serpentine,” after the pattern of the first serpent, who, through deceit and friendly-seeming hypocrisy, as toward Adam, expel from virtue those who are persuaded. And Asbacaphath, who resettled these into the land of Israel, is interpreted “taking captive from behind” — that is, unseen or unnoticed — or again, “taking captive with bonds.” This is clearly the devil, who does everything unnoticed, for the destruction of human nature, and who binds each with cords of his own sins. He resettled into the land of Israel — I mean, the habit of virtue and knowledge — pride, vainglory, menpleasing, and hypocrisy, yoking them alongside the virtuous and the gnostic, that he might steal, from those who labor in good things, their toils, sophistically leading the aim of the things being done away to other things than the true cause. And perhaps, knowing that these evil demons follow close upon the virtuous, the divine apostle sought to persuade the Corinthians, writing that he did not come to them with a word of flattery, as a hypocrite — which some perhaps supposed of him — nor with a pretext of greed, as a manpleaser, nor seeking glory from anyone, as one vainglorious; for he passed over pride in silence, having manifest the true marks of humility — the countless persecutions, and the sufferings of the body, and the utter want of possessions, and the plainness in speech as to delivery; for even if unskilled in speech, he says, yet not in knowledge.

These, having heard the sound of the trumpets, came to know what the sound was; and they came to know that those from the captivity were building the temple to the Lord God of Israel. The trumpets, whose sound the unclean demons hear, are the reasons concerning virtue and knowledge. And the sound of these reasons is the works of the virtues, and the steadfastness, in manner and character, of those who have returned through repentance to virtue from vice, and have advanced from ignorance to the knowledge of God. And they came to Zerubbabel and Jesus and the leaders of the fathers' houses, and said to them, “Let us build together with you, for we hear your Lord just as you do, and we sacrifice to him.” Zerubbabel is the practical mind, and Jesus the contemplative; and the leaders of the fathers' houses are the powers of the soul, from which the manners of virtue and the reasons of knowledge have set forth, to whom the unclean demons of pride, vainglory, men-pleasing, and hypocrisy come, saying, “Let us build together with you the temple of the Lord.” For none of these evil demons ever hinders the eagerness of the virtuous man, but rather, deceitfully cutting away the deficiencies of the virtues, dictates their excesses, being eager together with those who strive, that he might make the whole intention of the ascetic turn toward himself, having lost the equal weight of the mean, and, without his noticing, journey toward a different lodging than the one he supposed.

Wherefore the evildoers say, “We hear your Lord just as you do.” For they neither hate self-control, nor abhor fasting, nor almsgiving, nor hospitality, nor psalmody, nor leisure for reading, nor the loftier studies, nor sleeping on the ground, nor vigil, nor any of the rest by which the life according to God is characterized, so long as the aim and cause of the things done inclines toward them. For the other demons the ascetic perhaps more quickly detects, and easily escapes the harm from them. But these, who seem to work together with the course of virtue and, as it were, wish to build together the temple to the Lord, what mind, however exceedingly lofty, could ever detect, apart from the effective and living Word, who pervades all things and pierces even to the division of soul and spirit — that is, who discerns which of the works or thoughts are of the soul, that is, natural species of virtue or their movements, and which happen to be spiritual, that is, characterizing what is above nature and God, given to nature by grace? He who understands the fitting or unfitting inclination throughout, of joints and marrow, toward the spiritual reasons of the manners according to virtue, and who judges the thoughts and intentions of hearts — that is, the unseen relations, hidden in depth, upon the things said, and their unseen causes according to the soul.

To whom there is no creature unseen — namely, among us, who suppose we escape notice — but all things are naked and laid bare, not only the things that have come to be and been thought, but even the things that shall come to be and shall be thought by us? For concerning a deed or thought that is yet to be, the discourse says, “there is no creature unseen”; not concerning one already come to be, which has also been manifested to us ourselves and to others — for that would scarcely befit God, who has foreknown all the infinite ages, both those that came before, and those that are, and those that shall be, and who has taken up beforehand, by nature and not from beings, the knowledge of the coming-to-be of all things, but has taken up in himself, from himself, the knowledge of beings. For he alone is, by nature, the knowledge of beings, as cause of beings; and again, selfknowledge, as having his own knowledge above cause by nature, and settled, moreover, beyond this, according to the wholly and altogether infinitely-super-infinite reckoning of infinity — because he is, in every reason and manner, the maker even of the knowledge so called, and is inaccessible to every other knowledge that can be spoken or thought. Who, not having this Word dwelling in the depth of his heart, will be able, having escaped the unseen deceits of the demons' hypocrisy against us, to stand by himself, entirely alone, apart from any admixture, and to build the temple of the Lord after the pattern of great Zerubbabel and Jesus and the leaders of the fathers' houses, who said plainly, with a loud voice, to the deceiving spirits of pride and vainglory and men-pleasing and hypocrisy: “It is not for us and you together to build the house to the Lord our God; for we alone will build it to the Lord of Israel” — knowing that their admixture works corruption and destruction of the whole building, and robs the grace of the comeliness of the divine offerings?

For no one can build this to the Lord who has any of the said demons sharing in his virtue; for he does not have God as the end of the things done, in view of whom he carries it through, but rather the passion which through it he establishes. Not out of envy, then, did those of the captivity refuse to admit the Babylonians and the Cuthites and the men of Hamath and the Avvites to build the temple of the Lord together with them, but because they had recognized the friendly-seeming deceits of the demons' evil-working, wishing, through the good, to unnoticed work out for them the death of sin. May it be granted also to us always to say to the spirits of wickedness who assault us unseen in the guise of spiritual friendship, and say, “Let us build together with you the temple to your Lord”: “It is not for you and us together to build the house to the Lord our God; for we alone will build it to the Lord of Israel.” Alone, because, having been freed from the spirits that war by way of deficiency against virtue — from which we have already come out — we do not wish, exalted through you by excesses, to be caught again and to fall a fall so much more grievous than the former, as the hope of return from the former, for those pardoned on account of weakness, was easy, while from the latter it either does not exist or will be difficult for those hated on account of pride, who make of what was right hand something even more right.

But again, not alone, because we have the holy angels as fellow-helpers of good things — or rather, God himself manifesting himself in us through the works of righteousness, and building us to himself a holy temple, free of every passion. Scholia 1. That confession is twofold.

2. That every confession, he says, humbles the soul: the one, having been justified by grace; the other, teaching it, held fast in dejection of its own judgment upon offenses.

3. He who mourns for his first sins, and who has, perfectly, faith toward God, ever begetting him unto righteousness, and every impression of virtue, presenting his own life and reason accordingly, has established himself a spiritual member of the tribe of Benjamin, showing the birth that exists according to God to be a work of judgment, not of necessity. For he is a son of the right hand who willingly submits to the birth that is according to God's judgment.

4. He calls the Babylonians pride, as being a confused understanding. For the passion of pride is composed of two ignorances. And two ignorances, coming together into union, produce a single confused understanding. For he alone is proud who is ignorant both of divine help and of human weakness. Pride, then, is the privation of divine and human knowledge. For to the negation of the true extremes there corresponds one false affirmation.

5. He calls the Cuthites vainglory. For vainglory is an ecstasy from the aim that is according to God, and a passing over to another aim than the divine one. For the vainglorious man is he who cultivates virtue for the sake of his own, and not divine, glory, and who purchases, with his own labors, the unsubstantial praises that come from man.

6. He calls Hamath men-pleasing. For the man-pleaser is concerned only with the manners that appear, and indeed with flattering speech, that he may win over, for some, sight, and for others, hearing, of those who delight in or are struck only by things that appear and are heard, and who circumscribe virtue by sense-perception alone. We say, then, that men-pleasing is the display of manners and words honored, as though for virtue, for the sake of men.

7. He calls the Avvites hypocrisy. And hypocrisy is a pretense of friendship, or hatred concealed under the appearance of friendship; or enmity worked through goodwill, or envy imitating the character of love; or a disposition fond of sin, taking in those who behold it by the display of manners according to virtue; or a life having comeliness in fiction, but not in fact; or a pretense of righteousness, kept up by the mere appearance of being so; or a manner of ethical philosophy, concealing the hidden privation of judgment that is according to virtue; or a deceit having the form of truth, which those who imitate the serpent in crookedness of manner practice.

8. God is the cause of beings, and of the good things that are among beings. He, then, who labors around virtue and knowledge, and does not extend the acknowledgment of his own incapacity in proportion to the measure of his advance in grace, has not escaped the evil of pride. And he who cultivates the good for the sake of his own glory has preferred himself to God, pierced by the nail of empty glory. And he who does or pursues virtue in order to be seen by men has set the human acceptance far above the divine, being diseased with the passion of men-pleasing. And he who, wickedly, has colored his manners for deceit with the mere solemnity of virtue, and who covers the evil disposition of his judgment with the appearing form of piety, purchases virtue at the price of hypocrisy's deceit. To other things, then, than the true cause of each of these, the intelligible Asbacaphath has led away the aim.

9. The words of God, he says, when merely spoken by utterance alone, are not heard as a sound, not having the practice of those who speak them as their voice. But if they are sounded forth by the practice of the commandments, they both keep the demons at bay, being pierced by such a sound, and, by the advance of the works of righteousness, they readily build up the divine temple of the heart in men.

10. He took Zerubbabel here to mean the practical mind, as more warlike; and Jesus, the contemplative, as a priest, and as one appointed always to make intercession with God.

11. He calls the division of soul and spirit the difference between the virtues that are from nature, whose reasons we have naturally, and those that are from the Spirit, whose grace we receive as a gift; for the Word makes a clear distinction of these, judging.

12. Marrow is the divine word, which nourishes the divine reasonings in us as it were bones, which in turn nourish the body of the virtues. And a joint is the manner of practice, according to which the union of the reasonings with the divine reasons naturally comes about, for a single fulfillment of virtue.

13. He says that the thoughts and intentions, of which the Word is judge, are the relations of the soul toward the divine reasons and the reasonings, and the causes of these relations themselves. For thought moves memory, to which relation is proper; and intention looks to an end, which characterizes cause.

14. The knowledge according to essence, he says, is God; and the mind clearly precedes all knowledge, under which it is naturally found to fall. God, then, is also above this, since he is established, infinitely beyond all mind, under which knowledge of any kind is naturally found to fall.

15. The demons who war by way of deficiency of virtue are those who teach fornication and drunkenness, love of money and envy, and such things; and those who war by way of excess are those who teach self-conceit and vainglory and pride, and such things, secretly implanting, through the things on the right, the things on the left.

16. The definition of virtue is the union, according to acknowledgment, of human weakness with divine power. He, then, who circumscribes himself by the weakness of nature has not come to the definition of virtue; and for this reason he transgresses, not yet having received the power that strengthens what is weak. But he who stubbornly sets forth his own weakness as strength against the divine power has passed beyond the definition of virtue, and for this reason, transgressing, does not recognize it, as having become, in his own estimation, exalted beyond what came before; for he thinks the transgression to be virtue. More pardonable, then, is he who has circumscribed himself by natural weakness, suffering the fall from virtue rather through negligence, than he who sets his own weakness against the divine power as strength for the doing of what is fitting, having wrought the fall rather from self-will.

57. Concerning “the Prayer of a Righteous Man Avails Much When It Is Effective” “The prayer of a righteous man avails much when it is effective.” What is meant by “effective”? I know the prayer of the righteous man to be “effective” in two ways. In the one way, when the one who prays makes his offering of this prayer to God together with works according to the commandments, and does not let his prayer lie idle and without substance, falling from the tongue as mere speech and an empty sound of voice, but rather effective and living, ensouled by the manners of the commandments — for the substance of prayer and supplication is plainly the fulfillment of it through the virtues, according to which the righteous man has his prayer strong and able to do all things, being made effective by the commandments. In the other way, when he who has need of the righteous man's prayer himself performs the works of prayer, both correcting his former life and making the righteous man's prayer strong, being empowered through his own good conduct. For there is no benefit in the prayer of the righteous man, when he who needs it takes more delight in his transgressions than in the virtues, since even great Samuel once mourned for Saul's transgression, but was not able to propitiate God, not having taken up, as a helper of his mourning, the fitting correction of the one transgressing.

Wherefore God, stopping his servant from unprofitable mourning, said to him: “How long will you mourn over Saul, when I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?” And again Jeremiah, most compassionate on behalf of the people of the Jews, who had gone mad, in error, after the demons, is not heard when he prays, not having, for the power of prayer, the turning of the godless Jews from their error. Wherefore God, turning him also away from praying in vain, says: “And you, do not pray for this people, and do not ask that they be shown mercy, and do not entreat, and do not come to me any more concerning them, for I will not hear.” For it is truly a great folly, not to say madness, to seek salvation through the prayer of the righteous while being, in disposition, one who delights in destructive things, and to ask forgiveness for those very things in which one glories, being defiled, in one's purpose, by their operation — when one ought not to let the prayer of the righteous, of which one has need, lie idle and unmoved, if one is truly hostile to wicked things, but to make it effective and strong, winged by one's own virtues and outstripping the one able to grant forgiveness of the things transgressed. Whether, then, it is made effective from the righteous man who offers the prayer, or from the one who asks that it be made, the prayer of the righteous man avails much.

For, made effective by the righteous man, it gives him boldness before the one able to grant the requests of the righteous; and, made effective by the one who asks for it, it removes him from his former wickedness, changing his disposition toward virtue.

58. Concerning “in Which You Rejoice, Though Now for a Little While, If It Is Necessary, Having Been Grieved” “In which you rejoice, though now for a little while, if it is necessary, having been grieved in various trials.” How can one who is grieved in trials rejoice in that in which he is grieved? The discourse knows grief to be of two kinds, in truth: the one constituted invisibly, according to the soul; the other visibly, according to sense-perception. And the one embraces the whole depth of the soul, tormented by the scourge of conscience; the other circumscribes the whole of senseperception, contracted by the weight of pains from its natural diffusion. And the one is the end of pleasure according to sense-perception; the other, of gladness according to the soul — or rather, the one is the outcome of the deliberate passions according to sense-perception, the other, of those according to the soul, occurring against judgment. For grief is, to speak in my own words, a disposition deprived of pleasures; and privation is an infliction of pains that comes upon pleasures; and pain is clearly a deficiency or withdrawal of a natural habit; and deficiency of a natural habit is a suffering of the power that naturally underlies the habit; and suffering of the power that naturally underlies the habit is the manner that comes about through the misuse of the natural operation; and misuse of the manner of operation is the movement of the power toward what is not natural to it and does not subsist by nature.

And just as the discourse knows grief to be twofold, as I have said, so also I know the manner of trials to be twofold: the one according to judgment, the other against judgment; and the one the producer of voluntary pleasures, the other the inflicter of involuntary pains. For the trial according to judgment clearly constitutes the voluntary pleasures that accord with free choice, while the trial against judgment plainly imposes the involuntary pains that occur against free choice; and the one is the cause of grief according to the soul, the other of grief according to sense-perception. Wherefore I think that the Lord and God, teaching his own disciples how they must pray, says to pray against the kind of trial according to judgment: “and lead us not into trial” — teaching his own disciples to pray that they not be abandoned to receive the experience of the pleasurable, voluntary trials that accord with judgment; while great James, called the Lord's brother, teaching regarding the kind of involuntary trials, says that those who contend for the truth should not shrink back: “Count it all joy, my brothers, whenever you fall into various trials” — clearly meaning the involuntary trials, against judgment, that are productive of pains. And this is clearly shown: there, the Lord adds, “but deliver us from the evil one”; here, great James: “knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

He is perfect who does battle with the voluntary trials through self-control, and endures with fortitude the involuntary trials through patience; and he is complete who accomplishes both practice with knowledge and contemplation not without practice. For since grief and pleasure are divided into that of the soul and that of sense-perception, he who secures for himself the pleasure of the soul, while receiving with patience the grief of sense-perception, becomes proven and perfect and complete: proven, on account of his testing in the things contrary according to sense-perception; perfect, one unyieldingly does battle, through self-control and patience, with the pleasure and grief according to sense-perception; and complete, as one who preserves unharmed, in the steadfastness of reason's identity, the mutually opposed habits that battle one another among the dispositions according to sense-perception — I mean, practice and contemplation held together with one another, neither being separated from the other, but practice manifesting, through its manners, the knowledge belonging to contemplation, and contemplation being no less armed with the virtue of practice through reason. Since, then, the discourse has shown grief and pleasure each to be twofold, the one constituted according to the soul, the other according to sense-perception, let us also consider, so far as we are able, their causes in a more summary fashion. Of the grief according to the soul, then, the manner is twofold, the one constituted over one's own, the other over another's transgressions; and the cause of such grief is plainly the pleasure according to sense-perception, either of the one grieving, or of those on whose account he grieves.

For, according to strict reasoning, there is scarcely any sin at all among men that does not have as the beginning of its own coming-to-be the soul's irrational relation senseperception for the sake of pleasure. And the cause of the pleasure according to the soul is plainly the grief according to sense-perception of the one who delights and rejoices in his own or another's virtues; for, according to strict reasoning, there is scarcely any virtue at all among men that does not have as the beginning of its own coming-to-be the soul's reasoned disposition of contrariety toward sense-perception. But when the soul has acquired a disposition of contrariety toward sense-perception for the sake of virtue, senseperception will necessarily be in pains, not having the soul's power that devises pleasant things joined to it according to its disposition of judgment; but, on the contrary, manfully repelling, through self-control, the uprising of its own natural pleasures, and remaining entirely unyielding through patience against the infliction of pains that are contrary to nature and involuntary, and not being led astray from the God-befitting worth and glory according to virtue by the unsubstantial pleasure, and, sparing not the flesh on account of the painful sense-perception, not falling short of laying hold of the height of the virtues. And the cause of grief according to sense-perception is the soul's complete disengagement from the things according to nature; and the pleasure according to sense-perception is plainly established by the soul's operation contrary to nature, having no other beginning of its constitution than the soul's laying aside of the things according to nature.

For mind and sense-perception have a natural operation opposed to one another, on account of the utmost difference and otherness of the things underlying them. For the one has as its underlying objects the intelligible and incorporeal substances, which it is naturally suited to apprehend according to essence, while the other has the sensible and bodily natures, which it too naturally apprehends. Since, then, it is not possible for the mind to pass over to its kindred intelligibles apart from the contemplation of the sensible things set forth as an intermediary, and since this contemplation is altogether impossible to come about without sense-perception, which is joined to the mind but is naturally akin to sensible things, then, reasonably, if the mind, in its approach, becomes fixed on the surfaces of visible things, supposing the sense-perception joined to it to be a natural operation, it has fallen away from the things intelligible according to nature, and has, so to speak, taken hold with both hands of bodies contrary to nature — being active, contrary to reason, on account of the sense-perception that has overcome it, becoming the begetter of grief according to the soul, tormented with frequent scourges of conscience, and becoming the manifest maker of pleasure according to sense-perception, fattened by the devices of the ways that preserve the flesh; but if, cutting through, at the very approach of the things seen, its relation to senseperception, it beholds the spiritual reasons of beings, pure of the forms attached to them, it has wrought the pleasure of the soul, mastered by none of the things beheld by senseperception, and has established the grief of sense-perception, deprived of all sensible things according to nature; for where reason takes the lead before sense-perception in the contemplation of visible things, the flesh is deprived of all natural pleasure, not having sense-perception left unbridled and freed from rational bonds for the service of its own pleasures.

Since, then, as I have said, the pleasure according to senseperception constitutes the grief of the soul — that is, the pain (for the two are the same as one another) — while the pleasure according to the soul is naturally productive of the grief of sense-perception — that is, the pain — reasonably, he who longs for the life according to hope, of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, kept in the heavens through the resurrection of the dead unto an incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance, has, according to the soul, exultation and inexpressible joy, continually gladdened by the hope of the good things to come, but according to the flesh and sense-perception, grief — that is, the pains that come upon it from various trials, and the sufferings attending them. For pleasure and pain accompany every virtue: pain, of the flesh, deprived of the pleasant and smoother senseperception; pleasure, of the soul, delighting purely, free of every sensible thing, in the reasons that are in the Spirit. It is fitting, then, that the mind, in the present life — for this is what “now” means to me — while grieved according to the flesh on account of the many pains of the trials brought upon it for virtue's sake, should always rejoice according to the soul and take delight because of the hope of the eternal good things, even if it has sense-perception worn down; for “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us,” says the divine apostle.

Thus, then, to speak in my own words, can a man rejoice in that in which he is grieved. For he who, on account of the pains he undergoes for virtue's sake, is grieved according to the flesh, rejoices, in that very virtue, according to the soul, as beholding, as though present, the comeliness of the things to come; for the sake of which, in the manner of great David, by the deliberate death of the flesh, he who is ever renewed according to the birth of the soul in the Spirit dies daily, having, indeed, his pleasure salutary and his grief profitable. For by grief we do not mean the unreasonable kind, which torments the soul over the loss of the passions or material things dear to the multitude — belonging to those who make their impulses toward what they ought not, and their flights from what they ought not to flee — but the reasoned grief, approved by those wise in divine things, and indicative of a present evil. For they say grief is an indication of present evil: constituted according to the soul, whenever the pleasure according to sense-perception overpowers rational discernment; and arising according to sense-perception, whenever the soul's course according to virtue is accomplished without hindrance — bringing upon senseperception pains in the same measure as it produces pleasure and joy for the soul that is brought to God through the kindred illumination that comes by virtue and knowledge.

Scholia 1. He speaks of the grief according to the soul.

2. The pain according to sense-perception he here calls grief.

3. He says that the grief according to the soul is the end of the pleasure according to sense-perception; for from this the grief of the soul is constituted. Just so, too, the end of the pleasure according to the soul is the grief according to the flesh; for the gladness of the soul becomes the grief of the flesh.

4. Successive definitions of grief, referring back to the cause according to which it is naturally wont to come about.

5. He says grief is twofold: the one concerning senseperception, constituted by the privation of bodily pleasures; the other concerning the mind, coming about by the privation of the goods of the soul. And he says trials too are twofold, the one voluntary, the other involuntary; and the voluntary are fathers of the bodily pleasure according to sense-perception, but begetters of the grief according to the soul — for sin, only when actually committed, grieves the soul. But the involuntary, which show themselves in pains against judgment, are fathers of the pleasure according to the soul, but begetters of the bodily pain according to senseperception.

6. The trial according to judgment, he says, constitutes the grief according to the soul, but clearly fashions the pleasure according to sense-perception; while the trial against judgment establishes the pleasure of the soul, but the grief of the flesh.

7. The Lord, he says, teaches us to pray against the voluntary trials, as being productive of pleasure of the flesh but of pain of the soul; but great James exhorts us to rejoice in the involuntary trials that come upon us, as taking away the pleasure of the flesh but the pain of the soul.

8. What he means by “perfect.”

9. What he means by “complete.”

10. He who has had experience of the grief and pleasure of the flesh might be called proven, as one tested in the ease and difficulty of the things concerning the flesh. And he is perfect who has wrestled down the pleasure of the flesh and its pain by the power of the Word. And he is complete who has kept the habits according to practice and contemplation unchanged by the intensity concerning the divine.

11. Since every grief is constituted according to the soul, he says, the pleasure of the flesh takes the lead. That apart from the passionate relation of the soul toward sense-perception there is, among men, altogether no sin.

13. That the soul is made glad spiritually, he says, by him who tames the flesh with voluntary pains.

14. That the voluntary alienation of the soul from the flesh is, he says, the coming-to-be of virtue.

15. He calls the noetic power of the soul “devising.” This power, when separated from relation to sense-perception, leaves the flesh destitute of forethought for pleasure according to its judgment-relation. Nor does it any longer endure to console the pain of the flesh, on account of the total leisure of its judgment's relation toward divine things.

16. The soul's laying aside of the things according to nature, he says, is naturally wont to become the beginning of pain according to sense-perception. For when the soul labors around the goods according to nature, the power that devises the manners of pleasure according to sense-perception no longer finds itself.

17. Underlying sense-perception are the sensible things; underlying the mind, the intelligible things. There is, then, great difference between the intelligible and the sensible.

18. The mind, he says, no sooner considers sense-perception a power proper to it according to nature, becoming entangled with the surfaces of sensible things, than it devises the pleasures of the flesh, being unable to pass beyond the nature of visible things, hemmed in by its passionate relation to sense-perception.

19. He who transfers, in imitation, to his own law the laws of the things that are, reckons virtuous the movement of things deprived of reason. But he who changes his own law in imitation to the laws of others is subject to passion, bringing forth the power of reason into irrationality.

20. That when reason prevails in us, he says, the flesh, enslaved to it for virtue, is necessarily tormented.

21. The flesh belongs to the soul, but not the soul to the flesh. For the lesser, he says, belongs to the greater, but not the greater to the lesser. Since, then, the law of sin — which is the pleasure according to sense-perception, on account of which the death of the flesh was condemned through pains, devised for the abolition of the law of sin — became entangled with the flesh through the transgression, he who has recognized that death entered for the abolition of sin's law always has his soul rejoicing, beholding, through various pains, the law of sin being removed from his own flesh, for the reception of the blessed life to come in the Spirit — which it is otherwise impossible to obtain, unless the law of sin, in the present life, according to the judgment's relation to it, has first been emptied out of the flesh as out of a vessel.

22. He calls the joy over virtue that benefits the soul “salutary pleasure”; and the pain of the flesh undergone for virtue's sake, “profitable grief.”

23. He who has melted into passions and material things makes his impulses toward what he ought not.

24. He who does not welcome the occasions that produce the privation of passions and material things makes his flights from what he ought not to flee.

59. Concerning the Salvation Which the Prophets Sought “Concerning the salvation which the prophets, who prophesied of the grace that would come to us, sought out and searched, searching into what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating, testifying beforehand the sufferings unto Christ and the glories after these.” If the blessed prophets themselves left it for us in writing to seek out and search what they were sounded by the Holy Spirit to say, how could they themselves, being sounded by the Holy Spirit and writing down what was revealed to them, still be seeking out or searching? Human nature has, essentially, the powers of seeking and searching for divine things laid down in it by the Creator, together with its very entrance into being; but the power of the all-holy Spirit, coming upon it by grace, produces the revelations of divine things. But since, in the beginning, the evil one nailed these powers, through sin, to the nature of visible things, and there was none who understood or sought after God, all who partook of the nature having their noetic and rational power circumscribed by the surface of sensible things, and possessing no conception at all of things above sense-perception, reasonably the grace of the all-holy Spirit, unnailing from material things those who had not become subject to the deception by deliberate purpose, restored the power that had been nailed; which, receiving back pure through grace, they first sought and searched, and thus sought out and searched, plainly through that same grace of the Spirit.

For it is not right to say that grace alone, by itself, worked in the saints the knowledge of the mysteries apart from the natural powers receptive of knowledge, since we would then be introducing the holy prophets as not understanding the power of the illuminations given to them by the all-holy Spirit — and how then would the saying be true, that the wise man will understand the things from his own mouth? Nor again, that, apart from the grace of the all-holy Spirit, by natural power alone, in seeking, they received the true knowledge of the things that are, since then the visitation of the Spirit would be shown superfluous to the saints, contributing nothing at all toward the manifestation of the truth — and how then would the saying be true, that every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of lights, and that to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable? “For to one,” it says, “is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing,” and so on; to which it adds: “but all these the one and the same Spirit works, distributing to each individually as it wills” — and it wills, plainly, what is profitable to each, for the assurance of the dispassionate desire of those who seek divine things.

For he who seeks divine things dispassionately will altogether receive what he seeks; but he who asks with some passion, as one seeking wrongly, will fail to obtain what he seeks; for it says, “you ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly.” Neither, then, does the grace of the all-holy Spirit work wisdom in the saints apart from the mind that receives it, nor knowledge apart from the receptive power of reason, nor faith apart from the assurance, according to mind and reason, of the things to come and, for the time being, hidden from all, nor gifts of healing apart from natural love of mankind, nor any of the other gifts apart from the receptive habit and power of each; nor again, on the other hand, will a man acquire any one of the things enumerated by his own natural power apart from the divine power that supplies these things. And all the saints show this clearly, seeking, after the revelations of divine things, the reasons of what has been revealed. For Abraham, having received the promise of the inheritance of the land shown to him, when God said to him, “I am the God who brought you out of the land of the Chaldeans, that I might give you this land to inherit it,” was not content with having received what he had gone out from the land of the Chaldeans seeking, but searched, longing to learn also the manner of the inheritance, saying to God, “Master, Lord, by what shall I know that I shall inherit it?”

And Moses, having received the power of signs and wonders, sought also to be taught the manners and the reasons by which the confirmation of the given signs was to be demonstrated; and “he set among them,” says great David, “the words of his signs and his wonders, in the land of Ham.” And again David himself, crying out to God concerning himself, says, “Uncover my eyes, and I will consider the wonders of your law”; and, “your law is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths.” And Daniel, the great man of desires for divine visions, for whose sake he spent three weeks of days without food, seeking the reasons, hears an angel saying to an angel, “Make that one understand the vision.” And Zechariah the great prophet, throughout his whole prophecy, in each vision brings in the angel speaking in him, both showing the visions and teaching the reasons of the visions, saying: “And the angel who spoke in me showed me”; and, “the angel who spoke in me said to me”; and, “I said to the angel who spoke in me, ‘Lord, what are these?’” And it is clear from this that all the saints both received revelations from the Spirit and sought that the reasons of the things revealed be revealed; and that the grace of the Spirit in no way abolishes the power of nature, but rather, that power having been rendered inactive by the use of manners contrary to nature, made it active again, leading it, by the use of the manners according to nature, to the understanding of divine things.

For the Holy Spirit seeks and searches in us the knowledge of the things that are, but does not seek what is sought for itself, since it is God and beyond all knowledge, but for us, who have need of knowledge — just as, indeed, the Word also becomes flesh not for himself, but for us, accomplishing the mystery through the incarnation. For just as the Word did not work, in a God-befitting manner, the things according to the nature of the flesh apart from a flesh noetically ensouled, so also the Holy Spirit does not work the knowledges of the mysteries in the saints apart from the natural power that seeks and searches for knowledge. Whether, then, the saints sought or sought out, or searched or searched out, they had the grace of the Spirit moving their noetic and rational power to seek and search for the salvation of souls, and apart from the Spirit they beheld nothing spiritual at all, since the human mind is not naturally able, without the divine light, to apprehend divine and intelligible things. For just as it is not possible for the eye to apprehend sensible things without sunlight, so without spiritual light the human mind could never receive spiritual contemplation; for the one illumines sense-perception according to nature for the apprehension of bodies, but the other irradiates the mind for the contemplation and understanding of things above senseperception.

And the salvation of souls is, properly speaking, the end of faith; and the end of faith is the true revelation of what was believed; and the true revelation of what was believed is the ineffable interpenetration of the one believed in, according to the proportion of the faith in each; and the interpenetration of the one believed in is the return, at the end, of the believers to the beginning; and the return to their own beginning, at the end, of the believers is the fulfillment of desire; and the fulfillment of desire is the ever-moving rest around the object of desire, of those who desire it; and the ever-moving rest is the unceasing and unabated enjoyment of the object of desire; and the unceasing and unabated enjoyment is the participation in the divine things above nature; and participation in the divine things above nature is the likening of the participants to the thing participated in; and the likening of the participants to the thing participated in is the identity, admitted through likeness according to actual operation, of the participants with the very thing participated in; and the admitted identity, according to actual operation, of the participants through likeness with the thing participated in is deification, for those deemed worthy of deification; and deification is, in brief compass, the encompassing and limit of all times and ages, and of the things in time and age; and the encompassing and limit of times and ages, and of all things in them, is the unbroken unity, in those being saved, of the genuine and proper beginning with the genuine and proper end; and the unbroken unity of the genuine beginning and end in those being saved is the surpassing exodus, beyond the things naturally measured essentially by beginning and end, of the things according to nature; and the exodus of things circumscribed by beginning and end is the immediate and infinite, and infinitely-continued, all-powerful and superpowerful operation of God in those deemed worthy of this exodus, understood as the better thing; and the immediate and infinite, and infinitely-continued, all-powerful and super-powerful operation of God is the ineffable and superineffable pleasure and joy of those operated upon, according to the unspeakable and beyond-understanding union, of which it is altogether impossible to find, in the nature of beings, a mind, a reason, an understanding, or an expression.

For nature does not have the reasons of the things above nature, just as it does not have the laws of the things against nature; and by “above nature” I mean the divine and inconceivable pleasure, which God is naturally wont to work by nature, according to grace, being united to the worthy; and by “against nature,” the ineffable pain constituted by the privation of this, which God is wont to work, by nature, contrary to grace, being united to the unworthy. For according to the underlying quality of the disposition of each, God, being united to all as he himself knows, grants to each the perception in the way that each has been formed by himself for the reception of the one who will, without fail, be united to all at the end of the ages. And salvation of souls, I think, is perhaps what Peter, the foremost of the apostles, meant, as the end of faith, by the participation in the things above nature; concerning which salvation, plainly through the Holy Spirit, the prophets clearly sought out and searched into what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating, testifying beforehand the sufferings unto Christ and the glories after these. The Holy Spirit, then, guides to understanding those who seek in the Spirit the salvation of souls and search out its spiritual reasons and manners of this salvation, not allowing the power by which they are naturally wont to seek divine things to remain in them unmoved and inactive.

First, teaching them to seek the mortification of free choice with respect to sin, or of sin with respect to free choice, and the revival of free choice with respect to virtue, or of virtue with respect to free choice; and to search out the manners of the mortification of free choice with respect to sin, or of sin with respect to free choice, and likewise the reasons of the resurrection of free choice with respect to virtue, or of virtue with respect to free choice — through which manners and reasons the mortification, with respect to sin, of free choice, or with respect to free choice, of sin, and the resurrection, with respect to virtue, of free choice, or of free choice with respect to virtue, is naturally wont to come about, clearly having, in this age (which the discourse called “time”), the sufferings unto Christ — that is, on Christ's behalf — concerning nature, which the Spirit testified beforehand to them, that they might become conformed to the death of Christ in the mortification of sin, and to his resurrection in the raising up of virtue. For he who is to be saved must, in truth, not only mortify sin by free choice, but also mortify free choice itself by sin, and not only raise up free choice by virtue, but also raise up virtue itself by free choice, that free choice, wholly divided from sin dead and dead itself, may not perceive it, and, alive, may perceive, according to indissoluble union, the whole of virtue alive.

These things, then, perhaps, the saints, first seeking and searching through the Holy Spirit, set right the practical philosophy; after which, being made pure and free of every defilement, they moved, by the same Spirit, the noetic eye of the soul toward the end of beings, seeking, after the resurrection according to free choice, also the incorruption of nature, and searching out the manners and reasons of the God-befitting immortality according to it. For they no longer sought the resurrection of free choice, which they already had received from the Spirit in the practical life, nor did they search out its accomplished manners, through which grace; but they had already they sought the incorruption of nature, which they did not yet have, and searched out the manners and reasons of the deification according to it, toward which they hastened, desiring the glory according to it in Christ, that, just as they had suffered with him in this age (which, as I said, the discourse called “time”), so they might also be glorified together in the age to come, becoming heirs of God above nature, according to grace, and joint-heirs with Christ, who by the economy, through the power of his enmanment, has made the whole of nature his own. For Christ, being by nature God and man, is inherited by us as God, above nature, by grace, through ineffable participation, and, having made us his own for our sake, in the form that is according to us, as man, he inherits himself with us according to the inconceivable condescension; whom the saints, mystically beholding beforehand in the Spirit, were taught that the sufferings on his behalf, for virtue's sake, in the present, must lead the way to the glory that will be manifested in Christ, in the future, for virtue's sake; “for searching,” it says, “into what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating, testifying beforehand the sufferings unto Christ and the glories after these.”

They both sought out and searched, then, not only the incorruption of nature and the reasons of the deification according to it, but also the time in which the trial through sufferings on its behalf would come about, making manifest the disposition of those who truly desire it and the purpose of those who only suppose, in hypocrisy, that they love it; and the other time, or age, in which it will appear present in actual operation, transforming all proportionately, according as each is receptive of it, toward the divine likeness — which glory, perhaps, the discourse foretold as following upon the labors undergone for virtue's sake. This, then, one might say in answer to him who asks why Scripture here spoke not of “seeking” and “searching,” but of “seeking out” and “searching out,” putting forward this plain sense. But I know also another account, which I heard from a certain wise man. For he, treating the matter of the beginning and end of both “seeking” and “seeking out” in a more mystical way, said that “seeking” is naturally ordered toward the beginning, but “seeking out” toward the end; for one does not naturally seek out the beginning, just as one does not naturally seek the end, but one seeks the beginning, and seeks out the end. For since, he said, man, at the very moment of his being, through disobedience, put his own beginning behind him, he was no longer able to seek what had come to be behind him; and since the beginning naturally circumscribes the movement of the things that have come from it, it was reasonably also called the end, into which, as the cause of the movement of the things moved, the course receives its limit.

Seeking out, then, his own end, man arrives at the beginning, found, by nature, in the end; leaving off the seeking of which, he pursued the seeking-out of it, as being, by nature, the end. For it was not possible to escape its circumscription, which surrounds him on every side and limits his own movement. It was not possible, then, to seek the beginning, as I said, which had come to be behind; but to seek out the end, which stands before, that he might come to know, through the end, the beginning that had been left behind, since he did not know the end from the beginning. And this, perhaps, wise Solomon means when, as a mystagogue, he says: “What has come to be, that is what shall come to be; and what has been done, that is what shall be done” — as though clearly showing the beginning from the end. For no longer, after the transgression, is the end shown from the beginning, but the beginning from the end; nor does one seek the reasons of the beginning, but seeks out those that lead the things in motion toward the end. But if, because “seeking” is said in many places of Scripture — as, “seek peace and pursue it,” and, “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” — one does not consider this a firm conception, it has, from itself, a sensible confirmation of what has been said.

For the discourse, having said “seek peace and pursue it,” enjoined, in the end, the pursuit of the beginning, and commanded that the kingdom, being a beginning, be sought out through righteousness, as the end of the kingdom. For the kingdom of God is prior to all righteousness, or rather, to speak more properly, is righteousness itself, toward which, as an end, every movement of the earnest man hastens. For if righteousness is the distribution to each of what is equal according to worth, and kingdom is lawful governance, then righteousness is the same as kingdom, through which, as an end, it is easy for those who wish to journey, kingdom being, as it were, the beginning; for righteousness is kingdom put into operation, and kingdom is righteousness confirmed through works. For to govern lawfully what exists is to distribute to each what is according to worth, and to distribute to each what is according to worth is the lawful governance of what exists. The difference in wording, then, has in no way disturbed the evenness of Holy Scripture's meaning, at least among the wise who understand divine things. But if one should wish to understand “seeking” and “searching,” and “seeking out” and “searching out,” in another way, he will find “seeking” and “seeking out” moving around the mind, but “searching” and “searching out” around reason. For the mind naturally seeks, and reason naturally searches.

For seeking is, to define it summarily, the simple movement of the mind, with desire, toward some object of knowledge; discernment of and reason, searching with some is the simple understanding, concerning some object of knowledge; and seeking-out is the mind's cognitive movement, according to knowledge, toward some object of knowledge, with a certain, that is, such-andsuch a desire; and searching-out is the discernment of reason, in actual operation, concerning some object of knowledge, with a certain, that is, such-and-such understanding — which definitions, transferred to divine things, we say: seeking is the mind's first and simple movement, with desire, toward its own cause; and searching is the first and simple discernment of reason, with some understanding, concerning its own cause; and seeking-out, again, is the mind's cognitive movement, according to knowledge, toward its own cause, with a certain fervent desire; and searching-out is the discernment of reason, in the actual operation of the virtues, concerning its own cause, with a certain understanding, prudent and wise. The holy prophets, then, having sought out and searched concerning the salvation of souls, had the mind's movement toward God fervent and boiling with knowledge and understanding, and the discernment of reason, in actual operation, prudent and wise concerning divine things; whom those who imitate seek out, with knowledge and understanding, the salvation of souls, and pursue, searching out with prudence and wisdom, the discernment in divine works.

Scholia 1. Neither, he says, does divine grace work illuminations of knowledge when there is no receptive power according to nature to receive the illumination; nor does the receptive power, apart from the grace that supplies it, work the illumination of knowledge.

2. He who asks without passion receives the grace of being able to accomplish the virtues in practice; and he who seeks dispassionately finds, by natural contemplation, the truth in beings; and he who dispassionately knocks at the door of knowledge will enter, without hindrance, into the hidden grace of mystical theology.

3. The mind, he says, is the instrument of wisdom; reason, of knowledge; the assurance concerning both, of the faith constituted from both; and of the gift of healings, natural love of mankind. For every divine gift has, in us, a suitable and connatural instrument, as it were a power or disposition, receptive of it. For instance, he who has made his mind pure of every sensible fantasy receives wisdom; and he who has made reason master of the innate passions, I mean anger and desire, receives knowledge; and he who has unshaken assurance, in mind and reason, concerning the divine, receives faith, which can do all things; and he who has set right the natural love of mankind, after the complete removal of self-love, receives gifts of healings.

4. Sensible light, clearly.

5. Spiritual light, clearly.

6. Namely, those moved toward God.

7. The reason of being, he says, brings God with it as a natural beginning; and the reason of well-being brings God as an end, toward which, by judgment, everyone who longs to fashion his desire toward God presses on; whose unity is the reason of well-being, coming by grace, and bringing with it God, who is above every beginning and end by nature, making those who have a beginning and end by nature beginningless and endless by grace.

8. The change according to grace in quality, toward deification, is an exodus from the things naturally circumscribed by beginning and end.

9. A mystical intimation demonstrative of the judgment that is to come.

10. One first seeks, he says, to mortify sin by free choice, and free choice by sin; and thus searches how and in what manner these must be mortified toward one another. And again, after their complete mortification toward one another, he seeks the life of free choice according to virtue, and of virtue according to free choice; and thus searches how, and in what manner, the life within one another of these must be brought about. Seeking, then, taken as in a definition, is desire for something desirable; and searching is the effective manner of desire toward the thing desired.

11. He who has mortified free choice to sin, he says, has become conformed to the likeness of Christ's death; and he who has raised it up to righteousness has become conformed also to his resurrection.

12. Sin and free choice, he says, mortified to one another, have a double insensibility toward one another; and righteousness and free choice, having life in one another, have a double perception.

13. Another contemplation on the same matters.

14. The mind, he says, moved by desire alone unknowingly toward the cause of beings, only seeks; but reason, journeying variously through the true reasons in beings, searches.

60. Concerning the Lamb Without Blemish and Without “As of a lamb without blemish and without spot, Christ, foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but manifested in the last times for our sake.” Foreknown by whom? The discourse of Scripture named the mystery of Christ “Christ,” and the great apostle bears clear witness, saying: “the mystery hidden from ages and from generations has now been manifested” — meaning, plainly, that the mystery according to Christ is the same as Christ. This is manifestly the ineffable and inconceivable union, according to hypostasis, of divinity and humanity, bringing humanity into identity with divinity in every way by the reckoning of hypostasis, and making of both one composite hypostasis, introducing no diminishment whatsoever of their essential difference according to nature — so that their hypostasis becomes one, as I have said, while the natural difference remains unaffected, according to which, even after the union, the natural quantity of the things united is preserved undiminished. For where no passion at all of change or alteration followed upon the things united in the union, the reason according to essence of each of the things united has remained undefiled; and of those whose reason of essence has remained undefiled even after the union, their natures have remained, in every way, unharmed, neither denying anything at all of its own by reason of the union.

For it was fitting for the maker of all things, becoming by nature, according to economy, what he was not, to preserve himself unchanged, both as what he was by nature and as what he became by nature according to economy. For change is not naturally beheld in God, in whom no movement at all is conceived, about which changing occurs in things that move. This is the great and hidden mystery. This is the blessed end for the sake of which all things were constituted. This is the divine purpose foreconceived from the beginning of beings, which, defining, we call the foreconceived end, for the sake of which all things exist, but which itself exists for the sake of nothing; looking to this end, God brought the essences of beings into existence. This is properly the limit of providence and of the things provided for, according to which the recapitulation, into God, of the things made by him comes about. This is the mystery that circumscribes all the ages, and manifests the great counsel of God, super-infinitely and infinitely-infinitely pre-existing the ages, of which the very Word of God according to essence became a messenger, becoming man and making manifest, if it be lawful to say, the innermost depth of the Father's goodness, showing in himself the end for the sake of which the things made clearly received their beginning of being.

For on account of Christ, that is, the mystery according to Christ, all the ages and the things within the ages have received, in Christ, the beginning of their being and their end. For a union was preconceived of limit and limitlessness, of measure and immeasurability, of bound and infinity, of creator and creation, of rest and motion — which union has come to be manifested in Christ in the last times, giving fulfillment to God's foreknowledge through itself, that the things naturally in motion might come to rest around that which is wholly unmoved according to essence, having gone forth entirely from their motion toward themselves and toward one another, and might receive, by experience, the operative knowledge of that in which they were deemed worthy to rest, unchangeable and ever the same, affording them the enjoyment of that which is known. For the discourse knows a twofold knowledge of divine things: the one relative, as lying only in word and concepts, and not having, through experience, the sensation of what is known according to actual operation, by which we are governed in the present life; the other, properly true, afforded, in experience alone, according to actual operation, without word or concepts, the whole sensation of the thing known through participation by grace, by which, in the lot to come, we receive the deification above nature, worked without cessation.

And the relative knowledge, as lying in word and concepts, they say is productive of the desire for the knowledge that comes by participation according to actual operation, while the sensation afforded, according to actual operation, by participation, through experience, of the thing known, is productive of the removal of the knowledge lying in word and concepts. For the wise say it is impossible for the word concerning God to coexist with the experience of God, or the notion concerning him with the sensation of him. And by “word concerning God” I mean the analogy, drawn from beings, of the gnostic contemplation concerning him; and by “sensation,” the experience, in participation, of the goods above nature; and by “notion,” the simple and unified knowledge concerning him drawn from beings. And this, perhaps, is recognized also in every other case, if the experience of a given thing brings to rest the word concerning it, and the sensation of a given thing renders idle the notion concerning it. And by “experience” I mean the operative knowledge that comes after every word; and by “sensation,” the participation itself in the thing known, manifested after every notion. And this, perhaps, the great apostle teaches mystically when he says: “whether prophecies, they will cease; whether knowledge, it will be abolished” — clearly speaking of the knowledge that lies in word and concepts. This mystery was foreknown before all the ages by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit alone: by the one, according to good pleasure; by the other, according to selfaccomplishment; by the other, according to cooperation.

For the knowledge of Father and Son and Holy Spirit is one, since their essence and power are also one. For the Father was not ignorant of the incarnation of the Son, nor was the Holy Spirit; since, in the whole Son who self-accomplished the mystery of our salvation through the incarnation, the whole Father according to essence was present, not being incarnate, but taking good pleasure in the incarnation of the Son, and the whole Holy Spirit according to essence was present in the whole Son, not being incarnate, but cooperating with the Son in the ineffable incarnation on our behalf. Whether, then, one should say “Christ” or “the mystery of Christ,” the foreknowledge of this belongs, according to essence, to the Holy Trinity alone — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And let no one be at a loss how Christ, being one of the Holy Trinity, is foreknown by it, knowing that Christ was foreknown not as God, but as man — that is, his incarnation according to economy for man's sake. For that which ever is, from him who ever is, above cause and reason, is never foreknown; for foreknowledge belongs to things that have a beginning of being through a cause. Christ, then, was foreknown, not as what he was by nature for his own sake, but as what he appeared according to economy, having become, later, for our sake.

For it was truly fitting for the one who is by nature the maker of the essence of beings to become also the self-accomplisher of the deification, by grace, of the things made, that the giver of well-being might appear also the granter of ever-wellbeing. Since, then, none of the beings knows at all, either itself or another, what it is according to essence, reasonably none of the beings has, by nature, foreknowledge of any of the things that shall come to be, except God, who is above beings, who knows even himself, whatever he is according to essence, and who foreknew, before it came to be, the existence of all things made by him, and who is destined, by grace, to bestow generously upon the things that are the knowledge of themselves and of one another, whatever they are according to essence, and to manifest the reasons of their coming-to-be, preexisting in him uniformly. For to say that some were foreknown before the foundation of the world by Christ, who was later manifested to them in the last times, as though they themselves existed before the foundation of the world together with the foreknown Christ, is a notion alien to the truth, as introducing, in effect, the essence of rational beings as coeternal with God, which we reject. For it is not at all possible either to have come to be together with Christ as he is, or, again, ever to cease from him wholly, since in him is naturally found the consummation of the ages and the rest of the things in motion, according to which nothing of beings at all shall be subject to change.

And the discourse of Scripture called Christ “without blemish” and “without spot,” as being, in soul and body, by nature entirely alien to the corruption that comes by sin; for his soul had no blemish of vice, nor did his body have a spot of sin. Scholia 1. Limit is the bound of things enclosed, the term of things finite by nature; and measure is the circumscription of quantity in general, and the end of ages and temporal natures. And bound is the circumscription of things finite by beginning and end according to coming-to-be. And creation is the subsistence of things brought forth from what is not, by production. Of these, he says, a union according to hypostasis was preconceived, by providence, toward him from whom these things have come to be, that both the being of beings might be preserved according to essence as it naturally is, and that their subsisting — that is, however they receive being according to divine grace — might, by union with God, be transformed for all into unchangeableness.

2. He says knowledge is twofold: the one lying in word and divine concepts, not having, in kind, the sensation of the things thought of; the other, according to actual operation, having, apart from word and concepts, the enjoyment of the true things according to their kind alone.

3. Since, he says, reason is naturally wont to indicate the thing known through knowledge, it moves the desire of those moved through it, toward the enjoyment of the thing signified.

4. Before all experience, he says, is the word of knowledge, since enjoyment naturally comes to prevail only through experience.

61. Concerning “That the Time Has Come for Judgment to Begin at the House of God” “That the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God. And if it begins first with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the Gospel of God? And if the righteous is scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?” What is meant by “the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God,” and by “if the righteous is scarcely saved”? God, who created the nature of men, did not create together with it, in sense-perception, either pleasure or pain, but rather fashioned in it a certain power according to mind for pleasure, according to which it would be able ineffably to enjoy him. But this power — I mean the natural desire of the mind toward God — the first man, as soon as he came to be, gave to sense-perception, and, in this very first movement, had pleasure worked contrary to nature by means of senseperception toward sensible things; and to this pleasure, the one who cares providentially for our salvation fastened, as a kind of avenging power, pain, according to which the law of death was, with wisdom, rooted in the nature of the body, restraining the madness of the mind's desire, moving contrary to nature toward sensible things.

Whence, on account of the irrational pleasure that had entered into nature, pain according to reason entered in return, through many sufferings, among which and from which is death, effecting the removal of the pleasure contrary to nature, but not indeed its complete abolition, according to which the grace of divine pleasure according to mind is naturally wont to be shown forth. For every pain, having as the cause of its own coming-to-be pleasure preceding it in actual operation, is plainly a debt naturally paid, on account of the cause, by all who have partaken of the nature. For pain follows by nature, in all things, upon pleasure contrary to nature, in whom the law of pleasure led the way, without cause, in coming-to-be; and I call causeless the pleasure that comes from the transgression, as not having come to be, plainly, as the successor of a preceding pain. Since, then, after the transgression, all men had pleasure naturally leading the way in their own coming-to-be, and there was none at all who was by nature free from the passionate coming-to-be that is by pleasure, but all, as paying a natural debt, endured pains and, upon these, death, and the manner of freedom was altogether impassable for those tyrannized by unjust pleasure and naturally held fast by just pains and the most just death upon them — it was necessary, for the abolition of the most unjust pleasure and the most just pains that come through it, by which man was pitiably torn apart in suffering, having the beginning of his coming-to-be from corruption, that of pleasure, and ending the term of his life in corruption, that of death — it was necessary that pain and death be devised for the correction of the fallen nature, unjust and, at the same time, causeless (causeless, as having in no way had preceding pleasure in its coming-to-be; unjust, as being the successor of no passionate life at all), that, taking its stand between unjust pleasure and most just pain and death, pain and most unjust death might entirely abolish the most unjust beginning that comes from pleasure and the most just end of nature that comes, on account of it, through death, and that the race of men might again become free of pleasure and pain, nature recovering its original good estate, defiled by none of the marks inherent in things subject

to coming-to-be and corruption. For this reason, the Word of God, being by nature perfect God, becomes perfect man, constituted of an intellectual soul and a passible body by nature, like us in every way except sin alone, having in no way at all had the pleasure from disobedience preceding his birth in time from a woman, but willingly accepting, out of love for mankind, the pain that comes through it, being the end of nature, that, suffering unjustly, he might abolish the beginning of coming-to-be that comes from unjust pleasure and tyrannizes nature — the Lord's death not having this beginning as a debt paid on its behalf, as with other men, but rather set forth against it — and might blot out the just end of nature that comes through death, which end did not have, as the cause of its being, the unlawful pleasure on account of which it had entered in and by which it was justly punished. For it was truly necessary, necessary that the Lord, being by nature wise and just and powerful, as wise, not be ignorant of the manner of healing; as just, not make the salvation of man, held fast in judgment by sin, a tyrannical thing; and as allpowerful, not be too weak for the fulfillment of the healing. He made manifest, then, the reason of wisdom in the manner of healing, becoming man without change or any alteration whatsoever; and he showed the equity of justice in the greatness of the condescension, submitting willingly to the condemnation of nature in its passibility, and making that very thing a weapon for the abolition of sin and of the death that comes through it — that is, of pleasure and of the pain that comes through it — in which the dominion of sin and death consisted, and the tyranny of sin according to pleasure and the mastery, through it, of death according to pain (for in the passible element of nature plainly consists the dominion of pleasure and of pain; for, wishing to escape the painful sensation of pain, we flee to pleasure, attempting to console the nature that is oppressed by the affliction of pain; but hastening, through pleasure, to blunt the movements of pain, we all the more confirm, against ourselves, the bond of that very pleasure, unable to have pleasure released from pain and its labors).

And he made manifest the strength of his surpassing power by establishing in nature a coming-to-be unchangeable by the very things opposite to what he suffered; for by giving to nature dispassion through passion, and rest through labors, and eternal life through death, he restored it again, renewing, by his own privations according to the flesh, the habits of nature, and, through his own incarnation, granting to nature the grace above nature, deification. God, then, truly became man, and gave to nature another beginning of a second birth, which, through pain, ends in a life of pleasure to come. For just as Adam, the forefather, transgressing the divine commandment, introduced into nature, alongside the first, another beginning of coming-tobe, constituted from pleasure but ending in death through pain, and, having devised, upon the serpent's counsel, a pleasure that was not the successor of a preceding pain, but rather ending in pain, held all who were born of him in the flesh, according to him, bound together with him, justly, on account of the unjust beginning that comes from pleasure, toward the end that comes, through pain, by death — so also the Lord, having become man and fashioned for nature another beginning of a second birth from the Holy Spirit, and having accepted the most just death that came through Adam's pain, which death, having become in him, plainly, most unjust, as not having the most unjust pleasure of the forefather that comes from disobedience as the beginning of his own coming-to-be — made the abolition of both extremes, I mean the beginning and the end, of the human coming-to-be that is according to Adam, as these were not, in the first place, from God, and made all those mystically regenerated of him by the Spirit free from the liability that lay upon them, no longer having the pleasure of coming-to-be that comes from Adam, but having, working in them, only the pain that comes on account of Adam — not death as a debt paid for sin, but by economy, on account of the natural circumstance, against sin — which death, whenever it does not have as its begetting mother the pleasure of which it is naturally wont to be the avenger, plainly becomes the father of eternal life.

For just as, for Adam, the life according to pleasure became the mother of death and corruption, so also the death of the Lord that comes on account of Adam, being free of the pleasure that comes from Adam, becomes the begetter of eternal life. Since, then, as I think, the discourse has well distinguished how the coming-to-be from Adam that is according to pleasure, tyrannizing nature, sent it forth as fodder to the death that comes through it, and how, again, the birth of the Lord according to the flesh, out of love for mankind, effected the abolition of both — I mean the pleasure that comes from Adam and the death that comes on account of Adam — utterly abolishing, together with Adam's sin, Adam's penalty (for it was not possible for the coming-to-be that in no way touched the beginning, through which death came to subsist at the end, to be seized by corruption through death at the end) — since, then, the discourse has distinguished these from one another, as I said, so long as only the marks of Adam, both according to the beginning and the end — I mean those concerning coming-to-be and corruption — held tyrannical sway over nature, it was not the time for judgment to begin toward the perfect condemnation of sin; but when the Word of God appeared to us through flesh and became perfect man except sin alone, having only, in the flesh, willingly assumed the penalty of Adam by nature, and condemned sin in the flesh, the righteous one suffering unaccused on behalf of the unjust, and reversed the use of death, making it a condemnation of sin, but not of nature — it became the time for judgment to begin, by the reversal of death toward the condemnation of sin.

Something of this sort I mean: sin, having at first enticed Adam, persuaded him to come to a transgression of the divine commandment, in accordance with which, having established pleasure and having, through pleasure, fastened itself in him to the very foundation of nature, it condemned the whole of nature to death, thrusting toward departure, through death, the nature of the things that had come to be, by means of man. For this was also devised by the sower of sin and father of wickedness, the evil devil, who, through pride, exiled himself from the divine glory, and who, through envy — both toward us and toward God — exiled Adam from paradise, that he might blot out the works of God and dissolve the things constituted for coming-to-be; for the most foul one envies not only us the glory that comes from virtue toward God, but also God the all-hymned power that comes toward us for salvation. Death, then, on account of the transgression, held sway over the whole of nature, having as the basis of its dominion the pleasure that, from disobedience, began the whole comingto-be that is according to nature, on account of which death itself was condemned upon nature. But the Lord, having become man and not having received the unjust pleasure preceding his birth according to the flesh, on account of which the just condemnation through death was brought out against nature, but willingly, by nature, accepting death in the passible element of nature — suffering, plainly — reversed the use of death, which was no longer, in him, plainly, a condemnation of nature, but of sin; for it was not possible for death to exist as a condemnation of nature in one who had not had his coming-to-be from pleasure, but rather as the abolition of the forefather's sin, on account of which the fear of death held sway over the whole of nature.

For if, in Adam, death was the condemnation of nature, having pleasure as the beginning of its own coming-to-be, reasonably death in Christ became the condemnation of sin, nature having again received, in Christ, a coming-to-be pure of pleasure, that, just as sin, through pleasure, condemned nature to corruption through death in Adam, and it became the time for nature to be condemned by death on account of sin, so also, in Christ, nature according to righteousness might condemn sin through death, and it might become the time for sin to be condemned by death on account of righteousness — nature in Christ having wholly divested itself of the coming-to-be from pleasure, according to which death, as a debt, necessarily followed all as a condemnation — so that the same death, in Adam, is the condemnation of nature on account of sin, but in Christ is the condemnation of sin on account of righteousness. For he who suffers on account of sin justly endures death as a condemnation of nature, but he who does not suffer on account of sin, granting, rather, grace to nature by economy, willingly accepts, for the condemnation of sin, the death that comes on account of sin, for its abolition. Since, then, just as, on account of Adam, who established, through disobedience, the law of coming-to-be according to pleasure, and on account of whom death, as a condemnation of nature, was brought about, all who received being from Adam necessarily, and even unwillingly, had bound, by natural power, to their coming-to-be, the death condemned upon nature, and it was the time for nature to be condemned by sin, so long as the law of coming-to-be according to pleasure held sway over nature — so also, on account of Christ, who entirely removed from nature the law of comingto-be according to pleasure, and who willingly accepted the use of the death condemned upon nature on his account, solely for the condemnation of sin, all who from Christ have been willingly regenerated by the Spirit through the washing of regeneration, and who have laid aside, through grace, the former coming-to-be of Adam that is according to pleasure, and who have kept, through the law of the evangelical commandments, the grace of sinlessness in baptism and the power of mystical adoption in the Spirit undiminished and undefiled — reasonably have the use of death working effectively for the

condemnation of sin, having taken the time to condemn sin in the flesh: generically, according to nature, by grace, on account of the great mystery of the incarnation, from the very time of the Word's incarnation; but specifically, according to actual operation, by grace, from the time each one, through baptism, received the grace of adoption — according to which, when made effective, by judgment, in the commandments, having only the birth in the Spirit, they endure, through many sufferings, the use of death brought upon them for the condemnation of sin. For no longer, on account of sin, does he who has been baptized and has kept his baptism secured by the commandments pay death as a debt for sin, but he accepts its use for the condemnation of sin, which mystically sends him on to the divine and unending life — if indeed, for the sake of truth and righteousness, through many sufferings, the saints have nobly fulfilled the course of the present life, having freed nature in themselves from the condemnation of death that comes on account of sin, and having made the weapon of death, which was for the abolition of nature, into a weapon for the abolition of sin, following the leader of their salvation, Jesus. For if sin had death as a weapon for the abolition of nature in those who committed it after the manner of Adam, much more shall nature have death as a weapon for the abolition of sin in those who work out righteousness through faith in Christ.

Since, then, the mystery of the incarnation has come to be, and God incarnate has entirely removed, in those born in the Spirit after his likeness, the coming-to-be according to the law of pleasure of nature, it has become, as I said, the time for judgment to begin at the house of God — that is, for sin to be condemned, received the beginning of its condemnation through sufferings from the faithful who have recognized the truth and who, through baptism, have laid aside the coming-to-be according to pleasure. For these he called “the house of God,” as the most divine apostle Paul bears witness, saying: “but Christ, as a son, over his house, whose house we are.” And Peter himself, the chief of the apostles, sets this forth in the words that follow, saying: “and if it begins first with us” — that is, plainly, the judgment — “what will be the end of those who do not obey the Gospel of God?” — as if he were saying: if we, who have been deemed worthy, by grace, through the Spirit, to become the house of God, ought to display so great endurance of sufferings for righteousness, unto the condemnation of sin, and, being good, are eagerly to bear away, like evildoers, an insulting death, what will be the end of those who do not obey the Gospel of God — that is, what will be the end, or rather the judgment, of those who not only have had the birth according to Adam's pleasure, which held nature captive, living and active in soul and body, according to judgment and according to nature, zealously maintained even to the end, but who have not even accepted God the Father, exhorting through his incarnate Son, nor even that mediator himself who intercedes on behalf of the Father, the Son, who, for our reconciliation to the Father, willingly delivered himself, by the will of the Father, to death on our behalf, that, for his own sake, he might so glorify us, brightening us with the beauty of his own divinity, in the same measure as he himself, for our sake, accepted to be dishonored by our sufferings?

For this, I think, is perhaps the Gospel of God: the embassy and exhortation of God to men, through his incarnate Son, granting, as a reward for reconciliation to the Father, deification without beginning, to those who obey him. Wherefore, indignant at the disobedient in what follows, the great apostle says: “and if the righteous is scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?” — calling “righteous,” as is fitting, the faithful man who keeps the grace given in baptism and has preserved, through many sufferings, the adoption through the Spirit undestroyed; and “salvation,” the full grace of deification that will be given by God to the worthy, which even the man most steadfast, above all others, in all divine things will scarcely attain; and “ungodly” and “sinner,” him who is estranged from evangelical grace — “ungodly” on account of unbelief toward Christ, “sinner” on account of the coming-to-be, living in him according to the corruption of the passions of the old life. Or perhaps the discourse called “ungodly” him who is entirely deprived of the knowledge of Christ alone, and “sinner” the faithful man, but, in my judgment, a transgressor of the evangelical commandments that preserve pure the garment of incorruption given through holy baptism — of whom the position (of the ungodly and the sinner, I mean) has been somewhat apprehended by those who attend to mystical knowledge.

For “where” clearly denotes a position not lacking in local circumscription — over against which, if the position of the righteous is distinguished, the righteous will not at all have “where” with respect to position, having received, as the promise says, God himself as his position, which is above “where” by grace. For God is not “where,” but is, without relation, beyond every “where,” in which will be the settling of all who are being saved, according to what is written: “Be to me a God, a protector, and a place of refuge, to save me” — of which every one who shall in no way participate in the power that pertains to well-being, according to relation, will be like a limb of a body entirely deprived of the life-giving operation according to the soul. Or again, since God shall be the place of all who are saved, uncircumscribed and unextended and infinite, becoming all things to all according to the analogy of righteousness — or rather, giving himself to each according to the measure of the sufferings undergone here, with knowledge, righteousness' sake, just as the soul, in the members of the body, manifests itself operating according to the underlying power of each member, and, through itself, holds the members together for being, sustained together for life — where will the ungodly and the sinner appear, deprived of this grace?

For where will he appear who is unable to receive the operative presence of God according to well-being, having undergone the falling-away from the divine life that is above age and time and place? Whether, then, according to the first sense, taken affirmatively, “where will the ungodly and the sinner appear” means he will not at all be free of a circumscribed life, not having a life that escapes all circumscription and is beyond every place; or whether, according to the second sense, taken negatively, he will appear “nowhere,” not having God, who sustains life for well-being, and who is to become, for the worthy, a place for all — how shall he exist, not having God as his place, according to the abiding and settling in God that pertains to well-being? And, simply put, if the righteous is saved with much difficulty, what shall become of him, or what shall he suffer, who has made no account at all of piety and virtue in the present life?

1. Pleasure and pain, he says, were not created together with the nature of the flesh; but the transgression devised the one for the corruption of free choice, and condemned the other for the dissolution of nature, that pleasure might work a voluntary death of the soul from sin, and pain, through dissolution, might effect the specific departure of the flesh.

2. That, by providence, for the punishment of the pleasure that is according to free choice, God gave to nature the pain that is against free choice, and, upon it, death.

3. The devising of voluntary pains and the infliction of involuntary ones, he says, remove pleasure, bringing to rest its movement in actual operation, but do not abolish the power inherent in nature, like a law, for its coming-to-be. For philosophy according to virtue is naturally wont to work dispassion of judgment, but not of nature; according to which, that is, judgment's dispassion, the grace of divine pleasure according to mind supervenes.

4. He calls “unjust pleasure” the law of sin that, through the transgression, became entangled with nature.

5. He says the labor and death of the Lord ought to be shown as the mean for the abolition of the two extremes, as having a birth free of pleasure and a death pure of a passionate life, with respect to his own divine flesh assumed for our sake — a coming-to-be, birth, and death which he willingly endured for our sake, that, appearing as the mean, he might remove our coming-to-be from pleasure, and the death that comes from a passionate life, and might transfer us to another life, free of temporal beginning and end, which not nature but grace fashions.

6. That it was entirely impossible, he says, for nature, subjected both to the pleasure according to free choice and the pain against free choice, to be recalled again to the life it had from the beginning, unless the Creator became man, willingly accepting the pain devised for the punishment of the pleasure according to the free choice of nature, not having preceding it the coming-to-be from pleasure, that he might free nature from the birth that comes by condemnation, accepting a birth that had no beginning from pleasure.

7. The end of the Lord, which comes through death.

8. Namely, in the passible element of nature.

9. How we increase, all the more, the natural penalty of pain, by hastening to console it through pleasure.

10. He says the wisdom of God is shown in his becoming, in truth, man by nature; and his justice, in his having assumed, like us, the passible element of nature in his coming-to-be; and his power, in his having fashioned, through sufferings and death, eternal life for nature, and unchangeable dispassion.

11. That, having removed from those born in him by grace, through the Spirit, the pleasure from the law of sin, so far as concerns their birth according to the flesh, the Lord permits them to accept death, which was formerly unto the condemnation of nature, unto the condemnation of sin.

12. He says human nature, after the transgression, had, as the beginning of its own coming-to-be, conception according to pleasure from seed, and, as its end, death according to pain through corruption. But the Lord, not having this as the beginning of his birth according to the flesh, was, by nature, also not liable to its end, that is, death.

13. That the devil, expecting the nature of the things that had come to be to receive a departure into non-being, strove to show man a transgressor of the divine commandment.

14. That the devil, envying both God and us, by deceitfully persuading man that he was envied by God, prepared him to transgress the commandment: envying God, that his allhymned power, deifying man, might not become manifest in actual operation; and envying man, plainly, that he might not become, in kind, a partaker of the divine glory according to virtue.

15. That the true incarnation of God is, he says, a generic condemnation of the law of nature that prevailed through the transgression; and that the specific condemnation of this law is the willed regeneration, according to Christ, of each individual.

16. He called “unbegotten deification” the substantial illumination of divinity present in kind, which has no coming-to-be, but an inconceivable manifestation in the worthy.

17. How the “where” must be understood.

18. He says that he who shall not receive the pure divine life, in which there is no reckoning of circumscription at all, will not be free of pain, having his existence continually circumscribed — or rather, held together — by that which is begotten, but not by that which is unbegotten and free of every local position and temporal motion, and having no apprehension, and, for this reason, no circumscription either. For the divine life, being also inconceivable, though it gives enjoyment of itself to those who shall participate in it by grace, does not give apprehension of itself; for it ever remains, even in the participation of those who enjoy it, incomprehensible, since, being unbegotten, it has, by nature, infinity.

19. God, he says, by a single, infinitely-powerful will of his goodness, will hold together all — angels and men, both good and evil. But not all of these shall equally participate in God, who, without relation, passes through all, but each according to his own proportion. Those who have kept their judgment, by nature, equally law-abiding throughout, and have made it, according to actual operation, receptive of the reasons of nature, throughout the whole reckoning of ever-well-being, on account of the well-disposedness of judgment toward the divine will, shall participate wholly in the goodness according to the divine life shining upon them, as in angels or as in men. But those who have made their judgment, by nature, unequal and law-breaking throughout, and have shown it, according to actual operation, dispersive of the reasons of nature, throughout the whole reckoning of wellbeing, on account of the opposition of judgment to the divine will, shall fall wholly from the goodness, according to the appropriation of judgment manifested in them toward illbeing — according to which there shall be, for such, a separation from God, not having, according to the purpose of judgment, the reason of well-being quickened by the operations of good things, according to which the divine life is naturally wont to shine forth. The measure of each one's judgment, then, at the judgment, shall be the reason of nature, examining its movement toward ill-being or wellbeing, according to which participation or non-participation in the divine life naturally comes about.

For according to being, God, being present, shall hold together all, always; but according to ever-well-being, only the holy angels and men, in their own particular manner; leaving ever-ill-being to mingle with those who are not such, as the fruit of their own judgment.

62. Concerning the Sickle Which Zacharias the Prophet What does the holy prophet Zacharias mean when he says: “And I lifted up my eyes and saw, and behold, a flying sickle, twenty cubits in length and ten cubits in breadth. And he said to me, ‘This is the curse that goes out over the face of the whole earth.’” And a little after: “‘And I will bring it forth,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and it shall enter into the house of the thief and into the house of him who swears falsely by my name, and it shall lodge in the midst of his house and consume it and its timbers and its stones.’” What is the sickle, and the measure of its length and breadth? And why flying? And who is the thief and the perjurer, and what is his house? And what are the timbers, and what are the stones? God, who said, “I have multiplied visions, and by the hands of the prophets I have been likened,” set forth beforehand, in symbols variously adorned, the types of his wondrous coming, through the flesh, for the salvation of men, showing forth one thing by means of one prophet and another by another, as each was capable of receiving. Accordingly, also granting to the great prophet Zacharias initiation into his own mysteries, and, as it were, bringing before his eyes, for his understanding, the power of his coming presence through the flesh, he wisely fashioned for him, in contemplation, a sickle, teaching that he himself, who had fashioned himself beforehand, in manifold ways, in types in the visions of the prophets, was about to submit willingly, in truth, to our formation by nature, that he might show present in the actual things the truth foretold through the types.

The sickle, then, is our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son and Word of God, who, for his own sake, according to nature, is and ever remains simple, but who, for my sake, by the assumption of a flesh noetically ensouled, as he himself knows, became composite according to hypostasis, admitting neither, by the utmost union with the flesh according to hypostasis, confusion into one nature, nor, by the utmost difference from the flesh according to nature, division into a duality of Sons — and by “utmost,” I mean, of the union according to hypostasis, that which is entirely undivided, and, of the difference according to nature, that which is entirely unconfused and unaltered — because the mystery of the divine incarnation neither entails, along with the otherness according to nature of the things of which it consists, the difference according to hypostasis, nor, by the union according to hypostasis, the confusion into one nature; the one, that the mystery of the Trinity might not receive an addition; the other, that nothing might be, by nature, akin and consubstantial with the divinity. For a coming-together of two natures has occurred toward one hypostasis, but not toward one nature, that both the one, according to hypostasis, might be shown accomplished, according to the union, from the natures that have come together with one another, and that the difference of the things united, in their natural property, toward the indivisible union, might be believed to remain outside all change and confusion.

For if the coming-together of the natures had occurred toward the generation of one nature, the mystery of our salvation would be entirely unknowable to us, having no way or means to learn the condescension of God toward us, whether the flesh was changed into the divine nature by the union, or the divine nature was transformed into the essence of the flesh, or both, mixed together by some blending, toward the generation of another nature besides themselves, with neither of the natures of which it consists preserving its reason unharmed. For whether the flesh was changed into the nature of divinity, or the nature of divinity was changed toward flesh, or the manner of union toward one nature drove the natures together toward the generation of some other nature besides these, I do not recognize the mystery of the divine incarnation, finding, after the union, no natural difference of flesh and divinity within the mystery. But if there exists, in Christ, after the union, a natural difference of flesh and divinity — for divinity and flesh are never the same according to essence — then the union of the things that came together did not occur toward the generation of one nature, but toward one hypostasis, according to which we find in Christ no difference of any manner whatsoever; for the Word is the same as his own flesh according to hypostasis.

For in whatever respect Christ has a difference, he cannot be one in every way; but in whatever respect he admits absolutely no difference of any kind, in every way the “one” is, in his case, always both truly a fact and rightly predicated of him. Since, then, every difference, as difference, always has as its underlying subject some quantity of the things that differ — for without quantity there would never be difference, and quantity does not admit indication without number — we would rightly take up number, with respect to Christ after the union, solely for the indication of the difference of the natures of which he consists, signifying that the natures are preserved unchanged after the union, but not dividing, by number, the union of the things that have come together into one hypostasis. And we make this clear by our very thinking, in that we introduce no number whatsoever with respect to the reckoning of the hypostasis; for where no difference at all is beheld, no quantity is introduced along with it; and that which has no quantity introduced along with it does not admit the number that is indicative of difference either. We confess Christ, then, to be composite according to hypostasis, in respect of which identity and complete singularity are beheld, but not according to nature, in respect of which difference is beheld, and the not-being-entirely-singular — that we may both preserve the sameness and singularity of the hypostasis, and confess the difference of the natures that have come together into one hypostasis.

This is he whom the wondrous Zacharias saw flying in the shape of a sickle; for the Word of God is the one who reaps down all wickedness and ignorance. “Its length,” he says, “is twenty cubits, and its breadth ten cubits.” As God, then, and Word, Christ is naturally wont to be broadened, by the manner of providence, in a progressive way, into ten cubits — I mean, the active and divine commandments; for the reason of God is broadened into a decad of commandments, through which, having legislated both the operation of what is fitting and the abstinence from what is not fitting, he has embraced the whole movement of the free judgment of those provided for. But as the same, having become flesh and perfectly enmanned, he is lengthened into twenty cubits, on account of the composition of the elements for the constitution of the body upon the senses; for the senses are five, and the elements happen to be four, from which, by their union, the nature of men has been constituted; and five, multiplied by four, makes clearly the number twenty. And Scripture called the manner of the economy “length,” on account both of its height and of the mystery of the divine enmanment being above all nature. “Flying,” both because it has nothing earthly, and because it is swift and quickly moving, and, to speak in sum, because the reason is compact and circumscribes the whole salvation of men within the heart alone of those who are being saved, held together by faith and a good conscience alone.

For nothing is quicker than believing, and nothing easier than confessing with the mouth the grace of what has been believed; for the one shows the living love, of him who has believed, toward the one who made him; the other, the Godloving disposition toward one's neighbor. And love and genuine disposition — that is, faith and a good conscience — are plainly the work of the unseen movement of the heart, which needs no outward matter at all for its coming-to-be; for “the Lord,” it says, “will make a short word upon the earth.” This is the curse which God the Father sent forth over the face of the whole earth, the truly curse of the true curse. For since the disobedience of Adam became a curse through the transgression, not permitting the commandment to be increased into the bearing of the fruits of righteousness, that creation might receive the blessing, the natural blessing of God the Father becomes, in Adam, a curse — becoming a curse of the curse that is according to sin, for the abolition of the injustice, grown into fruit-bearing, of the disobedience — that creation might receive the removal of the growth according to sin. For a curse and sin were made, for my sake, according to the divine Apostle, by him who looses my curse and takes away the sin of the world.

For I had two curses: the one, being the fruit of my own free choice — that is, sin, through which the fruitfulness of the soul's virtue fell to the ground — the other, the death of nature, justly condemned on account of my free choice, driving nature by necessity, and against its will, to that place where the movement of my own free choice had been sown by judgment. God, then, who fashioned the coming-to-be of nature, having willingly submitted to the condemned curse of nature — I mean, death — slaughtered and killed, by his own death upon the cross, the curse of sin living in me according to free choice, and the curse of my God became the curse and death of my sin, not permitting the transgression to come to the bearing of the fruits of injustice, but rather the blessing and unending life of the divine righteousness that is according to the commandment. This sickle — that is, our Lord and God Jesus Christ — consumes the thief and the perjurer, and dissolves his house, and casts down his timbers and his stones. The thief and perjurer, in truth, is the wicked and lying devil. He is a thief, as one who plundered man, by deceit and craft, of paradise, though man was the work and creature of God and a precious possession, and who brought him to this place of affliction, and defiled the image of divine glory with the many stains of transgressions, seeking, in his wicked desire for goods not his own, to make his own possession the wealth of another — not that he might keep it, but that he might steal and slaughter and destroy.

And he is a perjurer, as a liar and deceiver; for having promised Adam that he would give him the glory of divinity, he cast him down to the dishonor and outrage of irrational cattle — or rather, to speak more properly, made him more dishonorable than every beast, being, in the outrage of his irrationality, so much more than the beasts as what is contrary to nature is more abominable than what is according to nature — and, having exiled him from immortality, defiled him with the covering of corruption. And the house of this thief and perjurer is the present world of corruption and successive confusion, which he perhaps appropriated for himself by plundering man, in which he was permitted also to play the robber, for reasons known to God who permitted him to rob, until the cyclical course of time should be completed. In this world, lodging as in a house, through the ineffable incarnation, the Word of God both bound the devil and rendered him powerless, and utterly consumed the timbers and stones of this world, destroying and utterly abolishing the carved images and altars and the platforms of statues, through which the father of deception, the devil, as though some many-formed and strange god, thought he was worshiped by those he had deceived, making the folly of those men, as though it were his own glory, material for himself, being far more foolish than those deceived.

For what is more foolish than seeming to be, when the thing in truth by nature is not? In this house of the thief and perjurer, the devil — I mean this present world — the Lover of Mankind, the Redeemer of our souls and bodies, lodging through the flesh, entirely overthrew it, according to the manner of the former deception, and again restored the whole, according to the reason of true knowledge, and, simply put, having driven off the robber from the goods of another, he himself, as Master, has again taken possession, through virtue, of his own things, magnificently building his holy Church throughout the whole world under heaven. Or perhaps the devil is a thief, as one who, by deceit and craft, still to this day contrives to divert to himself the desire of each; and a perjurer and a liar, as one who both deceives men and, by the hope of better things, persuades the more fickle to fall away from the goods presently in hand, and who, through what seem to be pleasant things, secretly fashions pains for those who are persuaded by him. And the house of this thief and liar is the sin-loving disposition of each heart, which has, as it were stones, the hardness and insensibility of the heart with respect to good things, and, as it were timbers, the kindling thoughts of the impure inflammation of the Or perhaps Scripture calls “timbers,” figuratively, desire — for the tree of desire is first recorded as having corrupted the movement contrary to nature, and, on account of this, the soul's power is receptive of every passion, as woody matter is receptive of fire — and calls “stones,” perhaps, the hardness and insensibility and unyieldingness to the reason of virtue of the irascible movements; all of which, together with the house in which they happen to be — that is, the disposition — the Word of God, coming, both dispels and consumes, first casting out of it, through faith, the devil who once, through deception, dwelt in it, binding, with unbreakable fetters, him who supposed himself strong, and plundering his house, and driving out of the heart the inflammatory habit of the passions together with the hardness with respect to good things.

Or perhaps he calls “stones” the sluggishness of the soul with respect to good things, as being insensible of the virtues, and “timbers” the readiness with respect to evils, all of which the Word, driving them out of the heart of the faithful, does not cease to make peace, reconciling, in one body, the virtues of both those far off and those near — dissolving, that is, the dividing wall of the fence, I mean sin, and annulling the handwriting of judgment concerning evil, and subjecting the mind of the flesh to the law of the Spirit. For he called, I think, “those far off,” the movements according to sense-perception, being far by nature and altogether alien to the law of God, and “those near,” the noetic operations of the soul, as not being far, by kinship, from the Word — which he joins together, after the dissolution of the fleshly law, according to the manner of virtue, binding them to one another by the Spirit. For he called, I think, the “dividing wall” the law of the body according to nature, and the “fence” the relation, in the law of the flesh, toward the passions — that is, sin; for only the relation, of dishonor, toward the passions of the law of nature — that is, of the passible part of nature — becomes a fence, walling off the body from the soul, and not permitting the passage, through the mediation of the soul, of the reason of the virtues toward the flesh in practice.

But the Word, coming, and wrestling down the law of nature — that is, the passible element of nature — abolished the relation to the passions contrary to nature within it. This is my Lord and my God, Christ Jesus, whom the prophet saw as a sickle, twenty cubits in length — for my God and Savior is inclusive of all the sensory operation upon sensible things — and ten cubits in breadth — for my God and Savior is definitive of every rational movement; for they say numbering belongs, by nature, only to the rational faculty, and the encompassing and end of every number is the decad. He is, then, the Word of God, inclusive not only of sensory powers, but also of noetic operations, as being the maker not only of bodies but also of incorporeal things. And he was called a sickle in the vision not only as reaping the wickedness of the rational nature, which he himself did not sow, and gathering the nature which he himself did not scatter, but also as cutting and bringing the saved into the divine storehouses, and further, as fittingly conjoined, by the operations of the virtues, to the practical powers of the soul. But if it seems to anyone that the discourse of Scripture makes mention of two persons and of so many houses, whose overthrow the sickle effects, saying, “and it shall enter into the house of the thief and into the house of him who swears falsely by my name,” let us understand that, taking, instead of two persons, the two generic and all-inclusive operations of the devil's deception, he signified, that is, the manners of the operations; and the two generic and definitive dispositions of humanity concerning deception, the discourse called two houses.

For example, whenever, by deceit and craft, robbing the innate knowledge of nature concerning God, the evil one appropriates it to himself, he is a thief, attempting to transfer the reverence due to God to himself, plainly diverting the mind's contemplation of the soul away from the spiritual reasons within the things that have come to be, and circumscribing the noetic power solely by the outward appearance of sensible surfaces; but whenever, beginning from the natural movements, he sophistically drags down the soul's practical power toward things contrary to nature, and, through what are supposed to be good things, persuasively fastens its desire, through pleasure, upon worse things, he swears falsely by the name of the Lord, leading the persuaded soul, contrary to its promise, to other things. And he is a thief in that he robs, for himself, the knowledge of nature, having, as it were a house, the erring understanding of those deceived; and he is a perjurer in that he persuades the practical faculty of the soul to labor in vain over things contrary to nature, having, as it were a house, the sin-loving disposition of judgment of those who tolerate him. The devil is a thief, then, as I said, in that he perverts the knowledge of nature, and a perjurer, in that he diverts its virtuous operation from practice; and the house of the thief is the disposition equipped with the erring reason of knowledge, and the house of the perjurer is the disposition tinged with the pollution of dishonorable passions — which the saving Word of God, entering in out of love for mankind, makes a dwelling-place of God through the Spirit, working knowledge of the truth instead of deception and ignorance, and virtue and righteousness instead of vice and wickedness, through which he is naturally wont to work his own manifestation in the worthy.

Accordingly, the discourse has called, instead of persons, the manners of the various evil-working of the one and the same wicked devil, and, instead of houses, the dispositions of those affected, congenial to the diabolical manners. And again, the thief is he who, for the deception of his hearers, practices the divine words in pretense, not having recognized their power through works, making the mere utterance a trade for glory, and hunting, by speech through the tongue, the praise of being reckoned righteous by those who hear him. And, simply put, he who has a life discordant with his speech, and a disposition of soul opposed to his knowledge, is a thief, being shown up unfavorably by the goods of another; to whom the discourse will rightly say: “But to the sinner God said, ‘Why do you recount my statutes and take my covenant upon your mouth?’” And again, he is a thief who, by manners and habits that appear, conceals the hidden evil-working of the soul, covering the inward disposition with a pretense of decency, and, just as the former steals the understanding of his hearers by the utterance of words of knowledge, so this one steals the sense-perception of those who observe him by the manner of hypocrisy of manners; to whom likewise it is said: “Be ashamed, you who are clothed in garments not your own,” and, “The Lord will uncover their form in that day.”

For each day, in the hidden workshop of the heart, I seem to hear God saying these things to me, as one plainly condemned on both counts. And he is a perjurer — that is, swearing falsely by the name of the Lord — who promises God a life according to virtue, and yet cultivates things alien to the promise of his own profession, transgressing, through the idleness of the commandments, the covenant of his confession of a solemn life, such as I am. And to speak concisely, he who has chosen to live according to God, and yet is not perfectly mortified to the present life, is a liar and a perjurer, having sworn to God — that is, having promised the blameless course in the divine contests — and not having fulfilled it, and for this reason in no way praised. For “everyone who swears by him,” it says, “shall be praised” — that is, everyone who has promised God the God-inspired life, and who, through the truth of the works of righteousness, fulfills the oaths of his fair promise. But if he who fulfills his own promises altogether has praise, as one who swears by God and speaks truly, it is clear that he who has become a transgressor of his own agreements shall have blame and dishonor, as one who has sworn by God and lied.

Submitting to these, as though to certain houses — the hearts, that is, the disposition of each — the sickle, that is, the Word of God the Father, being, in essence, knowledge and virtue, consumes them entirely, effacing, by the change toward the better, the former condition of each heart, and bringing each to the participation in the good he lacks, and making the thief of knowledge an unashamed worker of virtue, and the thief of the appearing arrangement of manners a knower and cultivator of the disposition hidden according to the soul, and making the perjurer a true keeper of his own promises, confirming his own promises by the works of the commandments. Behold the mystery! Behold the strangling of the Physitheletes! Behold the death of Italus and of Nilus!

2. We do not speak, he says, of a difference of hypostases in Christ, since the Trinity has remained the Trinity, and, God the Word being incarnate, no addition of a person came to the Holy Trinity on account of the incarnation. But we speak of a difference of natures, that we may not proclaim the flesh consubstantial with the Word according to nature.

3. That he who does not speak of a difference of natures, he says, has no way to confirm the confession that the Word became flesh without change, not knowing that, in the union, what assumed and what was assumed are preserved according to nature in the one hypostasis of the one God and How the Lord is a sickle, and what its breadth is understood to be in cubits.

5. How he again, as a sickle, has a length of twenty cubits.

6. Why the prophet saw the sickle flying.

7. Faith establishes, through hope, the perfect love toward God; a good conscience establishes love toward one's neighbor, through the keeping of the commandments. For a good conscience has no accuser for a commandment transgressed; and these alone the heart is naturally wont to have believed of those who long for true salvation.

8. How the Lord is a curse, and of what he is a curse.

9. Since, he says, man had his desire moved toward the earth, he was driven, even unwilling, toward it by death.

10. What the thief is, and the perjurer.

11. Theft is an evil thing: the capture of nature by deceit. Sacrifice is that which the devil sacrifices those he steals: the slaughter of free choice with respect to the God-inspired life, and the complete abolition of memory that accords with it. Destruction is the ignorance that befalls those sacrificed, coming about by the privation of the knowledge of God. For this is why he steals, seizing the reasoning faculty: that he might work the privation of the life according to virtue and knowledge.

12. What the house of the thief and of the perjurer is.

13. As the cause for which the devil is permitted to play the robber, one might conjecturally say: that his wickedness might become known to men by experience, that he might be the more hated, being shown up; and that the dispositions might be shown to all men, by one another, through testing, that each might bring forward a witness connatural to himself — his own conscience. For God has no need of learning by experience, having, essentially, the knowledge of all things even before their coming-to-be.

14. What the timbers are, and what the stones.

15. That the overthrow of the house, that is, of the world, in respect of deception, came about through the incarnation.

16. An exposition of the same matters, according to another contemplation.

17. Another contemplation on the same matters.

18. He has set forth this contemplation as fitting for those subject to passion. For he who is diseased with complete immobility toward the good is altogether easily moved toward evil. For it is impossible to be immobile with respect to both.

19. The movement according to sense-perception, joined to the operation according to mind, produces virtue with knowledge.

20. Why he called him a sickle.

21. That the Word is mingled with the practical powers of the soul, just as the sickle with the hand of the reaper, for the abolition of the passions and the harvest of the virtues.

22. The devil, he says, is a thief, as a worker of ignorance; and a perjurer, as a worker of wickedness — having, as it were houses, one who is ignorant, the erring understanding, and for the wicked, the sin-loving judgment.

23. A fine contemplation, and very fitting for us, who, out of vainglory, counterfeit the renown of virtue and of knowledge.

24. He is a thief, he says, also who feigns a deceitful fashioning of virtuous manners, and covers, with the outward form that appears, the hidden wickedness of his judgment.

25. He who feigns knowledge only in the utterance of words, he says, steals, for his own glory, the understanding of his hearers; and he who feigns virtue in manners steals, for his own glory, the sight of those who observe him; and both, stealing by deceit, lead astray — the one, the understanding of the souls of his hearers; the other, the bodily senseperception of those who observe him.

26. What the perjurer is.

63. Concerning the Lampstand Which the Same Prophet It is again written in the same prophet: “And he said to me, ‘What do you see?’ And I said, ‘I have seen, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, and its lamp above it, and seven lamps upon it, and seven oil-feeders for the lamps that are upon it; and two olive trees above it, one on the right of its lamp and one on the left.’” What is the lampstand? And why gold? And what is the lamp above it? Who are the seven lamps, and who are the seven oil-feeders of the seven lamps, and who are the two olive trees? And why on the right and on the left of the lamp? The Word, foreshadowing to the prophet, from afar, symbolically, the many-lighted and surpassingly radiant magnificence of the holy Church, thus adorned this vision for him, teaching, I think, the power of the new mystery pertaining to it. The lampstand, then, is the all-glorious Church of God, all of gold, pure and undefiled, unstained, unadulterated, undiminished, and receptive of the true light. For they say pure gold neither blackens, being tarnished by any rust, nor is corrupted, nor again is diminished, being entirely melted in fire, moreover naturally invigorating and renewing to the visual power of those who gaze intently upon it. Such, in the very reality of the facts, has the all-glorious Church of God shown herself to be, after the purest nature of gold: unadulterated, as having nothing at all mixed and alien to the mystery of theology that is according to the faith; pure, as radiant and glorious with the brightness of the virtues; unstained, as defiled by no filth of the passions; undefiled, as untouched by all wicked spirits, and not blackened, like a rust of wickedness, even by material circumstances; and undiminished and unlessened, as not consumed even by the furnace of the periodic persecutions, nor tormented by the successive uprisings of the heresies, enduring no diminishment whatsoever, in reason or in life — that is, in faith and conduct — because of the weight of the trials.

Wherefore she is invigorating, by grace, to every understanding of those who piously consider her; for she calls the impious, offering them the light of true knowledge, and preserves those who love to behold her mysteries, keeping the pupil of their understanding unaffected and unwavering, and calls back those who have somewhat given way to some tossing, and, by the word of consolation, renews their afflicted understanding. Thus, then, according to one approach, we have understood, through the things said, the lampstand seen by the prophet. And the lamp above it is the paternal and true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world — our Lord Jesus Christ, both becoming and being called “lamp” on account of the assumption of the flesh from us and akin to us — that is, the substantial Wisdom and Word of God the Father according to nature, who is preached in the Church of God according to the pious faith, and who is exalted and made manifest among the nations by the life according to virtue through the keeping of the commandments, and shines upon all who are in the house — I mean this world — even as God the Word himself somewhere says: “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house” — meaning, plainly, himself as the lamp, as being by nature God and having become flesh by economy, being, as it were, light according to essence, held, without circumscription, through the medium of the soul, as fire through a wick, by the shell of the flesh.

Which, I think, great David also understood when he called the Lord a lamp, as being the Word of God the Father and a natural law, saying: “Your law is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths”; for my Savior and God is the dispeller of the darkness of ignorance and wickedness; wherefore he was also called “lamp” by Scripture — for “lamp” (lychnos) is named from “loosing the night” (lyein to nychos); and those who are diligent about such words call darkness “nychos” — and he alone, as a lamp, having dissolved the gloom of ignorance and the darkness of wickedness, has become for all the way of salvation, bringing, through virtue and knowledge, to the Father those willing to journey toward him, as the way of righteousness, through the divine commandments. And the lampstand is the holy Church, upon which the Word of God, shining in his proclamation, illumines all who happen to be in this world, as in a house, filling the understandings of all with the light of the divine knowledge of truth through the rays of truth. And he called “bushel,” in this symbolic fashioning, the synagogue of the Jews — that is, the bodily worship of the Law — which has the light of the true knowledge in thoughts entirely unrecognizable, on account of the thickness of the symbols in the letter; under which bushel the Word does not wish to be held at all, wishing rather to be set upon the height and greatness of the beauty of the Church — for if the Word were held entirely by the letter of the Law, as by a bushel, he would deprive of eternal light all those who strive to strip off sense-perception, as deceptive and receptive only of deceit and of the corruption of kindred bodies, giving them no spiritual contemplation — but on the lampstand, I mean the Church, that is, the rational worship in the Spirit, that he might illumine all, teaching those in the whole world to live and conduct themselves by reason alone, and to have such care for their bodies as, through much forethought, to cut off entirely the soul's relation to them, and to give the soul no fantasy of matter at all — this being their work and diligence — the sense-perception that, in the beginning, thrust reason aside and received, snake-like,

the irrationality of pleasure, having already been quenched by reason; against which death was justly ordained, that it might cease to afford the devil an entrance to the soul; for sense-perception, being one in kind, is made fivefold in its species, persuading, through the operative power apprehending by each species, the erring soul to cherish the connatural sensible thing instead of God. Wherefore he who wisely follows reason willingly condemns himself to the death of the flesh before the enforced and involuntary death, making the complete separation of judgment from sense-perception. He, then, who abides only by the letter of Scripture has only sense-perception mastering his nature, according to which alone the soul's relation to the flesh is naturally wont to be shown; for the letter, not understood spiritually, has only the sense-perception that circumscribes its utterance, and does not permit the power of the things written to pass over to the mind. But if the letter has kinship only with sense-perception, then everyone who, after the manner of the Jews, receives the letter only according to history lives according to the flesh, dying daily, by judgment, the death of sin on account of living sense-perception, unable to put to death, in the Spirit, the deeds of the body, that he might live the blessed life in the Spirit; “for if you live according to the flesh,” says the divine Apostle, “you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Let us not, then, lighting the divine lamp — that is, the illuminating word of knowledge — through contemplation and practice, put it under the bushel, lest we be condemned as circumscribing, by the letter, the incomprehensible power of wisdom, but rather on the lampstand, I mean the holy Church, kindling for all, in the height of true contemplation, the light of the divine doctrines. This holy Church, perhaps, the Law also, typically proclaiming beforehand, commanded to become a lampstand all of gold, both solid and hammered: the one, as having nothing hollow and lacking the power of reason; the other, as entirely scraped clean of all material excrescences and having nothing earthly — which the great Zacharias, wonderfully beholding with a certain variation, says, in addition to the lamp: “and seven lamps upon it.” The seven lamps here must be understood by us in another manner, different from that in which the discourse has already taken up and explained the lamp in the Gospel; for not always and not all things that have the same expression will in every case be understood in one and the same manner, but each of the things said must be understood with respect to the underlying force — that is, of the passage of Holy Scripture — if we are to aim rightly at the purpose of the things written. I suspect, then, that Holy Scripture here calls “lamps” the operations of the Holy Spirit — that is, the gifts of the Spirit, which the Word is naturally wont to bestow upon the Church, as head of the whole body; “for the Spirit of God shall rest upon him,” it says, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and piety; the spirit of the fear of God shall fill him.”

But if Christ is the head of the Church according to the reckoning of his humanity, then to the Church has been given, by him who has the Spirit by nature, the operations of the Spirit, as God; for the Word, having become man for my sake, works out for me the whole of salvation, giving back to me, through what is mine, what belongs to him by nature, on account of whom he also became man, and, as receiving on my account, makes the manifestation of his own things, reckoning my grace, as loving mankind, his own, and ascribing to me his own natural power of right actions, on account of whom he is now said to receive what belongs him nature beginninglessly and above reason. For the Holy Spirit, just as he exists by nature according to essence from God the Father, so also is he, by nature, according to essence, of the Son, proceeding ineffably from the Father, essentially, through the Son, and bestows his own operations, like lamps, upon the lampstand, that is, the Church; for, in the manner of a lamp dispelling darkness, every operation of the Spirit is naturally wont to drive out and expel from the Church the manifold coming-to-be of sin. For wisdom effects the abolition of folly; understanding, the removal of ignorance of what is proper; counsel, the abrogation of indecision; might, the routing of weakness; knowledge, the dispelling of ignorance; piety, the driving away of impiety and of the vileness of works that accompanies it; and fear drives away callousness by the contempt it dispels — for not only the commands but also the operations belong to the Spirit, and are light.

And the lamps are again, in turn, all those who, through the Church, kindle the light of salvation for the whole of life, and who are the degrees that fill up her good order. For instance, the wise teacher of divine and lofty doctrines and mysteries is a lamp, uncovering what was hitherto not manifest to the many; he who, with understanding and knowledge, hearkens to the wisdom spoken among the perfect is another lamp, as an understanding hearer who preserves in himself the light of the truth of what is spoken; and he who, with counsel, fittingly discerns the times for the matters at hand and devises the manners suited to his words, and does not allow them to fall together unsuitably and be confused with one another, this man too, as a wondrous counselor, is shown to be another lamp; and he who bears the onslaughts of involuntary trials with unshaken resolve, after the pattern of blessed Job and the noble martyrs, is a strong lamp, himself too preserving unquenched the light of salvation, kept in the manner of endurance through courage, having the Lord as his strength and song; and he who knows the devices of the evil one, and is not ignorant of the entanglements of the unseen wars, this man too, shining with the light of knowledge, appears as another lamp, fittingly echoing the great Apostle: “for we are not ignorant of his devices”; and he who pursues the life according to the commandment, piously flourishing in the virtues, is another lamp, as one who, being pious, confirms his piety piously by his manners; and he who, by the expectation of the judgment, has walled off, through self-control, the entrance to the soul from the passions, has become another lamp, cleansing, through diligence and the fear of God, the stains of the passions rubbed into him, and, by casting off the defilements contrary to nature, making his life clear and bright.

The Holy Spirit, then, effects purification in the worthy through the purity of the virtues by means of fear and piety and knowledge, and bestows the illumination of the knowledge of beings according to the reasons by which they exist, on the worthy, through might and counsel and understanding, and grants perfection, through the allradiant, simple, and complete wisdom, to those worthy of deification, leading them up, immediately, in every way, so far as is possible for man, to the cause of beings, being made known solely from the divine properties of goodness; according to which, knowing themselves from God, and God from themselves, there being no intermediary walling them off — for between wisdom and God there is no intermediary — they shall have unchangeable immutability, all the intermediaries that lay between them having been wholly transcended, in which the danger of erring concerning knowledge once existed, and being led up, by grace, to that very infinite and infinitely and infinitely-infinitely, by nature, transcendent summit of all things, unutterable silence and unspeaking ignorance, ineffably and inconceivably. “And seven oil-feeders for the seven lamps upon it.” The account concerning the lamps has, so far as I can say, been given according to two approaches of contemplation; the account concerning the oil-feeders will now begin. They say the oil-feeder is a kind of cup-shaped vessel, in which men are accustomed to pour the oil poured upon the lamps, for the nourishing and preservation of the light.

According to the reasoning of anagogy, then, the oil-feeders of the seven lamps of the vision are the habits and dispositions, receptive of the different reasons and manners and characters that nourish and preserve the seven lamps — that is, the operations of the Spirit — belonging to those in the Church who have received the distribution of the gifts. For just as it is impossible for a lamp to be kept unquenched without oil, so it is impossible, without a habit that nourishes good things with fitting reasons and manners and characters and, again, thoughts and considerations, for the light of the gifts to be kept unquenched. For every spiritual gift needs a suitable habit, unceasingly pouring into it, like oil, its noetic matter, that it may remain sustained according to the habit of the one who has received it. The oil-feeders, then, of the seven lamps of the lampstand are the fitting habits of the divine gifts of the holy Church, from which, as from certain vessels — after the pattern of the wise virgins in the Gospel — the wise and wakeful guardians of the good things given pour, upon the lamps of the gifts, the oil of exultation. “And two olive trees above it, one on the right of its lamp and one on the left.” Well and very fittingly the discourse has fashioned the whole vision, evenly inclined toward itself.

For having spoken of a lampstand, and a lamp, and lamps, and oil-feeders, it added also two olive trees. For it was necessary, truly necessary, that the generative cause of the power that preserves the light be conceived together, by nature, with the light, that the light might not depart from the lampstand, being extinguished for want of nourishment. The two olive trees, then, of the golden lampstand — that is, of the holy Catholic Church — are the two Testaments; from which, as from certain olive trees, pressed out by pious inquiry and searching, the power of thoughts that nourishes the light of the divine gifts is given forth, like oil, and, according to the proportion of its own power, the habit of each individual, being filled, preserves unquenched the light of the grace proportionate to it, being sustained, as by oil, by the thoughts derived from the Scriptures. For just as, without the olive tree, it is nowhere possible to find, in truth, genuine oil by nature, and without a vessel it is not possible for the oil to be held that receives it, and, not being nourished by oil, the lamp's light is entirely quenched, so, without the Holy Scriptures, there is no true, God-befitting power of thoughts, and without a habit, as it were a vessel receptive of thoughts, no divine thought could ever be constituted, and, not being nourished by divine thoughts, the light of knowledge in the gifts is not kept unquenched by those who have it.

Well, then, has the discourse, raising the vision to spiritual contemplation, likened the lampstand to the Church, and the lamp to God incarnate, who has girded himself, unchangeably, with our nature according to hypostasis, and the seven lamps to the gifts of the Spirit, that is, the operations, as great Isaiah has already clearly shown, and the oil-feeders of the lamps to the receptive habits, of the divine thoughts of Scripture, of those who have received the divine gifts, and the two olive trees to the two Testaments, from which the power of divine thoughts, wisely cultivated, is naturally wont to be given forth, by which the light of the divine mysteries is kept unquenched, nourished. “And one,” it says, “on the right of its lamp and one on the left.” I think the prophet calls “right” the more spiritual part of reason, and “left” the more bodily. And if the more bodily part of reason denotes the left, and the more spiritual part signifies the right, I suppose the Old Testament signifies the olive tree on the left, as caring more for the practical philosophy, and the New the one on the right, as teacher of the new mystery and productive of the contemplative habit in each of the faithful; for the one furnishes the manners of virtue, and the other the reasons of knowledge, to those who philosophize about divine things; and the one, snatching the mind from the mist of visible things, being made pure of all material fantasy, leads it up to its kindred; the other purifies it of material attachment, by the tension of courage, as by a hammer, driving out the nails of judgment's relation toward the body; and the Old, reckoning the body toward the soul, raises it up through the mediation of the virtues, hindering the mind from being brought down toward the body, while the New raises the mind up to God, winged by the fire of love; and the one makes the body the same as the mind in its movement according to position, while the other renders the mind the same as God according to the habit of grace, having such likeness to God that God is known through it — he who is by nature altogether unknown, in himself, to anyone — as an archetype through, as it were, an image.

Let this, then, stand thus, in this manner. But if one should wish to take the force of what has been said with reference to each individual man, he will certainly not lack for good and pious contemplations. For he will be able to understand by the lampstand each soul, all of gold, as by nature noetic and rational, incorruptible and immortal, and honored with the most royal power of self-determination, having upon itself the lamp of faith — that is, the Word who became flesh, believed by it firmly and truly and worshiped by it — upon which the lamp of reason, kindled by knowledge, is set, according to the teaching and exhortation of God the Word himself. For he says: “No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house” — meaning, perhaps, by “lamp,” the reason of knowledge in the Spirit that is according to practice — that is, the law of the spirit — and by “bushel,” the earthly mind of the flesh — that is, the passible law of the body — under which the law of grace ought not to be set, but upon the soul, the truly golden lampstand, that, shining with the flashes of the works of righteousness and of wise thoughts on all who are in the house — that is, the Church, or this world — it may make those who behold it imitators of what is good, who also glorify, through the works of virtue and not by the mere utterance of words, the Father in the heavens — that is, God, who, in the heights of the mystical contemplations of knowledge, begets in the worthy the magnificence of the works of righteousness that appear according to virtue — “that they may see your good works,” it says, “and glorify your Father who is in the heavens.”

Thus, then, according to the manner given, will he who rejoices in the noetic contemplations of Holy Scripture understand the lampstand seen and the lamp; and he will take the seven lamps to be the division of the different gifts of the Spirit according to the explanation already given, which mystically shine and rest upon him who is made perfect, according to Christ, through virtue and knowledge — since the discourse knows him to be Christ who lives according to Christ and is shown forth, so far as it is lawful for a man, in the same manners and reasons, as himself also having wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and piety and fear, through which, as through noetic eyes, God is said to look upon the whole earth of each heart; “for these are the seven eyes of the Lord,” it says, “that look upon the whole earth.” “And seven oil-feeders for the lamps that are upon it.” The oilfeeders are the habits, in practice and contemplation, of those worthy of the distribution of the divine gifts; from which, as from certain vessels, pouring, like oil, the power of mystical thoughts, they keep the light of the gifts of the Spirit unquenched. And the two olive trees he will understand, as I said before, to be the two Testaments — the Old, on the left of the lamp, generating, like oil, for the gnostic — that is, contemplative — part of the soul, the manners of the virtues according to practice; and the New, on the right, generating, like oil, everflowingly, for the passible — that is, practical — part of the soul, the spiritual reasons of the knowledges according to contemplation — that both together, the light of theology, like the lamp, might be strengthened all the more, together with the connatural gifts of the Spirit, supplied, from the Old Testament, with the manners that honor knowledge through practice, and, from the New Testament, with the reasons that illumine the practice of the virtues through spiritual contemplation, and that, from both together, the mystery of our salvation might be brought to a single perfect beauty, making life a demonstration of reason, and reason the glory of life, and making practice a contemplation put into operation, and contemplation a practice mystically initiated, and, in short, making virtue the manifestation of knowledge and knowledge the preservative power of virtue,

and showing, through both — I mean virtue and knowledge — one wisdom constituted — that we may know that the two Testaments agree with one another in every respect, by grace, for the fulfillment of one mystery, more fully than soul and body agree with one another, in composition, for the coming-to-be of one man. But if anyone, aspiring to noetic contemplations, should take and say that the two olive trees are the two laws — I mean the natural and the spiritual — he has not gone outside the truth. For the natural law, on the left of the lamp — that is, of God the Word incarnate — will be understood, through kindred sense-perception, as bringing forward to reason the manners toward virtue that are in sensible things; and the noetic, that is, spiritual, law, on the right, gathering, through kindred understanding, the reasons toward spiritual knowledge that are in beings; through which, filling the different habits of the spiritual gifts, like the oil-feeders of lamps, with practical and gnostic contemplations, we keep the light of truth unquenched. And perhaps this passage of Scripture, understood more gnostically through the two olive trees, one on the right of the lamp and one on the left, signifies providence and judgment, between which stands, as upon a golden lampstand, the holy Catholic Church, or the soul of each saint, kindling for all the light of truth — the Word, who, as God, comprehends the whole — and revealing the true and most generic reasons, according to providence and judgment, of the coherence of beings, according to which the mystery of our salvation, predetermined before all the ages but accomplished in the last times, was constituted; of which, providence — as being, so to speak, the olive tree on the right of the lamp — we behold in the ineffable manner of the union, according to hypostasis, of the Word with flesh ensouled rationally, by faith alone; and judgment — being on the left — we ineffably understand in the mystery of the life-giving sufferings, on our behalf, of God incarnate.

For the one, as good, came to be, primarily, according to will, being by nature the Savior of all; while the other he endured, as a consequence, by voluntary forbearance, as one who loves mankind, being by nature the Redeemer of all. For God did not become man primarily that he might suffer, but that he might save man through sufferings, to which man, who was originally impassible, had subjected himself through the transgression of the divine commandment. The mystery, then, that concerns the providence of the Word's incarnation is on the right, as effective of the deification of the saved, above nature by grace, predetermined before the ages, which no reason at all of beings will ever be able to attain. And the mystery that concerns the judgment of the life-giving suffering of God, who willed to suffer according to the flesh, is clearly on the left, as effective of the complete abolition of all the properties and movements contrary to nature that were introduced into nature from the disobedience, and productive of the unfailing restoration of all the properties and movements that primarily belong to nature — according to which no reason of beings at all will ever be found counterfeit. From these — I mean providence and judgment, that is, incarnation and suffering — on account of the firm and pure and incorrupt strength and unchangeableness of the manly virtue that is according to practice, and on account of the transparent and radiant character of the mystical contemplation and knowledge, there has come forth, like chariots of horses from between two bronze mountains, the holy tetrad of the Gospels, which have encompassed and journeyed round the whole earth, and have healed the wound of Adam's transgression, and have given rest to the Spirit of God, through faith and the good manner of life that accords with it, in the land of the north — that is, among the nations, in whom the gloom of ignorance held sway and darkness tyrannized nature.

Or again, the power of the four generic virtues, equal in number to the holy Gospels, having taken hold of the whole heart of the faithful, as of a land, and having journeyed round the wound inflicted upon them by the passions of dishonor, and having given rest to the Spirit of God, through the practical operation of the commandments, in the land of the north — that is, in the flesh — through the works of righteousness, has shown the law of the Spirit shining forth. Or again, the two olive trees must be understood as contemplation and practice; of which contemplation, the providence that is according to the incarnation gives the reason to appear, while the judgment that is according to the suffering gives the manner to be put into operation for practice — the one, according to the soul, being on the right of the Word, and the other, according to the body, being on the left; and the one calls the mind to kinship with God, while the other sanctifies sense-perception by the Spirit and removes from it the impressions of the passions. Or again, faith and a good conscience must be understood as the two olive trees, between which the Word stands, being rightly worshiped by the faithful according to faith, and being piously served, through mutual good pleasure, according to a good conscience. Or the discourse has likened the two peoples — I mean that of the nations and that of the Jews — to two olive trees, calling them, as it were interpreting the olive trees, “sons of fatness,” on account of their birth in the Spirit and the grace of adoption unto deification; between whom God incarnate stands, as upon a lampstand, the one and only Catholic Church, reconciling them to himself and to one another, and making them generative of light, that which is according to virtue and knowledge.

Or perhaps the discourse has mystically hinted, through the two olive trees, at soul and body: the one as luxuriant, like the olive tree, with the reasons of true knowledge, and the other as thick-set with the practices of the virtues. And if the discourse of Scripture hints, through the two olive trees, at the two worlds also — the intelligible and the sensible — this too would be well understood: between which stands the Word, as God, mystically depicting, in types, the intelligible world as appearing in the sensible, and teaching the sensible world to be understood, in its reasons, within the intelligible. And if the vision concerning the olive trees has depicted also the present life and the life to come, this manner of contemplation too would be well founded: between which the Word stands, leading away from the one, through virtue, and leading back to the other, through knowledge — which, perhaps, the wondrous Habakkuk understood when he said: “In the midst of two living creatures you shall be known,” calling “living creatures,” just as the great Zacharias called the bronze mountains and the olive trees, the two worlds, that is, the two ages, or their proper lives, or soul and body, or practice and contemplation, or the habit of the good and its operation, or the Law and the Prophets, or the whole of the Old and the New Testament, or the two peoples, of the nations and of the Jews, or the two laws, the natural and the spiritual, or faith and a good conscience; in the midst of which the Word ever stands, hymned and glorified through all, and bringing all things into one accord of the good, as God of all, and for this reason having made all things, that he might become, for all, the indissoluble bond of the identity of the good in union with one another.

And perhaps the discourse, in the vision, called the Church and the soul a lampstand, as having, acquired and not by nature, the light of grace, since the good belongs, by nature, to God alone, from whom, by participation, all things receptive by nature of light and goodness are illumined and made good. This, then, the discourse, taking care for due measure, has set forth concerning these matters. But you yourself, having, with God, contemplated better things than these, on your own account, brighten, holy father, with the ever-shining rays of your understanding, my dim-sighted soul.

1. What is the lampstand?

2. How is the Church unadulterated gold?

3. How pure?

4. How unstained?

5. How undefiled?

6. How undiminished?

7. What is the lamp of the lampstand?

8. Not every man, he says, who comes into this world is entirely enlightened by the Word; for many remain unenlightened, and without part in the light of knowledge; but it is clear that every man who comes, by his own judgment, into the true world of the virtues — for every man who, in truth, by voluntary birth, comes into this world of the virtues is entirely enlightened by the Word, receiving an unmovable habit of virtue and an unerring understanding of true knowledge.

9. How is God the Word incarnate also a lamp?

10. What is the bushel, under which the lamp does not become hidden?

11. He beheld the woman in sense-perception, and the serpent in pleasure; for both stand diametrically opposed to reason.

12. That sense-perception, having taken the mind captive, teaches polytheism, worshiping, through each sense, in slavery to the passions, the connatural sensible thing as divine.

13. What lamps the discourse means.

14. Behold the greatness of grace! Behold the boundless sea of theology!

15. Of what are the gifts of the Spirit effective?

16. What are the lamps according to another manner of contemplation?

17. Fear, piety, and knowledge work the practical philosophy; might, counsel, and understanding accomplish the natural contemplation in the Spirit; and wisdom alone, divine, bestows mystical theology.

18. He calls the essence of sensible and intelligible things “intermediaries,” through which the human mind is naturally led up to God as the cause of beings.

19. What are, according to anagogy, the oil-feeders of the lamps?

20. What are the two olive trees?

21. A definitive and concise recapitulation of what has been contemplated.

22. What is the right, and the left?

23. The Old Testament, he says, being a symbol of practice and virtue, prepares the body to be in accord with the mind in its movement; but the New, being productive of contemplation and knowledge, brightens with divine gifts the mind that mystically clings to it.

24. A manner of another contemplation, specific, referring the lampstand and the things of the lampstand to the soul of each man.

25. What is the lamp?

26. God, he says, is called and becomes, by grace, the Father of those alone who have a pure birth in the Spirit, according to judgment; according to which, having, as it were the face of the soul, the character of God who begot them, appearing in the virtues, in their life, they cause those who behold them to glorify God, by the change of their manners, offering their own life to them as an outstanding pattern of virtue for imitation. For God is not naturally glorified by mere speech, but by the works of righteousness men proclaim the divine majesty far more than by speech.

27. What must we understand the seven lamps to be?

28. What are the oil-feeders?

29. What are the two olive trees?

30. The Old, he says, furnishes to the gnostic the manners of the virtues; and the New grants to the practical the reasons of true knowledge.

31. That “practical” he calls the passible part of the soul.

32. He who shows knowledge embodied by practice, and practice ensouled by knowledge, has found the exact manner of true theurgy. But whoever has either of these divorced from the other has made knowledge an unsubstantial fantasy, or has established practice as a lifeless idol; for knowledge without practice differs in nothing from fantasy, not having practice as its underlying substance; and unreasoning practice is the same as a lifeless idol, not having knowledge to ensoul it.

33. Just as soul and body, by composition, make a man, so practice and contemplation, coming together, complete one gnostic wisdom; and the Old and New Testaments effect one mystery.

34. The natural law is on the left, on account of senseperception; but it brings to the Word the manners of the virtues, and makes knowledge operative. And the spiritual law, being on the right on account of the mind, mingles with sense-perception the spiritual reasons in beings, and makes practice reasoned.

35. Providence, he says, is shown in the Word's being united to flesh according to hypostasis; and judgment appears in his willingly accepting to suffer for us in the flesh; through which, union and suffering, the salvation of the universe was constituted.

36. The incarnation, he says, came about for the salvation of nature; but the sufferings, for the redemption of those held by death on account of sin.

37. The mystery of the enmanment, he says, removes the properties contrary to nature from human nature, and restores those according to nature.

38. He has understood providence and judgment, that is, incarnation and suffering, as the bronze mountains, from which the tetrad of the Gospels comes forth.

39. He has understood by “land of the north” the nations, who were once, as in a region of darkness, in the error of ignorance, but who have now come to be in a region of light, in the recognition of the truth, by the grace of the holy tetrad of the Gospels, as incorruptible elements, refashioned, according to the inner and noetic man, unto eternal life through faith.

40. Another contemplation of the four chariots.

41. Another contemplation of the olive trees.

42. The contemplative man, he says, has the reason according to providence of the incarnation appearing; the practical man shows the manner according to the judgment of the sufferings of the Word being put into operation.

43. Another contemplation on the olive trees.

44. Another contemplation on the same.

45. Another contemplation on the same matters.

46. Another contemplation on the two olive trees.

47. He who understands the apparent world beholds the intelligible; for, imagining the intelligibles in senseperception, he types them, and shapes, according to mind, the reasons beheld; and he transfers, in manifold ways, to sense-perception the constitution of the intelligible world, and, to the mind, the many-woven composition of the sensible world; and he understands, in the intelligible, the sensible, having transferred sense-perception to the mind by their reasons, and, in the sensible, the intelligible, having skillfully transposed the mind, by types, toward senseperception.

48. Another contemplation on the same matters.

64. Concerning Jonah and His Prophecy What meaning has the saying in the prophet Jonah concerning Nineveh, which states: “in which dwell more than twelve myriads of men, who do not know their right hand from their left,” since from the letter I find no consolation? For it did not say “children,” that I might think of infants, but “men.” And what man, having sound wits, is ignorant of his right hand or his left? But tell me who the men are, and what the right and the left, according to the reasoning of anagogy. None of the persons or places or times or other matters, animate or inanimate, sensible or intelligible, recorded in Scripture has its history or its contemplation always suitable to itself understood in the same manner. Wherefore he who exercises himself unerringly in the divine knowledge of Holy Scripture must, according to the differences of the things done or said, receive each of the things enumerated differently, and assign to it the contemplation fitting to it according to the place or the time. For each of the things signified in Scripture has, in the power of the Hebrew tongue, many meanings for its name, which we clearly find here as well. “Jonah” is interpreted, according to different pronunciations, “rest,” and “gift of God,” and “healing of God,” and “God's grace to them,” and “toil of God,” and “dove,” and “flight of beauty,” and “their affliction.”

And this same man comes to be in Joppa, and in the sea, and in the whale, and in Nineveh, and under the gourd. And “Joppa” is interpreted “watch-tower of joy,” and “wondrous comeliness,” and “mighty joy.” The prophet Jonah, then, bears the type both of Adam and of common nature, and of Christ and of prophetic grace, and of the ungrateful people of the Jews, who toil against every good thing and are ever envious of the divine graces. For instance, he bears the type of Adam and of common nature by fleeing from Joppa into the sea, and for this reason, by the force of his name, being called “flight of beauty.” And Joppa signifies, being typified in it, paradise, truly “watch-tower of joy,” both being and named, and “mighty joy” and “wondrous comeliness,” on account of the wealth of incorruption within it — whatever this paradise may be, planted by the hand of God (“for the Lord God planted,” it says, “a paradise in Eden, and placed there the man whom he had formed”), and whatever the trees in it may be, whether beheld by sense or understood, and what the tree of life in the middle of paradise is — of all of which Adam, having received the command to eat, perhaps did not even taste; “for of every tree,” it says, “that is in the paradise you shall eat for food.”

And Joppa again signifies virtue and knowledge, and the wisdom that follows upon them: virtue, when it is interpreted “wondrous comeliness”; knowledge, when it is taken as “watch-tower of joy”; and wisdom, when it signifies “mighty” joy, by which man, being perfected, receives the ineffable joy — the mighty joy, truly the sustaining power of man's God-befitting and divine constitution — if indeed wisdom is a tree of life to all who cling to it, according to what is written: “and to those who lean upon it, as upon the Lord, it is secure.” For we see the nature of men ever fleeing Joppa — that is, the habit of virtue and knowledge and of the wisdom pertaining to them, its grace — just as Adam fled paradise through disobedience, on account of the mind's diligently applying itself to wicked things, and being willingly dragged down into the sea — I mean the brine of sin — as the forefather Adam, cast down from paradise, was tumbled into this world, and diligently attends the unstable and briny error and confusion of material things, both bearing and being borne by them; the profit of which, for those who cling to it, is only to be plunged and swallowed by the whale, and to have water poured about them even to the soul, and to be encompassed by the utmost abyss, and to sink one's head into the clefts of the mountains, and to descend into the earth whose bars are its eternal holders — the earth, that is, truly dark and gloomy, plainly the bottom of the utmost abyss, a land of eternal darkness, in which there is no light, nor is the life of mortals to be seen, as great Job, who contended in the great contests on behalf of truth, somewhere says.

The prophet, then, signifies Adam, that is, the common nature of men, mystically typifying these things in himself: nature, having slipped, as from Joppa, from the divine goods, and having been borne down to the misery of this life, as to a sea, and submerged in the unstable and roaring deep of attachment to material things, and swallowed by the noetic and insatiable beast, the whale, the devil, and having received the water of the trials in wickedness, poured about it from every side, even to the soul — that is, its life encompassed by the trials — and having been surrounded by the utmost abyss — that is, its mind bound by complete ignorance and its reasoning encompassed by the great weight of wickedness — and having sunk its head into the clefts of the mountains — that is, the first reasoning, according to the faith, concerning the Monad, as the head of the whole body of the virtues, having been shut up, as into certain lightless clefts of mountains, in the understandings of the wicked powers, and divided into many opinions and fantasies (for the discourse called the clefts of the mountains, lying somewhere in the depth of the utmost abyss of ignorance, the thoughts, tending to error, of the spirits of wickedness) — and having descended into the earth whose bars are its eternal holders — that is, brought down to the habit deprived of every divine sense and of the life-giving movement of the virtues, having no perception at all of goodness and no movement of desire, in thought, toward God — upon which, like an abyss, the gloom of ignorance and the immeasurable depth of wickedness has settled, and in which the mountains of error — I mean the spiritual powers of wickedness — are rooted; into whose clefts, having first sunk down, the nature of men later became, through this most evil habit, their base, being receptive of their error and wickedness — having, like eternal bars, the inherent attachments to material things, which do not allow the understanding, once freed from the darkness of ignorance, to see the light of true knowledge; which habit, perhaps, as I said a little before, great Job hinted at when he said: “a dark and gloomy land” — a land of eternal darkness: dark, as bereft of all true knowledge and contemplation; gloomy, as deprived of all

virtue and practice — in which, he says, “there is no light,” plainly of knowledge and truth, “nor is the life of mortals to be seen,” that is, plainly, the manner of life proper to rational beings. This, then, comes about, perhaps, whenever the prophet, typifying in himself the sufferings of humanity, into which it has pitiably poured itself, appropriates to himself what belongs to the common nature, and, fittingly, as he typifies Adam, the meaning of his own name is applied to him, being interpreted “flight of beauty.” But whenever he prefigures beforehand God, who became, for our sake, in what belongs to us, in a manner according to us, man by means of a flesh noetically ensouled, except sin alone, and delineates beforehand the mystery of the economy and of the sufferings pertaining to it, he signifies the descent from the heavens into this world by the transition from Joppa into the sea, and he shows the mystery of death and burial and resurrection by being swallowed by the whale and, after three days and three nights, being given up unharmed, and for this reason, fittingly, according to the force of his calling, he is well named “rest” and “healing of God” and “God's grace to them,” and perhaps also “toil of God,” on account of the voluntary suffering. For the prophet mystically prefigured beforehand, through his own dramas, Christ Jesus, the true God, as the true rest of those wearied in pains, and the healing of the broken, and the grace of the remission of sins.

For our very Lord and God, having become man and having sojourned in the sea of the life that is according to us, as from the heaven that is Joppa, interpreted “watch-tower of joy,” into the sea of this life, according to what is written, “who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame,” and into the heart of the earth, where, through death, the evil one had swallowed and held us imprisoned, having willingly gone down, and, through the resurrection, having drawn us up and led up to heaven the whole captive nature, is truly our rest and healing and grace: rest, as loosing the law of the circumstantial slavery in the flesh on account of the temporal life; healing, as having healed, through the resurrection, the fracture of death and corruption; and grace, as the dispenser of the adoption, in the Spirit, of God the Father through faith, and of the grace worthily bestowed on each according to deification. For it was truly, truly necessary that the light and power of God the Father should come to that land in which the darkness was, and the eternal bars, that, having loosed the darkness of ignorance, as being the paternal light, and having shattered, as the substantial power of God, the bars of wickedness, he might free the nature so terribly secured in them by the evil one, granting it the unquenchable light of true knowledge and the unassailable power of the virtues.

And whenever the prophet typifies in himself the prophetic grace, evangelically passing over, as from a certain Joppa, from the hitherto supposedly glorious bodily worship of the law, into the nations, and leaving the Jewish people, on account of their unbelief, bereft of the joy pertaining to it, and mystically prefiguring the Church of the nations turning to God, like Nineveh, through many afflictions, dangers, and circumstances, and toils, and persecutions, and deaths, he leaves Joppa, signifying, plainly, the grace of prophecy departing from the worship according to the Law, and coming to be in the sea of involuntary circumstances, and in the surge of the uprisings in persecutions and of the contests and toils and dangers concerning them, and being swallowed by the whale of death, yet in no way at all destroyed. For nothing of the things that are was able to hinder the course of the grace evangelically proclaimed to the nations — not affliction, not distress, not persecution, not famine, not danger, not the sword; on the contrary, rather, grace was confirmed through these things, prevailing over all who rose against it, and conquering the more, in suffering, over those who did the suffering, and it turned erring nature to the living and true God, just as Jonah turned Nineveh. And even if the evil one seemed, through the outrage of persecutions, to cover over grace, as the whale covered the prophet, yet he was not able to hold it down to the end, being unable to alter the strength of the power that works grace effectively.

Wherefore he made grace shine forth all the more brightly, after the trial of the opposing forces, among her disciples, in the same measure as he himself was undermining his own power by his onslaughts, seeing that grace was not only entirely unconquerable for him, but also that the natural weakness of the saints who proclaimed it to the nations was becoming a power destructive of his tyranny, and utterly abolishing every height that raises itself against the knowledge of God, and, by the very appearance of being bodily overcome, was rather made powerful spiritually. Which Paul, the great trumpet of truth, who learned this by experience through suffering, having become, in newness of spirit and not oldness of the letter, a minister of the prophetic grace in Christ toward the nations, says: “We have this treasure in earthen vessels” — calling “treasure” the word of grace, and “earthen vessel” this passible body, or the reckoned unskillfulness in speech according to delivery, which conquered all the wisdom of the world, or contained, so far as attainable, the wisdom of God that is altogether uncontainable by the world, and filled the whole inhabited world with the light of the true knowledge pertaining to it — “that the surpassing greatness of the power,” he says, “may be of God and not from us; afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body; for we who live are always being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh; so that death is at work in us, but life in you.”

For those who became heralds of the Word of grace, unaccusably enduring, for the sake of truth, death in sufferings by voluntary judgment, worked out for the nations the life, in the Spirit, that is according to knowledge of the truth; which very thing Jonah, who had mystically prefigured beforehand this grace in himself, also suffered, himself having undergone so many dangers, that he might turn the Ninevites from error to God, and for this reason, according to the meaning inherent in the name, fittingly interpreted “gift of God” and “toil of God.” For the grace of prophecy toward the nations is a gift of God, and a truly beloved and loving gift, and a divine and praiseworthy toil: a gift, as bestowing the light of true knowledge and affording incorruption of life to those who receive it; and a toil of God, as persuading its ministers to be adorned with toils for the sake of truth, and teaching those who care greatly for the life in the flesh to be enlarged rather by sufferings than by relief, making the natural weakness of the flesh with respect to suffering the material for a surpassing power according to the spirit. For the word of grace, through many trials, passed over to the nature of men — that is, the Church of the nations — just as Jonah, through many afflictions, passed over to Nineveh, the great city, and persuaded the reigning law of nature to rise up from its throne — that is, from its former habit concerning evil according to sense-perception — and to remove its robe — I mean to lay aside the vanity in its manners of worldly glory — and to put on sackcloth — that is, mourning, and the harsh and rough conduct of affliction, fitting for a life according to God — and to sit upon ashes; ashes are the poverty of spirit, upon which sits everyone who is taught to live piously and who has the scourge of conscience afflicting him for his transgressions.

And not only did the Word of grace, being proclaimed, persuade the king to believe God, but also the men — that is, the men who together fill up nature — assuring one man to confess that there is one God, the maker and judge of all, and to proclaim it faithfully, preparing for the complete abstinence, plainly, from their former wicked practices, and to put on sackcloth from the least to the greatest of them — that is, to pursue willingly the affliction that mortifies the passions; and by “least” and “greatest” here, according to the reasoning of anagogy, I suppose are meant those detected by the Word in lesser and greater wickedness. “And the men of Nineveh,” it says, “believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth from the least to the greatest of them. And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he rose up from his throne, and removed his robe from himself, and put on sackcloth, and sat upon ashes. And it was proclaimed and said in Nineveh by the king and by his nobles, saying: Let neither men nor cattle, nor oxen nor sheep, taste anything, nor feed, nor drink water.” The king of nature, as I said, is the law of nature; and its rulers are the rational, the irascible, and the desiring faculty; and the men of this city — that is, of nature — according to one approach, are those who fail in reason and hold an erroneous knowledge concerning God and divine things; and the cattle are those who err with respect to desire and bear the burden of pleasure through the bodily sufferings; and the oxen are those who cast down the whole movement of irascibility toward the acquisition of earthly things (for they say the blood of an ox, when drunk, brings immediate death to the drinker; and blood is plainly a symbol of anger); and the sheep, they say, are, blameworthily, those who foolishly, by sense-perception alone, feed toward passion, as upon grass, on the contemplation of visible things.

We suppose all these to lie blameworthily in this passage of Scripture, until the discourse should take and change them to the better. Whence the discourse adds, saying, “let them not taste, nor feed, nor drink water,” forbidding, plainly, the former causes, constitutive of the passions with respect to each of the things named; after the abolition of which, showing the change to the better of those once held fast in their evil practices, it continues: “and the men and the cattle put on sackcloth, and cried out earnestly to the Lord God; and each turned from his evil way and from the injustice that was in their hands.” Let us understand “men,” as I said, to mean those held fast by the passions of the soul according to erroneous judgment of reason, and “cattle” those fastened, through the misuse of irascibility and desire, upon bodily sufferings for pleasure's sake — all of them, like putting on sackcloth, putting on the mortification of their earthly members, that is, of the whole earthly law and mindset, and crying out earnestly, that is, with a loud voice, that is, with boldness against lawlessness, avowing the license of their former sins, and departing, as from a certain road, from their accustomed course, and from the injustice, as it were in their hands, put into operation by their deeds. Thus, then, Nineveh, understood as common nature — that is, the Church of the nations — continually shows Jonah preaching in it — that is, the word of prophetic grace — and turning back, day by day, to God those who have erred.

But if we understand Nineveh with reference to the contemplation of each individual, we say that the soul of each is the great city, to which the Word of God is sent, when it acts unlawfully, to proclaim repentance unto life; and we understand its king to be the mind, and its rulers the innate powers, and its men the passionate reasonings, and its cattle the movements concerning the body according to desire, and its oxen the covetous movements according to irascibility concerning material things, and its sheep the movements of sense-perception that apprehend sensible things without the understanding — and the king, the mind, rising up, as from a throne, from its former habit of ignorance, and laying aside, like a robe, the false opinion concerning things that are, and putting on, like sackcloth, repentance for what has been wrongly thought, and sitting upon the ashes of the habit of poverty of spirit, and commanding men and cattle and oxen and sheep to fast from eating in wickedness and from drinking in ignorance — that is, to abstain from the practice of evils and from the erring contemplation according to sense-perception — and to put on sackcloth, that is, the habit that mortifies the passions contrary to nature and acquires the virtues and knowledges according to nature, and to cry out earnestly to God, that is, plainly and intensely to confess the past, and to propitiate, by humility, him who is able to grant forgiveness of what has gone before, and to ask, for the operation and preservation of better things, an unchangeable power of free choice from him who readily bestows it on those who ask, and to hinder the understanding, as from an evil road, from its former error, and to lay aside the inventive habit of wickedness from the practical powers of the soul.

And in this great city — that is, common human nature, or the Church of the nations, or the soul of each individual — being saved through the word of virtue and knowledge, that is, faith and a good conscience, there are more than twelve myriads of men, who do not know their right hand from their left. I suppose Scripture here speaks of twelve myriads according to the reasonings of anagogy concerning time and nature — that is, the knowledge that comprehends visible nature together with the things that necessarily accompany it. For if the number twelve is composed of five and seven, and nature is fivefold on account of sense-perception, and time is sevenfold, then the number twelve clearly signifies nature and time. And it deliberately said “more than twelve myriads” of men, that we might know this number to be circumscribed and surpassed by the “more,” indefinitely, by those who, through themselves, exceed the number twelve. The all-glorious Church of God, then, having passed by the reasonings according to time and nature, on account of virtue and knowledge, but having crossed over to the magnificence of eternal and intelligible things, has more than twelve myriads of men, not knowing their right hand or their left. For he who, on account of lawful virtue, has made forgetfulness of the passions of the flesh, as of the left hand, and, on account of unerring knowledge, is not taken captive, over his right actions, by the disease of self-inflating selfopinion, as of the right hand, has become a man who does not know his right hand, as not being a lover of glory that dissolves, nor his left, as not being provoked by the passions of the flesh.

“Right hand,” then, as it seems, the Word called the vainglory over supposed right actions, and “left” the licentiousness over shameful passions. And every soul that is made brilliant by the contemplations of intelligible things has acquired these men who do not know their right hand and their left. For every soul that has contracted the discursive power away from the contemplation concerning nature and time has, having passed by the number twelve, men — that is, natural reasonings — as no longer laboring over the reasonings under nature and time, but rather occupied with the understanding and knowledge of the divine mysteries, and for this reason not knowing their right hand or their left. For the rational knowledge of the virtues — that is, the true recognition, according to actual operation, of the cause of the virtues — is naturally wont to produce complete ignorance of the excess and deficiency that lie, as right and left, on either side of the mean of the virtues. For if nothing at all is naturally unreasonable in reason, then clearly he who has been led up to the reason of the virtues will in no way recognize the position of the unreasonable things; for it is not possible to behold both opposites at once, together, and to know the one as together implied in the other. For if there is no reasoning of unbelief in faith, nor is light by nature the cause of darkness, nor is the devil naturally wont to be shown together with Christ, it is clear that neither does anything at all unreasonable coexist with reason.

But if the unreasonable cannot at all coexist with reason, he who has been led up to the reason of the virtues does not know, as I said, the position of the unreasonable things, knowing virtue only as it is, and not as it is supposed to be, and for this reason knowing neither a right hand through excess nor a left through deficiency; for in both, clearly, the unreasonable is beheld. For if reason is the bound and measure of beings, it is equally opposed to reason, and for this reason unreasonable, both to move beyond the bound and beyond the measure, and again to move short of the bound and short of the measure. For both equally, in those so moved, bring the falling-away from that which properly is: the one, by persuading them to make their movement unclear and unbounded, having no God, on account of the immoderateness of their mind, foreconceived as its end, imagining themselves more right than the right; the other, by persuading them to make the movement of their course toward sense-perception alone, contrary to the true aim, thinking, through weakness of mind, that what is circumscribed for them according to sense-perception is the foreconceived end. Of these things he who is joined to reason alone, the reason of virtue, and has circumscribed all the movement of his own noetic power by it, is ignorant, not suffering them, and for this reason is unable to think anything beyond reason or contrary to reason.

But if anyone should wish to raise his mind ambitiously to a loftier meaning, he will altogether understand “right hand” to mean the reasons of incorporeal things, and “left” the reasons of bodies; of which the mind that has been raised, without relation, to the cause of beings will be entirely ignorant, beholding no reason at all in God, who, according to every cause, is by essence above every reason; to whom, having been withdrawn from all beings, it knows no reason of the things from which it has departed, beholding, ineffably, by grace, only him to whom it has come to be joined. God knows how to spare these and such as these, and, for the sake of such as these throughout the whole world — men who, in truth, do not know their blameworthy right hand or left — since almost everything in Scripture is taken both in a praiseworthy and in a blameworthy sense, even though the envious one, who is the enemy of all love for mankind, and who labors against the salvation of men and for this reason dares to fight against the goodness of God — the ungrateful, thankless, and man-hating people of the Jews — is cut to the heart and renounces life and makes the salvation of the nations in Christ an occasion of mourning; on account of whose folly they esteemed the gourd far better, and mourned when they saw it withered by the worm.

For I said before that great Jonah also typically prefigured in himself the madness of the Jews, not himself suffering anything at all — God forbid — of what belonged to the Jews, but rather, in himself, exposing beforehand their impiety, on account of which they fell from their former glory, as from a certain Joppa. Wherefore the Holy Spirit mystically imposed upon him such a name, able, according to its different interpretations, to indicate the disposition of all those typified in him. Whenever, then, he typically exposes beforehand in himself the madness of the Jews — grieving over the salvation of the nations, and confounded at the strangeness of their calling, renouncing life, and, blasphemously, contrary to the divine will, preferring death to life on account of the withered gourd — he is interpreted “their affliction,” which the discourse, censuring, says: “and God saw their works” — speaking, plainly, of the Ninevites — “that they turned from their evil ways, and God repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. And Jonah was greatly grieved and confounded, and said, ‘Now, Master, Lord, take my soul from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.’” And again: “and the Lord God commanded a worm at dawn the next day, and it struck the gourd, and it withered; and it happened, as the sun rose, the Lord commanded a scorching, burning wind, and the sun struck upon the head of Jonah; and he grew faint of soul and renounced his life, and said, ‘It was better for me to die than to live.’”

Nineveh, then, is the Church of the nations, which received the word of grace and turned away from its former error of idols, and for this reason was saved and deemed worthy of the glory of the heavens. And the booth which Jonah went out from the city and made for himself images the Jerusalem below and the man-made temple within it. And the gourd prefigured beforehand the temporary shadow, in the letter alone, of the Law's bodily worship, having nothing at all abiding and able to brighten the mind. And the worm is our Lord and God Jesus Christ, as he himself says of himself in the prophet David: “I am a worm and not a man” — a worm, on account of the flesh assumed without seed, both truly becoming and being called such (for just as the worm has no conjunction and mixture leading its own coming-to-be, so also no mixture led the way for the Lord's birth according to the flesh) — and further, as encompassing this flesh with the fishhook of divinity, as bait for the deceiving of the devil, that, as the insatiable noetic dragon, gaping open, on account of its being easily overcome by nature, upon the flesh, might be pierced by the fishhook of divinity and vomit forth, whole, through the holy flesh of the Word taken from us, the human nature that it had already swallowed — that, just as it had earlier swallowed man, having enticed him with the hope of divinity, so also it, having later been enticed by the offering of humanity, might vomit forth him who had been deceived by expectation of divinity, itself having been deceived by the expectation of humanity, and that the surpassing greatness of divine power might be shown, through the weakness of the defeated nature, conquering the strength of the conqueror, and that God might be shown conquering the devil, using the offering of the flesh, more than the devil conquered man, promising him the nature of divinity.

This worm struck the gourd and withered it — I mean, he abolished the worship according to the Law, as a shadow, and withered the selfopinion of the Jews concerning it. “And it happened, on the next day, as the sun rose”: “on the next day,” because, after the passing of the typical riddles according to the Law and the appointed time of the bodily worship pertaining to it, the grace of the new mystery arose, making another day of lofty knowledge and God-inspired virtue, and deifying of those who cling to it. For after this worm struck this gourd and this sun — for the same one is both the worm and the sun of righteousness: the one, as born according to the flesh without seed, having a conception escaping all conception; the other, as having come, for my sake, under the earth, according to the mystery of death and burial, and, for his own sake, being by nature eternal light — was to rise from the dead through the resurrection, God commanded a scorching, burning wind, and the sun struck upon the head of Jonah. For after the rising of the sun of righteousness — that is, the resurrection and ascension of the Lord — the burning heat of trials came upon the Jews, who remained impenitent, and struck them on their heads, according to just judgment, turning back, as it is written, their toil upon their own heads, just as they themselves had earlier prayed against themselves, saying, “his blood be upon us and upon our children.”

For clearly, after the resurrection and ascension of the Savior, vengeance through the nations came upon them, and my sun, striking down the glory and power of the whole nation, as though its head, cast it down; toward which, having shut the eyes of their understanding, they did not recognize the light of truth shining upon them. Or again, the scorching wind, roused against the Jews who disobey the word of grace, is the abandonment justly brought upon them, withholding the rain of knowledge and the dew of prophecy, and further drying up the natural spring of pious thoughts in the heart, as upon those who have filled their hands with innocent blood, and have betrayed the truth to a lie, and have denied the Word of God, who came, unchangeably, in a form like ours, for the salvation of the human race, and who for this reason have been handed over to the self-rule of error, in which it is nowhere possible to find, in any manner whatsoever, a disposition moistened by piety and the fear of God, but rather a dry and unmoistened judgment, colored by every wicked passion, which only vainglorious pride knows how to characterize — an accursed passion, composed of two evils: pride and vainglory. Of these, pride denies the cause both of virtue and of nature, while vainglory renders both nature and virtue itself illegitimate.

For nothing at all is done by the proud man according to God, and nothing at all proceeds from the vainglorious man according to nature. The mixture of these is vainglorious pride: having, toward God, contempt, according to which it is naturally wont blasphemously to slander providence, and, toward nature, alienation, according to which it treats all things of nature contrary to nature, corrupting, by the manner of misuse, the comeliness of nature. And, to speak concisely, the people of the Jews, having been permitted, on account of their unbelief toward Christ, to have their understanding bound by the demon of vainglorious pride, has hated God and men equally: God, holding him lower than the pleasure of the flesh, and for this reason casting off the worship in the Spirit; and men, considering those not descended in the flesh from the race of Jacob altogether alien to the Creator, and for this reason making the shedding of our blood a matter of practice for divine acceptance — the vain one, it seems, being ignorant, through folly, that the body avails not so much for kinship with God and nearness of race as the soul, bearing the same character of faith as the rest, and the inherent identity, according to judgment, with all concerning the good; according to which, the law of the flesh is entirely quenched, and the Word of God alone, through the Spirit, shines forth manifestly, uniting all, according to mind, toward the knowledge of one God, and one love toward one another and concord, according to which no one is entirely separated from anyone else spiritually, even if they be far distant from one another bodily, in the position of their places.

Vainglorious pride, then, is the God-hating and man-hating passion. For it dries up the heart of the unbelieving, withering their pious reasonings concerning divinity and their right reasonings concerning nature, in the manner of the scorching wind. For they say this wind comes about by a mixture of an easterly and a southerly wind, and for this reason dries up the moisture spread through the earth. And they say it is also called Euroclydon and Typhonic: the one, as raising up disturbance on every side, of land and sea; the other, as productive of a parched darkness — which vainglorious pride is shown to produce. For it brings great disturbance upon the soul, and fills the understanding with the darkness of ignorance. This scorching wind of vainglorious pride God raised up after their drunken insolence toward Christ — that is, he permitted it to come upon the Jews, who had a disposition congenial to it, that their purpose concerning God and men might become manifest to all. Wherefore, being oppressed by the gloom of ignorance, they willingly cast themselves into the portion opposed to God, having, in all, nothing but to labor and be distressed both at the salvation and glory of the nations through faith and at the abolition of the bodily observances among them, saying, “And now, Lord, take our souls from us, for it is better for us to die than to live,” on account of the withered gourd — that is, the worship in the shadows of the Law, abolished, which had come to be and ceased to be under night, having, for none, a noetic illumination circumscribed only by the riddles and types of the symbols and able to brighten the soul's But let us spiritually embrace, through faith and the righteousness that accompanies it, the spiritual Nineveh — I mean the Church of the nations — truly a great city established for God, as it is written, and saved through the three days appointed for it for repentance and turning; and let us be diligent to become citizens of this city, great for God, through repentance and change to the better.

For the discourse deliberately says the city is great for God, saying thus: “And Nineveh was a great city for God.” Where, in Scripture, does the Jew, mindful of truth, find this saying set down in word concerning the lower city of Jerusalem? For nowhere, though I have often read all of Holy Scripture, have I found it written that “Jerusalem was a great city for God.” And who, relying on the power of speech and the wealth of thoughts, could ever measure and circumscribe the greatness of a city that both is, and is called, great for God? For me, this is entirely impossible; and I think it is impossible for every man of sense too, who has any small perception of divine majesty, and who does not fail to recognize that divine reckonings must be commensurate with God. But how is the first city of the Assyrians, where the confusion of error existed, where the palace of idol-madness was established, far distant from the so-called holy land promised to bodily Israel, great for God, unless God, having beheld the greatness of the faith of the Church of the nations, circumscribed by no reason, accepted the future as present, and made his own what was formerly alien, and, by his own word, established as God-inspired and most precious what was once most base on account of godlessness, having no greatness at all determined by any reason, saying plainly through the prophet: “And Nineveh was a great city for God” — to which the word of prophetic grace, having been sent, proclaimed the blessed overthrow, saying, “Yet three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”

Having come to this passage concerning the appointed time of the days, I think I shall pass over all else that could be said by those who elevate the discourse, and consider and state only this one thing, with careful attention, which will perhaps be found not to depart from the truth in being said. Hearing, then, the definite statement, “yet three days and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” proclaimed unalterably by the prophet, I take it to mean that the sentence is against Nineveh — or rather, to speak more properly, that the visitation shall be on behalf of Nineveh. For I understand that, after the three days which the prophet, being typologically in the belly of the whale, prefigured beforehand in himself, anticipating the three-day burial and resurrection of the Lord, the discourse expected another three days, in which the light of truth was to be demonstrated, and the true outcome of the mysteries foretold, and the overthrow of the city was to come about entirely — no longer prefiguring the truth of the Savior's burial and resurrection as something still to come, but clearly showing the truth itself actually accomplished in the events, of which the prior triad of days that Jonah spent in the whale was the prefiguration. For if every type is of a truth expected, and, according to the type, Jonah spent three days in the belly of the whale, it is clear that the mystery was to show the truth, in a way befitting the new order and truly following upon the type, and that the Lord spent three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, according to the Lord's own words, saying: “Just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so shall the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights.”

For the saying, “yet three days,” indicates, covertly, that three other days had already passed, since otherwise “yet” would not have been used — that is, that there shall again be three days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. The type, then, did not overthrow Nineveh according to the divine sentence, but the truth, of which he spoke, “yet three days” — as if he were saying: yet three days, after the type shown in me, shall there be, of a more mystical burial and a greater resurrection, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. But someone, perhaps at a loss, will say: How does God speak truly, giving a sentence of overthrow and not overthrowing? To whom we say that he speaks truly, both overthrowing and saving the same city, the one by the putting off of error, the other by accomplishing the reception of true knowledge — or rather, putting to death error, while faith is again brought to life, and effecting salvation by the death of error. For “Nineveh” is interpreted “parched blackness” and “most smooth beauty.” In agreement, then, with the force of the interpretation, the Lord, after the three-day burial and resurrection, overthrew the parched blackness of error that had accrued to nature from the transgression, and renewed the most smooth beauty of nature that comes from the obedience of faith, showing again, in nature, the beauty of incorruption at the resurrection, exceedingly smooth and roughened by nothing material at all.

And this, said in this way, will fit both common nature and the holy Church and the soul of each individual, having laid aside, through faith and a good conscience, the image of the old and earthly Adam, and having put on the image of the heavenly. It has been clearly shown, then, that the prophet has, concerning himself, a contemplation of many kinds, according to the force of his name, each passage of his Scripture fittingly suiting a different sense according to the interpretation. For, interpreted as “flight of beauty,” he signifies Adam and common nature; but, called “rest” and “healing of God” and “toil of God,” he signifies our Lord and God, according to the force of interpretation already given; and, indicating the “grace” of the proclamation, on account of the wealth of the Spirit within it, he is called “dove” and “gift of God” and “toil of God,” on account of the many contests of those who became ministers of this true calling; and, hinting at the madness of the Jews against the truth, he is interpreted “their affliction,” which is envy over the good things of others, begetting grief for those who have them — an evil that has fallen upon the very nature of the Jews, who have taken up hatred toward God and men, and for this reason seek only, through blood and murders, the utter destruction of nature.

But since the discourse, hastening on, passed over the contemplation concerning the journey of the three days — for it says, “and Nineveh was a great city for God, of about three days' journey” — let us, if it seems good, fill in this omission briefly. We must suppose, then, that the journey of the three days' road is the different modes of life of the course that is according to God — that is, the conduct fitting to each generic law; and by “generic laws” I now mean the natural, the written, and the law of grace; for each of these has its own peculiar manner of life and course, fitting to it, since it also has, arising from it, a different disposition, according to judgment, of those who are led by it. For each of them is naturally wont to fashion a different disposition for each of those under it. For instance, the natural law, when senseperception does not have the upper hand over reason, persuades all, untaught, to embrace what is kindred and akin, nature itself teaching them the succor of those in need, and to will for all what each supposes agreeable to himself when it comes from others. And, teaching this, the Lord says: “Whatever you wish that men should do to you, do also to them.” For in matters where nature is governed by reason, there is naturally but one disposition; and where the disposition is the same, the manner of character and the course of life is also, plainly, naturally one; and where the manner of manners and the course of life is the same, one and the same, plainly, is the bond, according to judgment, of the relation toward one another, leading all, by a single judgment, to the one reason of nature, in which there is entirely none of the division of nature now prevailing on account of self-love.

And the written law, restraining, through fear of the penalties, the disorderly impulses of the more foolish, accustoms them to look only to the equal distribution — according to which the strength of justice, confirmed by time, is transferred into nature — making fear a disposition, gradually and gently confirmed by the judgment concerning the good, and custom a habit, purified by forgetfulness of former things, and giving birth, together with itself, to mutual love, according to which the fulfillment of the law is naturally wont to come about, all being fitted together with one another in love. For the fulfillment of the law is the mutual bond, in love, of all who have partaken of nature, bearing the reason of nature crowned with the longing of love, and, by the addition of longing, brightening the law of nature. For the law of nature is the natural reason, having taken sense-perception into subjection to itself in its manners. And the written law is, or rather the fulfillment of the written law is, the natural reason, having taken up also spiritual longing, as an aid to the mutual connection with what is kindred. Wherefore it says: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” but not “you shall have your neighbor as yourself.” For the one denotes only the connection with the kindred with respect to being; the other signifies providence with respect to well-being.

And the law of grace teaches those it leads to imitate God himself directly, who loved us so far beyond himself — if it be lawful to say even this — though we were, on account of sin, enemies, that he even came, unchangeably, into our very essence, being above all essence and nature, condescending beyond essence, and became man, and willed to be reckoned one of men, and did not refuse to make our condemnation his own, and deified us by grace to such a degree as he himself, by economy, became man by nature — that we might not only learn to cling to one another naturally, and to love one another as ourselves spiritually, but also to care for one another, beyond ourselves, in a godlike manner, and to make this the proof of love toward one another: to choose, readily, voluntary death for one another's sake, according to virtue. “For there is no greater love than this,” it says, “that one lay down his life for his friend.” The law of nature, then, to speak in sum, is the natural reason, having taken sense-perception into subjection for the removal of irrationality, according to which there is division of things naturally joined together; and the written law is the natural reason, having, after the removal of irrationality with respect to sense-perception, taken up also a spiritual longing, sustaining the mutual connection with what is kindred; and the law of grace is the reason that is above nature, transforming nature unchangeably toward deification, and showing, as in an image, incomprehensibly to the nature of men, the archetype above essence and nature, and affording the abiding continuance of ever-wellbeing.

If, then, the reasoning concerning the three laws holds in this manner, reasonably the great city of God, the Church — that is, the soul of each individual — is a journey of three days' road, as receptive and capacious of the righteousness according to nature and law and Spirit. For in these three laws the whole order of the Church is contained, circumscribed in breadth by virtue, and in length by knowledge, and in the depth of wisdom by mystical theology. But let us not be separated, in disposition, from this city, like the people of the Jews, cherishing the body, as it were a booth, and attending to the temporary pleasure of the body, as it were a gourd, lest the worm of conscience, striking, wither the deceived disposition that clings to pleasure, and lest, when the exaction for our wicked way of life comes upon us like a scorching wind, through involuntary trials, we renounce life and become resentful against the divine judgment. For each of us who are overcome by the deceit of material things and who rejoice in the pleasures of the body receives, in the manner of a worm, the Word of God, striking him, for the time being, in conscience, and, in the manner of the root of the gourd, eating away his relation to pleasure, and thus, through the complete rising of the illumination of the Spirit's oracles, drying up the operation according to sin, and, with the scorching wind — the memory of eternal punishments — striking, as it were a head, the beginning of the passions of wickedness that arises according to sense-perception in their onslaughts, that we might learn the reasons of providence and judgment, which prefers eternal things to temporary things, whose privation the race of men is accustomed to grieve over.

For if the discourse of Scripture introduced man grieving over the booth and the gourd — that is, the flesh and the pleasure of the flesh — but Nineveh clinging to God, it is clear that what has appeared beloved to God is, for men, far better and more precious than all things of whatever kind that exist — how much more so than the things that do not exist, and that only seem, through mistaken presumption, to exist, of which there is entirely no reason at all in actual being, but only fantasy, deceiving the mind, and providing the passion with a vacant form of non-existent things, but not real subsistence.

1. In how many ways is “Jonah” interpreted.

2. In how many ways is “Joppa” interpreted.

3. To how many things, understood spiritually, does Jonah correspond.

4. Of what does Joppa, understood spiritually, bear the correspondence.

5. According to another approach, a contemplation fitting the particulars concerning Joppa.

6. Of much-disturbed tumult.

7. He calls “head” the first reasoning concerning the Monad, as the beginning of every virtue; and the clefts of the mountains, the understandings of the spirits of wickedness, by which our transgression. mind was swallowed 8. He calls “lowest earth” the habit that has no perception at all of divine knowledge, or of any movement of the life according to virtue.

9. He calls “abyss” the ignorance lying upon the habit of wickedness, upon which, as upon earth, the seas of wickedness have settled.

10. He calls “earth” the fixed habit of wickedness; and “eternal bars,” the passionate attachments to material things that hold together this most evil habit.

11. He calls “light” true knowledge, and “life of mortals” the conduct fitting for rational beings, of which he who has the evil habit is deprived.

12. Here he took “the sea” to mean this world, into which the Lord came through the flesh.

13. He calls the Lord “rest,” as loosing the toils undergone for virtue; and “healing of God,” as healer of the wound of death; and “grace of God,” as redemption; and “toil of God,” as taking up our sufferings.

14. How our Lord and God is grace: see, Nilus, and be not shaken, by the words, “full of grace and truth.”

15. How Jonah signifies prophetic grace.

16. That the endurance of the saints, he says, wears out the wicked power that assails it.

17. That the saints, suffering bodily, and willingly submitting to death of the flesh for the sake of truth, worked out for the nations the life according to faith in the Spirit.

18. That the natural weakness of the saints is the material for the surpassing divine power, by which the Lord showed the proud devil to be the weaker.

19. He says the king is the natural law; and the throne, the habit of passion according to sense-perception; and the robe, the vesture of empty glory; and the sackcloth, the mourning of repentance; and the ash, humility.

20. He calls “men” those concerned with reason; “cattle,” those concerned with desire; “oxen,” those concerned with irascibility; “sheep,” those who fail with respect to the contemplation of visible things.

21. That Nineveh also signifies the soul of each individual.

22. “Not without” are time and place; without which none of the things that have come to be exists.

23. The Church, and the soul of each individual, having the reasonings concerning virtue and knowledge, as surpassing time and nature, has more than twelve myriads; for the reason of virtue does not know the sin of the flesh, as of the left; and the reason of knowledge does not know the wickedness of the soul, as of the right.

24. God is the cause of the virtues; and the operative knowledge of this is the alteration, according to habit, toward the Spirit, of him who has truly recognized God.

25. The reason according to nature, he says, is naturally wont to lead him who cares for practice, through the mediation of the virtues, up to the mind; and the mind introduces him who desires knowledge, through contemplation, to wisdom; but the unreasoning passion persuades him who neglects the commandments to be dragged down toward senseperception, whose end is that the mind be nailed fast to pleasure.

26. He calls “unbelief” the denial of the commandments, and “faith” assent to them; and “darkness,” ignorance of the good, and “light,” knowledge of it. And he has called “Christ” their essence and hypostasis; and “the devil,” the worst habit, generative of all evils.

27. He calls “virtue” the most dispassionate and fixed habit concerning the good, which stands on neither side at all, bearing the character of God, to whom nothing is opposed.

28. If the Word has, as is natural, determined the coming-tobe of each of the things that are, none of the things that are has, by nature, either exceeded or fallen short of itself. The bound, then, of beings is the recognition, by desire, of the cause; and the measure is the imitation, according to actual operation, so far as attainable, by beings, of the cause.

29. To be carried beyond the bound and the measure of the desire of the things in motion, he says, makes the course fruitless, since they do not arrive at God, in whom the movement of desire of all things comes to rest, receiving the enjoyment of God as their self-subsisting end.

30. Beyond the bound and the measure — that is, plainly, contrary to the bound and the measure.

31. Namely, to reason.

32. That the mind that has run up to God in ecstasy leaves behind both the reasons of incorporeal things and those of bodies. For it is not natural for anything after God to be beheld together with God.

33. How Jonah can also be taken typologically with reference to the Jewish people.

34. Jonah, interpreted, typologically exposes beforehand the Jewish people.

35. That the Lord conquered the power of the tyrant more, by putting forward the weakness of the flesh, than the devil conquered Adam, by promising him the worthiness of divinity.

36. The Lord is a worm on account of the unsown flesh; and the sun, both on account of the setting of his burial, according to which the Word, as man, came to be under the earth, and as being, by nature according to essence, light and God.

37. That the scorching wind signifies not only the trials, but also the abandonment by God that removes from the Jews the supply of the divine gifts.

38. He says it is proper to pride to deny that God is the begetter of virtue and of nature; and to vainglory, to divide nature toward diminishment; of which vainglorious pride is naturally the offspring, being a composite habit of wickedness, having voluntary denial of God, and ignorance of equal honor according to nature.

39. Kinship according to the soul through the Spirit looses the relation of judgment to the flesh, but binds it fast, by longing, to God.

40. He calls “night” the legal symbols, under which the law is enacted, in which it is not possible to find illumination of the soul for those who do not understand them spiritually.

41. That, on account of the greatness, immeasurable by any reason, of the mystery of the divine economy, the Church of the nations, he says, was called a great city for God.

42. According to essence, he says, the truth precedes the types; but according to manifestation, the types temporally precede the truth. Since, then, Jonah, having anticipated the truth in himself typically, prefigured it beforehand, remaining in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, he says, “Yet three days,” meaning the three days of the Lord's burial and resurrection, after which the error and ignorance of the nations shall be overthrown.

43. Namely, of faith.

44. A summary exposition of the interpretation of the name Jonah, according to the force inherent in it, concerning each of the persons and manners set forth.

45. Namely, the law.

46. He says the work of the natural law is the judgmentrelation of all toward all, of one mind.

47. Canons demonstrative of the characteristic property of the natural law.

48. The written law, he says, restraining injustice by fear, accustoms toward justice; and by time, habit makes the disposition fond of justice, upon which a fixed habit toward the good supervenes, bringing forgetfulness of former wickedness.

49. Definitions demonstrative of the operation proper to each of the aforesaid laws.

50. That to have one's neighbor as oneself belongs only to concern for life with respect to being, which is proper to the natural law. But to love one's neighbor as oneself belongs also to provide for the neighbor's well-being according to virtue, which the written law enjoins. But to love one's neighbor beyond oneself is most proper to the law of grace.

51. Definitions, in summary, demonstrative of the property, effective of good things, of the three days.

52. The road of the three days is, he says, the perfection, through the three laws, of him who keeps them according to righteousness.

53. Another, more refined contemplation concerning the booth and the gourd and the worm and the scorching wind and the sun.

54. He who is hindered from the occasions that lead the body to pleasure, he says, learns the reasons of providence, which restrains the kindling matter of the passions. But he who receives the scourges that bring pain to the body is taught the reasons of judgment, which cleanses him, through involuntary pains, of former defilements.

65. Concerning Those of the Seed of Saul Who Were Put to Death by the Gibeonites Under King David It is written in the second book of Kingdoms: “There was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David sought the face of the Lord. And the Lord said: ‘Upon Saul and upon his house is the injustice, because he put the Gibeonites to death.’ And David called the Gibeonites and said to them, ‘What shall I do for you, and with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord?’ And they said to the king, ‘The man who consumed us and persecuted us and planned to destroy us — let us annihilate him, that he may not stand within any border of Israel; give us seven men of his sons, and we will hang them up to the Lord on the hill of Saul.’ And the king took the two sons of Rizpah daughter of Aiah, Saul's concubine — Armoni and Mephibosheth — and the five sons of Merab, daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel, and gave them into the hand of the Gibeonites; and they hanged them on the mountain before the Lord. And the seven fell there together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the beginning of the barley harvest.

And Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth and spread it for herself upon the rock, until the waters of God dropped upon them from heaven. And she did all that the king commanded. And afterward God was entreated for the land.” Why, after Saul's death, was David called to account, with a famine gripping the land, until he gave up seven men of Saul's seed to be put to death by the Gibeonites? What is the meaning of these words, and how shall we contemplate them spiritually? The precise knowledge of the oracles of the Spirit is naturally revealed only to those worthy of the Spirit, who, through great diligence in the virtues, having cleansed their mind of the soot of the passions, receive, like a clean and clear mirror, at the very first contact, the knowledge of divine things imprinted and impressed upon them, like a face; but for those whose life, like mine, is stained with the blemishes of the passions, it is scarcely possible even to conjecture, from probable guesses, the knowledge of divine things, let alone to presume to understand and express it with precision. And I know clearly that you yourself, honored father, know divine things the more by suffering, and have gained the knowledge of them by experience, rather than as I know it, speaking, being able to declare nothing about divine things from having suffered.

Yet what is within my power is not to be rejected, especially by you, who have laid upon me this task, beyond my power to speak of. Saul, then, in this passage of Scripture, is the law, according to the power of the fleshly commandment, that reigns over the fleshly Jews in the letter — that is, the bodily manner or reasoning that reigns over those led by the letter of the law alone. For “Saul” is interpreted, according to one approach, “asked-for Hades”; for the people of the Jews, preferring the pleasure-loving life to the life and kingdom in the Spirit of God according to virtue, asked that Hades — that is, ignorance — reign instead of his knowledge; for everyone who has fallen from divine love has the law in the flesh reigning through pleasure — the law that can keep no divine commandment, or does not wish to. According to another manner, “borrowed” or “a loan.” For the written law was not given to those who received it for the acquisition of an abiding possession, but for the pedagogy of a promise yet expected. Wherefore, when God gave the kingdom to Saul, he did not, in his covenant with him, promise the kingdom as eternal. For every loan does not become, for the one who receives it, a possession for keeping, but an occasion of labor and toil for the gathering of another possession.

And Saul's concubine Rizpah is interpreted “course of the mouth.” And “course of the mouth” is the learning of the law by utterance in speech alone, which is unlawfully taken to wife by him who attends to the bodily worship of the law alone, from which nothing pious or God-loving is begotten. For he who exercises himself only in the bodily learning of the law by utterance of speech has no lawful cohabitation with reason — that is, with the learning of the law. Wherefore what is begotten of him is ignoble and to be cast off. For there is begotten to him, through the unlawful union, from Rizpah, Armoni and Mephibosheth, which is “their anathema” and “the shame of their mouth.” For “Armoni” is interpreted, according to one approach, “their anathema,” and “Mephibosheth,” “shame of their mouth”; and “their anathema” is the corruption, through the body, according to sin, of the operation of the passions; and “Mephibosheth” is the mind's movement contrary to nature concerning wickedness — that is, the mind's inventive contemplation of base things — being and being called “shame of the mouth,” that is, of the mind. Or again, “their anathema” is the place of the penalty now holding sway over nature — that is, this world, which has become a region of death and corruption on account of sin, into which the first man fell from paradise after the transgression of the divine commandment; which world, according to the pleasure-loving relation of judgment — that is, worldly attachment — is naturally begotten from the learning that consists only in the verbal utterance of the law, by him who does not pass, in mind, to the divine comeliness within the letter of the law, in the Spirit.

And “the shame of their mouth” is the mind's world-loving preoccupation of thoughts and its body-loving preoccupation. For where the world is naturally wont to be begotten, according to the judgment's relation, from the bodily fashioning that appears in the letter of the law — that is, the disposition that loves the world — the mind's world-loving preoccupation of thoughts is reasonably begotten together with the body-loving preoccupation as well. Or again, “their anathema” is the material, unlovely, and unformed movement of the passions, and “the shame of their mouth” is the mind's movement that brings form to the passions and fashions the beauty according to pleasure toward sense-perception. For without the mind's inventive power for the fashioning of form, passion is in no way brought about. He, then, who circumscribes the power of the divine promise by the letter of the law alone has the learning of the law as a concubine, but not a lawful wife. Wherefore such learning, of necessity, not for its own sake but for the sake of him who receives it bodily — that is, cohabits with it — begets the anathema and the shame. For he who believes that God has ordained, according to the law, sacrifices and feasts and sabbaths and new moons for the sake of bodily delight and rest will altogether and in every way come under the guilt of the operation of the passions and the shame of the filth of the base thoughts that accompany them, and will be under the corruptible world and the body-loving preoccupation of thoughts and under the matter and the form of the passions, able to hold nothing precious except corruptible things, and for this reason, perhaps, wickedly begetting Merab, who bore five sons to Adriel.

And “Merab” is interpreted “satiety of the throat,” which is gluttony. For this alone, having taken license from the commandment in Jewish fashion, begets to Adriel — that is, to the contemplative part of the soul — the manners of the senses according to misuse. For “Adriel” is interpreted “divine power” or “strong helper” or “mighty sight,” which is the mind made according to the image of God. And it dwells together with gluttony, having been deceived into believing it a begetting of the fleshly law that is according to the commandment — that is, of the letter. For the mind, persuaded that bodily delight is an ordinance of divine commandment, according to the law in the letter, admits no other for cohabitation than this, considering it divine and a begetting of the law that reigns over it, and constitutes from it the manners of the senses according to misuse. For whenever the contemplative part of the soul embraces bodily delight, according to the law in the letter, as divine, for cohabitation on account of the commandment, it pursues the use of the senses contrary to nature, permitting no operation to appear natural in its use. He, then, who exercises himself bodily in the learning of the law, having, as a concubine and not a lawful wife, the knowledge of divine things, and begetting from her the anathema of the operation of the passions and the shame of the unpleasantness of the thoughts that accompany them, and, from Merab — that is, his daughter gluttony — receiving offspring, the manners of the senses according to misuse, is accustomed to kill the reasons and reasonings that are in the nature of beings — that is, the natural ones — like Gibeonites.

For “Gibeonites” are interpreted “mountainous” or “lofty ones”; and these clearly signify the loftier reasons according to natural contemplation, or the reasonings that are in our power according to nature, which Saul kills — and whoever else is now, in disposition, another Saul, on account of the error confined to the letter of the law alone, not shrinking from dismissing and adulterating the natural reasons. For no one who attends only to the bodily worship of the law can at all admit a natural reason or reasoning, since the symbols are not naturally the same as nature. But if the symbols are not the same as nature, he who clings to the symbols of the law as though they were the archetypes can never clearly behold, according to nature, the coming-tobe of beings, and for this reason unreasonably dismisses the natural reasons, not considering that he ought to preserve those saved by Jesus, on whose behalf he also mustered that fearful war against the five kings who rose up against them, in which heaven itself, by stones of hail, fought together with Jesus against those who rose up against the Gibeonites; whom the incarnate Word made bearers of wood and drawers of water for the divine tabernacle — that is, for the holy Church prefigured beforehand through the tabernacle. For this, this is Jesus, who put to death the passionate manners and reasonings that rose up against them according to sense-perception.

For Jesus, the Word of God, ever preserves the reasons according to natural contemplation, appointing them as bearers of wood and drawers of water for the divine tabernacle of the mysteries, as suppliers of the kindling matter for the illumination of divine knowledge, and of the cleansing purification of the passions, or of the occasion for the life-giving distribution in the Spirit. For without natural contemplation the power of the mysteries is never at all preserved in anyone in any manner. And if the Gibeonites also signify the portion of the nations, joining the heir of the divine promises, Jesus, and being saved and taught to bear wood and to draw water — that is, to carry, practically, upon the shoulders of the virtues, the mystical and saving reason concerning the cross and the divine regeneration through water, and to supply the divine ark of pious faith, like wood, through the mortification, by practice, of the earthly members, and, contemplation, like water, the inflow of the knowledge in the Spirit — this is not absurd nor alien to piety. Whether, then, the Gibeonites prefigure the reasons according to natural contemplation, or the portion of the nations saved through faith, he who has chosen to live in Jewish fashion, according to the law in the letter alone, has them as an enemy and a foe of what is being saved. For he who considers the belly his god, and glories in his shame as though in glory, knows how to cling zealously only to the passions of dishonor, as though they were divine, and for this reason attends only to temporal things — that is, to matter and form and the fivefold misused operation of the senses — some as the children of Rizpah the concubine, and others as the offspring of the dishonored daughter Merab.

For senseperception, entangled by intercourse with matter and form, is naturally wont to bring passion to completion, but to kill and consume the natural reasons. For it is not natural for the reason of nature to appear together with passion at all, just as neither is passion naturally born together with nature at its coming-to-be. He, then, who clings only to the letter of Scripture, like Saul, dismisses also the natural reasons, and does not receive the mystically pre-proclaimed calling of the nations, gaping only, according to the law, as he supposes, toward the enjoyment of the flesh. So long, then, as this bodily disposition according to the law holds sway over those who live only according to sense-perception, the famine of divine knowledge in the Spirit does not become manifest. For famine is, in truth, the failure of the good things known by experience of it, and the utter want and scarcity of the spiritual foods that sustain the soul. For how could one consider it a famine, or a loss, to be deprived of things once altogether unknown to him? Wherefore, while Saul lives, there is no famine, since, while the letter according to the law lives and reigns over the understanding of the material Jews, the deficiency of spiritual knowledge is not naturally discerned. But whenever the splendor of the evangelical grace shines forth, and the allglorious David — who is the law according to the Spirit — takes the kingdom of the spiritual understanding, after the death of Saul — that is, after the demise of the letter (for “David” is interpreted “rejection” and “strong of sight”; the one is said with reference to the Jews, when the spirit is overcome by the letter; the other is applied with reference to Christians, when the letter is conquered by the spirit) — then the famine of the knowledge in the Spirit is discerned, commonly in the faithful people and, individually, in the soul of each person, whenever he prefers the outward covering of the letter, appearing before that mystical contemplation in the Spirit, and, so to speak, makes the soul of Scripture more dishonorable than the body.

For, in truth, the people of the faithful, and those who have recognized the truth, and the soul of each individual person, hunger, having abandoned the spiritual contemplation in grace, and having become subject to the typical slavery in the letter, not sustaining the mind with the greatness of thoughts, but filling sense-perception with the passionate fantasy of the bodily configurations of the scriptural symbols. Wherefore there comes to be, especially, a famine of divine knowledge for three years, year following year. For every one who does not admit the spiritual contemplation of Holy Scripture has thereby rejected, along with it, the natural law also, as the Jews do, and has been ignorant of the law in grace, according to which deification is given to those who are led by it. The famine, then, of the three years signifies the deficiency of knowledge, proportionate to each, in the three laws — I mean the natural, and the written, and that of grace — coming about for those who do not care for their own elevation, according to contemplation. For he cannot at all care for the noetic understanding of the Scriptures who rejects, in contemplation, the natural reasons of beings, and clings only to the material symbols, devising no spiritual elevation of speech for them. For while only the historical narrative of the Scriptures holds sway, the dominion of the temporal and time-bound things over the understanding has not departed; but the children of the dead Saul, and his grandchildren, seven in number, are still alive — that is, the bodily and temporary worship of the law, from which the passionate disposition is accustomed to be begotten, according to the reason given, for those who love the body, having as helper of its error the manifest ordinance in the symbols.

For this reason, I think, no famine occurred in the days of Saul — that is, that in the time of the legal worship according to the flesh, the deficiency of the knowledge in the Spirit was not discerned — but in the time of evangelical grace, in which, when we do not spiritually understand the whole of Scripture after the passing of the dominion of the letter, we altogether hunger, not enjoying the mystical worship in the Spirit that is fitting for Christians. But when, having received perception, we seek, after the manner of David, the face of the Lord, we are clearly taught that, because we did not admit the natural reasons for advancement to the mystical contemplation in the Spirit, but still cling to the bodily reasonings in the letter of the law, the grace of knowledge has been taken away. “And David sought,” it says, “the face of the Lord; and the Lord said, ‘Upon Saul and upon his house is the injustice, on account of which he put the Gibeonites to death.’” David is every mind that has clear vision according to Christ, ever seeking the face of the Lord. And the face of the Lord is the true contemplation and knowledge, according to virtue, of divine things; seeking which, he is taught the cause of the deficiency and want with respect to it, and is commanded to give over to death the two sons of Saul from the concubine Rizpah, and the five sons of his daughter Merab.

Saul is, as I said, “asked-for Hades” — that is, “desired ignorance”; and desired ignorance is clearly the letter of the law — that is, the bodily dominion of the worship in the law, which is the bodily part of the law, or the mind that clings, bodily, only to sense-perception concerning the matter of the letter. And Rizpah is, according to her interpretation, “course of the mouth,” which is the learning of the law by utterance of speech alone; and truly he has a course of the mouth, but not of the understanding, who is a stranger to the spiritual contemplation of the law. And the sons of Rizpah are Armoni and Mephibosheth. And “Armoni” is “their anathema,” which is the corruption, through the body, according to sin, of the operation of the passions, or the place — that is, the world — in which the penalty for the transgression was given, or the inherent pleasure-loving relation toward the world; and “Mephibosheth” is “shame of their mouth,” which is the mind's movement, contrary nature, concerning wickedness — that is, the inventive imagination of the passions — or perhaps the world-loving preoccupation of thoughts and the body-loving preoccupation, or again the mind's movement that brings form to the passions and fashions the beauty according to pleasure toward senseperception. For it is these sons that the written law, and the mind that adheres to the letter of the law alone, naturally beget from the learning that consists only in the utterance of speech.

And Merab, according to her interpretation, is Saul's daughter, “satiety of the throat,” which signifies the passion of gluttony. For only this passion is naturally wont to beget, in body, delight and the enjoyment-loving disposition toward material things — both the law, in the letter, circumscribing by its symbols those who worship according to it, and the mind that, on account of its flesh-loving life, confines the law by its types. And the five sons of Merab, Saul's daughter, are the five misused, passionate manners of the five senses, which the disposition that cares only for the body according to the law, through delight, is entirely accustomed to beget for Adriel — that is, for the contemplative part of the soul. These two sons of Saul — that is, matter and form — and the five grandsons of Saul — that is, the five misused manners of the five senses concerning matter and form; I mean, the passionate and unnatural entanglement of the senses with sensible things, that is, with things under time and flux — the wondrous David, after the death of Saul — that is, after the passing of the bodily worship according to the law in the letter, and the crossing over of ignorance — gives over to be put to death, according to the divine oracle, to the Gibeonites — that is, to the loftier reasons and reasonings according to natural contemplation; the spiritual law, or mind, gives over, in the symbols pertaining to sense-perception and the body, the most general relation to the things under time, to be utterly abolished and put to death, taking place at the height of the hill of Saul — that is, of the law of spiritual contemplation.

For unless one first, having examined the discordance between the symbols of divine and intelligible things and the things themselves, according to nature, desires to come, in mind, having set sense-perception entirely outside the divine sanctuary, to the comeliness of intelligible things, he cannot ever be freed from the bodily variety within the types; clinging to which, so long as he remains, he does not reasonably find consolation for the want that comes from the famine of knowledge, having condemned himself, like the deceiving serpent, to eat the earth of Scripture — that is, the body — but not, like Christ, to eat the heaven — that is, the spirit and soul of Scripture, that is, the heavenly and angelic bread; I mean the spiritual contemplation and knowledge of the Scriptures in Christ, which God grants abundantly, supplied to those who love him, according to what is written: “He gave them bread from heaven; man ate the bread of angels.” It is necessary, then, that the reception of Scripture according to sense-perception with reference to the body — as being clearly generative of the passions and of the relative disposition toward things temporal and flowing, that is, of the passionate operation of the senses toward sensible things, as Saul's children and grandchildren — should be abolished by contemplation according to nature, as though on a mountain, through the elevation to divine matters through the natural oracles, if indeed we desire to be filled with divine grace.

For if, according to the divine oracle, the injustice is upon Saul and upon his house, on whose account he put the Gibeonites to death, it is clear that the law, understood only according to the letter, and the people of the Jews, and whoever is, in understanding, an imitator of them, do injustice to the truth — for this one the discourse knows to be Saul's house — circumscribing the power of the law by the letter alone and not admitting, for the manifestation of the knowledge mystically hidden in the letter, contemplation, which stands between the types and the truth, leading those who are led away from the one, and back toward the other, but as it were altogether denying this, and putting it outside the initiation into divine things. This bodily and temporary reception of the law, then, must be put to death, as being under time and flowing, through natural contemplation, as though on a mountain, at the height of knowledge, by those who are diligent in divine contemplations. For it says: “And David called the Gibeonites and said to them: What shall I do for you, and with what shall I make atonement, that you may bless the inheritance of the Lord? And they said to the king: The man who consumed us and persecuted us and planned to destroy us — let us annihilate him, that he may not stand within any border of Israel; give us seven men of his sons, and we will hang them up to the Lord on the hill of Saul.

And the king took the two sons of Rizpah daughter of Aiah, Saul's concubine — Armoni and Mephibosheth — and the five sons of Merab, daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel, and gave them into the hand of the Gibeonites; and they hanged them on the mountain before the Lord. And the seven fell there together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the beginning of the barley harvest.” Where, according to the history, do we find that the Gibeonites destroyed Saul so that he should not stand within any border of Israel, when his grandson, Mephibosheth son of Jonathan son of Saul, was preserved by King David, and many others of Saul's kin, as is recorded in the book of Chronicles? And how, having taken seven men of his seed, did they say, “Let us annihilate him, that he may not stand within any border of Israel,” of him who had died many years before this? But, as it seems, the unreasonable has been mixed into the wording of the history, that we might seek the true meaning, in understanding, of what is written. The bodily mind of Scripture, then — that is, Saul — is entirely abolished from every border of Israel by him who, through natural contemplation, as it were by certain Gibeonites, kills, in practice, the pleasure-loving and body-loving relation toward the unstable and flowing matter that is begotten of the written law within the soul, slaughtering, as it were the children and grandchildren of Saul, the lowly understanding of the law, through the mediation of natural contemplation, as upon a mountain, at the height of knowledge, and making manifest before the Lord — that is, plainly, through confession — the former reception of the law with reference to the body.

For this, “to hang in the sun,” can be understood by those fond of learning as meaning “before the Lord”; “and they hanged them,” it says, “on the mountain before the Lord,” bringing into the light, plainly through knowledge, the erring preconception according to the letter of the law. For everyone who has killed the bodily understanding of the law has clearly killed and abolished the letter of the law, “that he may not stand within any border of Israel” — that is, within any mystical manner or reason of spiritual contemplation. For if “Israel” is interpreted “mind that sees God,” it is clear that the bodily element of the law can in no way at all subsist in any manner of spiritual contemplation for those who prefer the spirit to the letter, if indeed, “God,” according to what is written, “is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and Truth,” but not in the letter — “for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Wherefore that which is naturally wont to kill must itself be killed by the life-giving Spirit; for it is altogether impossible for the bodily element of the law and the divine — that is, the letter and the spirit — to coexist together, actively, at the same time, since it is not natural for that which is capable of taking life away to agree with that which naturally bestows life.

According to the history, then, taking up this passage, we do not find Scripture speaking truly. For where did the Gibeonites destroy Saul from every border of Israel, when much of Saul's kindred was afterward found among the people? But understanding it according to contemplation, we find clearly that, through the mediation of natural contemplation, at the height of knowledge, the written law entirely passes away — that is, the bodily ordinance of worship in the symbols. For where will circumcision of the flesh still stand, when the law is understood spiritually? Where the sabbaths and the beginnings of the months? Where the festal assemblies of the feasts? Where the tradition of sacrifices and of the resting of the land and the rest of the law with respect to bodily worship? For we know, applying ourselves naturally to the matters at hand, that the removal of the completeness that comes from God according to nature is not perfection — for nature does not achieve perfection by being mutilated through art, and by laying aside, through cunning device, what has come to it from God, according to the reason of its creation — lest we introduce the art of God as stronger than the confirmation of righteousness, and make the contrived deficiency of nature a filling-in of the deficiency in righteousness that is according to creation, but rather that we be taught, from the local position of the part that is circumcised, to perform, by judgment, the circumcision of the passionate disposition of the soul, according to which judgment is fitted to run together with nature more, correcting the passionate law of acquired coming-to-be.

For circumcision is the mystical, complete removal of the mind's passionate relation to the introduced coming-to-be. And the Sabbath is the complete cessation from the passions, and the universal rest of the mind's movement concerning the things that have come to be, and the complete passing over to the divine; in which he who has arrived, as is lawful, through virtue and knowledge, ought not, like wood, to entertain any matter at all that kindles the passions, nor indeed to gather up at all the reasons of nature, lest we, after the manner of the Greeks, make God out to be one who delights in the passions or is measured by the bounds of nature, whom only complete silence proclaims, and total ignorance by way of transcendence sets forth. And we say that the new moons are the different illuminations in the course of the days according to virtue and knowledge; running eagerly through all the ages with these, we fulfill the acceptable year of the Lord, adorned with the crown of goodness. And the crown of goodness is pure faith, adorned like precious stones with the lofty expressions and spiritual reasons of the doctrines, and binding fast, with thoughts, the God-loving mind, as though a head; or rather, the crown of goodness is again the very Word of God, who circumscribes the mind, as a head, by the variety of manners according to providence and judgment — that is, by self-control with respect to the voluntary passions and endurance with respect to the involuntary — and who makes the mind more beautiful than itself by the participation in the grace of deification.

And of the feasts, the first is a symbol of practical philosophy, bringing over to virtue, as from Egypt, that is, from sin, those held fast by it; and the second is the type of natural contemplation in the spirit, offering to God, as the first-fruits of harvest, the pious opinion concerning beings; and the third is the mystery of theology, comprising the gnostic habit of all the spiritual reasons in the things that have come to be, and the complete sinlessness, by grace, that accords with the economy of the incarnate Word, and the perfect and immortal unchangeableness in the good that follows upon these, as productive of trumpets and atonement and the feast of tabernacles. This, for now, according to one approach, is my conjecture from the honoring of the days. For God did not command the Sabbath and the new moons and the feasts to be honored by men because he wished days to be honored — for in this way he would have taught them, contrary to the law of the commandment, to worship the creature rather than the Creator, supposing the days to be venerable by nature and for this reason to be worshiped — but he indicated, symbolically through the days, that himself was to be honored. For he himself is the Sabbath, as the rest of the soul's toils in the flesh and the cessation of labors according to righteousness; and the Passover, as the liberator of those held in the bitter slavery of sin; and Pentecost, as the beginning and end of beings, and the Word, in whom all things by nature consist.

For if Pentecost comes after the week's cycle of the sevenfold week returning upon itself, and Pentecost is clearly a decad multiplied by five, then plainly the nature of beings, being, according to its own reason, fivefold on account of the senses, shall, after the natural passing of time and the ages, be in God, the one according to nature, receiving no limit in whom there is altogether no interval. For some say the Word is a decad, as providence broadened, in progression, by the decad of the commandments; and whenever nature is joined by grace to the Word, the “notwithouts” — that is, place and time — shall no longer exist, the alterable movement of things naturally in motion having ceased. For the finite rest, in which the movement of things in motion necessarily comes about by alteration, must receive its end through the presence of the unbounded rest, in which the movement of things in motion is naturally wont to cease. For where there is, by nature, a limit, there also the movement of the things within it is altogether alterable; but where there is, by nature, no limit, no alterable movement at all of the things within it will be known. The world, then, is a finite place and a circumscribed rest, and time is a circumscribed movement; wherefore the movement according to life of the things within it is also alterable.

But whenever nature, having passed through place and time, both in actual operation and in conception — that is, the “notwithouts,” that is, the finite rest and movement — is joined, without mediation, to providence, it finds providence to be, by nature, a simple and stable reason, having no circumscription at all, and for this reason, altogether, no movement either. Wherefore nature, existing in the world temporally, has alterable movement, on account of the world's finite rest and the course of time according to change; but coming to be in God, on account of the natural monad, in which it has come to be, it will have rest that is ever in motion and a stable ever-sameness of motion, occurring eternally around the same, one, and only thing, which the discourse knows to be the mediate and abiding settling around the first cause, of the things made by him. The mystery of Pentecost, then, is the immediate union of those provided for with providence — that is, the union of nature with the Word according to the conception of providence — according to which there is altogether no manifestation of time and coming-to-be. And again, the trumpet is our Word, as sounding forth to us divine and ineffable knowledges; and the atonement, as, being in himself what belongs to us, having become like us, dissolving our charges, and, by the gift of grace in the Spirit, deifying nature that has sinned; and the feast of tabernacles, as the fixing of our unchangeableness, according to the Godimitating habit, concerning the good, and as being the sustaining bond of the transformation toward immortality.

Applying ourselves naturally to Scripture, we do not believe that God delights in the slaughter of irrational animals and the sprinklings of blood, and grants, as a wage of such service, the forgiveness of sins to those who offer them, lest we unwittingly worship a passible God, as though he eagerly desired such things through great zeal — things which, if we should behold men extremely fond of, we would condemn as licentious and intemperate. For we know that spiritual sacrifices are not only the mortification of the passions, slaughtered by the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and the deliberate pouring out, as of blood, of the whole life in the flesh, but also the offering of the manners according to philosophy and of all the natural powers, dedicated to God and wholly consumed by the fire of the grace in the Spirit for the divine portion. Thus, contemplating naturally each of the symbols contained in Scripture, as upon a mountain, at the height of mystical contemplation, we kill the temporal and transient tradition of the law, like seven men of the sons of Saul, and we abolish Saul — that is, the earthly mind confined to the letter of Scripture alone — “that he may not stand within any border of Israel” — that is, in any manner of spiritual contemplation. For this man, while alive, in truth consumes and pursues and destroys, confining the law to the flesh alone, the natural reasons and reasonings, honoring as divine the passions of dishonor, which the natural reasonings, taking license from the law of the Spirit, kill together and put to death at the beginning of the barley harvest.

And the beginning of the barley harvest is the gathering, in the practical philosophy, with some proportionate reason, of the virtues, according to which the earthly element of the Scriptures is naturally wont to be killed and every earthly movement entirely abolished. For as soon as one pursues the philosophy of the virtues rationally, at once he has also naturally transferred the reception of the Scriptures toward the Spirit, serving God in practice, in newness of spirit, through lofty contemplations, and not becoming, in oldness of the letter, through the more lowly reception of the law with reference to the body and sense-perception, a nurturer of the passions, after the manner of the Jews, and a healer of sin. For it is necessary, through practice, by means of the natural reasonings, dispatch the passionate and bodily understanding of the law, as the discourse of Scripture suggests, saying: “And the king took the two sons of Rizpah daughter of Aiah, Saul's concubine — Armoni and Mephibosheth — and the five sons of Merab, daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel, and gave them into the hand of the Gibeonites.” The hand of the Gibeonites is the practice, according to virtue, of the natural reasonings, through which the sons of Rizpah, Armoni and Mephibosheth — that is, the operation of the passions begotten of the bodily teaching of the law by utterance of speech alone, and the unrestrained movement of the reasonings — are put to death, and further, also the five sons of Merab — that is, the unrestrained five manners of the five senses, begotten from delight according to the misused use of operation — whom every mind, lofty and elevated according to God, is naturally wont to kill together, as upon a mountain, at the height of spiritual contemplation, at the beginning of the barley harvest, which is at the outset of the practice according to virtue, or of the pious contemplation according to nature, slaughtering together, at the same time, both the operation of the passions and the unseemly movement of the reasonings, and further, the unrestrained manners of the misused operation of the senses.

“And the seven fell,” it says, “together, and were put to death at the beginning of the barley harvest. And Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, took sackcloth and spread it for herself upon the rock, until the waters of God dropped upon them from heaven.” Rizpah, as I said, is interpreted “course of the mouth,” which is the bodily teaching of the law according to utterance of speech alone; which, after the death of the passions begotten of her, and the manifestation, coming about at the height of natural contemplation, in the heart of each of those formerly held fast by her, spreads repentance, like sackcloth, upon the rock — I mean the reason of faith according to Christ — attending diligently to the ordinances in the Spirit, according to Christ, through repentance, having day and night before her eyes, through memory, like children, the former conduct according to the law in the flesh, until the waters of God shall drop from heaven — that is, until the divine knowledges of the Scriptures shall be sent down from the height of spiritual contemplation, extinguishing the passions and renewing the virtues. For the learning of the law is naturally wont, approaching Christ, the true and solid rock, through repentance, to receive the divine rain of the spiritual knowledge of the Scriptures, according to the command of King David — that is, of the mind “strong of sight.”

For it says: “And she did all that the king commanded. And afterward God was entreated for the land.” The learning of the divine Scriptures, then, according to the command of King David — that is, of the spiritual law, or of the mind “strong of sight” — being transferred, through the mediation of repentance, of which sackcloth is the symbol, by the practice of the virtues, to the rock, that is, to Christ, is naturally wont to call forth the divine rain of knowledge, and God is accustomed to hearken to the earth of the heart, and to grant divine showers of gifts, and to supply the abundance of the fruits in righteousness, and to loose, as it were a famine, the former ignorance of divine things, and to make the soul a land full of spiritual goods, laden with grain and wine and oil: with the one, as with the reason of practical knowledge, being sustained; with the other, as with divine longing, renewing the erotic fervor of desire toward God, being made glad; and with the other, as with the smooth and even and transparent and illuminating manner and reason of dispassion, free of every earthly movement, having its face made cheerful with the virtues. But let us too, after the manner of great David, abolish Saul from every border of Israel — that is, the earthly and bodily ordinance of the law, or the Jewish manner of worship, or the mind that is ready to hand only in the literal sense of the whole Scripture and more bodily-minded — from every manner of contemplative initiation, and let us pass over to the spiritual deification of what is understood, and let us preserve the Gibeonites — that is, the reasons according to nature of beings, which Jesus, the true heir of the divine promises, kept unharmed, on whose account, when they were being destroyed by Saul, God withheld the divine rain of mystical knowledge — and let us kill, through the Gibeonites themselves — that is, through natural contemplation, like seven men of the sons of Saul — the passionate, material, and temporal reception of the law, which Rizpah, being “a course of the mouth,” is naturally wont to bear — that is, the bodily learning of the law — and Merab, interpreted “satiety of the throat” — that is, the delight of the belly — the

one bearing Mephibosheth and Armoni, the one interpreted “shame of the mouth,” the other “their anathema,” that is, the habit of the passions and their operation; and the other, the five sons to Adriel — that is, to the contemplative part of the soul — the five misused, passionate manners of the senses within us; which, abolishing through natural contemplation, we propitiate the angered God, having been transferred from the letter to the spirit, and we call forth the divine showers of knowledge, and we enjoy abundantly the fruits of righteousness that come from it. For the letter of the law, like a certain Saul, or the material reception begotten from the letter, in the understanding of the earthly-minded, like the children and grandchildren of Saul, having led up, through the mediation of natural contemplation, to the height of spiritual initiation, let us kill every bodily and temporal notion of the law and, to speak more properly, every earthly notion — if indeed we too, together with God, have hated Saul, and have rejected him from reigning over Israel — that is, the manifest, fleshly manner of Scripture, that is, Judaism, we have driven off from reigning, unto slavery of the flesh, over the noetic power within us. For it is necessary that Saul — that is, the bodily ordinance of the law — be hated and rejected from the kingdom, like Agag, king of Amalek, and the fat of the flocks and herds, and the vine and the olive tree — I mean the kindling matter of irascibility and desire, and the causes productive of delight — being preserved, and Agag himself, while alive, being carried to the land of promise — that is, the calf, the earthly mindset of the flesh, into the place of divine knowledge, I mean the heart.

For “Agag” is interpreted “calf” — perhaps that calf which foolish and unintelligent Israel, having cast it in the wilderness, deified, and preferred the pleasure of the belly to the divine service; which calf Moses and Samuel abolish, the one grinding it and scattering it upon the water, the other slaughtering it with a spiritual sword — that is, the living and effective grace of holy baptism (for this is Moses) and the obedience to God through the commandments (for this is Samuel); for “Moses” is interpreted “drawn out of water,” and “Samuel,” “obedience of God,” which is true faith and the The dominion of sin, then — that is, the mindset of the flesh — the grace of holy baptism is naturally wont to abolish, and the operative obedience to the divine commandments to slay with the sword of the Spirit — that is, with the word of the divine knowledge in the Spirit — crying out mystically to the passion of sin, as great Samuel to Agag: “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be made childless today among women.” For the passion of gluttony has made many virtues childless, as it were by a sword, with the smooth reasoning of pleasure; for it kills the seeds of selfcontrol through incontinence, and corrupts the equity of righteousness through covetousness, and cuts off the natural continuity of love for mankind through self-love, and, to speak in sum, the passion of gluttony is destructive of all the offspring of virtue.

And this passion is abolished only, as I said, by the grace of baptism and the conduct according to obedience to God's commandments. God, then, repents of having anointed as king over Israel the law in the letter, which is productive of this passion, and transfers the might of the kingdom and gives it to David — that is, plainly, to the evangelical and spiritual law — that is, to the son of Jesse; and “Jesse” is interpreted “work of God.” The holy Gospel, then, is the offspring of the making — that is, of God's self-accomplishment through the flesh — having the kingdom for infinite ages, according to which we have unfailing exultation and gladness, as an unending day without evening. For it says: “This is the day which the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it,” calling “day” the evangelical grace, or the very mystery of him who made this grace, in which he wills all of us, according to the divine Apostle, “to walk becomingly, as in the day, of knowledge and truth.” For Christ is the day of eternal light, in which all who have believed in him must conduct themselves well through the good order of the virtues. For this is he who was made, without seed, by God alone with respect to the flesh, and who has innovated the laws of the natural ordinances, and has been prepared before the face of all peoples, and is “a light for the revelation of the nations and the glory of the people of Israel.”

For our Lord is truly a light of the nations, revealing to them, through true recognition, the eyes of their understanding closed by the gloom of ignorance, and again, having prepared himself, for the faithful peoples, as an excellent pattern of virtue for divine conduct, having become for them a guide and model of the person according to virtue; looking to whom, as the author of our salvation, we accomplish the virtues in imitation, so far as is possible for us, through practice. But he is also “the glory of the people of Israel,” being God and the Word, as brightening the mind with the divine light of knowledge through mystical contemplation. Or perhaps the discourse means by “peoples” the reasons according to nature, and by their “face,” the true and unerring opinion concerning beings, of which the Word himself, as creator of nature, is clearly the preparation for its recognition, and by “nations,” the passions contrary to nature, which he reveals, though hidden, granting the light of knowledge, and entirely drives out of nature. And the Word becomes the glory of Israel, as purifying the mind of the passions contrary to nature and adorning it with the reasons according to nature, and further, binding it fast with the diadem of the unchangeableness according to deification. For the glory of Israel is, in truth, both the deliverance from the passions contrary to nature and the setting right of the reasons according to nature and the acquisition of the goods above nature.

He who receives this noetic David, though envied by Saul, is not caught; but on the contrary, out of great love for mankind, being dispassionate, even when hated he heals, with the harp of the spirit, the enemy suffocated by the evil spirit, and makes him sound in mind, freeing him, as from an evil demon, from the wicked seizure of the earthly mindset. For everyone who, through envy, hates and slanders wickedly by accusations him who is more powerful in the contests of the virtues and in the abundance of the reason of spiritual knowledge, is Saul, being suffocated by the evil spirit, unable to bear the renown of the good fortune of the better man in virtue and knowledge, and for this reason raging the more, because he is unable to lay hold of his benefactor. And often he sends away, bitterly, even his dearest Jonathan — I mean the innate reasoning according to conscience — for reproving the unjust hatred and truthfully narrating the good deeds of the one hated, after the manner of the old and truly vain Saul; to whom Samuel says, as to a transgressor of the divine commandments: “It has been made vain for you, because you transgressed the commandment which God commanded you.” Saul, as I said before, is either the written law or the people of the Jews who conduct themselves according to the written law.

For from both, thus earthlymindedly entangled with one another, the Spirit of the Lord departs — that is, spiritual contemplation and knowledge — and an evil spirit comes upon them, that is, the material mindset, suffocating them, as though they were subject to seizure, with the successive disturbances and whirlings of things under coming-to-be and corruption, by the instability of their reasonings. For the law, understood earthlymindedly with reference to the letter alone, is subject to seizure, being shaken by countless contradictions and having no agreement with itself; and the mind that Judaizes, being maddened by the unstable revolution of material things, of necessity also has its own disposition changing unstably along with it. But whenever David, our Lord Jesus, who is truly by nature a musician, sings to the spirit of gnostic contemplation, both to the law and to the Jew, he makes the one spiritual instead of earthly, and transfers the other from unbelief to faith. Both the law, then, and the people of the Jews are, in the manner of Saul, both subject to seizure and sound in mind. For the law is subject to seizure, as I said, when taken earthlymindedly, and the Jew is subject to seizure, when he wishes to worship God earthly-mindedly; and again the law is sound in mind, when understood spiritually, and likewise the Jew is sound in mind, when transferred from bodily worship to the spiritual service of God.

And it must be noted that Saul kills those preserved by Jesus. For those whom the Spirit of Scripture preserves, the letter is naturally wont to kill. Wherefore God repents of having anointed this — I mean the written law — to reign over Israel, when it is taken fleshly by the Jews, and gives the might of the kingdom to the Spirit, the neighbor of the letter and better than the letter. For it says: “And I will give the kingdom to your neighbor, who is better than you.” For just as David was Saul's neighbor, so plainly the Spirit stands next to the letter of the law; which is naturally wont to appear after the death of the letter. Let us too, then, entreat the noetic David to sound upon the harp of spiritual contemplation and knowledge for our mind, which is seized by material things, and to drive away the evil spirit of the fall into material sense-perception, that we may be able to understand the law spiritually, and to find the mystical reason hidden within it, and to make it an abiding possession as provision for eternal life, that we may not have the borrowed, symbolic law in the letter, being destitute of the knowledge in the Spirit that is according to grace, and cherish only, as those who do not see, the questioning concerning divine things, deprived of the truly all-radiant direct vision of the mystical oracles.

For both meanings are conveyed by “Saul,” when rendered in the Greek tongue. For, in addition to what has been said, he is interpreted both “borrowed” and “questioning” — which the written law, being what it is, is indeed shown to be: the one, as not being nature's most proper possession and not co-extensive at all with its subsistence; the other, as moving us concerning true knowledge and archetypal wisdom, to those who do not suppose questioning to be a comprehension of the sought-for archetype of divine things, but who are hastening, only through the bodily symbols in the law, as through a kind of questioning, toward the comprehension of the divine goods — that we may cease from the anxiety of questioning, in which there is perhaps often even error, coming to be in the truth of the divine things sought, and be transformed into their blessedness, appearing in us unchangeably through participation, and making the form according to it the mark of our existence in Christ Jesus, our God and Savior, to whom be glory unto the ages. Amen. Scholia 1. The mind that is purified to the utmost through the virtues is naturally wont to be thoroughly taught the reasons of the virtues, making its own knowledge, divinely characterized, that comes from them. For every mind, in itself, is formless and uncharacterized, having an acquired form — either the knowledge, subsisting in the spirit, from the virtues, or the ignorance that supervenes from the 2.

He who has received, from the virtues, in the Spirit, the mind's divine knowledge as its form, is said to “suffer” divine things, because he has taken this up not by nature according to subsistence, but by grace according to participation. But he who has not received the knowledge that comes from grace, even if he says something of a gnostic character, does not know, by experience, the power of what is said. For mere learning does not give knowledge according to habit.

3. He has said well that Saul is taken in this passage of Scripture in the sense fittingly suited, in accordance with the manner shown by the history, to the contemplation drawn from it — for “Saul” is taken in many manners in other passages.

4. Just as, he says, he who is joined to a concubine has not acquired a lawful marriage, so he who exercises himself bodily in the learning of the law has no lawful cohabitation with it, begetting from it bastard doctrines, corrupted along with the life of the flesh.

5. He who receives the learning of Scripture with reference to the body, he says, is taught, from it, sin in actual operation, and the mind's preoccupation with sin; delight, and incontinent intercourse, and murders, and the abhorrence of all God's creation, are learned from the letter of the law.

6. A contemplation according to another approach. This world, the region of condemnation, is also called “anathema”; which he who does not pass over, in mind, to the spirit of the law, naturally begets by attachment.

7. That toward whatever we are relatively disposed, he says, toward that we have also acquired the mind's preoccupation.

8. According to another contemplation: that the imageless movement of the passions is also “anathema”; and “shame of the mouth” is the mind's movement that fashions the passion into an image toward sense-perception, and that supplies, by inventions, matter suited to the passion.

9. He has given the three contemplations of the passage in summary.

10. He who is persuaded that it is a divine ordinance to delight bodily according to the law receives gluttony as a gift of God, with joy, for cohabitation; from which he begets the manners that defile, by misuse, the operation of the senses.

11. A summary recapitulation of what has been previously contemplated, by which he shows that he who takes the law bodily concubines with his own learning of it, and begets the habit and operation of the passions, and admits gluttony as divine, for the coming-to-be of the manners that defile the senses by misuse — for the abolition of the natural reasons and seeds within beings.

12. He who remains within the symbols of the law, he says, cannot see, according to reason, the nature of beings, nor preserve the reasons essentially set within beings by the Creator, on account of the difference of the symbols from the nature of beings.

13. The reasons of nature bear wood, becoming matter for the knowledge of divine things; and they draw water, effecting the cleansing of the passions and the transmission of the life-giving operation in the Spirit.

14. Another contemplation of the same, introducing, through the Gibeonites, the calling of the nations.

15. He called, in contemplation, Armoni and Mephibosheth matter and form, and the five sons of Merab the fivefold misuse of the senses; which, joining to one another — that is, entangling sense-perception with matter and form on account of its constitution with reference to the flesh of the law — he who circumscribes the mind by the letter alone completes the fleshly passion, but corrupts the natural reasons.

16. That passion and nature, according to the reason of being, in no way coexist with one another.

17. He who does not believe Scripture to be spiritual, he says, does not perceive his own poverty with respect to knowledge.

18. Whenever, he says, David is taken with reference to the law, according to the Jews, indicating the letter, he is interpreted “rejection,” on account of the tradition of divine ordinances with reference to the flesh; but with reference to Christians, signifying the spirit, he is interpreted “strong of sight,” on account of the mind's contemplation of knowledge.

19. He called the spirit the soul of Scripture, and the letter its body.

20. He calls the three years the three laws — the written, and the natural, and that of grace — held together with one another. He, then, who takes the written law bodily does not sustain the soul with the virtues; and he who does not apply himself to the reasons of beings does not, with generous hospitality, feast the mind on the manifold wisdom of God; and he who does not know the great mystery of the new grace does not exult in the hope of the deification to come. The deficiency, then, of spiritual contemplation with respect to the written law has, as its consequence, the want of the manifold wisdom of God understood according to the natural law, which in turn is followed altogether by ignorance of the deification to be given by grace according to the new mystery.

21. He who does not understand the law spiritually, even if the law is dead to him, in that he does not worship bodily, nevertheless still has the lowly notions of the law; he cherishes the children of Saul and the grandchildren; wherefore he is tormented by the famine of knowledge.

22. Just as the face is characteristic of the individual, so also spiritual knowledge distinctly characterizes the divine; which he who seeks is said to seek the face of the Lord.

23. David is interpreted “strong of sight” and “clear-seeing mind.”

24. He who is fleshly-minded, according to the letter of the law, with respect to bloody sacrifices, has a desired ignorance, taking the commandment only for the pleasure of the flesh.

25. He who worships bodily, according to the law, he says, begets, as it were matter, the sin in actual operation; and, as it were form, is materially fashioned by the mental assent to it with the corresponding pleasures of the senses. But he who receives Scripture spiritually kills, as it were the sons and grandsons of the letter of the law, through the natural reasonings at the height of contemplation, both the operation, as matter, and the assent to sin, as form, together with the misused manners toward the pleasure of senseperception.

26. That without natural contemplation, no one discerns the discordance of the legal symbols with divine things.

27. He has understood “to hang in the sun” as meaning to manifest, at the height of contemplation, the letter of the law as dead, through the knowledge in the Spirit.

28. He has understood “the border of Israel” to mean every reason and manner of spiritual contemplation, in which the bodily tradition of the law can in no way stand.

29. The spirit, he says, is productive of life; the letter is destructive of life. Neither, then, can the letter and the spirit act in the same way; just as neither does the life-giving coexist with the corruption-working.

30. The uncircumcision is natural, he says; and everything natural is a work of divine creation. And a work of divine creation is also very good, according to the voice that says: “God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” But the law, commanding the uncircumcision to be removed as unclean, through circumcision, introduces God as correcting his own work through art — which is most impious even to think. He, then, who applies himself naturally to the symbols of the law knows that God does not correct nature through art, but commands the passible part of the soul, obedient to reason, to be circumcised — which is typically signified through the bodily member — which knowledge is naturally wont to lay aside through manly judgment in practice. For the circumcising priest signifies knowledge, having, like a blade of iron, the manly courage of reason in practice, against passion. The bodily tradition of the law, then, is abolished, the letter giving way to the spirit.

31. A definition of the mystical contemplation concerning circumcision.

32. A definition of the mystical legislation concerning the Sabbath, in which he sets forth mystically what the Sabbath is, and what the spiritual reason according to it is — that it is the rest from the passions and from the mind's movement concerning the nature of beings.

33. God, clearly.

34. What the new moons signify.

35. A definition of the crown of goodness.

36. Another, more mystical definition of the same.

37. Here he says self-control is the work of providence, as purifying the passions of judgment; and he says endurance is the achievement of judgment, as being arrayed against involuntary trials.

38. He calls the first feast the Passover.

39. He calls the second feast Pentecost.

40. He calls the third the feast of the seventh month, that of Atonement.

41. Consider how the law destroys those who understand it bodily, persuading them to worship the creature instead of the Creator, and to consider by nature venerable the things made for their sake, being ignorant of him for whose sake they themselves were made.

42. How God is the Sabbath.

43. How God is also a mystical Passover.

44. The mystery of the feast of Pentecost, in which he mystically initiates into the spiritual power of what is signified, calling God “Pentecost.” For just as the monad, remaining stable after the sevenfold cyclic return of the week into itself, completes Pentecost — and again, becoming, by its advances into it, a decad through the pentad doubled into it, makes Pentecost — is the beginning and end of its own numbers: the one, as before every quantity; the other, as above quantity — so also God, to whom he said the monad corresponds by typical likeness, is the beginning and end of beings, and the reason by which all things consist: the beginning, because he is before all essence and movement; the end, because he is above all essence and movement; and reason, because he is providential of all things according to cause, as the sustaining bond with respect to the underlying species, according to which each of the beings has its continuance in its own reason. Whenever, then, the times and the ages, to which he says the week corresponds, receive their limit, God himself will then be entirely alone, apart from the mediation of the “not-withouts” — that is, of places and times — holding together within himself, by true union, the existence of beings among those being saved — that is, generated nature, which he likened to the pentad, not only on account of the senses, under which it is naturally found to fall, but on account of the universal knowledge that consists in the comprehension of the unerring knowledge of noetic and rational, sentient and living, and existing things.

It will, then, at some point, cease from the rest according to place, and from the movement according to time, as generated nature, coming to be, among those being saved, above the things made for its sake (that is, place and time), through the true conjunction with God, for whose sake it also came to be. For, having made God himself, according to the reason of providence, its own quality (that is, the mark, by grace, of the property that pertains to deification), by the decad of the commandments, it shall be freed both from the circumscription according to rest in place, and from that according to movement in time, receiving an ever-moving rest — the unending enjoyment of divine things — and a stable movement — the insatiable desire concerning them.

45. In the seventh month there are three feasts: of Trumpets and of Atonement and of Tabernacles; of which the Trumpet is a type of the law and the prophets, and of the knowledge proclaimed from them; and the Atonement is a symbol of God's reconciliation with man through the incarnation. For he who willingly submitted to the condemnation of the one condemned dissolved the enmity once ratified against him. And the feast of Tabernacles is a prefiguration of the resurrection, and of the transformation of all things toward unchangeableness.

46. He who delights in mere bloody sacrifices, he says, prepares those who offer them to be zealous for the passions as if they were subject to passion; for that which sincerely worships loves to rejoice in the things in which the one worshiped delights.

47. That the discourse knows sacrifices, he says, as the slaughter of the passions, and the offering of the natural powers; of which the reasoning faculty is typified by the ram, and irascibility bears the symbol of the bull, and the goat is an indication of desire.

48. The earthly mind of Scripture, clearly, prevailing over the soul, casts off the natural reasons, causing them to disappear through the misuse of the natural powers.

49. As soon as one ceases to receive Scripture with reference to sense-perception and the body, he says, at once he also runs up toward the spirit, in mind, through the mediation of nature, doing spiritually those things which the Jew, performing them, has God angry at him.

50. What is the hand of the Gibeonites, to which David hands over those of Saul's seed.

51. He says the “hanging in the sun” is the manifestation which the passions undergo, being led in triumph by the lofty reasonings of nature according to lofty contemplation.

52. The bodily teaching of the law, he says, having before its eyes, through repentance, the bodily notions of the law as dead, and attending to the reason according to Christ, receives, like rain, the heavenly illuminations of knowledge.

53. Grain, clearly.

54. Wine, clearly.

55. Oil, clearly.

56. He said grain is the support of the soul, as being spiritual knowledge; and wine, that which gladdens the heart, as being productive of the erotic union with God; and he said oil is that which fills the face with cheerfulness, as characteristic of the spiritual grace that brightens the mind through dispassion.

57. Agag is gluttony; and its king is the earthly mindset; and its herds and flocks are the nourishing matter of the passions; and the vine is the reckless movement of reasoning; and the olive tree is the smoothness that kindles desire through pleasure — which he who clings to the bodily law transfers, as into the holy land, into the habit of God-worship, receiving, as a wage for these, the divine aversion.

58. The people of the Jews were called foolish, as godless; and unintelligent, as evildoers, which is “ungodly and sinful.”

59. The passion of gluttony, he says, is naturally wont to kill the divine offspring of the virtues; and it itself is killed, by the reason according to knowledge, through the grace of faith and the obedience to the divine commandments.

60. How he is light.

61. How the Lord is a preparation before the face of all peoples.

62. How the Lord is also the glory of Israel.

63. According to another contemplation, who are the peoples, and what is the preparation of the people before their face.

64. What again are the nations, which the Word, coming, reveals.

65. How the Word is again called the glory of Israel.

66. As soon as one kills, he says, the bodily mind in the letter of the law, he receives the reason in the spirit as king.

67. He has taken David to mean both the Lord, and the Gospel, and the spiritual law, and knowledge, and contemplation, and what is called practice, and the new people; and in many manners of contemplation he has fittingly suited the places to the underlying need.

68. He who has the types but not the archetypes of the mysteries, and who has received the questioning, but not the knowledge, of the illuminations in the Spirit — a loan, that which is admitted, in agreement with what has been said, to be the experience of sense-perception in the symbols of the law — hungering in soul for the Spirit, and being shortsighted concerning the questioning that leads, as it were, toward true knowledge.

69. “A digression” is that in which there is, perhaps, often also error.

70. Of blessedness, clearly, characterizing those deemed worthy of participation in it, and making them, from it, known. The Questions and Responses First Century 1. [The opening of this response is damaged in the source text.] ...passions, and the assault diminishes the vice, and it is restored again to its former shape — that is, to desire according to nature — if [...] longing and desire for God. And the putting of the hand “into the bosom” signifies our Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of the Father, being made flesh in the workshop of our nature; for this is what the bosom and the white hand signify. And again, in the hand’s being restored to its former shape, it is shown that after the resurrection the Lord, having been taken up, was restored into the paternal bosom. For Moses, having become a mediator of God and the people, at one time holds the person of God and the Father, at another that of our nature.

2. What does the tower built in the land of Sennaar signify? We too build a tower whenever we are moved from the east, that is, whenever we are moved away from knowledge; and we come into the land of Sennaar, that is, into the passion of Questions and Responses 587 gluttony — for Sennaar is interpreted “watchfulness of teeth.” Then we also build a tower, that is, we make much of the passions of the flesh, and we build by joining passion to passion. “Even unto heaven” — for those who are earnest about vain things never wish to stop, but have an insatiable appetite for them. And God stops the building of the tower and “confounds the tongues” whenever, disciplining us for our profit, He cuts short our vice; for whenever He disciplines with sickness the man overcome by the uncleanness of fornication, or brings to his senses through poverty the man enslaved to gluttony, He makes, as it were, a breach in the tower of the passions, “confounding” at the same time the tongues also; for having checked by sickness the fornicator who continually meditates on fornication, and made him occupy himself instead with the health of his body, He has, as it were, confounded the voice of his continual meditation on the passion.

3. What does it mean that “David, by his playing, also stilled the evil spirit of Saul”? Every man who, after the pattern of the blessed David, shepherds the sheep — that is, the reasoning part of the soul — and conquers the incensive part and desire, as David conquered the lion and the bear, this man, using the word of teaching together with a certain lofty contemplation, sweetens the hearer and lulls to rest the passions of vice within him.

4. Since it is written in the Gospel, “Unless one is born of water and Spirit,” and again elsewhere, “He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire,” I beg to learn the difference. The Holy Spirit, coming to be in each person, as water cleanses the defilement of the flesh; as spirit, washes away the stains of the soul; as Holy Spirit, lays down the manners of the virtues; and as fire, makes him God by grace, shining upon him the divine marks of virtue.

5. Since, according to Gregory the Theologian, who says in his discourse on Pentecost that “the apostles received their perfection through three gifts — first, healing sicknesses and driving out demons; second, the breathing upon them after the resurrection; and third, the Spirit itself essentially, in the form of fiery tongues” — how, if one should become equal to the apostles in virtue, can he receive the gifts spoken of, and how must one understand “essentially”? I ask that it be explained by way of example. It is possible for us too, if we hasten to become imitators of the apostles, first, through the practical life, to command the Questions and Responses 589 passions and heal the sicknesses of the soul; second, through natural contemplation, to restore nature to itself; third, through the teaching of the word — for this is what the tongues signify — to become fire to those who hear, at once consuming their passions like fire and also giving light. But how the Holy Spirit worked at first, and how it came at last essentially upon the apostles, must be explained, as it were, by an example. Just as when wood is laid upon a pan, and then, the fire being kindled beneath, the wood receives the heat of the fire through the medium of the pan — so at first the Spirit worked but dimly in the saints; but if, according to the same example, one should lift away the intervening pan, and the fire should take hold of the wood directly, it at once assimilates the wood to its own nature.

In this way, as by sensible examples, one may form an image of the “essentially.”

6. Since Scripture does not clearly say that Abraham gave tithes to Melchizedek — and besides, if he gave back everything, as he himself says, that not even so much as a shoe-latchet did he take — from what did he give tithes? For he was not carrying anything of his own when he went out to war, astonished as he was. Since divine Scripture says that Melchizedek is “a priest of God,” it will fittingly be believed that Abraham, holding the rank of a layman, gave the tithes to the priest. And that he had something to give is clear from this: the kings who campaigned against Sodom had taken not only the goods of Sodom, but also had with them the spoils of other regions which they had previously taken captive. All of these Abraham took, having cut down the kings; and the goods of the Sodomites he gave back, but the rest he kept for himself — and from these he gave the tithes to Melchizedek.

7. For what reason were the priests under the Law not forbidden to have wives, while the priests under Christ are forbidden, so far as custom goes? The obvious reason is that the Gospel is loftier, and that virginity has become accessible to many since the Master of all was pleased to be born through virginity — which was rare among the ancients. But since the priesthood of the Gospel is believed to be according to the order of Melchizedek, and not according to the order of Aaron, and it is not recorded that Melchizedek had a wife, it is therefore necessary that the bishops who serve as priests according to his order also do not admit wives. Questions and Responses 591 8. Since it is written that the prophet Amos was “a herdsman of goats, nipping sycamore figs,” what is a “herdsman of goats,” and what is “nipping”? “Herdsman of goats” is a shepherd of goats, and “nipping” is cutting. Since the sap of the sycamore fig is raw and thick and harmful, those who nip it cut the sycamore fig with small knives and make the sap flow out. Little creatures then creep in from within, and when the ray of the sun falls upon it, they sweeten and soften it. This, then, according to the letter. But according to the manner of anagogy, the shepherd of goats is he who shepherds by reason the desiring part of the soul.

He “nips sycamore figs” who subdues the body through selfcontrol and lets the moisture of the passions flow out; for such a man receives, like little creatures, divine thoughts, and is sweetened by the “sun of righteousness” and softened in soul, and is established by God as a prophet and teacher to others.

9. What does the bronze serpent signify, which by God’s command was hung up on high by Moses in the wilderness? Since the intelligible serpent, who from the beginning deceived man, through his disobedience mingled into our flesh the law of sin, creeping in us like a serpent through pleasure — for this reason he who walks the wilderness of the virtues, if he turns back to Egypt, that is, to the darkness of sin, is struck by the intelligible serpents; but if he gazes upon the crucified Lord, whose flesh, hung on high, held dead and inoperative the law of the serpent of sin in our flesh, he is saved. And the serpent was of bronze, since the nature of bronze admits neither diminishment nor rust, just as the Lord did not admit the rust of sin, “nor did His flesh see corruption.” And since Gregory the Theologian mentions, saying, “the bronze serpent is hung up against the biting serpents, not as a type of Him who suffered for us, but as an antitype,” and that “he who believes puts to death together with it the powers under it,” it is necessary to clarify these things too. He who through virtue and knowledge has cleansed the eye of the soul clearly knows that evil has no subsistence and exists in none of the things that are, except only in the act.

Since, then, the serpent, the origin of evil, mixed the crookedness of sin into man through disobedience, Moses is commanded to hang up the bronze serpent, prefiguring what was to come to pass in the Lord. For He alone, through the passion of the cross, put sin in the pillory and showed it inoperative and dead. Whoever, then, gazes upon Him and believes that the enemy has been put to death and made inoperative, this man also “puts to death together with it the powers under it”; for it Questions and Responses 593 can no longer do harm, either through the senses or through sensible things, by which it had its dominion. For this reason, then, it was said by the Father “not as a type, but as an antitype,” as prefiguring the putting to death of the devil.

10. How must we too, if “the Law is spiritual,” keep the Sabbath of days, and the Sabbath of weeks, which is Pentecost, and the Sabbath of years, the seven-year period, and the Sabbath of the seven-year period, which is the We keep the week of days whenever we cease from the working of evils; and we keep the Sabbath of weeks whenever we cease from assenting to wicked thoughts. And we keep the Sabbath of years whenever we do not admit the assault of desire, since the year has the sprouting of fruits, which stirs up desire in these things. And we keep the Jubilee whenever we altogether bring to rest the memories of evils and the images that come upon us from prepossession; for the Jubilee is interpreted “release of bonds for the living,” or “deliverance from mourning for the living.” For whenever one has acquired complete dispassion, then he is loosed from the bonds of sin, and, delivered from mourning, settles joy in his soul.

11. What does Elisha’s raising of the son of the Shunammite woman signify? Elisha the prophet signifies the Lord, and the child of the Shunammite woman signifies human nature. For since she had grown weak through transgression and was put to death by the diabolical heat, the Lord sent Moses, working wonders through his rod, just as Elisha sent Gehazi, yet did not raise the man — nor were the prophets able to do this. The Lord Himself, therefore, out of love for mankind, taking up our flesh, gave life through its sufferings to our nature, which had been put to death.

12. Why is it that one of the evangelists makes the genealogy from below upward, and the other the opposite? I think that they have not done this without purpose, but rather quite mystically. For since some of the faithful are led down from the promises to the practice commandments, while others, beginning from the practice of the commandments, are led up to the promises — for this reason the one leads the genealogy down, and the other leads it up. Questions and Responses 595 13. For what reason is it customary in the Church, in the setting forth of the precious body and blood of the Lord, to set forth unequal loaves and cups? All things performed in the Church have a transcendent meaning. And since these symbols are, in a special way, mysteries and images of the divine essence, and that essence is without composition — for all creation is composite, and only the Holy Trinity, as has been said, is simple and without composition — for this reason the Church sets forth the loaves and the cups unequal, characterizing thereby the divine.

14. Since some raise the difficulty how the Lord’s becoming man is said to have escaped the notice of all the heavenly powers, when we find that even the prophecies concerning the Lord came about through angels, and Gabriel announces the conception of the Virgin, and angels initiate the shepherds into the mystery — what, then, is it that escaped the angels? That the angels knew the Lord’s becoming man was to take place for the salvation of men, there is no need to doubt. But what escaped was this: incomprehensible conception of the Lord, and the manner in which He, being wholly in the Father and wholly in all things and filling all things, was wholly in the womb of the Virgin.

15. Why is it that on Mount Ebal, on which the curses were given, Joshua the son of Nun is commanded to build an altar and to write the law? “Gerizim” is interpreted “kneaded lump.” In the kneaded lump, then, of the accursed portion of the nations, our Lord Jesus Christ fixes an altar — that is, the Church — inscribing the law not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are “hearts of flesh.” And it says that the altar was built of perfect stones, “upon which no iron was lifted up,” signifying the intelligible stones, the apostles, who became unhewn because of the simplicity and plainness of their manners; from whom the Church of the nations was constituted.

16. What does it signify, that which the prophet threatens against those who make “moon-shaped ornaments for the host of heaven,” that they be handed over Nebuchadnezzar, so that he fixes his throne at the gate of “Moon-shaped ornaments” are little loaves of various shapes, which the Jews and their wives made and placed in the Questions and Responses 597 windows of their houses, receiving the light of the moon and the morning star. Since, then, “moon-shaped ornaments” are interpreted “windows,” this suggests the understanding that whoever pleasurably occupies his senses with sensible things makes “moon-shaped ornaments.” For this reason he also receives the intelligible Nebuchadnezzar reigning at the gate of Jerusalem, that is, in the soul, oppressing it as his subject; for Nebuchadnezzar is interpreted “prophesying the judgment of affliction.”

17. What do the five sacrifices offered according to the Law signify: the sheep, the ox, the goat, the turtledove, and the pigeon? According to one approach, the ram is taken as the ruling part with respect to the reasoning faculty, the bull with respect to the incensive part, the goat with respect to the desiring part, the turtledove with respect to self-control, and the pigeon with respect to sanctification. But if one must also inquire into the properties naturally belonging to each animal and apply to each of them a fitting contemplation, those who have examined such things say that the sheep offers its owner three things: the fleece, the milk, the lamb; and the pupil of its eye moves together with the sun, and each day it drops out three hundred and sixty-five pellets of dung. Now man, the rational sheep, if he is earnest to offer himself as a sacrifice to God who possesses him, is obliged to give, as fleece, moral practice; as milk, natural contemplation — for this nourishes the mind; and as a lamb, to beget through his own teaching a disciple like himself in every way, and to offer him perfect to God. And such a man also has the pupil of his eye moving together with the sun, that is, his mind moves together with — that is, follows — the Sun of righteousness, who bears our affairs through His providential governance of beings; for in both afflictions and prosperity he follows, giving thanks, the providence that governs all things well.

And such a man drops each day 365 pellets, that is, he casts off each time, as corruptible and superfluous, the things that are under time and generation. Concerning the ox, they say that it has a triangular heart and a five-lobed kidney; and it has three stomachs, and by day its eyes are luminous, but by night fiery, and a third of the day and a third of the night, looking toward the east, it breathes, blowing; and its right nostril has the fragrance of musk, and its blood is deadly to all tame animals except the dog. We too, then, bearing the yoke of Christ like an ox, and handling the plough of the word, must break up the stony hearts, and root out the thorns of the passions, and broaden the earth of the heart for the reception of the divine word; and must have a Questions and Responses 599 heart that is triangular, that is, have sound teaching concerning the Trinity in the heart, so that, just as the heart naturally distributes life to the body, so also piety toward God may hold together the members of the soul; and must have a five-lobed kidney, that is, the desiring part must not be turned toward the passions, but through the five senses must survey creation unto desire and love of the Creator alone; and must possess three stomachs — the stomach, first receiving the food and, through its digestive power, sending on to each of the members what is pure in it, gives the remainder to the belly.

So, then, it was fitting that we too, being led by practical and natural and theological contemplation, and apportioning to all the members of the soul what is fitting, should also take forethought for the lesser part, that is, the body — for this is the belly; and that, a third of the day and a third of the night, looking toward the east, we should breathe — that is, looking toward the threefold providence of God, which is preserving and converting and instructing, we should give thanks both in the night of temptations and in the day of prosperity; and that we should have eyes fiery by night and luminous by day, that is, that the contemplative power should, in the day of the virtues, receive the rays of knowledge from the Sun of righteousness, but in the night of the successive temptations brought upon us for the sake of virtue, should grasp the principles of these abandonments; and that we should have a right nostril that is fragrant — for the right part of man is the soul, since we are twofold, of soul and body; he, then, who through the virtues of the soul has drawn to himself the grace of the Holy Spirit, becomes fragrant to others. And the blood of such a man is deadly to the tame animals, that is, incensiveness turned aside from its right use is deadly to the men who imitate it, but food for the demons who bay against us.

Now the goat has a nature of this kind: it easily climbs the mountains, walking the precipices, and delights in musical strains, and if its right horn is burned as incense in any place, it produces the appearance of an earthquake; and it drops each day two hundred pellets of dung. So it is necessary that our soul too should leap over the precipices of temptations with good courage, and, climbing the prophetic mountains, hunt after the height of knowledge and delight in it — and not only delight, but also, through the reed pipe, that is, through active teaching, instil delight in those who hear. And the right horn signifies that he who has offered the contemplative part of the soul to God through prayer, becoming fragrant to those who hear, shakes the settled habit of fleshly passions within them. Such a man each time casts off the error of the senses Questions and Responses 601 concerning sensible things; for the senses, being entwined with sensible things [text damaged] — just as the number four, multiplied by ten, makes forty, so this number, multiplied again, produces two hundred.

18. What is the didrachma which the Lord too is asked to pay, and what is the fish which Peter is commanded to catch, and to take from it the stater, and give it to those who demand it? Those who demanded the didrachma bear the image of the natural passions within us. These approached Peter — that is, the practical and humble disciple of the Lord, who in the manner of a disciple was obedient to the Father — demanding of him, as of a man, what they were accustomed to exact as tribute from all men. But the Lord showed by the parable that He Himself, as God and Master, was free; yet since He had put on our flesh and accepted its blameless passions, He also consented to pay these to nature, without sin. For since, in forming man at the beginning, He implanted in him two general principles — one, the governing principle, that of the soul; the other, according to providence, that of the flesh — and man abided in neither of these, but wounded the one by the transgression of the commandment, and the other by the misuse of the limits of nature, and let the principle hidden in the passion swim in the sea of the turbulent life — for this reason, when the Lord was asked to pay the tax of nature, as Master and Corrector of nature, He, by the principle of practice, seized the sticky passion of sin swimming in the sea of life, and drew up the principle swallowed within it — that is, the boundary of need originally given by concession — and restored it to nature free of the passion of misuse.

19. Since Gregory of Nyssa, in his own writings, appears in many places to hint at apokatastasis to those who do not understand the depth of his lofty contemplation, I ask you to say what you know concerning this. The Church knows three restorations: one, that of each man according to the principle of virtue, in which he is restored who has fulfilled in himself the principle of virtue belonging to him; a second, that of the whole of nature in the resurrection, the restoration to incorruption and immortality; and a third — which is the one that Gregory of Nyssa has especially made use of in his own writings — is this: the restoration of the powers of the soul that have fallen under sin, back to that for which they were created. For just as the whole of nature is expected, in the resurrection, to receive back at the appointed time the incorruption of the flesh, so also the powers of the soul that have been turned Questions and Responses 603 aside are expected, over the extension of the ages, to cast off the memories of evil implanted in them, and, having passed through all the ages and finding no rest, to come to God, who has no limit; and so, by recognition — not by participation in the good things — to receive back their powers and be restored to their original state, and the Creator be shown blameless of sin.

20. What does the story concerning Bel signify, and who is Daniel, and King Darius, who recognizes the footprints of those who entered, that they are of men and women and children? Every man who comes to be in the “confusion” of life — for this is what Babylon is interpreted — makes his own soul a temple for Bel, that is, for the devil. In this temple, if Daniel comes to be — that is, the law of God, for Daniel is interpreted “the judgment of God” — he teaches Darius, that is, the ruling mind, that the footprints of those walking in the temple, that is, of the soul, are those of men and women and children — that is, of incensiveness and desire and ignorance. Whereupon the king, the mind, knowing this, hands them over to judgment, the law of God, that all may utterly perish. And the ashes that were sprinkled signify asceticism and humility; for through these the footprints of the passions running about in the soul become manifest to the mind.

21. How must one understand what was said by the Apostle: “Christ the firstfruits, then those who are Christ’s at His coming, then the end”? “Christ the firstfruits” came to be through the resurrection; “then those who are Christ’s,” those who have believed in Him; “then the end,” the salvation through faith of all the nations. But if you wish to take what has been said with reference to each individual, “Christ the firstfruits” is faith in Him; “then those who are Christ’s,” the works of faith; “then the end,” to be separated from all things, sensible and intelligible, and through knowledge to cleave to God. And “the last enemy that is abolished is death” — this comes to pass whenever we too yield up our whole self-determining will to God; then the last enemy also is abolished. And it is called death because God is life, and that which is opposed to life is fittingly called death.

22. What does the bow signify, which God set in the cloud as a covenant toward the human race? Since the bow is of four colors, it signifies the flesh of the Lord, which came to be, like ours, of four elements, and had Questions and Responses 605 no cause of its constitution, just as the bow has none. This He set in the cloud, that is, in the world; and the world is called a cloud because of the wrath of God, that is, the sentence of death — for the cloud is sometimes taken in a good sense, as gently watering and as giving shade from the burning heat, and sometimes in the sense of wrath, as overturning and hailing because of its violence and force. According to this, then, it says the bow is set in the cloud, that is, the incarnation of the Lord in the world of wrath, so that the human race might no longer be flooded by the waters of vice. And it is a bow for this reason, that we may know that the Lord’s reconciliation toward us is a war against our enemies and foes, or that the Lord’s war against the enemy has become for us reconciliation.

23. For what reason does the Law forbid the eating of any blood of beasts and of the rest? It calls “beasts” not only the untamed, but also the tame animals unclean under the Law — such as the ass and the pig and the like; and these are the more violent and untamed passions of vice. We ought not, then, to use these toward the establishment of our own vice. And since blood is taken for the constitution of life, and often too for incensiveness because of murder, this suggests that we ought to set our whole life before God and not live for ourselves but for God, as the Law says, “you shall pour out the blood before the altar” — or that the incensive part should not be employed for its own defense or its own passion, but only for holding fast, manfully and vigorously, to God and to things divine.

24. What is, according to the Law, the goring ox, and why, though irrational, is it put to death? The goring ox is unreasoning zeal, possessed as if it were according to God, and used for the defense of others. Such a passion, then, must be put to death, lest, having gored many, it commit murder and bring its own master — that is, the soul — into shared danger.

25. What is Joseph’s coat of many colors, and what does the outcome of the dream — the obeisance of his father and brothers — signify? Every Israel, that is, “mind seeing God,” makes for his own son Joseph, that is, for him who is begotten according to God, a coat of many colors, that is, clothes him with moral conduct together with the manifold variety of the virtues. To such a man — Joseph is interpreted “addition” — his father and mother and brothers do obeisance; for to everyone who adds to and increases the measures of virtue and knowledge, the Questions and Responses 607 law of nature and nurturing sense do obeisance, bowing down together with the principles proper to them, natural and sensory. But since Joseph is also taken for the Lord, God the Father is fittingly said to make for His own natural Son a coat of many colors — that body which for our sake He took up from us, adorned with divine virtues, according to what is said in the Psalms, “a body You prepared for me” — which His brothers according to the flesh, the Jews, stripped off and defiled with the blood of the Passion. And His father and mother and the twelve brothers did obeisance to Him — that is, the Law and worship, and those of the twelve tribes who believed.

26. What does the pillar of cloud signify, guiding by day, and the pillar of fire, giving light by night? By both, the Word of God is signified; for to those journeying through the practical life He becomes, refreshing them from the burning heat of temptations, a pillar of cloud; but to those journeying through knowledge, giving light and clearing away the mist of ignorance, He becomes a pillar of fire.

27. What does the manna signify, and what is the stinking that befell those who did not gather it in sufficiency? The manna signifies the Word of God, who fittingly adapts Himself to all through practice and knowledge, and nourishes the soul. Whenever, then, one makes use of Him duly and according to reason — that is, pursues the mean of the virtues, fleeing equally their excess and their deficiency — this man gathers the manna in sufficiency. But whenever one uses the word not duly but in excess — for it is good to signify what is meant from a single virtue — whenever, for instance, one pursuing temperance flees incontinence, but judges marriage abominable, already the word of temperance has become malodorous to him through the immoderation of excess; and not only has it become malodorous, but it has also bred worms, that is, has begotten other passions.

28. What is the sense of the woman struck and miscarrying, and that the Law decrees that if the child comes out already formed, the striker must give “life for life,” but if it is expelled unformed, he is only fined? According to the letter we understand it thus: since murder pertains to the body — for the soul, being immortal, is never murdered — for this reason that which is not yet formed into human shape brings no danger, or only a small fine; but if the human image has been completed, such a man is fittingly Questions and Responses 609 charged with the murder of a fully formed human being. But according to spiritual contemplation we understand this: that he who has scandalized a soul which has conceived the divine word and formed by habit the seed of virtue, and has caused it to miscarry this shaped work of teaching, is guilty of death; but he who scandalizes a soul which has received the seed of the word, but has not yet formed it through habit and act, is worthy of penalty.

29. What do the “six cities of refuge” signify, and why were three given in the land of promise, and the other three outside it? Since the tribe of Gad, because it possessed many cattle, received its cities outside the land of promise, the Law set apart three of these for the involuntary manslayer to flee to, and the other three in the land of promise. This, then, is signified according to the anagogical manner: since there are three ways by which we sin without deliberate intent — through the practice of tyranny, through deceit, and through ignorance — he who is caught in these, before the attendant passion, pursuing him, slays him outright and makes him sin deliberately, must flee: he who sins through tyranny, to the city of self-control; he who sins through deceit, to the city of experience and good shrewdness; he who sins through ignorance, to the city of learning. These were assigned to those in the practical life because of their fruitfulness and their fitness for the pasturing of cattle; for the practical life is both fruitful in the virtues and a shepherding of the more brutish passions. But the inner cities were assigned to the gnostics; for since the gnostic occupies himself in three things — moral, natural, and theological knowledge — he who commits involuntary manslaughter, that is, who strikes without experience, in moral teaching, moving incensiveness and desire contrary to reason, must flee to the city of gentleness — for gentleness is the end of moral philosophy; and he who stumbles in natural contemplation and applies himself without knowledge must flee to the city of knowledge; and he who stumbles in theology must flee to the city of faith, lest the attendant passion of ignorance be able to overtake and destroy the one who shares in it.

And as for “until the great priest dies” — that such a man must remain, and then return to his own possessed land — it follows to contemplate this. The “great priest” is our Lord Jesus Christ. Whenever, then, we come to perfect dispassion and no longer bring to Him anything of this world, whether words or thoughts, and simply, whenever we come to be Questions and Responses 611 beyond sense and conception, and “no longer know Christ according to the flesh,” then the great priest has died to us, no longer receiving from us any worship from among the things that have come to be; and thereafter we are restored to our own possessed land, that is, the land that is in God Himself, in whom are the principles of the virtues.

30. What are the rods which Jacob peeled and put in the watering troughs, and who is Rachel, who stole the idols, and what is the terebinth in which Jacob hid them? Every Jacob, that is, “supplanter,” peels the rods — that is, makes the principles of beings pure of the material shapes lying upon them — and sets them in the watering troughs, that is, in the habit of knowledge, so that those being taught, like sheep, conceiving through this teaching, may be marked in imitation of it. Every soul thus instructed, then, steals the idols of its own father, who had formerly begotten it wickedly in vice. And the idols are shapes not naturally present in the things seen, but fashioned as idols “from the evil father, the devil,” for the sake of deception; these the one who, according to the Apostle, takes every thought captive to the obedience of Christ rightly steals. And she hides them in the saddle-bags of the camels; take the camel here as the body, because of its crookedness, and because the camel, continually imprinting the tracks of its feet upon the earth, signifies our body, become crooked and passionate through transgression; and the saddle-bags are the various manners of asceticism, sitting upon which the soul escapes the father of vice as he searches and seeks the idols devised by him for her deception — which, by lofty anagogy and contemplation concerning them, she rightly wrests from him and hides in the saddle-bags of self-control that press down our body.

But whenever she comes into the land of promise, that is, into perfect knowledge, then she is commanded to strip these off also — that is, the things stolen, rightly, for our advancement — whether the more moral manners, like a garment, or the natural principles heard from them, like earrings. These, then, the far-seeing mind takes and hides in the terebinth, that is, in the mystery of the cross; for all practice and knowledge is hidden in it. And the cross is likened to the terebinth because in winter the tree is altogether unlovely, but in spring most fragrant and most delightful; so too the cross of the Lord, in the present life, seems to have the appearance of contempt, but in the age to come sends forth the comeliness of much fragrance and glory.

31. What does the story concerning Judah and Tamar signify? Questions and Responses 613 Our Lord Jesus Christ, having come “according to the flesh” from the tribe of Judah, and having come in the way of life to the “lost sheep of the house of Israel,” found in the way of error the Church of the nations, which had gone whoring “after other gods,” and, being joined to her, gave her the staff and the cord and the ring — that is, the mortification through the cross, and the pious opinion concerning beings, and the grace of the Spirit; and, simply put, practical, natural, and theological knowledge.

32. Of Saint Cyril of Alexandria, concerning Naboth and The events concerning Naboth are referred to Christ. The vineyard is Israel, according to Isaiah; and Ahab is a type of the rulers of Israel, who wished to have it as a garden of vegetables, watering it with a turbid subversion; but Christ, holding the person of Naboth, was unwilling to give it up as an ancestral inheritance — whereupon the intelligible Jezebel, that is, the synagogue, brought a false charge against Him and put Him to death.

33. In whose person are Jephthah and his daughter taken? Jephthah is taken in the person of the Lord, and his daughter, in that of His all-immaculate flesh. For just as Jephthah was born of a harlot and was driven out by his own kin, and, going out, made war and conquered his adversaries, having promised God to offer up as a sacrifice whoever should meet him from his own household — so also the Lord, having come forth sinlessly, according to the flesh, from our fornicating nature, and having become the sower of His own flesh, and having been driven out by the Jews who supposed themselves His own, and having conquered the war on our behalf, offered up His own flesh to God the Father. For Jephthah is interpreted “opening of God.”

34. What does the saying in Proverbs mean, “through slothfulness the roof-beam shall be brought low, and through idleness of hands the house shall drip”? The roof-beam is taken for the natural powers of the soul; for just as beams, neglected and bent by the weight lying upon them, fall down, so also the natural powers of the soul, not attended to through meditation on the divine oracles, being bent by the weight of voluntary and involuntary temptations, fall down toward sensible things. And “the house drips through idleness of hands” whenever the soul, having no activity of good works, receiving through the senses, like drops, the imaginings of material things, drives away the grace dwelling within it. Questions and Responses 615 35. What does the wedding at Cana signify, and what are the mysteries accomplished in it? Cana is interpreted “possession,” and Galilee “revelation.” Every mind, then, that has a revelatory habit of divine things, in being joined to virtue or even to sense, needs the mediation of reason, so that virtue, joined to the knowledge of the mind, may become concordant with it, and sense, submitting, may come under the authority of the mind, which by nature orders it. And since the gnostic habit, through the diffusion that comes with pleasure from the disobedience that took place, was watered down, the Word came, leading it back to its original firmness.

And the mother who asks is faith, or also humility, or also scientific wisdom; for each of these is by nature able to beget in men the highest And “my hour has not yet come” signifies this: since teaching precedes signs — for it is for the sake of those who disbelieve the teaching that the display of signs comes about — and He had not yet taught there and had experience of their unbelief, for this reason He said, “my hour has not yet come.” And the servants signify the prophets, who, through their teaching, [text damaged] nature, emptied transgression [text damaged]; but the Lord, coming, changed it into spiritual knowledge and led nature up into what is beyond nature through faith. For she holds the person of the Theotokos; for just as the Theotokos, existing according to creation from the Lord who is also her Son, herself bore Him according to the flesh, so also faith, existing from the word, through the working of practice brings the word into operation. And the water-jars, being six, signify the productive habit of good things, since the Lord too created the visible world in six days. And the master of the feast is the discerning law; wherefore it says, “Every man sets forth the good wine first, and then the lesser” — for the pure and discerning law, discerning, says that the mind ought first to run up by recognition to the cause, and then thus to the things after it, which Adam did not do; or also that the teaching of the Lord ought to be desired before the Law and the prophets.

36. How shall we understand the Gospel saying, that “among those born of women none greater than John has arisen, yet he who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he”? Whoever humbles himself beyond John — for this is what “least” means — that man is greater than John. Or otherwise: since John is believed to have attained the knowledge here attainable through contemplation, the small and last Questions and Responses 617 knowledge, according to the state that is to be revealed hereafter, is greater than the knowledge here. Or also, that the highest theologian among men is less than the least among the angels. Or also, that he who holds the lowest rank in the evangelical way of life is greater than the highest in the righteousness of the Law.

37. What, then, do the unclean birds and land-creatures and water-creatures according to the Law signify, in a general account? The birds, we have supposed, signify in general the passion of vainglory and pride, divided into various manners according to the differences of the birds. And the land-creatures in general signify the passion of love of money, split into differences according to the difference of each animal’s habit. And the water-creatures in general signify the passion of gluttony, because of its sticky and sluggish quality and its wallowing in the earth; and the unclean fish under the Law are phlegmatic. But the Law defines as clean those having fins and scales, signifying, by the one having fins on the belly, him who has, over pleasure, a lofty reasoning suspended above it, not permitting him to proceed on his belly; and by the one having fins on the back, him who manfully swims through the sea of life by endurance of what befalls him; and by the one having fins on the tail, him who cleverly escapes the grasp of the demons who hunt him; and by the one having fins on the head, on this side and that, him whose contemplative faculty guards the mind securely on every side.

38. For what reason does Scripture say that Esau was hated by God, and Jacob loved, before they were born? According to the letter it is clear that God, who knows all things, knew before their birth what each would be according to his own choice, and, knowing this, already hated the one and loved the other. But if one examines the matter anagogically, every mind is hated by God that is, like Esau, shaggy with worldly matter and roughened with forbidden thoughts; and every Jacob is loved — a mind that is smooth, plain, immaterial, and single in manner. And otherwise: every Isaac has two sons, of whom, before they are born, one is hated and the other loved; and these are “the law of the Spirit” and “the mind of the flesh,” of which, even before they come into operation, the one is loved and the other hated. And otherwise, Isaac is taken as a type of God; he had two sons, the written and the spiritual law; and the one was shaggy and rough, the other smooth. For the Law had many innumerable observances, and was hated, according to Questions and Responses 619 Isaiah, in that “my soul hates your feasts and your sabbaths”; but the other was loved, for it was smooth — for the Gospel is smooth and concise; for it demands sincere faith toward God and a good conscience toward the neighbor.

Or also, according to the interpretation of the names: every “despiser” and base man of piety is hated by God — for this is what Esau is interpreted; and every “supplanter” of vice is loved, which is what Jacob is interpreted.

39. Why is it that Abraham saw three angels, but Lot two? Abraham, as one who was perfected and had passed beyond appearances, and had been illumined with the knowledge of the Holy Trinity and Monad — wherefore he also receives the alpha added to his name, as one who alone had drawn near, according to knowledge, to the Alone — fittingly sees three angels. But Lot, not yet having passed beyond the things seen by knowledge, but worshipping the divine from the things seen, and imagining nothing more than these, and not having come to be beyond the two, matter and form, from which the things seen consist, nor having embraced by knowledge the doctrine of Monad and Triad — for this reason sees two angels. Whereupon, when the angels urged him and pressed him to be saved on the mountain, he shrank from going up to the mountain, but begged instead to reach Zoar, that is, the lesser knowledge — for Zoar is interpreted “small.” And the angels who cast Lot out are taken for the two Testaments, the written and the evangelical law; for through these one is cast out and flees the error concerning sensible things, and escapes the conflagration that comes from them. And he has sense as his cohabiting companion, going up together with him; if, then, she turns back, she becomes a pillar of salt, set forth as an example to all, bearing the unalterable habit of briny vice.

And if he also brings up wine from Sodom, which signifies the prepossessions of unclean thoughts, the two daughters make such a man drunk in order to conceive by him. The first daughter, then, is desire; for when the mind stirs up the first memories of prepossessions, immediately desire, coming together with it, receives the assent. And immediately the second also approaches — this is pleasure — with which, coming together, it conceives the act. For this reason such offspring are accursed and do not enter “into the assembly of the Lord until the third and fourth and tenth generation.”

40. Why is it that, though there are many graver insults, the Lord in the Gospels determines that he who calls his brother “fool” is liable to hell, but says that he who says “raca” is subject to the council? Questions and Responses 621 They say that the name “fool” is applied to the senseless and unintelligent man, but “raca,” in the Hebrew tongue, is interpreted “spat-upon.” Since, then, the name “fool” is spoken of the godless and unbelieving man — according to “the fool has said in his heart, there is no God,” and according to Moses, saying, “this is a foolish and unwise people” — whoever calls his brother, a fellow believer, godless and an idolater, or a heretic and unbeliever, calls him a fool, and is justly liable to hell. But whoever says “raca” — that is, “spatupon and unclean” — slanders his brother’s manner of life, and is fittingly subject to a lighter penalty.

41. What does the story in Judges signify, concerning the Levite and the concubine whom the men of the tribe of Benjamin misused and killed? Since the sacred mind, made from God in the beginning, put to death the natural law through transgression, it took the concubine — that is, the legal worship, which is not natural but brought in from outside; then, when the natural movements rose up like wolves, they killed her also. And the sacred mind, indignant, cuts her into pieces and sends her into every border of Israel, into the twelve tribes — that is, it divides the legal commandments and apportions each to the fitting power of the soul, so that all may be moved together to the destruction of the disorderly thoughts. Now the powers of the soul are three: the reasoning, the desiring, the incensive. And these need the four general virtues; for without these there comes about neither the destruction of vice nor the establishment of virtue. Then, for what has been rightly judged to come also into act, they need the five senses as well, so that the number twelve may come to completion, which characterizes all Israel. Or also, the number twelve signifies time and nature; for time is sevenfold, and nature fivefold. And that many of the Israelites fell in the battle, and afterward the few conquered, signifies that he who contends against sin must be pure of every passion, since so long as he is mastered by haughtiness or vainglory or conceit or arrogance, or condemns others, or is held by any other passion whatever, he is found powerless in the very act of warring against the passions, and falls; but he must be pure of all these, and then thus draw up in battle, and so the Lord grants the victory.

And that Israel was entreated concerning the remnant of Benjamin who had taken refuge on the rock of Rimmon signifies that he who fights against the passions ought not to destroy, together with the passions, the natural power, but rather to preserve what is beyond natural power. For instance, one contends against the passion of gluttony; he ought not to abolish altogether the necessary food for the Questions and Responses 623 sustaining of life, but the luxurious and frenzied diet. And to flee to the rock signifies faith in Christ, or the firm habit of the practical life, which readily puts to death the disorder of the passions; for Rimmon is interpreted “the exaltation of death.”

42. What is it that the Apostle wrote, sending his epistle to Timothy, “be urgent in season, out of season”? Whether someone is held by vice, he says, whom it is timely to teach, suggest to him through teaching the flight from evil and the choice of the good; or whether someone is not held by vice — which seems untimely — to such a man suggest knowledge, he says, fortifying him against the future uprising of temptations.

43. What does the parable of the ten virgins signify? Since man has five noetic senses apprehending intelligible things, and five bodily senses apprehending sensible things, the parable seems to hint at each individual man. Whoever, then, has the lamp of practical virtue, and also has the oil of knowledge watering it — that is, whose deeds come to be with knowledge — this man, having subjected the body and joined its senses to the noetic ones, has become five wise virgins. But whoever seems to pursue the practical life without having the oil of knowledge, but pursues it foolishly, either for vainglory or for gluttony or love of money, this man, having turned his noetic senses toward sensible and temporal things, and having made them earthy, has fittingly become five foolish virgins, being known only from sensible things.

44. What does the paradise planted “toward the east” signify anagogically? I think that paradise signifies the heart of man, planted in the east of the knowledge of God. In the very middle of it God planted “the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” And “the tree of life” is taken for the principle of intelligible things, and “the knowledge of good and evil” for the principle of sensible things; for this has the knowledge of good and evil — for to those who from the beauty of created things conceive the Creator, and are led up through them to their cause, there is knowledge of the good; but to those who remain only in sense, and, deceived by the surface of sensible things, turn the whole desire of the soul toward matter, there is knowledge of evil. And if someone in perplexity should object, “How can this be taken with reference to a single man, that the knowledge concerning the one thing should become at one time good, at another evil?” — to him it must be said: since it has been said Questions and Responses 625 that the intelligible and the sensible world are the two trees, and man partakes of each, being of soul and body, whenever the authority of the soul inclines toward sense and the body, behold, he has partaken of the tree, and has known the experience of both good and evil: of good, in that the body is naturally pleased by the enjoyment of sensible things; of evil, in that the soul begins to be ruled by the worse part and its natural powers are weakened.

45. What does the fish, shown by the Lord after the resurrection, lying upon the coals, signify? The fish signifies human nature, swimming in the confusion of the passions, which, out of His unspeakable love for mankind, the Lord, descending into the sea of life, drew up, and, roasting it in the fire of the Holy Spirit and melting away all the stickiness of the passions, made food for Himself and for the apostles. For the Word is always hungry for our salvation, together with those who follow Him; wherefore, in imitation of Him, they too chose to die for our salvation.

46. What does Zacchaeus the tax collector in the Gospel signify, and the events concerning him? Zacchaeus the tax collector is he who taxes God’s creation for his own enjoyment. He hears the Word passing by and climbs up into the sycamore tree whenever the word of repentance comes to be in him; for it persuades him to come to be above the mind of the flesh — for this is the sycamore tree; for from there he will easily behold the Word and hear Him say, “Make haste and come down” — that is, “If you desire to receive Me wholly in your house, do not think it enough merely to come to be above the mind of the flesh, but also make your journey with Me through the virtues.” And his giving back fourfold signifies either that he makes use of each of the four general virtues for the establishment of good works, or that he clears away from himself the act, the assent, the prepossessions of memories, and the bare imaginings — the act through self-control, the assent through attentiveness and the guarding of thoughts, the prepossessions through orderly reading, and the imaginings through fervent prayer. Or it means the practical and the natural and the theological and the prayerful; for the prayerful is loftier than the theological — for the one theologizes about the divine from the things that have come to be, but the other unites the soul to God unknowably and ineffably.

47. What does the phrase written in the Song of Moses mean, “for their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and their branch of Gomorrah,” and what is the wine which the Nazirite must not Questions and Responses 627 drink, and what are the vinegar and strong drink and grape and husks? The vine of Sodom is irrationality; for Sodom is interpreted “renewal,” that is, “blindness,” and Gomorrah “bitter provocation”; for from irrationality comes the bitter provocation of sin and the ecstatic drunkenness of vice, like wine. Hence the word charges the Nazirite to abstain from such wine; and Nazirite is interpreted “hedged about”; for he who is fortified by the law of God must abstain from such wine of irrationality, and also from the grape, that is, incensiveness, and from the raisin, the remembrance of wrongs — for this is incensiveness grown stale — and also from vinegar, the grief that comes from missing pleasures, and from strong drink, the pleasure taken in vengeance on one’s neighbor — for all strong drinks are sweet — but not even the husks, the contriving and constituent forms of vice. Nor does such a man cut his hair, that is, the various thoughts that constitute the mind and adorn it. Wherefore Samson — interpreted, without the aspirate, “likening a likeness,” but with it, “their sun” — when he was laid upon the thigh of Delilah, that is, when he threw himself upon the passible part connected with pleasure, was shorn of his hairs, that is, of the thoughts that give him strength against the passions, and became the plaything of demons, blinded in his two eyes — I mean, of practical and contemplative knowledge.

48. What is, according to the Apostle, “having girded your loins with truth,” and the rest of the armor of the spiritual array? “Having girded your loins with truth” was well interpreted by Gregory, surnamed the Theologian, saying, “lest, perhaps, the desiring part loosen what the contemplative binds tight.” And “having put on the breastplate of righteousness” is this: since righteousness is a habit that apportions the equal, and the three powers of the soul within us must be held in equal balance, and through these the four general virtues must be constituted with equal strength — for this is righteousness — and through prudence the reasoning part, moved toward the examination of beings, binds reason to reason like a chainmail breastplate; likewise, joining also the various principles of temperance and the rest into one, one must fortify oneself so as not to be wounded by the darts sent by the enemy. And the shield of faith must be understood as the mortification of Jesus carried about in the body; for the shield, being made of wood and hide, hints to us at the mystery of the cross and the mortification in the body; for to those who possess these, they become a shield of faith. Questions and Responses 629 And “having shod your feet in readiness for the Gospel of peace” must be understood thus: since we have supposed “the Gospel of peace” to be the gift of dispassion, to him who has not yet arrived at it the Apostle enjoins, for the readying of such a gift, that the soles of the soul be shod with the deadness of the body; for thus one remains unstruck by the thorn of the passions, and, by the serpents and scorpions — that is, wicked thoughts — unwounded.

And the “helmet of salvation” is hope; for since the sensible helmet is the casque, made of bronze, and bronze is dense and gleaming and does not admit diminishment, and the head signifies faith, one must understand that hope is what fortifies faith; for this, being firm and undiminished, does not allow faith to be overlooked. For it hopes all things, and does not depart from confidence toward God; but even if, like Job, it seems to the many to be despised like refuse, yet within, such a man is gleaming and radiant, exulting in hope. And “the sword of the Spirit” is discernment, “which divides the better from the worse”; and the Apostle enjoins that this be always in hand, that is, that one always wield it, keeping it operative through practice; for just as an iron sword, always wielded, is fearful to adversaries, but if laid aside and left idle is eaten away by rust, so also discernment, if not joined to practice, is unprofitable and useless, and is eaten away by vice.

49. What does Doeg the Syrian signify, who killed the three hundred and fifty priests? Doeg the Syrian is “proud reasoning,” or “the surge of the passions,” according to the interpretation of the name. And fittingly such a man tends the mules of Saul, the barren habit of virtue. And he is opposed to David, that is, to the reasoning of humility; for David, according to one interpretation of his name, is interpreted “despised.” This man kills the priests of Nob, that is, the divine and propitiatory thoughts that sit enthroned in virtue — for Nob is interpreted “sitting enthroned” — and three hundred fifty of them, since, assailing God’s creation, made in six days, through the senses, we glorify its Maker in wonder through the scientific knowledge of our reasonings; and six times fifty makes the number three hundred; and again, fulfilling the ten commandments of the Law through the senses, we complete the fifty. The thoughts, then, that from these officiate to God and are enthroned in virtue, the proud reasoning, or the surge of the passions, is wont to kill.

50. How must one understand the phrase in the Symbol, “incarnate of the Holy Spirit and of Mary the Virgin”? Questions and Responses 631 Some of the saints say that the soul was cast down from the Holy Spirit in the manner of a man’s seed, but the flesh was formed from the virginal blood.

51. What is the saying in Proverbs, “he who joins hand to hand shall not go unpunished”? He who mixes a base act with a virtuous act “shall not go unpunished.”

52. From the same: “Do not go surety for your friend; for if you have nothing to repay, they will take the bedding from under your ribs.” He calls the body a “friend,” because of the soul’s relation to it. He says one should not go surety for it, that is, should not deem it worthy of sparing, nor, being obliged to render the labors that surpass virtue, allow it to pursue relaxation instead. For if the mind, devoted to asceticism, should begin to give way, not finding the means to render its account for the sake of virtue, the demons take even the ascetic labors upon which it used to rest — for this is what the bedding signifies.

53. What does the saying of Isaiah signify, “Who has measured the water in his hand, and the heaven with a span, and all the earth with a handful”? Since, according to the prophet Habakkuk, “the virtue of the Lord covered the heavens” — that is, His way of life according to the flesh covered the virtue of the angels in heaven — He Himself, by practice — for this is the hand — measured all knowledge, tropologically called water; for the nature united to the Word has comprehended all knowledge. And “the heaven with a span”: calling “heaven” the loftiest principle of beings, and “span” the knowledge of sensible things extended together with practice, because the hand has five fingers; these principles, then, the Lord, having become man, measured out, recapitulating all things in Himself. And “all the earth with a handful” signifies this: that the Lord so constrained His own flesh, being of earth, that He did not permit even the natural and blameless passions to operate without His consent.

54. Who is Hezekiah, and what is the sickness, and what is the fig-cake by which the wound was healed? Hezekiah is taken in the person of humanity; and the wound in the thigh signifies the law of sin, because the generative parts lie near the thigh; and the fig-cake is the life-giving flesh of the Lord, having no sap of sin, from which healing has come to us for the wound of the transgression. Questions and Responses 633 55. What does the iron axe-head signify, which fell into the Jordan from one of the sons of the prophets, which the prophet Elisha made to float by throwing in a piece of wood? Irenaeus says the prophet showed “by the deed,” in bringing up the iron, that “we shall receive back again, through the economy of the wood, the solid Word of God, which, having negligently cast away, we do not find.” And that the Word of God is likened to an axe, John the Baptist teaches, saying, “even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees,” and Jeremiah too, saying, “the word of the Lord is like an axe cutting rock.”

56. What does the number 153 of the fish in the Gospel signify? Since, beginning from one and proceeding by addition, you complete this number at seventeen, it signifies that through the fulfillment of the ten commandments and the seven operations of the Holy Spirit those who are saved enter into the kingdom of heaven; or also, that those who through faith in the Holy Trinity and the hope of things to come — for the number fifty is beyond the sevenfold time — and through the working of the commandments, which is signified by the number a hundred, are saved and made worthy of the kingdom.

57. Who are the men and the women and the serpents, for whose sake the Lord, according to Gregory of Nyssa, spent three days in Hades? There are three powers of the soul: the reasoning, the incensive, the desiring. The men, then, are taken for the reasoning, the women for the desiring, and the serpents for the incensive. These three powers, then, are restored in the age to come by recognition; and for their sake the Lord accepted also the life-giving Passion and the descent into Hades.

58. From Proverbs: “a man who is far-seeing and quick to understand must attend upon kings” — how shall we understand this? The word means that the man quick with respect to the practical life, and far-seeing with respect to the gnostic, must attend upon the three laws — the natural, the written, and that of grace — so that, being guided by them, he may duly set right the practical and natural and theological philosophy.

59. From the same: “seven times shall the just man fall, and rise again.” Here one must understand by “the just man” Him who alone is truly just, our Lord Jesus Christ. Since, then, He Himself is Questions and Responses 635 said to fall and rise in us, having out of love for mankind accepted all that is ours, and our nature fell seven times — first, at the transgression of our forefather; second, at the murder dared by Cain, who first introduced murder into nature; third, in the generation of Noah, in which the Spirit of God did not remain, because they were flesh; fourth, at the building of the tower; fifth, in the generation of Abraham, of which he alone was well-pleasing to God; sixth, at the time of Moses, the godlessness of that generation having run so far aground that he was sent from God to help against so great an impiety; seventh, in the generation of the prophets, which outstripped all the preceding generations in the measure of vice — since, then, as has been said, our nature fell seven times, the Lord, moved by unspeakable love for mankind, raised it up, uniting that very nature to Himself according to hypostasis.

60. Whom does the Apostle mean, writing to the Ephesians, when he says “those who first hoped in Christ”? Every one of the saints before the Lord’s coming, practicing whatever virtue, even if he did not know the whole mystery of the economy, yet, moved naturally in part, hoped and expected that He who had made nature would also restore it when it had been corrupted.

61. From the same: “that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the surpassing greatness of His power.” “The hope of His calling” is dispassion through practice, according to the Lord’s own way of life; and “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” is the riches according to the knowledge of truth; and “the surpassing greatness of His power” is the deification that shall be granted to the worthy, as being beyond nature and making those who partake of it gods from men by grace.

62. From the same Apostle: “for we are His workmanship, created for good works.” This is said by the Apostle, I think, because God, having made man in the beginning, and man having fallen through transgression, He re-created him again through His incarnate coming, and restored him to his original state.

63. From the same: “who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition, the enmity, in His flesh,” and the rest. Whether He made the two peoples one by joining them, or the things of earth and the things of heaven — for He joined Questions and Responses 637 these too, standing apart from one another — or whether you take it with reference to each individual: He joined soul and body, which were always at war with one another; for He subjected “the mind of the flesh to the law of the spirit.” And “having broken down the middle wall of partition” — He called the flesh, or sensible things, or the legal worship, the middle wall, and sin the fence; for these, like a wall, while we made use of them without knowledge and without spiritual understanding, walled us off from God and subjected us to sin. “The enmity in His flesh” — calling sin enmity; for it was this that made us enemies of God. “Having abolished the law of the commandments in dogmas” — the law of the commandment is “you shall not murder” and the rest; and he who applies himself naturally to the commandment and knows the principle of the commandment knows that one must abstain not only from bodily murder, but from every passion that ravages nature; for envy too, and slander, and all the passions are destructive of nature.

The Lord, then, coming, abolished the law in dogmas — instead of “brought to an end” — saying, “it was said to the ancients, you shall not murder; but I say to you, whoever is angry with his brother without cause shall be liable” — not only teaching, but also doing. And He abolished also the sacrifices according to the Law by His teaching, causing them to be understood spiritually; or rather, He brought the many to an end, having shown them to be a type of the mystery according to Himself.

64. From Proverbs: “Who has gone up into heaven and come down? Who has gathered the winds in his bosom? Who has bound up the water in a garment? Who has grasped the ends of the earth? What is his name?” Since man was fashioned in the beginning for this purpose, that he should ascend by longing to the Cause, and then thus descend to the creatures that come after the Cause, and, having surveyed these well by knowledge, raise them up to their Maker — but he did not do this, and before being lifted up to God inclined toward matter — our Lord Jesus Christ, coming, the second Adam, “recapitulated all things in Himself” and showed for what purpose the first man had been brought forth. For according to the assumption of human nature, He first went up, moved toward the Cause, then also came down according to the Godhead, putting on “the form of a servant”; and again He went up according to the composite whole in the ascension after the resurrection from the dead. So must we too first be lifted up to God, and, tempering the soul, stretch its whole longing toward Him, and then thus descend to the investigation of beings and Questions and Responses 639 survey each according to its nature, and again through them be lifted up, by contemplative knowledge, to their Maker.

Such a man “gathers winds in his bosom”; for he gathers into the bosom of his own heart the various principles of beings, tropologically called winds. Since, then, the bosom is the navel, in which they say the first offspring takes its beginning, one must understand that, gathering the various principles in the generative and contemplative part of the heart, he brings forth one Word of God; for the many principles of beings are gathered into one. But he also “binds up water in a garment”; the waters, as you will find Scripture often saying, are temptations; these, suffering them in his own body, or also in the moral part of philosophy, he binds up with endurance, sending them away powerless. And he grasps also “the ends of the earth,” not permitting even the natural passions of the body to be carried out unreasonably.

65. From Isaiah: “and the remnant shall be above unfired gold.” Those tested through temptations, and abandoned for further trial, like Job and Joseph and their like — these are “above unfired gold,” above Adam, who was fashioned upright like gold, but was not fired by temptations, nor did he bear them.

66. What does “the carbuncle and the emerald stone” in Both signify the Lord: the carbuncle, as giving light and burning, because the Lord grants knowledge but consumes wickedness; and the emerald, since it strengthens the power of sight, itself also signifies the Lord, as producing the strength of the soul’s contemplative power.

67. What does the blinding of Samson signify, according to contemplation? Samson is interpreted “sun,” and Delilah “growing poor.” Samson, then, fell upon the thigh of Delilah, that is, upon the passible part connected with pleasure, and grew poor in the virtue that had given him light. Then she brought a barber and a razor, and shaved off his seven locks; the barber is the devil, and the razor is deceit, according to what is written, “you have wrought deceit like a sharpened razor”; and the seven locks are, according to the prophet Isaiah, the seven operations of the Spirit. Whenever, then, his hairs began to grow again — that is, whenever he came to repentance for what he had done — then the little boy leads him by the hand, that is, the law of God, and brings him to the pillars on which the house of the Philistines was supported, which are incensiveness and desire, by which every foreign mind is Questions and Responses 641 captured. And Samson’s dying together with the Philistines signifies the consummation, that is, the mortification, of the mind of the flesh.

68. What does it signify that this same Samson killed the Philistines with the jawbone of an ass? Here Samson bears the type of the true Nazirite, Christ; for He, taking up our flesh unmoistened by any sin, destroyed the foreign demons. And that Samson was bound by his own people and delivered to the Philistines has plainly been fulfilled in the Lord; for the Jews, who seemed to be His own, bound Him and delivered Him to the nations. But also from the body of the Lord, as from the jawbone, there sprang forth the water of knowledge, for which He thirsted, saying, “that they may know You, the true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” But also every Samson, that is, every Nazirite, through the jawbone, that is, through the self-control of the body — which is of a different kind from the soul, as the ass is from the national portion of the Law — kills the passions through the practical life. Then he also thirsts for divine knowledge, and through invocation, from that very virtuous practice, divine knowledge is sent down to him, giving him drink and refreshing him. And if he is also shut up within the walls of Gaza, that is, by sensible things, he takes up the gates, that is, the senses, on the shoulders of the practical life, and carries them up to the mountain of lofty knowledge.

69. For what reason does God command the sons of Israel to destroy the seven nations, but by no means the five satrapies? God, hating all things contrary to nature, commands the passions to be destroyed; but He does not wish the natural powers of the five senses to be done away with — only, if ever they should be moved contrary to nature, their operations are to be put to death.

70. What does the Gospel signify in saying, “wash your face and anoint your head”? Our face is our manner of life, characterizing, as does the countenance, what sort of people we are according to the inner man. This, then, the word bids us wash — that is, to cleanse our life of every stain of sins. And the head is our mind, which the word bids us anoint — that is, to brighten with divine knowledge.

71. What is the Lord’s response, when He says, “Go, tell that fox” — speaking of Herod — “today and tomorrow I perform cures, and on the third day I am perfected”? Questions and Responses 643 Herod is interpreted “made of skin.” We must, then, abhor the fleshly thoughts that wish to tear the mind away from practical virtue, and say to them, “Today and tomorrow I perform cures, and on the third day I am perfected” — that is, “I heal, through the practical life, first my own members, then also the senses, that they may apply themselves healthily to sensible things; and on the third day I am perfected,” receiving perfection through the contemplation of divine knowledge.

72. What is it, according to the Apostle, that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”? Flesh is desire, and blood is incensiveness; and fittingly he who is not pure of these cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

73. What does the mountain of Sinai in Horeb signify, and what the mysteries that came to pass upon it? Sinai is interpreted “temptation,” and Horeb “new tillage.” He, then, who longs for the height of knowledge must first come to be in the endurance of temptations, and till new ground and sow the fruit of knowledge and righteousness, and purify himself of every passion; and for three days — that is, having the three powers of the soul purified of all fleshly pleasure — he must not bring the female along with him, nor the irrational, the word signifying by this that he who wishes to become worthy of the divine voice must have nothing effeminate or irrational, but, clothed in the bright garments of virtue, ascend the mountain of knowledge. For thus, according to the God-inspired Moses, having come through natural contemplation and the property of time — which the seventy elders signify — and having passed beyond voices and sounds, the indications from things that appear, he brings up with himself only Aaron and his two sons, Nadab and Abihu — that is, Aaron, reason, and his sons, incensiveness and desire. But these too he must leave behind, like smoke and storm-cloud, and have only Aaron — the reason simple with respect to understanding, I mean — shining like lightning-flashes with divine illuminations; then he must leave this also outside, and enter into the darkness of unknowing, where all that is irrational and unintelligent is left behind.

And the people purified beneath the mountain, I think, signify those in the practical life; and the seventy elders, those pursuing natural contemplation; and those around Aaron, those pursuing theology; and those who are like Moses, those united to God through negation and unknowing.

74. What is a diapsalma? Questions and Responses 645 I think it is either a change from one thought to another, or a change of manner of teaching to another manner.

75. What is meant by, “it were better for him that a millstone were hung about his neck and he were cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones”? By “little ones,” I think, He means those simple in understanding, who, because of the smallness of their mind, cannot discern the judgments of providence. Whoever, then, scandalizes such as these, it would be better for him to have the portion of a Greek — those who, like an ass in a mill, are occupied only with the motion of the world — and to be cast into the depths of the sea, that is, into the confusion of life. This the Apostle Peter also confirms, saying, “it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, having known it, to turn back.”

76. For what reason, after the man who gathered wood on the Sabbath was stoned by God’s command, does He command a cord of blue to be bound to the fringes of garments? He who keeps Sabbath in practice and knowledge, and then grows slothful, begins to gather for himself the kindling matter of the passions, like wood; or also the gnostic who turns toward the surface of visible things — fittingly such passions are killed by the divine words, as if by stones. But since God, seeing men’s slothfulness and their proneness to slip, so that they should not, overcome by forgetfulness, fall away from the commandment, commands a cord of blue to be bound to the fringes of garments, that, seeing it, they might come to remember the ordinance. This, then, is the apparent aim of the Law; but the spiritual aim, which purifies the depths, is this: since the fringe is from the warpthread of the garment, this signifies that faith must be suspended from the garment of practical and moral philosophy — for this is the warp-thread — and, simply, that faith and practice must be interwoven, and from these knowledge, or wisdom, must be bound off in the manner of hyacinth-blue; for wisdom is called sophia, according to those who trace etymologies, which the color of the hyacinth, through its darkening, indicates.

77. What is the anagogical contemplation concerning Abel and Cain? Cain is taken for the mind of the flesh, and Abel for mourning, that is, for repentance. Whenever, then, the mind, not yet having perfectly set right its practical habit, is mocked by the mind of the flesh and goes out with it into the field — Questions and Responses 647 that is, into the breadth of natural contemplation — it is killed, being unable to pass through the surfaces of beings but remaining in them. Whoever, then, kills Cain, that is, the mind of the flesh, which is the assent — for he who kills mourning gives assent to vice — dissolves “seven avengings,” that is, abolishes the seven spirits of wickedness, or the seven passions of vice worked by them. And the curse that Cain should groan signifies the uprising of conscience, ever striking and shaking his understanding.

78. What does the story concerning Lamech signify? Some of those instructed in divine things say that in the times of Lamech, there being disorder and lawlessness, the strong oppressed the weak. This Lamech, then, meeting a man with his wife, killed him and took his wife; and meeting also a brother with his sister, killed him too and took his sister. And Scripture called the one a man, the other a youth. This, then, according to the history; but according to contemplation, Lamech is taken for the operation of vice. For he killed within us the man, the natural law, and took from him sense; and he killed also the youth, that is, the spiritual law, and took from him understanding, so that, mingling with these, the sower of vice might bring sin to birth. From this Lamech, then, vengeance is exacted seventy times seven, that is, penalties are exacted for the assent and the act. Wherefore, when Peter said to the Lord, “How often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? Until seven times?” the Lord answered, “Not only until seven times, but until seventy times seven” — that is, “to him who repents toward you, you shall forgive not only the small things that come about in assent, but the acts also.”

79. What do the molten thing and the graven thing and the teraphim signify, which they made in the time of Gideon; and what are the earrings and the crescents which Gideon made into an ephod, and set up in the gate, and it became a snare to his house? According to Scripture, he makes a molten thing who has, from outward prepossessions, the shapes of vice, and, melting them from these, brings sin into act. And he makes a graven thing who fashions the passion out of himself. And he makes teraphim who has acquired the habit of the passions as a vessel; for they say the teraphim was a vessel for the blood of those sacrificed. And Gideon’s making an ephod from the earrings and crescents signifies this: that whoever among teachers, taking a word or a doctrine from each — for this is the earrings and crescents — concerning something manifested in creation, then gathers from all these one Questions and Responses 649 mystical word of contemplation, and sets it forth openly, or deposits it in books — for this is the gate — as many as cannot, from a childish mind, understand the mystical and unified sense of the word, are scandalized at the teacher who spoke it.

80. What does the story concerning Gideon himself signify, and the fleece, and the war against the Midianites, and the rest? Hagar, Sarah’s handmaid, is taken for sense; she, conceiving through natural contemplation, bears the natural law. But if she rises up against the mind, as that Hagar did against Sarah — Sarah being interpreted “ruler” — sense is thrust aside, and the mind conceives Isaac, the spiritual law, from whom comes Israel, that is, “the mind that sees God.” This mind, whenever it is tyrannized by Midian, that is, by fornication, is handed over by permission for seven years, that is, to the temporal and occasional passions. “And the sons of Israel made for themselves,” it says, “clefts and caves in the mountains” — for the mind, being warred upon, seems to devise remedies and labors, but doing these without knowledge, toils to no profit. “For the man of Israel would sow,” it says, “and Midian and Amalek and the sons of the east would come up and destroy the fruit of the land” — for Amalek is gluttony, and Midian fornication, and the sons of the east vainglory; they destroy all the seed of the heart, which he seems to cultivate without knowledge. “And there was left no sustenance of life in Israel,” it says, of flock or calf or ass, that is, of the reasoning and the incensive and the desiring part.

“And their possessions went up, and their tents, with their camels without number,” that is, the manifold forms of the passions, and their memories, and their imaginings. “And Israel was made poor,” it says, “before Midian, and the sons of Israel cried to the Lord, and the Lord sent a man, a prophet” — for whenever the mind is made poor of all virtue, and its thoughts, out of repentance, cry out to the Lord, the Lord shall send a word reminding it of the going up from Egypt, that is, the redemption from the darkening of sins. “And there came,” it says, “an angel of the Lord, and sat under the terebinth” — hinting at the mystery of the cross — “and Gideon,” it says, “was beating out wheat in the wine-press” — that is, pursuing the practical life together with knowledge; for this is the wine-press. “And the angel appeared to him, and said, The Lord is with you, mighty in strength” — for He calls, by these titles, him who has subjected and enslaved the passions and has authority over them through practice and knowledge: “The Lord is with you.” And the humility of such a mind is shown from his answer; for he said, “And if the Lord is with us, why then Questions and Responses 651 have these evils found us?” “And the angel said to him, Go in your strength; by this you shall save Israel” — that is, in the strength of practice and knowledge.

“And he said to the angel, If I have found grace in your eyes, do not depart from here until I come to you.” “And Gideon went in and made a kid of the goats, and took an ephah of fine flour, unleavened, and put the meat in the basket and the broth in the pot, and brought it out to him under the terebinth. And the angel said to him, Take the meat and the unleavened cakes and lay them upon that rock, and pour out the broth upon it. And he did so.” For whenever a spiritual thought is sent down to the mind, and the mind finds how to fit to such knowledge the works belonging to it through suitable acts, the knowledge is not shaken loose. And the bringing out of the meat and the unleavened cakes and the broth signifies practice poured about with knowledge free of conceit; for this is what the broth signifies. And he was commanded to lay these upon the rock; for knowledge and practice must be joined to faith in Christ. “And the angel stretched out the tip of the staff that was in his hand, and touched the meat, and fire went up from the rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes, and the angel departed from his sight.” For whenever such practice and knowledge are perfected by faith, then the fire of the Spirit renders them luminous, and the reasoning of the beginning of knowledge is caught up with it; for it no longer, as before, attends, reminding — for the mind, wholly mingled with the light of the Spirit, no longer sits by the things with which it began.

And the fleece signifies the Jewish worship; for upon it there was dew, since it had the ordinances of worship. But “upon all the earth, dryness” — for all the nations were dry of the knowledge of God. And the squeezing of the water into the basin signified the grace of baptism that was to come; for the Old Testament had, in many things, types of holy baptism; these, then, being squeezed into the basin of baptism, showed us in advance the mystery according to it. And the repeating of the sign, with the fleece now having dryness, and all the earth dew, signified the grace of the Gospel; for all the earth was filled with the dew of the Gospel, but the Jewish people were left dry of all faith. And with reference to each individual: the fleece is moral philosophy, squeezed into the basin of knowledge; and that all the earth has the dew signifies that, after the setting right of moral philosophy, all the earth of the heart is filled with divine knowledge. But if one is puffed up over the mere setting right of morals, apart from fitting knowledge, such a man has the earth of his own heart without moisture, but appears to adorn, like a fleece, only the outward tent. Questions and Responses 653 And the ten thousand who turned back as Gideon went out to battle signify those who, out of cowardice, flee the toil of virtue, betraying the senses and their own operations.

And the twenty thousand who bowed down upon their bellies and drank the water there are those who betrayed sensible things together with the senses; for the four elements, joined to the five senses, make up the number twenty. These, rolling upon the earth — that is, mastered by earthly attachment — attempt to drink the water of knowledge; and the word rejects them as unfit for the spiritual battle-line. But He chooses only the three hundred who lapped; these are they who have crucified themselves and have kept the three powers of the soul safe within the hundredfold of perfection; for a hundred is the tenfold decad of the commandments, each commandment containing the other, or, more clearly, the one that is ten. Wherefore also, when Sarah advanced, the letter rho was added to her name, the word signifying the perfection of her virtue. These lap the water with their hands and drink; for through the labors of practice they draw the water of knowledge. And the general of the spiritual battleline commands these to hold in the left hand jars with lamps inside, and in the right a horn, and so to engage the enemy — signifying by this that he who is about to draw up against the invisible enemies must, through the practical life — for this is the left hand — hold the body, already casting off, through asceticism, all moisture of the passions and becoming dry like a potsherd, having within it the light of knowledge; and with the right hand, that is, with contemplation, hold fast the teaching of the word — for this is the horn.

And the breaking of the jars signifies that the perfect mortification of the flesh, and its disregard, unveils to us the light of knowledge. And the saying, “a sword for the Lord and for Gideon,” signifies that he who carries the cutting word of the Lord, together with his own zeal, destroys the passions. And the dream which the Midianites saw signifies that whenever the mind begins to give itself to asceticism and to afflict the body, the demons of fornication, as if by a dream, divine that “if the mind should have strength to extend itself in such asceticism, it will kill us”; for a cake of barley bread, rolling, that is, asceticism advancing, overturns the tents of the foreigners — that is, the constituent passions of the demons.

81. What is meant by the Lord’s saying to the apostles, “behold, I am with you until the consummation of the age”? The Lord Himself is said to be with us in the present age; but in the age to come, the saints shall be with Him, deified by grace. Questions and Responses 655 82. What does Jericho signify, and who is Achan, who stole from the accursed thing; and why does God command that he be burned, while Joshua stoned him? Whoever, enlisted for the divine battle-line, encircles Jericho with seven circuits, sounding the trumpet — that is, passing through the sevenfold age of this present time with the trumpet of the Gospel — is taught to dedicate everything of this age to God. But whoever purloins a tongue, and hides it in the earth — that is, hides the word in the earthly wisdom of the world — or also a bare garment — that is, exercises his character to please those who watch — and two hundred pieces of gold — that is, hides all sensible things together with the senses, these golden pieces, in the earth of his own fleshly enjoyment — such a man is first made to seethe like fire by the commanding Word, and then, pelted with divine words as if with stones, is put to death.

83. Concerning the different wills of God. Three wills must be supposed in God: according to good pleasure, according to economy, according to concession. And that which is according to good pleasure is signified in the case of Abraham, when it was said to him, “go forth from your land”; and that which is according to economy is signified in the case of Joseph, ordered toward the outcome of things to come; and that which is according to concession is signified in the case of Job.

84. What is meant by, “do not call a man blessed before his death”? According to the obvious sense that most take, because of the uncertainty and the slipperiness of human choice, one must not call anyone blessed until, having passed through the whole course of virtue, he closes his life with an undisputed end. But according to the loftier sense: he who begins, through repentance and asceticism, to humble and weaken the earthly mind living in him, is not yet to be called blessed until, through the intense labor of asceticism, it is put to death and reaches its consummation; for such a man is blessed, as having died together with Christ through the inactivity of evils, and rising again together with Him through the height of the virtues. For this too the psalmist signifies, saying, “blessed are the blameless in the way” — that is, pure of vice — “who walk in the law of the Lord” — those who journey through good works.

85. What does the psalmist mean by “enemies who set upon me round about”? Questions and Responses 657 “Round about” means before, behind, right, and left. The demons, then, set upon us in front whenever they entice us through the appearances of matter; behind, whenever they stir up the memory through the prepossessions of wicked thoughts; on the left, whenever they pry the soul loose through fleshly and licentious passions; on the right, whenever they set upon the soul through vainglory and pride.

86. What is, “take up the psalm and give the timbrel”? Take up God-inspired teaching, and give virtuous practice through the mortification of the body.

87. What is “elementation”? They say that three kinds of bodies are spoken of: first, that of the four elements — fire, water, earth, air; then, from these, second bodies — all growing things, trees and plants; and from these, a third body, the human and that of irrational animals; for by eating these they become flesh. Just as, then, the four elements are the beginning and elementation of our bodies, so also the elementation of the soul from the four general virtues, and its beginning, produces the setting right of morals; then from this, as it were a second body, the habit of the virtues; then from this, knowledge, or contemplation, takes on a body — for “practice is the ascent to contemplation.”

88. What does the ladder seen by Jacob signify, and who are the angels descending and ascending? We suppose the ladder to be piety toward God. And the angels descending and ascending: the ascending ones are the principles of the virtues, raised up through us; the descending ones are the principles of knowledge, which come down because of the exaltation of our virtues.

89. What does the denarius signify, given to the Lord by the The denarius is the law given by concession for the need of the body. When, then, the Pharisees — who are a type of the demons — bring this to us, we must take hold of it and examine it through discernment, apportioning to nature the things of need — for this is “giving the things of Caesar to Caesar” — but apportioning the whole desire of the soul to God.

90. What does “if they persecute you from this city, flee to the other” signify? Questions and Responses 659 Cities exist for garrison and security and the keeping of valuables. A city, then, according to the manner of allegory, is asceticism devised in various manners — for instance, abstinence from wine, refraining from foods, intensified vigil, and the like — which are the garrison and security. If, then, the demons persecute us from one of these, bringing conceit or vainglory through such a form of asceticism, it is better to withdraw from such seemingly stricter practice, lest you fall into pride, and flee to another, vainglory-free virtue, until the principle of dispassion arrives. Or otherwise: He calls human souls cities; for the words of the apostles, sent from the Savior, are received by the worthy and dwell in them; but, driven out by those who judge themselves unworthy, they migrate to the souls of others, which have become receptive of their teaching. And they shall not finish going through such cities of Israel, truly sojourning in them, now dwelling in some, now driven from others, until the Son of Man comes according to His glorious advent, filling all things.

91. What is meant by, “a bruised reed He will not break, and smoking flax He will not quench”? He who, in imitation of the Lord, employs the word of compassion, neither causes him who is bruised by sin, through despair, to be utterly broken, nor quenches him whose reasoning faculty is puffed up through vainglory over certain virtues, but allows him to keep his zeal until he comes to the perfection of recognition. For this is, I think, also the letting the tares grow together with the good seed — that is, the passion of man-pleasing and vainglory sprouting up together with the virtues. Wherefore the farmer of souls commands that these not be plucked up until the virtues have taken firm root, lest, wishing to uproot such passions, one pluck up together with them the zeal for virtue.

92. What does the prophetic riddle signify, saying, “sound the trumpet at the new moon, on the notable day of our feast”? What, then, is the notable feast? The Word enjoins the teachers of the Church to sound the trumpet through the word of teaching; and to sound it with a trumpet, that is, with the mortification of the body; and at the new moon, that which is according to the moon — for the moon is called “men” [month]. And the “notable feast,” according to the Jews, was that of the trumpets, celebrated in the seventh month; and on the tenth of the same month they kept the fast of Atonement, and on the fifteenth the Feast of Tabernacles. We, however, keep the feast spiritually thus: in the seventh month, that is, in the seventh law of grace, Questions and Responses 661 celebrating the notable day of the Gospel; for the God of all gave seven laws to nature from the beginning: to Adam two — the one before the transgression, not to eat of the fruit of the tree, and the one after the transgression, to eat bread “in the sweat of his face”; a third, that in the time of Noah; a fourth, that in the time of Abraham, that of circumcision; a fifth, that of Moses; a sixth, the prophetic; a seventh, the evangelical, in which we offer to God the firstfruits of the fruits of virtue at the beginning of the illuminations; for on the first of the month those under the Law offered the firstfruits of the fruits.

And on the tenth of the month we keep the fast of Atonement, being initiated through the name of our Lord Jesus, who became our atonement, fasting from all vice; and on the fifteenth we keep the Feast of Tabernacles; for, adding to the mystery according to our Lord Jesus the five apprehensive powers of the soul, occupied with none of the sensible things but joined to the Lord Himself, we receive in Him the firm establishment of the virtues.

93. A difficulty from the Ethics of Saint Basil, in the discourse “On Fasting”: “when perfection was despaired of,” he says, “then enjoyment was permitted.” Perfection was despaired when man, disobedience, perverted the natural powers given to him. It was, then, impossible for nature, once caught fast in material attachment, to return to perfection, until the Maker of nature, becoming man above nature, restored nature to what is according to nature. And he says that enjoyment was “permitted” instead of saying that man was handed over to the self-rule of error.

94. Of the same, from the first Psalm: for what reason did he take, at the beginning of the Psalms, the example of a house’s foundations, and a ship’s keel, and the heart of a living creature? Since a house built of stones becomes a refuge from cold and heat, and moreover a shelter and guard for man, from this we learn, following natural contemplation, that asceticism, composed of the principles according to virtue, is a house, providing us shelter from the diabolical heat of temptations, and warmth from his cold that comes through despair, and a guard from the demons that plot against us. And by a ship He took the soul of each man, having as it were a keel the firmness according to prudence, and planks fastened to it, the mortification of the body, securing the joints of the soul with exactness as with pitch, and not allowing anything of briny vice to seep in, and sailing over the sea of life and passing through this age, giving present things like a merchant and Questions and Responses 663 acquiring future things in exchange. And by the heart of a living creature He took faith, woven all about through the virtues.

95. From the discourse “On Baptism” of Saint Gregory the Theologian, a difficulty of a prophetic phrase: “Blessed is he who sows upon every water, and every soul that shall tomorrow be plowed and watered, which today an ox and an ass trample.” The soul that is plowed through the practical life and cleared of the thorns of the passions, and watered through knowledge, which today an ox and an ass trampled — calling the ox the Jewish Law, and the ass the portion of the nations — that is, the soul persisting today in the letter and pressed down by irrationality, but tomorrow transformed through practice and knowledge; into which he who sows the seeds of virtue is blessed.

96. From the same: “blessed is he who, even if he is a torrent of reeds, is watered from the house of the Lord.” A torrent of reeds is the flesh, which, in the storm of the passions, sweeps away the powers of the soul, and, like reeds, strikes with the roughness of sins. And it is watered from the house of the Lord whenever, from the commandments of the Lord — who took up our flesh, from which, coming to be in the way of life, He drank the Passion on our behalf and became for us a house of refuge — it is watered.

97. From the same: “yesterday you were withering, though flourishing with the flow of blood; for you were the source of scarlet sin.” “Yesterday,” he says, “you were withering in virtue, but flourishing in sin; today you have blossomed again in virtue, having withered in sin; for you touched the hem of Christ’s garment.” The hem of Christ is the various forms of asceticism, since, just as the hem hangs from the garment, so the various asceticisms hang from moral philosophy; which, when accompanied by humility, are naturally able to stanch the flow of the passions.

98. From the same: “yesterday you lay upon a bed, palsied and dissolved,” and the rest. By “bed” he means the ease of the body, and “palsied” means dissolved by pleasures. “And you had no man,” he says — that is, no manly reasoning — “that, whenever the water is troubled, he should cast you into the pool” — that whenever a thought that troubles you toward the discernment of good and evil should arise in you, it might cast you into the water Questions and Responses 665 of purification. “Today you have found the man who is also God” — for whenever someone, employing teaching, purifies, God is the one working, and the man is the instrument he uses for the salvation of the one who suffers. “You have been raised from the pallet” — or rather, “you have raised the pallet” — that is, through the practical life you have borne up the body, no longer dragged down by it.

99. From the same: “I know a fire that is not purifying but punitive: either the fire of Sodom, which rains upon all sinners, mixed with brimstone and storm; or the fire prepared for the devil and his angels; or that which goes before the face of the Lord and burns round about His enemies; or, more fearful than these, that which is arrayed together with the unsleeping worm, not quenched but everlasting for the wicked.” Upon those who trample the natural law by misuse rains “the fire of Sodom”; and this is the accusation of conscience, whenever it burns them like fire. And “brimstone” is the various afflicting circumstances that befall, and “storms” are the sudden crises, which, mingling together, cause the more violent pain. And those burn their conscience in imitation of the devil and his angels, as many as, through pride, enviously slander God’s providence and practice deceit toward their neighbor. And that which “goes before the face of the Lord” and burns “His enemies” round about is fire, the operations of God; for these characterize the face of God — such as goodness, love of mankind, gentleness, and their like — which give light to those who are akin to them, but burn those who are opposed and estranged from that likeness. And these kinds of fire he did not say were everlasting, because, according to Gregory of Nyssa, nature must recover its own powers and be restored, by recognition, to what it was in the beginning, so that the Creator be shown blameless of sin.

But that fire he called more fearful, which is arrayed with the eternal worm, not quenched but everlasting for the wicked — which, since the divine appears and lies open for the enjoyment of the worthy, unceasingly devours and torments, more violently than fire, those who have not made themselves radiant through good works, ever stirring up the memory like a worm, and reckoning up the loss and the deprivation of the good.

100. From the same, in the discourse “On Hail,” on “I will not allow a spring to be stopped up and become a torrent.” A spring is the evangelical teaching, ever welling up through faith; a torrent is the philosophy from outside, having its persuasiveness in word alone. And otherwise: a spring is he Questions and Responses 667 who has his life in accord with his word; a torrent is inoperative speech, bewitching the hearing with mere utterance. Or otherwise: a spring is he who imparts the tradition according to the mind of those laid up in his teaching; a torrent is he who teaches according to the letter.

101. From the same: “concerning the righteous judgments of God, whether we comprehend them or are ignorant of the great abyss.” “Abyss” is called incomprehensibility, from “to stop up” or “to block,” according to what is said in the Psalm concerning the asp that “stops” its ears, instead of “blocks”; so, then, to us who cannot come to comprehend the providence that wells forth its judgments, they are incomprehensible, but in another way they are comprehensible.

102. From the same: “how also is mercy weighed in balances, according to Saint Isaiah? For the good is not without judgment, even though it seemed so to those in the vineyard.” If God’s mercy is weighed, it is fittingly also circumscribed. Rather, then, one must suppose this: just as we have the powers of sight and hearing and breathing, which do not receive the whole of the air or the light or the sound — since otherwise no participation of these would be left for another — but each partakes according to the power proportionately present in him, so also God’s mercy gives forgiveness and grace according to the quality of each subject’s disposition; for instance, one has repented perfectly, and is forgiven perfectly; another has repented partially, and is forgiven partially; and likewise with him who loves.

103. From the same: “and the wrath proportioned to the sins, called also a cup in the hand of the Lord, and a bowl of falling drunk to the dregs, even though it takes something from the desert of all, and tempers the undiluted wrath with love for mankind, inclining from the sheer edge toward relief.” “The hand of the Lord” is the creative and preserving power, productive of well-being and destructive of ill-being. Every sin, then, as soon as it subsists, has already fixed upon it the judgment that follows from its end. And He inclines from the sheer edge toward relief, suggesting to the soul, through the saving commandments, the repentance that empties out such a judgment.

104. A question of difficulty, from the discourse “On Good Order” of Saint Gregory the Theologian: “How is reason the offspring of mind, and begets reason in another mind?” Of what reason, then, does he speak — the inward reason, or the spoken? Questions and Responses 669 Our fathers say that nothing is unbounded and simple in essence except the Divine alone; but all other things, whatsoever have their being after God and from God, have their being from essence and quality, or power — that is, from essence and accident. If this is so, then the soul too, being mind according to its power, has itself as unbegotten, begetting from itself in a begotten manner, so that the reason begotten in the mind and from the mind is, in another sense, the very mind that begets it, together with the property of begetting that admits of no reversal. This reason, then, thus both being and being begotten, taking the voice of the ministering nature, is uttered forth and begets a reason in another mind, being conveyed to the mind through the hearing of the one who receives it. And it begets a reason in another mind, not creating a reason in the other, but giving, so to speak, the power of form and shape, for the fashioning of a thought in the hearer.

105. From the peaceable discourse of the same Saint Gregory: “a perfect Triad from three perfect things, the Monad having been moved because of its richness, the Dyad having been transcended because of matter and form, from which also bodies are, the Triad having been defined because of its perfection; for it is the first to transcend the composition of the dyad.” He does not here posit a cause for the being of the divine and blessed Trinity, which is beyond cause and reason, but for our guidance toward the truest piety concerning the Holy Trinity. For just as from the essence of beings we conceive the One who brings them into being, so also we are mystically taught the manner of the existence of the more-thanineffable Godhead from certain symbols in beings — the holy Godhead itself moving us toward the recognition of itself, and providing pious occasions for daring to examine the manner of its transcendent existence. It is said, then, to be “moved,” either for our sake, who are moved toward it, or as the cause of our movement toward the knowledge of it. It moved itself in us, then, toward the knowledge that there is some cause of all things — this is “the Monad having been moved.” And “the Dyad having been transcended” is said, because the divine nature is beheld as outside composition. And “the Triad having been defined because of its perfection” is said, because Being itself is not without wisdom and life; which, understanding, we defined the Son and Word of God as wisdom, and the Holy Spirit as life, since our soul too, created according to the image of God, is beheld in these three — in mind and reason and spirit.

106. What does the saying in Ezra signify, “terrify them in the law of the Lord”? Questions and Responses 671 “Terrify” is said instead of “strike them with dread” — not from the good things promised, but from the fearful things threatened; for this is servile, and fitting for the Jews.

107. From the Ethics of Saint Basil, on the first Psalm: “that, as in a common infirmary for souls, all men, each of us, might choose the remedy for his own passion; for it says, ‘you shall cause great sins to cease.’” For what reason did the teacher not follow Scripture here? For Scripture gave the remedy as letting the wicked thought that has entered pass by and not receiving it, but he applied the word to healing. Since every beginning has an end also, and every saying has something answering to it, and every operation has a result, often the more exact teachers make the beginning of their own discourse from the results, just as the teacher did here also; for the end of letting the evil pass and not receiving it is indeed healing and health.

108. From the same: “prophets teach one thing, and historians another, and the Law other things, and the form of proverbial exhortation is different again.” The prophets teach things foreknown; the historians, the remembrance and setting forth of good things; and the Law, the knowledge of good and evil; and the form of proverbial exhortation provides counsel of judgment — that is, it suggests the manners of things to be done.

109. From the same: “and somewhere, one of those greatly made savage by wrath, when he began to be charmed by the psalm, immediately the wildness of the soul departed, lulled to sleep by the melody.” The teacher spoke not of him who merely sings psalms, but of him who knows how to sing them; for thus Elisha too sought from the kings a young man who knew how to play, that is, one who understood and was able, through the mediation of the words, to convey the indwelling meaning to the soul and impress it there. Such a man is able not only to lull incensiveness to sleep, but also to drive out demons — that is, not only to quench the passions of the flesh, but also to drive away the demons that stir them up, after the pattern of the great David driving out the evil spirit of Saul.

110. From the same: “a weapon in nocturnal fears, a rest from daily labors.” He called “night” the hidden, deceitful assaults of the enemy, and “day” the open and acknowledged temptations. He, then, who has received the habit of divine knowledge, and is ignorant of none of the enemy’s designs, fears none of the Questions and Responses 673 enemy’s hidden assaults; for fear is nothing other than expected evil. But moreover, he reckons as rest even the labors endured for acknowledged temptations, because of the testing that comes to the soul from engaging with them, and the blessed expectation, hoped for from this, of the crown of incorruption.

111. From the Apostle to the Romans: “for God has shut up all in disobedience.” Just as an owner pursues a stray and wandering animal, and, when he has shut it in together with those pursuing it and finds it wounded, cares for it — so also the Word of God, having become man, “shut up” — instead of “overtook” — and found all disobedient and sinful, and, having mercy, saved them.

112. From the same: “but he who is weak eats vegetables.” This is not said by the Apostle concerning bodily illness — for he always rejoiced in the sicknesses of the body — but he commands him who is weak in soul to eat vegetables, that is, things ready at hand, plain and easily prepared, that do not fatten the flesh. This, then, is the obvious sense; but according to contemplation, he is weak and eats vegetables who is unable to ascend to the height of knowledge and, after the pattern of Moses, to draw near to the very darkness where God is, but, whether he be one of the people or even one of these loftier seventy elders, is still nourished on natural contemplation as on vegetables.

113. From the same: “I say that Christ became a minister of the circumcision for the sake of truth.” Since man, deceived in the beginning and coming to be in transgression, was likened to the cattle, and condemned to be begotten and to die in their manner, and the Lord would not endure that His own creation should perish utterly, at various times He worked out its salvation, and in Abraham made more manifest the salvation that was to be through His incarnate coming; wherefore, after all the promises made to him, He gives him circumcision, which signified the removal of the passible part of the soul. Since, then, all the saints circumcised the passible part of the soul, but did not remove it altogether — for they were subject to the condemnation of nature, being begotten of intercourse — the Lord Himself, coming, who is also Master of nature, who also gave Abraham circumcision, became truly its minister and fulfiller, effecting the removal passible generation; for He was conceived without seed and born without corruption. Questions and Responses 675 114. From the same: “and this, knowing the time, that it is now the hour for you to be roused from sleep.” He means the time of the evangelical proclamation, and that those who have believed and been justified must hold fast eagerly to the virtues, for the guarding of the justification that comes from faith and grace, and, sleeping through the inactivity of the commandments and having a mind inoperative toward spiritual and divine things, must be roused in heart and keep the mind wakeful toward heavenly and intelligible beauties, having lulled to sleep every sense toward sensible things — that it may be possible for us, after Solomon, to say, “I sleep, but my heart is awake.”

115. From the same: “if the dead are not raised at all, why are people even baptized for them?” Since he speaks of dead bodies — for these are what fall and rise again — and we are baptized for their resurrection — for baptism bears the type of burial and resurrection; for the immersion and the emergence signify this — the Apostle, silencing those who waver about the resurrection, said, “why are they even baptized for them?” For he who here fulfills the type of burial and resurrection through baptism awaits, in its own time, the complete and true resurrection that is to be.

116. What does the sheet shown to Peter in Acts signify, and the beasts and creeping things and four-footed animals within it? Since, according to what was shown to the prophet Ezekiel, “their work was as a wheel within a wheel,” and by this the sensible and intelligible worlds, existing within one another, are signified — for the intelligible world is in the sensible in its types, and the sensible world is in the intelligible in its principle — there was shown to the Apostle, then, everything of the sensible world; for the sheet “let down by four corners” signifies the world composed of the four elements, existing purely in the intelligible according to the principle inherent in them. And he heard, “rise, kill, and eat” — that is, “rise in mind from things according to sense, and kill, and eat” — “having divided sense by the division of reason, and, taking these up spiritually, make them your own.” Or also, it signifies the Church, established upon the four corners of the Gospels, or also upon the four general virtues. And the beasts and creeping things signify the various characters of men from the nations who were to come over to the faith of Christ. And “kill and eat” signifies, “first, by the word of teaching, kill the vice in them, and then eat,” making their salvation your own, just as the Lord too made this His own food.

Questions and Responses 677 117. What does the number of fifty thousand of the burned books signify, in the same Acts? Since the number of the myriad is the end of every number, it is signified by this that of all magic and vain curiosity there is no other end than the error of sensible things, which those who discern it burn with the fire of apostolic teaching.

118. What is the reason that the Lord expired on the cross before the thieves, and what do the thieves signify, and the breaking of the legs? Since our Lord Jesus Christ, being God by nature, having taken up our flesh, truly became man alone — alone keeping in Himself the aim of God, which He spoke: “let us make man according to our image and likeness” — and just as the first man was fashioned by divine hands, so also the Lord, dying the death on his behalf, alone and first laid down His own soul into the paternal hands. And just as He was and became only-begotten and firstborn among many brothers, so also He alone and first accepted to undergo death, the destroyer of death, that He might become also firstborn from the dead and in all things Himself hold the first place. And the thieves are taken for our nature, divided into just and sinners. And the breaking of the legs signifies that all men, when they die, are found not without transgressions and the crushing weight of sin, but the Lord alone died sound and without any sin whatsoever. But with reference to each individual, the thieves are taken in many ways: they are taken for body and soul, and for the mind of the flesh and the mind of the spirit, and also for incensiveness and desire, and for the sensible world and the intelligible, and for the written law and that of grace.

Since, then, whether we sin or act rightly, the Word, condescending, is always crucified in our midst, whenever, through our wrongdoing and ignorance, we render the Word inoperative and inclining downward, immediately the demons, leaping upon us, break in pieces the powers of the soul that go forward and pass through.

119. What is the discrepancy in what is recorded in Acts concerning the vision of Paul? For in the account of the vision on the road, Luke records that those with him heard the voice but saw no one; but in Paul’s own account, on the steps, of the same vision, he says that those with him saw the light, but did not hear the voice of the one speaking. According to the history, Chrysostom, interpreting the passage very learnedly, said that the first exegesis, saying, “those present heard the voice,” means that they heard the voice of Paul saying, “Who are You, Lord?” but saw no man Questions and Responses 679 except Paul. And the second exegesis, saying that they saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one speaking, means that they did not hear the voice that came from the Lord to Paul, but saw only the light. But according to contemplation, the passage must be understood thus: the gnostic mind, like Paul, has thoughts present with it; at the first appearance of the Word to the mind, then, the thoughts hear only echoes and images of the knowledge, but see nothing clearly; but as the mind advances and comes to be upon the steps — that is, in lofty contemplation — the thoughts no longer become partakers of mere images, but of the perfect light of knowledge.

120. How must God’s “repentance,” found in Scripture, be piously understood? Those who have determined to think piously of divine things say it is impossible that God, being by nature Creator, should not also by nature be provident of the things He has created. If this is so, it is altogether necessary that, God being naturally provident of humanity, there be with Him many manners concerning the providential care of nature’s salvation. For since man is a fickle creature, easily changing with times and circumstances, it is altogether necessary that divine providence too, being one and the same, change together with our dispositions, devising a manner fittingly suited to the vices that spring up in nature. And just as in medicine there are many diseases subject to it, and the skilled physician, as the underlying body falls into many and various afflictions, must himself also pass from lesser to better methods, so also with God, the passing from one manner of providence to another is customarily called, in Scripture, God’s “repentance.”

121. What does the little phrase of Psalm 104 [105] signify, “He turned their heart to hate His people”? God does not merely know beings before the ages as existing in Himself in very truth — even though all things, both those that are and those that shall be, did not, at the moment of being known, also receive their being in themselves, but each at its own fitting time, for it is not possible for the infinite and the finite to be simultaneous — but also the end of the disposition of each according to its motion; for there is no time or age that interrupts this between God and it; for nothing in Him is recent, but future things are as present; and times and ages are indicative, not to God, but to us, of the things that are in God. For we must not suppose that, when we see God doing something, then also His knowledge concerning it began. Questions and Responses 681 If this is true, as indeed it is, He knew altogether, as present, not only the wickedness of the Egyptians that was to be, and their disobedient choice against every good work, and their disposition fit for vengeance for the evils done to the Israelites out of the custom of Egypt, but also the disposition of the Israelites that was to come, readily going over to the word of piety through faith.

Since, then, He permitted such hidden dispositions, previously restrained even by Himself, to come into operation, He is said, in this respect, to have “turned” them; for just as, if one should turn a valve that is secured and holds back by force the rush of water, the water immediately releases its hidden rush, so also the wicked and the good dispositions, providence permitting it, are brought into the open through intermediate events.

122. Of what were Moses and Pharaoh types in Exodus, and what is Egypt, and how were the plagues for some but not for others? And who is the destroyer, and what is the death of the firstborn, and why does Scripture in one place say “lead up” from Egypt, and in another “lead out”? Moses is a type of the pious and of their end; and Pharaoh, of the impious and of their end; for to the degree that Moses was obedient and pliant for the impressing of the divine commands, to that degree Pharaoh was disposed to the contrary. And Egypt, according to one approach concerning it, is interpreted “darkening,” and is taken for this present age. And geographers say that Egypt is lower-lying than all the earth; wherefore Scripture says not only “led out” but also “led up,” “leading out” signifying those who come from attachment to the flesh to the spirit, and “leading up” those who are borne up from material things to intelligible things. And Egyptians are all who are lovers of pleasure and lovers of the world, even if noble in body; and Israelites are all who are lovers of God and haters of the world. For the one group, then, the water is blood; for the other, water according to nature; for since water is nourishing and life-giving, it signifies that whoever makes the occasion of this life serve injustice and rapine and greed, being a murderer of those he wrongs, has water that is blood; but whoever has the occasion of life from righteous labors, for him the water is water of life.

And the firstborn of the Egyptians are killed because they do not have the doorposts anointed with the blood of the lamb. Now the firstborn are the mind’s first offspring and thoughts, and the doorposts are the senses, and the destroyer is the devil, who, through the medium of the senses, binds the soul to sensible things and destroys every divine movement within it. And the firstborn of the Israelites are preserved by the anointing of the blood — that is, the Questions and Responses 683 divine movements of the mind, by the mortification of the senses.

123. What is meant by the saying in Psalm 75 [76], “the inward thought of man shall confess to You, and the remainder of his thought shall keep festival to You”? The feast belongs to those who rejoice, and confession to those who are examined; and the one is of grief, the other of joy. This, then, he says: that in the judgment, the passing and incomplete thought of good, when weighed against the wicked and fully accomplished thought, has the greater weight; for the one is examined, while the other becomes the occasion of feast and joy.

124. What does the Apostle mean, saying, “I would rather speak five words in the church than ten thousand words in a tongue”? He speaks five words, even if only one word is spoken, who speaks a word that instructs the five senses; and he speaks ten thousand words in a tongue who, through his own word, provides an invitation to the passions. And again: he speaks five words who, through spiritual contemplation of beings, points to the Creator; for nature is fivefold, being of form and the four elements; but he speaks ten thousand words who fashions elegant phrases and persuasive combinations concerning the operation of visible things, for his own glory and enjoyment, deifying creation instead of the Creator; for creation was not given that it might be deified, but that it might teach us God.

125. What do those in the Gospel signify, who excuse themselves from the calling because of the field and the marriage and the pairs of oxen? By the woman, love of pleasure is signified; by the pair of oxen, love of possessions; by the field, gluttony — about which every man who busies himself falls away from the divine promises.

126. What is the etymology of gluttony? Neither the grammarians nor the rhetoricians mention it. But Aristotle, in his work “On Animals,” mentions a creature called “margos,” which is born from putrefaction between earth and water; and from the moment it is born, it does not cease devouring earth until, tunneling through the earth, it comes to the surface; and having come there, it dies for three days, and after three days a cloud of rain comes and rains upon it, and it lives again, no longer devouring incessantly. And from this, I think, the ancient philosophers were moved Questions and Responses 685 to call the greedy “gastrimargoi” (gluttons). But one who piously knows how to apply himself to the things that are can also take what has been said according to spiritual contemplation. For every passion is by nature born from putrefaction, and, once born, does not cease to devour the heart that gave it subsistence, until, through the habit of struggle, it comes to light; and having come to light, it dies to the three powers of the soul; and thus the grace of the Holy Spirit, appearing as though through a cloud of teaching, gives drops of knowledge and gives life — not according to the former passionate life, but according to the virtuous life proper to God.

127. What is the parable of the laborers hired for the vineyard in the Gospel, and what is the seeming inequality? God’s judgment does not proceed according to time and body, because the soul too, being without time and without body, since it does not receive its increase and its limit according to time, makes the movements of its disposition without reference to time. It is good to clarify what is said by an example. Often there is one who has seventy years in the monastic life, and another only one day; and since the aim of the profession is that, having drawn the soul away from attachment and relation to material things, one may transfer the whole soul to God — the one who has had seventy years, then, dies having taken no care whatsoever for such dispassion, while the other, who has had one day, having drawn away his whole passionate attachment to material things, and having gathered it wholly into the bosom of God, is perfected. In the distribution, then, that takes place according to the judgment, the one receives the wage worthily, as having brought the aim of the profession to its end; the other receives it by grace alone, for the sake of which he endured the labor of asceticism.

128. Whether, then, grief was inadmissible to Job in what befell him? We say that Job became inadmissible to grief; for he who had once, piously, made his examination of beings, and had confirmed in himself hatred for things that pass away and love for things that do not pass, how could he be grieved by the passing things, when, through the alteration of manner, they suffered what they naturally are wont to suffer?

129. Why, then, did none of the saints admit grief, and yet it is said of many of the saints that they had grief — as Paul too says, “I have unceasing grief,” and the rest? Questions and Responses 687 He who is occupied with things practical, so long as conscience pricks and strikes him because of the images that come by memory, is altogether grieved with a praiseworthy grief; but he who has arrived at the measure of perfection is even above this. For he who has been illumined through knowledge, having spread out the noetic part of his soul to God indivisibly, according to the equal identity of movement, and having acquired unspeakable joy in the perpetual delight of the divine beauty, how could he admit the grief opposed to this? The saints, then, are sometimes said to grieve in imitation of their own Master; for both grief and joy are spoken of God according to providence — grief over those who perish, joy over those who are saved. There is, then, one principle of grief, but it admits many manners of disposition. The grief, then, that is spoken of concerning the saints is mercy and compassion, and an overflow of joy, deriving from the Godformed perfection stored within, distributed providentially to those without.

130. Whether contemplation precedes practice? There is a twofold manner of contemplation: one, that which determines what is fitting for practical things, and this precedes the practical things; the other, that which reflects upon the things done, and this is conceived after the practice.

131. From Isaiah: “I planted a vineyard and put a fence around it,” and the rest. The planting of the vineyard signifies creation; and the fence, the natural law; and the hedging, the written law — by which the Creator secured nature. Whoever, then, truly cultivates by choice the seed of the good sown according to nature, he has made fruit for the planter; but whoever is unreasonably carried toward non-being, he makes thorns — that is, the passions — and is trampled by the demons who work these.

132. From the Song of Songs: “Come from Lebanon, my bride, come from Lebanon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of the leopards.” God the Word says to the soul betrothed to Him through good works, or also to the whole nature of humanity, to come out from idolatry — for this is what Lebanon signifies — and from evil habit — which the dens of lions signify, for the lion always attacks the shoulders, that is, the practical life — and from the mountains of leopards, that is, from ignorance; for this animal naturally makes its assault against the eyes, and the eyes are plainly taken for knowledge. Questions and Responses 689 133. From Isaiah: “upon the mountains and the hills I will be judged with you.” Since the life of soul and body, and this earthly place, have been providentially entrusted to angels, who minister the divine words to us, and likewise the prophets too conveyed to us, through their own words, the manners of salvation, He says, then, that He will be judged with us concerning these — calling the angels mountains, and the patriarchs and prophets hills.

134. What does the phrase of the Psalm signify, “He will take up the orphan and the widow, and will make the way of sinners to vanish”? The widow is the soul that has put to death the natural law, and the orphan is the underhanded manner, practiced for the sake of ostentation and heavier gains, having God not as father. Through this hypothetical counsel, then, the Lord, giving life to the natural law and correcting the underhanded manner, so that it may come to be for the sake of the good itself and not for perishable glory, takes it up, making the ways of sinners to vanish — that is, the former conduct in which it used to walk.

135. From Job: “because they had no shelter, they wrapped themselves around a rock.” Those who formerly had no shelter, that is, faith, were the nations; and they wrapped themselves around a rock — faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

136. Whether it is possible to find a natural demonstration concerning the Holy Trinity? All beings are believed to exist in three modes: in essence, in distinction, in life. And from the principle of the essence of beings we are persuaded that some essence exists, which is the Father; and from the distinction of beings, wisdom, that is, the Son — for it belongs to wisdom to apportion to each nature its fitting property, and to preserve each of the things that have come to be, distinct and unconfused, both in itself and in relation to the rest; and from life, the Holy Spirit. But in God these are hypostatic and are so called; in creatures, they are accidents.

137. From Saint Gregory the Theologian, on “all brought what was proclaimed to them, but some were self-motivated” — and what do the things brought signify? Those are self-motivated who come to the good from the natural seeds present in them; and those are proclaimed to Questions and Responses 691 who come to the good from teaching. And he offers gold who piously fashions his discourse about theology; and silver, he who has a pure life and bright, transparent teaching; and precious stones, he who adorns the strength of the practical life with divine words; and spun fine linen, he who preserves the habit of virtue unshaken in involuntary temptations, and through these washes away and whitens, like water, the thoughts that arise in the soul from sin; and spun scarlet, he who, through the abundance of the word, wipes away the pleasures and passions that come upon us through the mortification of the members of the body; and purple, he who has embraced accurately and unfailingly the knowledge of beings — for purple, in one approach, is taken for knowledge, since it is composed of many and various kinds, just as knowledge too is of many and various contemplations. And he offers dyed-red skins who is wholly mortified to sense; and hair, he who has acquired complete insensibility to present things.

138. What is the meaning of the psalm, “serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice in Him with trembling”? And how is it possible at the same time both to tremble and to rejoice? And how again does it say in Psalm 18 [19], “the fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever”; but John says, “love casts out fear” — and if it is cast out, how does it endure? Fear is twofold: the one, for offenses; the other, according to the worth of the beloved. Love, then, lays aside the fear that is for offenses, but preserves the fear that is according to the worth of the beloved. And exultation is the joyful disposition over the acquisition of certain things, and gladness is the enjoyment of what has been acquired.

139. What do the cows and the ears of grain, shown to Pharaoh in a dream, signify? Here Pharaoh is taken for nature; and the good cows signify practice, and the ears of grain, knowledge; for in this sevenfold period of time, knowledge and practice are at work. And the other cows and ears of grain, the ugly and wind-blighted, signify ignorance and vice, which had the strength to devour both the vigor of practice, signified by the cows, and the knowledge signified by the good ears of grain. But our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Joseph, alone the foreknower and corrector of such a famine, taking faith like gold, and a bright life like silver, and moral philosophy like sheep, and the swift and eager course of the godly life like horses, supplies the grain, that is, true knowledge.

140. What is the unjust judge in the Gospel, and who is the widow woman? Questions and Responses 693 By the unjust judge he means the natural law, hardened by transgression and reverencing neither God nor man; and by the widow, the soul that is widowed of good works. For if she comes to repentance, she compels the natural law, troubling it through asceticism and self-control, to abstain from things contrary to nature. And if, He says, the mind, through diligent and laborious persistence, has strength to accomplish even things beyond nature, how much more, He says, will God hear those who cry to Him through fervent and shameless prayer and persistence?

141. What is the scroll given to the prophet Ezekiel, on which was written “lamentation and song and woe,” and how was it sweetened in his mouth? The scroll is the divine Word; and written in it is lamentation, that is, the threats of punishments; song, the promises of good things; and woe, because those who are neither made temperate by fear of punishments nor bettered by the incitement of the promises shall altogether receive the woe of eternal punishment. And that the scroll was sweetened in the prophet’s mouth signifies this: that he who continually meditates on what has been said, and attends to the things threatened and the things promised, is sweetened by hope.

142. For what reason did the Spirit descend ten days after the Ascension of the Lord? Some of those instructed in divine things say that, since there are nine ranks of angelic powers, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, the Lord, ascending according to His humanity — for according to His divinity He fills all things — apportioned one day to each order, from the lowest to the last; for these too needed the Lord’s visitation to them; for in Him, according to the Apostle, were recapitulated not only the things on earth, but also the things in heaven. And after this He was manifested to God the Father, and thus the Spirit came down. But it is possible to contemplate this matter also in another manner of contemplation: since the Word of God is hidden in His ten commandments, and takes a body in us, condescending to us through practice, and again leads us up, exalting us through knowledge, until we come to the loftiest of all the commandments, which says, “the Lord your God, the Lord is one” — for whenever our mind, released from all things — or rather, having released all things — comes to rest in God Himself, then it receives the fiery tongues, becoming god by grace. Questions and Responses 695 143. For what reason, when Luke says in Acts concerning Paul that “he hastened, if it were possible for him, to keep the day of Pentecost at Jerusalem,” does he appear to have made a genuflection, which is forbidden by the canons?

He does not speak of the Pentecost itself, in which the Spirit came down, but since the fifty days are called the day of Pentecost, Paul hastened to make the first day from the Paschal season at Jerusalem — from which it is plain that he bent the knee during the fast days.

144. For what reason does the Apostle Paul call himself a Roman, and, speaking to the tribune, said, “but I was even born so”? Those in every country, thinking it a great thing to be called Roman, offering gifts, were registered as Romans, and the name ran through their family. Since, then, the Apostle’s parents too, being in Tarsus, were registered as being called Romans, fittingly the Apostle, as begotten from them, says, “but I was even born so.”

145. From the prophet Amos: “and two or three cities shall be gathered into one city, to drink water, and shall not be filled.” What do the cities signify? Here one must suppose the cities to be souls, because they are composed like houses and are receptive of the virtues. And two cities are souls established through practice and contemplation; and three, souls that have set right theology through unwavering faith. Since, then, the prophet set this down in the form of a curse, it signifies that whenever there comes a famine — not of bread and water, but “a famine of hearing the word of the Lord” — even if such souls have reached the measure of the virtues named, but grow negligent, they seem to seek knowledge, but since they do not pursue practice, they fail; and even if they seem to gather together into one city, that is, to the teacher, they are not filled with knowledge; for to him, too, the grace of teaching is not given, that he should be able to give drink of divine knowledge to those in need.

146. From the same: “the city from which a thousand went forth shall have a hundred left, and from which a hundred went forth shall have ten left.” Since every number is contained in four decades — for instance, the first decad from the monad, then this same is a monad of the hundred, then the hundred is a monad of the thousand, and again the thousand is a monad of the myriad — since, then, the number of virtue too is multiplied by Questions and Responses 697 advance and receives increase, this, I think, is signified by the numbers: that he who has so set right the ten commandments that each commandment is contained in the rest, this man, having multiplied them tenfold, has come to the hundred, and, like Sarah, has received the addition of the letter rho. And whoever has also set right the knowledge that follows upon these, multiplying the hundred tenfold, has come to the thousand. And since this too was spoken by the prophet in the form of a curse, it signifies that through negligence he who has come to the measure of the thousand in virtue falls back and comes to the hundred; and likewise he who, from the hundred in practice, comes down to the mere observance of the letter of the commandments, or fulfills them in the Jewish manner.

147. From the same: “woe to those who desire the day of the Lord, and this is darkness and not light, as when a man flees from before a lion, and a bear meets him, and he leaps into his house, and leans his hands against the wall, and a serpent bites him.” The day of the Lord is the illumination and knowledge of the Lord. Whoever, then, desires to lay hold of the knowledge of God without practice, is fittingly lamented; for, being troubled by the passions, incensiveness and desire, seeking to escape being bitten by the lion — that is, by incensiveness — he falls into the bear of desire; then, hemmed in by these, he leaps into the house, and leans his hands against the wall, and a serpent bites him. The house is the soul, and the wall is the body; whenever, then, he leans the practical powers of the soul upon the enjoyment of the body, pleasure comes out — for this is the serpent — and bites him; for pleasure, creeping through each sense of the body as through a hole, bites the wretched soul. To him, then, who is thus weak in the eyes of the soul, the sun of knowledge is darkness and blindness.

148. From the Psalter: “the words of the Lord are pure words, silver refined by fire, tried in the earth, purified seven times.” Since they purify us from every stain of sin, they are called pure; and “silver refined by fire” because of their translucence and their power to give light, as in silver; and because of their divine quality and their power to test our hearts — for the heart in the Gospel is called earth; and “purified seven times” whenever we purify each commandment sevenfold. It is good to clarify what is meant by a single commandment: the Law proclaims, “you shall not murder.” Whoever, then, wishes purify this commandment sevenfold, not only abstains from murder by Questions and Responses 699 the hand, but also, if he sees one hungry, feeds him; if he sees one thirsty, gives him drink; if he sees one naked, clothes him; if he sees a stranger, takes him in; if he sees one sick, does not overlook him; if he sees one in prison, runs to him. And, simply, he who neglects one of these has, in this respect, committed murder; for, so far as it lay with him, he let one die whom he could have restored, having need of him. Joining, then, these six enumerated commandments of the Lord to the legal commandment “you shall not murder,” one purifies the word of the Lord sevenfold; and this can be applied likewise to each commandment.

149. From Proverbs: “seldom set your foot in your friend’s house, lest, having had his fill of you, he hate you.” Here he calls our body a friend, because of the natural union and affection we have toward it. The word, then, counsels that care for the body not be made a matter of forethought, but that our forethought be for the mere trace of the soul, and this too seldom — lest, if you set great store by its comfort, it show toward you the manners of an enemy and one who hates you.

150. What does the saying of the patriarch Jacob signify, “I paid for the thefts of the day and the thefts of the night”? Understand by “thefts of the day” the defeats that befall us through the outward senses from the evil one, for which the patriarch paid the labors of asceticism. And “thefts of the night” are those by which the enemy plunders us through the inward thoughts, for which we too, after the pattern of the patriarch, must pay labors and vigils and the other forms of asceticism.

151. What does the heifer signify, according to the Law, whose neck is broken in the ravine, concerning the ignorance of a murder? By this the spiritual intent of Scripture signifies that we must fear not only for our manifest sins, as ones who shall render account for them, but, being also afraid for what we do without knowing, must always break the neck of the heifer — that is, of our flesh — in the ravine of self-control and asceticism. And for this reason they left the heifer alive, that we too might learn not to kill the body, but to break the neck of, and tame, the pleasures that rise up in it.

152. What do Nadab and Abihu signify, who “offered strange fire” and for this were burned up? Those who continually serve as priests to God, and offer themselves as a living sacrifice to God, and have the fervor of Questions and Responses 701 the Holy Spirit in themselves, like Cleopas, offer their own fire to God; but whenever, growing slothful, they come to be outside this state, and gather in themselves the kindling of the passions, then they have introduced strange fire, and their conscience is burned up with the fire of accusations.

153. For what reason is fine flour always taken together with the legal sacrifices, sometimes kneaded with oil, sometimes baked in an oven, sometimes in a pan? The fine flour must be taken for reason, as being the nourishment of rational beings; and whenever kneaded with oil, it signifies reason together with the illumination of knowledge; and whenever in a pan, it signifies reason tested and constituted from the pleasurable temptations that befall us from within; and whenever in an oven, it signifies reason made firm through the endurance of trial from the temptations that befall us from without.

154. Why, when, in the seventh month, on the fifteenth day, they kept the feast for seven days under the Law, did they offer fourteen calves on the first day, taking away one calf each day until they came to seven? Since, according to the saying of the Lord, one must turn and become as little children, and the child is altogether deprived of passionate movement, but when he becomes fourteen years old, immediately the passionate movement begins to be stirred up in him — this, then, I think, is the mystical meaning the Law indicates: that we must offer to God, as a sacrifice, the diminishment even of natural movement, until we come to perfect dispassion.

155. What do the two hundred fifty men signify, who rose up against Moses, and, offering incense, fire went forth from the Lord and consumed them; and the Lord commanded Eleazar to take up their censers and make them into beaten plates and fasten them to the altar? The number fifty is always taken, with reference to divine things, as transcending things under time; and the number two hundred is taken with reference to sensible things and the senses, because of the composition of the number four with the number five. As many, then, as take sensible things in a sensible manner, and pursue the divine virtues for the sake of sensible things, these rise up against the divine law, and their conscience is burned up with the fire of accusations. And then the priestly word of teaching takes their censers — that is, the mind in which they thought to offer to God a zeal not according to knowledge — and, through teaching, drives Questions and Responses 703 out and thins the coarseness resting upon it, and offers it to the altar, that is, to divine knowledge.

156. For what reason does the Law forbid “the price of a dog and the hire of a harlot”? By this it signifies that the virtues must be offered to God unmixed with incensiveness and desire, calling incensiveness the dog, and desire the harlot.

157. Since Psalm 21 [22] is plainly referred to the Lord, how shall we understand, “but I am a worm, and no man”? Our Lord Jesus Christ, because of His unspeakable love for mankind, became and was called a worm; for just as the worm is born without intercourse, so also the Lord was conceived apart from seed. But He also became, as a worm, a bait for the devil; for gaping wide, as at a worm, for the flesh, he was impaled upon the Godhead. But He is also a worm to His enemies; for to the wise He is at once found to be wisdom, but to the foolish, crooked. But He also becomes a worm within us whenever we sin, convicting and gnawing our conscience.

158. What is written in Genesis, “and He set the cherubim, and the flaming sword turning every way, to guard the way of the tree of life”? Just as the sensible tree becomes food for the flesh, so also the tree of life, which is the Lord, becomes food and life for our souls. And the way leading to Him is the virtues; and it is guarded by the cherubim and the flaming sword. Cherubim is interpreted “fullness of knowledge”; through knowledge, longing for God comes to be in us; and through the flaming sword, that is, discernment, which consumes what is base, fear comes upon us. Fear and longing, then, are what guard the way of the tree of life. And the sword is said to turn; for whenever we sin, it meets us face to face, convicting us through our conscience; but whenever we repent, it gives us passage.

159. From the Apostle: “if anyone builds on this foundation gold or silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, the fire will test each one’s work. If anyone’s work that he has built survives, he will receive a reward; if anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, but he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.” The foundation is faith in Christ. And one builds on it, as gold, theological initiation; as silver, a transparent life; as precious stones, pious thoughts; as wood, attachment to sensible things; as hay, he who is nourished on irrationality; as stubble, he who works corruption. And in the case of those Questions and Responses 705 who have good works, the day of knowledge signifies that their revelation comes about in fire, that is, in the Spirit. But in the case of sinners, the works are burned up, discernment justifying the conscience and lessening the sins through repentance, and saving the man, but penalizing the idleness of the virtues in the time that has gone before. But also in the age to come the works of sin pass into non-existence, nature receiving back its own powers safe, through the fire of judgment.

160. What is it that David sings, saying, “give Your strength to Your servant, and save the son of Your handmaid”? Since by nature we are servants of God, but sons of His handmaid, wisdom, he prays that strength be given to us first — that is, dominion over the passions — and that then, through this, salvation may come to be ours.

161. Since it is written in Kingdoms that God “incited David” to number the people, but in Chronicles it says the devil did — how, then, shall divine Scripture be shown to be consistent with itself? Since the Apostle calls the devil the god of this age, the passage in Kingdoms must be understood accordingly. Or otherwise: since nothing comes to pass apart from God’s providence, but all things come to pass either according to good pleasure, or according to economy, or according to concession, what is written in Kingdoms, that God “incited,” must be piously understood instead as “permitted,” while in Chronicles it names the devil as the one who worked it and became its cause. And the seventy thousand who fall are either those found with Absalom, or those who have the passion of self-conceit and pride. But according to contemplation, this signifies that every David, who has begotten a thought not from disposition but by the sudden seizure of exaltation, repents and asks God, and the thoughts concerning temporal and passing things die; for the number seventy signifies temporal movement, because of the sevenfold cycle. For this reason, then, it is better to choose to be pursued by enemy demons and a famine of hearing the word of the Lord.

162. What does the paralytic signify, who was let down through the roof by four; and whether, according to the history, it is possible for the house to be unroofed? According to the history, the house was indeed altogether unroofed, since those who have themselves seen those places say that the roofs of the houses there are of very light pumicestone, so that one who wished to unroof it could do so easily Questions and Responses 707 and quickly. But according to the manner of anagogy, the paralytic is every mind that is sick in sins, and, through natural contemplation — for this is the door — cannot see the Word; through faith, unroofing the covering of the coarseness of the legal letter, he is let down, through the four virtues, from vain height to the Word who has emptied Himself, and by faith and practice receives his healing.

163. What does the Babylonian furnace signify? Temptations come upon us in two ways: voluntarily, through the passions of pleasure within us; and involuntarily, through afflictions from outside. And when it is voluntary, at the command of Nebuchadnezzar, that is, the devil, we ourselves kindle the furnace of the passions, feeding it with incensiveness like brushwood, desire like pitch, pleasure like naphtha, and the perversion of reason like tow — for flax is taken for reason, wherefore the priests, when serving as priests, wore linen; whenever, then, reason is perverted, it becomes tow, and through it the rest of the passions are easily kindled. But if one, after the pattern of the blessed children, calls upon God through humility and fervent prayer, he is loosed from the bonds of hands and feet — that is, the practical life and the journey according to God — and is refreshed with dew by the visitation of the Holy Spirit. But when we are tempted involuntarily, and the intelligible Nebuchadnezzar kindles the furnace for us through outward afflictions — sicknesses and other unwilled circumstances — we are able, through endurance and thanksgiving, to be refreshed with dew by the hope of the good things laid up for us.

164. For what reason, when the prophet Elisha was mocked by the children, did he pray, and bears came out and tore forty-two children? Some say that these were not Israelite children, but from the foreign nations, understanding. and not children in age, but Since, then, they in heard the prophet performing many signs and did not believe, but mocked him, and there were some present who did not share their vain opinion, so that these should not be harmed, and blasphemy should not be traced back to God, God took vengeance upon them. But according to contemplation, every mind, like Elisha bald — that is, pure of material thoughts — in the ascent of knowledge, is much mocked by the thoughts concerning sensible things and matter and form, the number forty signifying sensible things; and matter and form, added, complete the number forty-two. The mind, then, is scoffed at by such thoughts, so that it be cast into reluctance toward Questions and Responses 709 virtue. These, then, it destroys through prayer, by means of the two bears — that is, through pleasure and desire; for such passions, turned around toward the better use, will kill the mocking thoughts.

165. What does the parable in the Gospel signify, concerning the meeting of the kings of twenty thousand and ten thousand? The king who draws up with ten thousand signifies the king within us, the mind, warring with the ten commandments against the other king who has twenty thousand — that is, against the ruler of this world, who draws up against him together with sensible things and the senses; for the five senses, inclined toward sensible things, which are of four elements, make up the twenty. Through these the enemy draws up against us. And “to sit and take counsel” signifies whether it is possible to undertake every hardship and labor for virtue; but if not, he says one must sue for terms of peace — that is, submit to the natural necessities laid upon us after the transgression, being unable to pursue the evangelical way of life.

166. What does the deaf demon in the Gospel signify? A soul that does not hearken to the commandments of the Lord is troubled by the deaf demon; but whenever the Word of God comes to be in it through the working of the commandments, then it not only hears, but also speaks, through the knowledge of God.

167. What does the tower in the Gospel signify, according to the Lord’s parable, which he who could not complete is mocked by those who pass by? The tower signifies the perfection of the virtues built up with knowledge. Whoever, then, after dispassion according to practice, has the fitness to acquire natural and contemplative and theological principles, by which perfect knowledge is completed, he completes the building of the tower; but he who lacks one of these, as unable to bring the building to its end, is mocked by those who pass by.

168. [The opening of the question is damaged; it concerns how the seeming difference between the sayings of the evangelists] will be shown [to be resolved]. They say that universal things are indicative of particular things, and particular things of universal things. He, then, who said, “I came to seek that which was lost,” signified the universal nature, which is Israel according to the account of Questions and Responses 711 Genesis, and always “sees God”; and he who said that He was sent only “to the sheep of the house of Israel” also, through the particular, signified the universal. For since, in Abraham, the good that had flowed away in the forefather through the disobedience of nature was recovered through recognition, God gives him the promise that he would be father of many nations, of those who, through recognition, come to a faith like his, and are adopted by him as sons; for it is plain that if they are adopted, they are also of the house of Israel, and fellow heirs and of the same body. And the request of the Canaanite woman for the crumbs signifies the teaching fitting for those introduced from unbelief into the life according to virtue; for the simple and most perfect word of knowledge is divided into many parts according to the capacity of those who receive it; catechetical instruction, then, likened to crumbs, is fitting for beginners.

And the dog, since it is a barking animal, driving away strangers but fawning on its own household, is taken for the practical habit, which drives away vices contrary to nature but fawns on the natural virtues, strengthening and guarding 169. What does the story concerning Joab signify, when he pursued Sheba the son of Bichri, who “raised his hand against David,” and who is the woman who threw his head from the wall? Joab, with the aspirate, is interpreted “from without, or pursuing”; without it, “giving, or provider.” Here Joab must be taken for courage, and Sheba for pride, which, like a head, contains within it, as it were, the little houses of the rest of the passions. Whenever, then, the virtuous mind perceives the uprising of pride, it sends out Joab, that is, courage, to pursue and drive on the powers of the soul to destroy it. Fleeing, then, pride hides itself, as though in some city, in one of the virtues; courage besieges this, seeking to destroy pride. And the wise woman, who is wisdom, by the discovery of the constituent causes of virtue, brings about the destruction of the producing causes of the passions, through which every constitution of vice comes to be in the soul.

170. What does the story concerning Amasa signify, when Amasa is interpreted “anointed, or anointing”; he is taken, then, for dispassion, as one who, because of his perfection, easily escapes every grasp of adversaries; and Joab, for courage. Whenever, then, the soul, through courage, after attaining perfect dispassion in habit, abandons prayer, and busies itself vainly with some passion, it kills — that is, Questions and Responses 713 renders inoperative — the more perfect manner of contemplation, busying itself with defeated enemies.

171. What does the story concerning this same Joab signify, when he killed Abner, and what is the curse brought upon him? Here Joab is taken for the resentful thought, against whom he also receives the curse — to lean upon a staff and fall by the sword — the word signifying, I think, by the staff, the hope of the resentful man concerning sensible things — for every resentful thought, always wrapped up in material things, has its support in them — and by “falling by the sword,” the destruction of such an attachment through the sharpest reasoning.

172. In whose person is Hushai, when David sent him “to frustrate the counsel of Ahithophel”? Since Hushai was son of Iemini, in his own person he is interpreted “spinning,” but in relation to his father he is called “right-hand son”; he is taken for discernment; for it is discernment that, by its power of discrimination, thins out and frustrates the counsels of adversaries.

173. What does it mean, said by the Apostle, “the fullness of Him who fills all in all”? God, according to His essence, is negatively removed from all beings; for He is neither spoken, nor conceived, nor participated by anyone whatsoever. But according to His providential procession, being participated in by many, He is also filled by them. For each of the things that have come to be, according to its own principle, which is in God, is said to be a member of God and to have a place in God; indeed, if it should be moved according to this principle, wisely and rationally, it will come to be in God, filling its own place and working out its comeliness in the body of Christ as a useful member. But whoever, abandoning his own principle, is unreasonably carried toward things that have no existence, shall justly undergo eternal punishment for the reproach, so far as it lay with him, brought upon the body of Christ.

174. What does Adonibezek signify, hung by Joshua the son of Nun “upon a double tree”? The double tree bears the type of the operation and relation, according to both soul and body, toward sensible things. Whoever, then, after the pattern of Joshua, cutting through the commandments the way of virtue, renders vice inoperative in both soul and body, toward sense and toward things contrary to nature, this man has hanged the ruler of this world upon the double tree. Questions and Responses 715 175. What does the story concerning Ahab signify, when the prophet saw the angelic powers on the right and on the left? The prophet here weaves the universal principle of providence, knowing that the ruling principle is mingled with all things; and by the right he introduces the hypothetical principles of fitting actions, and by the left, those of judgment, that is, of the things not in our power. Whoever, then, is led to what is right neither by the teaching of the divine law nor by the visitation of the afflictions that befall him, this man is handed over, left to self-love, that is, to the sin within him, which, thrusting him into ever greater depths of evil, does not stop until, having killed him unrepentant, it sends him on to the judgment there.

176. What does the woman bent double for eighteen years in the Gospel signify? A soul entangled in sensible things through its three powers is signified by the bent-double woman. For the number six, in which the sensible world was brought into generation, tripled, makes eighteen. If, then, she comes through repentance to the Word and God, she becomes healthy, no longer bending down toward earthly things, but gazing all around at the heavenly beauties.

177. What does the song of Habakkuk signify, saying, “the sheep have failed from lack of food, and there are no oxen at the manger”? The sheep are the mind’s thoughts and movements, and the oxen are spiritual teaching, and the manger is dispassion according to practice; when this does not exist, spiritual teaching fails; and when this fails, the thoughts and movements constituted in our mind through it naturally fail together with it, the soul, through famine of the word, descending to the affairs of life. Or otherwise: the rational sheep fail from not feeding on the spiritual food of teaching, because the spiritual oxen — the teachers — do not exist at the manger of the Church.

178. What does the Lord’s precept signify, anagogically: “if anyone compels you to go one mile, go with him two”? He who compels us is the Lord, through His teaching, to the one mile of His commandment. It is good, then, that we hear Him commanding, and go two miles — that is, obey the commandment and add, through our works, the other mile. Or otherwise: we are compelled to the mile of faith, but the works of faith are also required of us. Questions and Responses 717 179. What is meant by, “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also”? If the demons, He says, strike you on the right cheek through thoughts, exalting you because of your right-hand works, turn the other — that is, bring before your eyes the deeds of the left-hand practice, whatever has been done by us.

180. What does the Lord’s saying to His disciples signify, “I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until I drink it new with you in the kingdom of My Father”? Since our salvation is God’s food and drink, according to what is written, and the Lord, having fulfilled this through His incarnate economy, and having brought to its end, through His teaching and way of life, the saving purpose concerning us, having made His disciples come to be above sense, He says, “I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine” — that is, of the salvation of men worked out through His sojourn among them. But in the age to come He drinks this new — that is, renewed through the Holy Spirit, and making the worthy gods by grace through the ecstatic and inebriated participation in the good things.

181. What is meant by, “My Spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh; and their days shall be a hundred and twenty years”? God, caring for the salvation of men at that time, foretold that their life would be a hundred and twenty years; for it was twenty years until Noah was commanded to build the ark; and for a hundred years he remained building the ark, so that, by this display, they might come to correction; and after this He brought the flood and took them all away. And Scripture speaks truly that a hundred and twenty years remained for that generation from when He threatened them.

182. What does Eutychus signify in Acts, who fell “from the third story while Paul was discoursing”? Every mind that ascends the practical life as though a first story, and, resting upon natural contemplation as a second story, and, through unwavering faith, mounting itself upon the height of theology as a third story, then, growing careless of the divine word and drowsy, falls from the aforesaid third story; but if the word of teaching, falling upon him, finds in him something living, and he has not been altogether deadened through despair, he is made alive again through repentance. Questions and Responses 719 183. How, since the purpose is not the same, is the single denarius said in the Gospel to be given by the master of the house to those who labored in the vineyard, when the callings are various? Some of the holy fathers say that the various callings signify the various ages; others, the various purposes. Suppose the denarius to be temperance; but this has many differences: for the one who has his own wife, having obtained her, keeps temperance in this respect; but there is another, loftier than this, who does not continually make use of the license of the law; and another, who makes use of it only for the begetting of children in succession for his family; and another, who, after obtaining one or two children, abstains altogether from marital intercourse; and there is one loftier than all these, who does not give himself to marriage at all, but practices virginity for love of the Lord.

The word, then, has shown five purposes, one loftier than the other, in which are signified the five callings and the one denarius of temperance; and take this as applying also to the other virtues.

184. What does the story concerning the prophet Jonah signify, and who is Joppa, from which he flees? Jonah, fleeing from the face of the Lord, is taken for our nature; for this, being in Joppa — interpreted “watchtower of joy,” signifying paradise — fled through disobedience, and gave itself to the sea of life, and is storm-tossed and swallowed by the intelligible sea monster, and is vomited out through the Lord’s three-day burial in Hades. And he is also taken for the prophetic gift, and preaches in Nineveh, that is, to the nations, and is distressed over the gourd; and the gourd is the bodily worship of the Law, which the worm dried up — our Lord Jesus Christ, who said, “I am a worm, and no man”; for through His coming He abolished the temporal worship of the Law. And that there were in the city twelve thousand who did not know their right hand from their left signifies those who pursue virtue neither by excess nor by deficiency, but by the mean and the royal road.

185. For what reason does the raven feed Elijah bread in the morning, and meat in the evening? The raven is taken for nature, blackened through disobedience; and Elijah, sitting by the torrent, is taken for the gnostic mind, established in the torrent of temptations and the labors of asceticism. This mind is fed by the blackened nature: in the morning, bread — that is, gathering knowledge from the natural contemplation of beings; in the evening, meat — for he is initiated into the mystery of the Lord’s incarnation that was to come at the last times, that, Questions and Responses 721 having brought nature into subsistence from non-being, He would restore it once corrupted. Or otherwise: Elijah is taken as a type of the Lord; for He, when an intelligible famine held all hearts, came into the torrent — that is, into life — willingly enduring temptations and passions, and His own people, when He came to His own, did not receive Him nor feed Him, but the nations, blackened by idolatry, received Him and fed Him through knowledge and practice, the bread signifying knowledge, and the meat, practice.

186. What is meant in the psalm, “he shall rejoice like a giant to run his course”? “Giant” is interpreted “falling upon,” and is taken for the Lord; for He rejoiced in the way of the economy, working out our salvation, and fell upon the demonic phalanxes, abolishing their dominion over us.

187. From Psalm 71 [72]: “righteousness shall rise up in his days, and abundance of peace, until the moon is taken away.” It is plain to all that the prophet foretold this by the Spirit concerning the Lord’s incarnate way of life. And the days of the Lord are not those He spent bodily on earth, but the virtues, which, like days, giving light, cause righteousness to rise up in us. What righteousness? The apportioning habit that does not allow the lesser to rise up against the better — that is, “the mind of the flesh” against “the law of the Spirit.” And “abundance of peace” comes to be in us whenever the passions, lulled to rest, remain unmoved with reference to the soul. And “until the moon is taken away” signifies this: that such abundance comes to the soul from the knowledge of God that causes righteousness to rise up in us, that even the bare imaginings of our changeable nature — for this is the moon — are utterly taken away. “And he shall have dominion,” it says, “from sea to sea” — here signifying by sea the practical life, from which, beginning, he has dominion over those subject to his law, “unto the sea” — plainly, the boundless knowledge, in which those who partake of it swim through the contemplation of beings. Or also understand by sea baptism, in which, according to the prophet, the face of the adversary vanishes into the first sea, and his hindparts into the last sea — calling baptism, as has been said, the first sea, and the resurrection the last, in which the hindparts of the enemy are abolished; for then our nature perfectly puts off the law of sin implanted through the transgression.

Questions and Responses 723 188. The discourse with Nicodemus from the Lord, in which He says that the spirit blows where it wills, and you hear its voice — of what spirit does He speak? Some think the Lord speaks of the airy wind, but it seems to me rather that He speaks of the Holy Spirit. For this, with authority, blows where it wills, and it wills in those receptive and pure in understanding; for these, being inspired with the divine gifts, do not know from where the particular gift was given to them, or for what cause, nor to what end the gift's bestowal leads, but hear only the voice — that is, the very operation of the gift, made manifest through the purity of life, and in a certain manner giving forth a voice, whether it is the gift of teaching or of healings or... [the response is damaged here in the source text].

189. What is the blasphemy against the Spirit, and how is it that “every sin shall be forgiven men, but he who blasphemes against it shall not be forgiven, neither in this age nor in the age to come”? The difficulty concerning the blasphemy against the Spirit has its solution from the passage itself; for when the Lord was performing various healings, the Jews attributed these operations of the Spirit to the ruler of the demons. But that forgiveness comes neither here nor in the age to come for those who blaspheme must next be inquired into. Some of those who have examined such matters precisely through the Spirit say there are four ways by which forgiveness of sins comes about, two here and two in the age to come. For since memory does not suffice to recall all the failings of the whole of time, so that man might repent of them here, the Master of nature, being a lover of mankind, provided, even when we do not repent, ways of repentance. In the age to come, as has been said, there are two: whenever someone, having sinned here indifferently, and again having done good indifferently — whether moved to pity and compassion toward his neighbor, or to whatever else pertains to love of mankind — these, weighed in the age to come at the time of judgment, whichever way the scale inclines, forgiveness comes about; this is the one way.

And the second is this: whenever someone, held fast in sins, but hearing the Lord saying, “judge not, that you be not judged,” fearing, judges no one, in the examination of his deeds, as a keeper of the commandment, he is not judged; for He who cannot lie is not forgetful of His own commandment. And the other two ways have their forgiveness here: whenever someone in sins is providentially disposed by providence toward misfortunes, necessities, sicknesses — for we do not know that through such things God purifies him — and if he gives thanks while being tried, he receives the reward for his thanksgiving; but Questions and Responses 725 if he is ungrateful, he is purified from those sins for which he is disciplined by these things, but he is exacted the penalty for his ingratitude. Since, then, whatever sins a man commits against men, as the word has shown, have many occasions for forgiveness — for one who sins against a man, but does good to another man, has in effect made his defense to the very nature against which he sinned — but the blasphemy against the Spirit, which is unbelief, has no other occasion of forgiveness except becoming a believer, fittingly for him who has closed his life in unbelief, neither here nor in the age to come is the sin of unbelief and godlessness forgiven.

190. From the Gospel: “Truly I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power.” This is Mark's saying; but Matthew's is: “until they see the Son of Man coming in His glory.” Since the Word of God is not circumscribed by things according to history, but, ever operative, like the sun shines His own light, He did not speak this to the disciples merely with reference to history, saying, “there are some standing here,” but concerning all who, like them, have shone forth in virtue, meaning, “those who have their standing near me on the foundation of the virtues.” And “they shall not taste death” is said of the apostles, that they should not taste natural death until they saw, through the Transfiguration, the image of the splendor that was to be for the saints. But since the word knows different kinds of death — for the mortification of the passions too is called death; and also the practical man, when, having left off the war against the passions, he comes to natural contemplation, has died to the former state, being occupied with the contemplation of beings, resting from the contest of the practical warfare; and also he who has passed through natural contemplation, and left behind all that is caused, and come to the Cause through theological negation, this man too has died to the former state, no longer moving among things made, but having transferred his movement to the Maker of all — concerning, then, the death that comes about through the removal of all things, He says that they shall not taste it, that is, that those equal in virtue to the apostles shall not suffer it, until the Lord, transfigured, displays Himself no longer affirmed from the position of beings, but, by theology according to negation, displaying the inaccessible hiddenness of the Godhead.

And that one of the evangelists says “the Son of Man coming in His glory,” and the other, “until they see the kingdom of God come in power,” signifies this: since according to His divinity He is Son of God, but according to His humanity He Questions and Responses 727 became, for our sake, Son of Man — according, then, to His being Son of God, He always possesses glory; but according to His becoming Son of Man, He is said to come in His glory. For thus He glorified the humanity He assumed: that just as, being in a passible body, He was seen transfigured on the mountain, so we too, receiving an incorruptible body in the resurrection, shall be. For to say “come in power” signified that the hoped-for incorruptible and eternal kingdom of the saints is not yet present in actuality.

191. “And it came to pass after six days, Jesus took Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them, and His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white as light.” “After six days” signifies that, since God brought the visible creation into being in six days, those who, through the abundance of the virtues and of knowledge, have passed beyond all visible things, these ascend together with the Word on the mountain of theology. But since Luke mentions eight days, and seems to show a discrepancy among the evangelists, I think the difficulty finds its solution here, and that the history runs fittingly together with contemplation: for just as, according to the history, the one who spoke of six days spoke of the days in between, while the one who spoke of eight days signified both the beginning, in which the Lord spoke, and the end, in which the took place — so also according to contemplation: since man, through the transgression, slipped into what is contrary to nature, he who wishes to ascend together with the Word to the mountain of theology must first, as it were, pass through one day, that which is contrary to nature, and then, as it were, pass through six days, that is, nature, and come to be in what is beyond nature, which is the eighth; for this transcends time, and characterizes the state that is to come.

And why does He “take Peter and James and John” alone, apart? Since the Word always shrinks from the crowded and tumult-filled condition, and since Peter, according to the first name of Simon, is interpreted “obedience,” but according to “Peter” signifies unchangeableness — and by these is signified the unchangeable and immovable faith toward God that comes from obedience to the commandments — and James is interpreted “supplanter,” and by him is signified hope — for unless one hopes to receive, in place of these passing and corruptible things, the things not passing and incorruptible, he cannot supplant the devil, who always has his deceit in sensible things — and John is interpreted “dove,” and by him is signified love, since gentleness is nothing other Questions and Responses 729 than the unmovedness of incensiveness and desire toward things contrary to nature, and he who is neither moved to incensiveness by desires, nor by failure to obtain what he desires, plainly loves all — to those, then, who have acquired faith and hope and love, the Word ascends together with them to the mountain of theology, and is transfigured before them, no longer affirmed as being called God and holy and king and such things, but negated according to what is beyond-God and beyond-holy and all things spoken by way of transcendence. And the face of the Word, which shone like the sun, is the hiddenness characteristic of His essence, upon which it is impossible to gaze fixedly by the interpretation of reasonings, just as it is impossible to gaze upon the brightness of the sun, even if one is very much purified in his visual power.

But since Scripture mentioned a garment, it is necessary, following the sequence, to make mention of the body also. The body of the Word, then, is the substance of the virtues — such as goodness, gentleness, and the like; and the garments of the Word are the words of Scripture, and the fashioning of the world, put forth and receiving its being from God — which those see as white who scrape away the letter of divine Scripture from its overlying coarseness, and, by contemplation of the Spirit, gaze upon the bright beauty of the thoughts, and those who, by removing the deceit that comes through sense, gaze brightly upon sensible creation, and, from the greatness of its beauty, reason accordingly to its Creator.

192. “And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared, talking with Him; and Peter answered and said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if You wish, let us make three tabernacles, one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’” Those who pass over from the letter to the spirit see both the Law and the prophets present with the Word, and proclaiming with a loud voice His coming. And why did Peter mention tabernacles? Since all knowledge and all virtue, compared with the state to come, differs in nothing from an easily-dissolved tent, according to the Apostle, saying, “whether prophecies shall cease, or knowledge shall be abolished.” And there are three tabernacles: the practical, the natural, and the theological; and the theological he assigned to the Lord as God, and natural contemplation to Moses, as one who wrote the generation of all things, and the practical to Elijah, as a virgin and zealot and ascetic.

193. What is the reason that Moses and Elijah fasted forty days, and why did the Lord, as though setting His seal upon the deeds of His servants, also accept to remain the same Questions and Responses 731 forty days without food; and what does the number forty signify? The number forty is taken in many places in the God-inspired Scripture as afflictive, as with the Israelites who suffered in the wilderness forty years, and the same who were enslaved in Egypt four hundred years. But also this world, in which we endure affliction, is composed of four elements. Moses, then, as the first lawgiver, having handed down the Law to the Jews while they were as children, fasts forty days, signifying that the legislation according to him legislates abstinence from sins in act; for every sin naturally has its constitution from sensible things and the senses. And Elijah, bearing the type of the prophetic gift, as one who had risen above the legal precepts, fasts forty days, signifying that the prophetic gift legislates abstinence from assents. And the Lord, as the fulfiller of the Law and the only one who takes away the sin of the world, having fasted the forty days, gave us power not only to abstain from sins in act and assent, but also to become superior to the bare imaginings themselves.

194. What does it signify in the Gospel, when, after the Lord repelled every temptation of the devil, the evangelist notes that “the devil departed from him until a season”? What season, then? Since temptations are twofold, voluntary and involuntary — that is, pleasurable and afflictive — the devil, first having tempted the Lord through the pleasurable, through gluttony and love of money and vainglory — for all these produce pleasure — and having been repelled, departed until a season. What season? That of the Passion on the cross, so that, through involuntary and afflictive temptations too, assailing the Lord, as he supposed, he might be able to find in Him something of human passions; but he was repelled through these also, and, triumphed over on the cross, was brought to nought.

195. Since John has been testified to by the Lord Himself as having become greater than all born of women — for his life too was pure and separated from every sin — for what reason... [the question and response break off here; the source text is damaged at this point, at the end of the main series of questions]. Variant a: Further Questions and Responses Various questions and selections from various difficult chapters. (In the source, this appendix uses its own numbering, not continuous with the chapters above, and Questions and Responses 733 several numbers are missing between what survives; the surviving numbering is kept here.) What are the virtues of the soul, and what of the body? The virtues of the soul are these: love, humility, meekness, long-suffering, forbearance, freedom from remembrance of wrongs, freedom from anger, freedom from despondency, freedom from envy, freedom from judging others, freedom from vainglory, almsgiving, temperance, freedom from love of money, compassion, freedom from self-conceit, freedom from pride, compunction. And the virtues of the body are these: fasting, sleeping on the ground, vigil, self-control, freedom from possessions, freedom from distraction. What is meant by what is said in the Apostle, “I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing also with the understanding”? One “sings with the spirit” whenever he merely carries the utterance of the words sung through the tongue; but he “sings with the understanding” whenever, knowing the power of what is sung, he rejoices in it through contemplation.

What is meant by, “in iniquities was I conceived, and in sins my mother craved for me”? Since God's original purpose was that we should not be begotten through marriage and corruption, but the transgression of the commandment introduced marriage, because Adam broke the law — that is, set at naught the law given him by God — all, then, who are begotten from Adam are conceived in iniquities, falling under the condemnation of the forefather. And “in sins my mother craved for me” signifies that Eve, the mother of us all, first craved sin, as though in heat for pleasure. For this reason we too, falling under our mother's condemnation, are said to be craved for in sins. What is meant by what the Apostle says, “to be accursed from Christ for the sake of my kinsmen”? Questions and Responses 735 “I prayed,” he says, “to be handed over by Christ to the devil, that I might be scourged and endure the punishments due for Israel, which they justly owed for their unbelief toward God — only that they might be saved; just as the Lord too ‘gave Himself up and became a curse for us.’” In how many ways does man sin? I think man sins in four ways: by sudden seizure, by deceit, by ignorance, by disposition. And the first three easily come to recognition and repentance, but he who sins from disposition, and comes to repentance neither by experience nor by time, has an incurable punishment.

What does the Lord signify in the Gospel, saying, “two sparrows are sold for a penny”? They say the “assarion” (penny) is worth ten units; and by the ten is signified the letter iota, which is the beginning of the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Both the old and the new people, then, and both the inner and the outer man, are bought back through the name of the Lord. What is meant by what was said by Elisha, when Elijah was taken up, “where is the God of Elijah?” It is interpreted in three ways: either “where is the God of my father?” or “where is the God of my great one?” or “where is the God of him who has been hidden?” In how many ways is there allegory, and what is tropology? Allegory concerns inanimate things, such as mountains, hills, trees, and the rest. Tropology concerns our members, such as the head, the eyes, and the rest; for tropology is so called from Questions and Responses 737 What is meant by what is said in the psalm, “sitting, you spoke against your brother, and against your mother's son you set a stumbling block”? He who speaks evil of the conduct of a fellow believer, and, as it were, sits enthroned in reviling him, is fittingly said to speak against his brother. And he who, carried away by envy, slanders the son of wisdom as he is adorned, and scandalizes all, this is “he who sets a stumbling block for the son of his mother.”

Since it is written in Saint Diadochus, in the hundredth chapter, that “some shall be judged by fire and purified in the age to come,” I ask that the father's intent be revealed to me clearly. Those who have acquired the perfection of love toward God, and have raised the wing of the soul through the virtues, are caught up, according to the Apostle, in the clouds, and do not come to judgment. But those who have not acquired the perfect in every respect, but have both sins and right deeds, these come to the tribunal of judgment, and there, through the weighing of good and evil deeds against each other, are as it were tried by fire; and if the scale of the good things outweighs, they are purified of punishment. Concerning the different righteousnesses. Those wise in divine things say there are three righteousnesses: human, angelic, and divine. And the human, they say, is the equal distribution and fairmindedness in the sensible things of this world; the angelic is the ungrudging impartation of divine knowledge; and the divine righteousness they define as suffering on behalf of sinners. For what reason, rebuking Peter, did the Lord call him Satan? Not, as some suppose, does the Lord call Peter Satan with insult, but since the Lord's privations became our possessions — for instance, His death became life for us, His dishonor became glory for us.

The Apostle Peter, then, when Questions and Responses 739 the Lord said He was about to suffer, supposed, following the nature of things, that it was impossible for life to die, or for such glory to be dishonored. The Lord, then, removing this suspicion — that one ought not to seek the sequence of nature in things beyond nature, for, having done these through their opposites, He has willed life through death, glory through dishonor — as opposing His intent, then, He calls this suspicion “Satan”: “get behind me” — instead of “follow my counsel, and do not presume to seek the sequence of things.” And they say the name Satan is interpreted “adversary” — which the Lord brought forward not with insult, but as though saying, “you who oppose my aim.” How must we piously understand the Gospel saying that “the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son,” and how in another place it says, “I judge no one, but the word which I have spoken, that shall judge him”? Insofar as He is God, neither the Father nor the Son judges anyone; for man does not become the judge of irrational creatures, but of men. But the Father has given judgment to the Son, not insofar as the Son is God, but insofar as He became man. And He shall judge all, comparing His own way of life as man with ours.

Again, His word shall judge — that is, the teaching, which He demonstrated through His works, according to what is written, “the things that Jesus began both to do and to teach.” What does the riddle of Proverbs signify, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for in doing this you shall heap coals of fire upon his head”? We have as an enemy against the soul our own body, always warring against us through the uprising of the passions. If, then, the mind of the flesh, pressed by conscience, hungers — that is, longs for salvation — or thirsts for divine knowledge, it is fitting to feed it through self-control and labors, and give it drink through meditation on the divine oracles. For thus there is heaped upon its head — that is, upon the mind — coals of fire: divine and spiritual thoughts. What is meant in Psalm 101 [102], “I have become like a pelican of the wilderness”? Questions and Responses 741 The pelican is a bird; and the serpent is greatly hostile to its young. What, then, does it contrive? It builds its nest on high, fencing it round on every side because of the serpent. What, then, does the ill-contriving serpent do? It watches from where the wind blows, and from there breathes its venom upon the young, and they die.

The pelican, then, comes and sees that its children have died, and looks for a cloud, and flies up on high, and with its wings strikes its own sides, and blood comes out, and it lets it drip through the cloud upon them, and they are raised up. The pelican, then, is taken for the Lord; and its children, Adam and Eve, our nature; and its nest, paradise; and the serpent, the apostate devil. The eviloriginating serpent, then, breathed through disobedience upon the first-formed, and they became dead to sin. Our Lord and God, then, out of love for us, is lifted up on the precious cross, and, pierced in the side, through the cloud of the Holy Spirit, granted us eternal life. What is meant by, “there the sparrows shall build their nests”? By sparrows he means either souls or the various virtues. What does it signify, “the dwelling of the heron leads them”? They say the heron is a bird, and lives with such temperance that, whenever it is about to come together for intercourse, it mourns forty days, and again afterward another forty. And it builds its nest in trees where it is not overshadowed by anything, but has clear air. By this it signifies temperance; for this leads all the virtues; and it is also set apart from sensible things, overshadowed by nothing of the temporal; for the number forty contains within it the perfection of each of the four elements.

What is meant by, “rendering the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate We have supposed the first generation to be the sowing of evil, that is, the assault; the second, desire; the third, the habit of evil, that is, the assent; the fourth, the operation, that is, the act. It is rendered, then, to the third and fourth generation — that is, for the assent and the act; for the assault and the Questions and Responses 743 desire are not culpable, since the evil has not yet come to its completion. What does it signify, “for three or four impieties of Tyre I will not turn away”? I think the prophetic word hints at four impieties: the assault, the desire, the habit of evil, and the operation. For the first and the second, then — that is, the assault and the desire — God shows forbearance, since the evil has not advanced to completion. But for the third and fourth impiety — that is, the habit and the operation, that is, the assent and the confinement — the word fittingly indicates the threat. That Christ cannot be said to be “of the Spirit,” as with the Father and the Son, though He is indifferently called “Spirit of God” and “Spirit of Christ.” Just as the mind is the cause of the word, so also of the spirit, but through the medium of the word; and just as we cannot say the word is “of the voice,” so neither can we say the Son is What does the Lord's saying signify, “if your eye, or hand, or foot scandalizes you, cut them off and cast them from you”?

It is possible to suppose that the parable hints, at the obvious level, at friends as eyes, and relatives, as necessary as our hands, and companions who serve us like feet; whom, if they scandalize and harm the soul, the word bids us cut off. But it is also possible to take the precept in another way, according to the manner of anagogy: if you have contemplative knowledge like an eye, but it lifts you up to conceit and pride, cut it off; and if also some seemly practice becomes for you a cause of exaltation, cut it off; and likewise, if you have the capacity for service, which is the foot, and are puffed up because of it, cut yourself off from it. For it is better for you, apart from these seeming virtues, to be saved, than through exaltation and pride to go to utter destruction. Questions and Responses 745 What does it signify, “the sun was lifted up, and the moon stood in her place”? Whenever the sun of righteousness is exalted within us through good works and true knowledge, then the moon stands in her place — that is, our nature, which is subject to change and alteration, receives a settled place. What is written in Peter's catholic epistle, “that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to Since this is said concerning those in the flood, and these had complete ignorance of God and lived together in wicked practices — as many sins, then, as they committed against one another, through the temptations that daily befell them, wars and afflictions and various circumstances, He forgave them; but the sins concerning their ignorance and impiety toward Him He did not forgive, so that through faith in Him, whenever, out of love for mankind, He should come to be in the region of Hades, as many as should believe, the sin of impiety might be forgiven them, and they might live according to God in the spirit, having been judged, plainly, in the flesh, as has been said, for their offenses against men.

What is meant in the Psalms, “be still, and know that I am There are six kinds of stillness, by achieving which we can come to know God: the first, from the operation of sin; the second, from an inflaming diet; the third, from the place of intermingling with those who live carelessly; the fourth, from unsuitable occupation for the life according to God; the fifth, from possessions that distract and scatter the mind toward many things; the sixth, having no will of one's own at all. And this is both true renunciation and true submission, according to God. How must we understand the ignorance concerning the consummation attributed to the Son? Questions and Responses 747 Ignorance is of two kinds: the one culpable, the other blameless; and the one is within our power, the other not. The culpable, within our power, is ignorance concerning virtue and piety; but the blameless, not within our power, is whatever, though we wish to know it, we do not know — such as things happening far off, things that are to be. If, then, in the holy prophets things far off were made known, and this not by our own power but by grace, how much more did the Son of God know all things, and, for this reason, His humanity too — not by nature, but by union with the Word? For just as fire-heated iron has all the properties of fire — for it gives light and burns — yet is not by nature fire but iron, so also the humanity of the Lord: insofar as it was united to the Word, it knew all things, and all things befitting God were displayed in it; but insofar as it was human nature united in Him, it is said to be ignorant.

What does the monastic habit signify, and before this, what is the shearing of the hair? Just as the head is foremost of all the members in the body, so also in the soul the mind holds the place of a head; this, then, must be shorn of all worldly thoughts. And the sleeveless tunic, since it covers the whole body but leaves only the hands bare, signifies that one must be clothed in moral philosophy, having removed the practical operations of sin; for the hands are admittedly a symbol of practice and operation. And the belt, since it is made of dead skins, and girds the loins and the navel, signifies mortification through self-control, and that this must always be laid upon the power and operation of vice; for the power of the opposing dominion of the evil one is, according to Job, “upon the navel of the belly,” and “the loins,” according to the blessed David, are filled with demonic mockeries; and “mockeries” are the various operations of fornication. And the mantle, since it has the cross both in front and behind, signifies that, according to the Apostle, we must not only be crucified to the world, but the world to us also — that, fleeing the world, we may have nothing hindering us, nor be held fast by attachment to it through the deceit that appears, nor again, pursued from behind by the world, through involuntary temptations, give way in the tension of piety, but remain insensible and dead to both the involuntary and the voluntary passions.

Questions and Responses 749 And the cowl signifies the grace of God that guards and shelters our mind. For he who has shorn away the thoughts of the world receives the helmet of salvation. And the sandals have this meaning: since they are made of dead skins, and are placed under a small part of the body, in the same manner as the whole body relates to the tracks of the sandal, so must the soul make use of the body, this too being dead to the passions contrary to nature. And the mantle, since it is four-cornered, and the world too is of four elements, signifies that we must be clothed with natural contemplation, so as not to look upon visible things according to sense and passion, but through the reason (logos) within them to be led up to their Maker. And that the left hand is left bare signifies that our good works must be shown openly, according to the word of the Savior, that men may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in the heavens. And that the garments are black signifies that we must be unseen by the world, as having our citizenship in heaven. And if one should also take the four-cornered mantle for the four cardinal virtues, he will not miss the mark of likelihood. The priest, from the height of the sanctuary, pronounces peace upon the Church, imitating the Lord of the sanctuary who was taken up, both releasing and giving His own peace.

And the people's response, “and with your spirit,” signifies this: You have granted us peace, O Lord, and concord with one another; but grant us also the peace of undivided union with You, that, being at peace in Your Spirit, which You placed within us at the beginning of creation, we may be inseparable from Your love. “If the dead are not raised at all, why then are people even baptized for them?” says the divine Apostle. That is: if our bodies are not raised at all, why do we believe that in baptism they are transformed unto incorruption? Questions and Responses 751 If you seek the explanation of the scriptural music, understand it thus. “Praise the Lord with the sound of the trumpet” — at the remembrance of the resurrection, the earth is shaken as by a trumpet, as it is written. “Praise Him with psaltery and harp” — with our tongue and mouth, as with a plectrum, struck by the Spirit. “Praise Him with timbrel and dance” — in flesh and soul, from which, as choirs, our prayers pass over to God. “Praise Him with strings and organ” — in the heart and in every inward part and sinew, which He has called an instrument. “Praise Him with well-sounding cymbals” — with the lips, through which the harmonious melodies of psalmody are woven. Since according to some copies of the Apostle it is contained that “we shall all sleep, but we shall not all be changed,” but according to others that “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,” I ask to learn which of the readings one ought to accept, and what is signified by each?

I think that, according to each of the readings — since the ancient copies contain both — one who takes them piously will not fall short of the apostolic aim. According to “we shall all sleep, but we shall not all be changed,” it must be understood thus: that we shall all undergo the sleep that comes through death, but not all of us shall exchange it for glory and boldness — which the same Apostle states more clearly elsewhere, saying, “if indeed, being clothed, we shall not be found naked.” But according to “we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,” it must be received thus: that not all of us shall undergo the temporal sleep, so as to need burial and dissolution unto corruption; rather, those found alive at that time shall undergo a swift death, not needing temporal sleep because of the resurrection occurring immediately; but all shall be changed, that is, shall put on incorruption. There is also another possible contemplation concerning this: “we shall not all sleep” — having made a cessation and inactivity of sins, we shall not put even our own passions to sleep, according to “I sleep, but my heart is awake”; for the writer of the Song of divine loves signifies that he who has become wholly inactive toward all things sensible and intelligible, this one keeps watch with the heart alone, delighting only in the contemplation of God.

And “but we Questions and Responses 753 shall all be changed” signifies the common change unto incorruption. What is meant by what is said in the Apostle, “would that they were even cut off”? This is said instead of “they shall lament and beat themselves,” coming to repentance for the sins by which they unsettled the faithful. For what reason are Moabites and Ammonites forbidden to enter the temple of the Lord “until the third and fourth and tenth generation, and forever”? Since “Moabite” is interpreted “the bowel of the father,” and “Ammonite,” “the father of the mother,” it is signified by these that whoever receives from another an example of wickedness, this one has made manifest “the bowel of the father”; and whoever begets sin from himself, this one is “father of the mother” — that is, of his own sin. Such as these, then, shall not enter the house of the Lord until the third and fourth and tenth generation, and forever — that is, whoever does not, through good habit and practice (for this is the third and fourth generation of the virtues), and through the name and faith of the Lord Jesus, and through the ten commandments of the Law, and through the regeneration that is to be in the age to come, make himself at home with God, shall not enter the house of God — that is, into the heavenly city, “in which is the dwelling of all who rejoice.”

Why is it that one who is leprous in part is unclean according to the Law, but one who is wholly leprous is clean? One who is leprous in part has that part of him dead where the leprosy is; for as the living blood withdraws, the place becomes hollowed, and whenever, at the priest's touch, the hollow of the leprosy yielded, it defiled such a one. So also one who is leprous in part of the soul, the soul being hollowed — that is, humbled through the withdrawal of the living power of virtue — becomes unclean. But one who is wholly leprous has the color of the leper, yet has the living blood sown throughout the whole surface of his body. This, then, signifies that one who has come to the utmost limit of evil, and then, repenting, resumes the living power of virtue, has Questions and Responses 755 only his conscience colored by his former preconceptions; for he cannot fail to reckon what he has done as though he had not done it. For this reason, then, the Law declares such a one clean. Why did Ham stumble, yet Canaan was cursed? And if one should take the sense of the Scripture according to the letter, the righteous Noah will appear unjust in this, bearing the curse against one man for another man's fault; and besides, if Canaan was cursed, surely his whole race ought to have been cursed also — yet we find his race, more than others, running to the faith of Christ.

We find that everywhere God and all the saints contend against evil and curse it. Since, then, evil first takes its origin in man according to disposition, and from this proceeds sin according to operation, fittingly Canaan, as characterizing sin according to operation, incurred the curse. But if you wish to consider this according to the movement of the soul alone — which is in the compound of both, I mean of body and soul — a disposition that has not proceeded to its end, this is operation in the soul. Providence, then, is the care that comes from God upon existing things; providence is the will of God, through which all existing things receive their fitting conduct. A,83 [the question is not preserved in the source text] He appeared to Abraham through an angel, to Moses through fire in the bush, to Isaiah through the seraphim, to Ezekiel through the cherubim; all these have testified to having seen Him in different ways. Variant B: Further Questions and Responses As with Variant A above, the numbering of this second appendix is not consecutive in the source; it likewise represents a selection of excerpted questions and responses rather than a continuous series. Questions and Responses 757 What is “behold, what is good or what is pleasant, but for brothers to dwell together”? According to the plain sense, whenever they are of one faith, “behold, the good”; and whenever they are also in accord in works, “behold, the pleasant.”

And understand by “brothers dwelling together” the three powers of the soul, or the soul and the body, whenever they are in accord concerning the knowledge of divine things and concerning good works; for whenever they act well, “behold, the good”; and whenever the knowledge too is in accord, “behold, the pleasant.” “Like ointment upon the head, running down upon the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down upon the collar of his garment.” The ointment is the Holy Spirit; the head is the mind; the beard is the reason (logos), for the reason encompasses the heart. The “beard of Aaron” is the reason that slays the passions and offers up the virtues to God as a sacrifice. The grace of the Spirit runs down also upon the collar of the garment — that is, it is transmitted through practice even unto moral philosophy; for the collar of the garment is its outer limit. “As the dew of Hermon that descends upon the mountains of The mountains of Zion are the saints who look to the heights; upon these descends the dew of Hermon. “Hermon” is interpreted “the turning away of beasts.” They also say the river Jordan is born there; by this is signified the grace of holy baptism, for this ever descends upon the saints, and through it comes the turning away of the intelligible beasts. That “there the Lord commanded the blessing, life forevermore.”

For the grace given through holy baptism is the pledge both of all good things and of eternal life, of which may we become partakers by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Questions and Responses 759 How shall we understand what is written in holy Dionysius, that “even non-being desires” God? Since God is none of the things that are, but above all things that are, in this respect even non-being applies to Him as a designation; for “non-being” is properly said of Him, since He is none of the things that are. What is meant by, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”? It is easier, he says, for the crookedness of the nations — for this is the camel — to enter through the narrow and constricted way, which is the eye of the needle, into the kingdom of heaven, than for the people of the Jews, who have the Law and the Prophets. And just as the needle falls into two openings and makes one, so also our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the needle, joined the two peoples, making, according to the Apostle, both one. But also he who has made himself thin and spun fine through self-control enters more easily through the narrow gate into the kingdom of heaven than the rich man who is ever widening himself through table and human glory.

Why did the men of former times live many years, but those of the last times, few? Since those of former times were utterly diseased with godlessness, God arranged for them to be detained a long time in this life, so that through repeated occurrences He might bring them to a perception that there is a providence which governs the varied movement of events. But the last generation, since it received knowledge both of the written law and of the spiritual law, is for this reason not detained in a life of many years. Variant C: Further Questions and Responses Only a single question survives from this third appendix in the source text. Questions and Responses 761 What is meant by “let us make man according to the image of God and likeness,” and then, further down, it says, “and God made man, according to the image of God He made him,” and omitted “according to likeness”? Since the first purpose of God was that man should come to be “according to the image of God and likeness,” and “according to the image” is incorruption, immortality, the invisible, which things image the divine — these He gave the soul to have, giving it along with these also self-mastery and self-determination, which are all images of the essence of God. But “according to likeness” is dispassion, gentleness, longsuffering, and the rest of the marks of the goodness of God, all of which are representative of the activity of God.

The things of His essence, then, which show forth the “according to the image,” He gave naturally to the soul; but the things that are of the activity of God, which characterize the “according to likeness,” these He left to our self-determining judgment, awaiting the outcome of man, to see whether, through the imitation of the God-befitting marks of virtue, he would make himself like to God. For this reason, then, the divine Scripture omitted, in what was said afterward, the phrase “according to likeness.” End of the Questions and Responses To Theopemptus the Scholastic Having asked concerning the unjust judge, and the saying, “if anyone strikes you on the right cheek,” and “do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” To those for whom the Logos is the object of worship, for these also life itself, as an exponent of the Logos, is the thing rightly accomplished; that, receiving in the trial of practice the seal of true knowledge, they may learn from what they have suffered, as is right, how much greater it is to become than merely to know what a thing is; and greater still than this, to become so ever more and more, until the undoubting kinship with the Cause is brought to perfection in them, circumscribing motion by stability and desire by unchangeableness of purpose — to whom also deification by grace is given in requital, the prize of a sacred and God-like conduct of this present life.

Toward these, most wisely directing your own life as well, God-guarded master, you are eager to seek that which, through goodness, lies open to all, and yet through its infinitude escapes all: on the one hand, that it may draw desire to itself, goading it by the ineffable nature of its beauty; on the other, that it may temper it, Questions and Responses 763 restraining satiety — which is the father of insolence and the offspring of dissipation — by the awe of its exceeding infinitude and divine transcendence, for those who do not first behold the flaming sword stationed and turning with the Cherubim, meant for none but those who turn to virtue without fear. Hence, stretching your moderation to the measure of your advance toward the good, whereby you increase your progress the more securely, you have deigned that I, unknown and lowly as I am, should come to know that by which nature was furnished with its manner of being; I mean, the reasoned account (logos) of the letter, which gathers together things absent, and makes manifest things unseen, delivering to the understanding, and joining to it, that which was until then unknown to sense, in the measure that, being impressed through it, it is itself thickened and takes on body. By which you have led my nothingness the more into longing for yours, since by it you have set in motion, incorporeally, the vision proper to yourself, showing that you possess, in both these respects, an equality in reason rather more than others possess, in comparison with you, the grace of reason as an advantage over others; adorned by these throughout your life, how then have you been eager to lead my dim sight toward contemplation, and this of sacred discourses too, whose ascent is beyond what belongs to man — to one who has not yet fully risen above the nature and origin of unstable and extended things; let alone to me, who am willingly mingled with the rubbish of these things, and who, after the manner of a worm, wallow and take pleasure in the corruption of unclean passions.

Yet for the sake of obedience, and in honor of your love, daring beyond my worth, I will say those things concerning which you have bidden me — conjecturally, but not as pronouncing a definition. That the unjust judge, spoken of in parable in the Gospel, both is and is called our own reasoning (logismos), which from the beginning made its judgment out of transgression, unjust; in that it did not receive the commandment of the Creator, but chose instead the counsel of the corrupter; from which also it preferred, by far, to be of earth rather than to be, and to become god. And that the city of this judge is senseperception, or the visible world, in which, resting unreasonably according to attachment, it exchanged its true dwelling for a sojourning; fearing neither God, nor even respecting man, who became the same for our sake — the one, through folly; the other, through contempt; the former not foreseeing the greatness of the judgments, the latter not restrained, the punishment which, for the time, goodness, awaiting a change, holds back; with which it recklessly sowed itself, misusing, beyond what was fitting, the honor of self- Questions and Responses 765 determination given by the Creator for the accomplishment of what is due, and judging the good that appeared preferable to that which is truly known — which was not right. And that the widow who troubles him is the rational soul, since it does not have, for the bearing of fruit in sacred and holy works, the reason (logos) that sows what is good according to nature; being mastered only by this whole affection and disposition toward it, but not remaining constant, because of its turning away and self-chosen inclination toward the things here below.

And that her adversary is, I mean the soul's, the material movement and mind of the wretched flesh, through which the unclean demons are eager both to defile the beauty of the divine image in us and of its worth, and to darken its brightness, whenever, through pleasure, we fall under them, they will terribly bring in upon us the shames and passions of dishonor; on account of which death also was pronounced upon our nature, since it did not choose from the beginning to delight truly in life. And that the “buffetings” are the chastising blows that come from conscience, together with a certain admonishing whisper, by which, when they are set before it from the soul, the sternness of the reasoning gently tends to be bent, and cannot bear the torment that lodges within, ever inflicting and troubling it, because it is unyielding toward the good on account of its longer-standing habit — until it destroys, through self-control and the voluntary mortification of the members of the flesh, the passions that destroy the soul. Then also, it may be led into closer kinship with the very Word, through piety, and into more perfect zeal for what is better; to which things, as they are worked in it naturally, comparing His own and paternal gifts, our God, Lord Jesus Christ, who is above being and nature, says: “And God will not execute your vengeance,” through Me made flesh, and effecting the destruction of the destroyer of nature.

Thus, then, I have briefly gone through the matters concerning this, so far as the measure of my understanding that could reach sufficed; even though others, understanding the passage differently, have taken it — some, of Christ; others, on the contrary, of Antichrist. But I am afraid to think or to say either: the one, as beyond comparison — for the vengeance is not less than the Son's, nor greater than the Father's, nor is it, through another, altogether another apart from the Son. And how, then, does He say of the same thing, comparatively, “And God will not execute your vengeance”? For it has no place; or it will altogether be shown to be different, and, along with the nature which is not able to do Questions and Responses 767 the same, is for this reason no longer ranked together with it, but only images it, as being subordinate, the One who is superior. And the other, as unacceptable and impossible — that the discoverer and teacher of evil should do good; “for a corrupt tree,” He says, “cannot bear good fruit”; and vengeance is a good thing, and it belongs to one who fittingly repels the annoyance of the one drawing near; or else, perhaps, one would be comparing to this — which is not lawful — the Father, and the source of all virtue and life, through the Son, and that too the Only-begotten, and equal in nature and goodness.

For good things are not naturally signified through evil things, just as light is not signified through darkness, nor life through death, nor being through that which in no way is. And I do not say these things to set aside their view; for I hold, and cling to life more than to the teaching of those who say this; but I say them, safeguarding my own moderation on account of extreme caution. As for the reading, whether to accent “buffeting” — this is not fitting for me to determine, because of my ignorance in these matters, but rather for those trained and who have made it their earnest study; who say it ought to be accented with the grave rather than the circumflex, since, they say, none of these verbs is circumflexed, except when it results from a grave contraction, as in “I think,” and “I do,” and “I gild,” and all such, which keep the accent on the same syllable even with a preposition. The right cheek — I mean, the right practice, and all that a life established for us through the commandments, filled with God, characterizes — is struck by the evil one through the presumption of the good conduct being enacted; and by the blow of the self-conceit arising from this, it becomes inflamed, as it were, through vainglory, and is lifted up against those who, perhaps, have not attained the same measure; on account of which it is fitting to turn, as it were another and, so to speak, left cheek — the life that formerly defiled us through the deceit of this age — and to be struck continually by this, through remembrance; and to be drawn together and to moderate oneself as a sinner, rather than to be lifted up as a saint, and, through pride, to fall, not having humility as a sacred foundation.

Let it be honored, then, together with the things taken according to contemplation; or rather, even before these, unto sacred preparation and preliminary purification, let these things also be accomplished bodily, for the sake of the Lord who commanded them; thereby granting to those who accomplish it rightly a disposition free from attachment, and a circumscribing of the unbelief of the one who strikes, restraining, by the readiness of one's acceptance, the Questions and Responses 769 eagerness of the blow — the striker being ashamed, if nothing else, at the very excess of such submission; and at the fact that one who is able to resist in no way resists, but is restrained on account of the approach. And “touch me not” was said to Mary Magdalene by the Lord, who supposed Him to be the gardener; the mystery signifying and intimating that every noetic soul, not yet having risen above its connatural tabernacle, and, on this account, in no way at all differing from the vegetables cultivated in the garden of things subject to becoming and corruption alone — for equal in both is the flowing in and the flowing out, and the circumscription and cycle of time — supposing the Word to be the craftsman, on account of His procession and condescension toward and as far as these things, is not worthy of contact with Him according to the spirit, seeking Him, moreover, among the things that appear, and knowing Him only as having become flesh for our sake, but not knowing Him fittingly also as God begotten of God the Father.

For this is what it suggests one should reasonably understand by, “I have not yet ascended to my Father” — that the soul so disposed has not yet been raised up, through the height of theology and of the faith by which the nature of visible things is circumscribed, but still, in a pedagogical manner, needing a more complete apprehension of Him, must run back up, through contemplation, as it were to some Galilee, to the revelatory disposition of divine things; and, together with the words prefigured and set forth beforehand by Him, be wholly comprehended, as is right, and become as much what He became, who is what we are, as He was shown to have become — apart only from sin — as we too shall be conformed to Him apart only from nature, when we attain the gift; which now, receiving in hope, and duly glorifying it through the fitting works of the commandments, may you enjoy as much as you have believed, and delight in as much as you have labored — or rather, far more, and infinitely more, by as much as the Giver of this gift has surpassingly transcended, beyond being, both the movement of nature and the compass of every age. Commentary on Psalm 59 “To the end, for those who shall be changed, for a monument, to David, for instruction, when he burned Mesopotamia and Syria of Sobah, and Joab returned and struck the valley of Salt, twelve thousand.”

“To the end, for those who shall be changed” — the present psalm is inscribed thus, both because of the change and alteration of will and purpose which came to men at the end Questions and Responses 771 of the times, through the sojourn of Christ, from unbelief to faith, and from wickedness to virtue, and from ignorance to the knowledge of God; and because of the universal change and renewal, to be wrought hereafter at the end of the ages by our Savior God Himself, of the whole race of mankind, in grace and by nature, from death and corruption to immortal life and incorruption, through the resurrection that is awaited. And “for a monument, to David” — that is, to Christ Himself — both because of the abolition of wickedness already accomplished, monument-like, through His divine incarnation, in Himself as author and Savior, and, after Him, in those who live piously according to Him; and because of the complete effacement of death and corruption that is still to be accomplished through Him. And “for instruction,” when he burned Mesopotamia and Syria of Sobah. For our instruction, we who are being changed and shall be changed — that is, plainly, with the praiseworthy and divine change — the psalm is inscribed by the noetic David, I mean Christ God. For He alone is the true King of Israel, that is, of him who sees God, as the abolisher of all wickedness and ignorance and the conqueror of all time and nature, through which wickedness is naturally constituted in us: He burned Mesopotamia, by conversing with us through flesh — that is, the condition of wickedness in the flesh, flooded with passions contrary to nature — and “Syria of Sobah,” that is, the disposition enslaved to time, that is, deceived by this age; for “Sobah” is interpreted “seven,” and this clearly signifies the property of time, for time is sevenfold in its nature.

For the devil is accustomed to set nature and time in motion together with himself against virtue and knowledge, weaving unseen wars, as Hadadezer waged the two Syrias against David — for “Hadadezer,” translated into the Greek tongue, is interpreted “loosing strength” or “undermining power” — who is the devil, who by deceit dissolved the spiritual strength of our nature at the beginning, through the transgression of the divine commandment, and enslaved man to time and to nature; for apart from those things which are under nature and time, he is altogether unable to war against men. “And Joab returned and struck the valley of Salt, twelve thousand.” For everyone who serves as general under the noetic King David — that is, under our Lord Jesus — against the opposing powers, strikes twelve thousand in the valley of Salt. Now the valley of Salt is the flesh, become, through disobedience, a region of dishonorable passions, in which, as in a valley, every pious and God-loving man, through reason and contemplation, strikes down nature and time — that is, the irrational preconception of the soul concerning them — in no Questions and Responses 773 way abiding, on account of the height of virtue and knowledge, by the laws that are under nature and time. For the number twelve signifies nature and time, since nature is fivefold, on account of the senses, and time is sevenfold, as is evident to all; and if you add five to seven, you will clearly complete the number twelve.

Perhaps also the number of those slain signifies the triad of the powers of the soul, wickedly and deceitfully entangled, contrary to nature, with the tetrad of things sensible, through relation, by which every sin is naturally wont to come about — which number he who serves the noetic David rightly slaughters, laboring in the contests for truth, and knowingly joining the unseen battles, and drawing up spiritually against the evil powers. For every power of the soul, moved contrary to nature, is naturally entangled with things sensible. Whenever, then, reason, and irascibility, and desire — being three in number, the generic powers of the soul — are overcome by the things of sense, which are four, they make up the number twelve; for four times three, and three times four, taken together, fill this number, which he who faithfully draws near to the Lord, and nobly plays the champion against every unseen and hostile spirit, abolishes. The present psalm, then, is inscribed “for us who are to be changed,” “for instruction” in the good things that have come to us from the noetic David, and “for a monument to David” — that is, for the proclamation of His divine and saving achievements on our behalf; for “a monumental inscription” signifies, according to those skilled in the interpretation of such terms, the proclamation of achievements. “O God, You have cast us off, and destroyed us; You were angry, and had compassion on us.”

God cast us off, when, not having kept the commandment from the beginning, we appeared unworthy of converse with Him face to face; He destroyed us, when, because of our wickedness, He estranged us from the height of the glory in paradise; He was angry, when, for the punishment and chastisement of wickedness, He subjected us to the penalty of death; He had compassion on us, when, through His onlybegotten Son, God the Word made flesh, who took upon Himself the debt owed on behalf of us all, He ransomed us from death and led us back again to His own glory. “You have shaken the earth, and troubled it; heal its breaches, for it has been moved.” Questions and Responses 775 He shook and troubled our earth — that is, the heart — giving us the sword of the Spirit, which discerningly distinguishes the worse from the better, and rouses the law of the Spirit against the law of the flesh, and creates in us the praiseworthy war against the passions, and shakes and troubles the continuity of the passions within us, disturbing the conscience with untimely memories arising from preconception; and He heals the breaches of our heart, which it suffered, having been shaken and having slipped through disobedience at the beginning, from the transgression in paradise, through spiritual regeneration in grace. “You have shown Your people hard things; You have made us drink the wine of remorse; You have given a token to them that fear You, that they may flee from before the bow, that Your beloved may be delivered.”

God shows hard things to those who fear Him through the commandments, prescribing, according to the practical philosophy, the manners of the mortification of the body; or, on the contrary, through His varied providence and judgment, disciplining us, in loving-kindness, for our profit, we who do not willingly submit to the divine yoke of the law of the commandments. And He gives to drink the wine of remorse — that is, granting the knowledge that follows upon the purification wrought through practice, according to spiritual contemplation; for all spiritual knowledge pierces the heart with remorse, bringing it to a perception of the greatness of the divine benefits toward us. And He gives to those who fear Him a token to flee from before the face of the bow, teaching those who fear Him to bear about in the body the mortification of Jesus, according to which the complete inactivity of sin is established; for the true token is the power that, through the cross, mortifies the mind of the flesh. “To flee from before the face of the bow.” That is, from the deceitful outward appearance shown in existing things; for the “face of the bow” — I mean, of each demonic passion — is the surface that provokes the senseperception of bodies, wounding the sense like the point of an arrow, and unseemly stirring up the soul toward the passions.

Wherefore the word says that those who fear the Lord shall flee from the face of the bow, but not from the bow itself; for the bow of sin, perhaps, without a face, could do nothing at all against those who fear the Lord. “That Your beloved may be delivered.” The beloved of God are the thoughts that hold together the divine knowledge according to contemplation, which the Questions and Responses 777 manners of the virtues, established according to practice, deliver from all error and from all the memories of sin that trouble the soul through preconception. “Save with Your right hand, and hear me. God has spoken in His holy place: I will rejoice, and will divide Shechem, and will measure out the valley of tents.” God saves with His right hand, giving His only-begotten Son — for the Son is the right hand of the Father — as a ransom for the salvation of the world; and He hears, giving to the righteous, besides the remission of sins, spiritual gifts also — for God hears the one who supplicates Him, first giving remission of sins through repentance, and He “hearkens,” besides the remission of sins, also giving the workings that come through spiritual grace. And He speaks in His holy place — that is, in His incarnate Word — His divine purpose, which was hidden from the ages and from the generations, according to the fleshly economy of Christ Himself, through His manner of life fitting to us as man, crying out, as it were, expressly, and giving to His life, as a pattern of eternal life, an image louder than any voice — the display of good works.

And He “speaks” also “in” each “holy one” who keeps His commandments, showing them, as it were living, through their works, His words and louder than any voice. The righteous man rejoices when, having been perfected by the grace of the Only-begotten, he becomes able “to divide Shechem” — that is, to set forth for others, proportionately, out of skilled experience, the manly manners of the virtues according to practice; for “Shechem” is interpreted “shoulder,” which is the disposition that restrains all the passions and is active in all the virtues — for they say the shoulder is a symbol of practice. And he measures the valley of tents, apportioning to each of the things that exist the fitting principles according to natural contemplation; for the “valley of tents” is the present world, in which, according to the differing judgment and disposition of each, present life, tent-like, is unstable and temporary for all. Or again, the manners of the virtues are the “tents” of the present valley, which he divides knowingly among those being taught, giving to each a fitting guidance according to his own condition, and safeguarding what is precious — he who knows, through good teaching, how to apportion to each the way that leads to salvation. Or the “tents of the valley” are the Churches established through Christ our Savior God throughout the whole world of the believing nations, which, I think, is the more manifest of the interpretations.

Or again, he “measures the valley of tents” who comprehends in knowledge the world of bodies, as a valley of tents; for the Questions and Responses 779 body is called, in many places of Scripture, a “tent” or “Gilead is mine, and Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is the strength of my head.” “Gilead,” according to one of the interpretations given for this name, is “revelation”; and “Manasseh” is interpreted “forgetfulness.” Revelation and forgetfulness fittingly accrue to the righteous man, who receives, through contemplation, initiation into hidden things, and forgetfulness of the labors of virtue, on account of the joy of spiritual contemplation that succeeds the labors of the virtues. And “Ephraim” is interpreted “enlargement,” which is the unfailing hope, according to faith, in the good things to come — which is the support of the “head” of the righteous man, that is, of his faith; for the head of every righteous man, and of every good work, is faith; and its “strength” is the secure and unfailing hope of the good things to come, according to which, contemplating the things to come as though present, we are enlarged in our afflictions, remaining unshaken temptations. “Judah is my king; Moab is the pot of my hope.” “Judah” is interpreted “confession”; for confession, through prayers, holds first place among the saints in every good thing. But “Judah” can also be understood of the Lord, who is the true King of the spiritual Israel, that is, of him who sees God — who, on our behalf, when He became man, made confession to the Father, saying, “I confess to You, holy Father.”

And “Moab” is interpreted “the bowel of the father,” and is understood as our body, through which, according to the practical philosophy, as through a washing-basin — which the “pot” clearly signifies — the purification of sins naturally comes about; for the “pot of hope” is purification — that is, the readiness, achieved through purification during life, for the inheritance of the good things laid up for us in hope. “Moab” can again be understood also of the incarnation of the Lord; for He became, and was named, the Son of Man for our sake, the true “pot of our hope” — that is, the one who cleanses and purifies our stains and defilements arising from sin. “Over Edom will I stretch out my sandal; the Philistines have been subjected to me.” “Edom” is interpreted “bloody clay.” It can also be taken of the flesh of the Lord, through which, as through a “sandal,” Questions and Responses 781 He trod upon human things, creation not otherwise being able to contain the Maker, who is infinite and uncontainable by nature. It can again be understood of the flesh of each of us, over which “we stretch the sandal” — that is, asceticism and selfcontrol, which guard the soul from the evil thorns and thistles of the devil; for this is what must be understood by the sandal — for without asceticism and exact self-control it is impossible for the ascetic of piety to overcome the passions of the flesh.

The sandal of the soul can again be understood as the senseperception mortified through reason and contemplation, through which the soul, treading upon things sensible, passes unharmed through this present age, the sense-perception, as it were a sandal, imagining, by means of it, the reasons of things, gathering the differences of visible things according to species and form toward the understanding and knowledge of the one and originating Logos. “The Philistines have been subjected to me.” For when the Lord, through flesh, sojourned in our regions, not only were the spirits of wickedness abolished and subjected to the might of His power, but also all the nations, having received through the calling the saving preaching of the Gospel, submitted; and the “Philistines” are subjected also to every righteous man, whenever, laying, as it were a sandal, upon the earth of his flesh, the self-control that mortifies the law of sin, he shall subdue not only the unclean passions lurking within it, but shall also abolish the evil demons who work these things. “Who will bring me to the fortified city?” The “fortified city” is the wisdom gathered from many divine and mystical contemplations, contained, that is, walled about, as another of the translators said, by the fortifications of the virtues. Or again, the “fortified city” is the condition in which the truly God-fearing and God-loving man becomes impregnable and inaccessible to enemies, on account of the protecting rampart of the holy powers around him.

Or again, the “fortified city” is the soul walled about with reason and life, and abounding in all the graces of the virtues. Or again, the “fortified city” is the possession of true and unerring knowledge, comprised of all moral, natural, and theological contemplations, to which every pious man is brought, by none other than God alone, who draws all to Himself through the ineffable greatness of His goodness. “Or who will guide me even to Edom?” Questions and Responses 783 “Edom,” as the discourse showed above, is the constitution of all sensible creatures, around which natural contemplation in the Spirit is naturally established, according to which, from the beauty and greatness of created things, the Creator is proportionately contemplated by him who piously gathers the knowledge of things that are. Or perhaps it is the practical philosophy through the flesh according to virtue, according to which our body becomes a temple of the Holy Spirit, being built up together with the beauties of the commandments — to which the same Lord again “guides,” granting to those who love Him the knowledge of visible things, and teaching the mortification of the members of this earthly and perishable flesh. Or, to sum it up, the “fortified city” is the noetic and gnostic contemplation of intelligible things, and “Edom” is the knowledge of sensible things, to which the sole Wisdom of God and the Father, the Only-begotten Son, brings and guides us.

Wherefore the prophet, continuing, says: “Are You not the God who cast us off?” That is: You, O God, who at the beginning, because of sin, “cast us off,” You Yourself, having compassion through the bowels of Your mercy, “bring us to the fortified city” and “guide us even to Edom,” according to the interpretation already given. “And will You not go forth, O God, with our hosts?” For God will not go forth with him who trusts in himself, and hopes in his bow, and ascribes to his own sword his salvation, but with those who by God Himself gore their enemies, and in His name bring to nothing those who rise up against them, fittingly God will go forth to the war against the unseen enemies. “Give us help from trouble, for vain is the salvation of man.” The prophet, in the person of our common nature, prayerfully asks God and Savior that help be given us “from trouble” — that is, plainly, from the trouble which was poured out upon our nature through sin, and which pressed it down even to the gates of Hades. For “trouble,” as I would say, is the tyranny and dominion of death and corruption; and “help” is the sure hope of the resurrection through grace, looking toward which, the pious bear the dejection of death without grief. Or again, “trouble” is the labor undergone for virtue's sake, and “help” is the dispassion that, by the grace of God, succeeds it, in comparison with which every salvation of men is vanity and utter non-existence; for this is rightly to be understood by “vanity.”

Questions and Responses 785 “In God we shall do valiantly, and He shall bring to nothing those who afflict us.” They “do valiantly in God” who do not ascribe to themselves the achievements of the virtues, nor to their own wisdom the apprehension of the divine mysteries, in which God Himself alone, and altogether making room, works every virtue and grants knowledge, “bringing to nothing” all the evil demons opposed to virtue and knowledge, who through wickedness and ignorance attempt to “afflict” those who fear Him. For He is the Savior of all, because He is also the Creator of all. To Him be glory and dominion, unto the ages of ages. Amen. PART II — PHILOSOPHICAL & The Ambigua to John, Archbishop of Cyzicus To John, Archbishop of Cyzicus Maximus Greets You in the Lord They are praised, and perhaps justly, by all, for their love of learning — those more eager lovers of good things, and the more zealous attendants upon the knowledge concerning them, who approach their betters and the teachers of better things — because, by questioning, without shame, they receive the knowledge of what they did not know, and the understanding, and thereby free themselves from ignorance and inexperience and the reproach that attends these. But who could worthily praise you with any discourse? Or what man will be found capable of encompassing, even in thought, the greatness of your virtue?

— you who, being approved shepherds of rational sheep, and knowing how to lead them up to the fold above and to lead them back by the sounds of a spiritual pipe, as having already received the habit of that mystical knowledge of divine things unattainable to others; according to which, having been worthily entrusted with the helm of Christ’s Church, you steer it skillfully, like a ship, together with the cargo of faith and the comeliness of a godly life, toward the harbor of the divine will, unharmed by any of the storms of life’s sea. Concerning the things known to you, of which God has made you the interpreters — not only to the wiser, if indeed anyone is at all superior to you in knowledge, but even to those worth nothing and altogether without experience of any learning — you do not consider it unworthy, as is your custom, to ask, in faith of finding something, and to find what is notable even among the insignificant. Wherefore I too, having received your honored letter, which bade me set down in writing, and send to you, the account concerning each of the chapters you found difficult in the discourses of Saint Gregory the Theologian — the very chapters over which we labored together when we were with one another — I marveled, as was fitting, at your virtue, and hymned the all-radiant and lofty character of your Christbefitting poverty in it — or rather, hymned the Lord who is glorified, in every manner, through you and in you, who both made you and manifested, through the very works and the truth, the power granted to you for becoming worthy of Him, adorned brilliantly with His own properties — the Lord who reached even to me, small and worth nothing, unlearned and utterly stripped of all virtue and knowledge.

Beholding myself humbled in this, I forced myself, so far as I was able, to undertake your command, having made no account of being thought rash by the many for your sake; but do you also, in your accustomed manner, grant to me — who expect to receive, in return, the dear and lovely wage of obedience — your fervent prayers, that Christ our God, the ready help of those who fear Him, may come to my discourse as an ally, or rather, that He, being the Word, may grant the whole power of speaking piously. But I ask you, as you read, not to seek from me polished diction, since I have no words that resound grandly in the ear, nor do I know how to make them echo with elaborate divisions. For, being untrained in such studies, and inexperienced in the practice of them, I count it a thing to be desired and prayed for, if I should in some measure conjecture the thought of this holy and great teacher, even in vulgar phrase, without presuming to rival the multitude of learned commentaries. For this theologian, as you know, being terse in speech and full of thought, imposes a necessity on one who wishes to unfold his purpose — even were he the most rhetorically and philosophically skilled — to go through much material, and especially upon me, who am unlettered; but if your God-loving zeal should, as is your custom, be stirred up to render what is written both concisely and elegantly, or to correct the sense entirely toward the loftier, you will receive a complete reward: the prayers of the Godbearing man to the Master of all, in that you did not allow his divine and supernatural thoughts to be dragged along by unsuccessful and grovelling attempts.

Following, then, the order of your letter, I have set down in writing my inquiry concerning each chapter, asking that you become kind and loving judges of what is said.

1. Concerning “...That Pull Down or Hold Fast...” From the oration on love for the poor, on: “I am sparing, as one who cooperates [in sin], and I have no way to escape the uprising, or how not to fall from God, weighed down by the fetters that pull down or hold fast to the ground.” It is not the same thing, to this blessed man’s mind, to be held fast and to be pulled down — do not suppose so, most excellent one, if you have earnestly striven to think something worthy of his greatness of mind; since he would appear excessive in his words, and having a mind not attending to the discourse, if he were not thought, in nearly every syllable, to have placed the fitting sense, and in every way determined to lead his followers to what is most beautiful and useful. But this is not how it is — whence should it be? — rather, he joins wise discourse to mind, and sets a loftier mind over lofty discourse, that the lofty might be declared to the lofty, and that, through both, the greatness of truth, hitherto inaccessible to the many, or even to all, might in some measure be made manifest. But that the whole riddle of what is said may become clear to us, let us examine the very words of the blessed man as they stand.

‘I am sparing,’ he says, ‘as one who cooperates [in sin], and I have no way to escape the uprising, or how not to fall from God, weighed down by the fetters that pull down or hold fast to the ground.’ Saying these things, he speaks not entirely of himself, but through himself to the common lot of humanity, knowing that everyone who loves salvation altogether attends to either practice or contemplation. For without virtue and knowledge no one has ever, in any way, been able to obtain salvation. If, then, he says, I am one of those who, through contemplation, attend upon God and delight in the blessed beauty, having peace altogether and sanctification, as having extended myself to God in an undivided identity of judgment, by rightly reckoning the irrational powers of the soul and bringing them near to the mind through reason and making them my own — I mean irascibility and desire, having transformed the one into love, the other into joy, if indeed it is proper to joy to leap in a God-befitting manner and to exult, after the pattern of John, who leapt from the womb, the great forerunner and herald of the truth, or of King David, at the resting of the ark of Israel — For in the womb (even if the saying is harsh, as unfamiliar to many, yet it is true) both we and God the Word, the Maker and Master of all, are found in the present condition of life: He dimly, as in a womb, and scarcely shining through into this sensible world, and this to those who, like John, are illumined by the Spirit; and men, as from the womb of material circumstance, though in some measure discerning the reason hidden within the things that are.

And this, if indeed they are able to boast of the graces of John. For, compared to the ineffable glory and splendor of the age to come, and the property of the life according to it, the present life differs in nothing from a womb wrapped in gloom, in which, for our sake, who have become infants in mind, God the Word too, being perfect and beyond perfection, became, as loving mankind, an infant. If, then, as has been said, I am such a one, and have attained the divine summit attainable to men in the present life, but neglect the God-like habit, inclining myself willingly toward affection for the body, I have been pulled down, weighed with the fetters — that is, with cares — and have fallen from God, having assigned to what is not lawful — I mean, to the earthly life — the care and concern that belong to the kingdom of heaven alone, and having chosen to be carried along with the senses rather than to bear my understanding toward God. But if I am still armed, through the practical life, in warfare against the passions, not yet having purely escaped the deceits of the enemies who wish to seize me through them, and if I cherish the body indiscriminately, I have plainly been held fast by it, as having chosen a relation to it instead of the separation that comes through virtue.

The contemplative man, then, is pulled down when he has already become, in habit, unattached, yet neglects the divine spectacles for the body. But the practical man, who fights against the body, is held fast when he gives in to the wrestling with it, and, in place of laboring for virtue — which is the freedom of the soul — chooses instead to be a slave of the 2. Concerning “...a Portion of God, and Having Flowed From the same oration, on: “What is this wisdom concerning me, and what is this great mystery? Does He wish us, being a portion of God, and having flowed away from above, lest, exalted and puffed up on account of our worth, we should despise the Creator, in our wrestling and struggle against the body always to look toward Him, and the weakness yoked to us to be an education for our dignity?” Some, meeting with these words, expecting, as it seems, no reward for their trouble in seeking the truth, flee to what is easy and already has many pretexts from Hellenic doctrines, saying that there once existed, according to their opinion, a unity of rational beings, according to which, being connatural with God, we had our sole abiding in Him — and, further, that a movement occurred, from which the rational beings, scattered in various ways, prepared God to see the coming-to-be of this bodily world, for the sake of binding them to bodies in punishment for their prior sins — thinking that the teacher hints at this by these words.

But they were ignorant that they suppose impossible things and aim at what cannot be, as the true argument will show, proceeding with what is fitting. For if the divine is unmoved, as being filling of all things, and everything that has received being from non-being is moved, as being borne, in every case, toward some cause, and nothing in motion has yet come to rest, as not yet having brought the power of its desiring movement to rest in the ultimate object of desire (for nothing else is naturally able to bring to rest that which is borne along except that object itself, when it is shown), then nothing in motion has come to rest, as not yet having attained the ultimate object of desire — since not even that object, once shown, has yet brought to rest the movement of those borne toward it. But if they claim this once happened by decree, and that the rational beings, moved away from their settling and abiding in the ultimate and sole object of desire, received their scattering — that I may not be tedious in speaking — what is the demonstration? They will reasonably and of necessity suppose that the rational beings will undergo the same falls again, upon the same things, to infinity. For of that which they have once been able, by experience, to despise, there is no argument to show they will not be able to despise it again forever.

And what could be more pitiable than for rational beings to be so borne along, having neither, nor hoping to have, any unchangeable foundation of fixity in the good? But if they should say they are able, but do not will, on account of the experience they have had of the opposite, then in this way too the good will be, for them, of necessity cherished not for its own sake, as good, but on account of its opposite — as not being, by nature, or properly, lovable. For everything that is not good and lovable for its own sake, and attractive of every movement, is not properly good. And for this reason it is not reasonably able to hold fast the desire of those who delight in it either; and, moreover, those who hold this opinion would confess themselves grateful to evil, as having been taught by it what is fitting, and as having learned anew, through it, how to have fixity in the good — and they would say it necessarily its begetter, if indeed they have determined to be consistent with themselves — and more useful than nature itself, as being, according to them, the teacher of what is advantageous, and generative of that possession more precious than all others, I mean love, according to which all things that come from God are naturally gathered, abidingly and unchangeably, into God.

And again, of the intelligible and sensible things that come from God, the movement is preconceived after their comingto-be. For it is not possible for movement to exist before coming-to-be. For the movement of things that have come to be is, of intelligible things, intelligible, and of sensible things, sensible. For none of the things that have come to be is altogether, by its own reason, unmoved — not even inanimate and sensible things themselves, as it seemed to those who have most carefully observed the things that are. For they said all things are moved either in a straight line, or in a circle, or in a spiral. For every movement is comprehended under the simple manner and the composite. If, then, the coming-to-be of the things whose movement it is is preconceived before movement, then the movement of the things whose coming-to-be it is is also observed, as being an after-thought subsequent to it. And this movement they call natural power, hastening toward its proper end, or passion — that is, a movement occurring from one thing toward another, having as its end the state of being unaffected — or active operation, having as its end that which is complete in itself. But none of the things that have come to be is its own end, since it is not self-caused, for then it would be unbegotten and without beginning and unmoved, as having nothing at all toward which it could be moved.

For it would step outside the nature of beings, as being for the sake of nothing — if indeed the true definition of it is that the end is that for the sake of which all things exist, while it itself exists for the sake of nothing. Nor is it complete in itself, since it would then also be inoperative, as being full, and, likewise, as having its being from nowhere. For that which is complete in itself is, in a manner, also uncaused. Nor is it unaffected, since it would then be also alone and infinite and uncircumscribed. For that which is unaffected is not naturally able, at all, to be affected, in that it neither loves anything else, nor is moved toward anything else by desire. None of the things that have come to be, then, has come to rest while in motion, as not yet having attained the first and sole cause from which the being of the things that are proceeds, or as not yet having come to be within the ultimate object of desire — that they might be thought to have brought into their own case, following upon a pre-existing unity, the scattering of the rational beings, consequently introducing the coming-to-be of bodies along with itself. And Moses and David and Paul, the saints, and their Master Christ Himself, bear witness: the one, in recording that the forefather did not taste of the tree of life, and, elsewhere, saying, ‘For you have not yet come, until now, into the rest and the inheritance which the Lord our God gives you.’

The other, crying out, ‘I shall be satisfied when Your glory appears to me,’ and, ‘My soul thirsted for God, the strong, the living; when shall I come and appear before the face of God?’ The other, writing to the Philippians, ‘If somehow I might attain to the resurrection of the dead — not that I have already received it or am already perfected, but I press on, if indeed I may lay hold of that for which I was also laid hold of by Christ Jesus.’ And to the Hebrews, ‘For he who has entered into His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His own.’ And again, in the same epistle, affirming that no one has yet received the promises. And He Himself: ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ Not one, then, of the things that have come to be, has ever yet brought its natural power, moving toward its proper end, to a halt, nor has ceased from its operation by resting it upon its proper end, nor has plucked the fruit of the cessation from movement — I mean, the state of being unaffected and unmoved. For to be the end, and the perfect, and the unaffected belongs to God alone, as unmoved and full and unaffected; but for the things that have come to be, it belongs to be moved, without beginning, toward the end, and, at some end, to bring their operation to rest, and to be affected — but not to be or to become, according to essence, without quality; for everything that has come to be and is created is not, plainly, unrelated.

But the word ‘affection’ must be heard charitably; for it does not here signify the affection that comes by change or corruption of power, but that which naturally coexists with the things that are. For all things that have come to be undergo some affection in being moved, as not being self-movement or self-power. If, then, the rational beings are created, and are altogether in motion, they are moved, from the beginning, according to nature, for the sake of being, and, toward the end, according to judgment, for the sake of well-being. For the end of the movement of things in motion is precisely their being, always, well; just as the beginning is being itself, which is God, who is both the giver of being and the bestower of wellbeing, as beginning and end — for from Him comes both our simply being moved, as from a beginning, and our being moved in a certain manner toward Him, as toward an end. And if the intellectual being is moved intellectually in a manner analogous to itself, it altogether also understands; and if it understands, it altogether also loves the object understood; and if it loves, it altogether also undergoes ecstasy toward it, as toward an object of love; and if it undergoes this, it plainly also presses on; and if it presses on, it also altogether intensifies the vehemence of its movement; and if it intensifies the movement vehemently, it does not come to rest until it becomes wholly within the wholly beloved, and is wholly encompassed by it, willingly receiving, by free choice, the saving circumscription, that it may be wholly conformed to wholly circumscribes it, so that it can no longer, of itself, be known as that very thing which is being circumscribed, but rather from that which circumscribes it — as air, wholly illumined by light, or iron by fire, wholly made fiery, or whatever else is of this kind.

From these things, then, we take, conjecturally, and only by way of likeness, the participation in goodness that is to come for the worthy — not that which has already come to be and has been corrupted — since these things too are beyond all that is hoped for, being, according to what is written, beyond sight, and hearing, and understanding. And this, perhaps, is the subjection which the divine Apostle says the Son subjects to the Father — namely, those who willingly accept to be subjected — after which death, the last enemy, is abolished, since that which is in our power — that is, our selfdetermination, through which, entering into us, it confirmed against us the dominion of corruption — has been willingly and wholly yielded up to God, and He, ruling well, is ruled, by our ceasing to will anything other than what God wills — just as the Savior, typifying our part in Himself, says to the Father: ‘Yet not as I will, but as You will.’ And after Him, the God-inspired Paul, having, as it were, denied himself, and no longer knowing himself to have a life of his own: ‘For I no longer live; Christ lives in me.’ But let not what has been said trouble you. For I do not say that the abolition of self-determination comes to be, but rather the positing of it, fixed and unchangeable according to nature — that is, a yielding according to judgment — that we might desire to receive, from that source whence we have our being and our being moved, being an image that has entered into its archetype, and, like a seal well fitted, by its impression, to its archetype, no longer having, nor being able to be borne elsewhere — or, to speak more clearly and more truly, no longer being able even to will otherwise, as having laid hold of the divine operation — or rather, having become God by deification, and delighting more in the ecstasy from the things naturally belonging to it, both existing and thought of, on account of the grace of the Spirit that has prevailed over it, and having shown God alone as operative in it, so that there is one and the same operation throughout, of God and of those worthy of God — or rather, of God alone, as having, in a manner befitting His

goodness, wholly interpenetrated all the worthy. For it is altogether necessary that all things cease their self-determined movement of desire toward anything else, once the ultimate object of desire and participation has appeared, and, analogously to the power of those participating, is contained, in a manner uncontainable, so to speak — toward which every lofty manner of life and understanding hastens, ‘and at which every desire comes to rest, and beyond which it is in no way carried; for it neither has, nor is there, that toward which every movement of the earnest man tends, and, for those who have attained it, the rest of every contemplation,’ says this blessed teacher. For then nothing at all will be shown outside God, or seeming to counterbalance God, so as to entice anyone’s desire to incline toward it, all things intelligible and sensible having been comprehended by His ineffable manifestation and presence — just as, in daylight, even the starry lights themselves are hidden, and are not even known to exist, so far as sense-perception is concerned. And in the case of God, still more so, in that the interval between the uncreated and created things is infinite and different. For then, learning, I think, the essential existence of beings — the what, and the how, and upon what it depends — we shall no longer be moved, in knowledge, toward anything as an object of desire, our knowledge of each thing after God, individually, being brought to its limit, and the infinite, divine, and incomprehensible alone being set before us, enjoyably, analogously, as the sole object both subsisting and participated in.

And this is what is greatly philosophized by this God-bearing teacher: ‘that we shall then know even as we are known,’ when we join this God-like and divine thing — as he says — our mind and reason, to its own, and the image ascends to the archetype, toward which it now has its desire. Concerning, then, the non-existence of the muchtalked-of unity, and how, in a manner suggested by what is now attainable to us of the Scripture’s thoughts and reasonings, the condition of the things to come will be, let this suffice. But concerning how, being a portion of God, we have flowed away from God, I shall, with God as my guide, make my discourse from this point on. For who, knowing by reason and wisdom that the things that are have been brought by God from non-being into being, would not, applying the contemplative faculty of the soul intelligently to the infinite difference and variety of natural beings, discern together, by the faculty of examination, the principle according to which they were created — discerned together with the undivided difference of the things that have come to be, on account of their unconfused property with respect to one another and to themselves? And again, would not discern the many as one — the one Word of God the Father, substantial and hypostatic, existing unconfusedly for His own sake through the reference of all things to Him — as beginning and cause of all things, in whom all things were created, the things in the heavens and the things on the earth, whether visible or invisible, whether thrones or dominions, whether principalities or powers — all things have been created through Him and unto Him?

For having the principles of the things that have come to be, subsisting before the ages, by a good will, according to them He brought into subsistence, out of non-being, the visible and invisible creation, making all things, both universal and particular, by reason and wisdom, at the fitting time. For we believe that the reason precedes the creation of angels; the reason of each of the essences and powers that fill up the world above; the reason of men; the reason of everything that has received being from God — not to speak of particulars — the same one being, on account of His infinite transcendence, ineffable and incomprehensible for His own sake, and beyond all creation and the difference and distinction that exists and is conceived within it, and the same one being shown forth, in a manner befitting goodness, in all the things that come from Him, according to the analogy of each, and multiplied, and recapitulating all things into Himself — according to whom is both the being and the abiding, and from whom, as the things that have come to be have come to be, and for whom they have come to be, and both remaining and being moved, they participate in God. For all things participate, on account of having come to be from God, analogously to God, either according to mind, or reason, or sense-perception, or vital movement, or substantial and habitual aptitude, as it seems to the great and God-revealing Dionysius the Areopagite.

Each, then, of the intellectual and rational beings — angels and men — is called, and is, a portion of God, by that very reason according to which it was created, which is in God and is toward God, on account of its own reason pre-existing in God, as has been said. Indeed, even if it should be moved in accordance with that reason, it will come to be in God, in whom the reason of its being is pre-present, as beginning and cause; and even if it should wish to lay hold, by desire, of nothing else before its own beginning, it does not flow away from God, but rather, by its extension toward Him, becomes God, and is called a portion of God, by fittingly participating in God — as one who, by nature, wisely and reasonably, through a becoming movement, has laid hold of its own beginning and cause, no longer having anywhere else to be moved after its own beginning, and after the ascent and restoration to the reason according to which it was created, or how to be moved, its movement toward the divine goal having taken the divine goal itself as its limit. As Saint Basil also shows, in his interpretation of the holy prophet Isaiah, saying thus: ‘The true Sabbaths are the rest laid up for the people of God, which, because they are true, God endures, and reaches even to those Sabbaths of rest, by which the world has been crucified’ — plainly, having departed from worldly things, and having arrived at its own place of spiritual rest, in which he who has come to be will no longer be moved from his own place, quiet and freedom from disturbance existing with respect to that condition.

The place, then, of all those deemed worthy of such blessedness is God, according to what is written: ‘Be to me a God, a protector, and a place of refuge, to save me.’ In whom the principles of all things are firmly fixed, according to which He is also said to know all things before their coming-to-be, as being in Him and with Him, in the very truth of all things — even though all things, both those that are and those that shall be, were not brought into being together with their own principles, or with being known by God, but each, at its fitting time, according to the wisdom of the Creator, is fittingly created according to its own principle, and receives, in actuality, its own particular being. Since He is always, in actuality, the Creator, while they are potentially, but not yet in actuality — since it is not possible for the infinite and the finite to exist together, nor will any argument appear to show that essence and the super-essential can exist together, and to bring into identity the immeasurable with that which is in measure, and the unrelated with that which is in relation, and to affirm of that which admits no category of predication at all what is affirmed of that which consists through all these categories. For all created things are altogether affirmed, according to essence and coming-to-be, as comprehended by their own principles and by the principles that concern them from without.

Setting aside, then, the utmost and negative theology of the Word, according to which He is neither spoken, nor thought, nor is at all anything at all of the things known to another, as being super-essential, nor is participated by anyone, in any way whatsoever — the one Word is many principles, and the many are one: according to the goodnessbefitting procession of the One into beings, productive and sustaining of them, the many are the One; and according to the returning and guiding reference and providence of the many toward the One, as toward an all-powerful beginning, or center that has preceded the beginnings of the straight lines proceeding from it, and as gathering all things together, the many are the One. We are, then, and are called, a portion of God, because the principles of our being pre-exist in God; but we are also said to have flowed away from above, because we have not moved according to the principle according to which we were made, which pre-exists in God. And in another manner it is easy for one who has been taught to apply himself piously to the principles of the things that are to explain the reason concerning this. For if it is not disputed that the one Word of God is the essence of virtue in each person — for our Lord Jesus Christ Himself is the essence of all the virtues, as it is written: ‘who became for us, from God, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption’ — having these predicated of Him absolutely, as being wisdom itself, and righteousness, and holiness itself, and not, as with us, in a qualified sense, as, for instance, a wise man, or a righteous man — then every man who participates, by a fixed habit, in virtue, participates without dispute in God, the essence of the virtues, as one who has genuinely, by free choice, cultivated the natural seed of the good, and has shown the end the same as the beginning, and the beginning the same as the end — or rather, the beginning and the end being the same — as one who is an unfeigned advocate of God, if indeed it is believed that the aim in every matter is both the beginning and the end of it: having received, on the one hand, from that source, in addition to being, the good

that belongs by nature to participation; and having, on the other hand, accomplished, through zeal, by his own judgment and free choice, the praiseworthy and unerring course leading toward it — according to which he becomes God, receiving from God the being God, as having added, to the natural good that is according to the image, the likeness that comes through the virtues, by the innate ascent and kinship toward his own beginning. And there is fulfilled, in his case, the apostolic saying: ‘For in Him we live and move and have our being.’ For he comes to be in God through attentiveness, not corrupting the reason of his own being that pre-exists in God, and he is moved in God according to the reason of his wellbeing that pre-exists in God, being made effective through the virtues, and he lives in God according to the reason of his ever-being that pre-exists in God. From this point, already, by the most dispassionate habit, being the same as himself and unmoved, but in the age to come, according to the deification that shall be given, lovingly cherishing and embracing the aforesaid reasons that pre-exist in God — or rather, God Himself, in whom the reasons of good things are fixed — he is a portion of God: as being, on account of the reason, pre-existing in God, of his being; and as good, on account of the reason, pre-existing in God, of his well-being; and as God, on account of the reason, pre-existing in God, of his ever-being — as having honored these, and operated according to them, and, through them, having entirely set himself alone within God, and having, entirely, entirely imprinted and formed God within himself alone, so that he too is, by grace, and is called, God, and God is, by condescension, and is called, for his sake, man, and the power of the disposition exchanged in this is shown — the power that deifies man to God through his love of God, and humanizes God to man through His love of mankind, and makes, by the fair exchange, God man, on account of the deification of man, and man God, on account of the enmanment of God.

For the Word of God and God always wills, in all things, that the mystery of His embodiment be worked. But whoever, having abandoned his own beginning, though being a portion of God on account of the reason of virtue existing within him, is unreasonably borne, for the reason given, toward non-being, is reasonably said to have flowed away from above, not having moved toward his own beginning and cause, according to which, and upon which, and for which he came to be, and is found in unstable revolution and dreadful disorder of soul and body, having wrought his own failure by the willing inclination toward the worse, the cause remaining unerring and always the same. In his case, too, the word ‘to flow’ might properly be applied, because, though it lay in his own power to establish the foundations of his soul unwaveringly toward God, he has willingly exchanged the worse for the better, which truly is. These reasons, which I have spoken of, the holy Areopagite Dionysius teaches us called Scripture ‘predeterminations’ and ‘divine wills.’ And likewise those around Pantaenus, who became the teacher of the great Clement the Stromatist, say that they are fondly called by Scripture ‘divine wills.’ Wherefore, when asked by some who boasted of outside learning how Christians profess God to know the things that are, those men, supposing that He knows the things that are intellectually, in the case of intelligible things, and sensibly, in the case of sensible things, answered that He knows neither the sensible things sensibly, nor the intelligible things intellectually.

For it is not possible for Him who is beyond beings to apprehend the things that are according to the manner of beings; but we say that He knows the things that are as His own wills, adding also the reasonableness of the argument. For if He has made all things by will — and no argument will contradict this — and it is always both pious and just to say that God knows His own will, and He has made each of the things that have come to be by willing it, then God knows the things that are as His own wills, since He has also made the things that are by willing them. Starting from this point, I myself think that Scripture has spoken, in this sense, the words to Moses, ‘I have known you above all,’ and, concerning certain ones, ‘The Lord knew those who are His,’ and again, to certain others, ‘I do not know you’ — as each, plainly, either according to the will and reason, or contrary to the will and reason, of God, by a movement of free choice, has prepared himself to hear the divine voice. These things, and things like them, I think this God-bearing man had in mind when he said: ‘when we join this God-like and divine thing, our mind and reason, to its own, and the image ascends to the archetype, toward which it now has its desire’ — at once and by the same token, through these few words, drawing off, in a teacherly manner, those who suppose that any of the things that are has ever yet attained this measure, and at the same time hinting at the reason of how we are a portion of God, and alluding to the future property of the blessed lot, and urging on, toward its unshaken and unwavering and never-changing enjoyment, those who are being purified by hope for this and who hasten toward it.

For he knew that, could we, by a simple contact, direct our expressions, reasonably and naturally, toward that to which we have reference in essence and reason, we too, apart from any inquiry whatsoever — the only sphere in which stumbling and error occur — would know all things, in a God-like manner, so far as attainable, no longer clinging, out of ignorance, to the movement concerning them, having drawn near, wholly, to the whole God, our mind and reason and spirit to the great Mind and Reason and Spirit, as image to archetype. As also he goes through in his oration on hail, saying thus, in his natural contemplation: ‘And some the ineffable light will receive, and the contemplation of the Holy and royal Trinity, shining more clearly and more purely, and mingling wholly with the whole mind, which alone I set down as the kingdom of heaven’ — when it delights and exults in pleasure, that, if I may dare to join what is mine to his words, every rational creation, of angels and of men, as many as have not, through inattention, corrupted any of the divine reasons naturally fitted to them by the Creator for their movement toward the end, but have rather soberly preserved themselves whole and unturned, as instruments of the divine nature, knowing both what they are and what they shall become — whom God, enveloping wholly, in every part, in the manner of a soul, as sound and useful members of a body to the Master, handles as He wills, and fills with His own glory and blessedness, giving and granting them the eternal and inexpressible life, and altogether free of every mark of the constitutive property of the present life, which subsists through corruption — a life which neither inhaled air, nor the channels of blood flowing from the liver, sustain, but God, wholly participated by all, becoming, in the manner of a soul, to the soul with respect to the body, and, through the mediation of the soul, to the body, as He Himself knows — that the one may receive unchangeableness, and the other immortality, and the whole man be deified, made divine by the grace of God who became man, remaining wholly man in soul and body on account of nature, and becoming wholly God in soul and body on account of grace and the divine brightness of

blessed glory befitting him throughout, after which it is not possible to conceive anything more brilliant or more exalted. For what is more lovable to the worthy than deification, according to which God, being united to those who have become gods, makes the whole of Himself their own, on account of His goodness? Wherefore they have well named such a condition pleasure, and persuasion, and joy — the condition that comes with divine understanding and the enjoyment of gladness that follows it: pleasure, as being the end of natural operations (for thus they define pleasure); persuasion, as an ecstatic power, leading that which is affected toward that which acts, according to the illustrative cause given of air toward light, and of iron toward fire, and persuading it, naturally and truly, that there is no other summit of beings apart from this — to which the state of being unaffected fittingly follows; and joy, as having nothing opposed to it, neither past nor future. For they say that joy neither knows a past sorrow, nor admits an anticipated satiety arising from fear, as pleasure does. Wherefore both the divinely inspired words and our Fathers, who were made wise in the divine mysteries by them, everywhere confirmed joy as an indicative name of the truth to come. If, then, as in a summary, to speak in my small way, it has been shown, both naturally and scripturally and patristically, that none of the things that have come to be has ever, while in motion, come to rest, nor has laid hold of the lot according to the divine purpose — and, further, that it is impossible for the foundation of those deemed worthy of abiding in God to be shaken — for how is it possible (that we might give some small help from reasoning to confirm what has been said) for those who have once come to be, in actuality, in God, to receive, according to desire, the insolent satiety — every satiety, by its own reason and definition, being extinguishing of desire, and consisting in two manners: for either desire is extinguished by circumscribing its objects as small, or, dishonoring them as shameful and unseemly, it abhors them, by which satiety is naturally wont to come about.

But God, being by nature infinite and precious, is naturally wont rather to intensify the desire of those who enjoy Him, through participation, toward the boundless. If this is true, as indeed it is, then there was no such thing as the so-called unity of rational beings, which, having received satiety with the abiding in God, was divided, and, by its own scattering, introduced together with itself the coming-to-be of this world — lest we make the good circumscribable and dishonorable, as being bounded by some satiety and becoming a cause of standing still for those whose desire it was unable to keep unmoved. And in vain, then, do some, as it seems to me, decree this, fashioning things that are not, and, what is graver still, falsely accusing this blessed father of holding such views — on the ground of which they can not only, with impunity, hold the opinion that their own souls came into bodies from a prior form of life, as a punishment for prior evils, but also reasonably attempt, through the credibility of the persons involved, to deceive others into thinking this is so — acting neither well nor piously. But leaving those who hold such views to have them as they do, let us, piously, examine the mind of the teacher, in addition to what has been said, in another manner also. I do not think he wishes here to give the cause of the comingto-be of humanity, but rather of the misery that has supervened upon it.

For, having lamented the pitiable condition of our body, by saying, ‘O the union and the estrangement! What I fear, I cherish; and what I love, I dread,’ and so on, and having, as it were, questioned within himself concerning the cause of the evils we are afflicted with, and the most wise providence concerning it, by saying, ‘What is this wisdom concerning me, and what is this great mystery?’ — he adds the resolution, clearly stating it thus: ‘It is that, being a portion of God, and having flowed away from above, lest, being exalted and puffed up on account of our worth, we should despise the Creator, in our wrestling and struggle against the body we should always look toward Him, and that the weakness yoked to us should be an education for our dignity.’ As if he were saying: since man was made by God, out of soul and body, on account of goodness, that the rational and intellectual soul given to him — being, as it is, according to the image of Him who made it — clinging, by desire and the entire love that comes from all his power, fast to God with knowledge, and, having taken on likeness, be deified; and that, by his scientific providence for what is subordinate, and the commandment enjoining love of neighbor as of self, he should, with understanding, cling also to the body, and, through the virtues, reckon it, and reconcile it to God as a fellow-servant, with the soul itself mediating, having the Maker dwelling within, and making Him the indissoluble bond of the immortality given to it, that what God is to the soul, that the soul might become to the body, and He be shown one Creator of all things, coming upon all beings analogously through humanity, and that the many things naturally set apart from one another might come into one, converging with one another around the one nature of man, and that God might become all in all, having taken up all things and given them subsistence in Himself, through no longer having any of the things that are possess movement independent of Him, or without a share in His presence — according to which we both are, and are called, gods, and children, and body, and members, and a portion of God, and such things, on account of the reference of the

divine purpose toward its end. Since, then, man was made for this, and for this purpose, but the forefather, having, ready to hand, the power for selfdetermination, used it for the worse, transferring his desire from what was permitted to what was forbidden (for he was self-determining, and it was of his own choice, deceived, that he preferred to be joined to the harlot and to become one body with her, rather than to cleave to the Lord and become one spirit with Him, and he willingly estranged himself from the divine and blessed purpose, preferring, by his own choice, to become dust rather than, by grace, to be God) — wisely, and at the same time lovingly toward mankind, and fittingly to His own goodness, God, who ordains our salvation, fastened, fittingly, upon unreasonable movement of the intellectual power within us, a punishment that would attend it, chastising by death, according to reasonable judgment, that very thing, perhaps, with respect to which we tore apart the power of love owed to God alone according to the mind — that, loving nothing, by having learned through suffering, we might be taught to lead this power back again toward that which truly is. This he makes more evident as he proceeds, saying: ‘But it seems to me for this reason too that none of the good things here is trustworthy for men, nor long-lasting, but that this too, if anything else, has been well devised by the artistic Word and the wisdom that surpasses all mind: that we should be played with among visible things, changed now this way, now that, and changing them, and borne up and down and turned about, and departing and fleeing before they are grasped, that, beholding the instability and irregularity in these things, we might migrate toward what is to come.

For what would we have done, had our doing well stood firm, when, though it does not remain, we are so bound to it, and pleasure and deceit concerning it have so enslaved us, that we can think of nothing better or loftier than what is present, even though we have come to be according to the image of God, and, hearing and believing that it is above and draws us to itself?’ And again, in the oration to those exercising civic office, saying: ‘That we may know that we are nothing in comparison with true and primary wisdom, but should always incline toward it alone, and seek to be illumined by its rays from there — whether through the irregularity of visible and ever-turning things, transferring us to the things that stand firm and remain.’ Not, then, as I think, does the teacher, in these words, make the declaration of the cause of the coming-to-be of humanity, as has been said, but rather of the misery introduced into our life at the coming-to-be occasioned by the transgression — as is evident to those who diligently and carefully study his divine writings. For of this misery — the whence, and the wherefore, and the for-what, and the for-the-sake-of-what — he sets before us its cause, through these words, showing thereby the salvation wisely dispensed to us by God through it; but concerning that other mystery, for the sake of which humanity came to be, he hints at its power in a different manner of speech, making his whole pious purpose concerning it manifest, as is shown in the oration on the Nativity, where he says: ‘Mind, then, and sense, thus distinguished from one another, stood within their own bounds, and bore within themselves the greatness of the Creator Word, silent praisers of His great work and resounding heralds.

But there was not yet a mixture of both, nor any blending of opposites — a token of a still greater wisdom and of the lavishness concerning natures — nor was the whole wealth of goodness yet known. This, then, the artistic Word wished to display, and, making one living being from both — I mean, of invisible and visible nature — He fashions man, and, taking the body from matter already pre-existing, and putting into it life from Himself (which the discourse knows to be an intellectual soul and image of God), He sets him up on the earth as a kind of second world, great in little, another angel, a mixed worshiper,’ and so on. And in the oration on the Lights: ‘But since it was thus, or this — for it was not fitting that the worship be circumscribed to the beings above alone, but that there should be also worshipers below, that all things might be filled with the glory of God, since all things belong to God — for this reason man is created, honored by the hand of God and by His image.’ I suppose these too suffice — even if they be small — for one not altogether disposed contentiousness, and who does not judge mere contention glorious, to show the whole mind of the teacher concerning what has been said. But if he still contends about how the teacher called us a portion of God, the account of this has already been given in many ways above.

But that it may be made more credible, resting upon the words of the Spirit, the holy and blessed apostle Paul, who received the wisdom hidden in God before the ages, and illumined the whole dim life of men, and drove away the gloom of ignorance from souls, will suffice concerning this, discoursing thus to the Ephesians: ‘That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your heart being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of the might of His strength, which He worked in Christ, raising Him from the dead, and seating Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above every principality and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come, and put all things under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.’ And again, elsewhere: ‘And He gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in craftiness, in deceitful scheming; but, speaking the truth in love, we may grow up in every way into Him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint of support, according to the working, in due measure, of each individual part, makes the growth of the body, for the building up of itself in love.’

I do not think, then, that he who has come to know piety has need of any further testimony for the manifestation of the truth truly believed among Christians, having clearly learned, through it, that we are members, and body, and fullness, of Christ, God, who fills all in all, being recapitulated into Him, according to the purpose hidden before the ages in God the Father, through His Son and Lord Jesus Christ our God. For the mystery, hidden from ages and from generations, but now made manifest through the true and perfect enmanment of the Son and God, who united to Himself, according to hypostasis, undividedly unconfusedly, our nature, and, through His holy flesh — from us and ours, intellectually and rationally ensouled — as it were joining us to Himself as a firstfruits, and deeming Himself worthy to be, according to His humanity, one and the same as Himself, even as we were predestined, before the ages, to be, in Him, members of His body, joining together and uniting Himself to us, in the manner of a soul to a body, in the Spirit, and bringing us to the measure of the spiritual stature of the fullness that is according to Him — has shown that we too came to be for this purpose, and that the all-good purpose of God concerning us, before the ages, has received no innovation whatsoever according to its own reason, but has come to fulfillment through another, plainly newer, manner, introduced besides.

For it was necessary — since God, having made us like Himself (by having, through participation, exact tokens of His own goodness, and having purposed, before the ages, that we be in Him), and having given us a manner, through the good use of our natural powers, leading to this all-blessed end; and man, having willingly rejected this manner through the misuse of his natural powers — that, lest man become altogether estranged from God, having been driven far off, another manner be introduced in place of the former, more paradoxical and more befitting God, in the measure that the beyond-nature is higher than the according-to-nature. And this is, as we all believe, the mystery of God’s most mystical sojourn among men. For if, says the divine Apostle, the first covenant had remained blameless, no place would have been sought for a second. For it is manifest to all that the mystery accomplished in Christ, at the end of the age, is, without doubt, the demonstration and fulfillment of that which was set aside, in the beginning of the age, in the forefather. Is it, then, usefully said by the teacher, the word ‘portion,’ according to the manners given, and would every noble soul and disposition accept the word so spoken, engendering for himself no trickery of reasonings, knowing that ‘portion’ and ‘member’ are the same in such cases? For if the member is a part of the body, and the member is the same as the portion, then the member will be the same as the portion.

And if the portion is the same as the member, and the gathering and composition of members makes an organic body, and an organic body, united to an intellectual soul, shows a complete man, then he who says the soul, or the body, or a member of it, is a part of man will not miss the truth. And if the body is an instrument of the intellectual soul, as of man, and the soul, wholly pervading the whole body, gives it to live by being moved, being simple in nature and incorporeal, not being divided or shut in together with it, but, being wholly present to the whole and to each of its members, as it is naturally suited to be received by them, according to the receptive power of its operation naturally underlying each — binding fast, in proportion, the members that receive it differently, for the preservation of the body’s being one — let him be led, from these small and familiar things, to the great and ineffable mystery of the blessed hope of Christians, taking no ignoble likenesses of great things beyond us from things small and according to us, whoever still has an unsettled and easily shaken mind concerning these matters. And, having abandoned the unreasonable opinion concerning the preexistence of souls to bodies, he will believe, with us, the Lord, who says of those raised to the resurrection that they cannot die — on account, plainly, of their purer manifestation and participation in the ultimate object of desire.

And again: ‘Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.’ Which, if it had ever previously come to be, it would have been impossible, as has already been shown, for it to undergo death by any kind of change whatsoever. And let him not step outside the natural reasonings, decreeing in vain an opinion about the soul that does not exist. For if, as has already been shown, body and soul are parts of man, and parts admit necessarily a reference to something relative (for they have altogether a whole predicated of them), and things thus called relative, of things existing together, exist altogether and in every way together in their coming-to-be, as parts making up, by their concurrence, a whole species, being divided from one another only in thought, for the discernment of what each is according to essence — then it is impossible for soul and body, as parts of man, to pre-exist or post-exist one another in time, since the reasoning of the relative, so called, would be dissolved. And again: for if soul or body is a species in itself, before the body, and each of these produces another species, according to the composition of soul with body, or of body with soul, it does this either as undergoing something, or as being naturally suited to do so. And if as undergoing something, they have undergone a change into what they were not, and it is corrupted; but if as being naturally suited to do so, they will always do this, on account of their natural suitability, and the soul will never cease being embodied in different bodies, nor the body ceasing to be ensouled by different souls.

But I do not think the fulfillment of the whole according to species comes from the affection or natural power of the parts in their concurrence with one another, but from their coming-to-be together, as a whole according to species. It is not possible, then, for any species whatsoever to change from one species into another without corruption. But if they should say that, because the soul exists and subsists after death and the dissolution of the body, it can also exist and subsist before the body — this reasoning, it seems to me, does not proceed by conjecture. For the reasoning of coming-to-be and of essence is not the same. For the one is indicative of being at some time and in some place and in relation to something, while the other is indicative of being, and of being something, and of being in some manner. If this is so, then the soul, on account of its essence, always exists after coming-to-be, but it is not unrelated on account of its coming-to-be, but exists together with the relation of atsome-time and in-some-place and in-relation-to-something. For the soul is not simply called soul after the death of the body, but the soul of a man, and the soul of some particular man. For it has, even after the body, the whole, as its species, predicated of it in relation, as of a part — namely, the human.

And likewise also the body, mortal on account of nature, but not unrelated on account of coming-to-be. For the body is not simply called body after the separation of the soul, but the body of a man, and the body of some particular man, even if it is corrupted and naturally resolved into the elements of which it consists. For it too has, thus, the whole of it, as its species, predicated of it in relation, as of a part — the human. In both, then, the relation — I mean of soul and body — being conceived inalienably, as of parts of the human species as a whole, shows also their coming-to-be together, demonstrates their difference from one another according to essence, harming in no way whatsoever the reasons essentially implanted in them. It is not possible, then, to find, or to speak of, either body or soul at all as unrelated. For, along with the one, the being-of-something of the other is introduced together; so that if one pre-exists the other, something must be understood along with it. For the relation is unmoving. These things, then, concerning these matters. And if the discourse has not fallen from the truth, thanks be to God, who, through your prayers, has guided me to think rightly. But if somewhere it has fallen short of the truth, you would know the precision of the discourse, as you are inspired by God with the knowledge of such matters.

3. Concerning “...Until Matter Itself Bears Its Disorder, as in a Stream...” From the same oration, on: “Until matter itself bears its disorder, as in a stream.” I think the purpose of the present chapter too holds to the sense of the previous one. For, having gone through very many things directed against those who are lovers of matter and lovers of the body, he adds this — so that one who piously investigates the saint‘s purpose may, from this, apply himself in this way. Since man was made by God, adorned with the beauty of incorruption and immortality, but preferred the ugliness of the material nature about him to the noetic beauty, and became altogether forgetful of the excellent dignity that belongs to the soul — or rather, of God, who so beautifully adorned the soul in a God-like manner — he reaped, by divine decree, a fruit worthy of his judgment, from Him who wisely dispenses our salvation: not only the corruption and death of the body, and the movement and aptitude easily prone to every passion, but also the instability and irregularity of the material substance external to and about him, and its readiness and susceptibility to alteration — whether God, at that time, on account of the transgression, commingled it with our body, and put into it, along with the body, the same power for alteration, and for suffering, and corruption, and total dissolution (as the covering of dead bodies shows) — according to what is written, that ‘the creation itself was subjected to corruption, not willingly, but on account of Him who subjected it, in hope’ — or whether He made it thus from the beginning, according to foreknowledge, on account of the foreseen transgression, that, by suffering and being afflicted through it, we might come to a perception of ourselves and of our own dignity, and gladly accept the change of relation, with respect to it too, toward the body.

For the all-wise providence of our life allows the things around us often to make use of their own natural impulses, for our correction, sometimes bringing back, through the confusion and disturbance that comes about concerning and from these things, to the object of love that is according to nature, those of us who once handled them madly, our love for what is present being hitherto irrational. For there being three universal manners by which, they say, our passions are cured pedagogically, through each manner, wisely, the disorder of matter, being governed in an orderly way, according to a reason above us and better, toward the goodness-befitting result known to God, is set as a remedy for the evil burden of the passions. For either we, being required to pay the penalty for former sins — of which perhaps we do not even retain a trace in memory, on account of ignorance, or, though we remember, we do not endure the correction owed in return for the offenses, either unwilling, or unable, on account of the habit of wickedness that has come to be in us — are purified from our weakness, or we cast off the wickedness present and being cultivated in us, and are taught beforehand to guard against that which is to come; or one man sets before other men a wondrous example of excellent endurance and pious courage, whenever he is lofty in understanding and distinguished in virtue, and able, by his own unshaken struggle against terrible things, to make manifest the truth hitherto hidden.

He exhorts, then, those who are able to think of nothing beyond the present life, and who trust in bodily health, and are puffed up over the course of affairs that flows along, against those deprived of these things — so long as the present life stands, and we are clothed with this corruption, about which is change and alteration — since it is unclear what will befall even them from the irregularity and disturbance of the body and of external circumstances. For this, I think, is what he means by, ‘Until matter itself bears its disorder, as in a stream’ — instead of: so long as this whole is subject to corruption and alteration, and we are clothed with the body of humiliation, and are perhaps subject, on account of the innate weakness, to the many-formed evils that come from it — let us not be exalted against one another on account of the inequality that besets us, but rather, by sober reasoning, let us equalize the irregularity of our nature, which is of equal honor, filling up the deficiencies of others with our own abundances. Wherefore, perhaps, the present irregularity too was permitted to prevail, that the power of the reason within us, preferring virtue above all things, might be shown. For the same change and alteration of the body and of external things belongs to all men, both bearing and being borne, and having this alone as fixed and abiding: instability and being borne along.

4. Concerning “...for He Has Nothing Loftier, or Shall From the same, from the oration on Saint Athanasius, on: “For he has nothing loftier, or shall have at all.” It seems to me that, by these words, this God-minded teacher frees the one being taught from every relation spoken of as comparative, or distinguishing, or in some other way. For those skilled in such matters say that this kind of expression is unrelated, and can mean the same as saying, incomparably, above all things — as having the force of a negation by way of transcendence.

5. Concerning “...Through Reason and Contemplation...” From the same oration, on: “To whomever, then, it was granted, through reason and contemplation, having passed beyond matter and this fleshly thing — whether one must call it a cloud or a veil — to be joined with God, and to be mingled with the purest light, so far as is attainable to human nature, blessed is he for the ascent from here and the deification there, which genuine philosophy grants, and the becoming above the material duality on account of the unity conceived in the Trinity.” I myself do not think the account given by the teacher concerning the virtue of the saints is deficient, even if some, as you have written, suppose this — on the ground that, by saying ‘through reason and contemplation,’ he speaks of the philosophy according to God of those who pursued it apart from practice alone, but, on the contrary, I think their true judgment and operation concerning the things that are is divided from practice — which very thing I myself would venture to define as the most complete philosophy there is. I suppose he introduces this quite clearly, declaring that it is accomplished by reason and contemplation, since practice is altogether joined to reason, and the judgment concerning it is comprehended within contemplation — if indeed it belongs to reason to order the movement of the body, restraining, as with a kind of bridle, by right reasoning, its inclination toward what is unseemly; and it belongs to contemplation to choose, with understanding, what has been well understood and judged, as a most radiant light, showing forth the truth itself through true knowledge — by both of which, especially, every philosophic virtue is both wrought and preserved, by which it is also made manifest through the body, though not wholly.

For it is not contained by the body, being the character of a divine power, but only certain shadows of it, and this not for its own sake, but that those bare of the grace concerning it might come to imitation of the God-like conduct of men who love God, that, by participation in the good, they too, having laid aside the shame of wickedness, might become a portion of those worthy of God; or that those in need of some help might obtain it from those able to give it, that, having received the disposition of the virtuous, hidden in the depth of the soul, made manifest through the body in practice, they too might hymn the providence of God that becomes all things to all and is present to all through all. For if there were no one in need of being benefited, or who ought to be shaped toward virtue by example, each would altogether be sufficient to himself, delighting in the graces of the virtues according to the soul. And it is not out of place to say this, apart from their demonstration, through the body, toward what is manifest. He, then, who has piously understood, contemplation, how the things that are stand, and who has, by rational counsel, conjecturally and rightly determined the reason concerning them, and who guards judgment for himself — or rather, guards himself, unswerving, for judgment — has grasped, all together, the whole of virtue, no longer moved toward anything else after the truth he has come to know, and has passed by, through zeal, all things, making no account at all of whatever belongs to, or is called, flesh and world — having already, inwardly, in reason, contained, invincibly, practice — as one who has, of the things in his power, brought to himself all the strongest and most dispassionate reasons of the discursive faculty, according to which every virtue and knowledge is and subsists, these being powers of the rational soul, having, for their being, no need at all of the body, but not refusing, for the sake of the reasons given, to make use of it, at the fitting time, for their manifestation.

For they say that of the discursive faculty belong, specifically, the understandings of intelligible things, the virtues, the sciences, the reasons of the arts, the faculty of choice, the faculty of deliberation; and, generically, judgments, assents, avoidances, impulses — and that some belong to contemplation according to mind alone, others to the scientific power according to reason. And if the saints preserved their own life guarded by these, then this blessed man, inclusively, through reason and contemplation, has introduced all the reasons according to virtue and knowledge as comprehended together with the saints, by which, attentively cleaving, with knowledge, through contemplation, to the understanding of God, they wisely imprinted upon themselves, through the virtues, by reason, the divine form — having judged it not at all necessary to name the practice through the body, knowing that it is not productive of virtue, but declarative of it, and a minister only of divine thoughts and reasonings. And that this may become clear also by another manner, those who have precisely gone through the reasons concerning matters like ours say that of the rational faculty, one part is contemplative, the other practical: and the contemplative is that according to mind, as the things that are stand; and the practical is that of deliberation, which determines right reason for practical matters. And they call the one the contemplative mind, the other the practical reason, and the one wisdom, the other prudence.

And if this is true, then the teacher named the reason from its cause, as is fitting, and not from matter, addressing a habit that has nothing opposed to it. For the contemplative man abides in the truths rationally and gnostically, not combatively and contentiously, and he does not bear to look at anything else besides them, on account of the pleasure he has in them. But if it must be made clearer still in another way, again, those who have exercised the reasons of perfection according to virtue say that those who have not yet become pure of relational communion with matter are occupied with practical matters, their judgment concerning the things that are still being mixed, and they are changeable, not yet having laid aside the relation to changeable things; but those who, on account of their summit, draw near to God by relation, and reap blessedness by the understanding of Him, being turned toward themselves alone and toward God, by genuinely breaking the bonds of material relation, are altogether estranged from practical matters and from matter, but are made akin to contemplation and to God. Wherefore, they say, they also remain unchangeable, no longer having the relation to matter according to which he who is held fast by matter, in relation, is of necessity naturally changed along with it as it is altered contrary to nature; and, knowing that he who wishes to be freed from material attachment needs the greatest power for laying it aside, the teacher says: ‘To whomever, then, it was granted, through reason and contemplation, having passed beyond matter and this fleshly thing — whether one must call it a cloud or a veil — to be joined with God, and to be mingled with the purest light,’ and so on.

6. How the Flesh Is a Cloud and a Veil Why does the teacher say the flesh is a cloud and a veil? As one who knows that every human mind, erring, and turning away from its movement according to nature, makes its movement concern passion and sense-perception and sensible things, having nowhere else to be moved, having failed of the movement that naturally bears it toward God — he divided the flesh into passion and sense-perception, for both belong to ensouled flesh, signifying these through the cloud and the veil. For the fleshly passion, which darkens the ruling faculty of the soul, is a cloud; and the deceit according to sense-perception, which fixes it upon the surfaces of sensible things and walls it off from the passage to intelligible things, is a veil — through which, taking forgetfulness of the natural goods, it overturns its whole operation upon sensible things, discovering, through the things mentioned, unseemly angers and desires and pleasures.

7. How Pleasure Comes to Be How pleasure comes to be. For every pleasure in forbidden things is naturally wont to come about from passion, through the mediation of senseperception, with respect to some sensible thing. For pleasure is nothing other than a form of sense-perception being shaped, in the sentient faculty, by some sensible object, or a manner of sensory operation constituted according to irrational desire. For desire, added to sense-perception, passes over into pleasure, bringing form upon it; and senseperception, moved according to desire, produces pleasure, having taken up the sensible object. The saints, then, knowing that the soul, moved contrary to nature through the mediation of the flesh toward matter, puts on the earthly form, resolved rather, through the mediation of the soul moved according to nature toward God, to make the flesh akin to God as is fitting, adorning it, so far as attainable, through the practice of the virtues, with the divine impressions.

8. How, and How Many, Are the Movements of the Soul How, and how many, are the movements of the soul. For the soul having three universal movements, gathered into one, illumined by grace: that according to mind, that according to reason, that according to sense-perception. And the simple and inexpressible movement, according to which, moving unknowingly around God, it knows Him, in no manner, from any of the things that are, on account of His transcendence; and the movement determinative of the unknown according to cause, according to which, moving naturally, it lays hold, by knowledge through operation, of all the natural reasons concerning it, which are formative of that which is known only according to cause; and the composite movement, according to which, laying hold of external things, as from certain symbols, of the visible things, it impresses their reasons upon itself — by these, in a magnanimous way, according to the true and unerring manner of the movement that is according to nature, they passed through the present age of struggles, having raised up sense-perception, kept simple, through the mediation of reason, toward the mind, having only the spiritual reasons of sensible things, and having united reason, in a unified manner, according to a single, simple, and undivided prudence, toward the mind having the reasons of the things that are, and having offered the mind, purely released from all movement concerning the things that are, and resting even from its own natural operation, to God — according to which, being wholly gathered toward God, they were deemed worthy to be wholly commingled with the whole God through the Spirit, bearing, so far as is possible for men, the whole image of the heavenly, and drawing as much of the divine impression, if it be lawful to say so, as they themselves, being drawn, were joined to God.

For they say God and man are paradigms of one another, and that God is humanized to man, out of love for mankind, to the same degree that man has been able, through love, to deify himself to God, and that man is caught up by God, in mind, toward the known, to the same degree that man has manifested the God who is by nature invisible, through the virtues. By this philosophy, then, constituted according to reason and contemplation, according to which the nature of the body too is of necessity ennobled, the saints, wounded unerringly for the longing of God, through the natural impressions concerning divine things present within them, came fittingly to God, having passed through body and world in an athletic manner, beholding these as contained by one another — the one by nature, the other by sense-perception — and each falling under the other, by the qualitative property that comes from the interchange of one with the other, and none of them being free, by its own reason, from circumscription — and, judging it shameful to let the immortal and evermoving element of the soul be corrupted and circumscribed together with mortal and circumscribed things, they bound themselves indissolubly to God alone, the immortal, and above all infinity, in no way yielding to the counter-pulls of world and flesh — which is the fulfillment, and, I think, the end, of all virtue and knowledge.

But even if the saints were ever moved concerning the spectacles of the things that are, they were not moved primarily to behold and know those very things materially, as we are, but that they might hymn, in many ways, the God who is, and appears, through all things and in all things, and gather for themselves much power of wonder and matter for doxology. For, having received from God a soul having mind and reason and sense-perception — the intelligible, and also this sensible one, just as also reason, besides the internal, that according to utterance, and mind, besides the intelligible, the passible (which they also call the imagination of the living being, according to which the other living creatures too recognize one another, and us, and the places they have traversed — around which sense-perception, the wise say, such things as these are constituted, being an instrument of it, receptive of what is imagined by it) — they thought it necessary to offer the operations of these, reasonably, not to themselves, but to God who gave them, on whose account and from whom are all things. For, having been taught, so far as is attainable to men, by the precise consideration of the things that are, the three universal manners for the sake of which God has made all things (for He brought us into subsistence, giving us essence, for the sake of being, and wellbeing, and ever-being), and that two of these are extremes, and belong to God alone, as cause, while the other is a mean, and depends on our judgment and movement, and, through itself, gives to the extremes the right to be properly so called, and, without whose presence, the designation becomes useless to them, not having the well conjoined to them — they thought that the truth in the extremes could not otherwise come to be present to them and be preserved, which the wellbeing, mingled with the extremes through the mean, is naturally wont to produce, than by ever-moving toward God.

And so, thenceforth, having intensified together with this the visual faculty of the soul according to nature, by reason, and having heard the Word Himself crying out expressly that one must not, in a manner, use the natural operations in reverse — on account of the corruption that of necessity attends the natural powers from the manner of misuse — they were taught to be borne evenly, according to the fitting reason of nature, toward its cause, that they might receive, added to that from which they simply have their being, also their truly being, at some point. For what benefit would there be, they said, reasoning with themselves, to that which is not its own cause with respect to being, if it should be moved toward itself, or toward anything else besides God — since, with respect to the reason of being, it will not be able to procure anything for itself, from itself, or from anything else besides God? For this reason, they taught the mind to think only about God and His virtues, and to apply itself, unknowingly, to the ineffable glory of His blessedness; and reason to become the interpreter and hymnodist of the things understood, and to converse rightly in the manners that unify toward them; and sense-perception, ennobled according to reason, imagining the various powers and operations in the universe, to report to the soul the reasons within the things that are, so far as attainable to the soul; and, through mind and reason, as through a ship, wisely steering the soul, this moist and unstable thing, borne now this way, now that, they traversed also the traces it had gone through.

9. Contemplation of the Crossing of the Sea Through Thus perhaps also that great Moses, by the stroke of the allpowerful Word — of which the rod was perhaps a symbol — dividing, in the manner of a sea, the deceit of sensible things, or, to speak more properly, taking it away, firm and unshaken, provided to the people hastening toward the divine promises the ground beneath their feet — showing that the nature under sense-perception, I mean, is, by right reason, visible and easily circumscribed, and passable and easy to traverse for a life adorned with virtues, and brings no danger, from the surging impulse on either side of the divided waters by which it had till then been covered, to those who thus cross through it — if indeed, according to the anagogical sense, the division of the waters is the separation, from a noetic sea, of the continuity with one another of the vices opposed to the virtues by way of deficiency and excess, which reason is naturally wont to produce, having taken hold of them with the heart, and in no way allowing them to be joined together again for those who press on eagerly toward God.

10. Contemplation of Moses‘ Ascent Into the Mountain Thus again, following God who calls, having risen above all things here, he entered into the darkness where God was — that is, into the formless and invisible and incorporeal dwelling, with a mind free of relation to anything at all besides God — in which, having come to be, so far as it was possible for human nature to be deemed worthy, he receives, as a prize worthy of that blessed ascent, a knowledge that circumscribes the coming-to-be of time and nature, and, having made God Himself a type and pattern of the virtues, toward whom, like a well-fashioned image preserving the imitation of the archetype, he impresses himself, comes down from the mountain, signifying, by his very face, the grace of the glory he has partaken of, to other men as well — becoming, and giving and offering ungrudgingly, himself, a type of the God-like type, to imitate — and shows this by expounding to the people what he has seen and heard, and by handing down, in writing, to those after him, the mysteries of God, as a kind of God-given inheritance.

11. Contemplation of the Leadership of Joshua, and the Crossing of the Jordan, and the Second Circumcision by Him with Knives from the Rock Thus Joshua, Moses‘ successor — that I may pass over the many things recorded concerning him, on account of their number — having taken up the people, previously trained in piety in the wilderness by many means, after the death of Moses on the mountain, and having purified them by a strange manner of circumcision, with knives from the rock, and having brought all the people across the Jordan, dried up by the advance procession of the divine ark, without their feet being wetted, signified the Savior Word, typically indicated through him: after the end of the letter of the legal ordinances, taking up the leadership, in the height of thoughts, of the true Israel who sees God, and circumcising, with the sharpest reason of faith in Him, every defilement of soul and body, and freeing from every reproach of those who provoke to sin, and bringing across the flowing nature of time and of things in motion to the condition of incorporeal things — having, hanging upon the shoulders of the virtues, the demonstrative knowledge of the divine mysteries.

12. Contemplation of Jericho and the Seven Circuits, and the Ark, and the Trumpets, and the Anathema Thus again, by seven circuits and as many trumpets, with a mystical shout, shaking the city of Jericho, which seemed hard, or even impossible, to capture, he mystically signified the same Word of God as conqueror of the world and finisher of the age, by mind and reason — that is, by knowledge and virtue. Of which the ark and the trumpets were the type, showing to those who followed him the sensible age to be easily captured and easily overthrown, and nothing in it fit for the enjoyment of the lovers of divine goods, as being joined to death and corruption and a cause of divine indignation. And Achan, son of Charmi — which is the troubled and matter-loving reasoning — signifies this, having, for bringing in some sensible thing to dwell within him, carried off, by divine sentence, that most pitiable death, which reason works, drowning, in the depth of an evil conscience, him who is worthy to be so punished.

13. Contemplation of Tyre and Its King, and Its Capture Thus again, as it is written, “At that time, having taken Hazor, and having killed its king with the sword, and having utterly destroyed everything that breathed in it, which was formerly ruling over all the lands” — it was taught, of which mysteries the passage had set forth the type, that our true Savior Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the destroyer of the wicked powers, and the bestower of the inheritance of grace on the worthy, at the time of His enmanment, having taken sin, through the cross, and its king the devil (for sin once ruled, reigning over all), killed it by the word of His power, and utterly destroyed everything that breathed in it — that is, the passions within us, and the shameful and wicked imaginings that attend them — that sin might no longer have anything at all breathing, in any manner, that could move and live in those who live in Christ and according to Christ.

14. Contemplation of “the Heavens Declare the Glory of Thus David, after those in time, but according to them in spirit — that I may pass over the Judges, who have many mysteries in their life — hearing the heavens declaring the glory of God, and the firmament proclaiming the work of His hands (a wondrous thing, in beings into which the Creator has not put a soul), received in the ears of his mind the reasons concerning theology from things without soul, and was taught, from the result, the manners of providence and judgment, so far as attainable to men — not attaining to the reasons by which, particularly, the governance of the whole is variously arranged.

15. Contemplation of “My Father and My Mother Forsook Thus again: “My father and my mother forsook me, but the Lord took me up,” saying — declaring, I think, in a veiled manner, that the law of the flesh according to nature, concerning coming-to-be and corruption, according to which we are all, on account of the transgression, both begotten and constituted, and the abandonment and flight, necessary for those who desire incorruptible things, from the senseperception that nurses us as a mother — through which the visible world is let go, and lets go of us, while the Lord is taken up — and, adopting the worthy by the spiritual law, and being made a Father to the worthy, through virtue and knowledge, He gives Himself wholly, according to likeness, as good, to them all. Or perhaps, by the father and the mother, he hints at the written law and the bodily worship according to it, by whose withdrawal the light of the spiritual law is naturally wont to rise in the hearts of the worthy, and to grant freedom from the slavery according to the flesh.

16. Contemplation of the Vision of Elijah in the Cave at Thus Elijah, the much-considered, after that fire, after the earthquake, after the great and mighty wind that breaks the mountains — which I suppose to be zeal, and discernment, and the eager faith that comes with full assurance (for discernment, like an earthquake shaking things joined together, dislodges, through virtue, the habit thickened by wickedness, from evil; and zeal, kindling, like fire, those who possess it, with the fervor of the spirit, persuades the impious to be taught; and faith, in the manner of a violent wind, for the glory of God, for the pulling down of strongholds, through the display of wonders, makes the truly faithful man, dispassionate, a supplier of gnostic water and deifying fire to others, healing, for one, the famine that comes through ignorance, and, for another, propitiating God, through kinship, for those who sacrifice, and killing the teachers of wickedness — reasonings and demons of false wisdom — sets free those held fast in the slavery of the passions) — after all these things, perceiving the voice of the light breeze in which God was, he was mystically taught the divine and untroubled and peaceful and altogether immaterial and simple condition, free of every form and shape, unable to be spoken or shown, by the utterance of speech and the manners and characters of life.

Struck with awe at its glory, and wounded by its beauty, having desired, more than to be a zealot for it, to be with it — that is, more than to fight for the truth, to become wholly one with the truth, and to see or know nothing opposed, having judged it far more precious to know only that God, wholly, throughout, is in all things — he is kept, while still in the flesh, in that state toward it, having crossed over matter by the divine chariot of the virtues, as an obstacle placed before the mind‘s pure passage to intelligible things, and the cloud of the flesh that darkens the ruling faculty of the soul through its sufferings — that he too might become a partaker of the ineffable goods he desired, so far as attainable to one still with a flesh subject to corruption, and that, perhaps, there might come to us too a firm confirmation of the things promised. For this too God suggested to him through what was thus mystically enacted, crying out unspeakably, that being with God alone, through peace, is more profitable than every other good.

17. Contemplation of Elisha, His Disciple Thus his disciple and heir of the Spirit, Elisha, no longer having sense-perception held, in actual operation, by material fantasies, as it had already been transported by the noetic graces of the Spirit, both himself seeing, by another operation of the eyes, the divine powers arrayed against the wicked ones that were around him, and granting to his attendant the power of seeing — was both taught and taught others that the soul, around which the ranks of angels encamp, as though surrounding a royal image, has a power stronger than the weakness — I mean, of the flesh — around which the spirits of wickedness lie in wait for the far-seeing mind, being greater.

18. Contemplation of Hannah and Samuel Thus also blessed Hannah, mother of the great Samuel, being barren and childless, having asked of God the fruit of the womb, and having fervently promised, through her attendance in the temple, to give back and to grant, in return, the gift to be given to the God who gives and grants it, taught mystically that every soul barren of fleshly pleasures must, through God, conceive the seeds of the virtues, that, having conceived in her understanding the reasoning that is obedient to God, capable of seeing what lies ahead with knowledge, and having given birth, she might be able to offer it, through pious attendance in contemplation, as a great and precious debt, judging she has nothing of her own — so as to show God alone as the giver and the receiver; as the law somewhere says: “My gifts, my presents, my offerings, you shall keep to bring to me” — since every good both begins and ends from Him and in Him. For the Word of God is naturally wont, in those in whom He comes to be, to set aside the movements of the flesh, and to check the soul‘s inclination toward them, and to fill it with all true discernment.

19. Contemplation of Him Who Sets Apart the Unclean For, hearing of the priest who, according to the legal ordinance, enters into a house that is unclean in whatever manner, and sets it apart, and prescribes to its owners the means for its cleansing, I understand the high priest Word to be signified thereby, entering, like a most pure light, into the soul, and uncovering its impious counsels and thoughts, together with the culpable actions, and wisely prescribing the manners of conversion and cleansing. This, I think, she who received the great prophet Elijah declared more clearly, saying, “Man of God, you have come to me to bring my iniquities to remembrance.”

20. Contemplation of Saint Elijah, and the Widow of For every soul that is widowed and bereft of good things, and destitute of virtue and the knowledge of God, when it receives the divine and discerning Word, coming to the remembrance of its sins, is somehow taught to feed, with the bread of the virtues, the Word who nourishes, and to give the fountain of life to drink with the doctrines of truth, and to prefer the healing of that very nature over itself, through which the jar of flesh will supply the practical conciseness in the virtues, and the cruse of the mind will perpetually well up the contemplation that preserves the light of knowledge, and the innate reasoning, like the widow‘s son there, having laid aside its former passionate life, will be deemed worthy to become a partaker of the divine and true life given by the Word.

21. Contemplation of the Lord‘S Transfiguration Thus also some of Christ‘s disciples, in addition to those mentioned, who, through diligence in virtue, were able to go up and be lifted together with Him to the mountain of His manifestation, having beheld Him transfigured — unapproachable in the light of His face, and struck with amazement at the brightness of what they perceived, and having recognized Him made more venerable still by the honor of Moses and Elijah, present on either side — passed over, from flesh, into the spirit, before laying aside the life through the flesh, by the interchange of the operations according to sense-perception that the Spirit worked in them, removing the veils of the passions from the intellectual power within them, through which, their organs of soul and body being purified, they were instructed in the spiritual reasons of the mysteries shown to them. The all-blessed radiance of His face, shining forth in rays, as conquering every operation of the eyes, they were mystically taught to be a symbol of His divinity, which is above mind and senseperception and essence and knowledge — being led by the hand, from His having neither form nor comeliness, and from knowing the Word to have become flesh, to the notion of Him beautiful in beauty beyond the sons of men, and of Him who was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God, and being led up, with knowledge, to the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth, through the theological negation that hymns Him as altogether uncontainable by all.

And that His whitened garments bore a symbol of the words of Holy Scripture, as having then become, for them, brilliant and clear and plain, and understood apart from every riddling enigma and symbolic shadow, and declaring the Word who is within them and is covered by them, at the time when they were driving the smooth and straight knowledge concerning God, and were freed from attachment to the world and the flesh. Or, that creation itself, by the removal of the impression of squalor that seemed hitherto to appear in it to those deceived and fastened only to sense-perception, through the wise variety of the different forms that fill it up, declares, analogously — in the manner of a garment — the worth of the wearer, the power of the Word who gave it its coming-tobe. For both interpretations of what is said would fit the passage, since, for our sake, it has reasonably been covered, in both, by obscurity — lest we presume to approach unworthily what is uncontainable — in the one case, by the letter of Holy Scripture, as He is the Word; in the other, by creation, as He is Creator and Maker and Craftsman. Wherefore I say it is necessary for him who wishes to walk unblamably straight toward God to have need of both: both the scriptural knowledge in the Spirit, and the natural contemplation, according to the Spirit, of the things that are — so that, the two laws, the natural and the written, being of equal honor and teaching the same things to one another, and neither having more or less than the other, may be able to show, as is fitting, him who desires to become a perfect lover of perfect wisdom.

22. Contemplation of the Natural and the Written Law, and of Their Reciprocal Concurrence Into One Another I understand the one, evenly, and as much as possible in accordance with reason, guided through the connatural spectacles within it, to have, in the manner of a book, the harmoniously fitted fabric of the universe — having letters and syllables, the first things toward us, close at hand and particular, bodies thickened by the concurrence of many qualities; and words, the more universal things among these, further off and more subtle, from which the Word, who wisely inscribed them and is ineffably inscribed within them, being read, is completed — furnishing the notion only that He is, not at all of what He is at any time, and, through the pious gathering of the various impressions into a single conjecture of the truth, leading Himself to be seen, analogously, through visible things, as the maker of their coming-to-be; and the other, accomplished by learning, through the things wisely dictated to it, as it were another world made of heaven and earth and the things in between — I mean, constituted of ethical and natural and theological philosophy — to declare the ineffable power of Him who dictated it, and to show that they are the same as one another by interchange: the written law being the same as the natural, in power, and the natural, in turn, as the written, in habit — and both declaring and concealing the same Word: the one, by the letter and what appears; the other, by the understanding and what is hidden.

For just as, calling the words of Holy Scripture garments, and understanding its thoughts to be the flesh of the Word, we in one respect cover, and in another uncover; so also, calling the forms and shapes of the things that have come to be, set forth for sight, garments, and understanding the reasons according to which these were created to be flesh, we likewise cover in one respect and uncover in another. For the Word, Creator and Lawgiver of the universe, is hidden while appearing, being, by nature, invisible, and is made manifest while being hidden, being believed by the wise not to be, by nature, thin. May it be granted to us, then, to reveal this hidden thing by negation, and rather to pass by the whole power of shapes and riddles that image forth the truth, and to be led up, ineffably, from the letter and the things that appear, to the Word Himself, according to the power of the Spirit, rather than that this hidden thing, by our positing, be made to remain hidden while appearing — lest we too, becoming murderers of the Word, worship, in Hellenic fashion, the creature rather than the Creator, believing nothing to be higher than the things seen, or more magnificent than sensible things, or, looking only as far as the letter, make much of the body alone, in Jewish fashion, deifying the belly, and considering shame to be glory, carrying off the same lot as the God-killers — not recognizing the Word who, for our sake, according to us, toward us, has come to be, thickened, through the body and syllables and letters, for the sake of sense-perception, having inclined the whole power of the intellectual element within us toward Himself.

For the divine Apostle says: “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” For the letter, cherished by itself alone, is naturally wont to kill, in those who cherish it, the reason within it — just as the beauty of created things too, not seen with a view to the glory of Him who made them, is naturally wont to deprive those who behold it of piety according to reason. And again, the Gospel: “If those days” — plainly, of wickedness — “had not been cut short, no flesh would have been saved” — that is, no pious understanding concerning God. For the days of wickedness are cut short when the erring judgment according to sense-perception, which creates them, is circumscribed by reason, and comes to be behind the pious righteousness that is according to it. For the law of the flesh differs in nothing from Antichrist, ever wrestling with the Spirit and setting itself against His divine law, so long as the present life is dear and lovely to those overcome by it, and the Word has not yet appeared and abolished it by the word of His power, distinguishing the mortal from the immortal, and driving out the disturbing slavery from freedom, and showing the truth itself, in itself, pure of falsehood, and marking off the material and temporary from the divine and eternal things, toward which the mind is naturally wont, through its erring kinship with them according to sense-perception, to incline, and to be put to death by irrational affection — toward which, especially and primarily, the God-befitting descent of the Word comes, raising it up from the death of ignorance, and checking its passionate disposition toward material things, and leading its desire back to the object of love that is according to nature.

Wherefore I think it necessary, being rational beings, and hastening through reason toward the Word (as the Word Himself says: “Is not the soul more than food, and the body than clothing?”), to care for the body far better than the garments — that is, for the divine and lofty thoughts, both of Holy Scripture and of the spectacles according to creation — lest, in due time, we be convicted of having laid hold of none of these things, not having grasped the Word who subsists and gives subsistence to all things, like that Egyptian woman who, having laid hold only of Joseph‘s garments, entirely failed of converse with her beloved. For thus shall we too, having gone up to the mountain of the divine Transfiguration, behold both the garments of the Word — I mean, the words of Scripture — and the visible created things, bright and glorious by the interchange of the doctrines concerning Him, and befitting the divine Word through lofty contemplation, in no way struck and kept away from the blessed touch of the Word, like Mary Magdalene, who supposed the Lord Jesus to be the gardener, and thought nothing above sense-perception, believing Him only the maker of things subject to coming-to-be and corruption — but we shall also see and worship Him living from the dead, come to us though the doors were shut, the operation according to sense-perception in us being entirely quenched, and we shall know the Word Himself and God, being all in all, and having made, out of goodness, all things His own: the intelligible things His body, the sensible things His garment.

Concerning which it seems not unfitting that it was said: “They shall all grow old like a garment,” on account of the corruption of mind that prevails over the things seen, “and like a cloak You shall roll them up, and they shall be changed,” on account of the expected grace of incorruption. 23. a Concise Explanation Concerning the Five Modes of Natural Contemplation In addition to these we shall also come to know the reasons — the ultimate ones, that is, attainable to us — of which creation has been set forth as teacher, and the five modes of contemplation joined to them, by which the saints, dividing creation, gathered together, piously, the mystical reasons concerning it, apportioning it into essence, and movement, and difference, and mixture, and position. Of these they said three are primarily for the knowledge of God, and are set forth as guides: that according to essence, that according to movement, that according to difference — through which God becomes known to men, who gather the impressions concerning Him from the things that are, as Creator, and Provider, and Judge; and two are pedagogical toward virtue and kinship with God: that according to mixture, and that according to position — by which, being shaped, man may become God, having, from the things that are, undergone the being God, seeing, as it were, in mind, the whole impression of God according to goodness, and being formed to it, by reason, most purely, as his own.

For what the pure mind is naturally able to see, by pious knowledge, this it can also undergo, becoming, in habit, through virtue, that very thing. For instance, essence is teacher of theology, through which, seeking the cause of the things that are, we are taught, through them, that it is, not attempting to know what it is according to essence, since there is not, in the things that are, any manifestation put forward of this, through which we might, even in some small measure, as through an effect, look up to the cause. And movement is declarative of the providence of the things that are, through which, beholding the unvarying identity, according to species, of each of the things that have come to be, according to its essence, and its likewise inviolable conduct, we conceive the reason that holds together and preserves all things, clearly distinguished from one another, according to an ineffable union, in accordance with the reasons by which each subsists. And difference is indicative of judgment, according to which we are taught that God is the wise distributor, from the natural power of essence commensurate with the underlying subject in each of the things that are, of the particular reasons. And by “providence” I mean, of mind, not the convertive, and, as it were, economic, leading back of those provided for from what they ought not to what they ought, but the sustaining providence of the whole, and preservative of the reasons by which the whole primarily subsists; and by “judgment” I mean not the disciplinary and, as it were, punitive judgment of sinners, but the saving and distinctive distribution of the things that are, according to which each of the things that have come to be, joined to the reasons by which it came to be, has the unchangeable lawfulness, in natural identity, that cannot be transgressed, just as, from the beginning, the Creator judged and established each thing as to its being, and what it is, and how, and of what sort — since the providence and judgment otherwise spoken of are fastened upon our free-choosing impulses, restraining us in many ways from base things, and wisely turning us toward good ones, and, by directing what is not in our power in opposition to what is in our power, cutting off wickedness, present and future and past.

But I do not say there is one providence and another, by these. For I know it to be one and the same in power, but having a different and manifold operation with respect to us. And the mixture of the things that are is a symbol of the composition of our judgment. For this, mixed with the virtues, and blending them into itself, constitutes, in the understanding, that most God-befitting world as well. And position is teacher of the disposition according to judgment, so as to have a firm opinion concerning the good, by regulating oneself against contradiction, admitting no alteration whatsoever from the things that befall it, from its foundation according to reason. And, joining again position to movement, and mixture to difference, they distinguished the subsistence of the universe, undividedly, into essence and difference and movement, and, understanding the cause to be beheld, technically, by way of conception, variously, in its effects, they piously grasped that it is, and is wise, and is living. And from this they were taught the God-perfecting and saving doctrine concerning Father and Son and Holy Spirit, according to which they were mystically illumined, not only concerning the simple reason of the cause‘s being, but were also piously initiated into the manner of its subsisting. And again, surveying the whole of creation according to position alone, they reduced the aforesaid five modes of contemplation to three, having recognized creation, by its own reason, to be the teacher of ethical and natural and theological philosophy, made of heaven and earth and the things in between.

And again, considering creation from difference alone — that is, from the things that contain and the things that are contained, I mean the heaven and the things within it — they brought the three modes together into two: wisdom, that is, and philosophy — the one as inclusive, and admitting all the pious modes so-called with respect to it in a God-befitting manner, and enclosing within itself the mystical and natural reasons concerning other things; the other as sustaining character and judgment, practice and contemplation, virtue and knowledge, and being referred, by a relational kinship, to wisdom as its cause. And again, considering creation according to mixture alone — that is, the harmonious composition of the universe — and, through all the things ineffably bound together with one another for the fulfillment of one world, conceiving only the reason that binds and fastens together the parts with the whole and with one another as their maker, they enclosed the two modes of contemplation into one, according to which, by a simple contact, having transported the mind, through the reasons in the things that are, to the cause, and having bound it fast to Him alone, as the gatherer and attractor of all things from Himself, no longer being poured out among the particular reasons of the wholes, by transcending them, but being persuaded, clearly, only that God alone is, properly, henceforth, from the precise looking-upon of the things that are — and the essence of the things that are, and the good ordering of the differing things, and the indissoluble cohesion of the things mixed, and the unchangeable settling of the things established, and, simply, the cause of every essence, however conceived, and of movement and difference, mixture and position — they wisely transferred, through a resembling likeness, the mystical contemplation according to the sensible age, to the world fulfilled, in the understanding, in the Spirit, through the virtues; according to which, gathering the aforesaid modes into one, they wiped upon themselves, so far as attainable, the most singular reason, which fulfills, through the different kinds of the virtues, the whole essence of the world according to judgment in the understanding — having, that is, passed through all the reasons of the things that are, and the very reasons of the virtues themselves, and having run up, unknowingly, together with these, toward the Word who is above these, and

toward whom, and from whom, their being is, super-essential and super-good; and, being wholly united to the whole, so far as attainable by the natural power within them, they were, accordingly, so conformed by Him that they were even known from Him alone, as most transparent mirrors, having the form of God the Word who looks into them appearing, without omission, entirely, through His divine marks — none of the old characteristics, by which the human is naturally wont to be indicated, being left, all having yielded to the better — like air, unlit, wholly commingled with light.

24. Contemplation of Melchizedek What, I think, that wondrous and great Melchizedek, concerning whom the divine word in Scripture recounts great and wondrous things, having known and undergone, was deemed worthy to become above time and nature, and to be made like the Son of God — having become, that is, by grace, so far as attainable, such as the giver of grace is believed to be by essence. For that which is said of him, “without father, mother, genealogy,” I suppose signifies nothing other than the complete laying aside, granted to him from the utmost grace according to virtue, of the natural marks; and “having neither beginning of days, nor end of life” bears witness to a knowledge that circumscribes the property of all time and age, and a contemplation that transcends the existence of all material and immaterial essence; and “made like the Son of God, he remains a priest continually” perhaps signifies that, even to the end, by an unchangeable habit of most God-like virtue, and by divine gazing toward God, he was able to keep the noetic eye unwinking. For virtue is naturally wont to fight against nature, and true contemplation against time and age, that the one might remain unenslaved to whatever else is believed to exist after God, and unmastered, as knowing God alone as begetter, and the other uncircumscribed, abiding in none of the things that have beginning or end, as imaging forth, through itself, God, the definer of every beginning and end, who draws every understanding of those who understand toward Himself by an ineffable ecstasy.

From which the divine likeness is shown — of knowledge, I mean, and of virtue — and by which the unshaken love toward God alone is preserved for the worthy, according to which the dignity of adoption, given in a God-befitting manner, grants them to intercede with God continually and to stand before Him, offering the divine likeness for the propitiation of the one who intercedes. Whence I reasonably suppose that great Melchizedek, having already, in life and reason, transcended and entirely left behind time and nature, under which he naturally lived, ought not to be addressed by the divine word as justified by these, but rather ought to be named from that out of which and through which he had, by judgment, transformed himself — I mean, virtue and knowledge. For those in whom judgment has nobly, through the virtues, striven against the most hard-fought law of nature, and whose mind‘s movement, undefiled, has soared beyond the property of time and age through knowledge, it is not right to name after the property of the things left behind, as a mark, but rather after the magnificence of what has been taken up, from which and in which alone they now are and are known. Since we too, applying ourselves naturally to visible things, both recognize and name bodies from their colors — as, for instance, we call illumined air light, and any matter kindled by fire fire, and a whitened body white, and other such things.

If, then, by judgment he preferred virtue above nature and all things according to it, on account of the noble choice of that dignity which is in our power, and outstripped, in knowledge, every time age, made, contemplation, everything after God come to be behind him, remaining in none of the things that are in which some limit whatsoever is beheld, divine Melchizedek has been begotten, through the Word, by grace, in the Spirit, unto the divine and beginningless and immortal essences of God, and bears in himself the sound and true likeness of God who begot him (since every begetting is naturally wont to make the begotten the same as the begetter: “That which is born of the flesh,” it says, “is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”) — reasonably, then, great Melchizedek is recorded not from the natural and temporal properties, in which father and mother and genealogy, and beginning and end of days, are comprehended, which, having already outstripped them, he entirely dismissed, but from the divine and blessed marks by which he transformed his own form — which neither time, nor nature, nor reason, nor mind, nor, to speak of any other thing according to circumscription, at all attains. Fatherless, then, and motherless, and without genealogy, neither having beginning of days nor end of life, great Melchizedek is recorded, as the true account of the God-bearing men has made clear concerning him — not on account of his created nature, from non-being, according to which he began and ceased to be, but on account of the divine and uncreated grace, ever being above all nature and all time, from the everexisting God, according to which, wholly, by judgment, being wholly begotten of Him alone, he is known.

And he alone is preserved by Scripture as being this — as perhaps having been the first to come to be, according to virtue, above matter and form, which can be signified by “without father, without mother, without genealogy”; and as having passed, in knowledge, beyond all things under time and age, whose being, having begun in time by coming-to-be, has not denied that it once had being, in no way whatsoever having tripped in the divine course of the understanding — which perhaps signifies “neither having beginning of days nor end of life”; and as having, in an exceptional manner, secretly and silently, and, to speak concisely, unknowingly, after the removal, in mind, of all beings, entered into God Himself, and been wholly conformed and transformed, wholly, to the whole — which the phrase “but made like the Son of God, he remains a priest continually” can hint at. For every one of the saints, from that particular good in which he especially had his beginning, has, accordingly, also been proclaimed a type of God, the giver. In this signification, then, this great Melchizedek too, on account of the divine virtue wrought in him, has been deemed worthy to be an image of Christ God, and of His ineffable mysteries, unto whom all the saints are gathered as their archetype, and the cause of the impression of goodness in each of them — but especially this man, as bearing in himself, more than all the others, the prefigurations of Christ.

25. Exposition Concerning the Lord, on the Things Said For our Lord and God Jesus Christ alone, by nature and in truth, is fatherless and motherless and without genealogy, and has neither beginning of days nor end of life: motherless, on account of the immaterial and incorporeal and altogether unknown begetting, above, from the Father, before the ages; fatherless, with respect to the begetting below and in time, from His mother, and in the body, in whose conception He did not establish the manner that comes through seed; without genealogy, as having the manner of both His begettings altogether inaccessible and incomprehensible to all. And “having neither beginning of days nor end of life,” as being without beginning and without end and altogether infinite, as God by nature; and “he remains a priest forever,” as ceasing to be by no death of wickedness or of nature, because He is God, and the supplier of all life according to nature and virtue. But do not suppose that anyone is without a share in this grace, because the word has determined it concerning great Melchizedek alone. For God has, equally, implanted by nature in all the power for salvation, that whoever wishes may be able to transform himself unto the divine grace; and if one wishes to become Melchizedek, and Abraham, and Moses, and, simply, to transfer all the saints into himself, he is not hindered — not by exchanging names and places, but by imitating manners and conduct.

26. Another Contemplation of Melchizedek Everyone, then, who has put to death the members that are upon the earth, and has entirely quenched the mindset of the flesh within himself, and has shaken off the relation to it throughout, by which the love owed by us to God alone is divided, and has denied all the marks of the flesh and the world, for the sake of divine grace, so as to be able to say, with the blessed apostle Paul, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” and so on — such a one has become fatherless and motherless and without genealogy, after the pattern of the great Melchizedek, having no way to be held fast by flesh and nature, on account of the union that has come to be with the Spirit.

27. Contemplation of “Neither Having Beginning of Days, nor End of Life” And if, in addition to these, he has also denied himself, having lost his own soul for my sake, he shall find it — that is, having given up the present life, together with its wishes, for the sake of the better, he has acquired the Word of God alone, living and operative, penetrating, according to virtue and knowledge, to the division of soul and spirit, and having nothing at all deprived of His presence — he has become both without beginning and without end, no longer bearing within himself the temporal life in motion, which has beginning and end, and is shaken by many sufferings, but only the divine life of the indwelling Word, both eternal and bounded by no death.

28. Contemplation of “He Remains a Priest Forever” And if he also knows how to keep watch, with much attentiveness, over his own gift, attending, through practice and contemplation, to the goods above nature and time, he has become also a perpetual and eternal priest, ever noetically enjoying divine converse, and, on account of imitating, by the unchangeableness of his judgment concerning the good, the unchangeableness that is according to nature, not being hindered, in Jewish fashion, from continuing forever in the death of sin, but offering the sacrifice of praise and confession, gloriously theologizing Him as Creator of all things, and gratefully giving thanks to Him as the just Provider and Judge of all things, at the divine altar in the understanding, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no authority to eat. For it is not possible for those who cling to the letter alone, and are content with the sacrifices of irrational passions for salvation, and who proclaim the death of Jesus through the idleness with respect to sin, but do not confess His resurrection, for which and on account of which death came to be, through the contemplation according to mind, illumined by works of righteousness — and who are altogether willing, most eagerly, to be put to death in the flesh, but do not at all bear to be made alive also in the spirit, their tabernacle still standing, because the way through reason and knowledge of the saints has not yet been manifested to them, which is the Word of God, who said, “I am the way” — to partake of the mystical loaves of divine knowledge and the life-giving cup of wisdom, since, from knowing the Word made flesh through the practical life, they do not desire to come, through contemplation, to the glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

29. Contemplation of Abraham Abraham, again, becomes spiritual by going out from the land and his kindred and his father‘s house, and coming into the land shown him by God — he who has broken off, in disposition, from the flesh, and has come to be outside it by separation from the passions, and has left behind the senses, no longer admitting any deception of sin through them, and has passed by all sensible things, from which deception and stumbling come to the soul through the senses, and comes, by the mind alone, free of every material bond, into the divine and blessed land of knowledge, and traverses it mystically in length and breadth, in which he will find our Lord and God Jesus Christ, the good inheritance of those who fear Him — theologized, in length, incomparably, for His own sake, by the worthy, so far as attainable to men, and glorified, for our sake, in breadth, through His all-wise providence that holds together the universe, and especially through His wondrous and utterly ineffable economy on our behalf — and having become a partaker, so far, of the manners in which he has been trained to honor the Lord, practice contemplation, by which friendship and conformity with God is naturally wont to be firmly confirmed. And, to speak concisely of these things: he who has wrestled down, in practice, flesh and sense-perception and world, concerning which the mind’s dissolution of its relation toward intelligible things comes about, and has, by understanding alone, through love, drawn near to God with knowledge — such a one is another Abraham, showing that he has, by an equal grace, the same character of virtue and knowledge as the patriarch.

30. Contemplation of Moses And Moses again is manifest as another, he who, in the time of the dominion of the passions, when the noetic Pharaoh, the devil, tyrannizes, so that the worse prevails over the better, and the fleshly rises up against the spiritual, and every pious reasoning, being begotten by judgment according to God, is naturally destroyed — and, cast into the ark of true asceticism, secured on the outside by ethical manners according to the flesh and, on the inside, by divine thoughts according to the soul, and enduring to be under senseperception, the daughter of the noetic Pharaoh, up to the point where the law permits the taking up of natural contemplations — but, by genuine zeal for divine goods, kills the Egyptianizing mindset of the flesh, and sets it down beneath the sand — I mean, the barren habit with respect to evils — in which, even if the tare of wickedness is sown by the enemy, it is not naturally able to grow, on account of the poverty of spirit inherently present, which begets and preserves dispassion, and, by divine command, bounds the sea of bitter and truly briny wickedness, made savage by the spirits of wickedness and grown wooded by the successive waves of trials, as it is written: “He who set the sand as a boundary for the sea, and said to it, You shall come up to this point, and no further, and your waves shall be broken within you” — but who, for the reasonings that still incline toward the earth and seek their enjoyment from it, for which the irascible faculty is naturally wont to contend, and to tyrannize and drive away the discerning reason, leads them, like sheep, as a skilled shepherd, through the wilderness — the condition deprived of passions and matter and pleasures — to the mountain of the knowledge of God, seen at the height of the understanding.

Diligently abiding on which mountain, through the fitting spiritual contemplations, after the abandonment of the mind‘s relation to sensible things (for this, I think, is signified by the passing of the forty-year period), he will be deemed worthy to become, in understanding, a beholder and hearer of the ineffable and supernatural divine fire existing in the essence of the things that are, as it were in a bush — I mean, the Word of God who shone forth from the bush of the Holy Virgin in the last times, and conversed with us through the flesh — bringing the naked footprint of his understanding to such a mystery, altogether free of human reasonings, as of dead sandals, and turning away, as it were his face, from seeking, the visual faculty of his understanding, but opening, by faith alone, as it were his hearing, the soul’s obedience for the reception of the mystery — from whom, having received the strong and unconquerable power against the wicked powers, he separates, by much authority, natural things from things contrary to nature, and things of the soul from things of the flesh, and intelligible and immaterial things from material and sensible things — far surpassing the power that tries to make the free thing a slave.

31. Another Brief Contemplation of the Same And to speak concisely: he who has not submitted to the yoke of sin, nor drowned himself in the murky stream of the passions through evil desire, nor endured to be nourished by sense-perception, the fountain of pleasures, but has rather killed the mindset of the flesh, which tyrannizes the nobility of the soul, and, having become above all corruptible things, has fled this deceiving world, as it were a kind of Egypt, which oppresses the far-seeing mind with bodily cares, and, communing with himself in stillness, and, by diligent leisure, having been taught, ineffably, through the scientific contemplation of the things that are, the wise economy of the divine providence that divinely administers the universe, and from there, through mystical theology, which the pure mind alone, through prayer, is believed to attain, by an ineffable ecstasy — communing with God, unutterably, as in darkness, in unknowing — and has inscribed himself, within, in mind, with the doctrines of piety, and, without, as Moses did the tablets, with the graces of the virtues, by the finger of God, the Holy Spirit — or, to speak scripturally, he who has chosen to suffer ill-treatment together with the people of God rather than to have the temporary enjoyment of sin, and has judged the reproach of Christ more precious than the treasures in Egypt — that is, than wealth and glory, the temporary and corruptible things — choosing, willingly, in their place, the toils undergone for virtue‘s sake — this man has become a spiritual Moses, not conversing with a visible Pharaoh, but arraying himself, noetically, against the invisible tyrant, the murderer of souls and originator of wickedness, the devil, and the wicked powers around him, with which he carries, as it were in his hand, a rod — I mean, the power of reason in the practical life.

32. Contemplation of How One Can Imitate the Saints Before and After the Law, and What Identity There Is Between the Natural Law and the Written, in Their Reciprocal Passage Into One Another In the same way, too, each of us who wishes can transfer all the saints into himself, being formed, spiritually, toward each of them, from the things typically written of them according to history (“For these things happened to them typically,” says the divine Apostle, “and were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come”) — with respect to the saints before the law of old, piously acquiring the knowledge of God from the creation of the world, and being taught to accomplish the virtues from the Providence that wisely administers the universe, after the pattern of those very saints before the law, who, having, throughout, naturally traced within themselves beforehand, in spirit, the written law of piety and virtue, were reasonably set forth as an example for those under the law (“Look,” it says, “to Abraham your father, and to Sarah who was in labor with you”); and with respect to those under the law, being led up, through the commandments, to the knowledge of the God signified in them, by pious understanding, and being adorned, through noble practice, with the fitting manners of the virtues, and being taught that the natural law is the same as the written, when it is wisely varied, through practice, by symbols, and, conversely, the written the same as the natural, when it becomes, in the worthy, unified and simple and free of symbols, through reason and contemplation, in virtue and knowledge — after the pattern of those very saints under the law, who, when the Spirit removed the letter, as it were a veil, were shown to have the natural law spiritually.

33. That the Saints Under the Law Too, Receiving the Law Spiritually, Foresaw the Grace Signified Through It For all, having expressly foreseen that another worship than the legal one was to come, proclaimed beforehand the perfection of the most God-befitting life that would appear according to it, fitting and most proper to nature, as needing nothing external for its perfection — as is clear to all who are not ignorant of the divine oracles through the law and the prophets. This especially David and Hezekiah hinted at, each, besides other things, in his own particular drama: the one, propitiating God legally on account of sin; the other, being honored by God with an addition to his life, by another ordinance besides the law.

34. That He Who Genuinely Follows Christ, According to Disposition, Through the Virtues, Becomes Above Both the Written and the Natural Law There is nothing, I think, to hinder him who has been pretrained in these laws — the natural, I mean, and the written — from also, in a God-loving manner, coming to be above them, in a God-befitting manner; and, apart from them, through sincere faith, genuinely following only the reason that leads to the highest good, laying hold at all of no thing or reasoning or thought whatsoever, upon which the nature and knowledge of anything, however conceived and however existing, falls and is manifested — as is fitting for one who has purposed genuinely to follow Jesus, who has passed through the heavens, and who, by the showing of the divine light, is able to receive, so far as is possible for man, the true and comprehensive knowledge of the things that are.

35. Contemplation of the Manner in Which He Who Has Become Entirely Obedient to God Comes to Be Above the Natural and the Written Law For if the whole nature of the things that are is divided into intelligible and sensible things, and the one is said, and is, eternal, as having received the beginning of its being in the age, while the other is temporal, as made in time, and the one falls under intellection, the other under sense-perception, on account of the indissoluble power of the relational property according to nature that binds these to one another — for great is the relation of those who understand to the things understood, and of those who perceive to the things perceived; and man, being of soul and a sentient body, is both circumscribed and circumscribes, by the reciprocal natural relation and property toward each part of creation, the one according to essence, the other according to power, as being divided, in his own parts, toward these, and drawing these to himself, through his own parts, by union. For he is naturally circumscribed by intelligible and sensible things, as being soul and body, and naturally circumscribes these, by power, as understanding and perceiving — but God, simply and indeterminately, is above all the things that are, both the containing and the contained, and the nature of time and age and place, apart from which these do not exist, as being unrelated, altogether, to all — then he who has soberly discerned how one must love God, who is above reason and knowledge and altogether every relation whatsoever, and is exempt even from nature, will pass by, without relation, all sensible and intelligible things, and all time and age and place, and, having, at the last, stripped himself, in a manner beyond nature, of the whole operation according to sense-perception and reason and mind, will attain, ineffably and unknowingly, the divine delight that is above reason and mind — in the manner and reason known to the God who grants such grace, and to those deemed worthy to receive it from God — no longer bringing along with him anything natural or written, all the things that can be spoken or known having been altogether transcended and silenced for him.

36. Contemplation of the Gospel Saying Concerning Him Who Fell Among Robbers And perhaps this is what is spent, in the inn, upon the two denarii given for the healing of him who fell among robbers, by the one commanded by the Lord to take care of him — which the Lord, returning generously, promised to repay: the complete removal, through faith, in the perfect, of the things that are (“For,” says the Lord, “whoever does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple”) — according to which, having removed from himself all things, or, to speak more properly, having removed himself from all things, he who has made himself a lover of wisdom is deemed worthy to be with God alone, having received the adoption shown forth evangelically — after the pattern of the holy and blessed apostles, who, having entirely stripped themselves of everything, and clung, wholly, to God and the Word alone, said, “Behold, we have left all things and followed You” — Him who is both the Maker of nature and the giver of the help according to the law; and Him, plainly the Lord, whom, having acquired as the sole light of truth, they reasonably received, in place of law and nature, the unerring knowledge of all things after God. For the knowledge of the things made by Him is naturally wont to be manifested together with Him, properly.

For just as, when the sensible sun rises, all bodies are clearly manifested together with it, so also God, the noetic sun of righteousness, rising upon the mind, as He knows how to be received by creation, wills the true reasons of all intelligible and sensible things to be manifested together with Himself. And this is shown by the bright garments, at the Lord‘s Transfiguration on the mountain, manifested together with the light of His face — gathering, I think, into God, the knowledge of the things after Him, and around Him. For neither can the eye apprehend sensible things without light, nor can the mind receive spiritual contemplation apart from the knowledge of God. For there, light gives to sight the apprehension of visible things; and here, the knowledge of God grants to the mind the knowledge of intelligible things.

37. Contemplation of the Manner in Which Adam‘S Transgression Came to Be Indeed, the forefather Adam, not having fixed the eye of his soul upon this divine light, reasonably, like a blind man in the darkness of ignorance, groping with both hands at the debris of matter, gave himself up wholly, inclining himself entirely, to sense-perception alone — through which, having received the corrupting venom of the most bitter beast, he did not even enjoy sense-perception itself as he had wished, apart from God, and before God, and not according to God, as he ought not, having attempted the impossible: to have the things of God without being as he ought. For, having received the counselor, the serpent, more than he received God, he received sense-perception more, and, making the beginning of his eating the fruit of the forbidden tree, of which I had also been taught beforehand that death would attend the fruit — which offers itself to sense-perception — he exchanged his life for death, fashioning for himself a living death for the whole duration of the present age. For if death is the corruption of coming-to-be, and the body that comes to be through the inflow of food is always naturally corrupted, being dissipated by the flow, then Adam has always preserved death, alive, both for himself and for us, through the very things by which he believed life to be sustained.

As indeed, had he rather trusted God than his cohabiting wife, and been nourished by the tree of life, he would not have laid aside the immortality given to him, ever preserved by the participation in life, since every life is naturally preserved by proper and fitting food. And the food of that blessed life is the bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the world, as the truthful Word Himself declared concerning Himself in the Gospels — by which the first man, unwilling to be nourished, reasonably fell away from the divine life, and laid hold of another, the begetter of death, according to which, having put upon himself the irrational form, and having dimmed the ineffable beauty of the divine, he gave over the whole nature as food to death. Through which death lives throughout this whole span of time, making us its food, while we never live, always being devoured by corruption through it.

38. That the Saints Were Taught, from the Unstable Revolution of the Present Life, That There Is Another, True and Divine Life, Ever the Same Having wisely understood its feebleness and its successive changes, the saints were reasonably taught that this was not the life originally granted to men by God, but were mystically taught that there is another, divine and ever-the-same life, which they supposed God, being good, must especially and fittingly have first created for Himself — toward which, having, through wisdom, by the grace of the Spirit, so far as attainable to men subject to death, lifted up the eye of the soul, and having inwardly received the desire for it, they reasonably thought it necessary to lay aside this present life, if they were to lay hold of that life purely, according to the fitting reason. And since the laying aside of life does not come about without death, they conceived, as its death, the casting off of the affection according to the flesh, through which the entrance of death came into life — that, having conceived death by death, they might cease living by death, dying the death precious in the sight of the Lord, the death that is truly the death of death, able to destroy corruption, and to afford entrance, for the worthy, into the blessed life and incorruption. For I think it is not right to call the end of this present life death, but rather deliverance from death, and separation from corruption, and freedom from slavery, and cessation from disturbance, and abolition of wars, and passing beyond confusion, and withdrawal of darkness, and release from labors, and silence from meaningless noise, and stillness from turbulence, and covering of shame, and escape from the passions, and disappearance of sin, and, to speak concisely, the circumscription of all evils — which the saints, having accomplished by voluntary mortification, showed themselves to be strangers and sojourners in the world.

For, fighting nobly against world and body and the uprisings that come from them, and stifling the deceit that arises from both, through the entanglement of the senses with sensible things, they preserved for themselves the unenslaved dignity of the soul — very reasonably, judging it lawful and just for the lesser to be led by the better, rather than for the better to be shackled by the worse. Which is indeed a divine law, implanted also in those who choose to embrace the life that is fitting, first of all, for rational beings — that which imitates, through moderation, the freedom from want and the unhindered ease of the angels.

39. That the Saints Did Not, as We Do, Perform Either Natural Contemplation or Scriptural Initiation But let us return, in order, and consider, so far as we are able, what remains of the Transfiguration, fitting it to what has already been considered, that the utmost of the saints in all things may be seen, and their genuine disposition of contrariety toward flesh and matter, and that they too did not contemplate, as we do, either creation or Holy Scripture materially and in a grovelling manner, using only senseperception and surfaces and shapes, and letters and syllables, for the reception of the blessed knowledge of God, from which stumbling and error concerning the judgment of truth comes — but with a mind alone, most pure and freed from all material mist. If, then, we wish to judge piously, examining, in a noetic manner, the reasons of sensible things, let us see them walking rightly, along a straight path, toward the unerring knowledge of God and divine things. 40. a More Expansive Contemplation of the It has been said above, then, that, through the light-like brightness that came to be upon the Lord‘s face on the mountain, the thrice-blessed apostles were mystically led by the hand toward the power and glory of God, altogether unattainable by all beings, according to what is ineffable and unknown, learning that the light manifested to their senseperception was a symbol of the unseen hiddenness.

For just as here, the ray of the light that came to be conquers the operation of the eyes, remaining uncontained by them, so also there, God surpasses all power and operation of the mind, leaving no shape at all for one who attempts to conceive Him in the very act of conceiving. And through the white garments, they were taught, in the same act and at the same time, in a God-befitting manner, both the magnificence in created things, analogous to the reasons according to which they were made, and the initiation in the words of Holy Scripture, according to what is understood — the scriptural power in the spirit and the wisdom and knowledge in created things according to it being manifested together with the knowledge of God, through which He, again, analogously, is shown forth. And through Moses and Elijah, who were present on either side of Him (for this remains for the examination of the contemplation), they received many gnostic manners, according to many conceptions, of which the types were set forth beforehand, through true contemplation, of the mysteries.

41. Contemplation of Moses and Elijah 1. And first, they received the most pious notion that the reason of the law and of the prophets must altogether be with the Word and God, through Moses and Elijah, as being from Him and concerning Him, and declaring Him, and being established around Him.

2. Then they were taught, through the same, wisdom and goodness abiding with Him: the one, that reason, according to it, is declarative of the things to be done, and prohibitive of the things not to be done, of which Moses was the type (for we believe the grace of legislation belongs to wisdom); the other, that, according to it, reason is exhortative and convertive, toward the divine life, of those who have slipped away from it, of which Elijah was the type, showing forth, in himself, the whole prophetic gift. For it is the proper mark of divine goodness, the loving return, with kindness toward mankind, of those who have erred, of which we know the prophets to be the heralds.

3. Or, knowledge and instruction: the one, as being the supplier, for men, of the knowledge of good and evil (“For I have set before your face,” it says, “life and death,” that one might choose to take the one, and flee the other, and not, through ignorance, fall into the worse as though it were good) — which Moses is recorded to have done, prefiguring in himself the symbols of the truth; the other, as being the punisher of the indifference of those who use opposites recklessly, as Israel did, whose instructor the great Elijah became, and who mingle indiscriminately things that should not be mixed, and who brings to a sense — as reason does — and to perception, the folly and hardness of heart of those altogether given over to evil.

4. Or, practice and contemplation: the one, as abolishing wickedness, and, by the display of the virtues, cutting off, entirely, in disposition, those led by it from the world, as Moses cut off Israel from Egypt, and teaching them to be led obediently by the divine laws of the Spirit; the other, as snatching them away from matter and form, as it did Elijah, by the chariot of fire, and bringing them to God through knowledge, and joining them, weighed down not at all by the flesh — on account of the abrogation of the law that is according to it — nor inflamed with any elation whatsoever over their achievements, on account of the dew of poverty of spirit joined to the true virtues.

5. Or again, learning, through Moses, that the mysteries concerning marriage and the unmarried state are with the Word — Moses not having been hindered, on account of marriage, from becoming a lover of the divine glory; and, through Elijah, one who remained altogether pure of marital union — as the Word and God, proclaiming to make His own, mystically, those who direct these things by reason, according to the laws divinely laid down concerning them.

6. Or, being assured, through the same, that the Word is faithfully Lord of life and death.

7. Or, learning, through the same, that all live to God, and that no one at all is dead to Him, except him who has put himself to death by sin, and, by voluntary inclination toward the passions, cut himself off from the Word.

8. Or again, being led to the light that the Word, as truth, is, and exists, in reference to which, the types of the mysteries both are and subsist, and are gathered into Him, as beginning and end, both of the legal and of the prophetic economy.

9. Or, that all things after God, and made from God — that is, the nature of the things that are, and time — being with God, are truly manifested together with Him who appears, so far as attainable, as cause and maker. Of these, the type of time would be Moses, not only as teacher of time and the number pertaining to it (for he was the first to number the time from the coming-to-be of the world), and as having become the leader of a temporal worship, but also as not entering bodily, together with those he had led by divine promise, into the rest — for such is the nature of time, not arriving at, or coming along in its motion with, those whom it is naturally wont to send on toward the divine life of the age to come. For it has Jesus as the successor of all time and age — even if the reasons of time otherwise remain in God, as the entrance, together with those who received the possession of the land, of the law given in the wilderness through Moses, mystically shows. For time is the age, when it comes to rest from motion, and the age is time, when it is measured, being borne along in motion — so that the age is, to define it summarily, time deprived of motion, and time is the age measured by motion.

And Elijah is the type of nature: not only as having kept the reasons proper to him unharmed, and the mindset according to judgment concerning them free from the change that comes from passion, but also as instructing, in judgment, like a kind of natural law, those who use nature contrary to nature. For nature too is such as this: it punishes those who attempt to corrupt it, in proportion as they practice living contrary to nature, since they no longer possess, naturally, the whole power of nature, having already been diminished in its completeness, and are for this reason punished, providing for themselves, by their own foolish and senseless inclination toward non-being, the deficiency of being.

10. And perhaps one who says that intelligible and sensible creation are held together by the Creator Word, through Moses and Elijah, does not miss the truth. Of these, Moses holds the reason of sensible creation, as having come to be under coming-to-be and corruption, as the history concerning him shows, proclaiming his birth and his death. For such is sensible creation too, having a known beginning of coming-to-be and expecting a determined end of corruption. And Elijah holds the reason of intelligible creation, as the history concerning him neither declares his birth, though he was begotten, nor determines that its corruption through death is to be expected, though he will die. For such is intelligible creation too, having neither a beginning of coming-to-be manifest to men, though it has come to be and begun and been brought from non-being into being, nor does it await an end of its being determined by corruption. For it has received, by nature, from God, who willed to create it thus, indestructibility.

42. Another Comprehensive Contemplation of the But if I do not seem more curious than is fitting, another great and divine mystery, I think, is disclosed to us from the divine Transfiguration, more brilliant than what has been said. For I think that the events on the mountain, at the Transfiguration — those God-befitting dramas — mystically set forth the two universal manners of theology: the leading one, I mean, simple and uncaused, which truly affirms the divine only through complete and total negation, and fittingly extols its transcendence through unspeakability; and the one that follows this, composite, which magnificently describes it, through affirmation, from its effects — by which, so far as it is possible for men to know, the knowledge that hovers concerning God and divine things leads us, through symbols fitted to us, to both manners, setting before us, through the pious consideration of the things that are, the reasons of both — teaching that every symbol of the former is beyond senseperception, and instructing that the great works of the latter are gathered from things according to sense-perception. For from the symbols beyond sense-perception we believe only that the truth that is above reason and mind is, not daring, or presuming, to consider or conceive at all concerning what it is, and how, and of what sort it is, and where and when, refusing the impiety of such an attempt; but from the things according to sense-perception, so far as is possible for us, taking, by understanding alone, faint conjectures of the knowledge concerning God, we say He is all things that we have recognized, as cause, from His works.

43. That the Lord Himself Became a Type of Himself, According to His Own Economy Through the Flesh Let us consider whether the symbol does not fittingly and wisely reside in each of the aforesaid manners, in accordance with that divine Transfiguration of the Lord. For, having been created, without change, in a form like ours, on account of His immeasurable love for mankind, He submitted to become a type and symbol of Himself, and to show forth, from Himself, Himself symbolically, and, through Himself appearing, to lead by the hand, toward Himself, invisibly, altogether hidden, all creation, and to grant, lovingly, to men, manifest tokens, through His deeds in the flesh, of that hidden and hyper-mystical infinity, beyond all things, and which cannot, by any of the things that are, in any manner whatsoever, be conceived or spoken.

44. Contemplation of the Flashing Face of the Lord The light of the Lord‘s face, then, which conquered the human sense-perception of the blessed apostles, is a symbol of the mystical theology by way of negation, according to which the blessed and holy divinity is, in essence, superineffable and super-unknowable, and infinitely exalted above all infinity, leaving not even a bare trace of comprehension to anything after itself, nor granting to any of the things that are the conception of how, and in what measure, it is both monad and triad — since the uncreated is not naturally able to be contained by creation, nor the infinite to be circumscribed by things that are finite.

45. Contemplation of the Shining Garments of the Lord And the affirmative manner is divided into that according to actual operation, and providence, and judgment: the one according to actual operation, which introduces the demonstration concerning God being Creator of all things from the beauty and greatness of creatures, being signified by the shining garments of the Lord, which the Word, taking beforehand as a pattern, showed forth in the visible creatures.

46. Another Contemplation of Moses And the manner according to providence is signified through Moses, as lovingly rescuing from error those held fast in wickedness, and wisely varying, for men, the manners of the departure from material and corruptible and bodily things to the divine and immaterial and incorporeal things, and grounding it skillfully in the divine laws.

47. Another Contemplation of Elijah And the manner of judgment is signified through Elijah, as, by word and deed, punishing some according to their worth, and cherishing others, fitting virtue or wickedness suitably to each, according to the underlying matter and quality. For all these things previously contemplated, in this passage of Holy Scripture, Moses and Elijah, so far as it was possible for those who typically depicted divine matters through themselves, each in his own time, actually worked out, according to history — bearing a resemblance to what has been said, in the manner of the contemplation.

48. Contemplation Concerning the Conversation with the Lord, at the Transfiguration, of Moses and Elijah And from their conversing with the Lord, and speaking of the departure which He was about to fulfill in Jerusalem, they were taught not only the outcome of the mysteries proclaimed beforehand concerning Him through the law and the prophets, but also, perhaps, that the end of the ineffable counsel of God concerning the universe, and of the divine economies pertaining to it, is not comprehensible by any of the things that are at all, except by His own great providence and judgment, through which the universe is orderly hastened toward the end foreknown to God alone — which all alike were ignorant of, as to what it is, and how, and of what sort, and when; but only the saints, who purified their souls with the virtues, and turned the whole inclination of their intellectual part toward divine things, truly and alone recognized that it would be — having heard, as it were, from the universal nature of visible things itself, through the manners by which it is naturally constituted, the end of its present good order, all but expressly proclaiming it. 49. a Natural Contemplation Concerning the World‘S Having, of Necessity, an End For, having surveyed, so far as was possible, scientifically, the present world, and the bodies within it variously fitted to one another, and having wisely unfolded the compressed reason in their understanding, they found that some of them are sensible and apprehending and universal, and that all are contained by all, and turned about, by the interchange of the particular quality proper to each.

For sensible things are naturally contained by the things that apprehend them, and the things that apprehend are contained by the sensible things, according to sense-perception, as apprehensible. And again, universal things are turned about, and corrupted, into particulars by alteration, and particulars into universals by analysis. And the corruption of some comes about through the coming-to-be of others. For the concurrence of universals with one another, producing the coming-to-be of particulars, is, by alteration, the corruption of one another; and again, the analysis of particulars, by the dissolution of their bond, into universals, introducing corruption, is the persistence and coming-to-be of universals. And, having learned that this is the constitution of the sensible world — the corruption and alteration, through one another, of the bodies within it, into one another, from which and in which it subsists — they were consequently taught, through the naturally unstable and alterable and now-thisway, now-that-way borne and turned-about universal property of the bodies of which it consists, that its consummation, coming to be of necessity, in due course, is not impossible; nor, reasoning rightly, is it a mark of rational understanding to call eternal that which does not always remain the same, without change and any alteration whatsoever, but is scattered and turned about in countless manners. 50. a Brief Contemplation Concerning the Age to Come, and What the Chasm Is Between God and Men, and What Lazarus and the Patriarch‘S Bosom Are From this, being above the things seen, they conjectured, in a magnanimous way, the end that will altogether come upon all things, in which none of the things that are any longer bears or is borne, nor is there any motion at all of anything, of anything whatsoever, an ineffable fixity having bounded the movement and motion of the things borne and moved.

Desiring, in mind, to attain this, while still clothed with corruptible flesh, they wisely crossed the chasm between God and men, having willingly ceased, in relation, from flesh and world. For truly a fearful and great chasm between God and men is the affection and disposition toward the body and this world. The privation of which Lazarus nobly and joyfully embraced (as the sickness and poverty show, the one making him a stranger to the world, the other to the body), and was deemed worthy to receive rest in the bosom of Abraham, leaving the rich man, who clung to these things, outside of relief — having profited nothing from the life through the flesh, except to be punished endlessly on account of it, as neither having the present life, which alone he desired and embraced, being naturally ungraspable in its flux, nor able to partake of the life to come, toward which he remained entirely idle and unloving — which is naturally joined only to those who have wholly loved it, and who, for the sake of longing for it, have willingly and gladly endured all painful things. And hearing “the bosom of Abraham,” let us understand the God who appeared to us according to the flesh from the seed of Abraham — the truly bountiful supplier of all, who apportions Himself, indivisibly, to all the worthy of grace, analogously to the quality and quantity of each one‘s virtue, as it were into various pastures, and who, on account of the natural, indivisible reality of His unity, is in no way at all divided together with those who partake, and yet, on account of the differing worth of those who partake, is marvelously manifested, distinctly, according to an ineffable union, by their participations — toward whom no one will be able to cross who rejoices in the softness of the flesh, and who is more pleased by the deceit of the world than by His blessed glory; nor will he who has been overcome by the world, and who wickedly rejoices in it, stand together with him who has overcome the world.

For divine justice has judged it unworthy that those who circumscribe the things that pertain to man by this life, and who pride themselves on wealth and bodily health and other dignities, and who judge this alone blessed, but count the good things of the soul as nothing, should partake of the divine and eternal goods, of which they took no thought at all, being ignorant, through their great zeal for material things, how much the virtues surpass wealth and health and the other temporary goods.

51. Contemplation Concerning the Virtues For the virtues alone, and together with other things, make man blessed. Together with other things, in breadth, as one of the wise in divine matters said; but alone, and by themselves, blessedness is conceived by circumscription — as two cubits; and the things in breadth, as a heap. For if you take away even two bushels from a heap, what remains still remains a heap; and if you take away from breadth-wise blessedness the goods of the body and of external things, but leave only the virtues, blessedness still remains, undiminished, even so. For virtue is, by itself, sufficient for happiness to him who has it. Every wicked man, then, is wretched, even if he has, all together, all the so-called goods of earth, being deprived of the virtues; and every good man is blessed, even if he is deprived of all the goods on earth, having the brightness of virtue, with which Lazarus, having rest in the bosom of Abraham, exults.

52. Another Contemplation of “If You Are Crucified as a And again: he is a grateful thief who is deemed worthy to be crucified together with Christ by the complete and entire driving out of the passions, and who is crucified with Him on the right, that is, who accomplishes every virtue with reason and knowledge, and keeps his life inoffensive to all men, and has no movement at all discordant with the gentleness of reason on account of severity. But an ungrateful thief is he who, for the sake of glory or of more substantial gains, deceitfully feigns, by outward manners, a life according to virtue, and pursues, toward outsiders, one single word of flattery in place of all virtue and knowledge, but toward his familiars is altogether crooked in judgment and hard to meet — whom one must, with understanding, silence sharply, for blaspheming the way of God. For perhaps he will cease slandering reason by his own conduct, through the admonition of him who rebukes him — just as the thief who fearlessly uttered blasphemy suffered upon the cross. For not answering back to him who rebukes has, as a sign, the silence of the acceptance of the word spoken. According to whichever, then, of the things said, we are crucified together with Christ, let us be diligent, as we are here, to propitiate the Word crucified with us, and to receive the unfailing promise of rest, made according to conscience, of the thoughts that afflict it — if indeed “today” indicates the present day of this age (“For today,” He says, “you shall be with me in paradise”), and “tomorrow” that of the age to come, in which one must expect no remission of sins, but only the repayment, fitting to each according to worth, for what has been lived.

53. Another Contemplation, Addressed to Those Perplexed Concerning the Saying in the Discourse on the Encaenia, “Higher Than the Lofty, and More Wonderful And again: that the first Sunday is a symbol of the future natural resurrection and incorruption, and the second bears the image of the future deification by grace. If, then, the enjoyment of good things is more precious than the habit purified of evils, and the habit of the perfection according to true knowledge is more precious than the healthy free choice according to virtue, and the transformation, in grace, toward God, according to deification, is more precious than natural incorruption — of which the first Sunday bears the type, and the second is the symbol — reasonably, being led by the Spirit, the teacher called the new Sunday higher than the lofty. 54. a Natural Contemplation, Through Which the Saints Were Taught Concerning God from Created Things Thus, then, the saints, having considered creation by contemplation, and its good order, and its proportion, and the usefulness that each thing provides to the whole, and how all things have been created perfectly, wisely, and providentially, according to the reason by which they were made, and that it is not possible for the things that have come to be to be otherwise well than they now are, needing no addition or subtraction to be otherwise well — were taught the Creator from His works.

And thus, too, from the persistence, and the order and position of the things that have come to be, and the conduct according to which all things stand, each according to its own species, unconfused and free of all disorder, and the motion of the stars, coming about in the same manner, never at all varying, and the cycle of the year, coming about in orderly fashion according to the return of the same things from the same to the same place, and the annual equality of the nights and the days, each increasing and decreasing in turn, with neither a greater nor a lesser measure of increase or decrease occurring to them — they believed that there is a Provider of the things that are, whom they also recognized as God and Creator of the universe. 55. a Natural Contemplation Concerning the World‘S Having a Beginning and Coming-to-Be, and Everything For who, beholding the beauty and greatness of God‘s creatures, will not immediately conceive Him as their originator, as the beginning and cause and Maker of the things that are, and run up, in understanding, to Him alone, leaving these things below — since it is not natural for the understanding to accomplish the whole crossing at once, and take hold, without mediation, of Him whom it has come to know through the mediation of His works — and will readily cast off his error concerning the world’s being without beginning, reasoning truly that everything in motion has certainly also begun its motion.

And every motion is not without beginning, since it is not without cause either. For that which moves has a beginning, and that which calls and draws toward that end toward which it is also moved has a cause. And if, of every motion of everything moved, that which moves is the beginning, and the end is the cause toward which the thing moved is borne (for nothing is moved without a cause), and none of the things that are is unmoved, except that which moves primarily (for that which moves primarily is altogether unmoved, since it is also without beginning) — then none of the things that are is without beginning, since it is also not unmoved. For all things that in any way are, are moved, apart from the sole and unmoved cause above all things: intellectual and rational things, gnostically and scientifically, since they are not selfknowledge or self-science. For their knowledge and their science are not their essence, but habits observed in addition to their essence, coming to be from the right judgment of mind and reason — I mean, their constitutive powers.

56. Contemplation Concerning the Contraction and Expansion of Essence, Quality, and Quantity, According to Which They Cannot Be Without Beginning But even essence itself, simply so called — not only that of things in coming-to-be and corruption, which is moved according to coming-to-be and corruption, but even that of all things that are — has been and is moved, by the reason and manner of expansion and contraction. For it moves from the most generic genus, through the more generic genera, into the species, into which and through which it is naturally divided, proceeding as far as the most specific species, in which its expansion is bounded, circumscribing its being toward the lower; and it is again gathered together from the most specific species, working backward through the more generic genera, up to the most generic genus, in which its contraction is bounded, defining its being toward the upper — and thus, being circumscribed from both sides, from above and from below, it is shown to have a beginning and an end, being altogether unable to admit the reasoning of infinity. And likewise quantity too — not only that of things in coming-to-be and corruption, which is moved, in every manner in which it is naturally observed, according to increase and decrease, but all quantity of all things, moved by the reason of relaxation and intensification, and specified, by contraction, in its particular differences — is circumscribed, not having the power of being poured out infinitely, and is again gathered together, working backward, releasing what belongs to it, but not the connatural species.

And likewise, quality too — not only that of things in comingto-be and corruption, which is moved according to alteration, but all quality of all things, moved by the changeable and dispersible nature of its differences — admits expansion and contraction. But no one of sound mind would say that which is naturally able to be dispersed and gathered, in reason or in operation, is altogether unmoved. And if not unmoved, then not without beginning either; and if not without beginning, then plainly not without coming-to-be, but, just as that which is moved is known to have begun its motion, so also that which has come to be is known to have begun its coming-tobe into being, having received its being and its being moved from the sole and one unbegotten and unmoved. But that which has begun, with respect to the coming-to-be of its being, can in no way be without beginning.

57. DEMONSTRATION OF “EVERYTHING WHATSOEVER, APART FROM GOD, IS ALTOGETHER IN PLACE, AND FOR THIS REASON OF NECESSITY ALSO IN TIME, AND THAT WHAT IS IN PLACE HAS ALTOGETHER BEGUN TO BE, But that I may leave off saying that the very being of the things that are, having a manner of being, and not simply — which is the first form of circumscription — is a strong and great argument for the demonstration that the things that are have begun according to essence and coming-to-be, who does not know that, of everything that is in any way whatsoever, except the divine and sole being, which properly exists even above being itself, the “where” is preconceived, along with which the “when” is altogether and in every way necessarily conceived together? For it is not possible to conceive the “where” as determined by privation from the “when” (for these belong to things that exist together, since they too are among the things not without one another); nor is the “when,” which is naturally conceived together with it, in any way determined by privation from the “where.” And under the “where” all things are shown to be, as being in place. For the whole is not above the whole of the universe (for it is somehow both unreasonable and impossible for the universe to be decreed as beyond its own whole), but has, by itself, in itself, its own circumscription — after the infinite power of the all-causing One, which circumscribes all things — namely, its own outer limit.

Which is also the place of the universe, as some also define place, saying: place is the periphery outside the universe, or the position outside the universe, or the limit of the container in which the contained is contained. And they will also be shown, together, to be under the “when,” as being altogether in time, since all things that have their being after God do not have it simply, but in some manner. And for this reason they are not without beginning. For everything that admits, in any respect, the reason of “how,” even if it is, was not. Wherefore, when we say the Divine is, we do not say how it is; and for this reason we say both “is” and “was” of it simply, indeterminately, and unqualifiedly. For the Divine is not receptive of any reason or thought, according to which, even predicating of it that it is, we do not say it is being. For being is from it, but it is not being itself. For it is above being itself, both that spoken and conceived of as “how” and simply. But if the things that are have their being “how,” but not simply, then, just as they will admit being under the “where,” on account of the position and limit of the natural reasons within them, so too they will admit altogether being under the “when,” on account of their beginning.

58. Demonstration That It Cannot Be Infinite, and for This Reason Nothing Without Beginning, If It Has Its Being According to a Quantity in Multitude And again: if the essence of all things, being many, cannot altogether be infinite (for the quantity in multitude of the many things itself has a limit, circumscribing the reason both of its being and of its manner of being — for the essence of all things is not unrelated), then clearly the hypostasis of each particular thing will not be without circumscription either, being circumscribed with respect to one another, by reason, in number and in essence. And if none of the things that are is free of circumscription, then all things that are have plainly received, analogously to themselves, both the “to be at some time” and the “to be somewhere.” For without these nothing at all will be able to be — not essence, not quantity, not quality, not relation, not action, not passion, not motion, not habit, not any other of those things by which those skilled in such matters enclose the universe. Nothing of the things that are, then, is without beginning, for which something else can be preconceived; nor is anything uncircumscribed, for which something else can be conceived together with it. And if none of the things that are is without beginning or uncircumscribed, as the argument has shown, following the nature of the things that are, then there was altogether once a time when some of the things that are was not; and if it was not, it altogether came to be, if indeed it was not.

For it is not possible for both to hold — both to be, and to come to be — without change and alteration. For if it was, and came to be, it was changed, having passed over, by coming-to-be, into what it was not; or it was altered, receiving an addition of beauty of which it had been deprived. And everything that is changed, or altered, or deficient in species, cannot be self-complete. And that which is not self-complete will altogether need something else, that which supplies it with completeness, and such a thing is complete, but not self-complete, on account of having its completeness not by nature but by participation. And that which needs something else for its completion will need it much more for its very being. For if essence is superior to species, as they say, and that being was able to supply this to itself, or simply to have it — that very thing which they wish to call it — how did it not suffice for having, or supplying to itself, the lesser — I mean, species? But if it did not suffice for supplying to itself, or simply having, that being — whether they wish to call it essence or matter, they who dare to attach the property of being without beginning to things after God and from God (for we are not disputing about this) — how could it have been able to have the greater — I mean, being itself — either simply, or from itself, when it was unable to have the lesser?

But if matter was in no way able to have the lesser from itself or simply, much more will it be unable to have being itself, either simply or in some manner, from itself. Is it not the case, then, that, as has been shown, that which was too weak to have the lesser — I mean, species — could not, even in any manner whatsoever, have had the greater — I mean, being itself — either? And if this is so, then being, and species too, have altogether been granted by God to the things that are, since they exist; and if all essence, and all matter and species, is from God, no one who is not altogether deprived of sober reasoning would endure to say that matter is without beginning or without coming-to-be, knowing God to be the Maker and Creator of the things that are.

59. DEMONSTRATION THAT EVERYTHING IN MOTION, OR SOMETHING ELSE DIFFERING IN ESSENCE, CANNOT BE INFINITE, AND THAT THE DYAD IS NEITHER A BEGINNING, NOR WITHOUT BEGINNING, AND THAT THE MONAD ALONE And again: if matter existed, as some say, it plainly did not come to be; and if it did not come to be, it is not moved either; and if it is not moved, it did not begin to be either; and if it did not begin to be, it is altogether without beginning; and if without beginning, also infinite; and if infinite, altogether also unmoved (for the infinite is altogether unmoved, since that which is not bounded has nowhere to be moved); and if this is so, then there are altogether two infinite and beginningless and unmoved things: God and matter — which is impossible. For a dyad can be neither infinite, nor without beginning, nor unmoved, nor able to be, at all, the beginning of anything, being circumscribed by union and by division: by union, as having, as its existence, the composition of monads, by which, as parts, it is contained, and into which, as parts, it can be divided (but nothing divisible or being divided, or composite or being composed, whether by nature or by position or by any other manner that can be conceived, but not even the very thing simply called division or composition, will be able to be infinite, since it is not simple and single, nor unnumbered or numbering or counted together, nor simply free of any relation whatsoever — for all these are observed in relation, but the infinite is unrelated, having nothing at all joined to it in relation); and by division, as being moved by number, from that from which it began and by which it is contained, since it does not have being by nature and unrelated.

For every dyad and every monad, contributing to it as a part, is constituted as being by number, according to which the monads within it, from one another, are deprived of the uncircumscribed. No one having any share of reasoning would say that which has, from eternity, something differing according to essence contemplated together, or considered together, with it, is infinite, knowing that the argument concerning the infinite will altogether collapse for him who thinks thus. For the infinite, in every respect and every manner, is infinite: in essence, in power, in operation, at both limits — I mean, the upper and the lower — that is, in beginning and end. For the infinite is uncontainable in essence, and inconceivable in power, and uncircumscribed in operation, and without beginning from above, and without end from below, and, to speak more truly and simply, wholly indeterminate, as nothing at all being able to be conceived together with it, in any one of the enumerated manners. For according to whatever reason or manner we should say something else, differing from it in essence, could be set alongside it, we take away from it, together, the whole reason of its whole infinity. And if nothing can be infinite that has, from eternity, coexisting with it something else differing in essence, then the dyad can in no way be infinite. For the monads within it, coexisting with one another by juxtaposition, bound one another, neither permitting the other to be seen as indeterminate, but each having the other adjacent, not transcended, and they reasonably take away from one another the reason of infinity.

And if, as has been shown, the dyad cannot be infinite, then it is plainly not without beginning either; for the monad is the beginning of every dyad. And if not without beginning, then not unmoved either; for it is moved by number, taking its being from monads by union, and into them by division. And if not unmoved, then it cannot be the beginning of anything else either. For that which is moved is not a beginning, but from a beginning — namely, from that which moves it. But the monad alone is properly unmoved, since it is neither number, nor countable, nor counted (for the monad is neither part nor whole nor relation), and is properly without beginning, since it has nothing older than itself, from which, being moved, it receives its being a monad, and is properly infinite, since it has nothing coexisting with it or counted together with it, and is properly a beginning, since it is the cause of every number and of every thing counted and countable, being exempt from every relation and every part and whole, and, properly and truly, primarily and solely and simply — but not in this way — being the first monad, and alone. And in saying this we do not signify the blessed Divinity itself as it is, being infinitely, in every respect and manner, altogether inaccessible and unapproachable to mind and to every reason and name, but we furnish for ourselves a foundation for faith in it that is passable and attainable and suitable for us.

For the divine discourse does not, by the name of “monad,” declare altogether representative of the divine and blessed essence, but indicative of its complete simplicity, which is beyond all quantity and quality and every relation whatsoever, that we may know that it is not some whole made of certain parts, nor is it any part of some whole. For the divinity is above every division and composition, and part and whole, since it is without quantity; and it is removed from every existence according to position, and from the notion that determines how it is, since it is without quality; and it is free and released from every connection and kinship with anything else whatsoever — for it is unrelated, having nothing before it or with it or after it, as being beyond all things, and not arranged, according to any reason or manner, with any of the things that are. And this, perhaps, the great and divine Dionysius had in mind when he said: “Wherefore the monad hymned, and the triad, the divinity above all things, is neither monad nor triad, as known by us or by anyone else; but that we might truly hymn both its super-unified reality and its divinitygenerating power, we have named, by the triadic and unitary divine name, that which is beyond every name, and, to the things that are, that which is super-essential.”

No one, then, will be able to say that a dyad, or a multitude, is without beginning, or is altogether a beginning of anything, who has resolved to live piously, in truth. For one God will be revealed to him, through the whole contemplative power and science according to reason and mind, being beyond all infinity, and known to none of the things that are at all, in any respect, except by faith alone, and this from His works, that He is — not having been discerned as to what He is at any time — and the maker and creator of every age and time, and of all things in age and time, in no way at all conceiving anything, in any manner, existing together with Him from eternity, knowing that neither of two things existing together with one another from eternity, according to existence, can be the maker of the other. For this is altogether unreasonable and inadmissible, and, to those who have understanding, laughable, that of things having their being together, one should be the maker of the other. But he receives that all things came to be, from God who ever is, from non-being, completely and wholly, but not partially and imperfectly, as having been wisely brought forth from a cause of infinite knowledge and infinite power, and that all things subsist in Him, as guarded and held together in an all-powerful foundation, and that all things return to Him, as each to its own limit, as the great Areopagite Dionysius somewhere says.

60. a Demonstrative Contemplation That God‘S Providence Is, by Nature, Over All Things And he will be persuaded that He is also the Provider of the things that are, through which he was taught that He is also God — judging it just and reasonable that there is no other guardian and caretaker of the things that are than the sole Creator of the things that are. For the very persistence of the things that are, and their order and position and motion, and the cohesion of the extremes with one another through the mediating things, none of them being harmed by their opposition to one another, and the inclination of the parts toward the wholes, and the union, throughout, of the wholes with the parts, and the unmixed distinction of the parts themselves from one another according to the particular difference of each, and the unconfused union according to the unvarying identity in the wholes, and the combination and distinction of all things with all things (not to speak of particulars), and the succession, ever preserved, according to species, of all things and of each, none of the proper reason of nature at all being corrupted or confused with another, or confusing another — shows clearly that all things are held together by the providence of God who made them. For it is not possible for God, being good, not to be altogether also beneficent; nor, being beneficent, not to be altogether also provident; and for this reason, caring in a God-befitting manner for the things that are, He wisely bestows upon them, as it were, both being and guardianship.

For providence, according to the God-bearing Fathers, is the care that comes from God to the things that are. And they define it also thus: providence is the will of God, through which all the things that are receive fitting government. And if it is the will of God — that I may use the very words of the teachers — it is altogether necessary, according to right reason, that the things that come to be, come to be, not admitting a better order. He, then, who has chosen to have the truth as guide, and who has truly known Him as maker of the things that are, will be led to say that He is, in every manner, also provident of the things He has made — if indeed, even in the case of animals, when we cast our intellectual power upon the things that are, by rational approaches, we find an impression not ignoble, conjecturing what is above reason. For seeing them too naturally caring for their own offspring, according to species, we too, taking courage, piously determine for ourselves, with pious boldness, the reasoning that God alone is the provider of all things that are — and not of some, but not of others, as some of those who have philosophized about external things say, but of all things together, according to one and unvarying will of goodness, both universal and particular things — knowing that if particular things are corrupted, through not obtaining the fitting providence and guardianship, universal things too will be corrupted together with them (for universal things are naturally constituted from particular things) — setting before ourselves the rational demonstration concerning this, which, by a reasonable conversion, rightly guides toward the truth.

For if universal things subsist in particular things, not at all admitting the reason of being and subsisting by themselves, it is plain to everyone that, if particular things are corrupted, universal things will not stand either. For the parts are in the wholes, and the wholes both are and subsist in the parts. And no argument will contradict this — except that, as though bound by the truth, even they themselves, unwillingly, proclaim the power of providence, and establish that it extends through all things, by the very things through which they strove to argue otherwise. For, saying that providence leads only universal things, they have escaped their own notice in also saying there is providence of particular things, being of necessity led, against their will, to the truth which they are eager to flee. For if they say universal things are deemed worthy of providence for the sake of their persistence, they thereby introduce that particular things are deemed worthy of it much more, since in them is the persistence and subsistence of universal things. For these are introduced together with one another, on account of their indissoluble natural relation to one another, and, when one is sought for its persistence, the other too is not alien to this guardianship, and again, if one falls from the guardianship for persistence, it follows that the other does not obtain it either.

And besides, it is said, in three manners, that God does not provide for all the things that are. For either they say He is ignorant of the method of providence, or does not will it, or is not able. But truly, according to the common notions of all, God, being good and super-good, altogether and always wills good things, and for all; and, being wise and super-wise, or rather the fountain of all wisdom, He altogether knows what is advantageous; and, being powerful, or rather infinitely powerful, He altogether operates, in a God-befitting manner, in all things, what has been known and willed by Him as good and advantageous, as good and wise and powerful, shown forth through all things, both visible and invisible, both universal and particular, both small and great, and all things that have being according to every kind of essence whatsoever, in no way falling short of the infinity according to goodness and wisdom and power, and preserving all things, according to the reason of the being of each, toward themselves and toward one another, according to the indissoluble relational harmony and persistence of all things. And why do we not consider that nature itself, by itself, is clearly a teacher that there is providence over all things? For nature itself gives no small proof that the knowledge of providence has been naturally implanted in us, whenever, as it were untaught, pushing us toward God through prayers in sudden circumstances, it prepares us to seek salvation from that source.

For, seized suddenly by necessity, involuntarily, before we can even consider anything, we cry out to God — as though providence itself were drawing us toward itself, apart from reasonings, and conquering the speed of our intellectual power, and showing forth the divine help as stronger than all things. For nature would not lead us, involuntarily, to that which does not have a natural basis. And everything that follows naturally upon anything, as is unclear to no one, has a strong and unconquerable power for the demonstration of the truth. And if, because the reason of providence concerning particulars is incomprehensible to us — as indeed it is, according to, “O the unsearchable depth of His judgments, and untraceable His ways” — they should say that, for this reason, there is no providence, they will not speak rightly, in my judgment. For if there is much difference, incomprehensible, between each and every man, and the change of each man with respect to himself, in ways of life and manners and judgments and choices and desires, and sciences and needs and pursuits, and the very reasonings according to the soul, being nearly infinite, and changing along with all the things that befall each day and hour (for man is this quick-turning animal, changing sharply along with the occasions and needs) — it is altogether necessary that providence too, having foreknowingly comprehended, by circumscription, all particulars, should appear differing and various and manifold, and, extending together with the incomprehensibility of the things multiplied, should be fitted, suitably, to each, with respect to each thing and thought, even down to the bare movements constituted according to soul and body.

If, then, the difference of particular things is incomprehensible, and the reason of the providence fitting to them is reasonably infinite — yet, because the reason of the providence of particulars is infinite and unknown to us, we ought not to make our own ignorance an abolition of the allwise care for the things that are, but rather, without examination, in a God-befitting and advantageous manner, to hymn and accept all the works of providence, and to believe that the things that come to be, come to be well, even if the reason is unattainable to us. And in saying all things, I mean the things of providence — not the things done wickedly by us according to the reason of what is in our power. For these are altogether alien to the reason of providence. This, then, is the signified manner concerning the power and grace, according to reason and contemplation, of the saints, set forth by this great teacher, so far as possible, conjecturally, but not declaratively (for our mind falls far short of the measure of the truth concerning him), having run beneath the discourse through the things said, and, as it were, tracked it, I say this only by way of conjecture. 61. a Different Contemplation of the Material Dyad Passed Beyond by the Saints, and What the Unity Conceived in the Trinity Is And by “coming to be above the material dyad,” on account of the unity conceived in the Trinity, “coming to be above matter and form, of which bodies consist,” I suppose he means the saints, or the flesh and matter, which he said, having passed through, they were deemed worthy to be joined with God and to be mingled with the most pure light — that is, having laid aside the soul‘s relation to the flesh, and, through the flesh, to matter, or, to speak generally, having laid aside the natural kinship of all sentient essence toward sensible things, and having laid hold, genuinely, only of divine desire, on account of the unity conceived, as I said, in the Trinity.

For, having known the soul to be set in the middle between God and matter, and to have unifying powers toward both — I mean, the mind toward God, and senseperception toward matter — they entirely shook off senseperception, together with sensible things, with respect to its relational operation in disposition, but made it, according to the mind alone, ineffably akin to God alone — toward whom, being wholly, unknowingly, united, the whole soul, as an image of the archetype, according to mind and reason and spirit, having beheld, so far as attainable, by likeness, the resemblance, were mystically taught the unity conceived in the Trinity. And perhaps the teacher also called irascibility and desire a material dyad, on account of their being material powers of the passible part of the soul, and rising up in faction against reason, and being able to scatter the mind into many things, unless one skillfully restrains and yokes them to himself from the beginning. And whoever should master them, and persuade them to be borne fittingly toward what is needful, yoked in slavery to the dominion of reason, or should altogether leave them behind entirely, and cleave alone to the unswerving, gnostic enchantment of love, through reason and contemplation, and should be contracted, from the many, toward the one and only pure and simple and undivided movement of the most manly power according to desire — according to which he has fixed, philosophically, for himself, unfailingly, stability, in the sameness of the evermotion according to desire, concerning God — is truly blessed, having attained not only the true and blessed union with the Holy Trinity, but also the unity conceived in the Holy Trinity, having become, according to power, simple and undivided and uniform, toward the simple and undivided being, and, in the habit of the virtues, imitating, so far as attainable, the goodness that is ever the same, and laying aside the property of the naturally divisible powers, on account of the grace of the God united to him.

62. Exposition Concerning the Passible Part of the Soul, and Its Universal Divisions and Subdivisions For the passible part of the soul is divided, as they say, into that which is obedient to reason, and that which is not obedient to reason. And that which is not obedient to reason they divide into the nutritive faculty, which they call natural, and the natural faculty, which they call vital — of which neither is led, obedient to reason; and it is not called obedient to reason, since it is not naturally suited to be led by reason. For growing, or being healthy, or living, is not in our power. And that which is obedient to reason is divided into two: the desiring faculty and the irascible faculty. And they call it obedient to reason, because it is naturally suited, in the earnest, to be led and subjected by reason. And again, they divide the desiring faculty into pleasure and pain. For desire, when it succeeds, produces pleasure; when it fails, produces pain. And again, in another manner, they say desire, being divided, makes, together with itself, four species in all: desire, pleasure, fear, and pain. And since, of the things that are, some are good and some are base, and these are either present or future, they called the anticipated good desire, and the present good pleasure, and again the anticipated evil fear, and the present evil pain — so that pleasure and desire are, and are observed, concerning good things, whether truly existing or supposed, and pain and fear concerning base things.

And again, they divide pain into four: distress, burden, envy, pity. And they say distress is a pain that produces speechlessness in those in whom it comes to be, on account of the passage into the depth of the reasoning faculty; and burden is a pain that weighs down and troubles, at unwished-for occurrences; and envy is pain at the good things of others; and pity is pain at the evils of others. And they said every pain is evil, by its own nature. For even if the earnest man grieves at the evils of others, as merciful, it is not primarily by intention, but consequently, by circumstance. But the contemplative man remains dispassionate even in these things, having joined himself to God, and estranged himself from the things present here. And again, they divide fear into six: hesitation, shame, disgrace, consternation, astonishment, anguish. And they say hesitation is fear of future action; and shame is fear at the anticipation of blame; and disgrace is fear at a shameful deed done; and consternation is fear from a great impression; and astonishment is fear that removes sense-perception, from great things heard; and anguish is fear of falling short — that is, of failure. For fearing to fail, we are in anguish. And some also call it cowardice. And they say irascibility, again, is a boiling of the blood around the heart, from a desire for retaliation for grief.

And they divide this too into three: anger, which some have called bile and wrath, and rancor, and grudge-bearing. And they say anger is irascibility having the beginning and movement toward operation, or irascibility being put into operation; and bile is vengeance through another upon him who has caused grief; and wrath is the requital, by the aggrieved himself, upon him who caused the grief; and rancor is irascibility for the long term (it is named from remaining, and being retained in memory); and grudge-bearing is irascibility watching for an opportunity for revenge — this too is named from lying in wait. And they divide each of these too into many other things. Which, if one should wish to hand down in writing by exact examination, would gather a great deal of discourse and consume much time, so as to be unbearable to readers on account of its abundance. It is a great and truly wondrous thing, then, and needing much attentiveness and diligence, and, before these, divine help: to be able, first, to master the innate powers of the material dyad — I mean, irascibility and desire — and their division, and blessed is he who has been able to lead them readily wherever seems fitting to reason, until, through ethical philosophy, he is purified of his former reasonings in practical matters.

63. Contemplation from Scripture That the Gnostic Must Not Join the Reason of Wisdom to the Law of Nature, and What the Addition of the Letter Alpha to the Name of Then, further, that great Abraham, having already, by having his reasoning faculty exercised concerning divine matters, according to that Isaac, come to be above them and entirely to reject them — as Hagar and Ishmael — being taught by the divine voice that comes bearing knowledge, that the divine offspring, according to mind, of free knowledge in the Spirit, joined together with the slave-born seed of the flesh, cannot obtain the blessed promise, which is the grace of deification set before those who love the Lord according to hope — which he had already, typically, laid hold of beforehand, being mystically joined, through faith, to the reason concerning the monad, according to which, having become uniform — or rather, one from many — he alone was magnificently gathered, wholly, to God alone, bringing with him no type at all of any scattered knowledge whatsoever concerning anything else. Which I think the power of the letter alpha, given as an addition to the name, signifies. Wherefore he was also made father of those brought to God through faith, by privation of all things after God, as being able to have the same types, in faith, in the Spirit, as those which the father has, resembling those of the children.

64. Contemplation of Moses Concerning the Sandals This, perhaps, at the beginning of the gnostic way, great Moses too was taught by the divine voice, when he approached to see the light mystically appearing in the bush, which said, “Loose the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you stand is holy ground” — signifying, I think, that the soul, about to make the gnostic journey, through contemplation, to the understanding of things above the world, must be terribly released, in disposition, from all bodily things, and have the complete alienation from the former life in relation to the flesh, through the laying aside of the sandals.

65. Contemplation on Parts of the Sacrifices This, again, that same most divine Moses perhaps also indicated in the ordinances of the sacrifices, commanding that the fat, and the kidneys, and the breast, and the lobe of the liver of the sacrificial victims, be removed — that one must remove the generic powers of the passions within us, I mean irascibility and desire, the truly material dyad, and their operations, and melt them by the divine fire of the mystical power that comes through knowledge — desire being signified through the kidneys, and its operation, that is, pleasure, through the fat; and irascibility through the breast, and its operation through the lobe of the liver, in which the bitter and sharpest bile is fixed. 66. a Brief Contemplation of the Various Leprosy This, again, in the passage concerning leprosy, I think, wisely intimates, through symbolic riddles, dividing the mark of leprosy into four kinds — white and greenish and reddishyellow and dark — through which both the irascible and desiring faculties, divided into the species under them, are shown: desire, through white and greenish, being signified as divided into pleasure and pain; and irascibility, through reddish-yellow and dark, being cut into anger and rancor and the hidden evil-working of hypocrisy. For these are the first kinds of the passions under them, as they say, and the most originative of all the offspring of irascibility and desire, by which the diseased soul cannot, so long as it is spotted by them, be counted among those deemed worthy of the divine encampment.

67. Contemplation of Phinehas and Those Slain by Him This, I think, wondrous Phinehas too hinted at by his own zeal. For, having together transfixed the Midianite woman and the Israelite man with the spear, he mystically signified that matter, by the form, and desire, by irascibility, and alien pleasure, by the passionate reasoning — through the power of the high priest‘s word — must altogether be driven together out of the soul. For form holds a relation to matter, as irascibility does to desire, giving it, by proximity, motion, it being by itself unmoved; and as reasoning does to pleasure, being naturally suited to give it form, it being, by its own reason, without form or shape. And the very power of the names shows this. For the Midianite woman is named Cozbi, which is “my titillation,” and the Israelite Zimri, which is “my song,” that is, “my being lifted up.” Whenever, then, the reasoning faculty of the soul, having turned away from divine meditation and gazing, and having been lifted up, is entangled with the material titillation of the flesh in the furnace of sin, it altogether needs the zealous word of the high priest, for the destruction of those thus wickedly entangled with one another, and for the turning away of the divine indignation that is being brought.

68. Concerning “Do Not Give the Holy Things to the Dogs,” and “Neither Staff, nor Bag, nor Sandals” This too, as it seems to me, the Lord Himself perhaps intimated — in the one place where He says, “Do not give the holy thing to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine,” calling perhaps “holy” the intellective element within us, as an image of divine glory, which He charged us not to allow, wickedly barked at by the movements of irascibility, to be thrown into confusion; and calling “pearls” its divine and radiant thoughts, by which everything precious is by nature adorned, which He commanded us to keep unstained and free from the unclean passions of material desire. And in the other place, where, sending forth His holy disciples to preach, and describing how they should be unencumbered and without excess, He says, among other things, “Take neither bag for the road, nor staff, nor sandals for your feet” — as though one who has laid hold of the lofty journey of knowledge ought to be free of every material burden, and pure of every passionate disposition according to desire and irascibility, as the bag and the staff make plain, the one signifying desire, the other irascibility; and above all, pure of the naked evil-working of hypocrisy, which, like a sandal, covers over the track of one‘s life and conceals the soul’s passion beneath a semblance of gentleness — which the foolish Pharisees put on, having the form of piety but not piety itself, and, though they supposed they went undetected, were exposed and instructed by the Word.

69. Contemplation of the Lunatic From this same material dyad — I mean irascibility and desire — the Lord again, I think, freed the lunatic; or rather, since the evil demon wished to destroy him by fire, that is irascibility, and by water, that is desire, He restrained and abolished his maddened frenzy (for the relation of men mastered by material things to what comes to be and passes away is no different from that of the moon). Taking hold of this relation, the demon that stirs up the passions does not cease casting the mind, as it were, into water and fire — desire and irascibility — and drowning it there, until the Word of God, coming near, shall drive out the material and evil spirit (by which the old and earthly man is characterized), and shall free the one so afflicted from the evil tyranny, restoring and granting him his natural selfmastery, by which the new man, created according to God, is shown forth. Thus, then, all the saints, having genuinely laid hold of the divine and unerring Word, passed through this present age, fixing the footprint of the soul upon none of the pleasant things within it. For having, quite fittingly, gazed intently upon the loftiest of the accounts concerning God attainable by men — I mean of His goodness and love, by which God, moved (if indeed one may rightly speak of “movement” in the case of Him who alone is unmoved — rather let us say “will,” which moves all things and brings them into being and sustains them, while itself never being moved at all) — was taught to give being to the things that are, and to grant them well-being — by these same accounts the saints wisely fashioned themselves, bearing in a manner easy to imitate, through the virtues, the visible likeness of the invisible and unseen beauty of the divine majesty.

For this reason they became good, and lovers of God, and lovers of man, compassionate and merciful, and were shown to hold one single disposition of love toward the whole race, by which, having firmly maintained throughout their whole life the virtue most excellent of all — I mean humility — which preserves what is good and destroys what is contrary to it, they became in no way whatsoever vulnerable to the temptations that assail us, whether voluntary and within our power, or involuntary and not within our power, withering the uprisings of the former through self-control, and shaking off the assaults of the latter through endurance. For, assailed from both sides, by glory and by dishonor, they remained unshaken, standing immovable toward both — neither wounded by insults, because of their voluntary selfabasement, nor admitting glory, because of their surpassing appropriation of poverty. Whence there was in them no anger, no envy, no strife, no hypocrisy, no guile, no ironic and thievish affection that, through deceit, draws the visible form toward something else — that most destructive of all the passions — no desire for the things that seem splendid in this life, nor anything else belonging to the wicked multitude of the passions; no threats stretched out against them by enemies, nor any manner of death held dominion over them. Wherefore they were rightly judged blessed, both by God and by men, because they made themselves manifest images of the ineffable and resplendent glory that is to appear, according to the grace of the great gift of God — so that, rejoicing as in things familiar to them, in the principles of the virtues, or rather in God, for whose sake they persevered in dying daily, they might be united to Him in whom the principles of all good things pre-exist, as in an ever-flowing spring, according to one simple and unitary compass of all things, and toward whom He draws all who rightly and according to nature make use of the powers given them for this end.

70. from Oration 42 of the Theologian, Concerning What He Recalled of Blessed Job, on “the Things That Follow Are Small, and Were Arranged for the Sake of Small Comparing them to the exaltation that came to Job from God, he called, I think, the bodily things given after the struggles of temptation “small,” as being in no way comparable to the eternal things. And he says they were arranged “for the sake of small ones,” meaning evidently those small in gnostic understanding, who are easily scandalized in matters concerning providence and judgment, and are shaken even in piety itself. Concerning these, I think, the Lord says in the Gospels, “Whoever scandalizes one of these little ones” — who, whenever they see a righteous man sick, or in poverty, or otherwise afflicted (and even those who are weaker in general condemn the whole matter as unjust — how much more, then, in the sudden reversal of Job, who by universal admission was held to be righteous?) — would have suffered this, had not his former splendor and glory been restored to him bodily, twofold. Concerning these things, then, the teacher has said, “arranged for the sake of small ones.” 71. from the Same Oration, Concerning “He Cleanses the Temple of the God-Hucksters” Neither, as some have supposed, does this celebrated teacher, in these words, show our Lord and God to be more severe than the blessed father Athanasius — far from it — nor indeed does he give the preference to Saint Athanasius, on the ground that the one used a scourge while the other used only speech, in saying that each cleansed the temple of the god-hucksters.

Thus, as these interpreters say, one of two things must necessarily be supposed: either that our Lord and God was ignorant of the gentler method of healing, or that Saint Athanasius, not knowing the ways of spiritual care, resorted to an untimely kindness. But since the discerning reason, stirred up within us concerning the things we have done, works in us, as in a kind of living and ensouled temple, a repentance proportionate to our offenses — by which Christ, God and Word, is ever striking us when we sin, holding, as it were, a plaited scourge, namely our own conscience entangled by absurd thoughts and deeds — while Saint Athanasius gently led those who had stumbled toward correction, as one himself clothed in the flesh of weakness — for this reason, I think, this godly-minded teacher made use in this manner of persuasive speech. 72. from the Same Author‘S Extemporaneous Oration Against the Eunomians, Concerning “There Are Some Who Itch in Hearing and in Tongue” Those who have devoted themselves to letters, and who make it no small point of pride to know their precise meanings, declare that a fitting word ought to be assigned to each thing, one that clearly represents, in whatever manner it happens to be used, the property peculiar to the thing signified and to nothing else; and they declare that those are said to “itch in hearing and in tongue” who wish always to learn or say something newer, who ever delight in novelties, who shift, to speak scripturally, the boundaries their fathers set, who take pleasure in the recent and the strange, and who rise up in scorn against the customary and the long familiar and the unchanging, as though it were stale and trodden-down and worth nothing, welcoming instead, gladly, whatever is more newfangled, even should it happen to be false and bring no benefit that passes over into the soul.

It is for the sake of this itching that every pious discourse and every saving labor is sung, and written, and practiced — the one armed against ignorance, the other against pleasure: the one, that by excising the maimings of ignorance it may join to God, through knowledge, those who possess the truth, who for this reason delight in learning, and, having sent the mind above things seen and things thought, may enchant it with the ineffable love of divine beauty, and fasten it there with longing, unable to be carried anywhere else — or rather, unable to bear being so carried; the other, that it may knock out the nails by which the soul‘s longing and vigor toward God were, through the ancient disobedience, fastened to matter and to things that perish, and may free those held fast by evil, and make them genuine disciples of virtue, and render the soul’s attachment to the good unshaken against everything that seems to hinder it — teaching, for the turning away from pleasure, which deceitfully fawns upon and softens the firmness of resolve through the things not in our power, and persuades us to choose present things over future, and things seen over things thought, self-control; and, for the laying aside of fear and cowardice, which through the same means suggests that the irremediable things not in our power are greater than human strength, and contrives by the bringing-in of terrors to overpower right reason by force, endurance, and the courage that is completed from it — that unyielding and unconquered habit toward every pleasure of the things in our power and every pain of the things not in our power.

The teacher called those of whom he speaks “itching in hearing and tongue,” since every discourse naturally is uttered and put forth through the tongue, and is heard and learned through hearing. But if we should wish to understand what is said according to another sense, “itching in hearing and tongue” may perhaps mean those who are eager to hear and to speak only for the sake of reproach and slander or abuse of others, who judge it a mark of distinction ignorantly to exalt themselves against every word and every man, and who, before the one they suspect and envy has even spoken, are already convulsed in spirit, thrusting forward, as it were, their soul, and preparing their hearing and their tongue for the hunting of some syllable or word — not that they may rejoice, but that they may find fault and have material for their tongue‘s malicious itch against him. This is what the enemies of the truth at that time did against this holy man — leaping forward, rising up in advance, and, before anything had even been said, reacting to what was about to be said; just as war-horses and racehorses, before the contests and the trumpet, prick up their ears straight, and strike the ground with their feet, and scratch at it with their hooves, and rouse themselves for the race, and often anticipate the whip that is about to drive them on — except that no blame attaches to horses, on account of their natural irrationality, for not waiting for the fitting moments of the contest, which the sound of the trumpet and the stroke of the whip signify; whereas for men of this sort, no blame can be conceived adequate to their wickedness.

Their business and their earnest pursuit is the practice of falsehood and opposition to the truth. Rightly, then, let such men be called “itching in hearing and tongue,” because, just as some very sharp and thick humor, lurking in the depth of the body, is often, through being scratched, provoked and discharged to the surface, so too the hidden disposition provokes those who take offense at things well said, once they have seized an occasion, to make public above all the wickedness within their soul — a disposition which by nature holds all the more to its depth, the more it seems, by its outward advance, to be emptied. For the disposition of wicked men, when brought forth through their deeds, does not thereby depart from its depth, but rather feeds madly upon everything external as well, and in no way departs from its place within the soul. 73. as a Flower in Winter Is Altogether Out of Season, and Manly Adornment for Women or Womanly Adornment for Men, or Geometry for Mourning Introducing, by the enumeration of things ill-fitting, the good order that ought to be found in every word and deed — by which the reason for the fittingness of each thing, and of all things, is by nature wont to appear unmixed — the teacher says this, that by these examples he might teach the bold and disorderly, who know no order, especially in speaking of God, to be orderly and reverent, rather than boldly confounding and mingling together, promiscuously, things that stand apart.

For if a flower seen in winter, and manly adornment imposed on women, and womanly adornment on men, and geometry joined to mourning belong to things that have no nature, and therefore no order (for the one does violence to the season and departs from its own proper place; the other counterfeits nature by an interchange, appearing now on man, now on woman, and displaces the order that belongs to each by nature; and the other, forcing into one things that cannot as yet coexist with one another — I mean joy and mourning — utterly confounds and obliterates them), how much more, then, will discourse about God, spoken as it happens and by whomever happens, and brought forth when and where it is not fitting, be unseemly and improper, and altogether unworthy to be heard concerning God — in whose case, I think, those who have understanding ought to set the store by timeliness that is owed, beyond all things incomparably set forth, The teacher says that geometry is ill-fitted to mourning. But he has made you, I think, more perplexed in the following ways: either because those who have conquered some territory by force of arms divide it up by geometry when they wish to hold their kingdom by law — and joy is the greatest possession, joy belonging to those who pursue only present goods, and to become victors, and to acquire sudden wealth, with whom no manner of mourning whatsoever can coexist; or because those skilled in these matters say that demonstrative syllogisms are properly bound up with geometry, and so one who reasons syllogistically about the mourner, and tries to show him mourning without reason, will rightly appear burdensome, not perceiving what is fitting; or perhaps one might say that reasoning syllogistically is itself ill-fitted to the mourner, contriving by the plausibility of arguments to persuade himself that he has not suffered the calamity that has actually and in fact befallen him — a thing altogether contrary to mourning itself, that is, to its very nature.

For just as the mourner who reasons syllogistically thereby drives away his mourning, so too mourning, being turned to syllogism, falls away from being mourning. For one who has recovered him in whom he had placed his hopes of succession thereafter considers everything here superfluous. And perhaps in this way one might say that what has been contemplated is not without reason, recognizing that joy and mourning cannot coincide with one another at the same time, since the productive cause of each plainly does not have its occasions from the same principles. And a reliable witness to these things is the holy and godlyminded Dionysius the Areopagite, who, discoursing thus concerning the angelic iconography, says: “The geometrical and carpentry tools, the foundation-laying and building and perfecting tools, and whatever else belongs to the uplifting and converting providence exercised over those in the second rank.” All these things indicate a bright and cheerful manner of life, to which mourning is altogether opposed, and for this reason ill-fitting. But if it is possible to understand the passage otherwise, I do not think it untimely to add also the word of Jesus the son of Sirach to what has been said. It is this: “Music in a time of mourning is an ill-timed tale.” Since, then, music comprehends all forms of learning, of which those who have applied themselves diligently to these matters say geometry is one, for this reason, I think, the teacher, agreeing with him who set forth the aforesaid saying, called geometry ill-fitted to mourning.

And if someone should ask why, having passed over the other branches of learning, he took up this one alone as ill-fitted to mourning, we say that he judged this one to be suited to all the aforesaid intentions. And then, through this one alone, the rest too were included by synecdoche. Let this, then, be said, so far as I am concerned. But if someone should discover something better, I will gladly acknowledge it, receiving from him the knowledge of what I did not know.

74. FROM THE SAME AUTHOR’S GREAT THEOLOGICAL ORATION, ON: “THAT GOD EXISTS, AND IS THE CREATIVE AND SUSTAINING CAUSE OF ALL THINGS, BOTH SIGHT AND THE NATURAL LAW TEACH — THE ONE BY FALLING UPON THE THINGS SEEN, WELL-ESTABLISHED AND ORDERED, AND MOVED AND BORNE, SO TO SPEAK, IMMOVABLY; THE OTHER BY REASONING, THROUGH THE THINGS SEEN AND ORDERED, TO THEIR SOURCE” He who approaches, with reason, the greatness of the things seen, as it possesses beauty and nature, according to senseperception, not allowing it, left wholly to itself, to act at all apart from the reason that guides it, nor allowing that same reason to be released from the simplicity of the intellect — according to which the forms and shapes belonging to senseperception are, through the mediating power of reason, naturally led into manifold rational accounts, while the variegated multiplicity, according to difference, of the manifold rational accounts inherent in beings is, through the power of reason, gathered into a single, simple, and undifferentiated act of understanding, according to which that knowledge called partless, and without quantity, and unitary, is constituted — such a one has truly, through the things seen and the good order within them, formed within himself an image, so far as is possible for a man, of their Maker and Sustainer and Source, and has come to know God — not according to what His essence and hypostasis are (for this is impossible and not to be attempted), but having learned only that He is.

And this he attains after passing wholly beyond every senseperceptible position, and shape, and figuration, and imagination — and, if I may say so without seeming excessive, having come to be entirely outside even the differentiation found in the very rational principles of beings, and having placed himself, as it were, at the boundary between God and all things after God: on the one side, God, as transcendent, remaining altogether untouched, with no understanding whatsoever reaching Him; on the other, the things left behind, surpassed by the abundance of intellectual knowledge, appearing beneath comprehension, while yet failing truly and firmly to comprehend, as to what they are, that which lies above them. This, it seems to me, is what the teacher, for the reason given, intimates through “sight” and “the natural law” — yet without identifying, as some have supposed, sight and the natural law as one and the same. For though both have their activity concerning the same things, they can, notionally, admit a distinction from one another, inasmuch as the one, resting irrationally on mere contact with visible things, is unable to advance further, while the other, by the reason joined to it, investigates these things thoroughly, and by the intellect rightly and wisely transcends them — according to which the natural law has chiefly introduced, through sight, the notion and conviction that God exists. He called “sight,” then, not the how, but simply the encounter of sense-perception with the things perceived (for it is not the proper function of sense-perception, simply as such, to reason from one thing to another); and he called “natural law” the activity, occurring senseperception, according to intellect and reason, by which the ascent toward what is better takes place, through orderly and diligent examination, proceeding from lesser things.

The teacher has said that the things seen are moved and borne along immovably, because, with respect to the reason by which they came to be, they possess an unchanging order and permanence according to nature, power, and activity, and do not depart in any way from their natural property, or change into something else and become confused; while, again, they are moved with respect to the reason of flux and efflux — by growth in quantity and diminution, and by alteration in quality, and, properly speaking, by succession from one to another, those that come after continually displacing those that came before. And, simply, to sum it up: all things that are, with respect to the reason by which they came to subsist and by which they are, are altogether stable and unmoved; but with respect to the reason of the things contemplated around them, by which the whole economy of this universe plainly consists and is carried forward, all things are clearly in motion and unstable. They say that motion is not the same as revolution. For they say that motion belongs rather to things subject to coming-tobe and passing-away, as admitting, in what is contemplated concerning them, the more and the less (though it can properly be said of all things that come to be, taken together), whereas revolution belongs to the substance moved in a circle, and to its tireless circling.

I do not know whether it is safe to speak confidently of this as acting naturally upon the universe, or as being acted upon — except that, properly speaking, to be borne along is to be acted upon. For nothing among beings is entirely self-moved, since none is without a cause; and what is not without a cause is moved, in every case, on account of a cause — being, that is, moved naturally, being acted upon, by the cause on account of which and toward which the motion is made. For nothing that is moved, in whatever manner, is ever moved without a cause. The beginning of every natural motion is the coming-to-be of the things moved; and the beginning of the coming-to-be of the things moved is God, as the author of their coming-to-be. And the end of the natural coming-to-be of the things that have come to be is rest, which infinity brings about, altogether, after the passing beyond of finite things — in which, because there is no longer any interval, every motion of things naturally moved comes to an end, having no longer anywhere, or how, or toward what to be moved, since it has, as its end and cause, God who bounds even the infinity that itself bounds every determinate motion. Of all coming-to-be and motion of beings, then, God is beginning and end, since they have come to be from Him, and are moved through Him, and will come to rest in Him.

Now, of every natural motion of beings, coming-to-be is conceived beforehand; and of every rest, motion is, according to nature, conceived beforehand. If, then, coming-to-be is naturally conceived before motion, and rest is naturally conceived after motion, it is plainly impossible for coming-to-be and rest to exist together in actual being, since they naturally hold motion between them as that which separates them from one another. For rest is not the natural activity of the coming-to-be of things moved, but rather the end of the power or activity belonging to it, or however one wishes to put it. For things that have come to be, have come to be for the sake of activity, and every activity is toward some end, that it may not be incomplete. For what has no end among natural activities is not complete either; and the end of natural activities is the coming to rest of the motion directed toward the cause of the things that have come to be. For example, that we may understand from a single case the manner of motion belonging to all beings: the soul, being an intellective and rational substance, both understands and reasons, having intellect as its power, understanding as its motion, and the thing understood as its activity. For this is the limit both of the one understanding and of the thing understood, in the understanding, as bounding the relation of the extremes to one another.

For when the soul understands, it comes to rest from understanding that which was understood, once it has understood it. For what has been properly understood once no longer calls forth again the soul’s power for being understood; and with respect to each act of understanding, it thus receives a kind of rest from that particular understanding directed toward the thing understood. When, therefore, all the acts of understanding of all things understood, whether sensible or intelligible, have passed through in the process of understanding, it ceases — just as it ceases from all the things understood, so too from the whole activity of understanding and its relation to all relative and intelligible things — having no longer anything at all to understand, after the understanding of the things naturally capable of being understood; after which it will be united to God beyond intellect and reason and knowledge, unintelligently, unknowingly, and ineffably, by a simple contact, neither understanding at all, nor even reasoning about God. For there is nothing among the things understood by reference to which the soul could hold an understanding of Him; rather, it is by simple union, as unrelated, and beyond understanding, and by a certain ineffable and inexpressible reason, which only God knows, bestows this unspeakable grace on the worthy, and on those who will hereafter experience it, when all things will be free from every change and alteration, since the motion of beings, in whatever respect it may occur, will have altogether reached its limit in the infinity that surrounds God, in which all things moved receive their rest.

For infinity is around God, but is not God, who incomparably transcends even this. Justly, then, I think, is the man most worthy of blame who dogmatizes the pre-existence of souls, and decrees an altogether unmoved unity of rational beings, confounding, in the Hellenic manner, things that ought not to be confounded, and saying that rest exists together, in actual being, with the coming-tobe of rational beings. For it does not accord with true reason that coming-to-be should be conceived before rest, if rest is by nature unmoved, according to him; nor that rest should be conceived after an unmoved coming-to-be; nor indeed that rest should be conceived together with coming-to-be. For rest is not a power of coming-to-be, so as to be conceived together with the coming-to-be of the things that have come to be, but rather it is the end of the activity belonging to the power of the coming-to-be of the things that have come to be; and, simply, to sum it up, rest, being one of the relative terms, is said not in relation to coming-to-be, but in relation to motion, in contradistinction to which it is admitted, having no reference whatsoever to coming-to-be, in relation to which it admits no distinction. So then, whenever I hear “rest,” I understand only a cessation of motion. But if coming-to-be and rest cannot exist together in actual being, then he who decrees this plainly falsifies the true account, dogmatizing an unmoved unity of rational beings pre-existing together with their coming-to-be.

But if someone should say, “And how, then, is rest spoken of in the case of God, who has no motion conceived beforehand?” — I say, first, that Creator and creation are not the same, so that what can belong to the one need not, of necessity, be observed likewise in the other as well, since otherwise their natural difference would in no way be evident; and next, properly speaking, God neither moves at all nor rests (for this belongs properly to things by nature finite, having a beginning of their being), nor indeed does He do anything at all, nor does He undergo anything of what is, for our sake, understood and said of Him, because He is, by nature, beyond every motion and rest, and is in no way subject, by any reasoning, to the manner proper to us. Let this be said by way of digression, concerning the need to say that nothing among beings acts of itself, released from all else, lest we foolishly introduce something after God as uncaused; but rather, that to act is, in every case, to be naturally caused to act — that very thing which, being acted upon, it is its nature to do.

75. ON: “BUT IF INCORPOREAL, NOT EVEN THIS AS YET UNCHANGEABLE, NOR INCORRUPTIBLE, NOR WHATEVER ELSE IS SAID CONCERNING GOD OR AROUND GOD” Directing his argument, I think, chiefly against those who wickedly maintain that the Son is unlike the Father, on the ground of supposing that “unbegotten” is the essence of the Father, and teaching them, from like cases, to recognize what is fitting, the teacher says this — that, being driven by the truth toward piety, they might readily confess with us that “unbegotten” signifies only that the Father has no origin, knowing that if they should force “unbegotten” to be the essence of God, they would, by necessity, consistently with themselves, be forced to say that “incorporeal” too is, of necessity, the essence of God, and likewise “without beginning,” and “immortal,” and “unchangeable,” and “incorruptible,” and whatever else is said of God by way of the removal of privatives on account of His transcendence — and thus they will be convicted, thereby confirming for themselves, or rather, to speak more properly and truly, of being sick with Hellenic polytheism, saying many essences of God, and not one — which, being ashamed to say outright as impious, they will altogether refrain from, though unwillingly. For privative or negative terms, contemplated concerning something, are not that very thing concerning which they are contemplated, since otherwise they would be among the terms signifying what a thing is, as being that very thing, rather than signifying what it is not, that very thing; and if this were so, they would be shown to be the definition of that concerning which they are said to be — which is absurd and impossible.

For definitions of things are not gathered from what they are not, but from what they are, unfolding the concise comprehension of things, which is their designation. Nothing at all, then, of what is said concerning God or around God can ever be the essence of God, since it cannot even signify a position — one alone fitting, and fitting to God alone — unrelated, and altogether free of activity toward anything, as to what He essentially is.

76. ON: “FOR AS IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO SAY BODY, OR TO HAVE BEEN BEGOTTEN, TO REPRESENT AND MAKE CLEAR THAT CONCERNING WHICH THESE ARE SAID, BUT ONE MUST ALSO NAME THE SUBJECT UNDERLYING THEM, IF ONE IS TO REPRESENT WHAT IS UNDERSTOOD FULLY AND ADEQUATELY; FOR THIS THING THAT IS IN A BODY AND PERISHES IS EITHER MAN OR OX OR HORSE” Since the saint saw that the heretics had but a single struggle — foolishly to drag down the supra-essential nature to their own level, and, by technical methods, to attempt to master, by the comprehension proper to their own knowledge, as they supposed, that power which cannot be mastered, and which is equally incomprehensible to the whole of creation — throughout the whole discourse he preferred to speak of God by privations and negations, admitting no position or affirmation whatsoever, lest, seizing upon this, they should, like shameless dogs, madly fasten their venomous teeth in the word of truth by biting at it, taking occasion in whatever way to argue speciously and to bring their own undertaking to completion, making of any position of the discourse given them concerning God whatever they pleased. For this reason he declares that God is neither body, nor incorporeal body, nor incorporeal altogether, nor in the universe, nor in any part of the universe, nor above the universe, and simply, that God is nothing at all and in nothing whatsoever, in any manner, of what is seen, or comprehended, or spoken, or understood, or can in any way be known — as is indeed true — thereby striking away from them every apprehensive notion concerning God as to what His essence might be.

Then, leading them more compellingly toward piety, and wishing to show that it is not permitted to anyone even to conceive, let alone speak, boldly and in general about God, on the basis of the investigation of things secondary and incomparably remote from God, he says this — so that they, thereby coming to recognize that the precise comprehension even of the least of created things surpasses the power of our rational faculty, might be able to restrain the irrational impulse of their boldness concerning far greater things, having learned, in small things, the weakness of nature. For if, when we examine some element — say, for instance, man or horse or ox — it is not enough, for complete comprehension, to say that the element is a body, or that man or ox or horse is merely something begotten or perishable, but one must also set forth the subject underlying these — that which is begotten, and perishes, and has been qualified. For ‘body’ is in no way the same as ‘begetting’ or ‘perishing’ — since otherwise this necessary consequence would follow: that whatever is a body must also be an element, and whatever is begotten or perishable must be man or ox or horse. For it is not the case that whatever is a body is, of absolute necessity, also an element or man or ox or horse.

For whatever is an element is, of absolute necessity, also a body, but not whatever is a body is, of absolute necessity, also an element. Nor is it the case that whatever is a body, or begotten, or perishable, is, of absolute necessity, also man — since otherwise, whatever is a body, and whatever is begotten or perishable, would of absolute necessity also be man. For whatever is man is, of absolute necessity, both body and begotten and perishable, but not whatever is body, or begotten, or perishable, is, of absolute necessity, also man. For it does not follow, of absolute necessity, that man, since he is body, must also be element, and ox, and horse, and whatever else is bodily and begotten and perishable. For particulars are never predicated of universals, nor species of genera, nor the things contained of the things containing them; and for this reason universals are not convertible with particulars, nor genera with species, nor common terms with proper ones, nor, to sum it up, the containing with the contained. So then, according to the reasoning given, the same must be understood in the case of ox and horse and everything else whatsoever. If, then, it is not enough for complete knowledge of things to name the multitude of what is contemplated concerning them — I mean body, and being begotten, and perishing, and whatever else of this kind concerns the subject — but one must, of absolute necessity, also indicate the subject underlying these, as the foundation on which they rest, if we are to represent what is understood completely and without omission — for we can say either man, or ox, or horse, these being not themselves body, but bodily, and not themselves begettings and corruptions, but begotten and perishing — so that these, I mean body and begetting and corruption, belong properly to living creatures, but the living creatures themselves are not identical with body and begetting and corruption.

If, then, no being at all is, in its very being, identical with the sum of what we understand and say concerning it, but is something other besides these — that concerning which these are said, holding them together, while itself in no way held together by them (for that concerning which these both are and are said is neither composed of them, nor is it these, nor any of these, nor from them, nor from any of them, nor in them, nor in any of them, nor in any one of them) — let every soul cease, in every discourse, from its habit of boldly leaping upon the things concerning God, vainly committing impiety, and, having learned its own weakness in small things, let it worship in silence alone the ineffable existence of the divine essence, which is beyond understanding and beyond all knowledge. “For not even,” as the saint taught before, “is the precise comprehension of creation itself, little by little, comprehended,” in the true sense, by our knowledge — so that I too may dwell a little on this discourse, and marvel at the untraceable depth of the wisdom that surpasses all For who among the exceedingly wise, trusting in rational methods and relying on demonstrations that are not truly demonstrations, having approached with reason the majesty of beings, will be able to know it, and to state and represent it?

What are the principles first implanted in the existence of each being, according to which each being both is and is by nature what it is, and has been given form, and has been shaped, and has been composed, and has power, and acts, and is acted upon — not to speak of the difference and property found in quantity, and quality, and relation, and place, and time, and position, and motion, and habit, with respect to which our own rational faculty, by nature magnificently endowed, is fitted to expand correspondingly in number into intellect, and understanding, and notion, and discursive reason, and reflection, and the inward word, and the uttered and vocalized word, that is, voice and cry, and again to be gathered together — apart from the difference and property of this same faculty according to knowledge and art, as in quantity and quality and the rest, as has been enumerated? Who knows the principles of beings as they truly are, as I have said, and how they differ, and hold an unmoved rest according to nature, never passing over into one another by motion, having rest within motion, and, most paradoxically, motion within rest? What is the bond by which opposites are joined to one another for the constitution of one world, and the manner of the orderly and unconfused motion and governance of the universe? Again, what is the intertwining, through composition, of opposites in the blending of our own bodies, which brings things naturally distinct into a friendly cohabitation, and tames, by their middle term, the harshness found at the extremes, and enables them to interpenetrate without harm to one another, and effects, as the preservation of composite things, the mutual interpenetration of the extremes in the blending — and how each of these exists, and what it is, and whither it tends or is borne, and upon what it is grounded, or bears, or is borne — not only, as has been said, by the principles by which they primarily exist, but also by the countless ways in which, notionally and actually, they are divided and united with respect to themselves and to one another?

And again, what is the principle of the essence, nature, form, shape, composition, power, activity, and passion belonging to each thing? And what, again, is the universal principle that effects, by a middle term, the connection of the extremes with one another, at the boundary proper to each, so that intellect and the thing understood, through the mediating act of understanding — which is a unitive relation of the things divided, with respect to the single act of understanding arising from both — might be joined and encompassed by one another, and so that nothing whatsoever among the things after God might, in this respect, be shown to be free of circumscription? Just as, likewise, all sensible things and all perceiving, that is, sense-capable things, are, through the mediating sense-faculty, a common relation of the divided extremes — the one apprehending the sensible things through it, the other falling under the perceiving beings through it — around the sense-organ, in which the limit of each thing’s power, according to relation, is established, and around which the extremes are, by nature, united to one another through the mediating relation. Attempting to investigate these things, or any one of them, and their principles, we remain altogether powerless and speechless as regards their explanation, having nothing on which we can firmly fix the intellect, except the divine power. And this, I think, is what the saint has said, exercising our intellect toward piety: “Not even, then, is the precise comprehension of creation attained, little by little.”

And the words, “But the nature which is far beyond these, and from these come, is incomprehensible and unencompassable,” must be understood as applying in common both to creation and to the nature that is beyond these things and from which these, namely created things, come — that is, the phrase “incomprehensible and unencompassable.” And the words, “not that it is, but what it is,” introduced here, are an anticipation of an objection. For, lest the argument should run ahead of him to whom the discourse is addressed, saying, ‘If, then, our object of worship is altogether incomprehensible, the preaching of the Christians is empty, and empty too is the faith, resting on nothing,’ he says this, forestalling the malicious argument or person. I did not say, he means, that this nature, of which we speak, is incomprehensible as to the fact that it exists, but as to what it is; and he adds, for the confirmation of the argument, ‘For it is a great difference, to be persuaded that a thing exists, and to know what it is,’ that is, there is a great difference between being persuaded concerning something that it exists, and knowing the precise comprehension of its essence. Do not, then, he says, since we have reasonably said that the divine essence is incomprehensible, maliciously twist the argument, so as to make us appear to introduce it as incomprehensible with respect to its very existence, and thereby conclude that we profess complete atheism.

And after a few words he says: ‘For what will you suppose the Divine to be, if you altogether trust in rational methods’ (that is, if you think that, running about with reasoning, you can enclose within some knowledge the object of your search) — ‘whether it is a body’ (that is, is it a body?) ‘and how could the infinite, and indeterminate, and shapeless, and intangible, and invisible be so?’ — that it might be understood, once made clear, that, the common notions having thus prevailed, the Divine is infinite, which is to say, has no limit. For this is proper to what is bounded by four limits — point and line, surface and solid — and further, by the three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth, these too being bounded by six limits, each, that is, being circumscribed by two: length by the upper and the lower, breadth by the right and the left, depth by the front limit and the back. And again, the same common notions introducing God as indeterminate — that is, not admitting a detailed unfolding of the elements of which the subject is composed, nor a position in place, nor a beginning or end in time — and further as shapeless, that is, not spherical, or square, or upright, or bowed downward; and again as intangible and invisible, as not falling under senseperception (for these are properties of bodies) — it would be absurd, from the things thus set aside, to suppose that the Divine is a body, and must of necessity be divided into as many parts as, again, would be required to constitute it as a body.

For the Divine is altogether partless, because it is also altogether without quantity; and altogether without quantity, because also altogether simple; and altogether simple, because also altogether without extension; and altogether without extension, because also altogether infinite; and altogether infinite, because also altogether unmoved (for that which has no capacity for being moved is never moved at all); and altogether unmoved, because also altogether without beginning (for it has nothing before it and greater than it, nor anything alongside it and equal to it, nor anything after it capable of measuring and comprehending it); and altogether without beginning, because also altogether unbegotten; and altogether unbegotten, because also altogether one and utterly alone; and altogether one and utterly alone, because also altogether unrelated, and for this reason altogether ineffable and unknowable, and the sole limit of all knowledge of the things rightly and befittingly moved toward it — having, as its sole and truest knowledge, the not being known.

77. ON: “FOR IF NON-BEING IS NOWHERE, THEN WHAT HAPPENS TO BE NOWHERE IS PERHAPS ALSO NON-BEING; BUT IF IT IS SOMEWHERE, THEN, SINCE IT IS, IT MUST BE EITHER WITHIN THE UNIVERSE OR ABOVE THE UNIVERSE” Perhaps the hearer will say: For what reason did the teacher render the converse statement ambiguous, adding the word ‘perhaps,’ when it is plain to all, according to logical premises, that what is nowhere is rightly and altogether acknowledged to be nothing? To this we will say, according to the poverty of our own limited understanding, that, wishing to restrain Eunomius and his followers, who claim to know God as He knows Himself, from their great madness, he led them, by such arguments, into an absurd conclusion. For either, saying that they know God as He knows Himself, they are of absolute necessity compelled also to add where the one known must be, for a complete comprehension of the one known — and God, according to them, in no way at all differs from any other being in this respect, He too being circumscribed by place — than which what could be more absurd? Or, not saying where, they must, according to the very premise of their own argument, say that He does not exist at all — than which what could be more godless? (For how, and what, could that be which does not have its being somewhere at all?)

Or the logical consequence of the argument forces them of necessity to say that He both exists and is nowhere, and therefore that the Divine both is and exists, yet what it is and how it exists is unknown. For if, according to them, where the Divine is remains unknown, much more will the Divine itself, as to what it is essentially, be still more unknown. Wherefore they must, of necessity, if they are pious, confess that what is not known is not anywhere either. For this reason, I think, sympathizing, as it were, with the followers of Eunomius, the teacher rendered the converse statement ambiguous, adding the word ‘perhaps,’ and thereby allowing us to understand that he does not altogether mean that what is nowhere at all in any way is thereby introduced as non-existent. For we say that God exists, and yet is nowhere, in that He is not circumscribed essentially, according to His existence, as though in a place; and yet that He altogether exists, in that He has absolutely no need of anything among beings in order to exist, things without which He both was and is, and will always be able to be — or rather, always is. For He who exists even before beings exist does not have His existence dependent on beings. For if, among us, the perishable product of art, in things not made by art, does not have its being, in its subsistence, circumscribed by the artisans — or, more truly and properly speaking, it never really exists at all — what, then, could one say concerning ineffable unknowable power that is uncontainable by all things alike, and always remains the same?

78. on: “Whether It Was a Daytime Vision, or a Truthful Sight by Night, or an Impression of the Governing Faculty, by Which It Becomes Present to Things to Come as Though They Were Already Present” This blessed father, having been purified in the highest degree from the things by which human nature is naturally defiled, through the practical philosophy, and having his intellect wholly qualified by the Holy Spirit through his engagement with the divine contemplations, through true mystagogy according to knowledge — having undergone the very same experiences as the holy prophets — enumerated for us, in these words, the kinds of prophecy. If it is proper, then, to venture at all upon words spoken so magnificently and inspiredly as these, which surpass the capacity of all who are not such as the teacher himself was, we think it useful to approach them conjecturally, rather than dogmatically. I think, then, conjecturally, according to my own dimness of vision, that he meant by ‘daytime vision’ the seeing and hearing of words and things spoken and appearing spiritually to the saints, without any visible person present, as though through sense-perception. For it is not right to say that, in the case of divine matters, some wondrous circumstance must necessarily be present for the shaping of the vision, but that, paradoxically and supernaturally, even without a person present and without perceptible voices striking the air, the vision comes to act, so that the one being initiated into divine things truly hears and sees.

For every vision is of things either present or past; of things not yet come to be, it is altogether not at all. For it is a relation mediating between two extremes. And by the extremes I mean the one who imagines and the thing imagined, from which, through the mediating vision, being a relation between the extremes, the mental image comes to be — this being the limit of activity and of passion: of activity on the part of the one who imagines, of passion on the part of the thing imagined — the extremes being joined to one another through the mediating vision, which is their relation concerning it. For all things that apprehend something in some respect are said to act, and all things that in some respect fall under others are said to be acted upon. The things that apprehend, then, act naturally, and the things apprehended are acted upon naturally, having, as the limit of passion and activity, their mutual connection through the middle term. For this reason I think it fitting to suppose that, in the case of divine matters, the thing imagined is not present, since what is already properly present in its own subsistence is no longer going to be present, and at the same time it is not believed to be divine, having nothing more than the natural consequence. For if we, in sleep at night, imagining, both see and hear, often when there is no one speaking or seen at all, how much more will the saints, truly awake, experience this, God acting in them while they are awake, by a paradoxical grace, that which we are accustomed to undergo, by the law of nature, in sleep.

And I suppose he means by ‘a truthful sight by night’ either the precise apprehension, occurring in the soul during sleep, of things to come, as in the case of Joseph and Daniel, or some vision of divine things appearing, on account of extreme dispassion arising from great purity, even to the bodily eyes of the saints. And by ‘the impression of the governing faculty,’ I think he means, by emphasis, that types of things to come are shown forth to the saints in a single manner, as in an image, according to the simple and undivided apprehension of the intellect. I, then, have said these things conjecturally, having ventured to speak of them without having received the grace of experience in these matters, but on account of the command of him who enjoined this task. If anyone who has received this grace should come upon these words, let him not blame me for rashness, but rather commend me for obedience, even if the present discourse contains no persuasive force with regard to the aim of what has been proposed. 79. on: “but as for Paul, Whether What the Third Heaven Afforded Was a Carrying-Forth, and Whether His Progress up to That Point Was an Ascent, or an Those who have wisely occupied themselves with divine discourse say that, among names taken comprehensively, some belong to essence, some to relation, and some to grace or to perdition.

Of essence, as when they say ‘man’; of relation, as when they say ‘good man,’ or ‘holy,’ or ‘wise man,’ or the opposite, ‘wicked man,’ or ‘foolish,’ or ‘unclean’ (for relation, representing the particular manner in which each is disposed among those divided diametrically into opposites, rightly names each according to the deliberate habit inherent in it); and of grace, when a man is named ‘God’ in the sacred writings — the man who has become obedient to God in all things, according to the saying, ‘I have said, you are gods’ — having, neither by nature nor by relation, the being called God, but becoming and being named such by adoption and grace. For the grace of adoption is altogether unrelated, having no capacity within nature to receive it; since otherwise it would no longer be grace, but rather the manifestation of an activity according to natural power. And thus again what comes to be would not be paradoxical, if deification were according to a receptive capacity of nature. For then deification would properly be a work of nature, not a gift of God, and such a one could, by nature, both be and properly be called God. For nothing else constitutes the natural power of each being than the unfailing motion of nature toward activity. But how deification places the one deified outside of himself, if it were comprehended within the bounds of nature, I am unable to understand.

Likewise, from the opposite side, they call those who have established non-being as a state within themselves, and who have become in every way like it in manner, by the names ‘perdition,’ ‘hades,’ ‘sons of perdition,’ and the like. I think, then, that this holy and great teacher, having these things in mind, arranged in these words the rapture of the holy Apostle, fittingly assigning to each the appropriate term. For this reason I suppose that he calls ‘progress’ the dispassion, according to habit, of virtue, which placed the holy Apostle beyond natural necessity, according to which he chose to have no relation of deliberate inclination toward nature, having come to be, indeed, outside even the natural activity according to sense itself — or rather, having transformed even this into a spiritual habit; and he calls ‘ascent’ the abandonment of all sensible things, no longer active or acted upon by him according to sense, and the transcending of the knowing contemplation, in spirit, concerning them according to nature; and he calls ‘assumption’ the abiding and establishment which came to be for him afterward in God — which the teacher fittingly called ‘assumption,’ showing that the Apostle underwent the assumption rather than performed it. For assumption is a passion of the one assumed, but an activity of the one assuming. Of these natural and relative names, then, the Apostle, being their Lord, transcended the appellation both according to nature and according to relation, having come to be above human nature and virtue and knowledge.

And that from which he fell immeasurably short as a divine name, of this he partook by grace in the calling, having become and being called God, by his assumption, in place of every other name, whether natural or relative, that belonged to him. Or again, thus: ‘progress’ is the complete renunciation of nature according to virtue; ‘ascent’ is the transcending of the things in which nature exists, I mean place and time, in which the subsistence of beings consists; ‘assumption’ is the restoration, by grace, toward Him from whom, and through whom, and unto whom are all things, as toward the end of all things. And to put it otherwise: ‘progress’ is the leading of his own disciples toward virtue by the Apostle, as teacher, through the practical philosophy — for the teacher must in every respect go before his disciples toward the performance of what is fitting; ‘ascent’ is the scientific comprehension, through natural contemplation, of the principles inherent in beings; ‘assumption’ is the pious and ineffable initiation into true and theological wisdom. And I think the third heaven is conjecturally the boundaries that circumscribe practical philosophy, and natural contemplation, and theological mystagogy — that is, the highest principles, or rather the limits, of these — since there is a certain measure of comprehension of virtue and nature, and of the theology concerning both, proportionately fitted by God to each being according to nature, within which bounds and limits the blessed Apostle, having passed beyond, so far as attainable, the accounts of the things mentioned, came to be.

For if heaven is the natural circumscription of the things contained within it, and the boundary of all that falls under senseperception, then plainly, according to the principle of spiritual ascent, every limit that circumscribes the accounts concerning some virtue or knowledge, as the boundary of the things defined and the limit of the things circumscribed, is figuratively called heaven. Or again, Scripture perhaps calls ‘the third heaven’ the three ranks of the holy angels above us, in ascending order, which Saint Paul perhaps reached, being initiated, by the negations of the kinds of knowledge proper to him, into the affirmations proper to them, and imitating, by the surpassing privations of his own, their habits. For every nature of rational beings, according to its own rank and power, is initiated into, and imitates, the knowing habits and positive affirmations of the essence and rank above it, by the privative negations proper to itself; and the affirmation, with respect to knowledge, concerning the things placed above is the negation of the things placed below, and conversely, the negation, with respect to knowledge, of the things placed below is the affirmation of the things surpassing them — proceeding negatively up to the highest of all natures and ranks by way of transcendence, which, after all ranks and powers, the immediate negation concerning God, with respect to knowledge, succeeds, being affirmed by none of the beings whatsoever, there being no longer any limit or boundary comprehending this negation.

For just as intelligible things are, by nature, the negation of sensible things, so too, among the essences and powers that fill up the world above, the superiorities of the first, with respect to the knowledge of God, are negated by those that come after them on account of their diminution. For just as the things we are unable to understand are intelligible to the holy angels above us, so too the things not understood by the holy angels above us are intelligible to the holy angels above them, and thus, ascending in succession from power to power, and being elevated, and passing through all ranks and powers, the process of reasoning comes to an end in what is ineffable, and unintelligible, and altogether unknowable. If, then, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, negations concerning divine matters are true, while affirmations are ill-fitted to the hiddenness of the ineffable mysteries, it is fitting that the divinely inspired Apostle, having negated the understanding of all knowledge proper to him, and having come to be above every relation to beings, was, as he said, appropriately ‘neither in the body,’ having no sense-perception in operation, nor again ‘outside the body,’ having his understanding idle, during the time of the rapture that came upon him — during which, having ineffably and unknowingly received certain words by a supramundane initiation, he honored them with silence, and kept them altogether unuttered, as being such that neither could intellect understand them, nor tongue speak them, nor hearing receive them.

And it produces, as those experienced in these matters say, in the aforesaid ‘progress,’ the perfect practice of virtue: right faith and undefiled fear of God; and in the ‘ascent,’ unfaltering natural contemplation: unimpaired understanding; and in firm the hope and ‘assumption,’ deification: perfect love, and an intellect voluntarily and altogether blinded, by way of transcendence, to beings. And they say, again, that the work of practical philosophy is to render the intellect purified of every passionate imagination; and that of natural contemplation, that it should render him knowledgeable of the true knowledge of beings according to the cause by which they exist; and that of theological mystagogy, that it should make him, so far as attainable, like and equal to God in habit, by grace — no longer, on account of transcendence, being at all cognizant of anything at all among the things after God. 80. from the Same Oration, on: “nor Could the World Itself Be Able to Contain Him” — as John, the Forerunner of the Word, the Great Voice of Truth, Declared It would be fitting for me too, gazing upon the greatness of the wisdom given him by God, to say to this holy and great teacher of truth what David, most eminent of prophets and kings, struck with amazement at the infinity of God’s majesty in all things, uttered under divine inspiration to God, saying: “Your knowledge has become too wonderful for me; it is too strong, I am not able to attain to it” — as was indeed right, circumscribing the uncircumscribable power by wonder alone, having nowhere else to fix the soul’s restless footing concerning things unattainable.

And I too, as I have said, must be content to receive sanctification from marveling at the wise teacher’s understanding, and not busy myself over how and for what reason, contrary to the historical record, the teacher interchanges the names that the divine voice mystically assigned to the saints, here calling John the son of thunder “forerunner.” But since obedience carries a great reward, especially since the commandment bids us obey our leaders, and to devote ourselves to searching and knowing the Scriptures, and to meditate on the divine law day and night — a practice I have found laid down chiefly among the things that are good — being wary of the danger of both slothfulness and disobedience, I will speak conjecturally about these things, to the best of my ability, trusting in the prayers of you who have enjoined this task. I think, then, that what this God-bearing teacher said, contrary to the historical record, when he applied the title of the Forerunner of Christ to the son of thunder, cannot be reconciled in any way other than by contemplation. For this alone is the reconciliation of things that seem, according to the historical record, to be opposed to one another, showing forth incorporeally the truth in all things — which is simple by nature — not being thickened together with the words or the bodies. Just as, then, the great Baptist John was called forerunner in relation to Him who was truly awaited, and a voice in relation to the Word, as heralding and going before it, and a lamp in relation to the sun, as an artificial, positioned, and temporary light in relation to the natural, essential, unmade, and eternal and inextinguishable light — and I think also as repentance, proclaiming the righteousness that existed by nature before it, come to be, after it, by economy — so too, I think, here the godly-minded teacher, by saying, contrary to the historical record, that the great apostle John was a forerunner, meant to intimate that John the great evangelist too, in the Gospel he composed, is a forerunner, preparing the way of the mind for the reception of the more perfect Word signified through him more mystically and more greatly — a Word that cannot be shaped by letters nor spoken by the voice of a fleshly tongue.

For the writing of the holy Gospels is an elementary instruction with respect to the knowledge that comes, at each stage, to those elevated through them, who spiritually scrape off from themselves the thickness of bodily thinking — or with respect to the knowledge that will come to be afterward, after the consummation of the things now in motion. For just as the Law was an elementary instruction, with respect to the knowledge then made manifest in it, for those led by it as by a tutor toward Christ the Word incarnate, and gathered together by the Gospel at His first coming, so too the holy Gospel is an elementary instruction for those led by it toward Christ the Word in the Spirit, and gathered together for the world to come at His second coming; for the same Word is both flesh and spirit, becoming this or that according to the proportion of knowledge fitting to each, since every word falls under voices and letters. And I venture to say that every thought, too, that can be shaped by the intellect, in no way differs, with respect to what lies beyond it, from an elementary instruction pointing beyond itself. For this reason the Gospels are four in number, as being, for the time being, capacious for those still under sense-perception and corruption. For the elements of this world are likewise four, and the virtues again four, from which the spiritual world according to the intellect is constituted, so that the reason of truth might, by the likeness of the elements composing them, circumscribe both the intelligible world within us and the world in which we are, and unite them to one another without confusion, yet again distinguish them from one another without division.

For what the aether, that is, the fiery element, is in the sensible world, that prudence is in the world of the intellect, as a habit that illumines and demonstrates the spiritual principles proper to each being, unerringly manifesting through them the cause present in all things, and drawing the soul’s longing toward the Divine. And what air is in the sensible world, that courage is in the intellectual world, as a mobile habit, both sustaining and energizing the innate spiritual life, and cutting a way for the soul’s ceaseless motion toward the Divine. And what water is in the sensible world, that selfcontrol is in the world of the intellect, being a habit productive of vital fecundity in the Spirit, and generative of the ever-flowing, longing enchantment for the Divine. And what earth is in the sensible world, that righteousness is in the world of the intellect — a habit generative in kind of all the principles inherent in beings, distributive, in the Spirit, of vital communication equally to each, and the unshakable establishment, according to position, of one’s own foundation in the good. The Gospel according to Matthew, then, mystically holds the place of earth and righteousness, as making its account more concerned with the natural and human order; that according to Mark holds the place of water and self-control, as beginning from the baptism of John and the repentance he proclaimed, by which self-control is constituted; that according to Luke holds the place of air and courage, as being more circuitous and dense with more numerous narratives; and that according to John holds the place of aether and prudence, as being the highest of all, and introducing, mystically, a simple faith and understanding concerning God.

And they say, in another way too, that the tetrad of the holy Gospels is a symbol of faith, and of the practical, natural, and theological philosophy: that Matthew’s is a symbol of faith, as introducing the unbelieving Magi worshipping with gifts; that Mark’s is a symbol of the practical, as beginning its teaching from repentance, by which every act becomes virtuous; that Luke’s is a symbol of the natural, as having a more circuitous exposition of its account, and a narrative of teaching suited in its manner to it; and that John’s is a symbol of theology, from which, and into which, it fittingly both began and ended. And again, just as the sensible world is by nature elemental in relation to the five senses, falling under them and guiding them toward its own comprehension, so too the world of the virtues, according to the intellect, falling under the powers of the soul, gives them elementary instruction toward the spirit, rendering them uniform by moving them only around it, and grounding them in its own apprehensions. And they say that the very senses of the body, according to the more divine reason befitting them, are elemental instructors of the powers of the soul, gently instructing them toward activity by their own apprehensions of the principles inherent in beings, through which, as through certain letters, God the Word is read by those keen-sighted toward the truth.

Whence they also called the senses paradigmatic images of the powers of the soul, each sense together with its organ, that is, its senseinstrument, having been distributed beforehand, correspondingly, by a certain more mystical reason, to each power of the soul according to nature. And they say that sight belongs to the intellective power, that is, to the intellect; hearing to the rational power, that is, to reason; smell to the irascible power; taste to the desiring power; and touch to the vital power. And, simply, that I may speak more clearly: sight, that is, the eye, is the image of the intellect; hearing, that is, the ear, is the image of reason; smell, that is, the nose, is the image of irascibility; taste is the image of desire; and touch is the image of life. The soul, being borne by nature, according to the law of God who wisely fashioned all things, through its own powers, and variously conveyed toward sensible things by means of them — if it should use the senses well, through its own powers gathering up the manifold principles of beings, and be able wisely to convey to itself everything seen, in which God, proclaimed in silence, lies hidden — it will itself, by its own choice, have fashioned a most beautiful and spiritual world within the intellect, composing the four generic virtues, in the manner of elements, together with one another, for the constitution of the world spiritually completed from them, forming, however, each virtue by the interweaving of the activity of its own powers with the senses: for instance, forming prudence from the interweaving of the intellective and rational power with the visual and auditory sense, in a knowing and scientific activity concerning their proper sensibles; forming courage from the interweaving of the irascible faculty with the sense of smell, that is, the nostril, in which, as they say, the irascible spirit resides, concerning the connatural sensible, in an activity of extreme evenness; forming self-control from the interweaving of the desiring power with the sense of taste, in a measured use concerning its proper sensible; and forming righteousness from the equal, orderly, and harmonious distribution, according to the activity of the vital power operating throughout, by means of touch, over practically all sensible things.

From these four generic virtues, again, it is taught to form, by composition, two more generic virtues — wisdom, I mean, and gentleness: wisdom, as being the limit of the things known; gentleness, of the things practiced. For instance, from prudence and righteousness it forms wisdom, as being the sustaining cause of the knowledge belonging to prudence and the science belonging to righteousness, and for this reason, as I said, the limit of the things known; and from courage and self-control it forms gentleness, being nothing other than the complete immobility of irascibility and desire toward things contrary to nature, which some have called dispassion, and for this reason the end of the things practiced. And these again it gathers into the most generic virtue of all — love, I mean — which draws all things out of themselves that come from it, and leads forward all things that come through it, and unites into one all things that begin, are moved, and come to rest in it, and, above all these, is preeminently deifying. Thus, then, the soul, moving and acting wisely, according to the reason by which it is and has become destined for God, usefully apprehends sensible things through the senses, appropriating to itself the spiritual principles within them, and admits the senses themselves — now made rational by the abundance of reason — as rational vehicles, so to speak, of its own powers; and it joins these powers themselves to the virtues, and, through the virtues, joins itself to the more divine principles within them; and the more divine principles of the virtues are joined to the spiritual intellect hidden invisibly within them; and the spiritual intellect is joined to the more divine principles inherent in the virtues, thrusting away every natural and voluntary relation the soul has toward present things, and gives itself, simple and whole, wholly to God; and God, having wholly embraced it, together with the body naturally united to it, assimilates them proportionately to Himself, so that, through the whole of it, He who by nature is such that no being can, in any way, be manifested from Him, might be shown forth, uncircumscribed, wholly, through the whole soul.

And this is perhaps what this blessed and great teacher had in mind when he said, in the Funeral Oration on the Resurrection for his brother Caesarius, “And a little later, receiving back the kindred flesh” (speaking, that is, of the soul) “with which it had philosophized concerning the things above, from the earth that both gave it and was entrusted with it — in the manner that God, who bound these together and dissolved them, knows — it shares with it the inheritance of the glory from above, and, just as it partook of its hardships through their common nature, so it imparts to it its own delights, having wholly absorbed it into itself, and having become, together with it, one, and spirit, and mind, and God, the mortal and flowing element being swallowed up by life.” For just as, through sin, the flesh was swallowed up by corruption, and the soul, through the flesh, became known through its own activities, and through the soul, through complete ignorance, even the knowledge of God — so that it is not even known whether God exists — so, at the time of the resurrection, according to the reversal that will then rightly take place, in the Holy Spirit, on account of the grace of God incarnate, the flesh will be swallowed up by the soul in the spirit, and the soul by God, who is life itself truly existing, so that the soul may have Him alone, wholly, made manifest through the whole of it; and, simply put, contrary to present things, concerning which we now are and are occupied, the grace of the resurrection, befitting God, will show all that is ours to be the reverse — so that just as death, having prevailed here through sin, swallowed us up, so there, having justly grown weak, it will itself be swallowed up on account of grace.

These things, then, will come to pass if the soul, as has been said, uses its own powers well, and, according to the purpose of God, traverses the sensible world wisely, through the spiritual principles within it, and comes to God with understanding; but if it should use them badly, surveying the present world contrary to right reason, it is not unclear how, falling into passions of dishonor, it will justly, in the age to come, be cast away from the divine glory, receiving a fearful condemnation for unending ages — its estrangement in relation to God — being pursued by which it has no ground to say that it is unjust, having as accuser the very disposition that gave subsistence to non-being, which it can never fail to recognize. But we must return the discourse to the matter before us. For when the evangelist said, “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which, if they should be written one by one, I suppose that not even the world itself could contain the books that would be written,” he showed us thereby that what was written by him is a kind of preliminary leveling of the more perfect and, as yet, uncontainable Word. According to this understanding, then, one who calls the holy evangelist John a forerunner, in the Gospel he composed, which prepares the way of the mind for the reception of the more perfect Word, will not miss the truth.

For this reason, too, the teacher calls it the great voice of truth, thundering forth spiritual things. For thunder is a sound that produces only astonishment in the hearers, without making anything clear — such indeed is elementary discourse. For every word written by God for men in this present age is a forerunner of the more perfect Word signified through it unwritten, in the Spirit, according to intellect, and to be manifested afterward — having the truth signified within itself, yet not showing that truth itself unveiled and naked. Thus, then, I think, the mind of the whole of divine Scripture, being piously reconciled, will be shown to contain nothing harsh or uneven, on account of the apparent contradictions according to the historical record. For every one of the saints from of old was, according to the true account, a forerunner of the mystery signified and prefigured through him, through the things he suffered, and did, and said, proclaiming beforehand their archetypes. For this reason too they are, without blame, taken one for another, and all for all, and each for each, and the books written by them are named after them, and they, in turn, after the books, in the custom of Scripture. And this the Lord shows plainly, both making and calling John the Baptist Elijah — whether on account of an equal habit of virtue, as the teachers say, and purity of intellect in all things, and intensity of manner of life; or on account of the identity, in both, of the power belonging to grace; or for some other hidden reason, He alone who says this as God would know, and those who by Him have become wise in such mysteries.

And again, calling Moses “the law,” and the prophets “their prophetic books,” in which He introduced the patriarch Abraham as saying to the rich man tormented in the fire of Gehenna, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them” — putting those very persons, Moses and the prophets, in place of the divine books written by them. And this is no wonder. For if it is one who is proclaimed through them, all of them, as being one who they proclaim, can be understood, and each can be piously taken in place of all, and all in place of each — both of those who ministered the mystery according to the Old Testament, and of those entrusted with the preaching of the grace according to the Gospel. Just as, then, the great Baptist John can piously be taken for the whole Old Testament, being a forerunner of the New Testament and its worship, so too, rightly, John the great evangelist can truly be taken for the whole New Testament and its worship, being a forerunner of the mystical hiddenness of the ineffable goods in the age to come, as a forerunning voice of the more divine Word to be clearly spoken, and an image of the truth that will be shown. For our whole mystery of salvation was wisely arranged by shadow, image, and truth. For the Law had, as the divine Apostle says, a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things themselves, by which the account guided those under the Law, according to a certain dim impression of the truth, toward the reception of the Gospel, suited to themselves.

But the Gospel possesses the image of the true things, having clearly, from here on, those who have wholly acquired the likeness of the good things to come. The word, through hope, prepares them, by the reception of the archetype of the true things, to be ensouled and to become living images of Christ, and rather identical with Him by grace than mere likenesses — and perhaps even the Lord Himself, if the word does not seem burdensome to some, is now called, by the God-bearing teacher, His own forerunner, as manifesting Himself proportionately to those who receive Him according to both the Old and the New Testament, running ahead of Himself through riddles, and voices, and types, and through these leading toward the truth that is without them — this being confirmed by the very words of the Lord Himself, in which He said, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” — signifying the teaching concerning Himself that was to come to them, higher indeed than what preceded, yet itself too lower than what would come after it, through the divine Spirit. Whence He fittingly added: “But when He comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you into all truth”; or again, in the words He speaks elsewhere: “Behold, I am with you all the days, even to the end of the age” — not as though He would not be with them at all after this, but as being about to be known, plainly, in a higher manner than that in which they had until then known Him in a lower manner, according to their own capacity.

For being always the same in Himself, and admitting no change from alteration, neither the more nor the less, He becomes all things to all, through the excess of His goodness — lowly to the lowly, exalted to the exalted, and, to those deified through Him, God by nature — so that all the forms and mysteries of the providence concerning man in this present age, however great they may be, are a kind of preliminary preparation and prefiguration of the things to come. Comparing, then, even the discourse of the Lord as it was, for the time being, capable of being received, with that which was to be mystically supplied to the disciples afterward — and likewise His former coming compared with the second — He is His own forerunner, having shown Himself, dimly, within Himself, in proportion to the capacity of those who received Him, but not yet, for now, having made manifest the mysteries which He keeps silently within Himself in secret, on account of their being, for the time being, altogether uncontainable by creation. For everything that falls under letters, as has been said, and under voices, holds, with respect to what is understood from it — even if it be spiritual — insofar as it does not at all fall under letters and utterance, the relation of a voice to a clear, articulate word. And for this reason, I think, this inspired teacher called all the things spoken by Christ God to the disciples, in relation to the unspoken intellect, or understanding, “John” — fittingly and wisely naming the forerunning grace from its capacity to receive.

81. from the Same Oration, on: “but the Discourse Concerning God, the More Perfect It Is, the More Difficult of Attainment, Having More Objections, and More If the things that have come to be are many, then the things that have come to be are, in every case, also different, if indeed they are many. For it is not possible for the many not to be different as well. And if the many are different, one must think that the principles too, according to which they exist essentially, are different — the principles by which the things that differ differ rather than because of which they differ; for things that differ would not differ from one another unless the principles by which they came to be had a difference. If, then, just as the senses, naturally apprehending sensible things, of necessity form, upon reception, many and different apprehensions of the subjects that fall under them, so too the intellect, naturally apprehending all the principles inherent in beings, in which, being infinite, it beholds the activities of God, forms many and, to speak truly, infinite differences of the divine activities it apprehends — it will rightly have a faltering power, and find the method of scientific inquiry into the truly existing Truth without resource, unable to understand how, in the principle of each particular thing by itself, and in all things together, according to the principles by which all things exist, God, who truly is none of the things that are, and yet properly is all things, and is above all things.

If, then, every divine activity, according to the true account, wholly and without division signifies, through itself, the whole of God, particularly, in each thing according to whatever principle it is — who exactly is able to understand and to state how, being commonly whole in all things, and particularly in each being, without division and undivided, God is, neither variously divided together with the infinite differences of the beings in which He is present, as though He were a being among them, nor contracted according to the particular existence of the one, nor contracting the differences of beings according to the one unifying totality of all — but is truly all things in all, never departing from His own undivided simplicity? Well, then, did the teacher say that the objections to the discourse concerning divinity are many, from which we are taught only that God is; and that the solutions are more laborious, from which, again, we learn what He is not — so as to put a stop to the useless and harmful over-curiosity of those who suppose the Divine to be graspable by the empty fabrications of their own thinking, by which not even the least of the things that are, according to the principle by which it is and exists, is truly graspable. 82. from the First Oration on the Son, on: “for This Reason the Monad, Having from the Beginning Moved Toward Dyad, Came to Rest at Triad” Everything that is moved according to nature is, in every case, moved on account of a cause; and everything that is moved on account of a cause, in every case, also exists on account of a cause; and everything that exists on account of a cause, and is moved on account of a cause, had, in every case, the cause on account of which it exists and from which it was brought to being as the beginning of its being, and the same cause, on account of which it is moved and toward which it presses, as the end of its being moved.

And everything that exists and is moved on account of a cause is, in every case, also generated. If, then, the end of what is moved is the cause on account of which it is moved, that cause is, in every case, the same as the cause on account of which it has come to be and exists. There is, then, in every case, one cause of whatever in any way exists and is moved according to nature, as beginning and end, on account of which every being and every moved thing both exists and is moved. For, being an active power, it both, as beginning, brings forth and puts forward the things that come to be, in a manner befitting God, and, as end, draws providentially and defines the things that are moved. If, then, everything moved and generated exists, and is moved, and has come to be on account of a cause, then everything that does not exist on account of a cause is neither made, nor, plainly, moveable. For that which has absolutely no cause of its being is not moved. And if what is without cause is, in every case, also unmoved, then the Divine is unmoved, as having no cause of its being, and yet being the cause of all beings. How, then, someone will perhaps ask, does this wondrous teacher, in the passage before us, introduce the Divine as moved?

To him we shall say that, more than anyone, he knew that the sustaining principle of each art, remaining altogether unmoved in itself — to use an example — while being shaped according to each form fashioned under that same art, is said to be moved rather because it moves, in itself, the thing being crafted, than because it appears as moved; or, as light, in relation to the seeing of sight, is said to move it, being properly that which moves every act of vision rather than that which is moved — so too the Divine, being altogether unmoved according to essence and nature, as infinite, and unrelated, and indeterminate, is said, as it were, to move, being a kind of scientific principle inherent in the essences of beings, by moving providentially each being according to the principle by which it is naturally moved, and, as cause, receiving impassibly all the predicates that are predicated of the things of which it is the cause. This the divinely-revealing and great Areopagite, Saint Dionysius, resolves when he asks: “Why is it that the theologians sometimes call the Divine Eros, sometimes Agape, sometimes the Beloved and the Object of Love?” He concludes the discourse thus, saying: “Because in one respect it is moved, and in another it moves”; and, to speak more clearly, as being Eros and Agape, the Divine is moved, and as being the Beloved and the Object of Love, it moves toward itself all things capable of receiving eros and agape; and, to put it yet more plainly: it is moved as producing an inward disposition of eros and agape in those capable of receiving them, and it moves as being, by nature, attractive of the longing of the things moved toward it; and again: it moves and is moved, as thirsting to be thirsted for, and loving to be loved, and desiring to be desired.

In this manner the godly-minded Gregory too says: “The Monad, having from the beginning moved toward Dyad, came to rest at Triad.” For it is moved in the intellect capable of receiving it — whether angelic or human — which, through it and in it, conducts inquiries concerning it; or, to speak more clearly, it teaches that intellect, without division, in its first approach, the doctrine concerning the Monad, lest division should be introduced into the First Cause; and it leads it forward also to receive the divine and ineffable fecundity of this Monad, telling it mystically and secretly that this Good must never be thought barren of Word and Wisdom, or of sanctifying power, consubstantial and enhypostatic — lest the Divine should be supposed composite from these, as accidents, and not believed to possess them always. The Godhead, then, is said to be moved as the cause of the inquiry made concerning it in whatever manner it exists. For without illumination, to attempt an approach to the Godhead is among the impossible things. And it is said to be moved, again, also on account of the partial manifestation, according to the holy Scripture, of the more perfect doctrine concerning it — beginning from the confession of the Father, and advancing to confess together with the Father the Son, and admitting together with the Father and the Son the Holy Spirit, and leading those being instructed to worship together the perfect Triad in the perfect Monad, that is, one essence and Godhead and power and activity in three hypostases.

83. ON: “BUT ONE WHO WILLS AND WILLING ARE DIFFERENT, I THINK, AS ARE ONE WHO BEGETS AND BEGETTING, ONE WHO SPEAKS AND SPEECH, UNLESS WE ARE DRUNK; THE ONE BEING, AS IT WERE, THE MOVER, THE OTHER THE MOTION. THAT WHICH IS WILLED, THEN, DOES NOT BELONG TO WILLING, NOR WHAT IS BEGOTTEN TO BEGETTING (FOR IT DOES NOT FOLLOW IN EVERY CASE), NOR WHAT IS HEARD TO UTTERANCE, BUT TO THE ONE WHO WILLS, AND BEGETS, AND SPEAKS. BUT THE THINGS OF GOD ARE ABOVE ALL THESE, FOR WHOM, PERHAPS, BEGETTING IS THE VERY WILL TO BEGET” Against the Arians, who employ every device to make blasphemy against the Only-Begotten seem plausible to themselves, saying that the only-begotten Son is a son of will, and not of the Father, the wise teacher says this, showing thereby that their whole contrivance against the truth is easily dissolved. For if we say that the powers of the soul — which one might perhaps call constitutive of its very essence — are indeed able to act within the essence in which they subsist, yet cannot be moved to effective activity at all without the assent of the one who wills; and even if it were granted, hypothetically, that they will, of their own accord, to act, from their natural motion, without the inclination, so to speak, of the one who possesses them, they would have no power whatsoever to act effectively from their own impulse alone.

For the deed does not, in every case, follow from the power, unless the power has the inclination of the one to whom it belongs, contributing to it the actual end in the activity — the power being, in itself, without subsistence. In vain, then, would they put forward the will, as being productive of nothing apart from the one who possesses and wills it. And this is what the teacher says: for the thing willed does not, in every case, follow from the willing, nor, likewise, do the other things follow from the rest, apart from the contribution of the subject in which they inhere. If, then, you infer divine things from human examples, O you who say this, accept, at least consistently with your own premises, that things which coexist together in a mediating relation exist together simultaneously — I mean the one who wills and the thing willed, the one who begets and the thing begotten, in relation, that is, to willing and begetting, existing together with one another. For just as there is no seeing apart from the one who sees and the thing seen, nor understanding apart from the one who understands and the thing understood, so too there is no begetting apart from the one who begets and the thing begotten, nor willing apart from the one who wills and the thing willed, since the thing willed does not, as has been shown, follow from the willing apart from the contribution of the one who wills.

If, then, these are among the things that coexist simultaneously in relation (for the relation between both is unmoved), then the Son, according to you, who is begotten, existed simultaneously with the begetting Father, who is always Father, through begetting, admitting no interposition of time whatsoever between Himself and the begetting Father — and the Son is no longer a son of will, but of the begetting Father. And let this, he says, be said from human examples; but the things of God are above all these, for whom, perhaps, begetting is the very will to beget. He rendered this ambiguous by the word “perhaps,” because the begetting of the Son from the Father is even above will. For the Son is not mediated from the Father by will, nor is the Father’s will conceived before the Son in any respect, since the Father did not pre-exist the Son, just as neither does intellect pre-exist the word that comes from it, nor light the radiance that shines from it. For having their being simultaneously, the Father and the Son who was begotten from Him without beginning have one will, simple and undivided, just as also they have one essence and nature.

84. ON: “FOR WHAT PREVENTS ME TOO FROM MAKING THIS PREMISE — THAT THE FATHER IS GREATER BY NATURE — AND THEN, TAKING UP THE FURTHER PREMISE THAT WHAT IS GREATER BY NATURE IS NOT ALWAYS GREATER, NOR ALWAYS FATHER, FROM CONCLUDING THAT THE GREATER IS NOT ALWAYS GREATER, OR THAT THE FATHER IS NOT ALWAYS FATHER” Since the teacher wisely defined the Father as greater than the Son with respect to cause, as the Father being the cause of the Son, but not the Son the cause of the Father, the Arians, taking up his premise that He is greater by cause, wickedly concluded from it that He is greater by nature. First, he nobly refutes what they fallaciously inferred, saying: “I do not know whether they deceive themselves, or those to whom the argument is addressed.” For it is not simply the case that whatever is said of something will also be said of the subject underlying it; rather, it must be clear of what, and in what respect, this is said. For it is not the case, he says, that whatever is said of the cause as cause will also be said of the cause as it is by nature. For it is not proper to reason that things said of, say, a wise man or a king, as wise or as king, should also be said of the subject underlying these, as of men, and to improperly take together, under the definition of essence belonging to the subjects, the things said of wisdom as wisdom, and of kingship as kingship, which have nothing at all in common with the account of essence, as though they were constitutive differences of it and completive of its definition.

Then, more skillfully, weaving together for them a syllogism from their own premise, he turns it against themselves. It goes thus: “For what prevents me too from making this premise, that the Father is greater by nature, and then, taking up the further premise that what is greater by nature is not always greater, nor always Father, from concluding that the greater is not always greater, or that the Father is not always Father?” That it may become clearer and more coherent for us, let us, if it please, set out what is said in the form of a diagram, beginning from the argument of the opponents, and ending in the teaching of the Father. The premise of the Arians, that is, the Eunomians: “If the Father is by nature the cause of the Son, and the Father is greater than the Son, then the Father is greater than the Son by nature.” The solution of our holy Father Gregory, who overturns his opponents through the reduction to absurdity: “If, according to you, the Father is by nature greater than the Son, and yet what is greater by nature is not always greater, or Father, then the greater is not greater, or the Father is not always Father.” Thus those who reject the truth are overturned, caught in their own contrivances, being vainly and emptily shaken out of piety. For in arguments of this kind the conclusions are constitutive of the premises, and the premises are determinative of the conclusions — into which those who suppose themselves wise, out of great ignorance, have fallen.

85. ON: “BUT LET IT BE, IF YOU WISH, EVEN A NAME OF ACTIVITY — NOT EVEN SO WILL YOU CAPTURE US. FOR THIS VERY THING, THE CONSUBSTANTIAL, WOULD HAVE BEEN ACTIVATED, EVEN IF THE SUPPOSITION OF ACTIVITY IN THIS CASE IS OTHERWISE ABSURD” Since those who had their tongue sharpened like a razor against the truth said, as though asking: Is “Father” a name of essence, or of activity — so that from this they might conclude that the Son is of a different essence from the Father, on the ground that the same essence cannot admit two properly distinct names (for if “Father” is a name of essence, “Son” could never be a name of the same essence); or, if it is a name of activity, that they might clearly show them confessing the Son to be a product of the Father, as an effect of activity — after treating the proper meaning of the term antithetically against them, the teacher immediately, conceding for the sake of argument, said that “Father” is a name neither of essence nor of activity, but of relation, and of how the Father stands toward the Son, or the Son toward the Father, and, accommodatingly, brought this in, saying: “Let it be, if you wish, even a name of activity,” and adds: “For this very thing, the consubstantial, would have been activated.” How, then, does the consubstantial act?

one of the exceedingly inquisitive, who cannot bear to be ignorant of anything useful, might perhaps ask. This will be resolved in the following manner. They say that there are, in general, two kinds of activity among beings: one that naturally brings forth from beings things of the same kind and consubstantial, altogether identical with themselves. Going along with the wordy quibblers according to this kind, in order to restrain them, at least a little, from blasphemy, the teacher says: “Let it be, according to you,” in keeping with the purpose of the argument as stated, “that ‘Father’ is even a name of activity.” To which he adds: “For this very thing, the Father, would have been activated” — that is, plainly, the consubstantial, as an activity essentially subsisting and living, just as, indeed, the godly-minded teachers of the truth have also called the only-begotten Word of God and Son of the Father a living Word, and power, and self-subsistent Wisdom. But the other kind of activity, they say, is one that produces things external, according to which someone, acting concerning something outside himself and of a different essence, fashions something else, foreign to his own essence, out of some preexisting matter. This activity, they say, belongs properly to the arts. Concerning this the godly-minded teacher says: “even if the supposition of activity in this case is otherwise absurd” — that is, absurd in the manner in which it was taken — especially when applied to Father and Son, in whose case the pious mind cannot even properly accept the first kind, on account of the ineffable and inconceivable existence of the Only-Begotten from the Father, and together with the Father, and in the Father, being even above this.

86. FROM THE SECOND ORATION ON THE SON, ON: “HE WOULD BE CALLED GOD NOT OF THE WORD, BUT OF THE ONE SEEN. FOR HOW COULD HE BE THE GOD OF HIM WHO IS PROPERLY GOD? JUST AS ALSO FATHER NOT OF THE ONE SEEN, BUT OF THE WORD. FOR HE WAS TWOFOLD, SO THAT THE ONE IS PROPERLY SAID OF BOTH, THE OTHER NOT PROPERLY; BUT WITH US IT IS THE OPPOSITE. FOR WITH US, GOD IS PROPERLY GOD, BUT NOT PROPERLY FATHER” “The properly” must be taken as applying to both — “Father” and “God” — as being able to be properly said of both concerning Christ, on account of the one hypostasis. For God is properly the Father of Christ, as Christ being the Son and God the Word, and one of the Holy Trinity, even after the incarnation; and He is again properly God of the same Christ, as Christ being truly man on account of the flesh, and reckoned as one of mankind. For the things belonging to the parts are properly predicated of the whole composed from them, since the whole admits, properly, all the things that naturally belong to the parts of which it is constituted. “The not properly” must likewise be taken as applying to both — “God” and “Father” — as not being able to be properly said of both concerning Christ, on account of the natural difference of the natures from which and in which He is constituted.

For the things belonging to the whole by composition can never be properly predicated of either one of its own parts. “But with us it is the opposite,” that is, the reverse of how it is with us. For when I consider the difference of the natures, and make their notional distinction, I cannot say that “properly” applies to both — I mean “Father” and “God.” For the Father is not properly God of the Word, nor is God properly Father of the flesh. “But it is the opposite,” that is, the reverse, or conversely — with respect, plainly, to both “properly” and “not properly,” taken with reference to the union and the one hypostasis, and with reference to the difference of the natures and their notional distinction: the one hypostasis admitting Him properly to be called God and Father, as of the one Christ, God, for the reason given; the essential difference of the natures, conversely, admitting the “not properly,” as it is with us. For with us, God is properly God, just as also of the flesh of the Word, but not properly Father, just as neither of the flesh of the Word. One must, then, apply, interchangeably, the predicates of the whole to the parts, and the predicates of the proper parts to the whole, and the comprehension of what is set before us will be easy and clear.

And that what is said may become clearer: when Christ is considered as a hypostasis, one must apply “properly” to both — “God,” I mean, and “Father”; but when the natures of Christ are considered, on account of the unconfused existence of that in which and from which He is, one must apply the opposite, which is “not properly,” as it is with us. And the teacher makes this clear, saying, in what follows: “And this is what causes the error for the heretics — the joining together of the names, the names being interchanged on account of the mixture.” The sign is this: when the natures are separated notionally, the names too are divided along with them. That is, so long as you regard Christ as a single hypostasis, the interchanged joining together of the names is undivided; but when you separate, notionally, the natures that are conjoined in the one hypostasis of Christ, you have divided the names along with the natures. Or again: since Christ is twofold in nature, both “God” and “Father” are predicated of Him — properly, when the names are pronounced together corresponding to the natures; not properly, when the natural possession belonging to each of the two, in which and as which He is, is, on account of the one hypostasis, interchangeably given to the other. Not knowing how to do this, or rather, not enduring to do so, the heretics, both then and now, do not refrain from blaspheming the only-begotten God the Word — some dragging Him down to a creature on account of the human things, others confounding the economy by denying the natures of which He consists.

Another man, exceedingly wise in divine matters, when I asked him about this passage, said: The “properly” and the “not properly,” applied to both, belong to the same relative predication, whether of “Father” or of “God,” or of both, as posited of the one Christ, who is constituted from two opposites, “properly” and “not properly.” If God is said to be the Father of Christ with reference to the notion of the two natures, He would be said, “properly,” the Father of the created nature, but “not properly” of God the Word. Likewise, from the opposite side, “properly” He is Father of the Word, but “not properly” of the created nature — just as it is with us as well, when these things are said. For of us He is “properly” God, but “not properly” Father. I accepted this wise man‘s approach as being sound, and judged it fit to be inserted into the text.

87. ON: “THAT HE, THAT IS, CHRIST, RECEIVES LIFE, OR JUDGMENT, OR THE INHERITANCE OF THE NATIONS, OR AUTHORITY OVER ALL FLESH, OR GLORY, OR DISCIPLES, OR WHATEVER ELSE IS SAID” — TO WHICH THE TEACHER ADDS: “AND THIS BELONGS TO HIS HUMANITY”; THEN FURTHER ADDS: “BUT IF YOU SHOULD ASCRIBE IT ALSO TO GOD, IT IS NOT ABSURD. FOR YOU WILL NOT ASCRIBE IT AS SOMETHING ACQUIRED, BUT AS COEXISTING FROM THE BEGINNING, AND BY REASON OF NATURE, NOT OF GRACE” Having often been perplexed within myself concerning this — how, and for what reason, as the teacher says, God is said to receive what He already has by nature — and being unable to satisfy myself, I finally judged it best to ask a wise elder, who set the matter straight most skillfully, speaking thus: suppose, hypothetically, that we know someone explaining the natures of beings to certain people, saying to them: Let us assign to God omnipotence, wisdom, goodness, righteousness; and likewise to creation, servitude, obedience, circumscription, subsistence from non-being, and whatever follows from these — since the nature of each, in common conceptions, demands its own properties. Someone saying, then, “let us assign to God,” does not thereby give Him something not already belonging to Him, but that which His nature has; for this “let us assign” signifies, as it were, the distinguishing of the nature by what belongs to it, from what does not.

In the same manner, then, understand piously the teacher‘s saying here too: “but if you should ascribe it also to God” — that is, of the nature receiving what belongs to it from those who distinguish the matters precisely. 88. on: “for Just as We Say It Is Impossible for God to Be Having asked the aforesaid wise elder about this passage as well, he said that “not to be” should not be connected to what precedes it, lest it be inferred that God is evil: “For just as we say it is impossible for God to be evil, or not to be” evil, but rather that He is evil — with “evil” being taken in common — for two negations produce one affirmation. “Impossible,” then, is negative, and, joined with “not to be evil,” it would conclude that He is evil. But this is not so — far from it. Rather, each clause has its own separate beginning, so that the phrase should be reconciled thus: “For just as we say it is impossible for God to be evil” — and then punctuate, and begin a new thought, adding, “or not to exist” — that is, to be non-existent.

89. ON: “YOU HAVE THE APPELLATIONS OF THE SON — WALK THROUGH THEM: THOSE THAT ARE LOFTY, IN A GODLY MANNER; THOSE THAT ARE BODILY, WITH SYMPATHY; OR RATHER, THE WHOLE, IN A GODLY MANNER, THAT YOU MAY BECOME GOD, ASCENDING FROM BELOW, ON ACCOUNT OF HIM WHO, FOR OUR SAKE, DESCENDED FROM ABOVE” He has illumined his intellect through lofty contemplation, according to the notion proper to each of the divine names, and has led and transformed it toward the archetypal and spiritual principle of each, and who, by the labors undertaken for virtue, has subjected the mind of the flesh to the spirit, becoming obedient even unto death — this man truly “walks through the divine appellations” blamelessly, both in spirit and in flesh, making the divine journey that leads to God: “loftily,” according to mystical contemplation, through the lofty names; “with sympathy,” according to the practical philosophy, being urged on toward the goal above through the bodily names; “or rather, the whole, in a godly manner,” since even practice is contemplative, and does not lack rational grace. But for the sake of which he chose the estrangement of his will from the flesh, through the complete circumcision of its natural movements, he plainly intimates: that he too might become, by grace, God, having established himself, in the flesh, above matter through practice, and, in intellect, through contemplation, above form — from which the subsistence of beings consists — and, to put it wholly, having become, according to the habit of virtue and knowledge, altogether immaterial and formless, on account of God the Word, who, for our sake, truly became, from us, in matter and form as we are — He who, according to nature, is properly immaterial and formless.

Or again: “or rather, the whole, in a godly manner,” on account of the dispassion that comes to be in him, having achieved the virtue and knowledge attainable by men, out of compassion toward God and neighbor — being ready to suffer, and to lay down his soul, for the debt owed by others, as being altogether free of stain. 90. from the Same Author, from the Oration on the Nativity, on: “the Laws of Nature Are Dissolved; the World Above Must Be Filled. Christ Commands; Let Us In truth, the laws of nature, being dissolved, brought about the filling of the world above. For plainly, had they not been dissolved, the world above would have remained incomplete and unfilled. What, then, are the laws of nature that were dissolved? Conception through seed, and, I think, birth through corruption — neither of which at all characterized the true incarnation and perfect enmanment of God. For the conception was truly without seed, and the birth altogether without corruption, pure and untouched — and for this reason the Mother remained a virgin even after the birth of the one begotten, remaining rather more free from passion through the very act of childbirth — a thing paradoxical, and surpassing every law and principle of nature; and God, who deigned to be born of her in the flesh, bound the bonds of her virginity, as mother, still more tightly through the birth.

The truly wondrous thing, both as event and as report, is that the birth and coming-forth of the infant took place without the birth-giving gates of her who bore Him being opened. For it was indeed necessary — necessary that the Maker of nature, restoring nature through Himself, should first dissolve the laws of nature, by which sin, through disobedience, condemned mankind to have the same property of succession, one from another, as the irrational animals, and thus renew the laws of the first and truly divine creation, so that what man, through carelessness, as one weak, had obliterated, God, through love for mankind, as one able, might restore. If, then, the laws of nature that came about through sin were dissolved in Christ, and every servile uprising of the passions was altogether abolished through the coming of the Word, then the world above must, in every case, be filled, as the teacher says. And let us not resist this. For if the old Adam, under sin, being a mere man, having dissolved through disobedience the first laws of nature that were in the spirit, filled the world below with those born of him in the flesh unto corruption, having become the leader in the likeness of his transgression — and no one will dispute this — much more will the sinless new Adam, Christ God, having dissolved, as Word, the laws of irrationality introduced into nature through sin, justly fill the world above with those born of Him in the spirit unto incorruption, having become the leader in the likeness of His obedience.

And let none disbelieve this, who have even in small measure perceived the power of God, and are not ignorant of its greatness. Thus, then, the world above is filled with those born according to Christ in the Spirit, and thus the law of the flesh and of birth below receives its fitting end, and all things are refashioned toward the world above.

91. Another Approach to the Same Since the teacher‘s discourse appears to me to have yet another sense in addition to these, this too must be stated, so far as is possible for us, God guiding the discourse in the Gospels. The sole cause of all things, and God, my Jesus, teaching secretly in parables, called man a sheep that had strayed from the divine hundred, and a coin lost from the divine ten, and a prodigal son who had foolishly leapt away from his father, dissolving the concord of the divine, brotherly pair — a sheep, I think, as being an object of providence, and led, and ordered, and providing three necessities to its owner: wool, and lamb, and milk, as being both nourished and nourishing, through the reason and manner of natural contemplation; and clothing and being clothed, through the manner of ethical philosophy; and being enriched and enriching, according to the generation of its like, in the mystery of true divine vision; and a coin, as being bright and royal, and, by the reason of the image, bearing the character of the divine archetype, and being receptive, so far as possible, of the whole of the divine beauty; and a son, as heir of the paternal goods, and equal in honor to the father, by the gift of grace. This man, then, as a sheep gone astray, the provident God sought as a shepherd and found, and, placing him on His own shoulders, led him back to the fold of his fellow flock; and as an image buried under the passions, defiling the original beauty, the Word, as Wisdom, kindled His own flesh like a lamp, and found him by the light of His own Godhead, and made the finding an occasion of great joy, by which He filled up the deficiency of the divine ten; and as a son, dead through sin and lost through ignorance of God, He, as a good Father, received him back as he returned, and again fully restores to him, without deficiency, the tokens of his former dignity, and, greatest and most mystical of all, sacrifices the fatted calf — whatever this calf might once have been, and this paradoxical sacrifice (I think it is the most hidden and most unknowable Word of the incomprehensible and unknowable manner of the divine and ineffable providence, at its very summit, and its communication,

befitting God, to beings) — and makes the son‘s return the crowning point of ineffable joy, having magnificently filled up the pair of sons — whatever this pair might once be, and the ten of coins before it, and the hundred of sheep before that. Concerning these, let us for now, if it please, pass over speaking, reserving for a more fitting occasion, in another place, with diligent elaboration, God granting it, to survey the mystical account belonging to each number. If, then, the good Shepherd, placing man on His shoulders as a sheep, led him back to his fellow flock; and if the Lord and Savior, as Wisdom of God the Father and Power, found man, bearing the royal impress through the image, as a coin, through the incarnation; and if the good and allcompassionate Father received him back as a returning son, and, numbering him among the powers of heaven, enrolled him, filling up the deficiency of each number in the heavens through the man who was saved — it is clear that Christ God filled the world above, having, befitting God, wrought in Himself the salvation of all.

92. Another Contemplation on the Same And let us, if it please, contemplate the matter before us in another way as well. Those who have carefully examined the nature of beings say that the law of each nature is the unswerving and unchanging fixity of the principle by which it is and has come to be — and, I think, everyone who has any share of reason, hearing this, will agree that this definition of the law of nature is a good one. If this is true, then plainly the law of nature necessarily preserves, just as it preserves inviolate the principle of nature, so also its place, according to position, altogether unaltered. But He who wisely determined, by law and reason and nature, the subsistence of beings according to each species, being above nature and law and intellect and reason and place and motion, in no way acts toward the things under nature according to any of the things according to nature, but, fittingly for Himself, above nature, does and undergoes the things according to nature belonging to the things under nature, preserving, paradoxically, in both — in Himself as undergoing, and in the things done — the unalterable purity according to nature. Thus, having moved Himself down toward us, He truly became, by His manifestation according to us, perfect man, without having moved Himself at all, and without in any way undergoing the experience of circumscription in place; and He perfectly deified us, taking nothing whatsoever from our nature by way of alteration, giving Himself wholly and without deficiency, and, according to the ineffable and inviolate union, having taken man whole and complete, He diminished nothing of the perfection belonging to the other nature, and He is truly wholly God, the same, and wholly man, the same, bearing witness in Himself, by the perfection according to both natures in which He truly is, to the immutability and unalterability that belongs to both.

Thus God dissolves the laws of nature, using nature, above nature, in the things according to nature.

93. Another Contemplation, on: “the World Above Must If, then, Christ, as man, is the firstfruits of our nature in relation to God and the Father, and as it were the leaven of the whole lump; and if He who never departed from His abiding in the Father, as Word, is, according to the notion of His humanity, in relation to God and the Father — let us not disbelieve that we too shall be, according to His request to the Father, where He Himself is, the firstfruits of our race. For just as He, unalterably, for our sake, became man below, like us, apart from sin alone, dissolving supernaturally the laws of nature, so too we, in accordance with this, shall come to be above for His sake, and gods according to Him, by the mystery of grace, in no way whatsoever altering our nature. And thus, again, according to the wise teacher, the world above is filled, the members of the body being gathered together, each according to its worth, toward the head — each member, plainly, receiving, through the architecture of the Spirit, the fitting position through its nearness in virtue, harmoniously, and filling up, together with the others, the body of Him who is filled with all in all, He who fills all things being filled from all. Whether, then, as has been said, according to the spiritual regeneration of those born according to Christ, or according to the filling up, brought about in Christ and through Christ, of the mystical numbers in the heavens — the divine hundred, I mean, of rational sheep, and the mystical ten of intellectual coins, and the honored pair of sons — or according to the gathering together of the members of the body toward their own head and their own firstfruits of the lump, the world above will, in every case, be filled, according to the teacher — already filled in Christ, and yet to be filled again, afterward, in those who are according to Christ, when they too shall have become conformed to His resurrection, having already, through the same sufferings, become conformed to the likeness of His death.

94. on: “a Child Is Born to Us, a Son Is Given to Us, Whose Government Is Upon His Shoulder; for He Is Exalted Together with the Cross” Wholly, through reason, joining himself to the first Reason, in accordance with reason, concerning the mystical saying about the Word which the great prophet Isaiah makes concerning the incarnate Word, saying, “Whose government is upon His shoulder” — this great teacher, summarily, as is his custom, made clear what one ought to think this “government” rightly to be, saying: “For He is exalted together with the cross.” But since the cross admits many contemplations, according to the various notions concerning it, it is worth inquiring according to which notion the teacher, in the present passage, called the cross a “government.” For the cross is contemplated according to shape, according to composition, according to the property of its parts, and according to activity, and according to many other notions, which are visible to those who love the contemplation of divine things. According to shape, as when the cross, being contemplated as encompassing, on either side, all things — both those above and those below — by its own limits, signifies power; according to composition, as when it makes manifest essence and providence and judgment — that is, their manifestations, I mean wisdom, and knowledge, and virtue, of the power that governs the universe — essence and wisdom, as creative, through the vertical line; providence and knowledge, as preservative, through the horizontal; judgment and virtue, as removing evil, and, through the whole, binding the things made and preserved to their own beginning and cause; and according to the property of its parts, when, through the vertical line, the cross signifies God, who ever remains the same, and in no way departs from His own stability, on account of His firm and unmovable establishment, while through the horizontal it shows that all creation is altogether dependent on God, having no other beginnings of its being, or foundation, apart from Him; and according to activity, when it signifies the inactivity and mortification of those fastened upon it — in which manner of contemplation, I think, the teacher has taken the prophetic word here.

Just as, then, of every office — for it is good to show forth, by examples proper to us, the truth of matters that transcend us — there are certain seals by which those who receive them are made known to all, that this one has received such-andsuch office from the king, as the ruler receives the so-called codicils, another through the sword the so-called military commission, and another some other office through some other token, and they receive these from the king and carry them in their own hands, and, going forth, give them to their own attendants to carry — in this manner too our Master Jesus Christ, according to the notion of His humanity, having received the symbols of His own government, went forth bearing His cross upon His shoulders, Himself first carrying it, and then giving it to another, showing thereby that the one entrusted with government must first lead the way for those guided by it, and hold fast to what it prescribes (for thus will he be readily accepted according to its precepts), and then command those entrusted to him to do likewise. If, then, the seal of the government of our Lord Jesus Christ is the cross, which He carried upon His shoulders, it is fitting to know what He wished to signify by these things, that He mystically arranged and endured them thus.

Those skilled in symbols say that the shoulder is a token of practice, and the cross of dispassion, as producing a kind of mortification. Through these riddles, then, our Lord and God, having passed through both of the things of which they are riddles — I mean practice and perfect dispassion — so that practice might not be corrupted by vainglory, showed, through what He Himself accomplished, to those subject to Him, almost crying out aloud, as it were: “This is the symbol of My government.” Let everyone among you, then, who desires this government, deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me — that is, let him make the mortification of the passions his practice, and goodness and the beauty of generosity, showing thereby that He longs for all, like Himself, to take up this government. For when the Godbearing teacher says that “He is exalted together with the cross,” I think he thereby gives us this sense: that as the rational nature of men is exalted through practice and the dispassion joined to it, Christ Himself is said to be exalted together with them — that is, the Christ-like condition among men, being exalted in orderly succession, moves, through dispassionate practice, toward the knowing contemplation of nature, and from this toward theological mystagogy. This, it seems to me, the holy Areopagite, the great Dionysius, chiefly indicates when he says: “But since the Divine is the beginning of sacred order, according to which the sacred intellects become knowers of themselves, he who ascends toward what is visible proper to his own nature will, at the beginning, see whatever he himself is, and will first receive, from his upward turning toward the light, a sacred gift; and he who has surveyed his own things well, with keen eyes, will depart from the unlit recesses of ignorance, and, being not yet perfect, will not immediately desire the most perfect illumination and participation of God, but gradually, through his own first steps, toward the things still prior, and, having been perfected, will be led up, in order and sacredly, to the highest communion befitting the source of divinity.”

Thus, then, according to this great and godly-minded teacher, the Most High alone is exalted together with the cross, through us, who are, in accordance with Him, exalted in the Spirit, through practice and the dispassion joined to it being led to knowledge, and through that knowledge, in the immaterial intellect, being exalted to the mystical contemplation and initiation of divine things — and I will boldly add, also to participation in them. 95. from the Same Oration, on: “the Word Is Thickened” The Word is said by the God-bearing teacher to be “thickened,” I think, according to the following sense: either because, being Word, simple and incorporeal, and spiritually nourishing all the divine powers in heaven in their order, He deigned, through His enfleshed presence, to be thickened, from us, for our sake, apart from our sin, and to set forth for us, fittingly, by words and examples, teaching concerning ineffable things that surpasses the power of every discourse (for it is said that He spoke all things in parables, and apart from a parable spoke nothing — for it is dear to teachers to use this method, when the hearers do not follow what is said in its primary sense, and thereby to lead them to a perception of what is said); or because, having hidden Himself, for our sake, ineffably in the principles of beings, He is proportionately signified, through each visible thing, as through certain letters, being at once wholly and most fully present in all things, and whole and entire in each particular, whole and undiminished — undifferentiated in things different, and ever remaining the same, simple and uncomposite in things composite, without beginning among things under a beginning, and invisible among things seen, and intangible among things touched; or because, for our sake, who are thick in understanding, He consented to be embodied for our sake, and to be shaped by letters and syllables and words, that from all these, as we follow Him, He might gradually gather us to Himself, being united in the Spirit, and lead us up to the simple and unrelated notion concerning Him — contracting us, for His own sake, toward union with Himself, to the very extent that He, for our sake, extended Himself by reason of condescension.

96. on: “Not from the Things Concerning His Very Self, but from the Things Around Him, One Impression Gathered from Another, Into Some One Semblance of the From the things belonging to essence, that is, from the essence itself, God is never known as being anything. For the notion of what He is constituted as is impossible and altogether inaccessible to all creation, visible and invisible alike; but from the things around His essence alone — that He is — and these being rightly and piously contemplated, God yields Himself, in some measure, to those who behold Him. But all the things around the essence indicate not what He is, but what He is not — such as the unbegotten, the withoutbeginning, the infinite, the incorporeal, and whatever else of this kind belongs around the essence — and these represent, not that He is something, but that He is not something. But even the principles of providence and judgment, according to which the universe is wisely administered — together with which the harmonious contemplation of nature too is said to be concerning God — show only, by way of analogy, that its Maker exists. Since, then, the negations are set in opposition to the affirmations, they are interchangeably and amicably intertwined with one another, and mutually taken up, concerning God: the negations, signifying not that He is something, but that He is not something, are united, concerning what this non-being is, with the affirmations; while the affirmations, showing only that He is, without indicating what this being is, are united, concerning what this being is not, with the negations — showing, toward one another, the opposition arising from contradiction, but, concerning God, the affinity that arises from the interchange of the extremes into one another.

97. ON: “BUT SINCE IT WAS NOT ENOUGH FOR GOODNESS TO BE MOVED ONLY IN THE CONTEMPLATION OF ITSELF, BUT THE GOOD HAD TO BE POURED FORTH AND TO GO ON ITS WAY, SO THAT THE THINGS BENEFITED MIGHT BE Having asked the great and wise elder, so often mentioned, about this passage as well, he said that the great and Godbearing Gregory thereby shows that the same God, in Himself alone, being properly and truly one, having nothing at all conceived together with Him differing in nature, having in Himself alone the inconceivable, beginningless, infinite, and incomprehensible fixity, from which, by an infinitely bestowing outpouring of goodness, He willed both to bring forth and give subsistence to beings out of non-being, and to impart Himself, proportionately, to the universe and to each particular, without defilement, graciously granting to each the power to be and to abide — according to the holy and God-like great Dionysius the Areopagite, who says that the One is to be hymned by God as removing Himself from all things, having brought into being, by goodness, the whole ordering of intelligible things and the beauty of visible things, existing, proportionately, in each of the creatures, according to some ineffable principle of wisdom, without diminishment, and yet again being in no way whatsoever, by any principle or manner, contained — bestowing Himself on some by an abundant and good-giving outpouring, on others in a middling measure, and on others only so far as they are able to bear some image of Him.

And this, perhaps, according to my own foolishness, is what it means for the good to be “poured forth” and to “go on its way” — that the one God is multiplied, proportionately, toward those receiving the communication of good things. capable 98. on: “He Shares a Second Communion, Far More Paradoxical Than the First” It was not so wondrous, I think, great though it was, that God, at the first formation, when the nature of men was pure, having been honored by the hand of God, should bring it, through the breathing-in, into communion with Himself, imparting to His likeness a share of the divine beauty according to the image — as it is that He should deign, after it had been defiled and had fled from God, on account of the passions it had contracted, to associate with it, and to partake of what is worse, and to add to the wonder of the paradoxical union with what is altogether unmixed in nature. For formerly nature had, by no manner or principle of essence or hypostasis — those categories under which all beings are universally contemplated — received oneness with God; but now it has received, through the ineffable union, oneness with Him according to hypostasis, preserving, unalterably, its own principle, differing according to essence from the divine essence, in relation to which it has, through the union, oneness and difference according to hypostasis — so that, by the principle of its being, according to which it came to be and is, it might remain its own being, properly held in every way undiminished, while by the principle of how it exists, having received divine subsistence, it might altogether neither know nor admit any inclination of motion toward anything else.

In this way, then, the Word made His communion with the nature of men far more paradoxical than the first, having united that very nature essentially to Himself according to hypostasis. 99. on: “but Now Receive My Conceiving, and Leap for Joy, If Not as John from the Womb, Then as David at the John the great is not only an image of repentance, and of the dispassion belonging to the practical philosophy, and of gnostic contemplation — of the first as herald and baptist, of the second as hermit and one wholly separated from the world, of the third as Levite and priest and forerunner of God the Word — but is also a symbol of the unchangeableness, according to habit, in these things, having preserved, from the womb even to death, the tension of soul in these matters unyielding. David, again, is himself also an image of confession, and of practice, and of contemplation, as being both shepherd of the Jewish tribe formerly and afterward king, and slayer of the foreigners — yet not a symbol of the unchangeableness of these according to habit. For he stumbled, after his recognition, suffering something human, and did not preserve the habit of virtue and knowledge unchanged. For this reason, perhaps, it is not even written that he leapt for the Word from the womb, as with the great John, but only after the complete destruction of the foreigners and the restoration of the ark — that is, after the retreat of the passions and the return again of knowledge.

John, then, is a type of all those begotten in the Spirit through repentance according to virtue and knowledge, and who preserve, to the end, through progress, the habit in these unchanged; David is a type of all who, after recognition, stumble, and who, again through repentance, restore to the soul the exultation of divine joy according to virtue and knowledge. Being concise, then, and having contracted, in spirit, intellectually, the power of the Word into a wide expanse, this great teacher likened the hearers of the divine sayings to the great John and David, through the habit belonging to each — as being confirmed, I think, in every one of those living according to piety, one of these two, according to the manner fittingly assigned to each — almost crying out expressly that: “All you who have received, through repentance, the divine Word conceived within you, of virtue and knowledge, either preserve, like the great John, from the beginning to the end, through progress, the divine leaping of the soul upon Him unchanged in habit, subjecting yourselves in no way at all to any form of vice and ignorance; or, like the blessed David, if something unwilling should befall you along the divine course, diligently strive, through repentance, to restore virtue and knowledge to yourselves through the exertions of endurance and the exercises of divine words, and do not, through negligence, abandoning this divine ark within you — I mean of virtue and knowledge — to the passions, suffer the fate of the priest Eli, and, falling backward, die at the gates of the temple in Shiloh, your shoulder of practice being broken.”

Which, I think, this blessed Father teaches more clearly in his oration on New Sunday, saying: “We are commanded to sing a new song to the Lord — whether we are those dragged into Babylon and the wicked confusion by sin, and then restored to Jerusalem, and there unable to sing the divine song, as on foreign soil, but here establishing a new song and manner of life; or those who have remained in the good and are progressing, having already achieved one thing, and being brought, through the renewing Spirit, to achieve another.” Having understood these things conjecturally, according to my own foolishness, I think the teacher says: “But now receive my conceiving, and leap for joy, even if not as John from the womb, then as David at the resting of the ark” — having gathered together, in a manner fitting to the worth and kind of the contemplation, the contemplation of what has been said. For those who diligently attend to such mysteries, and who love and delight in the spiritual principles belonging to them, say that the general account of scriptural contemplation, being one, is seen to be expanded in ten ways: by place, time, kind, person, dignity — that is, occupation — practical, natural, theological philosophy, present, and future — that is, type and truth — and, again, that the five are gathered together and circumscribed by three, and the three again by two, and the two are altogether enclosed by the one that admits no numbering: for instance, that those according to time, place, kind, person, and dignity, being five, are gathered into the three of the practical, natural, and theological; and these, being three, again into the two, signifying the present and the future; and these into the perfecting and simple, as they say, and all-comprehending, ineffable Word, from which, by procession, the general ten of the modes of scriptural contemplation came to be, and into which, as beginning, according to circumscription, that same ten is again, by ascent, gathered back into the monad.

And according to time, the account of Scripture is contemplated whenever it signifies “once,” “was,” “is,” “will be,” “before this,” “the present,” “after this,” and “at this,” and “from the beginning,” “the past,” “the future” — years, and seasons, and months, and weeks, and days, and nights, and their parts, and, simply, whatever indicates time; and according to place, whenever it signifies heaven, and earth, and air, and sea, the inhabited world, limits, regions, islands, cities, temples, villages, fields, mountains, ravines, roads, rivers, deserts, winepresses, threshing-floors, vineyards, and, simply, whatever can characterize place; and according to kind, universally, whenever it signifies angels, or whatever belongs to the ordering of intellectual essences in heaven, and further, sun and moon, stars, fire, and whatever is in air, on earth, in sea, whether animals, or zoophytes, or plants, and whatever is mined from the earth and falls under the arts of men, and whatever other such things — and particularly, again, whenever it names men, nations, peoples, tongues, tribes, families, and such things, with or without number; and according to person, whenever it calls by name this angel, or this archangel, or Seraphim, or whatever of the intellectual essences that dwell in the heavens, or Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob, or some other of those set forth in praise or blame in Scripture, indicated by name; and according to dignity, whenever it signifies kingdom, or king, or shepherd, or flock, or priest, or priesthood, or farmer, or general, or architect, and, simply, whatever else belongs to the occupations by which the human race is divided.

For all these things, which the account has shown to be contained under the five modes, being constituted, in essence and power and activity, by the primary divisions concerning them, either altogether move or are moved, or act or are acted upon, or contemplate or are contemplated, or speak or are spoken, or teach or are taught, or receive commendation or rejection, and, simply, to sum it up, either doing or undergoing, they variously introduce to us, in interweaving with one another, the practical, and the natural, and the theological philosophy — each of the things named being taken, in manifold ways, praiseworthily or blameworthily, according to the notions concerning it in contemplation, and manifesting the principles, whether to be done or not to be done concerning it, whether natural or unnatural, whether intelligible or unintelligible. For, as I have said, the manner belonging to each account is twofold, according to the capacity of the one who makes the intelligent examination of the contemplation concerning them, so that, from the positing of the things to be done, and natural, and intelligible principles, and from the removal of the things not to be done, and unnatural, and unintelligible imaginings, the practical, and the natural, and the theological philosophy might be acquired by the pious — which is the same as to say, the love of God. And these, again, are divided into the present and the future, as having shadow and truth, and type and archetype.

And insofar as it is possible, in a manner surpassing nature and lofty, for man in this present age, having reached the highest measure of virtue and knowledge and wisdom, to attain the science of divine things, it exists in type and image of the archetypes. For truly a type is everything now supposed by us to be truth, and a shadow and image of the greater Word. The Word, who in all things, with respect to the present in relation to the future, is the maker of all things, is understood as existing and appearing in type and in truth, as being above the present and the future, and above type and truth, since He has nothing opposed to Him contemplated together with Him. But falsehood is opposed to truth. Above truth, then, is the Word toward whom all things are gathered; and again, as being both man and God, He is truly above all humanity and divinity. The first five modes, then, according to their manifold contemplation, are gathered into the practical, and natural, and theological philosophy; these again into the present and the future, that is, type and truth; and the present and the future into the originating Word, that is, the Word who was in the beginning, who causes those who have become worthy of Him both to suffer and to see Him, and who, through the things mentioned, have diligently made their journey toward Him, and, having made the ten that came to be for their sake into a monad for His sake, He shakes them free of every passionate, and natural, and intellectual movement, and, in grace, forms in them, according to their whole habit, the property of the divine simplicity according to nature.

One must also know this: that the principle of providence is sown in natural philosophy, and the principle of judgment in practical philosophy, according to the manners fitting to them, by which they are made manifest through the contemplation of beings and of things that come to be. Having understood these things, as has been said, I think this godly-minded teacher fittingly called the named saints by the manner of contemplation according to kind and dignity, and the great John also by place. For this reason the great and holy John, as herald of repentance, is an image of practice; as hermit, of dispassion; as Levite and priest, of gnostic contemplation; and as having leapt for the Word from the womb, is a symbol of unchangeableness and of the habit according to virtue and knowledge. And holy David, as Jew and shepherd, is imaged as the practical philosophy through confession; as king of Israel, he introduces the contemplative mystagogy. The kind, then, of holy John is the nation and tribe from which he came; his dignity is his preaching and priesthood; and his place is the desert in which he dwelt. Likewise of holy David: his kind is his nation and tribe; his occupation, that is, his dignity, is his shepherding and his kingship. By these, each of them, contemplated proportionately to himself, according to the fitting account of the manners spoken concerning him, shows forth “without stumbling” the mystery signified through him.

100. on: “If He Flees Into Egypt, Flee with Him Readily; It Is Good to Flee Together with Christ When He Is Persecuted. If He Lingers in Egypt, Call Him Out of Egypt, Where He Is Rightly Worshipped” One must, I think, in addition to knowing that the Lord fled into Egypt, also know, in due sequence, by whom He was pursued. The Lord, then, flees not simply into Egypt, but also pursued by Herod, who at that time reigned over the land of Judea. “Herod” is interpreted, as they say, as “passion,” and “skin-clad,” and “nature”; and “Egypt” itself, too, is taken in many ways, according to the notions of the various contemplative approaches to it — sometimes as the present world, sometimes as the flesh, sometimes as sin, sometimes as ignorance, sometimes as affliction — according to which last understanding it is especially fitting, now, to receive the flight of the Lord into Egypt. It is good, then, to flee together into Egypt with Christ — that is, with the divine Word of discernment within us, still, for the time being, persecuted on account of infancy, for our sake, who are infants according to Him, by the earthly mindset that still rules and reigns over us through the passionate movements of the flesh — fleeing into the affliction that comes through the practical life, until death is announced to us, through the dispassion of those who seek the soul of the divine Word who is an infant within us — that is, of those who wish to put to death our God-befitting life according to reason, and who rage to destroy the Christ-like condition, or habit; the Word, meanwhile, through our undoubting resolve, readily mounting our Egypt, I mean our flesh, as though borne upon a light cloud, and shaking down its movements and passions like certain man-made idols, dislodging them from their seat, and driving them altogether from the soul, and, after the casting away of the idols, fittingly transferring worship to Himself.

Thus, then, we rightly flee together with the persecuted Christ, receiving, as a good reward for our flight with Him through voluntary affliction, dispassion. We, in turn, call Christ out of Egypt when we do not allow the divine word of discernment within us, after the retreat and complete mortification of the passions, foolishly to cling to devices concerning things that do not exist, nor permit Him to be known only as the Word made flesh within ourselves, or as He converses with us in others. But rather, having been well and faithfully instructed beforehand, through the virtues, in the types belonging to the practical philosophy under affliction, let us ascend from these, through contemplation, to the perceptions and preliminary sketches of knowledge, as though ascending well from a kind of Egypt into Judah, and teaching those who ascend with us, and let us pass over from knowing Christ as the Word made flesh, through the practical life, to the glory of Him as the OnlyBegotten‘s knowledge from His Father. Thus one rightly and piously flees together with the persecuted Christ, and thus again one calls Him out, passing over from the practical to contemplation and knowledge, doing all things with the Word, according to the Word, for the sake of the Word. Let it not seem strange to you that Egypt is now taken as affliction with respect to virtue; but examine carefully what is recorded in the Old Testament, how it tormented not only Israel, engaged in brick-making, but even the Egyptians themselves, unto ruin, through the sojourn of Moses.

For Egypt is interpreted as affliction and, as I said, darkness. And every interpretation, according to reasonable account, admits of both the commendable and the blameworthy notion belonging to it, for the most part, through contemplation. If, then, when the flesh flourishes and grows fat on the passions, the soul is tormented and darkened, the habit of the virtues and the illumination of knowledge withdrawing, then in the same manner, plausibly, when the soul is guarded and made radiant by the divine beauty of the virtues and the illumination of knowledge, the outer man is destroyed, the flesh, on account of the sojourn of the Word, casting off its natural flourishing, in which the serpent that has power over the navel — hidden, or rather reigning — like some invisible scatterer of good things, a Pharaoh, was creeping about, striking the soul with the bites of sin; and this serpent, through the mind of the flesh being extinguished part by part, in the affliction of the practical life, withdraws, being wholly put to death, leaving, fittingly, not even a trace of its former tyranny — so that those who have attained freedom through Christ can cry out, even before the general resurrection, on account of the voluntary resurrection of the will already accomplished in them: “Where, O death, is your sting? Where, O Hades, is your victory?” — meaning by this the pleasure of the flesh, joined with the deceit of the soul that comes from ignorance, by which the all-defiled devil, formerly holding sway over human nature before Christ, mercilessly pierced the nature of men with the sting of pleasure, and, with the sword of deceit, dragged it contentiously toward destruction.

101. FROM THE SAME AUTHOR, FROM THE ORATION ON THE LIGHTS, ON: “IF THEY HAD TO BE IMPIOUS AT ALL, AND TO FALL FROM THE GLORY OF GOD, BROUGHT DOWN TO IDOLS, WORKS OF ART AND FIGMENTS OF HANDS, THOSE WHO HAVE UNDERSTANDING SHOULD WISH NOTHING WORSE FOR THEM THAN THAT THEY SHOULD WORSHIP AND HONOR SUCH THINGS” When these words were read, some of the hearers, you say, took the teacher to task, saying that it is not right for those who have understanding, and who have proposed to live according to the Gospel, to wish anything of this sort upon anyone — that they should worship and honor such things. To them I say — not anything of my own, but what I was taught concerning this by a certain elder, wise in divine matters, and one who held the teaching of the Fathers in high esteem. Our holy and blessed Father and teacher Gregory, O these men (for I shall address them as though present), having seen the Greeks formerly so irrationally led astray, and altogether led away from the true notion of Him who properly is God, sets forth these things by the law of sympathy, so that, from the irrationality and worthlessness of their objects of worship — or rather, more properly speaking, their abomination — through the great refutation of these objects made possible for them by argumentative reasoning, the ascent to right doctrine might become easiest for them; and further, so that none of them might be dragged down into false belief, since the deceit is, from the outset, evident and easily detected by all, concealing its hidden evil under no appearance of honor.

102. ON: “BUT WHERE THERE IS PURIFICATION, THERE IS ILLUMINATION; AND ILLUMINATION IS THE FULFILLMENT OF LONGING, FOR THOSE WHO DESIRE THE GREATEST THINGS, OR THE GREATEST, OR WHAT IS ABOVE THE Those learned in the divine mysteries say that where there is purification of the soul through the virtues, there too illumination of knowledge appears, after pious examination of beings, raising the soul to the understanding of the Divine, and fastening its longing upon the ultimate object of desire, which is God — who properly exists and is known “in the greatest things,” “in the greatest,” and “above the great”: “in the greatest things,” as in three consubstantial and coequal hypostases, unconfused with the precise and unchangeable property belonging to each — I mean unbegottenness, and begetting, and procession; “in the greatest,” on account of the one, same, and singular essence of the Godhead; and “above the great,” on account of the fact that the Divine is not circumscribed by any quantity, or magnitude, or size, or comprehended by any limits. For every magnitude is finite, but the Divine alone is boundless — as the great David says, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised, and of His greatness there is no end” — as being bounded by no limitation whatsoever, and therefore infinite, or having no notion, of whatever time or nature, that reaches to it — the very notion by which the technical method of logical argumentation was devised by those zealous for such things, on account of which, and with which, they were shown to be disqualified in the discovery of truth, believing that whatever was not captured by their own reasonings did not exist at all.

The teacher makes what has been said plain by using the same expressions elsewhere as well. He says, then, in the oration on the Return of the Egyptians, discoursing theologically thus concerning the uncreated and divine essence, and the created nature that received a beginning of its being: “The one is called God, and stands in three greatest realities — cause, and craftsman, and perfecter, I mean the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And again, in the oration on Baptism, discoursing concerning the one and the same holy Godhead in three holy hypostases, he says: “Equal from every side, the same from every side, as one beauty and magnitude of heaven, an infinite conjoined-nature of three infinites.” The teacher, then, is his own interpreter, for those who read his God-inspired words attentively. 103. on: “Natures Are Innovated, and God Becomes Man” Those who received the many divine mysteries from the followers and servants of the Word who came before them, and who were immediately initiated, at the source, into the knowledge of beings, and who received, by succession, what had been handed down through those before them to themselves, say that the subsistence of all things that have come to be is divided by five divisions: of which the first, they say, is that which divides the universal created nature from the uncreated nature, having received its being through coming-to-be.

For they say that God, having made, by goodness, a radiant ordering of all beings, did not, from the outset, leave any manifest division discernible in it. For this division, which naturally separates these from one another, and which never admits union into one essence, as being unable to receive the one and same principle, they left ineffable, as never even attainable in thought. The second is that by which the whole nature that received its being through creation is divided by God into intelligible and sensible. The third is that by which sensible nature is divided into heaven and earth. The fourth is that by which the earth is divided into paradise and the inhabited world. And the fifth is that by which man — introduced, over and above all these, as though a most cohesive workshop of the whole, and mediating, naturally, in a manner befitting God, between all the extremes according to every division, through himself — is divided into male and female, possessing, by nature, in all the median points of all the extremes, through the relational property of his own parts toward all the extremes, the power toward union — by which the manner, being completed according to the cause of the coming-to-be of the divided things, was to render manifest, through itself, the great mystery of the divine purpose, bringing to completion, harmoniously, the union of the extremes among beings, proceeding, in ascending sequence, from what is near to what is far, and from lesser things to greater, culminating in union with God.

For this reason man is introduced last among beings, as, so to speak, a natural bond mediating, through his own parts, between the universal extremes, and drawing into one, within himself, things that by nature stand far apart from one another in interval — so that, beginning first from his own division, and proceeding in orderly sequence through the intermediate stages, he might attain the limit of the lofty ascent, accomplished through union with all things, toward union with God, as cause, who gathers all things — in which there is no division — having shaken off entirely from nature, in his relation to divine virtue, most free of passion, the property according to female and male, which was, according to the preceding account, in no way attached to the divine purpose concerning the coming-to-be of man; so that he might be shown and become, according to the divine purpose, man alone, undivided by the appellation of male and female — according to which principle he was indeed primarily made, not divided by the parts now belonging to him, on account of his perfect knowledge of his own proper principle, according to which he is. Then, having united paradise and the inhabited world through his own holy manner of life, he would make them one earth, not divided for him according to the difference of its parts, but rather gathered together, as one who has undergone no subjection to any of its parts; then, having united heaven and earth through his likeness, in every way possible for men, to the life of the angels according to virtue, he would make sensible creation one, altogether undivided in itself, not being divided for him spatially at all by the intervals, having become light in spirit, and held down by no bodily weight toward the earth, nor hindered from ascent to the heavens, on account of the complete blindness of his intellect toward such things, being genuinely pressed on toward God, and wisely making his ascent toward Him in due order, as on a common road, naturally following the one who had gone before him; then, having united, in addition to these, the intelligible and the sensible, through his equality with the angels in knowledge, he would make the whole of creation one creation, not divided for him according to knowledge and ignorance, the knowing science of the principles inherent in beings having

become, for him, undiminished, equal to that of the angels — according to which the infinitely bestowing outpouring of true wisdom, coming upon him as is fitting, would provide, purely and without mediation, to the worthy, the undistinguishable and inexpressible understanding concerning God; and finally, above all these, having united created nature to the uncreated through love (O the wonder of God‘s love for mankind concerning us! ), he would show them one and the same according to the habit of grace, having wholly interpenetrated wholly with God, and having become all that God is, save for identity of essence, and having wholly received God Himself in place of himself, and having acquired, as the prize of his ascent toward God, God Himself alone, as the end of the motion of things moved, and the firm and unmoved rest of those borne toward Him, and the boundless and infinite limit and boundary of every definition and ordinance and law, and of reason and intellect, and of nature. Since, then, man, as he had been by nature created, had not been moved with respect to the unmoved, as his own beginning — I mean God — but had, contrary to nature, willingly and foolishly been moved with respect to the things under him, over which he had been divinely appointed to rule, misusing, for the division of the united rather, the natural power given to him at his creation for the union of divided things, and had thereby come near, pitiably, to passing back again into non-being — for this reason natures are innovated, and, paradoxically, above nature, that which is by nature altogether unmoved is moved, so to speak, unmovingly, concerning that which is moved by nature; and God becomes man, in order to save man who was lost, and, having united within Himself the natural fractures of the whole universal nature, and having shown that the universal principles brought forth by particular things, by which the union of divided things naturally comes to pass, He might fulfill the great counsel of God the Father, recapitulating in Himself all things, those in heaven and those on earth, in whom also they were created.

Indeed, beginning the universal union of all things with Himself from our own division, He becomes perfect man, from us, for our sake, as we are, having all that is ours without deficiency, apart from sin, having in no way needed, for this, the natural sequence of marriage — showing, at the same time and in the same act, I think, that there was perhaps another manner, foreknown to God, of the increase of mankind into a multitude, had the first man kept the commandment, and not cast himself down into bestiality by the misuse of his own powers; and, being free from the difference and division of nature according to male and female — of which, as I said, He had no need at all in order to become man — showing that these things, without which it is perhaps possible to be, need not remain forever. For “in Christ Jesus,” says the divine Apostle, “there is neither male nor female.” Then, having sanctified our inhabited world through His own manner of life befitting man, He passes, after death, unhindered, into paradise, as He truly promised the thief, saying, “Today you will be with Me in paradise.” From here on, as though, in Him, our inhabited world no longer had any difference from paradise, He again appeared upon it, dwelling together with His disciples after the resurrection from the dead, showing that the earth, being one, is undivided in itself, preserving the principle by which it is free of division according to difference.

Then, through the ascension into heaven, He plainly united heaven and earth, and, together with this earthly body, consubstantial with us, having passed into heaven, He showed the whole of sensible nature to be one, according to its more universal, allembracing principle, obscuring the property of the division that cuts through it. Then, further, having passed through the sensible and intelligible orders, in succession, through all the divine and intelligible ranks in heaven, together with His soul and body — that is, our whole nature — He united them, showing the convergence of the whole creation toward the one, according to its most original and most universal principle, altogether undivided and unshaken in Himself. And finally, above all these, according to the notion of His humanity, He comes to God Himself, having appeared, on our behalf, plainly, as it is written, before the face of God the Father, as man — He who, as Word, could never in any way be separated from the Father — having fulfilled, as man, in deed and truth, through unfailing obedience, all that He Himself, as God, had predetermined should come to pass, and having accomplished the whole counsel of God the Father on our behalf, we who had rendered useless, by our misuse, the power naturally given to us from the beginning for this purpose; and having first united us to Himself, in Himself, through the removal of the difference between male and female, and having shown, in place of men and women, in whom the manner of division is chiefly beheld, men alone, properly and truly, formed throughout after Himself, and bearing His image whole and altogether unadulterated, which no mark of corruption touches in any way; and having, with us and for our sake, embraced the whole of creation through its intermediaries, as His own parts, and having, around Himself, indissolubly bound together paradise and the inhabited world, heaven and earth, the sensible and the intelligible — having, as we do, body and sense and soul and intellect — by which, as parts, He, appropriating to Himself each extreme universally akin to it, in the manner previously set forth, recapitulated all things in Himself in a manner befitting God, showing the whole of creation to be one, as though it were another man, completed by the coming-together of its own parts with one another, and inclining toward itself in the wholeness

of its existence, according to the one, simple, and indeterminate notion of its production from non-being, which is undifferentiated — according to which the whole of creation is able to receive one and the same, altogether undivided principle, having “was not” prior to “is.” For all things, according to the true account, coincide with one another in some respect whatsoever, even if not altogether — all the things that exist after God and have their being from God through coming-to-be — none among beings at all, not even the most exceedingly honored and transcendent, being altogether, by nature, released from the general relation toward the exceedingly unrelated; nor, again, is the most dishonored among beings altogether left without, and deprived of, its general natural relation to the most dishonored things. For all things distinguished from one another by their own particular differences are united by universal and common identities, and are drawn together toward the one and the same by some general principle of nature — for instance, genera, being united to one another according to essence, have the one and the same and undivided. For none of the universal, containing, and generic things is at all co-divided with the particular, contained, and specific things. For that cannot properly be called generic which does not gather together the things naturally divided, but is co-divided with them, and departs from its own singular unity.

For every generic thing, according to its proper principle, is present, whole to whole, undividedly and unitively, in the things under it, and each particular thing is beheld generically as whole. And species, likewise, being freed, according to their genus, from the variety found in their differentiae, receive identity with one another. And individuals, receiving mutual agreement according to their species, are altogether one and the same with one another, possessing invariability through their community of nature, and being free of all difference. And accidents, compared with one another according to their subject, have unity, in no way scattered by the subject. And a true and reliable witness to these things is the great and holy Dionysius the Areopagite, who, in the chapter on the perfect and the one in his treatise On the Divine Names, says as follows: “For there is no multitude at all unparticipating in the one; rather, the many, in their parts, are one in the whole; and the many, in their accidents, are one in the subject; and the many in number or in powers are one in species; and the many in species are one in genus; and the many in their processions are one in their source; and there is nothing among beings that does not participate, in some respect, in the one.” And, simply, to sum it up: the principles of all divided and particular things, they say, are contained by the principles of universal and generic things, and the principles of the more generic and universal things are held together by wisdom, while the principles of particular things, variously strengthened by the generic ones, are contained by prudence — according to which, being first simplified, and freed from the symbolic variety found in the subject matters, they are unified by wisdom, receiving their kinship with the more generic things as an identity.

And the Wisdom and Prudence of God the Father is the Lord Jesus Christ, who both holds together, by the power of wisdom, the universal principles of beings, and contains, by the prudence of understanding, the parts that complete them, as the Creator and Providence of all by nature, and who draws together into one the things that stand apart, through Himself, and dissolves the war among beings, and binds all things, those in the heavens and those on the earth, into peaceful friendship and undivided concord, as the divine Apostle says.

104. Another Contemplation on the Same Difficulty Natures are again innovated: the divine nature, on account of immeasurable goodness and love for mankind, supernaturally enduring, by voluntary will, our fleshly birth; and our nature, paradoxically, cultivating, without seed, for the incarnate God, by a manner strange to nature, flesh ensouled rationally, in every way the same as ours and without variation, apart from sin — and, what is still more paradoxical, the law of virginity of her who became Mother being in no way at all diminished through the birth. Innovation, properly speaking, is not only that the God Word, already begotten ineffably and without beginning from God the Father, should be born in time according to the flesh, but also that our nature should give flesh without seed, and that a virgin should give birth without corruption. For each of these, having its innovation manifest, at once conceals and demonstrates the ineffable and unknowable principle according to which it came to be — the one by the manner above nature and knowledge, the other by the reason of faith, by which all things above nature and knowledge are naturally apprehended. Thus, then, so far as I can say, the difficulty has been resolved as far as possible, and I do not know how else it ought to be treated. It would belong to your wisdom either to approve what has been said, or to discover and express, more wisely, from yourself, something better, and to impart to me the fruit of lofty knowledge, having nothing earthly in it.

105. FROM THE SAME AUTHOR, FROM THE SECOND ORATION ON BAPTISM, ON: “THE WORD KNOWS A THREEFOLD BIRTH FOR US — FROM BODIES, FROM BAPTISM, FROM THE RESURRECTION” — AND THEN, HAVING ADDED CERTAIN THINGS AND EXPLAINED THE BIRTHS, SAYING: “ALL THESE BIRTHS MY CHRIST APPEARS TO HAVE HONORED IN HIMSELF: THE FIRST BY THE FIRST AND LIFE-GIVING BREATHING-IN; THE SECOND BY THE INCARNATION AND THE BAPTISM WITH WHICH HE FIRSTFRUITS, THAT AS HE BECAME FIRSTBORN AMONG MANY BRETHREN, SO HE MIGHT ALSO DEIGN TO BECOME FIRSTBORN FROM THE DEAD” How does this godly-minded teacher, in these words, seem to make a superfluous repetition of what was said before? For having said “threefold birth” — from bodies, from baptism, from the resurrection — he then, as though forgetting, adds, through a phrase that seems superfluous, a fourth as well, by saying, “the first by the first and life-giving breathing-in.” For concerning the birth he had not mentioned along with the three, he adds, as though referring to something already stated, saying, “the first by the first and life-giving breathingin.” How, then, the teacher truly said this, he who has become like him in virtue, and is not far removed from his wise knowledge of divine matters, knows fully. But so far as I am able to know, according to the feebleness of my weak understanding, I do not think the fourth birth added here is superfluous, but rather completive of the birth from bodies previously set forth, and explanatory of the divine reasons and manners belonging to it.

For He who, for the sake of the coming-to-be of the first Adam, did not disdain the grace of becoming man, showed, through His own coming-to-be, His condescension toward the fallen one, and, through His birth, His voluntary self-emptying toward the one condemned: by coming-to-be, being led naturally into identity with man according to the life-giving inbreathing, from which, as man, He received the image, remaining unsold in His possession of freedom, unstained by sinlessness; and by birth, according to the incarnation, voluntarily putting on, through the form of a servant, the likeness of corruption toward man, consenting, by will, to be subject to the same natural sufferings as we, apart from sin, as the sinless one made accountable. For, having cut these into two parts, He was composed from parts, and became a perfectly new Adam, bearing in Himself, undiminished, the first Adam in both His parts. Having admitted, by the law of condescension, the coming-tobe of Adam before the transgression, He received, naturally, through the inbreathing, sinlessness, but did not take on incorruptibility. And having received, by voluntary selfemptying, the natural liability to suffering belonging to the birth that came from condemnation after the transgression, He did not take on the liability to sin, and becomes a new Adam, receiving the same sinless coming-to-be and enduring the same passible birth. For, having thoroughly interwoven both of these with each other, in Himself, by their respective parts, He healed both, through each other, by the deficiency at the extreme belonging to each: making the second and dishonorable birth saving and renewing by means of the first and honored coming-to-be, and establishing the first comingto-be as constitutive and preservative by means of the second birth.

By “extremes” I mean: of the coming-to-be, being the first and honored, incorruptibility, as the beginning of sinlessness; and of the birth, being the second and dishonored, liability to sin, as the cause of every passion and corruption. Having taken on neither of these in the incarnation, and yet having accepted the things that follow from them, the Savior made the birth save the coming-to-be, paradoxically renewing, through its own passibility, the incorruptibility of the coming-to-be; and again, made the coming-to-be preserve the birth, sanctifying, through its sinlessness, the passibility of the birth — so that He might wholly restore the coming-to-be, holding nature firm by the God-befitting reason belonging to it, and might wholly free the birth, and the nature subjected to it through sin, from the flowing manner of seed by which the other living creatures on earth are perhaps held fast. Having thus joined, naturally, coming-to-be, formation, and inbreathing, with the incarnation and birth, divide them only notionally, and you will find, according to this great teacher, the fourth birth, completing the birth from bodies, and admitting distinction from it by notion alone, in the manner explained. I mean that the coming-to-be, naturally conceived beforehand, is the same as the birth introduced afterward, of which the first and life-giving inbreathing is proper.

106. Contemplation on: “the Word Knows a Threefold And, to speak concisely, if you wish to know the precision of the teacher‘s words, inquire what is the principle, preceding by cause, of man’s coming-to-be, which remains ever within its own stability without ever departing, and what is the manner belonging to the pedagogical economy of his birth on account of sin, which has as its end the correction of the one being instructed and his complete return to the principle of his coming-to-be — and you will learn clearly how God, having become man, became perfectly both, wisely restoring the manner according to economy to the true principle of coming-to-be which He truly had; and then you will justly marvel at the understanding of the teacher, how, having notionally divided things naturally joined together, he secretly made plain the whole reason of the most divine mystery accomplished for us. For, by notionally apportioning the birth from bodies between the life-giving inbreathing and the incarnation, he intimated the difference between the manner of birth and the principle of coming-to-be. Taking hold of these, for our sake, the God who renewed nature — or rather, more truly to say, made it new — and who brought it back to the original beauty of incorruption through His own holy flesh, ensouled with reason, taken from us, and who furthermore graciously granted it deification, from which it is altogether impossible for God incarnate Himself, having united soul to body in the manner in which the union takes place, ever to fall away, having interpenetrated it wholly, unconfusedly, according to the union, and having received, in return for His manifestation through it, as much concealment as He Himself was made manifest through it, and was thought to have gone forth from His own natural hiddenness; and what is more paradoxical than this — that He who is by nature God, and who deigned to become man by nature, did not, through the one nature, at all transgress the natural limits of the other, but, being wholly God, remained, having become, wholly man — not hindered from becoming man by being God, nor diminished in being God by having become man, one and the same, wholly preserved through both, truly existing naturally as both, neither divided by the pure natural difference of the essence of the parts, nor confused by the extreme unity of the hypostasis,

not turned into the lower nature, nor fallen into what He was not. He did not fill out the economy by an imagined form and shape of flesh, and taking whatever else is said to belong to a subject without the subject itself, but, having properly, in reality and in truth, taken on the human nature itself, united it to Himself according to hypostasis, unchangeably, and unalterably, and undiminishedly, and undividedly, holding it, by the principle and definition of its essence, unfallen. According to this, He also, as this holy and great teacher says, honored our birth from bodies, and, having become truly man and being humanly born, in order to free us from the bonds of birth, and from the law of being sown like grass and springing up by condemnation on account of sin, and from having the same kinship, in our coming-to-be into being, with plants and irrational animals. As somewhere the great Ezekiel, who beheld great things, being initiated into divine mysteries and instructed in the cause of the economy now belonging to man, says, speaking to Jerusalem: “Thus says the Lord to Jerusalem: your root and your birth are from the land of Canaan; your father was an Amorite, and your mother a Hittite. On the day you were born, they did not bind your navel, nor did they wash you in water, nor salt you with salt, nor swaddle you in swaddling-clothes, and you were cast out onto the surface of the field, in the crookedness of your soul, on the day you were born.

And I passed by you, and saw you wallowing in your blood, and I said to you: from your blood is your life; be multiplied, as I have given you the sprouting of the field.” The Lord, then, who heals nature of the condemnation of springing up by seed, like grass, and, in common with the other animals, of having life through blood, and who brings it back to the original grace of incorruption, came to free it: openly to show it the good toward which, having come to be at the beginning, it never moved at all, and to trample down the evil toward which, as soon as it came to be, moved through deceit, it emptied out its whole natural power, contrary to nature; and to bind to Himself the power of desire (of which the navel is a symbol), giving it a firm and unfailing generative habit toward the good; and to wash it in water — meaning, to cleanse it of the defilements of ignorance by the sea of knowledge poured out upon it through grace; and to salt it with salt, and swaddle it with swaddling-clothes — that is, having firmly established, by the Spirit, its natural activity toward the good for which it came to be, to make it pure of the corruption of the passions and no longer receptive of it, and, by binding it about, as with swaddling-clothes, with the true principles inherent in beings, to make it altogether unable to be dissolved.

107. Another Contemplation on the Same Perhaps the teacher, by these words, introducing a twofold principle and manner concerning the coming-to-be of human nature — the one of the soul, the other of the body — divided the birth from bodies notionally into two births, indicating that the soul is ineffably constituted from the divine and lifegiving inbreathing, while the body comes to be from the underlying matter of that body from which it exists, together with the soul, at conception. For it is not right to say that the principle and manner of the coming-to-be of both is one and the same without variation, since these two are not identical to one another in essence. For things whose being is not the same to one another have, plainly, also a differing principle and manner of coming-to-be with respect to one another. But it is right to think that the soul has one principle and manner, and the body another, by which the body comes to be, and is, and remains unchangeably joined to the soul. 108. a Concise Contemplation Against Those Who Say That Souls Pre-Exist or Exist After Their Bodies Even if the time of coming-to-be is the same for both — I mean soul and body — simultaneously in existence, neither one pre-existing the other in coming-to-be, as I said, nor coming after it, lest the species composed of both, as a whole, be dissolved — rightly, the principle of relative terms, having its own subsistence, as a part, prior in itself, and having its union with something else altogether unrelated according to nature, and for this reason never naturally completing, by composition with another, the subsistence of some third thing, apart from corruption and alteration into what it was not.

For that which has pre-subsisted individually by itself is not naturally led into the subsistence of another species. But if that which pre-subsists admits composition with another for the completion of a different species, it does this either according to nature or contrary to nature. And if according to nature, it will never be seen to cease from composition with another for the fulfillment of a different species, being unable, by the compulsion of its own nature, to depart from it — and by this reasoning, neither will the soul ever be conceived apart from the body, nor the body apart from the soul, and the wisdom of these excessive thinkers is overturned into folly, forced by violence into the very thing they were eager to avoid. But if one of these admits composition with the other, contrary to nature, for the completion of a different species, it is altogether corrupted, departing from the natural limit, becoming what it is not by nature, and falling into what it was not. What could be more senseless than this? But let us return to the matter at hand. The coming-to-be of the soul, then, as the teacher emphatically says, does not occur from underlying matter, as bodies do, but by the will of God, through the life-giving inbreathing, ineffably and unknowably, as only its Creator knows. The soul, receiving its being at conception, together with the body, is brought to the completion of one man; and the body comes to be from the underlying matter — that is, from the other body — at conception, receiving, together with the soul, the composition of being one species with it.

This the teacher shows more clearly elsewhere, saying: “According to the twofold power of the inbreathing, we are all breathed into both with breath and with the Holy Spirit.” One must, then, notionally divide, at conception, the lifegiving inbreathing and the Holy Spirit as belonging to the intellective essence of the soul, and the incarnation and breath as belonging to the nature of the body, as the Fathers say. And the coming-to-be of the forefather Adam was mystically brought about, having a different principle of being and manner of coming-to-be for the soul, and, plainly, a different one for the body, as the divine Scripture magnificently initiated us — not allowing the soul and the body, coinciding in one and the same manner of coming-tobe, to be confused in their nature, and the principle of each one‘s essence, and the manner of coming-to-be, to be unknown. But if the twofold power of the inbreathing accompanied Adam, running concurrently with his coming into being, what should one say concerning the human composite of both — soul, I mean, and body — belonging to God and our Savior Jesus Christ? — a mixture that preserves, so far as possible, a great resemblance to the first Adam. For just as, as the teacher himself says, God, taking the body from matter — newly created, that is, not pre-existing — and placing life in it from Himself, which reason knows to be the intellective soul and the image of God, fashions man, so too, in the same manner, taking the body from the undefiled Virgin, as it were from unstained earth, and placing in it life from Himself, which reason knows to be the intellective soul and the image of God, He fashioned His own humanity — or rather, having, by the assumption of flesh ensouled intellectively and rationally, unchangeably fashioned Himself, He, as almighty, willingly, for our sake, made Himself man.

For this reason too, I think, the teacher says that our Lord and God honored our threefold birth — that is, the general manners of our coming into being, well-being, and eternal being: the birth from bodies, being one, of the composite of both, according to the simultaneous coexistence of its parts with one another — soul, I mean, and body — divided into two, on account of the different manner of coming-to-be belonging to each, by which we receive being; the birth from baptism, by which we richly receive well-being; and the birth from the resurrection, by which we are transformed, by grace, toward eternal being. One must, then, attend carefully to the teacher‘s words, on account of those who maliciously attack good writings. For, having divided the birth from bodies notionally alone, for the reason given, the teacher determines that the Lord received the life-giving spirit, that is, the inbreathing, according to His humanity — I mean the intellective soul — together with the body from the undefiled Virgin, simultaneously with the conception, no interval of time whatsoever being conceived beforehand, and not after the conception.

109. Against Those Who Say That Souls Pre-Exist Their For some say, as I have already stated, that souls pre-exist their bodies, while others say the opposite — that bodies preexist souls. But we, walking the middle way as the royal road, according to our Fathers, say neither pre-existence nor postexistence of soul or body, but rather co-existence, guarding against inclinations to either side, and turning neither to the left nor to the right, as the holy Scripture says, in every way — fearing the fear than which nothing is more fearful to fear — lest, by saying that souls pre-exist bodies, and that bodies were devised for the punishment of souls on account of the wickedness previously committed while incorporeal, we should reasonably suppose that the sole cause of the surpassing greatness of the things seen, by which God is known, proclaimed in silence, is wickedness — imposing upon God a necessity, contrary to His purpose, of creating an essence which He did not approve, whose very principle, perhaps, He does not even have hidden with the others before the ages. For to say that God has the principles of the substantiation of things that come to be contrary to purpose does not seem to me to belong to an intelligent mind, nor to one that has in any way rightly perceived the majesty of God, who is impassible and alone true, and has nothing at all recent among the principles of beings pre-existing in Him, and especially nothing contrary to purpose.

For all things, however they exist or will come to be, have been, according to essence, already willed, and already conceived, and already foreknown by Him; and He substantiates and gives subsistence to each of the things that are at the fitting and appropriate time. Let us not, when we see God fashioning something, suppose that then also His will, thought, and knowledge concerning it began. Far from it! For this is truly full of great absurdity — that what God did not, from the beginning, before the ages, conceive, or know, or will to be, He should now, having conceived and willed and known, or, more properly to say, having changed His mind, have brought to completion as good — not to mention that He would not even know the making of that of which He does not primarily possess the principles. But we believe that all things are always contained, foreknowingly, in the will of God, according to His infinite power, nothing being newly conceived by Him in any way and receiving being according to essence. For I do not think it is right for those who are piously minded to suppose that God learns, through the bringing of things into being, each of the things pre-contained in Himself according to their own principles by infinite power, according to foreknowledge. Rather, the ages and the times show us each thing being wisely created according to its predetermined and fitting time, and being brought forth into being — as the divine Apostle says, discoursing thus concerning Levi: “For he was still in the loins of his father, before he came into being” — he who, existing potentially in the patriarch Abraham, and receiving, at the appointed time, his actual coming-to-be into being through birth, in order and sequence, according to the ineffable wisdom of God, led us to understand and believe that all things receive their comingto-be into being at the foreknown time.

Of all things, then, that exist, or will exist, or have come to be, or will come to be, or appear, or will appear, according to their essential existence, the principles pre-exist firmly in God, according to which all things both are and have come to be and remain forever, drawing near, through natural motion, to their own principles held before them by purpose, and being held more firmly toward being, according to the quality and quantity of the motion and inclination of their free choice — receiving well-being through virtue and the right course toward the principle according to which they exist, or, alas, ill-being through vice and motion contrary to the principle according to which they exist; and, to speak concisely, according to the possession or privation of their natural capacity for participation in Him who exists, by nature, altogether unparticipated, and who, simply, gives Himself wholly, by grace, to all alike, worthy and unworthy, on account of His infinite goodness, and who will effect the abiding of eternal being for each according to how each has disposed and is disposed by himself. For these, the proportionate participation or non-participation in Him who properly is, and is well, and is forever, is an intensification and increase — of punishment for those unable to participate, and of enjoyment for those able to participate. For there is nothing at all among beings whose principle does not pre-exist in God.

And of those whose principles of essence pre-exist in God, the coming-to-be, plainly, is always according to divine purpose. And of those whose coming-tobe is according to divine purpose, the essential existence remains, without departure, toward non-being. And of those whose essential existence, after coming-to-be from being, remains without departure toward non-being, the principles are abiding and stable, having their sole beginning of being in wisdom, from which and on account of which they exist, and by which they have the power to be able to be firmly. And of those whose principles abidingly exist in God, the purpose of God, who made all things, concerning them, is unfailing; for the purpose of God is not at all encompassed by temporal limits, nor does it admit alteration from change, shifting along with its subjects — the existences of these, without dispute, are plainly incorruptible. Either, then, God, willing according to purpose, made human bodies, and, on His account, they remain altogether unchanging toward non-being, He always willing that which was willed by purpose, together with reason and wisdom, to be — and there will not be, according to them, a complete passing of bodies into non-being; or He did not make them according to purpose, and, unwilling, was tyrannized, being brought by force to a coming-to-be whose principles He is not shown to have had. And if, tyrannized, He came to make bodies against His purpose, unwillingly, then plainly reason and wisdom in no way guided their coming-to-be.

For that which comes to be contrary to divine purpose is altogether deprived and alienated from reason and wisdom. But that which is altogether deprived of reason and wisdom is evil alone, whose being is characterized by non-existence — of which we should never, God forbid, even conceive God to be the maker, still less dare to say so openly, and to believe it ruinously. But who is it that tyrannized God, if indeed He has been tyrannized, and is it at all right to say that He made, contrary to purpose, what He did not wish? And how is He who was tyrannized God, being compelled by necessity to bring about, contrary to purpose, the coming-to-be of things for their destruction? Let those who cherish this opinion dare to say. For either they will say that God made these things, and thereby blaspheme most greatly, imposing on God the necessity of making something contrary to purpose; or that He did not make them, and will be found, of necessity, introducing, in Manichaean fashion, another principle that made them. For it is altogether proper to those who set two principles in opposition to one another to hold the doctrine of pre-existence. These men, whom, by the grace of the allmerciful God, the deep darkness of obscurity has enveloped and driven into complete oblivion, unable to bear the light of the truth proclaimed by our holy Fathers.

I marvel, though, how — to pass over now what could be said, for the sake of brevity — the mystery concerning Christ, our true God, does not shame them into readily shaking off this opinion of theirs. For if the mystery concerning Christ is more mysterious than all divine St. Maximus mysteries, and is determinative of every perfection, in every notion, existing or to come, in all things, and stands above every limit and boundary, and this mystery teaches that the body taken from us and consubstantial with us is and exists with the incarnate God the Word, who became perfectly man, united to Him according to hypostasis, with which He also ascended into heaven, above every principality and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come, and now sits with God the Father, and unto endless ages, having passed through all the heavens, and having become above all things, and will come again for the transformation and re-elementing of the universe, and the salvation of our souls and bodies, as we have believed and believe, and may we remain believing forever — who is so bold and self-willed, and knows only how to fight rashly against what is clear and manifest, as even to entertain, in bare thought, a passing notion that bodies will ever pass into non-being, according to the progress of rational beings toward perfection, as they say, believing that the Lord Himself, God of all, is now and forever with a body — He who also grants to others the power to be able to progress, and who leads and calls all toward His own glory, so far as attainable by the power of the incarnation, as the leader of the salvation of all, and who cleanses the stains in all things?

But He is not led by them, as by types of His own perfection — if indeed they should dare to conceive even this at all — toward the laying aside of the body. For it does not follow that He who alone is by nature most perfect, and the Maker of all perfection, has His perfection beheld through others, or contemplated through progress, nor does He wait to receive perfection together with others, being in no way at all similar to any being in needing progress, so that He too should then lay aside the nature of the body, when the utmost progress of the rest prepares the laying aside of the body for them. Since He would no longer be the leader and Savior of those being saved, as one who has not, mystically, once for all, shown forth in Himself the end of perfection proper to us, but one of those being saved and begun and needing another to show forth in himself the perfection toward which all who naturally partake of reason press on, and he himself will be shown to be so as well. But this is not so. Whence could it be? Nor does the account of truth endure those who say such things. For the divine Apostle calls Him the leader and perfecter of our salvation, as having become incarnate for our sake, that He might consume our sin in Himself, and give Himself as a type and pattern of the conduct of virtue to all who believe in Him, as a good and wise teacher, accomplishing beforehand in Himself, for our instruction, the things to be said and done — having died, and risen, and been taken up into heaven, and seated with the body at the right hand of God the Father, so that we too, dying, might firmly hope to rise, and to live a life altogether separated from every death and corruption, and to be taken up into heaven, and to receive the honor and glory that comes from being in God the Father through His Son who mediates, and the blessed and eternal abiding with Him — but not to expect any laying aside whatsoever of the body, since the word of holy Scripture does not teach us this.

Nor indeed have we seen this having previously occurred in the leader of our salvation. For if it were pleasing to Him that this too should happen, He Himself would have been the first to have accomplished it beforehand in Himself, together with the rest, in which He, out of love for mankind, subjecting Himself for our sake, was perfected as we are, so that we, together with the rest, believing in this, might hope. How, moreover, if we should endure them saying this, according to this holy teacher, shall we believe that what has been united to God is also saved? “For that,” he says, writing to Cledonius, “which has been united to God, this too is saved.” Now the body too, along with the soul, was united to God the Word. Therefore the body, along with the soul, will be saved. And again, if the Word of God became incarnate for this reason, according to this godly-minded teacher, that He might both save the image and render the flesh immortal, how can that which is saved perish, and that which is rendered immortal die again — or rather, more properly speaking, that which has been wholly deified, through the mediation of the intellective soul, mediating between Godhead and body, having received, wholly, ineffably, essentially present, the hypostasis of the incarnate God the Word, and having been made and declared His own body — I cannot understand.

And for what reason, if this doctrine too is contained in the mystery of the Church‘s faith, it was not included with the others in the creed of the blameless faith of the Christians set forth by our holy and blessed Fathers, who were gathered together at various times for the confirmation of the divine doctrines of the holy Church of God and the Apostles, let us leave to the wise to say. But I think it sufficient, for the present, to have said these things by way of digression to these men. Let us turn to the others.

110. Against Those Who Say That Bodies Pre-Exist Their It is easy for anyone who wishes to say, O these men, that bodies exist prior to souls, but to establish what is said by reason is very difficult and laborious, and never has an easy proof of the undertaking. For if that which, according to you, is laid down as the beginning of human coming-to-be is altogether soulless, it is plainly also devoid of any life-giving power. For that which is altogether deprived of any soul whatsoever is also destitute of every vital activity. And if it is altogether without share of soul and the vital power and activity belonging to it, it is plainly dead. But if we suppose it to be dead, it neither is nourished nor grows, nor will it be able to subsist at all, and to remain altogether unscattered and undissolved. What has been said is confirmed by the healing of wounds in bodies. For when the disciples of physicians attend to these, if they find dead flesh rising to the surface, they first consume this with corrosive medicines, and then apply the means for the regeneration of the hollowed-out flesh from the scar, for its filling — since the living body plainly has a nature that recalls and reconstitutes and restores its own condition, whereas the dead body does not act in this way at all, being once dead and altogether deprived of vital power, and for this reason inactive.

And how will that which is by nature scattered and easily dissolved stand firm, unless some vital power, as it were a foundation, pre-underlies it notionally, naturally compressing and binding together, around itself, that which would otherwise be scattered — from which it received its being and its being given form by the power that skillfully fashions the whole? For in whatever thing the body, after birth, truly continues to have its being, in that same thing, plainly, it would rightly be said also to have the beginning of its existence. For that by whose separation the body naturally dissolves, by the existence of that same thing, plainly, it has also, reasonably, coexisted from its coming-to-be. But if, hard-pressed by these arguments, O these men, you say that what is laid down as the beginning of human constitution is not altogether dead, but shares in some vital power, however small — as having, plainly, a soul by participation in such power (for without a soul there could never be, once and for all, any form of life among the things classed under nature and comprehended within the evermoving circuit of heaven, and there is never, according to logical consequence, any form of life at all without a soul) — then whatever kind of life you suppose the thing laid down to have at conception, you have thereby made manifest a property belonging only to some soul — constitutive of the essence in which it is, and distinguishing it, as a difference, from things not of that kind.

But if, pressed by necessity toward what is fitting, you say that the embryo does have a soul, it is consistent and fitting for you to say what kind of soul this is, and how it is to be regarded or spoken of. And if you affirm that it has only the nutritive and growth-giving soul, then, by this reasoning, according to you, the body that is nourished and grows will be that of some plant, and not of a man. And I cannot see how man will be the father of a plant, examining the matter carefully, since man has his being, altogether, by nature, from man. But if you assign to the embryo only the sentient soul, then the embryo will be shown, at conception, to have the soul of a horse, or an ox, or some other of the land or air animals, and man will not, according to you, be by nature the father of man at the first constitution, but of some plant, as I said, or of some animal on earth. What could be more absurd or more deranged than this? For to maintain that the proper definitions of existence, according to the natural difference of each thing, do not coexist without fail with the first constitution of beings is to confound all things with one another, and to insist that nothing among beings properly is or is called what it is.

And, what is a still greater evil, it will plainly be shown to contain a most glaring slander against the divine wisdom and power. For if all things, however they exist, have their perfection, according to their own principle, in the foreknowledge of God, before their coming-to-be, then plainly, simultaneously with their being brought, according to their proper principle, into coming-to-be, they will, without fail, have their perfection in that very activity. But if beings have their perfection according to foreknowledge, but imperfection according to their bringing into being and coming-to-be, then either they will not be the very things foreknown, but other things instead of others, or this would be a manifest and clear weakness of the Creator, unable, according to His foreknowledge, to represent the foreknown fully, all at once, together with its coming-to-be, according to activity, as it exists by nature according to essence. But if, wary of these refutations, you take refuge in this final claim — saying that it is not right for the intellective soul, which is according to the image of God and divine (for so you call it), to coexist with flux and foul pleasure, but think it more decorous to say that it is introduced afterward, after the forty days of conception — you will plainly be shown to be accusing the Creator of nature, and you will be shown to be justly subject to the fearful danger arising from this blasphemy.

For if marriage is evil, then plainly the natural law of coming-to-be is evil too; and if the law of coming-to-be according to nature is evil in this way, then He who made nature, and gave it the law of coming-to-be, will justly be accused, according to you. And why do we turn away from the heretics of Mani and those before him, who, for this reason, and for this reason almost alone, set up two principles, and denied the God over all — saying the same thing, even if not through the same arguments — and now find you saying the same? But if, on account of this cause, out of reverent shame, you decline to say that the rational and intellective soul coexists with the body at conception, you will not dare to say, even after forty days, nor after the nine months of gestation, nor even after birth, before the forty days of purification, that the one born has the rational and intellective soul. For that which is born is not yet admitted to the temple of God, being determined by the law as unclean. So then, according to reasonable account, one must suppose that the one being born does not have the rational and intellective soul until the completion of the days of purification, but rather, as I said a little before, the soul of some plant or irrational animal among the things classed among beings.

But if your pretext for such reasoning is that the great Moses wrote that no penalty is exacted from one who strikes a pregnant woman before forty days, if it should happen that, through the blow, she loses the embryo before its time, one must know that wise Moses did not, in writing this, indicate that the entrance of the rational soul into the body occurs at that time, but rather that he wrote this for the time being, according to a superficial understanding, indicating that the complete formation of the thing laid down is finished at that point. In addition to all this, I am afraid to accept such reasoning, lest the order of the argument, proceeding in sequence, should justly make me liable to fearful charges — which it is not right even to say, so far as the consequence of the argument would force me — namely, to say that our Lord and God, if He truly deigned to become man like us, apart from sin, was, at conception, a soulless and mindless man, and remained so for the forty days — while our holy Fathers and teachers cry out plainly, or rather the truth that speaks through them and is spoken, that, together with the descent of God the Word at conception, timelessly, through the medium of the rational soul, the Lord Himself, God the Word, was united to flesh — and not that, through the medium of a soulless flesh, He afterward received a rational soul added to it, nor that He took on an altogether soulless body, or a mindless and irrational soul, but that He ineffably united to Himself, according hypostasis, undeficient nature constituted of rational soul together with body.

For this reason I especially hold to the doctrine of coexistence, sending away, fittingly, those on either side who stand opposed to one another and to the middle position, having as advocate and unerring teacher, for this doctrine, the very Maker of nature Himself, in the mystery of His own enfleshment — He who truly became man, and confirmed, through Himself, that nature has its complete subsistence together with its coming-to-be, and innovated only the innovation of nature — I mean the conception through seed and the birth through corruption, which nature contracted after the transgression, having fallen from its divine and spiritual increase into multitude — but not the principle of nature, according to which it is and by nature comes to be, together with its being, from rational soul and body. 111. on How Innovation Comes About in the Things Innovated, While They Remain Unchanged in Nature For every innovation, generally speaking, occurs with respect to the manner of the thing innovated, but not with respect to the principle of nature. For this reason, the principle, when innovated, corrupts nature, since it no longer has, unaltered, the principle according to which it is; but the manner, when innovated, while the principle according to nature is preserved, demonstrates the power of a wonder, showing thereby that nature is being acted upon and acting above its own law. The principle of human nature is that its nature consists of soul and body, and of a rational soul and a body; the manner is the order in the activity and being acted upon that occurs naturally, which is often changed and altered, but never changes nature along with itself.

As is the case also with everything else, whenever God wishes to innovate something concerning His own creation, for the sake of providence toward those provided for, and as a demonstration of the power that extends over and through all things — just as, indeed, working wonders by the greatness of miracles and signs from of old, He innovated, in manner, transferring the blessed Enoch and Elijah to another kind of life besides the one in the flesh under corruption — not by alteration of nature, but by a change in its manner of conduct and governance; making water become, in abundance, a flood for the wicked men on earth; showing Noah, the first sailor, having an unharmed dwelling in the ark with wild beasts; honoring Abraham and Sarah, His great servants, with a child beyond their age and the natural boundary and time appointed for childbearing; preparing fire to move downward as a flood upon the impious, without its natural principle being at all diminished thereby; kindling fire unburning in the bush for the calling of His servant; changing water in Egypt into the quality of blood, its nature not at all being denied, remaining water by nature even after the change of color, and accomplishing the rest of the wonders and signs there, to give the faithful hope of freedom from the terrors that held them, and to give the unbelieving a perception of the punishing power, for the laying aside of the hardness that possessed them concerning the Divine; cutting the sea with a rod, and dissolving the continuity of the water, its own nature not departing, for the passage of those pursued for His sake, and for the drowning of those who unjustly pursued the noble and free; sweetening water with wood; raining bread unplowed from heaven, strange and unknown; suddenly casting up from the sea a multitude of edible birds, apart from natural succession from one another, for the comfort of those suffering in the desert; showing the rock to be a mother of water, for the confirmation of the faith of those who wavered in their struggles; holding back a river for the crossing, unwetted, of a God-fearing people; halting the course of sun and moon, paradoxically unimpeded, making the ever-moving nature of the encompassing heaven stand still, for the destruction of impious power foolishly arrayed against God, before the power of the things

seen came to its end, and for the possession of the inheritance truly promised from afar; and all the rest of what He is said to have done, in the land of possession, and in the other places to which the old Israel came through transgression — concerning the manner of activity, not the principle of existence, God, having innovated the nature of the things innovated, did. After all these things, and after which, having accomplished the truly newest mystery of all, that for the sake of which all things exist and through which they exist, His own enmanment for our sake, He innovated nature with respect to manner, not with respect to principle — by the assumption of flesh through the medium of an intellective soul, having been ineffably conceived without seed, and truly born without corruption, a perfect man, having received an intellective soul together with a body from the very moment of the ineffable conception.

112. That Every Nature Always Has Its Completion in Its For every nature, universally speaking, whether intelligible or sensible — that is, simple or composite — never receives, in any manner, the beginning of the coming-to-be of its being in part, nor can it subsist from a half-portion. But if it is a composite nature, the whole is constituted, complete, all at once, together with its own complete parts, having no interval of time whatsoever between itself and its own parts, or between the parts themselves, of which it consists. And if it is a simple nature, that is, intelligible, it likewise naturally subsists, complete, together with its own principles, without fail, all at once, complete together with complete — no time at all in any way distinguishing it from its own principles. For no nature at all, among beings, ever was, nor is, nor will be, existing according to its own principle as what it now is not, nor indeed is it now, or will hereafter be, what it was not before. For those whose principles have had their perfection in God, together with their being, the production and substantiation of these, according to their own principles, is altogether incapable of receiving any addition or deficiency with respect to being what they are as beings. But I think it enough, in this digression of the argument, to have said, against these men as well, what has now been said, so that one may not be easily carried away into absurd opinions by those who make the technical plausibility found in the cleverness of their arguments a matter of belief.

113. Why the Teacher Joined the Birth from Baptism to the Incarnation With a view to what, and for what reason, the teacher joined the birth from baptism to the incarnation (for this remains yet for the examination of the present discourse), I will say concisely, as I have learned, to the best of my ability. Those who mystically attend to the divine sayings, and who, as is fitting, exalt them with loftier contemplations, say that man was made at the beginning according to the image of God, on condition that he should certainly be born, by free choice, in the Spirit, and should take on the likeness added to him through the keeping of the divine commandment, so that the same man might be a creature according to nature, but a Son of God and God through the Spirit according to grace. For it was not possible for man, having come to be, to be shown otherwise to be a Son of God and God, according to deification by grace, unless he had first been born, by free choice, in the Spirit, on account of the self-moved and unmastered power naturally inherent in him. Having neglected this deifying, divine, and immaterial birth, on account of preferring the sensible pleasure that was manifest to the still unseen and merely intelligible goods, the first man was justly condemned to have, instead, the involuntary, material, and perishable birth from bodies — God rightly judging that he who had voluntarily chosen the worse over the better should exchange the birth of freedom, dispassion, self-determination, and purity for a passionate, servile, and constrained birth, resembling that of the irrational and senseless beasts on earth, and should receive, in place of the divine and ineffable honor together with God, the dishonorable entanglement with matter shared with the senseless beasts.

Wishing to free man from this, and to lead him back to his divine good fortune, the Word who fashioned the nature of men truly becomes man from men, and is bodily born, apart from sin, for man‘s sake, and is baptized, voluntarily undergoing, on our behalf, the spiritual birth into adoption, He who is God by essence and Son of God by nature, for the abolition of the birth from bodies. Since, then, for our sake, He who made us — the Son and Word, alone equal in Godhead and glory with the Father, together with the Spirit — truly becomes, like us, man from us, and is bodily born, apart from sin, and He who is God by nature deigns to undergo, on our behalf, the birth from baptism into spiritual adoption, for this reason, I think, the teacher joined the birth from baptism to the incarnation — as being devised for the abolition and dissolution of the birth from bodies. For that which Adam, by voluntarily neglecting — I mean the birth into deification from the Spirit — was condemned to be bodily born unto corruption instead, this, by will, as good and loving toward mankind, He who became man in our transgression, and who voluntarily condemned Himself along with us, He alone free and sinless, having also deigned to be bodily born — in which lay the power of our condemnation — mystically set right by the birth in the Spirit; and, having dissolved, on our behalf, in Himself, the bonds of bodily birth, He gave us the authority to become, through the birth according to the Spirit, by will, children of God instead of flesh and blood, to those who believe in His name.

The incarnation, then, and the bodily birth, on account of my condemnation, came first upon the Lord, and thus the birth in the Spirit, which had been neglected, through baptism, followed, for my salvation and recall by grace — or, more clearly to say, my refashioning; as God, joining together in me the principle of my being and that of my well-being, and unifying the division and separation that came about through me between them, and, through these, wisely driving me on toward the principle of eternal being, according to which there is no longer any bearing or being borne about man, the economy of the things that appear having reached its end with respect to bearing, through the great and common resurrection, giving birth to man, into immortality, according to an unchanging existence — He for whose sake the nature of the things that appear received its being through coming-to-be, and with whom it will receive, by grace, its incorruptibility according to essence. But, if it please, let us, recalling in summary the force of what has been said, gather it together. We have the birth from bodies of our Savior notionally divided into the preceding principle of nature and the manner now existing according to us, into which it ended; and again into the principle of coming-to-be according to nature and the manner of comingto-be; and further into the different manners of the essential coming-to-be of the soul and the body; and, in addition to these, into the conception without seed and the birth without corruption.

It is for you, then, as fair judges, to approve the better of the interpretations set forth. 114. on: “Why Do You Seek Medicines That Will Benefit Nothing? Why the Critical Sweat, When Perhaps the Hour of Departure Stands Near?” This saying, as the blessed elder used to say, the teacher directed against those who postpone baptism, postponing baptism, out of love of pleasure, in the hope of living. And he says: “Why do you need to learn from another the departure” — plainly of life — “and not consider it as though already present? Why do you seek medicines that will benefit nothing? Why the critical sweat, when perhaps the hour of departure stands near?” For since the disciples of physicians say that there are four critical days among those in fever — the fourth, the seventh, the ninth, and the eleventh, and perhaps also the thirteenth (for on these days, they say, if they find the sick man‘s body moistened with sweat, they take it as evidence that the patient lying there will live) — so that the sick man, awaiting this sweat, might not, out of ill counsel, postpone baptism for a period of years, the teacher very wisely counsels the ailing man not to trust in this sweat and to rely on it in vain, since it is possible that, instead of this, the sweat of departure might occur — the sweat that proclaims the end of the present life — so that, as I said, the sick man, deceived by this sweat, might not unknowingly be alienated from the manifest and divine life that abides forever, and be found instead clinging to the human and perishable life, which will altogether be dissolved, being by nature ungraspable and ever flowing through corruption and change, and escaping the hands of those who suppose they hold it more quickly than one gazing at an insubstantial dream.

115. on: “for Christ Does Not Often Love to Be Stolen, Even Though He Is Exceedingly Loving Toward Why, some say, coming upon this passage, if God is exceedingly loving toward mankind, and an unfailing spring of love for mankind, so as not to be diminished in the least by those who draw from it, does He not love to be stolen? For thus He would show His love for mankind all the more, not being diminished by giving room to those who wish to steal — especially a saving theft, and as often as they might wish. To these we say, God granting the word, that this very thing is full of love for mankind — or rather, is itself love for mankind — toward those who wish to steal something: that He does not allow it, is the clearest indication of good providence, lest, if the appropriation of salvation should become too easy for those who wish it, the casting away of the gift should likewise become easy, as being able to be taken again with ease, and those who receive the gift should be shown to be ignorant of a fixed and stable habit in the good, having a disposition prone to fall into evil on account of the ease of acquiring the good, which is despised on account of its cheapness. 116. from the Same Author, from the Oration on Pascha, on: “Naked in Simplicity and Artless Life, and Without Any Covering or Screen; for Such It Was Fitting for the One from the Beginning to Be” What this great teacher secretly reveals in these words, I say, only those who have received an equal gift of wisdom and knowledge to his own know — who, by laying aside from the intellective eyes all the film that comes from the passions and every material attachment, have been able to receive the ray of true knowledge in all things, according to which, having gathered the intellect, so far as attainable, from the many into the simple comprehended, by and unitary simple reason, they have understanding, the whole scientific knowledge of beings.

But we, upon whom the darkness of ignorance still lies, hindering the apprehension of the truth, on account of the mind‘s preoccupation with unstable things alone, like a blind man groping with both hands through a heap of matter and often finding something precious, so we too attempt, with our own weakness, to say something concerning the question before us. And indeed we say nothing at all other than what God delivers into our hands, as it is written, to nourish, so far as we are able, you good fathers — I mean, by the groping reasoning of the intellective power within us, a simple, unadorned contemplation, proportioned to us, and invoking a paternal blessing — lest, going about the field of sensible things sensibly, unskillfully, like Esau, we be deprived, through slowness, of the ready blessing of the father who is being nourished, or again, through loftiness of mind, seeking something greater than our power from those who still dwell on the mountain of our contemplation, we be wounded, like Israel, concerning whom the Law says that some who forced their way up the mountain were met by the Amorite who dwelt on that mountain, and he wounded them. I suspect, then, that the teacher, wishing to show the difference between the constitution of the human body before the transgression in the forefather Adam and that now observed and prevailing in us, says this — since then man was not torn apart by opposite and corrupting qualities in the constitution of his body, but remained the same, free from flux and efflux, and from the continuous alteration on either side according to the prevalence of qualities, as one not without a share in immortality by grace, and not having the corruption that now scourges him with its stings, but rather another constitution of the body fitting him, held together by simple and unopposed qualities.

According to this the first man was naked, not as fleshless and bodiless, but as not having the thicker constitution that makes the flesh mortal and resistant. According to this great teacher he lived artlessly, not being dissipated through the natural well-being once essentially given him, and had no need of covering, on account of the dispassion united to him, not suspecting shame, and on account of not being subject to cold and heat, for which especially the manner of covering by houses and garments was devised by men.

117. Another Contemplation on the Same Or perhaps the teacher, from the things now contemplated concerning man, indicates, by the removal of what now belongs to him, the things that then belonged to him. For man is now moved either concerning irrational fantasies of the passions, from deceit, on account of love of pleasure; or concerning the principles of the arts, from circumstance, on account of need; or concerning natural principles, from the law of nature, on account of learning — none of which, reasonably, drew man of necessity from the beginning, since he had become above all things. For it was fitting for the one from the beginning to be such, distracted at all by nothing of the things under him, or around him, or according to him, and needing, for his perfection, only one thing: the unrelated motion, with his whole loving power, toward Him who is above him — I mean God. For being dispassionate by grace, he did not admit the deceit of the fantasies of the passions through pleasure; and being without need, he was free from the circumstantial necessity concerning the arts on account of need; and being wise, he stood above the contemplation concerning nature, on account of knowledge. The first man, then, had nothing interposed between God and himself for knowledge, hindering the kinship that was to come about through his free motion of love toward God, and for this reason he was called by the teacher “naked in simplicity,” as being above all natural inquiry, and “in artless life,” as being pure of every life in need of arts, and “without any covering or screen,” as being free from the passionate entanglement of the senses with sensible things — into which he was justly brought later, having, by falling short, chosen deficiency, and having freely chosen to become empty of all things instead of full, having come to be below the things above which he had by nature been constituted.

118. Another Contemplation on the Same Or perhaps “naked,” as the teacher says, of the manifold contemplation and knowledge concerning nature, and being, “in artless life,” outside the many-faceted methodology concerning practice and virtue — having, in habit, the undefiled principles of the virtues — and “without any covering or screen,” not primarily needing the mind‘s dependence on sensible appearances for the understanding of divine things, having only the simple projection of the unitary, simple, and sustaining virtue and knowledge of the things after God, needing only the motion belonging to activity, by free choice, for its manifestation. Indeed, all those who wish, by a philosophical account, to raise themselves from the fall of the forefather, first begin with the complete removal of the passions, then, in this way, with freedom from occupation with the principles of the arts, and finally, having risen above natural contemplation, they peer into immaterial knowledge, which has altogether no form shaped by sense-perception, nor a concept comprehended by the utterance of speech — just as God made the first man from the beginning, naked in the simplicity of knowledge, and in unencumbered life, and in the mortification of the law of the flesh. It would indeed be possible to contemplate the matter before us in another and loftier way as well, but let this be set aside for now, for the reason I stated at the beginning of the discourse.

119. on: “Yearly, as the Sun of Righteousness, Either Setting Out from There, or Circumscribed by What Is Many are the appellations of our Savior, and manifold is the manner of anagogical ascent belonging to the notion of each, since the thing taken paradigmatically for the appellation of the Lord, according to natural contemplation, can admit many approaches of contemplation. As indeed the present difficulty before us also has. For let us, too, contemplate — for it is not possible, on account of brevity, to set forth the many ways of contemplation concerning the sun — according to the notion by which the teacher contemplated it, unfolding, so far as possible, what was said by him in compressed form. A year, then, according to our holy and wise teachers, is the return of the sun from the same point to the same point, comprehensive of the fivefold property according to time. For time is both divided into and gathered from day, and week, and month, and season, and year; and the year likewise into hour, and day, and week, and month, and season — the motion belonging to it remaining continuous and without interval, around divisions contemplated according to alteration have numbered the continuous and unbroken motion of time. If, then, in this manner a year comes to be among us according to the course of the sun, then plainly a year of the Lord that is acceptable is, as it is written, according to the manner of allegory, the whole extension of the ages, from the beginning at which God was pleased to give substance to beings, and to give existence to the things not existing, and, through providence, as it were a spiritual sun of the power that sustains the universe toward abiding, condescendingly permitting His ray to shine forth, deigning to bestow, by various means, the good things He had sown, proper to beings, for their fulfillment, until the completion of all the ages, at which He will gather the fruits of His own sowing, unmixed with tares and pure of all chaff and refuse, and the whole reckoning of the motion of things moved will be brought to its end, the worthy having received the promised final blessedness of deification.

The Lord, then, is called “Sun of Righteousness,” as the Maker and Perfecter of the ages, and as the beginning and end of all things, and as the Creator of the wise fivefold order of providence toward those provided for, and as filling all things with eternal light by the unfailing outpourings of His goodness, and as making those who widen their intellective passages for the reception of His blessed ray ripe and edible to God the Father. And He is the same acceptable year of the Lord, as being fulfilled through all those who are saved, according to the fivefold motion intellectually made by Him as Sun of Righteousness, which he will surely understand who gathers the spiritual science of things understood through the precise natural contemplation, according to reason, of things seen. And He is said by the teacher to “set out from there,” or to be “circumscribed by what is seen” — either as light from light, and true God from the true God the Father according to essence, setting out by begetting, or as man, He Himself circumscribed by the visible form of our nature, just as the sun, setting out from heaven, is circumscribed by its visible disk-shaped body. 120. on: “It Is No Wonder That the Lamb Is Sought Especially by Each Household” One might say, and reasonably, I think, perhaps: If Christ is one, mystically proclaimed through the Law and the Prophets and the majesty of creation to those able to hear and see spiritually, how does the Law, in fulfilling the type of Christ, command many lambs to be sacrificed, household by household of the tribes?

To him we say: if we should receive the account itself, touching, intellectually, the ears and eyes of the soul, and opening them for the reception and contemplation of His mysteries, and for the vindication of all disobedience and the turning away from all vanity, we would altogether know the mystical intent of the holy Scripture, joining to the matter before us the similar saying of the holy Apostle: “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” Just as, then, each of those who have believed in Christ, according to his own power and the disposition and quality of virtue underlying him, is crucified and crucifies Christ with himself, being crucified spiritually together with Christ — for one, according to one manner of virtue, another according to another, makes his crucifixion fitting to himself: one being crucified only to actual sin, putting it to death, fastened by the fear of God; another being crucified to the very passions, healing the powers of the soul; another to the very fantasies of the passions, not allowing the senses free rein to receive any agitation connected with them; another to the reasonings and thoughts concerning the passions; another to the deception according to sense-perception; another lays aside the relation of the senses to sensible things, through natural affinity, being crucified; another extinguishes altogether, by the cross, all sentient motion, so as to have nothing at all naturally active within himself; another ceases altogether even from the activity according to intellect — and, to say what is greater: one, crucified by the practical philosophy through dispassion, passes over, as it were from a kind of flesh of Christ, to His soul, toward natural contemplation in the Spirit; another, being put to death also by natural contemplation, through the casting away of the symbolic contemplation of beings according to intellect, is transposed, as it were from a kind of soul of Christ, to His intellect, toward the unitary and simple mystagogy of theological science; and another, from this, is mystically led up, as it were from a kind of intellect of the soul of Christ, to His Godhead, through the ineffable indeterminacy accomplished by complete negation — each, as I said, making, according to his own power, and the grace proportionately supplied to him, his lofty ascents through mortification to all things — so too each of us, as

in a household, in his own rank of the state proper to him according to virtue, sacrifices the lamb and partakes of His flesh, and is filled with Jesus. For Christ Jesus becomes each one‘s own lamb, in the measure that each is able to receive and eat Him: proper to Paul, the great herald of the truth, in his own way, and proper, in his own particular way, to each of the saints, according to the measure of faith in each, and the grace of the Spirit supplied to each — being found, wholly, whole to one in one way, whole to another in another way, and becoming all things to all. 121. on: “Whatever Is Fleshly and Nourishing in the Word Shall Be Eaten, Together with the Inward Parts and the Hidden Things of the Mind, and Shall Be Distributed for Spiritual Digestion” God, who gave subsistence to every nature with wisdom, and who secretly implanted, as the first power in each rational essence, the knowledge of Himself, has given also to us, lowly men, as a most generous Master, according to nature, longing and love for Him, having naturally intertwined with it the power of reason, so that we might be able, with ease, to know the ways of the fulfillment of our longing, and, not going astray, to fail to attain what we strive to obtain.

Moved, then, by this longing, we are led to seek to attain that truth itself, and the wisdom and governance orderly manifest in all things, striving through these for the sake of which we received the longing. And knowing this mystically, those who love learning and honor the truth established for themselves one occupation and diligent pursuit: the laborious exercise concerning this, having learned precisely, from the true understanding and consequence of things themselves, that if, in this present age, they should in some measure, through pious contemplations, form an image of the truth to come, and thereby satisfy their longing, having their soul thus made more ready, as having been well trained here, they will pass, without weariness, after this life, to the truth to come — already well sketched out for them beforehand through the more divine notions, God and our Savior Jesus Christ leading them to that very truth, and showing it to them, simple, and clear, and without any perplexity, symbolic variety, or enigmatic obscurity, pain and grief and groaning having fled from them, as in practical virtue, on account of dispassion, so too, in theoretical knowledge, all obscurity and perplexity, on account of wisdom, having been added to them — they having received from here their preliminary sketches of it, at that time when the truth is naked. For to everyone, He says, who has — plainly, longing for the things to come — it shall be given, and the enjoyment of eternal goods shall, without fail, be set before him.

For our God, being rich, never ceases distributing to those who love Him the divine gifts of knowledge, which we cannot even name in this present age, on account of their height and greatness — if indeed the great Apostle speaks truly concerning the final blessedness, that it is above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come, hinting at the highest summit of the good things that will be shown, after the distribution of all the gifts and the ascent through all of them — a summit that cannot be spoken or known by any reason or intellect — both of those attainable to us in this age, and of those to be shown in the age to come, which we can perhaps, in some measure, name and know. For Jesus, who has passed through the heavens, the Word of God, and has become above all the heavens, ever transposes and transfers those who follow Him through practice and contemplation, from lesser things to greater, and from these again to things still higher than these — and, simply to say, time will fail me to recount the divine ascents and revelations of the saints, according to the alteration from glory to glory, until each shall receive the deification fitting to his own rank. Knowing, then, that we have this aforementioned natural longing for God, this great teacher exhorts and calls all, through his teaching, to the spiritual eating of the lamb sacrificed for us, and lays down, for our clear and profitable observance, that the harmony of the members of the lamb — that is, of Christ — should be kept unbroken and unmixed, lest we be condemned as tearing apart and rending the fitting harmony of the divine body, or eating the flesh of the lamb and the Word rashly, beyond our power, or unworthily, contrary to our power; but let each, according to his own power and rank, and the grace of the Spirit befitting him, partake of the divine Word according to the notion proper to each member.

For instance, of the head, he will partake who has acquired a faith concerning theology that is entirely free from the need of unproved first principles, from which the whole body of the virtues and knowledge, being fitted together, grows in spiritual growth. Of the ears he will partake who receives the divine words spiritually, with understanding, and, on their account, becomes obedient and submissive to God, through works, even unto death. Of the eyes, he who understands creation spiritually, and gathers all the principles according to sense and intellect, without stumbling, into one fulfillment of the glory of God. Of the breast he will partake who has filled his heart with theological contemplations, according to the great evangelist John, and, like an ever-flowing spring, piously pours forth to those who learn the reason and manner of the providence that encompasses the universe. Of the hands, in turn, he fittingly partakes who performs none of the works commanded carelessly and negligently, but has the whole activity of his soul, according to practice, ready and vigorous for the fulfillment of the divine laws. Of the belly, he who has the generative power of the soul ever-flowing, and is multiplied with spiritual contemplations, and possesses, unquenched, the most burning love of the dispassionate desire for divine communion. Of the inward parts he will fittingly partake who investigates the depths of God with the more hidden inquiry and knowledge of the intellect, and is filled with unspeakable mysteries.

The discourse will venture something greater. Of the lower parts of the Word let him partake soberly who stands, in reason, against matter, and keeps the flesh entirely undefiled, together with the soul, forming the whole Word, without omission, in it by the virtues, He having become flesh. Of the thighs he will partake who has reason lying over the passible part of the soul, and altogether excises its inclination toward matter. Of the knees, he who inclines with compassion, providentially, toward those who are downcast and weak in faith, imitating the Word‘s condescension toward us. Of the shins and feet, in addition to these, let him partake who has the footings of his soul unshaken and unmovable in faith, and virtue, and knowledge, and presses on with purpose toward the prize of the upward call, and leaps over, together with the Word, the mountains of ignorance and the hills of vice. But who could enumerate all the notions of our Savior God, devised for our sake, by which He has made Himself edible and shareable, proportionately to each? For the Lord has, besides all these, curls, and nostrils, and lips, and neck, and shoulders, and fingers, and whatever else, in a tropological sense, is said of Him from our own constitution. Of these, those partake fittingly and profitably who transpose, for each and through each member, the signified spiritual sense.

Thus the Lamb of God is eaten, according to this holy and great teacher, and is distributed for spiritual digestion, transforming, by the Spirit, those who partake toward Himself, leading and transposing each of them into the place, in the arrangement of the bodily harmony, of the member spiritually eaten by them — so that, out of love for mankind, the Word, present in all things, might become, in reality, the sole and above-nature reason and essence of things. 122. on: “Having Put to Death the Members That Are Upon the Earth, and Imitating the Girdle of John, the Desert-Dweller and Forerunner and Great Herald of the He who imitates the girdle of John is he who, by the power of reason, binds tightly, through knowledge, the generative power of the soul in a practical way, and keeps it undissipated toward matter. He is a desert-dweller who has acquired a habit purified of the passions. He is a forerunner who, genuine repentance, foretells the righteousness that follows it, and, through manifest virtue, the knowledge that is about to visit them. He is a great herald of the truth who confirms, by his own manner of life, the word of teaching spoken by him.

123. ON: “AND IF ANY DISCIPLE IS SENT FORTH TO PREACH THE GOSPEL, PHILOSOPHICALLY AND WITHOUT EXCESS — WITHOUT STAFF, AND WITH ONLY ONE TUNIC, ALSO GO BAREFOOT, THAT THE FEET OF THOSE WHO PREACH THE GOSPEL OF PEACE MAY APPEAR BEAUTIFUL” The Gospel is the loftier discourse concerning the Kingdom of God; and the Kingdom of God is the state purified of all matter and all fantasies connected with it. A disciple sent forth to preach the Gospel, then, is reasonably one who shows, in his manner of life, complete estrangement from this world, through being without money, and without staff, and with only one tunic — having cut off love of money, and anger, and confidence in any power of his own — pursuing, as with a single tunic, ethical philosophy that is unadorned, unfeigned, single-formed, and free of all duplicity, leaving no trace whatsoever of deadness in the footprint of his soul, as with a sandal — being a messenger of the great peace, and a herald of the state that no longer fears the war arising from the passions, nor shrinks from the death of the body — so that those who look intelligently upon him may, from the unchanging sameness of his manner of life according to virtue, have imaged for them the most fitting conduct and stability found among the angels concerning God.

124. Another Contemplation on the Same Theme Or perhaps, to speak simply, both in imitation of the girdle of John, and again in the sense that the Passover can be eaten in a Gospel manner, the Father intimated, in a teaching way, the differences of those who partake, and the manners of the Passover itself. For the account of the Old Scripture hands down three Passovers: one celebrated in Egypt, another in the desert, and the other in the land of promise. Egypt, then, allegorized according to one of its notions, signifies this world; the desert, likewise, according to one of its contemplations, allegorically indicates the state of souls after death; and the land of promise prefigures the age to come. For there are three places and states in which we men come to be: this world, in which, receiving our being, we are born; the place after death, to which, departing from here, we go; and the age to come, in which we are enclosed together with souls and bodies. For as long a time, then, as we are in this world, we celebrate the Passover in Egypt, being cleansed of the stains of sin; but when we have passed through this life by death, we celebrate, as it were in the desert, another Passover, learning the more manifest principles of beings, without symbols and riddles and the variety that comes through sense-perception, intellectually and incorporeally; and again, in the age to come, of divine proclamations, we keep the feast of the Passover, eating immediately the highest reason of wisdom, toward which, being transformed by grace, we are deified — having no passing to any other Passover whatsoever, except that even here, being present, it is possible for us to have imaged the property of each of the states mentioned.

For the life of each of us is characteristic of the place in which he is. For instance, if we pursue the practical philosophy manfully, we celebrate the Passover well in Egypt, being among the Egyptians, yet not being Egyptians — as being in the flesh, yet not warring according to the flesh. But if we practice natural contemplation in the Spirit piously, making the powers of the soul weapons mighty for God, for the pulling down of strongholds and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and the contemplation of the spiritual principles inherent in beings — as though naked of body and free of the deceptive fantasy according to sense — making our journey knowingly toward the divine promises, we are in the desert, that is, in the state purified of the passions and of all material fantasy. But if we are formed by the ineffable movements of intellect in theological mystagogy, not ignorant of the breadth and length and depth and surpassing greatness toward us of the wisdom of God, so far as attainable by men, we are in the land of promise. I think, then, that the teacher, through the division of the three persons, intimates the practical, natural, and theological philosophy, by which each partakes, proportionately to his own underlying power, of the intelligible Passover.

125. ON: “IF YOU ARE RACHEL OR LEAH, A PATRIARCHAL AND GREAT SOUL, THEN STEAL WHATEVER IDOLS OF YOUR FATHER YOU MAY FIND — NOT TO KEEP THEM, BUT TO DESTROY THEM; BUT IF YOU ARE A WISE ISRAELITE, CARRY THEM OFF TO THE LAND OF PROMISE” Rachel, they say, is interpreted as “shepherdess,” while Leah is interpreted as “wearied” or Rachel, then, is both shepherded shepherds, and is led and leads, according to the force of her name. Rachel, then, is every contemplative soul, which is shepherded and led, as a lamb, by the law of God, and which, according to the law of God, shepherds and leads its own movements and thoughts by the ordinances of the practical life, subjecting for a time the passions of the flesh to the fecundity of virtue, and thus, after entering into knowledge, utterly making them vanish. Leah is every practical soul, having the weariness endured for the sake of virtue, which especially everyone who pursues divine philosophy first takes to wife. A wise Israelite is a contemplative intellect that transposes the thoughts of this age to the region of knowledge, after the pattern of that great Jacob, who carried all of Laban‘s possessions to the land of the fathers. For just as that wondrous Jacob, in the historical narrative, peeled the rods and placed them before the water-troughs, causing the drinking sheep to conceive in likeness to them, so too every intellect, most wise in the Spirit, having stripped the more divine principles of beings of the matter surrounding them, and having set them before the modes of contemplation belonging to knowledge, teaches all who learn from it, as well as its own soul, to be formed after the condition of the incorporeal.

Leah, then, is the patriarch of those who accomplish virtue through practical weariness; Rachel is the patriarch of those who rationally pursue virtue through natural contemplation, as being obediently led by the law of God, and gently leading according to it. And of those who pursue the height of knowledge according to spiritual contemplation, Jacob, all-glorious, is the patriarch — of those who behold and know the things that appear, not altogether as they appear, but as they are understood, and who, together with the notions found in them, are richly transposed toward immaterial and incorporeal knowledge. 126. on: “If You Are Simon of Cyrene, Take up the Cross and Follow” Simon, they say, is interpreted as “obedience,” and Cyrenian as “readiness.” Everyone, then, who is ready for obedience to the Gospel, and who eagerly undergoes, through the mortification of the members that are on the earth, the affliction endured for virtue according to the practical philosophy, has become a Simon of Cyrene, pursuing willing virtue, bearing the cross upon his shoulders, and following Christ, showing the conduct of his life according to God to be altogether withdrawn from the earth. 127. on: “If You Are Crucified as a Thief, Recognize God as the Grateful One Did” A grateful thief crucified with Christ is every man who suffers evil for his sins, as accountable, sharing in the sufferings, together with the Word who suffers, without being accountable, for his sake, bearing it with thanksgiving, and recognizing the Word who is present with him according to the providence of just judgment, and confessing the cause for which he suffers evil, and, by his confession, as it were sharing in the passion with Him, who, though blameless, shared in the suffering with him — so that, for his own sake, the Word might impart to him, unworthy though he is, the reason of His own well-being, and might reckon the mortification arising from circumstance as his own voluntary virtue, on account of his gratitude — when the wise veils of providence‘s reason, having reached their end, the light of His kingdom shall appear, unapproachable.

Thus the mortification of the members of the body, arising from circumstance, is transformed for him, suffering on account of sin, through grateful thanksgiving, into voluntary virtue, by which, being released from many debts on account of sin, he justly enters, together with the Word, into the region of knowledge — I mean paradise — where, being present, he will know the cause of the condemnation and affliction in which we are now confined. An ungrateful thief is he who suffers evil on account of sin, as accountable, and, out of a spiteful disposition, does not recognize the justice who, being accountable, suffers together with him out of love for mankind, but instead dismisses, with blasphemy, the reason of judgment justly determined for him according to providence — who, since he did not recognize the Word who, dishonorably, by His own will, was condemned along with him, and did not ask for grace for his offenses, is sent away as a stranger to the Kingdom, having received no promise from the Word that he will ever attain it.

128. Another Contemplation on the Same Theme And again, a grateful thief is he who, even coming to the very end of his present life, arrives at a perception of his offenses, and recognizes, with understanding, the reason of divine judgment justly determined and accomplished for him there, and sincerely asks forgiveness from the depth of his soul for his sins. An ungrateful thief is he who, at the very end of his present life, blames, out of love of life, the law and boundary of the separation of soul from body, wisely set by the just decree of God, as not having been well given.

129. Another Contemplation on the Same Theme And again, since each of us is twofold in nature, composed of soul and body, a thief is he who, in each of the two things of which he is composed, according to the law of the nature of each, is mystically crucified with the Word for the sake of virtue — having the law of the flesh, as an ungrateful thief resisting the reason of virtue, and having the law of the spirit, as a grateful thief, and accepting the Savior Word through the manners of the practical life, laborious though they may be — with whom he enters, rejoicing, into the place of the feast, filled full with all knowledge, having been altogether freed from the mindset according to the flesh.

130. Another Contemplation on the Same Theme And again, a grateful thief is he who has been deemed worthy to be crucified with Christ through the complete and entire mortification of the passions, and is crucified with Him on the right, that is, going through every virtue with reason and knowledge, and keeping his life free of offense to all men, and having no movement whatsoever discordant with the gentleness of reason on account of severity. An ungrateful thief is he who, for the sake of glory or greater gain, treacherously feigns a life of virtue in his outward manner, and pursues, before outsiders, only the single word of flattery instead of all virtue and knowledge, but toward his familiars is altogether crooked in disposition and hard to approach — one who blasphemes the way of God and must be rebuked with understanding. For perhaps he will cease slandering the Word by his own conduct at the admonition of the one who rebukes him, just as happened at the cross to the thief who fearlessly uttered blasphemy. For not to answer back to the one who rebukes is a sign of accepting the word spoken, silence being the sign. According to whichever of the said contemplations, then, we are crucified with Christ, let us strive, as we are here, to propitiate the Word who is crucified with us, and to receive, with a conscience purified of the thoughts that strike it, the unfailing promise of rest, if indeed “today” indicates the present day of this age (for He says, “Today you will be with Me in paradise”), and “tomorrow” indicates that of the age to come, in which one must expect no remission of sins, but only the recompense fitting each according to the worth of what has been lived.

131. on: “and If You Are Joseph of Arimathea, Ask for the Body from Him Who Crucifies” The body of Christ is the soul, or its powers, or the senses, or the body of each individual, or the members of the body, or the commandments, or the virtues, or the principles of the things that have come to be, or, to speak more truly and simply, both individually and in common, all these things, and each of them, are the body of Christ. The devil crucifies this — that is, all these things — in the one who allows their crucifixion, not letting them act according to nature. “Joseph” is interpreted, in the Hebrew tongue, as “addition”; “Arimathea” as “take that up.” How, then? A man who has additions of faith, and has grown in the manners of virtue, and has removed from himself all deception of material things — this man is a spiritual Joseph, able to take the body of Christ and to bury it well, and to lay it in the heart that has been hewn out from faith, making his own body a body of Christ by grace, and the members of the body weapons of righteousness for God unto sanctification, and preparing the senses of the body, according to the innate reason, to be servants to the soul for natural contemplation in the Spirit, and making the soul itself equal in law to its powers for the fulfillment of the virtues, and further, having enslaved the soul and its powers to the commandments of God, showing the commandments themselves to be natural activities of the soul, and being roused, through the unshakable and firm habit according to virtue, to the understanding and reception of the more divine principles hidden in the commandments, and clothing, as with a linen cloth, in the spiritual principles concerning this age, the first Word, from whom, and through whom, and unto whom are all things.

He who has thus kept this fitting order is Joseph, mystically burying the mystical body of Christ.

132. Another Contemplation on the Same Theme And again, to speak concisely, he who, by practice and contemplation, renders to those who hear a wondrous account of the cross, has become another Joseph, through the addition of the goods according to contemplation, having increased in spiritual knowledge, and an Arimathean, through the genuine kinship of the virtues, in practice cutting off all his material attachment.

133. Another Contemplation on the Same Those who teach blasphemous doctrines concerning the embodiment of God crucify Christ again; and he who piously and boldly proclaims to all the doctrines concerning the incarnation of God buries Him again. 134. on: “and If You Are Nicodemus, the Night-Time GodFearer, Bury Him with Spices” Nicodemus is he who is a night-time God-fearer, and buries the body of Christ with spices — one who is strong in understanding toward the recognition of Christ, but who, out of cowardice, on account of fear of the Jews (I mean the assaults of the passions or the demons), out of sparing the flesh, declines the ambition performing commandments. For him it is a great thing toward acceptance even to think well of Christ, and not to utter blasphemous words. 135. on: “and If You Are Some Mary, or the Other Mary, or Salome, or Joanna, Weep at Dawn. See First the Stone Taken Away, and Perhaps Also the Angels, and Jesus The first Mary, from whom the Word cast out seven demons, is every practical soul, purified, by the reason of the evangelical commandments, of the terror concerning this age. For this age is “of the week,” being fulfilled by time‘s revolution back upon itself, from which the Word frees His own devotees, setting them altogether above the things under time. The other Mary is every contemplative soul, which has acquired, through true knowledge, kinship with the Word by grace.

Salome, which is interpreted “Peace” or “Most Full,” is every soul that is at peace through the casting away of the passions, and, by the abundance of the practical virtues, has subjected the mind of the flesh to the law of the spirit, and that has wisely comprehended, so far as possible, the knowledge of beings through the fulfillment of spiritual notions in contemplation. Joanna, which is interpreted “dove” — the gentle creature, without gall, and prolific — is every soul that has laid aside its passionate condition through gentleness, and has the fiery fecundity of the spirit in knowledge. These weep at dawn, that is, they pour forth tears of knowledge, seeking the Word who is the most originative source of all virtue and knowledge. And first they see the stone taken away from the door of the tomb — that is, the hardness lying upon the heart, which is the obscurity of the Word; then the angels, that is, the natural principles of beings in the Spirit, proclaiming in silence the all-causing Word.

136. Another Contemplation on the Angels Or perhaps the principles of holy Scripture, which provide a clearer notion concerning Christ, as God and man — that is, concerning theology and economy. For the account says they saw one at the head, and one at the feet. For at the head is the principle of theology, on account of the Godhead of Christ, and at the feet the principle of economy, on account of the incarnation; and one who calls the Godhead the head of Christ, and His humanity His feet, will not miss the mark.

137. Another Contemplation on the Same Or perhaps the angels are the movements of conscience concerning the reason of piety, on account of the complete casting away vice ignorance, proclaiming intellectually to the soul the resurrection of the Word who was once put to death in it through vice. And finally the soul sees the Word Himself manifestly appearing to it, without symbols or types, and filling its intellective capacities with intellectual joy. 138. on: “Become Peter or John; Hasten to the Tomb, Racing Against, Running Together with, Contending the Peter is every man who has acquired the firmness of faith in Christ through the conduct of his life; John is he who is loved by the Word on account of much gentleness and the pure cleanness of heart arising from it, and who, for this reason, is entrusted with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, and who, by reclining upon the breast, has received from the very hidden Godhead of the Word the power of theology. These run against one another, the one striving to surpass the other‘s contemplation by virtuous practice, the other hastening to outrun the other’s practice by gnostic contemplation. And they run together, according to their purpose, with one another, each advancing equally toward his own good.

139. Another Contemplation on the Same Peter and John, again, are each man deemed worthy to draw near to God, having the practical part of the soul as it were a Peter, and the contemplative part as it were a John, running together with one another according to reason, without excess or deficiency of the one toward the other; and again running against one another according to purpose, each thought to outrun the other in its own extreme.

140. ON: “AND IF, LIKE THOMAS, YOU ARE LEFT OUT FROM THE DISCIPLES TO WHOM CHRIST APPEARS, WHEN YOU SEE HIM, DO NOT DISBELIEVE. AND IF YOU DISBELIEVE, BELIEVE THOSE WHO TELL YOU. BUT IF NOT THEM, BE CONVINCED BY THE MARKS OF THE NAILS” Thomas is interpreted as “twin,” that is, doubt, or one who wavers in his reasonings, and for this reason does not even believe that the resurrection of the Word has taken place without touching the marks of the nails. Thomas, then, is every doubting man, who believes with difficulty that the resurrection of the Word of virtue and knowledge within him has taken place — whom only the memories of past sins, impassibly imprinted in the mind, persuade to accept the resurrection of the divine Word within him, and to confess Him Lord and God: Lord, as lawgiver of perfection in practice; God, as guide of the complete mystagogy in contemplation. And an impassible memory is the imprint of past things — the discernment, arising in the soul without pleasure or pain, concerning practice and reason, regarding one‘s own deeds or thoughts — having the marks, but not the wounds, of the injuries, healed over through the dispassion that has come to be.

141. Another Contemplation on the Same Or again, the nails are the manners of the virtues according to the practical philosophy, which hold the disposition of the soul, fastened with labor to divine fear; which the impassible, simple, and ineffable principles of knowledge, succeeding them, proclaim aloud as the resurrection of the divine Word that has come to be in the soul according to deification, showing beforehand, as a faithful witness, the dispassion of the God-like habit — which he who has not experienced would never believe, even at the report of another speaking of it, just as Thomas did not believe the resurrection to those apostles who had experienced it, before the experience of undergoing it himself. 142. on: “If He Descends Into Hades, Descend with Him. Know Also the Mysteries of God There — What Is the Reason of the Twofold Descent” The spiritual man, knowing that the Word of God is present, undefiled, everywhere, follows Him through contemplation, gathering, with understanding, the science of providence over all things. Thus, when the Word descends into Hades, he descends with Him — not, plainly, for evil, but to search out and learn the mystery of God‘s descent into Hades, and to be taught the supernatural reason of the things that take place and are accomplished there.

143. Another Contemplation on the Same Or again, since every sin is a Hades, making the soul held fast by it dark, formless, and corrupted, he who discourses concerning the passions descends with the Word of teaching as it descends into Hades, giving life, through the word, to the virtue put to death by each vice, and leading it to resurrection, and bravely tearing apart, together with the word, the bonds of material attachment of souls. The reason of the twofold descent, according to a straightforward understanding, is this: with respect to the first sense, that the Word saves souls even with bodies, through faith and a pure conduct of life, upon the earth; and that He, descending into Hades without a body, can procure the salvation of the souls of those who have died before, there, through faith alone; and with respect to the second sense, that the habit and activity of vice also receives, from the Word, the return to virtue and knowledge. 144. on: “and If He Ascends Into the Heavens, Ascend with Him. Be Among the Angels Who Escort Him, or Those Who Receive Him; Command the Gates to Be Lifted up” He who, through great abundance of knowledge and rich participation in the Holy Spirit, has sufficiently, so far as possible, completed the account of providence, and has comprehended the science concerning it, ascends together with the Word as He ascends from earth into the heavens, having traversed knowingly the whole nature of all things provided for, visible and invisible, together with their principles, and having been taken up into that state which has no motion or movement whatsoever, toward which he especially pressed on, beyond every reason and manner, being led up, from those who escort him, as it were certain angels — the principles of providence inherent in beings — to the region of those who receive him, the ineffable principles and mysteries of theology, and, by his particular ascents, making the intellective gates of his soul loftier for the reception of the most divinely-ruling Word.

145. Another Contemplation on the Same And again, in another way, he ascends together with the ascending Word, who, from the manners of virtue in the practical philosophy, as from a kind of earth, is raised up, together with the Word who draws him upward, into the spiritual heavens of knowledge in contemplation.

146. Another Contemplation on the Same And, to speak yet more mystically concerning these things, he who is able to be led up, from the knowledge according to the economy — from which the world of the flesh of the Word came to be present with the Father — to the notion of the glory that was present with the Father before the world of the incarnation of the Word came to be, has truly ascended into the heavens together with the God and Word who, for his sake, descended to earth, having fulfilled the measure of knowledge attainable by men in this present age, and having become as much God as He became man, by being raised, through divine ascents, as high as, for man‘s sake, God, unalterably emptying Himself, descended to the uttermost limit of our nature. 147. from the Same Author, from the Oration on New Sunday, on: “the Tabernacle of Witness Is Renewed, and Most Splendidly, Which God Showed Forth, and Bezalel Completed, and Moses Set up” The anagogical reason concerning the tabernacle being manifold, let us contemplate it too, as the teacher has taken it in the present passage. The tabernacle of witness, then, is the mysterious economy of the incarnation of God the Word, which God the Father, being well pleased, showed forth, and which the Holy Spirit, cooperating through wise Bezalel who prefigured Him, completed, and which the intelligible Moses, the only-begotten Son of God and the Father, Himself accomplished, having established human nature in Himself by the union according to hypostasis.

148. Another Contemplation on the Same Except that the tabernacle is also an image of the whole of creation, intelligible and sensible, which God the Father, as Intellect, conceived, and the Son, as Word, fashioned, and the Holy Spirit completed. And again, it is an image of the sensible nature alone, and of man alone, who is composed of soul and body, and again of the soul alone, considered by itself according to reason — being contemplated, plainly, according to the manner fitting each. 149. on: “and the Kingdom of David Is Renewed, and Not Once, but First by Being Anointed, and Second by Being Likewise let us also receive, concerning the great David, prophet and king, the highly venerable anagogical account, according to which the teacher contemplated him in the present passage. David, then, intellectually understood, is the true King of Israel, that is, of the one who sees God — Jesus Christ: according to His first coming, anointed according to the notion of His humanity, just as the teacher says elsewhere, that He anointed His humanity with His Godhead, and made it what the anointing was; and according to His second and glorious appearing, both existing as, and being proclaimed, God and Lord and King of all creation. 150. on: “Forgetting His Own Prior Statement, [He Places] the Day of the Renewal [Above the Day of Resurrection]” Concerning the present passage, some raise a difficulty, saying: Why, having said that the day of the Resurrection surpasses all the feasts on earth — not only the human ones that come and go, but even those of Christ Himself and those celebrated in His honor — does the teacher, as though forgetting his own prior statement, place above it the day of the Renewal, saying, “higher than the high, and more wondrous than the wondrous,” so that from this the teacher would be thought to contradict himself?

To this it must be said that the teacher himself, in the same oration, says a little later: “The word does not wish you ever to remain in the same state, but always to be moving, easily moved, altogether newly created.” Just as, then, we know that one who is being renewed becomes higher than himself, and is made more radiant, resembling God, by advances toward virtue, so too we must believe that every day of feast devised for our sake becomes, in us and through us, higher than itself, the power proper to the mystery signified through it leading itself in us toward perfection. Reasonably, then, did the teacher call the New Sunday higher than the high, as being ever raised together with us to the same height, and surpassing itself — the Resurrection, I mean the first Sunday, secretly, through the mystery belonging to it, granting a life altogether purified of every material fantasy to those who thus spiritually accomplish the mystery belonging to it; while the New Sunday, in addition to these things, also brings them into participation in the enjoyment of the divine goods of which the first began.

151. Another Contemplation on the Same But if what is said seems credible, they say that the first Sunday is a type of the resurrection, by free choice, into virtue, while the second is a type of the perfection, by free choice‘s habit, into knowledge.

152. Another Contemplation on the Same And again, that the first Sunday is a symbol of the future natural resurrection and incorruption, while the second bears an image of the future deification by grace. If, then, the enjoyment of goods is more precious than the state purified of evils, and the habit of a virtue-loving free choice is more precious than the perfection in true knowledge, and the transformation, by grace, into deification toward God is more precious than natural incorruption — of which the first Sunday bears the type, and the second is the symbol — reasonably, being led by the spirit, the teacher called the New Sunday higher than the high. 153. on: “I Hate Even Familiarity Through the Air” Directing a lengthy discourse toward women, and especially those who have taken up the solitary life, concerning the correction of manners, by implication, the teacher gently, I think, exhorts that those practicing asceticism at home ought not to look out through windows at anyone at all, and especially at passersby, lest they receive the stings of death through untimely observation.

154. FROM THE SAME AUTHOR, FROM THE ORATION ON HOLY PENTECOST, ON: “THERE BEING NEED OF ONE DAY, WHICH WE HAVE RECEIVED IN ADVANCE FROM THE AGE TO COME, BEING BOTH THE EIGHTH AND THE FIRST, OR RATHER ONE AND INDISSOLUBLE. FOR THE SABBATH-REST OF SOULS HERE MUST END THERE” The number seven, in holy Scripture, taken merely as a number, has, by nature, much mystical contemplation lying upon it for those who diligently study divine things. For it signifies time, and age, and ages, motion, and compass, and measure, and boundary, and providence, and many other things, being well contemplated according to the reason of each. And, considered merely as rest, it likewise has much knowledge mystically to be gathered from it. But lest, by going through each in turn, I make the discourse burdensome, let us exercise ourselves on what seems the loftiest of the others. For those learned in divine things say there are three modes. The whole account of the coming-tobe of rational essences is seen to have that of being, that of well-being, and that of eternal being; and that the mode of being was, first, bestowed upon beings according to essence; and that the mode of well-being was given, second, to them according to free choice, as self-moved beings; and that the mode of eternal being was, third, granted to them by grace. And the first is comprehensive of power, the second of activity, and the third of the cessation of activity.

For instance, the mode of being, having naturally only the power toward activity, cannot, altogether, have that activity most complete apart from free choice; and the mode of well-being, having, by disposition alone, the activity of the natural power, does not, at all, have that whole power without nature; and the mode of eternal being, wholly circumscribing those that precede it — the power of the one, the activity of the other — neither naturally inheres, according to power, in beings at all, nor indeed does it, of necessity, follow altogether upon the will of free choice. For how could that which has a beginning according to nature and an end according to motion be capable of that which is ever-existing, and has no beginning or end? But it is a boundary, making nature stationary with respect to power, and free choice with respect to activity, in no way at all changing the principle according to which either exists, and defining, for all, all the ages and times. And this, I think, is perhaps the mystically blessed Sabbath, and the great day of the cessation of the divine works, which, according to the Scripture of the world‘s genesis, appears to have neither beginning, nor end, nor coming-to-be — the manifestation, after the motion of things determined by measure, of the things above boundary and measurement, and the infinite identity, after the quantity of things contained and circumscribed, of the things uncontained and uncircumscribed.

As, then, the activity according to free choice makes use of the power of nature, whether according to nature or contrary to nature, it will receive, as its end, either well-being or, alas, ill-being, which is eternal being, in which souls keep Sabbath, having received a cessation from all motion. The eighth and first, or rather the one and indissoluble day, is the pure and all-radiant presence of God, coming to be after the rest of the things moved — for those who have used the mode of being according to nature by free choice, wholly and fittingly visiting them wholly, and granting eternal well-being through participation in Himself, as the only one who properly both is, and is forever, and is well; but for those who have used the mode of being contrary to nature by disposition, He fittingly renders, instead of well-being, eternal ill-being, since well-being is no longer capable of being received by them, being disposed contrary to it, and having no motion at all after the manifestation of what is sought — the manifestation by which the sought thing is naturally made manifest to those who seek it.

155. Another Contemplation on the Same And again, the seventh, that is, the Sabbath, is the passage through all the manners of virtue and the gnostic principles in contemplation. The eighth is the true transformation, by grace, toward the beginning and cause of the things done in practice and the things known in contemplation.

156. Another Contemplation on the Same There is, then, again, a seventh and Sabbath, which is the dispassion that succeeds the practical philosophy according to virtue. And there is an eighth and first, as one and indissoluble, which is the wisdom that comes to be after gnostic contemplation. And according to other, various manners, it is possible for those who love the contemplation of divine things to receive the account concerning such matters, and to discover many good and true contemplations.

157. FROM THE SAME ORATION, ON HOW THE TEACHER, TAKING UP “DOUBLE IT AND TRIPLE IT,” SPEAKS OF THE MYSTERY CONCERNING THE NUMBER SEVEN: “AS ALSO THE SEVENTH RETURN OF ELIJAH THE PROPHET, WHICH BREATHED LIFE INTO THE SON OF THE WOMAN OF ZAREPHATH, AND HIS EQUAL-NUMBERED POURING OUT UPON THE WOOD-PIECES” The blessed elder, when I asked him about this, said: On this basis, perhaps, one can gather a proof concerning the number seven that the teacher discusses. First, according to those called arithmeticians. For they say that certain numbers are constituted from others that are doubled and tripled, the unit being added last. For instance, sixty-four is constituted from doubling: the unit being doubled together with the six numbers, and the unit being added, and thus the heptad is fulfilled — for instance, twice one is two, twice two is four, twice four is eight, twice eight is sixteen, twice sixteen is thirty-two, twice thirty-two is sixty-four. These, thus formed, seem to be composed through six numbers, but the unit, taken last, fulfills the seven, from which the doubling took its beginning. In this same way, then, applying the same rule here too, we will complete the number seven. For it says, “Pour out, double it and triple it.” Twice one is two, three times two is six, and the first unit, added to the sixes, completes the number seven.

And they say that the number three has a certain spiritual kinship, according to mystical contemplation, with the number seven, in the following manner: that the all-venerable and worshipful Trinity is signified through the three, and again the same through the seven, since the number seven is a virgin. For among the numbers within the decad, this alone neither begets nor is begotten. This he clearly indicates, discoursing in the book of his verses On Virginity, saying thus: “The first virgin is the pure Trinity.”

158. Another Contemplation on the Same Or thus also: having mystically contemplated, by reason, the activity of the Holy Trinity — I mean the good, which manifests the four generic virtues — you fulfill the number seven. For, mystically contemplating the activity of the holy and all-hymned Trinity, we complete the virgin number seven.

159. ON: “BUT JESUS HIMSELF, THE PURE PERFECTION, KNOWS HOW TO FEED FIVE THOUSAND IN THE DESERT WITH FIVE LOAVES, AND KNOWS AGAIN HOW TO FEED FOUR THOUSAND WITH SEVEN; AND THE REMNANTS OF THE SURPLUS ARE, IN THE FIRST CASE, TWELVE BASKETS, AND IN THE SECOND, SEVEN HAMPERS. NEITHER, I THINK, WITHOUT REASON, NOR UNWORTHY OF THE SPIRIT” Having already exercised the mind toward a contemplative habit, in what has been said at length before, so far as was possible, let us not, if it please, burden it with a multitude of words, since it is now able to receive the contemplation of divine things scientifically, even in concise form. The five barley loaves, then, signify the ready-to-hand principles of natural contemplation. The five thousand men nourished by them indicate those who are moved concerning nature, but not yet altogether purified of the relational disposition concerning the passible and irrational part of the soul — as one may understand from the fact that the loaves are of barley, a form of food common to both cattle and men, and from their being together with women and children, which plainly shows them not to be altogether estranged from pleasurable desires and the imperfect infancy of reasonings. The desert is this world, in which the Word of God, for those moved toward the Divine through natural contemplation, spiritually breaking open the principles of nature, grants a complete satiety of good things, as the baskets of the leftovers show, being twelve in number.

160. Contemplation on the Number Twelve The number twelve signifies either the principles concerning time and nature, as being completed by the composition of five and seven. For time is “of the week,” as being moved cyclically, and having a suitable aptitude for motion, having, by this number, an equal distance of the extremes from the middle. Nature is “of the pentad,” as being naturally disposed to be ranked under the number five, on account of having more than what is called simple matter, which is divided fourfold, having its form. For nature is nothing other than matter given form. For form, added to matter, produces 161. Another Contemplation on the Same Or the notions of things that have come to be and are eternal, as being moved and circumscribed, and as admitting the account of what, and of what kind, and of how they are. For everything that is movable and has come to be exists, and for this reason is altogether also under time, even if not measured by motion. For everything that has come to be has a beginning of its being, as having begun to be, and an interval, from which it began to be. And if everything that has come to be both exists and is moved, it is altogether also under nature and under time — under the one on account of existing, under the other on account of being moved — through which, by combination, the reckoning of the number twelve is completed, in the manner explained.

162. Another Contemplation Or this number signifies ethical, natural, and theological philosophy, as being gathered from four, and five, and three. For the precise philosophy concerning conduct in matters is “of the tetrad,” on account of the four generic virtues. Natural contemplation is “of the pentad,” for the reason stated, I mean sense-perception, which is naturally divided fivefold. Mystical theology is “of the triad,” on account of the three consubstantial holy hypostases of the all-holy Monad, or in which the holy Monad is, or, more properly to say, which the holy Monad is.

163. Another Contemplation Or the universal and most generic virtue and knowledge — the one being accomplished here through the four virtues, the other being signified through the eight, mystically indicating the more divine state of the things to come — from which the number twelve is completed by composition.

164. Another Contemplation Or the present things and the things to come — the present things naturally admitting the elemental and material number four, while the things to come admit the number eight, mystically contemplated in them, as the transcendent property of the weekly cycle of time.

165. Another Contemplation Or the number twelve clearly signifies the threefold principles concerning the judgment and providence of intelligible and sensible things. For each of these, with respect to being what it is in itself, admits three principles, as has become clear, through much study of the sacred sayings, to the highest initiates and hierophants of divine matters. The universal threefold principles of beings, then, tripling themselves by the four things in which they are contemplated — or, conversely, being quadrupled by the things of which they are the principles — produce the number twelve. For if beings have essence, and power, and activity, they plainly possess a threefold principle of their being. And if providence is what binds these principles together with respect to being, according to which they are, its principle too is altogether threefold. And if judgment, which is punitive as chastising vice, concerns the corruptions of each of the aforesaid principles that have gone astray, whether past, present, or future, it too has a threefold principle of contemplation, which, circumscribing the essence, power, and activity of beings, it remains, preserving its own indeterminacy forever.

166. Another Contemplation Or again, this number signifies the complete recognition, attainable by us, of the cause and the things caused. For a dyad added to a decad makes twelve; and the decad is Jesus the Lord and God of all, as returning, without departing, by the processions from the monad, again unitively to Himself. For the decad too is a monad, as being the boundary of the things bounded, and the compass of the things inclined toward it, and the limit of every arithmetical completion. And the dyad, again, is every composite structure of the things after God — for instance, all sensible things, as being constituted from matter and form, are a dyad; and likewise the intelligible things, from essence and the essentially accidental form-giving element. For nothing that has come to be is, properly speaking, altogether simple, since it is not merely this or that, but has, as in a subject, the essence together with the constitutive and distinguishing difference contemplated with it — the difference that constitutes it as that very thing, and clearly distinguishes it from something else. For nothing that has, in any manner whatsoever, something essentially contemplated together with it for the manifestation of its own existence can properly be simple.

167. Another Contemplation Or again, this number secretly signifies the divine essence and its active energy. The divine essence, indicated through the number three, as hymned in Trinity on account of the trihypostatic existence — for the monad is a trinity, as being perfect in perfect hypostases, that is, in the manner of existence, and the trinity is truly a monad, in respect of essence, that is, in the principle of being. The active energy, signified through the number six, as being the only perfect and complete number within the decad, and as being constituted from its own parts, and as comprehending, moreover, the universal and unequal numbers — I mean the even and the odd — as being alone the perfect production and preservation of perfect things, according to the principle by which they exist. For the unequal things move, with the extremes, toward the ever-moving rest of the extremes. For instance, that I may make my point to the diligent from one example among the rest: an extreme is: “And God said, Let Us make man according to Our image and likeness”; a middle is: “And God made man, male and female He made them”; and again an extreme: “For in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female.” Since, then, the extremes and the middle are unequal — the ones having the male and the female, the others not having them — the divine energy is both productive and comprehensive of them, which the most wise Moses, mystically initiated, I think, and befittingly showing forth to the rest of men, wrote that God made the whole world in six days — with which, in order and sequence, together with providence and judgment concerning beings, fittingly contemplating the coming-to-be (for these are contained in it), we complete the most full number twelve.

168. Contemplation on the Baskets The account calls the baskets, in which the surplus was laid up, the pedagogical economy — that is, the intelligible principles of the aforesaid things, for those spiritually nourished, on account of their not yet being above the pedagogical teaching, which fittingly lays down what is useful, and sets forth to those thus instructed a painful discipline — as one may understand from the material of which the baskets are built, being by nature striking.

169. Contemplation on the Seven Loaves The seven loaves of the four thousand foreshadow, I think, the mystagogy of the Law — that is, the more divine principles belonging to it, which the account mystically gives to those who wait three days upon the Word, that is, who, with patient endurance, long-sufferingly bear the labor that procures the illumination of knowledge concerning ethical, and natural, and theological philosophy.

170. Another Contemplation on the Three Days Or perhaps the three days indicate the natural, and the written, and the spiritual law, as each providing the illumination of the more spiritual principle proper to it to those who diligently labor — during which those who rightly and truly hunger for divine things, waiting upon God the Word, blamelessly receive mystical food, the remnants of the surplus bearing, at the same time, the symbols of victory and kingship. For the seven hampers, having their material from palm branches (and the palm is a symbol of victory and kingship), and moreover, through their own unshaken resistance for the sake of truth against the assaults of violent winds, show forth those nourished by them to be victors over all vice and ignorance, as having received from God the Word invincible dominion over the passions and demons.

171. Contemplation on the Number of Four Thousand And the number itself of those nourished by these spiritual words is a clear witness of their true perfection, as containing the four generic units, of which the first unit is the monad itself, the second unit is the decad, the third unit is the hundred, and the fourth unit is the thousand. For each of these, apart from the first monad, is both a monad and a decad: a monad with respect to those after it, as being composed into itself, and completing its own decad by multiplication by ten; and a decad, as circumscribing into itself the composition of the monads before it; and the thousand, quadrupled, gives subsistence to four thousand. The first monad, then, is a symbol of mystical theology; the second monad is a type of divine economy and goodness; the third monad is an image of virtue and knowledge; and the fourth monad is a manifestation of the universal, more divine transformation of beings.

172. Another Contemplation on the Number Seven The number seven of the hampers, contemplated in another manner besides the former, they say, signifies wisdom and prudence: the one, as being moved threefold, in the intellect, concerning the cause; the other, as being moved fourfold, in reason, concerning the things after the cause and around the cause, on account of the cause. Neither, then, according to this great teacher, was done by the Lord without reason, nor unworthy of the Spirit. 173. on: “and There Is a Difference of Gifts, One Needing Another Gift for the Discernment of the Better” The difference of gifts that needs another gift for discernment, according to this great teacher, is, I think, prophecy and speaking in tongues. For prophecy needs the gift of the discernment of spirits, so that it may be known who, and from where, and to where it leads, and of what spirit it is, and for what reason — lest it be mere idle chatter, uttered at random from some impairment of the governing faculty of the speaker, or some self-moved impulse of one who supposedly prophesies, conjecturing, from shrewdness, about certain matters naturally, by reason, through much experience; or from a wicked and demonic spirit, as in Montanus and those like him, where what is called prophecy is monstrous fable-telling in the guise of prophecy; or perhaps, for the sake of empty glory, one person preens himself over another, saying and parading what he himself did not beget, lying for the sake of being admired, and not ashamed to put himself forward as the spurious father of orphaned words and thoughts, in order to seem wise.

“Let two or three prophets speak,” says the divine Apostle, “and let the others discern.” But who are these “others”? Plainly those who have the gift of the discernment of spirits. Prophecy, then, needs, as I said, the discernment of spirits, so that it may be known, and believed, and approved; and the gift of tongues needs the gift of interpretation, lest such a one seem, to those present, to be raving, since none of the hearers can follow what is being spoken. “For if you speak in tongues,” says the great Apostle, “and an unbeliever or an outsider comes in, will they not say that you are mad?” And he rather commands the one speaking in tongues to be silent, if there is no interpreter. As for the teacher‘s saying “for the discernment of the better,” those who have illumined their minds with divine words say that the gift of prophecy and that of tongues surpass the gifts they need for discernment and clarification — that is, the discernment of spirits and interpretation. Knowing this, the teacher said, “for the discernment of the better.” 174. from the Same Author, from the Oration on Hero the Philosopher, on: “Propositions and Sub-Propositions” A proposition, according to the grammarians, is a phrase, composed of a noun and a verb, that completes a selfsufficient sense — for instance, “John walks.” A subproposition is a phrase, composed of a noun and a verb, that does not complete a self-sufficient sense — for instance, “John cares.”

One who says, then, “John walks,” shows that he needs nothing further; but one who says, “John cares,” has omitted to say about what he cares. 175. from the Same Author, from the Funeral Oration for Saint Basil, on: “There Is, Then, Nothing Among All Things on Which It Would Not Be Fitting, of All Things” Whenever anyone approves of good things, he altogether, in that very respect, makes progress, and is manifestly both pleased and encouraged by what is said concerning him. He is pleased, being attached to it the more in soul, as to a thing dear to his heart; and he is encouraged toward greater progress in it, receiving from the praise concerning it a greater incentive. “For of whatever things,” says the teacher, “I know the praises, of these I clearly know also the advances” — that is, of whatever matters I know the praises, and of the men who clearly approve them, I also understand the advances, that is, the increases, toward virtue. There is, then, none among all the matters praised on which you would not find the increase of those who take delight in them — or, since the teacher set forth three things above: himself, the discourse, and the admirers of virtue — having comprehended these, he unfolded them, in the manner of rhetoricians, applying the inductions to the three, beginning the discourse first from himself, then passing through the admirers of virtue in the middle, and completing it with the discourse itself — since the subject concerning Saint Basil is fitting also to him, as a teacher and one set forward for the discourse, and is longed for by those who love virtue, that is, its admirers, as they long to know the manner of advance in virtue through imitation, and is fitting to the discourse itself, as declaratory of the good things according to virtue.

Of every man, then, whose life is praised according to God, and especially of Basil the great — whether they are able to comprehend the whole, and to show forth, as a living and ensouled image, the man‘s virtue to those who love him, or whether they are unable to attain that greatness — there is nothing among all things, whether the discourse, or the speaker, or the hearer, to which the good of the subject will not be fitting; or, as has been examined more precisely above. 176. from the Same Author, from His Verses, on: “for the Lofty Word Plays in Forms of Every Kind, Ordering, as It Wishes, Its Own World Here and There” When the great David, having driven the intellect, as through certain bars of the things that appear, by faith alone, in the Spirit, toward intelligible things, received a certain impression, from divine wisdom, of the mysteries attainable by men, then, I think, he says: “Deep calls to deep at the sound of Your cataracts” — perhaps indicating by these words that every contemplative intellect, on account of both its natural invisibility and the depth and multitude of its thoughts, resembling an abyss, when, having passed beyond the whole order of visible things, and having, by the vehemence of its motion, surpassed the beauty of intelligible things, stands upon itself, altogether fixed and unmoved, on account of its passing beyond all things — then fittingly calls upon divine wisdom, the truly and really inexhaustible abyss in knowledge, asking that it give it the voice of the divine cataracts, but not the cataracts themselves — which is to receive a certain gnostic impression of faith concerning the manners and principles of divine providence over the universe — by which he will be able to remember God from the land of Jordan and Hermon, in which the great and awesome mystery of the divine condescension of God the Word toward men was accomplished through the flesh, in which the truth of piety toward God was granted to men — which, on account of its having transcended every order and power of nature, was called, by the divine and initiate of divine hidden-knowing wisdom, the great Apostle Paul, the foolishness and weakness of God, on account, I think, of its surpassing wisdom and power; and was called, by the godlyminded great Gregory, a plaything, on account of

its surpassing understanding. For the one says: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men”; the other: “For the lofty word plays in forms of every kind, ordering, as it wishes, its own world here and there” — each showing forth the divine state by the privation of our own most excellent positions, and making the affirmation of divine things by the negation of our own. For among us, foolishness, and weakness, and playfulness are privations — the one of wisdom, the other of power, the other of understanding — but when said of God, they clearly signify the surpassing excess of wisdom, and power, and understanding. Whatever, then, is said of us privatively, when said of God, must rightly be understood to signify a possession; and conversely, whatever is said of us as a possession, when said of God, is most fitting to understand as signifying a privation, on account of transcendence. For the excesses of divine things, even when spoken by us privatively, by way of contradiction, fall far short of the true meaning according to which they exist. If this, then, is reasonably true (for divine things never coincide with human), then the foolishness and weakness of God, according to the holy Apostle Paul, and the plaything of God, according to Gregory, the wondrous and great teacher, is the mystery of the divine enmanment, as having, supraessentially, transcended every order and harmony of every nature, power, and activity — which the most divine David, having beheld from afar in intellect by the divine Spirit, and having been initiated into it, and, as it were, interpreting beforehand the surpassing possession of God spoken of by the Apostle through privation, cries out against the Jews, I think wisely: “In the multitude of Your power Your enemies shall lie to You.”

For every man who ignorantly and impiously encloses God within the law of nature, and does not begin to believe that He who, dispassionately, above nature, essentially came to be among things under nature, is able to do all things according to nature, becomes manifestly an enemy of God and, clearly, a liar. Thus, then, according to one approach, the discourse has ventured, for the time being, conjecturally, to contemplate the foolishness of God, and the weakness, and the plaything, together with which, by way of digression, as an exemplary preliminary contemplation of the difficulty set forth, the discourse, taking “the abyss that calls upon the abyss for the voice of the divine cataracts” to mean that the gnostic intellect receives what is called wisdom, indicated a small impression of the mysteries concerning the divine and ineffable condescension. For “abyss” and the place of the abyss are named homonymously, and the place of divine wisdom is the pure intellect. Perhaps, then, by position, on account of its receptivity, the intellect too is called an abyss, and wisdom, again, is named the same, on account of its nature. Perhaps, then, as I said, it is possible for us, from these things too, to unfold the manner concisely given concerning “For the lofty Word plays,” saying something like this: Just as parents (that I may use examples proper to us for the description of matters that transcend us), giving occasion for their children to shake off sluggishness, in a manner of condescension, seem, out of accommodation, to take up childish games — for instance, to play at knucklebones, and to occupy themselves with dice along with them, or, setting before them many-colored flowers, and garments dyed in many colors, pleasing to the senses, they either led them away or captivated them, since the children, for the time being, have no other occupation — and after a short while hand them over to their teachers, and then impart to them a more perfect discourse and their own affairs — so too, perhaps, the teacher says, by these words, that God over all, through the still historical nature of visible created things, casts us in now, as mere children, into amazement or diversion through the sight and knowledge of them, and then instills in us the contemplation of the more spiritual principles within them, and finally leads us up to the more mystical knowledge

of Himself, so far as attainable, through theology — the knowledge purified altogether of every variety and composition found in form, and quality, and shape, and quantity, in multitude and bulk, in the preliminary instructions — which, in relation to the goal of contemplation, is called by the God-bearing Gregory “playing,” and by the God-bearing Dionysius “being enchanted” and “going out of oneself.” For in reality, the things present and appearing, contemplated in parallel comparison with the things that properly and truly are, and that will be manifested afterward, seem to be a plaything, and even less than that. For the ordering of present and visible things, compared to the truth of the properly divine and archetypal things, will be thought by those deemed worthy of comprehending, so far as possible, the whole beauty of divine loveliness, not to exist at all — just as a plaything, compared with some true and real thing, is not thought to be anything at all.

177. Another Contemplation on the Same But examining the matter before us in another way as well, with the help of divine grace, conjecturally, but not dogmatically (for the one is moderate, the other rash), let us venture to approach the passage before us, saying that perhaps the projection of the middle things, having an equal distance from the extremes, is called by the great teacher a plaything of God, on account of their flowing and easilyaltered state — or rather, to speak more properly, a stationary flux. Which is indeed paradoxical: to behold a stasis ever flowing and borne along, and a flux ever-moving, devised by God providentially for the betterment of those provided for, able to make wise those instructed through it — that they should hope to be transferred elsewhere altogether, and should believe that the end of the mystery concerning them will be, through grace, firmly deified by their inclination toward God. By “the middle things” I mean the things now seen and existing concerning man, or in which man‘s fulfillment consists; by “the extremes” I mean the subsistence of the things not now appearing, but which will truly come to be concerning man, the things properly and truly made and come to be according to the ineffable and primary purpose and reason of divine goodness. As the wise Ecclesiast, with the great and clear eye of the soul, having risen above the coming-to-be of the things seen and flowing, and having come to be, as it were, in a vision of the things truly made and come to be, says: “What is that which has come to be?

The very thing that will come to be. And what is that which has been made? The very thing,” he says, “that will be made” — recalling, plainly, the first and the last things, as being the same and truly existing, and making no mention at all, in this passage, of the middle and passing things. For after having gone forth, so far as it was possible, concerning some nature of animals and stones, and, to speak simply, indefinitely concerning many things contemplated among beings — in a manner especially befitting a great teacher — he adds to these: “For the lofty word plays in forms of every kind, ordering, as it wishes, its own world here and there.” Perhaps, then, just as he himself says in the oration on Holy Pentecost, discoursing concerning Godhead and created nature: “As long as each remains in its own place, the one of transcendence, the other of lowliness, goodness is unmixed and love for mankind uncommunicated, and there is a great and impassable chasm in between” — not that which separates the rich man from Lazarus and the bosom of Abraham‘s longing, but all created and flowing nature from the uncreated and standing nature? To this the great, Godproclaiming Dionysius the Areopagite speaks similar and comparable things, saying: “This too must be dared to be said for the sake of truth, that the very Cause of all things, by the beautiful and good love of all things, through the excess of His erotic goodness, comes to be outside Himself, by His providences toward all beings, and is, as it were, enchanted by goodness and love and desire, and is led down, from being above all and transcendent over all, to being in all things, according to an ecstatic and supra-essential power that does not depart from Himself.”

Perhaps, then, as I said, from these things too, it is possible for us to unfold, in this sense, the manner concisely given concerning “For the lofty Word plays.”

178. Another Contemplation on the Same Perhaps too, the material things we handle, which pass from one to another in different ways, being transferred and transferring, and having no solid foundation, except the primary principle according to which they are wisely and providentially borne and bear — being thought, by our holding them, to be held fast, when in fact they escape more than they are held, and our desire, which endures to be held by them, is rather, as it were, thrust away by them, being altogether unable either to hold or be held, since the only stable boundary of their own nature they possess is to flow away and not to remain fixed — are reasonably called by the teacher a plaything of God, as He thereby transports us toward the things that truly are, and are never shaken.

179. Another Contemplation on the Same And if we ourselves too, according to the prevailing sequence of our nature at present, are now born in likeness to the other animals on earth, then become children, then, as a flower‘s swift-fading bloom, our youth having reached the wrinkling of old age, are about to die, and are transferred to another life — we are not without reason called “a plaything of God” by this God-bearing teacher. For, compared to the future archetype of the divine and true life, the present life is a plaything, and whatever else is more insubstantial than this. Which he shows more clearly in the funeral oration for Caesarius, saying thus: “Such is our life, brethren, of those who live in the present: such is the plaything on earth — not to exist and to come to be, having come to be to be dissolved; we are a dream that does not stand, a phantom not grasped, the flight of a bird passing by, a ship on the sea leaving no track, dust, vapor, morning dew, a flower springing up in its season and dissolved in its season. As for grass are the days of man, as a flower of the field, so shall he flourish — well did the divine David philosophize concerning our weakness.” These are the things concerning which you were perplexed in the most divine words of our great Father and teacher Gregory, and which you commanded me to speak, most blessed ones, to the best of my ability.

Rightly yielding to your bidding, I spoke conjecturally, but not dogmatically. For my intellect does not attain to the great and lofty understanding of the God-bearing teacher, being still struck by many darts of passions according to will, by whose wounds it rejoices to be marked rather than to be cleansed by the graces of the virtues, having acquired, through long habituation to evil, a disposition prone to sin. And if these things appear to you to have some account worthy of the subject, and not altogether falling short of the truth, thanks be to God, who has illumined my lowly and earthbound mind (that He might work this wonder too) and has graciously granted a discourse proportionate to it, so as to sketch the proportion of the things understood — and to you as well, who set the task, and who, by the help of your prayers, have brought the whole to a successful conclusion. But if I have wandered from the truth, whether wholly or in part, incorrectly or incompletely — for in this too I offer you the great and God-revealing Dionysius as advocate — it would belong to your love for mankind to correct one who is unwillingly ignorant, and to teach him who needs to learn, and to come to the aid of one who does not have sufficient strength, and to heal one who does not wish to be sick, so that this too, together with your other good deeds — or rather, before the others — you may offer up to God as a precious offering, more venerable than any sacrifice: love for mankind, to Him who is glorified in heaven and on earth by all creation, and who requires from us only this one sacrifice: love for one another.

The Ambigua to Thomas the Consecrated To Thomas the Consecrated To the consecrated servant of God, spiritual father and teacher, lord Thomas, Maximus, humble and sinful, unworthy servant and disciple. Having taken up, from earnest zeal for divine things, an unchangeable habit of unerring contemplation, you have become, O man greatly beloved of God, a most temperate lover not simply of wisdom, but of her beauty. And the beauty of wisdom is knowledge put into practice, or practice made wise, of both of which the character, fulfilled as it is through both together, is the principle of divine providence and judgment. According to which, having intertwined the mind with sense-perception through the Spirit, you have shown in truth how God is naturally wont to make man according to the image of God, and you have made known the wealth of His goodness, showing forth lavishly, by the good mixture of opposites in yourself, God embodied in the virtues — to whose height, having measured yourself by imitation of His self-emptying, you did not disdain to come down even to me, seeking those things of which you have, from having suffered them, the knowledge. Now these are chapters of Dionysius and of Gregory, those all-hymned and blessed men truly chosen, from the beginning, by the purpose of the ages, to be joined to God, who have received, as is truly the case, the whole outpouring of wisdom attainable by the saints, and who have made the laying aside of the life according to nature the very substance of the soul, and who, on this account, have had Christ alone as their life, and, to say what is greater still, have had Him become the soul of their soul, and are manifest to all, through all their works and words and thoughts, as no longer being of themselves, but of Christ, who has, by grace, exchanged Himself for them.

But how shall I speak of the Lord Jesus, not yet having received the Spirit of holiness? How shall I tell of the mighty works of the Lord, I who am slow of speech, and who have fastened my mind to the attachment of corruptible things? How shall I make even a few of His praises heard, I who am deaf, and who have, through friendship with the passions, entirely turned away the ear of my soul from the blessed voice of the Word? How shall the Word become manifest to me, who am overcome by the world, when He is naturally wont to conquer the world, but not to be manifested to the world, if indeed He is naturally unrecognizable to a disposition that loves matter? How is it not rash for the guilty to lay hold of things holy, and the unclean of things pure? Wherefore I would have declined the undertaking of what has been commanded, fearing the reproach of rashness, had I not feared still more the danger of disobedience. Taken, then, as a mean between these two, I choose rather the reproach of rashness, as more tolerable, fleeing as unpardonable the danger of disobedience. And by the mediation of the saints and the help of your prayers, Christ our great God and Savior granting the power to think piously and to speak fittingly, I shall make my response to each chapter as concise as I am able (the discourse being addressed to a teacher who is able to supply great things from small), beginning from Gregory the God-minded, as being nearer to us in time.

A. of Saint Gregory the Theologian, from the Oration on the Son, on “Therefore the Monad...” Of Saint Gregory the Theologian, from the first oration on the Son, on: “Therefore the Monad, having from the beginning moved into a Dyad, came to rest at a Triad.” And again, of the same, from the second Oration on Peace, on: “The Monad being moved on account of its richness, the Dyad being transcended (for it is beyond matter and form, of which bodies consist), and the Triad being determined on account of perfection.” If, servant of God, having considered what seems to be a discord, you have been perplexed about the true concord, it is not possible to find, in the sense of these words, anything more unified. For it is the same thing to transcend the dyad and not to stand at the dyad, and again to be determined as a triad and for the movement of the monad to stand at the triad — provided we hold to a monarchy that is not without magnificence, as though circumscribed to one person, nor again disorderly, as though poured out to infinity, but one which a triad of equal honor by nature — Father and Son and Holy Spirit — constitutes, whose wealth is their connaturality and the single outleaping of their splendor, the divinity neither being poured out beyond these, lest we introduce a populace of gods, nor being bounded within these, lest we be condemned for a poverty of divinity.

This, then, is not a causal explanation of the supra-essential cause of beings, but a demonstration of pious opinion concerning it — namely, that the divinity is monad, but not dyad, and triad, but not multitude, as being without beginning, incorporeal, and free of faction. For the monad is truly monad — for it is not a beginning of what comes after it, by a contraction of expansion, so as to be poured out, moving naturally into multitude — but the substantial reality of the consubstantial triad. And the triad is truly triad, not completed by a number that can be resolved (for it is not a composition of monads, so as to undergo division), but the unisubstantial existence of a monad in three hypostases. For the triad is truly monad, because it is thus; and the monad is truly triad, because it thus subsists — since it is also one divinity, both existing monadically and subsisting triadically. And if, hearing of movement, you wondered how the super-infinite divinity moves, the passion is ours, not its — we being first illumined concerning the principle of its being, and thus illumined concerning the manner of its subsisting, since the ‘that it is’ is in every way conceived before the ‘how it is.’ Movement of divinity, then, is the knowledge that comes about, through manifestation, concerning both its being and the manner of its subsisting, for those capable of receiving it.

B. of the Same, from the First Oration, “the Loftier Things Attribute to the Divinity...” Of the same, from the same first oration, on: “In one summary: the loftier things attribute to the divinity and to the better nature, apart from passions and body; the lowlier things to the composite one, who for your sake was emptied and became incarnate — it is no worse to say, also became man.” The Word of God, being wholly full of essence — for He is God — and wholly hypostasis without deficiency — for He is Son — having emptied Himself, became the seed of His own flesh, and, being composed by ineffable conception, became the hypostasis of the flesh assumed. And by this new mystery, having in truth become, without change, wholly man, the same one, being hypostasis of two natures, uncreated and created, impassible and passible, was receptive of all the natural principles, without deficiency, of those things of which He was the hypostasis. And if He received essentially all the natural principles of those things of which He was hypostasis, then to Him, having become composite by the assumption of the flesh according to hypostasis, the teacher very wisely — lest they be thought to be mere appearances — assigned the sufferings of His own flesh, He Himself, as possessing the flesh, being, in respect of it, truly a God who is passible with respect to sin.

Showing, then, the difference between the essence, according to which the Word, even having become incarnate, remained simple, and the hypostasis, according to which He became composite by the assumption of flesh, and was styled, by economy, a passible God, the teacher says this: ‘lest, predicating the things of the hypostasis, we unwittingly, through ignorance of the nature, worship, like the Arians, a God passible by nature.’ ‘It is no worse,’ he added, ‘to say also, became man’ — not only on account of the Arians, who put divinity in place of a soul, and the Apollinarians, who dogmatize the soul as mindless, and who in this manner cut off the completeness of the Word’s nature as it is according to us, and who make Him passible by nature of divinity — but also that the only-begotten God might be shown to have become, in truth, perfect man for us, as accomplishing our salvation through a flesh naturally operative, animated intellectually and rationally — since, in every respect except sin alone, of which no reason at all is naturally implanted in nature, but not without natural operation, He truly became man, whose reason is definition essence, characterizing naturally all in whom it is essentially implanted. For that which is predicated commonly and generically of certain things is the definition of their essence, the privation of which altogether works the corruption of nature, since none of the things that are remains what it was, preserved, when deprived of what belongs to it by nature.

γ. of the Same, from the Same Oration, “for He Who Is Now Despised by You...” Of the same, from the same oration, on: “For He who is now despised by you was, when He was also above you; He who is now man was also uncomposed; what He was, He remained; what He was not, He assumed; in the beginning He was, without cause — for what is the cause of God? — but afterward He came to be, for a cause; and this was, that you, the insolent one, might be saved, you who despise the divinity because it accepted your thickness, having, through the mediation of mind, held converse with flesh, the God below having become man, since He was commingled with God and became one, the greater prevailing, that I might become so much God as He became man.” ‘For He who is now despised by you,’ he says, ‘was, when He was also above you’ — plainly above every age and every nature, existing, for His own sake, beyond both, even though now, for your sake, He has come to be under both, willingly. ‘He who is now man was also uncomposed’ — simple both in nature and in hypostasis, as being only God, naked of body and of all that belongs to body — even though now, by the assumption of flesh possessing an intellectual soul, He has become, in what He was not, composite in hypostasis, while remaining what He was, simple in nature, that He might save you, man.

For this alone was the cause of His fleshly generation: the salvation of nature, whose passible condition, having undergone it as though it were a kind of thickness, He, through the mediation of mind, held converse with flesh, the God below having become man, having become, for the sake of all, all that we are, except sin — body, soul, mind — through which death holds sway, the common product of these being man, God seen through what is conceived. He, then, the Word, having emptied Himself properly, without change, with respect to what is passible in our nature, and having truly come to be under natural senseperception through the incarnation, was called a visible God and a God below, having made manifest, through a flesh passible by nature, His super-infinite power, since the flesh was plainly commingled with God and became one, the greater prevailing, the Word who assumed it deifying it properly by hypostatic identity. ‘And He became one,’ the teacher said, ‘but not one thing’ — showing that, even in the identity of the one hypostasis, the natural otherness of the things united remained unconfused, since the one term is indicative of hypostasis, the other of nature. For the saying, ‘that I might become so much God as He became man,’ is not mine to say — I who am defiled by sin and altogether without appetite for the life that truly is — but yours, who are known, by the complete recovery of nature, from grace alone, and who are destined to be shown forth, from the power that accords with it, so far as He who became incarnate partook of our weakness by nature as God — the deification of those saved by grace being measured, as He Himself knows, in return for His self-emptying — becoming wholly god-formed and capable of receiving the whole of God, and of Him alone.

For this is the perfection toward which those hasten who have believed this promise will truly come to pass. δ. of the Same, “as Word, He Was Neither Obedient nor Of the same, from the second oration on the Son, on: “As Word, He was neither obedient nor disobedient; for these belong to those under the hand of another, and to those of second rank — the one to the better-disposed, the other to those worthy of chastisement. But as the form of a servant, He condescends to His fellow-servants and servants, and is formed into what is alien to Him, bearing me wholly in Himself, together with what is mine, that He might consume in Himself the worse, as fire consumes wax, or the sun a vapor from the earth, and that I might partake of His condition through the commingling. Wherefore He honors obedience by His work, and learns it by suffering. For the disposition is not sufficient, any more than it is for us, unless we also proceed through the deeds; for the deed is a demonstration of disposition. And it is perhaps no worse to suppose also this: that He tests our obedience, and measures all that is ours by His own sufferings, by an art of love for mankind, so as to know, from His own, what is ours, and how much is required of us, and how much is forgiven us, His reckoning taking account, along with the suffering, of the weakness also.”

‘As the Word,’ he says, ‘He was, by nature God, entirely free of obedience and disobedience’ — since He is also, by nature, as Lord, the giver of every commandment, of which obedience is the keeping, and disobedience the transgression. For the law according to commandment, and the fulfillment or transgression of it, belong to things naturally in motion, not to that whose being is, by nature, rest. But ‘in the form of a servant’ — that is, having become man by nature — He came down together with His fellow-servants and servants, taking the form of what was alien to Him, undergoing, together with the nature, also the passible condition of the nature that is according to us. For alien to the sinlessness that belongs to nature is the penalty of the one who has sinned, which is the passible condition of the whole nature, condemned on account of the transgression. But if, having emptied Himself in the form of a servant — that is, become man — and having come down, He is formed into what is alien — that is, becomes, by nature, a passible man — then self-emptying is beheld concerning Him as both good and loving of mankind together, and condescension as well: the one showing Him to have truly become man, the other showing Him, truly being man, to have become passible by nature.

Wherefore the teacher says: ‘bearing me wholly in Himself, together with what is mine’ — that is, the whole human nature, by union according to hypostasis, together with its blameless passions. By these having consumed our worse condition — wherefore the passible element was adjudicated to nature, I mean the law of sin that comes from disobedience, whose dominion is the disposition of our judgment contrary to nature, introducing passion to the passible element of nature by relaxation and intensification — He has not only saved those held fast by sin, but has also imparted divine power, having, in Himself, loosed our penalty, working unchangeableness of soul and incorruption of body in the identity of judgment concerning the good that is according to nature, for those eager to honor grace by their deeds. This, I think, the saint teaches when he says: ‘that He might consume the worse in Himself, as fire consumes wax, or the sun a vapor from the earth, and that I might partake of His condition through the commingling’ — becoming, plainly, by grace, pure of passion, as He is. And I know also another account of ‘He is formed into what is alien,’ learned from a certain holy and wise man, in both word and life. For he, when asked, said that obedience is alien to the Word by nature, as is also the subjection which, having created for our sake — we who transgressed the commandment — He accomplished, working the whole salvation of the race, making what is ours His own.

Wherefore He honors obedience by His work, having become, by nature, a new Adam in place of the old, and He learns it by suffering, having been brought, willingly, through the very same sufferings, to us. Since, according to this great teacher, ‘He toiled, and hungered, and thirsted, and was in agony, and wept,’ by the law of the body — which is a clear demonstration of an effective disposition, and a proof of His condescension toward His fellow-servants and servants. For He has remained, by nature, Master, and yet has become, for my sake, a servant — I who am, by nature, a servant — that He might make master him who tyrannically lorded it over me through deceit. Wherefore, working the servile things in a masterly way — that is, the fleshly things in a divine manner — He displayed the dispassionate power that by nature masters the fleshly things, through suffering abolishing corruption, and through death fashioning imperishable life; and, doing the masterly things in a servile way — that is, the divine things in a fleshly manner — He displayed His unspeakable self-emptying, deifying, through passible flesh, the whole race made earthly by corruption. For by the interchange of these He clearly confirmed both the natures of which He Himself was the hypostasis, and their essential operations — that is, movements — of which He Himself was the unconfused union, admitting no division with respect to both the natures of which He was hypostasis, since He operated, in a manner proper to Himself, monadically — that is, in a unified way — and, through each of the things done by Him, inseparably manifested together, by the power of His own divinity, the operation of His own flesh.

For, He being one, nothing is more unified; nor, again, is anything more unified or more salvific than His own things. Wherefore, both suffering, He was truly God, and, working wonders, He was truly the same man, since He was also, by an ineffable union of true natures, a true hypostasis. Operating in accordance and appropriately with these, He was shown to be saving them, truly being saved unconfused — since He remained, by nature, both impassible and passible, immortal and mortal, visible and conceived by mind, being, the same one, by nature both God and man. Thus, then, to speak in my own words, does the Master by nature honor obedience, and learn it by suffering — not only that He might save, in Himself, the whole nature, cleansing it of the worse condition, but also that He might test our obedience, learning, by experience of our sufferings, what belongs to us — He who circumscribes all knowledge by nature — how much is required of us, and how much is forgiven us, toward the perfect subjection through which He is naturally wont to bring those being saved to the Father, having appeared, in Himself, by the power of grace, as we are. How great and truly awesome is the mystery of our salvation! For as much is required of us as He, by nature, had of what is according to us; and as much is forgiven us as He, beyond us, in union, took on of what is according to us — unless, perhaps, a habit of sin-loving judgment makes the weakness of nature material for wickedness.

And that this is the very sense intended, this great teacher clearly shows, confirming it in what follows. For he says: ‘For if the light was persecuted on account of the problem, shining in this darkness, this life, by the other darkness — I mean the evil one and the tempter — how much weaker is the darkness? And what wonder is it if, though he entirely escaped, we should in some measure be overtaken? For it is a greater thing for him to be persecuted than for us to be overtaken, in the judgment of those who reason rightly about these things.’ E. Into the Letter of Dionysius to Gaius the Therapist, “How, You Say, Is Jesus...” Into the letter of Dionysius the Areopagite, Bishop of Athens, to Gaius the Therapist: “How, you say, is Jesus, who is beyond all things, essentially ranked among all men? For He is not called man here as cause of men, but as being Himself, according to His whole essence, truly man.” Since, according to the simple sense of Holy Scripture, God is signified to all by the names derived from Him as cause of all things, one might perhaps suppose that even after the Incarnation, God is again called man in this manner alone; against this supposition, the great Dionysius corrects Gaius the Therapist by these very words, teaching that the God of all things, having become incarnate, is not called man in the simple sense, but as being Himself, according to His whole essence, truly man.

Of which the only true demonstration is the natural power constitutive of that essence — which one would not err in calling its natural operation, properly and primarily characteristic of it, as being the form-giving movement, most generic of every inclusive property naturally belonging to it, apart from which alone is nonbeing, since, according to this great teacher, only that which in no way at all is has neither movement nor existence. He teaches, then, most clearly, that God, having become incarnate, denied nothing at all of what belongs to us, except sin, since that too was not of nature — declaring expressly that He was not simply man, but Himself, according to His whole essence, truly man. And insisting, by what follows, that even the name is truly His, having been made essentially man, he says: “But we do not define Jesus in a human manner” — since we do not dogmatize Him a mere man, cutting off the union that is beyond understanding. For we predicate the name “man” of Him essentially, but not as of one who is the cause of men, in respect of the very God who by nature was truly made essentially as we are. For He is not man alone, because He is also God, if indeed neither is He a mere man, nor a bare God, “but a man truly, He who is exceedingly loving of mankind.”

For, by infinite longing toward men, He became, in truth, that very thing which was by nature longed for, having suffered nothing with respect to His own essence through the ineffable self-emptying, nor having changed or diminished anything at all of human nature through the ineffable assumption, of which the reason is properly its constitution. “Beyond men,” because divinely, without a man; “and according to men,” humanly, by the law of conception; “having been made essentially from the essence of men” — for He did not merely make appear to us in Himself a bare configuration in the form of flesh, according to the follies of the Manichaeans, nor did He bring down with Himself from heaven a flesh co-essential with Himself, according to the myths of Apollinaris, but, having in truth become, according to His whole essence, man, by the assumption, plainly, of a flesh intellectually ensouled, united to Him according to hypostasis. “And He is, none the less, super-full of super-essentiality, He who is ever super-essential.” For He was not subjected to nature by becoming man; on the contrary, He rather raised nature up with Himself, making it into another mystery, Himself remaining altogether incomprehensible, showing His own incarnation, its birth being super-essential, more incomprehensible than every mystery — becoming comprehensible, on its account, only to the extent that He was known, through it, to be the more incomprehensible.

“For He is hidden even after the manifestation,” says the teacher, “or, to speak more divinely, even in the manifestation. For this too concerning Jesus is hidden, and by no reason or mind has the mystery concerning Him been brought out, but, even when spoken, remains ineffable, and, when thought, unknown.” What could be more demonstrative than this of divine super-essentiality — manifestation demonstrating the hidden, and speech the ineffable, and mind the ignorance that comes by way of transcendence, and, to say what is greater still, essentiation demonstrating the super-essential? “Indeed, by the abundance of this, having truly come even into essence, He was essentiated beyond essence” — innovating, plainly, the laws of natural generation, and having truly become man without the seed that comes from a man. And the Virgin makes this clear, conceiving Him in a manner beyond nature, the super-essential Word, without a man, from her own virginal blood, humanly, fashioned by a law strange to “And beyond man He worked the things of man” — having, without suffering, innovated the nature of the elements by their foundations. And this is clearly shown by the unstable water bearing up the weight of material and earthy feet and not yielding, but, by a power beyond nature, standing firm against dissolution — since truly, with unwetted feet, having a bodily bulk and the weight of matter, He journeyed transitively over the moist and unstable essence, walking upon the sea as upon dry ground, and, by the power of His own divinity, inseparably manifesting together, through the crossing, the natural operation of His own flesh — since the movement proper to it, by nature, is transitive, but not that of the super-infinite and super-essential divinity united to it according to hypostasis.

For, once essentiated humanly, the super-essential Word had, with the human essence, undiminished, as His own, also the movement of essence that generically characterizes it as man, specified naturally in all the things He worked as man — since He truly became man: breathing, speaking, walking, moving His hands, using the senses fittingly for the apprehension of sensible things, hungering, thirsting, eating, sleeping, laboring, weeping, being in agony — and yet being a self-subsisting power, and all the rest by which, in the manner of a soul naturally, selfeffectively moving its connatural body, He moved the assumed nature as His own, it having truly become and being truly called so — or rather, to speak properly, He Himself, without change, having become, in actual reality, what nature is, fulfilled, without fantasy, the economy on our behalf. He did not, then, abolish the constitutive operation of the assumed essence, any more than the teacher abolished the essence itself, in saying: “He was essentiated beyond essence, and beyond man He worked the things of man” — but he showed, in both, the newness of the manners preserved within the permanence of the natural principles, apart from which none of the beings is what it is. But if we should say that, while the positing of the assumed essence stands, the removal of its constitutive operation is the negation by way of transcendence, by what reasoning shall we show the same term, applied equally to both, to signify, in the one case, existence, and, in the other, altogether abolition?

Or again, since the assumed nature is not self-moved, being truly moved by the divinity united to it according to hypostasis, if we take away its constitutive movement, shall we not also deny the essence itself, it not appearing self-subsisting — that is, of itself — but having received its being in that very God the Word who was, in truth, essentiated as it? Having, in both cases, an equal cause for the denial — or shall we not rather confess the movement together with the nature, apart from which there is no nature either, knowing that the reason of being is one thing, and the manner of being another: the one confirming the nature, the other the economy? The concurrence of which, making the great mystery of the super-natural physiology of Jesus, showed the difference of the operations and the union preserved together in the same subject: the one beheld indivisibly in the natural principle of the things united, the other known unconfusedly in the unique manner of the things done. For what, and what sort of thing, and where, and how shall a nature be, having become bereft of its constitutive power? For that which altogether has not even one power neither is, nor is anything, nor is there any positing of it at all, says this great teacher. And if there is no reasoning against these things, it must be piously confessed both that Christ had the natures of which He Himself was hypostasis, and His natural operations, of which He Himself was the true union, with respect to both natures — since, operating in a manner proper to Himself, monadically, that is, in a unified way, He inseparably manifested together, through all things, by the divine power, the operation of His own flesh.

For how shall the same one be, by nature, God, and again, by nature, man, not having, without deficiency, what belongs by nature to each? And what, and who being, will He be known, if He is not confirmed by what He naturally operated as that which is unchanged? And how shall He be confirmed in each of the things of which, and in which, and which He is, remaining unmoved and inoperative? He was essentiated, then, beyond essence, having fashioned for nature another beginning of generation and of birth: conceived by the seed of His own flesh, and, being born, having become a seal of virginity to her who bore Him, and having shown, in her case, the contradiction of things unmixable to concur in truth together. For the same one is both virgin and mother, innovating nature by the concurrence of opposites — if indeed virginity and childbirth are opposites, of whose natural combination no one could conceive. Wherefore the Virgin is truly Theotokos, having, in a manner beyond nature, in the manner of a seed, conceived and borne the super-essential Word — since the one who bears is properly the mother of him who was sown and conceived. “And beyond man He worked the things of man,” showing the human operation joined without change, by the utmost union, to the divine power — since the nature, unconfusedly united to the nature, has interpenetrated it wholly, having nothing at all absolute, nor separated from the divinity united to it according to hypostasis.

For the super-essential Word, having in truth been essentiated beyond us as our essence, joined the affirmation of the nature and of its natural properties to the negation by way of transcendence, and became man, having the manner beyond nature of how He is joined to the principle of being of nature, that He might both confirm the nature, by the newness of the manners, not admitting alteration according to the principle, and show the super-infinite power known likewise even in the generation of opposites — indeed, having made the passions of nature works by the authority of judgment, and not, as with us, the effects of natural necessity, in reverse manner from how it is with us, He went through what is, according to us, passible by nature, showing what is by nature, in us, movable by judgment, to be, in His own case, movable by the authority of judgment. Which the teacher clarifies in what follows, saying: “What need is there to go through the very many other things, by which he who sees divinely will know beyond mind even the things affirmed concerning the love for mankind of Jesus, having the force of a negation by way of transcendence?” For, having undergone all the things of nature together with the nature, by an ineffable conception, the super-essential Word had nothing human affirmed by natural reason that was not also divine, denied by a manner beyond nature.

Of which the knowledge was beyond mind, as unprovable, having faith alone as its comprehension, for those who reverently worship the mystery of Christ with knowledge. Giving, as it were, a summary account of this, he says: “For, to speak concisely, He was not even man” — because, by nature, He was free of natural necessity, not subjected to the ordinance of generation that is according to us. “Not as not being man” — because, according to His whole essence, He was truly man, admitting by nature the things natural to us — “but as from men” — since He was consubstantial with us, being, by nature, man as we are — “beyond men” — by the newness of the manners, circumscribing, by what we are not, His own nature. “And having, beyond man, truly become man,” He held the manners beyond nature and the principles according to nature joined together with one another without harm, of which the combination was impossible — He Himself, to whom nothing is impossible, having become a true union, operating in neither of the natures of which He was hypostasis in separation from the other, but rather confirming, through each, the other — since, being truly both, He was, as God, the mover of His own humanity, and, as man, the revealer of His own divinity. Divinely, so to speak, having the suffering — for it was voluntary, since He was not a mere man — and humanly the working of wonders — for it was through flesh, since He was not a bare God.

So that the sufferings were wondrous, being made new by the natural divine power of Him who suffered, and the wonders were passible, being fulfilled by the natural passible power of the flesh of Him who worked them. Knowing this, the teacher says: “And henceforth, not doing divine things in a divine manner” — since they were not merely divine, separated from flesh, for He was not merely super-essential — “nor human things in a human manner” — since they were not merely fleshly, separated from divinity, for He was not merely man — “but, as God made man, having conducted for us a certain new theandric operation.” For, having, by the assumption of a flesh intellectually ensouled, truly become man, He who is exceedingly loving of mankind, and having, by an ineffable union, the divine operation made manly by connaturality with the flesh, fulfilled the economy on our behalf theandrically — that is, working, at once, divinely and manly, the things divine and the things human — or, to speak more clearly, having conducted at once a divine and a manly operation. The wise man, then, by the negation of the mutual division of the divine and human things, having made the affirmation of the union, did not fail to know the natural difference of the things united; for the union, though it repelled division, did not harm the difference.

But if the manner of the union preserves the reason of the difference, then the saint's expression is a periphrasis, by a fitting name signifying the twofold operation of the twofold nature of Christ — since, in neither nature nor quality, has the essential reason of the things united been in any way diminished by the union. But not as though a negation of the extremes made an affirmation of some middle term — for there is no middle term in Christ affirmed by the negation of the extremes. “New,” as characteristic of a common mystery, of which the reason is the ineffable manner of the concurrence. For who has known how God is made flesh, and remains God? How, remaining truly God, He is truly man? Showing Himself, both, truly by natural existence, and, through each, the other, and, by neither, changed. These things faith alone comprehends, honoring the Word in silence, to whose nature no reason at all belongs. And “theandric,” not as simple, nor as some composite thing, nor as belonging to a divinity alone, bare, according to nature, nor as belonging to a humanity alone, mere — nor as belonging to some composite nature at the meeting-point of certain extremes — but as most fittingly belonging to God made man, that is, to Him who has become perfectly man. Nor again, one, as though it could not otherwise be conceived, of “the new,” as it seemed to some, or “able to be one” — for the “newness” is of quality, not of quantity, since it will also necessarily bring in with it such a nature — if indeed the definition of every nature is the reason of its essential operation, which one would never call twofold, save one contending with the myths of goat-stags.

But how, this being granted, will He who is by nature thus, having one operation, and that a natural one, accomplish, by the same operation, both the wonders and the sufferings, which differ from one another by the reason of nature, without there occurring a privation attendant upon the loss of the habit? For none of the things that are is naturally able to do opposite things by one and the same operation, being held together by the definition and reason of nature. Wherefore it is not right to speak of a single or natural operation of the divinity and flesh in Christ, unless divinity and flesh are the same in natural quality — and so also in nature — and the triad will become a tetrad. For “neither according to nature,” he says, “nor according to power, nor according to operation, has He become the same as the flesh.” For by nothing by which the Son is naturally the same as the Father and the Spirit, on account of the one essence, has He become the same as the flesh on account of the union — even though He has made it life-giving by the union with Himself, it having, by nature, what is mortal. Since He will also be shown to be of a changeable nature, having altered the essence of the flesh into what it was not, and having made the union the same as nature.

Let us, then, understand the theandric operation as it was given — which, conducting for us, not for Himself, He innovated nature by the things beyond nature. For “conduct” is a life carried on according to the law of nature. And the Lord, being twofold in nature, reasonably appeared having a fitting life, compacted at once, unconfusedly, according to both the divine and the human law — new, this too, not only as strange to those on earth and paradoxical, and thus known as apart from the nature of beings, but also as characteristic of the new operation of Him who lived in a new manner. Which he who devised the fitting name for this mystery perhaps called theandric, that he might show the manner of the exchange according to the ineffable union, made by interchange, of the things naturally belonging to each part of Christ to the other, apart from any change or confusion of either part with the other according to the natural principle. For just as, of a sword made red-hot by fire, the cutting power becomes burning, and the burning becomes cutting (for the fire has been united, as it were, with the iron), so also the cutting power of the iron becomes joined to the burning power of the fire, and the iron becomes burning by union with the fire, and the fire cutting by union with the iron — neither having suffered anything, by the interchange according to union, toward the other, but each, even in the property of the composite according to union, having remained unfallen from what belongs to it by nature.

So also in the mystery of the divine incarnation, divinity and humanity were united according to hypostasis, neither natural operation having departed on account of the union, nor having acquired, after the union, an unrelated existence, distinguished from that which is composite and coexists together. For the incarnate Word, having, with the whole active power of His own divinity, the whole passible power of His own humanity joined together with it by an indissoluble union, worked the wonders humanly, being God — fulfilled through flesh passible by nature — and went through the sufferings of nature divinely, being man — accomplished by divine authority; and both, rather, theandrically, being at once God and man, giving us to Himself, by the one, having appeared what we have become, and giving us to Himself, by the other, having become what He showed forth — and by both confirming the truth of the things of which, and in which, and which He was, as alone true and faithful, and wishing this to be confessed by us, that which He is. Having Him, sanctified in word and life, being conformed to Him, imitate His longsuffering, and, receiving the present writing, show yourselves to me as loving judges of what is contained in it, overcoming, by sympathy, the stumblings of your child, expecting this alone as the return for his obedience; and become for me mediators of reconciliation with him, making the peace that surpasses all understanding, of which the Savior Himself is the ruler, freeing, by an active habit, those who fear Him from the disturbance of the passions, and being the Father of the age to come, begetting, by the Spirit, through love and knowledge, those who have filled the world above.

To Him be glory, majesty, and might, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, unto the ages. Amen. Scholia on the Works of Saint Dionysius the Areopagite His nobility, and the renown attaching to the great wealth of Dionysius, and that very council-chamber of the Athenians in which he was chosen to sit as counselor, establish this by themselves alone. For he was one of the Areopagites, as the divine Luke has shown in his history of the sacred acts of the holy apostles; for after saying that the most holy apostle Paul, having come to Athens and conversed with certain philosophers of the school of Epicurus and of the Stoa, and having proclaimed faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the universal judgment, was seized by those who were unphilosophical (for they were not truly philosophers) and led to the Areopagus, and, having made his defense there, at once won over certain of them and brought them over to the light of truth, Luke adds: ‘And so Paul went out from among them; but certain men joined themselves to him and believed, among whom also was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.’ Now I do not hear without reason that, of all those who then believed through the divine Paul, the excellent Dionysius alone is named by the God-bearing writer, his rank also being added; for Luke says ‘the Areopagite’ — and I would add, rather, because on account both of his surpassing wisdom and of his preeminence in the blameless conduct of the Athenians, he deserved to be remembered along with his household.

One must know, as I have said, that it was not for every man to serve in the council of the Areopagus, but only those foremost among the Athenians in lineage, wealth, and upright life; and accordingly the men of distinction served in the council of the Areopagus. For of the nine archons appointed at Athens, the Areopagites had to be constituted as judges, as Androtion says in the second book of his Atthis; but later the council of the Areopagus came to be composed of more members, that is, of fifty-one of the most distinguished men, chosen from the nobility, as Philochorus relates in the third book of the same Atthis. The court at the Areopagus was outside the city, so called (according to the myth the Athenians tell) from the eminence of that hill within the city where the court that arose between Poseidon and Ares was held; for Poseidon, according to the ancient myths among the Athenians, brought suit against Ares in that place, claiming that his own son Halirrhothius had been slain by Ares, and from this that hill was called ‘Areios’ after Ares. The Areopagites accordingly judged nearly all offenses and transgressions of law, as both Androtion in his first book and Philochorus in the second and third books of his Atthis relate in full. For this reason, since the most divine Paul was, as the truthloving Luke recorded, a proclaimer of strange divinities, the lovers of the wisdom made foolish by God dragged him before the council of the Areopagus.

But among the Areopagites who then held office, as an utterly unbending judge, the all-great Dionysius cast his vote incorruptibly for the truth concerning the Spirit-bearing Paul, and, bidding a hearty farewell to the senseless solemnity of the Areopagites, at once held fast to the light — to Christ Jesus, the true and allseeing judge of thoughts, the only-begotten Son and Word of God the Father, whom Paul proclaimed. For although the Romans then held power, they nevertheless left Athens and Lacedaemon self-governing; hence the institutions of the Areopagites were still in force among the Athenians. And while all the doctrines of salvation were accomplished through Paul the mighty, Dionysius was instructed as a disciple by the great Hierotheus, as he himself says; then, according to what is recorded in the seventh book of the Apostolic Constitutions, Dionysius was appointed bishop of the believers at Athens by Paul the Christ-bearer. The ancient Dionysius, bishop of the Corinthians, also mentions the Areopagite, as does Polycarp in his letter to the Athenians. One may well marvel at the soundness and the wide learning of this holy Dionysius, who was truly led by great knowledge of the Church’s blameless traditions, and who beheld the spurious doctrines among the philosophers of the Greeks as things carried over toward the truth. Indeed, one ought rather to pity and grieve for the carelessness of those who, being negligent examiners lacking proper education, measure by their own ignorance even the learned propriety of later men.

Such men, coming upon the writings of certain authors, and perhaps failing to follow the sense of what is said, are at once carried off into an undiscriminating slander of the author, though they are utterly unable to set right or refute the very things they mock — when they ought rather to turn their anger upon themselves, and be vexed the more that they themselves, through want of diligence, never came to know the things that lead to knowledge; or, to speak truly, that not having been diligently trained by those capable in such matters, they were never freed from their perplexities. But some men dare to slander the divine Dionysius as tending toward heresies, being altogether ignorant even of what the heretics themselves teach; for if they compared the doctrines of these men with each of the condemned heresiarchs, they would recognize how far removed they stand from such worthless things — as far as true light from darkness. For what could they say regarding what he teaches concerning the sole adorable Trinity? Or what regarding the one of this all-blessed Trinity, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten God the Word, who willed to become perfectly incarnate? Did he not set forth in full an intellective soul and a body earthly like our own, and all else that is set down by the orthodox teachers? What, then, could one reasonably find fault with concerning intelligible and intellective and sensible things, or concerning our universal resurrection, which is to take place together with the body proper to us and to our soul, and concerning the tribunals to come, both of the just and of those who are not such?

For to these things, in sum, our salvation looks — matters which it would not be right to set forth at length here, since the exposition by way of scholia will note all of them in due course. ‘Yes,’ they say, ‘but Eusebius the son of Pamphilus did not record his compositions, nor indeed did Origen.’ To these it must be said that Eusebius passed over a great many things that did not come into his own hands; for he himself does not say that he gathered together absolutely everything — rather he confesses that there exist books beyond number that never came to him at all; and I could myself name many works not possessed by him, even from his own region, such as those of Hymenaeus and Narcissus, who served as priests at Jerusalem. I myself, at any rate, have come upon some of the writings of Hymenaeus. Nor, indeed, did he record the labors of Pantaenus, nor those of Clement of Rome, except for two letters only, nor indeed those of very many others. As for Origen, I do not know whether he mentioned all of them, but he scarcely mentioned four. And a certain Roman deacon, Peter by name, told me that all the writings of the divine Dionysius are preserved, deposited in the sacred library at Rome. He wrote most of his works to the thrice-blessed Timothy, the disciple of the holy apostle Paul, bishop of the Ephesians, who, as is likely, suffered much at the hands of those who presided over the Ionian philosophy at Ephesus, and who inquired of him, as of one skilled in external philosophy, so that he might contend the more effectively; nor is this unlikely, since the God-loving apostle Paul himself made use of sayings of the Greeks, having perhaps heard these from those in his company who were experienced in Greek philosophy.

This too confirms that these writings are truly and faithfully those of Dionysius: the unstudied way in which he recalls the sayings of the men who flourished alongside him, of whom the divine letters of the apostles also make mention — this shows the writings to be free of contrivance, and above all, shows the utter security of their doctrines. Since some say that the work is not the saint’s own, but that of some later writer, they are of necessity compelled also to charge him with certain forbidden and absurd things, as one falsely claiming for himself that he was with the apostles, and that he wrote to those with whom, according to them, he never associated at all, nor ever wrote. As for the claim that he even fabricated a prophecy to the apostle John, then in exile, that he would return again to the land of Asia and teach his accustomed doctrines — this belongs to a man given to marvel-mongering, madly hunting after the reputation of a prophet. As for the claim that he says he was present at the very time of the saving Passion, together with Apollophanes at Heliopolis, observing and philosophizing with him about the eclipse of the sun, as having occurred then contrary to nature and contrary to custom; and that he says he was present with the apostles at the translation of the sacred relics of the holy Theotokos Mary, and quotes sayings of Hierotheus, his own teacher, from his funeral orations concerning her; and that he is said to have fabricated letters and discourses as though delivered to the disciples of the apostles — how great an absurdity and condemnation this is, even for an ordinary man, let alone for a man raised to such a height in character and knowledge, one who transcended all sensible things and was joined to intelligible beauties, and through them, so far as possible, to God!

Explanatory commentaries, then, as fully elaborated as possible, were needed for the interpretation of his vast learning; but, more summarily, so far as the book allowed, I have set forth by way of scholia the things that seemed right to me, trusting in God, following the sequence of the passages themselves, as they happened to come into my hands. One should know that certain of the philosophers outside the faith, and Proclus especially, have often made use of the theorems of the blessed Dionysius, even in the very same dry words; and from this one may suspect that the older philosophers at Athens, having appropriated his treatises, as this very book here recalls, concealed them, so that they themselves might appear to be the fathers of his divine sayings; and now, by the economy of God, this present treatise has come to light for the refutation of their vainglory and trickery. And that it was habitual for them to appropriate what is ours, the divine Basil teaches concerning the text ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ speaking thus on this very saying: ‘I know that many of those outside the Word of truth, who pride themselves greatly on worldly wisdom, both admired these things and dared to insert them into their own compositions; for the devil is a thief, and steals our own words to hand them over to his own prophets.’

So he says. And as for Numenius the Pythagorean, who plainly says, ‘For what is Plato but Moses speaking Attic?’ — no one can deny that he, not being one of ours, but one of our opponents, bears witness to this, as Eusebius, who presided over Caesarea in Palestine, also testifies, saying: ‘Not only now, but even before the coming of Christ, it was habitual for those outside to steal what is ours.’ On the Celestial Hierarchy Explanation of the Title Hierarchy: Since the title contains ‘hierarchy,’ it is customary to call bishops ‘hierarchs.’ One must know, then, that a hierarchy is the governance — and, as it were, the careful oversight — of the ordering of sacred things, and a hierarch is the one who governs, oversees, and provides for sacred things: not, indeed, one who governs the priests, but one who orders the sacred rites and the constitution both of them and of the church and of the mysteries — not, indeed, the chief priest as such. The great Dionysius himself sets forth this same explanation further on, in his discourse On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. The presbyter: Note that the name ‘presbyter’ signifies the bishop as well, since the bishop too is a presbyter; and this is shown also in the Acts of the Holy Apostles, where the holy apostle Paul, in Asia, addresses the elders of the churches there.

Chapter I §1. Every good gift: Note that the blessed Dionysius makes use of the Catholic Epistle of Saint James; for the saying is from there — and this shows that it had already been published. For even from it: He theologizes these things concerning the Son. §2. Ancestral: Here he means by ‘fathers’ those who handed the doctrine down to him, not his natural forebears; for he was of Greek descent, as the Acts of the Holy Apostles show, and as he himself indicates both in his letter to Saint Polycarp and in the ninth chapter of On the Celestial Hierarchy. Symbolically: For he does not speak in a naturalistic manner, but through certain symbols and images. a. Of minds: The philosophers among the Greeks also call the intellective — that is, angelic — powers ‘minds’ (νόες); since each of them is wholly mind, and possesses its whole essence as a living mind substantialized into its own form, they are called νόες, the inflection having occurred for euphony’s sake — since, from ὁ νοῦς, τοῦ νοῦ, the plural ought to have been οἱ νοῖ, but for the sake of euphony it was formed instead from another nominative singular, as οἱ νόες; for this is the Attic custom, as they say Ἀριστοφάναι and Σωκράται instead of οἱ Ἀριστοφάνεις and οἱ Σωκράτεις. There are also those who say οἱ νόοι, as from ὁ νόος, τοῦ νόου; and Scripture too calls them by this name, as in Isaiah: ‘The great mind, the ruler of Babylon’ — that is, the devil.

According to the Ionians, then: νοῦς, νοός, νόες, like χροῦς, χροός, οἱ χρόες; for the inflection is Ionic. Supra-originate: God is ‘supra-originate,’ as being above every principle, and a deiarchic light, as the principle of those called gods — I mean angels and righteous men. b. Of inwardness: By ‘inwardness’ he means hiddenness; for it is unknown to all who are outside it. c. Blending: Note the ‘blending,’ and why the divine, being one, is multiplied. Of veils: By ‘veils’ he means the things said corporeally of God in the Scriptures, such as the names of human members, or the naming of certain powers. Note, too, that this was for the sake of those who, being in the flesh, were to behold immaterial and incorporeal things; and the veils in the tabernacle signified this the more, as he hints here. Connaturally: Instead of ‘of the same nature,’ ‘akin.’ §3. The rite-imparting: ‘Rite’ (τελετή), according to the philosophers of the Greeks, is called the imparting of the mysteries, inasmuch as it perfects the one being initiated and is perfective of those who approach such things. The ‘riteimparting hierothesy,’ then, is the divine positing and arrangement of the ordering of our sacred mysteries, having its origin from God through the apostles, these perfective goods; for the divine apostle Paul calls the initiated ‘perfect,’ saying: ‘as many, then, as are perfect, let us be thus minded.’

Supracosmic: ‘Supracosmic’ must not be understood sensibly, but intellectively, and as above the world that pertains to us. Note, too, what he means by ‘figures’ and ‘formative compositions,’ that is, images, which he sets out next. Of moldings: Note that he calls the mystical traditions here ‘molded,’ which he expounds in the discourse On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy; but this must be understood in a manner befitting God. ‘Moldings,’ then, is to be construed with ‘formative,’ and ‘simple and untyped’ with ‘composition.’ Material [guidance]: By ‘material guidance’ he means being led by the hand, through things said materially, to the understanding of things beyond sense-perception. Apparent [beauties]: By ‘apparent beauties’ he means the adornments of the sacred houses, and by ‘discursive instructions’ the readings of the Holy Scriptures; and by ‘ranks of ordering’ the degrees of the priests. Note, too, that visible beauties are images of the invisible orderings, as the Apostle also shows in Hebrews, considering the things concerning the tabernacle, and as Moses heard: ‘Make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’ The discursive [instructions]: ‘Discursive instructions’ are the broader demonstrations, made through visible things and through deeds, of intelligible things, for those whose understanding does not grasp them unitively and all at once by simple acts of intellection. Of habit: There, ‘habits’ are those that order divine things; and a ‘habit’ is an abiding quality.

Here, too, the term administers the ecclesiastical ranks as ‘habits,’ inasmuch as they are incorporeal — for habits belong to incorporeal things. It should be noted that the priestly mystagogy performed among us men is an imitation of the celestial hierarchy. Supracosmically: ‘Supracosmically’ must not be understood sensibly, but intellectively, and as above the world that pertains to us. In sacred-scriptural [terms]: That is, in the discourses composed sacredly concerning them in the Scriptures. May lead us up: It should be noted how we are led up to theology, and that it is Christ who leads us up. Summits: Nothing is named at random by this blessed man, but with great learning and properly, together with reverence; since, then, he said that our sacred ordinance is accomplished, through material and discursive symbols and moldings, according to the pattern attainable by us — being also an imitation of the sacred ordering among the angels — he fittingly called the hierophany among them a ‘summit’; for those who have occupied themselves with such matters are accustomed to call the ‘summit’ of each essence its purest part, that on which the essence immediately, that is, most closely, depends — as, for instance, the summit of the soul is its purest intellect, and the summit of love is the fiery love of those who have ascended to the most divine things. And so the summit of our hierarchy and mystical ordering is its purest part, that from which it hangs, and that which draws nearest to immateriality; the most genuine symbol among us, then, is the summit of the untyped and simple and incorporeal mysteries, to which our hierarchy, being joined, mounts, as it were, toward the hierophany among men; and through the images it leads up to the pure visions of the intelligible rite, fittingly called the ‘summit’ of the things here that are bodily and material in form.

He calls ‘manifestation’ proclamation; and it is clear that this is the proclamation through symbols and types, which he also called ‘moldings’; and by ‘simplicity’ he means the immateriality of their b. For he knew: For he knew that, in hymning the sacred minds in the heavens, as he himself says according to Scripture, he was compelled to speak of beast-shaped living creatures, and eagles, and the other things to which the divine Scriptures liken the archangelic powers; for he says: ‘lest we too, like the many, suppose irreverently that the orders of the many-faced and many-footed beings in the heavens have no explanation.’ These, then, he proposed to make clear according to the disclosure of the sacred oracles. Artlessly: Greatly, or in every way, or truly, or simply. c. Poetic: That Scripture also made use of certain poetic fictions for the guidance of the human mind, since it was unable to receive instruction in greater things; for the celestial symbols resemble the imaginings found among the poets, as this sacred man himself says (understand by ‘poets’ those admired among the Greeks, such as Homer, Hesiod, and the rest), or ‘poetic’ as though meaning formative, plastic outlines. For the wise condescension of God, knowing our mind to be weak and unfit for loftier contemplation, having fashioned for it an ascent connatural to it, thus brought the archangelic orderings into the open — not disclosing them as they truly are, but as we are able to comprehend them; think, then, nothing unfitting of the heavenly things.

§2. Compositions: By ‘compositions’ he means the aforesaid moldings and figurations. In themselves: ‘In themselves,’ that is, as they are by nature, they are, he says, unknown and uncontemplated by us. Abrupt: I think he calls ‘abrupt’ the strange path, as it were a path and molding cut off from the usual ones; wherefore he also calls it a ‘tent,’ making clear that the forms of the holy angels as recorded are not true — for they are not, in truth, such as sacred Scripture presents them, but so that we might attain to their majesty. The divine Dionysius himself attempts to bring together what is said of them and to show that it is possible, by unfolding, to understand the angelic orderings in this way, as has been said. Somewhat immaterial: ‘Somewhat immaterial,’ that is, partially — for they are not wholly immaterial; and by ‘the substances set above’ he means heaven and the things in heaven, such as the stars; for the most rarefied and singlesubstanced part of them is, in a way, near to immateriality. God-formed: By ‘god-formed simplicities’ he means the intelligible substances; for immaterial substances are altogether uncompounded, not being a mixture of the elements — for bodies are made of these, but those are incorporeal. Settling in: Settling in, and causing to remain. Lion-like: These forms of the divine and holy cherubim were recorded both by the divine Ezekiel and by the inspired John in the Revelation.

Swarms: A ‘swarm’ is a completed multitude. And bird-like: That is, of bird-like form and consisting of birds. Living creatures: By ‘other living creatures’ he means such as horses, mules, and the like; and by ‘baser matter’ he means such things as thrones made of wood, and wheels, and swords of iron — such as the drawn sword against Balaam, and the one David saw, as recorded in the second book of Kingdoms — and chariots as of wood. Passible: He calls it ‘passible’ since the lion-form signifies something of the irascible power, and the calf-form the appetitive, which are indeed great passions. By ‘likenesses’ he means the resemblant surmisings; thus Ezekiel says that he saw a likeness of the throne, and a likeness of a lion, which shows the fictive character of these apparent things; wherefore it is also said here, ‘unlike likenesses’ — for the prophet does not see all as alike, but some as one sort, others as another; yet they are entirely unlike the things to which they seem similar, for they truly have nothing of a lion or a calf or the rest. What ‘unlike’ signifies you will find in what follows. But the: By way of defense. a. That neither into things divine: He undertakes, by his own interpretation, to show both things: that the heavenly beings should not seem to be insulted, and that we should not be fixed upon lowly, earthbound notions concerning the ‘living creatures’ spoken of among the angels.

b. Fittingly put forward: Here he says why the types are put forward as symbols of the untyped, and the forms as symbols of the unformed. Unfigured: Instead of ‘unformed.’ c. Without intermediary: That is, not through intermediate types, but all at once and by a first apprehension; and ‘they set forth’ is the same as ‘they propose’ and ‘they put forward.’ d. Formations: Note that incorporeal things are formless; when, then, you hear concerning the supra-essential One, ‘who, being in the form of God’ — understand thereby His exact likeness to His own Father; for this is also what the image of the invisible God signifies, and ‘he who has seen me has seen the Father.’ So too the holy Basil interprets it in his discourse to his own brother, On the Difference of Essence and Hypostasis. §3. That the manner of sacred: That the divine is hymned in two ways: either as like to all things — for all things subsist in Him — or as unlike — for He is none of all things. Through the unlike: That the types are fashioned both through likenesses and through unlikenesses; and he here explains how they are fashioned. Sometimes as reason: In what sense God is called Word and Mind — as in ‘who has known the mind of the Lord?’, and ‘the word of the Lord came to me, saying,’ and so forth.

And he speaks of ‘rationality’ with respect to God, not wishing to signify that God is rational as partaking of reason, but that He is Reason itself, being wholly reason; and they speak of ‘essence’ with respect to God when they say: ‘I am He who is, and He who is has sent me; and You are the same’ — for from ‘to be’ and ‘the one being’ comes the derivative ‘essence,’ meaning existence. And life: That God is properly called neither life, nor light, nor mind, nor essence, but causally — for He is also above these, and is not such as these are. Invisible: That the things said of God by way of negation, such as ‘invisible,’ ‘infinite,’ and the like, are ‘unlike’ — for they show not what God is, but what He is not; so too Gregory the Unintelligible: By ‘unintelligible’ he does not mean ‘foolish,’ but ‘not comprehended by anyone’; and God is ‘indeterminate,’ as falling under no boundary, but Himself being the boundary of all things and determining all things within Himself, while Himself falling under no boundary — since boundaries are composed of affirmations, and affirmations are ill-fitted to God, as being false when applied to Him; for God is above these, not being essence, but above essence. The negations: Not only concerning God, but also concerning all divine things — that is, all things intelligible that come after God — he says that the negations are true, and the affirmations ill-fitting.

The affirmations are ill-fitting when we say of either God or the intellective powers ‘life’ or ‘light’ — for neither is that life such as lives by inhalation and exhalation, nor is that light the kind that appears and makes visible the things set before it, but something higher than these. But the negations, made by way of denial, are somewhat more proper concerning intelligible things — for we say that they are invisible, and understand that they do not fall under sight; but what that non-appearing thing itself is, reason seems neither to busy itself with nor to set forth; and yet ‘life’ and ‘light’ seem to signify something of what it is, and these too in no way disclose what God is. They honor, then: See how well he defended why the heavenly beings are remembered as ‘living creatures,’ that is, by images; for just as God, who is over all, has nothing of the same kind among all things, and for this reason nothing of all things fittingly signifies Him, but rather we theologize by another method, saying what God is not — which he calls proceeding through unlikenesses — so also concerning the heavenly powers, who come after God, the theologians worked skillfully, likening them to nothing intelligible, but taking from sensible things, which he calls ‘dishonorable,’ a resemblance of these, doing this for their honor, so that the imitation of them might be fictive and not true; for if the one called lion-formed and many-footed and many-winged is also rational and immaterial, how is it not clear that he has transcended, in a supracosmic manner, the material things conceived among us?

For toward the more honorable: Here is yet another reasoning, on account of which Scripture used such likenesses concerning the heavenly beings: for if it had used more honorable images, saying that the divine powers were, for instance, golden or flashing, those who heard would certainly have been persuaded, taking their conviction from the more honorable things among men; but as it is, it has interposed incongruous and shameful images, so that, knowing precisely that they are not such, we might seek the truth of the things that are. Without harm: For the so-called flames of fire, the divine substances, are not burning but life-giving. Shameful: For how is it not shameful that the symbols of intelligible things should be made of material things? Spectacles: ‘Spectacles’ are the things seen with wonder. For even anger: That the irascible movement is not simply full of irrationality, but is spoken of thus with respect to the irrational nature. One should read the final discourse of the book, which he delivered concerning the vision of the holy cherubim; for there all these things are treated at length. That not one of the things that are: Note that nothing that exists is deprived of participation in the good; note, then, what is meant by ‘anger’ among irrational beings, and what among rational beings, and what ‘desire’ is in each. Rationality: Note that he speaks of ‘rationality’ even with respect to angels; and by ‘implacable’ he means unyielding and unrelaxed.

Desire: That the desire of intelligible beings is an unrelated love directed toward God, which he calls immateriality. On account of the unmixed: By ‘unmixed’ he means the pure, and one who has leisure for nothing else; for he who is wholly gripped by divine love is wholly His, and is stretched out only toward the object of his desire, hindered by no discursive and bodily reasoning. And in saying that irrationality exists in the incorporeal substances, we do not thereby insult them with mindlessness, in speaking of the lion-forms and calf-forms and bird-forms, as in the case of the eagle, as types and symbols of irrational things fitting to the heavenly ranks; rather, we mystically signify the difference between the rationality proper to them and that proper to us; for we manifest our rationality by the instrument of the tongue and by vocal forms, striking the air with articulate speech, the word passing from us into the hearing of our listeners, from body to body, as the divine Basil also says in his discourse Attend to Thyself; but there it is not so — rather, being in a state of incorporeality, and passing into and out of one another, beholding one another’s thoughts more clearly than any speech, they converse with one another, as it were, imparting to each other through the silence of the word. Declension: Instead of ‘declination.’

a. Transitive: Our spoken word is ‘transitive,’ as passing over from the speaker to the hearer; and ‘bodily’ is said in contradistinction to the interior word — for that is neither bodily nor transitive. b. Of matter: By ‘most dishonorable matter’ he means the whole corporeal nature, arranged by God into various forms, ensouled and unensouled and the rest; and by ‘intellective comeliness’ he means the things said concerning God, of which we find moderate and dim images among existing things, such as simply being, living, perceiving, and the like. c. That matter too is from God: That all matter has its existence from God, no wise argument will deny; and matter itself bears in itself proofs that it has both been brought forth and ordered by God; for every ordering that comes from matter has certain dim and shadowy echoes of intelligible things. For just as intellective beings are fit to receive, so far as possible, the providential processions from God, and, being life, are given life by God who is above all life, and possess powers active for beneficence, and a certain supracosmic movement — so too all material things, both as a whole and severally, are fit to receive God’s providence in a manner proper to themselves, and can be given life and become a source of life, as in: ‘let the earth bring forth a living soul,’ and again, ‘let the waters bring forth creeping things having living souls’; and they also have beneficent powers for those who draw breath from the earth, as the benefits from plants and minerals show; and material things have a fitting movement, proceeding toward generation and corruption, and receive the order imposed and to be imposed by God.

But they are also by nature illumined by the presence of intellective powers, as in the case of the angel who flashed at the Lord’s resurrection and illumined the surrounding air. Matter has these things by way of being acted upon, not, indeed, as the intellective beings have them by way of acting; wherefore they are said to have them by way of a final echo; and what a ‘final echo’ is I shall make clear in the discourse On the Divine Names, chapter 4. And of the same: Note that he does not say that all matter is intellective; hence the stars too are without soul, for they do not have mind. Even if he uses the same names, they are not taken in the same sense, but are defined and understood according to the natural property of the subject. §5. Deiarchic: That is, with the thoughts concerning God. Of the visible honorable things: Note what he calls ‘the honorable’ among visible things, such as the sun and the stars; and what ‘the intermediate,’ fire and water; and what ‘the last,’ such as myrrh; and what ‘the dishonorable,’ such as beasts and worms; and that both the beast-like symbols, and those from matter, and the honorable, and the intermediate, and the dishonorable, are said with respect to God. Sun: The prophet Malachi calls Him the Sun of righteousness, and the divine Peter, in his Catholic Epistle: ‘until the day-star arises in your hearts,’ and so on — for this is the morning star.

And Moses says: ‘fire in the bush not consuming’ — that is, illuminating without harm. And Jeremiah calls Him water: ‘they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water’; and others say other things; and the Lord: ‘rivers of living water shall flow from his belly’; and Solomon in the Song of Songs calls Him myrrh: ‘your name is myrrh poured out.’ And among the Twelve Prophets, Hosea and Micah list the aforesaid beasts among the things prophesied concerning God, and David calls Him a worm: ‘I am a worm, and not a man’ — spoken from the person of the Lord, or he likened Him to a worm as not begotten of seed, as we are, but without seed, as worms, which are not born of seed but from earth or from decay; for ‘I am a worm and not a man’ is said as from the person of God incarnate — not, indeed, taken with respect to His divinity, but with respect to the apparent lowliness of the flesh. He calls the prophets ‘god-wise interpreters.’ For he has already set forth certain ‘images’ beforehand in the discourse On the Divine Names. Images: What is meant by the ‘images’ laid up in store is shown in what is said in the discourse On the Divine Names, at the beginning of the ninth chapter. Echoes: He speaks of the last of God’s echoes in creation, which he earlier said were more dishonorable than the material orderings.

How these are called the ‘last echo’ will be explained by us more fully in the discourse On the Divine Unless the ill-formed: Understand by ‘ill-formed’ the beastshaped and brutish, which Scripture says concerning the angels; and ‘disclosive’ signifies the manifesting, that is, the one that discloses. Angel-like: He rightly named the typical images, which he mentioned before, not ‘angelic’ but ‘angel-like’ — for the images written are not of the angels as they truly are, but suggest a certain impression of the form of incorporeal beings, as he himself explained. To mark off: He is accustomed to say ‘to be marked off’ concerning things distinctly defined and made clear. We suppose: ‘We suppose’ is used in common construction, so that it means both ‘we suppose there to be a hierarchy,’ and ‘we suppose whom it is fitting to benefit’ — that is, that the hierarchs are able to benefit, through the sacred rites. But you, O child: One must inquire why the great Dionysius calls the divine Timothy ‘child.’ Either, I think, he says this because he was advanced in years beyond him, and preeminent in philosophy, so that Timothy would even inquire of him beforehand, as the treatises in hand show — for even though Saint Timothy believed before the divine Dionysius, as the Acts of the Holy Apostles show, yet the great Dionysius was more capable in external learning; or he calls him ‘child’ in imitation of the Lord, who said, ‘Children, have you any food?’; or because those who practiced guilelessness according to God were called ‘children,’ as Papias also shows in the first book of his Expositions of the Lord’s Sayings, and Clement of Alexandria in the Paedagogus.

Of multitude: Against ‘multitude’ he adduces ‘unity-formed’; for holy things he unifies, but profane things, being of sin, he multiplies into many through division. This, then, he now calls ‘multitude’ — that which is, as it were, profane. Hierarchy is: Definition of hierarchy. As attainable: As possible. Rite-perfecting: That is, perfecting. Wholly unmixed: Likeness, and equality, and identity are called the one and unifying, as being simple and unmixed and uncomposed; but unlikeness, and inequality, and otherness, and mixture, and being in flux, are called material. The One, then, would be understood as God. Devotees: ‘Thiasos’ properly means a sacred chorus. By ‘devotees’ here he means those occupied with divine things. ‘Most translucent’ means bright and radiant; ‘unspotted’ means unstained. To act: I take this to mean that none of those enrolled in a sacerdotal rank should do anything greater than belongs to his own order, but should only perform and hand on in teaching what befits his own rank, and not attempt what is beyond his rank — for instance, the presbyters should teach and bring forward the offering, but not ordain; the deacons should teach, but not baptize, for they will not give the Holy Spirit, just as Philip the deacon did not in the Acts of the Holy Apostles — nor should they offer the sacrifice, and so on in succession; and those being initiated should only do what is fitting, so that what is said by the divine Paul may be well kept: ‘let each remain in the rank in which he was called.’

Of rite-perfection: That is, of perfection. In ranks: For there must be a difference and a graduated ascent among the ranks, and a scientific exactness. The perfection of those allotted: Note what the perfection of the hierarchs is, and how they are fellow-workers of God according to the divine Apostle. The divine operation: That is, the works of God, He Himself working — making wise, perfecting, and the like — working according to capacity in those being instructed. Since order: Note the order and the effect of the hierarchy, and that those who approach must first be purified by the teaching that separates out the confusions of sin; then be illumined by the knowledge of the God-inspired Scriptures concerning the doctrines of the knowledge of God; and then be perfected by the bath of regeneration. Some are illumined: Note that illumination precedes baptism. Divine blessedness: purifies, illumines, perfects — teaching, leading up, and deifying. Divine blessedness: purification, illumination, perfection. Of divine blessedness: the hierarchs, on the one hand, purify, illumine, and perfect; while those under hierarchy, on the other, are purified, are illumined, and are made perfect. Of mind: He used the Ionic form: ὁ νοῦς, τοῦ νοός, οἱ νόες; for the Attics say ὁ νοῦς, τοῦ νοῦ, and in the plural οἱ νοῖ, τῶν νῶν, and νοισί. §3. Purifying: Here he speaks concerning the hierarchs themselves, having spoken before of those under hierarchy, also indicating the ranks: how the purifying ones stand lowest, being the exorcists; the illuminating ones stand higher, by their teaching, such as the presbyters and deacons; and the perfecting ones are those who fill with the Holy Spirit by baptism, such as the bishops.

He says these same things further on too, in the discourse On the Ecclesiastical Present naturally and supernaturally: That the things leading to salvation and illumination are present both naturally and supernaturally. And he has well made clear the order of the ecclesiastical rite: that first those approaching the divine baptism should renounce Satan while being purified, then be illumined by the teaching of the presbyters appointed for this; that the purifying ones should be worthy to impart holiness to others, and then, accordingly, the bishops should baptize — for he calls these the ‘perfecting’ ones. This order must be preserved. Chapter IV §1. Toward communion: Note the reasoning for which God brought all things into being: that each might commune with His goodness proportionally; for this is what ‘many mansions with the Father’ signifies — for each will commune with His goodness according to his own work; so also Titus says in his discourses Against the Manichaeans. Beings: Here by the name ‘beings’ he signifies, taken together, all things in creation, both intelligible and visible; for God made all things out of things that are not, and for this reason alone, that they might enjoy His goodness. And they enjoy it through providence, each as it is fit to receive; for the providence of God is the source of the essence of beings. All beings, then: That all beings partake of the providence of God; for there is nothing among beings that does not partake of God — so that evil has no subsistence, since it does not partake of God, appearing as a privation of a state, but is not itself a thing primordially existing in essence; thus we spoke at length above in the appropriate chapter.

Of beings: some are unliving, some living, some intellective, some rational. Those he calls merely ‘beings’ are such as the heavens and the earth; those he says live irrationally are the irrational animals; some are incorporeal, as the heavenly beings; and some embodied, which he calls ‘such as ourselves.’ For they would not have been: By ‘beings’ in this sense he means the divine things, that is, the Holy Trinity, which, being the maker and origin — that is, cause — of creatures, is said to be participated in by those very things that have come into being from it. The unliving, then: That even unliving things partake of the providence of God with respect to their very being; and unliving things are such as stones and all things that do not proceed to generation. Living things, of the same: In each of the things that follow, it is necessary to understand in common the aspect by which they partake of providence. The holy powers, then: Note, concerning the order of the whole, that the essences of the powers above are various; and by ‘merely beings’ he means those he called ‘unliving.’ For intellectively, toward the God-imitating: See that the intelligible powers too partake of the good by free choice, the more so as they greatly desire it; for he says that they ‘shape themselves,’ which is a matter of free choice; therefore the account is false which says that the devil fell from the heavens — for he turned to evil of himself.

And ‘attached’ is used instead of ‘joined together.’ Of beings: some are irrational, such as stones and the rest that partake of no vital activity; others are living — of these, some are without sense-perception, such as plants, some without reason, some incorporeal and above us; of these, some are sensitive, others rational, and of these too, some are embodied and such as ourselves. And in many ways, in participation: For their essences are a living mind. Note, too, that all intelligible things partake of God in the first way. And ‘disclosive’ means ‘proclamatory.’ Of the angelic appellation: Note what an angel properly is, and that he says they hold the first rank; and further, how we are initiated through angels, and how the Law was given through them, and that angels also led up to God our fathers before the Law and after the Law. Renowned: Glorious. And the practical manifestation of this, as in the case of Joshua the son of Nun, and Gideon, and others; and toward the straight way from an unconsecrated life, as in the case of Cornelius the centurion — for he was the first to be transferred from among the unbelieving nations; and sacred ranks, as in Daniel, ‘ten thousand times ten thousand,’ and the cherubim seen by Ezekiel, and the seraphim seen by Isaiah. And ‘subcosmic’ visions, as in the case of Paul caught up to the third heaven, and in the Revelation of the divine John.

§3. Without mediation: That is, without the ministry of angels. As what it itself ever is: See how he explains the saying, ‘No one has ever seen God,’ which I consider most true, while knowing also that there are scriptural sayings which say that God appeared to men, as in the case of Adam, in Paradise, and Abraham, at the oak of Mamre, and when they journeyed to Sodom; and to Moses on the mountain, though he is said to have seen only His back parts. And he says that no one has seen, nor will see, the hidden reality of God itself, which is His essence — or, to put it more loftily, that no one can or will be able to comprehend and express what God is. And if theophanies did occur to certain of the saints, understand that each, in proportion to his own faith, was deemed worthy of some vision manifesting the Divine to him, through which he received the illumination of the divine knowledge that came to him. As in a formation: I think he means the Transfiguration, or the wonder as of fire on Mount Sinai. Theophany: He says it is called a theophany not because God appears and shows what He actually is — for this is impossible — but because the saints are deemed worthy of divine illumination through certain sacred visions proportioned to them, which he says come about through angels.

Law-giving: Note that the Law, too, is a prefiguration of another, divine legislation — that is, of the divine incarnation according to Christ; and that the first legislation was given through angels is shown also by holy Stephen, saying: ‘you who received the law as ordained by angels, and did not keep it.’ It: That is, the law-giving, evidently. Through the first: Note how, through the first — that is, those who have ascended — the second, instead of ‘those who stand lower,’ are led up to God, and note this concerning the angelic ordinances. Supra-essential: He called ‘supra-essential the commandingorder’ the origin of their order and its efficient cause. §4. Gabriel: Note that angels are the first initiated into the things concerning the Incarnation, as is shown by the account of the most divine Gabriel, who learned the things concerning holy John, and who also announced the good news to the Virgin, that she would conceive of the Holy Spirit the incarnate God the Word. Manly: The manly theurgy is the incarnation of Christ, according to which, being God, He worked divine things in the flesh. Observe how, having here called Jesus ‘a manly theurgy,’ by saying ‘manly’ he shows that He became a perfect man, and by ‘theurgy,’ that He, being God, is also man — the same one having worked the divine signs. He says shortly after that He is unchangeable; for He remained ever what He was.

And observe again how he says that the deiarchic mystery of the ineffable God-formation came to be in the holy Theotokos Mary. He speaks of ‘God-formation,’ showing that God was formed according to that in which He became man, as it is said: ‘the Word became flesh.’ And ‘deiarchic,’ because, God being the cause and origin of those called gods — angels and righteous men — the mystery of the Incarnation belonged to Him whom he named beforehand ‘Jesus, God.’ And Mary: Note these things against the Nestorians: not all angels were made bold in the mystery of the economy — for when the Lord was taken up after the Passion, there were some who said, ‘Who is this King of glory?’ — for the question betrays ignorance. Note, against the Nestorians and Acephali, that he calls Jesus the supra-essential cause, as being the maker of all things; and that he says He was begotten as we are without change — yet these are not the same and a single nature, even though the same one is both; and that He Himself is both lawgiver and under the law, and that He Himself, as man, was also directed by angels, both in the withdrawal into Egypt and in the return from it; and that He Himself is also the maker of the angels. So that Christ Himself, one in two natures, accomplished the great mystery of the economy; for it is said: ‘who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant.’

Behold, two forms! For what he says here, that He ‘does not spring aside,’ means this: He did not disdain, as man, to obey even angels, but submits obediently to the prefigurations of God the Father made through angels; for it was He Himself who ordained that the human race should be so governed. Unchangeably: For He did not alter His divine nature. He does not spring aside: For the things ordained — that is, foreordained — by Him, He Himself in the last days assumed and showed forth in Himself. And concerning the angel: That the chapter concerning the angel who strengthened the Lord, which is found in the Gospel of Luke, is also spoken of by the great Dionysius, and that it was handed down to him and to Saint Timothy by the apostle Paul rather unwritten, secretly, as a mystery — for Luke wrote down his preaching; and this is shown by his saying, ‘made manifest to us by our priestly traditions.’ See also the other interpretation, which says: since it is said in Isaiah, ‘the angel of great counsel,’ he says that this name befits the child born in His flesh, and why He was called ‘angel’ — because they announced to us the counsel of the Father; for having saved us through His own Passion, He showed that the Father, too, shared in this counsel; for He was not called ‘angel’ as being lower than the Father — this against the Arians.

Do not take the chapter of the angel who strengthened Him contrary to the interpretation of holy Scripture; for it must be understood with respect to the flesh — for elsewhere too the Gospel says, after the temptations, that angels came and ministered to Him, and that He grew weary from the journey, and that He hungered; for all these things show that He assumed a perfect man together with his sufferings. But someone will say, what need was there of an angel when divinity itself was present? We say, then, that God works most of His wonders through angels; and all divine Scripture attests this. Disclosive: According to what He Himself said to the Father: ‘I have manifested Your name to men.’ The heavenly essences: Why, when the Church says that all the holy angels are of one essence, does the divine Dionysius name many powers? Now the great Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, the one from the rhetoricians, in the scholia he composed on the blessed Dionysius his namesake, says this: that secular wisdom is accustomed to call every invisible nature ‘unbegotten,’ and likewise to call the hypostases ‘essences’; and from this he says that such expressions are used by holy Dionysius after the manner of those outside, by a loose usage. Disclosure: That is, the disclosure, or clarification. They name: He says that the last order of the intelligible beings is properly addressed as ‘angels,’ while the ranks that transcend it are addressed otherwise, some of which he also names; in the following chapter he mystically recalls the nine orders; but now he says fully that the higher ranks know all that the lower ranks are initiated into by illumination, and also know other things unknown to those below them; and even though this is so, nevertheless all the intelligible ranks are sometimes called by the generic name ‘angels’ as well.

And he also says why, as in the hundred-and-second psalm: ‘Bless the Lord, all His angels’; and in the hundred-and-third: ‘who makes His angels spirits,’ and so forth. But the reasoning does not convert — for the lower ranks are not named by the designation of the higher — and the lower ranks are mystagogically instructed through the higher powers. Completing: That is, the last rank of the angelic ordinances. And we say: One might ask: did these ranks of the heavenly beings, the higher and the lower and the still lower, come to be such that one is higher and another lower? And we say that God created all intelligible beings self-determining; for if man became self-determining, though made of clay and a soul, how much more did the intelligible powers, which have nothing earthly or heavy, become self-determining? For divine Scripture itself establishes this, saying that the devil fell willingly from the angelic order; and this divine man himself, two pages before, concerning the angelic powers, says that they intellectively shape themselves toward the God-imitating and raise themselves up in a supracosmic manner toward the deiarchic likeness, desiring to form their intellective character — from all of which it is shown that the intelligible powers are self-determining and self-choosing. Fittingly, then, he says that each is illumined with divine understanding in proportion to its own desire for the good; wherefore they are also called ‘ranks,’ by degree, as though the desire in them were graduated.

For this reason, he says, it makes no sense here to call the last rank ‘seraphim’ or ‘thrones.’ Note, too, why all the orders are called ‘angels’: because those who are properly angels lead sacred men up to the divine rays known to them. But just as this: Namely, the order of angels. Those pertaining to us: Filled with these most contemplative mysteries, the sacred Dionysius reveals, saying that the last rank, called ‘angels,’ leads by the hand, in a pedagogical manner, the hierarchs of the Churches among men toward the ascent to God; while this lower rank, our own instructor, and the ranks set successively above by degree, the higher instruct as mystagogues the lower ones as being beneath them. Of the rank allotted: That is, of the last, I mean that of the angels. Note, too, that he holds that all the names of the nine orders are common to each order, because of their common illumination from the God-formed source unto the lightgiving that comes from God, even if not equally. It is possible, he says, to name all the intellective and incorporeal ranks in common also in another way, that is, according to the Godformed character, which consists in being like God, so far as this is attainable by each of them; so that all the supracosmic ranks are called ‘God-formed,’ and all of them have another communion as well: the gift of the most luminous illumination from God, even though the illumination is given to each in proportion to what is attainable by it, whether less or more.

And in the discourse On the Divine Names he says that only the commanders of every order are properly called ‘divine.’ Properties: Note how he calls the proportions proper to each order ‘properties.’ Chapter VI §1. Only precisely: That God alone, who also deifies them, knows precisely both them and their ministries; and they themselves also know themselves and their own affairs. For we know nothing precisely concerning them, except what we have been taught from divine Scripture. Nine: Note that there are nine divine orders of the intelligible beings. §2. Hierophant: He is accustomed to call his own teacher ‘hierophant’ — either the most divine apostle Paul or Saint Hierotheus, as was said in the discourse On the Divine Names; but here I think he means no other than Saint Paul; for it belonged to no one else but him who reached even the third heaven and was initiated into these matters. First triadic order: Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. Nearest: Concerning the first of the sacred orders, which draws near to God. Most holy: One who beholds God with understanding and worthily can grasp this first, triadic, and God-formed commanding-order both from Ezekiel, who speaks of a throne first, upon which God was seen, and then immediately next to it the divine cherubim; and in Isaiah, the most holy seraphim standing in a circle around God, beholding Him. These show their portion, which stands highest above all, next to God; and this is made clear in almost the same way also in the Revelation of Saint John the apostle, evangelist, and theologian.

Immediately: It is said ‘immediately’ because there is no other order before it. Note, too, that he calls the thrones — that is, the many-eyed and many-winged cherubim and seraphim — the powers highest of all, and of the one triadic hierarchy. The renowned: He hints at holy Paul. He lists the next two triadic holy commanding-orders of the intelligible beings from the bottom upward; for the first are the dominions, then next the powers, then the authorities. He himself, however, having placed the authorities first, took the dominions in the middle; and of the third, ministering triad, first the principalities, then next the archangels, and last the angels. Now here he did not mention them in this way, but named them taking them from the bottom upward. The Apostle, in his letters to the Romans and to the Ephesians, mentions some of the angelic orders, but does not set forth this order. The great Dionysius makes clear that the divine Apostle handed these things down to the saints as a mystery. Chapter VII §1. Again the title: Again the title ascends from below to what is higher; for the third are seraphim, the second cherubim, and the first thrones. He wrote it, then, in reverse order. Appellation: Note that every name of the sacred beings contains the meaning of the order’s specific activity, as the interpretations of the names of the holy seraphim and cherubim show.

Of theophanies: For the first theophanies are worked in, and operate toward, the first order. Disclosive: Instead of ‘interpretive’ and ‘representative.’ God-formed: Since he speaks of ‘god-formed habits’ with respect to the divine minds, one must not suppose that the great Dionysius means these intelligible virtues as an accident, as though acquired in ourselves too, as one thing in another subject, as it were a quality supervening; for accident and subject are banished from that realm, since all composition and the formlessness of matter are exiled from there. For if one thing were in another, as an accident in a subject, that essence would not live of itself, nor could it be deified of itself, so far as attainable, on account merely of the order preserved as one thing in another; the habits spoken of in them, then, are essentialized in themselves, not as an accident in a subject, on account of their immateriality. Whence the great Dionysius, further on in the discourse On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chapter four, says that the habits in them are essential. Of habits: Note that the divine powers possess the Godformed character by way of habit. A habit is an abiding quality. From this, then: It is shown from this that they are selfdetermining, acquiring the virtues by habit. This is set forth more fully by Ammon of Adrianople, in the discourses he wrote Against Origen, Concerning the Resurrection.

Of the most exalted: Why they are called thrones. Of the lowly footing: Instead of, ‘of the base toward what is lowly.’ Note, too, what the aim of every hierarchy is. Of remission: He signifies by the thrones a certain most exalted nature, set immediately after God by Him, attending to nothing material — as is shown by their having nothing of a lowly footing of remission, that is, of yielding and of an inclination downward, but an ascending movement toward God, attending upward. And he well added ‘supracosmically,’ instead of ‘incorporeally’ and ‘immaterially’ and ‘intellectively’ — for lest you should suppose the ascending way to be bodily, he added ‘immaterially.’ God-bearing: Note that he also calls the order of the holy thrones ‘God-bearing,’ as intellectively bearing and resting God. Observe, then, since the blessed Basil the Cappadocian called the flesh of Christ ‘God-bearing,’ how this must be understood in each case. But the flesh of the Lord Himself is united to God the Word Himself according to essence and according to hypostasis, wherefore He Himself is also said by the Fathers to ‘bear flesh’ and to have ‘put on flesh’; what absurdity is there, then, if His flesh too is called ‘God-bearing,’ as bearing God the Word by an undivided union, being properly and truly called His own flesh? But these angelic orders, having God in themselves by grace, in a manner ineffable in speech and inconceivable in thought, are called ‘God-bearing’ for this reason: that the first powers partake first of God, and thus impart to those beneath them the illumination that has come upon them.

§2b. To the first: Thus the reading, taken by way of elevation, must be understood: it must be thought that the hierarchy proper to the first essences is the one alike to them in every way, while the rest receive it through an intermediary. Of the invisible: Note that these first three ranks are greater than every invisible and visible power. c. Having come to be: That is, created. Of imaginings: That they are incapable of receiving any material imagining, and are unmixed with any relaxation, because the divine powers are not only freed from stains and defilements, but do not even at all know any diminishment or lessening toward the worse. Understand this, not as though they were unchangeable by nature, but that, being selfdetermining through their exceeding desire toward the good, having inclined toward the Divine, they remained so, possessing, as it were, a habit of immovability. For God alone is unchangeable by nature; but if these had been created so by nature, the devil would not have fallen. But all these too are of one and equal order; for the good that comes from nature admits of no diminution. d. Of self-identical movement: This holy man says their movement is ‘self-identical,’ as being unvarying and unchanging, remaining ever the same. Their movements are the unceasing activities of their acts of intellection; for they are minds never silent.

And note the ‘unchangeable’ with respect to their love of God, and read the fourth chapter of the discourse On the Divine Names, and the eighth chapter of the present discourse. e. Contemplative: Note how these holy ranks are called ‘contemplative,’ and that they do not acquire the knowledge of God through symbols or the theorems of Scripture, as we do. f. Beholders of intelligible things: Those who oversee the mysteries are called ‘beholders’; and these things are revealed to the saints through sensible things spoken symbolically concerning God, which cannot be conceived with respect to the powers above. Contemplation: Note that the ‘thrice-shining contemplation’ spoken of here means the one Godhead in three hypostases. Of Jesus: He speaks of ‘communion with Jesus’ as participation in the glory and ineffable brightness of the body of Christ; for He sits together with the Father even with In images: Concerning the phrase ‘in images they impress the likeness,’ where it should properly agree grammatically otherwise — let no one suppose it a solecism, as though the great Dionysius were ignorant; rather, know precisely that, being in truth an Athenian and thoroughly Attic, he speaks this way deliberately, following an Attic idiom of joining masculine participles with feminine nouns, as the poets and the comedians also do. Theurgic: Note that the likeness to the Lord Jesus is theurgic — that is, it makes gods of those who are made like Him; and note how these ranks are made like Christ immediately and without symbols, receiving this directly from Him.

To the first-working: Note that these powers are also firstcreated, and that they possess the virtues of the Lord Jesus And having been perfected: Note how these divine powers are called ‘perfected.’ Analytic: He speaks of the science of the various things — the interpretive and clarifying exposition of the intricate sacred tradition, which the lower ranks also need, as he says next, and much more so do men; for without expositions that analyze the manifold wisdom of the holy theorems, it is not possible to understand them, neither for us, nor for those ranks above the first three. Whence he says that, of the lower ranks, each first rank alone acts as hierarch, and no other power; but of the hierarchy of these highest orderings, God alone acts as hierarch, and no other power. Being hierarchized: That is, being mystagogically led. This, then: Scriptural proofs of what has been said. §3. To be taught: Note the ‘to be taught’; for it shows that they are not such by nature. The highest of all: Since they are higher than all and have nothing above them, so far as concerns the other powers, they are fittingly initiated first into divine knowledge by God Himself alone, as the highest. Into the heavens: Note, against the Basilians, that is, the Nestorians, that He who was taken up as man, Jesus Christ, is Himself the Lord of all intelligible beings and the King of glory, as those being initiated learn from those who say, ‘lift up your gates, O rulers,’ and inquire, ‘who is this King of glory?’, and again hear, ‘the Lord of powers,’ and so forth.

And against the Acephali and the Eutychians, that, though He is Lord of powers, He is nevertheless flesh and manifestly man, as also shown by the astonishment of the ranks that follow at this strange thing. Of theurgy: He well called the economy on our behalf ‘theurgy’; for truly all the works of the Lord’s economy were the works of God — the holy birth, and the healings, the signs at the Passion, and the resurrection. For I say: The words ‘For I speak righteousness and a decree of salvation’ are Isaiah’s; and see how he has understood them. And I marvel: The saying must be construed thus: I marvel how the first ranks, as though intermediate, reverently desire the deiarchic illuminations. Mid-flying: He called them ‘mid-flying,’ as not soaring to the very summit of the height, but attaining to the middle; and ‘to be perplexed’ signifies their saying, ‘Who is this that comes from Edom?’ They ask: Observe with how much fear and reverence the very highest of all the ranks, as intermediate, and not the very first, ask one another — first the words in Isaiah, ‘Who is this that comes from Edom? the redness of his garments from Bosor,’ and then, as though permitted by God, they say to Him: ‘Why are your garments red?’ Of the all-holy purification: Note how he says that the divine ranks are purified, illumined, and perfected.

Of the purification: Note what purification is with respect to the minds, and what ignorance is. Of boundless light: ‘Boundless’ means great and abundant. Is perfected: Note how these divine ranks are purified, illumined, and perfected. By way of habit: ‘By way of habit’ is the abiding and unrelinquished apprehension of the knowledge that has been illumined in them. The one in a circle: Since he says that these first commandingorders both stand and circle around God without mediation, one must clarify how they both stand and move, as in a circling dance around God, taking his starting point from Isaiah, who says: ‘and seraphim stood around him; each had six wings,’ and adds, ‘and with two they flew.’ How, then, did they, standing, fly around in a circle? It must be understood thus: every mind, having shone forth from God, the cause of all, since it has shone forth from its Maker, is said to move around Him as around a center — the movement being not a local one, but intellective and living. Such is the circular movement of a mind: everything that thinks either thinks as being mind, or as partaking of mind. That which is mind thinks primarily; that which partakes of mind thinks secondarily. In this respect, then, insofar as, being mind, it thinks, it may be said to move; and this movement is conceived as circular insofar as, turning back and coming to be around itself, it will think itself, and Him before it, from whom it shone forth; as, then, having been brought forth from God’s willing, it will be around Him — that is, around the desire and love of God, as around a center; for the secondary beings are not united to those before them, but what comes to be resembles a kind of dance; for begotten things, being desirous of what is proper to them, gaze intently upon their begetter; that which is turned in its intellection toward what is before it, then, introduces the notion of circular movement.

Since, then, God is everywhere: Since, then, God is everywhere, those who everywhere accompany Him, by their willing always to think Him, exult in this and dance around, as it were, in joy. A mind, then, is said to be in itself and to hasten toward itself; that which is in itself, and signifies immortality, has rest — for according to being, which is to exist immortally, it is understood to stand still; but according to its hastening toward itself, it moves, not wishing to be somehow diffused into intellections outside itself and material. According to its self-identical movement, then, it does not stand still, but moves; but according to its essence, ever remaining the same, it has rest, not movement. There is, then, by nature, in each of the minds, an impulse — the desire toward God, and the circular dance around Him as around a center, as of a circle around the point, that is, the center, from which it was constituted; for indeed, by natural necessity, each of the beings dances the dance around God, desiring being for the sake of being. Thus, then, all things are around the King of all, and for His sake all things exist, and He is the cause of all good things. And when he says that the first beings dance immediately around God, as having nothing before them, he shows that the second and the third — that is, the sensible things — dance around God proportionally, through the mediation of those before them, as has been said.

The intelligible things: Intelligible things are forms and properties of distinct existences; and in incorporeality, immaterial things have no need of place in order to be separated, as all bodies do; for where there is body, there is also the place that is to contain bodies without confusion. As a vulture: These are Ezekiel’s words. From His place: How must place be understood with respect to God, since Scripture everywhere says that the Divine is unbounded, and: ‘heaven is His throne, and earth the footstool of His feet’; and again: ‘He has weighed the valleys in a balance, and the earth in the hollow of His hand’; and again: ‘if I ascend into heaven, You are there; if I descend into Hades, You are present.’ What place, then, did Ezekiel conceive for God? We say that God illumines, for those who seek Him with their whole movement, the things that seem impossible to us; for divine Scripture says: ‘if anyone keeps my commandments, I and the Father will come and make our dwelling with him.’ So then, the intelligible powers, and the souls of the saints, and of all who keep the commandments, might fittingly be called the place of God, and His restingplace; for elsewhere too He says: ‘my Spirit has rested upon them.’ In the treatise on the divine hymns: Note that he also composed another treatise, On the Divine Hymns.

The divine places: What the place of God is. Places of the deiarchic rest: The saying, ‘What house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest,’ shows that this is not said concerning anything sensible, but concerning these divine minds; or else thus: God wished to signify that the Divine is uncircumscribed. And otherwise: that among those very hearers there was no place of rest for God, on account of their unbelief, as the Lord says in the Gospels: ‘the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ He is Monad: Not only, he says, does the thrice-holy hymn, and the voice glorifying God from His place, show that it has been imparted also to the lower ranks to know and hymn God, but it signifies also something else besides this: that we also call God a Unity and a Monad in three hypostases, and say that He provides for all things, from the first even to the ends of the earth, embracing all things without relation — that is, not containing them corporeally, but by divine providence, supra-essentially. And that He is a Unity and a Monad, the unholy Evagrius too says this, in the second century, chapter three: ‘He Himself is Monad, since the Divine is simple and undivided; for this reason, Monad — for a monad, arithmetically speaking, is simple uncompounded; and Unity for this reason, since the Holy Trinity is also naturally united to itself, and unites all who draw near to it, according to what is said in the Gospel: that they may be one, even as we are one.’

Without relation: He calls ‘unrelated containing’ the providence and embracing power of God that is altogether transcendent and unconnected to the things contained. Mighty: Most powerful. Of the appellation: That their appellation signifies their proper character. Middle triadic order: Dominions, Powers, Authorities. Unenslaved: That every intelligible power is implacably disposed toward evil. §2. As an implacable dominion: Here he piously mocks the error of the Greek philosophers, who named certain particular ‘implacable’ powers of their own, as having come into existence from certain other, prior three powers — not, indeed, created by God as particular lights. And they say that these implacable ones are subordinate to the intelligible powers that put them forward, restraining them and, as it were, opposing and holding back both those before them and themselves, so that they should not fall into matter — being, in this respect, weaker than the powers that put them forward, inasmuch as they need to be held back from falling. This, then, in summary, is their teaching. But the great Dionysius wisely says the very opposite: he says that they subsist creatively from God, whose likeness they also bear toward dominion, just as we too who were created according to His likeness; and he says that they possess the implacable character against every relaxation by the very principle of dominion, cutting off and, as it were, severing, and not allowing desire toward sensible things to prevail — not restraining those before them.

And he calls sensible and bodily things ‘servility’ and ‘unfreedom’ and ‘vain opinion,’ since these do not allow the contemplation of the things that truly are, but drag one down from unswerving steadfastness to a groveling subjection to vanities. He again calls material things ‘unlikeness,’ as never remaining in identity, but ever changing. Of sovereign rule: He called the Godhead ‘sovereign rule,’ since it stands as the origin and cause of every dominion. They do not fail: Note how he says everywhere that the higher powers impart their own gifts to those after them, and that the powers strengthen the ranks beneath them; and we know that an angel is written to have strengthened Daniel, and others too; and, greatest of all, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, inasmuch as He was also man, as it stands in the Good order: This must be construed together with what was said above, since I think it signifies something in common. Assimilated: That the intelligible powers also impart, so far as is lawful for them, as being angels, something of the authority to those after them. For it is purified: How, and by what means, are the middle ranks purified, illumined, and perfected; and that Scripture has it that one angel conveys the divine symbols to another. And through a middle agent: That the perfections that come through intermediaries are dimmer than those worked first by God, which are the first.

The perfection said to be through another: According to what is set down concerning the prophets Zechariah and Daniel and Ezekiel. Being dimmed: He said ‘being dimmed’ not on account of any weakness proper to itself, but on account of the limited capacity of the recipients; for this is what ‘a repetition of perfection’ signifies — that the second beings are perfected more dimly. The skilled ones: Note that priests handed these things down to the great Dionysius. He called the first divine powers ‘selfmanifest,’ since they receive the divine illuminations from themselves; for the remaining powers do not receive the divine gifts of knowledge through themselves, but through those set above them. Of the priestly tradition: Note that it is a priestly tradition to know concerning the order of the minds. Of illuminations: Proof of what has been said, that the second beings are initiated by the first, from the prophet Zechariah. Having delivered up: Concerning those handed over to the By every kind of means: Observe that God contrives all things for the turning-back of those who go astray. Understand ‘gently’ instead ‘benevolently,’ or ‘exceedingly and greatly.’ For it is common: That all the intelligible powers are called ‘angels’ by a common name. Of the subordinate: Of those set lower, of secondary rank. Going before: Going, perhaps, before the prophet; or perhaps before the greater angel came upon him.

Then, from him, the divine word: This intends to show that even among the angelic orders the first announce the will of God to the second. And ‘abundantly’ instead of ‘very much,’ from Ezekiel. To be separated: The Lord spoke well through the prophet Ezekiel, so that sinners might be separated from the righteous; for this too He is shown to have done in the Gospels, when He divided the sheep from the goats. Behold, in this too the Old Testament harmonizes with the New. Who the ankle-length garment: Concerning the one clothed in the ankle-length tunic. Note that the angel commanded to set the mark had an ankle-length tunic and a girdle about the loins, a garb befitting a priest; while the other angels had an axe in their hands, which signifies a certain punitive power — from which we should understand that the form of the angels is shaped according to what is about to be accomplished, which we ought also understand concerning the seraphim and cherubim and the other powers, that they have their form suited to their own rank; for those who say the thrice-holy hymn are represented as many-faced, the account signifying that their hymn is unceasing and abundant; so understand also concerning the rest. The mark upon the foreheads: Note that he foreshadowed the divine prefiguration from that event: that the faithful place the life-giving seal upon the forehead and are preserved from the destroyer; but then angels in the form of priests were commanded to do this to the blameless — for the girdle and the ankle-length tunic signify the priestly-becoming garb of the priests; but now we, the faithful, imprinting upon ourselves the seal of the cross upon the forehead, escape the enemy; behold, another likeness of the Old to the New.

Note, too, that these are the three triadic orders of the intelligible powers: the first triad, thrones, then cherubim, then seraphim; the second triad, dominions, powers, authorities — these are also called ‘the middle’; the third triad, principalities, archangels, angels; and by a common name, all are ‘angels.’ Of good order: Concerning the good order of the second toward those above them. The most divine Gabriel: Note that Gabriel, too, does not belong to the higher powers, but to the subordinate ones. Of hierarchy: Note that what takes place in the Church today is an imitation of the mystical hierarchy above; for the priests, too, place the seal of the life-giving cross upon those approaching the mystery, so that they may be separated from the unbelievers, and so that they may escape the enemy; and besides, order is preserved in the holy Church — for what the subdeacon is permitted to do, those below him do not do, and what the presbyter does, the deacon does not do; and, simply put, each has the ministry befitting him; and by a common name, all are called clergy and ministers, as the angels also are. From this one must understand how it was said by the divine Stephen: ‘you who received the law as ordained by angels, and did not keep it.’ Chapter IX §1. Its supra-essential commanding-order: The order of principalities itself manifests the supra-essential commanding-order of the principial origin itself.

§2. Of archangels: Concerning the archangelic order, and what it signifies. Hierarchy: Note the universal principle, that every hierarchy has first, middle, and last powers — that is, the three triadic orders. Most holy: Variant reading: also ‘most sacred.’ How the divine archangels too commune with those before them and those after them. According to the last: That it is the last order of angels, and encompassing the world. The last triadic order: Principalities, Archangels, Angels. And rather: That the last order of the heavenly powers is more properly addressed as ‘angels,’ as drawing near to men, through whom men also are initiated into divine things. For the highest: That the first triad acts as hierarch to the second, and the second to the third; and the third to the priests among men, and oversees what is accomplished by More hidden in form: How some hierarchies are more hidden, others more manifest. To the human hierarchies: Which of our own hierarchically preside over us. Note the proof from Daniel — that is, that the last order presides over the hierarchy pertaining to us. And indeed also the hierarchy: Construe in common: ‘so that it may be in order’ — and indeed, that the hierarchy from God too may be in order, and so forth. But if someone should say: How, when good angels presided over the nations, only Israel knew God — for each nation has an angel allotted to it, as the Jews had Michael, whom he says belongs also to the last order of the holy angels.

That it was not through the angels: He says that this failure was not due to the causality of the presiding angels, but due to each one’s own self-determined inclination toward what is not fitting. By self-love: Note that each is responsible to himself for both good and evil; and ‘self-love’ and ‘self-will,’ side by side, signify self-complacency. And this is attested: Not that God chose only Israel, but that Israel alone was willing to follow God; for so too the interpretation of the name signifies, ‘a mind seeing God’; thus we ought to understand what is said in the Song of Moses: ‘the Lord’s portion became Jacob’s allotment,’ which signifies Israel — for God does not love Israel alone, as the Apostle too showed in many places, saying: ‘is God not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles too, since God is one’ — but Israel was the first to walk after God, since it later fell away and was itself also cast off; for men, possessing selfdetermination, make God to be with them when they will. To have experienced this: That Israel itself also fell away. Life: That man is self-determining. Of visions: What the Father says here can be seen occurring also in the case of sunlight: making its own transmission through transparent materials, but not likewise through denser ones — either not transmitting at all, or only dimly.

What difference in matter causes here, then, the inequality of self-determined inclination produces with respect to divine illumination. Unlikeness: That is, the deflection of the eyes of the mind. Or renders it wholly unparticipated: See how he says that we ourselves are responsible for receiving the divine illumination — whether we receive little or much of it, or receive none of it at all — when we become resistant to it, as it were hard, that is, stony; for the Lord Himself says in the Gospels: ‘God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham’ — for what is hard and impossible for us is possible for God. We turned away: Note that this passage above all silences the untimely and undiscerning ignorance of those who dare to say that these divine writings are Apollinarius’s — not conjecturing the antiquity of the man from the persons he mentions, but calling the name ‘Dionysius’ a false attribution; nor noting that he here speaks of him as having turned from idolatry, when Apollinarius was not from such a background. Readily toward all: That God, being good by nature, holds Himself ready for all to partake of His holiness and to have their soul illumined; the remaining question, then, is what depends on us — how we desire to share in His knowledge, so that self-determination may be shown; for God is not the cause of evils, which is separation from Him.

And the construction runs: since indeed even over the other nations no foreign gods presided, but there is one origin of all; and that over the other nations too there was one origin — God — who ruled, and then, through their own angels, acting as hierarchs. Melchizedek: Note what is said concerning Melchizedek, as being a hierarch, and as having come to know the truly existing God by the guidance of angels; and he said ‘those who follow’ on account of the voluntary and unconstrained character of this. §4. To Pharaoh: Note that he says the visions in dreams came to Pharaoh and to Nebuchadnezzar through angels, as well as their disclosures, that is, interpretations. Servants: Joseph, of the Egyptians; Daniel, of the Babylonians — angels presiding over these nations, revealing the visions by the will of God. By allotment: Note the interpretation of the words of the Song of Moses: ‘When the Most High divided the nations, when He scattered the sons of Adam, He set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and the Lord’s portion became His people Jacob, Israel the allotment of His inheritance.’ One must not suppose, he says, that the nations were divided out to other gods or angels; for it was not by lot that Israel fell to God while the others fell separately to other angels, as though these did not minister to God for anything else — as if this or that nation’s angel had no business with God beyond his own nation.

Nor did God take this or that nation with equal or opposing honor, and each of the angels his own nation, as it is said in Isaiah, that the devil said he had for himself the mountains toward the north — that is, the nations — and opposed God and would be like the Most High; for all things are slaves of God, and He Himself rules over all, but He honors those who know Him above the rest, and for this reason He too is said to rule over them, even though they may have an angel set over them, as Israel had Michael. And how is God, ruler of all, said to be, by way of special distinction, the God of Israel, and Israel His own? We say that God is the God of all, but is rightly called God of those who draw near to Him and worship Him alone; the rest, worshiping idols, make for themselves other gods. Israel became the Lord‘s portion: He interprets well the saying, ‘Israel became the Lord’s portion.’ It would follow, then, if Israel alone knew God, that Israel alone would be overseen by the Lord and His angels; but even in this the immeasurable and inscrutable mercy of God is shown: that even to those who seem not to be of His portion, He put forward His own angel as guardian of their nation — ‘for He makes His sun to rise on the just and the unjust.’

And again: ‘He does not desire the death of the sinner, but rather that he turn and live.’ But you will say: how is it, then, that those who had angels given by God to preside over and lead them fell away from the living God and worshiped idols? We say that all necessity has been banished from those who look toward God, and self-determination has been introduced in its place; if, then, anyone chooses to be with God, he is guarded by the angel and set in order — for ‘the Lord,’ it says, ‘knows the way of the righteous’; and again: ‘I was young, and now I am old, and I have not seen the righteous forsaken.’ But if anyone chooses the opposite, he is not compelled by the angel to do this or that; for such a life is rather brutish, and not selfdetermined. Indeed, concerning Israel too he says that it sinned and made a calf: ‘you have rejected the knowledge of God,’ it says, ‘and gone after your own heart’ — that is, you preferred your own will. Michael: That Israel too, even though it became the Lord’s portion, nevertheless had its own particular angel, Michael. Willingly: He says this on account of self-determination and the absence of compulsion. Chapter X §1. Rite-perfecting: By ‘rite-perfecting’ he means the originating and causal power of their perfection.

More hidden, indeed: Note that here he clearly shows for what reason the ranks of the heavenly powers are such that one is highest, another middle, another last; for he says, concerning the higher rank, which is thrones, seraphim, and cherubim, that, being illumined by divine knowledge itself, on account of reaching up to it without mediation and having nothing that comes before it, it is thus purified, illumined, and perfected by the divine rite-perfecting power itself; for if it had been created in such a way as to be first, it would have needed neither purification nor illumination, having been so formed as to be worthy of the first rank. Besides, observe what this divine man says shortly after: that it is rather more hidden because it is more intellective and more given to simplicity; for from these things one may better grasp their self-determination; for if it had not opened and applied itself more than the lower ranks, it would not have drawn near to God; but having drawn near to God willingly, it is the more purified and illumined and perfected — that is, works the things that are perfect, instead of the things pertaining to God; and this, I think, Scripture hints at: ‘draw near to Him and be illumined, and let not your faces be ashamed.’ So understand also concerning the powers that follow, that each sees God according to its own proportion; this he states more clearly also at the end of this chapter.

§2. Disclosive: That all the angels disclose to those below them the lights that come to them from those before them. ‘Disclosive’ must be taken in common. And he speaks of the first commanding-order of the seraphim as moved from God. Seraphim: Why does the divine hymn say that, concerning the seraphim, one cried to the other? Because the first announce the divine mysteries to the second. §3. Not unreasonably: For, ascending from the simpler initiations — which the Apostle called the drinking of milk — to the middle ones, and from these to the greater, that is, to the food of the perfect, he displays the last rank and power. It is also possible to understand the passage otherwise: to call the first the upward stretching toward what is set above; the middle, the turning and coiling around it; and the last, that which leads up what is beneath — which is to be understood especially with respect to the angels. And first and middle: Note that the mind of each of us has first, middle, and last ranks for thinking about God, corresponding to these three orders; understand it thus: that every mind has an essence, according to which it is first; then also a power, according to which, doing what is proper to it, it is pious. He makes this clear also in the next chapter. Whence from this: Whence from this it may be clearly and incontestably grasped that what we noted a little before is true; for see how he speaks: every heavenly and human mind has first, middle, and last elevations, according to which each comes to participate in the hierarchic illuminations.

First, that he has spoken of an equal rank between men and the powers above — and we know of no man, whether prophet or righteous one, who set nothing of his own initiative toward drawing near to God. See what he who reached the third heaven says: ‘I buffet my body and enslave it, lest, having preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.’ Then he clearly states here the selfdetermination of the angels as well, and the desire of their own impulse; and, so that none of the overly contentious should quarrel, he says, as it were in an epilogue, that nothing is without need and self-complete — that is, perfect of itself — except God alone; so that angels and men both need advancement and perfection. Chapter XI §1. For it is not possible to say, as in the case of the angels: For the powers belong to the second and middle triad, ranked after the dominions; so that not because they are the last were all the ranks called ‘powers,’ as in the case of the angels. Of the last: That the higher orders possess what belongs to the last, while the last do not possess what belongs to the higher; so it was also said above, since the first possess the illumination wholly, and the last only partially, as he says next. This can also be found in the Church: for the priest is able to do all that belongs to those below him, such as deacons and the rest, but the deacon is not permitted to do what belongs to priests; for we said above that our hierarchy imitates the heavenly order.

He rightly added ‘wholly,’ for they partake partially. §2. And we say: How are all called ‘powers’? For the last rank is that of the principalities, archangels, and angels; and yet even these are sometimes named ‘powers.’ Into essence and power: As an example, one should say that the nature of fire is its essence, its capacity to illuminate is its power, and the effect of the power is its activity — that is, to illuminate and to burn. Or that we call them heavenly powers: ‘Powers’ is an equivocal name; for it is used both of the particular order — that is, the second of the middle triadic ordering — and, in common, of all the orders, as each possessing a certain power. To the subordinate: ‘Us’ must be understood in common. Note how he says above that the angelic ranks are divided into three: into essence, power, and activity; here, however, he states the reason for which all are called ‘powers.’ They have, over and above, also the ranks: He seems here to say, in a way, that the angelic orderings were creatively appointed according to merit — though he does not set this forth clearly; for above, in the previous chapter, he plainly states their desire and understanding to be the cause of their higher rank, since indeed he also said that they are purified and illumined and perfected.

One might, then, venture to say piously that God, foreknowing the movement of their desire, brought forth their ranks as worthy of them — from which one could not say that they are able to fall, on account of having acquired a certain habit toward the good through their exceeding will; but that the angels, that is, the last orderings, could perhaps also be turned toward the worse — for he called them ‘encompassing the world’ — from among whom, I think, the devil too once was, before he fell. And if anyone knows a more perfect account of this, I ask to learn it. Note, too, how the angelic orderings were creatively brought forth according to rank. Chapter XII §1. It is asked: How are our priests called ‘angels’? §2a. For we say that of the whole: Note that even if the last fall short of the wholeness of the higher powers, nevertheless they too partake of a partial wisdom and knowledge. b. And those of the ranks beneath them: What is the whole wisdom and participation, and what the partial; and ‘according to its own power’ must here be understood as the power of free choice. c. It has been determined: Note that ‘it has been determined’ does not signify some fated and inescapable necessity, as many are accustomed to say, but ‘determined’ instead means ‘ordered according to a certain fixed proportion of power’ — of the mind, perhaps — beyond which one ought not to inquire.

§3d. You will find: How both the angels, by a common name, and men who love God are called ‘gods,’ according to: ‘I said, you are gods.’ Of the transcendent: How, and which, and with respect to what, they have been deemed worthy of the divine names. Chapter XIII §1. The seraph: Note: ‘the seraph,’ with masculine inflection. For one might raise a difficulty: Since it seems to contradict what was said; for he said before this that the lower ranks are initiated by those set above them, not directly from the highest — for instance, the third rank from the middle, and the middle from the one highest of all. This was inquired into, and resolved in various ways. §2a. Of the sins spoken of: That it is not possible to be initiated into divine things unless a remission of sins first takes place. For ‘seraph’ is interpreted ‘one who sets on fire,’ or ‘one who warms.’ §3b. Another interpretation: you, exceedingly: Note that ‘you, exceedingly’ is not said altogether by way of comparison with what is moderate — that is, it is not said ‘not exceedingly’ as strange, so that we should suppose that it is altogether strange but only moderately strange; rather it stands in place of the positive, that is, ‘it does not seem to me strange,’ declaring this reverently in a philosophical manner; but it is also used instead of ‘in no way,’ as though he said, ‘in no way strange.’

c. Having fashioned: Note that he says the angels set over the prophets fashion the divine visions of the prophets, bringing into imagination the things that seem to be seen; for they saw riddles and symbols, not the bare things and essences themselves. Unto God: You see that the angels who initiate the prophets into revelations did so in this way: leading them up first to God, the properly universal cause; and secondly to the first minds after God, appointed by position and rank as godformed rulers of the hierarchy leading unto God. He teaches these things in what follows. And through all things: Note that the providence of God pervades all things secretly, and that a lower angel is likewise called ‘seraph’ by a common name. Proportionally: That is, He extends His illuminations according to the measure of the recipients’ power. According to the capacity of each: How the divine illuminations are transmitted more brightly to some, more dimly to others, he clarifies by an example. Of solar light: This example was also given above; and he calls glass and the like ‘the first matter,’ as denser matter he calls, for instance, houses and caves and the like. Otherwise: he calls ‘the first matter’ that which is thin and airy and pure. Again, the heat of fire: He well likens fire to God; for Scripture says, ‘our God is a consuming fire,’ and that fire both warms one thing and consumes another; so too God illumines those who draw near to Him, but consumes the unbelieving — those who do not approach and draw near to Him in faith.

But toward the resistant materials: Such as diamond and water. Of natural things: He calls sensible and visible things ‘natural.’ One should know that, among intelligible beings, the virtues are not by accident, as with us, but God is living virtue, self-complete and without need, since He is supraessentially essentialized and, in a communicative manner, proceeds forth into the intelligible beings that exist from Him as their cause; God, then, is the fountain of virtue, living and deifying, according to what is attainable, those who partake of it; but nevertheless He proceeds forth providentially into the intelligible beings essentialized by Him, and by this does not cast off being the summit and perfection of the minds. Not by accident, then, do the minds possess virtue, as we do — prudence from practice or learning, or righteousness, or temperance through self-restraint, or courage from bodily and sinewy fitness; for virtue is not in them as one thing in another, but their working of what is proper to them and their unceasing stretching-out toward God and into themselves — this, the God-imitating in them, is virtue; yet order preserves the character of one thing being in another, as in: ‘your soul lives in me,’ instead of, the imparting of teaching; but accident in a subject does not exist there — for those beings are uncompounded and immaterial, and their forms are lives, not as in matter.

And these things the one who wrote them out understood. Keep in mind, however, my own notes three pages back; for here too the notion of their desiring assists my understanding; and the Fathers too understood it thus, and he himself seems to affirm the selfdetermination of the angels, as you will find shortly. Commanding-order: That is, God. It is, then, for all: Note that God is the essence of light, both virtue by nature and virtue by position. They lead: Note that, after God, the highest minds are the origin of every virtue, through whom, as the first, we have the illumination of God. A fiery property: Note that the highest minds are fiery according to their proper character. Thronal: He well interprets what the thrones of the heavenly beings are: to have an understanding of God that is opened wide; and he calls ‘thronal’ the property proper to the holy thrones, appointed by allotment. Of the subordinate: Concerning the ranks set below, how they partake of divine things through the first. The things spoken of: He has come to the exposition of the matter at hand. He said, then: Concerning the one who said that it was not the seraph who appeared to Isaiah, but one of the lower angels; for he contends against this opinion, which he set forth a little before at the beginning of the chapter, where he says, ‘but another, not exceedingly strange,’ and so forth.

As in symbols: Since he sees the seraphim as six-winged. And established around God: For the oracle has it that ‘it stood around him.’ He learned, then: See what Isaiah learned, whom he calls a theologian: that the Divine is unknown even to the highest powers, and that nothing among beings resembles Him. We have said, in the book before this one, that ‘beings’ means intelligible and sensible things; and the prophet is initiated into these things after being cleansed of his own sins, concerning which we shall speak shortly. He was initiated concerning the seraphim: What he was initiated into concerning the seraphim. Of the appellation: Interpretation of ‘seraph.’ Of wings: What the wings signify. The ascent toward the Divine that is first: For he said above, at the end of the tenth chapter, that every heavenly and human mind has first, middle, and last ranks. Fittingly, then, he said that this power has six wings, so that with two it covers its face, with the middle two its feet, and with the remaining two it flies about the Divine, which he called the highest stretching-forth. Note, too, what the many-footed and many-faced character of the seraphim means, and why some parts are covered. Sixfold: Note how he refers the six wings of the holy seraphim to these three ranks. Of the things seen: That is, of the things beheld by the prophet.

Of the more exalted: By covering the face; and of the deeper things, by covering the feet; and by the middle, the due proportion. And the most precious hymnody: The ‘Holy, holy, holy’; and he signifies that an angel too, in proportion to its own power, receives the divine illumination, and itself imparts to the prophets only as much as they can receive, not as much as it itself knows. That it is a purification: What purification is, and how it comes about with respect to intelligible beings from God. And it itself: Namely, the purification, or the participation. To the transcendent beings: For purification is not the same for the incorporeal beings as it is for men. To those around it: Around the deiarchy itself, evidently — that is, around God. It reveals: Namely, purification. But with respect to the second beings: One must observe that he says every incorporeal power differs not a little in its Godformed character; for the highest minds possess the Godformed character in great measure, but it diminishes accordingly, as rank requires, for the remaining minds, down to the last; and still more do our souls fall short of even the last of these — since our soul falls far short of all the minds. The divine illumination, then, is beheld as somehow more gathered and contracted, in proportion to the, as it were, lengthening distance from nearness to God — the divine illumination itself thus gathering own manifestation toward its unified and simple unknowability; for God is unknown, not on account of some variety of reasonings unknown to us, but according to a certain unified immortality with respect to us, incomprehensible once and for all, in a single act.

Fierily: Note that the fiery character belongs to the seraphim, and how, an angel purifying, the seraphim are said to purify, and before these, God. Or of priests: Note that priests are subordinate to the hierarch; and that to illumine is one thing, to purify another; and that a minister is one thing, and a priest another; and that when priests purify or illumine, the hierarch is said to do it. Preserving them unchangeable: That God, who is likewise the maker of all intelligible beings, Himself also holds together and preserves the first essences in unchangeableness and steadfastness; one must understand them as unchangeable with respect to that in which they are — for instance, in immortality, in the life according to which they are essentialized into being light; for in these respects God holds them together and preserves them as essentially unchangeable, and as not turning toward degenerate desires, inasmuch as they are also self-determining. For their stretching-out toward Him belongs to their own intellective free choice, while their perpetual persistence in this belongs to the assistance of God; for all things need God’s help. He who teaches me these things: Note that the great Dionysius learned these things from another. Hierarch: Note that, after God, the highest orderings too are leaders. I was initiated in a god-formed manner: The characterization of the angel — as it were, the purifying angel — spoke these things to Isaiah concerning the seraphim.

Or from himself: The construction of the passage, given by way of hyperbaton after many words, must be resolved thus: your intellective knowledge, then, might either receive this cause, or find it from itself, or learn it from another and rather uncover it for itself; but if it is possible, it might likewise uncover for me too a beloved contemplation concerning angels. ‘To honor’ stands instead of ‘to prefer.’ Note that the angels procure for us the gifts of God. Procuring: Observe that, when God gives us speech at the opening of our mouth, the angels procure it, evidently interceding on our behalf. Thousands: These things are stated in Daniel. The weak and contracted proportion: He called the number of men, compared to that of the angels, a ‘weak proportion’; for it is also said by another — Didymus the Blind, evidently — ‘the ninety-nine sheep are the angels, and the one that was lost is we men.’ Cognitively: Note that he says even the angels themselves know the determinations cognitively, not by learning — as, for instance, how great the number of the heavenly essences is — having been illumined in this too by God. Chapter XV §1. Befitting angels: Such as linen, such as a burning coal. Re-purifications: He calls ‘re-purifications’ the explanatory interpretations, by which the symbols are purified of what seems strange in what is said.

For if: For he said above that the higher powers act as hierarchs to those after them, and the middle to the later, and the later of them to the hierarchs among men. Nor did he say that the same rank both rules over the rank after it and is ruled by them, but rather said this: that the first rank rules, but is ruled by those before it. So understand also concerning what follows. For if to be hierarchized: What he means is this: if we said that the first ranks act as hierarchs of the last, and then again that these same last ranks act as hierarchs of the first ranks, by whom they are also hierarchized, this would be an absurd thing. Not unreasonably: He says it is not absurd to apply the images found in the sacred oracles of Scripture to all the heavenly powers alike, as though all were lofty and salvific and cognitive — though not in like manner, but some more eminently, others more subordinately. And the ascent toward the steep height: The higher and superior. §2. One must begin and inquire: Note why, in the angelic types, the fiery is chiefly employed, and why Scripture, for the most part, speaks of heavenly things as fire-like. And that the seraphim are called ‘those who set on fire.’ Being those who set on fire: Interpretation of ‘seraphim.’

For the sacred writers: Why God too was beheld as fire. For sensible fire: A marvelous natural philosophy concerning fire. We see fire scattered throughout everything, yet unmixed — that is, not commingled with the things in which it exists. And it passes through all things — that is, not as water makes its mixture with the earth in a plainly visible way — so too fire, consuming and devouring the whole; and it is exalted, that is, set above all the elements by way of special distinction, according to its active power; and he calls it unknown and hidden, as existing in certain materials, yet not appearing without friction, or without matter capable of receiving its activity — shown thereby also to be unrelated and uncontemplated. Likewise the other properties of fire must also be considered, which this Father took up, by a reverent elevation and understanding, with respect to God and the angelic natures. Note, too, why the Lord God was often beheld as fire, and in what respect fire is like God. Uncontainable, unmixed, discerning: Note this description, or rather praise, of sensible fire; for it discerns even materials, such as lead from silver, and dissolves solderings; and it is unalterable, in that, while its subject — that is, the very essence of fire — remains, it is not possible for it to be changed in its affections, as, for instance, to become round or cone-shaped, which one can find among earthly things, or to undergo the properties of air, such as being corrupted through exhalations, or thickened, or, like water, to undergo transformations.

Of downward relaxation: For it never proceeds downward. Self-identically moving: Moving in the same way. Without need: That fire is without need of another — although it does need some substrate in order to be kindled; but he does not mean this, but rather that fire does not mix with another element, nor is it blended, as water is with earth; wherefore some among the elements have called it single-substanced. §3. Human-formed: Why the angels too are fashioned in human form. And the difference with respect to sense-perception: Note the difference between the sense-perception of the irrational animals and the sensitive faculty of rational beings, I mean of us; for irrational beings are wholly sense-perception, by which they subsist, being mindless; but in us the sensitive element is slight — for we do not subsist through it, but through the intellective element; whence, even after death, we still exist, being an intellective soul. But among the angels there is not even the slightest trace of the senses, but our condition is a dense place by comparison. He says that man is least with respect to sense-perception, not as though the other animals had more senses, but more active and keener ones. And this he takes as a riddle: that the angels do make use of organs of sense like ours, but far surpass us in the abundance of their intellective power — just as man too, by the superiority of his mind and reason, prevails over irrational nature.

The visual organs: What the eyes of intelligible beings signify, and what the organs of smell — that is, the nostrils — and what the ears, and what taste, and what touch, which he calls the tactile, and what the eyelids and eyebrows, and what the loins, and what the teeth, and what the shoulders and arms, which he calls the forearms, and what the chest, and what the back and the feet, and what the lightness of the wings, and so on. And those of the organs of smell: In these he gives a natural account of the property of the bodily eye; but by way of elevation these are transformed, as are those of the other human members, into a contemplation of the natural powers among the angels. And of nourishing channels: Understand by ‘channel’ the surpassing outpouring of wisdom, according to what is said: ‘I will pour out from my Spirit upon all flesh,’ and so on. For divine knowledge passes from God, through the intelligible powers, unto godly men, according to the proportion of each. Unity-formed: By way of the reception of intellection. By providential power: Every intelligible power, he says, multiplies the divine knowledge that comes to it — that is, it makes it plain, so that it may be understood by us, interpreting the things seen, as you will find in Daniel, when the angel interpreted for him the dream that he saw.

And, again, the heart: The heart is comprehended by us as, so to speak, a center that first receives life, since, according to the divine Basil, the heart is created first; then, as from a center, the whole body is fashioned, so that this life extends everywhere throughout the body — for whether it is the connatural heat that gives life to the body, or the spirit, or the blood, the heart is the source of all these. Wherefore it has seemed to some that the whole vital principle, gathered together, is chiefly and, as it were, first established here — even though it is present throughout the whole body and is not confined to a place, nor circumscribed in a place, nor contained by the body. So, then, also concerning the invisible ranks, whether providing for the whole, or ministerially providing for particular kinds: one must understand them as though established in the middle, in the place, as it were, of a heart, and as established as the center of a fountain-like life — even though they are uncontained and not circumscribed by place or bodily part, over which they have been appointed by God to provide. And the guarding power: Construe the passage thus: the guarding power of the life-giving distribution; then, as with respect to the heart set forth. Wherefore also winged: Why the feet of the angels are winged: to show their self-movement and their tension toward the Divine, and their non-association with earthly things, insofar as passibility is not in them — since angels have also appeared upon the earth.

The lightness of wings: What light, winged things are. And being pure: Pure of external addition, such as foods and clothing, by which our own condition is sustained. The manifold wisdom: The manifold wisdom of God. This is an apostolic saying; and why did this divine man call it ‘manifold’? — although we generally take ‘varied’ as applying to something wicked; besides, here the great Dionysius calls it both ‘simple’ and ‘manifold,’ which seem to be two opposites. We say, then, that he said ‘simple wisdom’ for this reason: to show the uncompoundedness of God, and His need of no duplicity — for God is not wise by learning, but is wisdom itself, absolutely. And ‘manifold,’ because it is transformed into many kinds of knowledge on account of the weakness of those being illumined; for He is a great high priest who sympathizes with our weaknesses. Or, in this way: the wisdom of God is called ‘simple’ with respect to His economy, in that He created all things as God, and in the righteous of that time displayed His own power without concealment, as in the case of Moses and Abraham and the rest; but when He accomplished the mystery of the economy, it might fittingly be called ‘manifold.’ For, having become man, and having come under the law, and having suffered, and having been found among the dead, He thus, through flesh and the weakness inherent in it, triumphed over every enemy, and conquered Hades, granting resurrection to those held captive there; this is the manifold character of His wisdom: that through weakness He prevailed over those who seemed strong.

Universally: In the discourse On the Divine Names, chapter 4, it was fully clarified what ‘intelligible’ and what ‘intellective’ mean; but now the great Dionysius himself clarifies it: for ‘intelligible’ is that which is thought, which is fittingly also said to be illumined by the light; and ‘intellective’ is that which itself thinks, being illumined — and, to speak concisely, subordinate the higher ones essences intellective, are intelligible, thinking subordinate to the thing thought. The divine nature illumines intelligibly; the angelic is illumined intellectively. Priestly garment: He signifies what the priestly vestment in Ezekiel and Daniel means. Their gathering habit: We said above what ‘habit’ means with respect to incorporeal beings. And read in the seventh chapter, ‘the gathered and undispersed character of their acts of intellection’; by these the Father signifies the divine illuminations, and their own identity, ever wound up together in the abiding of the good God. Of unlike things: Of material things, evidently. §5. Geometric: Concerning geometric implements in Ezekiel and Zechariah. Corrective: As the sword in Kingdoms, and the sickle in the prophet Zechariah. §6. Winds: I think he is recalling the passage in David: ‘who walks upon the wings of the winds,’ perhaps signifying the Ascension of Christ; since in what follows too the Father says that they are wrapped as it were in the form of a cloud, on account of what is said: ‘a cloud received him out of their sight.’

Timelessly: He fittingly said ‘timelessly’; for among sensible things, properly, things come to be in time, and more slowly; but among incorporeal and intelligible beings, things are accomplished timelessly, eternally, and without delay; one ought not, then, to speak of time with respect to intelligible beings. Making: Instead of ‘blowing’ or ‘flight.’ And the motion from above: ‘From above,’ toward what is below, as in the case of Jacob’s ladder. Of the airy: Note that he calls the wind an ‘airy spirit.’ Wind-like: Another contemplation of the name ‘winds.’ Symbolic theology: Note also another of his treatises, not extant. And he calls ‘fourfold re-purification’ the anagogical allegory of the four elements; and the symbols, it seems, he rather unfolded there by way of contemplation of the four elements. Note, too, how he interprets ‘the Spirit blows where it wills,’ through what follows: for he says, ‘you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.’ Supracosmically filled: For just as the cloud calls up the water of the sea and pours it out over the face of the earth, according to what is said, ‘He who calls up the water of the sea, and pours it out over the whole face of the earth’ — so too the minds, receiving their own knowledge, spread it out, in the manner of clouds, upon those below them. Without ostentation: He says ‘without ostentation,’ that is, in a blended manner; for the light in a cloud is not cast off.

Rain-bearing: He considers, in another way, what clouds signify; and further on, what he says amber, and bronze, and various colors, and the forms of beasts signify with respect to angels. Receptacle: He named ‘receptacle bosom’ the earth that receives the rains, bringing forth its own fruits through them. §7. But since these things: Concerning the beast-shaped types. §8. Of tracks: Note here a natural fact about the lion; for they say that, wishing to elude those who hunt him, as he walks he effaces his own tracks with his tail, so that they may not be known; whence it is also said concerning God: ‘Your way is in the sea, and Your paths in many waters, and Your tracks shall not be known’; for just as a path is not preserved in waters, nor the tracks of a lion, so neither are the ways of God. Resourceful: For the eagle is a most keen-sighted creature. For it is said that eagles distinguish their genuine offspring from the spurious in this way: if the young stare unblinking at the sun, they are genuine; if not, they are cast out of the nest as spurious. So, then, one who is unable purely to gaze upon the Sun of righteousness is found to be spurious with respect to His knowledge. And of white horses, indeed: Note what white, dark-blue, red, and mixed-colored horses signify; we have fully clarified ‘unlike likeness’ above, in the second chapter of this book.

The motion in a straight line: ‘The straight’ must be fitted to ‘power’; the rest is by way of an intermediary. According to another interpretation: Another consideration concerning the wheels. Gelgel: Note what ‘gelgel’ signifies in the prophet Ezekiel. Of joy: How the heavenly beings, and the Divine itself, are said to rejoice. Passible: He calls human pleasure ‘passible,’ as consisting in the easily-alterable passibility of the body. Ease: The name ‘ease’ is applied to those who do not wish to labor, but choose to live otherwise; the word signifies what is facile and not laborious; but here it rather suggests what is blessed and dispassionate and untroubled. Otherwise, he calls ‘ease’ the facility and comfort of soul in repose together with dispassion; understand it, then, proportionally, also with respect to the angels. Well-being: He said ‘well-being,’ taking it from our own condition; and it signifies being well continually, and an unharmed state. Sacred men: It is not possible to conceive these things as they are, except for those deemed worthy of such perfection — such men as this holy priest says are fitting, so as to be deemed worthy of divine illuminations both concerning the knowledge of beings and concerning the pure stretching-out toward God; for by such illuminations, being deified, the mind, coming to be, as it were, in an easier lot, comes into possession of angelic pleasure, and of the freedom from disturbance found in those beings — according to which the mind, thus finding ease, in the salvation of those being saved, imitates God, dispassionate so far as possible, God who wills all men to be saved, having enjoyed the theurgic visitations of God — that is, of those that work and accomplish gods.

He calls ‘theurgic visitations’ those that work and accomplish gods. That of some, the supracosmic order: Note that one who is ignorant ought not to blush at what he does not know, but should confess his ignorance, and not answer at random concerning what he does not know. One should know, too, that the marks of distinction which the saints still bore while they were Greeks, these they inscribed for themselves without shame even after turning to Christ. For behold, this man too calls himself ‘the Areopagite,’ and the divine Justin, in his discourse To the Greeks, inscribed himself ‘Justin the On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy Chapter I §1a. Theurgic: By ‘theurgic’ he means that which is worked from God — that is, given to men — and that the hierarchy among Christians produces and accomplishes gods. Of traditions: That he received the hierarchic science by tradition. b. You shall not dance it out: That is, you shall not, playfully and irreverently, make it manifest to all the unconsecrated, making the divine and mystical things an occasion for laughter. c. But to the sacred alone: That the holy things must not be revealed to the profane, nor pearls cast before swine. d. The most deiarchic mind: Note, against the Nestorians, that ‘mind’ is said also of God; and ‘sanctification,’ that is, purity unto holiness. e. According to power: Of the intellective and intelligible essences themselves, according to their power; for it is not according to His own power that Jesus acts — for He is of boundless power, being also God.

f. He compresses: The interpretation of these things is in the fifth chapter of the discourse On the Divine Names. g. Many differences: I think ‘many differences’ refers to the manifold cares of fleshly desires, which the Lord forbids; and by ‘unity-formed and divine life’ he means seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, which the Lord signified, saying in the prayer, ‘that they may be one’; and he called the soul thus disposed a ‘sacred habit,’ which is especially befitting to the consecrated. And of the knowledge of the visions: That is, the scientific comprehension of the discourses and teachings concerning God; for the sacred initiations do not consist in the mere hearing or utterance of the oracles, but in the mind’s following and understanding of the things hymned; for so too those who are devoted to God are first themselves consecrated to Him, and then in this way procure the same for others: they are perfected, and again they perfect. §2. It belongs to the angels: That he speaks again now of the nine orders which he named beforehand in the discourse On the Divine Hierarchy. And every hierarchy now hymned: What the power of every hierarchy is. The hierarch himself too: That is, the bishop. And to those set below: Concerning advancement. Those set below follow: The presbyters. But the heavenly ranks, indeed: A comparison of the heavenly and the sensible hierarchy.

Of sensible symbols: The sensible symbols are the mysteries signified in what follows — that is, baptism, or illumination; the synaxis, that is, the mystery of communion; and the rest. One thing, indeed, is: God, evidently. Not in a unified manner: Instead of ‘not uniformly,’ and ‘not in one and the same way.’ Of intelligible things too: Note that the treatise he composed concerning intelligible and sensible things has not been found among us. More discursively: Instead of ‘more fully.’ §3a. Hierarchy is, indeed: Hierarchy is, he says, as our reverend tradition sets forth, the things universally contemplated or spoken concerning the matters at hand — that is, the underlying sacred realities — or indeed also the things done. For he calls ‘summation’ the comprehension of the whole, just as we also call ‘recapitulation’ the resuming, in a few words, of what was said before. b. Most universal: ‘Universal’ means the more comprehensive things. He says, then, that, of every rank called a hierarchy, the hierarchy is the more originative and generic summation of every hierarchy; for instance, of the hierarchy of the presbyters, the hierarch is the bishop, who ought to know, purify, illumine, and perfect; of the hierarchy of the deacons, the hierarch is the archdeacon, who ought to know the liturgical activities; and so on for the remaining ranks in succession. c. Summation: The summation of sacred things is the knowledge of every sacerdotal rank.

d. Its origin: What the origin of hierarchy is, and concerning the Trinity. e. Knowable: Note that the Holy Trinity has, as knowable, the recognition of its own existence — as we now say, its own essence — and this alone knows it. The rational essence: Note that angels and men are rational essences. And it, in no other way: Namely, salvation. And deification: What deification is. Of hierarchy: What the end of every hierarchy is, and what qualities the hierarch must pursue. Note, too, that he says the end, that is, the aim, of every hierarchy — of the angelic and of the human — is love toward God and divine things, and the things enumerated next. And ‘ministered in a unified manner’ signifies looking wholly and single-mindedly toward such worship. §4. Supracosmically: Note how God moves the intelligible powers, and how we are illumined. For not from outside: Men receive true knowledge from outside — that is, from the contemplation of creation, and from didactic discourses and other such things — but angels are illumined from within, in their own intellective power, and are marked with the divine will — that is, are shaped toward the God-imitating character, and toward knowledge of beings, insofar as they are beings. And intelligibly: One must understand how, from within and not from outside, the illuminations of God move the divine minds; for he said that God illumines them intelligibly.

Since that which thinks is intellective, and that which is thought is intelligible, and the thing thought is, as it were, the nourishment and sustenance of the one thinking, fittingly, then, God — since the incorporeal beings are minds that think — Himself, being intelligible and thought by them, so far as they can attain, becoming present from within, Himself illumines, while the mind thinks and is nourished. Of divided symbols: He calls ‘symbols’ here the manifold teachings of Scripture — chiefly those that introduce, through symbolic discourses, the contemplation concerning the divine nature and the intelligible essences; but sometimes also those that are corrective of practice, such as the legal precepts, led up into moral allegory; and much more the rites of the mysteries are contemplated in symbols and types. For it is the essence: Note what the essence of our hierarchy is, and what the divine oracles are. Of the rite-performers: He calls the apostles ‘rite-performers,’ whom he also called leaders; and ‘theological tablets,’ the books of the Old and New Testaments; and ‘more immaterial initiation,’ the knowledge of the meanings of Scripture that came to the apostles from the Spirit — which he also called ‘the bodily word’ — from which initiation the teachings of the New Testament also arose; and he called ‘neighboring the heavenly hierarchy’ the illumination of the Spirit that comes to be in the ruling faculty.

From mind to mind: Observe the things stated through an intermediary discourse, and that the mysteries were handed down through an unwritten word. ‘Having handed down’ must be taken in common; and he said ‘sacred symbols’ with respect to the mysteries set forth next, which he also deems worthy of anagogical contemplation. In sensible images: Concerning images. That which is folded together: Behold clearly what is folded. In unwritten initiations: Note that the divine things have been handed down to us also by unwritten initiations. A certain symbolic hierarchy: That the hierarchy among men is symbolic and from sensible things — that is, we do not encounter the divine realities nakedly, but as accomplished through symbols, such as the cup of blessing, as the Apostle says, and the bread which we break, and the rest. Uncovered: That is, made known, and indicative of what things and mysteries they are. You shall not impart to another: That the mystical things must be spoken with caution. Chapter II §1a. And of this: Of the assimilation and union with God, evidently. b. What, then, is the origin: The origin, he says, and the waymaking of our kinship with God and of the heavenly inheritance is divine baptism; for indeed, ‘unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he shall not see the kingdom of God.’ Whence the inner man is formed toward a better and salvific disposition, and toward the practice of the words and deeds according to God.

c. That toward the other commandments: He says that three things are needed for the beginning of the commandments: the reception of the divine oracles, the catechesis of the divine faith, and the regeneration through divine baptism. He rightly showed, then, that the most preeminent and special movement of the mind is love toward God, and that a certain origin of the love toward God is our divine creation — that is, the regeneration through baptism, according to which we begin to be divinely; for our creation from seed, even though it is from God as creator, is nevertheless natural, but that from baptism is divine; for it is not of blood, nor of the will of man. Just as, then, in natural generation, one must first come to exist, and then act accordingly, and undergo — men, their proper experiences, and irrational beings likewise their fitting ones — so too in the divine regeneration of baptism, one must first come to exist for God, and then work His love and the rest toward the good life. For as the renowned one: He means the blessed Hierotheus, as he has often shown in the previous discourses. The very first movement: What the special movement of the mind is. That of being divinely: That is, the regeneration through baptism. Most ineffable: That is, to be re-formed and regenerated through baptism, as he shows next.

One must come to exist: That acting according to it follows upon natural existence. Of the divine generation: That is, of baptism. Sun-fashioned: The rays which the sun fashions; he means the beams. §2. Concerning Uzziah: Note the matters concerning Uzziah, and Korah, and Nadab. Gospels: Which Gospels are truly meant. Loving-kindness: Note concerning the economy. To assimilate: Through faith, evidently, as he shows next. a. He who has come to love these things: He speaks of one newly believing and wishing to be illumined; and by ‘initiated’ he means, that is, a Christian, and a perfectly faithful one. b. And he himself, wholly: Concerning the one now called the sponsor of the newly-illumined. c. That he will follow: According to what is said in the Law: ‘in all things we will listen to the voice of the Lord.’ d. To sponsor: To sponsor the one who was requested; whence he is also called ‘sponsor.’ Named of hierarchy: The hierarch, evidently. §3e. Of the two men: The phrase must be construed thus: ‘of the two men’ — as one who has received the sheep upon his shoulders — so that it means: from the two men, I mean the sponsor and the one who has come forward, into the church, receiving him as a lost sheep, this one turning him back from error; for the sponsor was already a believer, and did not need to be received in; now the priest gives thanks to God.

If it were construed otherwise, ‘having received of the two men,’ it would be quite a solecism. He was reverenced: Instead of ‘he was venerated.’ Through intellective thanksgiving: He calls ‘intellective thanksgiving’ the silent kind, occurring in the mind; and ‘bodily,’ the bowing of the head and worshiping God. §4. Every sacred ordering: That is, the whole clergy. g. A certain hymn: Note that it is possible to offer a hymn to God from all of Scripture, not only from David. Otherwise: ‘a certain hymn’ — either the song of Miriam the sister of Moses, ‘let us sing to the Lord,’ or the thirty-third psalm of David, or a part of it: ‘draw near to Him, and be illumined.’ To become whole: He says: a whole approach, that is, from the whole soul. He commands the priests: Note that he calls ‘priests’ those subordinate to the bishops — that is, he names the presbyters and deacons thus; for they enroll the names of the newlyillumined. The man: Note also concerning the registration of the one being baptized and of the sponsor. The church having completed its response: That is, at the utterance of ‘Amen.’ He loosens his sandals: Concerning those being perfected in divine baptism. And he strips him: Here he does not strip all the clothing, but leaves one garment, as he shows next; and ‘through the ministers’ means through the deacons.

He turns him toward the east: Here he makes him as one praying and asking; but in the posture toward the west, as one repelling the works of darkness. Note that at that time only the deacons stripped those coming for baptism, while the presbyters did the rest, which now the deacons do; and in what follows you will find that he calls the deacons ‘ministers,’ and the presbyters ‘priests.’ Of the ministers: He calls the deacons ‘ministers.’ Mother of adoption: He calls the font ‘the mother of adoption.’ The sacred melody of those inspired by God: The phrase must be construed thus: ‘the sacred melody of the inspiration of the God-possessed prophets’; and then, the bishop, having spoken this, receives the man; for he does not mean the sacred melody of the prophets in general — for all the prophets spoke one song; and it is the twenty-eighth psalm: ‘The voice of the Lord is upon the waters,’ and the ‘Alleluia.’ Fitting: That is, white. To the most theurgic: Variant reading elsewhere: ‘most theological.’ One should not, he says, be surprised, in reading the father’s discourses On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, if he says some things that diverge from the order now prevailing in the churches in the celebration of the mysteries — just as here too he introduces the reception of holy communion as taking place after the anointing with chrism.

For it is likely that these things suited the arrangement of those times, but now are done more precisely, in the complete liturgy of the divine mysteries, in which the newly-illumined must also partake. §8. By saying again: By saying again that he stretches upward toward the contemplation of the first things, he hinted either that a prayer follows after this, or that after this the hierarch proceeds to the divine liturgy. He stretches upward toward the first things: The bishop, holding the image of God who is over all — just as God, ever remaining in His own unity and identity, and established in Himself without ever going forth, nevertheless, for the salvation of all, extends by His providential processions the illuminations of His goodness upon all, and is present to all without departing from His own establishment — so too the bishop, in imitation, so far as is possible symbolically, of God, remaining in his own station, that is, the ecclesiastical principate, proceeds, by the providence of loving-kindness, to the second things — that is, to descending toward the one who turns to Him — and teaches him, and anoints him, and seals him, and imparts the gift, having baptized him. All these things, as liturgical, are secondary to his principate. Having completed all the secondary things, he returns again to the altar, symbolically representing, with respect to God, that, although he proceeded providentially into the secondary things for the sake of the salvation of the one who came forward, nevertheless he did not depart from doing what is proper to him and being in his own place — that is, in the heights of the contemplation concerning God — but from divine things (that is, from the holy liturgy concerning the newly-illumined) he turns again to divine things, as it were toward the height of theological contemplation, being led and transferred toward what is pleasing to the Holy Spirit.

He says these same things, too, a little later, in the contemplation of the mystery of communion. By that purification through water: For by water unclean things are purified. Hinting: That interpretations, too, must be made with respect to the hearers; and that the many are unable to hear such mysteries, which he calls ‘the multitude.’ Unity-formed, of the multitude: He calls ‘unity-formed’ the God-formed; and ‘of the multitude,’ the many and the unconsecrated. In the treatise on intelligible things: That he has composed a treatise concerning intelligible and sensible things, and what it contains. Let us say, then: Contemplations. Of the intellective beings: He speaks of two kinds of wickedness among intellective beings: either they fall away completely from the divine light, being enamored of wickedness, or, despising the measure of illumination given to them, and boldly attempting to overstep it, and failing to grasp what exceeds their power, they will altogether fail even of the measure given to them, the divine light remaining everywhere unaltered. Self-chosen: Note that every intellective sight and power, whether of angels or of men, is self-chosen and selfdetermining; and note how it comes to be in wickedness. It has been detached: Just as ‘to be joined together’ signifies ‘to be fitted together,’ so too ‘to have been detached’ signifies ‘to have fallen from the fitting and connatural union’; sometimes, too, the word signifies ‘to hang from.’

Here, however, it is taken in the former sense. Or of that light moderately received: From the image of sensible light you shall fit this saying to the due measure of divine acts of intellection; since it is also written: ‘seek not what is too high for you; think on the things enjoined to you’ — for by ‘measure’ in these things he means the fitting proportion. Of the things unfitting: Of the things not fitted to it, as being beyond it. Toward this the divine man: A type of what the bishop is. To those approaching: Here clearly, that he teaches with respect to the hearers. Self-knowing: Note that the first gift one acquires from precise teaching is to come to know oneself, so as to keep the precept in the Law, ‘attend to yourself,’ as the divine Basil also said; for thus, for the time being, one imitates the angels who know themselves. Running up to the visible: Here ‘visible’ means the contemplated, that is, the knowable; and ‘running up’ means being wholly moved toward seeing; and he calls it a sacred gift, to be one who knows oneself. It belongs to this: Exposition of what it means to come to the hierarch through a sponsor. Seal: What the seal is, and what the registration. With him: Instead of ‘with him.’ Attending: Accompanying. But to be unrelated: As having, so to speak, no relation to the former life, nor being classed among the divisions of the unity-formed; for the one is, in all things, alike to itself, insofar as it is one; but the multitude, as being in a division of sins, is unlike.

Having stripped off: Why he is stripped. As though breathing out: Note what it signifies for the catechumens to breathe at the devil. Proclaiming: The tradition of the symbols, evidently. Toward the whole inclination toward the one: Take ‘the whole inclination toward the one’ according to the saying of the Lord, who said, ‘that they may be one’ — that is, looking toward the one thing, which is what is pleasing to God; and by ‘stretching-forth’ understand the elevation of reasoning toward the Divine, and the withdrawal from lowly, earthbound things. It possesses the unalterable: How, and from where, the intellective habits become unalterable. To be unsoftened: Unenticed, unsoftened, manly, unyielding, undeviating amid every relaxation. One should know that this is said with respect to women becoming manly, or of manly appearance. And you see the anointings: Concerning the anointing. According to which, under the contest-appointer: The construction of the present passage is by hyperbaton, with a long intervening discourse inserted. It must be construed thus: ‘according to which, coming to be under Christ the contest-appointer, the one being consecrated shall enter the contests, as divine, rejoicing,’ and so forth. Christ: as God, He appoints the contest; as wise, He legislates; as beautiful, He adorns the contests; as good, He contends together with us. Since, as God: That Christ is God, against the Nestorians. Having entered: He speaks concerning baptism.

Of the first of the athletes: He calls the Lord ‘the first of the athletes,’ who, for His own goodness alone, contended against the might of death. In the contests: Through the anointing with the divine chrism, evidently. Both activities and: By ‘activities’ he means sins and passionate desires and movements; and by ‘subsistences’ he means the active natures of the demons; for wicked deeds are not contemplated as having their own subsistence. §7. Since death is: What death is, and that our composite nature is a union. Leading to the unseen: Some have said that this ‘unseen place’ is Hades — that is, the formless and unseen separation of the soul that occurs, into places invisible to the senses. Of bodily alterations: For the body is often transformed, not only into worms, but also into other creatures. Observe that he calls such a transformation ‘alteration,’ and that death is not the non-existence of our essence, and that the soul, departing from the body, becomes invisible, and does not coil around the body, as some have said, and that submersion in water is fittingly taken as standing for death. The deiarchic death: That he calls the three-day burial of the Lord ‘a deiarchic death,’ and that the saying which the Lord spoke, ‘the ruler of this world comes, and finds nothing in me,’ he says belongs to the Word. He calls Satan ‘the ruler of the world’ and of the diabolical purposes among men, the one who holds the power of death, according to the Apostle; since he found nothing of his own transgression in Christ; ‘for He did no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth,’ as Isaiah says.

Wherefore it was also impossible for Him to be held by death, as Peter says, but He alone was left free among the dead, according to David. §8. The unadorned is adorned: Since darkness is the filthy life, according to the Apostle, and is something most disorderly and formless, having not the form of divine thought (for it is a shadowing and a barrier against virtue), fittingly the one who draws near is adorned with illumination, and receives the form of light, becoming a child of light, and a seed of God — that is, receiving light, according to the divine John. He called ‘formless’ among beings the illformed, not that which is altogether without a share of form, just as we often call the ill-shaped ‘shapeless.’ To recognize intellectively: I myself suppose that the great Dionysius, out of a purpose of humility, was silent as though he did not know. That he was indeed deemed worthy of the Spirit of foreknowledge is clear from what he has done in the letter to the evangelist John. Nevertheless, this seems to me to signify that those deemed worthy of the divine Spirit, being everywhere a fragrance of Christ, and united to Him in purity, according to the Apostle, perceive His presence — by speaking in tongues, or having the gift of prophecy, or working healings, and all that is shown in the Acts and in the most divine Paul.

Otherwise: those who, being spiritual, understand spiritual things and compare them with the spiritual — Paul says that those who preach the things of the Gospel are the divine and spiritual fragrance, as leading from the life of faith to the life that is through the remission of baptism, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the kingdom of heaven through God-befitting works, which are also of an intelligible fragrance; whence John the divine, in the Revelation, beholds the prayers of the righteous as bowls full of incense. And the stench of the devil is the works of sin, as it is also said in the Psalms: ‘my wounds grew foul and festered, because of my folly’ — that is, my sin. Wherefore Christ too has been prophesied as myrrh poured out, and the Lord smells a fragrance of sweetness in the offering of the righteous Noah. Hence too the Gospel: ‘to some, a fragrance of life’ — to the faithful, evidently — ‘but to others, of death’ — again a fragrance unto death, convicting their deeds and condemning them to Gehenna, in the same way that the most excellent myrrh alike delights men and destroys swine, who cannot bear its extreme fragrance. He speaks of these things at length further on, in the fourth chapter, concerning the myrrh. From the Apostolic Constitutions: Baptism, then, is given unto the death of the Lord; the water stands for the burial; the oil for the Holy Spirit; the seal for the cross; the myrrh is the confirmation of the confession.

A. Leader of the rites: He means holy Hierotheus. a. Having set forth in sacred writing: That is, according to the sacred description of the things visibly performed. The common element: By ellipsis of ‘existing.’ b. And communion: Concerning communion. The perfection from the rites: That it is impossible to be perfected apart from partaking of communion. In sum: That is, in a most necessary discourse. Imperfect, indeed: That no synaxis is accomplished apart from partaking. And the sum: Here too ‘the sum’ is taken with reference to what is necessary and timely. A name for it: Why it is called ‘illumination,’ and that rightly. From that which is accomplished: Here too it is taken by ellipsis of ‘to exist.’ B. The hierarch, indeed: This order was practiced, perhaps, in the local churches, in the time of the Father. Of the sacred-writ tablets: He calls the Old and New Testament ‘sacred-writ tablets.’ And being worked upon besides these: That is, by unclean spirits. And of the ministers: He calls ‘ministers’ the deacons, and those now called subdeacons. Select: The ‘select’ are the first-rank deacons; and ‘priests’ means the presbyters. They set forth: This is according to the custom prevailing at Rome. For there only seven deacons minister at the altar, whom he calls, I think, ‘the select,’ while the others perform some other ministry; and note from this too the archaic character of the Father, and that the presbyters, together with the deacons, set forth the bread.

This also happens everywhere, when the deacons are few; but at Rome, I think, it is always so, since only the seven select ones minister at the altar; and perhaps these seven are also select in their manner of life among the others. Of the catholic faith: That even then some symbol of the faith was proclaimed beforehand, or rather what they then received as the teaching and joint-teaching of the faith. Of the sacred tablets: Here the diptychs were not read first among us, but in the time of this Father, after the kiss of peace, the diptychs were spoken, just as also in the East. The select ones of the ministers: That only the first-rank deacons stand by the altar; and perhaps also those who are select in life among these. And he brings before the eyes: That is, he clarifies the things hymned — such as, that this and that belong to Christ. And he indicates also the divine gifts attached to these — such as, that it is unto the remission of sins, and unto eternal life, and other such mysteries. And perhaps ‘before the eyes’ signifies this: that at that time, after the prayers, the holy gifts were uncovered, having remained covered until the time of partaking; or perhaps he means the lifting up and elevation of the single blessing of the divine bread, which the priest raises, saying, ‘Holy things for the holy,’ which is rather more true, as you will find stated toward the end of the chapter.

§1. The images in order: He called ‘images of the true things’ the things now accomplished in the synaxis. As not even of the symbols: That these are symbols, and not the truth itself. For the most sacred readings: What the psalms and the readings are. Unto remembrance: That ‘after supper, having taken bread,’ and so on; and that His death is proclaimed, until He comes, according to the Apostle and the Lord Himself saying, ‘do this in remembrance of me,’ and so on. Note, too, that he called the mystical supper of the Lord the ‘archsymbol’ of the present divine mysteries; and that for one partaking of the bread and the cup unworthily, the partaking profits nothing — rather he shall receive it to his own judgment, according to the Apostle. And from what follows one might reasonably say that Christ delivered the mystery to the disciples after Judas had gone out from the supper. The sacred things in the same manner: He speaks of Judas. Note that He gave to him too a share of the mystical bread and cup, but gave the mysteries to the disciples after Judas had gone out from the supper, as being unworthy of them. As the participation according to disposition: In these words he shows the participation that comes by recognition — that is, having this disposition inwardly, and not merely by bodily approach, but by the mind’s approach, through faith and spiritual perception.

§2. From the effects: That is, from the visible things accomplished, to the invisible and mystical things, which are the causes and archetypes of the things in sense-perception; or from the effects to the causes — that is, from the sensible symbols to the intelligible and intellective — that is, from the less perfect to the more perfect; as from the types to the image, and from this to the truth. For the things of the Old Testament are a shadow, those of the New an image, and the state of the things to come is the truth. Then the sacred act: ‘Kâta’ is accented on the penult; it signifies ‘and then.’ §3. Of the images: He calls ‘images’ the likenesses of the invisible and mystical things — that is, the things accomplished symbolically; and of these he called the mystery of the synaxis the first, whose intelligible content he undertakes to lay bare. For both the reality above all things: Behold, one mode of contemplation of the chapter at hand. Not outside of the essential: Note the unmoved standing of God according to essence, and that the bishop is a type of God. Note that the matter of the censing is elevated according to three modes: the hierarch, beginning from the altar and going around the whole temple, is again restored to it. Likewise: A second mode. In a manner, the divine man says: A third mode of the contemplation at hand: how, even with respect to the bishop, the incense is multiplied from the one, yet is unable to be contained by the lesser — that is, not sharing in communion with the worse.

§4. And that of the psalms: What the psalms are. And note the word ‘consubstantiated’; but also that he added ‘nearly’ — for these things are not united to one another according to essence, but by all contributing toward one aim, that is, toward the salvation of men, he said ‘consubstantiated’; whence he immediately added ‘nearly,’ correcting the opposition arising from the word. Below he speaks of ‘one inspiration,’ that is, one common breathing, which signifies that there is one aim of all. For every sacred book: A cursory recollection of the books of the Old Testament. Of the grievous things: Distressing things, as in the case of Songs of loves: Concerning the love in the Songs. Or the manly narratives: From here he introduces likewise the books of the New Testament. Of the beloved and: I think he means the Revelation of the divine John, or his Gospel, which is rather more likely. §5. He rooted together: He drew together. And that of the divine songs: The purpose of the psalms, he says, is that God and His true servants be hymned, these having a dictating and comprehensive power for such things; which, he says, is necessarily employed in all things sacerdotally performed, producing in those who chant an abiding remembrance of the psalms. Of theurgies: Majesties. And by the harmony of the divine odes: Note that the concord of psalmody is a teaching of like-mindedness toward God and toward one another.

The condensed things: That the condensed things, that is, the unclear things, are clarified through the symbols that are enacted; for this is what ‘is widened’ signifies. Note that the Father says the things spoken obscurely in the psalms are clarified through the reading of the Scriptures. In these: For in these — the Scriptures, evidently — the one who looks precisely knows that one and the same Spirit spoke them all. It is proclaimed: As clarifying the Old Testament through itself. The one, indeed, spoke the things: As the one, the Old Testament, spoke, so the New accomplished. Of theology: Note that he calls the Old Testament ‘theology,’ and the New ‘theurgy.’ §6. Universally, of those: Those who are universally uncatechized and unhearing of these things, having chosen this willingly. Of the divine generation: That is, of holy baptism. And concerning the catechumens: Concerning the catechumens and the possessed and those in repentance, and what they partake of. The last, then: That the catechumens are the last rank. Without participation: Not partaking. Being midwifed: Being regenerated. Miscarried things: Stillbirths. §7. Unconsecrated, this too: Unfinished. Note that he ranks among ‘the possessed’ also those who unrepentantly persist in bodily allurements — such as fornicators, lovers of spectacles, and those who pursue similar things — whom the divine Apostle, naming, adds that one should not even eat with such a person.

One should know that this strictness of distinguishing and separating such persons is not now practiced. Such a one, at some time: Note that one united to God will not be worked upon by an unclean spirit. A most accursed operation: That the licentious are, beyond those who fall into demon-possession, even worse. The realities of beings: That he calls the virtues ‘the things that truly are.’ The material alteration: Since matter too undergoes muchpassible alteration. In the things alien: Note that the things pertaining to sin are alien to us; for sin is not natural to us, but rather fitness for every good work, according to the Apostle, and as it is in the Psalms: ‘and spare your servant from strange things.’ From this you understand also what is said by the Lord: ‘if you have not been found faithful in what is another’s, who will give you what is your own?’ For this reason these alien things are said not to exist — for they do not belong to nature, but are spurious; while acting according to nature is truly a being, and is ours. Otherwise: he called ‘alien’ the things of the world, as not properly belonging to any one, but passing from one to another; or as our conduct not being wholly in these things, but looking toward another life, for which we have indeed come to be.

Of the minister: That is, lest any of the possessed be made passionate, as he says next. That of those passionately affected: A clear demonstration. Since, then, of the divine rite: Concerning the order of those dismissed. Uninitiated: The catechumens, the licentious. And samples: Mockeries of imprints. Through unmanliness: Note whence he says some of the faithful are troubled by demons. By disposition and desire: As it were, by repentance. The all-holy ones: The faithful, united both to God and to one another. a. Catholic: He called the hymnody ‘catholic,’ either as sung by all, or as offered for the sake of catholic grace. b. And this hymn: Note that he called the hymn a symbol, a confession, and a thanksgiving. For it seems to me: Toward what end the symbol looks. c. The essence, indeed: That is, according to the Apostle’s saying, ‘for all things are ours.’ And he calls ‘archetypal beauties’ those contemplated in the divine nature, participation in which, so far as attainable, He granted to men; or he means being ‘according to the image’ and ‘according to the likeness.’ d. Constructed goods: That is, the good things procured for us from Him. e. Of the complete incarnation: Note what he says concerning Christ, that is, concerning His perfect incarnation, and against Apollinarius. The divine bread: Note that not only the holy bread was set forth covered, but also the divine cup — which is not now done.

§8. The most divine kiss: Note why the kiss is given. Of desires, from: Note that the passionate desires are divisive, dividing us both from God and from one another, and perhaps even from ourselves. Like-formed enmities: That is, toward men who are like us. §9. Of the tablets: Why the diptychs are read after the kiss. Those who have died piously: Note that the diptychs of the departed were read at that time only for himself, not, as now, for the living as well. Theology says: This is from the so-called Wisdom of Solomon; and note that this holy father made use of it. Observe: He says this: that the phrase in the prophets, ‘to be remembered before the Lord,’ should not be understood in the sense that God’s memory is renewed — in the imagination of memory, which happens with respect to intellective beings bound to flesh, that is, ourselves — but the ‘memory of God’ would fittingly be said of us, as we become God-formed in Him through a virtuous life, and are deemed worthy of an unforgettable knowledge concerning Him. Note how he takes the saying of the psalm. Of the symbols: Of the body and blood. §10. With water, the hands: What the washing of the hands is, and when. He says, ‘he who has bathed’: Note how the Father takes the saying of the Lord which says, ‘he who has bathed has no need to wash his feet.’

The construction of the passage has its resolution toward ‘he hints,’ so that what is said runs thus: that this refers to something, he hints — the laver, in the legal worship, and, in ours, the washing of the hands. And ‘unrelated’ and ‘absolute’ signifies that he will not be carried along by the lesser conduct and disposition. Otherwise: the reading of this construction, taken by hyperbaton, will be fitted thus — that, as the oracles say, he who has bathed needs no other purification except the washing of his extremities, by which utmost purification he will render himself, in the most pure state of God-formedness, unstained and unspotted in his conversion, and, advancing toward the second things in a good-formed manner, will be unrelated and absolute, as altogether unity-formed and turning again, in a unified manner, toward the One. Except that of the extremities: What it means that the one who has bathed needs no other washing, except to wash the extremities; and he calls ‘the second things’ the sensible things, toward which the soul is affected through imagination. The sacred law, indeed: Note that there was no laver in the Law, and that he has composed another treatise concerning the hierarchy according to the Law, which is not extant. Of the hierarch: Note the God-inspired character of the priest, the truly most perfect. To have been purified for the sacred rite: By the divine sacred rite, evidently.

The splendor of mirrors: He calls ‘mirrors’ the souls of the saints, as receptive of the divine light and assimilated to the better lot. Of those sending forth to pass through: Here too, speaking as an Athenian in the Attic manner, he construes the saying, meaning that the flashes send forth their own brightness — though properly one ought to say it in the feminine, agreeing with ‘flashes’ — which we showed more fully above, in the seventh chapter of the book On the Celestial Hierarchy, to be an Attic figure. Read there, then. And that of the hierarch: Note why the hierarch washes at the altar, that is, before the holy things — that is, in front of them. And of the utmost purification: Of the utmost purification, evidently. And before the eyes: The divine gifts remained covered at that time, until the time of holy communion; and this he shows a little later. Or, more precisely: that the hierarch, lifting up the holy bread, showed the blessing, saying, ‘Holy things for the holy.’ §11. Some, then: Few know all the providences toward us — indeed, perhaps not even a few know them; and concerning what the offering is. The human nature: Concerning the fall of mankind. Transgression: Violation. By its own inclinations: That is, self-chosenly. The construction relates to what was said above; for he said that the most passible life succeeds human nature, and the other things are by way of an intermediary.

That of the beginning: Since we also have our origin of composition from the earth — for our bodily part is from it — fittingly, after the transgression, we also have an end suited to the beginning; for we return into earth, since it was said, ‘earth you are, and to earth you shall return.’ Of the anagogic life: He calls ‘anagogic life’ that which seeks the things above and is turned toward God. Most-passible alteration: What alteration with respect to bodies is, we discussed at length in the discourse On the Pitiably into non-existence: Into non-existence on account of sin; for the sinner, in a certain manner, does not exist — for evil is without subsistence. Most boundless loving-kindness: Incarnation, that He worked it out of loving-kindness. Self-working for us: Note the precision of the doctrines, expressed in a multitude of words and combating all the heretics: for ‘to become self-working’ shows that the providence toward us was of God the Word Himself — not one being in another, as some madly claim with Nestorius. And ‘in a true participation of all that is ours, without sin,’ overturns the Apollinarians, the Acephali, and simply all who hold heresies whatsoever. Of possession: ‘Possession’ here must be understood not as some abiding quality, but as retention and continuance, that is, holding fast. Not by power: Note that Christ conquered Satan not by strength, but by judgment and righteousness.

This too Gregory of Nyssa says in the Catechetical Oration. Of the blessed: Of the wealthy. Formless with beauties: We said above likewise, that he calls the darkness of ignorance ‘formless.’ And it signifies our freedom. Most accursed: Defiled. §12. It is necessary, according to the hierarchic customs: Of the deiarchic goodness, as he said at the beginning of the chapter. Having hymned, and also blessed: That is, blessing the bread and the cup of the holy gifts. Note, too, that everywhere he calls the divine sacred rite ‘symbolic,’ and the holy gifts symbols of the higher and truer realities. For the covered gift: As was said a little before, the divine gift remained covered until the time of partaking, unless perhaps ‘covered’ means hidden from the many and those standing outside, that is, simply from the laity. For the one and simple: Since He also took an intellective soul and an earthly body. Note, too, how we become partakers of the divine nature, being united to Christ. Note also the matters concerning the economy, and who it was that appeared, and what the breaking and distribution of the bread signify. In the highest degree: That is, according to a union that is highest, and complete, and essential according to hypostasis, truly. For it is necessary for us: Note what the aim of Christianity is. §13. Bringing before the eyes: He speaks here concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, not symbolically, whom he also called our intelligible life.

And ‘complete,’ since He also assumed an intellective soul and an earthly body. And he well said ‘unconfused incarnation’ — for He remained God, having appeared as man, and preserving the properties of each nature; and note this against the Apollinarians. Given form from us: That is, having taken the form pertaining to us, that is, our nature. Partakers of God: Note how we become partakers of the divine nature, being united to Christ. §14. Unto thanksgiving: Concerning the Eucharist. He precedes the distribution: ‘He leads’ is used in common — that is, ‘precedes’; for it is necessary that the priest partake first, and thus distribute. The participation, then, precedes, and the partaking of the one who offers precedes the mystical distribution to the rest. By the God-inspired teachings: What sort of man the priest must be. Those who have boldly made use of it: What he means is this: just as the priest, if he does not partake first of the things offered by him, is unconsecrated, so too those who dare to teach others, without doing what they teach, unconsecrated; for one must first do, and then teach, according to what was said by the Lord: ‘he who does and teaches shall be called great.’ Of the ordinance: Of the divine Law. One must not dare: Fear exceedingly. Harmonizer: That is, ‘fitting.’ The Lacedaemonians called ‘harmostes’ the ruler appointed by them over the cities subject to them, from ‘to harmonize’ the ruled to live according to the laws; whence the Athenians too called ‘harmosters’ those who set people in order for good living, as Plato the comic poet clearly shows in the play Ambassadors.

And here, accordingly, he fittingly called the bishop, the ruler of the Church, ‘harmoster.’ §15. For by the sacred taste: Note what ‘taste and see’ means. A. Thus toward the one: That is, toward the intelligible and spiritual. Of the fragrant circuit: Instead of, the bishop having censed the whole church. B. Melody: The ‘Holy,’ evidently, or also the ‘Alleluia.’ And the blessing upon it: For through it every holy thing is perfected. C§1. To the sacred men: Note this truly divine saying: that divine men ought to keep the deeds of virtue hidden from vain glory. If it is right: If it is just. In the image: Even though the image possesses an unvarying and altogether like resemblance to the archetype, nevertheless the essence, he says, is different — for the one is soulless, the other ensouled; and the true living creature is animate, while the painter’s work is of wax and colors; in this respect, then, difference is observed, while the identity in both, in their resemblance, is not identical. Likeness: Resemblance. Fittingly: Toward the divine beauty, evidently. Unto being seen: Note how he understands that our good deeds must not be paraded. They are of fragrance: That is, God (for this is the fragrance), doing the truly good of Himself, does not turn back toward all — that is, does not vainly care about those who sometimes do not accept His judgments, nor does He seek to have glory among men.

§2. As of hidden things: We have often shown, in the discourse On the Divine Names, what ‘intelligible’ and ‘intellective’ mean. This, then, he also says here: that to the bishop, being holy, as kin to the divine light, God reveals — not through another teacher, but Himself illumining him — the mystery of the contemplation and of the myron; wherefore no veil lies upon the bishop himself with respect to the divine myron, but ‘with unveiled face,’ according to the Apostle, he beholds the mysteries, while for the imperfect there is need of symbols; wherefore the holy myron of God becomes covered with wings, visible also to the people, only through the interpretation that uncovers the symbols. He calls the bishops ‘seers,’ since among the Greeks too those put forward by all to inquire of God concerning future things, and to offer sacrifices on their behalf, were called ‘theoroi.’ And he calls ‘unlike’ the imperfect among the people; for this is his custom. For he does not hide it from the intellective, but it is hidden from books. Of riddles: For through riddles and symbols these ranks are illumined according to their own weakness. §3. Of the hierarchic gifts: For the divine myron, being anointed, perfects everything, just as the partaking of the holy body and blood does. Of the divine fragrances: For all who are made fragrant partake proportionally of the divine mystical fragrance.

Of those worked upon: Of those possessed by demons and turned toward licentiousness, concerning whom he also speaks in the chapter before this. He calls ‘consternation’ as it were tumult, fear, terror, deception. But to those unto repentance in mind: He speaks for the sake of those in repentance. They lead: A well-ordered sequence and ascent befitting the saints. The unity-formed: He calls ‘unity-formed’ the mind directed toward the One — that is, the mind that beholds the Divine itself — which, he says, is also united to that very One, and is filled with union with it. §4. And what: Read the passage as a question. For if the fragrance of: That sensible fragrance nourishes the sense and makes it flourish. Of the discerning faculty: He calls ‘discerning’ discriminative faculty of the soul, that is, the intellective, which, unless it were purified from the inclination toward the worse, he says would not come to be in perception of the divine fragrance. Being pleased: Instead of ‘being made fragrant.’ §5. That according to mind: ‘According to mind’ means with respect to angels. It is signified by the twelve-fold number: A type of what the twelve wings are. Note, too, the greatness of the seraphim. Theology: ‘Holy, holy, holy.’ Both of wickedness together: Note that the Father says the powers above are without share not only in wickedness, but also in forgetfulness.

Science: He well joined ‘intellection’ with ‘science’; for precise understanding of anything produces science of it. §6. The properties, then: What the property of the seraphim is, and that he spoke of it before. Of the things above heaven: He speaks of this in the treatise On the Celestial Hierarchy. §7. The sixfold arrangement, then: A contemplation of the holy seraphim. Note the whole passage, how in it he enables us to understand what is written in the prophets concerning the powers above. The sixfold arrangement: He speaks of the sixfold arrangement as their having six wings. First and middle: It has been said in what precedes how the first, middle, and last of the intellective powers must be understood. Fashioning: For they do not have true wings. Of the wings: Note how he understands the matter of the wings of the seraphim, and that they flew wholly, having nothing subordinate or lowly. §8. And if the faces: Note a most beautiful and singular contemplation: why the seraphim cover their faces and feet with their wings, but fly with the middle ones. §9. And this too: Interpretation of ‘seraphim.’ §10. Of the essential state: In the discourse On the Celestial Hierarchy, chapter seven, it was clarified what ‘essential habit’ means with respect to angels. a. He was not ignorant: That the holy angels too know that Jesus, who sanctifies, was also sanctified, and when, and how.

Having come down: That is, having become man. b. By the Father: He says this because the activity of the Holy Trinity is one. Note the unimpeachable orthodoxy of the great Dionysius, and how he preserved all that belongs to the divinity of the Lord Jesus — that He Himself, as man, was sanctified both by the Father and by Himself, since He is also God, and by the Holy Spirit, the heavenly ranks too knowing their own origin, that is, their cause and maker, Jesus — that even though He is sanctified, nevertheless He still retains what is unaltered according to essence, for He is God. Note, too, that they know their own origin from His theurgy. d. He sets the seraphim around: Note why the six-winged ones stand around the divine myron. And ‘unvarying’ he said either with respect to His having been made like us in all things according to our nature, apart from sin, or as not undergoing variation or a shadow of turning with respect to His divinity, in taking on the human. Note, too, the complete Incarnation, against those who say He had no mind. e. The one being sanctified: This was rather then rendered in the Epistle to the Hebrews thus: ‘for both He who sanctifies and he who is sanctified.’ The myron: Why the myron is poured out in the form of a cross in the baptistery.

He brings before the eyes: Instead of ‘he proclaims openly.’ Needing the divine generation: For He rose on the third day, not held by death. Uncontained: For He rose on the third day, not being held. Those unto death: For the explanation of the mystery is hidden from the many: why baptism into Christ means that we are baptized into His death. §11. In a manner befitting man: Note here too that Christ, even as man, receives the Holy Spirit, being sanctified, and, as God, gives it. Note, too, the matter of the essential divinity, and that He remained unaltered. The most divine essence has this by habit: If, hearing of ‘essential habits’ with respect to the angels, we do not understand them as qualities coming upon them from outside by accident, as was said a little before, and as we clarified in the discourse On the Celestial Hierarchy, chapter seven — much more, with respect to God, who is properly above essence, shall we understand ‘habit’ not as a quality that befalls composite things, but as the habit of essential divinity, which naturally possesses of itself all the things of goodness. This signifies, meanwhile, that divinity itself is not the very essence of God, but the glory of the essence. §12. Of the altar: That the altar too is perfected with myron, and why. The altar is Jesus: That Jesus is the altar; and note the greatness and the height of such an altar, which is Christ.

Mystically burnt whole: He hints at the end of the fiftieth psalm. Rite of myron: That it was called ‘the rite of myron,’ and why. All things theurgically: What he means is this: since every divine theophany and working is shown through symbols, consider what the symbol of the ‘Alleluia,’ the melody of the prophets, which follows, signifies. Those who study Hebrew matters say: Note this against the Of theophany: What sort of psalm is meant, and clearly it is one of those inscribed ‘Alleluia.’ Chapter V §1. Allotments: He calls these ‘allotments’ because each sacerdotal rank has, distinctly assigned to it, its own ministries of the priesthood — as it were, allotted to it — which it cannot overstep; for the work of the deacon, and of the others likewise, is clear. As for ‘powers’ and ‘activities,’ one may take them as bearing a single meaning: those permitted to work these things are said to have the power of purifying and illumining by teaching. But it is also possible to distinguish them otherwise: ‘powers’ as the spiritual gifts and dignities, and ‘activities’ as the ministries; the perfections we shall take with reference to the ordinations. And the triad, indeed: He clarifies next what the triadic division is, and what the triad of the transcendent ranks is, concerning which he set forth beforehand in the first chapter of the present discourse.

Note that in the ecclesiastical hierarchy there is a triadic division, and of what sort. Our sacred tradition is divided: into the mystery (for this is the rite), into the initiate, into those being initiated. §2. The most holy hierarchy, indeed: What the hierarchy in the heavens is, and that the rite of the heavenly hierarchy is the knowledge and possession of God according to power. The initiates of this are the first ranks around God; and those being perfected are the ranks after them, being initiated and taught by them. After that one: What the hierarchy according to the two peoples is. That according to the Law: Concerning the hierarchy according to the Law. Not easily discerned: Note that he calls the contemplation and allegory of the legal ordinances not easy to grasp and discern. And to this, according to the Law: What the rite of those under the Law is. Of the initiate and leader: Moses, evidently. In sacred writing: According to what is said: ‘see that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain.’ The more perfect hierarchy: He speaks concerning the new hierarchy in the Church, that it is the allotment of the things according to the Law. The Apostle says these things in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Lord: ‘I did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it.’

By its middle position: Note how the ecclesiastical hierarchy stands in the middle between the heavenly hierarchy and the legal one, and how it communes with both — with the one in spirit, with the other in letter, that is, in symbols. The threefold: How the division of the ranks into three operates. God-formed, of the sacred things: That is, into sacred knowledge, and teachers, and the taught. Of those pertaining to us: Of the angels. The sacred rite of the mysteries is divided into purification, initiation, and perfection. The ordering of the celebrants is divided into purification, illumination, and perfection — applied respectively to the imperfect, the purified, and the illumined. The power of those being perfected is divided into those being purified, those being illumined, and those being perfected. §3. The sacred power: In these, observe clearly the triadic division of the hierarchy shown. And that of the celebrants: Concerning those who perform the rites. Purifies: What ‘to purify’ is, and what ‘to illumine,’ and what ‘to perfect,’ he has said in the discourse On the Heavenly Hierarchy, chapter 3, near the end, and here too, proceeding, he will say; and this is the triad. With perfections: The first, to purify the imperfect; the middle, according to which they initiate others; and the last, only to be perfected. The first, indeed: Instead of ‘the triad of the subordinate ranks.’

The threefold power: What the threefold power of the priests is. Of the synaxis: ‘Having been shown’ is taken from common construction. And now the purification: For from the divine Scriptures we are purified and illumined toward the sacred divine generation; but from the synaxis and the rite of the myron we are scientifically perfected. Note here too the triadic division shown likewise. The sacerdotal ordering is divided into the purificatory, the illuminative, and the perfective. §4. Or, are not also the sensible rays: As in the case of glass receiving the sun, which he also said above; and as one may see with fire or light: the one shining through rarefied and transparent bodies, and not through the denser and lightless ones; and fire, through material easily kindled, sets ablaze even the natures unsuited to participate in it. It illumines: The activity of the hierarch, evidently. Of these, then, it is: ‘It is’ is to be taken in common; for it is understood with reference to all the things in this passage. Of God-beholding gifts: Note that the hierarch is first illumined in a God-beholding manner, then imparts to those under him, then perfects those to whom he imparts the illumination. §5. The first, indeed, is: One should note how the same rank is both first and last, in different respects. And that of the hierarchic order: Concerning the power of the ranks.

All things sacerdotally accomplished have their reference to the hierarch, as he works these things through the ranks under him, to whom he has also given the power to work these things; nevertheless, the sanctification of the myron, and the consecration of the altar, and the ordination of the sacerdotal orders are reserved to the hierarch alone, and not allotted through the ministry of others — which he also called ‘perfective images of the divine power.’ And by ‘wholeness’ he means all the ranks together, as he immediately explains. And these are: That is, those that perfect the holy bread into the body of Christ, and the cup into holy blood, and the water into holy purification, and the unilluminated one into adoption, and all the rest likewise. For even if by the sacred rites: Note that neither to sanctify nor to perfect the myron belongs to the presbyters, whom he also calls ‘priests’; nor is it theirs to consecrate an altar, so as to offer upon it, nor indeed to ordain. For only the hierarch does these things, apart from which the presbyter will neither baptize nor offer, but will officiate only in what has been already consecrated by the bishop. Sacred rite: That is, ordination. In a unified manner: In a single, undivided way. The sciences: That the teaching power of the mysteries belongs to the hierarchs. §6.

And that of the priests: What the rank of the priests, that is, of the presbyters, is. It does: The rank of the priests, evidently. And that of the ministers: What the rank of the ministers, that is, of the deacons, is. Purifies: How the deacons purify. Whence, at the sacred rite: A contemplation of purification. Note, too, that it belongs to the deacons to strip and unshoe those being baptized, and to set them toward the west, and again to turn them toward the east. Wherefore also at the sacred doors: Note that the deacons at that time kept the doors; now it is the subdeacons. §7. It has been shown, then: Recapitulation. Evidently of the hierarchic order: That the bishop also does what belongs to those below him, and the first do what belongs to the second and to those after them — but not the reverse. To undertake with arrogance: That each must not presume to undertake what is greater than his rank. The sacerdotal images: Of what the sacerdotal ranks are types — those that work among men the things from God. For since: Concerning the heavenly ranks, how they perform sacred rites under God. B. The hierarch, indeed: The ordination of a bishop, of a presbyter, and of a deacon. Both feet: This is now accomplished otherwise. One of the feet: It is unclear which foot he means.

In each order: Note that all in the sanctuary must embrace the one being ordained. C§1. Sacred proclamation: ‘Proclamation’ is, as it were, a heralding by name; for the chief priest ordaining him, sealing him, declares by name: ‘N. is sealed from presbyter to bishop, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit’; likewise also for a presbyter and a deacon. Prostration: ‘Prostration’ is the kneeling; and ‘proclamation’ is what is now called the announcement or the acclamation. The proclamation: The acclamation at ordinations, as at that of a bishop: ‘For the holy father, bishop so-and-so.’ And at that of a presbyter: ‘For the presbyter so-and-so.’ And at that of a deacon: ‘For our brother so-and-so, deacon.’ He calls this ‘proclamation’ whenever, during the very act of ordaining, one proclaims: ‘The divine grace elects this man being ordained to such-and-such rank.’ §2. The ordination, then: Contemplation. §4. Unto the manly life: Note the manly life of Jesus, and His deiarchic sinlessness. Proclamation: What the proclamation is. §5. Not even a brother: A beautiful and altogether necessary and secure saying: that no one made even a brother apart from God. Rite-performer: As man, Christ also became high priest. Note this against the Acephali and the Nestorians. Wherefore he himself too: Note when the disciples were ordained priests, and that Jesus, although being God, did not Himself ordain, but promised to send the Holy Spirit from the Father — which happened when the tongues as of fire appeared to them.

Rite-source: He calls the Lord this with respect to His divinity. The one of the disciples: Holy Peter, evidently, together with the rest, when he put forward Matthias as an apostle. And concerning God: Note what he says concerning the lot that fell upon Matthias, and how he understands this. For it seems to me that the oracles: The saying in the Acts of the Apostles concerning these matters I have found, in some books, thus: ‘and they gave lots for them’; but in others, ‘and they gave their lots.’ The reading ‘for them’ agrees with what has now been said by the divine Dionysius, as signifying that the lot was some symbol, perhaps from a revelation, or an operation of the Holy Spirit falling upon the one chosen by lot; whence the greatest Peter also says concerning the Iscariot, ‘he was allotted the lot of this ministry with us’ — although a lot, as we commonly understand it, had not occurred with the apostles, on behalf of the Lord who chose §7. And the hierarch: Concerning the bishop, why the holy Gospels alone are placed upon him. Of theurgies, of theophanies: One must understand ‘being’ as implied; for often the construction proceeds by ellipsis of the verb. Note, too, how many divine privileges the bishop partakes of. Of sacred discourses: That is, of interpretations. And to the priests: Concerning the presbyters.

The inclination, then: What the inclination signifies. §8. The three, of the rite-performers: That is, of the hierarchs, priests, and ministers. To the three of those being perfected: That is, of those being purified, those being illumined, and those being perfected contemplatively. The ministerial rank: Concerning the deacon, bending one foot. And the priests: What it means that the presbyters bend both feet. Both feet: What it means that the hierarch bends both feet, and why the Scriptures are placed upon his head. A. A triad of those being perfected: That there are three ranks being perfected. §1. We say, then: Who are those being purified, and how. The multitudes being separated out: That is, the catechumens, those in repentance, and those afflicted. He introduces a distinction among those in repentance in what follows. And of that, as: Of those who sin in repentance after baptism. And of that, as still: Of those storm-tossed and possessed. And of that, as still toward: Of those converted from heresies or licentiousness. And of that, as having been transferred: Of those not completely turned from licentiousness unto sanctification, or of the catechumens. §2. And the middle rank: The faithful people. That purified of every defilement: The whole purification of the people. The ranks being purified are divided into those cast out of the sacred places, the faithful people, and the monks, that is, the therapeutae.

That of the sacred people: Note that he calls the sacred people the ‘middle rank’ — that is, those in the lay order who have the whole, uncensured standing; and the monks, that is, the therapeutae, the highest of all. §3. That of the monks: The measures of the monastic state. Why the monks were called ‘therapeutae.’ And unified: What an undivided monad and unified life is. Of the divided things, by sacred unions: He calls the things of ordinary life ‘divided.’ A god-formed unit: How the monk is perfected, and why the monk has a particular perfection, invocation, and state. B. The priest, indeed: Note that he says ‘the priest,’ not ‘the hierarch,’ and that according to this saying of the Father, a bishop ought not to give the monastic habit, but only a presbyter. By the divided things: By the things of ordinary life and manifold occupation — such as commerce, and other transactions. And ‘imaginations’ means the desires according to the mind, and the impressions of the passions. He tonsures: How the monk is tonsured. The threefold: Note the threefold hypostasis. C§1a. The monastic rank: Why one is called a monk, and what the monastic state and practice is. §2. Renunciation: What the renunciation is. b. Wherefore also many things: Note this against the Lampetians — that is, the Messalians, or the Adelphians, which is the same as saying the Marcianists — who, having practiced asceticism strictly for only three years, thereafter become so indifferent for the rest of their lives that they do every absurdity without fear; for, wallowing in adulteries and licentiousness, gluttony and mutual ‘marriages,’ and simply in every profligacy, they boast of doing such things dispassionately; and, being diseased with passion without perceiving it, and suffering without pain from themselves and the demons dwelling in them, like those held by the disease of delirium, they rather exult and are not grieved.

c. It is forbidden: Note that the monk is forbidden to do many things which the laity have the permission and authority to do — such as marriage, and engaging in military service or commerce, and other things in which the layman is not condemned. §3. The cutting off of hair: What the tonsure is. §4. And that of the former garment: What the changing of his garment means. §5. And all: What the kiss is. Unto the deiarchic communion: Why ordained communion means. Unto the partaking: those partake immediately. It is imparted toward: For all likewise, after ordination, are deemed worthy of the divine mysteries, which shows their kinship and union with God. Rites, purification: What the rites signify. Rank: Behold, here too the Father has taught more clearly what the transcendent ranks are, which he mentioned above. §6. But you will say that: And that there is no one being purified in heaven, and concerning angels. Is there some heavenly purification: Note that no defilement occurs in any of the heavenly powers, which Origen and those of his mind hold, saying that, according to the proportion of their deviation, each of the heavenly orders received such a name and rank, and was bound to subtler bodies, for the correction of their own deviation toward the worse; but they are altogether pure, and incorporeal minds, as they were created from the beginning.

Otherwise: none of the heavenly minds was ever captured by evil after the fall of the demons; for we know this neither from divine Scripture, nor has any of the God-wise Fathers said it. But this holy man says it by way of concession, as one might say: that they are altogether pure and unharmed and need no purification; yet, even if we were to grant that some of them came to be in some defilement, it would altogether pass over into the opposing powers, so that the rest would likewise remain unharmed. And that this is so, he clearly showed; for, having stated his own true opinion in answer to the objection, he added, ‘for if anyone’ — instead of, ‘but if one should grant that someone deviated, he fell from this choir’ — which I do not say, he says, but the contrary: that they remain altogether pure forever, since otherwise I should fall from my own standing. Let none of the initiates of Origen, then, suppose that the present saying supports his ill-believing opinion, which says that there is always a fall and a relapse and a transformation among the heavenly minds, as Origen says in the first book On First Principles: ‘Reason, I think, shows that every rational being whatsoever can come to be from any other rational being whatsoever’; and shortly after: ‘after the end that comes upon all, again a flowing-away and a falling occurs.’

And Evagrius, in the seventy-eighth chapter of the second century, says: ‘Each order of the heavenly powers consists either wholly of those from below, or wholly of those from above, or of both.’ And in the nineteenth chapter of the fifth century: ‘From an angelic and archangelic state, a psychic state comes to be; and from the psychic, a demonic and human state; and from the human, angels and demons again come to be.’ To the subordinate powers: What the purification and ordering of the heavenly powers is. Otherwise: that the purification of the heavenly powers is illumination unto a more perfect knowledge; and note that they progress in knowledge, and that the demons are not said to be purified, on account of those who claim that even they, in the restoration mythologized by them, will be saved together with the saints. Thus also being illumined: Note the matters concerning the angels: how they are illumined and perfected. A§1. Thus also toward life: That not all who die are led away to the same places, and concerning the resurrection. Of the total resurrection: That with the body, evidently. For the souls, indeed: He speaks concerning the righteous. And the pure bodies of: Concerning the resurrection of bodies. Of those who hold to resurrection and judgment: some say the soul rises with the same body, as the Christians do; others, without a body; others, with other, strange bodies, and that it has a life, such as now.

Of those who have fallen asleep: some are sacred; others unconsecrated. For having been united: That bodies are united to souls. §2. And concerning the unconsecrated: Concerning the death of sinners, and what the Greeks suppose happens after death, whose opinions he sets forth. Of these, the more irrational deny even that the soul is immortal — among whom is a certain Bias (not the one of Priene, but another), who says it is mortal and is dissolved, in the manner of the body too, and passes into non-being; but the supposedly more rational among them, who philosophized concerning the immortality of the soul, such as Plato and the like, say that after death the body will no longer be constituted, but will never again, throughout the ages, return to the composition it once had. Heretics too say various things of this kind, such as the followers of Simon Magus, and Menander, and Valentinus, and Marcion, and Manes; and now too those proceeding from the myths — not doctrines — of Origen. And see with whom they wish to be numbered, and what absurd opinions they attach to the blameless faith of the Christians, being hateful to God and to men of sound mind. And those who deny the bodily resurrection: That is, they say the resurrection occurs of souls only, apart from bodies. Already taken up: What the Apostle means: that our Lord Jesus Christ has become the pledge and demonstration of the universal resurrection with the body; and that our life is now hidden in Him, to be manifested in God at the regeneration.

A conjugal union for souls: Certain heretics arose then, such as those around Simon Magus and his followers, who claimed there would be an ethereal — if indeed any — body for souls. One should know that Origen too says the same in one of his treatises, but in others utterly denies this very thing, teaching that every bodily nature passes into non-existence. Read what was written against him concerning the resurrection by the holy martyr Methodius, bishop of Olympus in Lycia, and by Antipater, bishop of Bostra, and you will learn his mythical and outlandish nonsense. And most blessed: He says this hinting, I think, at Papias, who was then bishop of Hierapolis in Asia, and a contemporary of the divine evangelist John. For this Papias, in the fourth book of his Expositions of the Lord’s Sayings, spoke of enjoyments through foods in the resurrection — a doctrine which Apollinarius afterward came to believe, as appears in his treatise which some call the ‘Chiliad.’ How, then, could the writings of holy Dionysius be Apollinarius’s, according to the nonsense of some, when they refute Apollinarius? And Irenaeus of Lyons too, in the fifth book of Against Heresies, says the same, and brings forward as witness of what he says the aforesaid Papias. When unto the end: The ends of sinners are dreadful and altogether fearful. With other eyes: He means by ‘other eyes’ those of the mind, which is now more purified and looks toward the things of Hades, turned toward the expectation of Gehenna, which it had not believed before; wherefore it is distressed and laments death, considering that the punishments below might indeed be real; so that sinners too rise in the body.

B. Having brought together: Concerning sacerdotal persons who have died. But if to the pious: Concerning monks, righteous persons, and laypeople. In the divine Scriptures: Note what is read and what is chanted over departed monks and laypeople; and he says that the ministers sing odes agreeing and equal in force to the truthful promises previously read concerning the resurrection. C§1. Jesus leading unto light: That the places of the departed too correspond to their manner of life. For this divine judgment: That it is a matter of righteousness to grant to each, according to his life, his place too. A sacred prayer: Why the prayer. §2. And those of the deiarchic promises: Why the odes and readings. Note what the ancient order and sequence for the departed was. Observe, that now: That at funerals, neither the possessed nor those in repentance are dismissed, but only the catechumens — and why. The catechumens: Nothing is small in our mysteries, but all are great; yet, when compared to one another, they will differ in greatness. For, of the rites performed at funerals, the mysteries of the divine washings, illuminations, and communions are the greatest and incomparable; wherefore he called those performed at funerals ‘small’; nevertheless, not even of these are the still-catechumens worthy. For they will be harmed: These things follow what was said by the Apostle in First Corinthians concerning those who commune unworthily; and here too he says they show contempt for the divine mysteries.

§4. The prayer, then: Note what he prays for. Human weakness: That is, mere sins. §5. With proportionate significations: He said ‘proportionate significations,’ that is, meanings signified by words and names familiar and customary to us, and not beyond our Of their practical reality: That is, God named the enjoyments there according to what we are able to understand, from words and names familiar to us, saying that there is no grief, or sickness, or pain, or groaning there, but that there is light; nevertheless the goods there are truly unknown to us as yet and incomprehensible — ‘for eye has not seen,’ and so forth — but from what we know, He gives us examples of blessedness. Note how he takes ‘into the bosoms of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob.’ §6. For what reason: He raises a difficulty concerning the prayer made by the hierarch over those who have died in sins. The prayers of the righteous: Note that the prayers of the righteous benefit only those worthy of God’s mercies, whether living or having died — not sinners deserving of condemnation, both here and after death. Or what, from Samuel: For neither did Samuel’s praying benefit Saul, who was most wicked, nor did Moses benefit the Hebrews, who were sinners; for the Lord said to him, ‘do not pray for this people.’ The sun‘s own rays: Do not suppose that he means the sun gives its own light (for how could a soulless thing give a gift?

for giving belongs to free choice), but he speaks of the matter at hand by way of a certain personification. For, as if one were to suppose the sun saying: ‘I give light to sound eyes’ — and then someone with weak eyes should say, ‘give to me too, for I am sound’ — and then, having received the ray, should also lose what he saw — in the same way the sinner too suffers, asking a righteous man to pray for him; for the sinner, being dim-sighted, and receiving the ray of the righteous man’s prayer, does not allow it to work and illumine according to its nature, but procures darkness for himself, by not attending, through a pure life, to God’s gifts; and he will be benefited not at all by the righteous man’s prayer. That he understands the matter of the sun in this way is shown also in the discourse On the Divine Names, chapter 4. Beneficial: How and when the prayer of a righteous man benefits only a living person; and he says: when he is repentant, according to the Apostle, ‘weeping with those who weep’ — when that saying too is fulfilled: ‘the prayer of a righteous man, made effective through the repentance of the one who needs it, avails much.’ For if one builds — that is, the righteous man — and one — such as the sinner — tears down, the work remains unfinished, as we learned from the example of Saul and Samuel.

Having a sacred disposition: He called ‘sacred disposition’ here the disposition of one’s own life toward virtue. And ‘helper’ instead of ‘assistant.’ Converse: The Father does not simply forbid our proceeding into divine converse, and asking of God for ourselves the better and salvific things — knowing that the Apostle commands us to pray without ceasing — but forbids one, gripped by conceit, from despising the saints and setting their prayers at naught. And concerning the: From here he begins to say how prayer benefits the dead. Note, too, that this difficulty was raised even before him. §7. Overlooking: What sins of ours God overlooks through the priest’s prayer and supplication. And he asks for these things: What the priest asks. To those present: That is, to the righteous and pious. According to divine life: That is, whatever the righteous bishop shall lawfully and fittingly ask, he shall receive — but concerning the righteous; for it was said to holy Peter: ‘whatever you bind on earth,’ and so forth; and the bishops are, in imitation of holy Peter, as he says shortly. Note the greatness of the hierarchy, and its height and purity. Wherefore, for the unconsecrated: Note that he does not pray these things for sinners. Of the rite-source: That is, of the divine Spirit. Ask, and: The saying is from the Epistle of James, teaching us that we ought not to pray for any wicked person or matter.

They have the powers of separation: Concerning the excommunications and separations made by the hierarch; for he calls ‘powers’ the discerning tests and judgments given to them by God, by which they separate sinners from the righteous, or the reverse. By irrational impulses: Note that, if the hierarch excommunicates contrary to God’s purpose, the divine judgment does not follow him; for these things ought to be done according to divine judgment, and not for one’s own will. The Spirit: Note what the Holy Spirit, given to the apostles after the resurrection through the Lord’s breathing upon them, provided to them. To the one being illumined: To holy Peter. Who of that one and of every successor: How the saying of the Gospel, ‘whatever you shall bind,’ and so forth, must be understood. And of the sacred theology: He calls ‘sacred theology’ the saying, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ which one should note against the Basilians, the Nestorians, the Paulianists, and the like. Hierarchically: Most securely he said ‘hierarchically’ with respect to these matters. §8. Divine generation, before the: That in the case of those being baptized, the holy oil comes first, but in the case of the departed, last. And then, indeed: Why the anointing with oil comes for those being baptized, and why for the departed. §9. Together with its own body: That each soul has its own proper body, with which it also receives its recompenses; wherefore each partakes of the sanctifications; and ‘is granted’ is used in common of both.

Deiarchic communions: A divine ordinance, evidently. The whole man: Note that he calls ‘the whole man’ the one composed of intellective soul and body, as is shown by ‘in pure contemplation and knowledge’; and that he speaks of a whole salvation of soul and body. This must be noted, so that when, in other discourses, he says ‘the supra-essential Jesus was wholly essentialized in accordance with us,’ you may understand the Incarnation as from an intellective soul and a body. §10. Rite-performing invocations: He calls ‘rite-performing invocations’ the prayers at ordination. Note why he passed over these — that is, the holy invocations and activities — in silence. §11. Children not yet: Note what the Father says concerning the baptizing of infants. He wrote these things, as it seems, in answer to holy Timothy’s question, so that it is clear that he wrote the earlier passages, and the other discourses, also in answer to questioners. The sacred traditions: That even then there were those who mocked our mysteries — such as concerning the baptized children, who, being unable to speak, have those who bring them forward renounce Satan on their behalf, and the symbols are recited on their behalf. He defends against this mockery, adding that not all things are known to all. Note, too, that even the angels are ignorant of many things. Known: Known, that is, recognized. For they say what: Note how he received from those before him concerning children.

To the leaders: He calls the apostles ‘leaders.’ The divine things, to a good sponsor: Note to whom the child is entrusted by the parents when he is baptized: that he is entrusted to a sponsor initiated in divine things, for a sacred elevation. Leader: Note that he also calls the sponsor a ‘leader.’ Coming to be: Life, evidently. Of the Areopagite: That the marks of distinction which the ancient saints bore while they were still Greeks, they inscribed for themselves without shame even after turning to Christ; for behold, he named himself ‘Areopagite,’ as the divine Justin also did in his discourse To the Greeks, ‘of Justin the Philosopher.’ To the fellow presbyter: That the name ‘presbyter’ signifies the bishop as well, and the presbyter is also a bishop; and this is shown in the Acts of the Holy Apostles, where Paul, in Asia, addresses the churches there. Chapter I §1. Theological: Note that another treatise has been labored over by the Father, as it were a preliminary introduction and elementary preview of the things said scattered throughout the Scriptures concerning God — a recollection, in due sequence, of which the present treatise has been composed by him. Not in persuasive words: Human wisdom gathers the probabilities of its proofs from sensible things; for the great compulsion of syllogisms takes its starting points from geometry; but concerning incorporeal things — and still more supra-corporeal things and things above every essence — how could one logically apprehend them without interpretation, unless, with difficulty, by the very summitflower of the mind, one were able to understand together, without speech, the unknowing concerning God, that He simply is, through sincere reverence?

To conceive something concerning the supra-essential: God is supra-essential, as being contemplated above every essence, whether intelligible or intellective, and much more sensible. Of supra-essentiality: If ‘essence’ is said from ‘to be,’ and ‘to be’ implies a certain notion of derivation, it would not properly be said of God as essence; for God is set above every essence, being nothing among beings, but above beings and that from which beings derive; for the Godhead, hidden from all, of God alone, is a deiarchic power, ruling over those called gods — angels or holy men — just as it is also the maker of the gods that come to be by participation, being itself, truly, of itself and without cause, Godhead itself. To it, the supra-essential truth: For to the Godhead alone are the things concerning itself, as it is by nature, knowable. A ray of the oracles: He well said ‘ray,’ and not ‘sun’; for just as we cannot gaze directly at the sun, but perhaps at the rays about it, so too we cannot comprehend God Himself directly. By sobriety concerning divine things: For one must not be overbold in theology, but must proceed with sober reasoning toward the holy reverence due the Divine, uttering and interpreting only those things concerning God oracularly given according to Scripture, as he said a little before. By the truest theology: See how he calls the writing of the divine Paul ‘true theology’; for it is he who says that the illumination from God is clearly bestowed according to the measure of each one’s capacity — just as the Lord too shows, saying to the more perfect disciples, ‘to you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom.’

And the great Dionysius says this discourse pertains not only to men, but also to angels, whom he is accustomed to call, following certain of the outside philosophy, ‘minds’ — the ranks above being called ‘minds,’ as being wholly mind in essence, and thinking all things, unitively receiving what flows directly from God to them; whence they are also said to be ‘wholly eyed all over’ in the most holy cherubim. The divine things are uncovered: Note that the angels too are deemed worthy of the knowledge of God according to their own proportion. In salvific righteousness: For this reason, he says, God reveals to each according to his own capacity, not out of envy of what is greater, but in order to preserve the righteousness in the measuring-out of the knowledge of God; for it is the property of righteousness to apportion to each according to worth. Knowledge of God is, then, immeasurable, but we need measures; for if it were revealed to us without measure, we would not be saved — just as a bodily eye receiving the whole sun would not be saved either. The immeasurability, in a manner befitting God: He now calls ‘immeasurability’ the Divine itself, and its illumination according to what is possible. For just as ungraspable: The incomprehensibility of the knowledge concerning God is established from this: for if not even simple and unshaped things, though they be certain essences — such as angels and souls — fall under the senses of bodily beings, how much more does God transcend, who is neither essence, but above essence, neither simple, but above simplicity, neither mind, but above mind, neither a unit, but above a unit, and neither circumscribed by any boundary, but released by the indeterminacy of beings?

When you hear, then, in Scripture, of the ‘form’ of God, and ‘appearance,’ and ‘face,’ understand these, by way of elevation and beyond bodies, in a manner worthy of God; and when you hear of ‘unity,’ do not think of a coming-together of different things toward union — for the discourse now is not about such things, but about God, who is neither the origin of numbers nor composite, but is united even above single-substanced Unifying: From here, after having removed from God all that belongs to beings, he now, following the measure of our language, glorifies God from the very things from which he removed Him; and he calls Him a ‘unit,’ but a unifying one of units — that is, the maker of simple essences, such as angels and souls; and ‘unintelligible mind,’ instead of ‘not understood by any mind’ — for if like is known by like, then, if He were mind, He would have to be understood by minds. But who has known the mind of the Lord? Therefore He is mind above mind, and a name above every name; for ‘my name,’ He says, ‘I did not tell them’ — wherefore He is also nameless to all. But neither is He ‘being’; for if He Himself creates beings out of non-beings, then He is not among beings, but above beings. And if He says, ‘I am He who is,’ understand this in a manner worthy of Him — as without beginning and without end, but also unsearchable.

§2. Whatever it is, is knowledge: For God alone Himself knows what concerns Himself, knowing Himself knowably and properly as He is, while to all things after Him He is unrecognized in respect of what He is and how He is. ‘For no one knows the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father’ — for the Father, knowing His own worshipful image, that is, the Son, knows Himself also. The same concerning the Holy Spirit. All, then, that this blessed man contemplates concerning God, he understands concerning the venerable Infinity: That which is finite and comprehended is fittingly so by that by which it is bounded; but if God is the place of all things — not corporeally, but creatively (for He fills heaven and earth and all things, and is outside them) — it is clear that He is infinity, that is, a power having no boundary. Not, indeed, without communion: That is, all things partake of His communion and salvific providence. The supra-essential: How He sometimes calls the Divine ‘essence,’ and sometimes ‘supra-essential’ — just as ‘unintelligible mind,’ and ‘a name above every name,’ so too ‘a supra-essential essence.’ Applying our minds: For to those things of which God has given us comprehension, it is fitting to apply our mind, and to seek nothing beyond our weakness — such as, that He is good, that He is creator, that He is loving of mankind; but do not busy yourself with what the essence of God is.

Presuming, impossibly, with arrogance: He well said ‘impossibly’; for even if one should attempt it, he will not attain it, but will only darken his intellective sight, and fall from the light that is — like one who insists on receiving the whole sun with a bodily eye. This is what the cherubim and seraphim hint at, by covering their faces — signifying that one must not contend for a contemplation above them, not given to them. And this is the meaning of, ‘no one has ever seen God.’ Whence the God-wise say that they have seen the glory of God, but not God. §3. That which is above mind: Clearly one may grasp from this the madness of Arius and Eunomius, who dared even to formulate technical accounts of the ineffable and supraessential essence of the Only-Begotten. Of the deiarchy: He calls ‘deiarchy’ everywhere the all-ruling Trinity, since it rules also over those called gods — angels and saints, as we have said before. ‘Hidden’ means the incomprehensibility concerning that unnameable essence, which shortly he says must be met with sober silence, and, as befits it, above and reverently. And the good-giving origin: In what sense God is the origin of every manifestation of light, and what the manifestations of light and reformations are. Resurrection: This is what Simeon says when he saw Christ: ‘this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel’ — the fall of the worse in us, and the rising of the better.

The illumination of those illumined: Step by step, as though proceeding toward greater things, he speaks first of those illumined, then of those perfected. ‘To be perfected’ is to be led to perfection through the advancement in good living after baptism, so that one may be able to say, ‘I have finished the course, I have kept the faith.’ The worshipful Trinity, then, ruling over such a rite, as being the perfective source of every perfection, is fittingly understood as its rite-source. Those, then, perfected by this advancement are altogether deified, becoming partakers of the divine nature, of whom the Godhead — God — is proportionally the origin, He being a certain origin of those who have become gods. After this ascent, then, they advance into simplicity, becoming equal to angels through the resurrection, and no longer having a soulish body, according to the Apostle, but a spiritual one — that is, through the all-holy Spirit poured out abundantly upon them, and freed from the multiply-composite variety of reasonings, and from the senses; whence too they are unified, being led into a unit of simplicity, as we have said before. The life of the living: In Himself, God is not conceived; but since He is the cause and origin of all beings, He is the simplicity of the simple, the life of the living, the supraessential of essences, and, simply, the giver of all good things.

§4. Disclosively: ‘Disclosers’ were properly said of those who symbolically disclose the ineffable things of the mysteries. As a monad, indeed: Here he makes clear what ‘unit’ and ‘monad,’ when said of God, are chiefly meant to signify, and says that this is said by the theologians in order to establish the indivisibility of God; for that which is divided by bulk and magnitude, this, as also being body, is divided; but that which is without parts is not even susceptible of being a body, but is above all corporeity as well. Besides, since God, having deliberated, brought all things into existence by His will, He was not, like some mind divided into acts of intellection, multiplied, but, having remained and remaining, he says, in the unit, without parts and without dispersion, both brought into existence and sustains the things in creation — ‘for my Father works until now.’ He is, then, spread out above every simplicity, transcending it without parts. And of divided things: With respect to the supra-heavenly worlds and this visible one, the lower things are turned toward the things set above, and the corporeal is grounded in the living; but with respect to our mortal condition, the opposite is the case; for the soul is turned toward the spirit, in which the senses and the reasonings are fixed, by which we reason about the things in our consideration.

The soul, then, being turned toward this spirit, is turned also toward the senses in it, and through them toward the body; and in the mind the acts of intellection are, as it were, divided, and proceed dispersedly into differences, from a first intellection to second ones, into better or into base ones. He says, then, that, stretching ourselves toward God, we become, by that Unit, one without parts, our multiply-divided differences being gathered together from dispersion into a foldingtogether, and being unified in a supracosmic manner — that is, not sensibly, but intellectively — no longer being at variance with ourselves, but becoming one, unity-formed, just as He too ‘is one.’ As a Trinity: Note that he says the tri-hypostatic Trinity, and calls ‘fecundity’ the paternal procession, understanding, into the manifestation of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He well said ‘as a Trinity,’ since it is not number, but glory, that is spoken: ‘the Lord God, the Lord is one.’ From whom every fatherhood: One must understand by ‘fatherhoods’ the ranks that come from a common rank, as it were joined to one another — cherubim, seraphim, principalities, authorities; and among us, the spiritual ones too, as kin, and mutual connections, as Moses also shows in speaking of kinships. That all beings: All the creations of God are good, and have come to be very good, and remain so, so far as they abide in the natural order in which they came to be; but the deviation from what is natural, whether occurring in angels, or in souls, or in any bodies whatsoever, destroys the beauty, and, by this deviation’s error, produces ugliness.

Toward truth, wholly: Here he well expresses the economy: that one of the Trinity suffered. Note that one of the hypostases communed with us wholly, and that he called our Lord Jesus Christ Himself simple, and then, calling Him composite, recalling to Himself our human extremity. We rightly say, then, that one of the Holy Trinity was on the cross. This is against the Nestorians and the Acephali; for behold, he says, one of the hypostases communed with us wholly, as the Apostle says, ‘in whom dwells the whole fullness of the Godhead bodily.’ This ‘wholly’ is also against Apollinarius; for it shows that He assumed a perfect man. And took a duration: I take the Father’s saying ‘duration’ to mean the temporal measure of the Lord’s conduct in the flesh. And of the unconfused: For He Himself remained God the Word, having become, without confusion, what He was not; and note that the ‘unconfused’ has been proclaimed from apostolic times. And whatever other theurgic lights: He calls the teachings of the saints ‘theurgic lights,’ as producing the light of knowledge and making gods of those who are persuaded. The hidden things of the leaders: Note that the things concerning what is elevated, and beyond the hearing of the many, the holy Apostles handed down secretly, mystically revealing them to the perfect; and that the ‘without confusion and without change,’ which he said, and ‘of the whole man,’ are from the Apostles; wherefore the Apostle, writing to the Thessalonians, says that they must keep what they heard, whether by word or by letter; and, writing again to Timothy, says he has given him ‘a deposit in a mystery’ — which is here said ‘disclosively.’

Through the sacred veils: Note that one must place in the same rank both holy Scripture and the traditions of the bishops (whom he is accustomed to call ‘hierarchs,’ as rulers of the priests — that is, of the presbyters and deacons and doorkeepers, as he says in our hierarchy; whence we also trust their statements concerning doctrines); from which oracles, he says, the coarser things are placed upon the supra-essential realities for our understanding and mystagogy — as with God, when He appears as fire, or as an old man in Daniel, or as a man wrestling with Jacob, and such things; and with the angels, as the cherubim, being also beastshaped, and others in the rank of men and youths. Of divided symbols: That Scripture speaks of the Divine in human terms, naming it from human things, attributing to it feet and hands and faces. When incorruptible: That in the resurrection the saints will attain incorruption and immortality, in a Christ-formed state, shining above the sun, as the Lord too did when He was transfigured on the mountain — as the Apostle says concerning the saints, that ‘then they shall be as He is, and shall always be with the Lord.’ Of His visible theophany: Note that he calls even His divine body a ‘visible theophany,’ so that this saying applies alike against the Nestorians and the Acephali, and against those who suppose the Lord does not now, and will not, have flesh; and that there is one visible theophany of His, which is His ensouled flesh, and another intelligible, which will then be more perfectly shared by us according to mind.

Whence, turned toward God, illumined perfectly from there, we shall become one, in a unity-formed manner, freed from our compositional differences — which signifies the worldly senses and desires. In a more divine imitation: He said ‘more divine imitation,’ signifying the more exact and more perfect; as even now the life of the saints is angel-befitting, in the praise of God and disdain of fleshly things, though not completely — wherefore also the imitation is now more limited; but then perfection will appear in these things. Of intelligible visions: That from the symbols we behold the intelligible things concerning the angels; for he speaks concerning angels, as is shown also by his calling them ‘godformed.’ Above, too, he shows the symbols concerning them in the discourse On the Celestial Hierarchy; but now he joins to this also the symbols concerning God. Ceasing: He spoke of a ‘cessation’ of intellective activity, signifying the incomprehensibility of the divine nature; for none of its attributes is grasped by the movement of the mind, or does the intellection arrive at some acknowledged and clear certainty, except by the incomprehensibility, which is grasped by its own inactivity. Has pre-subsisted ineffably: One must take pains to understand ‘has pre-subsisted’; for he clarifies all his works next in order; from this, then, it will be understood how the Apostle says, ‘that we were in God before the foundation of the world.’

One should know, then, that, since the production of all things depends on Him as cause and origin, since all beings are from Him, it follows reasonably that, as they are also going to be, on account of His inconceivable will, they have pre-subsisted in Him, who knows both that He will bring them forth and when He will bring them forth. Foreknown in Him from before the ages, then, they have presubsisted. Whom it is not even possible to conceive: So also the theologian Gregory says, paraphrasing the saying of the Greeks: ‘to conceive of God is impossible, but to express Him is more impossible still.’ And of all: Having said ‘the terminations of all essential knowledges and powers,’ he repeated the same statement he had made a little before. Either, then, he sets this forth by each expression — that in God every knowledge ceases and has an end of every movement, on account of the incomprehensibility of the divine nature — or rather ‘boundary’ and ‘termination’ mean the end of each essential knowledge. These are the essences and powers, he says, presubsisting in God all together, and not part by part, but all at once, according to the ineffable principle of His foreknowledge. One should know that essence and power are different: the one belongs to things subsisting in themselves, the other to things having their being in another.

For if the knowledges: An explanation of what has been said. He well said: for if knowledges are concerned with essences and beings, but God is neither in essence nor among beings, He is fittingly beyond knowledge too. §5. Nor imagination: Imagination is one thing, and intellection, that is, thought, another; for they arise from different faculties, and by a distinct kind of movement: intellection is an activity and a making, but imagination is a passive affection and an impression signaling something sensible, or as though sensible. Sense-perception apprehends beings by an all-at-once impression, while the mind grasps beings in another manner, and not as sense-perception does. This must be distinguished from the apprehensive faculty of the soul, along with the imaginative; for the imaginative faculty is divided into three parts: the first, that which forms images of perceptions with respect to the things that produce sensible apprehension; the second, that which reforms images from the remaining traces left by these; the third, in which every pleasure of the apparent good according to imagination, or apparent evil according to grief, consists. No imagination, then, has any place with respect to God; for He is, altogether and simply, above and beyond all conception. Nor contact: He now calls ‘contact’ intellective apprehension; for, applying our mind knowably to intelligible and immaterial things, we seem, as it were, to touch them and, through the mind, to perceive what sort of things they are — just as also through touch we perceive sensible things; but with respect to God we do not touch Him even intellectively.

Uncalled and supra-named: ‘Uncalled,’ he says, instead of ‘not called by any mark of distinction.’ For He Himself calls the things that are not as though they were, as He called Cyrus so many years before, and Josiah. But what: The discourse On Theological Outline is sought. The co-divine: He calls the all-holy Trinity, in a certain sense, ‘co-divine.’ Angel-befitting unions: Having said concerning God that He is inconceivable and inexpressible to us, he now establishes what concerns God from the lesser; for if the things concerning angels are unknown to us, what must we think concerning God? He says, then, that the angelic creations are, as it were, certain ‘applications’ of the goodness of God; one must understand ‘application’ as the movement, divided without parts into each of the things brought forth. It is also possible to understand it thus: that the modes of union toward God, so far as it is fitting for angels to be united to God, are incomprehensible not only to us, but also to the lower angels; and they are known only to the highest angels, as being deemed worthy of the aforesaid mode of union. To these, the god-formed minds: The god-formed minds, whom he says, ‘in an angel-imitating manner,’ so far as they can attain, are led into union with the holy powers, which powers he called ‘angels’ beforehand — one must understand these as our theologians, I mean the prophets and apostles; for one must not suppose he means angels, especially from his saying ‘in an angel-imitating manner’ — for an angel does not imitate an angel, but the lesser imitates the greater.

Calling the theologians ‘minds,’ he said that they attain to an angel-imitating union with God, so far as possible, being deified through the cessation of every worldly activity. Cessation: For it is impossible to be united to God and to become, in some manner, a god, unless one ceases from material activities both in sense and in thought. Of the removal of beings: He calls ‘removal of all beings’ the not comparing the Divine to anything among beings, but says that He is not body, not habit, not power, and all the rest, as he signified through what follows. And it itself, nothing: That God ‘is nothing’ must be understood thus: that He is none of beings — for the cause of beings is above beings; whence God is theologized both as everywhere and as nowhere. Since, then, He is nowhere, all things are indeed through Him, and in Him, as He is none of all things; and again in Him, as being everywhere. For if He were only everywhere, He Himself would be all things, and locally in all; thus, then, He is also nothing, as being above beings. But as being above every habit: A habit is an abiding disposition; movement is that which is set contradistinction to rest; life is that which shows these to be active; imagination is that which forms images in the mind; opinion is a settled supposition.

Intellection differs from discursive thought, in that the one belongs to the discursive faculty of the soul, while the other signifies the movement of the discursive faculty. All these are not essence, but are seen around essence; whence he also distinguished it from these. The providence of the deiarchy: From these the foolish opinions are refuted of those who dared to say that the creative power is present in God by some kind of nature, as weaving is present in spiders; for he says that God brought forth the universe out of goodness alone; wherefore all the theologians do not dare to hymn Him from God Himself — that is, from His essence, for it is unrecognizable — but from His procession into external things, which is providence. Those things which, as intellective, think as being mind — these, being rational, applying knowingly to the providence of God, desire God proportionally; but those things that fall below the intellective, and are a sensitive soul — I mean of beasts and of all ensouled but irrational bodies — these, moved only by sense unto hunger and thirst, reasonably desire, in a sensible manner, the one who provides. And the other things, too, that have only the vegetative, that is, vital, movement, without sense and without soul — such as all plants and all herbs — these too seem to desire the divine providence, by which they also subsist and flourish; whence these too are taken up in the hundred forty-eighth psalm as praising God, through their own constitution.

These too, then, partake of the ineffable providence, but only with respect to living, even though without soul and without sense, and according to their habitual fitness, which is the property of the power. The intellective, indeed: By ‘intellective’ he means the angelic nature, by ‘rational’ the human; and by what falls below these, the irrational, to which only the sensitive belongs. Wherefore he also said ‘sensibly’ — that is, sensitively. And the other things — that is, the plants and all that is altogether without soul and without movement — some, he says, desire providence according to vital movement, that is, the nutritive and augmentative, while the soulless ones desire it in having, within themselves, being at all. §6. As eternal: See how clearly, from the effects and created things, they hymn the highest of all: they call Him eternal, as the maker of the ages and, in truth, an age, if indeed He who always is, is Himself so — whence He is also called an age; but ‘eternal’ is not the age itself, but that which partakes of the age. Isaiah accordingly says: ‘the eternal God, who fashioned the ends of the earth’; but God is not second to the age, so as also to partake of it, but is the maker of the ages. As ageless: According to: ‘but You are the same, and Your years shall not fail.’

As in a breeze: This is what is said in Kingdoms, that the Lord was present to speak to Elijah neither in the earthquake, nor in the cloud, but the Lord calls in a still, small voice; and this shows that he speaks of God as being, in a certain sense, even in a body — He who is uncontained in all things; for breath too is partaken of by all, and is in all, and is contained by none, as the Lord also says in the Gospels: ‘God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ §7. And the nameless: Nameless, on account of His being all things and being none of the beings, but all things being from Him, as He Himself explains. As of origin: Of origin, as furnishing being; of end, as sustaining things in being. All things in all: All beings, since all things are from Him. And hearth: He called Him the hearth of all, as being the dwelling of all the saints, as the Lord Himself says, ‘abide in Me’; for just as we are His temple, according to, ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them,’ so too He is our house. And he well immediately added ‘united’; for since he said that He is all things and all things are in Him, lest anyone, bringing his mind down to composition, should fall from the truth, supposing all things to be heaped together in God, or that God is all things according to composition, he quickly remedied the incongruity, saying ‘united’ — that is, in His own unit, or rather remaining above a unit, spread out without parts and unmixed with beings, He is all things and in all things; but He is also unrelated: ‘in all things,’ instead of, contained or corporeally circumscribed by nothing, but rather transcendently; for He is outside all things, being nowhere, all things being from Him, and He Himself in all things; for from Him all things have their constitution.

And all things simply: That is, without composition; for He was not composed with, or corporeally united to, any of beings, except at the time of the economy. §8. Of divine phantasms: That he calls ‘phantasms’ the revelations of God in symbols, and note how he speaks of this. In sanctuaries: The Greeks called the sacred precincts of their gods ‘anaktora’; the saint hints here at the passage in Isaiah — for he seems to be recounting that he saw, in the temple, that divine glory and vision, that of the seraph; and what follows is said with reference to Ezekiel‘s vision in Babylon, and certain other contemplations. Symbolic theology: He promises to write another treatise, which he calls Symbolic Theology. The hierarchic man: Note that it especially befits priests to contemplate the divine Scripture. God-formed: Instead of ‘theophanic.’ And sacred ears: He enjoins that sacred ears be set before the holy things, that is, a reverent hearing worthy of holy things. Of the uninitiated: That is, of those not initiated; that one who hears the divine oracles, or their interpretations, with laughter and mockery, is judged as a fighter against God. The Apostle also writes to Timothy that one ought not to speak of such things in truth to those who do not receive the word. Chapter II §1. The deiarchic: From this chapter especially, the Arians and Eunomians, who preach unlikeness, are combated, as well as the Nestorians and the Acephali.

He calls ‘the whole deiarchic existence’ of the holy and only worshipful Trinity the Godhead known in three hypostases; for it is his custom to call the venerable Trinity ‘whole Godhead’; for this very Godhead, revealing what the whole Godhead is, has manifested itself to the saints with a distinguishing of the persons, disclosing the properties of the three hypostases, that there is Father and Son and Holy Spirit; for the three are one and whole and only Godhead. Distinguishing: That is, making known and showing. The deiarchy: Note that, even though the utterance is spoken humanly, he attributes this to the Godhead, on account of the unity of person. Not partially: Well said, ‘not partially’; for the activities, and all the hymnologies of theology, are not apportioned by allotment to one and only one of the persons of the divine Trinity, but they are common to the Trinity, apart from the Incarnation alone — for that belongs to the Son alone; only the characteristic properties of the three hypostases apply partially and properly to each hypostasis — as ‘Father’ to the Father, and to no other. And of the whole: Note that the Trinity is signified as the whole Godhead. Unless concerning the whole: Note that one who says the divine names are not common impiously severs the unity of the worshipful Trinity. Thus says He who is: One should note that this holy Dionysius receives the Revelation of the holy John the Evangelist; for that is where this saying comes from.

That holy Dionysius knew that the divine Evangelist was on Patmos, where he also saw the Revelation, you will learn below from the tenth letter, which he wrote to holy John himself. Of the prophets: David says this. He who is, who proceeds from the Father: Consider how he states this usage; for it is not now recorded in this form. The deiarchy: In other places, ‘deiarchic life.’ Of God-begetting Godhead: Note that he calls the Father ‘Godbegetting Godhead,’ and the Only-Begotten ‘filial Godhead.’ Discursively: Instead of ‘more fully.’ All things through Him: Note that, when he says ‘all things are from God,’ he signifies comprehensively the whole Godhead, that is, the Holy Trinity; but when he says, ‘all things were created through Him and unto Him,’ he signifies, more particularly, the hypostases — for all understood this concerning the creative Word. And of Him: Of the Word, evidently. Communally and unitedly: Note that the things of the Holy Trinity are united communally. The theurgic works: Such as: ‘I cast out demons by the Spirit of God’; the reverence, as in: ‘to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit it shall not be forgiven’; and that of the gifts in saying: ‘you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you.’ The fontal cause: It is said in the Psalms, ‘for with You is the fountain of life,’ and in Jeremiah, ‘they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water.’

God, then, is called ‘fountain,’ as a womb and origin and cause of all things that have been manifested and have come forth into being; on account, then, of the creative and unfailing character of the things subsisting through the Spirit, and because the Holy Spirit itself too is the cause of all beings, he fittingly theologizes it as ‘fontal cause’ as well; understand the unfailing character of His creating from: ‘my Father works until now, and I work.’ Likewise the Holy Spirit too, together with the Father and the Son, always works unfailingly. §2. With unperverted notions: He well said ‘unperverted’; since the heretics too read the Scriptures and are nourished in them, and yet pervert themselves. Of a division befitting God: He called ‘a division befitting God’ the unconfused knowledge concerning the hypostases in the Holy Trinity, and says that one need not concern oneself with persuading those who do not receive divine Scripture. For to theologize commonly concerning the Holy Trinity is not to introduce a confusion of the hypostases. Toward the theological science: Explaining the theological science concerning God above, he did not call it ‘science’; but here he calls the things concerning theology ‘science.’ ‘Science’ is a right opinion bound to reasoning, or a true account, unshakeable in the mind, and the precise knowledge and declaration of a matter. The divine disclosures: He calls ‘disclosures’ the teachings that disclose the mysteries.

Unmultiplied in themselves: That one must not go beyond holy Scripture in theologizing. §3. And whatever belongs to the transcendent negation: By way of removal, He is glorified above understanding; for from the things not observed concerning Him, He is worshiped in a transcendent manner — as immortal, as endless and invisible and without need; for these too are common to the Trinity. Causal, on the other hand, are the things that have flowed forth upon creation from Him, as the cause of every good thing. That of the Father: ‘Supra-essential’ is taken in common, as applied to the Father, so too to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. But with respect to the distinct names of the Holy Trinity, he says there is no interchange or communion whatsoever; for the Father could not piously be called ‘Son,’ nor the Son ‘Father.’ The incarnation of Jesus pertaining to us: Note that the Incarnation belongs to God the Word alone. He calls it ‘complete,’ against Apollinarius, as consisting of an intellective soul and a body like ours; this is also against Eutyches. Against Nestorius, the unaltered existence of Jesus, as God, pertaining to us; and he calls the mysteries in His humanity ‘essential’ — the hunger, the toil, the walking on water, the entering to the disciples with the doors shut, the raising of the dead, and the Passion itself, and so on.

Essential mysteries: Note the word ‘essential,’ applied to the Incarnation; for he said this, casting out the doctrine of mere appearance. §4. Initiates of the sacred tradition: ‘Hieromystai’ are those initiated into sacred things. Hidden and unemanated: He calls ‘hidden unions’ the incomprehensible knowledges concerning the divine essence; the essence itself of the Holy Trinity, what it is, no one shall ever know. The distinctions: He calls ‘distinctions’ the hypostatic, worshipful existences — that is, of the Son, the inexpressible radiance from the Father, and of the Holy Spirit, the inconceivable procession from the Father. That above the origin-of-unity: The unity above the origin-ofunity signifies that which is above every unity and simplicity among beings, of the divine nature, being without parts and simple. Unutterable, on account of the unnameability of the essence; but many-voiced, since it has manifoldness of expression through the variety of those benefited. The all-conceivable: How God is both unknown and allconceivable, and how we acquire knowledge of Him in unknowing, must be said; for God is made known by unknowing — but not the ignorance that comes through unlearnedness, for this is darkness of soul; nor the knowing that knows the unknown one is unknown; but He is known according to that unknowing by which, having spread ourselves out above the acts of intellection, we, having transcended every intellection concerning God, become simple, thereafter unknowing and remaining undistinguished, on account of our standing toward unity, and firmly established in union, we are unknowing that we are unknowing.

God is, again, ‘all-conceivable,’ being conceived, as to what He is, from His gift-loving providences, and from His creatures — from the one, that He is Savior, from the other, that He is Creator. And he calls ‘position’ the existence, as derived from the very existence of all things. God, who also transforms these things, is the position and removal of all things: the position of all things, as having set and made all things — for in Him all things have their constitution; and the removal of all things, as also reshaping and refashioning the very position and making of beings. For if it is agreed that the things in generation are also subject to corruption, He, by the wealth of His goodness, has, for some, removed even corruptibility — as of angels and souls — while for others He transfers corruptible into incorruption. Note the mutual indwelling of the divine hypostases, according to a certain abiding and establishment, as in: ‘I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me.’ Just as the lights of lamps: The whole thought of the Father has this manner. He gave an example concerning the Holy Trinity: just as three lamps, or candles, lit in some temple or house, are, with respect to their hypostases, distinguished — for each lamp is individually one and another — yet in their light they have a united and inseparable communion of nature and activity; and no one can, in the air of the house, distinguish which light belongs to this lamp, and which to the other.

Having said this, he passes now from the triadic account to that of the economy, and clarifies the glorious going-forth of God the Word from the Father, according to His own saying: ‘I came forth from My Father, and I go to My Father.’ Even if one should remove one of the torches from the room, its whole proper light will go out with it, drawing along with itself nothing of the brightness of the other lights, nor leaving its own to the others. For the Son, having come from the Father and having dwelt in the world, neither drew together the Father and the Spirit in Himself, nor, having gone out from His own, left them behind, but made His goingforth undivided from His own abiding. Where, indeed, even the supra-essential: The unions of bodies, whether contemplated elementally or otherwise mixed, have their alteration in powers and qualities, and their union effects something other than the nature of the simple things; likewise, psychic powers too have a differing variety according to their movement; and moreover the unions of angels with the divine illuminations have their partiality and proportion according to their own ranks; but the Godhead in the Holy Trinity, being cut off by none of the aforesaid, is fittingly glorified as being above these unions. And supra-heavenly lights: Note that he calls all the souls and minds ‘supra-heavenly lights,’ and says that all these living essences are united, as was said in the example of the many lamps in a house, unmixedly and without confusion united to one another, being god-formed and proportionally partaking of the super-united union of God.

§5. Of the supra-essential divine begetting: Note that he calls the Father ‘supra-essential divine begetting’ and ‘fountain,’ and that he does not interchange the names. Unions and distinctions: He now theologizes concerning the ineffable Trinity up to the procession into three hypostases: that God the Father, moved timelessly and lovingly, proceeded into the distinction of hypostases, remaining, without parts and without diminishment, in His own wholeness, super-united and super-simplified, His own radiance having come forth into existence, as a living image, and the all-holy Spirit worshipfully and super-eternally proceeding from the Father. And the cause and fountain of all things was multiplied, by goodness, into the tri-hypostatic deiarchy. Gregory the Theologian says these things too in his discourses Against Eunomius. There is also, according to another account, a divine distinction: the procession of God, through the abundance of goodness, into the manifold variety of the invisible and visible creation. Common to the tri-hypostatic and distinguished Unit are the creative providences and goodnesses; for the all-royal Trinity comes to be participated by those able to partake, without relation and without being contained — just as, when a great voice occurs, all present partake according to their own capacity, but some more strongly, some more dimly, and the voice is participable, yet remains, in itself, unparticipated. From the participations and the participants: According to essence, the Godhead is not participated, nor conceived; but it is participable in that all things exist from it, and are held together by it unto being.

In each of the impressions: By way of example, he says how God is participated without being contained. §6. The seal is not: Objection and resolution, from the example of the seal. Imprints: He calls ‘imprints’ here the impressions. And neither resistant: As stones and wood, or again things of a liquid nature, none of which receive the seal from a ring. And it is distinguished: Note that the Incarnation of the Word is distinguished, wholly and truly, from the Holy Trinity. That pertaining to us: Here, discussing the economy again, he attaches it to God the Word, neither the Father nor the Spirit having communion in it, except by will alone. Note the precise account of the economy: that the supra-essential God the Word was essentialized unalterably — since He remained God — and was essentialized, pertaining to us, wholly from us; and that it is truly God the Word who suffered, evidently in the flesh, and that all the things in the economy are His human theurgy, and that the Father did not commune in these, nor the Holy Spirit, except by the good pleasure and will of the incarnation. Note these things especially against the Nestorians, the Acephali, and the Phantasiasts. It is distinguished: This means that the triadic and theological Word’s becoming incarnate, pertaining to us, wholly and truly, from us, is set apart, both in doing and in suffering all that is proper to His human sphere.

He calls ‘unshared’ and ‘exceptional’ — that is, pure and unblameable — of His human nature, those things which are: birth, infancy, growth, thirst, toil, grief, tears, spittle, blood, piercing, corruption, flux, voluntary death, speechlessness, motionlessness, and the like. For in these the Father and the Spirit have communed in no way or manner, unless one should say by good pleasure and will. The unaltered, having become: How he says the Word suffered, as also, ‘our hands have handled,’ concerning the Word of life — we have set this forth. §7. But to those, as mystically participating: According to the power inherent in the bread and the cup. Above intellective activity: The sacred mind unfolds — that is, interprets — the meaning of the things said concerning God, being wholly occupied with divine things, and remaining unclouded by earthly and passionate things; but it does not apply itself to the divine things themselves otherwise than by a cessation of every intellective movement concerning beings; for when one is surrounded on all sides by the incomprehensibility of God, then one grasps what is sought. By the participations alone: ‘Names’ must be supplied. He calls ‘participations’ the gifts that we partake of, from God Hiddenness: That even the name ‘God’ does not signify essence, nor what God is, but a certain beneficence toward us; and that from the participations bestowed on us by God we also form our names for God, but what God is remains inconceivable to all; for the divine existence will be worthily hymned in this manner only, when, released by us from every activity, even the most active — that is, the intellective — it will receive us through holy silence.

Again, that it is fontal: Note the venerable and awesome names for the immaculate Trinity: that the Father is fontal Godhead, and the Son and the Holy Spirit are shoots of the God-begetting Godhead — that is, of the Father — Godplanted, and flowers, and supra-essential lights. He calls ‘fatherhood’ the, as it were, paternity, and brings in ‘sonship’ accordingly; for the being of fathers and being called sons has flowed from above, the Son being by nature of the Father, and the Father of all creatively and instructively — whence incorporeal and intelligible fathers and sons of gods, instructively and transcendently, exist among angels and the righteous, the properly named Father ruling over all fathers, and the Son ruling over all sons, as He too becomes participable in this, as He Himself says: ‘I have manifested Your name to men.’ §8. To the effects: The ‘effects’ are all things brought forth into creation, whether in heaven or on earth; the ‘causes’ are the transcendent realities — that is, the three hypostases of the Holy Trinity. It is plain, then, that there is no resemblance of these to one another. He well added ‘admissible’; for not all names. And if one should say ‘to live’: That the properties of the effects are present in the causes abundantly and essentially. So that we do not correctly say the Divine ‘lives’ and ‘is illumined’; for this is the cause of our living and being illumined; essentially, then, are present in the Divine the things that are present in us by grace — for this is what ‘by participation’ signifies.

§9. But also that of every theology: That he calls ‘theology’ the things concerning the Incarnation, and that he calls the enfleshment of the Lord Jesus ‘divine formation pertaining to us.’ This is especially against the Nestorians, in saying that He was manly essentialized. Observe that he says the body of the Lord Jesus was formed from the virginal blood. Note, too, how he says there are certain most senior angels, and that a certain one of them is first. He is accustomed to call the highest three ranks ‘most senior angels’ — thrones, seraphim, cherubim; and here he says that not even to the very first of the angels is the manner of the Incarnation attainable. And to the renowned: Glorious. To the leader: He hints at his own leader, holy Hierotheus, as he immediately shows; for after Paul, he was benefited by this man. What it means not only to have learned but also to have suffered is said also in the Epistle to the Hebrews: ‘for He learned obedience from what He suffered.’ For one who suffers grasps by experience what is taught; so too one initiated by revelation will interpret divine things more divinely. He who crucifies himself and his own flesh carries about in his own body the marks of Christ; fittingly, then, he also reigns with Christ, and is entrusted with His divine mysteries — when holy Hierotheus too is said not only to have learned, but also to have suffered, divine things.

Otherwise: he said he ‘suffered’ divine things, meaning that he received initiation into these not by teaching through discourse, but was imprinted by divine illumination, and he called such an initiation into more divine things ‘cosuffering,’ that is, joint-disposition. §10. The cause of all: These divine words establish how the Son too is ‘all things in all,’ and ‘the head of all,’ according to the Apostle; and he says that He is the fullness and the binder of all things, drawing together the interconnection of creatures — as the gatherer of the whole, then, and fittingly also a part, since every part is a part of the whole, and neither whole nor part, as being none of these, but above every essence. His Godhead is, in a certain sense, spoken of as ‘perfect,’ with respect to us, the imperfect; but with respect to the perfect angels, He is not perfect, but supra-perfect; and the Son is ‘rite-source,’ as ruling every perfection, since He is also ‘before perfection.’ So too He is called ‘form’ among the formless and incorporeal, as being the maker of all formgiving; but with respect to these forms He is formless and above form, since forms and ideas are secondary to Him. Distinguishing: Instead of ‘discerning’ and ‘preserving unconfused.’ And He is a measure: He is a measure of beings, since in Him all things are bounded, and He might most justly be called an ‘age’; for if ‘age’ is said as ‘ever being,’ He Himself is the everbeing one.

And He is the maker of the ages, as being also the maker of the angels; for these are immortal, and immortality is called ‘duration,’ ‘perpetual life,’ ‘age’ — but not ‘time’ — endless and ever to be. Full among the needy: What he said above, ‘imperfect among the perfect,’ he says here, ‘super-full among the full’; and so ‘imperfect’ too you must understand as ‘super-perfect among the perfect.’ And even unto nature: See how he says this, since He also came down even unto nature — understand ‘our nature’; and that we do not rightly say ‘nature’ with respect to God. Behold, then, how he says, ‘He came down even unto nature’ — that is, He reached even to that most dishonorable thing, which He Himself did not possess. Unalterably: Note that He communed with us unalterably and unconfusedly and without passion, and that in our natural things He remained supra-natural, and in our essential things supra-essential, and had what is ours above us — as, that He was of a virgin, that He was without sin, that He spoke and did all things with the authority of God, that He walked upon the water, and such things. Note, then, that no one theologizes thus concerning the economy except against the Nestorians and the Acephali and the Phantasiasts. §11. The common and: Common and united are the names of the Holy Trinity — as many as are named from its gifts to the things after it, which gifts he calls ‘distinctions,’ and, as it were, ‘multiplications.’

And it is multiplied, remaining one: This is against the Phantasiasts, namely, that the One is said to be multiplied; for since all things are from Him, and through Him, and unto Him were created, and He Himself is the head of all beings, He is fittingly said to be multiplied through the things that came to be from Him — when, all things being subjected to the Father, He Himself is said, through the things that came to be from Him, to be subjected to the Father, as the Apostle says, ‘then the Son Himself also shall be subjected’; and such a one, in the multiplication of the production of all things, remained one and the same in the undiminished outpouring of His communications, being a part in the whole, and being nothing of the whole — for He is supra-essential, and unattainable by us. And by the unified: He called the production of all things ‘unified,’ signifying that it happened together with the willing, and not that the things that came to be were created little little partially. And ‘undiminished communication’ means that, in creating beings, God diminishes none of His own goods. Our common leader, having considered: Our common leader and guide, evidently the apostle Paul; for it was through him that he believed, as we know from the Acts. And one should note that holy Hierotheus too was a disciple of holy Paul.

For indeed, if there are those called: The saying, ‘even if there be many gods and lords, yet there is one who is truly God and Father, and one who is truly Lord Jesus,’ signifies this: that the cause of all, and the creative Godhead, by an undivided and undispersed communication of its own name of Godhead and Lordship, has brought forth those called ‘gods’ and ‘lords’ — the Godhead not being fragmented into parts of godheads, as gold into many coins, nor the many gods completing His Godhead — but God is said to be multiplied by the will directed toward the production of each of beings, through providential processions, being multiplied, yet remaining one without parts — like the sun sending forth many rays, yet remaining in its unity. And it is well said, too, with respect to divine things, that the unions are more predominant than the distinctions; for one who listens intelligently concerning God, hearing ‘unit’ spoken of Him, ought not to suspect weakness, nor ‘simple’ as implying powerlessness; for nothing is properly said by us concerning God that attains that property, neither by way of privation, nor by way of position, but ‘the one’ must be said as incomparable to all things — which likewise holds also in the unemanated hypostases of His own unity; for He remains the same, even though the will seems to be distinguished into the production of the rest.

Of every distinction, then, the precausal and more predominant reality is the undivided unit of God. But with respect to sensible things, the opposite is the case; for there is no unit of them, but the distinctions of the elements, pre-existing, becoming concurrent and united, produce secondary unions from composition; but with respect to divine things it is not so — for with them, the union, pre-existing, makes the distinctions secondary, by will. And after that of the one: He calls ‘unions,’ with respect to divine things, the things contemplated in a unified and monadic manner concerning the Godhead — apart from the properties that He has withheld beforehand, that is, fatherhood, sonship, and the procession of the Spirit from the Father; and ‘distinctions,’ the being of many things partaking of the divine gifts. The things of the unions, then, take precedence and predominate; for the things of the one Godhead and Lordship were not gathered together from the many, but its monadic character, which is contemplated as a multiplication in those things. Chapter III §1. The good-originating: The originator of all goodness. But not all things: How not all things are present with God — he says this himself, but you may also understand it from the divine oracle: ‘draw near to Me, and I will draw near to you, says the Lord.’ Ourselves, then: Note that prayer leads us up to God, not Him down to us; note too that the examples are beautiful.

Of the many-lighted chain: He well likened our prayer to a heavenly rope; for just as one wishing to ascend to the height of heaven grips this rope firmly with his hands. Everywhere-present: How God is present everywhere and nowhere has been said by us above. Just as one lifting himself up little by little from the earth by his hands seems to be pulling down the rope, but he himself is lifted and raised up on high by the gradual ascent — so too one who prays intently, through his deeds, which the account calls ‘hands,’ by gradual working and prayer raises his mind up toward God; but if we let our hands go from the rope, we fall from the height. The same holds concerning the ship: the ship is our understanding, fanned by the winds of life; the sea is life, full of many storms; the rock is Christ, holding whom we remain unshaken, drawing our life toward Him. §2. Of the renowned: Glorious. To speak idly: To speak vainly. Having been instructed: He says ‘having been instructed,’ instead of ‘having been benefited.’ One should know that after Paul he was a disciple of holy Hierotheus. ‘Snatching away’ he says instead of ‘secretly appropriating and misappropriating.’ In a presbyteral manner: ‘Presbyteral’ he perhaps takes instead of ‘experienced’ and ‘scientifically’; and he calls ‘summary definitions’ those that have a concise mode of contemplation; and he calls ‘foldings-together’ expressions made in few words.

As, so far as possible, for us: That is, as far as possible for me, you yourself also urged me to interpret, and as many teachers among us have interpreted in this way; this is the resolution of the hyperbaton. Second oracles: Note that the writings of holy Hierotheus must be considered as a second holy Scripture. Eyewitness: He means the uncovered and more manifest understanding. Of the presbyteral: That the presbyteral dignity is more perfect and more instructive than that of all other priests. What ‘presbyteral’ means you will understand from Isaiah, saying: ‘not an elder, not a messenger, but the Lord Himself shall come and save us’; and from the Revelation of holy John, who said he saw twenty-four elders in heaven around the ineffable throne of God. Of the life-originating: He speaks, perhaps, of the lifeoriginating and God-receiving body of the holy Theotokos, who had then fallen asleep. Note, too, ‘James, the brother of God,’ and that this divine man was present together with Peter and James the apostles. Of the theologians: He speaks concerning the holy apostles. Of the deiarchic weakness: Here he calls ‘deiarchic weakness’ the Son’s voluntary condescension, unto flesh, apart from sin; for having remained altogether unacquainted with sin, He deigned, for our sake, without departing from what is His own, sinlessly to lead us back to our original freedom through our adoption.

For being rich in Godhead, He became poor with the wealth-making poverty, having assumed, in a supra-natural manner, our flesh, that we might be enriched by His Godhead; and being in the form of God, He put on the form of a servant, through the overflow of goodness, being the simple, hypostatic Word, and having become, without change, flesh. Besides these, note also His whole impoverished manner of life in the flesh: the manger, the flight into Egypt, His indifferent company with harlots and tax collectors, His choosing of the poorest fishermen, His homelessness, His dishonorable death on the cross, His being numbered among the wicked thieves, the piercing of the nails, the wounding of His side by the spear, the blows, the spittings, the vinegar, the gall, the crown of thorns, the mockeries and derisions, the kneelings, the most humble burial. This, as it were, foolishness and weakness of God, by the account of the economy, was proclaimed, wiser and incomparably stronger than men, by the surpassingly powerful triumph of the better — proclaimed by unbroken silence through deeds: ‘for even if He was crucified out of weakness, yet He lives by power,’ according to the divine Paul. To the same effect he well spoke of ‘deiarchic weakness’; for, on account of His voluntary condescension toward us, having endured all things unto death, even death on a cross, He Himself takes away our weaknesses, and is grieved for us, and ‘by His wound we are all healed,’ and His suffering is called His own, according to the voice of Peter saying: ‘Christ, then, having suffered for us in the flesh’; and: ‘if they had known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory’ — whence the Jews too are called ‘slayers of the Lord.’

Judged as a hymnologist: That those around holy Hierotheus, at that time, sang melodious psalms and odes, as both ‘hymning’ and ‘chanting’ show; and that the lofty and mystical things must be kept unspoken for the many, while the many must be spoken to and taught what is possible and readily demonstrable. §3. Of the divine Scriptures: Scriptures and theorems, evidently. Through excessive reverence: That it is reverent not to seek after the more divine things. We have received: Note that one must not neglect what knowledge of divine things is possible, but must also impart it to others; and that minds have, by nature, a desire for the contemplation of supra-natural things that is attainable. The things above us, indeed: That one must not be overly curious about what is above us, nor neglect divine knowledge, but must impart to others what is attainable; for it is said: ‘seek not what is too high for you, and search not into what is too deep for you; think on what is enjoined to you.’ Enjoining: According to the Apostle, who said: ‘commit these things to faithful men.’ To these things, then, we too: Note whence he came to write. To Hierotheus: That in what follows he interprets the writings of Hierotheus. Chapter IV §1. Well then: Come, then. They attribute: ‘They attribute’ must be understood instead of ‘they dedicate’; and that divine goodness is shown from all things signifies that all things have been brought forth from it into existence.

As essential: That the Divine itself is essential good, and that all beings partake of the good, as the things made partake of the sun. Just as our sun: Let no one suppose that the great Dionysius judges the things concerning God wholly by the example of the sun, but let it be understood thus: just as the sun, being nothing other than light, does not have light as something separable, nor receives light from within by a psychic choice to do good and distributes it to all — for the contrary is true: it does good neither as having a soul nor as having free choice, for it is irrational; nor does it receive light from elsewhere — for it is itself this very light and illumines — so must this alone be understood also concerning God: that God does not have the good by accident, as we have the virtues, but God Himself, being the essence of the good, just as light is the essence of the sun, extends around all the brightness of goodness by doing good to those who are illumined. Whence he says the example of the sun bears a dark and almost invisible image of the wholly incommunicable archetype; for if the images had the truth, they would no longer be examples, but archetypes. The intelligible and intellective orders: Properly speaking, ‘intelligible’ is one thing, and ‘intellective’ another.

For the intelligible is, as it were, the nourishment of the intellective, since that which is thought is greater and pre-conceived, prior to that which thinks. The ranks set above and nearest to God, then, must properly be called ‘intelligible,’ and the subordinate ones ‘intellective,’ as thinking those set above. One must not suppose that, because the things thought are called ‘intelligible,’ they themselves do not think — for they too think, since they are minds and essences of life, created by the highest mind; and the activities there too are hypostatic, and essences. They are thought, as immaterial, and they think beings, as incorporeal and supracosmic minds, illumined from above with the principles concerning beings, and conveying them mystically to the subordinate angels, intelligibly and revealingly. Of corruption and death: For these belong to bodies. They are properly illumined: That incorporeal and heavenly beings are thought, and themselves think. And guard and hearth: ‘Abiding’ and ‘hearth’ signify the same thing, in parallel. Philo the Jew, in his discourse On the Flaming Sword and the Cherubim, says: ‘Abiding, standing firmly among the parts of the world, is aptly called by the ancients “hearth.”’ He also says this above, near the end of the first chapter. §2. From there, to them: Note the matters concerning the angels: that immaterial beings pass into and out of one another without confusion, and that there are, as it were, degrees and ranks, first and second; and that the divine minds there wind around themselves, not with any bodily coiling, but a supracosmic and intellective one — proceeding from itself into acts of intellection and turning back into itself, yet not going outside itself dispersedly.

The many-eyed wheels of the inspired Ezekiel hint at this too; and that, with respect to the divine love, they are in identity and at the summit — one must understand ‘identity’ as the unfailing attention toward God, and ‘summit’ as the advancement of their intellection and essence into deification; and the unions of the intelligible beings with one another, understand as their mutual, God-befitting love, which, being divine and unifying, joins them, not heaping them together in a mass, but binding them by love. Of beings, some are united and interconnected, while others are divided and set in juxtaposition; and among intelligible things, united are, for instance, ‘living creature,’ ‘light,’ ‘intelligible world’; divided and in juxtaposition are ‘army,’ ‘rank,’ ‘clan,’ ‘chorus.’ Among sensible things, union is ‘living creature,’ ‘tree,’ ‘world’; division by aggregation is ‘flock,’ ‘people,’ ‘heap,’ ‘chorus.’ In the treatise on the angelic properties: Behold, another work of Dionysius is sought, On the Angelic Properties and The angel-befitting purifications: He speaks of ‘angelbefitting purifications,’ such as that of Isaiah, and that of Ezekiel eating the scroll of the book in ecstasy. And he speaks of the ‘perfecting rite of angels,’ as in the case of Daniel and the angel who interpreted for him, and concerning the shepherd who perfected Hermas, as we read there in the Shepherd; but he also speaks of how the angels themselves are purified and perfected, in the discourse On the Celestial And to be angels: Why they are called angels, and that they too are lights.

The souls: Note that the souls are others, subordinate to the angels after them, and that they are immortal, being created as essential lives; and that souls are led by the hand through the angels — those who practice an angelic life; so too we have read in the Shepherd. Good-originating source: Note that the souls of the righteous are led up to the good-originating source of all good things, that is, to God, and, coming to be in participation of His illuminations, they intercede with boldness. In the treatise on the soul: The treatise On the Soul is sought. Of irrational souls: He speaks of irrational and sensitive souls; and note that ‘soul’ is one thing, and ‘life’ another. Having received an amphibious lot: He speaks of the creeping things that have received an amphibious lot, such as frogs, octopuses; and buried ones, such as moles. Note that the souls are subordinate to the angels after them, and that they are immortal, being created as essential lives; and that souls are led by the hand through the angels. On account of the essential habit itself: We already said above that a habit is an abiding quality. Whatever, then, is unliving and soulless was brought forth in this way through the goodness of God, having been given qualities by way of habit — such as various stones, herbs and roots and earth and minerals, given qualities for some useful purpose.

These, then, do not acquire the habit from outside, but received, from God, in their essence, the quality of the habit. §3. But if also above all: See how the privations concerning God are effective transcendences of positive assertions — as ‘formless,’ ‘essence-less,’ ‘lifeless,’ ‘mindless’; for these, though bearing the notion of non-being, are nevertheless understood transcendently in God, who supra-essentially is, according to the removal of all things. In what follows he clarifies this more fully. And even non-being itself: How does non-being desire the good? For if it does not exist, how does it desire? We say that he understood ‘non-being’ to mean evil, as he demonstrates below — that even the so-called evil comes to be for the sake of the good. §4. And of the heavenly principles: He says that the cause of the heavenly principles and their sub-terminations is the goodness of God; for these too God brought forth through the abundance of His goodness. One must understand ‘heavenly principles and sub-terminations’ as the spherical creation of the heavens, subsisting circularly from a point, that is, a center, of the will of God; for the circular figure, beginning from itself, terminates in itself. And he says the heavenly essence is without growth and without diminishment, as having what is complete and self-sufficient with respect to what it was made for; wherefore he also calls it unalterable.

He called them ‘sub-terminations,’ not ‘full terminations,’ because the motion is spherical, and does not, properly speaking, have a terminus, but rather a kind of terminus toward the same point. Note, too, that he says heaven moves noiselessly and imperceptibly; and that of certain stars he speaks of a shifting, much-moving character with respect to the planets. Note also whence the reckonings of time come. And of the two luminaries: He speaks of the sun and the moon as the two luminaries; and he called them ‘great,’ following David; and he calls his Psalms ‘oracles.’ He speaks of ‘periodic restoration’ as the motion from the same point to the same point, which the sun accomplishes yearly, going around the zodiacal circle, and the moon accomplishes over certain days. Note that the reckonings of time come from these, and further from the months. They define: They completely delimit. Beyond Godhead: I noted this above too: that God is in all things, and is none of all things. But here he says something more: that He is still above all essences. See how he says that neither the things above reach His transcendence, nor do the things below pass beyond it — that is, the Divine has neither beginning nor end, since the heavenly and higher powers do not comprehend it — not that it exists but was not comprehended, but that it itself does not ‘exist’ in that sense; for this is ‘the knowledge in unknowing.’

For, having become superior and united to the powers above through love of God, we know that, together with all, we are ignorant of the divine And He illumines: That is, those capable of receiving His wholeness, to the measure they can receive it; wherefore He is also said to be a measure of beings; or because He knows the beginning and end of all things, as sole creator. The ranks: God is called ‘order,’ either because He created all things with good order, or because He is received by faith, by those who come to Him, neither overwhelming the weaker by His abundance, nor being received in a lesser measure by the more holy — but pouring forth His goodness to me according to my own vessel. According to a very faint echo: Just as the sensible sun illumines all visible things, and those not partaking of its light do not partake through their own weakness, so too with God: all are sanctified by Him, as many as are willing. The divine Dionysius well remedied at once the incongruity of what is said concerning the sun; for, having called the sun a manifest image of God’s goodness, calling the creature an image of the Creator, he immediately added, ‘according to a very faint echo.’ What ‘a very faint echo’ means must be said. Just as, if one should shout loudly, those standing near hear both the shout and what was said, while those standing farther off hear the utterance more faintly, and those separated by a greater distance receive only a very small and dim part of the echo, so as to hear a certain indistinct sound but not understand what was uttered — by so much must one suppose sunlight to fall short of the true light, that the interval between them is incomparable.

But also toward generation: Do not suppose the sun is the cause of the generation or life or growth or perfection of anything among beings, just as no other element is either, even if it should happen to be quite necessary, such as water. But God, knowing that everything cold is altogether barren, and that what is moderately warm produces generation, and that plants and seeds need warmth, and that many things are purified, even brought to whiteness, and that it also revives chilled seeds — for this reason He made the sun to have such a nature, so that it might do all the aforesaid things, having received its capability from the Creator, not from its own free choice or power. This holy Dionysius says fully, explaining himself further below, at the end of the fifth chapter and at the end of the sixth. Understand this, then, securely, and do not be led astray. It is a measure: The sun is called a ‘measure’ and a ‘number of the hours,’ since it governs the day; and the day, recurring, produces time; for this reason it was called a measure, as measuring, so to speak, our life. For it is itself the light: Note that the sun also illumined the three days before its own creation, being without shape; and that the first-created light was, on the fourth day, transformed into the sun, and that he speaks of a triad of days, as the great Basil also clearly says in the Hexaemeron.

Do not pass over this: that what was said before was not concerning the sun, but concerning the first-created light that was shaped into the sun. As originative: That is, the origin and cause of the union, or likeness, prior to true being. And which all things desire: See how he divides ‘all beings,’ and concerning the King of all beings, whom all beings desire. He speaks first of the intellective, then of the rational. The intellective are those not mixed with bodies, such as all the supracosmic powers; the rational are the human souls, which have a relation to the body. He says the intellective and rational beings desire God ‘knowingly,’ as this appetite is naturally present in them, to know the King of all and to partake of His goodness. But the irrational animals desire life according to that very sensitive power; wherefore they too desire the good. But the insensate things, such as plants and the soulless and lifeless, naturally desire the good, not that they might know it, but that they might remain — held together by the good, by natural appetite, unto their own being. It makes all things gathered together: ‘Gathered together’ — assembled. That the sun is named from ‘gathering together’ and collecting what is scattered; and that this does not do away with God’s existence, even though we have said many things that seem, to one easily misled, to be contrary.

According to the account of antiquity: According to the account of antiquity, either because the divine Dionysius and the divine Timothy were themselves Greeks, as is shown in the Acts of the Holy Apostles; or he speaks of the foolish account of the Greeks — for they called the sun ‘old’ and ‘ancient,’ as is said in comedy. §5. To purify thoroughly: For it is said: ‘draw near to Him, and be illumined, and your faces shall not be ashamed.’ Because they loved much: For to one who loves much, much shall also be given, but to one who loves less, according to the measure of his love; which he says above, that God is our order and measure. §6. And supracosmic: ‘Supracosmic mind’ is said of certain minds that are above all worlds, the highest of the holy angelic ranks; and of certain ‘epicosmic’ minds, that is, those appointed for the service of the worlds, ordered to their governance, called by some also ‘world-leaders.’ And of certain ‘encosmic’ minds, both men and angels — ethnarchs and city-protectors — and also over the churches and the saints, as the divine John says in the Apocalypse, and over the other cosmic arrangements; and the psalmist too says, ‘The angel of the Lord shall encamp.’ ‘Supracosmic’ is the spiritual man; ‘peri-cosmic,’ the psychic man; ‘encosmic,’ the fleshly man. Otherwise: ‘supracosmic’ is one who has also set theology aright; ‘peri-cosmic,’ one who has attained natural contemplation; ‘encosmic,’ one who has attained practical virtue.

Gathering all things together: Making, warming, increasing, and transforming all things at once. Divisive: For ignorance divides from God, just as light, rather, gathers together and makes unified, as he said above. Of opinions: Of the idols and their polytheism. Of imaginations: By ‘imaginations’ he means the fabricated notions about sensible things, or as though they were sensible. §7. And as beautiful: God is called ‘beautiful’ also in the Song of Songs, just as He is also called ‘beauty’; and David says, ‘fair in beauty beyond the sons of men.’ And that which partakes of beauty is also called beautiful. Note how ‘the beautiful’ and ‘beauty’ are divided, in the case of beings, into that which partakes and that which is partaken of, but not so in the case of God: He is called ‘beauty’ on account of the loveliness disseminated from Him to all things, and because He calls all things to Himself; and ‘beautiful,’ as ever being and never diminishing or increasing. Uniform with itself: God is uniform beauty, since He is neither dispersed into states and differences that produce beauty, nor does He possess beauty toward some and not toward others; but the beautiful itself, unchangeably, without beginning and absolutely, without artifice and ever in the same way, always is. And on this account He is said to possess beauty preeminently within Himself, as being, even before created things, the fountain, source, and cause of the beautiful.

For even if there are many beautiful things, they are beautiful from Him, and not beautiful in the same way as He is; whence He is beautiful without cause, but they are beautiful by causation and by participation. For God is beautiful in a unified way, since the things after Him are beautiful from Him, possessing the beautiful as it were in a quality. From this beauty: The words ‘behold, all things were very good,’ and, according to Zechariah, ‘whatsoever is beautiful of His,’ came from that beauty which has no cause. For on account of the beautiful the interlinkings of the elements came to be, which he calls ‘adaptations’; and the well-ordered bonds beings persist — called friendships and communions of all virtuous rational beings, whose thoughts turn toward God, as the Church of the firstborn in heaven and on earth; and among irrational creatures, the herdingtogether in flocks; and among inanimate things, the mutual sympathies of habit. All things, then, are united to the beautiful by participation, being turned back toward the And the boundary of all things: God is called the ‘boundary of all things,’ both as holding all things together, and as having laid hold of all things for their security, and as it being for His own sake that all things were brought into being, needing nothing else for their completion. Whence, just as He is called the beginning of all things, as being their cause, so also He is called the middle, as giving the extension by which they are constituted, and the end, since beings are bounded in His will, toward which they are also turned — according to which he also calls Him ‘final,’ as being beginning and end, according to the divine John in the Apocalypse; and ‘exemplary,’ as having in Himself beforehand foreordinations of all things that shall be, even before bringing them forth, as the Apostle says, ‘whom He also foreordained,’ and so forth.

For these the holy Dionysius understood as exemplars: that the things to come were foreordained in Him with foreknowledge, even before they were brought forth — that is, before they were marked off and distinguished, through the unified foreknowledge of God that encompasses all things. You will find these things also in the following, fifth chapter. Note also that he says the beautiful is the same as the good. That even non-being partakes of the good: How can nonbeing partake of the good? For if it does not subsist at all, it has neither desire nor participation toward any of the things that are. It must be said, then, that this divine man understands ‘non-being’ in different ways: sometimes he calls the Divine itself this, as being none of the things that are; sometimes matter; and again, sometimes he calls evil this too, according to different senses. One may say, then, that matter partakes of the good insofar as it was changed into form and freed from its former formlessness; or that evil partakes of the good insofar as, by a seemingly good choice, it too wills what appears to it to be evil, and wills always to exist; and everything that desires to exist desires the good. And above, two leaves back, he says that God is even above the things that are; so one might rightly say that God is above the things that are, and that non-being partakes of the good, as He is above the things that are, and is none of the things that are.

Note this necessary point: how he says non-being is found to be beautiful and good, when it is said of God; for God is called both being and non-being, as being none of the things that are, but exalted unknowably above all things. For there is nothing that knows in what respect God is nothing. The essential subsistences: Well said, ‘essential.’ Subsistences in themselves are higher than essences, but now, since he speaks of created things, he fittingly added ‘essential’ to ‘subsistences.’ They are called ‘unions,’ not because they were composed together in a heap to form some one thing, but because God was their fountain and source, and from Him all things that are were brought forth, shining out and coming to subsist by a process of descent, so as to appear even in distinctions of hypostases. ‘Identities’ are the anagogic and unitive powers of intelligible beings toward God, as also are ‘likenesses,’ since they are both from Him and proximate to Him. ‘Othernesses,’ insofar as otherness, being of a downward and divisive character, was multiplied into visible things in the lowest and last processions of the divine will. And again ‘unlikenesses,’ since that which comes to be must in every respect be other than its maker, and not identical to it. ‘Communions of opposites’ are the blendings of the elements; for all bodies are composed of the four elements.

‘Interlinkings of things of the same rank’ are the orderings, by descent, of the worlds — both the visible and the intelligible — multiplied from the one substance of matter into the bodies of the firmaments, holding to one another as it were in a chain; from these you may understand also what follows. ‘Non-minglings of things united’ are as in the case of the commonality of the human race and the individuality of each particular man: for by the common principle of substance we are all united, but by the particularity of each we possess non-mingling. All the standings: He speaks of three things — standings and motions — which he also enumerates: of minds, of souls, and of bodies; one must, then, understand each fittingly. The minds, then, both stand and move, as Isaiah and Ezekiel say concerning the seraphim and cherubim, since these are the ones ascending and descending, as Moses says. For their being turned unceasingly toward God and established in their upreaching toward Him — even though they may be sent forth and descend to the things below, for the sake of the providential care of those who are to be benefited — this is what it means to stand fast in their nearness to God, and to be moved in their ministrations concerning those they benefit. And they are moved in their thinking of the things above them, and they stand in being thought of by those beneath them, as intelligible, remaining in their own identity; for they are guards and abodes of themselves, and are made their own, are gathered together upon themselves, undispersed toward things foreign to the fear of God.

And so all the lesser beings are turned toward those above them. The motions of minds and souls are wheel-like and circular, as Ezekiel also says, since they proceed from themselves and turn back again into themselves, never departing from themselves. And this is so in the case of incorporeal beings; but standing and motion will be understood, in the case of bodies, as matter remaining in its substrate while being moved into the turnings and changes of the bodies, both ensouled and soulless, that come to be from it. Circularly: Note how the heavenly bodies move circularly, and in a straight line, and spirally, and how the spiral motion of the soul is to be understood. The divine minds move, either circularly, or in a straight line, or spirally. But the soul’s motion: Since, as we wrote above, the minds are the ones that think, and the intelligibles are the ones thought, and the intelligibles are nourishment for the minds, he fittingly speaks, in the case of the intelligent soul, of its powers, as it alone thinks the things above it; for it is not thought by anything, and it is the last of all intelligible things. ‘Powers’ of the soul are its aptitudes toward the senses. Spirally: You see from this how great is the difference between the soul and the intelligibles; for the intelligibles think, mentally and in a unified way — that is, by a single, undivided grasp — the divine illuminations set above them, revealed according to their own measure; but the soul thinks rationally and discursively — that is, being divided into particulars, and being taught by participation.

For the mind, descending into reasonings, is as it were divided, and needs a discourse that proceeds through many examples for the extension of what is thought, toward that which surpasses it. The soul, then, acts in a mixed and transitional way when it thinks; for this is proper to the soul, both in itself and when it is led by the hand from outside toward higher things — for it ascends from things foreign to it. The rational souls move, either circularly, or spirally, or in a straight line. Of these, then, and of sensible things: Observe that he says there are also three motions of sensible things: the circular, the spiral, and the straight. We are led to understand these from what has been said concerning the soul: the circular, when sensible things themselves act according to their own proper powers and qualities, as fire heating, and water cooling, and so forth likewise; the spiral, when they act transitionally, as fish and birds from the waters, and the rod of Moses into a serpent, and such things; the straight, when they run back again to their own principles, as when, after the dissolution of things that come to be, they are again resolved into the elements that perish. And motion: One might be led to understand, by ‘motion’ of sensible things, alteration and corruption; for since standing signifies their generation, it is clear that motion signifies the opposite.

Note, then, that even the things altered and corrupted look to Him, and from Him, and through Him, and to Him. Through whom all standing: Through whom, evidently, is the good and the beautiful. All is one and multitude: How is ‘all is one and multitude’ to be understood? Suppose the whole world to be a great plant, living in a certain manner through all its animate parts, as trunk and stem, and the parts of the parts, as branches, twigs, and leaves. For if you were to suppose each of these to be as it were a self-complete living thing, yet preserving the union and order within the whole, according to which the tree itself lives both in itself and together with its parts — as it is possible to live: the intelligent beings intelligently and rationally, the irrational sensibly, the soulless and breathless things vegetatively and habitually — and each living in itself, as I said, and yet, together with the whole, the parts moving along with the universal things, you will know the coalescence and cohabitation of the universe into the one, and its coalescence into multitude, as each thing living fittingly and properly in itself, as we have said. And again, if all things are from the one and only God, they are rightly said to be one, on account of their connection and harmony, and multitude, on account of the manifold variety of each particular thing.

The definitions: ‘Definitions’ are the explanatory formulas of the essence of each of the things, and of the genus, and of the difference, declaring what each thing is. Exemplary cause: The exemplary cause, that is, the source, is that toward which what comes to be, comes to be; and this is either the idea, which is a self-complete, everlasting thought of the everlasting God, or the eternal exemplar present in nature, toward which the things that come to be, come to be; for ideas and exemplars are incorporeal. The final cause, or source, is that for the sake of which what comes to be is perfected — or the final cause is that which is inseparable from the effect; or that from which, as inherent, what comes to be, comes to be, as the matter of all things — and God brought forth this too. The efficient cause is that which is separate from the effect, as God, and everyone by whom what comes to be, comes to be. And all the things that are not: Understand thus how the things-that-are-not are in the good: since privations are in Him super-substantially; for we could not call the privation a substance — such as ‘without beginning,’ ‘incorruptible,’ ‘immortal,’ and all such things; for God is not these things, since He is even before these; for it was from Him that it became known what these things are.

And so we do not know even what God is not, or how He is unspeakable and incomprehensible; for these are not His source, but are from Him. He, then, is the cause even of nothing, all things being posterior to Him, according to the cause of being and nonbeing; for even ‘nothing,’ with respect to Him, is a privation; for He has being through being none of the things that are, and He is non-being through being and being-beyond-being — being all things as their maker, and being nothing as one who has transcended, or rather has transcended-beyond and is super-substantial. Read also, on the previous leaf, my note concerning non-being. And the lesser things toward the greater: I noted the like also above, in the first chapter, that the lower things are always turned toward those above them, as being encompassed and provided for by them; and things of the same rank are communally drawn toward things of the same order, and simply all things love one another and themselves. But God also loves all things, that He may make all things good. For He Himself, the worker of good: He speaks marvelously, that the good love, pre-existing in the good, did not remain barren, but brought forth for us the good love by which we desire the beautiful and the good; for the Divine is active and generative, according to the saying, ‘My Father works until now, and I work.’

Note from this a divine motion: for the love that works good moved the Divine to providence, to our constitution, that it might also be active in being moved, and not remain barren; from this you will understand also the saying ‘when the monad was moved,’ and what follows, said by Gregory the Theologian in his first oration on the Son. Generative superabundance: That is, He brought forth creation, so as to display in it the movements of His beloved love. §11. And let no one suppose us: Note that one ought not use names that seem unfitting concerning God, unless indeed they also occur in the divine Scripture, as he now speaks concerning love; and that one ought not to attend to the words, but to the force of the intention; for he expounds these things in a divine manner. Through other words of equal force: That we are not prevented from uttering the words also through equivalent terms. Note that he says ‘motherland’ and ‘fatherland’ are the same. One must know: Why we use syllables and words; consider the reading — what he wishes to say is this: whenever we set in motion spoken discourse concerning some sensible thing, then we need words and syllables and letters and writings to make known what is spoken; but if the soul, of itself, is moved toward the intelligibles through right activities, the senses, together with sensible things, are superfluous; for it imagines lofty things.

But when it becomes God-like, advancing by its gradual upreachings, and through unknowing union has its graspings toward the inaccessible light, then the intellectual activities too are superfluous, as are the senses, since the soul then contemplates things higher than these, being united to God. But when it should at once imagine lowly things and hasten to be moved concerning some sensible thing, then it is necessary to seek out clearer accounts and the more distinct of visible things. Just as also the intellectual powers: Note that mind is one thing, and soul another. He calls ‘intellectual activities and powers’ the acts of thinking, which are lower and a dispersal of the mind. When, then, the soul wishes to look up toward God and, so far as possible, be united to Him, it must turn its eye — that is, its very mind — away from particulars, and leap up toward the more universal; for particulars are the acts of thinking, as we said. For then, the mind having become wholly itself and turned within, becoming henceforth a unity and simplicity, it will be able to lay hold of the divine rays, through the praiseworthy unknowing — not the unknowing that comes from ignorance, but that which knows that it does not know the incomprehensible things concerning God. It shall know by enjoying the divine flashes of light — not through the sensible eyes, for it is not apprehended by these, but through the eyeless conditions of the mind.

The clearer conveyances than the senses: He explains what the clearer conveyances than the senses are, and says they are the more distinct accounts and the more evident of visible things. §12. And yet it seemed to some: That love signifies eros, and that eros is the more divine name. Let them hear: Note that even then there were some who took hold of names, whom he silences from the divine The divine Ignatius: And from this some think to slander conveniently the present treatise, as not being by the divine Dionysius, since they say Ignatius is later than he; but how could anyone mention someone who comes after him? This too seems a fabrication to them; for the holy Paul, who enlightened Dionysius, was later in time than the holy Peter, after whom Ignatius became bishop of Antioch, Peter having been transferred to Rome. And the holy Paul, who enlightened Dionysius, lived on for a long time, and Dionysius lived on after him; and the Evangelist John was exiled to Patmos under Domitian, to whom Dionysius writes back. But Ignatius was martyred before Domitian; so that he is earlier than Dionysius. My love: One must inquire how, when Ignatius — after Timothy — is speaking of Onesimus, and writing to the Romans, ‘my love has been crucified,’ Dionysius, now writing to Timothy, mentions this, as though Ignatius had already written it; and perhaps this was inserted from outside by one of the philologists, for further confirmation of what the holy Dionysius said concerning divine love, and was later, through ignorance, inserted within — which we know to have happened often in many cases; for even without this the body of the discourse stands complete without omission.

Or perhaps it was a customary saying of his, as ‘God-bearer’ is also often said and written by him — a proof being that it is not added, ‘he writes to certain persons,’ that is, to the Romans, but simply, ‘and the divine Ignatius also writes.’ And in the introductory writings: One must note that he calls the writings of Solomon ‘introductory writings’ of the divine Scripture, from which also the sayings are drawn. α. That love signifies eros, and that eros is the more divine name. β. Rather to divine things: Why the theologians attribute true eros rather to divine things. γ. The multitudes: Note that one must use words according to what the multitudes can receive; and he says what love does, and concerning the two loves, the divine and the divided, that is, the one proper to bodies. δ. As more objectionable: As slandered, evidently. ε. It fell upon him, who says: David speaks concerning Jonathan, in the first book of Kingdoms. ς. Is ranked among the sacred: That love and eros can mean the same thing, and what the activity of eros is. ζ. Of the binding-together: That is, of that which blends together the things that love one another. η. On account of the beautiful: What he said above, that the divine love, pre-existing in the good, brought forth the love in us, through which we desire the good.

§13. θ. Ecstatic: Concerning erotic ecstasy, David also says, ‘I said in my ecstasy...’ Standing outside himself: Note how ‘standing outside himself, for God’ is to be understood. One must dare to say: That God too loves all things. Wherefore also ‘jealous’: In what sense God is called ‘jealous’ — as a lover of the salvation of all. §14. But what, in general: He calls God Himself the producer and begetter of both love and eros; for He it is who brought these forth, being in Himself, out into external things — that is, in relation to creatures — and on this account it is said, ‘God is love,’ and likewise in the Song it is called love, and again, sweetness and desire, which is eros; and the beloved and the truly desired is He Himself. Insofar, then, as the beloved eros pours forth from Him, He Himself is said to be moved, as its begetter; but insofar as He Himself is the truly desired and beloved, He moves those who look toward this, and those in whom the power of desiring exists in due proportion to them. Desired and beloved: Understand that God is, for me, that which draws forward and moves toward erotic union in the Spirit — that is, the mediator of this union, and the one who harmonizes toward Himself His being loved and desired by His own creatures; and he calls Him ‘motive,’ as moving each thing to be turned back toward Him according to its own proper reason.

And the term ‘leading-forth,’ even if among outsiders it signifies something not reputable, here signifies the mediation that procures union in God. And in one respect He is moved: Note the divine motion, in which God is moved and is Himself its leader-forth and mover. And of the transcendent union: The loving union with God is exempted from, and set above, every other union; he calls it, then, the higher, transcendent union; and he calls the divine love without beginning and without end, as proceeding from the good and returning again to the good in a circular figure; since the line of a circle has no discernible point where it began and where it ended. For from Him is the desire for the good, and it looks again to Him; and in Himself is, and remains, the loving of the connatural goodness, and of those reaching up toward the good. Erotic motion: That the erotic motion, pre-existing in the good, being simple and self-moved within the good, and proceeding from the good, turns back again to the same, being without end and without beginning — which signifies our desire toward the Divine. Note that he says it proceeds as an everlasting circle in the good, proceeding indeed toward the intelligibles and the sensibles, but again returning to itself, and neither standing still nor ceasing. §15. α. Love: Take note how the great Hierotheus philosophizes most excellently about praiseworthy love.

First he calls it divine, since God is indeed the first cause of heavenly love, in an exalted and uncaused way; for if love itself is the same as agape, as has been said, and it is written that ‘God is love,’ it is clear that the unifying love, that is, agape, of all things is God. From there, then, he proceeds transitionally to the angels, whence he also calls it angelic, where above all one might find the divine love of unity; for among them nothing is discordant or at strife. Then, after the angels, he also speaks of intellectual love — that is, among men wise in God, who belong to the Church, to whom Paul says, ‘that the same thing be said,’ and so forth, and the Lord, ‘that they may be one, even as we are one.’ And this concerns those who are truly Christians; but the rest concerns all men also, among whom is the law of friendship. He called the rational souls ‘intellectual,’ having named them from the divine mind; and he called the love of irrational creatures ‘psychic’ love, that is, sensory friendship, mindless of course; for it is from this erotic power that birds also fly in flocks, such as swans and geese and cranes and ravens and all such; and there are also such creatures on land — deer, oxen, and the like; and there are swimming creatures too, such as tunnies and mullets and all similar kinds.

And even the nongregarious creatures are moved by this toward association with their own kind. And he calls ‘natural’ the love of inanimate and insensate things, according to their habitual aptitude, that is, of quality, loving the Creator on account of being constituted by Him; for according to their vital, that is, natural motion, these too are turned toward God. §16. Since the things from the One: And above we said that the minds are the ones that think, and the intelligibles are the ones thought, and that the intelligibles are surpassed without seeking by the minds, whence also the things thought are nourishment for the things that think; the minds, then, love the intelligibles, as being turned toward them and as it were having ascended to them; and the intelligibles too love the minds providentially, by imparting an equal benefit; it is agreed, then, that the loves of such things stand above sensible things. But these, I think, are called ‘intelligible’ and ‘intellectual’ by having become such through participation in the good that truly is. But the self-intelligible loves are the divine ones, that is, those of God; for just as there is a good which is good for someone, and another, the simply good, which is the good itself, so also there is an intelligible which is intelligible for someone, as being thought by him, and the simply intelligible — not time or place (for these too are intelligible, since they are not sensible), but the mind of intelligibles, being activity, and living, and life; for the intelligibles that come after this are found by inquiry and the pursuit of problems, or are had by revelation.

Unrelated cause: By ‘unrelated’ he means the absolute, which has no relation, that is, no natural affinity, toward the universe. §17. The whole love of all things: In saying ‘whole love,’ he also indicates particular loves, saying that God is both the whole and the particular, as being the cause and supplying to all, according to each one’s capacity, what is, as it were, an erotic outflow. How, then, can God be both the whole and the part, remaining with Himself without ever going forth, will be clear from the analogy of the seed: for when the seed is cast all at once into the womb without interruption, one embryo is produced; but if the seed is divided into different chambers of the womb, each part produces a whole, complete embryo; and of the seed, one part will become the nose, another the eyes, and so forth, and all complete. Something similar, then, must be considered by analogy concerning the all-perfect Mind: for the whole activity contains the parts also, and each of the parts is complete; and one part is self-justice, another self-manhood, and so on; and thus they are neither confused into one another, but each is distinct, nor do they possess the indivisible in disorder, in that each partakes of them as it is able. For each partakes of the forms according to its own aptitude; so also God is both the whole and the parts of love.

§18. For it desires Him: Since he said that even non-being somehow desires the good and wills to be in it — which you will also find him saying a few leaves above, even though this is clarified from Hellenic doctrines (for he contends chiefly against the Greeks, and the Manichaeans, who are the champions of the doctrine of evil) — it is necessary to explain more broadly what is called ‘non-being,’ and why it is pious and necessary that there be one source of the things that are. For this is sound to hold. For this source is God; for if there were different sources, they would certainly appear infinite in number. If, then, God is the one source, so likewise is true being, and the good itself. Reason will necessarily also find the opposites of what has been said; for where there is a source, there will certainly also be an end; and if there is being, there will also be non-being; and if there is good, there will also be evil. But since the things that are, are substances and forms, non-being would be formless and without substance, contemplated by reason alone. This non-being, then, the ancients also called formless matter, which they also name ‘the ultimate disgrace.’ It is called non-being: Matter is called non-being, not because it is altogether nothing, but because it does not truly exist; for that which truly exists is God, and the good itself; for matter too was brought forth by God out of non-being; but not, as some have supposed, formless and unshaped from the start.

Whence matter is not the source of sensible things, but rather their completion and, as it were, the last thing and sediment of beings. Therefore it is neither an image of God, as rational beings are, nor an idol of that which truly is. And the sensible too is an idol of the truly intelligible world; and the sensible is not without matter, but is better than matter, partaking somehow of form. Matter, then, will never be shown apart from form and qualities, which are habits; for when has fire ever existed without heat or light or the whiteness of its hue, or water without coldness or moisture or its blue-tinged color? So too earth and air. For this reason I said that matter is contemplated by reason alone as formless, and without quality, and unshaped; for that from which visible and invisible things came to be was brought forth by God, evidently, out of non-being — not with formless matter first lying as a substrate, then afterward being ordered, as the divine Moses teaches. Matter, then, is in God, inasmuch as it too was brought forth by Him; but it is understood in Him as super-substantial, He containing all things as the Good. You will find these things scattered throughout what follows. How the demonic multitude: He now works through further problems, saying: If all things are from the good, whence come evils, and whence did angels become demons?

All this is against the Manichaeans. β. Is not good-formed: Well and precisely has he applied ‘good-formed’ to the angels; for God, being essentially the good itself, while the things after Him, as being made good from without, by participation, through their desire toward Him, are fittingly called ‘good-formed,’ not goods in their own right. γ. And how does the good [permit evil]: See how he brings forward problems as if in inquiry, containing even the very objections of adversaries, such as the Manichaeans, yet showing nonetheless the right intention of this divine man. For he asks from what source evil was brought forth; and whether from another cause, and all such objections that belong to opponents. Then, next, how the good willed to bring it forth, and how evil too falls under providence — showing from these that, even if evil did have some origination at all, it had this from the good, and that providence alone governs the whole, so that from this there is one good source for the things that are. These things the divine man also examined in his Problems; for, proceeding further down, he clearly resolves the problems, showing that evil is neither substantial nor in nature, but comes to be by privation of the good, being neither being, nor reckoned as non-being. And this is what is hinted at in the thirty-sixth psalm: ‘I saw the wicked exalted like the cedars of Lebanon, and I passed by, and behold, he was not; and I sought him’ — that is, his place — ‘and he was not found.’

For this shows that evil, even if it is greatly exalted, nevertheless does not exist, nor will it leave behind a place of its own, that is, a trace; for as soon as it appears it is dissolved, having no subsistence. Do not, then, suppose he is saying anything contradictory here. §19. Is evil not from the good? Note how marvelously he weaves the solution from various arguments. The purpose of beings: For even one who is angry, that is, wrathful (the argument being, as it seems, by way of example), when the one at whom he is wrathful is doing something evil, wishing to bring him over to the opposite — that is, employs such a motion for the sake of the good. And if all beings [desire the good]: We said above that, if God is said to be super-substantial as without beginning and cause of all things, the opposite — as the last of beings, and without substance, being the opposite of the supersubstantial God, that is, matter — is called non-being, and yet is said to be in God, having come to be through His goodness; even though, through being mixed with sensible things, it is not wholly evil, nor wholly good, as its instability shows: for it has evil in its instability, but a portion of the good, since it too was brought forth by God, and is in God.

Absolute evil (I do not mean vice, which, as a form and quality, befalls the rational creature and departs from it, but the simply evil itself) is neither in the things that are, which in some way desire the good, nor in the things that are not — meaning ‘in material things,’ as understood within the super-substantial — but even beyond non-being, which belongs to matter, evil stands further removed from the good, and hence is fittingly more without substance than matter, this same evil being, as it were, altogether nothing. The simply absolute evil, then, exists nowhere at all in any way; but the evil of matter exists by way of deficiency of goodness, in that it is also seen to be senseless and formless; whence you will understand also what is said by the prophet Obadiah: ‘and they shall be as though they were not’ — evidently concerning sinners. Whence, then, is evil: Here, proposing the counter-argument, he broadly works through the objection, as arising from a plausible-seeming counter-position: for if we do not grant that there is something opposed to the beautiful, namely evil, virtue will not appear to be good, but all things will be indiscriminately mixed together, with virtue neither being praised nor its opposite existing. But now the objector says: if we do not grant evil to be opposed to the good, the good itself will be opposed to itself in those who sin by deficiency of the good; but even before the activity of virtue we see, in the soul of the virtuous man, vices already distinguished from virtue; for whenever the rational part of the soul performs its own proper acts, it is hindered in nothing good; but whenever the irrational part of the soul, which is mixed with matter and body, prevails, then the rational part is hindered from acting according to its own nature.

The irrational part, then, is made evil by its admixture with matter, but the rational part is made evil not by being mixed with matter, but by inclining toward matter — that is, by yielding to the irrational and not mastering it — it is made evil, as an eye is prevented from seeing when there is darkness. This, then, does not show that absolute evil subsists; for that which is evil for someone is not the same as absolute evil, but vice too is a form and an accident of evil; for by additions it is constituted into being this particular thing — as injustice, for instance, is a wickedness of the soul, and again, the species of injustice, with respect to the matter of desire, differ — one concerning money, another concerning honors. And species of evils also come to be by additions, from the parts of the soul: cowardice or rashness from the irascible part, licentiousness or foolishness from the appetitive part. And species of evils also come to be from the activities: for cowardice is, as it were, a deficiency in impulse, rashness an excess of impulse, and licentiousness concerns being affected by pleasure. It has become clear, then, how in the soul, even before activity, evils are distinguished from virtues, through the irrational and the rational, which are parts of the soul. And these things of the irrational part show us another law ‘warring against the mind,’ as the Apostle says, and, when not mastered, taking the rational part captive, as we have shown.

Against reason: Instead of, against the rational part of the soul. And if there is corruption of beings: Instead of, if the beingcorrupted is seen among the things that are, or if any of the things that are is subject to corruption — from this the existence of evil is shown; for this is what ‘it does not cast out’ signifies. Or does it not often happen: These too belong to the counterargument, that evil is, rather, even among the things that are, and is a being; for even if evil is a corruption of beings, yet this corruption sometimes leads to a different generation — as the egg is corrupted, but is transformed into a bird; and the bean, too, when chewed and buried in the earth, is transformed into the form of an embryo; and our bodies into worms, and other creatures, and countless other such things — as horses becoming a generation of wasps, and bulls of bees. And evil will be: A resolution of the objections proposed: if corruption is evil, and corruption corrupts evil too, how will evil be that which corrupts itself? For if evil is in matter, it is evidently the more easily corruptible; and matter is this, and this corrupts itself; for this reason matter is also called without substance, in contrast to the super-substantial substance of God, as being itself corruptible and not eternally existing; and formless, in contrast to the form of God, as Moses called the creative Word.

And matter is also called non-being, in contrast to the divine subsistence according to substance. §20. Insofar as it is evil: ‘Insofar as it is evil’ means, in respect of which it is evil. Rather: Note that in the divine discourses too the tradition of more precise points, arrived at by further reasoning, is not forbidden; for behold, as you see, after setting forth the earlier opinion, he hands down, by further reasoning, the more precise points. And unmixed and whole: The unmixed and wholly complete goods come to be, from the good, in the supracosmic intelligibles, as being also incorporeal; but the mixed goods are seen in rational bodies — that is, in us — the irrational part of the soul, as has been said, partaking of matter through the body, which partakes of form, while the rational part inclines toward the irrational and at times yields to it, and on this account inclines toward matter. For absolute evil must be considered as itself unmeasured, itself formless, evil essentially to itself, but not evil to another; for this is a form and accident of vice. Evil, then, must be something such as I have said — just as God is, for all things, the boundary itself, the measure itself, the form-giver itself, and the good itself essentially (for I do not now speak of good for another, since this is accidental) — how, then, will evil be essential also for others, when absolutely all things are, in a mixed way, made evil and yet have their being in the good, none being wholly without participation in the good, but all partaking of the good according to their own aptitude?

Evil, then, is not in subsistence, but appears in stealthy intrusion, in the privation of the good. But it extends even to the lowest things: One must understand by ‘the lowest’ the material and earthly bodies; for just as God is the source of all things, as we have already said, so the lowest of all things is this refuse-like, dense, earthy part of matter; whence it is also called the footstool of God, as being the lowest, yet nevertheless partaking of His goodness, as bearing Him even at the lowest point; for Wisdom too says, ‘this earthy tent weighs down a mind full of care,’ as the irrational part of the soul is mixed with the material body, and at times overpowers the rational part of the soul. The good is present: For to the degree that the things in creation descend into the denser and more material, to that degree, by privation and deficiency of the good, they partake of it less, as from a faint and last echo; for, as we said, suppose someone were to shout loudly: those near him, and with sound hearing, receive the whole shout and know even what was said, while those further off hear the utterance less, in proportion to the distance, and those very far off perceive it only very faintly, as of a last, dying echo. And its own privation: That which is not wholly deprived of the beautiful, but only partially, and this very thing that is deprived of the good, is nevertheless made to subsist, by partaking of the good to some degree in some respect; for it is not partial, but total, deficiency of the good that is evil.

And the things that fight against it: See how he says that even the things that fight against the power of the good subsist and are preserved through it. Is God, then, the cause of evils? God forbid! For God, as the source and creator of all things, on account of His superabundant goodness and unspeakable love, even bears with sinners, that He may show both His own love for mankind and the free will of His creature; for it is said, ‘love bears all things’; and again, ‘who makes His sun to rise on the just and the unjust.’ But in every way whatsoever: What lies before him to demonstrate is that the simply absolute evil is not a substance; and he says that nothing among the things that are, and in creation, is wholly without participation in the good; for the things wholly devoid of the good, as not even having been brought forth by the good, do not even exist — for who else is the creator? But neither can anything subsist without partaking, in some accidental way, of the habit, that is, the quality, of the good; for many things, even when abandoned by an acquired habit, that is, quality, remain in existence — as iron, having been made red-hot and having taken on the utmost heat, when the fire is quenched, remains what it was; and water, in itself an elemental thing, is said to be without quality, but passing through earth, is given quality thereby; and yet, when conducted elsewhere, it ceases to have that quality, and still continues in existence; so too things covered with snow and chilled, when the cold ceases, still continue in existence.

But even things devoid of life, such as trees, and stones, and stars, and things devoid of mind, such as cattle, nevertheless subsist. And God too is exempt from substance, being super-substantial, and yet He is, and pre-exists; but this cannot be said in the case of the good. For unless a thing partakes of the quality of the good, in which it must be constituted, it cannot subsist, ‘for in Him we live and are,’ as the Apostle says. What then? Is not the licentious man, in his licentiousness, deprived of the good? And yet he subsists; and one might say that, precisely in his licentious act — as being in privation of the good — properly speaking he is not; nor does he desire things that are; for what is absolute licentiousness apart from the form of the licentious act? Yet, since by a false opinion he seems to himself to hold some good and to be united in friendship with that which is being corrupted along with him, even though the friendship appears corrupt, it is nevertheless a faint echo of divine love, and has a semblance of the good through it; for one must not be ignorant that, when the rational part of the soul is overpowered by the irrational part, it is hindered from performing its own proper acts, but then goes along in approving the irrational, so as neither to master its impulses nor to concur in its actions with judgment; for false opinions are not properly opinions of the rational part, nor are false thoughts properly thoughts of the rational part’s thinking; for false things are not, properly speaking, thoughts at all.

Hence the irascible man too sometimes proceeds mistakenly; yet he is not without a share of the good, seeming to himself to use anger for the correction of the one being chastised; and likewise the shameful man supposes pleasure to be a good end. From this, then, even those who fight against God are tolerated, on account of their being wholly from the good; for that which is not deprived of the beautiful wholly, but only that which is partially deprived of the good, is made to subsist, in that it wholly partakes in some degree of the good. For it is not partial, but total deficiency of the good that is evil; and that which is not partially, but totally deprived of the good, this neither was, nor is, nor shall be, nor can be. Nor does it desire things that are: That the licentious man, even though, precisely in his licentious act, he neither is nor desires the things that are, nevertheless, in the very form of union and friendship, faintly partakes of the good. Toward the seeming good: Note that even one who makes use of anger is said to partake of the good, insofar as he is moved toward the correction of what seems evil; so too one who desires the worst, that is, the most evil, life, partakes of the good in desiring what seems to him the best life; and one who pursues evil, in seeming to do good, partakes of the good.

Insofar as sickness too: Sickness, evidently, is a deficiency of health, and an excess of the material bodies, holding neither measure nor order, but coming about through the intemperance of the matters, one rebelling beyond due order against the others, producing the sickness. Sickness, then, exists in the body to the degree that order is in any way lacking, while the body still holds together; for if a total lack of measure should dissolve the body — that is, the order of the matters — sickness too vanishes, the body being dissolved in which the sickness had subsisted. So too in the case of the good: so long as it is preserved in us, we have the power also to do evil; for once the good has withdrawn, no evil either can be found in us. For that which is wholly without share of the good: The intention of the divine Dionysius is clear from many things; contending against the opinions of certain of the Greeks concerning evil, he says that evil is not being. For evil could not at all be substantial, unless that which is wholly without share of the good, through total deficiency of it, were substantial; but this cannot be found anywhere, not even in formless matter itself, even though this seems so to some of the Greeks; for whatever has been brought forth by God at all, even faintly and at the very last remove, has nevertheless partaken of the good.

And proceeding further, in the tenth chapter, he demonstrates this problem fully. For if evil were mixed with the good — that is, in one respect non-being through partial deficiency of the good, in another respect non-being because the Maker exists wholly — this would not be evil; for evil consists not in any deficiency whatsoever, but in total deficiency of the good. That which is deficient in the good only a little, then, is not evil; for it can even be complete with respect to its own nature; for a thing can be deficient with respect to the good, yet complete with respect to its own nature — which is indeed good, and in no way evil, even though it partakes of deficiency with respect to the first good. And that which is not wholly without share of the good, but is nearer to evil in a greater degree, is not wholly evil; just as, too, that which is nearer to the good in a lesser degree has something of the good, and derives its substance from it, and gives substance to its own privation in the very act of altogether warring against the good; for if it were an absolute and total absence of the good, it is clear that it would be neither wholly good, nor mixed good, nor absolute evil; for where the good is not, nothing exists in nature either.

How, then, will evil exist, without being given substance by something? Remove bodies and light, and there will be no shadow. Evil, then, does not exist simply, but as in a substrate; whereas the good, even apart from a substrate, has both nature and preservation, and is itself, in itself, good; but evil, apart from the substrate — that which is preserved by the good, for all things neither are, nor appear, nor are corrupted, apart from it (for how, when there is no substrate at all?) — is altogether without existence, and in no way whatsoever a being. And gives substance: That is, gives substance to evil; for if evil is a privation of the good, and the good gives substance to its own privation, then it gives substance to evil, which is the privation of the good. By its partial participation in it: That by the partial participation in the good, its privation too is given substance. When it is evil for some: These are species of evil, as we have said before; for it is not the substantial absolute evil, which does not even exist. For to be evil in this particular case — to cling to a shameful pleasure as to some good — is not absolute evil, but a species of evil; for that which is wholly evil does not exist at all, since it partakes, even if only as a last echo, of the good; for see what he says further on: if all things partake of the good, and the good is in all the things that are, then evil, clearly, either does not exist, or exists in the good; for it is not the nature of fire to cool — but should it begin to cool, it will no longer be fire.

So too evil, if it does subsist at all, partakes faintly of the good; for all beings are in the good, and remain there; but if it has nothing of the good, it does not even subsist; for the very wanting to subsist belongs to a good participation, as has often been said above. Absurd and impossible: Note that even of God it is rightly said in certain places, ‘He cannot,’ as the Apostle also says: ‘if we are faithless, He remains faithful, and He cannot deny For every dyad: That every dyad is not a first principle; but the monad is the source of every dyad. Note this against the Wholly opposite: Note this well; for he contends vigorously against the Manichaeans, who foolishly hold the dogma that a dyad of opposites is a first principle. For arithmetic reduces the division found in numbers, in respect of multitude, to a limit, positing the monad as the source of all number, and the dyad as the source of the even numbers. The ‘source,’ then, signifies the simplest thing in each genus. How, then, will the dyad be the source of all things? For the dyad is not a simple source, but a composite one. That which arises from composition, then, is not simple; and how could it be called a source? For prior to this composite source there will be the properly-so-called source, the One, from which, by the composition of monads, the dyad was produced.

It is clear, then, from every side, that the dogma of two sources is untenable. And indeed neither can there be two: That it is not possible for there to be two opposite sources of opposites. Nor free of difficulty: Not without harm. Wherefore also good things are dear to one another: Since all things partake of the good, and are themselves led up, by their very being, to the good, the good and the beautiful of all things could not fail to be the first beautiful, of which all things, partaking, become beautiful, being in some way made like, by participation, to the beautiful — though far more faintly resembling the one good and beautiful, as it were growing and coming to appear within the nature of beautiful things; whence also, ‘all things were very good.’ And the nature of beautiful things, proceeding into multitude, already in a way even into composite things — which men are especially accustomed to call beautiful — is shown, in many ways, to be composed with evil, and to be spoken of in many senses; but the beautiful found among beings is neither a substance nor a genus, but an accident possessing a certain likeness, gradually attaching to things; for beautiful things are not called so according to one single form, but in many ways; they only resemble one another as being alike, even though in a manifold way, in being themselves beautiful according to their own proper forms, each severally, and in this respect, as being made like to one another, addressed by the same name.

But if the good is in God: That the good, in God, is a subsistence. Not simply: Instead of, eternally. In time: Instead of, by participation. §22. But neither in the angels: Concerning the angels — that evil is not in them either, and why they are called angels. The divine goodness: By ‘divine’ he means the things concerning the nature of the angels who have remained Godformed. And we said above why he calls the angels ‘goodformed’ and not ‘good in themselves.’ According to these causes, then, evil is not in the angels either. He also gives the etymology, why they were called angels. It is an image of God: Note that he calls the angels images of the good; and note how he speaks. But by chastising: As if by way of anticipatory reply, he forestalls the objection of certain heresies, who hold that those who chastise by God’s command are angels, and that the very chastisement itself is a form of evil; and he immediately dissolves this most philosophically and fittingly, arguing also from the example of the priests who exclude and expel the polluted and profane from the Church for profane and polluted deeds — showing that they too, in punishing the polluted, are not thereby of evil. God forbid! For it is said: ‘for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath upon him who does evil.’

Note, then, these resolutions; for he resolves many of the questions of those who say, ‘Are executioners and rulers, then, from God?’ Those who exclude the profane from the divine mysteries: Note that the profane must be excluded from the divine mysteries through the priests. Nor is being chastised evil: That it is not the being chastised that is evil, but the becoming worthy of chastisement. Note this concerning priests and rulers who chastise the profane. But neither are the demons: That the demons are not evil by Then, neither is this true for everything: Note that corruption is not evil for everything, and always — as in the case of beasts, and reptiles, and destructive weeds. But neither is anything corrupted: That nothing among the things that are is corrupted, insofar as it is substance. But by deficiency: Note that he also calls ‘corruption’ the discordant and unharmonious motion contrary to the order of nature. You have this also in Ezekiel, concerning the devil: ‘your knowledge was corrupted along with your beauty.’ He says this, resolving what is said by the Greeks and the Manichaeans — that the demons are not evil by nature. Then he sets forth and resolves the hypothetical objections raised by them, saying: first, the demons do not corrupt substances; for substances, insofar as they are substances, do not pass into non-existence; then, even if this were so, corruption is not evil for all things nor in every case — as in beasts, and creeping things, and destructive weeds, and other such things.

One must inquire, then, whether the demons corrupt a power or an activity; and here it is necessary to state briefly what power is and what activity is. One must know, then, that the difference between power and activity is such as that between a habit and the activity according to the habit; a habit, then, is an abiding quality. It will be clear thus: fire has a heating power, and its habit, that is, its quality, is the beingheating. The activity, then, according to the habit, that is, the quality, occurs when some body is actually heated; for behold, the activity of the habit of fire is thereby accomplished; the power, then, has the activity from itself; for the activity is that which is accomplished from the power itself, since power is understood in relation to acting. Corruption of a power, then, is the corruption of the activity, just as corruption of substance is the corruption of the power; and the same holds of activity: the feeble progress contrary to order, symmetry, and harmony, according to which, proceeding discordantly, the power, the activity, and the substance cannot remain as they were; for if the weakness is total, as we have said, substance is corrupted; but this is not true of a partial weakness of the things mentioned; and it is the substrate that corruption corrupts, in which the power and the activity subsist, and neither the power and activity, nor, likewise, the substance — but not even corruption itself will be left over, once the things concerning which the corruption occurs have perished.

The activity, then, of intelligible and intelligent minds is to act according to nature, that is, to be stretched upward toward God; and the power of the mind is to descend into acts of thinking, concerning which what has been said applies: moving discordantly, they fall short of the good. By nature, then, nothing is evil. But a deficient good: As not introducing the total corruption of corruption. Then, how are those from God evil: Against those who say: If the demons came to be from God, how are they evil? This is the resolution of the question, whether the demons are evil; and he says that it is not insofar as they are good, according to the production of their substance (for they were brought forth good, from the good), but insofar as they grew weak in their natural activity. And they obtained a good substance: That the substance of the demons is good. As the Oracles say: Note how he understands the phrase, ‘the angels who did not keep their own principle’; for by their ‘principle’ he means their production into being; for they too were brought forth for every good work, just as we were. From these, then, are the demons, made evil in this respect alone: in the cessation of their habit of good things, and in not being active in the good; so that they are evil by choice, but not by nature; whereas the good, moreover, belongs to beings by nature.

There is, then, a great difference. Of the habit of divine goods: Note the words ‘habit’ and ‘activity’; for behold, what he earlier called ‘power,’ he now calls ‘habit,’ as we explained above in the long note. Therefore, if always the same: That the demons are not wholly without share of the good. For the ever-the-same: That the ever-the-same is proper to the good. But to be evil: Why the demons are called evil. For them, a falling away: He calls ‘falling away’ the withdrawal from what is fitting, and ‘imperfection’ the deficiency of the perfect, that is, of perfection. Rash imagination: What imagination is, we said in the first chapter. But these things: Behold another resolution, showing that evil is not evil by nature, but by a falling away from the good; for that which exists in nature always remains the same and is not cast down, as is the good itself, but evil is unstable, since it corrupts and alters whatever it happens upon, as we said above. Evil, then, is not in nature — as this divine man says concerning the demons; for if it were in nature, it would always remain the same. He has shown, then, that the demons too, insofar as they exist, and think, and live, and have desire for the good, are not evil by nature, but by a turning-aside from the good, in which they also came to be.

α. Nor are these things evil in themselves: Irrational anger in itself, and mindless desire in itself, and rash imagination, are not evil absolutely and in every case, when considered in themselves; but sometimes their removal also harms the living creature possessing them, as he says fully in the seventh chapter of this treatise. And he has rightly placed, among these dispositions, the things that seem objectionable, since there is also anger joined with reason, as that against sin and against the enemies of God; and mindful desire, as the desiring of what is better, and, ‘with desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you.’ So too there is imagination that is not rash, by which we lay hold of the intelligibles, doing this with our mind. Not the disposition: By ‘disposition’ he means simply the having of something; but the things mentioned before — I mean anger and its associates — are constitutive powers of the particular character found in certain living creatures, and in this respect such things are not evil. β. But insofar as it does not exist: ‘According to nature’ is to be understood in common with what precedes. γ. Never do they cast off these gifts: Here he says clearly that the demons are from the angels; for they do not cast off the angelic gifts given to them — that is, they do not change the good they possess by nature — even though they themselves are unwilling to look upon the light within them, having closed their good-seeing powers, as is said of the Israelites: ‘they closed their eyes, and were dull of hearing with their ears, lest they should turn and I should heal them.’

Note, too, that the demons also are luminous, or rather are lights by substance, as are the rest of the angels; so too in the Gospels: ‘I beheld Satan as lightning.’ δ. They are called evil: One must inquire not simply into the being-called, but into the being, by nature. And ‘insofar as they are not’ is to be understood thus: they have not come to be through a turning-aside from the good things given them from God — habits and activities — which, having laid aside, they became evil, in respect of which they have not obtained being. α. And of non-being: How those who desire non-being desire evil must be explained thus. God is being above the things that are, and truth, then, is being, since truth too is God; fittingly, then, that which is opposed to truth is falsehood, which neither is being — for it is wholly outside of God — nor is it even an image of truth, for it has nothing good from God. But since it persuades some that it is something at all, it will be a dark and faint idol of the things that are, in whatever way. Whence it is also, in activity, an idol, and in activity a falsehood, that is, truly and actually a falsehood; whence too, in activity, it is non-being — it is not being, and is truly nonbeing.

Therefore, just as with falsely-existing things — this whole falsehood of beings — when the falsehood is removed, it removes the entire substance of the matter, so too the lover of falsehood, like the demons, loves non-being, and does not stand in being — that is, in truth — as Truth itself says. The demons, then, as Jesus says, being ‘liars, and fathers of the lie,’ neither exist, and desire non-being, whenever they also desire the evil of the lie. β. §24. But if to consort with the evil: Note that to associate with evil people, out of providence for their becoming good too, is not evil, according to what is said: ‘I became to those without the law as one without the law, that I might gain those without the law also.’ We also said above, in the fifth chapter, that a total privation of the good does not occur among beings, since even a total corruption of corruption itself would then occur, but only a partial deficiency of the good. According to this, then, the soul does not have evil totally either, but has it in one respect and not in another; and the good is essential to it, while evil is external. But even so, one might say that the hindrance of the soul’s own natural activity is an evil for the soul. Even if the hindrance, then, was external, still, the soul, hindered as one seeing in darkness, will do evil things.

To this it must be said that from what has been said, the hindrance is found to be a maker of evil, yet not absolute evil itself; for vice is not the first evil, but a species of evil, just as virtue is a certain co-worker toward the good, not the first good. γ. Evil, insofar as it is a being, evil: That is, evil is not some substance, nor is it seen among the things that have substance as a completion of it, as power and activity are; and toward such a rendering of the notion the father’s whole intention here is directed. But as a deficiency: How evil is to be understood. δ. §25. But neither is it in animals: That evil is not in irrational animals either, since they are not evil by nature, nor are their dispositions evil — such as anger, desire, and rash imagination. ε. For if you were to remove: That the dispositions of irrational creatures are natural, as anger is to the lion and to serpents, and barking to dogs; whence, being natural, they are not evil either. ς. §26. But neither in the whole of nature: Nature is a divine art, proceeding by habit into generation, whose products, as of a divine art, are plants, animals, fruits, and the mutual transformations of the elements — being itself a source of motion and rest.

Just as, then, in the case of wax-modelers and those who practice the plastic arts, there must be something remaining in them — that is, reason and mind — by which, through their hands, they produce their own works, so also, in the nature of the universe, there is something remaining within it — that is, the power — not working through hands, but being the will and thought of God, proceeding, as it were an art, into the generation of the things that grow; for nature does not need certain things to remain while others move; for it is matter that is moved into generation, while that which moves it is the unmoved reason within the whole, which is the divine art we have called nature — being form, yet not composed of matter and form; for what need has it of matter, hot or cold? For the matter that has already been fashioned bears this within itself; for fire does not need to approach in order that the matter become fire, but reason; and this is no small sign that, in animals and plants too, the productive reasons are, according to nature, the abiding reason — and the reasons corresponding to the visible forms are the offspring of nature, that is, of the unmoved and abiding reason within it. How, then, can there be evil in nature as a whole, when the reasons in created things are natural, and in no way opposed to the whole nature, which is from the good?

If, then, it has been demonstrated that nature as a whole is from the good, and that the particular reasons in created things are not opposed to nature as a whole, it is clear that evil is not in nature either; and this is opposed to the beautiful; evil, then, does not exist, not even in the whole. But the things opposed among particular created things — whether in mixtures, or in animals and the rest — are contrary to nature not in themselves, but in relation to others; and where things are borne discordantly, contrary to nature, this is a weakness of that which is according to nature, but this is not evil; it is, rather, a disorder of arrangement. Of nature as a whole: He calls the divine nature ‘nature as a whole.’ ζ. For if all: All the reasons of nature, he says — that is, the causes according to which things came to be and are — exist from the divine nature, which, as has been said, he calls ‘the whole,’ since all things grew from it; and he called ‘the whole nature’ everything created by God. There is, then, nothing in nature that is wholly opposed to the whole; for that which is contrary to the nature of one being is, to another, its own nature; and this is good. For every nature, then, not to remain in that for which it came to be is evil; for this he called a privation belonging to nature — the failing, for whatever cause, to fulfill that for which it was brought forth, unto its own generation.

η. §27. But neither is it in body: Just as beauty is a proportion of limbs and parts with good coloring, so too ugliness is a disproportion of the same. θ. A cause for the soul: Since some of the philosophers say that it is from the irrational part of the soul, mixed with matter and body, the soul inclining toward it, that evil-doing arises, as was discussed above, the divine Dionysius most excellently resolves the difficulty from the case of other beings that are incorporeal and wholly unmixed with body, who, even without body, fall short through deficiency of the good. Vice comes to have a sub-existence: That it is possible even without a body for vice to have a sub-existence, as among the demons. And evil in bodies: What evil is. §28. Or, being unable even to be affected in itself: It is reasonable to set forth in summary the opinions of those who say that matter is non-being, and how they call it non-being, so that the syllogisms of the divine Dionysius may also be understood. They call matter non-being for the following reason: they say that being, which exists in the intelligible orders, came to be from that which is first, being above being. Since, then, that first is above being, being is called ‘being’ from it, being other than being, by a process of descent; for the being of which they speak, they name the matter of intelligibles, contemplated by reason alone, which they say is itself both form and life, being as it were the substrate of the intelligible substances; but the matter in sensible things, as being deficient in all that belongs to the intelligibles, is neither form nor life.

This came to be, as they say, from being, which they said came to be from the first and the beingabove-being; so that, being other than being, they do not say it is being, but non-being; for they say that the descent must proceed even to the very last things, and for this reason they say that matter is other than being and than the beautiful, so that it is not even beautiful. They say, then, that it is nothing in actuality, but is deprived of all that occurs upon it — namely, form and quality; for it neither shapes itself into form, such as of heaven, earth, air, water, animals, stars, nor gives itself quality, but is ordered into these from another. As being, then, nothing of the things that are, in itself — of form and of quality — but only these potentially, that is, being able to be brought into form and quality, yet not actually being any of these, it is fittingly non-being, not actually existing in itself; whence too, as formless and qualityless, and non-being, and as deficient in everything, it was called evil by them. Resolving these things, then, the divine Dionysius says: How will matter produce evil, being totally non-existent in actuality? For to act belongs to actuality; but it cannot even be affected in any way, being only in itself; for, as we say, it is ordered into form and quality from another; it is not affected, then, being in itself.

But if you say it is non-being, as being totally nothing, it will be neither evil nor good; but if it is something that is, it is either from God, or from itself, or from another source, both it and God; and if matter is necessary, as completing the cosmos, how is matter evil? For the definition of the necessary is: eternal, true, as beneficial — such as virtue is, being beneficial. Evil, then, is one thing, and the necessary another. For evil, insofar as it is evil: Overturning the opinions of those who say matter is evil, he says: How, then, does the growth of things from the earth — plants and animals — come to be born and nourished from matter? For these too consist of form and matter. How, then, does absolute evil beget and nourish, and not immediately corrupt and be corrupted? For this is the habit of evil. But neither, as we said above some assert, does matter drag souls into vice through the irrational part of the soul, mixed, through the body, with the irrational part of the soul; for many have mastered this part, as have the saints of God. And since some of the Greeks say that heaven and the stars, for this reason, are not corrupted, because they came to be from the purer part of matter, while the bodies bordering on corruptible things came to be, they say, from the sediment and denser matter — necessarily, according to the descending order of created things, being the last, they turned out thus; whence the lower things are corrupted and unstable, being unable to be established and to remain firm in themselves, as heaven and the stars are — if, then, it came to be thus of necessity, how is matter evil, having within itself, in our view, the necessary?

Matter, then, is in no way evil.

29. Privation according to power: Privation is not some subsistence, but occurs concerning that which is deprived of the form proper and fitting to it, as here too; for the privation of form in matter being partial, there will be something of the good in it, insofar as it too desires form and order, and receives these as goods. But absolute evil does not receive any participation in the good at all, and therefore does not exist; for total privation corrupts even the very substrate body, so that it no longer even sustains sickness; whence he called it powerless; but partial privation, as having something of the good, is said to have power. But insofar as it is not total: A concise definition of evil: that it exists not according to nature, but according to a partial deficiency of the good. §30. α. And of the whole cause: He calls ‘the whole cause’ the cause of the universe. And he said ‘partial’ so as to eliminate the total; for total deficiency establishes non-being. God knows evil: Even the things called evil, God sometimes knows as goods. And by ‘evils’ he now means such things as wars, disciplinary sicknesses, deaths, and the like; for these are thought evil by us, but are powers of a beneficent cause; for through the things mentioned, repentance and the knowledge of God and of piety has become, for the majority, an occasion; and among the prophets, evil is called discipline.

Read the twenty-second chapter. β. In him are the causes: The cause of the evil in licentiousness is desire, moved contrary to reason. But this desire itself is a beneficent power — for rational beings, toward being stretched upward, through it, to the true good; for irrational beings, toward the desiring of what is fitting for their own preservation. γ. But if evil is eternal: These are, against the Manichaeans, a refutation and overturning of their opinion. For even though the heresy did not yet exist, these things were inspired protectively, overturning their error in advance. Perhaps they were also directed against certain other outside opinions. δ. Everything according to nature: That is, the reasons of natures are not disorderly, and what is definite follows upon that which is according to nature; for a definition is also the explanatory formula of the substance of things, declaring the ‘what it was to be,’ which is capable of being equivalent to the ‘what it is.’ Everything according to nature, then, is from a determinate cause, on account of which the thing that comes to be, comes to be. If, then, evil is causeless — for it did not come to be for any reason — it is fittingly also in indeterminacy; for there is no formula of it, explaining its ‘what it was to be,’ by necessity, nor according to nature. If, then, it is contrary to nature, it will not have a formula in nature, just as lack of skill has none in an art.

ε. If by nature: If the soul is not made evil according to a partial privation of the good, from outside its own substance, but by something foreign supervening, the privation of the good will belong to its very substance, and evil will be essential to it. And how, then, will it be a soul? For it will not even be living, for it will not have life; and life is good. But if it is a soul, it partakes of the good, that is, of life; it will, then, have the good essentially, and not evil; wherefore it is also called good-formed. But by a weakness with respect to its own proper activity according to nature it is made evil, being weak and easily moved toward the passions. And the weakness of the soul is not, as with bodies, a thickness or thinness affecting its substance, but a yielding toward material and temporal things; whence too it moves discordantly thereafter. And the offspring of this he here calls its ‘productions.’ Note, too, that the activity of the soul does not possess the unchangeable, as befalling it and departing from it. But if by its activities: So that the meaning may be stated concisely thus: the nature of the soul is good, since it was brought forth from the good, and its activities are good; for we see good men performing their own proper acts; but it is by a turning-aside and deficiency of the good that evil steals in.

Evil, then, is neither in nature, nor essential. §31. ς. If evil is opposed to the good: To the one, the many are opposed; if, then, the many causes are opposed to the one and good cause, they are many for evil too; and if, as I said above, of the things according to nature, the productive things are formulas and powers, the productive things of what is contrary to nature are the discordant deviations, arising from weakness and incapacity, of the things according to nature, through which evil also comes to have a subexistence. And sometimes an unbalanced mixture of unlike things also produces evils, whenever heat, or cold, or dryness, or moisture prevails over the others; whence sicknesses too often arise. But how would evil subsist, when all the things that came to be remain as they were made? For these were brought forth by motion, at God’s will, and remain unmoved within their own limits, standing fixed and bounded in God; but the opposite of these — absolute evil — is unstable, and has no limit, either determined or undetermined, none of which we see in creation. How, then, can evil be substantial? ζ. Formulas and powers: That is, these must not be reckoned as according to a formula necessary to nature, or as some essential property. And by ‘mixture of unlike things’ I think he means the motion of natural powers toward things unfitting for them, which unbalance produces, the motions not being held by reason to remain within the limits for which they came to be.

Of all things, even of evils: That the good is the beginning and end even of all evils, since, whatever we do, we suppose ourselves to be doing good; and that evil does not have subsistence, but sub-existence, for the sake of the good, and does not come to be for its own sake. This too we said above, that we do this not looking to evil, but supposing we are doing good, even if the outcome shows the contrary. That it is for the sake of the good: What he also said in the preceding chapter, ‘on account of the good,’ since we suppose what we do to be good. §32. But it is not truly right: For, desiring the good according to nature and its habitual power, we sometimes act in ignorance of the evil, which seems good to us but is in truth evil. For what? Because, in avenging the wronged, we sometimes kill the wrongdoer, who is not deserving of death. Understand it thus, and you will not go wrong. It is, then, a privation: Marvelously has he shown evil to be without subsistence, demonstrating it to be a privation of the things that belong to order and nature. And privation is not itself a subsistence, as we said before, but the not-beingpresent of that which is fitted and ought to be present; whence he also calls sin — that is, a certain missing and falling-away from what is fitting — this very privation, and ‘purposeless,’ instead of ‘shooting wide of the mark,’ by a metaphor from archers; for just as they, hitting the mark — that is, the target at which they shoot, which is indeed called the ‘skopos’ — go forward well, so those who shoot outside the mark fail of what is fitting.

And sin: Do not understand ‘sin’ as that which occurs in us, such as adultery, or injustice, or some such thing, but understand it as he means it, thus: falling short of the good and of motion according to nature, that is, of order, we are carried into the irrational, total, and substance-less nonexistence that is contrary to nature; whence he says that evil is in no way, nowhere, a being. Not all things to all: Divinely has he preserved the gradations of created things; for the mind, according to which the divine minds have their substance, being wholly immaterial, is higher than the soul. The angel, then, who was moved contrary to the good-formed mind, became a demon; but the soul, insofar as it is intelligent and rational, when not acting according to the reason of the intelligible mind above it, does not perform its own proper acts; and bodies, which are below the rational principle, when found contrary to nature, are not sound in their own proper functions. §33. How, in general, evils fall under providence: If providence is in all things, evil is nowhere by nature. But even in the things that occur: That God makes beneficent use even of the things that occur and are thought to be evil, for the correction or benefit of us or of others. Either of others, or particular: Against those who say that we ought to be good even unwillingly.

Those who say that providence ought to compel virtue: Note how he rebukes those who say: Why did God not make us such that, even if we wished, we could not sin? For this is nothing other than to say: Why did He not make us mindless and irrational? For to be led to virtue by necessity would show us to be neither self-governing over ourselves, nor possessed of an intelligent soul; for take away our free will, and we shall be neither an image of God, nor a rational and intelligent soul, and our nature will in truth be corrupted, not being what it ought to be. And what he calls ‘self-moved’ must be understood as said instead of ‘free’ and ‘self-governing’; for he does not mean the things that move themselves, such as ensouled things, in contrast to the unmoved, like houses and mountains, or things moved by another, like stones and wood. For, discoursing concerning virtue, he took up the selfmoved, for whom he says providence is fitting — such as that through the law and the prophets, that through benefactions — as the Apostle too shows, addressing the Athenians. That we should be unwilling: Well has he overturned the argument of those who say that we ought to be good even unwillingly and by necessity; for this would have been the corruption of our very substance, for our free will would have been abolished.

§34. And alteration: Note that even incorporeal and immaterial beings are altered, not remaining wholly in the identity of the good; for the good is the same, as ever standing fixed and firm, but that which is changeable is not the same. §35. But those who sin in knowledge: See how he explains, ‘woe to those who sin in knowledge,’ and, ‘the servant who knew his master’s will and did not do it shall be beaten with many stripes.’ Or of knowledge: Perhaps by ‘knowledge’ he means that which accrues from teaching, which forgetfulness too can often dim, which he also says above comes from hearing; but one must consider unforgettable the knowledge that accrues, without being taught, from natural contemplation or illumination. But these things, for us: Note that there is also another treatise of his, concerning the just and the divine tribunal; and note also that this chapter contains twenty-three syllogisms, demonstrating that evil is not a being. On Chapter Five §1. Not the supra-essential: The ancients named God “One” not as the origin of numbers, but because He is set apart from all things and has nothing enumerated among the things after Him, and also because of His uncomposite and simple nature; but this does not set forth what the essence of God is — for essence could not properly be said of God, since He is supra-essential.

Of the God-originating essence-originating principle: By “essence-originating principle” he means the principle and cause of all essence; for the Godhead itself is above all essence. And by “procession” he means the divine activity, which brought forth all essence. For indeed the divine name of the Good: How God is called good. Observe how he says that the Good, that is, His divine name, extends to all beings and even to non-beings; but that the One is above beings and extends beyond even that; and that Life is above living things, and Wisdom extends over noetic and rational and sentient beings — so that it is clear that the Good, that is, God, is the cause of being, and of life, and of wisdom; while Being is the cause, for the rest of beings, of life and wisdom — understand this in proper sequence. And it extends even to non-beings: The Good extends even to non-beings, as calling them to being; or also according to what he himself, the father, has said, that non-being itself is called good, whenever it is contemplated in God on account of His supra-essentiality. By “non-beings” he means material things, as we have often shown above; or thus: since God is not circumscribed by place, he fittingly says He is even above non-beings, that he might show His uncircumscribed nature. And above living things: One must note how, when he speaks of angels and men, he calls angels “noetic,” but our souls “noeric” — as we have often shown above, setting forth the interpretations of “noetic” and “noeric.”

But now, since he speaks first concerning God, he fittingly calls the angels “noeric” along with us, inasmuch as they too are nourished by intellection, through their noetic apprehension, so far as possible, of God, by being turned toward the divine wisdom, as human souls also are — and the sentient beings too, that is, the irrational ones. For all ensouled things, nevertheless, partake of divine wisdom even in their natural impulses, as the divine Basil shows in the Hexaemeron, and indeed the very fact that all things came to be in wisdom, according to the saying, “You have made all things in wisdom.” And wisdom is the Son who is; all things, then, came to be in the Son who is, he says. §2. Revelatory: By “revelatory” he means those that reveal, that is, that set forth. Of the goodness above all: Note that we rightly say He is above all goodness and godhead; think, then, of the godheads of angels and righteous men as diminished. In hidden places: As in, “He made darkness His hiding place,” and again, “in the hidden place of the storm.” And of those who partake of sense: Since a little before he seemed somehow to speak of a descent in the Good, saying it is the cause of Being, and so on in order — lest those who read without understanding find occasion for blame, he says: the Good is not one thing, and Being another, nor again Life or Wisdom another; for there is one cause of all things, not many, and fittingly one Godhead bringing forth all things — the holy and blessed Trinity — and not many creatorgodheads.

And he did not say this superfluously, but striking at the wise men among the Greeks and the heretics from Simon, who say there are world-making gods, in proportion as they are diminished, producing correspondingly weaker creatures, down even to the dregs of all things, as they say — that is, matter. And [calling] the one: He says the appellation “the Good” is receptive of complete providence, but the others are partial — such as Life and Wisdom and Reason; for all beings came into existence through the goodness of God, and are good, that is, very fair, but not all partake of life or reason or wisdom; wherefore he has set such appellations in contradistinction to the complete one. And he calls those that are contemplated in more things “more universal” — such as Life; for it reaches to plants and animals, both rational and irrational; but wisdom and reason are more particular, for these are seen only in rational beings. §3. And of life, wisdom: The saying being somewhat obscurely put, I think what is said suggests some such sense as this — as if someone were raising a difficulty and saying: Why, since the name of Being surpasses the appellation of Life, and again the name of Life surpasses that of Wisdom — since the order requires this, as he himself showed a little before, saying that the cause that produces essence and life and gives wisdom belongs to those that partake of essence, and life, and mind, and reason, and sense — do we no longer see this order among beings?

For it would be necessary, according to the degrees you have named, for beings to be closer to God than living things, and sentient things, and noeric and rational things — that is, those that partake of mind and reason; but it is not so; rather the opposite is the case — for instance, heaven and stars and earth and water and air, and the things composed of these, are less close, in providence, to God than living things, even if they live only the vegetative life, as plants and such things do; and living things are less close than sentient things, that is, the irrational animals — for the irrational animals are more honorable in life than plants and herbs, in that they at least have sensation, while plants do not; and the intellects of rational beings, that is, the supra-cosmic powers, are, as being higher than us rational beings, nearer to God in their immateriality and noetic nature than we are — even though the opposite ought to be the case, that the beings enjoying the greater gifts of God should be above the others, such as heaven, the stars, and such things. This, then, is the difficulty; and the divine Dionysius now answers it, ranking mind and reason and sense in descending order and preference — you will find it thus after one page. And yet it would be necessary for those of the greater gifts: He calls “greater gifts” those contemplated in more things, such as Being and Life; but he says that the things that partake of these alone are seen not among the first and better things, but among the lesser ones — since the superior things also possess the properties of the lower ones, of Being and of Life, and are on this account superior, even though they are signified by more particular appellations; whereas the things that partake of the more universal properties do not partake of the property of the superior things, that is, of Wisdom and Reason and Noetic nature, and are on this account lesser — as partaking of lesser, that is, fewer, gifts — just as, in turn, the others, as partaking of more, are also superior and closer to And live more than the others: That the superior beings, and those closer to God, are said to live more than the inferior ones — as the divine

intellects live more than we do, being closer to God. Again, we, as rational beings, are said to live more than the irrational; and again the irrational, as having sensation, live more than plants, which have no sensation, but only the vegetative life. §4. He who is above the whole of being: “Being,” said of God, is above the whole of being taken collectively; for he calls this “supra-essential” — meaning above the being that is in becoming; for being is essence, since the name of essence is derived from “to be.” God, then, being also above being — for “being” indicates being brought into existence from some cause — is understood supra-essentially as “He who is”; wherefore He is also called the age of the ages brought forth by Him. For that which neither was nor will be, but only is, having its being fixed, not changing into “will be,” nor having changed from “was” into “is” — this is age. For it is not only necessary that all beings be present to the whole and entire, but also that nothing of what once was not be so any longer; for nothing has come to it that was not there before. This disposition and nature, then, would be called, and would be, age; for age is named from “ever being.” If, then, one should call age an infinite life in this sense, in that it already is entire and wastes nothing of itself by having passed away, nor again does it remain static, it would not be entire, but would be close to defining what age is.

That, then, is infinite which does not fail; and this properly, because it wastes nothing of itself; thus, then, God too is age, and the maker of ages. Age, then, is not the subject itself, but that which shines forth from the subject itself; the noetic things, then, and the things not seen, are, according to the Apostle, eternal — but the eternal thing is not age itself, but that which partakes of age, that is, of unextended and infinite life. As, then, God is called the maker of the ages — that is, of the noetic things, which, by likeness to age, are called ages, since they partake of age, that is, of that which ever is — being Himself their age and their sustainer, so too He is called timeless time, inasmuch as He is also the cause of times; for what age is among noetic things, this time is among sensible things. Just as, then, visible things are images of the invisible and noetic things, and we call age that unwavering and all-at-once life, already infinite and altogether unswerving and standing in one, so too time then rests in that which ever is, but is manifested by way of descent, when it was necessary that a visible nature should afterward proceed. We call, then, the procession into sensible things, of the goodness of God that creates these things, time; for it is not the motion of the divisions into parts and hours and nights and days that is time, but something homonymous with time — for just as we are accustomed to call the measure and the measured thing by the same name, so too here: for instance, if we call whatever is measured by a cubit — whether floor, or wall, or something else — a “cubit.”

The courses of the stars, then, according to the saying, “let them be for signs and for seasons and for years,” came to be from God for our clear distinction and manifestation. He, then, who ordained these things, would Himself be, as their cause, above age and beyond time. And neither was: That neither “was,” nor “is,” nor “will be” is properly said of God; for God is above these. But these too are said of Him, on account of His being, according to every conception, supra-essentially. Neither was: He rightly said, “neither was”; for “was” is indicative of time. But God is also above “was,” that is, above time. You will say, then: But how is it written of God the Word, “In the beginning was the Word”? For behold, here “was” is used. We often say that the Father is the beginning and cause of all things; wherefore, then, it says, “In the beginning was the Word,” since the Son is in the Father. Rightly, then, it said, “In the beginning was the Word”; but “will be” is clear. For this signifies that He is not now, but will be at some time — which it is unholy and unfitting to say of Rather, neither is: One must also supply here that to which “came to be” and what accompanies it are properly applied; or one must understand it otherwise, as being above every notion and imagination of being.

And by saying “the beings,” he signifies that they were altogether brought into existence; but by adding, “and the very being of the beings,” he signified their continuance. §5. And is Himself by Himself: One must not suppose this to be said concerning the cause of all things, but concerning the noetic and noeric and sensible and other things that subsist creatively from Him; for, as we have said before, God is preexistent before being — for “being” has, as it were, some intimation of a pre-existing cause. God, then, is called preexisting, and is also called, further, “being,” as the cause of all things; and then, that all things exist from Him. Being, then, by conception, subsists from participation in His preexistence — not as though God were divided into being and pre-existing, but His will, which brought beings into being, is said to have this being pre-subsisting in God; and this divine will having been foreordained unto the being of creation, fittingly, before the other things in which beings participate from God, a certain prior principle of being is conceived as God Himself; for a thing is first something, and then it is also life and wisdom. The invisible and highest intellects, then, first partook of being, and thus of life and wisdom. For just as, in our case, some prime matter subsisted, from which we are, so too, in the case of the incorporeal intellects, being itself of each is conceived as a kind of matter, through the form of life, and according to which it is made essential unto life and wisdom and likeness.

Likeness and identity we have also discussed above, as the powers that lead up to God, according to which the beings that are closer to Him are made like Him, and the things after these partake of them by way of descent, themselves too first partaking of being. Think of the “principles of beings” as the first hypostases of essence in creation, called principles not because beings come from them as from elements, but because, as has been said, they were created before the things after them — for instance, among noetic things, the beginning of creation is the Thrones, and so on in order; among sensible things, the beginning of creation is heaven and earth — “for in the beginning God made heaven and earth” — for these are the first-created of sensible things. Then, further, the Ideas and Paradigms, which are self-complete, eternal intellections of the eternal God, as we said before, are conceived as, so to speak, elements and principles and immaterial and incorporeal matter of the things that partake, and of the Ideas themselves — that is, of the incorporeal orders that were brought forth; for Self-Life and Self-Wisdom and SelfOrder and the other paradigms in God, of which the creatures partake, are like a point, that is, a center, from which straight lines proceed toward the circle. Of all things fittingly, then: God gave Himself this appellation, saying, “I am He who is”; wherefore He is fittingly proclaimed before the other things said of Him, such as Life and Wisdom and the like.

And by saying “pre-exist” and “super-exist,” he set forth beginninglessness utter incomprehensibility of God‘s being — He who, by the foreordination of His own ineffable knowledge, established beforehand the whole being of all things; for the mind grasps “being” all at once, at first contact, and then it contemplates how they are. He signified, then, simple being, not the manner of being, by saying, “being in itself” — just as, next, saying “Self-Life,” “Self-Likeness,” and what goes with these, he meant simply being alive, and simply life, not introducing this or that particular kind of life; and likewise for the rest — this, “being,” is first predicated of them. And, if you will, of living things: Just as, so to speak, in the case of qualities, the self-qualities exist beforehand, and then, when they occur, they produce the quality — so too understand these things: for instance, self-subsistent whiteness, occurring in a body, whitens it; understand analogously what is said here — that God, pre-existing, that is, Life, gives life to all that partake of Him. The self-participations: By “participations” he means those things which beings partake of — such as being itself, or life, or wisdom, or order, and the rest, which are divine gifts of participation, which he also called the “principles of beings.” §6. And is from itself and in itself: This must be understood thus: the self-supra-goodness, being mind, and wholly activity, turned toward itself, is in actuality, not in potentiality, having first been mindlessness, then becoming mind in actuality; whence it is pure mind alone, not having understanding introduced from without, but understanding altogether from itself.

For if its essence were one thing, and the things it understands were other than itself, it — that is, its essence — would be unintelligent; but whatever it has, it has from itself, not from another; and if it understands from itself and out of itself, then it is the very things it understands. Being mind, then, it truly understands, understanding the beings as being. If, then, understanding itself, it understands the beings, it is itself the beings; for either it will understand them as existing elsewhere, or in itself, as being its own. Now it is not possible to understand them as existing elsewhere; for where would they exist among sensible things? For sensible things are not beings, being mutable, and coming to be, and perishing. It understands, then, itself, and in itself. And since God is also the maker of beings, He will not understand them in that which does not yet exist, but He Himself is the archetype of this whole universe; and what He understands, He does not receive as impressions from others, being Himself the paradigm of beings — so that neither is He Himself in place, nor are the things in Him as in a place, but He has them as He has Himself, and is united to them, all being together, and being in Him without parts, yet distinguished, in the partless, without division.

His intellections, then, are the beings, and the beings are the forms. But “intellections” must not be understood in this sense — that because He understood this, this came to be, or this is; for such understanding requires something already understood to precede it, so that, having understood it, He might make it; but He understands the beings inasmuch as He understands Himself and is joined to the things within Him; for this very act of understanding is, for Him, the coming-to-be of the beings. That which is within them, then, is the form, and this is the Idea; but He Himself, being wholly mind, is wholly knowledge, while the intellects that come from Him and are in Him resemble the theorems of that knowledge. And there are, all at once, many sciences, which remain unconfused, and act outwardly according to one at a time, whenever needed; and the soul has all its powers together within itself, according to which it provides for the body, and yet it puts them forward, unconfused, in due season — exercising the natural power concerning the body, according to which it nourishes and grows it and makes it fit for generation; and exercising the sentient power concerning the veins and arteries and flesh and sinews, according to which power we perceive sensible things; and the opinionative power, according to which it judges sensible things; and the imaginative power, according to which it forms images; and the memorative power, according to which it remembers; and the appetitive power, according to which it desires and moves the living thing from place to place; and the estimative, and the irascible, and the concupiscible powers.

For it has these powers when making use of the body, in its irrational part. But after death, the mind alone will be active, these others being idle. And whatever things somehow partake of being: He says that from the supra-goodness of God, which is the very being of God Himself, comes the existence of beings and their continuance. “Unitively,” he says — that is, according to a certain simple and all-comprehending cause of the whole, unrelated; for the Divine has no relation or communion with beings by any principle, or concept, or reality, but is altogether and in every way transcendent, touching them only by sustaining and providentially caring for them, so to speak. And the examples that follow confirm the argument that all things are from God, as the cause of their existence, He being other than these, and subsisting in Himself, other than they. And has every number: For number is increased by the composition of many units into a magnitude; the unit, then, as the cause of numbers, uniformly comprehends all numbers; so too the center, that is, the point, comprehends the straight lines toward the circle. And in the center: These are confirming examples of the argument. Note how he clarifies matters concerning God even from geometrical figures, comparing Him to a center. United uniformly: He has put “uniformly” here in place of “simply” and “alike”; for not otherwise.

But also in the whole of wholes: It is evident that the parts are in the whole; the principles, then, naturally contemplated in each of the beings, of the powers or movements inherent in them, are contemplated in the universally-taken nature, he says — just as those of external philosophy brought all things existing in themselves, and contemplated in others, which we call ensouled and unensouled, under one category, calling it essence; in such a term are comprehended both the properties of each particular essence, and the principles, remaining unconfused — for the principle of ensouled things is one, and that of unensouled things another; likewise also of sentient things, that is, rational and irrational, even though they are united according to the principle of essence, that is, of simple being. But he said “uniformly in the soul,” signifying that there is one vital power given by the soul to the whole body, working in various ways in the members. §7. For He is the principle of beings: If a cause is that on account of which the thing caused comes to be, it is fitting that all things pre-subsist in the cause of all, as in an idea and paradigm, as we have said before, together and uniformly — even the opposites, as is said to be contemplated in God. And how, both unitedly and as opposites, you will understand thus: the ordered world has its form divided, as in the world, the stars in one place, and man in another; and again fire in one place, water in another.

For opposites, if they should come together, are corrupted together; but in the intellections of God, all things were together and existing, and without confusion, and not in place — for they are not bodies, nor in a body, but in eternal intellections, which are paradigms; wherefore also God is the principle of all things; for a principle is everything that pre-subsists what comes to be, and, besides other things, is also the order of the things ordered; and order is the working of likeness of all beings toward one another, and a due proportion that becomes the cause of the communion of every being toward one another; but God is also every rest and every movement of beings. These must be understood differently: in the case of noetic and noeric beings, nature, being the principle of movement and rest, that is, of quiescence — for it is the same — signifies activity; for the movement toward divine ministrations and teachings of those below is a vital activity, and the rest and stasis, being eternal and immutable, signifies that the intellects perform their own works and are filled with divine things. But in the case of sensible things, nature, being the principle of movement and rest, that is, of quiescence, signifies by movement their bringing into being, and by rest, or quiescence, either the cessation or alteration of their being through corruption.

These things are said to be God, as He Himself is their cause, supra-essentially. But movement, in God, is the providential procession into the things that come from Him and through Him in goodness; and rest is His ever having Himself in the same way, and possessing His unrecognizable quiescence and unshaken freedom from disturbance, without ever departing from Himself. One should note that he called the noetic powers eternal, as partaking of age; and Scripture is what says this: “For the things that are seen are temporal, but the things that are not seen are eternal.” But the things that exist in others are such as sanctification, immortality, well-being; for these belong properly to noetic and noeric essences, but are said, by extension, to be in noetic beings and in us, as gods and lords and angels mighty in strength, by participation, and as men. Every boundary and the rest: Whatever things are beings by way of being, he says these subsist as being contemplated in others, and not by themselves; for the essences (these he called “beings”) are of the things that exist by themselves, which are characterized by immortality, wisdom, order, harmony, and the things with them, which are said to exist in others — just as also the things perceived by sense concerning bodies, such as color, shape, size, and the like, which cannot subsist apart from bodies.

And the father distinguished these from the things known by conception; we call these the things apprehended by intellection, such as thought, reason, sensation, and such things, which we know only by conception, that is, by a kind of reflection; or he calls the noetic things known by conception, and in no way subject to sense. §8. The noetic and noeric essences: Note that “noetic” is understood in relation to us, but “noeric” in relation to God. And being: That is, being God-like. And all the other things: That He Himself is the cause of the being of all things, and is before being, as also being the Idea, that is, the paradigm, of being, as is shown from this: for being itself is not God, because of God‘s being, but rather, on account of God, being both exists and is spoken of; wherefore being is in God as an Idea, yet God is not in being — for He was before being; nevertheless, because He is the cause of all things, and is shown to be their producer, He is outside all things, as the cause of all, and is addressed by the names proper to all things, as having brought forth all things. And of Him is being: “Of Him,” as being is from Him; “in Him,” as being sustained by Him; but He Himself is not of being, nor is He contained in being; for the supra-essential is above being.

And He Himself is not in being: One must supply in both cases “the cause” — that is, He has being as His cause, and He Himself does not have being as coming from some prior cause. According to every conception of beings: The contemplation of beings, which he here called “conception,” being manifold and various, in every approach of the mind finds the concept of the cause, that is, the maker, meeting it beforehand; the “multiplying,” then, signifies that the same cause is contemplated in the many. And “is” and “will be”: What he denied in the passage before this, he now, in speaking of God, necessarily suggests we understand these things according to the concept of the cause, interpreting himself. “Came to be,” then, and “comes to be,” and “will come to be” are properly predicated of creatures; for some things came to be once, such as heaven, angels, the sun, and such things, of which “comes to be” and “will come to be” have no place — but what is said by David, “who makes his angels spirits,” must be taken either with reference to their being sustained, as it is said, “My Father works until now,” or according to the custom of Scripture, which often uses temporal signification interchangeably, using the future for the past, and vice versa. Of these, then, “came to be” is properly said; but “comes to be” is said also of all things in becoming and corruption, and of things that alternate reciprocally, such as night, day, summer, and spring, and such things; but “will come to be” is said only of those things that have not yet come to be at all, but are expected — such as the transformation of the universe, and what goes with it.

As the cause of all these things, then, God is hymned; for he did not say, “these are predicated of Him,” but “properly hymned.” But “was,” and what goes with it, according to every conception, will fit none other than God, on account of “was” being contemplated of Him as above every beginning. But “is” and “will be” signify that He has, in every respect, the unaltering and in all things unchangeable — wherefore He is also called supra-essential. Wherefore also all things are predicated of Him at once — he says all things are said of God, or understood of Him, according to the concept of the cause; for this is what “predication” means among philosophers. But He Himself is none of the things of which He is the cause, on account of His being and superbeing; wherefore the negations too signify this — such as “formless,” “without comeliness,” and the like; but “allformed” and “all-shaped” signify that He is the cause of every form and shape. According to which, one must also understand what follows, On the same: How, having said above, “neither was, nor is, nor came to be, nor comes to be, nor will come to be,” does he here say that both “is” and “will be” and “came to be” and “comes to be” and “will come to be” are properly hymned of Him? Does the holy Dionysius, then, contradict himself?

Far from it! For above he called Him the maker of every existence, subsistence, essence, nature, and of time; fittingly, then, he set “was” and the others upon Him, that you might understand that God did not begin from time, or in time, or after time, but that He is above being itself. For, he said, being is in Him; but here, since he said that He is multiplied according to every conception, he rightly said that “was” and “will be” and the rest belong to Him, that, wherever you conceive a moment or a time, you will find God there, being above both the beings and the pre-beings, and the cause and maker of them and of the beings, and being none of them — just as we say that He is none of the beings, and yet is in all And is none of all things: In opposition to “all-shaped” is “formless,” on account of His being above corporeality and above materiality, not conformed to any of the beings; and in opposition to “all-form” is “without comeliness.” He calls Him “without comeliness” as being the source from which comeliness itself came, while Himself is above comeliness. The citations are: “And we saw Him, and He had no form nor comeliness,” and so on. For if our sun: Below, at the end of the following discourse, that is, the sixth chapter, where the sign indicates, it shows that the sun does nothing of itself, but from the cause and principle of all things, which is God.

And he well demonstrated what is understood of God from the sun; for just as the sun, being one, gives life to all sensible things, and nourishes, and increases, and alters them — that is, makes great things from small, or from a seed makes the shoot or tree that grows from it — and is in all visible things, yet is none of them, so too God, being the cause both of the sun itself and of all sensible and noetic and noeric things, is none of the beings, and is in all — for all things partake of Him; wherefore Paradigms: The paradigms, which they also call Ideas, we have already shown above how they are defined — that he calls the Idea, that is, the paradigm, a self-complete, eternal production of the eternal God; and here too the great Scripture, calling the “foreordinations,” alluding to the divine Paul, who says in Romans, “Whom He foreordained, these He also called”; and elsewhere, “having foreordained us according to the good pleasure of His will” — for he calls the paradigms and Ideas “will” and “foreordination.” He also adduces the blessed Clement, bishop of Rome, whom the Apostle mentions, as saying that “among beings there are more archetypal paradigms, namely, of relative things.” What is said will be clearer thus: there is a certain opinion that likens all things to a line, assigning the upper part of the line to noetic things, and the lower to sensible things.

And of these, to the more archetypal ones, which are the properly noetic things, it assigns the first and higher part; and to the things from the noetic, the part after that; and so on, by descent along the line, the rest. For this opinion wishes to show that not all things are of the same worth, but that some come from others — such as the subordinate forms, from the universal principles in creation, which he calls the more archetypal universal principles. He says, then, that the sacred Clement says there are also, among created things, more generic paradigms, that is, Ideas of relative things — meaning that the subordinate forms of relative things subsist as a pattern of the higher relative things — as, for instance, material fire in relation to ethereal fire. But the great Dionysius does not properly call these “Ideas,” but rather the intellections of God; for even if paradigms in creation are so called, they are not to be worshiped, as Moses says. Where the holy Clement said this, he has not indicated. But we say that the paradigms are: Plato understood the Ideas and paradigms in a lowly and unworthy manner with respect to God, but the father used the term, while piously interpreting the concept. He called the divine wills “definitive” and “productive” — the one, because by will alone He establishes and makes all things; the other, on account of the beings coming to be of different form and kind.

Note, then, that he calls “paradigms” the essence-producing and unitively pre-subsisting principles of beings in God — that is, foreordinations. §9. It proceeds, not through lordly things: Rather, the blessed Clement followed a certain opinion which says that, even in the coming-to-be of sensible beings, there are certain originative causes — such as the activities of noetic, that is, incorporeal angels, that is, those that bring things into essence — having, as originative causes, the Ideas, that is, intellections, of God; concerning which Ideas, being paradigmatic, the noetic things are, as originative and beatific and governing activities; but among sensible things, the originative and beatific and creative cause is the form imposed upon matter, as the aforesaid opinion says; for it calls the principle of the nature in becoming, according to which sensible things were given form, such a “governing form.” It seems, then, that the blessed Clement perhaps said this; but it is not proper to call these “paradigms,” that is, governing Ideas, or originative causes; for these things do not come from them, but from the intellections of God, who alone is to be worshiped. Of procession and goodness: By “procession” he means not only that God is occupied with the contemplation of Himself, but that He has poured Himself forth and proceeded and brought beings into subsistence. All things in Himself: That God is said to exult over all beings, according to the Psalm: “The Lord shall rejoice in His works,” and in Proverbs: “I was that in which He delighted.”

“Preceded” here is used in the sense of “foreordained” and Every duplicity: Since some said that the Ideas and paradigms are enhypostatic, he now strikes at these, who are Greeks, and says: for if the Ideas were not simply and unitively — being super-simplified intellections of the supersimplified and super-united God — God would be composite, of paradigm and of Himself, which he called “duplicity.” “Rejoicing” agrees with David: “The Lord shall rejoice,” and so on. Just as also one voice: Note concerning voice, that being incorporeal and one, it is heard by many alike, and is not diminished by the multitude. So too God is partaken of equally by all — for this is what “unitively” means. By analogy of faith, and not being divided, He is not diminished. §10. As that for the sake of which: Above, in the chapter before this one, we said, defining completely, that the final cause is that for the sake of which the thing that comes to be exists. And the limit of all things: To “limit,” infinity is conceived as the opposite; but God is the limit of all things — for nothing escapes His providence and dominion; and He is infinity, since, according to divine Scripture, “of His understanding there is no number,” and again, “of His kingdom there will be no end.” As, then, incomprehensible and infinite — for God has these things pre-eminently, having transcended all things, and being the limit of every limit; for all things are bounded in Him, and He is the infinity of every infinity.

And even if matter too is called infinite, as ever being reshaped and changing now into one form, now into another, it is nevertheless bounded in God, even though it is unstable and indeterminate, being brought by God into the giving of forms. And fittingly God is the limit of such infinity, and infinite with respect to the limits of beings, as having also brought matter forth out of non-being; for Scripture says, “Of Him, and through Him, and unto Him are all things.” For in one, as often: “Limit” is opposed to “infinity” by negation and affirmation, as mortal and immortal. He rightly said “as of opposites”; for these are not properly opposed to one another, as by way of habit and privation, but, as has been said, by negation and affirmation. Present to all: For being present everywhere, He is present to each thing individually and to all things together, alike. And God is also called “standing,” in that no change whatsoever is contemplated in Him; but “moving,” in that He sustains and preserves beings; and these things too are above all conception; wherefore he added “neither standing,” “nor moving.” And standing and moving: What is said seems somehow contradictory — “standing” and “moving,” and “neither standing” nor “moving.” For how can the same thing both stand still and move, or neither stand still nor move? First, one must not understand divine things from sensible things, or take images from them; but lest we seem at a loss for a solution, we have said before that “standing” signifies genesis, and “moving” alteration, that is, change.

God, then, is the genesis of all things — for He always brings them into being; so God stands still. But He also moves, again, because He transforms and alters all things for the better — for through Him we become better; wherefore also the divine Dionysius says of Him a little before, “the beginning and end of all beings.” For “neither standing” nor “moving” is explained by him as meaning that He remains in Himself, and yet proceeds to all things — for He imparts to all beings a share of His own wholeness, and He Himself is unchangeable and unaltering, according to the saying, “But You are the same.” Therefore God both proceeds and remains in Himself. Nor in any of the beings: He did not say “in something”; for He is in all things, and this on account of being unrelated in all things; for he calls the supra-cosmic essences “eternal,” on account of their having come to be before the nature of time; for time is reckoned from the making of heaven and earth. Or of the things temporally: It was also said above that it is not the age itself, but that which partakes of age, that is properly called eternal. Understand “belongs” with respect to essence. Note that some beings are eternal, such as angels, and that the eternal is not thereby also beginningless.

In the chapter following, right at the beginning, he applies the term “eternal” even to God. And the measures of beings: The measures of beings are the ages of the noetic things, and time of the sensible things; for noetic things are measured, as it were, by the measure of age, even though the things measured are called by the same name as the measuring age — for angels too are called “ages.” So too with sensible things: the things measured by time are homonymously called “times,” as also the movement of the stars, and of the sun, and lifetimes — for, being measured by time, they are called “times.” On Chapter Six §1. And of the sustaining cause: He called it ‘sustaining’ as not only having created the life in beings, but also holding it together for its continuance. From it too are souls: After the life of angels, he next ranks that of our souls, as being rational and immortal; and after the rational souls, he then adduces the life of the sentient soul and the nutritive, that is, the vegetative — that is, of irrational beings and of plants — which he calls, at the last, an ‘echo,’ as we have often interpreted above. But the lives of irrational beings and of plants are not divine, but belong to material fire and breath. Concerning these lowest lives alone, then, as has been said, he says the saying of David was spoken: ‘You will take away Your spirit, and they will fail, and return to their dust.

You will send forth Your spirit, and they will be created, and You will renew the face of the earth’ — for the great Dionysius takes these divine oracles as referring only to the sentient soul and the vegetative life; for he does not understand them of the life of noetic beings or of our own life — for God, having created this life essentially unto immortality for noetic beings and our souls, would not take away their life; since they will be essences. But David also speaks of animals renewed from the earth, though not concerning these; and concerning the life of the demons who fell away willingly, he adds that this too remains indestructible, since God who created them wills it so, even though they themselves fell away from God — ‘for the gifts of God are without repentance’ — He who from the beginning made them immortal. And he calls the ‘last echo’ the fainter participation of life, and, so to speak, that which partakes but slightly of vital power. Which, being taken away: The Psalm-verse speaks of men, and of the final and common resurrection, which the father sets forth more clearly a little before; but here he adduces the verse, making his argument concerning all things that have life in any manner, showing that life is contemplated in them from none other than God. And ‘to be taken away’ he has put in place of ‘to be separated,’ just as also ‘returning’ in place of ‘partaking.’

He says these things are weak with respect to partaking of this life, because they do not have life from themselves and of their own accord, but received from God; for the things that, as far as they are in themselves, are not contemplated in living, but have this by their reference to God, in a certain manner live again, and, as he himself says, become living things once more. §2. As in mixed bodies: Wonderfully he teaches all the doctrines with correctness. For, now handing down the manner of the resurrection, he declares us mortal, as being mortal from an immortal soul and a mortal body; but he says the essential life of the soul is less than the angelic essences, insofar as he calls it ‘angel-like’ life, yet not ‘angelic,’ not as being self-angelic, but resembling it; and he says we are, in part, the rational souls, but wholly we are those composed of soul and body; and he says our bodies are made immortal in the resurrection, declaring that the doctrine of the resurrection seems incredible to ‘antiquity’ — meaning ‘to the senseless opinion of the Greeks’ — on account of it being contrary to nature for matter to be made immortal. And ‘antiquity’ means senselessness. But even if the matter of the resurrection is above nature — as with respect to the present life, which is carried on through food, and excretion, and diseases — yet with respect to God, nothing is contrary to nature, nor above nature, since He Himself is the cause of all life.

I say also that the paired bodies: That the divine word wills that our bodies too partake of immortality, according to the Apostle: ‘For this mortal must put on immortality.’ Above nature: He says this because to give life belongs, by nature, to God alone. The refutative arguments of Simon: He says there are refutative arguments of Simon against our doctrine, which says that our body rises and is made immortal, as though the matter were contrary to nature. Those who have spoken against Simon and refute him on these points are Irenaeus, and Origen, and Hippolytus, and Epiphanius. But the great Dionysius divinely dissolves what is said by Simon, that the resurrection of bodies is contrary to nature; for since nothing is contrary to God, how could anything be contrary to nature? But for someone to think to derive proofs from these visible and sensible things against the incomprehensible and altogether invisible cause of all things, that is, against God — this is truly contrary to nature; for how will the things of opinion and the noetic things overturn that which is above all sense and understanding? By the manifest character of sense: One must not, he says, disbelieve the accounts concerning God, who is the invisible cause of all things, on account of what is perceptible to sense. For this is properly to say something contrary to nature — to set aside the things above sense, on account of the manifest character of sensible things.

§3. Whether rational, or sentient, or nutritive: Note how he divides the things concerning participated life; for he calls a ‘principle of life’ such as our soul and the sentient soul; for these are principles of life for the bodies that, through them, begin to be moved toward life; but the ‘essences’ of life are the noetic powers and our souls; for they have as their essence that which is life, as, so to speak, a certain matter and substrate and self-form, which is that of life; wherefore also souls give life to bodies, as I have said. God, then, as the cause and completer of our life, as its sustainer and distinguisher, as having ordained the differences of every life — of noetic, rational, sentient, and growing things — is the principle of all; so that, since he said above that the sun too gives life and nourishes all things, do not think that it has this of itself, but from the principle and cause of all things. There are certain untimely philosophers who say: If you wish to say God is above all wisdom and understanding, you make Him unwise and without understanding. To whom it must be said: Our God is above all things conceived and existing. Whether, then, wisdom, or understanding, or life, or hypostasis, or existence, or essence is conceived by us, He is above all these — not as not partaking of them (for this would be senseless; for how does the cause of the things that come to be not partake of the things from Him?), but as all things having proceeded from Him and partaking of His wholeness; for everything participated is more ancient than the things that come from it.

Wherefore He is also properly called ‘He who is,’ and ‘age,’ and ‘time,’ as having made the ages and the times; so too, then, one must say of wisdom and of life, that He is also their maker; for if we should say these are otherwise, God would be found to have been made wise or understanding afterward, which is their audacity, not ours — far from it! And of the guiding sun: Note that he calls the apostle Paul the sun of himself and of the holy Hierotheus. Note also how the father took the Apostle’s saying; for Chrysostom and the rest of the Fathers took it as referring to the cross. And it is customary for theologians: The saying that it is customary for theologians to express privations of God in an antithetical manner, we might understand thus: wishing to set forth the divine light as far as possible, that it is unapproachable and uncontemplatable, and that nothing — neither immaterial nor sensible — can make contact with it, they named it darkness, as in, ‘He made darkness His hiding place’ — which the divine Apostle expresses as ‘dwelling in unapproachable light’; for that which nothing approaches is like a darkness that, by way of excess, sees nothing. Again it is said: ‘Your knowledge is made wonderful from me; it is very strong; cannot attain to it.’ Just as, then, incomprehensible and inconceivable, unmixed knowledge of God is likened to unknowing, transcending all knowledge in creatures (for the unknowing concerning God, of those wise in divine things, is not ignorance, but knowledge, knowing in silence that God is unknowable) — so too they call the incarnation of God the Word a ‘self-emptying,’ even though it is full, or rather superfull, of wisdom and power and salvation; but they also call the trophy through the cross a ‘weakness of God,’ as, for instance, because by death the wicked and invisible powers of the devil were destroyed, and, instead of death, the resurrection of the dead and the kingdom of heaven were introduced in its place.

In this manner, then, is also ‘the foolishness of God’ — the understanding of God that surpasses all human wisdom and knowledge. One might understand what is said by considering those from the heresies, together with whom also the Greeks, who imagine they demonstrate by sensible syllogisms that it is impossible for the incarnation of God, economically arranged unto death, to have occurred. Considering whom, the most divine Paul, seized with dizziness, cried out: ‘O the depth of the riches and wisdom of God! How unsearchable are His judgments!’ That which surpasses every method of created wisdom, then, would be equal, to those not taught by God, to words of foolishness. For the mystery could not be smoothed over by words, or by sensible demonstrations, without faith going before. By way of antithesis, concerning God: ‘By way of antithesis’ — that is, by a converse turning of the reasoning; through the negations denote privations, transcendence concerning God is signified, which in another place he called ‘the power of transcendent negation.’ The seeming irrationality in it: For indeed the Passion on the cross, and to say that God suffered in the flesh, seems irrational and absurd, which yet manifested the true reality. Note how the father understands the Apostle’s saying; for Chrysostom and the rest of the Fathers took this as referring to the cross. Entangled: Entangled in other things — that is, turned back, wallowing.

By these he shows that one must not compare divine things to human ones. Has this power: We have said above too that the mind, wishing to understand, descends from itself into its intellections; for the intellections are lower than the one who understands, as being understood and grasped, and there is, fittingly, a scattering and division of the unity of the mind itself; for the mind is simple and without parts, but the intellections are very numerous and scattered, and, as it were, the forms of the mind; for this reason the noeric — that is, the ones understanding — are less than the noetic — that is, than the things understood. But he speaks of the union of the mind, as he says more clearly in what follows, by which it stretches up toward what is beyond itself — that is, it lays hold of the contemplation of God, by departing from all sensible and noetic things, and moreover from its own movement, and thus receiving the ray of divine knowledge. This irrational, then: Here especially he makes clear how ‘the foolishness of God’ is the super-wise magnitude of the incomprehensibility concerning God; for he says that, being enclosed within the sensible, when we examine, let us say, the doctrine concerning the immateriality and supraessentiality of God, we go astray, measuring those things by sensible standards — as, for instance, when setting forth the proclamation of the Trinity, alone to be worshiped, and hearing of a three-hypostatic, unpartitioned, and undivided theology, some immediately grow dizzy, attending to bodies, which require place and intervals, saying: How is it possible for there to be three hypostases by themselves, and for them to be undivided?

For they do not know that they are being foolish in sensible things, in order that they might be made wise in divine things, and countless other such things — against whom the Lord directs: ‘If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?’ And the divine Paul says that ‘the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit; for they are foolishness to him.’ So then, that which is foolishness to men are the spiritual things, which must be pursued; for he called it ‘foolish wisdom’ because no wisdom is able to attain it; just as also ‘irrational’ and ‘mindless,’ as not having a reason or mind that can interpret it, that is, comprehend it. §2. From it, the noetic powers: Note that, elsewhere too, there are noetic and noeric powers; and fittingly the same beings are both noetic and noeric, just as the orders above; noetic in that they are understood by the ones below them; noeric, in that they are also the highest, and stretch up to understand, as far as possible, the God who is above all, being nourished from above by intellection, and nourishing those who understand at a lower level. For our souls are noeric only; for, understanding scientifically, as far as possible, the things that transcend them, they no longer have anything noeric after them, so as to be understood in turn; for the irrational and mindless soul is after us; but the intellections of the divine minds are not in discursive reasonings such as ours, into which our mind descends from the things divided — that is, from sensible and discursive concepts — in place of forms and multiplicity, which belongs to material things — but they gather their intellections immaterially, contemplating all things in the simple.

Noetic: Understand ‘noetic’ as in relation to us, but ‘noeric’ as in relation to God. Or from divided things: We are among divided sense-organs; for hearing is one thing, and sight another, and so with the rest; and from the divided sensible things corresponding to these we take up the knowledge of beings — or in divided particular concepts, and from divided learnings, that is, the things understood; and sometimes also through discursive reasonings — that is, making the explanation clear and unfolded. But the noeric natures, having no communion with all such things, are illumined with the knowledge of truth by a unitive and simple intellection. And they have: He says that the angels have a noeric power and activity that came to be from the supernatural wisdom of God; for the divine angels have, by participation from Him, the power of noeric activity, according to which they understand themselves and the beings, understanding the Ideas by direct vision, which he called the intellections of God. They have, then, this noeric activity introduced from the cause, God, and they understand the beings far more transcendently than souls do — if indeed souls understand the beings from the beings themselves and lay hold of the forms, which is a more discursive kind of understanding, and go around all things in a circle. But the angels, according to the God-likeness inherent them, understand multitudes of creation unitively, and are not divided into the scattering of the variety of beings, that is, of sensible things, as rational souls are; but souls are deemed worthy of this in some measure, in imitation of angels, whenever, rolling up the intellection of the many into one, they have all things together within them, distinguished without confusion; and yet souls have their understanding introduced from without, whereas the angels understand from themselves and in themselves, being also God-like.

And this concerns noetic things; but concerning how one understands God, you have this both here and above, in the fifth chapter, near the end. What we said concerning souls — that they understand the many, rolled up into one, in an angel-like manner — they will especially have perfectly in the resurrection, when, coming again into their own bodies, they will receive back the perfect knowledge of beings. And the resurrection of the righteous will have this perfectly, according to the saying: ‘And so we shall always be with the Lord’; and again: ‘Now we see as in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face’ — evidently, we shall be taught the knowledge of beings. But discursively and in a circle: It has been said what ‘discursively’ means. ‘Discursively and in a circle,’ then — that is, not by an all-at-once grasp of the mind — is the human soul covered over with divine knowledge, but receiving the true understanding of beings piecemeal, according to which it falls short of the angelic vision of God, gathers, around the one cause, the concept of the things variously contemplated, and is deemed worthy of angel-like intellections. It desires, then, to attain: The demonic mind desires, out of irrationality, equality with God, but does not know how this could be attained, not having suffered ignorance by nature, but willingly choosing what is contrary to nature.

Note that the demons, insofar as they have mind, acquired this from the Good; but having become irrational, and not wishing to remain what they were, they underwent a falling-away from wisdom. By way of transcendence: Concerning the fact that the things said of God by way of privation, and their opposites, are understood transcendently. And all the other things, from within: Let no one be led by these things to absurd notions, so as to say that God has, in Himself, evil things too, as a cause, that is, that He is thereby to be concluded to be their cause; for the father’s argument is not about these things; for he has already shown that evil neither exists nor is among beings, but he speaks concerning the things that are in essence, such as angels and the rest of creatures, as he also said before, whose knowledge He does not have from learning them, what sort of things they are; for he showed this by saying: ‘Not learning beings from beings,’ and, ‘Not laying hold according to the idea of each,’ but as their maker, He possesses beforehand the knowledge of His own works, knowing how He will bring them forth, and unto what, before their genesis — the deviation and deficiency of which, that is, the failure and inability, introduces evil, making what is contrary to nature by the privation of what accords with nature; for this reason he brought forward the example of light; for by its privation darkness subsists alongside, and has as its cause the absence of the nature of light — just as also positive states are more originative than privations, and, so to speak, causes.

Here, then, the father makes his argument concerning the things brought into being by God and the nature of each of these, which he has also said pre-subsist in God according to foreknowledge and foreordination. And precedes essence: That knowledge precedes and has grasped beforehand essence. Just as also the light: The comparison is unerring; for just as, if one should suppose this visible light to be intelligent and rational, and then we should ask it whether it knows darkness, and it should say it knows — even before darkness comes to be — knowing not by any experience (for how could light see darkness? for if there is light, there will be no darkness), but light would say it knows insofar as it is light; wherefore it also knows that, if it withdraws its own light, no one will see — so too God has, as cause, within Himself, the knowledge of all things, not having acquired this by experience, since thus God would be found to be later than knowledge, or at some time not knowing. Note that darkness is the thing caused, subsisting alongside from the deficiency of light, which is against the Manichaeans. Of darkness: That darkness is known not from elsewhere, but from light. And not from beings: See how he says God knows the beings, not from the knowledge of all things, but from His own — just as light knows the things of darkness, having nothing of darkness in itself.

This is said in many places in the fifth chapter, how God, knowing, that is, understanding, Himself, understands and knows the beings paradigmatically. God, then, is not: For the Divine is in no duplicity, being altogether simple, and above every simple thing. For indeed the angels too: That the angels know the things on earth, not making contact with sensible things through sensation, as we do, but through a power that has ascended to understand from various oracles — as, for instance, in Tobit, where it is said that the divine angel Raphael told the son of Tobias to take the gall of the fish that had come up, as removing the whiteness of the eyes that comes from the droppings of sparrows; for one would not suppose that he learned the remedy by experience. But also the angel in Judges, in the case of Gideon, who brought forth fire from the rock upon the sacrifice, did not know that fire burns by sensation, as we do, but by a higher, fitting knowledge; so too the rest. But if someone should say, How then will the devil and his angels perceive the eternal fire? It will be said, in a fitting place. But also in Daniel, in the chapter of Belshazzar, he who wrote the letters knew them without having learned. Note that the knowledge of sensible things by the angels is not according to sensation; for they do not make use of senseorgans as ours, but by the power and nature of mind.

§3. But concerning these one must inquire: He inquires together with us how we know God, and rightly says that the nature of God, what it is, has never been known by any of the things in creation, either scientifically or by direct vision; for we make contact with these in the case of incorporeal beings — but God is known from the ordering of creatures; for if, according to the divine Apostle, the beauty of the created things signifies their maker — that is, the maker of the things in becoming — fittingly the ordering of beings is knowledge of the One who ordered them; for the beings, that is, the forms, and the particular creations, such as the angelic orders, and all sensible things, are images and likenesses of the divine Ideas, that is, paradigms of the things in mind, which paradigms are the eternal intellections of God, through which and according to which all things were in Him, not being other than Him and having come to be as things brought forth — as also, in the Apocalypse, the most divine John says one of the eldest angels told him, that all things were and have come to be — meaning that the Ideas were, and that the images and likenesses of the Ideas, that is, of the paradigms, are all the things that have come to be.

For of noetic things, the noeric are images, and of the transcendent things, the lower are images. By the removal, then, of all these (for God is removed from beings, being none of the things created by Him, but ineffably transcending all things), God is known transcendently. From His own nature: Note this as necessary and ready for the defense of piety. a. And certain images: Here one must understand ‘divine paradigms’ as the foreordinations, of which the products of creation are images. He called the foreordinations ‘purposes,’ the Apostle, as in the letter to the Ephesians, saying, ‘according to the purpose of the ages.’ In all creatures, then, evidently, God is known, as the craftsman in his crafted works. But that which pertains to essence is altogether set apart from all things; and thence, being unknown to the crafted things, He is known from such unknowing, just as also through the scientific understanding and knowledge of the creatures. Summing these things up, then, he joined what follows to the same point. b.: Since also the Ideas of animals are in God, and of all things according to nature, universally, but not such that the things here are idols and likenesses of the particular things there; for all things here are idols of the things there; for the soul too is itself an image and likeness of the Idea. c.

And through knowledge, God: How God is known through opposites, both through positions and through removals, he shows by going through them. For even if above, in the first chapter, he said that nothing is representative of the essence of God — not intellection, not touch, not imagination, not opinion, nor whatever else he said there and here, which we have also interpreted in those places — now he says that God is known even through the things denied there, yet not His essence; and again, that He has none of these things for our comprehension. As, then, the cause of all things, He is known from the things that come from Him; but as being none of the things that come from Him, He remains unknown by all. And how He is also known through unknowing, he says both here and, as was said above, in the second chapter. And He is neither understood: For through the things created, we understand, we lay hold of the knowledge that God is. But who, or of what kind, or how great God Himself is, we neither understand, nor name, nor comprehend by mind or sense. Similar to this is also: God is in all things, and is in none of all things. According to the union above mind: Note that, according to what has been previously set forth, he took the union of the contemplation of God that is above mind.

For this is according to the Oracle: This too is from the Solomon, where wisdom is called the craftswoman of all things; and from Proverbs, where it is said, from Wisdom: ‘I was fitting together beside Him’; and David: ‘You have made all things in wisdom.’ But God is Reason: Concerning God the Word, and why He is called Word, what such a name signifies, he here gives one cause according to which He is named Word, namely, that He has in Himself the causes of all beings; for the principles of every nature are in Him, as the cause of all creation; for through Him are all things; for both the Ideas and the paradigms are in Him, not being elsewhere in something else, but being eternal intellections, and principles that make all things — that is, nature; for nature too is a principle, having a cause and a nature, since the natures of beings are not at random or in vain. He calls Him Word also because He proceeds through all things without hindrance, and goes around all things, even to the uttermost, as in the letter to the Hebrews: ‘For the word of God is living and active,’ and so on. This Word is: That God the Word, being Himself and in reality the truth that is, is fittingly also the simple knowledge of beings. What knowledge is, he immediately goes on to teach.

For if knowledge is unitive: Clarifying the matters concerning true knowledge, God the Word Himself, Christ Jesus, concerning whom the discourse is, and that knowledge is truly unitive of the knowers and the known, says: ‘And I know my sheep, and am known by mine; as the Father knows me, I also know the Father.’ For just as knowledge, having known that which it wished to know, is united to the thing known, no longer having doubt concerning it, nor being split, on account of doubt, into other concepts and unsettled, and thereby becoming ignorance, through not being persuaded that it has known — so the faithful, united by knowledge to the known Christ, who is God the Word, and having fixed their faith upon Him, having the most stable and unshaken faith of the things known, that they have known God and have been known by God, have departed from the ignorance which we said divides and splits and unsettles into nowthese, now-those doubts, as not having known what it ought to know, and have stood firm in certainty, having been fully assured by faith that they have known and have been united, for this reason, to the known. He, then, who is in the darkness of ignorance, according to the Apostle, being shaken by that very error, is carried about by every wind of the trickery of men, like those tossed about at sea (for the Apostle says this too), and thinks the knowers to be mad, just as Festus too said to Paul, who was proclaiming the divine knowledge: ‘You are mad, Paul.’

The knower, and the one who is truly a Christian, inasmuch as he has known Christ in truth, and through Him has acquired the knowledge of God — I mean the unitive knowledge of the truth (for unitive is the simple and uncomposite knowledge) — has departed from the world, not being in the worldly opinion and error of the unbelievers, but knows himself to be sober and freed from the manifold error of unbelief; wherefore also they die daily for the truth, not only being in danger, each time, even unto death, for the truth’s sake, but also always dying to ignorance, and living by knowledge, and being witnessed to as Christians. Cause of division: Here he called ‘division’ the instability of judgment, being divided into many things. Of the hearth: Of abode, of dwelling. By the unitive faith of the Christians: He called our faith ‘unitive,’ as having the simple and unerring knowledge of that which truly is. On Chapter Eight §1. And power: In what respect God is called power. And lordship: As in, ‘The Lord of powers, He is the King of glory’; again: ‘The Lord of powers is with us; our helper is the Distinguishing of powers: ‘Distinguishing’ — that is, setting apart and separating. §2. According to unbending power: He said ‘unbending,’ that is, not falling short of its own summit; for it does not create by bending down to power, but, being immovable and unbending, brings forth beings by its own strength.

Perhaps one should also read ‘unclosed,’ as it were not shut; wherefore he adds also ‘unbounded’; for it is not closed, as being powerless in some respect, but the power of God is always open in power to make all things. And empowers weakness: He calls ‘weakness’ these material and earthly bodies, which he also calls, as we have often said above, the ‘last echoes,’ on account of their partaking of the power of God faintly, and according to their own fitness. And concerning bodies as ours it is said, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’; but this must also be observed in the other animals, as in gnats and flies and such things — how much power they have in their own stings, such weak and despised creatures, empowered by God who made them; wherefore also, in Joel the divine prophet, God says concerning the locust and the caterpillar and the grub, ‘My great power’ — and how far the infinite power of God extends even to these, he says, giving wonderful and most true images. But you will also find the same among inanimate things, observing in herbs and plants and metals harmful and beneficial powers; and most things are easily crumbled, while others are strong and unyielding, such as adamant. Otherwise: He says the weakest of animals are the ‘empowered weakness’ in these, having this power of truly existing; or one must think of ‘weakness’ as the inanimate and altogether unmoving nature, which received the essential power, that is, the power of existing at all, from God.

§3. And this too, if it be lawful: That is, it would not have been possible for anything to exist at all, had this not been established by the divine power. Has power for being: He understands ‘power’ not only as the strength for constitution, but also signifies the fitness for being of such-and-such a kind. And he calls ‘distribution of power’ the outward procession of God‘s providence and goodness concerning beings, unto the being and bringing forth of beings. And he says the first power is that of beings; these are the noetic and incorporeal beings, called ‘beings,’ as immortal; and along with the noetic, the noeric too must be classed together, as being the ones now called ‘ensouled’ and ‘rational’; for reason is mind, according to which the soul, by way of descent after the angels, is called noeric. Then, subordinate to this, is the sentient power, that of ensouled irrational beings; then the vital and vegetative power, that of all plants and herbs, according to which vegetative life they bloom; and after all these, the essential power — that is, of inanimate things, such as metals and earthy things — which power is that which constitutes and makes them persist in being, and gives the power of qualities, hot or cold, or the subsequent mixtures, and either to benefit, or to benefit in such-and-such a way. And the appetitive powers too — of rational beings always being able to will and to desire — God is the provider, and He empowers, toward friendship, the things that are united, and toward communion — that is, He brings the seeds of all things, that is, the elements, proceeding in due measure toward union, and mingling and drawing near to one another gently, into the power of generating like sensible things.

Of this union, then, and of the mixture of the elements united in friendship, as we have said, when it turns toward difference and separation, the parts, being distinguished, are separated into the generations of animals and plants and so on, and this distinction, that is, separation, receives from God the power for being and the bringing forth of the things that come to be according to species. He called, then, the combinations and separations ‘unions’ and ‘friendships,’ and named ‘distinction’ the unconfused and unmixed forms. Note that the angelic powers too have this very desire from God. §4. And that these be: The nature of beings seeks being not by choice, but by the necessity and usefulness of its existence; and this, then, he says is ‘being thus,’ and the power of being sought, as necessary being from the divine and infinitely powerful essence. §5. And good order: He calls ‘good order’ the well-disposed positions, and the well-arranged orders — the comely creations; and he speaks of the ‘unities’ of angelic simplicities; or he calls ‘unities’ the simplicities and incorporealities and immaterialities of the essences themselves. Note that he says the stars endure forever. And unaltering orders: Do not understand ‘unaltering’ of the heavenly essences as meaning eternal existence (for they, according to what is written, are ministering spirits), but understand the unalterability with respect to the keeping of the boundaries appointed to them from the beginning by God.

And by ‘processions of time’ he means its length and its forward course; and by ‘distinction,’ the marking, through the alternation of the seasons, that is, times, which is again restored to the same points; wherefore he also called the movement of time ‘revolutions’; or he calls ‘temporal processions’ the movements of the planetary stars, passing, over a certain reckoning of time, through the twelve intervals of the so-called houses; and ‘restorations’ are the returns from a certain point to the same point — as the sun goes around the twelve houses in a year, passing from the socalled Ram back to the same Ram; the moon in a month, and the other five likewise; for from these the times are measured. And the powers of fire: Evidently the ethereal. He speaks concerning the four elements, and that the earth is founded upon nothing; but Scripture says, ‘You founded it upon the waters.’ The essential powers: Perhaps all inanimate and insensate things too are called ‘essential,’ evidently being so called from ‘being.’ And deification: The righteous and the angels are deified, according to, ‘I said, You are gods.’ Position altogether: He calls ‘position’ the bringing into being, meaning: that which does not partake of power is not even in creation. §6. And yet, says Elymas the sorcerer: This shows the antiquity of this holy man; for he knows what Elymas the sorcerer said, who also opposed the holy Paul in Cyprus, whom the Acts of the Holy Apostles mention.

Yet Arabia has many like Elymas, who say to us, when we say that Jesus Christ, God the Word, suffered for us in the flesh, but not in Godhead — that ‘if you do not accept that He suffered in Godhead, as He wished, you make God powerless, saying He is unable to suffer in Godhead if He should wish.’ To whom it must be said, that God did not will this — having, in whatever He might suffer, the coming-to-be of something contrary to nature, so that the Godhead, which is by nature impassible, might suffer. See how he interprets the apostolic saying, ‘God cannot deny Himself.’ For the denial of Himself: What I said — Elymas the sorcerer, mocking the divine Paul who said ‘God is not able to deny Himself,’ and thinking to show, from Paul‘s own words, that God is powerless, though able to do what He wills, that is, to deny Himself — the great Dionysius most philosophically resolves. For he says that God is truth, and truth is being, but falsehood, as unsubstantial, is not even being. If, then, God should deny Himself, truth, having lied, becomes non-being. And how could this happen? The ‘not being able,’ then, when applied to God, is a sign of ineffable power. For it is like saying that God is able to make Himself not to be God, but to pass into nonexistence — which, together with the impossibility, also carries the blasphemy.

How, then, will it be said that He who is will become He who is not? God, then, is not able — that is, it is inadmissible for Him not to be, that is, unadmitted that He not be. Therefore, also, this ‘not being able’ of God, that is, the impossibility of God, cannot come to pass. For just as light, insofar as it is light, cannot become darkness, so too these things are impossible for God, on account of His unsurpassable truth. Thus, then, God does not know ‘not knowing’ by way of privation — as in, God has not experienced ignorance — that is, He does not know what this ‘not knowing,’ that is, being ignorant of something, even is. But by privation He does not know ignorance; for ignorance is a privation, not a subsistence, but something outside the essence around which the privation occurs; for it is a deficiency of that which ought to be present. God, then, is deprived of ignorance, and never knows ‘not knowing’; for if we should say that God does not know ignorance, not by way of privation, then ‘not knowing’ would be found to belong to His essence, and His ignorance would be essential to Him, and God would be found to be darkness; for ignorance is darkness. Thus loftily you will also understand, ‘It is impossible for God to lie,’ and, ‘The Son can do nothing of Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it’ — which is like saying: It is impossible for the Son to will other things while the Father wills other things.

For there is one will of the sole worshipful Trinity according to Godhead; nor indeed are we ignorant that the Son of God, and God, the one of the allhymned and all-immaculate Trinity, having become man, assumed a human will, natural and sinless. And ‘not to be’ is not: A negation set against a negation makes an affirmation. He, then, who says that ‘not to be’ is not in God, thereby gathers that He is. So, then, he says, ‘He cannot not-be-able,’ and likewise, ‘He does not know not-knowing’ — from which it is gathered that He altogether knows and is able. And he rightly added here ‘by privation’; for these are not said transcendently, but privatively — ‘He is not able’ and ‘He does not know.’ §7. And He is hymned as righteousness: In what respect God is righteousness. The definition of righteousness is: a virtue distributive of what is due according to worth, or the proper function of the parts of the soul; or a mean between excess and deficiency; or a disposition distributive of equality; or a disposition aiming at the common advantage; or the science of what is to be distributed, and what is not, and what is neither. They rail against: ‘Concerning those who speak iniquity against God,’ as the Psalmist says. Here he speaks opportunely, showing their words to be perverse; for, being self-moved, that is, self-determining, and masters of their own impulses, they say: Why have we become selfdetermining?

Why are we not rather prevented, even unwillingly, from sinning? — not knowing that this is equivalent to wishing that stones be moved by another, and, having earthly bodies, asking why we do not remain in sameness, that is, unchangeable, immortal, while making use of material and temporal things? This is the mark of those who are ignorant of the nature of sensible and noetic things, and are diseased with much irrationality; for our body, being material and temporal and mutable, fittingly needed things of like kind, that is, temporal and material; but the soul, created immaterial and immortal, fittingly has selfdetermination, on account of its likeness to its Maker. Not understanding these things in either respect, the railers blame divine providence, though seeing such good order in it; for this is what is meant by, ‘and altogether they attribute the things of one to another.’ Self-moved: Self-determining. §8. But someone might say: Against those who say, How is God not unjust, who permits the righteous to be ill-treated by the wicked? Otherwise: Here he inquires into a chapter proposed to us by another; for he says: ‘Someone might say,’ and so on, resolving it piously and in a manner pleasing to God; for he says for what cause God, being just, permits holy men to be wronged by unjust and grasping men (for we see many righteous men suffering loss, either in money or in affairs, from unjust and grasping men), and he makes a skillful defense.

For he says that holy men ought not to be attached to earthly and temporal things, since otherwise they would no longer be holy; for they ought to prefer the things that are truly worthy of love, and divine; for those who desire riches are no longer holy. And the question is resolved; for this is what the divine Paul says: ‘Why not rather suffer wrong?’ — meaning, do not be alarmed about worldly things. And again, introducing divine love, concerning which neither injustice nor covetousness can occur, he says: ‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress?’ and so on. He calls ‘materially minded’ those who are passionate and given over only to earthly things. And ‘to be surpassed in reputation’ is to appear less esteemed. By angelic virtues: That virtue is rightly said also of angels, just as also of God, according to, ‘His virtue covered the heavens,’ and that being wronged with respect to material things is a work of divine providence, accustoming them to desire more divine things. Of material attachment: See how he says that not being attached to material things signifies manliness, that is, courage; for those who are enslaved to worldly and bodily passions are fittingly called effeminate. And that divine justice does not wish to charm and destroy us through these things, but accustoms us to their contempt, according to the saying, ‘For whom the Lord loves, He chastens; and He scourges every son whom He receives.’

What then? Are those who have riches not loved by God? You will say that, first, wealth in itself is not evil, but rather the attachment to it and its evil use; and further, God knows those weak among us, and, wishing to save them, gives them, as an incentive, perhaps also wealth and prominence of life, not being ignorant of what they are — for how could He who knows all things before their coming to be not know? But this is so that we might have no excuse, according to the Apostle, ‘Therefore you are without excuse, O man’; and again: ‘We have a great High Priest, able to sympathize with our weaknesses.’ Not to charm: ‘To charm’ is to deceive by way of pleasure; it also means simply to please. Of the best things: Of the desirable things. Unrelenting steadfastness: He calls ‘unrelenting steadfastness’ the unyielding resistance to the tickling of earthly things, and the not bending toward material things through temptations. §9. Of the proper function in all things: He called ‘proper function’ the movement peculiar to each of the beings according to nature; for it is not possible for men to do the things of angels, nor for water the things of fire, and vice versa. And as from the worse things: Do not understand ‘the worse things’ here as referring to created things (for there is nothing evil in them), but to sin, which subsisted alongside from our own choice, by way of privation of the good.

For God snatches us away from it willingly, if we should run to And unswerving toward the worse: Think of him as saying this concerning sensible and created things — that He preserves all things in their own good order; for none of them has been transformed, but they have remained as they were created; this is what ‘unchangeable’ signifies. And ‘unswerving toward the worse,’ either because He made them capable of choice, or because none of them has departed from its own state, or been transferred to inferior things. For heaven and earth have remained, and the things in them likewise. And that He banishes the doing of what belongs to another, and keeps the properties of each unfallen — understand it thus: that the elements remain opposed to one another, such as hot and cold, wet and dry, and each of them remains within its own wholeness, and does not pass over into its opposite; for fire never becomes water, nor water fire. But if they should come together, at the Creator‘s command, each of them remains, preserving its own property. And the proportions: He calls ‘proportions’ the fittingnesses and due measures of each nature. Not off the mark: That is, not outside the intent of Scripture. Upholding: Supporting. Of the maimed: Of the injured, of those who cause harm and uselessness. And all inequality: He does not simply say that inequality is banished, but in particular cases — that is, that each of the things that have come to be does not remain equally and alike in identity according to nature; wherefore he also added ‘by way of privation,’ since, given that beings are indifferent and unequal, inequality is not thereby cast out.

Of the equality in each of them: Knowing the two ways in which inequality is spoken of, he makes both clear, and says that God is called righteousness in this respect, according to which He apportions the equality of all things, and banishes the inequality of all things. He now calls ‘inequality’ that which occurs by way of the privation of equality, that is, covetousness; for the equal distribution to each according to worth — this holds all things together and preserves them. Having said this, he adds also the other way in which inequality is spoken of. For he knows that some call the noetic and incorporeal forms, and the first principles of beings — I mean the immortal creation, the unities, that is, the simple essences — ‘equality’ and ‘identity’; but the sensible things, which are also divisible, and in change and difference, and now one way, now another, they call ‘inequality’ and ‘otherness.’ He says, then, that even if one should understand this inequality — the difference of sensible things into forms, through which the generations of animals and plants and so on subsist — even of this inequality God is the guardian and protector, not allowing the opposites to be mixed together into one, and, running together, to come to corruption through commingling. For as He brought forth all things, so He preserves them, and they are as they were from the beginning.

For inequality: Note that he calls ‘inequality’ also the difference of the whole in relation to all the wholes, and that such inequality the righteousness of God guards. Note, too, that there is also a natural inequality. On Chapter Nine §1. Of these theonymic images: Most wisely he speaks of theonymic images, transposing from the Greeks unto the truth; for they used to make certain statues, having neither hands nor feet, which they called ‘Herms’; and they made them hollow, having doors, like little tower-shrines. Within them, then, they placed the images of the gods they worshiped, but on the outside they kept the Herms closed; the Herms, then, appeared cheap, but within they had the adornments of their gods. So too, then, you will understand here: that the names concerning the one true and real God in Scripture seem, taken by themselves, unworthy to be said of God — such as ‘small,’ and ‘to sit,’ and so on — but when the names are unfolded and interpreted worthily of God, they have within them the images and divine types of the doctrine concerning God. Great, then, is God hymned in the Oracles: God is not called ‘great’ by way of comparison with another, as an ox is greater than a sheep, or a bean than a millet-seed, but on account of the incomparable and truly incomprehensible character of the divine majesty; for this is what ‘properly’ — that is, saying ‘property’ — signified.

§2. God, then, is named great: Even though he interprets the appellations predicated of God, it is necessary to make these clear by scriptural testimonies. ‘Great,’ then, is said where it is written, ‘Great is our Lord, and great is His strength,’ and all such things in Scripture; but that He is also ‘small’ is shown in the Third Book of Kingdoms, where it says to Elijah the prophet: ‘Behold, the voice of a gentle breeze, and the Lord was there’ — for it shows Him as contained by the breeze, which is a sign of subtlety and smallness. But you have ‘Himself’ here, and in, ‘I am, and I have not changed.’ The other, when He appeared to Ezekiel as a man of fire and amber, and elsewhere: ‘His eyes as lamps,’ and the rest; as the appearance of bronze and of a furnace, which John says in the Apocalypse; and ‘like,’ when He says He makes man according to His likeness; but ‘unlike,’ in Isaiah, when He says, ‘To whom have you likened me, says the Lord,’ as having nothing like Him. And ‘standing’ and ‘unmoving,’ in His saying to Moses concerning the rock, ‘Here I stand before you, before you are there,’ and the like. But ‘sitting,’ where Baruch says: ‘You who sit forever, and we who perish forever’; and again: ‘He who sits upon the Cherubim.’

But ‘moving,’ as when it says: ‘And He mounted upon the Cherubim and flew’; and again: ‘Come, let us go down and confuse their tongues,’ and, ‘He bowed the heavens and came down.’ These things for now; but in the particular expositions the necessary things will be made clear. This greatness is also infinite: Since God has a most-perfect limit, being beyond-perfect and beyond-infinite, as in, ‘and of His kingdom there will be no end’ — but He is also above all number; for even if God is called ‘one’ and ‘unity,’ yet He is above the one. For properly the ‘one’ signifies a relation to the many numbers that come from it, and seems to be, as it were, the beginning of a multitude of numbers; nevertheless God deigned to accept even the ‘one’ from among the things that come from Him, since the one is simple and without parts in itself and uncomposite; but even so He is superunited — that is, He is above the one; wherefore it is said, ‘and of His understanding there is no number.’ §3. Thus, then, small is said of God: For all beings, both the very great and the exceedingly small, partake of a share of smallness; for none of the beings has escaped the smallness that appears in all things; or, that the things in growth proceed from small to greater — this is what the father says; or that in the greater the small is contemplated, but not the greater in the small, insofar as it is the greater.

The exceeding sharpness God‘s penetration even into incorporeal things is signified here; for ‘to penetrate even to the division of soul and spirit’ — for this seems to be the case — declares that even the incorporeal, unitary nature of the soul can be divided by God. Wherefore God also understands the concepts which the mind understands when moving and active, and, of such incorporeality and indivisibility (for what is between mind and intellection?), God penetrates in the midst — as it is also said: ‘You have understood my reasonings from afar.’ But also between the soul and the spirit — that is, in that in which we have the senses fixed, through which the soul makes contact with sensible things, and we have the discursive faculty of thought — God passes through unhindered. And this spirit the wise men among the Greeks call a power and, as it were, a second, sentient soul of the soul; this sentient soul, then, is that which extends through the marrow and veins and arteries and bones and the whole body. §4. Undiminished, ungenerated: Note in how many ways the signification of ‘ungenerated’ is taken — either that which has not yet come to be, but will be generated, as Sarah said, ‘It has not yet happened to me’; or as unfinished, like the tower in Chalane; or by someone, as in, ‘Paul an apostle, not of men’; or a particular one, as, ‘Justus, one of the twelve’; or that which nowhere and in no way exists at all, such as the monstrous things the Greeks fable, Scylla and Chimera and the like.

Specifically and absolutely, then, is ‘ungenerated’ said of God. On the same: Having called God ‘ungenerated,’ he purges the misleading interpretations of the name, and says: See that you do not take the term as meaning that God has been generated, as though God had something above Him, so that He came to be this or that from what is before Him — such as a demiurge, or good, or spirit, or fire, or something of the sort; but neither should you suppose Him ‘ungenerated’ in the sense of not existing at all, either in becoming, or as anything else. How, then, one must understand ‘ungenerated,’ he says next. He does this against the Arians and Eunomians, who blasphemously divided God into generated and ungenerated. But as altogether-ungenerated?: Since, as he says, calling God above all that is ungenerated makes one suppose and say that there are, on this account, certain ungenerated things in creation after the Holy Trinity, let us make clear what is signified. And it is meanwhile clear from the beginning that the divine Dionysius, especially since the philosophers were then flourishing in Ephesus, where the Ionian philosophy too had its seat, set himself to transpose unto the truth all that was mistakenly said by them. He knew, then, that it was the doctrine of certain of them, who said that all noetic and immortal, and noeric, things are both generated and ungenerated: generated, as having subsisted from the cause, God, to the procession of illumination; ungenerated, in that they proceeded not in time, but eternally — that is, in the ages.

For we have said above that sensible things have time, but noetic things have age, wherefore they are also called eternal. As, then, having shone forth by procession, they called them also ungenerated; again, he knew that others called this visible world both generated and ungenerated — generated, insofar as the whole proceeds unto this, or proceeds from one to many, which pertains to the generations of animals and plants according to species, and the rest; or from many to one, meaning, whenever it proceeds unto corruption, unto the dissolution into the elements; but they called the same world ‘ungenerated’ again, that is, eternal, insofar as, according to them, it never ceases from the movements toward generation, and the restorations toward corruption. The great Dionysius says, then, that however ‘ungenerated’ might be said — whether as I have said, or as the Greeks say — you should not receive this concerning God; for other things are called ‘ungenerated’ with a cause, but God is so called without cause and absolutely; for what cause is there for God, who altogether transcends all things? Uniformly and identically: ‘Uniformly’ he said on account of ‘identically,’ incomparability on account of of the divine nature; its unalterableness and immutability; and ‘defined’ signifies that which is shown, from ‘to define,’ or that which is set apart and separated. And the same: The ‘ever the same and unvaryingly so’ is seen only in the productive cause of all things, from which the gift is also given to creatures to remain in identity, and also the ordering of the opposites, that is, of the things that stand otherwise in relation to one another.

All things equally, then, even those not in identity of nature, are seen in God; for God is the cause of all beings equally, that is, alike. According to the one and unitary: The ‘ever being unvaryingly and unalterably the same,’ which is ‘identical,’ is God; and He Himself is bounded by nothing else, nor is there any limit of Him, but all things are bounded in Him; and He is the same, ever God, as being unity, and the truly identical, and His own boundary, and the boundary of all things, set apart from all things, and having transcended, uniformly and identically — that is, according to His being a unity that is unmixed and simple with respect to all things, and according to the identical, that is, according to His being ever the same; for there is no difference between saying ‘unity’ or ‘uniform,’ and ‘identical’ or ‘of the same form’; for it signifies the same thing. God also imparts to the creatures that come from Him a share of the identical, wherefore all things remain in the same and unvarying manner, just as they also came to be, in mutual accord and salvation and sympathy, insofar as they are able to partake of this. So too He has the othernesses — that is, the various processions of the creatures from Him — preserved and ordered within Himself, yet holding fast to His own identity, and not being altered into otherness, nor into contrariety, even though He also holds together the opposites among sensible things.

§5. Since God is present to all providentially: The syntax is hyperbatic, having its resolution referred to ‘must be supposed,’ so that the sense is: ‘It must be supposed, since God is present to all providentially,’ and so on. For just as, if one should think of the soul: See how it is possible to conceive the soul corporeally, and how he understands there to be parts of the soul corporeally; for he skillfully fashions this by his reasoning. By the partless: The soul is partless, not simply, but in relation to a body; for he speaks of its parts and powers, for whose image the parts of the body are sometimes taken. Unfoldings: By ‘unfolding’ he means the expansion, that is, the clarification of the concept hidden in the expression; and ‘to be purified’ means altogether to free what is being contemplated from corporeal things. The three shapes of bodies: He calls the ‘three shapes’ of bodies that which is extended in three directions, as he at once makes clear; and from this you will fittingly understand what the Apostle said: ‘That you may know what is the depth, and what is the height,’ and so on, which some have taken to refer to the saving cross. Note what ‘length,’ and ‘depth,’ and ‘breadth’ are, said of God. But now, taking this divine name itself: The ancients called the cause of the sympathy and providence and salvation of all things by the terms ‘unity,’ ‘identity,’ ‘equality,’ and ‘likeness,’ which they also called ‘one’; but ‘otherness’ and ‘unlikeness’ they called the creative providence toward the divided and mutable and sensible things, and also toward the beings — that is, the noetic things — understanding the names in proportion to the things signified, as we have also said in various places above.

Others called identity and otherness — that is, the same and the other — ‘form’ and ‘privation’; others, ‘limit’ and ‘infinite.’ (That he promises to compose the Symbolic Theology.) He calls a ‘unitive multiplication’ the fact that God, remaining in His own simplicity, brought forth the various and manifold forms of creation; for he calls ‘procession’ the movement and impulse toward creating the beings. §6. But God is called like: Of us it is not possible to say ‘like’; for our body is composed of like-parted and unlike-parted things, as Aristotle also shows at the beginning of his treatise On the Generation of Animals. But God, that which He is, is entirely alike, since indeed divine Scripture, as ever the same unalterably, says He is unlike all things, as in: ‘Who among the gods is like You, O Lord?’; and again: ‘To whom have you likened me, says the Lord’; and again: ‘I have multiplied visions, and by the hands of the prophets I have been likened’ — that is, I myself to myself, as Irenaeus says in his Against By imitation according to power: It is possible to take ‘imitation’ here of the noeric and rational nature turning toward God, according to, ‘Be perfect,’ and, ‘Be merciful, as your Father in heaven’; which properly belong to God, and beyond every definition and reasoning, but to creatures according to the power of each, in proportion to their nature.

It is also possible to understand ‘imitation’ here as the participation in the things contemplated supra-essentially in God, which the things brought into being have received, partaking of being and of the rest, which we have gone through above. And to say ‘like God according to the divine image’ does not deny that this is said of man, but he has extended the term, by way of the principle of participation, to the rest of things as well. And according to the divine image: How ‘according to image and likeness’ is to be understood he says here — that it is not according to form, but according to being turned and having the mind stretched up toward God, the cause of being and of well-being, which others have understood as selfdetermination — since God is not, according to essence, like rational beings; for neither are we like our images, made perhaps of wax or bronze, which are of a different essence from us and only somewhat like us; for things of the same rank — that is, of the same order and essence, such as the Cherubim and Seraphim and the rest of the orders — are like one another according to the leading form, which form is, among noetic beings, as a kind of underlying matter, being immaterial life, and is itself the form which each of the noetic beings is.

But God is not so in relation to the things from Him; for the cause is not like its effects. But what I have said concerning noetic beings, understand also concerning our noeric souls. For in the case of things of the same rank: He calls ‘of the same rank’ those of the same nature, from which likeness is convertible — for instance, Peter is like Paul in nature, and conversely Paul is like Peter. But in the case of man and his image, the same principle does not apply; for the principle of essence is not the same in both, which he called the ‘leading form’ of likeness. And man is said, in another sense, not to be like his own image, because the image came to be in likeness to man, and not man in likeness to it. So too, then, in the case of the cause and the things from it, convertibility is not admissible; convertibility being that which can be said equally by those handling either side of the argument — for instance, if that which is in the womb is a living thing, and, conversely, if that which is in the womb is not a living thing. Thus says Clement at the beginning of the fifth book of the Stromata, just as also here: if things of the same rank are like, then, conversely, if things of the same rank are not like.

Of self-likeness: It is the custom of the great Dionysius to say, concerning the causes, that God is Himself the ‘self-being’ and the sustainer of self-being; and that He is Himself selflikeness and the sustainer of self-likeness. And he says these things, not as saying that God Himself is one life, and that a different, essential life was brought forth, as it were some enhypostatic thing apart from God, of which the things that partake of life partake — but, as he himself interprets in the eleventh chapter, God is called self-life and self-power, and self-likeness, and such things, as being this originatively, and divinely, and causally; for of these He is truly the fountainhead, and He is the sustainer of self-life and selflikeness and such things, as supplying, by way of participation, to the things that first, among beings, partake of this gift. For all things partake of such things according to their own fitness; the first and highest of the noetic creations, originatively; the things after them, by way of descent. And we have also said above that likeness is the unity of the wholes, according to which the wholes, being in the same state and according to the same, partake of concord, by participation in the first cause. He said ‘admitting,’ since the imitation is not perfect, nor complete. §7. That which falls short: That which is deficient.

§8. But what also concerning divine standing: ‘Standing’ and ‘sitting’ receive the same interpretation; for by ‘standing’ he does not mean the supposition of coming to be upright from having been bent down in sitting, but he called the unshaken and unaltering character of God ‘firm standing’ — just as also ‘sitting’ signifies being, in the unnamed kingdom, in rest, enduringly and incomprehensibly. And indeed in Scripture He is spoken of as rising up from sitting, as in, ‘Arise, O Lord, go before them’; and again as passing from standing to sitting, in, ‘That You will mount upon Your horses,’ and, ‘Your riding is salvation’; and again: ‘He mounted upon the Cherubim and flew’; and especially: ‘You sat upon a throne, judging righteousness,’ and, ‘God sits upon His holy throne.’ These things, however, not in a fleshly manner, but Godbefittingly. §9. And proceeding to all things: God is said to proceed to all things and to move, as in Jeremiah: ‘I am a God who draws near, and not from afar’; and again: ‘He who is over all and through all,’ and especially: ‘If I ascend into heaven, You are there,’ and so on. And in the theophanies: ‘Bow Your heavens and come down,’ and, ‘God went up with a shout.’ Not by locomotion or alteration: Teaching how to understand piously the things said of God, he says: When you hear that God moves, never understand the movement understood of created things, and especially of sensible things; for material things move by locomotion; and locomotion is the change of place as a whole, especially that which is unable to stand still of itself, when it wishes; but movement is that which occurs by alteration; and alteration is when, the sensible subject remaining, it changes in its opposite states, or even between states not opposite — as when the body is healthy, and again ails; the same too with bronze, now round, now angular, that is, transformed into angles; but when it changes wholly, no sensible thing remaining as the same subject, but, as it were, from all earth blood, and from water air, or from all air water, or as the rod of Moses into a serpent, or water into blood — this is both a turning and a genesis and a corruption, the former things having been removed; but there is also movement according to alteration into what is

unlike, and from color to color. Again, there is a certain local movement, the change from place to place, which movement occurs either by a straight course, or by circular motion, as a wheel moves, and, according to some, the heaven too; or by the mixed motion of straight and circular, such as the spiral course, which is that of serpents; there is also noetic movement, according to which the mind, when active, or the divine minds, understand beings. There is also psychic movement, according to which the soul is moved to intellections, and to moving the senses. There is also another, natural movement, that which moves fit things toward growth and nourishment. God, then, is not moved according to any one of these, but the movement of the unmoved and ever-unvarying one is called His will toward the coming-to-be of beings, and the procession of His providence unto all Not that which is composed of both: He speaks of transitional movement, which he also calls spiral, but unrelated, that is, absolute and unconnected. But also the movements of God: Having denied the corporeal movements of God, he clarifies how one must understand movement, God-befittingly, of God, interpreting the senses in the universe anagogically as movements. And the straight: How the circular, the straight, and the spiral movement are understood of God, read the fourth chapter, a few pages after its beginning, and you will learn how these are understood of angels and souls and bodies.

The middles and the extremes: The transcendent always contains the subordinate. He calls ‘extremes,’ then, the highest powers, drawing near to God; but ‘middles,’ those after them, yet above all sensible things. The highest, then, contain the middle ones, and the middle ones the sensible things; for this reason Scripture spoke of orders of angels in the heavens. God, however, contains all things, as a circle contains all things within it, and turns them toward Himself as their cause. Note what ‘identical’ and ‘righteousness,’ said of God, and ‘equal,’ mean. §10. Like room for growth: There is like room for growth through one another, also among the elements; for their equal mixture, and their not overbalancing one another in their combinations, produces the generations of the world; for if any of the elements should be in excess, the thing generated is corrupted. And according to all noetic equality: One must know that ‘noetic’ is that which does not fall under sense, nor has the ‘noeric’ in itself, such as the powers of the soul and the senses; but ‘noeric’ is that which has simple and unconditioned intellections, as angels; and ‘rational’ is that which receives the knowledge of beings through reason and contemplation, as the human mind; and ‘sensible’ is that which falls under sense, such as the parts of creation, which are divided into essential and natural — that is, either things existing unmovingly and altogether insensibly, or things having some kind of movement; for nature is defined as a principle of movement and rest.

And ‘volitional’ equality is the equality by choice; I am not, however, unaware that, by extension, the human soul too is called noeric and rational. Productive power of all equality: There is an equality given to the natures by God, the maker of all things, and there is a willed equality, which those who pursue justice and the equitable life by choice bring about willingly and by choice. This equality too, then, subsists from God. All equity, then, and righteousness, God possesses beforehand — or, more properly speaking, contains — in Himself, simply and without parts, as in Ideas and paradigms, in His eternal intellections. On Chapter Ten §1. As Almighty and as Ancient: God appeared gray-haired to Daniel, having a head white as wool, according to which He was also named ‘Ancient of Days’; but younger than the grayhaired elder, when He appeared as a man to Abraham with the angels, and as a young man too, which, having seen, he dismissed thus — as an elder, since all things are from God and after Him, wherefore also younger than He; but as young, as being ever in blooming and steadfast blessedness, unaged. But if you should also say the combination of both — that is, aged and young at once — as signifying that He, from the beginning, pervading and proceeding through all things, endures forever unto the end, which end is younger than the beginning, this too, he says, will have its meaning; then he adduces also the opinion of the divine Hierotheus; for concerning this he undertakes to speak of him as his own hierophant, calling him his own teacher.

§2. And gray-haired and young: How the Lord is written of, sometimes as gray-haired, sometimes as young, as in: ‘Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today, and forever’; for ‘today’ is younger than ‘yesterday.’ Since the unit: Since arithmetic has brought the multiplicity that has division in numbers to a conclusion — setting the unit as the beginning of all number, and the pair of the even numbers, and the numbers following, proceeding in magnitude by the addition of units — since multiplicity, that is, creation, is from God, and number pertains to multiplicity, it is fittingly called ‘younger’ with respect to number; for multiplicity, that is, the thing numbered, came forth after God and from God, ineffably; but the unit is also more originative than this younger number of creation, as I have said, or the cause of the numbers, and having a certain relation to the many that come from it. God, then, as also the cause of these, and holding the place of the unit, is addressed as ‘younger’ than the things from Him, according to the aforesaid theory. And there are those who called bodies ‘number.’ §3. And absolutely ungenerated: Above, in the fifth chapter, we discussed age and time at length; now the matters sought must be clarified; for not only does Scripture, he says, call God eternal, in saying, ‘the eternal God, who made the ends of the earth’ — for it calls God absolutely ungenerated, as being this without cause — but it also calls the things that partake of incorruption and are unaltering with respect to their essence ‘eternal,’ whether angels, or the higher heaven, as in: ‘He established them forever, and unto the age of the age,’ and, ‘the things not seen are eternal.’

And he says ‘unaltering’ means having remained as they came to be; and he calls ‘eternal gates’ either the heavens, or the angels set over them, as gatekeepers; and he also calls ancient things ‘eternal,’ as in, ‘I remembered the eternal years’; and he calls our own time ‘age,’ as in, ‘until the completion of the age,’ and, ‘that He might deliver us from the present evil age’; and conversely, he calls ‘age’ time, as in, ‘I will raise him up on the last day’ — for it is an age, but not a day, that pertains to the resurrection; and again: ‘in whom the god of this age has blinded the minds of the unbelievers’; and he calls time ‘age,’ as in, ‘the days of the age,’ and, ‘A Moabite and an Ammonite shall not enter the house of the Lord until the tenth generation forever’ — for he calls the ten generations an ‘age.’ Otherwise: One must not, he says, wherever Scripture says ‘eternal,’ altogether understand it of the Divine (for that is the entirely and absolutely — that is, according to every conception — ungenerated and eternal), but understand that angels too are signified by such a term, as having their continuance in identity. To partake of age: That this father too takes ‘age,’ according to Gregory the Theologian, as signifying the continuous — that is, the ever-being.

And age is spoken of temporally: The temporal age is that in the Psalms: ‘He has labored forever, and shall live to the end.’ But ‘eternal time’ is what is in the Apostle, such as: ‘before eternal times,’ and, ‘kept silent through eternal times’; and in Moses: ‘It shall be a possession for you forever.’ Note that the age to come is incorruptible and ever the same. Or we know rather among them: Among the saints themselves, evidently. Note that he calls the noetic things ‘beings,’ with which he also numbers age; but the sensible things he calls ‘becoming,’ of which he signifies time to be. You have this fully in the fifth chapter. Not simply co-eternal with God: Most wisely he safeguards the hearer‘s piety, saying that one must not suppose the things called ‘eternal’ to be, on this account, also co-eternal with God, who is before the ages. And indeed we have already said above that the properly eternal is not age itself, but that which partakes of age; the noetic things, then, properly called beings, having come to be as immortal, must also be called eternal, as remaining endless by the will of God — since they too were brought forth by God, not having existed before; speaking properly, he transposes the venerable notions of the philosophers among the Greeks securely unto piety. He says, then, that the incorporeal powers created by God are both beings and eternal, yet not co-eternal with God, as the Greeks foolishly babble, saying, ‘Together with God, together all things.’

But there are also, he says, these things that come to be — the terrestrial bodies, which they also call ‘generation and corruption,’ as being of the dregs of matter, and all things after the moon being coarser. But there are also things in between — that is, between the eternal and the things that come to be, that is, the coarser and terrestrial bodies, which frequently come to be and cease to be, unto generation and corruption — which intermediate bodies, though bodies themselves, nevertheless partake also of age, and of time in some measure; and the intermediate things are heaven and all the stars; for these too are bodies, even if of finer parts, and the purest of matter, as the Apostle says: ‘heavenly bodies and earthly bodies’; then, clarifying what sort they are, he adds: ‘one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars.’ The higher heaven, then, and the earth came to be within the ages; for before the created light, which is also called day, they were made, as Moses says; but within the temporal intervals, the firmament and the stars — yet, even though bodies, and temporal, for they are also tangible and visible — nevertheless they will be eternal, partaking themselves too of age, just as also our bodies, being transformed unto incorruption; as also the Apostle shows, saying that ‘the fashion of this world’ passes away, not the world; wherefore also concerning these intermediate bodies it is said in the Psalms: ‘He established them forever, and unto the age of the age; He set an ordinance, and it shall not pass away.’

Note, then, that the stars and the sun and the moon and the heaven are bodies of finer parts, but came to be immortal by the will of God, just as also our bodies become after the resurrection. Otherwise: He called angels and souls ‘intermediate between the eternal and the things that come to be’ — in one respect partaking of age, on account of their incorruption and immortality; in another respect, of time, on account of their being seen in becoming; wherefore he calls these both temporal and eternal; for he said beforehand that the things that abide are signified by ‘age’ — that is, whatever is also said concerning God — but the things in becoming, by ‘time’; even though, hearing ‘eternal’ and ‘temporal,’ one must not take these simply so, but, as he says, according to the manners agreed upon concerning them — that is, those clearly believed. On Chapter Eleven §1. Archisynagogal peace: Note that he called God ‘archisynagogal’ [gathering-leader]; and understand ‘divided multitude’ as the sensible creation. Unto the whole unity: Some took ‘the whole unity’ as the simple and partless cause of beings, toward which all things are turned, as being constituted in it; others, as the harmony of the universe, blended from elements of different natures; wherefore he also called the opposition of the qualities in them — of hot to cold, of wet to dry, and the others likewise — a ‘civil war,’ which is united unto the completion of one world.

Being in a uniform habitation: Do not understand this as the godless Manichaeans do, that matter, warring against itself, gave birth to these demons, but that, by nature, the wet is hostile to the dry, and the cold to the hot; for God joins even things so disposed toward friendship and the constitution of the universe. Understand, then, ‘civil’ as ‘innate.’ The elder powers, then: He calls ‘elder powers’ not simply the order of the Seraphim, but that which has the seniority with respect to gathering — that is, joining — the subordinate powers to the divine illuminations; for they receive the first theophany; and ‘partlessly’ means not in certain parts, but all at once, to the wholes. To be poured forth toward infinity: He now refutes the great errors of the Greek philosophers and transposes them unto piety; for, among them, many disputing — some saying that all things are generated from opposition and war, through strife and battle, others that all things are created only from friendship and concord, and neither properly considering God — this man, transposing their coinages of terms toward rightness, sets God over the universe, as maker and gatherer, understanding the ‘civil war’ of the universe as that of the incorporeal and immaterial and noetic things toward the natural discord of bodily and material and sensible things; for these are unlike in essence and discordant — ‘for the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.’

But not only this, but also all sensible things, that is, bodies, which some say are infinite, and are corrupted unto infinity, and the mixture of all things, which he calls infinity, turning toward difference separation parts, distinguished and separated into generations, and from this the separation increases all the more, and, not only purging what is mixed of the incongruous and alien, but already tending toward the cutting and shattering of what is congruous, and bringing the compounds into every unlikeness and difference, they say all things are dissolved and corrupted, except the simple elements — and this they call ‘war,’ the not allowing the wholes to remain united. The great Dionysius, being a friend of the truth, says that God dissolves such, as I have said, a ‘natural war’ (for he calls this ‘civil’ — that is, ‘natural’ — just as also ‘compatriot’ means ‘of the same nature’), giving to the universe, in place of civil war, peace and harmony and concord, and holding all things together in Himself, and reconciling them, as the Apostle says — and He will reconcile heavenly things to earthly things — through which He unites the powers assigned to particular things and administering them ministerially, by the love of those subordinate to them, and turns all things toward Himself, piloting and holding all things together. Which the sacred Justus calls voicelessness: Note concerning Justus, and that he calls the peace of the Divine ‘voicelessness’ and ‘unmovedness.’

The Acts of the Holy Apostles mention this holy Justus, saying that he was also called Joseph. Rather, then, he too wrote something, or made use of unwritten teachings. This too, then, is adduced to show the antiquity of holy Dionysius, and that he flourished together with the apostles themselves and apostolic men. Note also that those divine men used philosophical terms, calling the peace of God ‘voicelessness’ and ‘unmovedness.’ Departs from its own union: Here he means by ‘union’ the simple and unitary — that is, undivided. Remaining wholly within: That is, going forth from and departing from its own hiddenness. Its noetic and expressible participations: He calls ‘noetic and expressible participations’ whatever we are permitted to understand through what is said in Scripture. §2. According to their unconfused union: That he calls even things that come together into composition a ‘union,’ even if they are unlike; and what he means is what he called before ‘civil war.’ Yet pure: Even if the elements, he says, have an indivisible mixture and interweaving with one another, nevertheless their qualities do not lose their own extremity — such as the hot, the dry, and the rest, in the blending of the different kinds, which is contemplated in the universe. Toward the mixture of opposites: One must understand ‘mixture’ here not as the confusion, as in the case of liquids, that obliterates the underlying substrates, but the concord and mutual connection that, in harmony, preserves the things set over and the things subordinated — I mean the noetic and the sensible, that is, the things in becoming — and even the opposites themselves being at peace with one another, as water and earth, by which the earth is surrounded and not dissolved, and heaven, being of water, and the ether not dissolving heaven; and this is the civil war which not only the Creator wisely devised, but even more wisely brings all things, through the simple elements themselves, into friendship and harmony, according to the saying, ‘Summer and spring You have made.’

And unmixed: He said ‘unmixed and blended’ according to the sense proposed. By which the divine minds, being united: We have also said above that the divine minds understand both themselves, and those transcending them, and the inferior things; and that they remain in themselves when they exercise their own activities, united to their own intellections, but seem to proceed outward when they understand the things below them and the transcendent things, and thus, as far as attainable in understanding, return to the cause of all things. Understanding thus, the divine minds are, by common consent, united to the things understood; for that which understands is united, by knowledge, to that which is known and understood, just as also he who is ignorant is scattered, not having grasped what he did not know. Such a mind, then, understanding, bends back into itself, not being scattered outside itself, but united to itself, by the very things through which it returned into itself. But there is another union, apart from the holy minds, which is the noetic union of the soul; for they are noetic, but it is noeric, being below all the angels. And it is noeric only, for the reasons we have stated above, where we also discussed at length the matters spoken of here, in the first chapter. Through the immaterial and partless: That even in our souls it is possible for a partless and immaterial intellection to be found, whenever they gather their various reasonings into one noeric purity; for then they too advance, fittingly, by a certain path and order, toward union By complete concord and unanimity: He calls ‘complete peace’ the perfection of all good things — that is, God.

And binding the extremes: He calls ‘extremes’ the powers above and those below, and ‘middles,’ as we have said before, the things of the purest matter — such as the heavens and stars — and the other extremes, the earthly and earthy things themselves; for the noetic things are extremes from above unto below; and again, from below unto above, these earthly things are extremes, which are also joined to the middles. ‘Of the same kin’ are the things related and proceeding from the cause of all. And to the last: He calls the inanimate essences the ‘last completions’ of the universe — that is, those in which no growing or nourishing movement, or any other, is seen. And ‘of the same kin’ are the sibling and same-in-rank things. But union differs from unity; for the one shows the particular and unmixed character of the nature of each; but union shows the blending with others, or simply, participation. The whole toward the whole: And here again he keeps his own precision; for having said ‘of the same kin’ — that is, related and of the same kind, as having proceeded from God, the origin of all races, according to the Apostle who used the term, ‘for we too are His offspring’ — he also gives the cause by which all things are of the same kin; and he says that the noetic things, God makes related and of the same rank by their unities — that is, according to the simplicity and uncompositeness of the essences, and according to the immortality which those who have discoursed on these matters call ‘identity.’

So too the sensible things, by the unions from the different elements — that is, the compounds — and by the gathering of such mixtures, bringing their interconnections unto generation, He accomplishes, as it were, certain kinships. §3. But how, someone might say: A counter-argument against those who say not all things desire peace, and what otherness is. The property of beings: Note what he means by ‘property’ — that each thing exists as it has its nature, and according to the same, as it came to be. This is against the Acephali, who are ignorant of what property is. He examines the proper use of ‘property’ at length, clarifying it. But this too is a desire for peace: Here is the resolution. And ‘of their own’ he means ‘of their properties.’ Unmovedness: He calls ‘unmovedness’ the not falling away from its own nature and movement. §4. And if all moving things: He rightly said that all things move, not with one movement, but with a certain proper and fitting movement of their own; for the noetic and noeric things move otherwise, and the sensible things move unto generation, or some particular movement, concerning which we have discussed more fully in the ninth chapter. And the property of all moving things: That the moving life peculiar to each thing is also a property. §5. But if the otherness that comes by falling away: Against those who say that the otherness that comes by falling away from peace exists, and, on this ground, insist that peace is not desired by all.

Note the two kinds of otherness — one, that which comes by falling away from peace; the other, the property of each of the beings. For the altogether unstable: Wonderfully he rejects the opinions of the Greeks and of such heretics as the Valentinians and Manichaeans, who supposed matter to be a principle bearing within itself the opposite of God‘s things; for they said instability and turning-about boundlessness and formlessness — and all these continuous in matter — which is shown to be truly and altogether false. For there is nothing, nor has there come to be anything, that has not been brought forth from that from which it was produced, and adorned by God unto form, and that, in truly being as it was produced, has not obtained providence from Dim idols: In place of ‘faint images’; for they desire the enjoyment and communion with the flowing and perishing sensual pleasures, and, choosing to look upon these without instability — that is, to partake of them — because this does not go according to their mind, they say, they are thrown into confusion. And to make these stand: One must construe this saying thus: that the contentious and unstable men too are held fast by dim idols of the love of peace; for, being troubled by passions, and, in ignorance, wishing to make the passions stand fast as good things, they seem to desire peace, longing to enjoy themselves fearlessly in the fluid and evil passions, yet being thrown into confusion if they fail to enjoy what they suppose to be good things, though they are passions.

‘Themselves,’ then, must be construed in common, so that the sense is: desiring themselves, as being thrown into confusion if they fail of the passions, they seem to bring themselves to peace unto the enjoyment of the passions. Understand thus also ‘all desire peace’ — that is, the good. What, then, might one say concerning the peace of Christ: How Jesus Christ is the peace of us and of the angels, having ended the war, and dissolved the middle wall of partition, and adjudicated peace between us, and made both one, as the divine Apostle says in the letter to the Ephesians. According to which we shall no longer learn to make war: That man is one who does not war against himself, who has subjected anger and desire to reason. And he is at peace also with men, who has acquired one judgment toward all. But he who has rendered his own mind obedient to the things moved through the angels, this man has also acquired peace with the angels. But also to them the divine things: That is, that we might perform toward them the same reverence, worship, and adoration concerning the Divine. In the theological treatises: Note that he also has a composition of Theological Outlines; he also mentions this at the beginning of the first chapter. §6. You inquired by letter: How he understands God to be self-life, and the sustainer of self-life, and the like.

And he rightly discusses this also in the letters, especially the second. Note that God is named both from the beings brought forth from Him, as being their cause. From the primarily existing beings: I think he has called the supra-cosmic natures ‘primarily existing,’ as primarily and purely partaking of the divine gifts, of life and the rest. From the beings, then, that is, those contemplated among beings, God is called the sustainer and producer of self-life — that is, of the very reality and form of it; for we must understand similarly concerning us also, from the one instance of life and of similar things. But when God Himself is called self-life and the like, He is said to be this above every nature, as being it — that is, also above angels and every noeric essence. From the primarily existing: He calls the noetic creations, the incorporeal ones — that is, the angels — ‘primarily existing.’ Note the word ‘originatively’; that the supra-essential — that is, God — has, he says, primarily subsisted, in place of, He alone is the maker of noetic and sensible things; for one must not be persuaded by those who say the creative powers of God are gods, which is not the case; for God alone is the maker. Note that God alone is the maker of all noetic and sensible things. And gods of beings: That angels are not gods or makers, nor is anything else besides God.

Truly and properly: Note that even this divine man does not know a difference between ‘properly’ and ‘truly.’ Self-substantiation: Here he has made the resolution more clearly of the problem proposed, how one must take the fact that sometimes God Himself is called self-life and the like, and sometimes the sustainer of these — that is, having brought them into subsistence: that the one, as being their cause and supra-originative principle, is so called; but beings, partaking of these, are called, from them, living and being and divine. The animation, then, the substantiation, in place of the realities, God brought into subsistence. We conceive, then, first the reality itself, then thus its universal concept — that is, the life or essence contemplated in every way — and then we take the particular concepts, that is, the concept of each particular species, such as angelic or human life, and of the rest along with which it is co-introduced, and the memory of the participants themselves. Then, adding that all these participate of the wholes themselves, he showed that not all things partake of all things; for some partake of essence only, others of life, others also of intellection or noeric nature, and others, besides these, of deification too. Of the particular things: He calls ‘particular’ the successions of the kinds. And of self-goodness: That the supra-good and supra-divine is also the sustainer of self-goodness and godhead.

Note, then, that such things are not the essence of God. Read in the second letter to Gaius. Providences and goodnesses: He speaks of ‘providences and goodnesses,’ which he called before ‘substantiation,’ ‘animation,’ ‘goodness,’ ‘godhead,’ ‘beauty,’ and the like. From God the unparticipated: Having said a little before that God is participable, he now says He is unparticipated; God, then, is participable according to His bountiful impartations, but unparticipated according to His being the cause itself, and having this, properly, above all the things that all things fittingly partake of; for this is similar to what was said above, in the fifth chapter, that Being is in all things, and is none of all things; for on account of holding together and giving life and preserving, He is said to be in all things, yet He is none of the beings; insofar as He is the cause of the production of all things, the cause could not be from among the things caused. So too here: God is participable, insofar as all beings partake of Him, and by Him subsist — for that which does not partake of Him neither is, nor will be, nor was. But He is again unparticipated, since none of the beings partakes of His essence; for God is above beings according to His own nature. On Chapter Twelve §1. By the doubling of names: He calls ‘doubling of names’ the superlative form used with respect to the simple, such as ‘Holy of holies,’ ‘Lord of lords,’ ‘God of gods,’ and ‘King of kings,’ and the like.

§2. Wherefore also lordship: The two Gregorys, the Theologian and the one of Nyssa, say this. §3. Must be hymned absolutely: ‘Absolutely’ — that is, not in one respect, but not in another, nor in relation to something else, but according to a simple concept — that is, properly. And inequality: This is unity — I mean that of equality and identity; for this is the cause of the concord and sympathy and salvation of all things; for the principle of unity, being ever the same and unvarying, would fittingly be called ‘one’; for the ‘one’ in particular things is such — united to the parts, and in concord by way of participation in the first cause. According to this principle, the Lord too asks on behalf of the disciples, ‘that they also may be one, as we are one, that they may be made perfect in one’ — which signifies holiness; which signifies kingship; and God ‘exults’ — that is, rejoices — over His own works, according to the Psalm: ‘The Lord shall rejoice in His works,’ which signifies lordship. §4. The unparticipated cause: God is unparticipated according to the principle of nature. Is hymned as Holy of holies: How God is hymned as ‘Holy of holies’ and such things, he has wonderfully clarified, and says: insofar as pure nature and the cause of quality differ from the effect — for this is being, in relation to that which is not properly being; and insofar as, when this partakes, the very thing partaken differs — by so much does God, being called these things, differ from those things that have obtained this by participation; for all things are, and are said to be, and have what they have, from God; but God has it from nothing.

This is why He is called Holy of holies, and King of kings, and Lord of lords, and God of gods. But holy and kings: This blessed man, having been deemed worthy of divine insight, piously and lovingly initiates us into the matters that fell, among some, into polytheism, and says that the presiding principalities of the subordinate ranks are called, by way of preeminence, holy and kings and lords and gods — just as among men too the most eminent are so addressed; and just as, among us, the teachers preeminent in virtue have virtue gathered unitively in the soul, and, through teaching, imparting the virtues to others, according to the multitude of those taught, the virtue imparted by them is also multiplied — so, in a certain stronger and more divine manner, it is to be contemplated among the incorporeal orders; and through the higher orders, closer to God, the subordinate orders partake of the gifts of God, just as from an overflowing and welling-up mixing-bowl, the vessels near it are first filled, receiving what is borne toward them, and then, as they too overflow, it is poured out into other, subordinate vessels, and, according to the multitude of the recipients and their difference, whether small or great, that which wells up from the mixing-bowl is, as it were, sprinkled abroad, the first vessels holding within themselves, according to the unity of the fullness, that which was first brought from the mixing-bowl; so, in a more materialized manner, one must understand the abundance of the impartation of the divine gifts, distributed to all through the first orders.

And the Apostle too was named a ‘vessel of election.’ Note that he now says God is unparticipated according to the principle of nature. They multiply differences: That is, they display more of them; for the more diverse the participants, the more manifold the gifts appear. On Chapter Thirteen §1. Bounded by itself, uniformly: God is His own boundary and place, and nothing extends beyond God, but He Himself bounds even the infinite things; for the ages, being infinite (for they have no limit), He Himself, surpassing them by an infinite magnitude, infinitely multiplied beyond His own, contains — and every indeterminacy of life, as among noetic beings; for their life is not bounded, as with men, but they were created immortal. But God, standing in the supraeternal, is bounded by His own eternity. §2. But one, in that all things: Coins and silver pieces and obols are many in number, but one in species; for the species is one — either bronze, or gold, or silver — but many in powers, as herbs, one in species (for all are grass), but many in species — such as horse, ox, man, and the noetic things — one in genus, because these are all ‘animal’; but many in their processions, the creatures, one in principle; for God is the cause of all. But just as every number: He rightly demonstrates what he intends.

For it is the aim of this divine man to establish his own points even from arithmetic. He says, then, that nothing among beings is without a share of the one, that is, of God; because every number too partakes of the unit; for if one should begin from two, one counts one pair first, and likewise from ten; and, further, he says that even if one should begin first from what are called fractions, one counts one-half, and one-third, one-tenth, and so on in order, so that there is no number that does not partake of the one, that is, the unit; for if you mention a fraction, you will say one-half, and onethird, and one-tenth, and so on; and that one pair is called such, and one ten, as these too being completed from it. The one cause of all: The intent is clear, that God, being called ‘one,’ is not called one in the same way as numbered things; for God is one insofar as He is simple and without parts, and devoid of specific difference, and alien to all passions and accidents; and He is called one also as being conceived as a certain beginning, and, as it were, an element of the things to come. But sameness, or otherness, or greater, or lesser, and further, even or odd, or equal or unequal, which is contemplated among numbers, no one would reasonably refer to the beginning, making these its beginning; for such things are passions and accidents of necessity.

Of the divisions among numbers, then, the limit of multiplicity is referred back to the unit, and the beginning, in each genus, is the simplest thing. And so, among beings too — whether the one is many, or the many are one — the beginning and element is the simplest thing, and the one that has no part in all things, from which, as from a paradigm and Idea, the one among beings also derives — as, for instance, even if the sensible light is many in its parts, that is, in all the stars, yet, gathered as a whole, it is one light; and it is many in its accidents, as the peacock; for it has both golden and darkblue and white feathers, yet it is one in its underlying body; so too must the following be understood. For there is not even a multiplicity: Here he draws his conclusion from arithmetic. Note that he fittingly says God is even before the one, since He exists prior to all things, wherefore He is also the maker, that is, the inventor, of number. But the many: One must supply, in each of these, ‘existing’ — so that the sense is: that which exists in the parts as many is one in the whole, as the body; so too the rest are one in the underlying subject, that is, essence; but many in their accidents, as man.

And of accidents, some are separable, such as sitting, walking, and the like; others inseparable, such as being blue-eyed or hook-nosed, and the like; and again, there is one species, horse or ox, but this exists as many in number; for there are many horses, and many oxen. But it also exists as many in its natural powers; and again the many species, such as man, horse, dog, and the others, are one in genus; for each of these is ‘animal’; so too, then, that which exists as many in its periods — that is, in its counsels, or also its works — is one in its beginning. All and the whole all: ‘All’ is said when there are species and parts and differences in the divisions; but ‘the whole’ is said when the parts, gathered together, complete one entirety, or the species one genus, or even the opposites and contraries come to rest in concord and sympathy, as water together, and earth, and air, and the fiery stars, and heaven; for all these together are called ‘world.’ And without the one: Since the one seems somehow to have a relation to number, there could be no multiplicity without the one; for the numbers unto multiplicity are a composition of the unit — which he said above, that God is multiplied, being conceived from arithmetic. But the one has also subsisted, and exists, by itself.

And if one should suppose all things to all: ‘Should suppose’ and ‘by supposition’ are taken of things not really existing, but shaped in reason; here, however, it must not be taken so, but this must be posited as by conception in reason, on account of the identity of what has been created, and the whole being contemplated in the parts, and the parts in the whole. That, according to the one preconceived of each: If, he says, the species of man — that is, the nature — were not preconceived, one could not say that men are united to one another; and it is clear that this is according to the very principle of nature. §3. And if you should remove the one: The saying must be construed thus: that the things united are said to be united according to the species preconceived of each one; for we said before that species and multiplicities are inscribed with the one as a kind of element and beginning, being referred back to one genus, of which genus they are species; for these are united by the very species — such as horses, oxen, and so on, which are referred back to one genus, being called ‘animal.’ The whole Godhead: The whole Godhead is the all-holy and worshipful Trinity, but, on account of the inexpressible union of nature, is addressed as one and the One.

By which and from which: Construe ‘by which’ with ‘is,’ and ‘from which’ with ‘is constituted,’ and ‘through which’ with ‘abides,’ and ‘in which’ with ‘is held together’ — that is, is preserved — and ‘unto which’ with ‘is turned’ — even though the father has arranged the verbs in his own way, together as one, and ‘all things’ is to be taken in common with each. And he rightly said that, if you remove the one, there will be neither wholeness, nor fraction, nor anything else; for this he already hinted at above, saying, one-half, and one-third, and one-tenth — evidently, that even the fractions of the one partake of it. The one cause of all things: All things do not subsist absolutely by any and every one, but only by that one, insofar as it is one, by which God is named both ‘One’ and ‘one’; for it is by this one alone that beings exist; for he who says the very name ‘one,’ by negation of the manifold, signifies this. Yet the one is a self-beginning and first thing, by having a certain relation; for it introduces the concept of the many that come from it. But these things are not fitting for God; but the one, being only such a thing, is altogether impassible, and undivided, and most self-sufficient; for by its own nature it is not naturally interwoven with another, as the one among numbers; for the properly one repels multiplicity and every composition and division, and is before every unit.

For this is called neither small nor moderate — and, if one must even dare, neither fair nor good; for these are, as it were, passions, such as relations and accidents. But the one itself is also understood above all things, while the passions, such as small and moderate, are understood together with something else, and are, for this reason, neither simple nor elemental. The one, then, as has been said — that which is simple and impassible, not having the things mentioned — must not be posited even as a genus of beings; for genera are altogether divided into species; but neither properly as a point or a unit; for these have relation to the things that follow. But it is the most simple, and has not even one difference; for it has neither a certain movement, nor rest — that is, quiescence; but neither must the one itself be posited as being, but as the beginning and seed of being. Multiplicity of necessity accompanies being; being accrues to multiplicity, which is not the case with God. For being is essence, from ‘to be.’ But God is both supra-essential, and above being, and ‘unitively’ — that is, in place of ‘exceptionally and inimitably above being’; for God is all things, and above all things. Wonderfully, then, having discoursed on the nature of numbers, he adds: whether Triad, or Monad, the Godhead above all things is hymned, it is neither Triad nor Monad, as known by us through numbers, or by another, but God both is and is named above every mind; for by saying ‘that which is not,’ we understand what God is.

And the very one that defines being: That God is above being too, as being all things, and Himself the maker and inventor of number. Enumerable: Note that ‘enumerable’ signifies the indication of number; among beings, then, that is, creatures, the one imposed is set according to the concept of number. There is no unit either: Do not simply hear, ‘there is no unit, nor triad,’ but construe ‘there is no’ with ‘known’; for the argument does not wish to abolish such a confession, but to teach the inscrutable. And the truly divine-begetting: He says that the ‘divinebegetting’ is signified from the naming of the Trinity; for the number was devised so that the worshipful revelation of the ineffable hypostases might be set forth, as Basil says, and the divine Gregorys. He called the Father ‘begetting’ by extension of usage, as also the Father of the worshipful Son, and the fountainhead of the co-worshipful all-holy Spirit. ‘Begottenness,’ then, or any other name agreed upon among men, or even among the noetic powers themselves, could not clearly set forth the things of God that are hidden from all; for how is it possible to name God from any of the beings, He who is none of all things, but above all beings? Nor is there a name of it: This divine man rightly says that there is neither a name of it, nor a word, but it is removed into inaccessible places — not places, far from it!

— but into reasonings and thoughts; for the discourse concerning God is inaccessible to every mind and thought. And that there is not even a name of it, understand well and readily; for all beings are signified both by names and by knowable realities. What name, then, or reality, could be applied to God, who is removed above all beings, and who has made all things, and is the cause of all things? Wherefore this divine Dionysius also says that goodness itself, or the good, does not properly apply to God Himself, since these too are found among beings. And above too you will find it thus, that these are reckoned as passions and accidents among beings, which is true of God who has transcended all things. But out of desire to understand: Note this beautiful saying, that, out of the desire to understand and say something at all concerning God, held fast by longing for Him, the theologians applied the name of ‘goodness’ to God, since properly God is supra-good and supra-essential, but goodness, as he says, is the most venerable name of all. But the negations, that is, the denials and privations, are not spoken simply by the theologians concerning God; for they are not understood as they are said, but are contemplated transcendently; for no one who partakes of wisdom would suppose ‘immortal,’ and ‘invisible,’ and ‘incorruptible,’ and ‘without need,’ and ‘sinless’ more vulgarly, nor any such things said of God, but, departing from what is signified, will bend back toward the silent and more divine concepts; wherefore he also fittingly calls them, next, ‘more divine theonymies.’

For the soul, departing from all bodily and worldly senses (for it has made these akin to itself), thus joins itself to the pure knowledge of God, as far as is possible for human nature — as the Apostle too hints, saying: ‘And so we shall always be with the Lord’; and again: ‘Now we see as in a riddle and in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face.’ The most revered of names: Note that, of all names, goodness is the most revered; wherefore it too is primarily dedicated to Of the things akin to it: ‘Akin’ means the things congenital and familiar and proper to creation. §4. For this is truly beyond even angels: That even to angels the things concerning God are incomprehensible, and that even the lowest of the angels contemplates concerning God more than all the theologians in the Church — and, therefore, more than the apostles too. And whatever of the equally powerful names: That, even if other equally powerful theonymies should be found in Scripture, one must supply these too according to the same revelatory methods. And to you and to other sacred men: That the mysteries must not be imparted to all without discrimination, but to capable and sacred men — which the divine Paul also writes to this sacred man, Timothy. We too are capable to speak: The father says this, humbling himself in a manner befitting a saint, and likewise all that follows.

Unto the Symbolic Theology: That he speaks of a Symbolic Theology not yet extant, as he also says in another chapter; but if you wish to know the difference between the Theological Outlines and the Symbolic Theology, read the third chapter of the discourse On Mystical Theology. On Mystical Theology, Chapter One §1. Where the simple: The simple and absolute things are those understood and directly beheld without symbols, as they are — not, that is, in a parabolic manner. He called ‘absolute,’ then, the things not spoken of by way of the unfolding of names or symbols, but gathered by the cessation and release from all beings and from intellections — which inactivity of the sacred movement he called, in the passages before this, ‘unintelligence,’ but here ‘most dark cloud’ and ‘invisible,’ according to the Psalmist: ‘Cloud and darkness are round about Him,’ and, ‘He made darkness His hiding place.’ The eyeless minds: For they are not full of sensible eyes, but their essence, being living mind, is wholly a most keensighted eye, wherefore they are also called ‘full of eyes’ in And leave behind the senses: The same thing is shown in parallel; for the ancients call the sensible things themselves ‘not-beings,’ as partaking of all change and not ever being the same; but the noetic things, as ever being, immortal by the will of their Maker and not changing in essence, they call ‘beings.’

These things we have often set forth in the discourse Above every essence: The simplicity, and above every unity. How one is unknowingly stretched up toward God is said also in the fifth chapter of On the Divine Names, and you will find it here too, shortly. Unrelated and absolute: He calls ‘unrelated ecstasy’ the withdrawal from every relation, meaning that one should be held by no relation, either toward himself or toward any of the creatures. Ray of darkness: Here too he called ‘darkness’ the complete incomprehensibility. §2. Let none of the uninitiated: Note that he calls ‘uninitiated’ those who are without a share of the mysteries, and who are wrapped up in sensible things, and imagine nothing to be above beings. Indeed, concerning those altogether uninitiated, he speaks a little further down. And note that he calls some ‘uninitiated’ and others ‘unmystical’ — that is, unhierophanted. But if these are above those: What he said before this concerned those who have believed in the name of Christ, but have not come to more perfect knowledge, but measure the truth by their own opinion, and do not know the difference between beings that are properly and beings that are equivocally so — of essences, and of Him who is above beings, wherefore also supra-essential. Such men, then, as uninitiated, suppose that the lofty things are truly darkness, this lightless shadow among us that covers God and hides Him from the sight of all — which many even among us are truly afflicted with, not knowing that the unsurpassable light darkens every sight.

If, then, he says, there are such men even among us, what should we say of idolaters, altogether without a share in any of the mysteries, and stupefied before wooden images? Properly, then, the noetic things are beings, but the sensible things are equivocally so. ‘Above these’ means, evidently, above the faithful, those who are entangled in perishable things. It is necessary, concerning it: As being all things Godbefittingly, and being nothing supra-essentially; for this is both affirmation and negation, since indeed both are properly said concerning the divine majesty. What the negations of the removals are, and the affirmations of the positions, and what the privations are, is clarified here too, and especially in the third chapter; and we have set this forth variously and at length in the discourse On the Divine Names. To be opposed: That, concerning God, the negations are not opposed to the affirmations; for God is above every removal and position. Read also, in the discourse On the Celestial Hierarchy, a little after the beginning. §3. Thus, then, the divine Bartholomew: Note here too the unfeigned character of these divine compositions of the great Dionysius. For, in addition to having made mention, in the previous discourses, of citations from certain of those who were with the apostles, he now likewise brings forward a citation of the divine Bartholomew, as ‘he says’ shows; for if he had been teaching unwritten things, he would have said ‘he said.’

Note also that he adduces a citation of holy Bartholomew, to show how great and how small theology is. That it is both wordy: ‘Polylogos’ (with the accent on the penult) means one who says many things; but ‘polylogos’ (with the accent on the antepenult) means one who needs many words — just as also ‘prototokos’ (with the accent on the antepenult) means one first-born, but ‘prototokos’ (with the accent on the penult) means the woman who has first given birth, as also in Homer: “Firstborn of Cinyras, not yet knowing childbirth.” Which has neither word: That is, representative of its own nature in external things. Understand the same likewise concerning intellection. All divine lights and sounds: He calls ‘heavenly sounds and words’ the things said concerning God in the Scriptures, as having been spoken and handed down, not according to human and earthly conception, but according to divine conception. The divine Moses: Note how he goes through the matters concerning Moses — that, having ascended the mountain and entered the darkness, he saw, as far as attainable for man, God. Note also the order of the things accomplished for Moses, before he was deemed worthy to enter the divine darkness. But the place where He stood: What is the place in which God stood, in the case of Moses, and what is the highest point of noetic things, and what of visible things, we discussed in the discourse On the Celestial Hierarchy, toward the end of the first chapter.

Suppositional reasons: He calls ‘suppositional reasons’ the descriptive ones, or as being contemplative of beings, which he said are subordinate to God; for through them — that is, through their continuance and preservation — we are taught that He is present to all things, not by transition, but providentially; and he calls ‘noetic summits’ the heavenly and noeric essences that are around God, which he also called His most holy places, above which He is set, or from which He is released, in no way whatsoever resembling And then He is released even from these: The connected exposition of the saying must be understood thus: that Moses, having contemplated the place where God stood, and then, released both from the things seen — that is, all sensible things — and from those who see, meaning all rational beings, both noetic and noeric essences, together with which are our souls, then entered into the darkness — that is, into the unknowing concerning God — where, having closed all his cognitive apprehensions, he came to be in the untouchable and invisible, beyond all cognitive apprehensions, of the God who transcends all things; and, being united by such a manner to the unknowing and inactivity — I do not mean the inactivity, concerning Him, of his own mind, nor the inactivity of anything else in neither understanding Him nor anything else — but, having been united to the altogether unknown reality of all knowledge, of Him who is beyond all things, he then knew the All by unknowing.

Note that he understood the darkness as unknowing. How God is known through unknowing, he says both here, and we have discussed more fully in the discourse On the Divine Names, in the second chapter. But one must know that, in Exodus, where it is written, ‘Moses entered into the darkness where God was,’ the Hebrew has ‘araphel,’ and the Seventy, and Aquila, and Theodotion rendered ‘araphel’ as ‘darkness.’ Symmachus, however, interpreted ‘araphel’ as ‘mist.’ The Hebrew, moreover, says that ‘araphel’ is the name of a firmament, to which Moses attained; for they say there are seven firmaments, which they also call heavens, and they give the names, which it is not now necessary to mention. I have also read of these seven heavens in the dialogue of Papiscus and Jason, composed by Ariston of Pella, which Clement of Alexandria, in the sixth book of his Hypotyposes, says was written down by holy Luke. However, the matter of the darkness, contemplated with reference to the divine unknowing, has been more divinely philosophized also in his letters; and in the fifth he writes fully concerning this. By the inactivity of all knowledge: Note that by the inactivity of all knowledge we are united to the unknown. On Mystical Theology, Chapter Two According to this, we: Here too he speaks concerning the divine darkness and unknowing. And note that this is what it means to come to be under the divine darkness — to see and to know, through absence of sight and absence of knowledge, that which is above sight and knowledge, precisely by not seeing nor knowing; for this, he says, is truly to see and to know.

Nowhere else does he so clearly set forth the knowledge that is in unknowing. Read also the fifth letter, to Through the removal of all beings: That is, through understanding none of the beings to be proper to Him; for this he called ‘removal.’ He speaks of a ‘self-grown image,’ one that comes to be in uncut matter, such as in a whole rock, insofar as it stands, whenever someone carves some figure, as Euripides also shows in his Andromeda, saying: “And a certain image of a maiden, from self-formed stone walls, the statue of a wise hand.” By ‘self-formed’ statue of the rock he meant the self-grown image; but also, whenever one carves some part of a tree still standing and blooming, and makes part of it into a couch, which, as Homer says, Odysseus did in the Odyssey; or also carved a trophy of victory in such a tree. He also speaks of images of precious stone — as when the emerald, purified of the surrounding earthy matter, itself appears as an image, that is, an ornament — with this especially in view he now said what is set before us, as Dionysius the poet says in the second book of his Lithika: “Of the deep-green jasper, or of the purple-glowing amethyst, the dark-hued hyacinth-stone.” For all these show the great learning of this holy man. But it is necessary, I think, the removals: The father himself clarifies the present passage in what follows.

Positions, then, are as many things as are properly said of God, that He is — such as ‘He who is,’ ‘life,’ ‘light,’ and the others; but removals are as many things as are denied as alien to God — such as, that God is not a body, not a soul, nor anything of the things known, or falling under intellection. Otherwise: what positions and removals are, we have discussed variously in the discourse On the Divine Names. In all beings: The knowledges of beings, he says, do not uncover the unknown concerning God and bring it to manifestation, but rather cover it over and conceal it. But by ‘the light in beings’ one must understand the knowing of beings insofar as they are beings, as we also find in what follows. On Mystical Theology, Chapter Three How the divine and good nature: What the discourse of the Theological Outlines contains. Behold the foundations and starting-points of theology, embracing all divine and illumined knowledge and orthodoxy: to know how the divine nature is one (which certain of the more recent Fathers termed ‘consubstantial’); how it is triadic, which we call ‘three-hypostatic’; and to know the properties of the persons, and what they signify — such as fatherhood and sonship — and what is the sanctifying power and theology of the divine Spirit; and how it is said, ‘My heart has belched forth a good word,’ and how it is said concerning the worshipful Spirit, that He proceeds from the Father; and how the Son and the Spirit are in the Father, and in themselves, and in one another, co-eternally and without division and without separation, in an unremoved abiding.

One must know that abiding and standing are the same, but movement is other than abiding. He says, then, that even in unmoved abiding, the divine nature, ever being, seems to move in its mutual indwelling with itself. And of that in Himself and in them: This is the sense of what has been said — that the existence of the Holy Trinity is coeternal, and it did not exist in one way and afterward come to be established in another, nor has it undergone any separation or change; but at once and simultaneously the Son and the Holy Spirit are from the Father, and not after Him. How the supra-essential Jesus: Note, against the Nestorians and the Acephaloi. How good: What the discourse On the Divine Names contains. For it was necessary: Why the Theological Outlines and the discourse On the Divine Names are of fewer lines than the Of the symbolic: He speaks of the first things of the Symbolic By the synopses of the noetic things: He called ‘synopses of the noetic things’ the contemplations befitting their immaterial simplicity, and he used ‘are wrapped’ in place of ‘are contracted.’ But complete irrationality: He calls ‘irrationality’ the inability to set forth by reason the things above reason, and ‘unintelligibility’ the inconceivable, and what one cannot conceive, as being above mind. And there indeed from above: Since the noetic things, and those above mind, are unities of God, and God is one — or rather, even above the one — fittingly it has been contracted, being both without parts and without multiplication.

But the things after God, the more they descend toward the sensible things, the more they come into converse with the divisible and scattered things, and are multiplied together with them, in accordance with the division and manifold splitting of sensible things. ‘Toward the last things’ means, evidently, from the theological outline. ‘From the first’: he speaks of the first as being that which is more proper and which first strikes the understanding, such as, that God is ‘He who is,’ which He named Himself. That the above every: How one must use the positions and the removals concerning God, and that we make the positions from the first and more kindred things to God, but the removals from the last and things most estranged from The hypothetical affirmation: Affirmation is a declarative statement, whether of the universal, or of some conflicting thing, or of something combined, or compared — such as, ‘God is life,’ ‘God is goodness.’ But hypothetical is a declarative statement indicative of the universal, or of something conflicting, or combined. The hypothetical affirmation, then, concerning God, is that ‘God is life and goodness’ rather than air and stone; but the removals are spoken by way of denial, contrary to position; for position is spoken according to hypothetical affirmation, as has been said, that God is life, or air; but the negative removal is, ‘God is not drunk,’ ‘He is not angered.’

And in the case of the positions we begin from the more kindred things; for life and goodness are more proper to God than air and stone. But in the case of the removals we ascend from the last things — such as, that God is not signified by reason, and is not conceived, is more proper to God than that He does not carouse, nor is angered — and altogether we begin the removal from the second; as, God does not get drunk, rather than He is not spoken of; and God is not wrathful, rather than He is not conceived. ‘Kraipale,’ then, is heavy and most violent drunkenness, being as it were a certain ‘karapale’ — that is, that which shakes and greatly moves the ‘kara,’ that is, the head. But ‘menis’ is not ordinary anger, but persistent anger. Ascending, then, from sensible things to noetic things, one must not understand all these incorporeal removals in a lowly manner, but must, in addition to each of the things said, understand also what the blessed Dionysius himself said — that God is none of the things said, which we know or conceive, nor even of the things which all the noetic powers know; for all the things said are, once for all, from God, and are His gifts; and how could He Himself, properly, be from them, He who exercises providence over them?

We have gone through all these things variously in the discourse On the Divine Names; for all these things, as accidents, exist also in the essences of the things after God, but God is above essence, and the cause of these, and therefore also above them. Otherwise: ‘Life and goodness’ — behold, affirmation, that is, position; ‘He does not carouse, nor is wrathful’ — behold, negation, that is, removal. Or air and stone: ‘Air,’ according to what is said in the Books of Kingdoms, is ‘in a light breeze’; and ‘stone’ the prophet saw. Of these, then, life and goodness are more proper positions and indications concerning God. Just as, then, from the removal applied to the contrary — such as ‘to carouse’ and ‘to be wrathful’ — these are far from God and alien; but not to be spoken of at all is more fitting to God, and nearer, on account of His being above all mind and reason. On Mystical Theology, Chapter Four Neither is He in place: Necessarily the father, by these words, secured the hearer, so that he should not, by the subsequent negations, suppose the Divine altogether not to exist; but in these he posited that He is, while in those that He is none of the things that are, but supra-essential. On Mystical Theology, Chapter Five As neither is He soul, nor mind: These differ from one another, as has been shown above — imagination, opinion, reason, intellection — which are contemplated in accordance with the mind.

One must further understand that, according to our reason, He has no reason; likewise also intellection, according to what is in noeric creatures; and the things that follow must be received in the same way. Otherwise: in these cases likewise one must posit ‘as we know it’; but of the things after it — that is, evidently, after the divine nature, that is, of creatures — he says he makes the positions, in saying ‘life’ or ‘light,’ according to what is contemplated in the things generated, from which we conceive Him who has given these subsistence, and we do not, through these, introduce any position of His nature; and again we make a removal by saying that the Divine is according to none of these. Nor one, nor unity: ‘One’ and ‘unity’ differ from one another; for the one signifies that which underlies, the other such a quality — just as ‘white’ and ‘whiteness,’ ‘good’ and ‘goodness.’ Note that neither is ‘Godhead’ the essence of God, just as neither is any one of the things said, nor of their opposites, wherefore He is none of them. For these are not His essence, but glory concerning Him. So too Sextus the ecclesiastical philosopher said, and Gregory the Theologian, in his third Theological Oration, that neither Godhead, nor unbegottenness, nor fatherhood signify the essence of God. Nor Godhead, nor goodness: Note also that He is not even Spirit, as far as we know, nor Sonship, nor Fatherhood.

And take ‘as far as we know’ throughout the whole of the negation set before us; it signifies according to our own knowledge. Nor do beings know Him: Let not this chapter trouble you, nor suppose that this divine man blasphemes; for his aim is to show that God is none of the things that are, but above the things that are. For if He Himself, having created all things, brought them forth, how could He be found to be one of the things that are? For he said that not even the beings know God, the cause of all things — and this is plain destruction, not to know God. But quickly he clarified it, saying, ‘as He Himself is’ — that is, none of the beings knows God according to what He Himself is, in place of saying His inconceivable and supra-essential essence, or the existence according to which He exists; for it is said, ‘No one knows the Son except the Son.’ And from the contrary the great Dionysius infers and says also that ‘no one knows God as He is,’ nor does God Himself know the beings as beings are — that is, He does not know how to apprehend sensible things sensibly, or essences as essences; for this is unbefitting to God. For we men understand what sensible things are through sight, or taste, or touch, but noetic things we apprehend from learning, or teaching, or illumination.

But God knows the beings by none of these ways, but has the knowledge befitting Himself; for this is what the saying hints at, which says, ‘He who knows all things before their coming to be’ — which shows that God does not know beings according to the principle of their coming to be, which is sensible knowledge, but according to another manner of knowledge. The angels, however, know these things noetically and immaterially, not sensibly as we do. Thus, then, God too, incomparably and transcendently, knows the beings, yet not by apprehending their essences. Otherwise: the beings, that is, the creatures, cannot extend themselves in their intellections beyond their own nature; fittingly, then, looking to themselves, they do not know the divine nature according to what it itself is. So too, then, the divine nature, looking to itself, does not know that the beings are in itself according to the principle of their essence; for this he showed by saying ‘as beings are,’ since above all beings He has possessed being itself supra-essentially; for otherwise one could not say that God is ignorant of His own creatures. On the same: That no one knows the immaculate Trinity as it is, in place of, it is nothing as it is, so that one might also know it as it is: we are men, and we do not know what the existence of the immaculate Trinity is; for we are not of its essence.

So too neither does God know the beings as they are, as we do; for He is not any one of the beings, nor according to them. For even though God is Himself Spirit, and indeed the Holy Spirit too is so named, yet He is not a Spirit known to us or to the angels. But having said above, ‘He is not light, nor truth,’ why does he again say further down, ‘He is not darkness, nor light, nor error, nor truth’? It is possible, then, undertaking to say, that the first statement speaks concerning absolute light, and not error, as among the essences of angels, and truth as truth absolutely released and without cause; but the things that follow, that He is neither of the relative things — as one changing from darkness to light, as it were changing from light in potency to light in actuality, from the relative things into one another, light and darkness; for He is neither darkness, nor much light; so too He did not change, from the contrary, from being error in potency into truth in actuality; for all these things, being secondary to Him, went forth from Him providentially. He is, then, none of the things from Him. Minor Theological Works 1653 PART III — DOGMATIC & POLEMICAL Minor Theological and Polemical Works To Marinus the Most Devout Priest Having set for yourself the goal to establish that friendship, praised above all, toward God, O Father honored by God, you rightly pursue the course toward it.

In reason, circumscribing the nature of beings for the sake of virtue's birth, but in mind, for the establishment of unerring union, limiting the movement of every age and time — with which the more ardent desire of God enters in together; extending the movement of you who desire to the same degree as the infinity of the desired, and by the incomprehensibility of the one desired, making your longing incomprehensible — of which God Himself is the end; becoming, for the worthy, the fulfillment of desire, since it is a self-subsistent enjoyment of good things; of which alone reason knows the experience as apprehension, since it clearly a union understanding, as not falling under any noetic form whatsoever. For this reason your life became, for you, the “person” of reason; and reason became the nature of your life — inscribing the man who is truly new according to Christ, well bearing the image and likeness of God the Creator in a way apt for imitation; which one must now suppose to be truth and goodness — the one the end of contemplation, the other of action; and the one the opposite of falsehood, the other of wickedness. From this the apprehension of the divine doctrines was joined to you in the right performance of the virtues — held together both by the abundance of knowledge and by the power of demonstration; according to which, having discerned and rejected the thing not accurately set forth by certain persons concerning the wills — namely, those who say that will and wish and counsel and choice and judgment are the same as one another, and that authority and opinion and prudence differ from one another only in name; and that the will of God and of the saints will become one; and who for this reason affirm and insist that Christ has one will by choice — you were not content, for the confirmation of what had been rightly judged, on account of the poverty of spirit that dwells with you, to rely on yourself alone; but you have deigned to take even me, who was reared in unlearnedness, as one who agrees with what you have rightly known.

Which Minor Theological Works 1655 thing I have come to do — even though it be rash — overcome by the reward of obedience. And I will make the writing concerning each of these things in order, brief, and as it were definitional — not inscribing my own words, for how could I, who am poor in these things? but gathering together what has been labored over by others concerning these things — that we may know how these differ from one another, both in name and in reality. On Natural Will, That Is, Willing For natural will, that is, willing, is the power that desires that which accords with nature, and which holds together all the properties that essentially belong to the nature. For the essence, being naturally held together by this, desires to be and to live and to move according to both sense and mind, longing for its own natural and full existence. For nature is desirous of itself, and of whatsoever things are naturally apt to constitute it, being appetitively dependent on the principle of its being, according to which it both is and has come to be. Wherefore others, defining this natural will, say that will is a rational and vital appetite; but that choice is a deliberative appetite of the things in our power. Willing, then, is not choice: since willing is a simple appetite, rational and vital; but choice is a concurrence of appetite and counsel and judgment.

For we first desire, then we deliberate; and having deliberated, we judge; and having judged, we choose that which has been shown by the judgment to be better rather than worse; and the one depends only on the things of nature, while the other depends only on the things in our power and able to come about through us. Choice, then, is not willing. But neither is choice wish. For wish is an imaginative appetite for things in our power and not in our power — that is, formed by the mind alone. And imaginative appetite belongs to the discursive faculty alone, without the deliberative reason concerning things in our power; or it is a certain natural willing. But choice is a deliberative appetite for the practicable things in our power. Now the mere account of this description, having shown the difference of these, would suffice to put an end to the contentiousness of those who argue to excess, and who — I know not how to put it politely — plainly contradict what has been rightly known. But since those eager to inquire desire somehow to grasp the things sought through more words, we shall speak also in Minor Theological Works 1657 another way. Those who have treated of these things say: it is not the case that wherever it is fitting to choose, it is in every case also fitting to wish.

For we say we wish to be healthy and to be rich and to become immortal; but we do not say we choose to be rich and to be healthy and to become immortal — since wish concerns both the possible and the impossible, but choice concerns only the possible things able to come about through us. And again, wish is of the end, but choice is of the things toward the end. They say, then, that the wishedfor is the end — for instance, health; but the deliberated-upon is that which is toward the end — for instance, the means to health. The same proportion, then, which the wished-for has to the deliberated-upon, they say wish has to choice — since these alone we choose, which we suppose can come about through us. But we wish also for things that cannot come about through us. It has been shown, then, that choice is not wish; and it will be shown again that neither is it counsel, that is, deliberation. On Counsel, That Is, Deliberation They say that counsel, or deliberation, is an appetite that inquires concerning something among the practicable things in our power. And the choosable is that which has been judged from counsel. It is clear from this, then, that deliberation concerns things still being sought, while choice concerns things already preferred. And this is clear not from the definition alone, but also from the etymology.

For the choosable is that which is taken before another. But no one prefers a thing without having deliberated, nor chooses without having judged. Choice, then, is not counsel, that is, deliberation. They say that choice is a deliberative appetite for the practicable things in our power. For choice is something mixed, and compounded of many things — composed of appetite and counsel and judgment. For choice, considered by itself, is none of these alone: it is neither appetite alone by itself, nor counsel, nor judgment; but a compound of these, just as the man according to us is composite of soul and body. For it is then that choice, and the choosable, comes to be — namely, that which has been preferred by counsel, concerning which the choice is made — when it receives the appetite. Necessarily, then, choice concerns these things after judgment, concerning which counsel is before judgment. For we choose those things concerning which we deliberate. Minor Theological Works 1659 On What Things We Deliberate About We deliberate concerning things that are in our power and able to come about through us, and that have an uncertain outcome. Now “in our power” has been said, since we deliberate only concerning practicable things. For these are in our power; not concerning self-subsistent wisdom. For we deliberate neither concerning God, nor concerning the things that come about of necessity and always in the same way — such as the cyclical motion of the seasons — nor concerning the things that do not always exist, but always come about in like manner — such as the rising and setting of the sun — nor concerning the things that come about by nature, though not always in like manner, but for the most part — such as the sixty-year-old growing gray, or the twenty-year-old growing a beard — nor concerning the things that come about by nature, but at different times in different and indeterminate ways — such as rains and droughts and hail.

On account of these, then, “in our power” has been said. But “able to come about through us” — since we do not deliberate concerning all men, nor concerning every affair; nor indeed concerning all things that are in our power and come about through us; but it is necessary to add also, “and having an uncertain outcome.” For if the outcome is manifest and agreed upon, we no longer deliberate concerning it, even though it be in our power and come about through us. And it has been shown that counsel concerns not the end, but the things toward the end. For we do not deliberate to become rich, but by what means and through what we shall become rich. And, to speak concisely, we deliberate only concerning those things whose doing is equally possible; and that is equally possible which we are able to do, and also its opposite. But if we were able to do only the one of the opposites, this would be agreed upon as beyond doubt, while the opposite would be impossible. For instance, when bread and a stone lie before us, no one deliberates which he shall make his food — the one being agreed upon, the other clearly being impossible. These things, then, we choose — the things equally possible, concerning which we also deliberate. But neither is choice a certain judgment, even though the many readily suppose this; rather, it is of judgment — since they say that judgment is a disposed appetite for things in our power, from which choice comes; or a disposition with regard to things in our power that have been appetitively deliberated.

For the appetite, having been disposed toward Minor Theological Works 1661 the things judged from counsel, has become judgment; after which, or more properly, from which, comes choice. Judgment, then, holds the same relation to choice as a habit holds to an activity. But neither is choice authority. For choice, as I have often said, is a deliberative appetite for the practicable things in our power; but authority is a lawful mastery over the practicable things in our power, or an unhindered mastery of the use of the things in our power, or an unenslaved appetite for the things in our power. Authority and choice, then, are not the same — since by authority we choose, but we do not exercise authority by choice; and the one is only selected, while the other makes use of the things in our power, and of the things that follow upon the things in our power — that is, choice and judgment and counsel. For by authority we deliberate, and judge, and choose, and are impelled, and make use of the things in our power. But neither is choice a certain opinion. For opinion is twofold — rational and irrational — while choice is mutable. They say that irrational opinion is a simple and ready knowledge, as when one puts forward an opinion belonging to another, being ignorant of its cause — as when one says the soul is immortal, without giving a demonstrative reason for its immortality.

But they say that rational opinion is a knowledge established according to the completion of discursive reasoning — as when one, having reasoned about something, renders its cause scientifically. For discursive reason is that which proceeds and operates in extension, beginning from a premise and going as far as a conclusion. For instance, someone proposes to show the soul immortal, and says: since the soul is self-moved, and the self-moved is ever-moved, and the ever-moved is immortal, therefore the soul is immortal. Or again: since the soul is incomposite, and the incomposite is indissoluble, and the indissoluble is immortal, therefore the soul is immortal. For it is proper to discursive reason to traverse a certain path leading to the knowledge of the thing; and it travels from the premises, through the syllogisms, to the conclusions, and produces rational opinion. And again, opinion concerns not only the Minor Theological Works 1663 things in our power, but also the things not in our power; but choice concerns only the things in our power. And we call opinion true and false, but we do not call choice true and false, but good and bad. And opinion concerns universals, but choice concerns particulars — for choice concerns practicable things, and these are particulars. Through many words, as I think, it has become clear that choice is not opinion. For if opinion, being constituted according to the completion of discursive reason, is knowledge, but choice is a deliberative appetite for the practicable things in our power, choice is not the same as opinion.

On Prudence, That Is, Phronesis But neither is choice prudence, that is, phronesis. Since they say that prudence is a contemplative appetite for rational and cognitive disciplines; or a habit opposed both to mindlessness and to excessive subtlety of mind; while choice, as reason has variously shown, is a deliberative appetite for the things in our power. They say prudence comes about in this manner: the first movement of the mind they call intellection; and the intellection concerning something they call a concept; and this, remaining and imprinting the soul toward the thing understood, is called reflection; and reflection, remaining in the same state and probing itself, is named prudence; and prudence, when broadened, produces discursive reasoning — called by those skilled in these matters “internal reason” — which, as they describe it, is a movement of the soul most fully accomplished within the discursive faculty, without any utterance; from which they say uttered reason proceeds. And they say phronema, again, is the knowledge of the thing thought that comes to the one who is prudent from prudence. For they speak of prudence, and the thing prudently considered, and the one who is prudent, and phronema. And prudence is the relation; the thing prudently considered is that which is thought; the one who is prudent is that which thinks; and phronema is the knowledge, come to the one who is prudent from prudence, of the thing prudently considered.

If, then, this is so, but choice is not so, choice is not phronema. It has been shown, then, I think, plainly, that the things set forth are not the same as one another, contrary to those who suppose this. But if they should say that they are altogether the same as one another, because appetite — that is, the appetitive power of nature — is predicated equally of all of them as a genus, let them say that all the species too are the same as one another — the land animals, the flying, and the Minor Theological Works 1665 aquatic — because the genus “animal” is predicated equally of all of them as more generic; and the ordering of the universe will vanish for them, being not a subsistence of things that differ, but only a manifestation of bare names. That After the Resurrection the Will of the Saints Will Not Be One, Either Toward One Another or Toward God Choice, then, having taken on impulse and use with regard to the things in our power, is the limit of the rational movement in us according to appetite. For that which is rational by nature, having a natural power — the rational appetite, which they also call the willing of the noetic soul — desires and reasons; and having reasoned, wills. For they say that wish is not the simply natural will, but the qualified one — that is, the willing concerning something; and willing, it seeks; and seeking, it considers; and considering, it deliberates; and deliberating, it judges; and judging, it chooses; and choosing, it is impelled; and being impelled, it makes use; and making use, it ceases from the appetitive movement toward that thing.

For no one makes use without first being impelled; and no one is impelled without choosing; and no one chooses without judging; and no one judges without deliberating; and no one deliberates without considering; and no one considers without seeking; and no one seeks without wishing; and no one wishes without reasoning; and no one reasons without desiring; and no one rationally desires without being rational by nature. Man, then, being by nature a rational animal, is appetitive, and rational, and wishful, and seeking, and considering, and choosing, and impelled, and one who makes use. But if man is by nature, along with the rest, also an animal capable of choice, and choice concerns things in our power and able to come about through us, and having an uncertain outcome; and the principle of the virtues, being the law of the natural powers put into operation, is in our power; and the manner of the misuse of the same powers, which underlies the passions contrary to nature — then everyone who is by nature capable of choice is receptive of and able to judge between opposites. But if he is able to judge between opposites, he is by all means also capable of choice; and if capable of choice, since the movement toward both alternatives lies within him, he is not by nature immutable. Since, then, deliberation and judgment and choice belong to things that are ambiguous, as being in our power, when the ambiguous things no longer exist — the self-subsistent truth having been shown manifest to all — choice does not exist, as it is moved through intermediate things that are in our Minor Theological Works 1667 power; because neither does judgment exist, which makes a distinction between opposites, of which we make the better preferable to the worse.

But if, then, according to the law of nature now prevailing, choice does not exist once all ambiguity concerning existing things has departed, there will be only an active noetic appetite for those who are thus appetitive according to nature — laying hold ineffably of the mystical enjoyment alone of that which is naturally desired, toward which it had its movement through the things enumerated; the satiety of which is the unending intensification of the very appetite of those who enjoy — each one participating, beyond nature, in as great a measure as he desired; and there is an immediate commingling with the very thing naturally desired. But if each shall participate in the desired thing to the degree that he desired it, then by the principle of nature the will of all will be shown to be one, but by the mode of motion, different. But if, by the mode according to motion, the will of all men is not one, then never in every mode will the will of God and of the saved become one, as some have supposed — even though that which is willed is one for both God and the saints, namely the salvation of the saved, being a divine purpose, as the end foreordained of all the ages; concerning which there will come about an agreement, according to the will, both of the saved with one another and with God who saves — God, who fills all things with the measure of grace, proceeding wholly in all things generically, and in each thing individually, and being fulfilled in all, after the manner of members, according to the proportion of the faith innate in each.

For if the will of God is by nature savingly-effective, and that of men is by nature the-thing-saved, that which by nature saves and that which by nature is saved could never be the same — even though there is one purpose for both, namely the salvation of the whole, put forward by God, but chosen by the saints. But if, according to those who say this, the divine and the human will shall be the same and one in number — since by will God brought all the ages into being — then the choir of the saints too will be a creator by the same will, whether natural or by disposition; and, simply, a creator by that will whereby they are naturally disposed to be identified with the divine — which is absurd, and, I think, the work only of a wandering mind. For unless all are creators, or only the apostles, or only the prophets — and again of these, either Peter alone, or Moses alone — and unless there is, with God and the Father, not one, but many abodes for the saints; the human will moved by imitation toward the good will that is according to nature would be identical with it in natural Minor Theological Works 1669 quality and quantity, which is impossible (for how could that which is by nature participant be identical with that which is by nature participated?)

— it is likewise impossible for the judgment of God and of the choir of the saints to be one in every mode, even though, as I said, there is one thing willed by both, namely the salvation of the whole, concerning which there is the union of the wills. But it seems that, not perceiving what absurdity of reasoning arises for them from what they say, they allow their own mind to be carried thoughtlessly toward things it ought not. For if will, however it be conceived or spoken of, is not without relation, and is not predicated as belonging to no category, it is a quality — but not of the things considered in themselves, but as being observed, evidently, in another. But if will belongs to the things observed in another, it is altogether an accident; and if an accident, it will be characteristic either of essence or of hypostasis (for there is nothing intermediate between these, considered in itself — that is, participating in neither, or composed of both). And if of essence, they will predicate one nature of both God and the saints, all being made to converge into one essence through the one will. For that which is predicated equally and generically of certain things indicates the essence under which they fall. But if of hypostasis, there will be one hypostasis of both God and the saints, all being fused together into the same.

For that which is individually inherent in one according to hypostasis, if observed identically in others, confuses them all together, and renders utterly indiscernible the principle of how each one is. That One Will Cannot Be Said of Christ, Whether Natural or by Choice If, then, their argument has proven weak in these matters, then, passing over to our Lord and God and Savior of all, Christ, and constructing one will said in whatever way of Him, it could never in any way succeed. For if they should say that this will of Christ is natural, they will be shown to be suffering forthwith from the Manichean delusion, proclaiming, as it were, one nature of Christ, neither existing nor to come to be, signified by a corresponding will; and they will be caught emulating at once both the madness of Arius and the consubstantiality of Apollinarius, having alienated Christ in essence from God the Father and from the undefiled Mother. For natural will characterizes nature, and no argument will gainsay this. But if it characterizes nature, it is clear that those who say this proclaim Christ to be a nature. But if Christ is a nature, he is truly neither God by nature, nor indeed man by nature — since the Father is not truly Christ by nature, nor is the mother truly Christ by nature. But if Minor Theological Works 1671 Christ is God by nature, insofar as he is by nature Christ, he who says this is a polytheist — holding that the Father has a different nature as God, since the Father is not by nature Christ, and that Christ has a different nature as God, since he is by nature Christ; and the end of such monstrous talk for them will be condemnation for polytheism.

But if the will is by choice — which they call “gnomic” — it will either be altogether according to nature, having the manner of the use of the practicable things in Christ agreeing throughout with the principle of nature; and Christ will be shown, according to them, not impassible but rather one who is continent with respect to passions in this way, and good by progress, whatever he may be by nature. For such is choice according to nature with respect to the practicable things of the one who chooses, making that which is better preferable to that which is worse. Or the will is contrary to nature, and will show the manner of the use of the practicable things in Him to have become corruptive of the principle of nature — for such is choice contrary to nature with respect to the practicable things of the one who chooses, making that which is worse preferable to that which is better. For once the judgment concerning the practicable things belonging to the one who chooses has, according to the deliberation, been rightly accomplished or gone astray — of which choice is, as it were, the vote — either the principle that is according to nature subsists in it through right use, or the mode that is contrary to nature comes to subsist alongside it through wrong use; the one becoming a messenger of choice according to nature, the other of choice contrary to nature.

And if the choice of Christ is according to nature, we shall not only accuse them again on the same grounds, for boldly sketching another nature of Christ, midway between the Godhead and creation — but we shall also laugh at them talking nonsense, making Christ, according to Nestorius, receptive by choice of opposites by nature, as a mere man. But if it is contrary to nature — I pass over in silence the blasphemy, lest, unawares, my tongue be defiled in refuting them. For in affirming a will by choice in Christ, they have altogether shown a hypostasis of Christ capable of being moved both according to nature and contrary to nature. For such, as I have already said, is choice. But if it is characteristic of the hypostasis of Christ, they have thereby separated him, by this will, from the Father and the Spirit, as having a different wish and a different judgment. For that which is individually observed in the Son according to hypostasis is altogether incommunicable to the Father and the Spirit according to hypostasis. As many, then, of the holy Fathers as have made mention of choice with regard to the humanity of Minor Theological Works 1673 Christ, indicated thereby the appetitive power of the nature substantially — that is to say, the natural willing, or our own choice — as inherent in the incarnate God by way of appropriation.

This especially your servant and disciple, having considered, said “choice” in the work set forth to my most holy lord and teacher concerning the difficulties of Holy Scripture, addressed to Thalassius — knowing that, since the Maker of men became man for our sake, he accomplished for us, evidently, also the immutability of choice, as the author of immutability: on the one hand receiving substantially, by His own authority, through actual experience, the sufferings of our condemnation; and on the other hand, in lovingkindness, taking up by appropriation the sufferings of dishonor — of which He made the appropriation the cause, for our race, of the impassibility of choice; and the experience of the former He granted as a faithful pledge of the natural incorruption that follows. For the human will of God was not moved, as ours is, by choice, choice being brought about through deliberation and judgment, that is, through the discerning of opposites — lest it be thought mutable by nature according to choice; but, together with its union to God the Word, having received its being, it had, undoubting — or rather, stationary — the movement according to natural appetite, that is, will; or, more properly speaking, it had, in itself, the motionless standing, according to the most genuine essential union, wholly deified by God the Word — which, naturally shaping and moving it as His own, and as the natural will of His own soul, He fulfilled without illusion the great mystery of the economy on our behalf, having diminished nothing whatsoever natural of that which was assumed, except sin — of which no principle whatsoever has ever been sown in any being.

The difference of the names, then, having become clear to us, through the definition suitably fitted to each, let us not be troubled, on hearing things confused without distinction by names, by the confusion of the things understood — since for us the truth is in things, not in names; nor let us suppose that which is not the same to be the same. But, believing piously, let us confess Christ to be truly perfect God, and truly perfect man, the same in reality, properly and according to truth, and not said to be this by bare name alone; and therefore let us proclaim him to have two natures, of which He Himself is the hypostasis, since He is not without flesh; and let us boldly affirm that He has two natural wills, according to the Fathers, since He is not without soul and without mind; and let us not dare to innovate a term for which we have no refuge in patristic authority. For the pious, zealous for orthodoxy, Minor Theological Works 1675 ought to fear to say one will of Christ, whether natural or by choice — not only on account of the absurdity shown, but also because none of the saints has ever been found to have said this — knowing truly that choice belongs to those capable of being moved toward both alternatives, I mean the good and the evil, which, with regard to Christ, who is truly the very essence and source of good things, is, even to conceive, not to say to utter, utterly full of impiety.

And concerning these matters, let this suffice. But concerning the “one activity” set down in the seventh chapter of the difficulties of the great Gregory, the meaning is clear. For I said that the condition of the saints that is to be in the age to come, describing it, is “one activity” of God and of the saints — the activity that deifies all the saints, belonging to the blessedness that is hoped for: on the one hand existing in God according to essence, on the other having come to be in the saints according to grace. Or rather, I attributed it to God alone — since the deification of the saints according to grace is the effect of the divine activity alone, of which we do not have the power sown innately in our nature. But of those things whose power we do not have, neither do we have the actuality, which is the fulfillment of a natural power. The actuality, then, depends on the power; and the power on the essence. For the actuality proceeds from the power, and the power from the essence and in the essence. These three, then, as they say, are mutually dependent: that which is capable, the capacity, and the possible. And they call the essence “that which is capable”; the capacity, that according to which we have the movement of being able; and the possible, that which is naturally apt to come about from us according to capacity.

But if that which is naturally apt to come about from us is according to a natural capacity — deification is not among the things naturally apt to come about from us according to capacity, since it is not among the things in our power. For no principle within nature is above nature. Deification, therefore, is not an actuality of our capacity, of which we do not have the power according to nature — but it is of the divine power alone, being not a recompense of righteous works for the saints, but a demonstration of the bounty of the One who made them — He having, by ordinance, made the lovers of good things to be, by grace, that which He Himself shall be shown to be by nature, according to the principles He alone knows — so that He may both be perfectly known, and yet remain entirely incomprehensible. I did not, then, do away with the natural activity of those who shall undergo this, which is by nature apt to bring it about, having ceased from further natural production — but I showed it alone as experiencing the enjoyment of good things; rather I indicated the supra- Minor Theological Works 1677 essential power alone as productive of deification, come to be according to grace for those who are deified. And let no one suspect that by these things one activity of Christ is being proclaimed.

For we do not proclaim Christ a man deified, but God perfectly made man, and having made manifest, through flesh naturally active and noetically ensouled, the infinite, infinitely, and beyond-infinitely superinfinite power of His own ineffable Godhead — the same being wholly God, and truly man; both natures the same, perfect and most complete; and possessing, without deficiency, everything that belongs by nature to both, except sin, of which there is no account. For of whatever natures He Himself was the hypostasis, of these He also naturally received the essential principles. But if He received the essential principles of those natures of which He Himself was the hypostasis, He fittingly also had the natural, ensouled activity of flesh, of which the essential principle is sown in the nature. But if, as man, He had a natural activity, of which the principle of nature was constitutive, then, as God, He evidently also had a natural activity, of which the principle was declarative of the supra-essential Godhead. For being perfect God, and the same perfect man, He acted naturally according to each of those natures of which He was the hypostasis, without division. But if He acted naturally according to each of those natures of which He was the hypostasis, without division, it is clear that, along with the natures of which He was the hypostasis, He also had their essential and constitutive activities, of which He Himself was the union — acting fittingly for Himself, and by the things He did confirming the truth of that from which, in which, and which He was.

Christ, then, is one out of two natures, Godhead and manhood; the only-begotten Word and Son and Lord of glory; in which He is known, and in which, existing truly, He is believed; possessing two natural and generic movements — that is, activities — constitutive of that from which He was, of which the particular operations were the effects; both put forth from Him and brought to completion by Him, without division of that from which He was, and without any confusion whatsoever. For He who is never subject to change, and who provides to all beings both their being and their manner of being, their permanence and their constitution, does not admit of division or confusion. These things, sanctified Father, have been said briefly for the sake of your command — that you may have, if they bring anything useful, a means of repelling the idle talk of the loquacious, who take license from the difficulty of the times. Minor Theological Works 1679 And do not overlook your poor servant; but enrich him with the divine Spirit, giving in return for my obedience your powerful prayers; and do not cease commending me to Christ, the great God and Maker of all, who is worshiped by all creation, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, unto the ages. Amen. Scholia 1. Nature is circumscribed in reason for the generation of virtue, according to progress — which is the complete denial of nature in respect of virtue.

And the movement of every age and time is limited in mind, for the establishment of unerring union, according to ascent — which is the transcending of the things in which nature is, I mean place and time, in which is the subsistence of beings. And the restoration according to grace toward Him from whom are all things, and through whom, and unto whom, as the end of all things, comes about according to assumption — which is a passion of the one who is assumed, but an activity of the One who assumes.

2. “Person,” that is, hypostasis; “nature,” that is, essence. For essence is that which is according to the image, namely reason; while that which is according to likeness is manner of life, which is hypostasis — from both of which virtue is completed. For they call virtue the hypostasis of wisdom; and they say wisdom is the essence of virtue. Wherefore the unerring manifestation of wisdom is the manner of the conduct of contemplatives; and the foundation of virtue is the reasoned account of the contemplation of the practical. And the most unfailing character of both is the unswerving gaze toward that which properly is.

3. That man is not immutable by nature, and how.

4. That will is characteristic either of essence or of hypostasis, and there is no intermediate between these — neither something common and composite of both, nor something participating in neither.

5. That choice, in the case of Christ, signifies natural willing — that is, the appetitive power of nature.

6. See the mystery of the economy.

7. On the text, “For in Him we live and move and have our being” — that is, concerning essence, and power, and activity.

8. Concerning deification. May you also, Neilos, hear these things, and think as those who teach the truth think. Minor Theological Works 1681 To Marinus the Most Devout Priest From the Treatise on Activities and Wills, Chapter 50 That Severus maliciously says that the hypostasis is the same as the nature, in order to ratify confusion by means of the one nature, and to escape refutation by saying he had understood “hypostasis” to mean “nature”; and again, that he introduces division, championing union from hypostasis, and thinks to escape notice by saying he takes “natures” in place of And again, when charged with the nonexistence of the natures on account of a merely nominal difference, that he finds refuge for his defense in a difference that is merely one of natural quality. And that, just as Nestorius, by calling the union merely nominal, introduced a real division, so also Severus, by calling the difference of the natures merely nominal, effects a real confusion. But Severus, hard pressed by these arguments and unable to bear the test of truth, again brings forward, as is his custom, falsehood as his ally — saying that in the economy the hypostasis is the same as the nature, and that the difference in natural quality is the same as the real and natural difference, because every quality too is natural, and is called a “thing” — so that, if he is caught and exposed by the refutations, plainly through the one composite nature championing both the delusion of Mani and the confusion of Apollinarius, and the convergence, after the union, of the united things into one essence, held by Eutyches — chameleon-like, changing his colors, he might change his own statement, saying he had understood “nature” to mean “hypostasis.”

But if, again, saying the union came about from hypostases, that is, from persons, he is shown to hold the division of Ebion, and Paul of Samosata, and Nestorius, and to decree the activity of the Word as though in a prophet, by way of grace — he would again have falsehood ready as his advocate, declaring that he had said “hypostases” in place of “natures.” But if, again, he is justly accused, on the ground of a merely nominal difference, of dogmatizing the nonexistence of the united realities, he would find refuge for his defense in the notion of a difference as in natural quality — saying that after the union there is in Christ a difference of natural qualities, but not of natures, that is, of essences — by the term that dissolves confusion, that is, “difference,” the cunning sophist all the more tightening the confusion; not making the opposites, according to the law of nature, a dissolution of the opposites, but a coalescence, contrary to the definition and law of nature — and having become, with regard to the difference, such a one for the deception of his hearers as Nestorius was shown to be with regard to the Minor Theological Works 1683 union. For that one, naming the union by a merely bare appellation, introduced by way of activity a division of the realities; and this one, championing a merely nominal difference after the union, holds that the differing things have their existence according to mere conception, but sets up their confusion according to activity.

For if Nestorius had not held the union to have come about merely nominally, he would have said that the one composite hypostasis of Christ, resulting from the union of the natures, was accomplished; and this man, if he did not proclaim the difference to be merely nominal, would not have refused to say that in Christ, after the union, there is the uncut and undivided quality of the differing things — knowing that with every difference, quantity is altogether introduced together with it, and with every quantity, the number that signifies it is conjoined. For it is impossible either for there to be a difference of quantity apart, or for a quantity to be discerned without the number that signifies it. And the one, knowing only the quantity of the natures in Christ, but not knowing the unity, by way of composition, of the hypostasis from the natures, makes the mere appellation of union a cloak through and through for the division of the natures; while the other, championing the unity according to nature alone in place of the unity according to hypostasis, but not knowing the natural quantity, makes the mere difference in natural quality a cloak for the confusion of the natures. And the one, championing the union of the natures in mere gnomic quality alone, denies that the true assembling of the realities came about according to essence, not enduring to say so; for “authority” and “dignity” and “such-and-such a will,” of which Nestorius said the union consisted, are plainly movements of judgment, but not of nature.

And the other, saying that after the union there is a merely nominal difference in natural quality alone, plainly makes an abolition of the things united, denying the difference according to essence of the very things united in natural otherness. And, to speak concisely of these matters: the one has discovered the union of gnomic qualities to be the division of the things that are by nature; the other, on the contrary, has devised the difference of natural qualities to be the confusion of the realities. Truly an evil pair of lawless men, madly tearing apart, through opposite errors, the truth of right doctrines. For the one, introducing a union of gnomic qualities, makes a division of the natures that, according to him, were never united at all; and the other, saying that after the union there is only a difference of natural qualities, likewise introduces a confused alteration of the natures that, according to him, were never united at all — not knowing what they are even saying. For it was necessary, had they Minor Theological Works 1685 known how to be consistent with themselves, that Nestorius, who says the union came about from gnomic qualities, should not divide the natures, of which he did not even in the beginning at all champion a union; but should recognize a difference, after the union, of the very things whose union he says there is.

And that Severus, introducing a difference of natural qualities, should not, after the union, confuse the natures, of whose union we do not permit him to speak, so long as he is ignorant of their difference after the union. For the difference of the things united is contemplated after the union, even though Nestorius rage against it; and the union of the things differing after the union, even though Severus draw up in battle array and make a great advocacy for the falsehood. If, then, according to Nestorius, a union came about of gnomic wills alone, let him also state their difference after the union, abandoning the division of realities never at all united; and let him gather together, with the difference of gnomic wills, also the variation of judgment — according to which it is not the difference according to nature that is naturally shown, but that according to hypostasis, producing a relaxation and intensification of goodness in the difference of gnomic wills; and he has made sinful the man deified by progress on his account — as not having, in every mode and reason, the same gnomic will as God. For the difference of gnomic wills produces, as I said, a variation of judgment; and the variation of judgment introduces a diminution of goodness — by which he who is still held in any way whatsoever has not yet become entirely sinless in his judgment.

Therefore, Nestorius, not accepting the one according to hypostasis from the concourse of the natures, has also dissolved the union of the gnomic wills, finding no way to say what, then, is the one thing demonstrated from the union of the gnomic wills. For he cannot speak of an identity of goodness, since the difference of the gnomic wills after the union plainly displays an otherness between them according to intensification and relaxation. For of those things whose concourse there is, it is altogether necessary also to speak of their difference. And in vain has the notion of “samewilledness” been devised by him, even though it is fitting for showing the division of persons. For same-willedness is a union of wills that preserves the difference of those united according to it — provided the division of the willing persons, in whom it is united, is contemplated without confusion. Minor Theological Works 1687 From the Same Treatise, Chapter 51 That the Fathers, in speaking of two wills in Christ, signified the natural laws, not the gnomic judgments. But let no one hold the argument accountable for forbidding a duality of gnomic wills, finding that nearly all the glorious teachers speak of two wills; nor, again, let the pious mind, following Severus, migrate on this account toward one will, lest it make one evil the successor of another — I mean, the confusion in place of the division.

For the divinely-inspired Fathers did not speak, with regard to Christ, of a quantity of gnomic wills, but of natural ones — rightly calling “wills” the essential and natural laws and principles of the things united. For having reflected upon the natural appetite of the noetically ensouled flesh — not the gnomic appetite of some particular man — an appetite which has the natural power of desire for that which is, being naturally moved and shaped by the Word toward the fulfillment of the economy, they wisely called it “will”; without which it is impossible for human nature to exist. For natural will is the power that desires that which accords with nature, and that holds together all the properties essentially belonging to the nature; according which, being always naturally implanted in that which is by nature capable of willing, is the being-naturally-disposed-to-will. But being-naturallydisposed-to-will is not the same as willing; just as beingnaturally-disposed-to-speak is not the same as speaking. For that which is capable of speech is always so by nature, but does not always speak — since the one belongs to essence, held together by the principle of nature, while the other belongs to intention, shaped by the judgment of the speaker; so that the being-always-naturally-disposed-to-speak belongs to nature, but the how of speaking belongs to hypostasis — just as also being-naturally-disposed-to-will and willing. But if being-naturally-disposed-to-will and willing are not the same (the one, as I said, belonging to essence, the other to the intention of the one who wills), then the incarnate Word, as man, had the being-naturally-disposed-to-will, moved and shaped by His own divine will.

For “his willing,” says the great Gregory, “was nothing opposed to God, being wholly deified.” But if it had been deified, it had evidently been deified by connaturality with the One deifying; but that which deifies and that which is deified are, in every case, two — not one and the same in nature. For that which deifies and that which is deified belong to the category of relatives; and relatives are, in every case, naturally introduced together with one another, and each is conceived along with the other. Therefore, as being naturally so disposed, the Savior, as man, is also shown willing the shrinking from death, along with Minor Theological Works 1689 the other passions, in the flesh — displaying the economy as pure of all illusion, and redeeming the nature of the passions condemned on account of sin. And again He displays the impulse, having put death to death in the flesh — that He might both show, in Himself, that which is by nature saved, as man, and might display, as God, the ineffable and great will of the Father, fulfilled bodily. For it was not that He might suffer and thereby save that He primarily became man. Wherefore He says: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless not my will, but Thine, be done” — showing, together with the shrinking, the impulse of the human will, in its connaturality with the divine, being shaped and coming to be according to the interweaving of the natural principle with the manner of the economy — since the incarnation is a clear demonstration both of nature and of economy: of the natural principle of the things united, on the one hand, and of the hypostatic manner of the union, on the other; the one confirming, the other innovating, the natures, without alteration or confusion.

But it is not the same thing, in the same respect, that needs both to be set aside and to be put into operation — which would be absurd, since the Father's will is by nature the Son's will also. The Savior, then, had, as man, a natural will, shaped by His own divine will, not opposed to it — for nothing natural is ever altogether opposed to God, whenever it is not also gnomic — wherein, too, a personal division is contemplated, provided it be according to nature; since one must hold the Maker accountable for the blame, as having made in Himself that which fights against nature. But how could the Word, having become incarnate, be truly man, if He were devoid of that which chiefly characterizes rational nature? For that which is deprived of the appetitive movement of desire would also be without any vital power whatsoever. And that which does not have a vital power from nature does not have any soul at all, either — without which not even flesh could ever subsist. Therefore the Word, incarnate according to hypostasis, did not present the economy as a mere shaping of flesh, but fulfilled it in the true nature of flesh, noetically and rationally ensouled — not having, according to Severus, a natural will as man. For if He were truly deficient, as man, in natural will, He did not truly become a perfect man, nor did He become man at all.

For what is the existence of an imperfect nature, of which there is not even a principle? The aim, then, of Severus and his associates was, by means of some natural deficiency, to thrust out the nature ineffably assumed in the union — and to ratify the abomination both of the delusion of Mani, and of the confusion of Apollinarius, Minor Theological Works 1691 and of the consubstantiation of Eutyches. For I recall that, while I was living on the island of Crete, certain false bishops of the party of Severus, having engaged me in argument, I heard say that this was why we do not confess two activities in Christ according to the Tome of Leo — on account of the wills that follow upon them, by which of necessity a duality of persons is introduced; but nor, again, do they confess a single, simple activity, which cannot be so contemplated — but we say, according to Severus, that one will, and every divine and human activity, proceeds from one and the same incarnate God the Word. To whom one might, in reproach, apply that part of the prophecy: “Ho, ho, flee from the land of the north; escape to Zion, you who dwell with the daughter of Babylon.” For the north is truly the mind of Severus, become a gloomy place, deprived of the dwelling of the divine light; and the daughter of Babylon is the confused teaching of false doctrines, wickedly begotten from the worst habit that came upon him — which is inhabited by those who have turned away from the light of knowledge, and who do not wish, through conversion, to be saved unto Zion, that is, the Church.

For at once, both with regard to theology and to the economy, the tortured reasoning of Severus is defeated. For if, according to him, wills are naturally apt to follow upon activities, and persons are introduced by wills, as effects by causes — not to mention what the proof is — then to every person, according to him, evidently belongs a will; and to this, in every case, a corresponding activity will be introduced together with it. For the relative term, having an indissoluble relation, makes the converse correspondence of the related terms equal. Therefore, since what is said simply is manifold in meaning: if the wills introduced by conversion together with the persons are natural, then the blessed Monad will, according to Severus, be also a Triad of natures. But if they are gnomic, the Monad will altogether be in discord with itself, the wills not agreeing, as a Triad of persons; or altogether, if the will of the supra-essential Trinity is one, the Godhead, though called by three names, will be of a single person. And again, if, according to Severus's proposition, will altogether follows upon activity, and person is introduced together with it — then, of necessity, when the activity is taken away, the will that follows upon it is taken away together with it, and the person introduced together with it. But if, when the activity is taken away, the will is taken away together with it, and the person is taken away together with the will — then, according to Severus, Christ will be without hypostasis with respect to activity, since, on account of the Minor Theological Works 1693 will taken away together with it, the person introduced together with the will has been taken away together with it.

And again, if, according to him, wills altogether follow upon activities, and persons are introduced together with wills; and he says that all divine and human activity proceeds from one and the same incarnate God the Word — then every will, according to him (namely, both divine and human), as following upon the activities together with the equal number of persons introduced together with them, will altogether be brought forth together from one and the same incarnate Word; and no argument will gainsay this. It will follow, therefore, that by the removal of the natural activities, Christ, according to Severus, is without essence; and by the exclusion of the one activity, again without will and without hypostasis; and by the full production of both divine and human activity, of many wills and many persons — or, more properly speaking, of infinite wills and infinite persons. For he who has affirmed every activity has made an innumerable declaration of quantity. Therefore, according to the converse Severus's proposition, his reasoning concerning theology collapses, introducing Arian polytheism, and Sabellian atheism, and a nature of Godhead fighting with itself in pagan fashion; and according to the proposition itself, his reasoning concerning the economy is plainly corrupted, holding the one Christ to be without essence, without will, without hypostasis — and again the same to be of infinite will and infinite person. What could be more impious than this?

Do you see where the rule of Severus, in its course, leads those who are persuaded by it? For every such argument stands without the unshakable foundation of truth. But you, good sir, who say there is one will of Christ — how, and of what sort, do you say this? If as natural to Christ, you have alienated Him in essence from both Father and Mother, He being united in essence to neither; for neither of them is by nature Christ. And how will you escape, by saying this, the danger of polytheism? But if gnomic, it will be characteristic only of His own hypostasis. For the gnomic is that which defines a person; and He will plainly be shown to have a will different from, and at variance with, the Father and the Spirit, according to you. But if it belongs to His Godhead alone, the Godhead will be subject to passion, given over, contrary to nature, to eating and drinking. But if it belongs to His manhood alone, it will not be efficacious by nature. For how could it be, if it is human? And the display of the miracles will plainly be shown to be a monstrous fraud. Minor Theological Works 1695 But if it is common by nature to both, how will the will be common, when the nature of the two is different? But if it is as of a composite whole, this is in addition a new fable and fiction.

For what composition can there be of a will? Again you have alienated Him from the Father, characterizing only a composite hypostasis by a composite will. Thus, then, the argument, once it advances, uproots every planting that the Father did not plant, since it is not natural for it to spare a foreign husbandry. But, it seems, Severus has done away with the natural will of the manhood in Christ, not knowing that the movement according to desire is the most proper and primary characteristic especially of every rational nature; which the Fathers, having considered, brilliantly confessed a difference of natural, not gnomic, wills in Christ. For they would never have spoken of a difference of gnomic wills in Christ, lest they proclaim Him of two judgments and two wills, and, so to speak, at war with Himself in the discord of His reasonings, and for this reason preach Him as two-personed — they who know that it is only according to this gnomic will that a difference of wills has come about in life: namely, the entrance of sin, and our estrangement from God. For evil consists in nothing else than only in the difference of our gnomic will from the divine will — to which a quantity opposed to it is altogether introduced, together with the number that signifies it, showing our will's, according to judgment, enmity toward God.

Nestorius, then, and Severus have one and the same aim in their impiety, even though the manner differs. For the one, fleeing the union according to hypostasis on account of confusion, makes the essential difference into a personal division; while the other, not speaking of the essential difference on account of division, works a natural confusion of the union according to hypostasis — whereas it is necessary to confess, with regard to Christ, neither confusion nor division, but the union of the things differing in essence, and the difference of the things united according to hypostasis — that both the principle of the essences and the manner of the union may be piously proclaimed. Both of these men, tearing these apart — the one ratifying only the union of gnomic qualities, the other only the difference of natural qualities after the union — have both fallen away from the truth of the realities: the one boldly condemning the mystery to division, the other to confusion. Minor Theological Works 1697 To George the Most Devout Priest and Abbot, Who Had Asked by Letter Concerning the Mystery of Christ Having winged your own mind with divine longing, and having raised your reason above zeal for matter and the things concerning it, O Father honored by God, you possess an insatiable engagement with the sacred Oracles, and, if anyone, an untiring power for the diligent attention given to them.

For that which is beyond sense knows no satiety; nor indeed does that which is beyond conception know any circumscription whatsoever. For the one has risen above all flowing and ebbing according to nature; the other transcends every form and figure; and it makes manifest, as far as is lawful, the revelation of the hidden thing, and it affords the possible apprehension of the indeterminate — as much as is sufficient for the ravishing of the mind and the seizing of the Holy Spirit. For it is unto this, and for this, that the lovingkindness of the condescension of the One above man, through revelation, exists — deifying by grace those who ascend together with it by disposition, and who receive, in the kenosis of the Word, the fullness that corresponds to it, in the completion of the working of the commandments; according to which you yourself, having been led up to the perfection of prudence and courage, prudently press down that which appears, and justly fatten that which is hidden — so that in the one you might display the mortification of Jesus, wholly annihilating all sin; and in the other you might display the life, putting forward every virtue in a manner beyond the world — from which, having rightly accomplished sacred practice and contemplation, you have obtained salvation as a sacred end; which, in order to share also with others, and, in imitation of God, to make it known, you have chosen to make use of honored syllables toward me, unworthy, lowly, and unlearned as I am — first, to make wise and to give understanding by reason; and further, to sanctify, through the grace united to you, distributed to all everywhere — for it is uncircumscribed, having as its cause the Word who is without cause.

Then also, wishing to be led sufficiently to knowledge of the new mystery of the deification, in human fashion, of God the Word incarnate for our sake and perfectly made man — not desiring by your question to learn the principal thing, for you are already in possession of all good things; but to advance to a more perfect initiation that which had not yet received the lesser. And, marveling at your pious manner, I set forth the argument as I am able — saying that the humanity in the Savior is not, by nature, one thing, and ours another; but the same in essence and without variance, since it was taken Minor Theological Works 1699 from ours, according to the ineffable assumption from the virginal, undefiled blood of the all-pure Mother of God — with which the Word, being united after the manner of a seed, became flesh, without departing from being God according to essence; and He became, as we are, a perfect man, except for sin alone — on account of which we often are in discord, and wrestle against God according to the will, as possessing an inclination toward either side; but He, being by nature free of all sin, as man not merely such, but as God made man, had nothing opposed; but preserved our nature undefiled, and altogether properly unstained — wherefore also He said: “Now the ruler of this world comes, and finds nothing in me” — meaning, in those things by which we, falsifying our nature, display the opposition of the will; on account of which even Christ is called, with respect to what pertains to us, “unsubjected,” until He release us too from this by the power of His becoming man — the truth of which, confirming it, He became all things for our sake, and did all things willingly on our behalf, having in no way falsified either our essence or any of its blameless and natural properties — even though He also deified it, together with all those other things, after the manner of iron set aflame, having shown it wholly divinely active, as having, on account of the union, entirely and utterly interpenetrated it, and having become, together with it, without confusion, one and the same hypostasis.

Wherefore the humanity in Him differs from ours, not on account of the principle of nature, but on account of the novel manner of its generation — being the same according to essence, but not the same according to the absence of seed, since it was not a mere humanity, but truly that of Him who was made man for our sake. Just so, too, His willing, properly being natural as with us, but shaped divinely, above us. For it is clear that absence of seed and seed do not divide nature; but they are divided with regard to the same nature — just as also ingeneracy and generation. Since, if perchance the Word, as man, had a difference from our nature on account of the unusualness of His generation, He would altogether also have one from the Father's essence, on account of His generation. For ingeneracy and generation are not the same. And we too would have one from old Adam and Eve, who came into being without seed — for the one is a formation of the One who formed him, and the other is a portion of the formation. But surely the Son is the same as the Father on account of the Godhead — for He is God and consubstantial; just as we too, with regard to Adam and Eve, and with the very God incarnate for our sake, are kin and Minor Theological Works 1701 consubstantial on account of humanity.

For just as the unbegotten and the begotten are not the essence of God — for who would say so — so neither are seed and the absence of seed, in any way whatsoever, the nature of humanity. The great theologian Gregory, then, gives no indication that the humanity in the Savior is, according to nature, one thing, and ours another — even though it has seemed so to some, from his saying: “We would say that the word is shaped by the man” — not the one understood as in the Savior (for “his willing,” being wholly deified, was nothing opposed to God), but the one that is ours — as the human will not altogether following the divine, but for the most part resisting and wrestling against it. For it is properly His, and is said to be His, not as being of another, or from another, apart from our essence and nature — but as said on account of Him and in Him, having come to be according to the same and one hypostasis; and not as done by itself, apart, or for its own sake, as with us. Wherefore, also, He held the introduced manner of generation, innovating a seed proper to Himself — the Word Himself, His subsisting divinely in it being allotted together with His being naturally — so that both what is ours might be confirmed, and what is above us might be believed.

For it is necessary in all things both to preserve, in the case of the incarnate God the Word who truly became man for our sake, the assumed nature together with its natural properties (without which it would not be nature at all, but only an empty phantasm), and to safeguard the union — the one being preserved in natural otherness, the other again being recognized in hypostatic identity — and thus, wisely and at the same time piously, to declare the whole principle of the economy, throughout, both unconfused and undivided. Proclaiming Him orthodoxly, you will have Him proclaiming you in return, according to His promise, and bestowing the enjoyment of His own gifts, here through hope, and there through experience; of which enjoyment beseech that I too may partake, sanctified Father, bringing me through your intercession to Him who calls and saves — as a reward for the mutual compassion of kinsmen toward one another, He who grants to be glorified with Him and in Him — to whom be glory and dominion, together with the all-holy Father and His life-giving Spirit, unto the ages of ages. Amen. Against Those Who Say That One Must Speak of One Activity of Christ by Predominance Against those who say that one must speak of one activity of Christ by predominance, on the ground that His divine Minor Theological Works 1703 activity, being more efficacious, predominates over the human — thus must one make reply.

First, that you yourselves also confess two activities: one predominant — I mean the divine — and one predominated over — namely, the human, evidently; which belongs to the category of relatives. But relatives altogether introduce together with themselves also the things distinguished over against them. Then, that if you speak of the activity by predominance, as though the human were abolished on account of being predominated over, you introduce a diminution to them both. For that which predominates is altogether itself also among the things that are affected; for it too is dominated by that which is dominated over. For even if less, still it is altogether dominated — just as gold, predominating over the silver mixed into it, let us say, or the bronze, is itself also dominated, even if less, clearly according to the quantity that has been mixed in. Against Those Who Say That, Just as There Is One Activity of the Instrument and the Mover, so Also of Godhead and Manhood There Is One Activity Against those who say that, just as there is one activity of the instrument and of the one who moves it, so also of Godhead and manhood there is one activity. If you say the instrument is natural, then, according to you, the Word will be coeval with the flesh, or the flesh co-eternal with the Word — for everything that makes use of a natural instrument has that instrument coeval with it, as the soul has the body; and then it will be time for us to call the divine nature a creature, or the body uncreated.

But if you say the instrument is artificial, you thereby introduce it as inanimate, and as separately standing apart and divided, and not always in motion, but only when it seems good to the one working it to take it in hand and put it to work; and then you will be shown, at last, either to be of one mind with the deranged Nestorius, who divides and separates the two natures of Christ God that came together into one hypostasis and one person; or disciples of the impious Apollinarius, who says the body of Christ is without soul and without mind. Minor Theological Works 1705 Against Those Who Say One Composite Activity of Christ Against those who say one composite activity of Christ. Composite activity altogether belongs to composite nature. But every composite nature has a generation that is coeval with its parts, and involuntary — for it is created, and circumscribed by its own place and world, and is inclusive of many individuals. It is time, then, for you, who say one composite activity of Christ, to say also that Christ's nature is composite — of which this activity is also definitive, having parts coeval with each other; and their concourse involuntary and compelled; created, and circumscribed by its own world and place; and, in consequence, also a multitude of Christs, of whom this composite nature is predicated.

On the Saying, “Father, If It Be Possible, Let This Cup Pass from Me” On the saying, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” If you take the saying “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” which bears the sense of shrinking, as spoken from the man — “not the one understood as in the Savior, for his willing, being wholly deified, was nothing opposed to God, but the one that is ours, as the human will not altogether following God, but for the most part resisting and wrestling against it,” as the divine Gregory says — what, then, do you make of what follows in the prayer, namely, “Not what I will, but let Your will prevail”? Does it seem to you to be of shrinking, or of courage? Of utmost concord, or of division? But that it is not of resistance, nor of cowardice, but rather of complete connaturality and concord, none of those who have understanding will gainsay. And if it is of complete connaturality and concord, from which will do you accept this? From the man that is ours, or from the man understood as in the Savior? But if from the one that is ours, then the teacher's statement concerning it is mistaken in what it declares — namely, that the human will does not altogether follow the divine will, but for the most part resists and wrestles against it.

For if it follows, it does not resist; and if it resists, it does not follow. For the one, as opposed to the other, is abolished and gives way before it. But if you take “not what I will, but let Your will prevail” not from the one that is ours, but from the man understood as in the Savior, you have confessed the utmost concord of the human will toward His divine and paternal will; and you have set Minor Theological Works 1707 forth the two-ness of the twofold nature — both the wills and the activities being according to nature — while He has, in neither, any opposition whatsoever, even though He was, in all things, the same by nature, with the natural difference of the things from which, and in which, and which He was. But if, being driven by these arguments, you should go on to say that “not what I will” belongs neither to the man that is ours, nor to the man understood as in the Savior, but is spoken negatively of the beginningless Godhead of the Onlybegotten — signifying the exclusion of His having any private will apart from the Father — then you are compelled also to refer the thing willed, namely, the request concerning the cup, to that same beginningless Godhead. For if you say the negation applies to the exclusion of His having a private will, but not to the setting aside of the thing willed — for it is not possible to place the negation upon both: both upon the Onlybegotten's having a private will apart from the Father, and upon the thing willed — since altogether the will of the Father and of the Son, being common, would be an abolition of that which is willed by God, namely, our salvation.

For this is, by nature, what is willed by Him. But if it is not possible to place the negation upon both, it is clear that if you carry it over to His having a private will, so as to establish the common will, you do not thereby abolish the thing willed, namely, the request concerning the cup; but you will bring it to bear against the common and beginningless Godhead, upon which you have also negatively carried the willing. But if this is a thing even to conceive of is to be shunned, then clearly here the negation, that is, “not what I will,” wholly removing the sense of opposition, sets forth the connaturality of the Savior's human will toward His divine and paternal will — the Word having made substantial the whole of the whole nature, and having deified the whole of it by that substantiation. Wherefore, having become, for our sake, as we are, He said, in a manner befitting man, to God the Father: “Not my will, but let Yours prevail” — since He who is by nature God had, as man too, a willing whose fulfillment was the paternal will. Wherefore, according to both — that from which, and that in which, and of which He was the hypostasis — He was known to be, by nature, both willing and active for our salvation: on the one hand as agreeing to this together with the Father and the Spirit; on the other, as having become obedient to the Father for this, unto death, even death on a cross — and having Himself accomplished, through flesh, the great mystery of the economy on our behalf.

Minor Theological Works 1709 That those who say that “not what I will” is spoken negatively of the beginningless Godhead of the Only-begotten — signifying, as they say, that He does not will anything privately apart from the Father — are compelled also to carry over the thing willed, namely, the request concerning the cup, to that same beginningless Godhead; and that, since it is not possible to place the negation upon both — both upon the Only-begotten's willing anything privately apart from the Father, and upon the thing willed — they must altogether carry it over to the willing-something-privately alone, not to the thing willed, which is the request concerning the cup, that is, our salvation. For what could be more absurd than this? For it follows that God wills to avoid that which is, by nature, willed by Him. Since to whatever “not what I will” belongs, to that altogether also belongs “let this cup pass from me.” Dogmatic Tome Sent to Cyprus to Marinus the Deacon I was no less astonished at the propriety of your great reverence than I marveled at the manliness of your surpassing zeal, O all-holy servant of God, and most wise initiate and hierophant of His mysteries. For by the sacred interweaving of both, you have acquired perfection in all good things: according to the one, having become wholly and altogether God's in the whole, through the fulfillment of His divine commandments, you consider yourself, on account of an extreme excess of poverty, to be, in comparison with such as myself, of a soul-disposition still attached to matter, wallowing in the ichor of unclean passions — while at the same time reasonably securing for yourself thereby a sure safety.

For nothing is stronger than voluntary poverty for the establishment and preservation of good things; for it stands as an unbreakable foundation of the divine buildings in the soul, and becomes, for all the others too who are zealous for the good, a means of procuring salvation — by leading, through effective demonstration rather than didactic address, those who wisely direct both mind and life alike toward you, to greatness of virtue through lofty selfabasement. And according to this zeal, I say, having the whole fervor of the Spirit, and having acquired in the earth of your heart that fire which He came to cast upon it — He who consumes every wicked habit and movement of ours, the Word who is by nature a lover of the good and a lover of mankind — you set aflame those who, through deceit and folly, rage madly after matter and rage madly in idle talk, in base deeds and counterfeit words, refuting their rottenness and vanity by the projection of the blessed lamp that burns Minor Theological Works 1711 unquenched in you according to divine knowledge and virtue; and you warm those who have been thoroughly chilled by the rigidity of this dark and lightless projection, with the ray-like beams of the divine words; driving off and dissolving entirely their numbness, and transposing their utmost shrinking into utmost courage and power; and you illumine again, from the eternal mountains — I mean the immaterial ones, and every knowledge and power of the patristic words and doctrines that transcends all the senses — those who long for light; and by the taste of wisdom, those who have already been well imaged, through hope, with that very thing which is by nature the object of longing, you bring them toward the total transformation through experience, and you piously lead them to it.

For nothing so images the work of your divine priesthood as zeal tempered with piety toward God and unyielding, and the innate reason within us that both sustains and kindles it, preparing us to do that which He who is by nature and first commands us to do, for our ascent to Him, and for our perfect restoration through holy works and good doctrines; and preparing us for the flight from and turning away from the things that cause us to miss this sacred ascent. And what else so violently dissolves this — I mean the journey toward the Word — and, as it were, walls it off, except the fearful betrayal of it by those who now spring up against those who travel the royal road of the divine and patristic doctrines; and who recognize no deviation on either side, unhappily borne along in the pits of confusion and the chasms of division; nor wish to know it at all — that road by which, through the grace of the all-holy Spirit who wisely guides and leads by the hand, those who hasten in their prayers, through sincere and orthodox faith, travel toward the perfect face-to-face knowledge and initiation into the great God and Savior of all, Christ Himself. For betrayal is the alteration of pious belief in Him and concerning Him, by the adoption of the confession and teaching of the heterodox, selling Him off unto the abolition of His all-holy flesh from us — or rather, unto the overturning of the whole economy; and it is a betrayal heavier than that which occurred at the first, when the Word was with us in the flesh, by as much as the knowledge of His Godhead, and the truth of the humanity in Him, have plainly become, for all, more perfect — having taken hold of the ends of the inhabited world through the great voice of the holy Fathers who proclaim it.

For since it is firmly confessed by all, everywhere, believed orthodoxly, according to the guidance of the God-judged teachers, that the one of the holy and consubstantial Trinity, the only-begotten Son, being by nature perfect God, became by will perfect man, having truly assumed our flesh, Minor Theological Works 1713 consubstantial with us, from the holy Ever-Virgin Mother of God, rationally and noetically ensouled, and having united it to Himself indissolubly and properly according to hypostasis — He exists, together with it, one, just as before; yet not without composition in hypostasis, even though simple in nature, inasmuch as He remained God and consubstantial with the Father; and again twofold, as having become flesh — so that, by the twoness of nature, He might be akin in essence to the extremes, and preserve the natural difference of His own parts in relation to one another; while by the oneness of person, having the perfect identity within the parts, and possessing, as one and alone, the personal difference in relation to the extremes; and by the undiminished, natural, and essential likeness to them — I mean the extremes — He might be perfect in each: the same being at once God and man. Those who impiously teach a diminution of what naturally belongs to Him introduce Him as imperfect, and as having suffered the falling-away of what is according to nature.

For if He does not preserve, without diminution, the property of each nature, apart from sin alone, according to the divine Fathers — the property of those natures from which and in which the incarnate Word properly exists even after the union — He is a deficient God, since He is altogether a man who has acquired a diminution of His natural properties. It is not fitting, therefore, on the pretext of a union that in no way injures anything, but only binds the realities together into one according to hypostasis, to corrupt their existence by the abolition of the natural will and the essential activity. For whether, as a whole out of parts, we should perhaps melt down and fuse together the two essential wills and the equal number of natural activities, by composition, into one will and one activity — such a thing will be shown to be mythical, and utterly foreign and alien to His communion with the Father and with us; since He does not have, according to nature, a composite will or activity — nor, again, do we. For composition belongs to none of the things in a subject; since these do not have existence at all considered in themselves, apart from the underlying essence. For, besides being graceless and utterly abominable, they would, on account of their natural kinship with both above and below, be divided and cut in half by way of distinction — and this while confessing the indissoluble union according to hypostasis.

Or again, if we should preserve the natural will and the essentially inherent activity of the incarnate Word's divine nature unimpaired, but take these away and strip them from the human essence in Him — then likewise we injure the transcendent union, which would have nothing to bind it to one hypostasis, the rationally and noetically ensouled flesh — that is, the essence and nature that is as ours — not existing Minor Theological Works 1715 at all, nor being preserved perfectly, in the Word. For where, and what nature, would this be, that has suffered the fallingaway of what is according to nature? If, then, the Lord was, in the flesh, deficient in these things, or in some one of them, of the natural properties, He was not flesh and man at all. For either let those who say this show a man who is, by nature, apart from these; or a man at all. Or, if this is nowhere the case at all, it is clear that the incarnate Word did not become a man deprived, by nature, of these things or of some one of them. For how, and by what reasoning, could this be, since nature has no deficiency of such things? But if He lacked them, He is something else, altogether foreign to our essence and unknown — and either this something was co-essential with Him from the beginning, and, He having come down from above, came down together with Him — that being, plainly, what He is said to have become; and then of what use to us is the descent, we in no way having come together with Him through the holy flesh not assumed from us and united according to hypostasis?

Or the whole thing is illusion, and only a figure deceiving the senses, and not the essence of flesh — as not being the firstfruits of our race, uniting the lump by grace, and releasing it from all the divisive things of which the transgression of the old Adam became the cause — on account of which death, too, was pronounced upon our nature. Why, then, do they envy us our perfect salvation and confession? Why do they strain against us their supposedly inescapable syllogisms, saying that wills follow upon activities, and that opposition follows in turn upon these — from which they also introduce those who will the opposite things? But, to pass over correcting their constructions — whence, and how, do they contrive such sophistries? I should like only to inquire and learn: did they, in doing such things, and in putting the new Ekthesis into effect, do this involuntarily — and who, then, applied the force? Then, after the act — the will not having existed at all beforehand — did they acquire it afterward, once the thing was done? Whence, and from what source, did it come? And who compelled the deed to have the will, so that it was done against willing, and the thing done was embraced against wishing? And again, how, if the incarnate Word Himself did not, as man, naturally will and perform the things according to nature, did He willingly accept hunger and thirst, and toil, and labor, and sleep, and all the rest?

For it was not the Word alone who willed or performed these things according to nature, having, together with the Father and the Spirit, a nature that is supra-essential and beyond infinity — even if again, “as God, by His Minor Theological Works 1717 authority, He gave to the nature, whenever He willed, the occasion to perform its own acts,” as the divine leader of the Nyssenes, the great Gregory, says. For if the same Word willed these things only as God, and not as man, then either the divine nature became, by nature, a body, or, having been transmuted in essence, He became flesh by a falling-away from His own Godhead; or altogether the flesh, as far as the rational aspect is concerned, was wholly irrational — or, if it was rationally ensouled, then that which is in Him was not ensouled, but was, throughout, inanimate and irrational; or, if it was rationally ensouled, it also possessed the natural will. For everything that is by nature rational is also, altogether, by nature possessed of will. And if He had, as man, a natural will, He willed altogether, according to essence, those very things which He Himself, as God, having created, implanted by nature in that essence for its constitution. For He did not come to falsify the nature which He Himself, as God and Word, had made; but He came to deify entirely the nature which He Himself, willing it for Himself, by the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Spirit, united according to the same and one hypostasis, together with all its natural properties, apart from sin.

Therefore, as being by nature God, He willed the divine and paternal things according to nature — for He was co-willer with His own Begetter; and, as the same being by nature man, He willed again the human things according to nature — keeping the economy pure of all illusion, in no way resisting the will of the Father. For none of the natural things, just as nature itself in no way whatsoever, ever resists the cause of nature; nor indeed does judgment, and whatever belongs to judgment, whenever it concords with the principle of nature. And indeed, if someone should say that something natural resists God, the accusation belongs rather to him than to nature — as having implanted in beings, by his own doing, a war leading to strife and battle against Him and against one another. For that nothing natural is opposed to God is clear from the fact that these things were created by Him according to generation, and bear no responsibility for their essential constitution in us; but altogether the opposite — that it is on account of their perversion that we plainly incur accusations. For according to this perversion, we become, by disposition, entirely wicked, like the ancient evil serpent; but according to that nature, we are, by nature, a formation of God and an honored creature. On account of this, according to the divine Fathers, we work no diminution at all, either of the natural wills, or indeed of the activities — just as neither of the natures themselves — in the case of the same and one Minor Theological Works 1719 incarnate God the Word; believing orthodoxly that He is, in every respect, perfect God and man at once, from His having, perfectly, both the divine and human things, both by nature, and by willing, and by acting; and from His having, properly, both divine and human essence, and will, and activity — lest, by a deficiency with regard to either of the natural properties, we should wrongly teach a diminution — or rather, a less-than-perfect existence — of either of the natures from which and in which He exists.

For that He had a will according to nature that was human, just as also, according to essence, one that was divine, the Word Himself plainly demonstrates through the fitting-forman economical refusal of death that He made for our sake, according to which He said: “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” — that He might show the weakness of His own flesh, and that He was not recognized by those who saw Him as flesh in mere appearance, deceiving the sense — but was, in truth, properly man, His natural willing bearing witness to this, whose refusal was according to the economy. And that, again, He had been wholly deified, concording with the divine will itself, being always moved and shaped from it and according to it, is clear from His making only the paternal will's judgment perfectly His own — according to which, as man, He said: “Not mine, but let Your will come to be” — giving Himself to us as a type and example in this too, for the setting aside of our own will, on account of the perfect fulfillment of the divine will, even should we behold, on this account, death impending. For if He, not having become man by nature, and not having acquired a natural, that is, human, will — inclining this according to the economy, and driving it together toward union with the paternal will — said to the Father Himself: “Let not my will come to be, but Yours” — it is clear that He said this as being God by nature; and from this, then, He showed Himself not to possess the same and equal will as the Father, but another, and one differing according to nature — which, subordinating, He asked that only the paternal will come to be.

And if He possessed a will, by nature, other than the Father's, it is clear that He also had an altered essence. “For of one essence,” according to the most wise Cyril, “there is indeed also one will.” But if the natural will is different, the nature is, in every way and altogether, different. One of two things, then: either He had, as man, a natural will, and, for our sake, economically, willingly refused death; and again He was impelled against it through perfect concord with the paternal will; or, not having, as man, a natural will, He suffered, as God by nature, the sufferings of the body as Minor Theological Works 1721 belonging to His own essence, that essence being naturally contracted at death, and possessing, by essence, another natural will in relation to the Father — which He also sought and prayed, by entreaty, not to come to pass. And what God fears death according to the nature of flesh, and on this account asks that the cup pass, while possessing another natural will apart from the paternal one? Removing, then, this absurdity from our souls, let us hold fast to the pious confession of the Fathers; and when He says, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,” as the great Athanasius says in his discourse on the Incarnation and the Trinity — “nevertheless, let not my will come to be, but Yours; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” — we understand that He shows two wills here: the one human, which is of the flesh; the other divine.

For the human will, on account of the weakness of the flesh, refuses the suffering; but His divine will is eager for it. To this the great theologian Gregory, too, in his second discourse on the Son, plainly teaches, saying: “For his willing was nothing opposed, being wholly deified.” So that He had a human willing, according to this divine teacher — yet in no way whatsoever opposed to God; because it was not at all gnomic, but was properly natural, being always shaped and moved by His own essential Godhead toward the fulfillment of the economy; and being wholly and entirely deified by the concord and connaturality toward the paternal will, and being divine properly by the union, but not by nature, and becoming and being called so truly — in no way, by being deified, departing from that which is according to nature. By saying, then, “wholly deified,” the teacher, having set forth the union of the human will in Him with His divine and paternal will, entirely drove away every opposition, and those who will the opposite things, from the mystery concerning Christ; and by saying, “For his willing,” showing both the innate movement of the human will in Him, and its essential and natural difference from His divine and paternal will, he wholly removed both confusion and illusion together. For, knowing that this confusion, and the division equal in dishonor to it, war against the principle of the economy for impiety's sake, both this divine Father and the holy teachers of the Catholic Church after him proclaimed loudly both the difference and the union with respect to each of these — the one, the difference, being really and perfectly preserved in the natural principle, the other, the union, again being firmly and hypostatically preserved in the economical manner — for the confirmation that in the one and only Christ God, according to the indissoluble union, the realities are essentially distinct, together with all their natural Minor Theological Works 1723 properties.

For just as they all taught one nature and another — I mean divine and human, a twofold nature in the same and one Christ — so too they resoundingly proclaimed to all one will and another — I mean divine and human — and two wills; and one activity and another, divine and human; and again a twofold activity, that is, two. For thus, too, they plainly proclaimed the numerical signification of the essences. For the same Christ, as man, and being by nature God, appears willing, economically, to let the cup pass — and up to this point shaping what is ours, as Cyril the wise instructed us — that He might drive away from our nature all shrinking from death, and might steel and rouse it manfully to an impulse against death itself. But He also appears, again, as God — although being man by essence — willing to fulfill the economy in a fatherly manner, and to accomplish the salvation of us all. And He is shown, too, as man, being God by nature, acting humanly, and willingly receiving, for our sake, the experience of the sufferings. And He is shown, again, as God, and being man according to nature, acting divinely, and putting forth the divine signs by nature — from which it was known that He was, at once, both God and man, the same, having, in natural correspondence with the number of the essences from which and in which He existed, an equal number of wills and activities by nature — for the confirmation of the perfect existence of those things which But if anyone, in opposition to these, contentiously brings forward, in objection, the “theandric activity” of the Godrevealing Dionysius, and the kindred expression of the most wise Cyril, demonstrated through both, let him know that he gathers for himself from this no strength against the pious confession.

For the “theandric” activity, expressed by the teacher in a fitting term, signifies, by way of periphrasis, plainly, a twofold activity of the twofold nature. For, by the conjunction in the very expression, he plainly proclaimed a divine and a manly, that is, human, activity — but not simply; wherefore he did not even name it by number, even though, uniquely, he taught the union of the natural activities — a union that does not injure their natural difference, just as neither does the indissoluble union of the essences injure the essences themselves. Since, according to those who say otherwise: if He had one activity, and this a theandric one — if the incarnate Word possessed this as one natural activity, how will the one activity, according to nature, be divided toward two? And by what principle will the one activity, operating according to the same, both constitute and distinguish the different essences — making each have, toward things of the same kind, an essential likeness, and Minor Theological Works 1725 again, toward things of a different kind, an essential difference? And I pass over saying that it has fallen away from natural kinship with both the Father and us, as neither He nor we possessing the theandric activity as an innate and essential one. But if, again, they say it is hypostatic — besides being a novel opinion, for who says that activity is hypostatic?

— such reasoning declares Him, by activity, alien to the Father, if He has a hypostatic, and not a natural, activity differing from the Father's. For it is by the hypostatic properties that the Word plainly has His difference from And the “kindred” activity, “demonstrated through both,” again “one,” according to the ever-memorable Cyril, was not spoken by the teacher for the abolition of the essential difference of the natural activities of those natures from which and in which the one and only Christ God exists; but was said by the teacher for the establishment of their utmost union. And he seems, in some measure, through other terms, to be imitating the God-revealing Dionysius. For, that He might not seem to be a naked God, nor again a mere man; neither a God privately operating incorporeally, nor privately a man doing the things of judgment — but God incarnate, and truly made man for our sake, operating, the same, both divinely and humanly at once — he showed that the Savior is found active not only in word, and in commands befitting God, in raising the dead and healing every disease and every infirmity; but that He hastened to take His holy flesh as a kind of fellow-worker especially for this — doing this, on the one hand, as God, by His all-effecting command; and, on the other, giving life again also by the touch of His holy flesh united to Him according to hypostasis — that He might show that this too was able to give life through His essential activity, to which properly belong touch, voice, and such things.

Then, as he showed His natural activities — of Christ God, composed of both — to be perfectly preserved: that of His Godhead through the all-effecting command, and that of His manhood through the touch — he set these forth as united throughout, by mutual connaturality and interpenetration, so as to show one activity, on account of the union of the Word Himself and His all-holy flesh — not a natural one, not a hypostatic one, for the teacher said no such thing — but one kindred in its parts, through which, as has been said, He showed Himself active both by all-effecting command and by the touch of His hand. It has been shown, then, from the sacred teaching of the wise Cyril, that he declares the difference of the natural activities — just as of the very natures of which they are — to be preserved even after the union; and he defines the union Minor Theological Works 1727 itself, again, on the one hand by saying “all-effecting command and touch,” and on the other by saying “one and kindred” — through which he magnificently dismisses every coalescence and every division from the mystery concerning Christ. But those who do not take it in this way, but understand the “kindred” activity of the Word and the flesh as one, teach the consubstantiation of Eutyches and Apollinarius. It is necessary, then, in all things, both to preserve the principle unimpaired, and to keep the manner of the economy uncorrupted — that the wicked pair, I mean division and confusion, may find no infiltration whatsoever against the truth.

According to this expression, then, and any other unique expressions of the holy Fathers, if they should be found, the pious sense must be received; and let us in no way take these as contradicting the dual expressions of the saints — knowing that these dual ones too are strong against confusion with regard to the difference, and those unique ones too are secure against division with regard to the union; but let us embrace both — both these and those — with soul and mouth, gladly, and confess them orthodoxly; and through the expressions that seem, in their utterance, somewhat opposed, let us wisely put to rout those who are opposed in their thinking, both to themselves and to one another, and to the truth alike; and let us manfully drive them from our fold — that is, from the catholic and apostolic Church of God — and let us in no way whatsoever grant any passage against the orthodox faith to those who plot, like brigands, to remove the patristic boundaries, by casting away any of the pious weapons and doctrines by which their overthrow and destruction is naturally accomplished. Yet this too one must know: that with regard to the natures and the natural activities, we find, alongside the dual expressions of the holy Fathers, unique ones as well — such as “the one incarnate nature of God the Word,” and “the theandric activity,” and “the kindred activity demonstrated through both.”

But with regard to the natural wills, it is not possible, as far as I know, to find any unique expression at all, but only the dual significations by pronouns and number. How then, and by what reasoning, if we should even undertake to examine this thoroughly, must one speak of one or two wills in Christ God, when the legislation and teaching of the Fathers bids us confess and champion two natural wills in Him, just as also the natures themselves, and their natural activities, to the point of knowing their difference? Having said these things now, digressively, to your Godhonored sanctity, I beg that you grant me pardon together Minor Theological Works 1729 with correction for anything said in them either unfittingly or not well understood — out of the loving-kindness and imitation of a father's compassion; and commend me to Christ God, who is glorified together with the Father and the Holy Spirit unto the ages of ages. Amen. Scholia 1. It is absurd, he says, for the one will to be divided (for this is what natural kinship would require), and for the one half to be given to the one nature, and the remaining half to the other — and thus to alienate Christ from God and from us, as though we did not have a composite will.

2. That the Fathers established, as doctrine, the difference and the union against confusion and the division equal in dishonor to it.

3. Neilos. There is a hypostatic union, but the irrational one is in our case, on account of which God became man, in order to save man — having freed from it as many as were, through fear of death, subject all their lives to slavery; that is, as many as, fearing pain, procured for themselves pleasure, the mother of pain, the author of corruption, the promoter and matchmaker of death. Copy of a Letter Written to the Most Holy Bishop Lord Nikandros, by Maximus Among the Saints, Concerning the Two Activities in Christ You yourself, O Father honored by God and all-blessed, bearing your name fittingly together with courage, have already received from Him, according to hope, the most sacred victory over all the enemies who war, whether secretly or openly, against the holy catholic and apostolic Church of God; and the ever-green crown, unfading in its gifts and in the activities of the Spirit, given on His behalf — and, as though holding in your hands the blessed enjoyment of that which is by nature desired, through perfect concord toward it. And from this, plainly, if anyone, delighting in the Lord Himself, how, and in what manner, do you deign to apply this — even in bare word, not to mention through your honored and blessed letters — to one so feeble and cowardly, and who has been taught until now to move the practical powers of the mind, or the reasonings, as it were the fingers of the hands, of the soul, not at all for the arraying of battle for God, and His holy war for and concerning Himself, and thereby nobly to put to rout those who rise up in words and doctrines against the Lord Almighty, and to drive them from the good land, which is our Lord and God Himself, and the Minor Theological Works 1731 orthodox faith that is the same — the truly firm seat and foundation of pious doctrines, and the unfailing fruit-bearing and nature of the virtues?

But you have done this in imitation of Christ — that, by displaying plainly toward me, who stands apart from Him in judgment, and who inhabits, as though by set purpose, a state that is a region far from Him in wickedness, and who nourishes, through activity, the passions of dishonor like swine, a self-emptying full of love for the good, and by showing, through the greatness of your condescension, the power of the divine achievements present in you — you might rouse me to desire it, and steel me unyieldingly toward a certain sacred and blessed zeal, casting off, as far as I am able, the burden of the sloth and negligence that weighs on me more than on all others; and, marveling, O blessed one, at the wise economy and providence exercised on behalf of me, a poor man, I have earnestly besought our Lord and God, with tears, though I am exceedingly sinful, both for myself and for all, that your preservation, in many years and more divine virtues, you the good and noble shepherd and father, may be granted to me — so that, having you especially now, when the foretelling of that which is by nature and truly the truth has been plainly confirmed by the outcome of events, and an affliction such as has never once occurred since the foundation of the world, nor ever shall, has overtaken all men everywhere on account of their sins — having you to strengthen and fortify us with the all-powerful staff of prayers heard by God, and to guide and enlighten us well with the all-sacred pipe of God-wise teaching, and to make us dwell, through practice, in a place of green pasture, the ever-living state of the virtues; and to nourish us, through knowledge, beside the water of rest, the ever-flowing supply of sacred streams in the doctrines; and to preserve us safely in a fortified place and lofty sheepfold — the catholic Church, and the Lord who fitted it together by will, through His own life-giving blood — we may be freed from the incursion of the adversaries: those who, seizing the opportune moment of the universal disturbance and confusion, contrive to confound the great and ineffable mystery of the saving economy of Christ God for all — a mystery that circumscribes, by nature, all ages and times, and those within age and time.

As though the holy flesh, taken from us, rationally and noetically ensouled, assumed by Him by the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, and united to Him according to one and the same hypostasis, did not have, after the union, the properties naturally belonging to it, apart from sin alone — since it did not even belong to that nature; or rather, as though the incarnate Word Himself, made man for our sake, did not perfectly preserve, as with us, the things that essentially characterize our nature — but either transformed Minor Theological Works 1733 these into His own divine nature, and thereby showed His own Godhead be deficient, in need of some supplementation for its essential completeness; or made them pass altogether into nonexistence, as not being very good, and annihilated the work of His own creation, by not making and uniting them to Himself according to hypostasis by any reason or wisdom. For how is that which came to be by reason and wisdom not indissolubly preserved, in union, in that very reason and wisdom? Or how, being preserved even after the union, is it not confessed — and for what reason, so that, through the confession that He who is God by nature became man, it might be believed in truth? Or perhaps He did not, from the beginning, even assume these very properties naturally belonging to nature, together with the nature?

But having taken some inanimate and irrational, and in no way consubstantial with us or belonging to us, flesh; or not even having taken it, but having brought down, from above and from the beginning, a nature co-essential with Himself, united it to Himself; and made the economy for us and toward us a mere appearance, drawing near to us in human form, but not truly having communion with human nature — that He might restore the whole race from the ancient transgression, and free it from the condemnation on its account. These things, and more than these, are held as doctrine by as many as do not orthodoxly confess, in accordance with the holy Fathers, that the natural properties, apart from sin — just as also the natures themselves — are perfectly preserved in Christ God, even after the union. For we do not see the divine and uncreated nature as nonexistent, or without will, or without activity; nor indeed do we recognize the created, human essence that is as ours to be nonexistent, or without will, or without activity. And if we know neither of these to be devoid of natural existence, willing, and activity — and it is from these, I mean the divine nature and the human nature, and in these, and of these, that the one and only Christ and Son truly has His hypostasis — how, if the same is truly God by nature and truly man by nature, did He not also have, properly, both a divine will and activity by nature, and a human will and activity by nature, being deficient in neither of these according to nature?

Through which, verifying the names by the realities, and again confirming the realities by these names, the same was plainly known — having, by nature, both the divine and human things, and willing and acting them — and thereby being believed to be that from which, and in which, and which He truly was. Since, if the natural will and the essential activity of the divine and human essence are done away with, how will He who exists from these, and who preserves them according to one Minor Theological Works 1735 hypostasis, be God or man? And how will He be shown to be, according to essence, this or that, if He does not preserve, without deficiency, the property of each nature, apart from all sin? For to depart from what is according to nature, even if it were to happen outside the essence, would have no existence at all — since it would not even have natural movement. For “that which has no movement at all,” as the God-revealing and great saint Dionysius says, “neither is, nor is anything; nor does it have, in any way whatsoever, any position at all.” On account of this, we who confess the natures of Christ God — I mean the divine, and the human that is as ours — for the sure confirmation of their existence, and the truth of our confession concerning them, must altogether also champion their natural wills, equal in number, and confess their essential activities to be just as many; and in no way, on the pretext of the hypostatic divine union, diminish or altogether deny any of them — knowing that the union according to hypostasis injures none of the natural properties, just as it does not injure the natures themselves — even though it brings them, through itself, into one, according to the one hypostasis, without ever removing them from being two, in the natural principle; just as, I say, the natural properties themselves, being again unified throughout by their mutual connaturality, and permitting neither the one to be contemplated apart from the other, nor apart from the communion of the one with the other, according to the ever-memorable Leo, pope of the Romans — does not at all obscure their essential and natural difference, but perfectly preserves it.

For by being preserved, it is preserved, and by being maintained, it is maintained. For the union of realities exists plainly only so long as their natural difference is preserved; since, once this ceases, that too altogether ceases, being utterly destroyed by confusion. This union, then, I say — since it does not injure the realities, nor their difference, but only, by its name, fittingly unifies the things united by it — the things differing by nature are, always and altogether, without diminution and perfectly preserved in it, having suffered no alteration or confusion whatsoever — not in the essences themselves, not in the wills, not in the activities, not in anything else natural. How, then, do some make a pretext of this — I know not how to say it politely — for their own conceit, and say that the incarnate Word is, by nature, without will and without activity with respect to what is as ours, that is, the human — as though the essence assumed from us in Him were properly inanimate and irrational? For that which is without activity is plainly without motion and without soul; and that which has no rational willing clearly irrational understanding. And if the incarnate Word existed, with Minor Theological Works 1737 respect to what is as ours, by nature without these, how will it be believed that He also became man?

And how, rather, will He not be shown to have been transformed in His divine nature, and to have fallen involuntarily under the passions of the flesh according to it? For it was by the abolition of the natural properties that Arius and Apollinarius made their assault against Him. For the one, declaring Him inanimate, and the other irrational — which is without activity and without will — blasphemed Him as a creature and a work in Himself. For each of them said the Only-begotten was, by nature, passible in Godhead, but not in the nature of flesh — Apollinarius even going further in impiety, declaring the change into flesh to be a complete transformation, by way of falling and alteration, of His own Godhead. It is necessary, then, for us, being pious, to reject such a confession, and to strengthen the teaching of the holy Fathers, and to confess, according to them, two natural wills and essential activities in the same and one Christ. For if we should say one will and one activity in Him, we shall plainly teach either that He is not by nature also man, but only God; or by nature only man, and not God; or neither man nor God. For instance, if we should say the will is natural, it is altogether either divine or human. And if divine, the Word will, by it, will the divine things naturally — showing Himself to be by nature only God, and co-willer with His own Begetter, and not man; for it is not natural for the human to be characterized by nature through the divine that is by nature — just as neither is the divine according to essence known through the human according to essence.

The same will follow, correspondingly, if we say the will is human by nature. But if hypostatic, it will be characteristic of His hypostasis alone, and He will never, by it, have communion with the Father and with us; for it is by hypostasis that the extremes are distinguished and separated. The same may be said, again, concerning the activities. But not on this account — far from it! — do we deny the unique expressions of the God-bearing Fathers concerning them, I mean the activities: both the “theandric activity” of the aforementioned God-revealing holy Dionysius, and Cyril the wise's “one and kindred activity demonstrated through both.” For these were piously proclaimed by them on account of the union, and the thoroughgoing connaturality of the natural activities with one another; just as the dual expressions were proclaimed on account of their essential and natural difference. “theandric” a comprehension of the divine and manly activity together. For the teacher, having devised a fitting term that, as I said, comprises both in its utterance, and having pronounced it Minor Theological Works 1739 uniquely, indicated by periphrasis the twofold activity of the twofold nature. For since he had said earlier, “not performing the divine things according to God alone, since He was not a naked God — but performing the divine things by nature, for He was God by nature; yet through flesh, united to Him according to hypostasis — and not performing the human things according to man alone, since He was not a mere man — but performing the human things naturally, for He was man by nature — yet by divine authority,” and not being led to act by any necessity or natural compulsion as we are — he conjoined the divine and the manly activity of the same, according to nature, as neither existing apart from the other, but being known, mutually, in one another and through one another, on account of the indissoluble union; and having comprised both in a unique term, he proclaimed it by periphrasis — so that, by saying “performing” both the divine and human things — even if not according to God, nor indeed according to man, since He was neither, as I said, a naked God, nor a mere man — yet truly performing them, he confirmed the essential difference of the natural activities; and by comprising these, and expressing them concisely in

a fitting term through the “theandric activity,” he taught their indissoluble union. And Cyril the wise's “one and kindred activity demonstrated through both” likewise holds to the great intention of this great Father. For he too teaches, through it, the connaturality and union of the natural activities. For this all-praised man, wishing to show that the flesh became God, and its essential activity divine, by its union with God the Word according to nature, and that it performed things beyond man, not having departed from that which it was by nature — just as the Word Himself, too, by His assumption of it, willingly became man for our sake, performing the things of man, even while being God by nature — declares that He did not heal and give life by the all-effecting command alone, as not being a naked God; but hastened to take His holy flesh as a kind of fellow-worker especially for this; and gave life and healed through it, and through its touch and voice — that He might show it able to give life, on account of its having come, in the union, to belong to Him who by nature gives life to all things, and not properly belonging to another as flesh. Wherefore he shows one and kindred activity of Him and of it, I mean the holy flesh, demonstrated through both: one, on account of the union; kindred again, with respect to the parts — as being the same, both in the all-effecting command and in the touch of the holy flesh.

For through both, as God, the Word plainly displayed this — showing, by giving life also through it, that it too had become, throughout, life-giving; just as fire too, Minor Theological Works 1741 burning through iron, by its union with it, renders the iron capable of burning — so that, on this account, the burning belongs not to the fire alone by nature, but also to the iron itself, on account of the union. And the divine activity of the Word in the miracles, again, belongs not to Him alone by nature, but also to the holy flesh itself, on account of its union with Him according to hypostasis — for He took it as His own fellow-worker in the divine things, as the teacher says, just as the soul takes its own body, for the fulfillment of its own works. This one and kindred activity, then, demonstrated through both, showing the union of the natural activities, plainly signifies, through itself, their difference of kind and duality — by referring to both the parts, of those from which and in which the one and only incarnate Word was known — and by being shown to belong to both, as demonstrated through both, the all-effecting command and the touch of the holy flesh. One must not be at all surprised by the term “kindred.” For “kindred” has been said by the holy Fathers both of consubstantial and of heterosubstantial things; and witness is the Theologian, the great Gregory, who speaks thus of the soul in his funeral oration for his brother Caesarius: “And a little later, having received back also its kindred little flesh, with which it philosophized concerning the things there.”

Here the teacher has called the flesh “kindred” to the soul on account of the union, not the nature. And again, in the discourse On the Lights, teaching concerning the onlybegotten Son, he says: “And He who is witnessed to by the kindred Spirit.” Here he has said “kindred” on account of the nature, not the union. And Cyril the wise himself, too, applies “kindred” indiscriminately both to things divided in essence and in hypostasis; and he says the following, commenting on the Evangelist John, concerning the healing at the divine baptism: “the things mentioned being, in some sense, kindred to both — for by the Spirit He sanctifies the spirit of man, and by the water, in turn, the body.” But what, and what sort of, kinship is there between the Holy Spirit and water, in essence or hypostasis, and our spirit and body? Even though this comes to us, and to the parts of which we are composed, especially by grace, on account of sacred regeneration. But again, the unique number itself, as is evident to all, is used by the saints, with regard to each of the categories that admit of case-inflection, both of consubstantial and of heterosubstantial things, according to union — evidently intending the expression “union,” as in: “One out of both, and through one, both”; and “One hypostasis and one nature of God the Word incarnate”; and “For even if the combination of both is one, it is not by nature, but by concourse.”

And Minor Theological Works 1743 again, of consubstantial things, as in: “And there was, and was, but was one. Light and light, and light, but one light.” And: “One God, and one nature, the highest,” says Gregory the Theologian. One must not, then, take the unique expressions of the saints, or those said to be “kindred” on account of the union, for the overthrow of the dual expressions, or those spoken of as heterogeneous by them on account of difference; nor, again, take these against those. For he who so takes them, and does not embrace both equally and fittingly — applying the one to the union, and the other to the natural difference — falls altogether, as is likely, either into division or into confusion; or rather, properly speaking, entangles himself, and thrusts himself out of the true communion and confession of the holy Fathers. For even if the flesh became one with the Word according to hypostasis, and was enriched, by the union, with His activity — it in no way fell from being, according to essence, a creature, nor did it suffer any departure whatsoever from the natural and blameless passions. And if this is properly so — as indeed it is — it plainly possessed a nature, and a natural activity in relation to the Word, that was different. The incarnate Word had this Himself, as man; for it was His according to nature.

For, having partaken of blood and flesh in like manner as we, the same had two natural activities, just as also natures: the divine and paternal, and the human that is as ours — through which it was believed that the same was both God and man. For of whatever natures He had the natural activities, of these, plainly, He also had the natures. For just as, as God, through the voice and touch of the holy flesh, He was shown healing and giving life according to nature; so again, being the same as man, He was known essentially, through that same touch and hand, girding Himself with a towel, and washing the feet of the disciples; and breaking the loaves, and distributing them; and dipping the morsel into the dish; and again, through His voice, declaring the sorrow that was upon Him: “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death.” And: “Now is my soul troubled.” And: “Could you not watch with me one hour?” And such things — in no way setting aside that which is, by nature, proper to each of the natures of which He is composed, from which and in which He consists; but confirming the natures by natural activities. But that it may be shown, through Cyril the wise as well, that the flesh did not have, by nature, one activity with the Word, just as it did not have one nature — even though it became kindred to Him by being deified through the union — let us hear what he sets forth, interpreting the Gospel according to Matthew, in the second book of the Exposition: “For this reason,” he says, “He works in the Spirit of God.

For indeed, in truth, it is not the natural activity of flesh, or the power of Minor Theological Works 1745 humanity, that dissolves Satan and puts Beelzebub to shame; for let someone come forward and teach you, if he will, what hinders those who wish to have set before them the authority over unclean spirits. Behold, if this were the work of flesh by nature — for we are all in flesh, and the principle of humanity is one for all — but it is neither the work of flesh specifically, nor of humanity, to prevail over spirits, since not all have this power; rather, the achievement is seen to belong to the activity through the Spirit.” The Father, then, has spoken truly, insofar as flesh and man are conceived, that the power over demons was the work of the Spirit, and not of the flesh, that is, of humanity. For the body of the Lord is, admittedly, holy, and has power over every disease; but it was, and is, holy, not because it is simply conceived as flesh, existing only in its own principles, but because it is the temple of the God the Word who dwells in it, sanctifying His own flesh through His own Spirit. So that, as this divine man says, in truth, it is not the natural activity of flesh, and the power of humanity, that dissolves Satan; nor does the nature of flesh accomplish this — since all men, being in flesh, and one according to the principle of humanity, would, if they chose to act, also have had power over spirits.

Having taught these things plainly, then, he has stood by them, and has become the interpreter of his own words — that it is by dwelling within, that is, by being united according to one hypostasis, and not by being flesh, existing only in its own principles, that it is holy and life-giving, having power over every disease. Let us, then, also preserve, according to the guidance of the saints, the principle of the difference unimpaired, preserving the natures themselves, and the things naturally belonging to them according to essence, even after the union; and the manner of the economy altogether indissoluble, uniformly maintaining the utmost connaturality of the things united; and let us drive out from ourselves all division and confusion. But if we do not thus piously receive and understand the unique expressions spoken by the saints — the “theandric” and “one and kindred” — according to the principle of the union, but suppose it to be either natural or, again, hypostatic, we shall of necessity teach that Christ is one nature — partaking of neither of those of which He is composed at all, since no nature exists, according to nature, as Christ. For nature can never, by nature, have communion with nature; but, unparticipating, it is altogether and in every essential respect different from every other. This will follow for us if we say the activity is natural; but if again hypostatic, we shall alienate Him from the Father and the Spirit with respect to activity.

For the Son could never have communion Minor Theological Works 1747 with the Father and the Spirit by any characteristic property of His own hypostasis. Let us, then, in no way wish to confess the activity of the incarnate Word Himself, who truly became man, as either natural or hypostatic. For none of the holy Fathers, from His divine descent to us until now, has handed down that one should confess a natural or hypostatic activity in Him; nor indeed has any expressly, as far as I know, except Cyril the divinely-inspired alone — which we receive wholeheartedly, even though it belongs to him alone, for the sake of the union. How, then, is it not also fitting to receive gladly the dual expressions of nearly all the holy Fathers, and of him too again, on account of the natural difference — lest, by clinging to and adopting his one unique expression alone, we should effect the rejection and invalidation of the words both of him and of the other saints — as though the pious accuracy of the proclamation were entrusted to none other of them but Cyril alone, and this not in his other statements, which declare the difference, but only in the “one and kindred activity”? Besides, how do some say, simply, that there is one activity of Christ God? For it must belong either to His parts, or altogether to Him as a whole.

But if to the parts, it will be divided, being evidently cut toward both; and suffering this, it will altogether be dissolved, and will dissolve together with itself the things united in it. But if to the whole, it will be receptive of opposites, being mortal and immortal, created and uncreated, circumscribed and uncircumscribed. And if this is so, Christ had His own activity existing according to habit and privation both, being and not being — through which, as properly acting according to it, He is receptive of opposites in the same respect, not in different respects. What could be more impious than this? The same may be said also concerning the will. And how, indeed, did the Word take His own flesh as a fellow-worker, according to Cyril the wise, if it did not have the activity according to nature? For that which has no activity, nor natural movement, is altogether dead and inanimate; and by what reasoning did He take up the dead as a fellow-worker? For that which is without activity is abolished by total immobility. And how did He show it able to give life, as Cyril himself again taught, through its natural movements — such as touch, voice, walking — if these did not belong to it, or were not in it, according to essence? For if they belonged to it according to essence, the flesh altogether had a natural activity — for the movement of the hands and feet, and the voice in utterance, belong to its essential activity.

But if these Minor Theological Works 1749 did not belong to it according to nature, the Savior did not show it to be able to give life. These few things, out of many, having been taught by you and by the God-wise holy men around you, I have made bold, at your most sacred command, to set down through this modest letter, and to venture beyond my power, being small and worthless — having neither a mind apt for the undertaking, nor speech pliant for clarity, nor character well-ordered for the release of better things; but rather, by grace, sheltered through your intercession by the all-good God, who covers the multitude of my sins. And I beseech you, with tears, as though present, prostrating myself at your honored feet, since the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers and saviors of souls, not to hesitate to make, out of love for the good, the correction of whatever I have written inaccurately — that from this you may show yourselves mediators of God rather than mere imitators, not only obtaining for yourselves His enlightenment and mercy upon all, but also rendering yourselves worthy of it. To Him I also beseech you to commend my weakness, poor and destitute as I am, that I may be sheltered from the flame, visible and invisible, that is allotted to all on account of my sins; and that I may forever rest and be guarded in the dew of His all-holy and orthodox faith, and of sacred virtue.

Amen.

1. See here your difficulty resolved. The great Father, having said that God, having come forth together with the assumption, is “one and one out of two opposites,” spoke thus on account of the union according to hypostasis; but he did not mean by “one” the nature. To the Holy Fathers Dwelling in This Christ-Loving Island of the Sicilians, Abbots and Monks, and Orthodox Peoples, Maximus, Humble and Sinful, Unworthy Servant “Great peace have they that love Your law, and nothing shall offend them,” said David, the ancestor of God, to God — making known thereby to all, and I declare it too, to those who long for salvation, that, cleaving with the utmost divine love to the nature of that ultimate object of desire, they should gladly and, if possible, indissolubly pursue the good of peace toward themselves and all — removing every occasion of offense from everyone, through pious and utmost harmony of mind toward one another. For this reason it has been my earnest care, as your servant, to set down eagerly in writing what I had already established by word of mouth, for the security and full assurance of your holinesses — Minor Theological Works 1751 removing, by this defense, every suspicion concerning our lowliness that has arisen in you from others. “For I cannot bear,” as Gregory the Theologian says, “that any of those who carefully observe all that concerns us, whether well or otherwise, should be struck down on my account; for it is good, whether one is sinning or merely suspected, as far as possible and as reason allows, to place no stumbling block or offense before the many — since we know how inexorable and how heavy is the punishment, from Him who cannot lie, upon those who offend even one of the little ones.”

I make known, then, to your holinesses, that never at any time have I held, according to the suggestion of my slanderers, the supposition of contradictory and opposing doctrines. For I have never confessed, or written at all, one and, at the same time, two — that is, according to them, three — wills and activities in the same and one Christ God. For the one overturns the other, having no stability of natural reasoning whatsoever — so that it would even be a doctrine unattested by the truth, that is, by the holy Fathers. For if one, how also two? And if two, how also one? And by which of these is the incarnate Word shown to be of like activity, that is, consubstantial, with the Father? For if they should say it is consubstantial with the Father, they thereby introduce a twofold divine activity — unless, that is, they confess their imagined third activity without abolishing the two activities of the same according to nature, I mean the divine and the human. For if not for their abolition, it is clear that they champion two divine activities of the same Son: one natural, one hypostatic. But if two, altogether different ones; and from this their own supposition becomes polytheistic, since the divine activity in Father and Son is known to them in otherness, and not in natural sameness.

And their opinion is not only polytheistic, but even atheistic — as they construct the Son to have no divine activity of His own, confounding nature and hypostasis with one another, together with the properties of each; and, together with Sabellius, they recognize the Son as communing with the Father in both — I mean nature and hypostasis — sketching Him thus, which is foreign to the catholic Church; not to mention that they also make the Father, by nature, passible and incarnate, that is, made man, through His shared activity with the Son, in both the miracles and the sufferings alike. Unless, that is, they say the Son performs some other activity besides the miracles and the sufferings, according to their aforesaid imagined third activity — by which they also declare the only-begotten Word Minor Theological Works 1753 to commune with the Father, in addition to His natural divine activity. But if, hard pressed by these objections, they define the Son as communing not with the beginningless Father, but with the undefiled Mother, according to this third activity — here too they give Him two created, that is, human, activities: again one natural and one hypostatic — thereby alienating Him, with respect to each, from God and the Father; and being carried along with the cutting-apart of Arius, on account of the complete estrangement, according to them, of the Only-begotten from the Father in both activities.

Whereby they also make us wonder-workers, but not only passible by nature — if indeed they say that by the third, according to them, or, as it is dear to them to call it, the activity of the whole, that is, of the hypostasis, Christ preserves His kinship with us — according to which, willingly not only accepting the experience of the sufferings, but also displaying the power of the miracles, they suppose Him, reasonably enough, to be this, which is impossible. For it is not possible for the same and one activity, or will, or nature at all, to be at once divine and human; or uncreated and created; or beginningless and originated; or composite and simple — so that by the same and one activity toward each, I mean the Father and the Mother, the Son should preserve His kinship by nature and without variance; or should perform each, I mean the divine things by nature and the human things, according to the same activity. For not even those who fashion goat-stags would conceive of this. But if it is impossible for the same activity, or will, or nature, to be at once divine by nature and human — or for the Son to commune, according to the same and one activity, with each — I mean the Father and the Mother — or to perform, according to it, each of the divine and human things; but rather, fittingly, as has been said: by the divine nature, the divine things; and by the human nature that is His, the human things — yet with the communion and connaturality of the one with the other, not divided — then their so-called third activity is also nameless, as nonexistent, being confirmed by no reason, divine or otherwise, nor by the “And what do we give to the whole,” they say, “if we do not give the one activity, as to one whole, on account of the union?”

But those who put forward this argument do not know what they are saying. For, supposing the whole to be something other than its own parts, of which and in which it consists, they insist somehow that they ought — not from demonstration, but from mere assertion — to attribute to the Minor Theological Works 1755 whole, as a whole, something else besides what naturally inheres in the parts: namely, the one activity. Let them, then, first show that the whole has, apart from the existence of its own parts, some other existence of its own; and then let them, on this basis, also assign to it, as a whole, some other activity besides the essential activities inherent in the parts. But if they cannot assign it some other existence according to nature, plainly they cannot assign it some other activity according to nature besides those of the parts. For Christ, being each of these according to nature — for the same is by nature God and man — has, according to nature, the properties of each nature: the divine willing and activity, I say, and the human willing and activity — but not one alone, for the abolition of the two natural activities; nor another besides the two according to nature — that is, three activities and wills. Each, then, just as each essence, so too each essential willing and activity, do we attribute, according to nature, to the same and only Christ.

For even though, contemplating the difference of His parts, we fittingly attribute the divine things to His Godhead, and the human things to His humanity — yet, conversely, on account of the union, we also apply, by way of exchange, the properties of each nature to the other; whence we also say that God is passible with respect to sin, and that the flesh is “assumed and become that which anointed it; and I dare to say, of the same Godhead,” according to Gregory the Theologian — “not performing the divine things according to God” — for through flesh, rationally ensouled, and united to Him according to hypostasis; not by naked Godhead, as before — “nor the human things according to man” — by an authority of infinite power, but not liable to necessity. For the suffering was not, as with us, a mere undergoing, but a selfemptying, on our behalf, of the incarnate Nevertheless, then, as to the whole, the same and one and only Christ, we attribute, according to nature, the whole of what belongs to the natures of which He consists, apart from sin alone; wherefore we confess the same to be both passible and impassible; uncreated and created; circumscribed and uncircumscribed; earthly and heavenly; seen and understood; containable and uncontainable, according to nature. But if, again, being circumscribed by these things, they say that the result of the two natural activities of the same — that is, the divine sign that comes about, for other men, from the Savior God — such as the resurrection, or the ascension, or the cleansing, or any such wonder-working — is one and the same activity, not even so is the argument easy for them to handle.

For we know not one, but many and infinite, are the divine signs of the Savior, concerning which the most theological John says: “if they should be written Minor Theological Works 1757 every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” Then again, neither with regard to any other of the things that exist externally — let alone speak of the God the Word Himself, above all beings, who was made flesh for our sake — do we recognize the essential existence at all from what is external, but from the natural properties by which He is characterized in Himself — that is to say, by natural willings and activities; or else, in this way, one might define the carpenter as a wood-working animal, but not rational, nor mortal, knowing his nature perhaps from the stool or the couch, but not from the properties that essentially constitute it — which, even to conceive, is ignorant. Wherefore we recognize the same properly, by nature, to be God and man, in no other way than from the innate properties that characterize Him divinely and humanly at once: that is, as I said, the divine willing and activity, and the human willing and activity of the same — by which, and through which, He seals what He was and became: working wonders beyond us as God willingly; and suffering for our sake, the same, willingly, as man — as being recognized as nothing other than that from which, in which, and which He is — some sort of spurious and intermediate, that is, third result, after the pattern of mules — as the myth-making of the empty-talking heretics fabricates monstrously, having fallen away from the pious proclamation of the holy Fathers — but is, in truth, properly, that very thing from which, and in which, He truly and properly is.

For, existing by nature from Godhead and manhood, and in Godhead and manhood, Christ is God by nature and man; and nothing else at all. “And how,” they say, “does Cyril the wise declare that a certain middle order of expressions concerning Christ is to be held, writing thus to Acacius: 'For some of the expressions are especially befitting God; others, again, are thus befitting man; and others hold a certain middle order.' And how would this ever contribute anything to their own supposition?” For it is not from the alteration or the loss of the extremes — I mean the Godhead of Christ and His manhood, or His divine and human willing and activity — that the teacher hands down to us, in these words, some other, middle, that is, intermediate result, communing with neither of the natures of which He consists; nor again, some composite activity that, according to them, He is or has; but that these things properly are that from which He is — yet not named separately, but together, and at the same time, each of these, as Christ being one and only. Minor Theological Works 1759 And he himself bears witness to this, defending the Eastern bishops, and writing thus to Acacius: “The brethren in Antioch, in no way divide the things united; but they insist that only the expressions concerning the Lord are divided, and that some befit His Godhead, others again His manhood — for the same is God and man.

And they say there are also others, made common in some manner, and, as it were, looking to both — I mean Godhead and manhood; such as this: some of the expressions are especially befitting God, others again thus befitting man, and others hold a certain middle order, manifesting the Son of God as being God and man at once and at the same time.” The teacher, then, has shown us that there is a middle order of expressions, not signifying that Christ is something other than that from which, in which, and which He is, as some have supposed; but that the same is, by nature, God and man at once. And he brings forward, for the proof of these things, the divinely-inspired Scriptures, saying thus: “When He says to Philip, 'Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not known me, Philip? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? He who has seen me has seen the Father'; and, 'I and the Father are one' — we assert this to be an expression especially befitting God. But when He rebukes the crowds of the Jews, saying, 'If you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham; but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth — this Abraham did not do' — we say such things are spoken in a manner befitting man.

Yet both belong to the one Son: the God-befitting, and indeed the human. But we assert that those expressions are middle — as when the blessed Paul writes, 'Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today, and forever.' And again: 'One God the Father, of whom are all things, and we of Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through Him.' And again: 'Whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever, amen.' For behold, behold — having named Him Christ Jesus, he says that He is the same yesterday and today, and forever; and that all things came to be through Him; and he names Him, who is of the Jews according to the flesh, God over all, and, indeed, blessed forever, amen. Do not, then, divide the expressions concerning the Lord in these; for they have, at the same time, both the God-befitting and the human — rather, apply them as belonging to the one Son, that is, to God the Word incarnate.” By these words of the Spirit the teacher has shown us also these very middle expressions, signifying nothing else whatsoever concerning Christ than the Godbefitting at the same time as the human; wherefore he bids us Minor Theological Works 1761 apply them to Him indivisibly, as to the same God, who is also man by nature — and nothing else at all, as I have said.

“And indeed,” they say, “he himself confesses one activity in Christ.” For thus he proceeds in interpreting the holy evangelist John: “And indeed, when He raised the little daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, saying, 'Little girl, arise,' He took hold of her hand, as it is written — giving life as God, by the all-effecting command; and giving life, again, also through the touch of His own flesh — showing one and kindred activity through both.” But this, indeed, has the teacher's meaning quite unveiled — that he does not define one activity of each of the two essences from which the one and only Christ exists, as some might suppose; since he himself declares, writing to Hermias: “For things that have obtained the same nature would act alike; but those whose principle of manner of being is altered, in these the principle of the activity in all things would not be the same. For things that are of the same activity are also confessed to be of the same essence.” One of two things, then, is necessary: either to represent the teacher as fighting against himself, or to grant that Christ has the same nature, just as also the same activity — but not to declare the natures altered, going into identity with one another through the indistinguishability of the activity. “For things that are of the same activity are also confessed to be of the same essence,” he says.

But if each of these is unfitting — both that he should be inconsistent with himself, and that he should fail to champion the altered natures of which Christ consists — it is clear that he does not hand down one activity of each of the essences, that is, of Christ composed of them, by saying, “showing one and kindred activity through both”; but he sets forth that the supra-essential Word, being God by nature, and made flesh, brought forth His life-giving and divine activity, by nature, both incorporeally and through a body. For by saying “kindred,” he signified nothing other than the same lifegiving activity, made manifest through both — the alleffecting command and the touch of His holy flesh — in the miracles; just as fire, burning immaterially and through matter, displays the same burning power in each way. Therefore, the teacher does not say this for the abolition of the Savior's human activity; for by speaking of the touch of flesh, he plainly signified the human activity — since the tactile is a clear demonstration of human activity; but neither has he handed down, besides the two according to nature, another from himself; but he has declared the life-giving activity, by nature, through both, as has been said — that of command and that of touch — as proceeding from one and the same God the Word.

Minor Theological Works 1763 But if, hemmed in by these pious proclamations of the Fathers, they bring forward the letter of Heraclianus to Achillius, in which they suggest that one should speak, besides the two, also of one nature and movement in Christ, as of a whole — let them themselves interpret it. For the letter runs thus: “One, indeed, is the whole nature and movement of the Lord considered in itself; but two, according to reference. One is the movement and nature of the parts by way of appropriation; but two, considered in themselves. And when I say 'movement,' I mean to signify activity and passion.” It is necessary, then, for those who assail our teachings with this fortification, to clarify by argument: what is, and how it is said to be, and by which of the approved Fathers it is attested, that there is one nature and movement of the whole Lord; and what are the two according to reference. And what is the one nature of the parts by way of appropriation, likewise movement; and what are the two considered in themselves — that is, these three pairings of the natures and movements of the same. And who has handed down that the same and one movement signifies each — I mean activity and passion; and how, if both belong to Him according to them, the Son is not, according to every movement of His, cut off from the Father, as being passible by nature in every respect — since, according to them, every movement whatsoever of God and Savior is marked as, at once, both activity and passion.

For the Divine is by nature impassible, and unrelated, and simple — or rather, more than simplified beyond all simplicity. And again, how do they not, by the three pairings of movements, introduce twelve activities and passions, if movement signifies both according to them? And which of the saints championed the natures of God according to reference or according to appropriation? Let them show these things first from a patristic judgment, and then thus the supposition of their own doctrines will be confirmed for them. But if they are unable, let them, abandoning these, then align themselves with us alone, who have judged piously, following the God-bearing Fathers of the catholic Church, and the five holy ecumenical councils — confessing the same one and only Lord and God Jesus Christ to be, in all respects, God by nature perfect, and man by nature perfect, apart from sin alone; and not, by the abolition of the perfection by nature in both respects, jointly abolishing the divine or the human willing and activity of the same — knowing that the supra-essential Word neither diminished, nor altered, nor annihilated in any way at all, either that which He was beginninglessly and without cause, or that which He became afterward for a cause, namely our salvation — but wholly, rather, and perfectly, apart from sin Minor Theological Works 1765 alone, in Himself and through Himself, preserved, in all respects and in all things, these very things properly, as I said, according to natural existence; wherefore the same and only and one Lord and God of ours is, by nature, both willing and active according to each of His natures, of which and in which He consists, for our salvation.

For, being by nature God, sovereign, and creator of the sovereignty of all things, He did not become mindless as man, nor bereft of the natural life that is ours, and that has its being from Him by creation; but He was truly noetic, that is, by nature willing and active, as man — He who alone is by nature God — having assumed the whole of me together with all that is mine, that He might grant salvation to the whole of me; having wholly loosed the condemnation of sin, since that which is not assumed is not healed; but that which is united to God, this too is saved, as he who bears the name of theology says. But since, against these pious teachings of the holy Fathers, which remove the illogical objection of those who are unequally yoked, others rise up against us from another quarter — making, for our own downfall, or rather, for the seizing away of the more simple, an advancing of letters, namely, the letter said to have been written by us to Marinus the priest, and the letter to Pyrrhus — it is necessary to say a few words about these as well, giving full assurance in all things to your holiness: that we have, on various occasions, written to Marinus the priest concerning various scriptural topics — yet by no means in the manner in which it has been said we spoke concerning the contradictory and opposing doctrines, I mean the one and the two, that is, the three activities or wills they fabricate for the same and one Christ — as though we had established these in Him, in agreement with them, or with anyone else whatsoever.

“For if I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor,” says the vessel of election. Wherefore the letter thus put forward, or rather fabricated, as though from us to Marinus, being altogether alien and not ours, we ourselves disown, and we urge all who piously confess the Lord likewise to disown it — that we may wall off every occasion from our adversaries, who make excuses for their sins, and who make of it a cloak for their own contradiction, fabricating slander against us — they who, since they cannot stand by their own argument, being destroyed by the assault of the truth, work out for themselves, under the mask of our supposed letter, a deceitful infiltration against the more simple-minded; which they would not suffer, nor commit, if they preferred the truth to falsehood in our defense concerning these matters. Minor Theological Works 1767 But as for Pyrrhus, again, who had earlier written to us a lengthy tome, and had honored us greatly in it, I know not how — but by way of examination, not assertion, in that very tome, having made an argument concerning one and two activities of the same, and as it were seeking and inviting our judgment and opinion on each argument — we too, reasonably, in the preface of our letter to him, returned the honor, fulfilling the apostolic exhortation: “in honor preferring one another,” says the divine Apostle — since the divine word bids us love and bless even those who hold different views, or who write to us.

And at the same time it was my earnest concern not to roughen him, but rather to smooth him, by the praises given to him, toward assent to what has been piously determined by me, according to the teaching of the holy Fathers; wherefore I acknowledged, in the treatise I wrote to him, that I had understood what he wrote to me in the same sense — urging him, as I said, and inviting him, toward the acceptance of the pious argument, which would procure for him the greatest salvation, if indeed, embracing this together with us, he confessed, as we have written — that is, two natural activities of the same and one Christ God, just as also natures, united without confusion and without division, divine and human, uncreated and created — but not one and the same, however it be called. For the argument of one and the same activity, or will, or nature, in the same and one Lord and God of ours, is not patristic, but rather heretical. Such, then, is the manner of our commendation toward him, that is, Pyrrhus — being intent on gently separating him from his contrary opinion, and bringing him back up to the right word of faith. But if anyone, missing our purpose, is still troubled at the commendation, not accepting the reasoning of our economy in this matter especially, let the commendation be dismissed by him, and let it be cast aside as he thinks fit, being no longer pleasing to us either, but rather distasteful, after the man's complete falling away; but let the force of what was piously determined with us for him be confirmed.

You have, holy Fathers, the account of the full assurance through our defense; but be manly, and be strengthened in spirit, not turning aside to the right or to the left because of adverse men and doctrines; but, being established and guided by the royal road, by Him who said, “I am the way, and the life, and the truth” — being of one soul, thinking the same thing — and the God of peace shall be with you all, ever piously proclaimed, and holily worshiped by you; and, as the end of your blessed conduct and confession here, granting you, there, a more blessed inheritance and rest — with Minor Theological Works 1769 whom, to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory, honor, dominion, worship, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen. Copy of a Letter to Lord Marinus the Priest of Cyprus Being guided by the divine law according to God, O Father honored by God, you have overlooked human law, surpassing what is measured by your self-emptying, and magnifying, in your poverty, the perfection of my inexperience — or rather, my rashness, to speak more properly — in thinking and speaking; for I am not ashamed to duly confess my own passions and those of my weakness, and to reveal them the more eagerly the more you have taken pains, out of loving-kindness, to cover them.

For who would ever have received the reasoning of the irrational so, and accepted the mind of a delirious understanding — not to say, entirely — as you, O Father honored by God, have solemnly dignified what is mine — not merely passing over, out of love, my lack of education, but honoring it to the utmost, which is the greatest thing for the unadorned, toward good repute — but also, as far as you, out of grace, cast upon it the venerable quality with you accustomed altogether beautifully to adorn your own understanding, you have brightened it to excess — things from which the reasoning and manner of true nobility, or kinship with God, to speak more truly, or more properly, consists — not knowing how to elevate rather than how to keep measured; for that is not its nature to do; for it is accustomed, somehow, unchangeably to settle toward abasement, revealing all the more, by the excess of what is not present, the deficiency, and making known the nakedness; and by the display of what is beyond worth, instilling a harsher perception than what is fitting, whenever, having taken hold of the depths of the soul, it makes plain, unveiled, the greatness of the incongruity. Having experienced this especially, through the clear expression of your prayers, I have touched upon divine ordinances, which the reasoning of the economy, seeing beyond conception, has provided to be providentially preserved and set forth for those, like myself, who need and require guidance.

And after a little: Indeed, of the synodical chapters of the most holy Pope now reigning, in as many as you have written, those of the imperial city have taken hold — but of only two: one concerns theology, namely, that he said the Holy Spirit “proceeds also from the Son”; the other, concerning the divine incarnation — that he wrote, “the Lord is without ancestral sin, as man.” And for the first, they Minor Theological Works 1771 brought forward concordant citations of the Roman Fathers; and further, of Cyril of Alexandria, from his sacred treatise composed on the holy evangelist John — from which they showed themselves not making the Son a cause of the Spirit; for they know one cause of the Son and the Spirit, the Father — of the one, according to generation; of the other, according to procession — but they say this in order to show that the Spirit proceeds through Him, and thereby to set forth the conjunction and indistinguishability of the essence. But for the second, they need no defense whatsoever. For what dispute is there in this — even if it is deemed so by those who make excuses for their perversity? Nevertheless, they satisfied the objectors, saying: “Neither did He have the sin of the mind, according to which Adam appears somehow to have first suffered, nor the practice and activity of evil that proceeds from it through the body.”

These men, then, gave satisfaction concerning matters for which they had not reasonably been called to account; but those others, concerning matters for which they had, very justly, made no defense at all until now — since they have not even rejected what was introduced by them. I urged the Romans to translate their own documents, for the sake of escaping, at your command, the misrepresentations of those who stumble at them; but since custom has prevailed to do and send it thus, I do not know whether they would trust it, perhaps. Besides, it is also because they cannot so precisely render their own thought in another tongue and idiom as in their own, in which they were nurtured — just as we too cannot render ours in ours. But this concern, too, will altogether come to them, once they have learned, by experience, the malicious misuse. As for the treatise on essence and nature, and hypostasis and person, and the chapters following, I have come upon a draft of Theodore of Pharan; and, as in the manner of an introduction, it perhaps is not unhelpful; but in the discourse on person and hypostasis, he appears to have followed, not so much the canons concerning these things, as somehow himself, in saying the activity is hypostatic — whom those of the opposing party put forward as the leader and advocate of their own opinion, having shaped and dictated almost the whole Ekthesis from him and his words.

For in these matters he has somehow obscured and darkened the argument, having given to the person, as to a person, the activity that characterizes the nature — not the manner and kind of its outcome, according to which the difference of those who act and of the things done is recognized, as being according to nature or contrary to nature. For as being something Minor Theological Works 1773 primarily — but not as each of us individually acts, that is, as man — but as someone in particular, such as Paul or Peter, shapes the manner of the activity, perhaps by remission or by increase, being shaped this way or that by him according to disposition. Wherefore in the manner the variation of persons in action is recognized; but in the principle, the invariance of the natural activity. For it is not that the one is more, and the other less, active or rational; but all of us equally have the reason, and its activity according to nature — though more or less, and in this way or that, just or unjust, in that the one follows more the things according to nature, the other falls short of them. But those who have gone astray in some particular must be watched with precision — since they somehow force and drag the definitions of realities and the canons to what seems good to them, transferring them as though by decree, that they might, from perversion, establish their own opinions.

As for the quires that were sent — even though I am not going through them at leisure, I mean those concerning the soul and the remaining chapters — I let you know my opinion of them. For the haste of the one setting out did not allow me to go through them; since it was after many days of arriving in Byzacena that it came to my poor self in Carthage. And besides, being hindered also by the weakness, so to speak, that I have in my eyes — since I wished to fulfill your command concerning these matters as quickly as possible, I have sent it. The arrangement decided upon, for the sake of the transcription, for your holinesses, of the one containing the interpretation of the evangelist John, appears to me, your servant, very fitting — that it might not become a cause of assault against the one who set it forth, for those who are not rightly attempting to alter everything as they see fit. Excerpt from the Letter Written in Rome For these are the ends of the inhabited world, and those who confess the Lord sincerely and orthodoxly everywhere on earth look straight, as toward the sun of eternal light, to the most holy Church of the Romans and its confession and faith, according as the God-inspired and divinely-taught holy six councils sincerely and most piously set forth, declaring most manifestly the symbol of the faith.

For from the very beginning of the descent to us of the incarnate God the Word, all the Churches of the Christians everywhere have possessed and do possess that greatest Church there as their sole base and foundation — as one that, according to the Savior's own promise, is in no way overcome by the gates of Hades, but holds the keys of the orthodox faith and confession in Him; Minor Theological Works 1775 and that opens to those who piously approach the truly natural and only piety; but shuts and stops every heretical mouth that speaks iniquity on high. For those things which the Creator and Master of all, our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and His disciples and apostles, and the holy Fathers and teachers and martyrs who came after them, consecrated by their own works and words, contests and labors, toils and blood, and finally by extraordinary deaths, founded and built up for our catholic and apostolic Church of those who believe in Him — these, by two words, without toil and without death — O the long-suffering and forbearance of God! — they are eager to overthrow and to invalidate — the great, allluminous, and all-hymned mystery of the orthodox religion of the Christians. On the Two Natures of Christ 1. Arius confesses the three hypostases, but denies the Monad, and does not say the Holy Trinity is consubstantial.

But Sabellius confesses the Monad, but denies the Triad; for he says the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are the same. But the Church of God both confesses the Monad and proclaims the Triad. Macedonius holds views similar to Arius; for he supposes the Holy Spirit to be a creature. But the Church proclaims the Holy Spirit consubstantial with the Father and the Son, and firmly affirms Him to be God. Likewise also concerning the one of the Holy Trinity: Nestorius speaks of the natural difference, but does not confess the union — for he does not say it came about according to hypostasis. But Eutyches confesses the union, but denies the difference according to essence, and introduces a confusion of the natures. But the Church champions both the union according to hypostasis, on account of indivisibility, and the difference according to essence, on account of unconfusedness.

2. How does the utmost union have both identity and otherness? Namely, identity of essences and otherness of persons — or the reverse. For instance, in the case of the Holy Trinity, there is identity of essence, but otherness of persons — for we confess one essence, but three hypostases. But in the case of man, there is identity of person, but otherness of essences — for, there being one man, the soul is of one essence, and the flesh of another. Likewise also in the case of the Master Christ: there is identity of person, but otherness of essences — for, there being one person, that is, hypostasis, the Godhead is of one essence, and the manhood of another. For just as it is impossible to confess the union of the Holy Trinity without proclaiming the difference, so it is altogether Minor Theological Works 1777 necessary, in the case of the one of the Holy Trinity, to proclaim both the union and the difference.

3. For just as the difference and the union, in the case of the Holy Trinity, are not signified by the same words — but the difference is confessed by saying three hypostases, and the union by confessing one essence — so also in the case of the one of the Holy Trinity: the difference is confessed by recognizing the two natures, and the union by proclaiming one composite hypostasis.

4. For just as we anathematize Arius, not as proclaiming the difference according to hypostasis in the Holy Trinity, but as not saying the natural union; so too we anathematize Nestorius, not as recognizing the natural difference in Christ, but as not saying the union according to hypostasis.

5. Just as we anathematize Sabellius, not as proclaiming the natural union in the Holy Trinity, but as not saying the difference according to hypostasis; so we anathematize Eutyches, not as failing to say the union according to hypostasis in Christ, but as not recognizing the natural difference.

6. The difference according to hypostasis in the Holy Trinity, and the natural difference in the one of the Holy Trinity, must not be spoken of in terms of sense-perception, but understood with the eyes of the mind. And how is it that, in the case of the Holy Trinity, you proclaim the three hypostases on account of the difference according to hypostasis, but in the case of the one of the Holy Trinity, you do not proclaim two natures in one hypostasis, on account of the natural difference?

7. Just as, on account of the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity, you say one essence, and on account of the distinct hypostases, you say three hypostases — so, on account of the difference of essence between the Word and the flesh, say two essences; and on account of their not each having its own hypostasis, say one hypostasis.

8. Just as, in the case of the Holy Trinity, we do not say the one essence for the confusion of the three hypostases, nor the three hypostases for the abolition of the one essence — so, in the case of the one of the Holy Trinity, we do not say the one hypostasis for the confusion of His two natures, nor the two natures for the division of the one hypostasis.

9. He who does not say, concerning Christ, the union according to hypostasis on account of the difference of the natures, is a Nestorian; and he who does not say the natural difference within the union according to hypostasis is a Minor Theological Works 1779 Eutychianist. But he who proclaims both the union according to hypostasis and the natural difference in the one of the Holy Trinity holds the royal and blameless faith.

10. He, then, who speaks of both difference and union in the case of Christ, neither abolishes the difference nor confuses the union. For the divine Cyril anathematizes those who, on account of the difference, abolish the union according to hypostasis; and the ecumenical council anathematizes those who, on account of the union according to hypostasis, abolish the natural difference in the one of the Holy Trinity. Essence and nature are the same; for both are common and universal, being predicated of many things differing in number, and never circumscribed to any one person whatsoever. Enhypostatic is that which is common according to essence — that is, the species — really subsisting in the individuals under it, and not contemplated by bare conception alone. Or again, enhypostatic is that which, being composed and cosubsisting with another thing differing in essence, for the constitution of one person and the generation of one hypostasis, is in no way known by itself. Homoousion is that which is of the same essence as another, but differs from it according to hypostasis — as is the case with man and the other species. If, then, a thing is the same as another according to essence, it is not the same as that thing according to hypostasis; and if a thing is one and united with another according to essence, it is not one nor united with that thing according to hypostasis; and if a thing has difference from another according to hypostasis, it has union with that thing according to essence.

Essential union, then, is that which gathers the different, and numerically many, hypostases into one and the same essence. Essential difference, again, is the principle according to which the essence, that is, the nature, remains undiminished and unaltered, unmixed together with unconfused, and, in making its concourse with another differing in kind into one hypostasis, does not in any way whatsoever depart from its own nature according to nature. Hypostasis and person are the same; for both are particular and proper, having their circumscription in themselves, but not being naturally predicated of many. Minor Theological Works 1781 Enousion is that which not only has, contemplated in itself, the aggregate of the properties by which one thing is distinguished from another, but also really possesses the common element of essence. Homoypostatic is that which is composed with another into one and the same hypostasis, but differs from that same thing according to essence — as is the case with soul and body, and all other things that, differing by otherness of nature, are united according to hypostasis. If, then, a thing composed with another according to union is the same as that thing according to hypostasis — that is, one hypostasis has come to be with it — it is other than that same thing according to essence. And if a thing is one and united with another according to hypostasis, it is not one nor of the same kind as that thing according to essence also.

And if a thing composed with another has difference from it according to essence, it has union with that same thing according to hypostasis. Hypostatic union, then, is that which gathers and binds together the different essences, that is, natures, into one person and one and the same hypostasis. Hypostatic difference, again, is the principle according to which the otherness, with respect to the aggregate of the properties contemplated in the common element of essence, cutting off one thing from another numerically, produces the multitude of individuals. Relational union is that which gathers the different judgments into one will. Relational difference is the movement that cuts the one will apart by otherness of judgment. Relational union is friendly concord of disposition, or a likeminded agreement and assent of wills. Relational difference is otherness of judgment, or dissimilarity of wills, or division of disposition. Confusing union is the composition that comes about, from hypostases, by concourse into some whole — which does not have, at all, the existence of its own parts, after the union, preserved in kind and form; but has it obliterated together, and mixed up, and unknown, and possesses, of the things that have run together in it, no difference whatsoever that would signify their essential property. Division is a cutting-through that sets apart and separates, part from part, and causes the existence of each thing, both according to essence and according to hypostasis, to be considered by itself.

Minor Theological Works 1783 The property of hypostasis is to be seen in itself, and to be distinguished numerically from things of the same kind. The property of the enhypostatic is either to be known, in a hypostasis, together with another thing differing according to essence, by an indissoluble union; or to be found, according to existence, naturally in individuals. The property of essence is to be predicated and to appear naturally in all and of all. The property of the enousion is to subsist really, and to bear in itself the true characteristics of all the personal properties. Power is enmattered activity; activity is immaterial power. Or again, activity is the result of a natural power. Natural will is the essential desire of the constituents according to nature. Gnomic will is the self-determined impulse and movement of reasoning toward either alternative. Difference is the principle according to which the otherness of the things signified, in relation to one another, is naturally preserved, and which is declarative of the manner of being. Identity is the invariance according to which the principle of the thing signified possesses complete uniqueness, being known by no manner of difference. SPIRITUAL AND DOGMATIC TOME, DEMONSTRATING THAT EMPEROR HERACLIUS, MADE AT THE INSTIGATION OF DISCORDANT WITH THE SACRED ORACLES AND THE HERETICS WHO FABLE MONSTROUSLY BOTH CONFUSION AND DIVISION CONCERNING THE MYSTERY OF CHRIST OUR GOD.

WRITTEN FROM ROME TO STEPHEN, THE MOST HOLY BISHOP OF DOR, SUBJECT TO THE HOLY AND APOSTOLIC THRONE OF THE HOLY CITY OF CHRIST OUR GOD The Lord likened the present life to night, its motion to a mill, and rest to a bed; and of those in each — I mean the mill and the bed — He determined that the one should be taken, the other left. And the one taken, perhaps, is the one released from the former through contemplation, and from the latter through practice — remaining neither confined, by disposition, to the circumscription of the intervals in which the movement of visible things is seen, nor to the softness of the passions, in which is rest; but the one left is the one voluntarily entangled in these, on account of the soul's love of pleasure and love of what is unsettled. But why should I, your servant, having been overcome by experience before, as I have now been by hearsay, wonder how you, radiant with Minor Theological Works 1785 God and most excellent men, chose, out of what you compassionately wrote, to be brought down so far in condescension to a poor and needy man — you who have been so lifted up from the earth by God's grace, and so exalted, as to raise your life to reason, and your mind to the Lord of the things here, and above the things here — appropriating and unifying the image to the archetype; or rather, to speak more truly, wishing to make your self-chosen condescension a demonstration of the height of your surpassing beauty, so that by your abundance you might bring even us up to the measure of God the Word, who displays, in His self-emptying toward us, the uncircumscribed height of His own glory — to which end He so much the more desired to remake us, as He, in the flesh, for our sake, fashioned Himself toward the lowlier — becoming man by nature, without alteration and confusion, He who is preeminently the lover of mankind; leaving nothing lacking for the assumption of what is ours, lest He leave the grace lacking to Himself, and salvation lacking to us, not giving the whole to nature, as not having taken the whole nature; but diminishing that salvation according to whatever He had not assumed.

“For that which is not assumed is not healed,” says the great Gregory. For how could the supra-essential God the Word, incarnate for our sake of the Holy Spirit and Mary the Ever-Virgin Mother of God, by the assumption of flesh having a soul, both noetic and rational, being made new by nature and becoming man, renew the old man, if He did not assume him wholly and entirely, apart from sin alone, from which comes the growing old, and on account of which death was pronounced upon nature — having as much nourishment for us as we had tasted of that tree, having been bitterly filled with the tree of transgression? And how, having emptied Himself, will the same raise up the fallen one, if He did not, wholly and entirely, from the very moment of conception, unite to Himself according to hypostasis that nature, apart only from the stumbling, from which comes the ruin, and on account of which the penalty was imposed? For this reason, having assumed a rational and noetic soul together with its connatural body — that is, a perfect man free of all blemish — and having united it to Himself according to hypostasis, the God who is above nature, having also taken its natural will, altogether had a self-determining willing. If, having transgressed the commandment, not without willing, but not without willing did we transgress, we needed the healing corresponding to it — the like being healed by the like, by the very incarnate God Himself; and having assumed this nature, He would also have had its rational and vital activity — by Minor Theological Works 1787 which, having reasoned about and performed sin (which would that it had never been!), we needed the salvation corresponding to it — God purifying it, by His assumption, of all defilement, and deifying, by the incarnation, our whole nature.

For if the Word, being God, created this nature having these things essentially — I mean the willing and the activity — and set forth the one as self-determining, the other as active, it is clear that, having taken the nature in this way, He united it to Himself according to hypostasis just as He created it from the beginning — that is, willing by nature and active — lest, having assumed only the nature as affected, but not also its innate powers, He would not have assumed the nature at all, but would have made the economy a mere appearance. For it is impossible for our nature, or that of any other beings, ever to exist or be named a nature, apart from its innate powers, by which each is essentially characterized by nature. Wherefore our nature is not without will, since it does not belong to man without it; nor indeed without activity, since it is not inanimate. But if it were without will and without activity, as it has seemed to some heretics of old and now, then He who is above us did not become as we are at all, not confirming what is ours by what is ours, and by those things which He Himself, having created from the beginning, characterized by nature, making man self-determining and active according to nature. And yet the sequence of the holy Gospels confirms, beyond dispute, that He assumed the power of both of these — those by which the arrangement of the Gospels introduces the supra-essential Word as man, willing and acting for our sake, saying in one place: “And about the fourth watch of the night He comes to them, walking on the sea, and He wished to pass them by”; and in another: “And rising up from there, He went to the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and entering into a house, He wished no one to know it, and He could not be hidden”; and again: “Departing from there, they passed through Galilee, and He did not wish anyone to know it”; and: “On the next day He wished to go into Galilee.”

And after this again: “Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not wish to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him”; and: “Where do You wish that we prepare for You to eat the Passover?”; and: “They gave Him vinegar mixed with gall to drink, and having tasted it, He would not drink it.” For these — I mean, “He wished to pass them by,” and “He wished to go out,” and “He did not wish to walk,” and the willing to eat the Passover, and the not wishing to drink the vinegar — confirm His human willing and activity as ours. For instance, the willing and not willing to pass by, or to eat, or to walk, or to drink, is plainly willing, by which He was known to be willing by nature. And by Minor Theological Works 1789 tasting and eating, and going out, and traveling and walking about, He was shown to be active with respect to the activity, according to which He became man by nature for our sake later, but not according to which He existed beginninglessly, for His own sake, by nature God. Since it is not natural, insofar as He was God and, by nature, God's Son — the Word — bodily to will something and to eat, or to be circumscribed locally by transitional movements, being everywhere and above all, infinitely and infinitely so.

Thus, then, Scripture, in showing Him also to have, supra-essentially, His divine and paternal willing and activity, clearly teaches: “As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom He wills.” Here too, then, the willing to give life to the dead attests to His divine willing; and the very giving of life, His properly all-effecting activity. And, simply put, whatever else of this kind depends on the transcendent nature of beings, for its manifestation, as far as possible. But by these means, the Word Himself, through His own disciples, set forth Himself, according to both His natures, of which and in which He consists, as being by nature both willing and active for our salvation; and those who succeeded them, and who proclaimed the theophany of the Word in the flesh — the God-judged Fathers of the catholic Church — proclaiming both of His natures alike, the divine and the human — and not only these, but also His willing and His activity, say the following in a loud voice. For he who bears the name “immortality,” in his discourse on the Incarnation and the Trinity: “And when He says, ‘Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done’; and again, ‘The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak,’ He shows two wills here: the human, which, on account of the weakness of the flesh, refuses the suffering; and His divine will, which is eager for it.”

And Gregory, who bears the name “theology,” in his second discourse on the Son: “Let this be said as the seventh point: that the Son came down from heaven, not that He might do His own will, but that of the One who sent Him. Now if this were not said concerning Him who had come down, we would say the word was shaped concerning the man, not the one understood as in the Savior. For his willing, being wholly deified, was nothing opposed to God; but it is said of the one that is ours — since the human will does not altogether follow the divine, but for the most part resists and wrestles against it.” But his namesake, who became the leader of the Nyssenes — or rather, the Teacher of the inhabited world — in his discourse on Pascha: “The leper approaches, already decayed and rendered useless in body. How does his healing come Minor Theological Works 1791 about from the Lord? The soul wills, the body touches; through both, the affliction flees. For, it says, ‘immediately the leprosy departed from him.’” And again the same, in the same discourse: “Again, those who attended Him in the desert in many thousands — He does not wish to send them away fasting; but with His hands He breaks the loaves. Do you see how, through both, the Godhead accompanying is made public — both by the operating body, and by the impulse of the willing that comes about in the soul?”

And in the second discourse composed against the impious Eunomius: “How does the Lord, reconciling the world to Himself, apportion between soul and body the benefit that came from Him to men — willing through the soul, but touching through the body?” And again the same, in the discourse against Apollinarius, says: “Since, then, the human will is one thing, and the divine another, He utters, as from the man, that which is fitting to the weakness of nature — He who made our sufferings His own; but He adds the second utterance, wishing the lofty and God-befitting purpose to be ratified over the human, for the salvation of the world. For He who said, ‘not mine,’ signified by the word the human; but by adding, ‘but Yours,’ He showed the conjunction of His own Godhead with the Father, of which there is no difference of will, on account of the communion of nature.” But the divine John, who brightened the throne of the imperial city, in the discourse entitled “To Those Absent from the Assembly, and a Demonstration That the Son Is Consubstantial with the Father,” which begins, “Again the horse-races, and again our assembly has grown smaller”: “Do you see how He also foretold His earlier age? Ask, then, the heretic: Is God afraid, and does He shrink back? And does He hesitate, and grieve? And if he says, Yes — then depart from him, and set him down below with the devil, or rather, lower than the devil, for even the devil would not dare to say this.

But if he says, None of these things is worthy of God — say to him, Then God does not pray either. For apart from these considerations, it would be another absurdity if these were the words of God. For the words show not only agony, but two wills — one of the Son, one of the Father, opposed to one another. For to say, ‘Not as I will, but as You,’ is indicative of this. And this not even they would ever grant; but while we always say, ‘I and the Father are one,’ referring to power, they say this is said of will, saying that of the Father and the Son there is one will. If, then, there is one will of Father and Son, how does He say here, ‘Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You’? For if this saying refers to the Godhead, some contradiction arises, and many absurdities are born from it. But if it refers to the flesh, the words make sense, and no accusation would arise. For it is not condemnable that the Minor Theological Works 1793 flesh should not wish to die; for this belongs to nature. For He Himself shows forth all the things of nature, apart from sin, and with much abundance, so as to stop the mouths of the heretics. When, then, He says, ‘If it be possible, let this cup pass from me,’ and, ‘Not as I will, but as You,’ He shows nothing else than that He was truly clothed with flesh that fears death.

For to fear death, and to shrink back, and to be in agony, belongs to that flesh. Now He leaves it deserted, and bare of its own activity, that, by showing its weakness, He might confirm its nature also; and now He hides it, that you might learn that He was not a mere man. For just as, if the human things had been shown throughout, this would have been supposed; so, if the things of Godhead had been performed throughout, the principle of the economy would have been disbelieved. For this reason He varies and mixes both the words and the deeds, that He might give occasion neither to the disease and madness of Paul of Samosata, nor to that of Marcion and Mani. For this reason He also foretells what is to come, as God, and shrinks back again, as man.” And let us clearly hear also what Cyril, the leader of the Alexandrians, teaches in the twenty-fourth chapter of the Thesaurus: “When, then, He appears to fear death, and says, ‘If it be possible, let this cup pass from me,’ understand again that the flesh, fearing death, was being taught, borne by God the Word, to no longer suffer this; for He said to the Father, ‘Not as I will, but as You.’ For He did not fear death insofar as He is the Word and God — He Himself; but He was eager to carry the economy through to its end.

For this is the will of the Father. But He also has the not wishing to die, on account of the flesh's naturally refusing death.” This same Father, commenting on the great evangelist John, says: “Christ made the same statement concerning this, teaching that to die on behalf of all is, on the one hand, willed, on account of the divine nature's having so purposed; but, on the other, unwilled, on account of the sufferings on the cross. And such statements refer to that aspect which pertains to the flesh, which refuses death.” And Severian, the divinely-inspired bishop of Gabala, on “Father, let this cup pass from me,” and on “Father, save me from this hour”: “The Lord, anticipating the objection, stops the mouths of the heretics, that He might show that He had put on this body subject to many sufferings — the body that agonizes over death, that trembles at the violence of death, that grieves and is troubled toward the end of life. He says: ‘Now my soul is troubled.’ ‘My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death’ — not my Godhead; for the Divine is impassible, and untroubled, and fearless. For ‘the spirit,’ says Minor Theological Works 1795 the Lord, ‘is willing, but the flesh is weak.’ So He shows two wills: the one, divine; the other, human.” But I think it has been sufficiently shown, by the God-bearing Fathers, the argument concerning the duality of wills of the same, and of one and another, both divine and human will, and that death was both willed and unwilled by the Savior: the one, on account of what He was from the beginning; the other, on account of what He became later.

We must begin also on the argument concerning the difference of activities, and their duality, in order, following the testimonies of the God-speaking Fathers, who confirm this as well. Right away, then, the great confessor and teacher Ambrose, archbishop of Milan, in his second discourse to Gratian, sets forth the following: “Equal, then, in form; but the same is lesser in the assumption of flesh, and in the suffering of man. For in what way can the same nature be both lesser and equal? And how, if it is lesser, does the same do likewise what the Father does? For in what way is the same activity from a different essence? For can that which is lesser act in the same way as that which is greater? Or can there be one activity where the essence is different?” And indeed the ever-memorable Cyril, hierarch of the Jerusalemites, in his discourse on the Gospel saying where the Lord made the water wine, which begins, “A miracle — this too was a miracle: He worked a wonder”: “He showed the twofold activity — suffering as man, but acting as God, He Himself; for it was not one and another, even if in one way and another.” And thus also Leo, the all-strong and all-holy exarch of the great Church of the Romans, in his dogmatic tome to Flavian of holy memory, against Nestorius and Eutyches, the illnamed: “For He performs, in each form, in communion with the other, that which is proper to it: the Word working that which is of the Word; and the body carrying out that which is of the body.

And the one of these shines forth in the miracles; the other has fallen subject to insults.” And John, who possesses a golden mouth — or rather, the mouth of Christ — in his discourse on the widow who offered the two mites into the treasury, which begins, “Simple, indeed, is the term ‘fasting’”: “In other cases of the natures joined together, the activity of the humanity is different, and the power of the Godhead is different. What do I mean by this? Below, He toils; above, He orders the elements together. Below, He hungers; from above, He supplies the rains. Below, He fears; above, He thunders. Below, He stands before a court; from above, He beholds Himself. But with respect to Minor Theological Works 1797 almsgiving, that of the twofold activity runs together. For He who rewards from above, from the Cherubim, those who show mercy — this same One, sitting before the treasury, tests those who love mankind.” And the same, in his discourse against the Arians on the Apostle Thomas: “Having heard these things, I cleansed my soul of unbelief; I put off my wavering judgment; I took up conviction; I touched the body, rejoicing and trembling. I stretched out, together with my fingers, also the eye of my soul, and thereafter I perceived two activities.” And indeed the most wise Cyril, president of the Alexandrians, in the thirty-second chapter of the Thesaurus: “For we shall surely not grant that there is one natural activity of God and of a creature — lest we either raise up the thing made into the divine essence, or bring down the excellence of the divine nature to the place fitting for created things.

For of those whose activity and power are indistinguishably one, of these the unity of kind must also, of necessity, be preserved.” These things, then, these Fathers of piety proclaim resoundingly — whom, out of many, or rather countless, and, so to speak scripturally, the whole cloud of witnesses, we have brought forward summarily, restraining the bulk of our letter, for the clearest demonstration of their true knowledge concerning the all-Savior Christ. Set in motion by this, they handed down, moved by the Spirit, to the holy Churches, that just as there are two natures of the same and one Christ, so, equal in number to the natures, one must champion His wills and activities — one and another, both divine and human willing and activity — for the manifestation of the essential difference of that from which, in which, and which He is: removing, together, both the illusion and the confusion, and, along with these, altogether the division as well — so that the one and the same incarnate God the Word for our sake is known, from that of which He truly and unconfusedly consists, according to the indissoluble union. For where the essential difference is not known, without confusion, in the utmost union according to hypostasis — both of the things united themselves, and of what naturally belongs to Him — neither will the principle of the union be known without confusion.

But those of the opposing and adverse party say the reverse. For Apollinarius the impious says thus, in his treatise entitled “A Demonstration Concerning the Divine Incarnation in the Likeness of Man”: “And they do not remember that this will is said to be proper, not to man, the one from the earth, as they suppose, but to God, who descended from heaven.” And the Minor Theological Works 1799 same fool again, in the treatise entitled “The Very Manifestation, Enfleshed, of God”: “For Christ is one, moved by divine will alone — according to which we also know His activity to be one, proceeding, in various miracles and sufferings, from His one nature. For He is God enfleshed, and is so believed.” And a little later: “And ‘Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, but let Yours be done,’ does not have the sense of one will and another, not agreeing with one another, but of one and the same — being worked divinely, but refusing death economically; since He who said this was the flesh-bearing God, having no difference at all in willing.” And his disciple and successor in impiety, and, aptly named, an enemy of the word of truth, Polemon the heretic, in his “Antirrhetic” against the holy Fathers, says the following perversely: “For the Word was God — Christ; and having been united to the perfection of flesh and having become man, He did not mix into Himself a mutable mind, moved toward opposites by natural will; but rather, having Himself become mind for Himself, He did all things by an immutable, divine will.

But it is not that the one is divine, the other deified, according to Gregory the Cappadocian — for then it would be mutable. For that which could be deified could altogether also have been made earthly, according to the first Adam.” And in his sixth letter written to Timothy, his fellowworker and wicked accomplice in impiety: “He who says there are two wills of Christ, following those of old and now who are puffed up, either introduces two Christs, divided from one another not only in nature but even in hostility; or teaches the one Christ to fight against Himself. For wherever there is duality, there is altogether division.” But also Themistius, shield-bearer of the party of Severus, and leader of the wicked-mindedness of the Agnoetae, in the forty-fifth chapter of the second discourse of the treatise directed against the tome presented to the Empress Theodora by Theodosius the heresiarch, of the heretics named after him, says thus, hatefully to God: “For it is not the case that, since the holy Athanasius said Christ showed two wills at the time of the Passion, we should therefore attribute to Him two willings, and these fighting against one another, according to your syllogisms; but we shall know, piously, the one willing of the one Emmanuel, moved in one respect humanly, in another respect God-befittingly.” And the same untouchable heretic again, in chapter 52, discourse 3, of the treatise consequent upon that of his fellow-tribesman in the same impiety: “One, I say, is the knowledge and the activity of Emmanuel, just as also the willing.

Consider it thus: the immutable One, as God, who is above all suffering, being Minor Theological Works 1801 moved in a manner befitting man according to willing, refuses the suffering; but again, in a manner befitting God, He takes courage toward the suffering — and He does each of these through flesh.” These things, then, these men perversely hold. But those who are likewise opposed both to these and to the truth — I mean the leaders of division — who championed the relational, judgment-based union, resound with the following. Theodore, the evil-minded and contentious, who plundered the see of Mopsuestia, in the second discourse of his misinterpreted work on the miracles: “The Savior, saying to the leper, ‘I will, be cleansed,’ showed that there is one willing, one activity, proceeding according to one and the same authority — I do not say of nature, but of good pleasure, according to which he who, foreknown, later became man from the seed of David, was united to God the Word, having, from the very womb, the inward appropriation toward Him.” And the follower and successor of his madness, Nestorius the accursed, in his so-called “Manifest Initiation,” second discourse of that treatise, says thus, maliciously: “We preserve the natures without confusion, joined together not according to essence, but according to judgment — wherefore we also see one willing, activity, and lordship of theirs, shown by equality of dignity.

For God the Word, having assumed the man He foreordained, was preferred by him by the reasoning of authority, on account of his foreknown disposition.” And the same demented man again, in the fourth discourse of the same treatise: “God the Word was not one, and He in whom He became man another. For the person of both was one in dignity and honor, worshiped by all creation, divided by no place or time, no otherness of counsel or will.” But indeed Paul the Persian too, a pseudo-deacon of the most abominable heresy of Nestorius, in his discourse “On Judgment,” utters the following, fighting against God together with those men: “Since, according to essence, there came to be no union of God the Word with the man He assumed, one nature did not come to be. But if one nature did not come to be, Christ is not one, single-personed hypostasis. Therefore the union is according to good pleasure, held together by identity of counsel and judgment — so that both the difference of the natures is shown unconfused, and the mystery of good pleasure is displayed in a single unity of will.” By these, as you see, most excellent men, both the writings, and, before these, the doctrines, when examined, are Minor Theological Works 1803 exceedingly of one voice and one confession — or, I know not how, this innovation now, on account of our sins, having crept in against the blameless faith, has established the one will in Christ, and likewise, in agreement with the senseless, the one activity.

The one will, by saying: “Wherefore, following the holy Fathers in all things, and in this too, we confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The one activity, by declaring: “But indeed, that it follows from this — that is, from the maintenance of the two activities — that one must also champion two wills.” For if it is determined that the wills follow the activity, it is altogether necessary, once that which follows is confirmed by it — I mean the one will — that the leading thing too, namely the one activity, be confirmed. For, being eager sophistically to introduce this alongside the one willing, it decreed, as its opinion, that the willing follows the activity. Wherefore it also knows Fathers whom it has followed in this and in all things — not those who truly are, but those who are not holy at all. For surely one could never say that Athanasius, the ever-memorable, spoke of one will — he who plainly cries out, as we have already set forth, “He shows two wills here: the one, human; the other, divine.” Nor Gregory the Theologian, speaking concerning the Savior's human will: “For his willing, being wholly deified, was nothing opposed to God.” Nor his namesake, leader of the Nyssenes: “The soul wills, the body touches,” he says; and, “by the operating body, and by the impulse of the willing that comes about in the soul.”

And: “willing through the soul, but touching through the body,” and, “the human will is one thing, and the divine another,” and having said, “not mine,” he signified by the word the human; but by adding, “but Yours,” he showed the conjunction of His own Godhead with the Father. Nor Chrysostom John, teaching: “For the words show not only agony, but two wills. And if this saying referred to the Godhead, some contradiction would arise. But if it refers to the flesh, the words make sense. For it is not condemnable that the flesh should not wish to die; for this belongs to nature. And He Himself shows forth all the things of nature, apart from sin, and with much abundance.” Nor Cyril of Alexandria, wisely teaching: “For this was the will of the Father, to carry the economy through to its end. But He also has the not wishing to die, on account of the flesh's naturally refusing death.” And: “To die on behalf of all is willed, on account of the divine nature's having so purposed; but unwilled, on account of the flesh, which naturally refuses death.” Nor Severian, president of the Gabalenes, who bears witness: “So He shows two wills: the one, divine; the other, human.” But nor, concerning one confession, the great confessor Ambrose, prudently proclaiming: “For in what way Minor Theological Works 1805 is the same activity from a different essence?

For can there be one activity where the essence is different?” Nor Cyril of Jerusalem, instructing: “He showed the twofold activity — suffering as man, but acting as God, He Himself.” Nor Leo the divine, wisely declaring: “For He performs, in each form, in communion with the other, that which is proper to it.” Nor Chrysostom again: “And in other cases of the natures joined together, the activity of the humanity is different, and that of the Godhead; but with respect to almsgiving, that of the twofold activity runs together”; and, “thereafter I perceived two activities.” Nor likewise Cyril, the most sacred leader of Alexandria: “For we shall surely not grant that there is one natural activity of God and of a creature.” These men, or some of them, the Ekthesis declares are not holy, nor indeed approved mystagogues of the Church; but declares also that their far-famed confession concerning the two wills and activities is impious, and alien to the Christian doctrine. For it confirms this for us by saying the following: “Likewise, the expression of the two activities scandalizes many, as being spoken by none of the holy and approved mystagogues of the Church; but also, that from it follows the championing of two wills, opposed to one another; and from this two who will opposite things are introduced — which is impious and alien to Christian doctrine.”

Behold clearly, and, as the saying goes, with bare head — it determines that it is not the holy, nor indeed the approved mystagogues of the Church, who champion two wills, and the equal number of activities that go before them; but rather that these are impious men, as the Ekthesis says, and alien to Christian doctrine; and that it introduces two who will opposite things, upon those who proclaim these things — that is, the two wills, and the equal-numbered activities — upon the Spirit-moved Fathers, whom it has not even deigned to follow, or to call holy, or in any way whatsoever to champion these things along with them, for the confirmation of the mystery of Christ God according to the flesh. But of whom, and which men, did it mean when it said that the expression of the one activity was spoken, and that it followed, in this as in all things, toward confessing the one will of Christ God — as those who were shown to be truly renowned, and those who are the champions of confusion and the leaders of division. For instance — for it is not unfitting to run through, again, briefly, for confirmation — Apollinarius the impious, fighting against God, said the following: “For Christ is one, moved by divine will alone, according to which we also know His activity to be one, and having no difference in willing.”

Polemon, the enemy of the truth: “By an immutable, divine will He did all things; but it is not that the one is divine, the Minor Theological Works 1807 other deified, according to Gregory the Cappadocian.” And: “He who says there are two wills of Christ, following those of old and now who are puffed up, either introduces two Christs, or teaches Him to fight against Himself.” Themistius the lawless: “But let us know the one willing of the one Emmanuel, moved in one respect humanly, in another respect God-befittingly”; and, “One, I say, is the knowledge and activity of Emmanuel, just as also the willing.” Theodore, the God-smitten: “He showed there is one willing, one activity, proceeding according to one and the same authority.” Nestorius, the utterly smitten: “Wherefore we also see one willing, activity, and lordship of theirs.” Paul, Persian also in judgment: “The union is according to good pleasure, held together by identity of counsel and judgment”; and, “the mystery of good pleasure is displayed in a single unity of will.” These, then, these accursed and execrable men, it determines to be holy Fathers; these it knows as approved mystagogues of the Church — whom, having followed in all things, and in this too, and defining one will and activity of Christ God together with them, it likewise confuses and cuts apart, along with them, the principle of the economy.

How, then, holding the opinions of the adversaries, has it supposed itself to hold otherwise, casting its votes contrariwise, and choosing and preferring that which is not, over that which is? For, since truth, not injustice, is the judge, it is surely clear to everyone that he who is concordant and of one confession with those men is not the one who says what they do not say, but the one who champions what they teach — since it is the holding of a different opinion that characterizes discord, and the holding of the same opinion that characterizes concord. And indeed it somehow bears witness itself, crying out that the abominable Nestorius never dared to say two wills, but rather “self-willedness” — that is, one will — of the two persons it fabricates for Him. If, then, even according to this, Nestorius champions not two wills, but one — and this is also held by Apollinarius, and all the impious men who follow from them, and moreover also one activity, as the argument has shown — then, without dispute, we, who say two, according to the divine Fathers, are altogether of a different mind from them; but it, saying one, stands revealed as of the same mind as Nestorius and Apollinarius, and those around them, in what it teaches — and, as I said, disowning the divine Fathers, while inscribing to itself, as its own, the execrable ones.

But of what, or of what compelling cause, has it introduced this against the pious confession? If as though we did not have the faith, the statement is false — for all Christians, even before this Ekthesis, are those who champion the right Minor Theological Works 1809 doctrine. But if as though we did have it, the manner is to be shunned, introducing something superfluous, as counterfeit — by which, overshadowing their own knavery, and being able to produce not even a single citation whatsoever from any council, or Father, or Scripture, as testimony for their own opinions, they say these things, fabricating the doctrines of piety which were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and became servants of the Word, and their disciples and successors thereafter, the divinely-inspired teachers of the truth — that is to say, the holy and ecumenical five councils of the most blessed and God-bearing Fathers. But if they handed these things down, what is the proof, or whence comes to them the confirmation of such doctrines? Besides, since we adhere to and confess the holy councils, it is clear that the discovery of the imported doctrines is counterfeit. But if these things are not from the holy councils, what is the weight of the drama, bending the ill-famed to the appellation of the all-praised — that the designation of the renowned Fathers and councils might be a bait for the more simple toward apostasy from the truth, cunningly devised long ago from the beginning by those of different opinion, both for the concealment of their own affairs, as I said, and for the deceitful seizure, as it were, of those led astray.

Wherefore, for the utter abolition of such things — I mean of those who, from time to time, search out deceitful investigations against the faith — the synodal law of the holy assembly at Chalcedon of the blessed Fathers has also most excellently determined, being ordained thus: “The holy and ecumenical council has determined that it is permitted to no one to put forward another faith, that is, to write or compose, or to hold or teach it to others; but that those who dare either to compose another faith, or to bring it forward, or to teach or hand down another symbol, to those who wish to turn to the recognition of the truth from Hellenism or Judaism, or from any heresy whatsoever — these, if they are bishops or clergy, that the bishops be alien to the episcopate, and the clergy to the clergy; but if they are monastics or laymen, that they be anathematized.” Who, then, of those who have in any way perceived God, and who are dependent on His all-radiant glory — from whom, and through whom, and unto whom is the salvation of those who piously confess Him — would still abandon the orthodox faith handed down to us from above and from the beginning through the divinely-inspired oracles and the Fathers, and prefer the recent innovation? Against which, just as against every other invented contrary to pious reasoning by those of different mind, the lawful curse of the approved and synodal decree of the holy Fathers assembled at Chalcedon has been Minor Theological Works 1811 brought forth, as the argument has shown — unless one, having grown numb to his own life, has preferred alienation from the glory of God.

Wherefore, beholding these things, Master, in actual fact, and understanding it to be plainly and openly a progression and proclamation beforehand, for the overthrow of all godliness, and the denial of the true knowledge of the Only-begotten, and the extreme deception and the last beast, according to the foretelling, by divine inspiration and most blessed illumination, of the holy men who hold these views, for our guard who have reached the ends of the ages — let each of us guard this imported innovation with all the strength of his heart, that we may not be carried along with it carelessly and negligently, but rather, standing gravely and manfully against all impiety, casting down reasonings, to speak scripturally, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. For this reason our Lord and God Himself, the Savior of all, out of loving-kindness making us secure, says: “Then, if anyone should say to you, Behold, here is Christ, or, Behold, there — do not believe it” — sending away the counterfeit and various faiths and suppositions concerning Him held by those given to strife, suppositions very far from the mystery concerning Him, and warding off His own followers from every alien opinion, by which the contentious and those of different mind are accustomed to disturb and to war against the sincerity of confession in Him — that the pious and Godloving mind that is ours may never, taken captive by any of these, fall from the truth, swept away by the plausibility of myths, but rather be confirmed by the demonstration of patristic reasonings.

“Watch, then, and pray,” the word further exhorts us, “that you enter not into temptation” — wishing, by watchfulness, to work in us sobriety concerning this, and, by prayer, His gracious assistance. And here it speaks of the temptation that comes from error, not from necessity, into which we are led from within ourselves, not from elsewhere, deviating from the straight and royal path — which, cutting a straight course, do you yourselves, guided by God, wisely lead also those of us, your servants, who limp on both feet, bringing us back to the shadowless and unsetting light of the most divine confession and conduct of the Word, looking to the reward from there. Since the divine law also bids those among you who are strong to bear the burdens of the weak, and thus to fulfill the law. And a heavy burden, beyond any other of the difficult things, is the divergence of doctrines concerning the same matters, which comes about among the more childlike, through the alteration of times and persons, perhaps by the deceit or threat of flatterers, whether fawning or precise — and especially in a time of universal disorder, cropping up uncontrollably. Do not cease, Minor Theological Works 1813 then, compassionately stretching out a hand to your suppliant — on the one hand purging this knowledgeably by argument, on the other confirming it lovingly by prayer, and appropriating and bringing us to Him who is rightly worshiped and believed by you, God the Word and King of all the ages, now and at His fearful appearing — to whom, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be honor, dominion, glory, worship, unto the ages of ages.

Amen. On the Two Wills of the One Christ Our God Various shapes and forms have been technically devised by various people for both security and adornment; and these seem to be resplendent in what appears, having grown numb, through ignorance, to what is hidden. But for you, sanctified Father, who have already transferred your reasoning to a life without interval, virtue — artless, and surpassing every form and shape — has sufficed for beauty and safeguard, adorning you, in addition to what is unseen, so much in what is visible to all, in proportion as you have preferred the desire of what stands firm to that of what is dissolved and worldly, and never has satiety. Or rather, showing you so much akin and like to God, as befits, in the same proportion as it has rendered you altogether estranged and unlike in relation to matter and the things concerning it. From this comes to you also your invulnerability toward those who act wickedly. For he who has suffered the good things by disposition, and is wholly possessed by them, having received the fulfillment of desire — the perfect conquest, within himself, of the object of desire, and the cessation of movement, the ever-moving rest, according to which the death that of old prevailed over nature is annihilated, not being conquered by this through transgression — is not naturally disposed to suffer from those wicked men.

For you no longer undergo any tossing, on account of the grace of the Spirit that has come to prevail, by which, holding fast in your prayers, and accomplishing skillfully its paths, you show, by activity, how many are royal and divine, to those who wish to walk straight along the unerring path of piety; and you mark out for them the deviations on either side; and you display, for the one, the threatened griefs; for the other, the promised sacred rewards — that you might bring them, by fear and by desire, to divine perfection. And marveling at your labor, I fittingly praise your understanding; or rather, being astonished at your vigor in each respect, I glorify the God who empowers and makes you wise, entreating you to use the same methods toward those deficient in understanding, and not to grow weary — for virtue has no weariness, being productive of all Minor Theological Works 1815 good things — until you have produced in them the mind of Christ, and have taught them to search out the depths of the Spirit, whose visible things circumscribe all the wisdom and power of beings, and reveal that which is spoken in mystery, to those like yourself who have devoted themselves to Him, and who prefer nothing more precious for their manner of life than Him. But since, possessing the virtue that is first and last of all alike, as leader and seal illuminating all — I mean humility — you have deigned to inquire of your servant and disciple, concerning the definition of natural will made by the reverent monk, whether it is correct or not, in saying it is “the power that desires that which accords with nature, and that holds together all the properties that essentially belong to the nature” — and that this is one thing, and the gnomic will another — I suppose this to be correct, and not discordant with the teaching of the God-judged Fathers, even if it has seemed to some not to be so — insisting that the Fathers define will as willing and the thing willed, or the desirable.

And who defines it thus, and which of the Fathers — I would gladly ask them. For if this is so, what else is this than a circular demonstration, which does not clarify the argument concerning itself, but sets forth each through the other, contrary to what is fitting, putting forward that which is: defining willing as will, and this again as that. For the things defined revert to their own definition. For that they also call the will “willing” is clear. But they do not say this as a definition of the will. For who could show this? Since, according to those who say this, “the willed” would be the definition of “wish,” and “movement” of “motion,” and “humanity” of “man.” But whether they signify the thing signified in this way or that, they in no way injure its existence, whether the thing indicated be movement or essence. For if this were so, the existence of all things, both universal and particular, would altogether collapse. For we make use of different significations in all things. And I say this too: that even if they call the will “willing,” they in no way call it “the thing willed” or “the desirable.” For how are appetite and the desired the same? For if this were so, toward what would it be moved, being itself properly that toward which it is also moved, and having no nature other than that?

For this will is a middle relation between the extremes, unifying them through itself, but not coinciding with them in existence. And witness is the divine and great Gregory, who does not bring the thing willed and the thing begotten into the same as the willing and the begetting altogether; but through these, as natural relations, refers them back to the one who begets and wills. For if he did not deign to make even the reference of the thing willed or begotten to the Minor Theological Works 1817 willing and the begetting, even though it is naturally a middle term — “for it does not,” he says, “altogether follow” — how then would he have brought these into the same, and declared them to be one? Besides: if they say the will is the thing willed, and we ourselves are, by nature, the thing willed and the desirable — for we are a creature of God — then God has, by nature, no other will than us alone — coming to be and ceasing to be, as we do; but before we existed, He was devoid of all will. The same would follow also concerning us: what is proper to us and natural would not be present, but only the externally willed — being and not being; good and not such — would be fashioned around us. But how also is the thing willed something external?

For it is called the thing willed and the desirable on account of the one moved by willing toward it, but not on its own account. So that if the one who has natural willing wills nothing of the things that are, nothing is, for him, the thing willed or desired. What, then, is the argument of those who insist that the will is, or is said by the holy Fathers to be, the thing willed? But let it be granted, said thus according to them — for our argument concerns not a difference of names, but pious concepts — let them answer this fittingly when asked: whether the divine will, according to nature, is one thing, and the human will another; and this is other than that, however many times it be called and named — let them teach this, and steady our understanding, which trembles over the unknown; and we shall not be much troubled by their naming, but rather ask whether we too may contribute something of our own in this matter. For if it is not one thing and another according to essence, it is clear that it is one by nature and the same. And if this is so, the nature too is of necessity one and without variance. For where there is no natural otherness of wills, there is none of essence and nature at all.

But if it is one thing by nature and another, altogether different; and if different, how is it not necessary to confess the number belonging to their quantity? For the denial of this works the utter annihilation both of it, and of the differing things, as though they were not. For how is it possible for a thing both to exist and not to be numbered, and for what cause? Or how, existing by nature but not being numbered, would the wills be so, if reasonably the natures themselves would not cease to be numbered? For that which is good in the case of the natures, being innate and constitutive realities, ought also to belong to the realities themselves; and either let them abolish the number from these too, as injuring something according to them, or let it, in no way harming anything, be comprehended in them also — Minor Theological Works 1819 for the manifestation of the innate difference belonging to them, on account of which we also make use of it even with regard to the essences; or let them show how they do not work the abolition or confusion of the Savior's natural human will, by the rejection of the number. And how is the incarnate Word a perfect man, apart from natural will? For being deified by union with God does not remove, any more than it removes the very nature of the rationally and noetically ensouled flesh from its essential existence, the state of the natural properties — just as the utmost and thorough commingling and union with fire does not remove the iron from its own nature; but it suffers the things of fire, since it has become fire by union; yet it weighs down according to nature, and cuts, since it has suffered no injury of its own nature, nor departed at all from its natural activity — even though it exists, together with the fire, according to the same and one hypostasis, and acts without interval both according to its own nature (I mean the cutting) and again according to the union (which is the burning).

For the cutting belongs to it, just as the burning belongs to the fire, on account of the utmost interpenetration and exchange of these with one another; and we are not prevented at all from naming or numbering its nature — I mean the iron's — even though it is seen together with fire, nor its natural activity, even though it is seen together with burning, and has no separation from it, but shines forth and is known uniformly together with it and in it. What, then, is the argument for not numbering that which naturally belongs to nature — that is, the will — and thereby attesting that which is imperfect as ours to the God the Word incarnate, who is beyond perfection and before perfection — even though, by the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the Holy Spirit for our salvation, He has, equally with all things, according to the indissoluble union, communed with the things of nature, just as also with nature itself perfectly, apart only from sin, since it was not of nature, but of judgment moved contrary to reason and the law of nature — a deviation and a stumbling? And rightly, it seems to me, especially for this reason, the aforesaid monk applied himself to distinguishing the gnomic from the natural will. For the one, according to his wellformed definition, is “the power that desires that which accords with nature.”

For everything that exists, and especially rational beings, naturally desires that which accords with nature, and has this power, received from God, essentially, for its own constitution. For if it does not have the appetite for that which accords with nature, whence and how would it have that for what does not exist at all, having no Minor Theological Works 1821 existence or movement whatsoever? For only what is nonexistent and without essence is powerless; and no power of this, nor movement, exists at all among beings. But the other, the gnomic will, is a self-determined impulse, making deviations toward either alternative, and is not definitive of nature, but properly of person and hypostasis. And this being discerned, Nestorius, the divided man-worshiper, impiously taught a union of judgments — that he might confirm each hypostasis by the other, and that the mere man might be preserved for him, having made the union, as he himself says, by a certain judgment and self-determined movement toward God the Word — from which he also establishes “same-willedness,” or, to speak more properly, “manywilledness” — inasmuch as, according to him, with each movement of the gnomic will, it advances, part by part, from the imperfect toward the perfect, being carried along and progressing; but not from the very ineffable conception itself, wholly and perfectly, together with all that is its own, toward the whole, and all that is its own, of our nature, united to the Godhead of the Word according to one and the same In order, then, that the said monk might also precisely distinguish that which is complete of nature in the incarnate God, and cast away that which is opposed — he defined the natural will in Him, and set aside the gnomic will, giving no room, on the one hand, to division by strife in this, nor, on the other, to illusion by infiltration, for lack of its existence.

But if someone should perhaps insist that it is not possible for the two wills to be spoken of in Him otherwise than by way of opposition — if as differing according to essence, I too accept this; but if as opposed, the statement is false. For it is not the case that whatever is different is altogether also opposed. For the opposed is properly the work of judgment moved irrationally; but the different is the work of nature held by reason. And the one is seditious of nature, the other plainly constitutive. Essential difference, then, is for the constitution of the things in nature, not for opposition, toward their dissolution. For nature does not have that which is contrary to nature; nor is there any principle of sedition. Besides, if the two wills are altogether contrary and opposed, how is it that, in the case of rational beings divided by nature and hypostasis, this does not altogether and in every case follow? For we sometimes concur with them, even though gnomic, and with God, and with angels, and with one another; but not on this account have we already fallen away from judgment and the will according to it. For if these things belong to us, and evidently the concurrence with others too, provided we have this, then we also hold fast to the other Minor Theological Works 1823 gnomic wills too.

If, then, this is so here, and no opposition is seen at all, even though the gnomic wills are preserved both in existence and in number, and the friendly disposition in relation — how, in the case of the same and one incarnate God the Word, who truly became man for our sake, would there be opposition in the wills that naturally belong to Him according to essence? And how do they say these are contrary, on account of the very number, or on account of their very existence? But if on this account, they also abolish the nature of the flesh, as opposed to the Word on account of its existence. For it is much stronger, as is clear to all, toward opposition, that the subject differ from that which is in the subject. But if on account of the number alone, let them also strip the natures of it, and let them number not even one of them! But then let them reject it also, for the same reason, in the case of the three hypostases of the one and beginningless Godhead, lest that too be at strife with itself — but it is absurd to allot such power altogether to that which is nothing, no essence, no quality, no other thing that exists — and more absurd still, to accuse the very existence of the natural will, and thence to work its abolition.

And this, when it is the first among all the natural properties and movements in nature, its innate power. For according to this alone do we, by nature, desire to be, and to live, and to move, and to understand, and to speak, and to perceive, and to partake of food, sleep, and rest, and not to suffer pain, nor to die, and, simply, to have perfectly the possessions of all that constitutes nature, and to lack the privations of what harms it. And it seems to me that the reverent monk did well also in this, in his definition, when he added: “and that holds together all the properties that essentially belong to the nature.” For the essential and innate will in us always holds together all things, and desires to hold them together, and to be deprived of none; or rather, we ourselves, through it and according to it. And I think that anyone who, in any measure, has regard for what truly is, rather than what merely seems, will agree altogether that the incarnate God, as man, has a natural and human will; and that He willed, according to it, naturally, each of the things enumerated, for the confirmation of His noetically and rationally ensouled flesh — since He truly became a perfect man, lacking none of what is ours except sin alone; but having all things, whatever we have too, without omission — the things that constitute our essence by nature, just as also those of His beginningless and divine nature, by which He was known to be properly man and God at once, and to preserve, after the union, His complete natural kinship both with us and with the Father.

Minor Theological Works 1825 For to say that only at the time of the saving Passion, when He was really shaping what is ours in Himself, and as man refused death, did He show Himself to have two wills — this seems to me assertive, not demonstrative. For why only at this time, and not before, and for what cause? For if He had it then, He also had it from the beginning, since He became man — but did not improvise it later. But if He did not have it from the beginning, nor at the time of the Passion, but only made an appearance of the refusal, then, along with this, He made an appearance of the rest by which we are saved — the tear, the prayer, the grief, the agony, the cross, the death, the burial. For if one of the things that are preserved in Him naturally, as with us, is invalidated, the others too will not stand firm. For how would that be so, and these not? And what is the reason? And how is there any opposition in praying, and in willingly making a display of natural weakness — I mean of the flesh — through the shrinking, and not resisting at all, but saying, “If it be possible”; and, “Not what I will, but what You will”; and joining, with the shrinking, the strong and eager movement against death?

For He was really shaping what is ours in Himself, through the brief natural agony, that He might free us from it too, and confirm the nature of His own flesh, and make the economy pure of illusion for all; and He again immediately displayed the greatest impulse against death, and the utmost connaturality and union of what is human in Him toward His own and paternal will, by determining this and saying, “Not mine, but let Yours come to be.” Thereby repelling division on the one hand, and confusion again on the other. But if they say this because He appears to have made an expression of willing at other times too, besides the time of the Passion, they would say the same also concerning innate intellection, and would construct Him as mindless. For He is not recorded as having said, “I have understood.” And likewise concerning smell, and the rest of our natural faculties, of which He is not recorded as having made mention. Or also concerning the soul itself, as though it did not exist beforehand, from the time He became man, but only whenever He made mention of it — for He is not proclaimed to have done this long before the Passion. Either, then, let them say it was improvised on the spot, since He had not often, and from the beginning, made mention of it; or, not saying this, but rather teaching, according to the great Athanasius, “At once flesh, at once ensouled flesh of God the Word, rational” — they will also say that the natural will of the Savior as man was not only at the time of the Passion, even though He made mention of it then; but from the beginning consubstantial, as man, naturally with the Savior.

And let them cease, then, moving and gathering such Minor Theological Works 1827 arguments out of season. For the present season is one for blood, on account of our sins, not for doctrines; and for strong lamentations, for the propitiation of God, not for sophistic contradictions, toward greater indignation against us. It also occurs to me to wonder concerning activity, how they teach this to be one in Christ, by its reference and relation to the individual, as they say. And, to pass over saying that none of the natural properties primarily belongs to the individual, but has its reference to its nature and essence — for who could act at all apart from the powers naturally belonging to the nature? Or whence would he have his acting or capability, apart from nature? But this I wish to ask: do they put this forward for the abolition of the natural activities, or what? For if for their abolition, how, when, and what kind of activity at all would there be, once those have ceased? For just as, if the natures did not exist, that which comes from them — I mean the composite hypostasis — would also altogether vanish; so too, if the natural activities did not exist, no other would exist at all. And I do not say this as though another activity were constituted from the natural ones.

For composition belongs to none of the things in a subject; since it does not present, at all, existence in itself, but only something arbitrary. As if they say that those properly existing by nature do not exist, how will that which in no way exists have existence? For who is it that says the activity is hypostatic, and whence do they get this, and from whom, having received it, do they put it forward? But if perhaps they declare this, they confess the hypostasis, to which it is referred, to be composite, and receptive of contraries and opposites — mortal and immortal, visible and invisible, circumscribed and uncircumscribed, beginningless and under a beginning — so the activity too will likely be this. And how otherwise than according to habit and privation, evidently? And it will undergo the one as existing, and will subsist alongside the other as nonexistent. And how will the one who has such an activity not, according to the same and not different respects — since not even that activity is single — undergo similar things? For it is altogether necessary that the one who acts correspond fittingly to his own activity, and that activity to him. And how is he God, who has it by habit, and not God by nature? And how is he man, who has it by privation, and not properly so by essence?

What nature is without activity, or apart from natural activity? For just as it is in no way devoid of existence, so neither is it devoid of natural power. But if it lacks this, it would also lack existence. For the powerless, as altogether inert, is only that which does not exist. For everything that exists has a constitutive difference — the innate movement co-assumed with its kind, Minor Theological Works 1829 and making the definition of the subject, by which it is properly known both that it is and what it is — having invariance toward things of the same kind, and again difference toward things of a different kind. And if this is so, how is it possible for the incarnate Word, lacking natural power according to the flesh, to be called a perfect man, or a man at all? For man does not exist apart from natural activity, any more than any other nature exists apart from its own and essential activity. For the lack of this either makes nature not to be nature at all, or makes all natures the same as one another, and, in place of all, one — mixed together and wholly confused, through the lack of that which constitutes each. For if they do not call the human in Him inactive, it is clear that they say He has an innate and human activity.

For how could it be otherwise? For it is not possible to act apart from natural activity — just as it is not possible to exist apart from essence and nature. But nor is it altogether necessary that the one who acts have only one natural activity, if his nature is twofold; since it is also altogether necessary that the one who subsists have one nature, even if his hypostasis is composite. For if that subsisting is on account of relation, this too is altogether on account of the same. For we see it uniquely borne in each case. For activity is referred to the one who acts, and nature again to the one who subsists. It is necessary, then, if, on account of the union and the uniqueness of the person, they say there is one activity of the one who acts, that they should say, for this same reason, one nature also of the one who subsists — lest they be caught teaching a relational union, saying this of the activities, but not saying it likewise of the natures. For it is not possible for them to unite these to a hypostasis, but rather essence and nature, insofar as concerns the natural activities — these being united to nothing else but activity in relation to it. Since, just as the natural difference of these makes, according to them, two who act, so surely, altogether, the innate otherness of the essences would gather two who subsist.

Either, then, let them mix these too into one nature; or let them in no way introduce division into those, being naturally essences and numbered. For what does not happen in the latter case could never happen in the former either. But the natural difference is signified through their number; yet division is excluded by the utmost union. For it is not possible to know the divine or human nature, insofar as it can even be known — let alone to say it differs from another — apart from essential activity. For the definition of a thing is properly the principle of its essential power; and if this is abolished, the subject is altogether abolished together with it. And for this reason we confess these to be naturally preserved in the incarnate Word: the one, in the flesh's reception of the divine things; the other, again, shown Minor Theological Works 1831 authoritatively in the experience of the human things — that we may also confess, together with these, the natures of which they are the essential activities. To whom is it not clear that, in the case of the same essence and nature, one cannot see a difference of existence or of natural activity? For no nature differs from itself; for this is somehow impossible. But in an individual and a person, altogether and in every case, if it is composite — for we see both the differing natures of which it consists, and the natural movements by which it is known to act according to nature, confirming its own existence — it presents in reality that from which it consists as one and another, through natural activity in one respect and another; through which, since it looks to the individual, I mean, and passes over the natures willingly, for the abolition of the natural activities, we find the attack not so much burdening as helping in this.

For if the individual is not altogether enclosed within one natural activity, just as neither within one nature — for who says or could show this? — it is clear that it has essential movements equal in number to the natures, that is, essences, that belong to it; and no one will gainsay this. And I pass over saying that the composite person concerning Christ is not properly called an individual. For it does not stand in the relation of division that proceeds from the most generic genus, through the subordinate genera, to the most specific species, circumscribing its own progression within it. Wherefore, on this account, according to the most wise Cyril, the name “Christ” has neither the force of a definition — for it is not an individual, predicated of a species of many things differing in number — nor indeed does it signify the essence of anything. For it is not an individual, referred to a species or genus, or circumscribed by these according to essence; but a composite hypostasis, thoroughly identifying in itself the natural division of the extremes, and bringing them into one by the union of its own parts. But if perhaps, to those who, by saying that the Lord is not without activity according to the flesh, confess His innate and human activity, they infer that He is thereby also without hypostasis — this is to do injury to the hypostasis.

For the fact of the nature's not being without hypostasis does not make it to be a hypostasis. Just as also, that a body has some shape does not make the body itself to be a shape; nor does generation or vision make the begotten or visible to be ungenerate, or not-invisible. And simply, everything else that, when denied not to be what it is not, produces a relation — that concerning which it is naturally contemplated is what is affirmed. Besides, even if this were perhaps so, when it is not, it would be nothing against the natural activities, which are not equally rejected together with the hypostases by the holy Fathers, nor do they divide Minor Theological Works 1833 the one into two, as the hypostases do. For who could show that it is not good, for the manifestation of the essential difference, to champion the natural activities in the same Christ? And for what reason, and how, and what argument determines this, or what approved Father — but let them not merely assert it! For if it is not good to confess the natural activities, neither is it good to confess the natures themselves. Or how these, but not those? But if both are good, why do they introduce, alongside the good, and construct hypostasis out of the nature's not being without hypostasis? For if they knew the activities to be censured by the Fathers, just as the hypostases, it would not be unreasonable for them to reject these too.

But if we know them proclaiming these, and confessing both divine and human activity, just as also nature, and bidding us to confess it — but no one at all confessing a divine or human hypostasis, except only Nestorius, the divided man-worshiper — why, then, if the teaching of the saints is not rejected by them, do they contrive such things against it, for the stripping away of the natural activities? And whose work is it, to gather and reason thus, other than that of Severus the sophist and madman, who hastens to destroy even his own arguments, and does not prevail against the pious, on account of the manifest clarity of the truth, even though he contrives it by the shameless method of sophistic nonsense? For if the nature's not being without hypostasis makes it a hypostasis, then altogether, by the same logic, the hypostasis's not being without essence would present it as an essence. And those who say this — how do they not divide the doctrine of theology by the natures of the equal-numbered hypostases? Since, according to them, the hypostases that are not without essence are altogether an essence; and do they not confuse the doctrine of the economy by the uniqueness of nature on account of the one hypostasis? Being consistent with themselves, then, they will teach such things against themselves. But for those who confess the natural activities, gathering these in this way is a favor — for through all things they gather the truth for themselves, according to the tradition of the saints, according to which the not-beingwithout-hypostasis does not make the nature a hypostasis, but enhypostatic — that it not be taken as an accident, by mere conception alone, but be really contemplated as a species.

Thus also the not-being-without-essence does not make the hypostasis an essence, but presents it as enousion — that we may know it not as a bare property, but properly, together with that in which the property is. Just as there, the enhypostatic signifies the enhyparktic, that which really exists — and the enhyparktic is that which partakes of essential and natural existence — so here, the active, that is, the operative, properly signifies the powerful. And the Minor Theological Works 1835 powerful is that which has essential and natural power. Therefore, to confess that the natures in Christ are not without hypostasis, or not without activity, is not to gather hypostases or agents, but to confess orthodoxly their essential and natural existences and activities, for the true confirmation of the incarnate God the Word, who exists from them, and in them, and according to them — I mean the natures — acting according to the indissoluble union. By what reasoning, then, do they themselves refer many activities, and more than a number, to one and the same — by saying, “every divine and human activity”? For “every” suggests one should understand, not one, nor even two, nor three, but infinite ones surpassing number — just as also “all things” and “everything” — and they suspect no division at all in this? But this same thing, against those who confess the two natural activities, according to the divine Fathers, to the point of knowing the difference, they gather, I know not how or why, together with “those who act”?

For if the many and different activities according to nature do not divide and cut the one and the same into many who act, how do the two? And who is more to blame for this attack, as unreasonable? For if they did not say and attribute these to the same, and to the same subject, connaturally interwoven with one another through their thorough mutual interpenetration, and preserved in Him according to the indissoluble union, and moved by Him, uniformly, according to one and another respect — by which He put forward the power of the miracles divinely, as being God by nature, and willingly received the experience of the sufferings, as being man by nature, for our sake — then their attack would indeed be not implausible. But now, since they do not say this, but refer these to the same and to the same, whence and how do they gather “those who act”? And why, if it is reasonable, do they not first gather for themselves “the many,” insofar as concerns the many activities? For just as the two activities suggest the two who act, so surely, of necessity, the many would suggest the many. But if this is so, how I fail to see the former, I think neither does anyone else who prefers the truth to mere appearance. And how, again, do they put forward the one, as it were contradictorily, against the many, concerning Him?

And what do they mean by this one, and how do they teach it? For it is not possible for the same to have both many and one. For if many, not one; and if one, how again many? For either that, the many activities, will altogether reject this, the one; or that, the one, will reject those, the many, according to their own argument, by which they put forward the one for the overthrow of the two natural ones. But if perhaps they say the one is produced from the many, this does not have the Minor Theological Works 1837 nature, as has been said, of things in a subject being composed. But nor, again, is it possible for the one to be cut into many out of which it came. Let them, then, first abolish the several by the one activity, that they not introduce, against themselves, many who act. And, again, let them abolish the one by the many, that they not teach consubstantiation, and thus fight against those who champion the two, if they are not to be found powerless. For it is not possible at all to attack others, while overturning themselves together with their own doctrines, requiring no other assistance at all in this. For that which has a foundation — that which exists — is firmly established by itself, suffering no fall from any quarter.

For that alone is truly vigorous and strong which has the truth as its support; but not that which receives its dissolution from another, let alone from itself. Abandoning these, then, it is altogether fitting for us, being pious, both to confess in reality the existence of each of the natures preserved in the one incarnate God the Word, and altogether to confess its innate activity, just as also its will; and, through the pious and most true opinion concerning each of these — the divine and the human alike — of the same, and of the properties naturally belonging to Him, to strengthen the orthodox teaching of the holy Fathers, who have handed down to the holy catholic Churches of God to think and say these things concerning Him; and to deny nothing of what He was from the beginning, and what He became afterward for our sake, and of all the properties that naturally characterize these. For they taught the same to be perfect in each, and in each, and to preserve without deficiency the natural property of each of that from which He consisted; and in all things like us, and likewise having been tempted according to will, apart from sin alone. Hearing, then, these blessed voices, we deny nothing at all, either of what is ours and natural, or of what is paternal and divine, in the same Christ; but we champion the same as having different natures and natural activities, and essential wills — that is, two.

For neither our nature, nor indeed the paternal nature, exists apart from essence, or innate will or activity. And if this is so, it is clear that He who subsists from these — I mean Godhead and manhood — according to one and the same hypostasis, and who is properly the same God and man, is consubstantial with us and of like activity, and has the same innate willing according to the manhood; and is consubstantial with the Father and of like activity, and has acquired the same willing according to the Godhead; and is wholly akin to those above, in all that pertains to that kinship; and wholly akin to those below, in all that pertains to that kinship, apart from sin alone. And he who does not so Minor Theological Works 1839 champion this does not accept as God-inspired Fathers those who proclaim these things; but it is clear who and what sort of Fathers he does accept. May it be granted to all of us, by the intercession of your Godfashioned prayers, to be guarded always in soul and body, in the temple of God, the catholic and apostolic Church, championing this sincere and orthodox confession of our great God and Savior before Him and all creation, and to offer it to Him in place of all things, and before all things, at His allglorious appearing; and to be deemed worthy by Him of an equal share, and to partake, together with those who unashamedly confess Him before men, of the eternal and blessed gifts promised, and to enjoy in experience, according to our prayers, what we now, deemed worthy by faith, have tasted — by the prayers and intercessions of our all-glorious and all-holy, undefiled Lady, the Mother of God and EverVirgin Mary, and of all the saints.

Amen.

1. The invisible is a negation of the visible thing. But that which is affirmed is affirmed not with reference to sight, but the visible; which is the relation of the non-invisible — that is, that to which the non-invisible has its relation. But of sight it is not the non-invisible, but blindness, that is the relation with reference to which the affirmation is made.

2. Against those who say there is no nature without hypostasis: one must retort, “nor is there a hypostasis without essence.” Then one must add, that just as to say the hypostasis is not without essence does not present it as being an essence — for thus one would confuse the mystery of theology with that of the economy, dividing the one and confusing the other — so too, to say the nature is not without hypostasis does not introduce it as being a hypostasis. On the Definitions of Distinctions Every distinction of beings comes about either according to opposition, or according to being-set-in-opposition — that is, either division or abolition. For instance, sensible and intelligible things have opposition, as being of different essence, but are not set in opposition to one another. For these are not mutually abolishing, and for this reason they admit of the distinction of opposition with respect to themselves — that is, division. But life and death have distinction, but not according to opposition, but according to being-set-in-opposition — that is, abolishing. For the position of the one becomes the removal of the other; and the Minor Theological Works 1841 existence of the one is the nonexistence of the other. If, then, a thing is primarily set in opposition to another, it is altogether also, consequently, opposed; but if a thing is primarily opposed to another, it is not at all, consequently, set in opposition.

And to speak more clearly: essences, on account of the differences inherent in them, admit of distinction from one another according to opposition — as soul and body, and all things that differ according to essence; but the things around essence, that is, qualities, have distinction according to being-set-in-opposition, as life and death, and anything of this sort. For these are plainly mutually abolishing. Understand “opposition” as division; and think of “being-setin-opposition” as abolition. For the one of these is in the essences; the other is inherent in the things around essence. And of the latter, both abolition and division wonderfully run together again. But the former has the power to divide, not to abolish. Definitions of Unions The union according to essence occurs in the case of hypostases, that is, individuals. The union according to hypostasis occurs in the case of essences, that is, soul and body. The union according to relation occurs in the case of judgments, into one will. The union according to juxtaposition occurs in the case of planks. The union according to harmony occurs in the case of stones. The union according to mixture occurs in the case of liquids — wine and water, and such things. The union according to blending occurs in the case of dry and liquid things — flour and water. The union according to fusion occurs in the case of things that melt — wax and pitch, and such things.

The union according to heaping occurs in the case of dry things — wheat and barley, and such things. Minor Theological Works 1843 The union according to reunion occurs in the case of things separated and again restored — as a torch proceeding from fire, and again being restored to it. The union according to essence occurs in the case of things of different hypostasis. The union according to hypostasis occurs in the case of things of different essence. Questions of Theodore the Monothelite, Deacon, Rhetorician of Byzantium, and Syncellus of Paul, Archbishop of Constantinople, to Maximus the Confessor First Difficulty of Theodore, Deacon, Rhetorician of Byzantium, and Syncellus of Paul, Archbishop of If, according to his own reasoning concerning the will, the Fathers also attributed ignorance to Christ, then those who say the will is not contemplated in Christ by appropriation must also, of necessity, say He is ignorant. And how is He God, who does not know the things to come? But they thereby also introduce Him as a mere man, according to the alreadycondemned heresy of the Agnoetae. But if, shrinking from the absurdity that follows from this, they say the ignorance is by appropriation, just as also the abandonment and the insubordination, let them, in like manner, say the same of the will. For the Fathers coupled ignorance together with the will, preserving the same reasoning for it — as Athanasius says in his book against the Arians, and Gregory the Theologian, in his first discourse on the Son, and others in other writings.

Second Difficulty of the Same If every term and expression not spoken by the Fathers is plainly an innovation, one of two things is necessary: either let them show that speaking of natural wills in Christ is an expression of the Fathers; or, not being able to show this, let them know that they are innovating their own teaching under the name of the Fathers. But if, understanding their other expressions toward their own purpose, they set up such a coinage of terms — if the second is blameworthy, then so too is the first. Minor Theological Works 1845 To Marinus the Priest: Resolution of the Difficulties Proposed by Theodore the Deacon and Rhetorician The questions from the rhetorician, most holy and Godhonored Father, display not so much the plausibility of the difficulty, as they show the absurdity of the difficulty — from its very falsehood, and from the contentiousness aimed at overturning the divine incarnation of the Only-begotten. For the Fathers did not, as he says, attribute ignorance to Christ according to the same reasoning as the will. For who could show this — even though these men, as is their custom, not only fabricate things that do not exist at all, but even boldly bring them forward against themselves? Or, if so, ignorance and will would have the same reasoning, bringing into identity with one another things altogether and properly incompatible — since the one presents the abolition of a thing, the other the position of a thing, which is plainly impossible, just as habit and privation are in no way whatsoever identical with each other.

Nor, because the divine and great Gregory enumerates it — I mean ignorance — among the things put forward by the Arians, has he thereby declared it to be identical with the will. For he made no mention of the will at all, not even in the passage where he sets these things forth, saying: “But do you also list, alongside these, among the words of ill-judgment, ‘My God, and your God’; and ‘greater’; ‘he created’; ‘he sanctified,’” and so on. But if, because he merely included it together, they perhaps attempt to bring ignorance into identity with the will, then “My God, and your God” and “greater,” said of the Father, and “to create” and “to sanctify,” will altogether also be identical, according to them, with ignorance, on account of the coupling — since he coupled these too with ignorance. But if this is a perversion of thought, that is a still greater deviation, for those who reason thus — let alone those who attempt to say or write it. Besides, if ignorance and will have the same reasoning, then either the things that by nature will altogether also do not know; or the things that by nature do not know altogether also will. Therefore God, willing by nature, will fall into the affliction of ignorance; and all inanimate things, not knowing by nature, will be moved by natural will.

And if this is so, Christ Himself too, who subsists from Godhead and manhood, having, by appropriation, as they themselves say, both ignorance and the will, will altogether have, by nature, ignorance together with the divine will. And I pass over saying that, even if by appropriation, mistakenly — Minor Theological Works 1847 nevertheless they have been shown to be advocates of that against which they contended, themselves too establishing two wills: the one according to nature, I mean, and the one according to appropriation — which are plainly two, together with an equal number of ignorances — which is also illogical, to hold that there is a twofold ignorance in Christ, who has not even one, but altogether annihilates all, since He is the wisdom and power of God. But what kind of appropriation do they mean? The essential kind, according to which each thing, having the properties naturally belonging to it, is appropriated on account of its nature; or the relational kind, according to which we cherish and are appropriated to one another's things by nature, ourselves suffering or performing none of these things? But if the first, they have rather declared the incarnate God to be a mere man, teaching Him thereby to be naturally ignorant. But if the second, they declare Him not a man at all, but only a fleshless God, as one who appropriates the things of the flesh in a bare relation, and not naturally, as belonging to man, together with being and remaining God.

Since indeed, in that very passage where he places the ignorance, the teacher plainly also enumerates all the natural things of the incarnate God — such as sleeping, hungering, thirsting, toiling, weeping, being in agony, submitting, the cross, death — with which He also worked the resurrection and the ascension, by which He has saved us, willingly receiving these things according to nature for our sake, and suffering. If, then, they hold that these things came about in Christ according to a bare relational appropriation, and do not champion them as natural to the incarnate Word as man, what, then, will they leave to Apollinarius and Mani? For they have surpassed Severus in impiety, or rather outdone him — as he did not so much rise up against the truth, but rather made use of the expression of natural properties, even though he does away with the nature of the flesh, squeezing the different natures into one. For these things follow for those who mix the unmixable, and thrust away and steal the patristic mind, which sets forth everything clearly, in its fitting order. Wherefore the all-praised and God-bearing teacher, in his second discourse on the Son, sets forth the following concerning ignorance, as though determining it by a certain rule and pattern — even though they themselves first brought these things forward without interpretation, snatching away the hearer: “Surely it is clear to all, that He knows without need of interpretation, as God; but He says He is ignorant, as man — if one should separate what appears from what is understood.”

He places ignorance, then, as something to be received only by the conceptual distinction of the essences; but he indicates the natural wills, and Minor Theological Works 1849 everything else natural apart from sin alone, by the union according to hypostasis of the very natures of the incarnate Word, for the most proper confirmation of that from which, and in which, and which He is. If, then, we contemplate ignorance in the conceptual distinction, it is not properly His at all, just as it is not, according to nature, constitutive of us either, even though it is said to be ours on account of the ancient transgression — such as ignorance, abandonment, disobedience, insubordination. For what principle of our nature is there in these, or constitutive of our essence? Wherefore we do not predicate these of Christ as altogether Christ's, nor indeed anything else, as I said, of the things known in conceptual distinction; and very reasonably. For if we do not know the incarnate Word in distinction, nor conceive of Him according to bare conception, but believe Him to be in the utmost union according to hypostasis of the natures — it is clear that none of the things taken in division by conception is at all His; but we champion, properly and alone, those things which are natural together with the nature, and are apart from the injury that comes from sin, really preserved and confessed by the pious, in the unity of person and His one hypostasis.

Therefore, either let them show the will not to be natural, and constitutive of our essence. But if it is natural — for man is by nature capable of willing — either it too, together with the other things, belongs to the incarnate Word, who became man according to essence, and who is and is known to be capable of willing according to both the natures of which He consists; or else the other natural things, together with it — I mean the natural will — will be known, in the conceptual division, only nominally, but not properly and really; and it will follow, according to them, that the contemplation and initiation into the whole economy — or rather, properly, the incarnation itself — is taken by them according to division and illusion, nothing natural being confessed by them in Christ according to union, not even nature itself at all. For where there is nothing natural, there will never be a nature either — just as where nature properly is, the things belonging to it, without omission, apart from sin alone, are also there. Wherefore they will have no excuse whatsoever against the truth. For every pretext has been utterly removed, through everything, for them to gladly welcome this, if they should wish, and sincerely agree with us — but not to lean, on arguments as feeble as a spider's web, coming from their own weak understanding, against those who orthodoxly believe in Him: that from which Christ is, in these He is Christ; and in which Christ is, these Christ is.

Christ, then, is God and man at the same time; and He is both in Minor Theological Works 1851 Godhead and in manhood; and He was united both from Godhead and from manhood. Resolution of the Second Difficulty, by the Same Holy As for showing that the Fathers speak of the wills as natural, we shall show this whenever those who have stopped up the hearing-power of their soul against everything divine and patristic are able, or, to speak more properly, willing, to hear it. For if they should wish to purify this, as though from some affliction of contention, and to fix the eye of their understanding clearly, or rather without passion, according to reason, upon the many-lighted and sacred radiance of the teaching handed down from the Fathers, they will altogether understand that they name the wills natural — from the fact that all together, plainly, say and teach: “the natural appetite, and the innate appetite; and that the flesh has, by nature, the not wishing to die — for this is a condemnation of nature. And how,” he says, “could the will be common to both? Where would the difference of nature appear in the one will? For it is altogether necessary that the wish run together with the nature, and that the nature not wish to die, but cling to the present life. And just as hungering and thirsting is no accusation, nor is desiring the present life.

For the affection for present things is implanted by nature.” And: “the flesh, which He assumed for our sake, having, together with all its natural properties, also the refusal of death.” These are the doctrines of Athanasius, and Basil, and Gregory, and John, and Theophilus, and Cyril, the ever-memorable, and of the other approved Fathers. What greater demonstration than these is there, that they declare the wills natural? And what contradiction, and from whom, is there, when there is no ambiguity at all in these statements, nor any concealment whatsoever? We, then, are not innovating expressions here, as those on the opposing side say, but confessing patristic voices; nor do we set up coinages of terms according to our own purpose — for this is a bold thing, and the work and invention of a heretical and mad mind — but we bring forward, piously, these very things as they were understood and spoken by the saints themselves. But what room, and whence, will they have for not understanding it altogether thus, but holding a different opinion, contrary to these — if indeed they should wish to be pious at all, and not to deviate from patristic teaching? For if, being ashamed, they will altogether hold the natural properties to be hypostatic, that is, personal, they will also introduce personal otherness; or if they hold them to be Minor Theological Works 1853 contrary to nature, they teach the falling-away of the essences, driving the natures — or rather, themselves — into nonexistence.

For indeed, neither the personal nor the contrary-to-nature — if we should grant that such a thing can be said at all — exists; since it is not known at all, once the wills according to essence have departed. For whether divine and human, or deifying and deified, or created and uncreated, or however else they might wish to call them, we are piously led to name the wills concerning Christ natural, and in no other way — wishing to signify the natural otherness of that from which He consists. For if it is altogether necessary that the wish run together with the nature, according to the Fathers, and it is not possible, evidently, to say the will common to both essences, nor does the difference of nature appear in the one will, it is clear that it is altogether necessary to say the wills are two, natural — that, according to the Fathers, the difference of the essences in Christ may be known without confusion and without division. What argument, then, do they have against this? Or what coinage of terms will they fashion for themselves, understanding the patristic sayings according to their own purpose? And what would the pious man wish to choose instead, falling away from the natural wills — the personal ones? And who will bear the cutting-apart, into persons, of the One? But the contrary-to-nature ones?

And who could bear the abyss of wickedness and nonexistence into which they gradually drive themselves? Yet this much grace we grant them: that, being eager to war against the number of the wills, they have turned to disputing their nomenclature — which we perhaps even concede, that they should call them as they wish, as long as they fall short concerning the number — until, having learned from their unfitting appellation the absurdity, and the unprofitable end to which it leads them, they too are persuaded to confess natural wills, according to the Fathers. And who would not marvel at their circling maneuvers — how, making use of certain circuits and detours, they contrive to strip away the great mystery of the divine economy concerning us? For at one time, bringing forward the will against the natural activities, introducing, as they say, the one by means of the one, they proceeded against the two, to the activity; at another time, ignorance against the wills, as though the will too fell away together with it, being reckoned among the external things. At another time, the complete denial of all natural things, through appropriation — and, as I said, the whole overthrow of the mystery — taking all these things concerning Him in a bare relation, and not known naturally, according to union, as belonging to the incarnate God as man.

It is necessary not to depart from the Minor Theological Works 1855 truth, but rather to concur with it in all things, and to advocate for it, according to the unfailing and most sure confession of the natures of the same and one Christ our God, and of the properties belonging to the natures — to whom be glory, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, unto the endless ages. Amen. Dogmatic Tome to Marinus the Priest Those whose reason is adorned with virtues have their mind illumined by gnostic graces, which remove it from all forgetfulness, just as those virtues remove that one from deception, and lead so far toward initiation into the hidden, as they lead back, for our imitation, toward that which was revealed for our sake. This you have shown in the Holy Spirit — you who, contending in the harmony of sacred manners and yet more sacred deeds, O Father honored by God, surpass praise as much as you are capable of applying vigor — making the end of your course an extension, and of reason the ever-moving ascent to the Word — that you might transcend nature, and cast off all types, and purely converse with the most pure, according to your withdrawal of yourself from all things and toward all things, and your perfect passage in relation — which procures, by grace, the indeterminate flow that circumscribes and surpasses everything determinate, and prepares you to enter firmly into the Holy of Holies, where Jesus, who is above us, entered as forerunner on our behalf for what is as ours — you who, in practice, ascend together with Him from glory to glory through virtue, and pass through the heavens scientifically from knowledge to knowledge, and, by the silence that is mystically hidden and most eloquent, according to every noetic cessation of activity, unknowingly meet with the Father of spirits — to whom, being supra-naturally led up by grace and by blessed zeal for sacred works, you raise up those of us who lie below, like myself, both stretching out a compassionate hand through your letter, and reason through the understanding hidden in it, persuading us by zeal to withdraw from the things that remove us from God, and to honor, practice, and prefer alone, without relation, the love that unites Him and us, with the whole heart — according to which, as simple

and formless, you bid us shake off every duplicity and covering of shape, both of the mind itself and of what appears, and to accomplish that virtue which is truly blessed and manifests the blessed — which, being strengthened by your most sacred prayers, may I be enabled to accomplish, leaving behind besetting sin. Minor Theological Works 1857 Since you, in turn, rousing my reasoning to work, and wishing to purify the capacity of my soul from all ignorance, bade me search out the argument of the truly named, most divine and great Teacher of the resurrection of the holy Church of the God-city dwellers — that is, to speak properly, of the whole inhabited world — against the Arbiter (or rather, properly speaking, the Divider — inasmuch as he completely separates, by utmost alteration and confusion, the God who became man for our sake, our Lord Jesus Christ, the consubstantial offspring of the Father, from both God and us) — how he says there is one activity in Him, even though he teaches the activities to be natural — I put forward this very man himself as the clear interpreter and teacher of his own expression, who defines it to be nothing other than the indissoluble union of the innate activities, and the result from them — I mean the work and the deed — as being indicative and declarative of these, if anyone has communed in the appellation according to the activity, the activity being properly both something particular and universal.

For insofar as it proceeds from the essential activity according to natural property, it holds the rank of the particular; just as again, insofar as it proceeds as a class, it holds the rank of the universal. For particular things are naturally apt to share in the appellation of the general, while universal things are predicated of the existence of particular things — but not, indeed, to share in the appellation, so that through this it might be somehow individuated and reckoned in the rank of the particular. The result, then, as I said, of the two innate activities — that is, the deed, as comprehending both of them according to their union — the teacher, calling it by the name proper to them, called one activity, on account of nothing divine or human being accomplished separately, but proceeding from one and the same, connaturally and unitedly at once, according to the unifying interpenetration in these; not indeed on this account saying His essential activity to be one according to natural property — just as neither one essence and nature, on account of the very uniqueness of the one person, sharing in neither of those of which it was composed. For the difference according to essence is preserved even in the union of the natures, properly preserving together with itself also that of the properties essentially belonging to the natures.

And declaring this in the very treatise composed against the Arbiter, after very scientifically distinguishing beforehand concerning both natural property, which is fit for activity, and activity itself, which proceeds from that fitness into deed and act, he sets forth thus: “Wherefore we say one activity in Christ” — and he adds the cause, on account of nothing divine or human being accomplished separately — “and we say Minor Theological Works 1859 this.” But as he showed the principle of the union by this, adding the principle of essential difference, he says: “But not one property is there of Him — far from it! For the property of Godhead and of manhood is not the same” — that is, evidently, that which is fit for natural activity, according to him. And going on further: “And to say the same thing generally in another way: it is altogether necessary that there be one activity of the things that came together from whatever natures — evidently by the communion of the union and its outcome; but to say their property is one, without confusion — perhaps even in cases where room for confusion is utterly inconceivable.” Most plainly, then, through his own words, the Father clarified his own understanding — not saying the essential activity in Christ to be one, lest confusion and mingling be introduced to His parts; nor at all a hypostatic one, lest separation and division of the extremes come about for Him — I mean the beginningless Father and the undefiled Mother; for He is clearly distinguished from them by hypostasis, and by their hypostatic properties.

But what does he say? One by the communion of the union and its outcome — which he defined above as the deed and the act — giving no infiltration whatsoever either to those who wish to mix, or indeed to those who wish to separate; but repelling the one, by recognizing what is primarily and by nature proper to His manhood, and what to His supra-essential Godhead; and forestalling the other, by not dividing or separating any activity in the same and one. For the name “activity,” taken commonly, both of the simple movement contemplated in relation, and of the very result, does not introduce confusion into the realities, as long as there is a clear clarification of what is understood — according to which we preserve, undivided, the properties essentially belonging to each of the natures, and know, unconfusedly, on account of the union, the properties of the one as distinct from those of the other, and know, on account of their existence, the properties of the whole composed of both — neither mixing them together in this respect, nor separating them in that respect, but holding fast to the boundaries of the essences with respect to their difference, while tightening the union in terms of one and the same hypostasis. Thus, then, and for this reason, this Father, and every other approved and divine Father, as I appear to have already written, speaks of one activity in Christ, and two — the one, looking to the union of the natural activities, just as also of the natures; the other, to their essential difference.

And so much for this. But concerning the interpretation, for use, of the theologian and great herald of the truth of the Church, Gregory — the saying that “the word was shaped by the man” does not refer Minor Theological Works 1861 to the one understood as in the Savior. For his willing, being wholly deified, was nothing opposed to God — I hold that it depends on a very pious intention, for the sake of which and from which it was labored over by the diligent; but that it is a little deficient with regard to the precision of the wording, at which point the easy-going and dull-witted contrive assaults, or rather, to speak more truly, attacks, and nothing is so much their concern as to search out and find fault, even in things very securely fortified on every side and offering them no opening against the argument — seizing upon a mere expression, drawn from an unfeigned and pure intention, in order to establish and confirm the essential and natural will of the ensouled flesh previously assumed from us — that is, of the human as in the Savior — from this God-inspired Father's saying: “For his willing was wise and considered” — from which the essential difference of it, the will, from His bynature divine and paternal will is shown, in no way allowing confusion to creep into the mystery concerning Christ.

But to pronounce it, as from certain manuscripts, with a grave accent, “deified, wholly,” and not rather with an acute accent, where it would be necessary not to introduce the one will by the adversaries, gives them a handle against us, as though we insinuated a relational and hypostatic union, and, as it were, a union by grace and dignity — since the saints too are said to be moved and energized primarily from God, on account of their wholehearted concord and disposition toward God and divine things. For the acute-accented reading does not bring “the willing, as of man, in the case of the Savior” into identity with essential and natural will — for who could show this? — but presents the utmost union and connaturality. For that which is deified, being a relative term — just as also that which is set-afire, and that which is illumined, and such things — altogether introduces together with itself also that to which it has its reference, namely that which deifies, sets afire, and illumines, being of the category of relation, so that the principle of difference and of the utmost union is confirmed neither more from the one side nor from the other. For it is not sufficient, for union, that a thing not be opposed; for everything natural and blameless is not opposed, but not altogether also united to God.

But that which is deified is altogether and in every way united, and in no way removes the essential difference, insofar as it is also unconfused according to the union. But if someone should say: even if nothing natural is opposed, how, concerning our innate will as ours — if indeed it is this, and not perhaps another, that the Father had in mind — did he not altogether say it followed God, but “resisting for the most part, and wrestling against”? For either it is not natural, as being an adversary; or it is not an Minor Theological Works 1863 adversary, as being natural. And it will then be, as it were, one thing in natural quality, and another with respect to the willing of the human in the Savior — if this indeed is in no way an adversary, but that is opposed. We say that insofar as it is natural, it is not opposed; but insofar as it is not moved naturally in us, it is plainly opposed, and, for the most part, resists — to which sinning is a consequence. For it is by the manner of the misuse of the movement, but not by the reason of the power according to nature, that the thing contrary to reason and law subsists — since, being fittingly shaped and moved, even if it does not have union with God, still it has concurrence and non-resistance.

For just as there is no principle in nature of what is above nature, so neither of what is contrary to nature and seditious. Hence the teacher did not declare it altogether and in every way as not following, but tempered it, saying: “as not altogether, and for the most part” — by which is also understood: sometimes, and rarely — on account of the difficulty of the many in being led up to virtue. For the willing of the human as in the Savior, even if it was natural, was not bare as ours is, just as the human itself, as above us, was deified to the utmost degree by the union — to which sinlessness properly belongs. But ours is plainly bare, and in no way sinless, on account of the deviation that occurs this way and that — not altering the nature, but perverting the movement, or, to speak more truly, changing its manner. And this is clear from the fact that, though it does many things irrationally, it never falls away into an irrational essence from the innate rational essence that belongs to it. There is, then, no other human nature that is ours, and another that is in the Savior; nor is the willing other, at least according to the principle of nature, even if otherwise above us — for the one subsisted divinely, the other was shaped, through the utmost union with the divine.

But to fit, again, especially properly, each of the things blamed in us — such as opposition, or resistance, and whatever else belongs to this catalogue — even though, dividing the natures inseparably in conception, they seem to come along with the following nature — it is not lawful to include the manhood in Christ among these. For if even in us it is not seen properly, but contrary to nature and reason, how could it be attached to that manhood even by conception, or additional conception, so to speak? But only by appropriation, out of compassion, as head of the whole body, just as also a physician appropriates the sufferings of the sick — until the God who became man for our sake frees us from these. Yet He wholly consumes and annihilates us by the power of His own embodiment. For the account of the passions is twofold: the one of condemnation; the other of dishonor; and the one characterizes our nature, Minor Theological Works 1865 the other altogether falsifies it. The former, then, as man, He willingly received our sake essentially, thereby confirming the nature, and loosing the condemnation against us; but the latter, again, as a lover of mankind, He appropriated economically, being known in us and in our manner of insubordination — that, like fire consuming wax, or the sun consuming the vapor of the earth, having wholly consumed us, He might make a transmission of His own properties, and thereby prepare us to be free of passion, and, according to the promise, incorruptible.

It is necessary, then, to accept, as is fitting, both the zeal and the labor of the one who is eager for such things especially for the sake of piety, but to exhort him toward a more precise attentiveness to patristic words, on account of the slanderers of good things, who do not even permit this out of excessive folly — a thing not even possible for them to seize upon, though they wish it. As for Honorius, Pope of the Romans, I do not think he condemns, in his letter written to Sergius, the duality of the innate wills in Christ by saying “one will”; but rather advocates it, and, as is likely, confirms it — not saying this for the setting aside of the human and natural will of the Savior, but on the ground that no will of the flesh, or passionate reasoning, in any way took the lead in His seedless conception and incorrupt generation. For divine and paternal willing alone, through the only-begotten Son, who Himself accomplished His own incarnation, and by the concurrence of the Holy Spirit, worked this. And that he holds this understanding is clear from the following. For, having said that, on account of the ineffable union of human and divine nature, God is said to have suffered, and manhood is said to have come down from heaven together with the Godhead — and thereby wishing to show the utmost exchange, for the sake of communion, of the properties naturally belonging to each of the natures of the one Christ and Son — he goes on to say: “Wherefore we also confess one will of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

How? he says. “Since our nature was plainly assumed by the Godhead, not sin” — that is, not out of sin — well-nigh echoing the words of the great Athanasius, who writes thus against Apollinarius the impious: “He was born of a woman, having raised up for Himself, from the first formation, the form of man, in a display of flesh apart from fleshly wills and human reasonings, in the image of a new creation; for the willing was of Godhead alone, since the whole nature too was of Godhead.” For since the coming-forth of the Word's generation according to the flesh for our sake was above us — for no passionate willing or reasoning of the flesh preceded, as is seen in our case, on account of the pleasure that prevails from the deception of our race — but divine Minor Theological Works 1867 willing alone, through the Son who Himself, as I said, accomplished His own embodiment, by the good pleasure of the Father and the cooperation of the all-holy Spirit, innovating in Himself and through Himself the manner of generation introduced upon nature, and making His own conception seedless from the holy Mother of God and EverVirgin Mary — considering, then, this ineffable principle of His generation, the one said “the willing of Godhead alone” concerning it, and this one said “one will of the Lord Jesus Christ, since plainly,” he says, “our nature was assumed by the Godhead, and not sin, apart from fleshly wills and human reasonings,” as the divine Athanasius says — not, indeed, that He, as man, together with being God by nature, does not have a human and natural will, just as also a divine and paternal one.

And he hints at the same thing also in what follows, saying: “He was conceived without sin of the Holy Spirit, and of the holy, undefiled and Ever-Virgin Theotokos Mary, and was born of her according to the flesh without defilement.” And he adduces divine Scripture as mentioning the flesh both approvingly and reprovingly, in no way suggesting — far from it! — that the Lord's flesh is different in nature and essence from ours, he who knew it to be assumed from our essence, that is, from the all-holy womb of the Ever-Virgin and Mother of God who is of the same nature as us; but different with respect to sinfulness, and that it has nothing at all opposing it, unlike us, in whose members the law from transgression wars against the law of the spirit. “For the flesh corrupted by sin, which wars against the law of His mind, was not assumed by the Savior,” he says. For that in which the law of sin, through the seed of generation, did not take the lead, does not exist at all, even in its members; but rather, the law of righteousness, revealed to us as a pattern, and completely annihilating that which was introduced into nature from transgression. “For the sinless one came,” he says, “to seek and to save that which was lost” — that is, the sinning nature of the human race.

“For no other law in His members, or different or contrary will, came to be with the Father.” Thereby showing, not that He did not have a human and natural will — for he is not seen to have said this — but rather that, as man, He neither had, in the body, through the members, any activity contrary to nature; nor indeed, in the soul, any contrary or irrational movement of will, as we do — “since He was born above the law of human nature.” And more clearly still, in what follows, he sets forth that his intention was only to exclude the passionate, but not the natural, will in the Savior. And that, while His natural and human will concurred with His paternal and divine will, Minor Theological Works 1869 having no difference from it arising from resistance, He gave Himself to us as a pattern, willingly subjecting what was His own; and He confirmed the paternal will, that we too, imitating Him, setting aside our own, might fulfill the divine with all zeal — saying thus: “And though it is written, ‘For I came not to do my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me’; and, ‘Not what I will, but what You will, Father’ — these are not expressions of a different will” — that is, of an opposed and resisting one — “but of the assumed human economy” — appropriating compassionately what is ours.

“For He said these things for our sake, to whom the Teacher of piety has given an example, that we might follow in His footsteps; and that each of us might prefer, not his own, but rather the Lord's will in all things.” It is not the abolition, then, as I said, of the natural and human will that he works, but of the passionate and contrary-to-nature; and, to speak throughout, he attests that the incarnate God for our sake is free of all sin as ours. And, to speak briefly, I think he means, by “one will,” to signify that only the divine willing took the lead in His generation according to the flesh; but by “that there is no difference of will,” he means that He has nothing opposed or resisting, but rather what concurs throughout and is united. Wherefore, when he says our nature was assumed from the Godhead, he mentions one will; but when he sets before us the saying, “I came not to do my own will,” leaving aside the number, he says, “These are not expressions of a different will” — that is, of an opposed and contrary one — from which it is plainly gathered that there are two wills by nature in the Savior. For if He had nothing opposed, He had a natural will as man. For the non-opposed is altogether natural, and no one will gainsay this; for nothing in nature or in the things according to nature is at all opposed.

It is a fearful thing, then, to press hard on what he did not properly write in his own words, and for those of opposing opinion, as not being the best, to contrive the man's writings as a cloak, misinterpreting them according to another purpose than his own. For his argument, rightly understood, is an advocate, driving off every attack of the slanderer. And thus, I for my part suppose the meaning to be, being pure of all suspicion. And this has been made more certain for me by the most reverend priest, lord Abba Anastasius, having returned from elder Rome — a man adorned, if anyone, with divine virtue and prudence — who said that much discussion has arisen for him with the most sacred men of the great Church there, concerning the letter written by them to Sergius — asking for what reason, and how, “one will” was inserted into it, and finding them troubled about this, and Minor Theological Works 1871 making their defense, and, among them, the very man who dictated it in Latin at his command, lord Abba John, most holy fellow-laborer, insisting that they made no mention at all, by number, of any one will whatsoever, even though this was now fabricated by those who translated it into the Greek tongue. Nor indeed any confirmation or exclusion whatsoever of the Savior's natural human will, but the complete stripping away and abolition of the one that is ours and disparaged, according to which the war of those of the same kind against one another consists — wishing to show that the assumed flesh was pure of all sin, according to the tradition of the most sacred oracles and the patristic teachings.

And they appear, in some measure, through such words, to be in accord with what has just now been explained by my nothingness, and, as it were, sealing the advocacy made on behalf of Honorius. Having learned, then, of their defense, I greatly marveled at their precision, just as I was also astonished at the cunning of those who dare everything for the sake of one vain impiety, and who wish — as is their custom, of old and now — by certain thefts and misinterpretations, to draw to themselves, contrary to what is fitting, those who struggle earnestly against them, and to appropriate for themselves an understanding that in no way follows from the text. Having necessarily learned this too, then, I have made it known to you, O Father honored by God, that you may be fortified in every respect, so as to repel the phalanxes of the adversaries, striking with reason vigorously, and overcoming decisively by faith — having thereby, for your proclamation, the glory of the Only-begotten, and, as your diadem, communion and union with Him by grace. But, O most sacred and honored head to me, make these things known to him who presides hierarchically over our blameless and orthodox faith, under whose wings all of us, both near and far, shall piously rest, having, as our sole foundation of more sacred doctrines, his and, through him, blessed illumination, by which we are led by the hand and brought up, in the Holy Spirit, to the shadowless and paternal light — looking to him as the leader of our salvation, after Him who is by nature and first leader, and directing our paths piously, hastening toward the life that is not dissolved by corruption, but constituted by incorruption — of which, just as here we partake in hope by his God-inspired prayers and God-wise teachings, so there too may we be deemed worthy to partake in experience, by his God-working intercession and offering, according to the perfection that is in the Word and God Himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, alone.

Minor Theological Works 1873 On Quality, Property, and Difference, to Theodore the I do not think that you, most sacred men, need anything else for the knowledge of all things — already, by simple virtue, one thing alone cries out, making you wise in mind: the Holy Spirit, from whom you also make divine things spring forth for others, according to the boundlessly-giving outpouring of wisdom, making the pouring-forth of your thoughts through the utterance of speech — so as to extend it, out of lovingkindness, even to lowly ones like myself, who lack all learning, well toward divine knowledge and instruction — even though I know you employ condescension through questioning, in order to advance, and yet more, through utmost self-abasement, to raise up to your own height of knowledge those of us who lie below somewhere, and who are oppressed by ignorance — that, by your descent purging our sluggishness, and by your breath cleansing the folly of my understanding, you might bring us into a gnostic disposition, and a vigorous and practical readiness, from which salvation comes by grace to those who are being saved, through those among you who have been deemed worthy to save the worthy. I say, then, concerning the things you bade me examine and teach — quality, I mean, and property, and difference — that their signification among those outside the Church is manifold, and it would be tedious to unfold their distinctions in this matter, and to draw out the argument, as this is more fitting for scholarly leisure than for the measure of a letter.

But among the divine Fathers, their clarification is concise and brief, not taken with reference to any subject — that is, essence and nature — but of the things contemplated in essence, and indeed of the things contemplated in hypostasis. They say, then, that quality is essential — as, in the case of man, rationality; or, of a horse, the capacity to neigh; but hypostatic quality is, of some particular man, being hooknosed or snub-nosed; or, of some particular horse, being dappled or chestnut. And so it is also in the case of all the other generated essences and hypostases, contemplated both commonly and particularly — that is, universally and individually — in beings, according to which the difference of species and individuals from one another is also known, distinguishing the truth of realities. But in the case of the unbegotten and monarchic nature, quality could never at all or properly be said. For the Divine is not from any essence and accidents, since it would then altogether also be a creature, as composed and put together Minor Theological Works 1875 from these. But by extension of usage, and as much as one could conjecture the things above us from the things as ours — since we are in no way otherwise able, and scarcely sufficient, to receive dimly a knowledge of those things, and to make it clear by reason, even in some measure, though not perfectly — natural quality is the all-holy, the all-powerful, the all-perfect, the beyond-perfect, the self-perfect, the selfsovereign, the all-surveying, and whatever else of this kind is said to be natural and divine, and fitting to God alone as supra-essential.

But hypostatic quality is, of the Father, ingeneracy; of the Son, generacy; and of the Holy Spirit, procession — that is, ingeneracy, and generation, and procession — which they also call properties, because these belong, by nature or by hypostasis, only to Him and to no other. From these are constituted the essential and hypostatic differences — by extension of usage, as I said, in the case of God, but properly according to nature in the case of all generated things. Wherefore they say these are the same as one another — quality, I mean, and property, and difference — and hold the reasoning of accidents, but not of any subject, that is, of essence. But they differ in that quality is more universal, and applies simply to all — since nothing among beings, apart from God, is without quality, as not being unrelated, nor formless. But property is particular, in relation to that quality, and is said not of all, but simply and of such-and-such a kind, and of this essence, and no other. But difference is said as constitutive and definitive of beings. Wherefore they name it thus, calling it “constitutive difference,” distinguishing, as I said, beings according to essence and nature, and according to person and hypostasis, and driving away every alteration and confusion whatsoever. This, then, and thus it stands, is the distinction and clarification, in summary, concerning quality and property and difference, according to the teaching of the Fathers.

But it is impossible for any of these to ever exist, or to be conceived of, apart from the underlying essence, of which each of these both is and is said to be — for both quality and property and difference are said to belong to essence, but not to itself; and he who does not say this has spoken irrationally, having departed contrary to reason from the principle according to nature. Of these, only, and beyond all, is Severus the deranged sophist, imagining and fabricating for himself things that in no way exist at all, and speaking of a difference of essenceless qualities in Christ, that he might declare Him nonexistent, by the stripping away of the natures from which and in which He consists, and, in turn, by the co-strippingaway of the qualities themselves. For it would not be possible, once the natures are abolished — so that Christ Minor Theological Works 1877 could no longer subsist even in these, or at all from these, I mean the qualities — even though the wretch monstrously fables Him to be composite, thereby making a complete denial of Him. For the composite is not God, or the nature of God; since every composite nature would then be, by nature, God. But if every composite nature is, by nature, God, then, according to him, the Father, being uncomposite, is not God — for if the composite is, by nature, God, the uncomposite is not, by nature, God.

But if the uncomposite too is, by nature, God, this godless and God-opposing man would have declared a kind of polytheism, being ignorant of the God who truly is, and who became flesh, yet preserved, even in the composition of the hypostasis, His simplicity and uncompositeness according to nature in relation to the Father, as being God by nature and of God — even though, as man from men, through man, He was born above men, by the assumption of flesh having a noetic soul. Even though this inhuman man does not confess the incarnate God to be man at all, since he denies the human nature in Him, just as also the divine. For he does not suppose Him to be of two natures, that is, twofold in nature, as the Fathers say, but posits some composite and spurious nature, emulating the abomination of Apollinarius. In this way, then, the accursed man, stripping away the great mystery of the economy concerning us, has cunningly made use, like a clever rhetorician, of the naming of terms, making the theft of realities hard to detect, and, as it were, tickling the senses toward the acceptance of impiety. For he calls Him, forsooth, God and man; but he strips away the proper truth of each appellation, as not confessing the natures of which these are plainly the names. And he speaks of difference, while recognizing no difference, the differing things not being, according to him, subjects by nature — so that he might also insinuate confusion through the one composite nature, and legislate nonexistence by the denial of the natures; and he seems to cover up the abolition with names, while casting off the confusion by talk of difference; so great is the truly ill-minded contrivance and device of this ill-minded man, covered by the darkness of ignorance, and darkening those it captures.

Against these it is necessary, as though addressing those who advocate for him, to turn our argument, and to say this too: that if, according to you, Severus, following Cyril of blessed memory, confesses the difference, turning away from coalescence, how does he not also confess together with him the natures — in which too, like that man, he recognizes the essential difference, stripping away only their division — but instead places the difference in bare qualities alone, contrary to that man's rule and definition? For that the blessed Cyril confesses the natures, of which he also teaches the Minor Theological Works 1879 difference, is clear from the fact that he does not even deign to commune with the divided Nestorius even in the very confession of the natures, even though not at all in conception. “For what,” says the teacher, “is common to me and to Nestorius? To say the two natures are two, to the point of knowing the difference of the flesh and of God the Word; for this flesh is other, according to natural quality, and of an essence not of the same kind as that Word.” If, then, he confesses the natures too, and recognizes the difference in them, and piously renders the cause of the confession, saying, “On account of the flesh being other than the Word according to natural quality” — which is the same as saying, essence and activity, with respect to the difference from God the Word — how does the deranged Severus not even deign to commune with the very Cyril he falsely honors, and to confess, in agreement with him, the natures, to the point of knowing the difference, according to that man's teaching — not only according to natural quality, but also the not-beingof-the-same-kind of essence — that he might recognize the difference of both the natures and the natural qualities together, that is, of essences and activities — but rather, denying the not-being-of-the-same-kind of essence of the flesh in relation to the Word, which is the difference according to nature, substitutes in its place the difference in nonexistent qualities, for every quality is altogether nonexistent apart from the underlying essence?

But he who does this maliciously, and rises up against the true teaching of the wise Cyril — that is, of all the God-judged Fathers — declares himself an alien, and a partner and advocate of falsehood. But does he, in speaking of a difference of qualities in Christ, speak of the difference after the union, or before the union? For if before the union, he holds altogether a division, not a difference, and teaches the union from things divided — as things pre-subsisting in themselves — and either he has dissolved this by the difference and confession of the qualities, or he declares that these too were never united at all from the beginning. And if he says they were not united, it is clear that he does not hold the natures, of which the qualities are, to be united either, even if he pretends to say so; for it is not possible for the one to be united, and the other to be divided, at any time — but they must undergo the same thing together with one another, whether union or division. If, then, rejecting division, he declares that the qualities too have been united together with the natures, it is altogether necessary, if he is to be consistent with himself throughout, either to say one composite quality, just as also one composite nature, on account of the union — and he would be convicted of recognizing confusion, not difference, in Minor Theological Works 1881 quality, but rather teaching the confusion of both essences and qualities together; or, granting the qualities to be different, and not fearing division, he would say the natures too are different, not being frightened, nor pretexting the thorough cutting-apart, to the point of turning away from and refusing their confession.

For if, according to him, the qualities, though confessed by him, have not suffered division on account of their difference, how will the natures be cut apart for the sake of confession and difference? But if he does not confess these natures, but only, forsooth, confesses the qualities, he is plainly annihilating the natures, and teaching Christ to be a mere aggregate of qualities — just as we recognize the natures of material things to exist, but subsisting in a substrate of matter, and not contemplated only and bare in qualities alone, as that man describes Christ, and for this reason names Him a composite nature — meaning precisely that nature, and no other, which he has fashioned and put together out of bare qualities. For of whatever things he says there is a difference, of these too, plainly, there is the union. For the difference does not belong to some things, and the union to others, but to the same, and not to others. Therefore, the deranged man declares Christ to consist of qualities and to be quality, and, according to these very qualities again, shows Him to be divided — as teaching, not one composite quality on account of the union, but different qualities in Him — if indeed this is his best definition of union. But if one rule prevails in the case of natures, and another again in the case of qualities, it is his task to show this to us, out of his elegance — or rather, his stupefaction, to speak more properly — that we might learn how, according to the union, he recognizes the two natures to be one nature, but does not recognize different qualities to be one quality; or for what reason he speaks of a difference of qualities, but does not speak of a difference of natures.

And how have the qualities remained unconfused apart from difference, while the natures too remain unconfused apart from it? And how are the qualities not divided according to the difference, while the natures are divided according to it? Or how, not being divided, are they not confessed together with the qualities? And why does he compose the natures together, but not compose the qualities together; and how, these not having been united into one composite quality, does he fable those to have been united into one composite nature? Let whoever is his impious lover and advocate resolve these difficulties for us clearly — that, by resolving them, he might dissolve together with them the reproach; or, being unable to do so justly, let him be carried away together with him, with even greater condemnation, in that he has dared to call Minor Theological Works 1883 harmonious with the Fathers a man who is discordant with himself in every way. Let these things be said to me by way of digression, Godhonored master, at your command, for the overthrow and refutation of him and of the shield-bearers of his party. It would belong to your God-minded understanding to instruct and teach the greater and more perfect things to those, like myself, who are imperfect and childlike, and to bring them to more divine knowledge — that you might appropriate them to God through the true knowledge of beings, of which the Word Himself, who is by nature above beings, is the cause — our Lord Jesus Christ — to whom, through your prayers, may you not cease to commend me, unworthy as I am, most holy and God-honored Father.

Again the Divine Maximus How, then, could anyone ever have the power — even if he were the most resourceful of all in devising falsehoods, fabricating things that do not exist against the true and real faith — to represent the holy Council of Chalcedon, which so reverently and resoundingly regards and proclaims these things, as sending forth the Nicene definition? But if you revile and blame it, both as firmly preserving this, and yet as perhaps introducing a second definition — what, then, is this second definition introduced by it? The confession, they say, of the expression “of two natures” and “in two natures.” For the Nicene definition does not have this; but it was plainly introduced by the Fathers at Chalcedon, not having been known or named before by anyone. That you cannot even show this is clear. For by many of the holy Fathers before it, this expression was both judged and proclaimed as pious; and the words of those who proclaimed it bear witness, being more radiant and brilliant than every ray of the sun — even though you are ignorant of this through lack of learning, or pretend to be ignorant, out of contentiousness and a senseless accusation against the pious Fathers and doctrines. But even if it were nothing new — when it is, as I said, most abundantly attested — what is there to prevent so many saints (or rather, all of Christendom — for this is properly what the most holy council of orthodox Fathers is) from putting it forth authoritatively, and legislating against the coalescence of Eutyches?

And after a little he says: For what reason, and how, do you accuse the holy Council of Chalcedon, even though it plainly made use of patristic expressions, and revile and mock it here and there, both in writing and unwritten, as introducing Minor Theological Works 1885 another definition of faith? Do not judge according to appearance, for the sake of Him who said this, but judge righteous judgment. What is your accusation against the Fathers at Chalcedon, concerning the same and one matter, and what is your proclamation of those who came before? For if it is possible to accuse the council at Chalcedon of another definition of faith, on account of the expressions included in the Nicene definition, this will altogether also follow, for the same reason, to say against Cyril and the hundred and fifty Fathers. But if it is not possible against them, how it is possible against that one, I cannot see. I urge you, however, to display your rabid contentiousness against the unprovable — if indeed, thus sufficiently put to shame, you would restrain yourselves from such great madness of falsehood set up against the truth. Since even Gregory, the advocate of theology, will no more escape the charge you bring against the Chalcedonians; rather, he will fall under it, according to your rule, even more, having earlier articulated what was insufficiently said at Nicaea concerning the Holy Spirit — “because,” he says, “this question was not yet stirred up at that time” — knowing the Spirit together with the Father and the Son, and writing to Clédonius that he thus understands and teaches.

But you seem to me, with your unsound sight, unable to look up at and receive the solar radiance, to blame it as dim, and to imitate its affliction rather than your own weakness — being yourselves diseased on account of confusion, and slandering those who sufficiently refute this as impious and unfitting to the truth of the natures preserved in Christ that are saved, as though they were not common luminaries, nor revealers of the truth. For if it is possible to speak the truth concerning truth, all — both the God-judged Fathers at Nicaea, and every council of orthodox and holy men — did not, by the introduction of their own words, introduce another definition of faith at all, as you declare, raving most excessively, and altogether being mad; but they firmly confirmed that very definition legislated by the three hundred and eighteen holy Fathers, as first and only, clarifying it, and, as it were, further explaining and elaborating it, on account of those who wrongly take and misinterpret it and its doctrines toward their own impiety. For instance, then, when Eunomius and Macedonius wished to injure the doctrine of theology contained in it, the hundred and fifty Fathers did not permit this, by their own expressions and doctrines. So too, when Nestorius contrived to divide the doctrine of the economy, the blessed Cyril did not allow it; just as the honored Fathers at Chalcedon Minor Theological Works 1887 prevented Eutyches, who wished to confuse it.

How, then, do you not accept this council too, on behalf of the good, together with those — I mean the councils — for the same and equal good; or, reviling this one as haters of the good, do you together revile those too? Which, indeed, is what you are doing in fact, while being cautious in your words — that, by seeming, forsooth, to honor those councils against this one, with pretenses of piety, you might, through this, injure those too, bringing upon them the same charge as upon it, for the same conduct. Who, then, of you will endure such arrogance against piety and the pious? And so on. Chapters on Essence and Nature, Hypostasis and Person That essence signifies the species and the nature, that which it is in itself; but hypostasis makes manifest the particular instance of the essence. That essence and “enousion” are not the same — just as neither are hypostasis and “enhypostatic,” even though both are contemplated in one another, but they are one thing and another. For “enousion” is that which is contemplated in the nature, and does not exist in itself; but “enhypostatic” signifies that very thing which is in a hypostasis, and does not exist in itself by itself — that is, not something composed of imperfect parts coming together into one, but something contemplated in the concourse, by confusion, of perfect and imperfect.

That hypostasis defines a person by its characteristic properties. But the “enhypostatic” signifies that which is not, in itself, an accident, but that which has its being in another, and is not contemplated in itself, nor subsists by itself, but is always contemplated with reference to the hypostasis — just as the qualities, both those called essential and those called accidental; which are not essence, nor exist by themselves, but occur in the essence, and do not have being apart from it. That, just as neither of the qualities — I mean the essential and the accidental — is essence, or a thing subsisting by itself, but always has its characteristic quality with reference to the essence, as color in a body, and knowledge in a soul — for one cannot say color appears apart from a body, or knowledge is exercised apart from a soul — so too it is not possible to conceive of the “enhypostatic” or “enousion” apart from essence or hypostasis. For they do not have existence in themselves, but are always contemplated with reference to the hypostasis. That the saying of some, that there is no nature without hypostasis, is rightly said by them, but not rightly understood Minor Theological Works 1889 — namely, the bringing of the not-without-hypostasis to hypostasis, rather than that it is contemplated in the That, just as if someone says, “There is no body without shape or without color,” he speaks rightly, but does not rightly conclude, if he says the shape, or the color, is the body, rather than that it is contemplated in the body — so, if someone declares, saying, “There is no nature without hypostasis,” and then gathers the not-without-hypostasis into hypostasis, he does not rightly distinguish.

That nature could never be without hypostasis, yet nature is not hypostasis; nor is the not-without-hypostasis contemplated as hypostasis. Since it does not convert. For hypostasis is altogether also nature; just as shape is altogether body. For it is not possible to conceive of hypostasis without nature; nor, again, of shape or color without body. But nature is not altogether also hypostasis. That nature holds the common principle of being, but hypostasis holds also that of being-in-itself. That nature holds only the principle of species, but hypostasis is also declarative of a particular. Of the Most Holy Clement, Presbyter of Alexandria, from His Work on Providence Essence, in the case of God: God is a divine essence, something eternal and without beginning, incorporeal and uncircumscribed, and the cause of beings. Essence is that which subsists throughout. Nature is the truth of things, or their essential reality. But according to others, it is the coming-into-being of things that have arrived at some determinate being; and according to yet others, the providence of God, working in the things that come to be both their being and their manner of being. Definition of Hypostasis by the All-Wise Maximus Composite hypostasis is a certain composite essence, comprehending all the properties of individual beings in its own individual instance. For that which is commonly contemplated in the individuals under the same species characterizes the essence, that is, the nature — primarily in the individuals under it, but generically, it characterizes the common element of all the individuals under the composite species.

Minor Theological Works 1891 Of the Most Blessed Eulogius, Pope of Alexandria, Seven Chapters Concerning the Two Natures of Our Lord and If our Lord Jesus Christ is of one nature according to the union, say — of which one? The one that received, or the one that was received? And what became of the other? But if both exist, how is He one, unless one composite nature was formed from both? But if this is so, how is Christ not of different essence from the Father, the Father being uncomposite? If our Lord Jesus Christ has never been confessed to be of two natures, how is it possible to say Christ is of one nature after the union, or even to speak of a union at all? But if Christ has been confessed to have come to be of two natures, say: when was Christ of two natures, and when did He become of one? Is God the Word consubstantial with the flesh assumed by Him, or of a different essence? But if consubstantial, how has it not become a Tetrad, or a Triad? But if the flesh is of a different essence than God the Word, how is Christ not of two natures? Some say “one incarnate nature of God the Word”; and I think you too say this. But if this is to be understood as meaning one essence of God and of the flesh, how is it possible for the created and the uncreated, and the eternal and that which is under time, to be the same?

But if it is to be understood as one nature having another, or being possessed by another, who could bear to say “one and one,” not two, but one? If the nature of God the Word and of the Father is one, how is the nature of God the Word, and of the Father, and of the flesh, not one? If God the Word and the flesh are in no respect two, how are God the Word and the flesh not one in every respect? And if God the Word and the flesh are one in every respect, how will the Word not be flesh, and the flesh Word, and co-eternal with the Father and consubstantial, as God the Word is? But if God the Word and the flesh are not one in every respect, how are God the Word and the flesh not two in some respect? If it is impossible for God the Word and the flesh to be more united than that with which God the Word and the Father are united, how, though God the Word and the flesh are united, are they in no respect two? Minor Theological Works 1893 On Essence, Nature, and Hypostasis Essence which signifies the common and uncircumscribed thing, namely, “man.” For he who says this signifies the common nature, not circumscribing by the term the particular man properly known by name.

Nature is that which is contemplated equally in all who are called by the same species. Hypostasis is that which presents and circumscribes the common and uncircumscribed thing in a particular, properly — as, “so-and-so.” Hypostasis is that which, together with the universal, has also something particular. Nature, according to those outside the Church, is a principle of motion and rest. Nature is the qualified existence belonging to the whole. Nature is so called from “to have grown.” First essence is everything subsisting by itself, such as a stone. Second essence is growing essence, according to which a plant grows and withers. Third essence is animate and sentient — the animal, the horse. Fourth essence is animate, sentient, and rational — man. Wherefore he also came to be last, as having, of all, an immaterial soul, and a mind that is the image of God. That One Will Cannot Be Said of Christ, of the Blessed The name “Christ” is not declarative of nature, but of the composite hypostasis. That is, the whole Christ is both Lord and God, and almighty, having in Himself also that flesh which, for our sake and for our salvation, He bore, undivided and unconfused — passible and not almighty, created, visible, circumscribed — not almighty by nature, but having, in Christ, an almighty will. For Christ is not, by hypostasis, mortal and immortal; nor, again, powerless and almighty, visible and invisible, created and uncreated; but the one by nature, the other by hypostasis.

And, simply put, these belong to Him not by opposition of judgment, but in the property of nature. For He is one, as I said before, Christ, having each nature naturally. For “Not as I will, but as You,” shows nothing else than that He was truly clothed with flesh, fearing death. For to fear death, and to shrink back, and to be in agony, belongs to that flesh. Now, then, He leaves it deserted Minor Theological Works 1895 and bare of its own activity, that, by showing its weakness, He might confirm its nature also. And now He does not hide it, that you might learn that He was not a mere man. For just as, if the human things had been shown throughout, this would have been supposed; so, if He had performed the things of the Godhead throughout, the principle of the economy would have been disbelieved. For this reason He varies and mixes both the words and the deeds, that He might give occasion neither to the disease and madness of Paul of Samosata, nor to that of Marcion and Mani. For this reason He also foretells what is to come, as God, and shrinks back again, as man. You who refuse to say or confess two wills in the one and only Christ — this one will, which you say is in Him — do you consider it beginningless and co-beginningless and co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, or wholly divine in quantity, simple and uncomposite, as belonging to the divine essence; or does it seem to you something altered on account of the Incarnation?

Signify to us what kind it is, and tell us the name of this will. For I will signify the name of the will before the Incarnation, that is, of the divine will. For just as the divine nature, three-hypostatic, is beginningless, uncreated, inconceivable, simple, and uncomposite in its entirety, so too is its will. Behold, then, I have spoken of that before the Incarnation; and all will agree with me, as one speaking the truth. And you yourself too, whether you wish it or not. Tell us, then, what name it has after the Incarnation. Search the whole Old and New Testament. Tell us the name of this one will you find alleged concerning Christ. Search, and do not delay. But then, since the divine will is called divine, and the human will is called human, would you say Christ has a theandric will? I do not think so. Since the Father and the Holy Spirit do not have a theandric will. But then would you dare to call it composite? Likewise again this would be new with respect to the Godhead. But then would you say it is natural? You too would then confuse, like Severus; for it is impossible for two natures, or natural wills, to become one nature, or one natural will, without confusion. But hypostatic? Then again you would alienate the Son from the Father, and, introducing three willings, you would appear not to have them concur with one another, just as the hypostases too.

If you say the one willing and activity as of one subject, you will be forced to say the one willing and activity as of the Father, and the one as of the Spirit — whether you wish it or not — and the argument will be found falling into polytheism. And if you say it is relational, you introduce Nestorius's personal division. But if you say it is contrary to nature, you corrupt the existence of the one who wills; for the Minor Theological Works 1897 contrary-to-nature is a corruption of nature, as the Fathers have determined. But then will you tear apart the Monad again, and move us to reckon by fractions and thirds of your one will, so that we might find a way to learn to what degree it is divine, and to what degree human? Likewise, also to what degree uncreated, and to what degree created, and, simply, however it pleases you to say. Tell us the name of the will you champion concerning Christ; place it alongside the unnamed Psalms, so that it might find room and place there too. Since, most learned sir, we cannot confess something that has no name whatsoever. And, as is likely, up to now it has not been made manifest to any of those born of earth. Inscribe it, then, definitively, from patristic teachings, and set forth for us the signification of its name.

For what we number, this we also confess, according to the great and Godrevealing Basil. I say that the life-giving flesh of the Son of God had, in God the Word Himself, all the supernatural things belonging to His own nature, the two natures uniting into one person and one hypostasis of God the Word. For we worship one Son, as one of the Holy Trinity, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, as before the ages, now and unto all the ages, and after the ages of ages. Amen. Ten Chapters on the Two Wills of Our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ. Written to the Orthodox 1. If, just as the Word is of one hypostasis together with the flesh, so too, according to some, there is one will, blessed ones — it is necessary that, just as in hypostasis, so too in will, He differ both from us and from the Father. And how will the identity of nature with the Father be shown by the difference of wills?

2. In whatever respect the Word has the “one” together with the flesh, in that respect He is separated from the Father; and in whatever respect He has the “one” together with the Father, in that respect He is distinguished from the flesh. But if there is one will together with the flesh, according to some, blessed ones, then He has been separated, by will, from the Father.

3. If, in whatever respects the Word is united to the Father and the Spirit, in those respects He is judged to differ from the flesh — and He is united, according to the common opinion of Christians, in will, to the Father and the Spirit — then He differs, by the will of the flesh, from the Father and the Spirit; as the Fathers themselves have determined both for Minor Theological Works 1899 themselves and for us, and as we, blessed ones, are zealous to preserve.

4. This one will, it is necessary for them, blessed ones, to say is either natural or hypostatic — since the constitution of beings is contemplated in essence and hypostasis. For what else, besides these, could they say, since it is not permitted them? But if they say it is natural, they will say there is one nature of the Word and of the flesh, even against their will. But if hypostatic, they will be forced, on account of the three holy hypostases, to say the wills too are three — if indeed they have resolved to be consistent with themselves.

5. If the will of the nature of the Word is creative of all things that have come to be; and this, according to them, blessed ones, is also the will of the flesh — then the flesh of the Word will plainly also be a creator of things that have come to be. And thus the common opinion of Christians, that it is created, is abolished. For how is that which creates out of nothing a creature, and possesses the distinctive property of the divine nature?

6. If, on account of the one will of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, their one nature too was shown by the God-inspired Fathers — but there is, according to them, blessed ones, one will of the Word and of the flesh — then there will thus also be one nature of the Word and of the flesh. But if, in the case of the flesh and the Word, the one will does not gather the one nature, then neither, in the case of Father and Son and Holy Spirit, will the one will gather the one nature — and our faith is empty, and the proclamation of the Fathers is empty.

7. This one will is either by choice, or natural. But if natural, there will be one nature, as has already been shown, of the flesh and of the Word; but if by choice, Christ will be separated, both in hypostasis and in judgment, from the Father and the Spirit.

8. If, according to the great Cyril, things that are of the same essence and nature are also of the same will, how can things that are not of the same nature be of the same will?

9. If, according to the golden-mouthed John, the flesh has, by nature, the not wishing to die; and the Word united it to Himself immutably according to hypostasis, together with all the properties naturally belonging to it — how, by denying the properties naturally belonging to it, do they not also thereby deny the nature together with its natural properties?

10. If they say that a person too is introduced along with a will, and, on this account, fearing a fear that does not exist, they refuse to say two wills in Christ, lest two persons also be, Minor Theological Works 1901 of necessity, introduced together with them for them — they will be compelled, if they wish to show the argument of their own doctrine to be well-connected, either, on account of the one will of the Godhead, to say also one person — since, according to them, a person of necessity follows the will — or, on account of the three persons, to say also three wills, thereby introducing the coalescence of Sabellius and the division of Arius. But since, blessed ones, ambiguity of terms often becomes the cause of error, the hearer passing over to a different signification than the one the argument indicated, I entreat your understanding in Christ, for the clear and unconfused clarification of the realities signified, to make clear to you, before all else, whether will exists at all, and to what signified things, that is, realities, such a name applies; and whether some of the realities named under it are composite, and others simple; and which are the composite ones. And whether, then, the composite ones have parts that are coeval, or not coeval; and which are prior to which; and which are posterior to which.

And what is the demonstrative and definitive principle of each part, that we may have an understanding by which to receive the “one will.” For the argument of the Fathers is not about terms, but about realities. Wherefore we find the Fathers conceding terms, but never concepts. In addition to these: what is choice, and what is judgment; and what is gnomic will, and what is will by choice. For all these things must concur together for the presentation of the wills. And he who does not know these things precisely, and yet discourses about wills, is a blind man who is short-sighted, not knowing either what he is saying, or concerning what he is making his assertion. Of the Same, from the Questions Put to Him by Theodore the Monk Nature is, according to the philosophers, a principle of motion and rest; but according to the Fathers, a species predicated of many things differing in number, in answer to “what sort of thing it is.” Essence is, according to the philosophers, a self-subsisting thing needing nothing else for its constitution; but according to the Fathers, the natural existence predicated of many things differing in hypostases. An individual is, according to the philosophers, a collection of properties, the aggregate of which cannot be contemplated in another; but according to the Fathers, such as Peter or Paul, Minor Theological Works 1903 or someone else, distinguished from other men by properties personally his own.

Hypostasis is, according to the philosophers, essence together with properties; but according to the Fathers, that which each man is, personally distinguished from other men. OF THE HOLY IRENAEUS, BISHOP OF LYONS, DISCIPLE OF THE HOLY APOSTLE AND EVANGELIST JOHN, FROM HIS DISCOURSES ON THE FAITH TO DEMETRIUS THE DEACON OF VIENNE, WHICH BEGIN: “SEEKING GOD, HEAR DAVID The willing and activity of God is the qualitative and providential cause of every time and place and age, and of every nature. The willing of the noetic soul is the reason that is in our power, being its self-determining power. Willing is an appetitive mind, and a discursive appetite assenting to the thing willed. Of Clement the Stromatist, from His Discourse on Willing is a natural power, appetitive of that which accords with nature. Willing is a natural appetite, corresponding to the nature of the rational being. Natural willing is the selfdetermining movement of a self-governing mind; or a mind moved self-determinedly concerning something. Selfdetermination is a mind moved according to nature; or the self-governing noetic movement of the soul. Of the Holy Alexander, Pope of Alexandria, from His Letter to Aeglon, Bishop of Cynopolis, Against the Arians Natural willing is the self-determining power of every noetic being, such that it has nothing involuntary even according to its essence. Of the Holy Eustathius, Patriarch of Antioch, from His Discourse on the Soul Natural willing is the movement of the reason that is in us.

Willing is a rational and vital appetite. Of the Holy Athanasius, Pope of Alexandria, from His Greater Discourse on the Faith Willing is the self-determining movement of the noetic soul. The first property of the noetic soul, and declarative of its Minor Theological Works 1905 essence, is willing. The mind of the Lord is not yet “Lord,” but rather willing, or wish, or activity. Of the Holy Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, from His Discourse Willing is a certain mind, and a disposition concerning something. Self-determination is the self-governing movement of the will. Willing is, for the noetic soul, its choosing, by its own authority, of the things according to judgment, through willing by choice. Willing is, for every rational nature, its life according to nature. The privation of such life is the abolition of essence. Of the Holy Diadochus, Bishop of Photike, from the Sixth Chapter of His Ascetic Discourses Self-determination is the will of the rational soul, coming about unhindered toward whatever it wishes. Of the Holy Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch Will is reason turning within the heart, able to be made manifest only through activity. Will is the wish of the soul, unable to be checked from within itself. Of the Holy Nemesius, Bishop of Emesa Willing is a deliberative appetite for the things in our power and able to come about through us, and having an uncertain outcome.

Of the Same: in What Respect Man Is Rational, and What Is Internal Reason, and What Is Uttered Reason Internal reason is the movement of the soul that comes about within the discursive faculty itself, without any utterance; wherefore, often, being silent, we go through an entire discourse within ourselves, and converse in dreams. And it is especially according to this that we are all rational; but not as according to uttered reason. For those deaf from birth, and those who have lost their voice through affliction or disease, are no less rational. But uttered reason has its activity in voice and in languages. Minor Theological Works 1907 Of the Holy Maximus, from His Syllogisms on the Wills: What Is Natural Will, and What Is Gnomic? Natural will is the simple and uniform impulse and appetite of the constituents according to nature. But gnomic will is the qualified and varying movement and appetite of the things that gather together according to pleasure. Of the Same, from His Letter to Marinus the Priest: What Is Willing, and What Is Choice? They say that will is natural willing. Seek back, likewise, in the same letter, concerning counsel and judgment and prudence and opinion and authority. Various Definitions of Our Holy and God-Bearing Fathers, Concerning the Two Activities of Our Lord and God and Of the Holy Justin the Philosopher and, in the End, Martyr, from His Discourse to Euphrasius the Sophist, on Providence and Faith, Which Begins: “the Word Is If God has willing running together with nature, just as also activity — for God is always, by nature, both willing and active — then, of the things that are capable of willing, none will have the same natural willing and activity as He; since it would then altogether also be of the same nature.

But according to activity and nature, God knows no circumscription. Of the Same, from the Same Discourse Activity, of every essence, is the quality that properly belongs to it. Natural and constitutive activity is the definitive difference of the nature of the thing signified; apart from which nothing at all has, in any respect, the discernment of its manner of being. Minor Theological Works 1909 Natural activity is the essential and constitutive quality of every essence; deprived of which, a thing is deprived of all essence. Natural activity is an essential power, not permitting any alteration whatsoever of one thing into another according to essence. Natural activity is the power that preserves the unmixed essential distinction of all things from all things. Of the Holy Alexander, from His Letter to Aeglon, Bishop of Cynopolis, Against the Arians Natural activity is the innate movement of every nature. Natural activity is the essential and cognitive principle of every nature. Natural activity is the power declarative of every essence. The activity of the rational soul is the movement and discursive reasoning of the mind. Activity is the essential movement characteristic of the nature, being proper to it, by which it is known to differ essentially from others. Activity is effective movement. That which is moved from itself is called effective. For we say that activity is the natural power and movement of each essence, apart from which nature neither exists nor is known.

For of noetic beings, it is intellection; of sentient beings, sensation, according to which they both make natural contact with external things, and are subject to external things. Of flying beings, flight; of swimming beings, swimming; of creeping beings, creeping; of walking beings, walking; of sprouting beings, sprouting. And, to speak comprehensively, we call the signifying property of each nature its natural activity — of which only that which does not exist is deprived. For that which exists partakes of some essence, and altogether also of the power that naturally reveals it. For true reasoning knows the natural activities of essences to be their definitions. Activity is the proper discursive reasoning and movement of the mind of the rational soul. Activity is the life according to nature of the rational soul. The essential activity of God is to be nowhere — not by not existing, but by being above place and time and nature, with which a beginning and an end and a coming-into-being are Minor Theological Works 1911 naturally co-conceived; He who is the sustainer and maker by will alone. For without natural activity, the nature of nothing is manifest. For the Creator implanted, in each nature, a distinguishing character — the movement that essentially distinguishes it from others. God-befitting activity and power is to be everywhere, and to fill heaven ineffably, and again to fill the earth, and to contain all things, while being contained by none.

For He is not comprehensible, nor circumscribed by any interval, nor within any circumscription whatsoever. For He who is without quantity, and without magnitude, and incorporeal does not endure to undergo any such thing. Since the definition of every essence is its activity according to nature, this is a confirmation that leads the mind up to the nature from which it proceeds — of those things whose activity is one and the same, of these too the essence is one. Of the Same, from His Works Against Eunomius How is there an otherness of essence in which sameness of activity is known? For where essences differ, the activities too must differ. How is the Spirit not of the same essence as the Father and the Son, being also of the same activity? How is there otherness of essence in the Trinity, in which sameness of activity is found? For if things are without variance according to essence, they will also be so according to power. And of those whose power is altogether somehow equal, the activity too is equal; and of those whose nature is one, the activities are the same. Of the Holy Gregory of Nyssa Therefore the sameness of activity in Father and Son and Holy Spirit plainly shows the invariance of nature. And we are able to know the nature of the one who acts through the understanding of the activities.

And the commonality of nature is actively demonstrated, being established through the sameness of the activities. But the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; yet there is one God in the same proclamation, because no difference contemplated, either of nature or of activity, in the Godhead. Minor Theological Works 1913 If, then, activity and power are one, how is it possible to suspect an otherness of nature, in things in which we find no difference according to power and activity? It is altogether necessary that choice too be confessed to correspond and belong to nature; and if things are dissimilar according to nature, the wills too must always be dissimilar. But since the power in each case is sufficient, neither will fall short in the fulfillment of its own will. Therefore, if we see the activities worked by the Father and the Holy Spirit differing from one another, we conjecture, from the otherness of the activities, that the natures that act are also different. For it is not possible for things separated according to the principle of nature to be brought together in respect of the form of their activities; neither does fire cool, nor does ice warm. But by the otherness of the natures, the activities that come from them are also separated from one another together with it. For things that have obtained the same nature will act alike.

But those whose principle of manner of being is altered — in these the principle of the activity in all things would not be the same. Things that have the same activity, and that make use of the same natural powers, must be of the same essence. For none of the beings will bear, unvaryingly, the same powers and activities toward that which is of a different kind and different essence. For things that are of the same activity are also confessed to be of the same essence. That things of different nature and different kind should have the same activity — no prudent man would grant this. For fire and water would never work one and the same thing; but just as they have the principle of essence and quality set apart from one another, so too they will render the activity different accordingly. For of those whose activity and power are indistinguishably one, of these the commonality of species must also be preserved. For things having the same activity are wont to be of the same essence also, and the notion of a different nature among them is implausible. For we shall surely not grant that there is one natural activity of God and of a creature, lest we either raise up the thing made into the divine essence, or bring down the excellence of the divine nature to the manner fitting for created things.

For things having one activity will bear one and the same principle of manner of being. Minor Theological Works 1915 Of the Holy Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, from His Second Discourse to the Emperor Gratian For how is the same activity from a different essence? For the lesser does not act in the same way as the greater acts. For where there is a different essence, it is impossible for there to be one activity. Of the Holy Basil, from His Syllogisms Against Eunomius The one who acts is one thing, and the activity is another, and the effect is another, and these are very much distinct from one another. For the one who acts is the one moved toward acting something. But activity is, as it were, the effective movement, and is itself, so to speak, the impulse of choice, straining and inclining toward acting something, and ceasing and ending as soon as the choice is made, having moved and passed by rather quickly. But effects are the things brought to completion and produced from it. The Disputation with Pyrrhus A RECORD OF THE DISCUSSION that took place concerning the matters raised about the doctrines of the Church, in the presence of Gregory, the most pious patrician, and the most holy bishops assembled with him, and the rest of the Godloving and glorious men, between Pyrrhus, formerly patriarch of Constantinople, and Maximus, the most reverent monk, in the month of July, in the third indiction.

Pyrrhus contending on behalf of the innovation introduced by himself and by his predecessor at Byzantium — that is, of one will; Maximus advocating the patristic and apostolic teaching that has come down to us from above — the said men, that is, Pyrrhus and Maximus, having been brought face to face by the aforementioned extraordinary man, I mean Gregory the most honored patrician. Pyrrhus began the discussion with Maximus, speaking thus. PYRRHUS. What evil have we done you, lord abba Maximus — both I, and he before me — that you should so tear us apart everywhere, giving all men a suspicion of heresy about us? Who has ever so honored or revered you, even though unknown to him by sight, as we have? Disputation with Pyrrhus 1917 MAX. Since God is listening — no one, to use your own words, has so honored or revered me as you have; but since you have now set aside the Christian doctrine, I judged it a fearsome thing to prefer, to the grace shown me, the truth. PYR. What, then, have we taught, that we have set aside the mind of Christians? MAX. In teaching one will of the Godhead of Christ and of His manhood; and not only teaching it, but also, to the ruin of the whole body of the holy Church, having put it forward through a new Ekthesis.

PYR. What then — does he who teaches one will of Christ seem to you to have deviated from Christian teaching? MAX. Very much so. For what could be more unholy than to say that the same One, by one and the same will, before the incarnation, constituted all things out of nothing, and sustained and provided for them, and conducted them savingly; but after the enanthropesis desired food and drink, and moved from place to place, and did all the other things that are altogether free of any reproach or blame — by which He showed the economy to be pure of all appearance of unreality? PYR. Is Christ one, or not? MAX. Yes, plainly one. PYR. If, then, Christ is one, then, as one, He surely also willed as one; His will is altogether one, and not two. MAX. To say something without first distinguishing the things signified by what is said is nothing other than to confuse everything, and hasten to leave obscure the very matters under examination — which is foreign to a reasonable man. Tell me this, then: Christ, being one, is He only God, or also man? PYR. Plainly, both God and man. MAX. Christ, then, being by nature both God and man, did the same will as God and man, or only as “Christ”? But if Christ willed primarily as God and man, then plainly He willed in a twofold manner, and not singly, though being one and the same.

For Christ is nothing other than His own natures, of which, and in which, He exists; so plainly, corresponding to His own natures — that is, as each nature is by nature — being one and the same, He both willed and acted, since neither of them is without will or without energy. And if Christ, corresponding to His own natures — that is, as each nature is by nature — willed and acted; and His natures are two; then His natural wills are altogether two as well, and His Disputation with Pyrrhus 1919 energies, equal in number to these, are essential. For just as the number of the natures of the one and same Christ, piously conceived and spoken of, does not divide Christ, but presents the difference of the natures as preserved even in the union — so too the number of the wills and energies essentially belonging to His natures. For, corresponding to both, as has been said, His natures, He, being one and the same, was both willing and acting for our salvation — this does not introduce division; God forbid; but it indicates only the preservation and safeguarding of these very things, even in the union. PYR. It is impossible for those who will not to be introduced along with their wills. MAX. This is the absurdity found even in your own writings — moved, not by reason, but by authority, you have declared it, having taken Heraclius as your ally in this, on account of your also having consented to his unlawful and illicit marriage, and confirming it by a blessing.

For if it is granted that those who will are introduced along with their wills, then, by the reasonable converse, wills will also be introduced along with those who will; and it will be found, according to you, that the supersubstantial, all-good, and blessed Godhead — on account of its one will, has, according to Sabellius, one hypostasis; but on account of the three persons, has three wills, and therefore three natures, according to Arius — if indeed, according to the patristic definitions and canons, difference of wills and of natures introduces difference. PYR. It is impossible for two wills to coexist with one another in one person without opposition. MAX. If it is not possible for two wills to be in one and the same person without opposition, then, according to you, it is possible with opposition. And if this is so, then for the present you have admitted that they are two; and you no longer differ from me on the number, but only on the opposition. It remains, then, to inquire into the productive cause of the strife. What, then, do you say this is? Is it the will according to nature, or is it sin? But if you should say it is the will according to nature — of this we know no other cause than God; then, according to you, God is the author of the strife.

But if it is sin — sin the incarnate God did not commit, nor did He have any opposition whatsoever in His natural wills. For where the cause does not exist, plainly neither will the effect. PYR. Willing, then, belongs to nature? MAX. Yes, willing simply belongs to nature. Disputation with Pyrrhus 1921 PYR. If willing belongs to nature, and the more distinguished of the Fathers said one will of God and of the saints, then, on this account, there will be one nature of the saints and of God. MAX. It was said above too, that he who speaks a true discourse must distinguish what the things spoken signify, on account of the error arising from homonymy. For I too will ask you in return: the saints who spoke of one will of God and of the saints — did they say this looking to the essential and creative will of God, or to the thing willed? For the will of him who wills is not the same as the thing willed, just as the faculty of sight in him who sees is not the same as the thing seen; for the one belongs to him essentially, while the other happens to be external. But if they spoke looking to the essential will, they will be found not only introducing the saints as of the same nature as, and co-creators with, God, but also contradicting themselves, having declared that things of different essence cannot have a common will.

But if they spoke looking to the thing willed, then it is by way of cause — or, as some are pleased to say, by an extended usage — that the Fathers called the thing willed “will”; and no absurdity will follow for those who define willing simply as belonging to nature. PYR. If we differ in our wills, both from ourselves and from one another — now willing this, now not willing the same thing — and this belongs to nature, and to its characterizing principle, then we shall be found not only differing from one another in nature, but changing it countless times. MAX. Willing and how one wills are not the same, just as seeing and how one sees are not the same. For willing, like seeing, belongs to nature, and is present in all things of the same nature and kind; but how one wills — just as how one sees, that is, to will to walk, or not to will to walk, and to look right, or left, or up, or down, or toward desire, or the understanding of the principles in beings — is a manner of the use of willing and seeing, belonging only to the one who has employed it, and distinguishing him from others, according to what is commonly called difference. And if we have nature bearing witness to this, then to will to eat, or not to will to eat, or to will to walk, or not to will — this is not the abolition of the natural capacity to will, but is the coming-tobe and passing-away of the things willed.

For neither, if we suppose that the things that come from God, being the things willed by Him, pass away, will there also pass away, together with these, His pre-conceived, essential, and creative will. Disputation with Pyrrhus 1923 PYR. If you call the will natural, and what is natural is altogether also necessitated, how is it not necessary, in saying that the wills in Christ are natural, to abolish, in His case, every voluntary movement? MAX. Not only the divine and uncreated nature has nothing necessitated that is natural to it, but neither does the intellectual and created nature. For that which is by nature rational has, as a natural power, the rational appetite, which is also called the will of the intellectual soul, by which we, willing, reason, and reasoning, will and choose. And, willing, we seek, and deliberate, and take counsel, and judge, and are disposed, and choose, and act, and make use. And since, as has been said, rational appetite — that is, willing and reasoning — naturally belongs to us, and taking counsel, and seeking, and deliberating, and choosing, and judging, and being disposed, and preferring, and impelling, and using — the natural properties of intellectual beings are not, therefore, necessitated. And how, even granting this, will such a proposition not be shown to be more absurd than every absurdity? For if, according to it, what is natural is altogether also necessitated; and God is by nature God, by nature good, by nature Creator; then God will be, by necessity, God, and good, and Creator — which it is the height of blasphemy even to conceive, let alone to say.

For who is it that imposes the necessity? Consider, if you please, my friend, the blasphemy of such a proposition in this way too. For if he who speaks of the wills in Christ as natural thereby, according to you, abolishes every voluntary movement in Him, then of necessity, things that will naturally must have involuntary movement, while things that do not will naturally must have voluntary movement. Then not only God, who is beyond beings, but also all intellectual and rational beings, being by nature possessed of will, will have involuntary movement; while inanimate things, which are not possessed of will, will have voluntary movement. But the blessed Cyril, in his third chapter against the accusations of Theodoret, has freed us from superfluous matters, plainly declaring that nothing natural in the intellectual nature is involuntary. And this is possible for anyone who wishes to learn it, by taking that chapter into his hands. PYR. Since one must gratefully accept as true what has come to light through examination — and the argument has shown with great clarity that the wills in Christ are natural — is it possible, just as we say something composite arises from the two natures, so too to say something composite arises from the two natural wills; so that both those who say two wills, on account of the natural difference of the natures in Christ, and those who say one, on account of the extreme union, may no Disputation with Pyrrhus 1925 longer differ from one another merely for the sake of bare words — if indeed, as Gregory the great theologian says, truth for us is not in names, but in realities?

MAX. Do you see that you are led astray in this by being altogether ignorant that compositions belong to things existing in a hypostasis, and not to things observed in another and not their own principle? And this is the common opinion of all — both the philosophers outside, and the Godwise mystagogues of the Church. But if you speak of a composition of the wills, you will be forced also to speak of a composition of the other natural properties — if indeed you wish to show the argument of your own doctrine to be wellconnected — that is, of the created and the uncreated, of the infinite and the finite, of the unbounded and the bounded, of the mortal and the immortal, of the corruptible and the incorruptible; and you will be carried off into absurd suppositions. And how will that which arises from wills be called “will”? For it is not possible for the composite to be named by the appellation of the things composed — or else, according to the ancient heretics, that which arises from the natures will also be called “nature.” And in addition to this, you again separate Him from the wills of the Father, having characterized His will alone as composite, and His nature as composite. PYR. Did the natures, then, have nothing in common, as also their natural properties? MAX. Nothing — except only the hypostasis of the very natures.

For He was, unconfusedly, the same hypostasis of His own natural properties. PYR. What, then, of the Fathers, whose words are the law and canon of the Church, who did not say the glory and the outrage were common? For that, he says, from which comes the glory is one thing, and that from which comes the outrage is another. MAX. This was said by the holy Fathers by the manner of interchange. And it is plain that interchange belongs not to one, but to two, and unequal things — the things naturally belonging to each part of Christ being, by way of interchange, according to the ineffable union, attributed to the other, without any change or confusion of one part into the other according to the natural principle. If, then, you call the will common in the manner of interchange, you speak not of one, but of two wills; and once again your clever argument has been overturned into that very thing you were eager to flee. PYR. What then — was the flesh not moved by the nod of the Disputation with Pyrrhus 1927 MAX. In saying this, you divide Christ. For Moses too was moved by His nod, and David, and all who became capable of the divine energy through the laying aside of human and fleshly properties. But we, following the holy Fathers, as in all things, so also in this, say that the God of all Himself, having become man unchangeably, not only, as God, willed the same corresponding to His Godhead, but also, as man, the same corresponding to His manhood.

For if things that have come to be from non-being have, from being, and not from nonbeing, a power that clings to being; and it is the property of this, according to nature, to have an impulse toward what is constitutive of it, and an aversion from what is destructive of it — then the supersubstantial Word Himself, having become substantial as man, also had the being of His manhood’s power that clings to it, whose impulse and aversion He, willing, showed through energy: the impulse, in making use, to such an extent, of what was natural and free of blame, that He was not even thought by unbelievers to be God; and the aversion, at the time of the Passion, in willingly making a shrinking back from death. What absurdity, then, has the Church of God committed, in confessing, along with His human and created nature, also the principles creatively implanted in it by Him, without which nature cannot exist? PYR. If cowardice belongs to us by nature, and this is among the things that are blameworthy, then, according to you, what is blameworthy — that is, sin — is implanted in us by nature. MAX. Again you deceive yourself, not the truth, by homonymy. For there is cowardice both according to nature and contrary to nature. Cowardice according to nature is a power that clings to being by way of shrinking back; cowardice contrary to nature is an irrational shrinking-back.

The Lord, then, did not at all admit the cowardice contrary to nature, since it arises from a betrayal of reasoning; but the cowardice according to nature, as indicative of the power inherent in nature that clings to being, He, willing it for our sake, as good, accepted. For the natural properties are not attributed to the will in the Lord as they are in us; but just as, being truly hungry and thirsty, He hungered and thirsted, not in our manner, but in a manner above us — for it was voluntarily — so too, being truly made cowardly, He was made cowardly, not in our manner, but for our sake. And, to speak generally, every natural property in Christ has, joined with its own principle, also a manner above nature, that both the nature might be confirmed through the principle, and the economy through the manner. Disputation with Pyrrhus 1929 PYR. Let us, then, to escape this subtle and, to many, hard-tograsp technicality, confess Him to be the same, perfect God and perfect man, avoiding all the rest, since the perfect implies within itself the natural properties. MAX. If, according to you, saying the natures without the individuating property proper to each, or saying that Christ is perfect God and perfect man without the marks of perfection, constitutes complete piety, then let the synods be anathematized, and, before them, the Fathers, who legislated for us to confess not only the natures, but also the individuating property of each nature; and not only that the same is perfect God and perfect man, but also the marks of perfection — that is, saying that the same and one is both visible and invisible, mortal and immortal, corruptible and incorruptible, tangible and intangible, created and uncreated; and, in accordance with this same pious understanding, they also piously declared as doctrine two wills of the same one, not only through the definite number “two,” but also through the substitution of “one” and “another,” and through the analogy of saying “divine” and “human.”

For the nature of number is not confined to one manner alone. PYR. If it is not possible for these expressions to be used, on account of the malice of those given to heresy, let us content ourselves with only what has been said synodically, and say neither one nor two wills. MAX. If one must confess only what has been said synodically, then one must not even speak of the one incarnate nature of God the Word, which comprehends the whole piety of the mystery, since this was not synodically proclaimed. But even so, you will be forced to confess the wills together with the natures and their individuating properties. For if you say that what naturally belongs to the natures of Christ constitutes their individuating properties, and willing is naturally implanted in each of His natures, then, along with the other natural individuating properties, you will be forced to confess the wills as well, together with the natures. Moreover, if the synods, on account of the expression “one will,” anathematized both Apollinaris and Arius — each of them having made use of this to establish his own heresy: the one wishing to show, through this, the flesh to be consubstantial with the Word; the other striving to introduce the Son as of a different essence than the Father — how can we be pious, not confessing expressions opposed to those of Disputation with Pyrrhus 1931 the heretics?

And the fifth synod, to omit all else, having decreed, in these very words, to accept all the compositions of the holy Athanasius, and Basil, and the Gregories, and certain other expressly approved teachers, in which the two wills are also contained, has thereby handed down two wills. PYR. And does it not seem to you that the expression “natural will” strikes the ears of many? MAX. Setting aside the divine, how many kinds of life do you say there are among beings? PYR. Tell me yourself. MAX. There are three kinds of life. PYR. Which are these? MAX. The vegetative, the sensitive, the intellectual. MAX. And since each is distinguished from the others by some principle of its constitution, what is the distinguishing and proper principle of each kind? PYR. This too I ask you to say. MAX. Proper to the vegetative is the movement of nourishment, growth, and generation; proper to the sensitive is movement by impulse; proper to the intellectual is selfdetermination. PYR. You have set forth very clearly and distinctly the individuating property of each kind of life. MAX. If the individuating property of each kind has been shown to be distinct and unconfused, I ask again: does the movement of nourishment, growth, and generation belong to the vegetative according to nature, and does movement by impulse belong to the sensitive according to nature? PYR. According to nature, without doubt.

Then also self-determined movement belongs, correspondingly, to the intellectual. PYR. This too will surely be granted by anyone who lays down doctrine consistently with his own principles. MAX. If, then, self-determined movement belongs by nature to intellectual beings, then every intellectual being is also by nature possessed of will. For the blessed Diadochus of Photice defined self-determination to be will. And if every intellectual being is by nature possessed of will, and God the Disputation with Pyrrhus 1933 truly became flesh, ensouled rationally and intellectually, then also, insofar as He was man, the same was essentially possessed of will. And if this is so, then the expression “natural will” does not strike the ears of the pious, but those of the given-to-heresy. PYR. For my part, I was already persuaded, in what has gone before, that the wills in Christ are natural, and I seek no further demonstration of this. For the argument has shown that the very nature of beings bears witness no less than what has been divinely declared, that He, corresponding to His own natures, was willing — being well-pleased as God, and obedient as man; and that the natural wills correspond altogether to the natures: the unoriginate to the unoriginate, and the originated to the originated; and that it is not possible for them ever to coincide into one will, even though they belong to one and the same, just as the natures do not — the unoriginate and the originated, the uncreated and the created, that which made and that which was made, the infinite and the finite, that which deified and that which was deified.

But those at Byzantium, still standing against the natural wills, say that the Fathers spoke of the Lord as having the human will by appropriation. MAX. Since you yourself have led me into such a wonderful and brilliant instruction — by what kind of appropriation do they say this? Is it the essential kind, by which each one, having what naturally belongs to him, appropriates it on account of his nature; or the relational kind, by which we make one another’s things our own out of friendship and affection, though we ourselves neither suffer nor perform any of them? PYR. The relational kind, plainly. MAX. Then, before showing the absurdity of this, it would be more just to examine more precisely whether man is by nature possessed of will, or not. For once this is shown, the blasphemy of such a heresy will become clearer. PYR. If you think best, let us examine this. MAX. Not only have those who have rationally examined nature, and who surpass the many, said that natural properties are untaught, but so has the common experience of more ordinary people. And if natural properties are untaught, and we have willing untaught — for no one is ever taught to will — then man is by nature possessed of will. And again, if man is by nature rational; and what is by nature rational is by nature also self-determined — for self- Disputation with Pyrrhus 1935 determination is, according to the Fathers, will — then man is by nature possessed of will.

And again, if in irrational beings nature leads, while in man nature is led, man being moved by authority according to will, then man is by nature possessed of will. And again, if man was made according to the image of the blessed and supersubstantial Godhead; and the divine nature is by nature self-determined; then man too, as truly an image of it, is by nature self-determined; and if he is by nature self-determined, then man is by nature possessed of will — for it has already been said that the Fathers defined self-determination as will. Moreover, willing does not belong to some men but not to others — not that it belongs to some and not to others; and that which is observed commonly in all characterizes the nature in the individuals under it. Then man is by nature possessed of will. PYR. It has been shown at length that man is by nature possessed of will. MAX. This, then, having been manifestly shown, let us examine, as we proposed above, the absurdity of their proposition. PYR. Let us examine it. MAX. If man is by nature possessed of will, as has been shown, but, according to them, Christ had the human will by a bare relational appropriation, then it is necessary for them — if they are consistent with their own principles — to say that the other natural properties belonging to us also belong to Him, together with this, that is, the will according to nature, by bare appropriation; and the contemplation and mystery of the whole economy will be found by them to be taken according to mere appearance.

Furthermore, if Sergius’s decree anathematized not those who spoke of two wills in some particular manner, but those who simply said two wills; and these men say two, even if mistakenly, on account of appropriation — then those who champion this decree lend support to the anathema pronounced against themselves. And again, if, according to the proposition they defend, persons are introduced along with wills, then, in saying two wills — even if mistakenly, on account of appropriation, as has been said — they will, according to this same proposition, be saying that two persons are introduced along with them. And who could bear the cutting of the One into two persons? PYR. What then — did not the Fathers say that the will which Christ formed within Himself was ours? Disputation with Pyrrhus 1937 PYR. Then they did not signify, by “human,” what belonged to Him by nature, but what He assumed by appropriation. MAX. Since they also said that He had likewise assumed our nature, then, according to them, He will be found to have had this very nature also by bare appropriation. For if the one statement is true, so is the other; and if the latter is false, so is the former. PYR. What then — in saying that He formed within Himself what was ours, did they signify what belonged to Him by nature? PYR.

How do you say this? MAX. Since He Himself was wholly God together with His manhood, and the same wholly man together with His Godhead, He, as man, in Himself and through Himself, subjected the human to God the Father, giving Himself to us as the best pattern and model for imitation, that we too, looking to Him as the leader of our salvation, might willingly bring what is ours over to God, by no longer willing anything other than what He wills. PYR. That saying was made, not by an evil purpose or by any cunning, but out of a wish to show the extreme union. MAX. If this is granted to the followers of Severus, then will they not reasonably say, as far as concerns the premise granted — that it is not out of an evil purpose, or any cunning, that we say one nature, but, wishing, just as you do, to show the extreme union through the one will? For they will use the very weapons of these men against them, as David used against Goliath. Behold, in saying one will, you fall into the very same notions and expressions as they. But this one will — what do they wish to call it? For it is only fair that they give it a name. PYR. They call it a “gnomic” [related to gnome, or personal disposition] will.

MAX. Then it is either gnomic and derivative; and if derivative, then the gnome, as the archetype, will be essence. PYR. The gnome is not essence. MAX. If it is not essence, it is quality; and it will be found that quality arises from quality — which is impossible. What, then, do they say the gnome is? Disputation with Pyrrhus 1939 PYR. The gnome is nothing other than what the blessed Cyril defined it to be: a manner of life. MAX. The manner of a life of virtue, say, or of vice — does this belong to us by choice, or not? PYR. By choice, altogether. MAX. Do we, then, choose willing and deliberating, or without willing and without deliberating? PYR. Confessedly, by willing and deliberating. MAX. Then the gnome is nothing other than a certain will, relationally clinging to something either really or apparently good. PYR. You have rightly given the exegesis of the patristic definition. MAX. If the exposition of the patristic definition has been rightly given, then, first, it is not possible to speak of a “gnomic will.” For how can it be that will proceeds from will? And further, in speaking of a gnome in Christ, as the inquiry concerning it has shown, they teach Him to be a bare man, deliberating in a manner like us — being ignorant, and doubting, and having contrary things — since one deliberates concerning things that are doubtful, not concerning what is beyond doubt.

For we, indeed, have simply, by nature, an appetite for the good; but experience of how something is good comes through inquiry and deliberation. And for this reason “gnome,” in our case, is fittingly spoken of, being a manner of use, not a principle of nature — since our nature has changed countless times. But of the humanity of the Lord, which did not subsist merely as ours does, but divinely — for He who appeared for our sake, from us, in the flesh, was God — “gnome” cannot be said. For His very being — that is, His subsisting divinely — naturally had both a kinship to the good and an estrangement from evil, as the great eye of the Church, Basil, teaches in his interpretation of the forty-fourth Psalm, saying: “And in this sense you will also understand what was said of Him by Isaiah, that ’before the child knows or chooses evil, he will choose the good.’ For before the child knows good or evil, he refuses evil in choosing the good.’ For the ’before’ shows that it was not by inquiring and deliberating in our manner, but by subsisting divinely, that He had, as belonging to Himself, that which is by nature good.” PYR. What then — are the virtues natural? Disputation with Pyrrhus 1941 PYR. And if they are natural, why do they not exist equally in all things of the same nature?

[MAX. They do exist equally in all things of the same nature.] PYR. And whence comes such great inequality among us? MAX. From our not equally activating what belongs to our nature. For if we all equally activated the natural properties for which we were made, then virtue would be shown to be one in all, just as nature is, admitting no “more” or “less.” PYR. If natural properties do not come to us from ascetic exercise but from creation, and virtue is natural, how do we acquire the virtues, which are natural, by labor and ascetic exercise? MAX. Ascetic exercise, and the labors that follow it, were devised, by those who love virtue, only for the purpose of separating out the deceit that has been mixed into the soul through sense-perception — not for introducing the virtues afresh from outside; for they are implanted in us from creation, as has been said. Wherefore, as soon as the deceit is completely distinguished and separated, at that very moment the soul shows forth the brightness of its natural virtue. For he who is not foolish is prudent; and he who is neither cowardly nor rash is courageous; and he who is not licentious is temperate; and he who is not unjust is just. And by nature, reason is prudence, and the judging faculty is justice, and spiritedness is courage, and desire is temperance.

Then, by the removal of what is contrary to nature, what is according to nature, and this alone, is accustomed to shine forth — just as, by the removal of rust, the natural gleam and brightness of iron shines forth. PYR. From this a very great blasphemy has been shown to belong to those who speak of a gnome in Christ. MAX. This too must not be passed over without notice: that the term “gnome” has many forms and many meanings, both in holy Scripture and among the holy Fathers, as is plain to those who read carefully. For sometimes they use it of counsel and advice — as when the Apostle says, “Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord, but I give my judgment [gnome]”; sometimes of a plot, as when the blessed David says, “Against Your people they have craftily devised a plan [gnome]” — which another translator, making it clearer, rendered: “Against Your people they have craftily devised counsel [boule]”; sometimes of a decree, as when Daniel, the great among the prophets, says of someone: “The shameless decree [gnome] went forth from the presence of the king”; sometimes of opinion, or faith, or mind, as when Disputation with Pyrrhus 1943 Gregory, surnamed the Theologian, discourses in his first oration on the Son: “Since to rebuke is no great thing — for it is very easy, and within the power of anyone who wishes — but to bring forward one’s own opinion [gnome] in its place is the mark of a pious man, and one who has understanding.”

And, simply put, that I may not, by going through everything one by one, heap up a burden upon this discourse, I have observed, in holy Scripture and among the holy Fathers, some twenty-eight meanings of the term “gnome” — for it exhibits the character neither of a common nor of a particular thing, but the meaning of him who uses it is determined from what precedes it, or what follows. Wherefore it is impossible to confine such a term to one single meaning. PYR. For how could that which is spoken of in many ways be assigned to one thing alone? MAX. That the shame of such a heresy may become even more apparent, let us examine this proposition in another way as well. PYR. If you wish, let us examine it. MAX. In saying “one will” — whether they call it deliberative, or gnomic, or authoritative, or wish to call it by some other name (for we are not at odds over this) — they will be compelled to call it either divine, or angelic, or human. And, first of all, whichever of these they say it is, they will call it natural — since each of these is indicative of a nature; and what they thought to flee by the method of division, they will be shown to establish by the method of resolution. And consequently, if they call it divine, they will thereby proclaim Christ to be God alone by nature; if angelic, neither God nor man, but some angelic nature; if human, they will show Him to be a mere man, subject to authority.

PYR. When they fall into these absurdities, they say the will is neither natural nor gnomic, but say it belongs to us by aptitude. MAX. Does this aptitude belong to us according to nature, or not according to nature? PYR. According to nature. MAX. Then again, by resolution, they will call the will natural, and they will have gained nothing by this circuit. And since aptitude produces its habit and readiness from learning, then, according to them, Christ acquired the habit and readiness of will from learning and advancement, and He advanced, being ignorant, before He learned, of what He Disputation with Pyrrhus 1945 was to learn. For what reason, then, do they turn away from Nestorius, while warmly clinging to his very expressions and notions? And that, in saying one will, they are advocating for his teachings, the Ekthesis they champion also bears witness, having declared that Nestorius maintained one will, in respect of the two persons falsely attributed to him. MAX. Moreover, in rejecting the will as natural, they will say it is either hypostatic or contrary to nature. But if they say it is hypostatic, then the Son will thus be of a different will from the Father — for “hypostatic” characterizes only a single hypostasis. But if contrary to nature, they proclaim the fall of His own essences, since things contrary to nature are destructive of things according to nature.

I would also gladly ask them this: does the God and Father of all will insofar as He is Father, or insofar as He is God? But if insofar as He is Father, then His will will be different from that of the Son — for the Son is not the Father; but if insofar as He is God — and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God — then they will grant that the will belongs to nature, that is, is natural. Moreover, if, according to the Fathers, things whose will is one have also one essence; and, according to them, the will of the Godhead of Christ and of His manhood is one — then they say that these have one and the same essence. And how, being thus impious, do they claim to be following the And again, if, according to the same Fathers, the difference of nature is not manifested in one will, then it is necessary for them either, in saying one will, not to say a natural difference in Christ, or, in saying a natural difference, not to say one will — if indeed they direct themselves by the patristic canons. And again, if, according to the same teachers, the will is not common to both — that is, to both essences — then it is necessary for them either not to say that both natures of the same One have, in common, one will, or, in saying this, plainly to fight against the patristic laws and decrees.

PYR. Very clearly, and concisely, the argument has shown the impiety bound up in every device of the opposing side. But what do we say to this — that they attempt to demonstrate this even from the Fathers? MAX. If they wish to call the Fathers those who divide, and those who confuse, the transcendent economy, we grant it to them; for all of these proclaimed one will, though standing at diametrically opposite poles of impiety. But if they mean the Fathers of the Church, we shall by no means grant them this. Disputation with Pyrrhus 1947 Let them show us one alone, among those well-known and recognized by all, that we too, on the day of the examination of our own affairs, when accused by Christ God, saying, “Why did you accept an expression that entirely dissolves the mystery of My incarnation?” — may have a defense, saying that we revered, in all things, the opinion of the Father. PYR. What then of what was said by Gregory the Theologian: “For His will, being wholly deified, was in no way opposed to God” — is this not opposed to the doctrine of two wills? MAX. By no means. On the contrary, it is more expressive of the two wills than of anything else. PYR. How do you say this? MAX. Just as heating brings in with itself both the thing heated and the thing that heats; and cooling, both the thing cooled and the thing that cools; and walking, both the thing walking and the way being walked; and seeing, both the one seeing and the thing seen; and understanding, both the mind that understands and the thing understood — for it is not possible to conceive or speak of a relation apart from the things related — so, correspondingly, both the thing deified and the thing that deifies.

Moreover, if, according to them, the deification of the will is opposed to the doctrine of two wills, then the deification of nature will also be opposed to the doctrine of two natures. For the Father has laid down the same principle of deification in respect of both. PYR. The citation from the Father has been shown very much to accord with the two wills; but one must also show Gregory, who illumined the Church of Nyssa, to agree with this. For they cite him as holding one will, from his saying that the Father said of the Lord, “The soul wills, the body touches; through both He flees passion.” For they say that it was by the divine will of the Godhead united to Him according to hypostasis that the Father said the soul of the Lord wills. MAX. Then, by the same reasoning, he also said that the body touches by the divine touch, and, according to them, the Godhead will be tangible. For what they say concerning the soul of the Lord, another, applying the same manner of expression to the body, leads them into the ultimate error. PYR. You have very concisely presented the blasphemy of such an interpretation. But what do we say concerning the citations they bring forward from the great Athanasius? One of which is this: “The mind of the Lord is not yet the Lord, but either a will, or a wish, or an energy directed toward something.”

Disputation with Pyrrhus 1949 MAX. They bring this forward against themselves too. Wherefore the true argument makes use of all their own objections for their refutation. For truth would never become so impoverished as to need the weapons of its opponents. For if, according to the Father, “the mind of the Lord is not yet the Lord,” then His mind will altogether be something other than the Lord — that is, the mind of the Lord is not by nature Lord, that is, God; for it is believed to have become His according to hypostasis. And this is plain from his adding that it is either a will, or a wish, or an energy directed toward something — using as his rule for this the truly philosophical Clement, in his sixth book of the Stromata, who defined the will to be an appetitive mind, and the wish to be a rational appetite, or the willing of something. And this divine teacher speaks of “an energy directed toward something” because, in all the things He did in a manner befitting God, He made use of the intellectual and rational soul united to Him according to PYR. Truly, in the very things by which they seem to fight against piety, they have, by undergoing refutation through these very things, been shown ignorant. But we must also work through the other citation they bring forward from the Father, that we may leave them no pretext against the truth.

MAX. What is this? For I do not know it. PYR. That in which that wonderful man says: “He was born of a woman, having formed for Himself the shape of man from the first creation, in a display of flesh, but without fleshly wills, and human reasonings, in an image of commonality. For will belongs to the Godhead alone.” MAX. Being self-interpreting, it needs no help at all from reasonings. PYR. And how do they find it ambiguous? MAX. From great ignorance. For to whom is it not manifest, unless the eye of his soul is altogether blinded, that the Father discoursed on these things not concerning the natural principle, but concerning the manner of His existence according to the flesh — wishing to show the incarnation to be the work of the divine will alone, the Father being wellpleased, the Son Himself working, and the Holy Spirit cooperating, but not a fleshly movement, and human reasonings, or any sequence of marriage? For the God of all, in becoming man, did not innovate the principle of nature — since He was not yet man, not having the whole and unaltered principle of nature in all respects, but rather the manner: that is, conception through seed, and birth through Disputation with Pyrrhus 1951 corruption. Therefore the God-minded teachers of the Church in no way denied the natural principles of the things united; but, in agreement with the evangelists, and apostles, and prophets, said that our Lord and God Jesus Christ was, in respect of both His natures, possessed of will and energy for our salvation.

PYR. And is it possible to show this from the writings of the Old and New Testaments? MAX. Most certainly; for indeed the Fathers, moved not on their own, but taught by these very writings, taught this lovingly toward mankind. For it was not they who spoke, but the grace of the Spirit that had wholly interpenetrated them. PYR. Since, having set out to be benefited by the imitation of divine goodness, you have given yourself to the labors of this inquiry, teach this too without hesitation. MAX. It is said in the holy Gospels concerning the Lord, that “the next day Jesus willed to go into Galilee”; and it is plain that, in respect of that in which He was not there, He willed to enter — and He was not there in manhood, for in Godhead He is absent from nothing. Therefore, it was in respect of His manhood, and not in respect of His Godhead, that He willed to enter; and He was possessed of will in respect of His manhood. And again, elsewhere: “I will that where I am, they also may be.” If, in respect of His Godhead, Christ is beyond “where” — for as God He is not in place — and it is impossible for created nature to be beyond “where” — then, in respect of His manhood, He wills that where He is, they too may be; and He, the same, was possessed of will in respect of His manhood.

And again, elsewhere: “And coming to a place, He said, ’I thirst.’ And they gave Him wine mixed with gall; and, having tasted it, He would not drink.” In respect of which part of Him is He said to have thirsted? If in respect of His Godhead, His Godhead will be passible, desiring drink contrary to nature. But if in respect of His manhood, then, in respect of that in which He thirsted, in that same respect He was unwilling to drink what was unfitting for nature; and He, the same, was possessed of will also in respect of His manhood. And again elsewhere it says: “And Jesus walked in Galilee; for He would not walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him.” If walking belongs, by nature, to the flesh, and not to the Godhead united to it according to hypostasis, then, in respect of His manhood, He, the same, walking in Galilee, was Disputation with Pyrrhus 1953 unwilling to walk in Judea; and He, the same, was possessed of will also in respect of His manhood. And again elsewhere: “And going out from there, they passed through Galilee, and He would not that anyone should know it.” It has been confessed by all that this passing-through belongs, by nature, to the manhood of the Lord, as has been said, and not to His Godhead; and if, in respect of His manhood, and not by nature in respect of His being God, this passing-through belonged to Him, then, in respect of His manhood also, passing along with His disciples, He would not that anyone should know it; and He, the same, was possessed of will also in respect of His manhood.

And again elsewhere: “And rising from there, He departed to the borders of Tyre and Sidon. And entering into a house, He would have no one know it; and He could not be hid.” If, in respect of His being God, Christ was a self-subsistent power; but in respect of His being man, a weakness — for “though He was crucified out of weakness,” says the divine Apostle, “yet He lives by the power of God” — then, in respect of His manhood, and not in respect of His being God, entering into a house, He would have no one know it; and He could not be hid; and He, the same, was possessed of will also in respect of And again elsewhere it says: “About the fourth watch of the night He comes to them, walking upon the sea; and He would have passed by them.” If someone should understand this to be said of Him in respect of His being God, he will be forced to say that the Godhead is bounded by bodily limits — I mean “above” and “below,” “before” and “behind,” “right” and “left.” But if he says these things are said of Him in respect of His manhood, then He, the same, was possessed of will also in respect of His manhood. And again elsewhere it says: “And His disciples came to Him, saying, ’Where do You wish that we go and prepare for You to eat the Passover?’”

If the eating of the Passover belongs to those under the Law, and the Lord, in respect of His manhood, willingly ate the Passover, then He, the same, was possessed of will also in respect of His manhood. And the divine Apostle, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, says of Him: “Having become obedient unto death, even death on a cross.” Did He, then, obey willingly, or unwillingly? But if unwillingly, it would rightly be called tyranny, and not obedience. But if willingly — and He became obedient, not in respect of His being God, but in respect of His being man — for “in respect of His being God, He is, according to the Fathers, neither obedient nor disobedient” — “for these Disputation with Pyrrhus 1955 things,” says the divine Gregory, “belong to those in second place, and those under authority” — then He was also possessed of will in respect of His manhood. And the blessed David, in the thirty-ninth Psalm, says: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You have prepared for Me. Whole burnt offerings and sin offerings You did not require; then I said, Behold, I come. In the roll of the book it is written of Me, that I should do Your will; O my God, I have willed it.” I think it is not doubted, even by those on the opposing side, that it is in respect of His manhood, and not in respect of His being God, that the Father is said to be His God, just as, in respect of His being God, and not in respect of His manhood, He is called Father.

And if, in respect of His manhood, and not in respect of His being God, the Father is His God, then also, in respect of His manhood, and not in respect of His being God, He willed to do the will of the Father, which is also His own — for the Father’s will is also His, since He too is God by essence. And if this is so, then He was possessed of will not only in respect of His being God, and consubstantial with the Father, but also in respect of His manhood, and consubstantial with us. And it should be known that the words of the Psalm just cited the divine Apostle, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, applied to the Lord. And great Moses, in the account of the creation of man, introduces God saying: “Let us make man according to our image and likeness.” If, then, man is an image of the divine nature, and the divine nature is self-determined, then the image too, if indeed it preserves its likeness to the archetype, is by nature self-determined. And if this is so, and the archetype has become by nature what the image is by nature, then He, the same, was by nature possessed of will in respect of both His natures. For it has already been shown from the Fathers that will is the self-determination that belongs to nature.

One must know that self-determination, like nature, is spoken of homonymously; but it is understood differently of God, and differently of angels, and differently of men. Of God, it is understood supersubstantially; of angels, as concurrent with the habit of readiness, admitting no interval of time whatsoever; of men, as the habit of readiness is conceived of temporally. For if Adam obeyed by willing, and beheld by willing, and, having willed, ate — then will is the firstsuffering thing in us. And if will is the first-suffering thing in us, and the Word, having become man, did not, according to them, assume this together with the nature, then I have not become without sin. And if I have not become without sin, Disputation with Pyrrhus 1957 then I have not been saved — since what is not assumed is not healed. Moreover, if the self-determined power of nature is His own work and creation, and the Word, having become flesh, did not, according to them, assume this together with the nature in the ineffable union — then either He condemned His own creation as not good, and cast it away from Himself; or, begrudging us its healing, He both deprived us of complete salvation, and showed Himself to be subject to passion, in either not willing, or not being able, to save completely. This, then, concerns the point that God the Word incarnate is by nature possessed of will also in respect of His manhood.

Concerning His being by nature possessed of will also in respect of His being God, we shall know from this. For our Lord and God Himself, the only Truth, says of Himself in the Gospels thus: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets, and stoning those sent to you; how often I would have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is left to you desolate.” It is plain that this was said not in respect of His manhood, but in respect of His being God, showing the varied ways of His wise providence concerning man — through which, having willed to gather nature to Himself away from external error, this nature was unwilling. And again He says: “As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so the Son also gives life to whom He wills.” If “as” is a comparative adverb, and comparisons belong to things of the same essence, then this cannot be said of Christ in respect of His manhood. Therefore the Savior taught us that, just as the Father, being God, by will gives life to the dead, so also He Himself, being consubstantial with the Father and of the same will, gives life to whom He wills. These are the doctrines of the evangelists, and apostles, and prophets. What, then, is a greater demonstration than these, that He is by nature possessed of will both in respect of His being God, and in respect of His being man?

PYR. Nothing is clearer than these for the demonstration that the wills are natural. How, then, did Vigilius, then bishop of Rome, accept the libellus presented by Menas, formerly bishop of the imperial city, containing one will — and this having been made public in the imperial secretariat, before the emperor of the Romans then reigning, and the senate? MAX. I am amazed how, being patriarchs, you dare to falsehood. Your predecessor, writing to Honorius, said that “it was dictated, but not presented, nor made public.” But Disputation with Pyrrhus 1959 you, in your letter to John, who is among the saints, the Pope, said that “it was presented and made public,” having been read out by Constantine the Quaestor. Whom, then, are we to believe — you, or your predecessor? For it is not possible for both to be telling the truth. PYR. And is this what my predecessor wrote? MAX. This is what is written. PYR. Let this be so concerning Vigilius. What have you to say plainly concerning Honorius, my predecessor, who decreed one will of our Lord Jesus Christ? MAX. Who is a more trustworthy interpreter of such a letter: the one who composed it in the person of Honorius — still living, and, together with his other excellent qualities, illuminating the whole West with the doctrines of piety — or those in Constantinople who speak from their own hearts?

PYR. The one who composed it. MAX. He himself, then, writing again to holy Constantine, who became emperor, in the person of John, who is among the saints, the Pope, concerning this very matter, said: “We stated one will in the case of the Lord, not of His Godhead and His manhood, but of His manhood alone. For when Sergius wrote that certain people speak of two opposing wills in Christ, we wrote back that Christ did not have two opposing wills — I mean of flesh and of spirit, as we have after the transgression — but only one, which characterizes His manhood by nature.” And a clear proof of this is his mention of “members” and “flesh,” which do not permit those things to be taken as belonging to His Godhead. Then, anticipating an objection, he says: “But if someone should say, ’Why, in discussing the manhood of Christ, did you make no mention of His Godhead?’ — we say that, first, the answer was made to the question asked; and second, we were following, in this too, as in all things, the custom of Scripture, which sometimes speaks from His Godhead, as when the Apostle says, ’Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God’; and sometimes only from His manhood, as when the same says, ’The foolishness of God is stronger than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.’”

PYR. My predecessor, adhering too simply to the letter, accepted this. MAX. I speak the truth: nothing so alienated me from your predecessor as his vacillation — that is, his falling now into one set of notions, now into another, and standing firm in none. At one time, accepting those who called this one will Disputation with Pyrrhus 1961 divine, he introduced the incarnate One as being God alone; at another, accepting those who called it deliberative, he introduced Him as a mere man, disposed deliberatively as we are, no different from Pyrrhus and Maximus; at another, calling it hypostatic, he introduced, together with the difference of hypostases, a difference of wills even among things consubstantial; at another, accepting also those who called it authoritative, he introduced the union as relational — for authority, and mastery, and such things, are plainly movements of will, not of nature; at another, taking up those who called it deliberate and gnomic, and making them masters of themselves, he introduced the Lord not only as a mere man, but as mutable and sinful — since gnome is a discerning of things in opposition, a seeking of things unknown, and a deliberating over things unclear; at another, taking up those who called it economic, he introduced the notion that, before the economy, He was without will — and whatever other absurdity follows from this argument — and he was carried off into countless other absurd suppositions, having no foundation in truth; which, if I wished to set down precisely in writing, together with their absurdities, not even the time to come would suffice.

And what necessity is there to produce documents and tear apart the holy Church of God? For he was not even able to perceive what is most common to all. For either — to make this concession to you — these hold the doctrines of the synods, as you have said they do not truthfully hold, and we have no need of your documents, since we accept and embrace these doctrines both formerly and now; or they do not hold the doctrines of the synods, and it is much more right to turn away from and flee them. Since, then, the putting-forward of these documents is unjust and unlawful on either account, their annulment, on either account, stands just and canonical. PYR. Sophronius, who not long ago became patriarch of Jerusalem, made us do this even against our purpose, having raised the question concerning the energies at an unfitting time. MAX. I am altogether at a loss what defense you expect to give, so bitterly accusing one who is blameless. Tell me, by truth itself: when Sergius wrote to Theodore of Pharan, having sent him also what he calls the libellus of Menas, through the mediation of Sergius Makaronas, bishop of Arsinoe, urging him to say what seemed right concerning the one energy and one will contained in the libellus — and he wrote back accepting them — where was Sophronius then?

Or when, at Theodosiopolis, he wrote to Paul the One-Eyed, a Severian, having sent him also the libellus of Menas, and the consent of the man of Pharan and himself? Or when he wrote Disputation with Pyrrhus 1963 to George, surnamed Arsas, a Paulianist, that citations concerning their one energy be sent to him, adding also in the letter that these things also effect the union of the Church with them? This letter the blessed John, Pope of Alexandria, took by hand from Arsas; wherefore, wishing to depose him for it, he was prevented by the invasion of the Persians that then took place in Egypt. Or when he wrote to Cyrus of Phasis concerning one energy and two, having been asked by him, sending him too the said libellus of Menas? What then? Since Sergius, in many ways, put forward his own disease publicly, and corrupted the greater part of the Church, is the blessed Sophronius to blame for such a scandal — he who, with the humility becoming his rank, reminded him, prostrating himself before his very footsteps, and offering him, instead of every entreaty, the life-giving sufferings of Christ God, that he might not renew a voice of the heretics, long ago rightly silenced by the holy Fathers who have gone before us in life? PYR. The argument has fittingly brought about the overthrow of everything proposed, and the inquiry concerning the wills is in no way lacking.

MAX. Since the inquiry concerning the wills has reached its conclusion, shall we, if you wish, also carry out the inquiry concerning the energies? PYR. Being ignorant of the argument concerning the wills as natural, I accordingly also accepted the argument concerning the energies; and whatever was said to me, whether unwritten or in writing, was directed to this same purpose. But now that it is confessed, by implication, that willing belongs to nature, and that acting belongs to nature, everything previously constructed on this point has been invalidated; and I consider it superfluous to raise any further discourse on this matter at all. MAX. What then — since God, on account of the purpose He foreknew in us, has called us to the knowledge of His truth, should we not test what has been said, whether in writing or unwritten, to certain people concerning this, for the sake of those who, unguarded, have encountered, or may encounter, such things all too readily, as is likely? PYR. If the testing has any bearing on this, it is necessary. For to be concerned for the security of the more guileless is an imitation of divine love for mankind. MAX. If, then, this is an imitation of divine love for mankind, let us begin our examination of this matter from here. Disputation with Pyrrhus 1965 MAX. I found in your writings that you laid down, as doctrine, one energy of Christ, as of a whole.

If, then, it is one, as of a whole, and the whole is His hypostasis, then this one energy will be hypostatic; and there will be another energy, just as another hypostasis, belonging to the Father and to the Mother — since Christ is neither of them. PYR. If you say there are energies on account of the difference of the two natures in Christ, and not one on account of the singularity of the person, then two energies will also be found belonging to man, on account of the essential difference of his soul and his body. And if this is so, there will be three energies of Christ, and not two. MAX. What you put forward for the destruction of the natural properties, those who fight against the natures also put forward against them. For this alone is your charm — that you go about, in all things, together with them. Wherefore we too bring against you the very same refutations brought by the Fathers against them, as suffering from the same disease: that if, on account of the difference of the natures in Christ, you too, with us, say two natures, and not one, on account of the singularity of the person, then in this way two natures will also be found belonging to man, on account of the essential difference of his soul and his body; and if this is so, there will be three natures of Christ, and not two.

But if, on account of the difference of the natures, you say two natures with us, and do not say three natures in the case of Christ, how, when we say two energies on account of the difference of the natures, will three energies be gathered together for us? For what you say, together with us, to those who put forward these things against the natures, will suffice for us too, concerning the energies, against you. Thus the argument, on equal terms, has struck you down, showing the absurdity of your difficulty. But from a superior position we say that the “one” according to the species of man is not the same as the “one” according to the essence of soul and body. For the “one” according to the species of man indicates the unvarying sameness in all the individuals under that nature; wherefore we do not say it without qualification, but add “of man.” But the “one” according to the essence of soul and body corrupts their very existence, thrusting it into complete nonbeing. And if the “one” according to the species of man is not the same, then it is not necessary for us, in speaking of one energy according to species, either to say this is hypostatic, or to say three energies, on account of considering energy in relation to nature. Disputation with Pyrrhus 1967 PYR. But persons are introduced together with energies, according to Nestorius; and it is necessary that those who say two energies advocate his abominable doctrines.

MAX. And yet Nestorius, saying two persons, lays down one energy as doctrine. And if, according to you, persons are introduced together with energies, then energies will also, correspondingly, be gathered together with persons; and you will be forced, following your own canons, either, on account of the one energy of the holy Godhead, to say also that it has one person; or, on account of its three hypostases, to say also three energies; or, like Nestorius, to say the union is relational — for the union is his one energy, as Nestorius himself and those of his faction have shown in their own writings. And in our own case, since the energy according to species is one, but the hypostases are many, either, on account of the one energy according to species, we must say that all have one person; or, on account of the many persons, we must say many energies too — and thus the statement of the Fathers falls apart: “Things of the same essence are of the same energy.” Moreover, if, according to them, a person is introduced along with an energy, and they have granted that many energies proceed from the one and same incarnate God the Word, then they will also grant that persons are introduced along with the many energies that have proceeded — if indeed they have determined to be consistent with themselves; and the persons, as well as the energies, of the same One will be found to be infinite.

And again, if, according to their proposition, a person is introduced along with an energy, then, when the energy is abolished, the person is altogether abolished together with it. And if this is true, then, by the abolition of the two energies, and of the one, both the two persons and the one person will be abolished together with them; and Christ will have passed, so far as lies with them, from being, and being beyond being, into non-being — than which what could be more impious? And if someone should wish, from great abundance of leisure, to exercise this idea also in the case of each of us, he will find that we too, at one and the same time, both reason and walk; or think one thing while conversing about something else with those we meet — as Moses is recorded to have done, at the same time entreating God on behalf of the people, and conversing with the people, and urging them to good hopes; and he is not two, either because he acts in a twofold manner, corresponding to his own natures, or because, being one, he acts in a twofold manner, does he Disputation with Pyrrhus 1969 confuse the movements essentially belonging to his own natures. And in the case of spoken discourse likewise, we observe the concept embedded in the word, and the word underlying the concept, and their complete mutual interpenetration; and neither by their difference is a difference of persons introduced, nor by their extreme union is confusion introduced.

And what could one say concerning the heated sword, which, no less than the natures — that is, the fire and the iron — preserves also their natural energies, that is, burning and cutting, and displays these through all things at once and at the same time? For neither is its burning, after the union, separated from its cutting, nor its cutting from its burning; and it neither, on account of the twofold nature of its natural energy, introduces two heated swords, nor, on account of the singularity of the heated sword, produces a mingling or confusion of their essential difference. PYR. Was there not one who acted? PYR. If, then, there is one who acts, there is also one energy, as of one. MAX. This one is Christ; for I shall ask you again, bringing you back to the same points as above: is He one in hypostasis, or in nature? PYR. In hypostasis; for in nature He is twofold. MAX. Did He, then, act in a twofold manner on account of the twofoldness of nature, or singly on account of the singularity of hypostasis? But if in a twofold manner, then He, being one, acted; and therefore the number of persons is not introduced along with the number of energies. But if singly, on account of the singularity of the person, the argument on this point will receive the same absurdities as before.

For if the energy is hypostatic, then a difference of energies will be observed together with the multitude of hypostases. PYR. It is not altogether the case that, because He acted in a twofold manner, His energies were two; but because there was one who acted, there was one. MAX. Another will say the same to you concerning the natures — that it is not because His nature is twofold that the natures are, and are said to be, already two; but because His hypostasis was one, His nature is, and is said to be, one. But that I may pass over all that can be said on this, when you speak of one energy, which do you claim this to be — divine, Disputation with Pyrrhus 1971 or human, or neither? But if divine, you say Christ is God alone; if human, He is not God at all, but a mere man alone; if neither of these, then you lay down as doctrine that Christ is neither God nor man, but nonexistent. PYR. In saying one energy of the Godhead of Christ and of His manhood, we do not say this belongs to Him by reason of nature, but by the manner of union. MAX. If, according to your account, the energy came to belong to Him from the union, then before the union He was without energy; and, according to you, He was without power when He was creating.

And again, if the acting came to belong to Him from the union, but the Father and the Holy Spirit were not united according to hypostasis to flesh, then they are not possessed of energy. And if they are not possessed of energy, neither are they creators — not to say that they do not exist at all. And again, since union is a relation, and not a thing, then the energy of Christ is, according to you, a relation, and not a thing. Moreover, you will be forced to say it is either created or uncreated, since there is no middle ground at all between created and uncreated. And if you say it is created, it will indicate a nature that is created alone; but if uncreated, it will characterize a nature that is uncreated alone — for the natural properties must altogether correspond to the natures. And how would it be possible for the energy of a created and originated nature to be uncreated, and unoriginate, and infinite, and creative, and all-sustaining? Or how could the energy of an uncreated and unoriginate nature be created, and originated, and finite, and sustained by another for its own indissolubility? PYR. Do you not accept and agree, when we speak of the outcome of the works done by Christ as one energy? MAX. There is a different outcome for a different action, and not one, as was shown in the case of the heated sword.

For even though the energy of the fire and the energy of the sword are united to one another, we see the outcome of the fire being burning, and the outcome of the iron being cutting, even though they are not divided from one another in the burning cut or in the burning — just as the outcome of heaven is one thing, and of earth another, and of the sun another. It is not possible, then, to say one outcome, unless the action itself were one and only one. If, then, looking to the outcome of the works done by Christ, you laid down one energy as doctrine, then you laid down as doctrine one Disputation with Pyrrhus 1973 action; or, on account of the infinite actions, infinite energies too. But it is concerning the works that our inquiry is; for our discourse is not concerning things external to Christ, but concerning the things within Christ Himself — that is, concerning the natural principle of the essences of Christ, whether it remained deficient after the union, or undiminished; and if deficient, whether it is possible for a deficient nature to exist; but if undiminished, whether the energy is observed within it — I mean within the constitutive principle of the essence — or belongs to what is external to it. But that the energy according to nature does not belong to what is external is plain from this: that nature can exist without works, but without the energy according to nature, nature can neither exist nor be known.

For it is by the things each thing naturally does that what it unchangeably is, is confirmed. Since, then, it was not with respect to a work that you laid down, as doctrine, this one energy fashioned by you, after the manner of a goat-stag, but with respect to the natural principle of the united essences — and an unfalsified proof of this is the chapters laid down as doctrine by Cyrus, which you received graciously and with great warmth: in which, laying down one energy as doctrine, he said that Christ worked the divine and the human by the same energy — thereby fighting not only against holy Scripture and the holy Fathers, but against the very nature of things that have come to be. For nothing among beings, remaining within the bounds of its nature, is naturally capable of doing opposite things. For fire does not both heat and cool; nor does ice both cool and heat; nor does earth both dry and moisten; nor does water both moisten and dry. If, then, this is observed in none of the things that exist, how do you not fear to say that the incarnate Word, having become man essentially, accomplished, by one energy, both the wonders and the sufferings, which by the principle of nature differ from one another? PYR. What, then, is contrary to the pious understanding that has now come to light from our inquiry — that which Cyril, the luminary of the Church, laid down as doctrine, when he said Christ had shown “one kindred energy through both”?

MAX. This citation is not at all opposed to the two energies; on the contrary, it establishes them. For he did not say there was one natural energy of the Godhead of Christ and of His manhood — for otherwise he would not, elsewhere, have said that “no one of sound mind would grant one energy of the maker and of the thing made” — but, wishing to show that the energy of the Godhead is one, both without flesh and with flesh — as if someone, wishing to show one energy of Disputation with Pyrrhus 1975 fire both with and without matter, should say that fire burns both without matter and with matter — so too the Father did not speak of one energy of the two natures, but spoke of the divine and paternal energy as one, essentially inherent in God the Word incarnate, according to which He performed the divine signs not only by an all-effecting command incorporeally, as He Himself says — since, even after the incarnation, He is a co-worker with His own Begetter, working incorporeally — but also showed these signs bodily through the touch of His own flesh. For this is what “through both” means: that the giving of life to the girl, or the giving of sight to the blind man, or the blessing of the loaves, or the cleansing of the leper — accomplished, as it was, by reason and by an all-effecting command, in kinship with what was accomplished bodily through touch — that He might show the flesh too to be life-giving, as being properly His own, and no other’s, through its unmixed union with Him.

For through both of these — that is, through command and through touch — the divine energy was made known through the very deeds themselves, in no way harming the human, passible, natural energy of the flesh, but rather, on the contrary, preserving it for its own manifestation — just as the soul, too, as through the instrument of its own body, and its own natural energy, brings forward what belongs to it, and its own energy according to nature. For the stretching-out of the hand, and the touching, and the taking hold, and the mixing of the clay, and the breaking of the bread — and, simply put, everything accomplished through the hand, or another member, or part, of the body — belonged to the natural energy of the manhood of Christ, according to which He, as man, was active, He who is by nature God, and who works the divine things naturally — so that, through each of the two, He confirmed each of the two according to nature, showing Himself truly to be perfect God and perfect man, apart from sin alone. The Father, therefore, was not ignorant of the individuating property proper to each nature, distinguishing it from the other natural properties — I mean the creative energy, and the vital energy given by the soul to its body — which the incarnate God the Word, preserving them within Himself, showed distinct and unconfused: the creative energy, in creating essence, and quality, and quantity — from which, and in which, and which the existence of beings both is and is observed.

For if the philosophers among the Greeks reduce beings to ten categories, still, all things are held together and encompassed within these: essence, in filling up the missing eyes of the blind man; quality, in changing water into wine; quantity, in multiplying the loaves. And He showed the vital energy in breathing, speaking, seeing, hearing, touching, Disputation with Pyrrhus 1977 smelling, eating and drinking, moving His hands, walking, sleeping, and all the rest, which display, in all beings under that nature, the unvarying sameness of the energy according to nature. PYR. Piously and without compulsion have you set forth the Father’s meaning, showing it not opposed to, but in agreement throughout with, the two energies. But what do we say concerning holy Dionysius, in his letter to Gaius the Therapeutan, who said that Christ “conducted Himself among us according to a certain new theandric energy”? MAX. Is newness a quality, or a quantity? MAX. Then it introduces along with itself a nature of such a kind — since the definition of every nature is the principle of its essential energy. And not only this, but also, when the Apostle says, “Behold, all things have become new,” he says nothing other than “Behold, all things have become one” — whether you wish to call this “by nature” or “by energy” is a matter of our own choosing. But if newness is a quality, it does not indicate one energy, but the new and unspeakable manner of the manifestation of the natural energies of Christ, corresponding to the unspeakable manner of the mutual interpenetration of the natures of Christ, and His manner of life as man, which was strange and paradoxical, and unknown to the nature of beings, and the manner of the interchange according to the ineffable union.

PYR. Does the term “theandric” also not indicate one? MAX. No; on the contrary, the term, by way of paraphrase, has handed down, through the enumerated natures, their energies — if indeed, by the negation of the extremes, there is no middle term in the case of Christ. But if it does indicate one, then Christ will have, as God, an energy different from that of the Father. The Son, then, will be of a different energy than the Father — if indeed the Father’s energy is not theandric, after this term has both characterized and established a nature as well. For the energy, being natural, is a constitutive and inborn mark of nature. And those who have examined these matters have said that there is one genus of quantity, and another of quality. PYR. Newness is neither quantity nor quality, but essence. MAX. I am amazed how you dared to say this. What is distinguished from essence? Disputation with Pyrrhus 1979 MAX. And what from newness? MAX. Then newness is not essence, but a quality. And how, if we understand the term to mean one energy, do we not introduce this God-declaring teacher as being opposed to himself, and to the rest of the Fathers? For all of them expressly and commonly both said and taught that things of the same essence are of the same energy; and things of the same energy are of the same essence; and that things differing in essence differ also in energy; and things differing in energy differ also in essence.

PYR. This was said by the Fathers concerning theology, but not concerning economy. Wherefore it is not the mark of a truth-loving mind to transfer what was said by them concerning theology to economy, and to introduce such an absurdity thereby. MAX. If this was said by the Fathers only concerning theology, then, according to you, the Son is not co-theologized with the Father after the incarnation. And if He is not cotheologized, neither is He co-numbered in the invocation of baptism, and faith and preaching will be found empty. And again, if the Son is not co-theologized with the Father after the incarnation, He will not be of the same essence either; for things differing in principle will altogether also differ in nature. And again, if the Son is not co-theologized with the Father after the incarnation, to whom shall we attribute the saying, “My Father works until now, and I work”? And: “Whatever things He sees the Father doing, the Son likewise does”? And: “If you do not believe Me, believe My works”? And: “The works that I do bear witness concerning Me”? And: “As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son gives life to whom He wills”? For all these show Him to be, even after the incarnation, not only of the same essence with the Father, but also of the same energy.

And again, if providence over beings is an energy of God; and this belongs not only to the Father and the Spirit, but also to the Son even after the incarnation, then He is also of the same energy with the Father even after the incarnation. And again, if the wonders are an energy of God; and from the wonders we have known Him to be of the same essence as the Father; then He has been shown, from the same energy, to be of the same essence as the Father; and He is co-theologized with Him even after the incarnation. Disputation with Pyrrhus 1981 And again, if the creative energy belongs essentially to God; and things that belong essentially are also inalienable; then they must, of necessity, either say that He is not of the same energy with the Father even after the incarnation, in which case they must not say He is of the same essence with Him either — for where there is no energy according to nature, neither will there ever be nature — or, in saying He is of the same essence with Him, they must also say He is of the same energy, and co-theologized with the Father even after the incarnation — for where nature is, there also, without fail, is its common energy. PYR. We do not say one energy for the abolition of the human energy, but because nature, when distinguished in contrast to the divine energy, is on that account called passion.

MAX. By this reasoning, those who say one nature also do not say this for the abolition of the human, but because nature, when distinguished in contrast to the divine energy, is on that account called passible. PYR. What then — did the Fathers not, in distinction from the divine energy, call the human movement “passion”? MAX. May it never be. For the existence of nothing at all, generally speaking, is known or defined by comparison or contrast — or else things will be found to be mutually the cause of one another. For if, because the divine movement is energy, the human is passion, then, altogether, because the divine nature is good, the human nature will be evil. And likewise, by the reverse of this contrast, because the human movement is called passion, the divine movement is called energy; and because human nature is evil, the divine will be good. But away with this — for such things are truly the mark of great folly. PYR. What then — did the Fathers not name the human movement “passion”? MAX. They named it in many ways, corresponding to the underlying concepts, of course. PYR. How do you mean this? MAX. They called it power, and energy, and difference, and movement, and individuating property, and quality, and passion — not in contrast to the divine, but: as sustaining and unalterable, “power”; as characteristic, and manifesting the unvarying sameness in all things of the same species, “energy”; as distinguishing, “difference”; as indicative, “movement”; as constitutive, and belonging to it alone and to nothing else, “individuating property”; specifying, Disputation with Pyrrhus 1983 “quality”; as being moved, “passion.”

For all things that are from God, and after God, undergo passion by being moved, since they are not self-moving or self-powered — not, as has been said, in contrast, but on account of the principle creatively implanted in them by the Cause that constituted the universe. Wherefore, even when speaking of it together with the divine, they called it “energy.” For he who said, “It acts in each form in communion with the other” — what else did he do? Or he who said, “For having remained forty days without food, He afterward hungered; for He gave to nature, when He willed, to work its own works”? Or those who said its energy was different? Or those who said it was twofold, or PYR. In truth, the inquiry concerning the energies too has shown one energy, said of Christ in any manner whatsoever, to be absurd. But I ask pardon, both for myself, and for those who went before me. For it was out of ignorance that we were carried off into these absurd notions and undertakings; and I ask that a way be found by which this introduced absurdity may be done away with, and the memory of those who went before may be preserved. MAX. There is no other way than that the persons be passed over in silence, but such doctrines be anathematized. PYR. But if this is done, Sergius, and the synod held in my time, will be found to be cast out along with them.

MAX. I cannot but wonder how you call it a synod, that which was not held according to synodical laws and canons, or ecclesiastical ordinances. For neither was the encyclical letter made with the consent of the patriarchs, nor was a place or day of meeting appointed. There was no accuser or one to bring charges. Those who assembled had no letters of introduction — neither did the bishops have them from the metropolitans, nor the metropolitans from the patriarchs. No letters or representatives were sent from the other patriarchs. What man of any reason, then, could bear to call a synod that which has filled the whole world with scandals and dissension? PYR. If there is no other way than this, preferring my own salvation above all things, I am ready to do this with every assurance — asking only one thing: that I be counted worthy, first, of veneration at the apostolic shrines — or rather, of the chief apostles themselves; and then, of an audience in the presence of the most holy Pope; and to present to him a libellus concerning the things wrongly done. Disputation with Pyrrhus 1985 When he had said these things, Maximus and Gregory the patrician said: “Since your proposal is good, and beneficial to the Church, let it be so.” Coming, then, with us to this great city of the Romans, he fulfilled his promise: condemning the doctrines of the impious Ekthesis, and uniting himself, through orthodox confession, to the holy, catholic, and apostolic Church, by the grace and cooperation of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, to whom be glory unto the ages of ages.

Amen. PART IV — THE TRIAL AND EXILE On the Bizya Interrogation The Things Discussed by Theodosius, Bishop of Caesarea in Bithynia, with Him 1. I have thought it necessary to make plain to all of you who continue in orthodoxy the things debated concerning our blameless Christian faith, and concerning the innovation introduced by those on the opposing side, between abba Maximus and Theodosius, bishop of Caesarea in Bithynia — that, knowing these matters more precisely, you may the more glorify God, who is loving toward mankind, who gives a word in the opening of the mouth of those who fear Him — lest the enemies of truth, proclaiming, as is their custom, the opposite of it, trouble your hearts.

2. On the twenty-fourth of the month of August, in the fourteenth indiction now past, the aforesaid bishop Theodosius went out to him in the exile in which he was being kept — that is, in the fortress of Bizya — sent, as he said, on behalf of Peter, the locum tenens of Constantinople; and Paul and Theodosius the consuls, as they too said, sent on behalf of the emperor; and coming up to the said monk Maximus, in the place where he was shut up, they sat down, and permitted him also to sit, the bishop of Bizya being present with them as well. And Theodosius the bishop said to him: “How are you, lord abba?” MAX. As God predetermined, before all the ages, the providential course of my life, so I am. THEOD. What then — did God predetermine all things beforehand concerning each of us? “He foreknew,” altogether predetermined. MAX. Foreknowledge belongs to the thoughts, words, and deeds that are in our power; predetermination belongs to the things that happen that are not in our power. THEOD. What are the things in our power, and what are the things not in our power? MAX. It seems that my lord, knowing all things, is speaking to his servant by way of testing him. THEOD. By the truth of God, I asked in ignorance, wishing to learn the difference between what is in our power and what is not, and how some things fall under God’s foreknowledge, and others under His predetermination.

MAX. All voluntary things are in our power — that is, virtues and vices; but not in our power are the visitations of the punitive or the opposite circumstances that befall us. For neither the sickness that punishes, nor the health that gladdens, is in our power, nor are the qualities and causes of these. For instance, the cause of sickness is disorder, just as the cause of health is order; and the cause of the kingdom of heaven is the keeping of the commandments, just as the cause of eternal fire is their transgression. THEOD. What then — is it for this reason that you are afflicted in this exile, since you have done things worthy of this affliction? MAX. I beg that God, by this affliction, may limit the penalties I owe Him for my transgression of His righteous commandments. THEOD. Is affliction not brought upon many for the sake of testing? MAX. The testing of the saints is that, through affliction, their dispositions toward the natural good may be made manifest to the life of men, revealing along with themselves virtues unknown to all, as in the case of Job and Joseph. For the one was tried for the manifestation of his hidden courage, and the other was tested for the proclamation of his sanctifying temperance; and every saint afflicted involuntarily in this age was afflicted according to some such economy, that, through the weakness permitted to be brought upon them, they might trample underfoot the proud and apostate dragon, that is, the devil.

For endurance is, in the case of each of the saints, the work of testing. THEOD. By the truth of God, you have spoken well; and I confess the benefit of it, and I have always sought to converse with you on such matters. But since it is on another matter that both I and my lords, the future patricians, have come to you, and have traveled so great a distance, we entreat you to accept what we propose, and to bring joy to the whole world. MAX. What are these things, my lord, and who am I, and whence am I, that my assent to what is proposed to me should bring joy to the whole world? THEOD. By the truth of our Lord Jesus Christ, what I tell you, both I and my lords the future patricians heard from the mouth of our lord the patriarch and of the pious Lord of the world. MAX. Command, my lords, to say what you wish, and what you have heard.

3. THEOD. The emperor and the patriarch entreat, through us, to learn from you for what reason you do not commune with the throne of Constantinople. MAX. Do you have written authorization concerning this from the most pious emperor, or from the patriarch? THEOD. You ought not, my lord, to distrust us. For though I am lowly, I am called a bishop; and my lords here are part of the senate; and we have not come to test you — God forbid. MAX. In whatever manner you have come to your servant, I shall tell, without any reserve, the reason for which I do not commune with the throne of Constantinople. Yet even if it were others’ place to ask me for what reason, it is yours, who know the reason more certainly than I.

4. You know the innovations that arose, beginning from the sixth indiction of the cycle now past, from Alexandria, through the nine chapters set forth by Cyrus — who, I know not how, became locum tenens there — chapters confirmed by the throne of Constantinople; and the other alterations, additions, and subtractions, made synodically by those who presided over the Church of Byzantium — I mean Sergius, and Pyrrhus, and Paul — innovations which the whole world knows. For this reason I, your servant, do not commune with the Church of Constantinople. Let the stumbling-blocks placed by the said men be removed, together with those very men who placed them, as God said: “And cast the stones out of the way” — and I walk the smooth and well-trodden road of the Gospel, free of every thorny heretical evil, just as I found it, with no human persuasion whatsoever. But so long as the presidents of Constantinople take pride in the stumbling-blocks that have been placed, and in those who placed them, there is no argument or manner that will persuade me to commune with them.

5. THEOD. What evil, then, do we confess, that you should be separated from communion with us? MAX. That, in saying one energy of the Godhead and the manhood of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, you confuse the principle of theology and of economy. For if one must be persuaded by the holy Fathers, who say, “Things whose energy is one, of these the essence too is one” — you make the Holy Trinity a Quaternity, as though His flesh had become of the same nature as the Word, and had departed from the kinship, according to nature, it has with us and with her who bore Him.

6. And again, doing away with the energies, and establishing one will of His Godhead and His manhood, you take from Him the distribution of good things. For if He has no energy, according to those who have decreed this, it is plain that, even if He wills, He cannot show mercy, the energy of good things having been taken from Him — since, apart from a good energy, nothing among beings is such as to act or accomplish anything.

7. Moreover, you also make the flesh, by the will, a co-creator with the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit, of all the ages and the things in them; but by nature, created — or, to speak more truly, unoriginate by the will, since the divine will is unoriginate, as belonging to the unoriginate Godhead, but recent by nature — which not only surpasses all folly, but impiety as well. For you do not simply say one will, but say that this too is divine. But of the divine will no one can conceive a temporal beginning or end, since neither can one conceive this of the divine nature, of which the will is essential.

8. And again, introducing another innovation, you altogether remove all that is distinctive and constitutive of the Godhead and manhood of Christ, decreeing by laws and formulas that neither one nor two wills or energies should be spoken of in His case — which amounts to a nonexistent thing. For nothing among beings — whether it be intellectual, is deprived of the power and energy of will; or sentient, of sentient energy; or vegetative, of the energy of growth and nourishment; or altogether inanimate, and devoid of all life, is deprived of what is called habitual energy and aptitude. And all things that so exist show this by being perceptible to the sensitive faculties. For it is the energy of such things to fall altogether under sight, through their own appearance; under hearing, through sound; under smell, through some proper vapor; under taste, through certain flavors; and under touch, through resistance. For just as we call “seeing” the energy of sight, so too we call “being seen” the energy of the things seen. And we observe all the rest coming about in the same manner. If, then, no being is altogether devoid of natural energy, and our Lord and God (be merciful, Lord!) has, according to you, no natural will or energy in respect of either of the things of which, and in which, He is — how can you either be, or be called, pious, while saying that He whom you worship exists, in no way whatsoever, as willing or acting?

For we are clearly taught by the holy Fathers, who say: “For that which has no power neither is, nor is anything, nor has any position whatsoever.”

9. THEOD. Do not take what came about by economy as authoritative doctrine. MAX. If what is not authoritative doctrine for those who accept it is the formula and law decreeing that neither will nor energy be spoken of the Lord — the removal of which shows the nonexistence of him from whom they have been removed — for what reason have you handed me over, without honor, to barbarous and godless nations? For what reason was I condemned to dwell at Bizya, and my fellow servants — the one at Perberis, the other at Mesembria? THEOD. By God who is about to judge me — both when it happened, I said, and now I say the same: that the Typos was ill-made, and to the harm of many. But the occasion for its being set forth was the strife of the orthodox with one another over wills and energies; and, for the sake of making peace among all, it seemed good to some to silence such expressions. MAX. And what believer accepts an economy that silences expressions which the God of all economized to be spoken through apostles, and prophets, and teachers? Let us consider, great lord, what evil this chapter, when examined, comes to. For if God set in the Church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, for the perfecting of the saints — having said in the Gospel to the apostles, and through them to those after them, “What I say to you, I say to all”; and again, “He who receives you receives Me, and he who rejects you rejects Me” — it is plain and manifest that he who does not receive the apostles and prophets and teachers, but rejects their words, rejects Christ Himself.

10. And let us consider another thing: God, having chosen them, raised up apostles, and prophets, and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints; but the devil, having chosen them, raised up false apostles, and false prophets, and false teachers against piety, so that both the old law and the evangelical law were warred against. By false apostles, and false prophets, and false teachers I understand only heretics, whose words and reasonings are perverted. Just as, then, he who receives the true apostles, and prophets, and teachers receives God, so too he who receives false apostles, and false prophets, and false teachers receives the devil. He, therefore, who casts out the saints together with the accursed and unclean heretics — receive, I beg you, one who speaks the truth — has plainly condemned God together with the devil.

11. If, then, in examining the innovations that have arisen in our own times, we find that they come to this, the utmost evil, see whether, under the pretext of peace, we may be found to have contracted the disease of apostasy, and to be proclaiming that which the divine Apostle said would be the forerunner of the coming of Antichrist. These things I have told you without reserve, my lords, that you may spare both yourselves and us. Do you bid that, having these things written in the book of my heart, I go and commune in the Church where these things are proclaimed — and become a communicant with those who cast out, together with the devil, those who truly cast out the devil, on the pretext that they were casting out God? May this never be, by the God who became, for my sake, without sin. And, having made a prostration, he said: “Whatever you bid to be done to your servant, do it — but I shall never become a communicant with those who accept these things.”

12. And being struck dumb at what had been spoken, they bowed their heads down and were silent for a considerable time; and Theodosius the bishop, lifting his head and fixing his gaze upon abba Maximus, said: “We shall answer for you to our lord the emperor, that, upon your communing, the Typos will be lightened.” MAX. We are still far apart from one another. What shall we do about the expression confirmed synodically, that of “one will,” for the abolition of every energy, under Sergius and THEOD. That document was taken down and cast aside. MAX. It was taken down from the stone walls, but not from intellectual souls. Let them accept the condemnation of these things set forth synodically at Rome, through pious doctrines and canons, and the middle wall is broken down, and we need no persuasion. THEOD. The synod at Rome has no force, since it was held without the emperor’s command. MAX. If it is the commands of emperors that confirm the synods that have been held, and not pious faith, then let them also accept the synods held against the doctrine of consubstantiality, since they were held by the command of emperors — I mean the one at Tyre, the one at Antioch, the one at Seleucia, the one at Constantinople under Eudoxius the Arian; the one at Nike in Thrace, the one at Sirmium; and, many years after these, the second one at Ephesus, over which Dioscorus presided — for the command of emperors gathered all of these, and yet all of them were condemned on account of the godlessness of the impious doctrines they confirmed.

Why, then, do you not cast out the synod that deposed Paul of Samosata, held under the holy and blessed Fathers Dionysius the Pope of Rome, and Dionysius of Alexandria, and Gregory the Wonderworker, who presided at that same synod, since it was not held by the emperor’s command? What canon declares that only those synods are to be approved that were gathered by the emperor’s command, or that all synods must be gathered by the emperor’s command at all? The pious canon of the Church knows those synods to be holy and approved which the rightness of their doctrines has judged to be so. But, as my lord knows, and as he teaches others, the canon declares that a synod is to be held twice a year in every province, making no mention whatsoever of an imperial command — for the security of our saving faith, and the correction of all matters not agreeing with the divine law of the Church.

13. THEOD. It is as you say: the rightness of doctrines approves the synods. Yet do you not accept the libellus of Menas, in which he set forth as doctrine one will and one energy of Christ? MAX. May the Lord God not allow it. You yourselves do not accept, but cast out, all the teachers after the holy synod of Chalcedon who contended against the abomination of Severus — and am I to accept the libellus of Menas, which was written after the synod, by which he plainly advocates for Severus, and Apollinaris, and Macedonius, and Arius, and every heresy, and accuses the synod — or rather, completely casts it out, by what he decreed? THEOD. What then — do you not accept one energy at all? MAX. And who among the approved teachers speaks of one energy? And Theodosius brought forward the citations, falsely circulated under their names, of Julius of Rome, and Gregory the Wonderworker, and Athanasius, and read them out. MAX. Let us fear God, and let us not wish to provoke Him to anger by the introduction of heretical citations. No one is ignorant that these belong to the impious Apollinaris. If you have others, show them; for by putting these forward, you persuade everyone the more that you have truly contracted the evil opinion of the impious Apollinaris and those of like mind with him.

And the same bishop Theodosius brought forward, under the name of Chrysostom, two citations, which abba Maximus read and said: MAX. These belong to Nestorius, who contracted the disease of the personal duality in Christ. And the bishop, immediately boiling with anger, said: THEOD. Lord monk, Satan has spoken through your bridle. MAX. May my lord not be grieved at his servant. And, taking the citations, he immediately showed him that these very expressions were Nestorius’s, and in which of his writings they were found. THEOD. God knows, brother, the patriarch gave me these citations; but behold, you have said some are Apollinaris’s, and others Nestorius’s. And, bringing forward the citation of holy Cyril that says, “one and kindred,” and, showing through both an energy, he said: THEOD. What do you say to this? MAX. There are those who have shown that this was, in truth, inserted by way of addition into the interpretation of the Gospel made by this holy Father, by Timothy the Cat. But let it be his, as far as you are concerned. Let us, then, examine the meaning of the paternal expressions, and we shall know the truth. THEOD. This I do not allow to be done; you must of necessity accept the bare expressions. [MAX. Tell me, I beg you, the difference between bare expressions and figurative ones. THEOD. That you may accept the expression as it stands, and not search into its meaning.]

MAX. Plainly you are introducing new ordinances, foreign to the Church, concerning expressions as well. If, according to you, one must not search into the expressions of the Scriptures and the Fathers, then we cast out all of Scripture, Old and New. For we have heard David saying, “Blessed are they who search out His testimonies; they shall seek Him with their whole heart” — as though no one could seek God without searching. And again: “Give me understanding, and I will search out Your law, and keep it with my whole heart” — as though searching leads to knowledge of the law, and knowledge, through desire, persuades the worthy to keep it in their heart, by the fulfillment of the holy commandments contained in it. And again: “Wondrous are Your testimonies; therefore my soul has searched them out.” And what does the proverbial word mean by wishing us to search out parables, and riddles, and dark sayings? And what does the Lord, speaking in parables, mean by teaching His disciples the meaning of the parables? And what does He mean by commanding, “Search the Scriptures,” as bearing witness concerning Him? And what does Peter, the chief of the apostles, mean to teach, saying, concerning which salvation the prophets sought out and searched? And what does Paul, the divine apostle, mean, saying, “Even if the Gospel is veiled, it is veiled in those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, that the light of the knowledge of Christ should not shine on them”?

It seems you wish to make us like the Jews, who, having buried their minds, as it were with rubbish, in the bare expressions alone, as you say — that is, in the letter alone — fell away from the truth, having a veil upon their hearts, so as not to perceive the Lord Spirit hidden in the letter, of which it is said: “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” Let my lord be fully assured that I cannot bear to accept an expression apart from the meaning contained in it, lest I become a manifest Jew.

14. THEOD. Hearing this, Theodosius said: “We ought to say one hypostatic energy of Christ.” MAX. Let us consider the evil born of this, and flee this foreign expression — for it belongs only to heretics who worship many gods. For if we say the one energy of Christ is hypostatic, but the Son does not coincide, according to hypostasis, with the Father and the Spirit, it is plain that neither does He coincide according to hypostatic energy; and we are compelled, just as with the Son, so also with the Father and the Spirit, to assign hypostatic energies; and, according to you, the blessed Godhead will have four energies — three distinguishing the persons in which He is, and one common, signifying the natural commonality of the three hypostases; and, according to the Fathers — if indeed we accept their teaching — we shall contract the disease of a Tetratheia. For they declare every energy to be natural, not hypostatic. And if this is true — as indeed it is — we shall be shown to be saying four natures, four gods, differing from one another in hypostasis and nature. Yet who has ever seen or observed a distinctive energy belonging to any of the things brought under a species by nature, and ranged under the common definition of the species by nature? For that which is common by nature never becomes the property of one and only one.

For hypostatic marks — such as an aquiline nose, or a snub nose, or gray eyes, or thinness of hair, and all such things — are distinguishing accidents of things that differ numerically from one another. For every man, insofar as he is a certain nature, but not insofar as he is a certain hypostasis, naturally acts, according to the predicative account conceived and spoken of both most particularly and commonly — such as “animal,” “rational,” “mortal,” which belong to the generic account in our case. For we all share in the same life, the same rationality, the same influx and efflux, and in sitting and standing, and speaking and being silent, and seeing and hearing and touching — which belong to the common account conceived in us. One must not, then, innovate expressions that have no force, whether Scriptural, or patristic, or natural, but which are foreign, and invented by the perversions of men. Yet show me this expression found in any Father whatsoever, and again we shall seek out the meaning of him who used it.

15. THEOD. What then — must one not at all speak of one energy in the case of Christ? MAX. According to holy Scripture and the holy Fathers, we have received no tradition of saying anything of the sort; but, just as we have been permitted to believe and confess Christ to be two natures, of which He consists, so too His natural wills and energies, corresponding to Him, who is at once, by nature, both God and man, the same. THEOD. Indeed, my lord, we too confess both the natures and the different energies — that is, the divine and the human — and that His Godhead has will, and His manhood has will, since His soul was not without will. But we do not say two, lest we introduce Him as warring with Himself. MAX. What then — in saying two natures, do you introduce them as warring with one another because of the number? MAX. What then — does number, when applied to natures, not divide, but, when spoken of wills and energies, have the power of division? THEOD. Certainly the Fathers, too, did not, when speaking of wills and energies, fleeing division, but said “one and another,” and “divine and human,” and “twofold and double” — and as they said it, so I say it, and as they have spoken, so I speak.

16. MAX. For the Lord’s sake — if someone should say to you “one and another,” how many do you understand? Or “divine and human,” how many do you understand? Or “twofold and double,” how many do you understand? THEOD. I know how I understand it, but I do not say “two.” Then abba Maximus, turning to the officials, said: MAX. For the Lord’s sake — if you hear “one and one,” or “another and another,” or “twice two,” or “twice five,” what do you understand, and how do you answer those who say them? And they said: “Since you have adjured us — by ’one and one,’ we understand two; and by ’another and another,’ we understand two; and by ’twice two,’ we understand four. Likewise ’twice five,’ we understand ten.” And, as if ashamed at their answer, Theodosius said: “What was not said by the Fathers, I do not say.” And abba Maximus immediately took the book of the acts of the holy apostolic synod, and showed that the holy Fathers plainly spoke of the two wills and energies of our Savior and God Jesus Christ; and Theodosius the consul, taking the book of the acts from him, himself also read out all the citations of the Fathers. And then Theodosius the bishop, answering, said: THEOD. God knows, if this synod had not laid down the anathemas by name, I would have accepted it more than any man; but, that we may not waste time here, whatever the Fathers said, I say, and I shall immediately put it in writing — two natures, and two wills, and two energies; and come and commune with us, and let there be union.

17. MAX. My lord, I do not presume to accept from you a written assent concerning such a matter, being a mere monk; but if God has moved you to accept the expressions of the holy Fathers, as the canon requires, send it in writing to the bishop of Rome concerning this — that is, the emperor, and the patriarch, and the synod with him. For even should this be done, I would not commune, so long as those who have been anathematized are commemorated in the holy offering. For I fear the condemnation of the anathema. THEOD. God knows, I do not condemn you for your fear, nor does anyone else. But for the Lord’s sake, give us counsel, if this is possible to be done. MAX. What counsel can I give you concerning this? Go, search whether such a thing has ever happened before — that someone was released after death from the charge concerning the faith and the condemnation pronounced against him — and let the emperor and the patriarch consent to imitate God’s condescension, and let the one make a petitionary decree, and the other a synodical entreaty to the Pope of Rome; and altogether, if an ecclesiastical way should be found permitting this for the sake of the right confession of the faith, it will be arranged for you concerning this.

18. THEOD. This shall altogether be done; but give me your word that, if they send for me, you will come with me. MAX. My lord, it would be more advantageous for you to take my fellow servant at Mesembria with you rather than me; for he knows the language, and they respect him properly, since he has been punished for so many years, both for God’s sake and for the right faith prevailing on their own throne. THEOD. We have various disputes with one another, and I am not glad to go with him. MAX. My lord, when it has been decided that this take place, and the outcome of what has been resolved comes to pass, I will follow you wherever you wish. And at this, all rose up with joy and tears, and made a prostration, and a prayer was made, and each of them kissed the holy Gospels, and the honored cross, and the icon of God our Savior Jesus Christ, and of our Lady, the all-holy Theotokos who bore Him, having also laid their own hands upon them in confirmation of what had been spoken.

19. Then, having conversed a little with one another concerning the life according to God and the keeping of the divine commandments, Theodosius the bishop, turning to abba Maximus, said: THEOD. Behold, all the scandals have been resolved, and peace has come through God, and shall come; but for the Lord’s sake, do not hide this from me — do you not say, in some manner, one will and one energy in the case of Christ? MAX. It is impossible for me ever to say this. And I will tell the reason: because it is an expression foreign to the holy Fathers, to say one will and energy of two natures. Moreover, whoever, in whatever way, says this finds absurdity meeting him directly. For if I say “natural,” I fear confusion; if I say “hypostatic,” I divide the Son from the Father and the Spirit, and shall be found introducing three wills, not coinciding with one another, just as the hypostases do not; if I say “one” as belonging to one person, I am compelled to say the same of the Father as one, and of the Spirit as one, will and energy, even if I do not wish to, and the argument will be found falling into polytheism; if I say “relational,” I introduce Nestorius’s personal division; if I say “contrary to nature,” I destroy the existence of the one who wills — for what is contrary to nature is, according to the Fathers, corruption of 20.

THEOD. On account of the union of our Savior, we ought altogether and in every way to say one will, just as Sergius and Pyrrhus, I think, having understood well, have written. MAX. If you permit, my lord, accept from me two remarks on this. If, on account of the union, one will came to be of our God and Savior — as Sergius and Pyrrhus and Paul have written — then, according to them, the Son will be of a different will from the Father, on account of nature, but not on account of the union, since the Son has, in respect of the union, one will, if indeed union and nature are not the same. If, on account of the union, one will came to be, according to them, of our Savior, then union will altogether be its cause, but neither of the two natures of which He consists; and the will, according to them, will plainly belong to relation, and not to nature — for the argument of truth knows union to belong to relation, not to nature. If, as they said, one will of our Savior came to be on account of the union, by what will do they say this very union came about? For surely they would not say it came about by the will that resulted from it, if they have regard for truth and flee absurdity.

If, on account of the union, one will of the Savior came to be, then plainly, before the union, He was either possessed of many wills, or altogether without will. And if He was possessed of many wills, He underwent a diminishment of the many, contracted to one, and clearly received the affection of change: the diminishment of the many wills naturally belonging to Him. But if He was altogether without will, then union was shown to be superior to nature, since from it He procured a will which nature failed to provide — and again He was shown to be mutable, having acquired by relation what did not belong to Him by nature. If, on account of the union, one will of our Savior came to be, in respect of one of the two natures of which He consists, then God became recent in will, He who, by the union, remains eternal and unoriginate by nature; and man became eternal in will, remaining recent by nature — which is impossible, not to say impious. If, on account of the union, one will of the natures came to be, why then, for the same reason, did one nature not come to be of the natures?

21. And at this point Theodosius the bishop, interrupting the flow of the argument, said: THEOD. What, then, came about on account of the union, if none of these things came about because of it? MAX. It showed the God who is by nature without flesh to have become, without falsehood, enfleshed; and it manifestly presented the Creator of all things as having become, by nature, man — not by a change of nature, or a diminishment of anything belonging to nature, but by a true assumption of flesh intellectually ensouled, that is, of complete manhood, pure by nature of all ancestral guilt. And, by the principle of interchange, it showed the truly wondrous thing, astonishing to all: the same wholly God among human things, remaining wholly and undiminished within His own, and wholly man among divine things, remaining wholly and unfallen from His own. For a mutual indwelling of the natures, and of what belongs to them naturally, according to the teaching of our God-inspired Fathers — but not a passing over of one into the other, or a diminishment on account of the union — has come about, which is the property of those who wickedly make the union a confusion, and who therefore involve themselves in various innovations, and, for want of stability in their own argument, persecute the pious.

22. Hearing these things, Theodosius the bishop seemed, together with the rest present with him, to accept what had been said. And the same bishop said again to abba Maximus: THEOD. Do me the kindness — what is it you told us, that no one acts as some particular hypostasis, but as some particular nature? For this proceeds beyond my understanding of what was said. MAX. No one acts as some particular hypostasis, but as some particular nature — for instance, Peter and Paul act, but not “Petrically” and “Paulically,” but “humanly”; for both are men naturally, according to the common and definitive account of nature, but not hypostatically, according to what is particular to each. Likewise Michael and Gabriel act, but not “Michaelically” and “Gabrielically,” but “angelically” — for both are angels. And thus, in every nature predicated of many numerically, we observe a common, but not a solitary, energy. Therefore, he who speaks of a hypostatic energy introduces the nature itself, though it is one, as having become infinite in its energies, and as differing from itself according to the multitude of the individuals brought under it — which, if we accept it as right, we corrupt, along with it, the very principle of the manner of being belonging to every 23. And when this had been said, as they were embracing one another, Theodosius the consul said: THEOD.

Behold, all is well; will the emperor accept making a petitionary decree? MAX. He will certainly do so, if he wishes to be an imitator of God, and to humble himself together with Him for the sake of the salvation common to us all, reckoning that, if God, who saves by nature, did not save until He willingly humbled Himself, how shall man, who is saved by nature, either be saved or save, without humbling himself? And Theodosius the consul said: “I hope, God preserving my memory, to speak this very word to him, and he will be persuaded.” And, embracing one another upon this, they departed in peace, the bishop having given abba Maximus a small sum sent to him, and a tunic, and a mantle. And the bishop of Bizya took back the tunic that very hour; and at Rhegium they took away not only the sum given him, but also whatever else he had of charitable gifts, together with his other wretched belongings and garments.

24. After the departure of the aforesaid men, on the eighth of September of the present fifteenth indiction, Paul the consul went out again to abba Maximus at Bizya, bringing an order containing the following: “We command your excellency to go to Bizya, and to bring Maximus the monk with great honor and gentle treatment, on account of his old age and infirmity, and because he was known to our forefathers and held in honor by them; and to place him in the pious monastery of holy Theodore, situated near Rhegium; and to come and inform us, and we shall send, on our behalf, two patricians, who are to discuss with him what has occurred to us, loving us in their souls and being loved by us; and to come and announce his arrival to us.” The consul, then, having brought him and placed him in the aforesaid monastery, departed to make the announcement.

25. And on the following day Epiphanius and Troilus, the patricians, went out to him with great pomp and display, together with Theodosius the bishop, and went up to him in the catechumenate of the church of that same monastery, and, the customary greeting having been made, they sat down, forcing him also to sit; and Troilus, beginning the discourse to him, said: TROI. Our lord has commanded us to come to you, and to tell you what has seemed good to his God-established power. But tell us first — will you do the emperor’s command, or will you not? MAX. My lord, let me hear what his pious power has commanded, and I shall answer suitably; for what answer can I give to something unknown? TROI. Troilus persisted, saying: “It is not possible for us to say anything at all, unless you first say whether you will do the emperor’s command, or not.” And when he perceived them insisting, and looking upon him with bitterness at his delay, and answering harshly, together with all who were present with them, and those puffed up with the trappings of rank, abba Maximus answered, saying: MAX. Since you will not consent to tell your servant what has occurred to our lord and emperor, behold, I say, with God and the holy angels and all of you listening, that whatever he commands me concerning any matter that is to be dissolved and perish together with this present age, I do gladly.

And Troilus, rising up at once, said: “Pray for me — I am leaving; for this man does nothing.” And, there being a great uproar and much confusion and disturbance, Theodosius the bishop said to them: “Tell him the answer, and learn what he says — for it is not reasonable to leave thus, having said nothing and heard nothing.” Then Epiphanius the patrician said: EPIPH. This the emperor declares to you through us, saying: “Since all the West, and those in the East who are being led astray, look to you, and all take up strife on your account, unwilling to be reconciled to us on account of the faith — may God move you to commune with us on the Typos set forth by us; and we ourselves shall go out to the Chalke, and greet you, and offer you our hand, and, with all honor and glory, bring you into the great Church, and stand together with you where the emperors are accustomed to stand, and celebrate the Synaxis together, and commune together of the undefiled and life-giving mysteries of the life-giving body and blood of Christ, and proclaim you our Father — and there shall be joy not only to our Christ-loving imperial city, but to the whole world. For we know for certain that, upon your communing with the holy throne here, all who, for your sake and your teaching, have separated from our communion, will be united to us.”

26. And abba Maximus, turning to the bishop, said to him with tears: MAX. Great lord, all of us await the day of judgment. You know what was decreed and resolved upon the holy Gospels, and the life-giving cross, and the icon of God our Savior, and of the all-holy, ever-virgin Mother who bore Him. And the bishop, casting down his face, said to him in a gloomier voice: THEOD. What can I do, when something else has occurred to the most pious emperor? And Maximus said to him: MAX. And why did you and those with you touch the holy Gospels, when the outcome of what was spoken was not in your power? Truly, all the power of heaven would not persuade me to do this. For what defense shall I give — I do not say to God, but to my own conscience — that, for the glory of men, which has, by its own account, no existence, I forswore the faith that saves those who love it?

27. And at this word, they rose up, with anger commanding them all, and, by pulling his hair, and shoving, and striking with fists, they battered him, drenching him from head to foot with spittle, the stench of which lingered on the garments he had been wearing until they were washed. And the bishop, rising up, said: THEOD. This ought not to have happened, but only the answer heard from him, and to go in and report it to our good lord. For canonical matters are handled in another manner. And the bishop, having scarcely persuaded them to be still, they sat down again, and, having heaped upon him countless insults and unimaginable curses, Epiphanius said with anger and harshness: EPIPH. Tell me, most wretched glutton — did you say these words, as though you held us, and our city, and the emperor to be heretics? Truly we are more Christian and orthodox than you, and we confess our Lord and God to have both a divine will and a human will, and an intellectual soul, and that every intellectual nature altogether has willing and acting from nature, since motion is the property of life, and will is the property of mind. And we know Him to be possessed of will, not only in Godhead, but also in manhood. And we do not deny His two wills and energies either.

28. And abba Maximus, answering, said: MAX. If you believe as intellectual natures do, and as the Church of God does, how do you compel me to commune on the Typos, which has as its sole purpose the abolition of these very things? EPIPH. This was done as an economy, that the people might not be harmed by such minute expressions. And abba Maximus, answering, said: MAX. On the contrary, every man is sanctified through the precise confession of the faith, and not through the abolition contained in the Typos. TROI. And in the palace we told you that it did not abolish, but commanded that these things be silenced, that we might all be at peace. And abba Maximus, answering, said: MAX. The silencing of words is the abolition of words. For through the prophet the Holy Spirit says, “There are no speeches nor words, in which their voices are not heard.” Therefore a word not spoken is not a word at all. TROI. Hold it in your heart as you wish — no one prevents you. MAX. But God has not confined the whole of salvation to the heart, having said: “He who confesses Me before men, I will confess him before My Father who is in heaven.” And the divine Apostle teaches, saying: “With the heart one believes unto righteousness, but with the mouth one confesses unto salvation.”

If, then, God, and the prophets and apostles of God, command that the mystery — the great and dread mystery, the salvation of the whole world — be confessed with holy words, there is no need whatsoever to silence, in any manner, the word that proclaims it, lest the salvation of those who are silent be diminished.

29. And Epiphanius, answering with the harshest words, said: EPIPH. Did you sign the libellus? And abba Maximus said: MAX. Yes, I signed it. EPIPH. And how did you dare, he said, to sign it and anathematize those who confess and believe as intellectual natures do, and as the catholic Church does? Truly, in my judgment, we shall bring you into the city, and stand you bound in the forum, and bring the mimes and mimeactresses and the leading harlots and all the people, that each man and each woman may slap and spit in your face. To this abba Maximus, answering, said: MAX. Let it be as you have said, if we have anathematized those who confess the two natures of which the Lord consists, and the two natural wills and energies corresponding to Him, who is by nature, in truth, both God and man. Read, my lord, the acts and the libellus, and if, as you say, you find this, do what you wish. For I and my fellow servants, all who signed, anathematized those who, following Arius and Apollinaris, say one will and energy, and who do not confess our Lord and God to be, in respect of either of the things of which, and in which, He is, by nature intellectual, and therefore possessed, in both respects, of will and energy for our salvation. And they said: “If we grant this to him, we shall neither eat nor drink; but let us rise and dine, and go in.

Let us say what we have heard — for this man has sold himself to Satan.” And rising up, they dined, and went in, in anger, on the eve of the Exaltation of the honored and life-giving cross.

30. And on the following morning Theodosius the consul went out to the aforesaid abba Maximus, and took away everything he had, saying to him on the emperor’s behalf: THEOD. Since you would not accept honor, it shall be taken far from you. Go where you have judged yourself worthy to be, bearing the sentence of your disciples, both the one at Mesembria and the one at Perberis, who had been notary of our blessed grandmother. And the patricians, that is, Troilus and Epiphanius, had also said: TROI.-EPIPH. We shall certainly bring your two disciples as well, the one at Mesembria and the one at Perberis, and we shall test them too, and see the outcome for them as well. But — that you may know it, lord abba — should we gain a little respite from the confusion of the nations, we shall settle accounts with you all, by the Holy Trinity, and with the pope now exalting himself, and all who speak there, and your other disciples, and we shall melt down every one of you, each in his fitting place, as Martin was melted down. And Theodosius the consul, taking him, handed him over to soldiers, who led him as far as Selymbria.

31. And they remained there two days, until one of the soldiers went to the camp and told the whole army: “The monk who blasphemes the Theotokos is coming here” — that they might stir up the army against the said abba Maximus, as one who blasphemed the Theotokos. And after two days the soldier, returning, took him into the camp; and the general, or rather the general’s deputy, being moved by God, sent to him the elders of the units, presbyters and deacons, and the reverent standard-guards; and abba Maximus, seeing them arrive, rose and made a prostration, and they returned it, and sat down, bidding him also to sit. And a certain very honored old man said to him with much reverence: “Father, since some have scandalized us regarding your holiness, saying that you do not call our Lady, the all-holy Virgin, Theotokos, I adjure you, by the holy, consubstantial, and life-giving Trinity, to tell us the truth, and to remove this scandal from our hearts, that we may not be unjustly harmed by being scandalized.” And, making a prostration, he rose, and, stretching out his hands to heaven, said with tears: MAX. Whoever does not say that our Lady, the all-praised, all-holy, and undefiled one, revered by all intellectual nature, became the true, natural Mother of God, who made heaven and earth and sea and all things in them — let him be anathema and accursed from the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the consubstantial and worshipful Trinity, and from every heavenly power, and the choir of the holy Apostles and Prophets, and the boundless assembly of the martyrs, and every spirit perfected in righteousness, now and always and unto the boundless ages of ages.

Amen. And, weeping, they prayed for him, saying: “God will strengthen you, Father, and count you worthy to complete this course without stumbling.” And when this was said, many soldiers gathered, hearing many good words being spoken; and one of the domestics of the general, seeing that a great army was gathering and being edified, and censuring what was being done to him — suspecting, God knows what — allowed him to be snatched away, and taken about two miles from the camp, until they should hold the Synaxis and those who were to lead him away to Perberis should come. Yet the clergy, overcome by divine love, walked the two miles on foot, and came and greeted him and prayed for him, and, carrying him with their own hands, set him upon the beast, and returned in peace to their own places; and he was taken to Perberis, into the custody that held him there.

32. And this too should be known: that at Rhegium, Troilus, addressing abba Maximus, said, that the counsellor John had written to him concerning an agreement proposed to them, and that this had for the present been prevented by the disorderly conduct of your disciples. But I think that the said counsellor John did not write to Troilus, but to Menas the monk, and that he told those of the palace.

33. And after this they brought them to Constantinople, and took action against them; and, after anathematizing and cursing Maximus, who is among the saints, and the blessed Anastasius, his disciple, and the most holy Pope Martin, and holy Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, and all the orthodox who agreed with them, they also brought the other blessed Anastasius, and, using the same anathemas and insults, handed them over to the officials, speaking thus: “You, then, Anastasius, having put on the dark garment of the common curse of anathemas, be removed from canonical hearing, being carried off to the portion of Gehenna which you have chosen for yourself, our glorious and revered senate, which has shared in and administered all things with us, being present, and about to receive, at once, judgment upon you after us, and to do to you what seems fitting according to the civil laws, as they shall determine, for the sake of your such great blasphemies and acts of tyranny. For the vote of this present synod, and, by the cooperation of the almighty Christ, our true God, having canonically voted what is fitting against you, Maximus, and Anastasius, and Anastasius — since what remained, in view of what was impiously spoken and done by you, was that you be subjected to the severe penalties of the laws, even though a penalty worthy of such offenses and blasphemies of yours does not exist — leaving you to the just Judge concerning the greater matter, and in this present life relaxing, in this instance, the strictness of the laws, that you may gain your life — we decree that our present most acclaimed prefect, at once taking you into his multi-official praetorium, and striking your backs with thongs, shall cut out from within, from you, Maximus and Anastasius and Anastasius, the instrument of your blasphemous licentiousness — that is, your blasphemous tongue.

And further, that he shall also cut off with iron your most sinister right hand, which served your blasphemous reasoning — the same detestable members being carried around, together with their removal, through the twelve districts of this sovereign city as you are paraded through it — and that he then hand you over to perpetual exile and imprisonment, that hereafter, and for the whole time of your life, you may bewail your own blasphemous errors, the curse devised against us having been turned back upon your own head.” The prefect, then, taking them and punishing them, cut off their members, and, having led them around the whole city, exiled them to Lazica. Exposition of the Movement, Between the Lord Abba Maximus and the Officials, in the Secretum That took place between the lord Abba Maximus, and those with him, and the officials, in the Secretum 1. On the day on which they arrived at this imperial city — the lord Maximus, and those with him — around sunset, two mandators came with ten members of the guard, and took them off the ship naked and unshod; and separating them from one another, they kept them in different guardhouses. And after some days they brought them up into the palace, and led in the elder to the place where the Senate had assembled, and a great crowd besides; and they set him in the midst of the seated officials, and the sacellarius said to him with much anger and fury: “Are you a Christian?”

And he said: “By the grace of Christ, the God of all, I am a Christian.” And that one said: “This is not true.” The servant of God answered: “You say so. I am not — but God says that I am, and that I remain a Christian.” “And how?” he said. “If indeed you are a Christian, do you hate the emperor?” The servant of God answered and said: “And how would that be evident? For hatred is a hidden disposition of the soul, just as love is also.” And he said to him: “By what you have done, you have become manifest to all, that you hate the emperor and his government; for you alone handed over Egypt and Alexandria and Pentapolis and Tripolis and Africa to the Saracens.” “And what proof is there of this?” he said. And they brought forward John, formerly sacellarius of Peter, formerly general of Numidia in Africa, saying that twentytwo years ago the grandfather of our master commanded the blessed Peter to take an army and go into Egypt against the Saracens, and wrote to you as to a servant of God, having full confidence in you as a holy man, asking whether you counseled him to go; and that you wrote back to him, saying that he should do no such thing, since God was not well pleased that the government of the Romans should be assisted in the reign of Heraclius and his family.

The servant of God said: “If this is true, you certainly have both Peter’s letter to me and my letter to him; let them be produced, and I submit to whatever penalties the law prescribes.” And he said: “I do not have the letter, nor do I even know whether he wrote to you at all. But in the camp everyone was saying these things at that time.” The servant of God said to him: “If the whole camp was saying this, how is it that you alone bring this accusation against me? Have you ever seen me, or I you?” And he said: “Never.” Then the servant of God, turning to the Senate, said: “Whether it is right to bring forward such accusers, or witnesses, judge for yourselves. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with what measure you measure, it will be measured to you again, says the God of all.”

2. And after this they brought forward Sergius the Magoudas, saying: “Nine years ago the blessed Abba Thomas, coming from Rome, said to me that Pope Theodore had sent him to the patrician Gregory, to tell him not to fear anything; for the servant of God, Abba Maximus, had seen in a dream that in the heavens, to the east and to the west, there were companies of angels; and those in the east cried out, ’Constantine Augustus, thou shalt conquer!’ while those in the west cried out, ’Gregory Augustus, thou shalt conquer!’; and the voice of those in the west prevailed over the voice of those in the east.” Then the sacellarius cried out: “God has sent you to be burned in this city!” The servant of God said: “I thank God, who cleanses me of my voluntary sins through involuntary punishment; yet, woe to the world because of stumbling-blocks! For it is necessary that stumbling-blocks come; but woe to him through whom the stumbling-block comes. Indeed such things ought not to be spoken in the presence of Christians, nor should those who do such things to please men — who exist today and are gone tomorrow — go unpunished. These things ought to have been said while Gregory was alive, and made known to the emperor as a sign of goodwill toward him. But it is just, if it seems good to you also, that the man who was earlier a false accuser be compelled to go and bring the patrician Peter, and this Abba Thomas, and that blessed Pope Theodore; and then, in the presence of all, I would say to the patrician Peter: ’Tell me, lord patrician: did you ever write to me concerning what your sacellarius has said, or I to you?’

And when he denied it, I would come under punishment. Likewise also to the blessed pope: ’Tell me, master: did I ever relate a dream to you?’ And when he refuted me, the charge would be his, not mine, since I never told of having seen it; for a dream is an involuntary thing, and the law punishes only voluntary things, if indeed it opposes itself to them.” Then Troilus said to him: “You are joking, Abba; you do not know where you are.” And he said: “I am not joking, but I mourn that my life has been preserved until now, that I should receive experience of such phantasms.” The patrician Epiphanius said: “God knows, he does well to make light of these things, if they are not true.” After him the sacellarius again said to him with anger: “Do all simply lie, and you alone speak the truth?” And the servant of God answered, weeping as he spoke: “You have authority, by God’s permission, both to give life and to put to death; yet if these men speak the truth, then Satan too is God by nature. But if he is not, as indeed he is not, then neither have these men spoken the truth. For may I never be counted worthy to behold, together with Christians, the appearing of the God who is above all being, maker and creator and fashioner, provider and judge and Savior of all, if ever I related such a dream, or heard another relate it — except at this very hour, from the mouth of the lord Sergius, the eunuch of the imperial household.”

3. Then they put forward a third false accuser, Theodore, son of John called the Candidatus, surnamed Chila, now son-inlaw of the lord Plato the patrician, who said: “When a conversation took place between us in Rome concerning the emperor, he mocked what was being said, making faces and mimicking gestures.” To him the servant of God said: “I never had any conversation with you, except once, together with the most devout priest, the lord Theocharistus, brother of the exarch, on account of the primicerius, having been prompted by letters concerning this matter. And if I am found to be lying, let me suffer for it.”

4. And after him they brought a fourth, Gregory, son of Photinus, who said: “I went to the cell of Abba Maximus in Rome, and when I said that the emperor was also a priest, Abba Anastasius his disciple said: ’May he never be counted worthy to be a priest.’” Immediately the servant of God said to him: “Fear God, lord Gregory; my fellow-servant has said absolutely nothing at all in this conversation about such things.” And he threw himself to the ground, saying to the Senate: “Bear with your servant, and I will tell everything just as it was said, and let him refute me if I lie. My lord Gregory, coming to Rome, was pleased to come to the cell of your servant; and when I saw him, as is my custom, I threw myself to the ground and did him reverence, and I greeted him, and after he was seated I said to him: ’What is the reason for the desired presence of my master?’ And he said: ’Our good and God-established master, caring for the peace of the holy Churches of God, has issued a command to the God-honored Pope, sending also an offering to Saint Peter, urging him to be united with the see of Constantinople; and he has deigned that these things be sent through my humble self.’ And I said: ’Glory to God, who has made you worthy of such a ministry!

Yet, in what manner has his God-crowned Serenity commanded that the union take place?’ Again he said: ’If you know.’ And you said: ’By the Typos.’ And I said: ’This, I think, is impossible; for the Romans will not endure that the lightbearing voices of the holy Fathers be destroyed together with the voices of the impure heretics; nor that truth be extinguished along with falsehood; nor that light be made to vanish together with darkness. For nothing will remain to us as an object of worship, if there is an abolition of the Godtaught words.’ And you said: ’The Typos does not effect an abolition of the sacred formulas, but a silence, that we may arrange for peace.’ And I said: ’In Holy Scripture there is a silence that is also an abolition. For God said through David: \”There are no speeches nor words, whose voices are not heard.\“ If, then, the words concerning God are neither spoken nor heard, according to the Scripture they do not exist at all.’ And you said: ’Do not bring me into disputations; I am content with the holy Creed.’ ’And how can you be content with the holy Creed,’ I said, ’while accepting the Typos?’ ’And what harm is there in accepting the Typos, and also saying the Creed?’ you said. I said: ’Because the Typos plainly abolishes the Creed.’ And you said: ’For the Lord’s sake, how?’

’Tell me,’ I said, ’the Creed, and learn how it is abolished by the Typos.’ And you began to say: ’I believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.’ ’Wait a little,’ I said, ’and learn how the faith of Nicaea is being denied. For God could not be a maker, if He were deprived of natural will and activity — since He made heaven and earth by willing, not by being compelled — if indeed David speaks truly in the Spirit: \”Whatsoever the Lord willed, He made, in heaven and in earth, in the seas, and in all deeps.\“ But if, for the sake of some arrangement, the saving faith is abolished together with false belief, such a so-called arrangement is a complete separation from God, not a union with God. For tomorrow the ill-named Jews will say: \”Let us arrange peace between us, and let us be united, and let us do away — we, with circumcision, and you, with baptism — and let us no longer make war on one another.\“ This the Arians once proposed in writing under the great Constantine, saying: \”Let us do away with homoousios and heteroousios, and let the Churches be united.\“ And our God-bearing Fathers did not accept it, but chose rather to be persecuted and to die than to be silent about the word that proclaims the one supra-essential Godhead of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And this, even though the great Constantine himself joined those who proposed such things, as is recorded by many who diligently wrote of the events of that time. And none of the emperors was able, by moderate words, to persuade the Godspeaking Fathers to come to terms with those who held heretical views in their days; but they used clear, authoritative words, suited to the doctrine in question, saying plainly that it belongs to priests to inquire into, and to define, the saving doctrines of the Catholic Church.’ And you said: ’What then? Is not every Christian emperor also a priest?’ And I said: ’He is not; for he does not stand at the altar, and after the sanctification of the bread, lift it up, saying, \”Holy things for the holy.\“ Nor does he baptize, nor perform the rite of chrism, nor lay on hands to make bishops and priests and deacons; nor does he anoint churches, nor does he bear the symbols of priesthood — the omophorion and the Gospel — as he bears those of royalty, the crown and the purple.’ ’And how does Scripture say that Melchizedek was both king and priest?’ you said. And I said: ’Melchizedek was a type of the one who is by nature King of all, God, who for our salvation became by nature a high priest. But if you say that there is another, according to the order of Melchizedek, who is both king and priest, then dare also to say the rest — that he is \”without father, without mother, without genealogy,\“ having neither beginning of days nor end of life.

And consider the evil that arises from this: for such a one, having become incarnate according to the order of Melchizedek, will be found to be another God, and not one who works our salvation according to the order of Aaron.’”

5. But why should we go on at length? At the holy Anaphora, at the holy Table, after the bishops and deacons, and every order of the clergy, the emperors are commemorated together with the laity, the deacon saying: “And of the laity who have fallen asleep in the faith: Constantine, Constans,” and the rest. So too he commemorates the living emperors, after all those in holy orders. As he was saying these things, Menas cried out: “By saying these things you have torn the Church apart!” And he said to him: “If one who speaks the words of the Holy Scriptures and of the holy Fathers tears the Church apart, what will be shown to be done to the Church by one who abolishes the holy doctrines, apart from which it is not even possible for it to be called a Church at all?” And the sacellarius, turning to the men of the exarch, said with a shout: “Tell the exarch: Ought you to have let such a man live where you rule?” And taking him outside, they brought in the disciple, and demanding that he denounce his master as having distressed Pyrrhus, he answered with a calm voice, telling the truth — that no one had honored Pyrrhus as he had honored him; and he was ordered to be flogged. And since he would not consent to be deprived of the reverent speech proper to monks, he ordered him to be struck by those standing by; and beating him with their fists, they left him half-dead.

And having dismissed them to the prisons, Menas caught up with the elder, saying in the presence of the officials: “God has cast you down, and brought you here, that you may receive back what you did to others, leading all astray into the doctrines of Origen.” To him the servant of God said, in the presence of all: “Anathema to Origen and his doctrines, and to everyone who shares his views.” And the patrician Epiphanius said: “The charge you brought against him, lord Abba Menas, has been resolved — for even if he were an Origenist, once he has anathematized, he has freed himself from such a reproach. As for me, I no longer accept such a thing being said of him.” Each of them was led away, to the place where he was being kept.

6. And on the same day, around the time of the lighting of the lamp, Troilus the patrician and Sergius Eukratas, the steward of the imperial table, came to the servant of God, the elder, and having sat down, bade him also sit, and said to him: “Tell us, lord Abba, of the controversy that took place between you and Pyrrhus in Africa and Rome concerning the doctrines; and by what arguments you persuaded him to anathematize his own teaching and agree with yours.” And he related to them everything in order, as much as memory preserved. And he said this also: “I have no teaching of my own, but that which is common to the Catholic Church. For I never uttered any word that could be called my own teaching.” And after the account, they said to him: “Do you not commune with the see of Constantinople?” And he said: “I do not commune.” “For what reason do you not commune?” they said. He answered: “Because they have cast out the four holy Councils, through the nine chapters made in Alexandria, and through the Ekthesis made in this city by Sergius, and, following upon that, through the Typos, issued in the sixth indiction; and because what they decreed through the chapters, they condemned through the Ekthesis; and what they decreed through the Ekthesis, they annulled through the Typos; and so they have condemned themselves that many times over.

Those, then, who have been condemned by their own selves, and by the Romans, and by the Council that afterward took place in the eighth indiction, and deposed — what kind of mystery will they perform, or what kind of spirit will visit upon what is performed by such men?” And they said to him: “Are you alone saved, and does everyone else perish?” And he said: “The three youths condemned no one for not worshipping the image, though all men worshipped it. For they were not concerned with the affairs of others, but were concerned only that they themselves should not fall away from true piety. So too Daniel, cast into the den of lions, condemned no one who did not pray to God according to the decree of Darius, but was concerned only with himself; and he chose to die rather than fall away from God and be scourged by his own conscience for transgressing the laws of nature. So may God not grant that I condemn anyone, or say that I alone am saved. But I choose rather to die than to have turmoil of conscience because I fell away in any way from the true faith in God.”

7. They said to him: “And what will you do, now that the Romans are being united with the Byzantines? For behold, yesterday the legates of Rome arrived, and tomorrow, which is Sunday, they will commune with the Patriarch; and it is plain to all that you were the one leading the Romans astray; indeed, once you were taken away from there, they came to terms with those here.” And he said to them: “Whatever preconceived judgment those who have come may hold with regard to the see of Rome, even should they commune, since they have not brought a letter to the Patriarch, they are not thereby doing so; and I am not at all persuaded that the Romans are being united with those here, unless they confess our Lord and God, according to each of the natures from which, and in which, and which He is, to be by nature willing and active for our salvation.” And they said: “But if the Romans should come to terms with those here, what will you do?” And he said: “The Holy Spirit, through the Apostle, anathematizes even angels who legislate anything contrary to the preaching.”

8. And they said: “Is it altogether necessary that will and activity be spoken of in the case of Christ?” He answered: “It is altogether necessary, if indeed we wish to be truly pious. For nothing that exists subsists without a natural activity. For the holy Fathers plainly say that no nature whatsoever either exists, or is known, apart from its essential activity. But if a nature neither exists nor is known apart from the activity that essentially characterizes it, how is it possible for Christ to be, or to be known, truly by nature both God and man, without the divine and human activity? For, according to the Fathers, the lion that has lost its roaring is no longer a lion; and the dog that has lost its barking is no longer a dog. And anything else, having lost whatever naturally constitutes it, is no longer what it was.” And they said to him: “We know indeed that this was so; only do not grieve the emperor, who made the Typos for the sake of peace alone, not for the abolition of anything conceived in Christ, but for the sake of peace, arranging the silence of the words that cause division.”

9. And the servant of God, throwing himself to the ground with tears, said: “Our good and pious master ought not to have been grieved on account of my lowliness. For I cannot grieve God by keeping silent about what He Himself has commanded to be spoken and confessed. For if, according to the divine Apostle, He Himself is the one who set in the Church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, it is clear that it is He who spoke through them. Through the whole of Holy Scripture, then, both Old and New Testament, and through the holy teachers and councils, we are taught that the incarnate God is willing and active according to both His Godhead and His humanity. For He would be lacking in nothing by which He is known as God, and nothing by which He is known by nature as man, apart from sin. But if He is perfect in each, as lacking nothing in either, then plainly he who does not confess Him to be what He is, together with all the natural properties that belong to Him in each nature, in which and which He is, falsifies the whole mystery concerning Him.”

10. And having been silent a little while, nodding to one another, they said: “From where can you show that those of the see of Constantinople cast out the Councils?” And he said to them: “This has already been shown in part through what I said in Rome to the lord Gregory, the asecretis; and now, if it seems good to the master that this be shown, let him order that permission be granted to your unworthy servant, and I will produce knowledge of the books, since mine have been taken away; and I will make this plain to all, without any crookedness of words.” And after many other things were spoken, they turned to exercises and considerations of grammar, and natural science, and technical matters; and being pleased by these, they became more cheerful, and began to say: “The Lord knows, we have been helped, and from now on we have no cause to trouble you.”

11. And the lord Sergius said to him: “I often came to your cell at Bebbas, and listened to your teaching; and Christ will help you; do not be anxious. But in one thing alone you grieve everyone: that you cause many to be separated from communion with the Church here.” “Is there anyone,” said the servant of God, “who says that I told him not to commune with the Church of the Byzantines?” The lord Sergius answered: “This very thing, that you do not commune, is a great cry to everyone, not to commune.” And the servant of God said: “Nothing is more forceful than a conscience that accuses, and nothing pleads more boldly than that same conscience.” And when the lord Troilus heard that the Typos is anathematized throughout the whole West, he said to the servant of God: “Is it a good thing that the reputation of our pious master is insulted?” The servant of God answered: “God will forgive those who compelled the master to make the Typos, and those who consented to it.” And he said: “Who are those who compelled him, and who are those who consented?” He answered: “Those of the Church compelled him, and the officials consented; and behold, the stain has been shaken off from those responsible, onto the one who is innocent and pure of every heresy. But take counsel to do what his grandfather, of pious memory, did.

For he, perceiving that some in the West were pouring blame upon him, freed himself by decree from the charge concerning the Church, writing: ’The Ekthesis is not mine; for I neither dictated it, nor ordered it to be made; but Sergius the Patriarch composed it five years before I came up from the East, and asked me, when I arrived in this most blessed city, that it be put forth in my name with my signature; and I granted his request. But now, knowing that some are fighting over it, I make it plain to all that it is not mine.’ He issued this decree to the blessed Pope John, who was condemning the Ekthesis in what he then wrote to Pyrrhus. And from that time it is recorded everywhere as the Ekthesis of Sergius. This our present pious emperor will also do, and his previous good repute will remain entirely unstained by any blame.” Then, shaking their heads, they fell silent, saying only this: “Everything is difficult, and there is no way out.”

12. When these and various other things had been spoken, they did reverence and received reverence, and departed with all cheerfulness. And again on the following Saturday they brought them up into the palace; and they first brought in the elder’s disciple, both patriarchs having assembled together; and they brought Constantine and Menas as accusers of the elder, demanding that the disciple agree with what was said against them. With all boldness the disciple said fearlessly to the Senate: “Do you bring Constantine into the imperial tribunal? This man is neither a priest nor a monk, but a tribune of the theater. It became known to the Africans and the Romans what sort of women he kept when he came there. Everyone learned of the tricks he used to conceal it — sometimes saying they were his sisters, sometimes that he had taken them because he did not commune with the Church of Constantinople, so that they might not be defiled by heretical communion. But again, whenever his money runs short, and he finds a place that does not know him, he does the same things, for the sake of shameful gain and filthy pleasure. And it is a great shame even to associate with him, for those who wish to live decently.” Then afterward, being asked whether he had anathematized the Typos, he said fearlessly: “Not only did I anathematize it, but I also drew up a formal document.”

“What then? Do you not confess that you have done wrong?” the officials said to him. And he said: “God forbid that I should say that what I did rightly, according to the ordinance of the Church, was done wrongly.” And having been asked many other things, and having answered as God granted him, he was led out from the tribunal.

13. And they brought in the elder, and the lord Troilus said to him: “Speak, Abba, take heed, speak the truth, and the master will have mercy on you; for if, through the lawful process of inquiry, even one of the charges against you is found true, the law puts you to death.” And he said: “I have already said, and I say again, that if even one thing said is true, then Satan too is God. But if he is not God, but an apostate, then the charges against me are false and have no substance. Yet whatever you order to be done, do it. Worshipping God, I am not wronged.” And he said to him: “Did you not anathematize the Typos?” He answered: “I have said many times that I anathematized it.” He said to him: “Did you anathematize the Typos, or did you anathematize the emperor?” The servant of God answered: “I did not anathematize the emperor, but a document foreign to the orthodox and ecclesiastical faith.” And he said to him: “Where was it anathematized?” “By the Council of Rome,” he answered, “in the Church of the Savior, and in that of the Theotokos.” Then the eparch said to him: “Do you commune with the Church here, or do you not commune?” He answered and said: “I do not commune.” He said to him: “Why?” He answered: “Because it has cast out the Councils.”

And he said: “If it has cast out the Councils, how is it that they are commemorated in the diptychs?” And he said: “And what benefit is there in names, when the doctrines have been cast out?” “And can you show this?” he said. And he said: “If I am given leave, and you so order, I can show this quite easily.” And when they had fallen silent, the sacellarius said to him: “Why do you love the Romans, and hate the Greeks?” The servant of God answered and said: “We have a commandment not to hate anyone. I love the Romans as sharing the same faith; and the Greeks, as sharing the same tongue.” And again the sacellarius said to him: “How old do you say you are?” He answered: “Seventy-five.” And he said to him: “How many years has your disciple been with you?” He answered: “Thirty-seven.” Then a certain cleric cried out: “The Lord has repaid you for what you did to the blessed Pyrrhus!” To him he made no answer at all.

14. When so much had been said in the tribunal, none of the patriarchs spoke a word at all. But when the discussion turned to the Council of Rome, Demosthenes cried out: “The Council has no validity, since the one who convened it has been deposed.” And the servant of God said: “He was not deposed, but persecuted. What synodical and canonical act took place concerning what was done, that securely establishes his deposition? Yet even granting that he was canonically deposed, this does not prejudice those things that were validly established according to the divine canons in an orthodox manner — with which the writings of the pope Theodore, among the saints, also agree.” And Troilus the patrician, hearing this, said: “You do not know what you are saying, Abba; what is done, is done.”

15. These are as much of the things spoken and done as memory retains; and to such an end came the matter concerning them, when they released the holy elder also from the tribunal, into custody. And on the next day, which was a Sunday, those of the Church, holding council, persuaded the emperor to condemn them to this bitter and inhuman exile, separated from one another — the holy elder to the fortress of Bizya in Thrace, and his disciple to Perberis, than which the empire of the Romans has no more remote a place — without provision, naked, unfed, deprived of every means of livelihood, not permitted to be near the sea, so that they might not receive visits from the merciful. And thus they are naked and unfed, having only the hope of God, entreating all Christians, crying out this: “Pray, for the Lord’s sake, that God may perfect His mercy together with our lowliness, and teach us that those who sail with Him experience a raging sea, the vessel being shaken by winds and waves, yet remaining unshaken itself. For He allows them to be tried by a great storm, testing their disposition toward Him, that they may cry out with a great voice: ’Lord, save us, we are perishing!’ and learn to ascribe all things concerning their salvation to Him alone, and not be confident in themselves; and that when they attain great calm, the wind and the waves having been stilled, He then delivers them into the midst of wolves, and bids them enter through the narrow gate and travel the difficult road; and He sets before them hunger, and thirst, and nakedness, and bonds, and prisons, and forced marches, and scourges, and the cross, and nails and vinegar, and gall, and spittings, and slappings, and buffetings, and mockeries; and suffering and manifold deaths — of which the end is the all-radiant Resurrection, bringing with it peace to those persecuted for His sake, and joy to those afflicted for His sake, and ascension into the heavens, and admission to the paternal and supra-essential throne, and a portion that is above every principality and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, whether in this age or in that which is to come.”

May we all attain to this, by the prayers and intercessions of the all-hymned, all-honored, and most glorious, truly by nature Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, and of the holy apostles, prophets, and martyrs. Amen.