Divine Names 1

Now, O blessed one, after the Theological Outlines, I shall proceed, so far as is possible, to the unfolding of the divine names.

Let there be set before us even now, as already laid down, that rule of the Scriptures: that we are to establish the truth of what is said concerning God not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit-moved power of the theologians, by which we are joined, in a manner ineffable and unknowable, to things ineffable and unknowable, in a union surpassing our own rational and intellectual power and activity.

In sum, then, one must not dare to say, nor even to conceive, anything concerning the superessential and hidden Godhead beyond what has been divinely revealed to us from the sacred Scriptures.

For of its superessentiality, which transcends word and mind and being, there must be ascribed an unknowing.

To it we must ascribe the superessential knowledge, looking up toward the heights only so far as the ray of the divine Scriptures yields itself, contracted, in reverence and holiness toward divine things, before the higher splendors.

For indeed, if one must trust the all-wise and most true theology, divine things are revealed and contemplated according to the proportion of each of the minds, the divine goodness in its saving justice distributing immeasurableness, in a manner befitting God, as something uncontainable from those who are within measure.

For just as things intelligible are ungraspable and unseen by the things of sense, and the simple and formless by things in figure and shape, and to those moulded according to bodily forms the intangible and shapeless formlessness of incorporeal things—so, according to the same principle of truth, the superessential infinitude lies beyond beings, and the unity beyond mind lies beyond minds.

And to all understandings unthinkable is the One that is beyond understanding; ineffable to every word is the Good that is beyond word—a Unity that makes one every unity, and a superessential Being, and a Mind beyond mind, and a Word beyond utterance, being unreason, unintelligence, and namelessness in the manner of none of the things that are; the cause of being to all things, yet itself not being, as beyond all being, and as it alone could properly and knowingly declare concerning itself.

Concerning this, then, as has been said—the superessential and hidden Godhead—one must not dare to say, nor even to conceive, anything beyond what has been divinely revealed to us from the sacred Scriptures.

For as it has itself transmitted concerning itself in the Scriptures, in a manner befitting the Good, the knowledge and contemplation of what it is in itself is inaccessible to all beings, as being superessentially set apart from all.

And you will find many of the theologians who have hymned it not only as invisible and incomprehensible, but also as unsearchable and untraceable, since there is no track of any who have passed through into its hidden infinitude.

Yet the Good is by no means utterly uncommunicated to any of the things that are; rather, while firmly establishing in itself the superessential ray, it appears, in a manner befitting the Good, by illuminations proportioned to each of the beings, and lifts up toward such contemplation and communion and likeness of itself as is attainable, those holy minds that approach it as is permitted and in a holy manner—neither powerlessly presuming toward what is higher than the theophany harmoniously bestowed, nor slipping downward into descent toward the worse, but stably and unswervingly stretching up toward the ray that shines upon them, and, with holy reverence, soaring aloft with sober and holy love proportioned to the permitted illuminations.

Following these divine yokes—which also govern all the holy orderings of the supercelestial beings—honoring with unsearchable and holy reverences of mind that which is hidden, beyond mind and being, of the Godhead, and the ineffable things with sober silence, we stretch up toward the rays that shine upon us in the sacred Scriptures.

Illumined by them in a supermundane manner toward the divine hymns, and shaped toward the sacred hymnody, so that we may both see the divine lights granted to us through them in due measure, and may hymn the good-giving Source of all sacred manifestation of light, as it has itself transmitted concerning itself in the sacred Scriptures.

As, for instance, that it is the cause and origin and being and life of all things; the recall and resurrection of those who fall away from it; the renewal and re-formation of those who slip toward what corrupts the godlike; the holy establishment of those moved by some unholy agitation; the security of those who stand firm; the uplifting hand for those led up to it; the illumination of those enlightened; the principle of perfecting for those being perfected; the principle of deification for those being deified; the simplicity of those being made simple; the unity of those being made one; the superessentially supreme origin of every origin; the good imparter, so far as is permitted, of the hidden; and, simply to say, the life of the living and the being of beings, the origin and cause of all life and being, through its goodness that brings beings into being and holds them together.

These things we have been initiated into by the divine Scriptures.

And you will find, so to speak, the whole sacred hymnody of the theologians arranging the divine names in a revelatory and laudatory manner with reference to the beneficent processions of the Godhead.

Hence in almost every theological treatise we see the Godhead sacredly hymned: as Monad and Henad, on account of the simplicity and unity of its supernatural indivisibility, from which, as from a unifying power, we are made one, and our divided diversities, being supermundanely folded together, we are gathered into a godlike monad and a God-imitating union; and as Triad, on account of the threefold-hypostatic manifestation of its superessential fruitfulness, from which every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is and is named; and as cause of beings, since all things were brought forth into being through its being-making goodness; and as wise and beautiful, because all beings, preserving the uncorrupted properties of their own nature, are full of all divine harmony and sacred comeliness; and as preeminently loving-mankind, because in one of its hypostases it has truly and wholly entered into communion with the things that pertain to us, calling to itself and raising up the human extremity, from which the simple Jesus was ineffably composed, and the eternal received temporal extension, and he who superessentially transcends all the order of every nature came to be within our nature, while the unchanged and unconfused establishment of his own properties remained.

And whatever other deifying lights the hidden tradition of our divinely inspired guides has bestowed upon us in a revelatory manner, following the Scriptures, into these too we have been initiated: now, in a manner proportioned to us, through the sacred veils of the loving-kindness of the Scriptures and of the hierarchical traditions, which wrap intelligible things in things of sense, and superessential things in beings, and place forms and figures about the formless and figureless, and multiply and fashion the supernatural and figureless simplicity by the variety of divided symbols.

But then, when we shall have become incorruptible and immortal, and shall have attained the Christlike and most blessed allotment, we shall be always with the Lord, according to the Scripture, filled in all-pure contemplations with his visible theophany, which shall shine round about us with most radiant splendors, as upon the disciples in that most divine Transfiguration; and partaking in his intelligible light-giving in a mind impassible and immaterial, and in the union beyond mind, in the unknowing and blessed irradiations of the supremely shining rays.

For in a more divine imitation of the supercelestial minds, we shall be equal to the angels, as the truth of the Scriptures says, and sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

But now, so far as is attainable for us, we use symbols proper to divine things, and from these again we stretch up, in proportion, toward the simple and unified truth of the intelligible visions; and after every conception befitting us of godlike things, ceasing our intellectual activities, we cast ourselves, so far as is permitted, into the superessential ray, in which all the limits of all kinds of knowledge pre-subsist in a manner more than ineffable—a ray which it is impossible either to conceive, or to speak, or in any way at all to contemplate, because it is set apart from all things and is more than unknowable, having pre-comprehended within itself, all together and superessentially, the consummations of all essential knowledge and powers, and being established above all things by an incomprehensible power, even above the supercelestial minds.

For if all kinds of knowledge are of beings, and have their limit in beings, that which is beyond all being is also set apart from all knowledge.

And indeed, if it is higher than every word and every kind of knowledge, and is altogether established beyond mind and being—being comprehensive and collective and anticipative of all things, yet itself altogether ungraspable by all, and there is of it neither sense-perception, nor imagination, nor opinion, nor name, nor word, nor contact, nor knowledge—how shall our treatise On the Divine Names be carried through, when the superessential Godhead is shown to be unnameable and beyond every name?

But as we said, when we set forth the Theological Outlines: the One, the Unknown, the Superessential, the Good-itself—which is what it is, the triadic Henad, I mean, equally God and equally Good—it is possible neither to speak nor to conceive.

But even the angel-befitting unions of the holy powers—which one must call either approaches or receptions of the more-than-unknowable and supremely-shining goodness—are ineffable and unknowable, and exist in those angels alone who have been deemed worthy of them beyond angelic knowledge.

The godlike minds, being united to these in an angel-imitating manner, so far as is attainable—since such a union of the deified minds toward the supremely-divine light comes about by a cessation of all intellectual activity—hymn it most properly through the negation of all beings, having been truly and supernaturally illumined in this from their most blessed union with it: that it is the cause of all beings, but is itself nothing, as superessentially set apart from all.

Now the superessentiality of the Godhead—whatever the superexistence of the supreme-goodness is—it is not permitted for any of those who are lovers of the truth that is beyond all truth to hymn either as word or power, or as mind or life or being, but as set apart, in a transcendent manner, from all habit, motion, life, imagination, opinion, name, word, thought, understanding, being, rest, establishment, union, limit, infinitude—from all things whatsoever that are.

But since, as the existence of goodness, by its very being it is the cause of all beings, the good-originating providence of the Godhead is to be hymned from all the things it has caused.

Since all things are both about it and for its sake, and it is itself before all things, and in it all things hold together.

And by its being is the production and subsistence of all things; and all things long for it: the intellectual and rational in a manner of knowing, those lower than these in a manner of sense-perception, and the rest by a vital movement, or by an essential and habitual aptitude.

Knowing this, then, the theologians hymn it both as nameless and from every name.

As nameless, indeed, as when they say that the Godhead itself, in one of the mystical visions of the symbolic theophany, rebuked him who said:

and, as it were, leading him away from all theonymic knowledge, said:

Why do you ask my name?

And is not this truly the wonderful name—the name that is above every name, the nameless name, the name established above every name that is named, whether in this age or in the age to come?

And as many-named, as when again they bring it in saying:

I am the One who is, the life, the light, God, the truth; and when the God-wise themselves hymn the cause of all things in many names from all the things it has caused: as good, as beautiful, as wise, as beloved, as God of gods, as Lord of lords, as Holy of holies, as eternal, as being, and as cause of ages, as supplier of life, as wisdom, as mind, as word, as knower, as possessing beforehand all the treasures of all knowledge, as power, as ruler, as King of those who reign, as Ancient of days, as ageless and unchanging, as salvation, as righteousness, as sanctification, as redemption, as surpassing all in greatness, and as in a gentle breeze.

And indeed they say that he is in minds and in souls and in bodies, and in heaven and on earth, and at the same time, in the same, the same one—within the world, around the world, beyond the world, beyond the heavens, beyond being; sun, star, fire, water, spirit, dew, cloud, stone-itself and rock, all the things that are, and none of the things that are.

Thus, then, to the cause of all things, which is also above all things, there will fit both the nameless and all the names of beings, so that it may be precisely the kingdom of the whole, and that about it may be all things, and that they may depend upon it as upon cause, as upon origin, as upon limit; and that it may be, according to the Scripture, all things in all (1 Cor 15:28), and may be truly hymned as the establisher of all, the principle-giving and perfecting and holding-together, the guard and the hearth, and that which turns all things back toward itself—and this in a unified, unrestricted, and transcendent manner.

For it is not only the cause of cohesion, or of life, or of perfecting, that, from this alone or from that one providence, the more-than-named goodness should be named.

Rather, it has pre-comprehended within itself all beings, simply and without limit, by the all-perfect goodnesses of its one and all-causing providence, and is harmoniously hymned and named from all beings together.

And indeed the theologians revere not only these theonymies—those from the all-perfect or partial providences, or from the things provided for—but they also name the more-than-shining and more-than-named goodness from certain divine apparitions which sometimes have shone upon the initiates or the prophets in the sacred sanctuaries or elsewhere, according to various causes and powers.

And they clothe it with shapes and figures—human, or fiery, or amber-like—and hymn its eyes, and ears, and locks of hair, and faces, and hands, and back, and wings, and arms, and hinder parts, and feet.

And they fashion about it crowns and thrones and cups and bowls and certain other mystical things, concerning which we shall speak, so far as we are able, in the Symbolic Theology.

But now, gathering from the Scriptures whatever pertains to the present treatise, and using the things said as a kind of canon, and looking toward them, let us proceed to the unfolding of the intelligible theonymies; and—as the hierarchical ordinance ever guides us in all our theology—let us, with a God-seeing mind, behold, properly speaking, the God-manifesting contemplations, and let us set our sacred ears beside the unfoldings of the sacred theonymies, enshrining holy things in the holy according to the divine tradition, and removing them from the laughter and mockery of the uninitiated—or rather, redeeming those very persons, if indeed there are any such men at all, from their fighting against God in this matter.

It is necessary, then, for you to guard these things, O noble Timothy, according to the most sacred instruction, and to make the divine things neither speakable nor utterable to the uninitiated.

But to me may God grant to hymn, in a manner befitting God, the beneficent many-names of the unsummoned and unnameable Godhead, and may he not take away the word of truth from my mouth (cf. Ps 119:43).

The whole supreme-divine existence—whatever it is—Goodness-itself, defining and revealing it, has been hymned by the Scriptures.

For what else is it possible to learn from the sacred theology, when it says that the Godhead itself, instructing, declared:

Why do you ask me concerning the Good?

No one is good except God alone.

This, then, has also been demonstrated by us, examined in other works: that all the God-befitting appellations are always hymned by the Scriptures not partially, but with reference to the whole and all-perfect and entire and full Godhead; and that all of them are ascribed, indivisibly, absolutely, without restriction, and as a whole, to the entirety of the all-complete and total Godhead.

And indeed, as we recalled in the Theological Outlines, if one were not to say that this is said concerning the whole Godhead, he blasphemes, and dares unlawfully to sunder the more-than-unified Henad.

It must be said, then, that this is to be understood of the whole Godhead.

For the good-natured Word himself said:

I am good; and one of the God-possessed prophets hymns the Spirit as the good (cf. Ps 143:10).

I am the One who is (Exod 3:14): if they say this is not hymned of the whole Godhead, but should force it to be circumscribed in one part, how will they hear the saying:

Thus says the One who is, who was, who is to come, the Almighty (Rev 1:8); and You are the same (Ps 102:27); and The Spirit of truth who is, who proceeds from the Father (John 15:26)?

And if they say that the source of life is not whole, how is true the sacred word which says:

As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will (John 5:21); and that It is the Spirit that gives life (John 6:63)?

And that the whole Godhead also has the lordship of all things—concerning the God-begetting Godhead, or that of the Son, it is not even possible to say, as I think, in how many ways the title 'Lord' is sung throughout theology concerning Father and Son.

But the Spirit also is Lord (cf. 2 Cor 3:17).

And the beautiful and the wise too are hymned of the whole Godhead; and the light, and the deifying, and the causative, and all things whatsoever that belong to the whole supreme-divinity, the Scriptures refer to the whole supreme-divine hymnody—comprehensively, as when it says:

All things are from God (cf. 1 Cor 11:12); and distributively, as when it says:

All things were created through him and unto him (Col 1:16); and All things hold together in him (Col 1:17); and You will send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created (Ps 104:30).

And, to say it in sum, the supreme-divine Word himself said:

I and the Father are one (John 10:30); and All things that the Father has are mine (cf. John 16:15); and All that is mine is yours, and yours is mine (John 17:10).

And again, whatever belongs to the Father and to himself, he ascribes in common and in a unified manner to the supreme-divine Spirit: the divine operations, the worship, the unfailing fountain-cause and distribution of the good-befitting gifts.

And I think that none of those who have been nurtured in undistorted understandings of the divine Scriptures will gainsay this: that all the God-befitting things belong to the whole Godhead, according to the God-perfecting word.

These things, then, having been briefly and partially demonstrated and defined by us here from the Scriptures, but sufficiently elsewhere, whatever total theonymy we shall undertake to unfold, it is to be understood of the whole Godhead.

But if anyone should say that we are in this introducing a confusion of the God-befitting distinction, we, for our part, do not think that such an argument is sufficient even to persuade itself that it is true.

For if there is anyone at all who sets himself against the Scriptures, he will surely be far removed even from our philosophy; and if he has no care for the God-wisdom that comes from the Scriptures, how should we have any care to guide him toward theological knowledge?

But if he looks toward the truth of the Scriptures, then we too, using this as a canon and a light for our defense, shall walk unswervingly, so far as we are able, declaring that theology delivers some things in a unified manner, and others in a distinguished manner; and that it is permitted neither to divide the unified things nor to confuse the distinguished things, but, following it so far as we are able, to look up toward the divine flashings.

For having received from there the divine revelations as it were a most excellent canon of truth, we strive to guard within ourselves the things laid up there, unmultiplied and undiminished and unaltered, being guarded by the guard of the Scriptures, and being empowered by them, so that, by guarding them, we may ourselves be guarded.

The unified things, then, belong to the whole Godhead, as we demonstrated more at length from the Scriptures in the Theological Outlines: the more-than-good, the more-than-divine, the superessential, the more-than-living, the more-than-wise, and whatever belongs to the transcendent negation; together with which are also all the causative names—the good, the beautiful, the being, the life-generating, the wise, and whatever the cause of all good things is named from its good-befitting gifts.

But the distinguished things are the superessential name and reality of Father and of Son and of Spirit, no convertibility or any community at all being introduced among these.

And there is, besides this, yet another distinguished thing: the all-perfect and unchangeable existence of Jesus among us, and whatever essential mysteries belong to his loving-kindness toward mankind.

But it is necessary, as I think, rather to take up and set forth the all-perfect mode of the divine union and distinction, in order that the whole discourse may become easy for us to survey, refusing all that is intricate and obscure, but defining what is proper, so far as we are able, in a well-distinguished and clear and well-ordered manner.

For, as I said also in other works, the sacred initiates of our theological tradition call the divine unions the hidden and unemergent super-establishments of the more-than-ineffable and more-than-unknowable abidingness; and the distinctions, the good-befitting processions and manifestations of the Godhead.

And they say, following the sacred Scriptures, that there are certain particular unions and distinctions both of the aforementioned union and again of the distinction.

To the source-principle Triad, common is the superessential existence, the more-than-divine Godhead, the more-than-good goodness; the identity, beyond all, of the whole property that is beyond all; the unity beyond source-principle; the unspeakable, the many-voiced; the unknowing, the all-intelligible; the affirmation of all, the negation of all; that which is beyond every affirmation and negation; the abiding and establishment, if one may so speak, of the source-principle hypostases in one another—wholly more-than-unified and confused in no part—just as the lights of lamps (that I may use sensible and familiar examples) being in one house, are wholly in one another's wholes, and yet have an exact distinction from one another that subsists particularly: unified in distinction, and distinguished in union.

And indeed we see, in a house where many lamps are present, the lights of all of them united into some one light, and shining forth one undivided radiance; and no one, as I think, could distinguish, from the air that contains all the lights, the light of this particular lamp from the others, and see the one without the other, since all are wholly mingled in all without confusion.

But if one were to take one of the torches out of the room, all its own light will go out with it, drawing none of the other lights into itself, nor leaving any of its own with the others.

For, as I said, their whole union toward the whole was wholly unmingled and confused in no part—and this in a body, the air, and from material fire on which the light depended.

Whereas we say that the superessential union is super-established not only above the unions in bodies, but also above those in souls themselves and in minds themselves—unions which the godlike and supercelestial lights possess, wholly through wholes, without mingling and in a supermundane manner, according to a participation proportioned to those who partake of the union that is exalted above all.

But there is also a distinction in the superessential theology: not only the one I spoke of—that according to the union itself, each of the source-principle hypostases is established without mingling and without confusion—but also that the things of the superessential divine-begetting are not convertible with one another.

But the Father alone is the source of the superessential Godhead, the Father not being Son nor the Son Father, while the hymns proper to each of the supreme-divine hypostases are reverently preserved.

These, then, are the unions and distinctions according to the ineffable union and existence.

But if the divine distinction is also the good-befitting procession of the divine union, which, while more-than-unifiedly multiplying and manifolding itself in goodness, the unrelated impartations, the bringings-into-being, the bringings-into-life, the bringings-into-wisdom, and the other gifts of the goodness that is the cause of all, are unified according to the divine distinction; and according to these, the unparticipatedly-participated things are hymned from the participations and the participants.

And this is common and unified and one to the whole Godhead: that it is wholly participated by each of the participants, and by none in any part—just as a point in the center of a circle is participated by all the straight lines lying around it in the circle, and just as many impressions of a seal partake of the archetypal seal, and in each of the impressions the whole and the same seal is present, and in none in any part.

But the unparticipatedness of the all-causing Godhead transcends even these, in that there is neither any contact of it, nor any other commingled communion with the participants.

Nor is the seal whole and the same in all the imprints.

But of this the seal is not the cause—for it gives its whole self and the same to each—but the difference of the participants makes the impressions of the one and whole and same archetype to be dissimilar.

For instance, if the material be soft and easily-impressed and smooth and well-marked, and neither resistant and hard, nor easily-dissolved and unstable, it will have the figure pure and clear and abiding.

But if it be lacking in any of the said aptitude, this will be the cause of its not-being-participated and of its unclearness, and of the other defects which come about by an unfitness for participation.

...has communicated the principle—unless one should say it is according to the good-befitting and man-loving common-counsel, and according to all the transcendent and ineffable divine-working, which the unchangeable one performed when he became as we are: the one who is both God and the Word of God.

So we too strive both to unify the divine things in word, and to distinguish them, just as the divine things themselves are both unified and distinguished.

But of these unions and distinctions—as many as we have found in the Scriptures to be God-befitting causes—having treated of each separately, so far as is possible, in the Theological Outlines, we have set them forth, unfolding and expounding some by the true word, and bringing the sacred and untroubled mind to the radiant visions of the Scriptures, while to others, as mystical, we were united, according to the divine tradition, beyond intellectual activity.

For all divine things, even those that are manifested to us, are known by their participations alone.

But what they themselves are, in their own source and establishment, is beyond mind and all being and knowledge.

For instance, if we should name the superessential hiddenness God, or life, or being, or light, or word, we understand nothing other than the powers brought forth from it to us—the deifying, or being-making, or life-generating, or wisdom-bestowing powers.

But to it itself we cast ourselves by the release of all intellectual activities, seeing no deification or life or being which exactly resembles the cause that is set apart from all things in every transcendence.

Again, that the Father is the source-Godhead, while the Son and the Spirit are, if one may so speak, God-planted shoots and as it were blossoms and superessential lights of the God-begetting Godhead, we have received from the sacred Scriptures.

But how these things are, it is possible neither to say nor to conceive.

But the whole power of our intellectual activity reaches only thus far: that every divine fatherhood and sonship has been bestowed both upon us and upon the supercelestial powers from the fatherhood and sonship that is set apart from all—from which the godlike minds both become and are named gods, and sons of gods, and fathers of gods, this fatherhood and sonship being accomplished spiritually, that is to say, incorporeally, immaterially, intelligibly; while the supreme-divine Spirit is super-established above all intelligible immateriality and deification, and the Father and the Son are transcendently set apart from all divine fatherhood and sonship.

For there is not an exact resemblance between things caused and their causes; rather, the things caused have such images of the causes as are admissible, while the causes themselves are set apart and super-established above the things caused, according to the principle of their own source.

And, to use examples from our own sphere: pleasures and pains are said to be productive of being-pleased and being-pained, yet they themselves are neither pleased nor pained.

And fire, which warms and burns, is not said to be burned or warmed.

And if one were to say that life-itself lives, or that light-itself is illumined, he will not speak rightly, according to my reasoning—unless perhaps he should say these things in another sense: namely, that the properties of the things caused pre-exist in the causes in a superabundant and essential manner.

But even the most manifest of all theology—the God-forming of Jesus among us—is both ineffable to every word and unknowable to every mind, even to the very first of the most ancient angels.

And that he became substantial in the manner of a man, we have received mystically; but we do not know how, from virginal blood, by another law contrary to nature, he was formed; and how, with dry feet bearing bodily weight and the heaviness of matter, he walked upon the liquid and unstable substance; and the other things that belong to the supernatural natural-account of Jesus.

But these things have both been sufficiently said by us in other works, and have been hymned most supernaturally by our renowned guide in his Theological Elements—things which he either received from the sacred theologians, or also discerned from the scientific search of the Scriptures by much exercise and practice about them, or was even initiated into by some more-divine inspiration, not only having learned but also having suffered the divine things, and from his sympathy with them, if one may so speak, having been perfected unto the unteachable and mystical union and faith with them.

...of Jesus, he says in the Theological Elements gathered by him.

The Godhead of the Son—the cause and consummation of all, which preserves the parts in agreement with the whole, and is neither part nor whole, and is both whole and part, as having comprehended within itself and surpassing and possessing beforehand every part and whole; perfect among the imperfect as principle of perfection, but imperfect among the perfect as more-than-perfect and before-perfect; a form forming form among the formless as principle of form, but formless among the forms as beyond form; a being treading undefiledly upon all beings, yet superessentially set apart from all being; defining all the principles and orders, yet super-established above every principle and order.

And it is the measure of beings, and an age, and beyond age and before age; full among the deficient, more-than-full among the full; ineffable, unspeakable, beyond mind, beyond life, beyond being.

It has the supernatural in a supernatural manner, the superessential in a superessential manner.

Hence, since out of loving-kindness it came even as far as nature, and was truly made substantial, and the more-than-divine one was called a man—but may the things we hymn beyond mind and word be gracious toward us—even in these things he has the supernatural and superessential: not only in that, unchangeably and unconfusedly, he has entered into communion with us, having suffered nothing in his more-than-fullness from the ineffable self-emptying, but also in that—this newest of all new things—in our natural properties he was supernatural, in things according to being he was superessential, transcending all that is ours, out of what is ours, beyond us.

But let us proceed to the aim of our discourse, unfolding, so far as is attainable for us, the common and unified names of the divine distinction.

And, in order that we may clearly predefine concerning all things in order, we say that the divine distinction is, as has been said, the good-befitting processions of the Godhead.

For instance: since God is superessentially being, and bestows being upon beings, and brings forth all the beings into being, that one Being is said to be multiplied by the bringing-forth from itself of the many beings, while it remains no less that one and unified one in the multitude, and unified in the procession, and full in the distinction, by its being superessentially set apart from all beings, and by the singular bringing-forth of all, and by the undiminished outpouring of its undiminished impartations.

But being one, and imparting of the one to every part and whole, and to one and multitude, it is one likewise in a superessential manner—being neither a part of the multitude, nor a whole made of parts.

And thus it is neither one, nor does it partake of one.

But far beyond these, it is one beyond the one—being to beings one and an undivided multitude, unfilled and more-than-full, bringing forth and perfecting and holding together every one and multitude.

Again, by the deification that proceeds from it—many gods coming into being according to the godlikeness of each, so far as is possible—there seems to be, and is said to be, a distinction and multiplication of the one God; yet it is no less the source-God and the more-than-God, superessentially one God, undivided among the divided, unified with himself, and unmingled and unmultiplied among the many.

And, having understood this in a supernatural manner, our common guide—and the guide of our leader—toward the divine light-giving, he who was great in divine things, the light of the world, says this, inspiredly, in his sacred writings:

For even if there are those who are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many gods and many lords—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him (1 Cor 8:5-6).

For indeed, in divine things the unions prevail over and take precedence of the distinctions, and the things are no less unified even after the undeparting and unified distinction of the One.

These common and unified distinctions—or rather good-befitting processions—of the whole Godhead, we shall try, so far as is possible, to hymn from the theonymies that manifest them in the Scriptures, this being, as has been said, predetermined: that every good-working theonymy, upon whichever of the supreme-divine hypostases it may be laid, is to be understood, without restriction, of the whole supreme-divine totality.

And first, if it seems good, let us examine the all-perfect appellation of Good, which reveals all the processions of God, invoking the good-originating and more-than-good Triad which reveals all its own most-good providences.

For it is necessary for us first, by prayers, to be led up to it as to the source-principle of good, and, by approaching it more nearly, to be initiated in this into the all-good gifts that are established about it.

For it indeed is present to all things, but not all things are present to it.

But then, when we invoke it with all-pure prayers, with an untroubled mind, and with the aptitude toward divine union, then we too are present to it.

For it itself is not in a place, so as either to be absent from anything, or to pass over from some things into others.

But even to say that it is in all the things that are, falls short of its infinitude that is above all and comprehensive of all.

Let us, then, lift up our very selves by prayers to the higher upward-gaze of the divine and good rays—as if, when a many-lighted chain were suspended from the height of heaven and reaching down to here, and we, ever grasping it forward with hand over hand in turn, seemed to draw it down, but in reality were not bringing that one down, present as it is both above and below, but were ourselves being lifted up toward the higher splendors of the many-lighted rays.

Or, as when having embarked upon a ship, and holding fast to the cables stretched out toward us from some rock, and as it were given to us for our taking hold, we drew not the rock toward us, but in truth ourselves and the ship toward the rock.

Just as, conversely, if one standing upon the ship should push away the coastal rock, he will do nothing to the standing and immovable rock, but will separate himself from it; and the more he pushes it away, the more he will be flung off from it.

And this perhaps is worthy of an apology: that, although our renowned guide Hierotheus supernaturally compiled the Theological Elements, we, as though those were not sufficient, composed both other works and the present theology.

For indeed, if he had deemed it worthy to treat in order all the theological subjects, and had gone through, by particular unfoldings, the sum of all theology, we should never have come to such a degree either of madness or of folly as to think that we could apply ourselves to theology more keenly or more divinely than he, or, by saying the same things twice superfluously, to talk idly—and moreover to wrong both a teacher and a friend, and us who, after Paul the divine, were instructed from his oracles—snatching for ourselves his most renowned contemplation and revelation.

But since indeed that one, expounding the divine things in the manner of an elder, set forth for us synoptic definitions, comprehending many things in one—as for us and for as many as are teachers of newly-initiated souls—exhorting us to unfold and distinguish, by a discourse proportioned to us, the synoptic and unified compactions of that most intellectual man's power; and since you yourself also often urged us to this, and even sent back the book itself as surpassing—

On this account we too set apart that one, as a teacher of perfect and elder-like understandings, for those above the many, as a kind of second oracles and as following close upon the God-given ones.

But to those of our own level, we shall deliver the divine things in a manner proportioned to us.

For if solid food belongs to the perfect (cf. Heb 5:14), of how great a perfection would it be to feast others on this?

Rightly, then, has this also been said by us: that the self-seeing vision of the intelligible Scriptures, and the synoptic teaching of them, requires an elder-like power; but the knowledge and thorough learning of the discourses that lead toward this befits subordinate consecrators and ministers.

And yet this too has been very carefully observed by us: that, concerning the things distinctly clarified by the divine guide himself in clear revelation, we have never at all undertaken any repetition in clarifying the same oracle set forth by him.

...the hierarchs, when we also—as you know—both you yourself, and many of our sacred brethren, had come together for the viewing of the life-originating and God-receiving body; and there were present also James the brother of God, and Peter, the foremost and most elder summit of the theologians; and then, after the viewing, it seemed good that all the hierarchs should hymn, each as he was able, the infinitely-powerful goodness of the supreme-divine weakness: he prevailed over all, after the theologians—as you know—of the other sacred initiates, wholly departing out of himself, wholly standing out of himself, and suffering the communion with the things hymned, and being judged, by all who heard and saw and knew him and knew him not, to be God-possessed and a divine hymnodist.

And what should I say to you concerning the things there set forth in theology?

For indeed, unless I too have forgotten myself, I know that I often heard from you also certain portions of those inspired hymnodies.

So great was your zeal not to pursue the divine things as a mere side-matter.

And, in order that we may pass over the mystical things there—both as unutterable to the many and as already known to you—when it was necessary to share with the many, and to bring as many as possible toward the sacred-knowledge that is ours, how he surpassed the many of the sacred teachers, both in length of practice, and in purity of mind, and in exactness of demonstrations, and in the rest of his sacred discourses, so that we should never have undertaken to look face to face toward so great a sun.

For so have we been aware of ourselves, and we know that we are able neither to conceive sufficiently the intelligible things of the divine, nor to utter and express what may be spoken of the knowledge of God.

And being far off, we fall short of the knowledge of the divine men in theological truth—for we should certainly, through excessive reverence, have come to this point of altogether neither hearing nor saying anything concerning the divine philosophy, had we not taken to heart that one ought not to neglect the knowledge of the divine things that is within our reach.

And this persuaded us, not only the natural longings of our minds, which ever yearn lovingly for such contemplation of the supernatural as is granted, but also the very best ordinance of the divine laws itself, which forbids us to busy ourselves with the things above us, as beyond our worth and as unattainable, yet earnestly enjoins us to learn all things, as many as are permitted and granted to us, and in a good manner to impart them to others.

Persuaded, then, by these things, and neither growing weary nor turning coward toward the attainable discovery of the divine things, but, on the other hand, not being able to endure leaving without help those unable to contemplate things greater than ours, we set ourselves to writing, daring to introduce nothing new, but distinguishing and revealing, by finer and more particular examinations of each, the things said synoptically by the one who is truly Hierotheus.

Come, then, let us now proceed in our discourse to the appellation of Good itself, which the theologians set apart, in a transcendent manner, for the more-than-divine Godhead, and apart from all things—calling, as I think, the supreme-divine existence itself Goodness, and saying that, by being the Good as essential good, it extends its goodness into all the things that are.

For just as our sun, not by reasoning or by choice, but by its very being, illumines all the things that are able to partake of its light according to their own principle, so also the Good, beyond the sun as beyond a dim image—being the transcendent archetype—by its very existence sends forth, in proportion, upon all the things that are, the rays of its whole goodness.

...removed from flowing and ever-otherwise-borne alteration, and are conceived as incorporeal and immaterial, and as minds they understand in a supermundane manner, and are illumined with the principles of beings in a manner proper to them, and again convey their proper things over to their kindred.

And they have their abiding from the goodness, and from there is their establishment and cohesion and guard and hearth of good things; and longing for it, they have both being and well-being, and being moulded toward it so far as is attainable, they are good-formed, and they communicate to those after them, as the divine ordinance directs, of the gifts that have passed over into them from the Good.

...the unconfused distinctions, the powers that lead up the subordinate toward the superior, the providences of the elder over the secondary, the guards of each power's proper things and the unfailing self-foldings about themselves, the identities and summits about the longing for the Good, and the other things that have been said by us in the work On the Angelic Properties and Orders.

But also, whatever belongs to the celestial hierarchy—the angel-befitting purifications, the supermundane illuminations, and the perfectings of the whole angelic perfection—are from the all-causing and source-principle goodness, from which both the good-formedness was bestowed upon them, and the manifesting in themselves of the hidden goodness, and the being angels, as it were, declarers of the divine silence, and as bright lights set forth as interpreters of the one who is in the inmost shrines.

But also, after those sacred and holy minds, the souls and whatever good things belong to souls exist on account of the more-than-good goodness: their being intellectual, their having the essential life imperishable, their very being, and their being able to be lifted up toward the angelic lives, and through these, as through good guides, to be led up to the source-principle of all good things, and to come into participation of the illuminations that gush forth from there, according to their own proportion, and to partake of the gift of the good-formedness so far as their power allows; and whatever other things have been enumerated by us in the work On the Soul.

But also concerning, if one must say it, the irrational souls themselves, or living creatures—as many as cleave the air, and as many as walk upon the earth, and as many as are stretched out upon the earth, and the things that have obtained life in waters or amphibiously, and as many as live hidden and buried under the earth, and, simply, as many as have a sense-perceptive soul or life—all these too have been ensouled and made living on account of the Good.

And all plants too have their nourishing and moving life from the Good; and whatever soulless and lifeless substance there is, it both exists on account of the Good, and on account of it has obtained its essential habit.

But if the Good is also above all the things that are—as indeed it is—then it both gives form to the formless.

And in it alone, even that which is without being is a superabundance of being, and that which is without life is surpassing life, and that which is without mind is overshooting wisdom, and whatever in the Good belongs to the transcendent form-giving of the formless things.

And, if it be permitted to say it, even not-being-itself longs for the Good that is above all the things that are, and strives somehow to be itself also in the Good—that is, in the truly superessential, according to the negation of all things.

But—what, passing through in the midst, has escaped us—the Good is also the cause of the celestial origins and consummations: of that increaseless and undiminished and altogether unchangeable good-flowing; of the noiseless (if one may so speak) movements of the all-great heavenly-course, and of the starry orders and comelinesses and lights and establishments, and of the transitional manifold-motion of some of the stars, and of the periodic restoration of the two luminaries—which the Scriptures call great (Gen 1:16)—from the same to the same, by which the days and nights that are with us are bounded, and the months and years measured, defining and numbering and ordering and holding together the cyclic movements of time and of the things in time.

What might one say concerning the solar ray itself, in itself?

For from the Good is the light, and it is an image of the goodness.

For just as the goodness of the Godhead that is beyond all things reaches from the highest and most-elder beings down to the lowest, and is yet still above all—neither do the things above attain to its transcendence, nor do the things below pass beyond its compass—but it both illumines all that are able, and creates and gives life and holds together and perfects, and is the measure of beings, and an age, and number, and order, and compass, and cause, and end; so likewise the manifest image of the divine goodness, this great and all-radiant and ever-shining sun, by a far-distant echo of the Good, both illumines all things that are able to partake of it, and has its light over-spread, unfolding into all the visible world, above and below, the beams of its proper rays.

And if anything does not partake of it, this is not of the feebleness or shortness of its illuminating diffusion, but of those which, through unfitness for the reception of light, do not unfold themselves into participation of the light.

Indeed, the ray, passing through many of the things that are thus disposed, illumines the things beyond them; and there is nothing of the visible things which it does not reach, according to the surpassing greatness of its proper radiance.

...it moves and nourishes and increases and perfects and purifies and renews.

And the light is a measure and number of hours, of days, and of all the time that is with us.

For it is the very light—even if then it was without figure—which the divine Moses said also bounded that first triad of the days that are with us (cf. Gen 1:3-13).

And just as the goodness turns all things toward itself, and is the source-gathering of the scattered, as a source-principle and unifying Godhead, and all things long for it as for origin, as for cohesion, as for end;

And the Good is, as the Scriptures say, that from which all things subsisted and exist, having been brought forth as from an all-perfect cause, and in which all things hold together, being guarded and maintained as in an all-ruling foundation, and unto which all things are turned back, as each unto its own proper end, and which all things long for—the intellectual and rational in a manner of knowing, the sense-perceptive in a manner of sense, those without share in sense-perception by the innate movement of the vital longing, and the lifeless and merely-existent by their aptitude toward the merely essential participation.

According to the same principle of the manifest image, the light too gathers and turns toward itself all things that see, that move, that are illumined, that are warmed, and, in sum, all that are held together by its beams.

And all its sensible things long for it, either as for seeing, or as for being moved and illumined and warmed, and, in sum, as for being held together by the light.

And I by no means say, according to the account of antiquity, that the sun, being a god and creator of this universe, governs the visible world in its own right; but rather that the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, are clearly seen—both his eternal power and divinity (Rom 1:20).

But these things belong to the Symbolic Theology.

Now we must hymn the intelligible light-name of the Good, and must say that the Good is called intelligible light, because it fills every supercelestial mind with intelligible light, and drives out all ignorance and error from all the souls in which it comes to be, and imparts to all of them holy light, and cleanses their intellectual eyes of the mist that lies about them from ignorance, and stirs up and unfolds those that have been closed up by the great weight of darkness, and imparts first a moderate splendor, then, when these as it were taste of the light and long for it the more, gives itself the more and shines abundantly, because they have loved much (cf. Luke 7:47), and ever lifts them up toward the things before, according to their own proportion for upward-gazing.

Intelligible light, then, is said to be the Good that is above all light, as a source-principle ray and over-gushing outpouring of light, illumining out of its own fullness every supermundane and circum-mundane and intra-mundane mind, and renewing all their intellectual powers, and embracing all by being stretched over all, and surpassing all by lying above all, and simply gathering into itself the whole lordship of the illuminating power, as source-principle light and more-than-light, and surpassing and possessing it beforehand, and gathering together all intellectual and rational things and making them one.

For just as ignorance is divisive of those who have gone astray, so the presence of the intelligible light is gathering and unifying of those who are illumined, and is perfecting, and moreover turns them back toward the truly Real, turning them away from many opinions, and gathering their varied views, or, more properly to say, their fancies, into one true and pure and uniform knowledge, and filling them with one and unifying light.

This Good is hymned by the sacred theologians both as beautiful and as beauty, and as love and as beloved, and by whatever other comely theonymies belong to the beauty-making and graced loveliness.

But the beautiful and beauty are not to be divided in the case of the cause that has comprehended the whole in one.

For these, in the case of all beings, dividing into participations and participants, we call beautiful that which partakes of beauty, and beauty the participation of the beauty-making cause of all beautiful things.