Divine Names 1 part 2/6

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.

...the impartations, and as calling all things to itself (whence also it is called beauty), and as gathering all things in all into the same; and beautiful, as at once all-beautiful and more-than-beautiful, and ever being according to the same things and in the same way beautiful, neither coming into being nor perishing, neither increasing nor diminishing, nor beautiful in one respect and ugly in another, nor at one time and not at another, nor beautiful toward one thing and ugly toward another, nor here beautiful and there not, as being beautiful to some and not beautiful to others; but as being beautiful by itself, with itself, in itself, ever uniform in being beautiful, and as possessing beforehand within itself, in a transcendent manner, the source-loveliness of everything beautiful.

For in the simple and supernatural nature of all beautiful things, all loveliness and everything beautiful pre-exists uniformly, after the manner of cause.

From this Beautiful comes being to all the things that are, each beautiful according to its own principle; and on account of the Beautiful are the fittings-together of all things, and the friendships, and the communions; and by the Beautiful are all things made one; and the Beautiful is the origin of all things as the efficient cause, both moving the whole and holding it together by the love of its own loveliness; and it is the end of all things, and the beloved, as the final cause—for it is for the sake of the Beautiful that all things come to be—and the paradigmatic cause, because all things are defined according to it.

And the discourse will dare to say even this: that even not-being partakes of the beautiful and good—for then it too is beautiful and good, when in God, according to the negation of all things, it is superessentially hymned.

This one Good and Beautiful is in a unitary manner the cause of all the many beautiful and good things.

From this come all the essential existences of beings, the unions, the distinctions, the identities, the differences, the similarities, the dissimilarities, the communions of opposites, the unmingledness of the things unified, the providences of the superior, the mutual holdings of things of the same rank, the turnings-back of the inferior, the self-guarding and unmovable abidings and establishments of all things; and again, the communions and fittings-together of all things in all, each in a manner proper to itself, and the unconfused friendships and harmonies of the universe, the blendings within the universe, the indissoluble cohesions of beings, the unfailing successions of things that come to be, all the rests and the movements—those of minds, those of souls, those of bodies.

For rest and motion to all things is that which is above all rest and all motion, establishing each in its own principle, and moving each toward its own proper motion.

And the divine minds are said to move circularly, when they are united to the beginningless and endless illuminations of the Beautiful and the Good; rectilinearly, when they go forth to the providence of the subordinate, accomplishing all things by a straight course; and in a spiral manner, because, even while providing for the inferior, they remain unemergently in identity, dancing round, without ceasing, about the identity-causing Beautiful and Good.

But the soul's motion is circular: the entrance into itself from things without, and the uniform in-folding of its intellectual powers, as in some circle, granting it freedom from wandering, and turning it back from the many things without, gathering it first into itself, and then, having become uniform, uniting it to the powers that are unitarily unified, and thus leading it by the hand toward the Beautiful and Good, that which is above all the things that are, and is one and the same and beginningless and endless.

And the soul moves in a spiral manner, in so far as it is illumined, in a manner proper to itself, with the divine knowledges—not intellectually and unitarily, but rationally and discursively, and as it were by mingled and transitional activities.

And it moves rectilinearly, when, not entering into itself and being moved by a unitary intellectuality—for this, as I said, is the motion in a circle—but going forth to the things about it, and from things without, as from certain varied and multiplied symbols, it is led up to the simple and unified contemplations.

...the Beautiful and Good, that which is above all rest and motion.