Disputation at Bizya 1 part 7/10

just as also the vow is a promise, that is, a pledge, of the things which men, sincerely serving God, offer up — presenting Scripture as bearing witness to their own statement in many places, as [in], 'Vow, and render to the Lord our God';

and, 'Whatever I vowed, I will render to you, my Savior and Lord';

and again concerning prayer, as [in], 'And Anna prayed to the Lord, saying,'

'Lord Adonai, Eloi Sabaoth, if you will indeed hear and hearken to your handmaid, and give me fruit of the womb;'

and, 'Hezekiah king of Judah, and Isaiah son of Amoz the prophet, prayed to the Lord;'

and, 'Whenever you pray, say, Our Father, who art in the heavens,' spoken by the Lord to the disciples;

so that it is possible that the vow be the keeping of the commandments, ratified according to the resolve of the one who has vowed;

and that prayer be the petition, by the one who has kept [the commandments], for a share in the good things that were held in store [as promised];

or rather, the vow [is] the contest of virtue, which God receives most gladly when it is offered;

and prayer, the prize of virtue;

which God, rejoicing greatly, gives in return

Therefore, since it has been shown that prayer is the petition for the good things [given] by the Word incarnate, let us, having set the Word himself before us as the teacher of prayer, approach with confidence, carefully working out, as far as contemplation allows, the meaning of each phrase;

as the Word himself is wont to supply [it] beneficially, and grants [us] to grasp the power of the meaning intended by the one who utters it

'Our Father, who art in the heavens:'

Straightway, in these words, the Lord fittingly teaches those who pray to begin with theology, and he initiates [them] into the manner of existence of the creative cause of beings, since he is, according to essence, the cause of the things that are

For the words of the prayer contain a declaration of the Father, and of the name of the Father, and of the kingdom of the Father;

so that from this very beginning we may be taught to venerate, invoke, and worship the one Trinity

For the name of God and Father, subsisting essentially, is the only-begotten Son;

[and it is] holy, [as Scripture] says: 'Let your Holy Spirit come, and cleanse us'

For the Father does not have the name as something acquired, nor indeed do we conceive the kingdom as a dignity superadded to him

For he did not begin to be, so as then also to begin to be Father or King;

but, ever being, he is ever also Father and King;

having begun neither to be, nor at all to be Father or King

But if, ever being, he is ever also Father and King, then ever also the Son and the Holy Spirit essentially coexist with the Father, being from him and naturally in him, beyond cause and reckoning, but not coming to be after him on account of some later cause

For relation possesses the force of mutual indication, not allowing the terms of which it is, and is called, a relation, to be considered [as existing] after one another

Beginning, then, from this [very opening] of the prayer, we are led [urged] to honor

the consubstantial and super-essential Trinity, as the creative cause of our own generation

Moreover, we are also taught to proclaim the grace of adoption bestowed upon us, being counted worthy to call, by grace, him who is by nature [our] Creator, 'Father';

so that, revering the title of the One who by grace has begotten us, we may be zealous, in our life, to imprint the characteristics of the one who begot us, hallowing his name upon earth, both taking after our Father and being shown through our deeds to be [his] children, and magnifying, through whatever we think or do, the natural Son of the Father who is himself the author of this adoption

And we hallow the name of the Father who is by grace in the heavens, namely by mortifying material desire, and being cleansed of corrupting passions;

if indeed sanctification is the complete immobility and mortification of desire according to sense-perception;

in which state, having come to be, we quiet the unseemly barkings of anger, since it no longer has desire to arouse it and persuade it to contend fiercely on behalf of its own pleasures, [desire] having already been put to death by holiness according to reason

For anger, being by nature the champion of desire, is naturally disposed to cease its raging when it sees that [desire] has been put to death

Fittingly, then, with the casting away of anger and desire, the dominion of the kingdom of God and Father comes, according to the prayer, upon those who, after the setting aside of these, are counted worthy to say, 'Thy kingdom come;'

that is, the Holy Spirit;

already having become, by the word and manner of meekness, a temple made for God through the Spirit

'For upon whom,' he says, 'shall I rest, but upon the one who is meek and humble, and who trembles at my words?'

so that from this it is clear that the kingdom of God and the Father belongs to the humble and the meek.

For, it says, ‘Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.’

This earth, which by nature has received a position in the middle of the universe, God did not promise as an inheritance to those who love him;

if indeed he speaks truly when he says, ‘For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage;’

but are like angels in the heavens.

And elsewhere again, to another who served with goodwill: ‘Enter into the joy of your Lord.’

And after him the divine Apostle: ‘For the trumpet will sound, and the dead in Christ will rise first, incorruptible.’

Then we who are alive, who are left, will together with them be caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

…a settled state — one moved by reason, and desiring to be a servant of reason, might at some point call this the very same thing as ‘earth.’

But now I think ‘earth’ is spoken of as the fixed and utterly unchangeable habit and power of the immutability of the meek in what is good, as one that always exists with the Lord, and has unfailing joy, and has laid hold of the kingdom prepared from of old, and has been deemed worthy of the standing and rank in heaven;

as though this reason of virtue had received, as it were, a certain ‘earth,’ a position in the middle of all things;

according to which the meek person, being in the middle between praise and blame, remains without passion, neither being puffed up by praise [being elated or vainglorious], nor being made gloomy by blame [being grieved].

For the one whose reason is by nature free, having removed desire from these things, does not perceive them when they trouble him with their assaults, having made himself cease from the storm concerning them, and having transferred the whole power of his soul toward the divine and inactive freedom;

of which the Lord, desiring to impart to his own disciples, says, ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and humble in heart;’

and you will find rest for your souls;

calling ‘rest’ the might of the divine kingdom, as producing in the worthy a lordship freed from all servitude.

But if to the humble and meek is given the indestructible power of the incorruptible kingdom, who is so unloving and altogether without appetite for the divine goods as not to desire in the highest degree humility and meekness, so that he might become, insofar as it is attainable for a man, the very character of the divine kingdom, bearing in himself, by grace, the unaltered formation in the Spirit of him who is truly, by nature and in essence, the great King, Christ?

in which, says the divine Apostle, there is neither male nor female;

that is, anger and desire;

the one [anger], tyrannically carrying reasoning along with it, and putting the mind outside the law of nature;

the other [desire], making the things that come after the one and only desirable and impassible Cause and Nature more lovable [than that Cause itself], and on this account setting the flesh in higher esteem than the spirit;

and making the enjoyment of things visible appear more delightful than the glory and splendor of things intelligible;

by the smoothness of sensory pleasure, barring the mind from the divine and kindred apprehension of intelligible things;

but only reason alone, stripped through abundance of virtue even of the utmost of that affection and disposition for the body which — though impassible — is nevertheless natural to it, the spirit completely conquering nature and persuading reason to leave off from moral philosophy, whenever the mind must be united with the supra-essential Word through simple and undivided contemplation;

even if it is naturally disposed to contribute to it, toward an easy severance and crossing-over of things that flow in time;

once these things have been crossed over, it is not reasonable that one who has been declared unrestrained by things sensible should still be burdened, as though by a sheepskin, with the manner that accords with mere character/habit.

And the great Elijah shows this clearly, through what he did, typologically demonstrating this mystery;

for the sheepskin — I mean the mortification of the flesh, in which the magnificence of moral order is fixed — he gave, at his being taken up, to Elisha, as an ally of the spirit against every opposing power, and as a blow to unstable and flowing nature;

of which nature the Jordan was a type, so that the disciple, surrounded by the murky and slippery [current] of attachment to material things, might not be held back from the crossing to the holy land;

but he himself, going forth toward God unhindered, held back by no relation whatsoever to any existing thing, simple in desire and uncompounded in gnomic will, made his journey toward him who is simple by nature, through the interlinked generic virtues, joined to one another in a manner known to him, as though by fiery horses.

For he knew that it is necessary for the disciple of Christ to be rid of unequal dispositions, whose very difference exposes the estrangement [from God];

for it is clearly the boiling of the blood, when the irascible faculty is stirred, that produces this;

and having attained — as one living and moving and being in Christ — he put away from himself the strange [and strange] generation of unequal things;

not bearing in himself, as it were male and female, the opposite dispositions, as I said, of these passions;

lest reason be enslaved to these, being altered by their unstable changes — reason in which the reverence of the divine image has naturally been blended, persuading the soul to be reshaped according to gnomic will toward the divine likeness, and to become [a member] of the great kingdom that co-subsists essentially with God and Father of all, as an all-radiant dwelling of the Holy Spirit, receiving wholly, if it is lawful to say so, according to what is possible, the authority to know the divine nature;

according to which authority a coming-into-being naturally occurs whereby [the soul] ceases from worse things and comes to subsist in better things, the soul, by the grace of its calling, guarding within itself, as though equal to God, the inviolable subsistence of the good things bestowed [on it];

according to which [disposition] Christ, ever willing, is mystically born, being made flesh through those who are being saved;

and making the soul that gives birth [to him] a mother of virgins — a soul which, to put it briefly, does not have, in respect of relation, as it were male and female, the marks of the nature subject to corruption and generation.

Let no one be surprised at hearing ‘corruption’ placed before ‘generation.’

For examining, without passion and together with right reason, the nature of things that come to be and cease to be, one will clearly find that generation begins from corruption and ends in corruption;

the meaningful/signifying passions of which, as I said, Christ does not have;

that is, the life and reason of Christ, and of him who lives according to Christ;

if indeed the one who says this speaks truly: ‘For in Christ Jesus there is neither male nor female;’

that is, indicating the signs and the passions of the nature subject to corruption and generation;

but only a god-formed reason, qualified by divine knowledge, and a single movement of gnomic will, choosing virtue alone.

‘Neither Greek nor Jew,’ by which is signified the differing account concerning the opinion of God;

or, to speak more truly, opposing [accounts].

[The Greek account,] foolishly introducing polyarchy, and dividing the one principle among opposing energies and powers;

and fashioning a polytheistic worship, torn by faction through the multitude of those worshiped, and made ridiculous by the differing manner of worship.

[The Jewish account,] on the one hand, posits one [principle], but narrow and incomplete and almost without subsistence, as being bereft of Word and life, falling through the opposite means into an evil equal to the former account, namely atheism;

circumscribing the one principle within a single person, and holding this [principle] to subsist apart from Word and Spirit;

or [holding it to have been] made/qualified by Word and Spirit.

not perceiving that whoever is deprived of these is no God;

or how could he be God, if he possesses these as accidents by participation, in a manner similar to rational beings subject to generation?

of which errors, in Christ, there is altogether none, as I said;

but only the account of true piety, and the firm ordinance of mystical theology, which rejects the diffusion of the deity found in the first account, and does not accept the contraction found in the second;

so that it might not be factious through natural multiplicity —

for that would be Greek — nor passible through singularity according to hypostasis;

for that would be Jewish — [the deity conceived] as deprived of Word and Spirit, or as made/constituted by Word and Spirit;

but the divine is proclaimed to be Mind and Word and Spirit, not as not being these;

and teaching us, who by the calling of grace have, through faith, been brought into the full knowledge of truth, to know one nature and power of the deity;

that is, one God contemplated in Father and Son and Holy Spirit;

as being the only uncaused Mind, essentially subsisting; the begetter of the only Word without beginning who subsists essentially; and the source of the only eternal life essentially subsisting, as of the Holy Spirit;

a Trinity in unity, and a unity in Trinity;

for the Trinity is not an accident in the unity as in its essence;

or conversely, a unity in Trinity —

for the unity does not differ from the Trinity by otherness of nature, being a simple and single nature.

Nor is it as one alongside another; for the Trinity is not distinguished from the unity, nor the unity from the Trinity, by any diminution of power;

nor is the unity distinguished from the Trinity as a common and generic [term], contemplated only in conception in relation to the particulars falling under it; rather, the unity is, in the proper sense, a substantially subsistent essence, and a power truly self-sufficient in strength.

for that which is altogether identical and unrelated is not mediated by relation, as the caused is [mediated] toward its cause.

For the Trinity does not arise by derivation from a unity, since it is unoriginate and self-manifest;

but the very same reality is truly both spoken of and conceived as unity and as Trinity;

the one, by reason of essence;

the other, by the mode of subsistence;

the same being wholly one unity, not divided among the hypostases;

and the same being wholly a Trinity, not confounded with the unity;

so that neither polytheism be introduced through division, nor atheism through confusion;

avoiding which errors, the doctrine that is according to Christ shines forth.

By the doctrine of Christ I mean the new proclamation of the truth, in which there is neither male nor female;

by which I mean the marks and the passions belonging to a nature subject to corruption and generation.

Nor Greek and Jew, the opposing doctrines concerning the Godhead;

nor circumcision and uncircumcision, the modes of worship corresponding respectively to these;

the one, because of the symbols of the Law, disparaging the visible creation and slandering the Creator as the maker of evils;

the other, because of its passions, deifying that same creation and raising up the creature in rebellion against the Creator;

and both alike, meeting together in equal evil, compound outrage against the Godhead —

that is, the seditious estrangement of the one nature from itself, both in nature and in disposition;

according to which the unnatural law of mutual slaughter crept in corruptingly among men.

Nor slave and free;

namely, clearly, the division of that same nature which has arisen contrary to right disposition;

rendering dishonorable one who is by nature equal in honor;

having as its auxiliary law the disposition of those who lord it over others, a disposition that tyrannizes the dignity proper to the image of God.

But Christ is all things and in all, fashioning in the Spirit, through what is above nature and law, the formation of the kingdom that has no beginning;

which, as has been demonstrated, is by nature characterized by humility of heart and meekness;

and the union of these two shows the man who is being created according to Christ to be perfect.

For everyone who is humble-minded is altogether also meek, and everyone who is meek is altogether also humble-minded;

humble-minded, inasmuch as he knows that his very being is borrowed;

meek, inasmuch as he has rightly discerned the use of the powers naturally given to him;

giving over the service of these powers to reason for the begetting of virtue;

while completely restraining their operation with respect to sense-perception.

And for this reason, with respect to the intellect he is ever in motion toward God;

but with respect to sense-perception, even were he to experience all the pains pertaining to the body together, he is not moved at all, nor does he imprint upon the soul any trace of grief that would alter the joy-producing disposition within it;

for he does not regard what is painful to the senses as a deprivation of pleasure.

For he knows only one pleasure, the soul's communion with the Word, the deprivation of which is unending punishment, encompassing by its very nature all the ages.

And for this reason, leaving behind the body and all that belongs to the body, he is carried with intense longing toward communion with the divine;

counting as the only loss — even though he might rule over everything on earth — the failure to attain the deification hoped for by grace.

Let us therefore purify ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit, that we may hallow the divine name, quenching desire that unseemly dallies coquettishly with the passions;

and by reason let us bind fast the passion of anger, which rages disorderly and madly after pleasures;

And let us apply the next clause of the prayer to what has preceded, saying:

"Thy will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth."

Whoever mystically offers worship to God by the rational power alone, separated from desire and from anger, has fulfilled the divine will on earth, just as the ranks of the angels do in heaven;

becoming in every way a fellow-worshipper with the angels and sharing their manner of life, just as the great Apostle somewhere says: "Our citizenship is in the heavens";

among whom there is no desire that, through pleasure, relaxes the sinews of the intellect;

nor is there raging anger, barking indecently at its own kin;

but reason alone, which naturally leads rational beings toward the first Logos;

in which alone God delights, and which he requires from us who are his servants.

"For what have I in heaven, and what have I desired of thee upon earth?"

Now nothing is offered to God in the heavens by the holy angels except rational worship;

and seeking this same worship from us also, he taught us, when praying, to say:

"Thy will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth."

Let our reason, then, likewise be moved toward the seeking of God, and let the power of desire be moved toward longing for him, and let the power of anger strive toward guarding him;

or rather, to speak more properly, let the whole intellect be stretched taut toward God;

as though braced with sinew by a certain tension in the manner of the spirited faculty, and set ablaze with longing through the utmost reach of desire's striving.

For thus, imitating the angels in heaven, we shall be found worshipping God through all things;

displaying on earth the same manner of life as the angels;

having, like them, our intellect moved not at all toward anything that comes after God.

"I am the bread that came down from heaven and gives life to the world";

becoming all things, proportionately, to us who are nourished through virtue and wisdom;

and being embodied variously in each one who is being saved, in the manner he himself knows;

while we still exist in this present age, in accordance with the force of the prayer's saying: "Give us this day our daily bread."

For I think that this present age is what is signified by "today";

as though someone, taking the sense more clearly, might render this passage of the prayer thus: "Our bread, which from the beginning thou didst prepare for the immortality of our nature, give us today, while we are still within the present life of mortality";

so that the nourishment of the bread of life and of knowledge may overcome the death that comes from sin;

of which bread the transgression of the divine commandment did not permit the first man to become a partaker.

For had he partaken fully of this divine nourishment, he would not have been overtaken by the death that comes from sin.

Yet he who prays to receive this daily bread does not by any means receive it wholly, as the bread itself truly is;

but only in the measure that the one who receives it is able to receive.

For the bread of life, being a lover of mankind, gives himself to all who ask, though not to all in the same measure;

but rather more abundantly to those who have accomplished great works;

and less abundantly to those who fall short of these;

to each, that is, according to the measure of worth in mind that he is able to receive.

The Savior led me to this understanding of the present saying, expressly commanding the disciples to take no thought whatsoever for sensible food, saying: 'Do not be anxious for your soul, what you shall eat or what you shall drink;'

nor for your body, what you shall put on;

for all these things the nations of the world seek after;

but seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

How then does He teach us to pray for the things concerning which He had earlier commanded us not to seek?

For it is clear that He did not command us to ask in prayer for what He had not exhorted us by commandment to seek.

Therefore, whatever we have not been permitted to seek by commandment, it is perhaps not lawful to ask for in prayer.

But if the Savior commanded us to seek only the kingdom of God and His righteousness;

He fittingly led those who desire the divine gifts to ask for this also in prayer;

so that, having confirmed by prayer the grace of the things naturally sought, He might join the gnomic will of those who ask to the will of Him who bestows the grace, making it one and the same through a relational union.

But if we are also commanded to ask in prayer for the daily bread by which our present life is naturally sustained, let us not transgress the bounds of prayer, greedily looking around for many cycles of years, and let us not forget, being mortal, that we hold a life passing away like a shadow;

but let us ask in prayer, without excessive care, for the bread sufficient for the day;

and let us show that we make our life, in a philosophic manner after Christ, a meditation upon death, anticipating nature by the gnomic will, and, before death arrives, cutting off the soul from care for bodily things;

lest it be nailed fast to the things that perish, having exchanged for matter the exercise of its natural desire, and lest it learn that greed deprives one of the abundance of the divine goods.

Let us then flee, as far as we are able, the love of matter, and let us wash away our attachment to it, like dust, from the eyes of the mind;

and let us be content with only what sustains, and also with what gives delight to, our present life;

and let us petition God for them, as we have been taught, so that we may be able to keep the soul unenslaved, in no way wholly held fast, through the body, by any of the visible things;

and let us be shown to eat for the sake of living, and not be convicted of living for the sake of eating.

For the former is clearly proper to a rational nature, the latter to an irrational one.

And let us be exact guardians of prayer, showing by the very facts themselves that we cling fast to one and only one thing, the life in the Spirit, and that toward the acquisition of that same [present

life, that is,] we make use of it;

for the sake of which we cherish its use only to this extent: that we do not refuse to sustain it with bread alone, and that, so far as it depends on us, we preserve its natural well-being incorrupt;

not that we may live, but that we may live for God;

making the body, reasoned by the virtues, a messenger of the soul, and making the soul, formed by steadfastness in the good, a herald of God;

and naturally confining this bread within a single day;

not daring, for its sake, to extend our petition to the Giver, through prayer, into a second day.

For thus, having truly disposed ourselves according to the power of prayer, we would be able to approach purely also the remaining words, saying:

'And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.'

He who, according to the first application of the contemplation of the preceding saying, seeks by prayer, in this present age — of which we said 'today' is the symbol — the incorruptible bread of wisdom, from which transgression walled us off at the beginning, since indeed he knows that the one pleasure is the attainment of divine things, of which God is by nature the giver;

and the guardian, according to willing, is the choice of the one who has received it;

and knowing the one pain to be the failure to attain these things, of which the devil is the instigator;

but the one who actually brings this about is everyone who, through weakness of the gnomic will, grows weary of divine things [

not guarding the precious good that is cherished by the dispositions of the gnomic will;

having his choice inclined altogether toward none of the visible things, and for this reason not being subjected to the bodily griefs that befall him;

this one truly, dispassionately, forgives those who sin against him;

since no one can at all subdue the good that is pursued by him according to desire, which is believed to be by nature unconquerable.

And he establishes himself as a model of virtue for God, if it is lawful to say this, as though urging the inimitable One to come to the imitation of himself, saying:

'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors;'

and calling upon God to become, toward him, such as he himself has become toward his neighbors.

For if, just as he himself has forgiven the debts of those who sinned against him, he also wishes to be forgiven by God, it is clear that, just as God dispassionately forgives whomever He forgives, so also he himself, remaining dispassionate amid what befalls him, forgives those who have offended;

[not letting the] memory of any past grievances be imprinted upon the mind, lest, by cleaving nature apart through his gnomic will, he be convicted — being human himself — of standing estranged from some fellow human being.

For thus, when the gnomic will has been united to the reason of nature, God's reconciliation with nature naturally comes about, since it is not otherwise possible for nature — divided against itself according to the gnomic will — to receive the divine and ineffable condescension.

And perhaps for this reason God wills us first to make reconciliation with one another — not that He might learn from us how to be reconciled to sinners and to forgive the payment of many fearful offenses, but that He might cleanse us of passions, and might show that the disposition of those who are forgiven corresponds to the bond of grace.

And it is clearly evident that, when the gnomic will has been united to the reason of nature, the choice of those who have achieved this will be unopposed toward God;

since indeed nothing contrary to reason can naturally be found in the reason of nature — which is also a law both natural and divine — whenever it receives the movement of the gnomic will operating in accordance with itself.

And if there is nothing contrary to reason in the reason of nature, it will have, in every respect, its operation in accord with God;

which will be] an active disposition, formed by the grace of the naturally good toward the generation of virtue.

Thus, then, is disposed in prayer the one who asks for the bread of knowledge; and after him, that other one also who seeks only the daily bread on account of the constraint of nature will be disposed in the same manner;

forgiving his debtors their debts, inasmuch as he knows that he is by nature mortal, and, waiting each day for what is naturally destined because of its uncertainty, he anticipates nature by his gnomic will;

becoming of his own free will dead to the world, according to the saying which declares, 'For Your sake we are put to death all the day long;'

'we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter;'

and for this reason being poured out like a libation for all, so that, in passing over to the ageless life, he might carry along with himself no mark whatsoever of the wickedness of the present age;