Mystagogy 1 part 12/13

and just as transgression of commandments and separation from Him who commanded follow disobedience, so the keeping of commandments and union with Him who commanded attend obedience.

He, then, who through obedience has kept the commandment has both worked righteousness and has, through love, kept his union with Him who commanded undivided;

but he who through disobedience has transgressed the commandment has both worked sin and has separated himself from the loving union with Him who commanded.

He who is gathered together out of the division according to the transgression is first separated from the passions;

then from the passionate thoughts;

then from nature and the principles concerning nature;

then from concepts and the knowledges concerning them;

and last, having passed through the variety of the principles concerning Providence, he arrives unknowably at the very principle concerning the monad;

according to which, having contemplated only its own immutability, the mind rejoices with the unspeakable joy;

as having received the peace of God which surpasses all understanding;

and which continually guards unfallen the one deemed worthy of it.

The fear of Gehenna prepares beginners to flee vice;

but the longing for the recompense of good things grants to those who are advancing eagerness for the practice of the virtues;

but the mystery of love lifts the mind above all created things, rendering it blind to all things after God.

For the Lord makes wise only those who have become blind to all things after God, showing them the more divine things.

The Word of God, being like a mustard seed, before cultivation seems very small;

but when it has been duly cultivated, it shows itself so great that the lofty principles of sensible and intelligible creatures rest upon it like birds.

For the principles of all things are containable by it;

but it itself is containable by none of beings.

That is, to drive away the devil's power that is against us, and to remove it from its base.

The grain of mustard seed is the Lord, sown by faith in the Spirit in the hearts of those who receive [Him];

whom he who has diligently cultivated through the virtues removes the mountain of earthly-mindedness, thrusting away by [his] authority his own hard-to-move habit of vice;

and the principles of the commandments and the modes for himself, or even the divine powers, he causes to rest [upon Him] like birds of heaven.

Building the height of good things upon the Lord as upon a certain foundation of faith, let us lay on gold, silver, precious stones;

that is, pure and unalloyed theology, and a transparent and radiant life, and divine reasonings as pearl-like concepts;

but not wood, nor hay, nor stubble;

that is, neither idolatry,

namely the agitation about sensible things;

nor an irrational life, nor passionate thoughts, deprived of the understanding according to wisdom like [empty] ears of grain.

He who longs for knowledge, let him fix immovably the foundations of the soul beside the Lord, as God says to Moses:

'But as for you, stand here with Me.'

But one must know that even among those who stand beside the Lord there is difference;

if indeed that [saying] is read not carelessly by lovers of learning: 'There are some of those standing here who shall not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power.'

For the Lord does not always appear with glory to all those who stand beside Him, but to beginners He comes in the form of a servant;

but to those able to follow Him as He ascends to the high mount of His transfiguration, He appears in the form of God;

[appearing] thus to some, but otherwise to others, manifestly varying the contemplation according to the measure of the faith in each.

When the Word of God becomes conspicuous and radiant in us, and His face shines like the sun, then His garments also appear white;

that is, the words of the holy Scripture of the Gospels, clear and plain, having nothing veiled.

But Moses and Elijah also appear with Him;

that is, the more spiritual principles of the law and the prophets.

Just as the Son of Man comes, as it is written, with His angels in the glory of the Father, so at each advance of virtue the Word of God is transfigured to the worthy, coming with His angels in the glory of the Father.

For the more spiritual principles in the law and the prophets, which Moses and Elijah typify in themselves, appearing with the Lord at the Lord's transfiguration, preserve the analogy of the glory in them, revealing to the worthy the power thus far containable.

He who has in some measure been initiated into the principle concerning the monad has altogether also come to know the principles concerning providence and judgment that go together with it;

that is, the three habitudes of salvation;

I mean that of virtue, and that of knowledge, and that of theology.

For the first needs the courage and temperance according to practice, of which the blessed Elijah was a type;

and the second [needs] the righteousness according to natural contemplation, which the great Moses indicated through himself;

and the third [needs] the unmixed perfection according to prudence, which the Lord made manifest.

And they were called tabernacles, because there are others better and more conspicuous than these, the allotted portions that shall succeed [for] the worthy in the age to come.

The practical man is said to sojourn in the flesh;

as one cutting off, through the virtues, the soul's relation to the flesh, and stripping off from himself the deceit of material things.

But the gnostic is said to sojourn even in virtue itself;

as one beholding the truth still in mirrors and riddles.

For the self-subsistent forms of the good things have not yet been beheld by him as they are, through the enjoyment of face to face.

For in an image of the good things, as toward the age to come, every saint passes through [this life], crying out:

'I am a sojourner and a stranger, as all my fathers were.'

He who prays must never stand still from the high ascent that leads to God.

For just as ascents must be understood as the advance in the practical [exercise] of the virtues, going from power to power;

and the going from glory to glory [as] the upward ascent of the spiritual knowledges of contemplation;

and the transition from the letter of the holy and divine Scripture to the spirit;

so one must do the same when in the realm of prayers also;

lifting up the mind from human things;

and [raising] the mind-set of the soul to the more divine things;

that the mind also may be able to follow Him who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, who is everywhere and passes through all things on our behalf in the [divine] economy, that we too, following Him, may pass through all things after Him;

and that we may come to be toward Him, if indeed we conceive of Him not according to the smallness of the economic condescension, but according to the majesty of His natural infinitude.

It is good always to be at leisure for and to seek God, as we have been commanded.

For even if in the present life, while seeking, we cannot come to the end of the depth of God;

yet perhaps, reaching even a little of His depth, we behold things holier than the holy, and more spiritual than the spiritual.

And the high priest typically makes this clear, going from the holies of the court, which are holier, on to the Holy of Holies, holier than the holies.

Every word of God is neither verbose nor mere wordiness;

but is one, composed of various contemplations;

of which each is a part of the word.

So that he who speaks for the sake of truth, even if he should be able so to speak as to leave nothing out for the matter inquired, has spoken one word of God.

In Christ, who is God and the Word of the Father, the whole fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily according to substance;

but in us the fullness of the Godhead dwells according to grace, when we gather together in ourselves all virtue and wisdom, in no way, so far as possible for a man, falling short of the true imitation of the archetype.

For it is not unlikely that, according to the principle of [adoption by] position, the fullness of the Godhead—composed of various spiritual contemplations—should dwell in us also.

Just as the word among us, naturally proceeding forth from the mind, is a messenger of the hidden movements of the mind;

so the Word of God, having known the Father according to substance, as Word [knows] the Mind that begot Him—since none of begotten beings can approach Him apart from Him—reveals the Father whom He knew, as Word according to nature, wherefore He is also called Angel of Great Counsel.

The great counsel of God and the Father is the silenced and unknown mystery of the economy;

which the only-begotten Son, having fulfilled through the incarnation, revealed, becoming the Angel of the great and pre-eternal counsel of God and the Father.

And he becomes an angel of the great counsel of God who has known the principle of the mystery, and is so exalted unceasingly through all things in deed and word, until he reaches Him who came down so far to him.

If for our sakes the Word of God came down in the economy into the lower parts of the earth, and ascended above all the heavens—He who is by nature wholly unmoved—

in Himself according to the economy, as a man, working beforehand the things to be;

let him who cherishes the friendship of knowledge consider, rejoicing mystically, what is the promised end of those who love the Lord.

If for this the Son of God, God the Word of God and the Father, became son of man and man—that He might make men gods and sons of God—

let us believe that we shall come to be there, where Christ Himself now is, as head of the whole body, having become for us a forerunner to the Father in our [nature].

For in the assembly of gods—of those who are saved—God shall stand in the midst, distributing the dignities of the blessedness from thence;

having no spatial distance from the worthy.

He who still fulfills the passionate cravings of the flesh, as an idolater and idol-maker, dwells in the land of the Chaldeans.

But when, having a little discerned matters, he gains perception of the modes that befit nature, then leaving the land of the Chaldeans, he comes to Haran of Mesopotamia;

I mean the intermediate condition between virtue and vice, that which has not yet become pure of the error according to sense-perception.

But if he should look up beyond the moderate understanding of the good that comes through sense-perception, he will press on toward the good land;

that is, toward the condition free from all vice and ignorance;

which the God who does not lie shows forth and promises to give as a prize of virtue to those who love Him.

If the Word of God was crucified for us out of weakness, and raised from the power of God, it is clear that He spiritually does and suffers this ever for our sakes;

as becoming all things to all, that He may save all.

Therefore well did the divine Apostle, among the weak Corinthians, determine to know nothing except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

But to the Ephesians, who were mature, he writes: 'God has raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus';

saying that the Word of God becomes a power proportionate to each.

He is therefore crucified for those still being introduced to godliness through practice, nailing their passionate activities by the divine fear.

But He is raised and ascends into the heavens for those who have wholly put off the old man, who is corrupted according to the lusts of deceit;

and have put on the whole new man, who is created through the Spirit according to the image of God, and have come to the Father of the grace [that is] in them;

for all things after God—both deeds and names and dignities—shall be under him who shall, through grace, come to be in God.

Just as before the manifest and fleshly coming, the Word of God spiritually sojourned among the patriarchs and prophets, prefiguring the mysteries of His coming;

so also after this sojourn, He comes not only among those still infants, nourishing them spiritually and leading them to the stature of perfection according to God;

but also among the perfect, secretly delineating for them, as in an image, the characters of His coming that is to be.

Just as the words of the law and the prophets, being forerunners of the fleshly coming of the Word, tutored the souls unto Christ;

so He Himself, the glorified Word of God who was made flesh, has become a forerunner of His spiritual coming;

tutoring souls through His own words unto the reception of His manifest divine coming;

which He ever effects, transferring the worthy from the flesh to the spirit through the virtues;

but He will effect it also at the end of the age, manifestly revealing the things hitherto unutterable to all.

So long as I am imperfect and insubordinate, not obeying God through the working of the commandments;

nor becoming perfect in mind according to knowledge;

Christ also, so far as I am concerned, is reckoned imperfect and insubordinate because of me;

for I diminish Him and dock Him, by not growing together with Him according to the spirit, since I am a body of Christ and members in part.

'The sun rises, and the sun sets,' says the Scripture.

Therefore the Word also is sometimes reckoned above, sometimes below—according, that is, to the worthiness, and to the very principle or mode of those who pursue virtue and are moved about divine knowledge.

And blessed is he who holds within himself unsetting, like Joshua the son of Nun, the Sun of righteousness;

[holding] the whole measure of the day according to the present life uncircumscribed by the evening of vice and ignorance, that he may be able lawfully to put to flight the evil demons rising up against him.

When the Word of God is exalted in us through practice and contemplation, He draws all things to Himself;

sanctifying according to virtue and knowledge our thoughts and words concerning flesh and soul and the nature of beings, and the very members of the body and the senses, and bringing them under His own yoke.

Let the beholder of divine things, then, ascend with diligence, following the Word;

until he reaches the place where He is.

For thither He draws, as the Ecclesiast says: 'And to its place it is drawn';

namely, those who follow Him, as a great High Priest, and as one leading into the Holy of Holies;

where He Himself, in our [nature], entered on our behalf as a forerunner.

He who pursues the philosophy according to godliness, and is arrayed in battle against the invisible powers;

let him pray that the natural discernment may remain with him (having proportionate light), and the illuminating grace of the Spirit.

For the one tutors the flesh toward virtue through practice;

[and prompts him] to prefer above all things the companionship of wisdom;

according to which he effects the casting down of the strongholds of vice and of every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God.

And Joshua the son of Nun makes this clear, asking through prayer that the sun stand still over Gibeon;

that is, that the light of the knowledge of God be kept unsetting for him, upon the mount of the contemplation according to the mind;

and the moon over the valley;

that is, that the natural discernment, lying upon the weakness of the flesh, may remain unaltered away from [its proper] virtue.

Gibeon is the lofty mind;

and the valley is the flesh humbled by death.

And the sun is the Word who illumines the mind, and supplies it with the power of contemplations;

and delivering him from all ignorance;

but the moon is the natural law, which persuades the flesh to submit lawfully to the Spirit, so as to receive the yoke of the commandments.

The moon is a symbol of nature, on account of its changeableness;

but in the saints it remains unchanging, on account of the unalterable habit of virtue.

(35) The Lord must not be sought outside those who seek Him;

rather, those who seek must seek Him within themselves, through faith manifested in works.

For He says: "The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart";

that is, the word of faith;

since Christ Himself is both the word sought and the One sought.

(36) Let us neither, contemplating the height of the divine infinity, despair of God's love for mankind as not reaching down to us because of that height;

nor, pondering the boundless depth of our fall through sin, disbelieve that a resurrection of the virtue deadened within us can come to pass.

For both are possible to God;

both to descend and to enlighten our mind through knowledge,

and again to raise up virtue within us, and to exalt it together with Himself through the works of righteousness.

For He says: "Do not say in your heart,

Who shall ascend into heaven?"

that is, to bring Christ down;

"or, Who shall descend into the abyss?"

that is, to bring Christ up from the dead.

But perhaps, according to another interpretation, the abyss is everything that comes after God;

in which the Word of God, wholly present to all things according to providence, comes as life visiting the dead things that exist.

For all living things are dead by comparison with the participation in Life.

And heaven is the natural hiddenness of God, according to which He is incomprehensible to all.

But if someone should again take heaven to be the doctrine of theology,

and the abyss to be the mystery of the economy, he would not unreasonably say so, according to my understanding.

For both are hard to traverse for those who attempt to investigate them by demonstration;

or rather, altogether impassable when searched out apart from faith.

(37) In the practical life, the word, thickened by the modes of the virtues, becomes flesh;

but in contemplation, refined by spiritual conceptions, it becomes, as it was in the beginning, God the Word.

(38) He makes the word flesh who, by means of coarser examples and expressions adapted to the capacity of the hearers, renders the teaching of the word ethical;

and again he makes the word spirit who sets forth the mystical theology by means of lofty contemplations.

(39) He who theologizes affirmatively from positive statements makes the word flesh;

having no other means than to know God as cause from things seen and tangible;

but he who theologizes negatively by way of abstractions makes the word spirit, knowing rightly the One beyond all knowing, as being God in the beginning and being with God, from none whatever of the things that can be known.

(40) He who has learned to dig within himself, like the patriarchs, the wells of virtue and knowledge through practice and contemplation, will find Christ within as the fountain of life;

from which Wisdom exhorts us to drink, saying:

"from your own vessels, and from the fountain of your own wells";

and in doing this, we shall find her treasures to be within us.

(41) Those who live brutishly, for the sake of sensation alone, perilously make the word flesh for themselves;

abusing the creatures of God for the service of the passions;

and not perceiving the principle of wisdom manifested in all things, so as to know and glorify God from His works;

and to understand whence, and what, and for what purpose, and whither we have been brought into being through visible things;

but passing through this age in darkness, they grope with both hands only the ignorance concerning God.

(42) Those who cling only to the letter of the holy Scripture, and bind the soul's dignity to the bodily worship of the law, blameworthily make the word flesh for themselves;

thinking that God is well-pleased with the sacrifices of irrational animals;

by whom much care is given to the body, with outward purifications;

but the beauty of the soul is neglected, being stained by the marks of the passions;

for whose sake the whole power of visible things has been set forth, and every divine word and law has been given.

(43) The holy Gospel says that the Lord is set for the fall and rising of many.

Therefore let us consider whether it be not for the fall of those who behold creation with the senses alone, and of those who hold only to the letter of holy Scripture;

as being unable, on account of their folly, to cross over to the new spirit of grace;

and for the rising of those who contemplate and hear both the creatures and the words of God spiritually, and in fitting ways care for the divine image in the soul alone.

(44) That the Lord is set for the fall of many and the rising in Israel, understood only in a praiseworthy sense, is understood as for the fall of the passions and evil thoughts in each one of the believers;

and for the rising of the virtues and of every God-loving thought. (45) He who thinks the Lord to be the Creator only of things in generation and corruption mistakes Him for a gardener, like Mary Magdalene.

For He knows that he is harmed who approaches Him with such a lowly preconception.

(46) Those who, for fear of the Jews, sat with the doors shut in the upper room in Galilee;

that is, those who, for fear of the spirits of wickedness, stand securely in the region of revelations, in the height of divine contemplations, and shutting the senses like doors, receive the Word of God who comes to them unknowably, appearing to them apart from any sensible activity;

and granting them dispassion through His inbreathing;

and bestowing authority over evil spirits, and showing the symbols of His mysteries.

(47) For those who search out the word concerning God according to the flesh, the Lord does not ascend to the Father;

but for those who seek Him according to the spirit through lofty contemplations, He ascends to the Father.

Let us not therefore keep Him forever below, who for our sake came down below through love for mankind, but let us go up with Him to the Father, leaving the earth and the things of the earth, lest to us also be said what was said to the Jews who remained uncorrected: "I go where you cannot come."

For without the Word, it is impossible to come to the Father of the Word.

(48) The land of the Chaldeans is the life subject to the passions;

in which the idols of sins are fashioned and worshiped.

And Mesopotamia (the land between the rivers) is the disposition that wavers between opposites.

but the land of promise is the condition filled with every good.

Everyone, then, who neglects this habit, like the old Israel, is dragged down again into the slavery of the passions, being deprived of the freedom that was given.

(49) It is to be noted that none of the saints appears to have gone down willingly into Babylon.

For it is neither lawful nor consistent with rational understanding that those who love God should prefer the worse to the good.

But if some of them were carried off there with the people by force, we understand by these those who, not primarily but by circumstance, for the salvation of those who needed guidance, set aside the higher word of knowledge and took up the teaching concerning the passions;

according to which the great Apostle also judged it more profitable to remain in the flesh;

that is, in ethical teaching, for the sake of the disciples;

while having all his longing to be released from ethical teaching, and to be with Christ, through the supramundane and simple contemplation according to the mind.

so also every spiritual word, sweetened by gnostic contemplations, gives rest to the seized mind, freeing it from the evil conscience that chokes it.

according to whom both practice and contemplation are constituted;

the one made radiant by the modes of the virtues;

the other illumined by divine conceptions.

(52) The kingdom of Saul is an image of the bodily worship of the law;

which the Lord abolished, as having perfected nothing.

"For the law," he says, "perfected nothing."

for it perfectly contains all the wills of God in the heart.

(53) Saul is the natural law;

which at the beginning was allotted by the Lord to rule over nature.

Who, since he transgressed the commandment through disobedience, sparing Agag the king of Amalek;

and slid down toward the passions;

that is, the law of the Spirit, which begets the peace that conspicuously builds for God the temple of contemplation.

(54) Samuel is interpreted as "obedience to God."

Therefore, so long as the word ministers as priest in us according to obedience, even if Saul should spare Agag;

that is, the earthly mindset;

nevertheless the priestly Word, being zealous, will slay this one, and will smite and put to shame the sin-loving mind, as a transgressor of the divine ordinances.

(55) When the mind, becoming high-minded, ceases to question the word of teaching which anointed it against the passions through fitting inquiry concerning what is to be done and not done, it is utterly captured by the passions out of ignorance;

through which, being separated in part from God, in the involuntary trials it goes over to the demons, deifying the belly;

wishing to find thence consolation from the things that press upon it.

And let Saul persuade you, who, not taking Samuel as counselor in all things, was of necessity turned to idolatry, and tolerated consulting the woman with a familiar spirit as though she were some god.

(56) He who prays to receive the daily bread does not by any means receive it wholly as the bread itself is;

but according as he himself who receives is able.

For the bread of life gives Himself to all who ask, as loving mankind, but not in the same way to all;

but to those who have done great works of righteousness, more; and to those lesser than these, less;

to each as the worthiness according to the mind is able to receive.

(57) The Lord sometimes goes abroad, and sometimes is at home.

He goes abroad in respect of the face-to-face vision;

He is at home in respect of the vision in a mirror and in enigmas.

(58) The Lord is at home with the practical man through the virtues;

but with him who makes no account of virtue, He goes abroad.

And again, He is at home with the contemplative man through the true knowledge of beings;

but with him who has stumbled in any way from this, He goes abroad.

(59) He goes abroad from the flesh who passes over from the practical to the gnostic habit;

being caught up, as in clouds, by the loftier conceptions, into the translucent air of mystical contemplation;

in which he will be able to be with the Lord forever.

But he departs from the Lord who is not yet able, apart from the activities of sense, with a pure mind to contemplate as far as attainable the conceptions, and who cannot contain the simple word concerning the Lord without enigmas.

(60) The Word of God is called flesh, not only inasmuch as He became incarnate;

but inasmuch as God the Word, conceived simply in the beginning with God and the Father, and having the clear and naked types of the truth concerning all things, contains no parables and enigmas;

nor narratives requiring allegory;

but when He sojourns among men unable with a naked mind to approach naked intelligibles;

conversing from things familiar to them, composing Himself by the variety of narratives, enigmas, parables, and dark sayings, He becomes flesh.

For at the first approach, our mind does not encounter the naked Word;

namely, by reason of the variety of the words;

so that the many think they see flesh and not the Word, even if in truth it is the Word.

For what seems to the many is not the meaning of the Scripture, but something other than what seems.

For the Word, through each of the written sayings, becomes flesh.

(61) The first beginning of men's discipleship unto godliness naturally comes to pass as toward flesh.