Hagioritic Tome 1 part 12/17

But that I myself may not suffer this too (for, answering each point sufficiently, there is no way I could escape verbosity (p.)

) for from much speaking, according to what is written, sin will not escape)—that, then, I may not myself rather risk suffering the very thing I charge against him, letting all these things go, I shall release only the charges you made against us, and this I shall do as briefly as I am able, wishing least of all to be long.

Besides, since the one who caused the stumbling-block has been removed from the midst, it would be superfluous to discourse about this again; but if indeed something among the things said against us not rightly should coincide with—as we again would suppose—the things declared by you concerning the divine matters, pardon those who thought it necessary to give some indication about this also; perhaps you will also wipe those things out, for our sakes who are not competent to attain to the height of your divine eloquence, repairing again this discourse of yours against us.

But if, after wiping out the things against us, you write at length, you will do us the greatest favor; this, however, we neither enjoin nor forbid; but you—that you may be prepared beforehand not to be angry if any of your own things should be overturned, for it is yours too.

But what is the first and middle and last handle you have against us?

"You exalt yourself," he says, "as having met with things beyond us."

"From your own words," he says, "from which I noted that I have taken the whole preface."

Read your preface—taken over from ours and, as you yourself say, refuting us—that we may know; and if from our own words there is any boasting, we shall acknowledge that this accusation of yours against us is just; but if not, you will pass sentence against yourself, having turned upon yourself a manifold retribution.

"You, having longed for the highest philosophy—or rather, having been drawn by the highest loving-kindness—and having let go of every kind of discourse and the study pertaining thereto, and having already met with the examples, stop."

) I do not recognize "having met with," my good man, as being one of our phrases; and in this lies the boasting which you continually bring up against me throughout the discourse; and not only is this something other than my words, but it is even among the things fittingly contrary to them.

For if you call "example" here that which we there called "myrrh" more figuratively, hear now at least intelligently.

We have nearly altogether forgotten the sciences of discourse; but of the true wisdom we have grasped nothing, or little; rather, as it were, we run toward the fragrance of myrrh, not yet having the myrrh itself in our hands.

Do not these things stand there word for word?

Plainly, then, you lie against us, who have by no means said we "met with" it, as though we had said we met with it.

And if you press this reproach upon us as having said we "longed for" it, you do something like this: as if someone should say that a man boasts great things about wisdom who said he went to a teacher and sat beside him teaching for a long time, yet, through his own dullness of learning, retained nothing of those teachings.

The things, then, which you have gathered against us out of your own addition—this I leave for you to consider in relation to the one to whom you have just now shifted over.

And you do not even heed our final prayer—you who wished to say against us everything of the things to be deprecated—"He who implanted in us this longing out of the excess of loving-kindness, may He also, for the sake of His compassions, grant the end"?

Asking, then, for an "end," how do we not know ourselves to be incomplete in respect of that whose end we ask?

And how do you reproach us—who say we ourselves are incomplete—as though saying we are super-complete?

We are so far from either supposing or calling ourselves perfect, (p.)

) that we even said that the very being roused at all to lay hold of what leads to the mystical school is not of ourselves, but referred it wholly to the loving-kindness from above; and if it is from the loving-kindness above, then neither is this our work.

To register so zealously, then, those who were merely roused to begin, and who do not even reckon this beginning as from themselves, as though they were testifying perfection to themselves—is this not manifest slander?

And how could one who makes no great account of the truth attain the truth, discoursing about the truth that truly is?

But indeed, having falsely put this forward against us ten times in one discourse, you made plain to all just so many times whence you speak; and to the unassailability of our arguments you bore witness in a novel way; for if you had a true reproach, having once set yourself among the accusers, what need had you of this false one and of the assault that proceeds first from it?

And then you reproach me, as though I had accepted concerning you the contrary opinion to the end of your whole discourse, which happens to be manifest—but this you plainly fabricate; for if it had been so, I would not have been asking, I would not have been perplexed, but would have condemned you as heterodox.

And perplexity comes over all when there is something not in concord with what is manifest and agreed; so that to be perplexed is a sworn proof of wishing to think nothing concerning you.

And your clearly saying "the one under the other," and "the duality of principle"—this, besides the rest, compelled us to inquire and be perplexed as to what you ever mean (p.)

) by "the principle from a principle," for which now again you devise a remedy by the other; for I undertook from the start to pass over the rest.

What, then, you have just now written next to what was set forth—that even if I say "the one" and "from the other" and "under the other," yet as holding that each thing, from whatever principle it is, is also referred up under that principle—if you mean each of all the things from any principle whatever, you are ranking the things above all things together with all things, and you require us to persuade about the uncreated from the created, which you, flowing copiously against us before, utterly forbade; but if this "each" refers to the creative principle that is "other from another," you signify to us more than two things from that principle; for we know "each of the two" said of things not exceeding the dyad, but of three we say "each one of at least three."

Give your over-flowing tongue free rein in this too: even in "something being referred up under the principle"; for that each of the divine-ruling hypostases is referred up "into" and "toward" the principle itself, we have both received and hold fast; but the referring-up "under" this works—so to speak—a referring-down, and presents the contrary of the intention; nor will you again bring forward to me those divisions among the philosophers and the things said according to them, although even in these this has a certain signification of subordination.

But I do not say only this; rather, most of all, that these things are far from that God-befitting referring-up and procession.

You will perhaps say of these things too that the error consists for you only in the wording, and that it least of all needs excusing.

But the error in the wording in such matters, O wisest of men, leads the hearers into an erroneous understanding; so that just as the one who knew yet did not teach clearly is on a par even with (p.)

) one who did not even reflect on it for his hearers, so the one who knew rightly yet taught erroneously is on a par even with one who knew erroneously.

And here too your error is about the wording, but not there about wording; rather about arguments, and many arguments, which you did well to remove and list as the things wiped out—and you will gather how many.

Nevertheless, if indeed, as you yourself say, the error befell you only in the wording, how much thanks ought you to have known toward us, who, on account of our reverence for you and the awe that comes upon us, did not declare that you erred, but, putting forth a perplexity, set you up as a teacher for us—so far as it touched us?

But you, instead of teaching, go on the attack, and—owing thanks for the reverence shown you—you repaid us with shamelessness and slander and reviling.

And the defense which you put forward—though it is cold, and brings forward the very things refuted in many places, even by ourselves, against the Latins, as if they were impossible to refute—nevertheless we accept it; for its deficiency has been all along made up by the fact that the thing on account of which it came to be has been cast out.

And as to what you accuse us of—as slandering your kinsmen on the matter of the two principles—for your sake this too happened to us, who was so ungratefully disposed; for, wishing to refute clearly the error (let it be, as you say, about the wording) (for to be silent was not possible, since it concerned God), in order that no reproach be attached to you, I judged it necessary to turn the arguments over upon those men.

For that those men do not from the outset say two principles, our first discourse against them, which is among you, will testify—answering those men thus: "But what do you say, you who speak of two principles in the divinity?"

"For what, if you do not say this manifestly, yet from the things you do say this is deduced?"

Saying there, then, that they do not say this manifestly, how could I now (p.)

But indeed this argument of mine is not at all beside the point, nor is it a complete slander, as you supposed, even if it were spoken to those men directly; for do not, as though being from the Latins, think us ignorant of the words and dogmas in which they err; rather, there are indeed those who even now clearly say this—"the two are one"—as many of them as are unpracticed in our writings against them; but for a considerable time this was current even among their most reputed men, and the writings of those men among us testify to this, calling the Son a second principle of the Holy Spirit; the one, then, who calls the Son not only a principle but also a second one—does he not manifestly say two principles?

But if now they have dropped this, thanks be to the refutatory arguments of ours that silenced them—just as also to the one named Nicephorus, who appeared against them; for after his arguments against them, those of them who share in some measure of understanding no longer dare to call us the ones of perdition, as we call them.

And as to our needing to dispute with them from the things conceded by them, I myself also agree; and so long as I hear "one source, one principle, one divinity-begetting Godhead," and that those who say these things are revered even among the Latins, I argue with the Latins from the things conceded by them; for among themselves they have, and honor as God-speakers, those who say these things concerning the Father of lights.

But if they will say to us that the Son too is divinity-begetting, we shall say to them that they do not advance the argument according to the things conceded among them; but for us, building from this, the argument will not be outside the things conceded even by them.

And the things which you say those men (p.)

...the Father is the source of the supersubstantial Godhead; for he did not say "the only source, not from a source," nor "the one source rather," nor "simply the only source of all divinity."

So that those men do not follow the things conceded by themselves, but we make our arguments to them from the things conceded by them—not slanderously, as you suppose, nor approaching them "by the side door."

And against our example you grasp at all the things said by the fathers by way of example concerning God; for what could be found that is made similar to that incomparable nature?

And even if it were possible to find one, not even thus would that be an example equal in all respects to the matter at hand; for the example is one thing, and that on account of which it became an example is another—yet not in such a way that, because it is other, it is therefore no example; rather, if it were not other, neither would it be an example.

But you judge our example by its disparities, and again you play the part of the Latins, setting us, as you seem to think, in the greatest perplexity—as if, depending on the twist of your tongue, those men theologized either ill or not ill; but do not so suppose; for many both before you and in your time, and whatever you may say, will convict them as evil-believers.

And what when we say that, even if each of the divine-ruling hypostases is separately called cause and principle of beings, yet nonetheless the cause and principle of beings is one; but you say that this is indeed true, yet aids the Latins? Does it not (p.)

For if the truth aids those men, who is the one who shall overturn those who are aided by the truth?

For if you had said "it seems to aid," the argument would have had some remedy; but as it is, you write thus plainly: that it is both true and aids that dogma of theirs.

And what, again, when, as we say that, since the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit brings forth all things, the principle of all things is one—you again add that the Latins too would say in this way: that, since the Father through the Son proceeds-produces the Spirit, the principle of the divinity is therefore one?

Have you grasped how rotten the dogmas according to those men are?

But lay down that mindset and you will be taught the secure thing—or rather, you yourself, of yourself, will know this well; for I praise the one who said that humility is the recognition of truth.

But how is it that those who say all things came to be from the Father through the Son rightly glorify on this account one principle of all things, yet to those who say the Spirit is from the Father through the Son we by no means concede that they may on this account say one principle?

Because there the creative power is common, but here the divinity-begetting is not common.

But if the Latins will say that this too is among the things said in common of the supreme Trinity, then we shall refute them, both by putting forward the God-inspired Scriptures and, in addition, by showing that they thereby glorify two Spirits—"that in which" and "that which"—and make the uncreated Trinity a tetrad; for the hypostases produced there are created, but here there will of necessity be also a fourth uncreated hypostasis; or else the hypostasis of the Spirit will again be created—which is even more akin to their arguments; for God came to creation through the medium of divinity, but not to the divinity of the Spirit.

And what you say is most absurd of all, you conceived most absurdly; your firmness was led astray by the equivocity of the term "monarchy"; for the monarchy of the creative principle, and the monarchy belonging to it, is of a different mode (p.)

...so that in no respect is the one mode by nature apt to do harm to the other.

And that it is not for you to say of God that "He is, as it were, light, or rather a fount of intelligible and immaterial light"—this you said truly; but how you will hear it, how you will understand it, how you will believe it—you who, in your discourse to us, name the sages outside as wondrous and God-seers and illumined, and those who believe them as admirable and zealous and reverent, on which account you call them not "outside" but "ancient sages," extolling them, while those among us who, through the keeping of the divine commandments and through exact leisure in stillness, have been blessedly purified in heart, you tear apart, ranking them at your own pleasure, off your own bat, together with me, whom you intemperately accuse?

And not only those still living, but even those who long ago passed over to heaven and live to God—whom the great Dionysius extols as having, even while still on earth, surpassed the intellectual operations—you both rank and mock together with me, who am, according to you, faulty and senseless and not rightly handling the true word.

"For the great Dionysius," you say, "teaches me such and such concerning you contemplatives."

At whom are you scoffing, O man?

But the great Dionysius' discourse is not about me, but about those best in their own right.

Besides, if I myself were ranking myself among those men, the pretext would perhaps be specious; but as it is, you would not find it, nor could you ever truly show this—not even if you should compose books against us with arguments equal in number to the lines of this many-lined discourse of yours.

) Who, then, would offer a becoming defense to one who slanders the most praiseworthy together with us who are slandered?

What is this you have suffered, brother?

Into what precipices have you willingly cast yourself?

And how, having broken your neck and been so shaken loose from those divine heads, as far as concerns your arguments, do you not perceive the anguish, nor greatly lament?

And how else would you have handled the discourse, if the great Dionysius had thought to pull them down rather than to exalt them?

But in the matters concerning demonstration we are both, my friend, in danger of speaking rightly—this is your argument.

Both of us, then, speaking rightly according to you, you are in danger of declaring yourself, in turn, to speak not rightly—whenever afterward you slander this right argument of ours; and, in short, that whole violent and torrential rain mixed with those typhonic winds, which you let loose from your tongue against us beforehand, has, no less—indeed all the more—deluged you, the very fount of the tempest.

But for me (for it never seemed to enter my mind to consider whom you follow in saying these things—men whom you yourself have now afterward disclosed)—for me, then, the proofs that I do not disparage your things said to the Latins concerning disputation and demonstration are many, and are in many other of our writings, and especially toward those from Thessalonica who asked this very thing last year; to whom, writing back, we declared that we agree with both, and we said this was a token of the agreement: the presence of piety in the arguments from both sides, the having or not having it properly, if indeed it be disputable; but you, having now striven with no small struggle, kept laboring to show us liars in this respect.

What, then, if we too, having put each of these dialectical syllogisms of yours—which you boast to have made most excellently and most rightly (p.)

) to the test, should show them giving forth a discordant sound, full of evil artifice—or rather, instead of the art you vaunt, shown to be full of artlessness, and so far from being dialectical as not even to be syllogisms, nor even sophistical ones, nor to preserve at all the form of a syllogism?

And that you may know we held these opinions even before these arguments, I shall set forth that thing of mine which you yourself, I know not how, praised—so that not even this is simply mine: "None is good save one, God, the only just, the only wise, the blessed and only Sovereign, the only one having immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable; none, then, of the things following upon God could be of wider extension than He, and each of them is singular, and whatever is predicated of them is not universal."

For the supersubstantial and supergood and supremely-wise and super-luminous—of what else are they predicated than of that supra-divine essence and wisdom and goodness and that light?

How, then, could a syllogism come to be from singulars, without the universal?

And if a syllogism could not come to be, how, my excellent friend, could a dialectical one come to be?

It will, however, be sophistical—having only the form and the appearance, but not being one.

And so your dialectic, then, has been blown away like chaff, and all your syllogisms—if indeed they are not even denied the name of syllogisms—are sophistical, not being such but only appearing so; or rather, not even this; yet let it be granted: the premises added from the arguments inherent in us, not being causes of the conclusion, how could they be causes of belief in it?

) of the name of syllogisms, are sophistical, not being so but appearing so—or rather, not even this; but let it be granted nonetheless; yet the premises that are added from the arguments inherent in us, not being causes of the conclusion, how could they be causes of belief in it?

...are sophistical, not being so but appearing so—or rather, not even this; yet let it be granted; but the premises added from the arguments inherent in us, not being causes of the conclusion, how could they be causes of belief in it?

But if it is conceded, what is the reason according to which, while wishing to name his own syllogism dialectical, he takes the non-universals as universal, and posits that the notions within us furnish belief to the oracles, and reckons the syllogism a cause of belief but not of knowledge, and in short concedes everything that does not agree even with the principle of the art, yet thinks nothing should be conceded to those who call it demonstrative?

Furthermore, since, in the things in which you think to refute us, you say the singular is double and equivocal, on no other ground than that it is one way in each of the things perceptible among us and another way in the case of God, learn that everything said of God is in this manner double and equivocal; for none of the things said of Him is so as in each of the things among us—not only the sensible, but not even the intelligible—so that in all your syllogisms you attempt, by means of this doubleness, to mislead your hearers; sophistical, then, are all of yours, and not dialectical.

Furthermore, if God is a singular, and such a singular as not to be "one out of many," and in the case of this One there is no "this particular thing" and no "underlying subject," and without these there is no premise—and a premise not existing, there will be no syllogism either, not to say dialectical, but not even sophistical.

...unutterable, or even unthinkable.

Take, for instance, the syllogism you say is most exact for you: "The Father and the Son have one operation; of those whose operation is one, the power is one; of those whose power is one, the essence and nature is the same; (p.)

) therefore of the Father and the Son the essence and nature is the same." This, then, is the answer to those who put it forward as questioners; for someone else setting it forth thus would not be called to account by us; but as it is yours, we shall examine it from your own premises.

For you rank the things removed from all multiplicity together with this, by means of it, and you require that we teach about the uncreated nature from the created.

Moreover, by means of the double mode of "operation" you attempt sophistically to mislead us; for not even you yourself would say that the power and operation of the Son and the Father is one in such a way as the operation and power of you and me is one.

But if not in all respects, how is your most exact syllogism not non-syllogistic, being deprived of the universal?

And in addition to this, it also begs the question at issue, being advanced by the force of tautology.

But I shrink, know it well, from being long-winded to no profit, wishing it least of all; yet if this syllogism, so very exactly elaborated by you, has nonetheless, on being tested but a little, shown itself contentious and non-syllogistic, what would those endure that have not come to such exactness for you, were they handed over to exact testing?

But for your sake, let them for the present lie unexamined.

Do you see how much I again favor you, the ungrateful one?

But the conclusion of this whole thing, elaborated by you more exactly than all, let us yet consider a little further, that I may refute you by your own self, and that the Solomonic saying may come to fulfillment: "He who digs a pit for his neighbor shall fall into it himself."

What, then, is the most exact conclusion from the most exact of the syllogisms?

"Of the Father and the Son the nature and essence is one"; and this is the same as (p.)

) to say: "One God is the Father and the Son."

But who does not know that this is a declaration declared to us by the holy Fathers?

And so hear your own words against yourself: "What a principle and common notion and axiom is to the geometers, that each of the declarations is to us—as many of the divine things as have been declared to us by the holy men; none of them, therefore, need be taken by syllogism."

Aha, aha! Even the most mathematical one shown to be unlearned! For you who say these things and name us from them, you who just now heard us showing by a syllogism that the Father alone is the projector of the Spirit—you attempted to show by a syllogism that the Father and the Son are one God (a thing more credible than all else of itself, and which the fathers declared), and you say this is the most exact of all your syllogisms—although this was not even first declared by the fathers, but by the very One of the divine-ruling Trinity and God of the fathers, Jesus, who says: "I and the Father are one," and "He who has seen Me has seen the Father," and "If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also," and "I am in the Father and the Father in Me."

But if the declarations of the fathers are self-attesting, how much more those of the Lord of the fathers; in that measure, then, the one who tries to demonstrate this rather by a syllogism is unlearned—if not even something more than the unlearned.

But do not be vexed at recognizing your own utterances—not brought back by us in retaliation, but issuing from your own words; for what I said at the beginning, you yourself have written against yourself, having attempted by such means to overturn my positions—means by which one could no less overturn all of yours too, and not only yours (that we may devise for you some consolation), (p.)

) but simply also everything whatsoever that might be thought to be demonstrated by reason concerning God and the divine things, and all who have said it and all who shall say it.

From nearly the same equipment the outsiders too advanced against our things, yet in no way did they prevail, but "they became vain in their reasonings," applying, so to speak, mortal rules to the discourses about the Immortal—those whose champions of the dogmas according to them you admire as having comprehended the divine transcendence, which is incomprehensible even to the cherubim who, on account of the abundance of their understanding, are many-eyed.

For this reason it has now seemed to me among the indispensable and most profitable things to write back, that you too may become wiser than yourself, having taken occasion from us the unwise, and that your things, sharing the danger with mine, I may, if indeed I can, deliver from the danger, and may persuade you to give your mind rather to the simplicity of the fathers than to Plato and the son of Nicomachus.

...where these too are taken up and fitted into the melody of the Spirit.

If you wish to hear what divine demonstration they speak of—and not simply demonstration, but syllogistic demonstration—take in hand the Dogmatic Panoply; for there you will see this inscribed in many places, and reading the discourse beneath which lies this inscription, you will find a syllogism everywhere there, and you will hear a syllogistic demonstration that there is one God, and you will cease accusing us for having said it—unless indeed you accuse them together with us—although the "there is one God" is, more than all else, a God-handed-down declaration; for "the Lord your God is one Lord"; if, then, they had wished simply to call the declarations demonstrations, they would have inscribed the demonstration over this, not over the things from which they syllogistically deduced it.

) rather is it a God-handed-down declaration, "for the Lord your God is one Lord"; if, then, it had been their wish to call the declarations simply demonstrations, they would have inscribed the "demonstration" upon this, not upon the things from which they syllogistically gathered it.

There, then—for I am by no means eager to assail you, though you have now by many constraints called me forth to this—I purposed to bring you up to that schoolroom of the fathers; there, then, you will know both how and what the things concerning God are, and in what manner you will not be forced to call everything the divine essence (which you have now suffered, choosing to escape saying "accident" in the case of God, yet not knowing the way of that escape); there too you will find a faith differing from knowledge, and a knowledge of faith of another mode; there too you will know a "knowable" of God by no means taken in terms of faith—as Paul the great also says that the knowable of God has been manifested even to those outside the faith, which, when we say it, you supposed that "to believe" means "to know."

As for the sayings of the earlier Fathers gathered there, I will not cease to think and speak in harmony with them; they speak with great force in their headings, as we have said, unless perhaps with some qualification they call 'demonstration' not the bare assertion as a self-evident proof, but the discourse advanced through reasoning, since the syllogism too has something more akin to demonstration. For if this were not so, they would have inscribed every assertion as a demonstration; for we who follow the Fathers hold to these things unshakably.

The Divine, O wondrous one, being superior to all mind and reason, is also above dialectic, for it is transcendently removed from imagination and opinion, and it is also above the demonstrative; for there is no grasp of it nor knowledge, and it is wholly beyond every syllogistic approach. Yet to reason about divine things was done in deed by the Fathers (p. ...)