Greek original · 128 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:1853–1:1980 (2009 verses in all)
Further, the universals, which are the principles of demonstration, derive their credibility through induction; but induction consists in adducing all the particulars and omitting none; yet the particulars are inexhaustible. It is therefore among the impossibilities for induction to come about; and the universals are therefore not to be trusted, not to be known—and that very fact that they are universal.
And not only do we not know them in a manner superior to demonstration, but we do not even hold a firm opinion about them. From such principles, how could there arise a demonstration, which is an unshakeable supposition?
"I saw," he says, "the eclipse of the sun occurring at conjunction, and the one after it, and yet another and another; and through the power within me, which is by nature ever apt to connect like things together, I obtained the universal knowledge. Again, from the daily continuous motion of the heaven, from many sense-perceptions the universal was gathered for me."
For this is your own argument, and a true one: that if anyone is to obtain exact knowledge through induction, he must of necessity have contact with all the particulars by means of the faculty in us suited to each, and must hear each of the audible things and see each of the visible.
But you, not having seen most of the days and revolutions and eclipses, yet pronouncing about them all, suppose that you know in a manner superior to demonstration; and, coming through this "knowledge" to demonstration, suppose that you hold a true and firm supposition—when it is exceedingly false and fallible?
For the continuous motion of the sun was interrupted in the days of Joshua son of Nun (Josh 10:13), and in the days of Hezekiah it moved backward (p. ...) (Isa 38:8)
And the eclipse that took place at the saving Passion of the Lord—did it not occur when the moon was not fourteen days old, at a time when it was among things wholly impossible for the moon to be in conjunction with, and perpendicular to, the sun?
If, then, the universal gathered from things involved in generation becomes the principle of art, and the principle of demonstration is from things that are ever in the same state, and demonstrative knowledge comes from this; but nothing among beings is ever in the same state, for none is unbroken—then the principle of demonstration does not exist; and the principle not existing, the end too is gone.
What truth Aristotle discovered through the instrument of demonstration, and how he attained the middle term and the cause—that is, in no way at all—it was possible to state; but I think I will now leave it aside.
And since the philosopher undertook to come to the aid of his teacher, we shall add these things also; but having said one thing, we shall halt the argument that has set out toward many.
You, then, must accept that your so-called "demonstration" is either irrationality, or else an argument and not a demonstration; for every argument is contradicted.
Do not, therefore, compare the non-existent with things that are—Aristotelian demonstration, and that which is "above it," with our demonstration concerning divine things drawn from the oracles of truth.
(p. ...) That the evil-minded Barlaam says we are ditheists is a concise demonstration of our piety and of his heterodoxy, since even the great Basil was called a tritheist by those who blasphemed against the Son and the Holy Spirit.
And against Gregory, surnamed "the Theologian," the band of Apollinaris cast stones and dragged him to the tribunal, calling him a ditheist, because he held the God-man Word to be perfect in both [natures] and to have mind according to both.
And of Maximus, wise in divine things, the followers of Sergius and Pyrrhus pitilessly cut off both his hand and his tongue, fastening upon him the charge of ditheism and polytheism, because he proclaimed two wills and two energies in Christ—created, that is, and uncreated, corresponding to the natures—the uncreated being, according to him, not of the divine nature itself but the natural energies thereof, which are not natures but God-befitting motions, as he himself sets forth in many places of his writings.
But, as I said, this great accusation is a token of the secure theology of the saints, and no less a clear demonstration of the heterodoxy of those who on this account (p. ...)
So then, against those who have just now lawlessly carved up the one Godhead into created and uncreated, and who say that only the divine essence is uncreated Godhead, and that everything uncreated is utterly indistinguishable from the divine essence, but that every power and energy—or whatever in any way differs from this essence—is created: against these we have declared that the one God, who is one in essence, is uncreated even in respect to these [energies], and is manifold in His energies, as all-powerful. (For God is said to be "multiplied," according to the divine Maximus, being multiplied by His providential processions through His will, individual to each, for the bringing-forth of beings; and being utterly unknowable in essence, yet knowable in those [energies], which are goodness, wisdom, power, deity—that is, majesty—and, in short, all the things about the essence, as Chrysostom the father also says verbatim.) So then, when we say these things against such men, the one who accuses us of ditheism plainly does not himself worship the Maker of all, but some inactive (energy-less) god.
For he could no longer call Him Creator, or Worker of divine deeds, or active at all, since the venerable Maximus has clearly declared that it is impossible to act without a corresponding energy, just as it is impossible to exist without existence.
But neither will he call uncreated that god which Barlaam asserts; for from the uncreated energy, according again to the same theologian, the uncreated nature is characterized; and that which characterizes differs from that which is characterized.
If, then, the divine nature has no energy distinct from itself—an energy that is also uncreated and is known to us from its operations, while that nature is established above all comprehension—how shall any of all beings know that there is an uncreated nature, which is in itself inconceivable but is known from the things about it (among which, according to the great Athanasius, are its power and energy)?
For it belongs to the nature to beget, but to the energy to make; and the essence of God is one thing, and the essential energy of God another; and the essence of God is one thing, but the signification of the names about it is yet another.
For that which has no natural power or energy neither exists, nor is anything, nor is there any positing or negation of it at all, according to the theologians.
This foolish accuser of our piety, therefore, has said in his heart, "There is no God" (Ps 14:1), even if with his lips he pretends to assert that God exists.
"But," he says, "God has energies—created ones; for every energy of God apart from the essence that works all things is created; and the one thing without beginning and without end is the divine nature, and this alone is the only uncreated light and the uncreated glory of God."
For either God has no natural and essential energies, and the one who says this is godless (for this is again to say outright that there is no God; for the saints openly say that, if there is no natural and essential energy, then neither will Christ—who is worshipped in two such energies and two natures—be God, nor man); or else, if there are natural and essential energies of God, and these are created, then the essence of God that possesses them will also be created; for that essence and nature whose natural and essential energies are created is not itself uncreated.
But also the divine providence, and the beholding power, and the splendor of God—the very splendor that shone forth on Tabor to Moses and Elijah and to those who went up with Christ onto the mountain, when He manifested His own deity and kingdom—these too, then, are creatures, if the nature alone (p. ...)
...is without beginning and without end, and this alone is the uncreated light and the uncreated glory of God, and thus there is one uncreated Godhead, inasmuch as only the divine essence is uncreated.
For providence is a relation of God toward the things that enjoy His forethought, and the beholding power a relation toward visible things, and the splendor toward the things divinely made splendid; but the divine nature is not a relation, being utterly loosed from all things and established above them all.
And to the beholding energy creating does not belong; for God beheld all things even before their genesis, but did not create them even before their genesis.
This nature that works all things not being [identical with the beholding energy], then, the beholding energy of the Spirit too will be created, according to Barlaam—and hence so likewise.
And the splendor of God is both participated and divided; for, he says, the Lord faintly disclosed it on the mountain, and the initiates beheld it not in its entirety, lest along with the seeing they should also lose their life.
"But let the splendor of our God be upon us," says the psalmist prophet (Ps 89:17 LXX); and "this moderate radiance here brings me to this point—to see and to experience the splendor of God," says Gregory the Theologian; and He who flashes forth the true and unsuccessive light, according to the great Basil, makes those who participate in Him into other (p. ...)
While we say these and such things against Barlaam's impious writings and proclamations, it is fitting that he, having thereupon learned the truth, should lay aside his impious opinion.
But he yielded not even to the refutations—just as not before to the exhortatory and consolatory words—and, declaring (as he supposed) the most divine light and every divine power and energy to be created all the more, he gathered together from the patristic sayings we adduced on these matters, and composed against us—or rather against the sacred fathers themselves—a "superior" and an "inferior" Godhead; and proclaiming this abroad, he at once both stirs up those who hear us undiscerningly, and, by their fleeing the supposed absurdity, persuades them to call created that light and every power and energy of God that in any way differs from the divine essence—lest they too fall into such ditheism.
"For," he says, "if the light too be uncreated—the light that is caused, participated, and seen, that came to be on the mountain, called in some manner 'Godhead'—and the nature of God too, which is above every cause and participation, every seeing and comprehension, every naming and manifestation, [be uncreated], how will there be one [Godhead], and not rather two uncreated Godheads, a superior and an inferior?"
The wretch does not perceive that, even if the divine light were a creature and every divine energy differed from the divine essence (as he himself says), so much the more impossible would it be for there to be one Godhead.
From the things he himself says, therefore, two Godheads of God strictly arise: the one superior in every respect and forever, as being an uncreated Godhead; the other inferior and divided in every respect and forever, as being a created Godhead.
But in an uncreated essence and natural power and will and splendor and energy, there is one Godhead, since the natural [attributes] have an indissoluble union with the nature to which they correspond, and are, in respect of their being uncreated, one and equal and simple.
For that which has no natural power and energy is not simple, but non-existent; and the distinction of cause and caused, participable and imparticipable, characterizing and characterized, and such things as superior and subordinate, in no way hinders God from being one and simple, possessing one and equal and simple Godhead.
For the Father too is greater than the Son in respect of being [His] cause and on account of the Son's humanity; and according to the great Basil and the divine Cyril, the Spirit is subordinate to the Son in order and in the dignity that accords with it, as being supplied through Him—yet is not second by nature, as Eunomius first raved, but equal; for just as the Son is Lord, so too the Spirit is Lord, but these are one God in one Godhead, simple and equal.
Neither, then, in the case of essence and power and energy and will and the like—all of which are uncreated essences [i.e. realities of the uncreated]—does the superiority in respect of order and cause and such things stand in the way of there being one Godhead.
For these are the one Godhead of the three adorable Persons: the essence, the will, the power, the energy, and the like—not as being one and altogether indistinguishable from one another and all merely essence (for this belongs to Barlaam's madness) (p. ...)
But he who says that the essence of God alone is the uncreated Godhead mutilates the Godhead—or rather, as has been previously demonstrated, abolishes it entirely.
And he who asserts that essence and power and will and energy persist as utterly indistinguishable [though all] uncreated, differs in nothing from the one who mutilates and abolishes it, accomplishing this very thing through an impious confusion; for all such things, passing over into one another and through one another, proceed toward non-existence.
Those, then, who choose to rightly divide the word of truth (2 Tim 2:15) must with understanding both cherish the superiority of the divine essence over the divine energies—since thereby the difference between them is shown—and [cherish] the uncreatedness of the divine energies, even though they differ from the essence—since thereby the singleness of the Godhead is shown; for outside the one God nothing is uncreated.
And it is now necessary to set forth, out of many, a few of the utterances of the saints, by which the superiority of the uncreated essence over the uncreated energy is most piously displayed—and especially those of the great Dionysius, by whom the Church was initiated into well-nigh the first (p. ...)
When the great one undertakes to hymn the essence-name that reveals Him who truly is, he says: "Let us call this much to mind—that the aim of the discourse is not to set forth the superessential essence insofar as it is superessential (for this is ineffable and unknowable and altogether beyond manifestation, and transcends even union itself), but to hymn the essence-making procession of the thearchic essence-source into all beings."
Now the union which the revealer of God just mentioned with wonder is deification, according to which (as he himself says at the outset of his treatise On the Divine Names) we are conjoined to the unutterable and unknowable things, unutterably and unknowably, in a union superior to that of our essence and energy.
Here it is quite evident that not only the essence of God, which transcends all the rest together with the essence-making procession, but also this very procession of God that is transcended—being essence-making—is uncreated. For that which is productive and creative, and that of absolutely all beings, how could it itself be something created and made and one of the things that thus exist?
A little later the same one says again: "The discourse does not undertake to express the supersubstantial Goodness-in-itself, and Essence and Life and Wisdom of the supersubstantial Godhead, which is enthroned above all goodness and deity and essence and wisdom and life, hidden away in secret places (as the oracles say), but the manifested goodness-working providence; and to this providence here too he dedicates most God-befitting hymns."
And in the eleventh chapter he also names this [providence] "Godhead," writing: "We call 'Godhead,' principially and divinely and causally, the one super-principial and supersubstantial Principle and Cause of all; but participatively [we call 'Godhead'] the providential power given forth from the imparticipable God—the self-deification, in which the partakers are and are called God-filled (deified)."
(p. ...) Is it, then, the inexpressible and super-principial essence of God—which in respect of ineffability and imparticipability and non-manifestation and uncausedness transcends this providence—that alone is uncreated?
Is the providence that is transcended by that essence (as by its cause)—which is itself also named "Godhead," as not being outside the fullness of the one Godhead—uncreated?
It is most manifest that this too is uncreated; for it makes God-filled (deified) the things receptive of deification, as itself not being outside the one God; and by their participating in it they are perfected as God-filled, since it is not by participation in another's deifying [grace] that it has the power to perfect, seeing that it is self-deification itself.
Moreover in the twelfth chapter, having said that the providence which beholds all things is "Godhead," and having here too divinely hymned it, he then says that from the transcendent and supereminent and most simple Holiness and Lordship and Kingship and Godhead proceeds all good providence, which beholds and holds together the things provided for, bestowing itself in goodness-befitting manner unto the deification of those who turn toward it.
This good providence, then—which proceeds from the supereminent and transcendent and most simple Holiness and Lordship and Kingship and Godhead (that is, from the essence of God; for that essence is most simple, as being utterly indivisible, and on account of being in itself above every name and nameless, is named with transcendence from all its own energies)—this good providence, which is named "Godhead" as overseeing all and beholding all, what else is it but the energy of God, and not the essence, since by being from that essence it differs from it and is transcended by it as by a cause that is also super-named?
How, then, is this providence that proceeds from that essence not uncreated, being a beholder and holder-together of the things provided for, and moreover bestowing itself in goodness-befitting manner unto the deification of those who turn toward it?
Indeed, having shown it to be participable as well—that is, to be a participation—as he too names it in many places of his discourses (for he says it "bestows itself in goodness-befitting manner"), he immediately went on to add: "But since the Cause of all is super-full, He is hymned as 'Holy of holies' according to a single, all-transcending pre-eminence, by reason of an overflowing causality and an exalted superiority; so that—as one might say—by as much as beings surpass non-beings in being holy or lordly or divine or kingly, and again the self-participations [surpass] the participants, by so much is the imparticipable Cause established above all, both the participants and the participations—that is, in respect of essence."
Are these self-participations, then, which are transcended by the imparticipable Cause—among which is also all good providence, as being holder-together and beholder of the things provided for and deifier of those turned toward it, and named "Godhead"—are they creatures, because they are transcended by the imparticipable Cause, as this heaven-minded one taught us, saying that the imparticipable Cause is established above not only the participants (clearly both the rest and the deified), but also above the participations—that is, above the deifying providence itself and the like—by reason of an overflowing causality and an exalted superiority?
And that none of these uncreated and divine energies is an essence, the same revealer of God clearly showed in the chapter before this, saying: "We do not say that being-itself or life-itself is any divine or angelic essence, but we call being-itself and life-itself and Godhead-itself even the very powers of God—the essence-itself, the life-giving-itself, the deification-itself."
This exalted and surpassing superiority of God's essence even over the uncreated energies themselves, the in-all-things great and lofty Dionysius—no less precise than great in divine things—hymns throughout the whole treatise On the Divine (p. ...)
...goodness-source: if you should understand by "Godhead" and "goodness" the very thing that is the goodness-working and God-making gift of the so-called Godhead, [then] as super-source of [all] thearchy and goodness-source, He who is super-principial over every principle is beyond.
There is, then, according to the God-wise theologians, an "inferior" Godhead—as the great Dionysius here too said—namely deification, which is a gift of the transcendent essence of God.
And Barlaam now proclaims ditheism abroad against us in vain; for he is plainly making this notorious unto the slander of the unassailable theologians, himself contending that this divine gift is created, and that thus there is one uncreated Godhead—the essence of God.
For God's deifying gift is His energy, which both the great Dionysius and all the other theologians in many places call "Godhead," insisting that the name "Godhead" belongs to the divine energy rather than to the divine essence; for, according to Gregory the Theologian, Isaiah is wont to call the energies of the Spirit "spirits."
As, then, the prophet, by calling the energies of the Spirit "seven spirits," did not harm the singleness of the Spirit, so neither—by the appellation "Godhead" (as shown above)—is providence (which is an energy of God) called [Godhead] by the saints, nor the beholding power, nor the God-making grace of God (that is, deification), the singleness of the Godhead being thereby abolished.
...and the energies, as this too has been shown above, are uncreated; therefore the God-making grace of God is not only called "Godhead" but is also uncreated, according to the God-wise theologians.
Having called it an "imitation," he set forth [its archetype] as inimitable, and said it to be the principle of those being deified, and a deity-source and goodness-source—which belongs to God alone—and called it "God-making" but not "God-made," in order to show that it persists as uncreated.
And that the God-making grace—deification itself—is uncreated, the divine Maximus too declares with boldness, writing: "This is the Gospel of God: an embassy of God to men through the Son made flesh, who bestows as a reward, upon those who obey Him, the unbegotten deification."
And again: "The divine grace remains incomprehensible even in the participation of those who enjoy it, because by nature, as unbegotten, it possesses infinity."
And again: "This belongs by nature to the divine grace alone—to bestow deification proportionately upon beings, illumining the [created] nature with the light that is above nature, and setting it above its own proper limits by reason of the surpassing measure of glory."
Wherefore the great Basil also says: "God poured out the Holy Spirit upon us richly through Jesus Christ (Titus 3:6): He poured out, He did not create; He bestowed as grace, He did not fashion; He gave, He did not make."
...but the nature is [not] poured out; for through this [grace] the nature of the Spirit, being uncreated, is both made known and displayed, while in itself it has no manifestation.
For again, according to the divine Maximus, the principle (logos) of ever-well-being comes by grace to the worthy, bringing with it God, who by nature is above every beginning and end, and making those who by nature have beginning and end to be without beginning and without end by grace; since the great Paul too, no longer living the temporal life but the divine and eternal life of the Word indwelling [him], became without beginning and without end by grace, and Melchizedek had neither beginning of days nor end of life (Heb 7:3)—not on account of created nature, by reason of which he began and ceased to be, but on account of the divine and uncreated grace, ever-existent above all nature and time, [proceeding] from the ever-existent God.
Paul, then, was created only so long as he lived the life that had come into being from non-being by God's command; but when he no longer lived this life, but the one that had accrued to him by God's indwelling, he became uncreated by grace, even as did Melchizedek, and as does everyone who has acquired within himself the Word of God living and working alone.
These things, then, the great Basil also says: that what is moved by the Holy Spirit with an eternal motion became a holy living being; and man, when the Spirit took up His dwelling in him, attained the dignity of prophet, apostle, angel, god—being formerly earth and ashes.