Triads in Defence of the Holy Hesychasts 1 part 18/21
Greek original · 105 verses · some words can be tapped for a gloss · long chapter, split into parts; this part covers 1:1994–1:2098 (2460 verses in all)
ℹ️ This corpus has no verse-level morphological tagging. Lemmas come mainly from word-level tagging of other books in the same language (not from this verse), falling back to dictionary form-matching for the rest. Rare homographs can still be misread; verify against the original and a specialist lexicon where precision matters.
ℹ️ The Chinese and English alongside are this site's own translation, made directly from the original text on this page (not the CUV or the WEB, which follow the Masoretic Text and a different textual tradition).
Indeed, neither did the disciples of the Lord simply see this symbol without first receiving eyes which they did not have before, so that, as it were, they became seeing out of blind, according to the divine John of Damascus, and thus beheld that uncreated light — so that, even though it did become perceptible to eyes, it was to eyes that had become beyond ordinary eyes, and that apprehended the spiritual light by a spiritual power.
Thus that light is both according to sense-perception and beyond sense-perception — that ineffable, inaccessible, immaterial, uncreated, deifying, eternal light; the brightness of the divine nature, the glory of the Godhead, the comeliness of the heavenly kingdom.
But that it is not alien, but rather natural to the Godhead, hear again the wise Damascene, learned in divine things, saying: 'He did not, like Moses, possess the adornment of divine glory as something acquired, but from his innate divine glory and brightness'; and again: 'He takes the foremost of the apostles as witnesses of his own glory and Godhead, and reveals to them his own Godhead, that which is beyond all things, the only, all-perfect and pre-perfect Godhead.'
And that it is not visible through the air either, the great Dionysius shows, and all those who, along with him, call this the light of the age to come, when, according to them, we will have no
And that it is not sensible either can be seen also from the fact that it is not visible through air; indeed, even when it shone on Tabor beyond the sun, it was not seen even by those in the surrounding region.
Will you not cease, O man, declaring the light of divine and essential comeliness to be not only sensible and created, but even inferior to our mere intellection?
Inferior to intellection — O heaven and earth, and all who dwell in them — the light of the divine kingdom, the beauty of the age to come, the glory of the divine nature?
The light which the apostles, according to the divinely-inspired Andrew of Crete, saw in an ecstasy transcending every sensible and noetic apprehension, having received the truly seeing precisely by not seeing at all in the ordinary way, and admitting the perception of things beyond nature by themselves undergoing divine things?
Did the initiates of the Lord, then, suffer a demoniacal ecstasy — O what an unheard-of thing to hear! — even though we have received it as a common teaching to say to Christ that 'the foremost of the apostles, having beheld on the mountain the unrestrainable outpouring of your light and the inaccessibility of your Godhead, were transformed by divine ecstasy'?
For no one with any sense would say this: that the essential goodness and life is the supra-essential essence of God; for that which possesses essential attributes is not the same as the essential attribute itself. But according to the great Dionysius, when we name the supra-essential hiddenness 'God' or 'life' or 'essence,'
These powers, then, are essential; but that which possesses these powers collectively and unitively is supra-essential — or rather, supra-essential in its very own supra-essential way. Thus, then, that deifying light too is essential, but is not itself the essence of God.
But this philosopher, proceeding further, declares not only this but every power and energy of God to be created, even though the saints say plainly that of the uncreated nature both all its natural properties and every power and energy are uncreated, just as the properties of created nature are created.
"But how," he says, "is it not the supra-essential essence of God, if it bears the marks of the Master — if it is beyond every creature both seen and conceived, being that which is above sense, above intellection, that which truly is, that which always is, the immaterial, the unchangeable — and this too, called by you 'enhypostatic'?"
Now he says these things not in a spirit of aporetic inquiry, desiring from anyone a clarification of what is obscure, or a resolution of the difficulties, but rather he refutes us, as he supposes — or rather, having set out to refute us and then, as being unable to do so, he goes mad and rages abusively against us: now claiming that the discerning faculty of our soul has been wretchedly corrupted, now saying that we are equal to, or even worse than, those heretics of old, the Massalians, at other times calling us impious and polytheists; indeed, he did not even refrain from calling us godless, atheist, and altogether accursed.
"Ditheist" is, as he himself asserts both in writing and by word of mouth, and proclaims to all, the appellation more fitting for us than all the others — although, by the very things said by him, he unwittingly exempts us from all such blame; for since he says that we call the reality beyond all things 'one,' this itself testifies that we call that supra-essential reality one God, and that that light is not
But not even if we should say that this energy is inseparable from that one essence will that supra-essentiality thereby become composite; for otherwise there would be no simple essence at all, if this were so — for you would not find any essence whatsoever without its natural energy.
And how would the deifying light not bear the marks of the Master — the light which you yourself, compelled by the truth of the facts, called a symbol of the Godhead?
And since the saints, in saying 'enhypostatic' here, do not mean 'self-subsistent,' how could this light be some other essence in itself, or how could it be a different, second God — this light which does not have an existence of its own?
But if, because this energy too is without beginning, uncreated, and incomprehensible, you fabricate in your clever suppositions another God, then you will likewise fabricate for us another God out of the will of God — since the venerable Maximus says that just as the divine nature, which subsists in three hypostases, is without beginning, uncreated, incomprehensible, simple, and uncomposite in its totality, so too is its will; and you would say the same of all its natural energies.
"But," he says, "the deifying gift is the imitation of God — a disposition belonging to the noetic and rational nature, beginning from the first order [of being] and terminating with the last of rational beings; since indeed the great Dionysius too, in explaining how God is above the very principle of divinity, says: 'if you should understand by "divinity" the reality of the deifying gift, and the inimitable imitation of him who is above-God and above-Good...'"
But, my good fellow, first of all the saint added 'inimitable' to 'imitation'; it is, then, no more imitation than non-imitation. How, then, will you yourself be readily credible, if you attach yourself to only one of the two sides?
teaching us this: that although it is impossible for a man, by himself, to be deified, made like to the inimitable God through imitation, nevertheless he must imitate the inimitable — for thus he would attain the deifying gift, and might be styled 'God' by adoption.
So [the saint] interpreted it. But you, having scraped away the conjunction, and in its place having written in the pronoun, thus read the saying to us, as though clarifying it, in this altered form: 'if you should understand by "divinity" and "goodness" the reality of the deifying gift, that gift being itself the inimitable imitation of the above-God one.'
Moreover, you also call the grace of deification a 'natural disposition' — that is, the actualization and manifestation of a natural power — whereby, unknown to yourself, you have fallen truly into the deception of the Massalians; for the one being deified will, by every necessity, be God by nature, if deification is to occur according to a natural power, and is by nature such as to be encompassed within the boundaries of nature.
Do not, then, call your own overturning of things that stand securely by their name, nor attempt to smear a blemish upon the blameless faith, wiping your own disgraces — which in truth are yours — onto others; or rather, shamelessly slandering them as though they were guilty of the same.
But be taught, you too, by those who know, or by those who have been taught by them, that the grace of deification is altogether without relation to nature, possessing no power in nature whatsoever that is receptive of it; for otherwise it would no longer be grace, but merely the manifestation of an energy operating according to a natural power, and what occurred would not even be paradoxical, if deification were according to a receptive power of nature — for deification would then reasonably be a work of nature, and not a gift of God, and such a one would be able to be, and to be properly called, God by nature; for the natural power of each of the beings that exist is nothing other than the unfailing movement of nature toward its own energy.
...deification puts the one being deified outside of himself — but if deification itself is encompassed within the boundaries of nature, how it could do this, I am unable to see.
The grace of deification, therefore, is above nature, above virtue, and above knowledge, and, according to the holy Maximus, all such things fall infinitely short of it; for every virtue, and the imitation of God that lies within our power, renders the one who possesses it fit for divine union, but it is grace that accomplishes this ineffable union itself; for through it, God in his entirety indwells all the worthy in their entirety, and the saints in their entirety indwell God in his entirety, having received God whole as their own possession, and having acquired, as it were, the very prize of their ascent to him — God alone — who has embraced them after the manner of soul clinging to body, as his own members, and has deigned to be in them through the enhypostatic sonship given by the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit.
So when you hear that God dwells among us through the virtues, or that He is established within us through remembrance, do not simply reckon this — the acquisition of the virtues — to be deification, but rather the brightness and grace of God that accrues through the virtues, just as the great Basil also says: that the soul, having increased its natural impulses together with its own ascetic effort and the help of the Spirit, becomes worthy, in the righteous judgment of God, of the brightness given by the grace of God to the saints.
That the brightness given by the grace of God is light, you will learn from him who says: 'The brightness from thence is light for those purified here below, at the time when the righteous shall shine forth as the sun' — those in whose midst God stands, they being gods and kings, distinguishing and apportioning the degrees of that blessedness from thence.
That this is supracelestial and supramundane, no one will gainsay; therefore whoever, he says, awaits the supracelestial light in the promises of good things — concerning which Solomon also says, (page…
…) light is for the righteous continually; and the apostle: 'giving thanks to the Father, who has made us fit for a share of the portion of the saints in light.'
Yet indeed, even when we say that wisdom comes to be present in someone through diligence and practice, we do not call this very diligence or practice itself wisdom, but rather that which accrues through them
But even with respect to the divine vision itself there are many differences; for to the prophets — to one in a dream, to another while awake — [God appeared] yet through riddles and mirrors; but to Moses He appeared in visible form and not through riddles.
But when you hear of a vision of God 'in form and not through riddles,' call to mind him who speaks of deification: the personally-subsisting illumination according to form, which has no coming-into-being but is an inconceivable manifestation among the worthy; and the mystical union with God, above mind and reason, in the incorruptible age of beings, according to which the saints, beholding the light of the unseen and super-ineffable glory, themselves also become recipients of that blessed purity together with the powers above; and [call to mind] the invocation of the great God and Father, which is a symbol of the personally-subsisting and really-existing adoption given by the gift and grace of the Holy Spirit, according to which, by the visitation of grace, all the saints are called, and shall be, sons of God.
This, then, the great Dionysius — having elsewhere called it 'the source-originating ray' and 'theurgic light,' but here 'the deifying gift' and 'the beginning of divinity,' that is, of deification — [says] in answering the one who asked how God exists 'above the source of divinity' (theurgy's principle), that is, above the beginning of divinity, replying: as if 'God,' (page…
…) hearing that [God] is seen in form and not through riddles; and, in the manner of soul with body, is engrafted upon the worthy as upon its own members, and is united with them to such a degree that He wholly interpenetrates them wholly, and they in turn wholly interpenetrate Him wholly; and [hearing that] the Spirit, through the Son, is poured richly upon us — yet not created — and is received by us and speaks through us: hearing these things, then, do not suppose that God is seen according to the supra-essential essence, but according to His deifying gift and energy — the grace of adoption, the unoriginate deification, the personally-subsisting illumination according to form. If you understand this to be 'the beginning of divinity' — the deifying gift, that which is participated in and seen in a manner beyond nature — then above this beginning is the essence of God that is beyond every beginning.
For that [gift] is indeed a relation, even if not a natural one — and yet it is one to which no [further] relation attaches, not only as being supra-natural, but also precisely as being a relation; for how could a relation in turn have a relation?
But the essence of God is not one to which no [further] relation attaches in the manner that a relation is, but rather it is beyond even these supra-natural relations themselves.
And of that [energy] each of those deemed worthy partakes, fittingly and proportionately for all; but the essence of God is exalted above all things that can be participated in.
But he who says that the deifying gift is a habit perfective of rational nature, beginning from the first order [of beings] and terminating in the lowest of rational beings, is clearly setting himself against the Gospel of Christ.
For if deification perfects rational nature, but does not make those who are godlike surpass it — being a habit of rational nature, as having proceeded from a natural potency into energy — then the saints who are deified do not become [something] above nature, nor are they begotten of God, nor are they spirit, as having been begotten of the Spirit; nor did Christ, having come to dwell among us, give the power that children of God be begotten only to those who believe in His name — for even before His coming this [habit] already existed in all the nations, whether (page…
Furthermore, if deification is indeed a habit perfective of rational nature, then the Greeks were not perfectly rational, nor were the fallen angels; therefore they do not misuse knowledge, but rather they have been deprived of the natural habit corresponding to it.
…[he calls] knowledge not only a gift of God, but also a habit perfective of rational nature — yet not a deifying gift, for it is not supra-natural, whereas that [deifying gift] is above nature.
Then all would be — some more, some less — yet all alike gods, both men and angels; while the race of demons would be ever-imperfect gods and demigods.
Therefore this habit is not deification; for whatever habit perfective of rational nature there might be — whether knowledge, or bodily temperament, or good natural constitution of body and soul, coming to be either from without or from within — would make those in whom it arises precisely rational, but not gods as well.
But rather, as has been shown above, the saints clearly say that the adoption which has advanced from faith into energy, and this deifying gift, are personally-subsisting; but this man alone of all has surmised that the imitation of God, which he [calls] the divine principle and deifying gift, is not personally-subsisting, and insists on this; therefore it is other than that [gift] which has been engendered in the fathers and (page…
But the divine Maximus said that this [gift] is not only personally-subsisting, but also unoriginate; and not only uncreated, but also uncircumscribed and beyond time — such that it makes those who have obtained a share of it, by means of it, uncreated, without beginning, and uncircumscribed, even though by their own nature they have come to be out of non-being.
But this man, intruding into things he has not seen, insists that deification is created and natural and subject to time — clearly fashioning it out of himself — from which it is evident that he drags God down into a creature.
For deification, according to the fathers, is an essential energy of God; but that essence whose essential energies are created is itself, of necessity, created as well.
One may see this wretched man falling into this absurdity in many ways and often; for he does not even blush to declare that all the innate powers and energies of God are created, even though we have believed each of the saints to be a temple of the living God, on account of the grace dwelling within.
But this too moves me to great wonder: how he himself, while saying that the light which shone on Tabor is called 'theurgic' by the fathers, then cannot himself bear to call it a 'deifying gift.'
Yet indeed, since the deifying gift of the Spirit is an energy of God, and God has His names from the energies (for His supra-essentiality is nameless) — if deification existed from virtue and wisdom alone, God would not be called 'God' as having a deifying energy, since it would be wisdom and virtue that make this energy of His manifest; nor again would He be called 'super-God,' as existing beyond this divinity — for it would have sufficed for Him [to be called] 'super-wise' and 'super-good,' and (page…
Now, taking no account of the fine Barlaam's abuses against us (for they are not directed against us but refer to the fathers; it is their doctrines that have been insulted — or rather, they do not even touch them, for one who spits, as the saying goes, at heaven, does not make heaven but himself worthy of spitting-upon) — we, then, reckoning these loathsome blasphemies as nothing, and as though he had asked, in a spirit of perplexed inquiry, what deification actually is, will answer this according to the power measured out to us by the Lord.
When you hear, O best of men, of a deifying energy of God and a theurgic grace of the Spirit, do not be over-curious, nor seek 'how this,' 'how that,' 'and how not this' — this while you yourself, according to those who have spoken concerning it, are destined not to come to be in God without it — but rather hold fast to the works through which you will attain to it; for then you will also know it, so far as is possible; for only he who has learned by experience knows the energies of the Spirit, according to the great Basil.
Do not, then, be over-curious, but follow those who have experience — chiefly in deeds, but if not in these, then at least in words — content with the illustrative manifestations of it; for deification is beyond all naming.
Wherefore we too, having written much concerning stillness — sometimes at the urging of the fathers, sometimes at the request of the brothers — have nowhere ventured to write concerning deification; but now, since it is necessary to speak, we shall speak — things pious, by the grace of the Lord, but not adequate to set it forth fully; for even when spoken, (page…
The divinity by nature, then — the source of deification, from which, as from an unparticipated cause, comes the being-deified of those who are deified — this, then, the blessedness beyond all things, most sovereignly originative of divinity, is in itself invisible both to sense and to mind, whether disembodied or bound to a body; even should one of these stand outside itself, deified unto something better, [it remains so]; for it is believed to be, and to become, visible only to a mind and body united according to hypostasis, though not according to their own proper nature.
For those alone [Christ's mind and body] were deified by the presence of the whole of Him who anoints, and received the energy equal to the deifying essence, having contained it entirely without deficiency and manifested it through themselves; for indeed in Christ 'the whole fullness of divinity dwells bodily,' according to the apostle.
Wherefore also there are among the saints those who, after the coming of God in the flesh, saw that light as a kind of boundless sea, marvelously pouring forth from a single disk — namely, the venerable body — as also the apostles [saw] on the mountain.
But the deification of angels and men who have been deified is not the supra-essential essence of God, but the energy of the supra-essential essence of God, indwelling in those who have been deified — not as art [indwells] in the artifact (for in this way there is present in things produced by craftsmanship the power that produced them, appearing upon or being manifested in them), but as art [indwells] in the one who has taken it up, according to the great Basil (wherefore the saints are also instruments of the Holy Spirit, having received the same energy as He); and [it includes] the ready faith of which it is spoken, the gifts of healing, the workings of powers, foreknowledge, and the wisdom that is not gainsaid, which also (page…
…) the Lord called 'the Spirit of our Father'; and not only this, but also the sanctifying transmission of the Spirit, granted from them and through them to those sanctified after them: 'For I will take of the Spirit that is upon you and put it upon them,' God said to Moses; and when Paul laid his hands upon the twelve Ephesians, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they at once spoke in tongues and prophesied.
Therefore, when we consider the Spirit's own worth, we contemplate Him together with the Father and the Son; but when we reflect on the grace operating toward those who partake, we say that the Spirit is in us — poured out upon us, yet not created; given to us, yet not made; bestowed as a favor, yet not fashioned. He is present in the imperfect still (to speak again with the great Basil) as a kind of disposition, on account of the unsettledness of their purpose, but in the more perfect as an acquired habit; and there are those in whom He is even more deeply rooted than this habit: for, he says, as the power of seeing is in a healthy eye, so is the energy of the Spirit in the purified soul.
Therefore the deifying gift of the Spirit is not the supra-essential essence of God, but the deifying energy of the supra-essential essence of God; and not even the whole of this [energy is given], even though that [energy] is in itself indivisible.
For what created thing could contain the whole infinitely-powerful power of the Spirit, except Him who was conceived in the virginal womb by the presence of the Holy Spirit and the overshadowing of the power of the Most High?
But just as fire is invisible when there is no matter present, or no sense-organ present capable of receiving its illuminating energy, so also deification is unobservable when there is no matter present capable of receiving the divine manifestation; but whenever it takes hold of suitable matter that possesses itself uncovered — and such is every rational nature that has been purified, not bearing the covering of manifold vice — then it too is seen as spiritual light, or rather, it makes those [natures] themselves spiritual light.
'For,' he says, 'the prize of virtue is to become God and to be resplendent with the purest light, becoming a son of that day which is not interrupted by darkness; for it is a different sun that makes this day — the one that flashes forth the true light, who, once he has shone upon us, no longer hides himself in a setting, but, embracing all things with his illuminating power, produces in the worthy a light continuous and without succession, and makes those who partake of that light themselves other suns.'
'For,' he says, 'just as this earthly air, when driven upward by the force of the Spirit, becomes light-like, being transformed by the purity of the upper ether, so also the human mind, having left behind this turbid and squalid life, when it becomes light-like by the power of the Spirit and is mingled with the true and lofty purity, itself somehow becomes transparent within that [purity], and is filled with rays, and becomes light, according to the promise of the Lord, who promised that the righteous would shine as the sun.'
…) We also see this happening on earth, in the case of a mirror or of water; for having received the ray of the sun, they produce from themselves another ray.
And we too, then, whether we, having left behind the earthly darkness, come to be above, will become light-like, having drawn near to the true light of Christ; or whether the true light, which shines in the darkness, should descend even to us — [either way] we too shall be light, just as the Lord somewhere says to His disciples.
Thus the deifying gift of the Spirit is an ineffable light, and makes those who have become rich in it a divine light — not only filling them with everlasting light, but also bestowing upon them knowledge and a life befitting God.
Thus Paul lived, no longer the created life, but the everlasting life of Him who dwelt within him, according to the divine Maximus; thus the prophets saw as existing the things not yet come to be; thus he saw God who has beheld Him spiritually, not by an alien symbol, but by a natural one — and by 'natural symbol of God' I do not mean that which is itself only a symbol, that is, whatever is perceived by sense as sense, whether it is seen or heard and operates through the air; rather, when an eye, seeing, sees not as an eye [naturally does], but as having been opened by the power of the Spirit, it sees God by no alien symbol — and this we call 'perception beyond perception.'
Know, however, the mark of that light: the cessation, arising in the soul, of unseemly pleasures and passions; the peace and settledness of thoughts; rest and spiritual joy; contempt for human glory; humility joined with ineffable exultation; hatred of the world, love of heavenly things — or rather, of God alone of the heavens; and besides these, even if someone should not merely cover the eyes of the one who sees, but should even gouge them out, he would no less clearly behold the light.
How, then, could anyone be persuaded by one who declares this to be visible through the air, and of no benefit at all to the rational soul, as [it is beneficial] to the (page…
He [who beholds the light], understanding that he does not behold it by sense as sense, thinks that he sees it by the mind; but examining and scrutinizing further, he finds that not even the mind is operative with regard to that light — and this is what we call 'understanding beyond understanding,' meaning by this that the one who possesses mind and sense sees, yet [sees it] beyond both of these.