Theological and Ethical Discourses 1 part 1/27

And against those who apply the term 'first' to the Father.

And against those who attempt to theologize without the Spirit.

And that whatever the Father is, the Son is also, and whatever the Son is, the Holy Spirit is also, and that these are one spirit, equal in honor, of one essence, and sharing one throne.

On the saying of the Apostle in which he says:

'And I knew such a man, caught up to the third heaven, who heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.'

What, then, are the unspeakable words that Paul heard?

And what are the good things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man?

What is, or how will there be and already is in us the kingdom of God, and what is its activity within us?

On dispassion, and the charisms and gifts that come by progress within it;

and what is the perfection of spiritual maturity in Christ.

Concerning those who suppose that they possess the Holy Spirit within themselves unknowingly, without perceiving at all His activity;

and concerning those who say that no man can see His glory in the present life, with proof of this by citations.

And that there is no envy among the saints, when through every virtuous zeal we are made equal to them.

And in what manner one sees God, and that he who has attained to such a measure as to see God insofar as is attainable, is already from this life initiated into the enjoyment that is to be given to the saints in the age to come.

And that whatever such a man says, does, or writes, it is not he himself, but the Holy Spirit speaking within him, who says and writes these things;

and he who rejects or misconstrues his words sins and blasphemes against the Spirit of God who works and speaks within him.

On dispassion and the virtuous life.

And how one must cut off one's own will and ascend to the height of perfection.

And concerning the conjunction of God with the soul, and of the soul with the body, and the paradoxical union of these three.

Concerning those who serve God, who they are, of what sort, and of what kind.

And who is the one who repents, and what is his labor; and who is the one who pursues the ascetic life, and what is his labor; and who is the one who serves God, and what is his work.

And that, if we do not acquire the virtues, mere freedom from the passions alone will profit us nothing.

On the love of God and faith, and how one becomes pregnant with the love of God.

On true knowledge, and that the knowledge of God comes to the diligent not from studies, but from purity and grace from above;

and a refutation of those who suppose they know the things of the Spirit without the Spirit;

in which also concerning the holiness of the Father;

and what a good thing faith is, and what is its fruit, and how it grows;

and that those who possess the treasure of the Spirit within themselves also recognize it existing in others;

and what are the signs of the saints, and how and by whom they are recognized;

and that he who has not been born from above cannot see the God who begot him, nor recognize the one who has attained to this through the Spirit. Discourse 10.

On the fearful day of the Lord and the judgment to come, that even before death this judgment is already at work in us who are being purified through tears in this life, so that in whomever it takes place in the present life, it will not confront him in the life to come.

And what is the day of the Lord, and to whom it is suddenly revealed.

And that faith in Christ alone cannot save us unless we also become knowingly partakers of the Holy Spirit, and that not all who are baptized receive Christ through baptism.

And how one can know whether he bears Christ within himself and has become a partaker of the Holy Spirit.

And an interpretation, as in passing, of 'In the beginning was the Word.'

On the life-giving death of Jesus and God, which continually takes place perceptibly in the perfect.

And that the acquisition of the virtues is purchased with blood;

and what are the lodging-places of the virtues, and that he who does not ascend to the kingdom of heaven in order, by the first step, will by no means enter into it.

That in the perfect there is joy and exultation, and not tears, and the streams of theology gush forth.

And toward the end, that one must not leap upon positions of authority without the grace that fully assures our hearts, the grace that calls one to shepherd the people of God;

On the saying of the Apostle which says:

'Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.'

On the saying of the Apostle:

'The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.'

And how we put off the earthy man and put on Christ, having become His kinsmen and brethren.

On feasts, and how one ought to keep feast, and of what things the rites performed in the feasts are symbols, and against those who take luxurious pride in them.

And concerning those who communicate worthily or unworthily, and what the difference is between them;

On stillness (hesychia), and what kind of labor he who valiantly perseveres in it must hold to.

To speak or utter concerning God, and to search into the things pertaining to Him, and to make utterable what is unutterable, and to imply as comprehensible what is incomprehensible to all, would be a mark of a rash and self-willed soul.

And this affliction befalls not only those who dare to say something of their own accord concerning God, but also those who memorize by rote and busily meddle with what was long ago spoken against the heretics by the divinely inspired theologians and handed down in writing—not that they may reap some spiritual benefit, but that they may be admired by their hearers at banquets and in assemblies and be styled theologians;

which grieves me all the more and fills me with anguish, as I consider the dreadfulness of the undertaking and the judgment laid up for those who are so bold.

And what things they say, in their audacity concerning the things of God!

'In this respect alone,' he says, 'is the Father greater than the Son: in that He is the cause of the Son's existence.'

How can you say that the Father is greater than the Son?

'Because indeed,' he says, 'the Father is greater than the Son'—and by 'greater' I mean instead 'first';

These are the words of their novel empty talk and senseless theology, of men who are ignorant of the reason for which these things were spoken by the theologians against the heretics;

for not being able adequately to understand the force of what was written, they tread on empty air, and they assert as certain and true and as being so the things they say.

Against these let us fittingly say here, being initiated not from ourselves but from Him who teaches man knowledge, obeying the Spirit that resounds from above:

If, O men, the all-holy Trinity, who brought all things into being out of non-being, was, is, and ever shall be undivided, who taught, who conceived of measures and degrees, first and second, greater and lesser, within it?

Who set forth such things concerning what is invisible and unknown and altogether inexplicable and incomprehensible?

For things that are always united and always exist in the same manner cannot be prior to one another.

But if you wish to call the Father first in relation to the Son, as the one from whom He was begotten, and on this account also greater, then I too say to you that the Son is first in relation to the Father;

for if He had not been begotten, the Father would not be called Father.

But if you altogether set the Father before the Son and call Him first as the cause of the Son's begetting, then I reject that the Son's being has any cause.

For you give rise to the suspicion that the Son did not exist before He was begotten, and that He was begotten either willingly or unwillingly, and that the Father either willed it or did not will it, and that He knew that He was begotten, and how, or knew nothing of it at all.

Do you see into how many absurdities—not to say blasphemies—we fall from such disputations?

Therefore, either refrain from saying that the Father is first in relation to the Son, and then we will accept your calling Him the cause; or, if you say this while managing the word with discernment, for the present we reject even this;

for things that, as has been said, are always united and always exist in the same manner cannot be causes of one another.

Do not, then, suppose that the Father ever pre-existed the Son, and you will call Him neither first nor greater than the Son;

since He is wholly in the Son who is equal in honor to Him, just as the Son is wholly in the Father who is of one essence with Him, how then shall He be called first in relation to Him who is co-eternal?

But if you call the Father the cause of the Son, I too say the same—unless you thereby raise the suspicion that God was once alone, when the Son did not yet exist, and that he begot him afterward, becoming the cause of his coming into existence. This drives you far from God and from the truth, making you impious, and places you among those impious men who say the Son came into being by the Father.

For merely to entertain this thought is itself the whole of godlessness and impiety.

For we say that the father is the cause of the son who is begotten in the case of bodily generation;

but in the case of the divine existence that never began, the begetting that has no becoming, the hypostasis that has no hypostasis prior to it, and the essentiation that is beyond essence—or whatever else I should call it, I do not know—whoever says 'first' is thereby compelled also to name 'second' and 'third,' which has absolutely no place at all to be said within the all-holy Trinity.

Therefore, in the case also of the ineffable and divine begetting of God the Word, we say that the Father is indeed the cause of the Son, as mind is the cause of word, spring of stream, and root of its branches—but by no means 'first,' lest we multiply number and divide the undivided and one Godhead into three gods.

For neither 'first' nor 'second' nor 'third,' neither 'greater' nor 'lesser,' can be conceived or spoken of within the undivided and unconfused Trinity;

for the things of the divine and supra-essential nature are altogether unspeakable, ineffable, and incomprehensible, beyond the grasp of the human mind.

But if you wish to exercise your reasoning yet further, and to learn how incomprehensible is the God who brought all things into being out of non-being—even if you should place the Spirit before the Son and the Father (if indeed it is even permitted to theologize in such a manner), you will find in him the whole shared nature of those co-eternal ones, as being consubstantial.

And observe how incomprehensible the things of the divine nature are to us human beings.

'God is Spirit,' it says; and again:

'Now the Lord is the Spirit.'

If, then, God is Spirit, and the Spirit is the Lord, where then is fatherhood here, and where is sonship, that you, O new theologian, should assign to me, speak of, and number a 'first' and a 'greater' within the divine and incomprehensible nature?

John, when theologizing, said, 'In the beginning was the Word,' and not 'the Father.'

But you, initiated into truths even deeper than this by Wisdom itself, Jesus, give to us and to the whole world 'the first' in the Father, so that you may show the Son to be second to him, and again the Holy Spirit third—proclaiming to us, as though you were some other theologian deeper than the former one, and more intimate with the Son of God, a different gospel?

Tell me, then, you who insidiously teach us tritheism—how is it that the theologian's voice, the one who leaned upon Christ's breast, did not say:

'In the beginning was the Father,' but instead, 'In the beginning was the Word'?

And why did he say not 'the Son' but 'the Word,' if not in order to teach us that neither was he known by anyone as 'Son' before God the Word came down and was made flesh, nor was God known as 'Father'?

Not that the three-hypostatic Godhead that brought all things into being did not yet exist, but that the mystery of the economy had not yet been made known.

For after the incarnation of God the Word, God was made known to us the faithful both as God and as Father; and likewise God the Word, who was made flesh for us, was made known as the Son of God, according to what was declared from above by the Father:

'This is my beloved Son:'

'Righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you'; and again:

'I have made known your name to men'; and again:

'Father, glorify your Son, that your Son also may glorify you'; and:

If, then, even after the incarnation of God the Word the Son and the Father are one, how much more so before the incarnation!

'I and the Father are one'—and he placed himself before the Father [in naming],

He is the cause of the Son, yet the Son is not thereby second, even though he is from the Father; nor is the Holy Spirit third, even though he proceeds from the Father.

For if the Trinity is one from the beginning, and this one is called 'Trinity' according to the hypostases, then the One can be neither first with respect to itself, nor first with respect to the hypostases that are with it;

for neither did the one subsist prior to the other, so that the one which had subsisted first should be prior to that which shone forth from it.

But since he is divided without division, and united without confusion, God is called one Trinity, none of these having in any way pre-existed the other—neither the Father the Son, nor the Son the Father, nor both of them the Spirit—so that one should become prior to the other;

Therefore the Trinity is one God, ineffable, without beginning, uncreated, incomprehensible, indivisible, able to be neither conceived nor spoken of by us.

But lest, through prolonged silence, we should fall into complete forgetfulness of God, and live in the world like men without God, it has been permitted to us, to the extent that human nature allows, to speak of God and of divine things, just as we have been taught by the divine apostles and our God-inspired fathers—so that, taking up continual remembrance of him, we might glorify his goodness and his loving providence toward us.

But we, who are earth and ashes, as though having forgotten ourselves and overreaching beyond all measure, do not shudder to search out and meddle with, to conceive and devise and fabricate in our minds, things incomprehensible and unutterable even to angels and all the heavenly powers; but, like certain unbelievers wholly uninitiated into the mysteries of Christ, we both think and recklessly speak, with a shameless soul, about the things of God.

Tell me, then, O you who do not spare yourself from searching into the things of the divine nature:

do you believe that God is three-hypostatic, without beginning, uncreated, incomprehensible, unsearchable, invisible, neither graspable by mind nor expressible in word; and that he was always the same, having had no beginning of days, nor ever of times or ages, but existing eternally?

If, then, you believe this—that the Holy Trinity alone was God, as indeed it was; and that, when it willed, it brought heaven and earth and all that is in them out of non-being into being, and made all the heavenly powers, and then made man last of all these; and that there is nothing whatsoever, whether in heaven or on earth or beneath the earth, that was not brought forth and did not come to be out of what was not, while God alone, the maker and creator of these things, is uncreated, without beginning, ever-existing and existing before all things—why, then, do you not also, in silence and in fear, worship the Creator, as do all the powers of heaven, but instead, neglecting to examine yourself, pry with a bold and self-willed soul into his incomprehensible nature?

For if God, the three-hypostatic Monad, was uncreated, without beginning, ever-existing and existing before all things, while all things—whether visible or invisible, whether corporeal or incorporeal, whether known to us or unknown—were brought forth by the one consubstantial and undivided Trinity of the one Godhead, then tell me, how shall the things brought forth ever be able to know the one who brought them forth, or the things that came to be know the one who eternally is, or the created things know the uncreated, or the things that afterward received their existence from him know the one without beginning—as to what he is, and how great he is, and in what manner he was begotten, at all?

By no means—except insofar as the Maker himself, just as he graciously bestows on each of the things he has made breath and life, soul and mind and reason, so also will he bestow, in his love for mankind, the knowledge concerning himself, to the degree that is beneficial.

But otherwise, how could you say that the thing made by God can come to know its own maker?

It is impossible for this to come about in any other way; for everyone, it is utterly impossible.

...having been instructed in the word, and having believed that God exists—the God in whom he came to believe through the word of teaching.

This, then, the faithful receive through various and manifold signs: through enigmas, through mirrors, through mystical and inexpressible workings, through divine revelations, through faint illuminations, through the contemplation of the inner principles of creation, and through many other means—by which the faith of such persons increases day by day and ascends into the love of God.

But moreover, God also gives them full assurance, just as he did the apostles, through the sending and presence of the Holy Spirit;

...and they are illumined more perfectly, and are taught through that light that God is unspeakable and inexpressible, uncreated and eternal and everlasting and incomprehensible.

For all knowledge and full knowledge, and every word of wisdom and word of more mystical knowledge, and besides these the working of wonders, the gift of prophecy, kinds of tongues and the interpretation of tongues, helps and governings of cities and peoples, the foreknowledge of the good things to come, the attainment of the kingdom of heaven, adoption as sons, and the very fact of being clothed with Christ, knowing the mysteries of Christ, understanding the mystery of his economy concerning us, and, in short, all things whatsoever that unbelievers do not know, but that we, who have been counted worthy to be faithful, are able to know and think and speak—all these are taught by the Spirit alone.

From these things, then, and from such as these, we are fully assured and confirmed that he is the God who made all things—who also brought us forth, taking clay from the earth; who granted us mind and reason and an intellective soul; who made us according to his image and likeness; and who drove away from us the darkness of ignorance;

and he it is who has deemed us worthy, dimly, from the things pertaining to us, as it were in a shadow, to be shown the things above us—things from which we have learned, through which we see, and by which we believe: that just as he brought forth together, at one and the same time, in the fashioning of our body, our mind and our soul and our own indwelling reason—for to say that 'God formed man, taking clay from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and he became a living soul' shows that our mind and our reason coexisted together with the soul, none of them having pre-existed or subsisted beforehand, the three being one at once, and given to us as one spirit of life—just as, then, in these none pre-existed, nor did one subsist before the other, they being of one essence and nature, so also in the holy, consubstantial, and co-equal Trinity, one did not pre-exist the other.

For God, the maker of the image, being three-hypostatic, never had one of the three pre-subsisting, but the three are at once one—God—and likewise the one is always three.

Confessing this, then, we believe, and we bear witness to all others for whom it is not presumptuous to speak of and search into the things concerning God, that God is three-hypostatic—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity, into whom we have been baptized;

which we have been confirmed in from the workings and gifts of the Spirit that have come to pass in us, and from the sacred ordinances and Gospels themselves.

But how the Trinity is, or when, or of what sort and nature—she who is the creatress of all things—this we, the created, do not know.

And if we do not know this—as indeed we do not—of how many thunderbolts are we worthy, speaking about what we do not know?

For how can we know that which is none of all the things that have come to be, neither of the things seen nor of the things unseen—we who are visible and created, corruptible, perceptible by the senses, blind and unenlightened?

And this, while our sins lie before us as a wall in the midst between us and God, separating us from him—which wall, if we do not remove or surmount through repentance, we shall not only be unable to know God, but shall not even know that we are human beings,

and shall we ever come to know in truth whence we are being carried, or whither we are being led, or who we truly are?

But if we are ignorant of ourselves, how much more of him who incomparably transcends us.

For if we were not ignorant of ourselves, we would not speak so presumptuously about God;

for to speak about God and divine things while we are unenlightened and empty of the Holy Spirit reveals our own ignorance of ourselves.

For if we truly knew ourselves, we would never have considered ourselves worthy even to gaze up at heaven, or to look upon the light of this world, or even to tread upon the earth itself, but would have been eager to bury ourselves beneath the ground.

For what, tell me, is more unclean than one who, with conceit and arrogance, undertakes to teach the things of the Spirit without the Spirit?

What is more abominable than one who has not repented and purified himself beforehand, but, having set this aside, wishes by falsely-named knowledge and outward wisdom alone to theologize, and to discourse presumptuously concerning the things that are, and that eternally exist in the same manner?

For even if he has sinned in nothing else—which is impossible—this alone renders such a person liable to eternal judgment, since 'everyone who is haughty of heart is unclean before the Lord.'

For some of such men have run aground into so great a folly that they neither say nor even think that they have sinned.

'No one is without sin, except God alone;'

for the divine Apostle says, 'All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace.'

But if, according to the holy oracle, no one is without sin except God alone, and all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, then whoever says he has not sinned is like one who says:

'I will set my throne upon the clouds, and I will be like the Most High.'

But if you confess that you have sinned, show me the genuine confession for your sins committed—the sincere faith toward the spiritual father who has taken up your thoughts, the submission, the obedience in menial tasks, the service toward the lesser of the brethren, the ministry toward the sick, and further, the humility of soul, the unaffected manner, the unfeigned and unhypocritical character.

And if, with the inward disposition of your soul, you have placed yourself beneath all, whence continual compunction and joy-bringing tears are born—from which and through which purification of the soul comes to the diligent one, along with the knowledge of the mysteries of God—then speak concerning things divine and human, and I too will acknowledge the power of your words.

For these are the fruit and work of repentance: they drive away ignorance, and at the same time bestow knowledge;

and by 'knowledge' I mean first that concerning ourselves and the things pertaining to us, and then that concerning the things above us and the divine mysteries unseen and unknown to those who have not repented—I mean, that is, the faith pertaining to us, which no one could acquire in abundance prior to the practice of what has been said, even if he should pass through the whole of secular learning.

But if he does not come to share richly in this, he will spend the time of his life in the deepest darkness of ignorance.

For although divine things lie written down and are read by everyone — both the divine things themselves and what concerns the divine — yet they are revealed only to those who have repented fervently and have been well purified through sincere repentance, and only to the degree that corresponds to the measure of their repentance together with their purification.

To whom the depths of the Spirit are also made manifest, and from whom the word of the wisdom and knowledge of God springs forth like a river of many streams, flooding the minds of their opponents.

But to all others, these things remain unknown and hidden, and are not at all unfolded by him who opens the mind of the faithful to understand the Scriptures.

'For my mystery,' he says, 'belongs to me and to my own.'

Therefore such people seem to see while not seeing, and to hear while not hearing at all, and to understand while being without understanding, unable to grasp the sense of what is read.

Such a one thinks he understands, though he does not understand the mind of unbelievers, and seems to know something while knowing nothing at all — for even if he does know something, he knows it wrongly, which is worse than any ignorance. So too, I think, are these men.

For thinking themselves to be wise, they have in reality become fools, passing their days like men beside themselves and out of their senses, these unfortunate ones, knowing nothing of the mysteries of Christ as they ought.

May the God of Israel deliver us from their conceit and pride, and may he deem us worthy to become imitators of his humility.

He then who turns aside from this path — I mean the blessed path of humility — and walks and advances somewhere outside it, whether to the right or to the left, and does not consent to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and God, how shall he enter with him into his bridal chamber?

And since he has not beheld it, how will he recount to others the things pertaining to it or concerning it?

How could he ever dare to speak at all about things he does not know and has never beheld?

But if he should attempt to teach about such great matters, is there on earth anyone more foolish than such a man?

Will he not indeed be more irrational than the four-footed beasts themselves, and altogether more brutish?

For, as is observed, all irrational animals keep their own nature and order, and each of them never oversteps its own limits.

But this one, formed by the hand of God, honored by him with reason and free will, did not make right use of his dignity, nor did he recognize his own weakness, nor did he remain within the good things implanted by God in his nature, nor did he stand within his own limits or understand his own affairs.

But like Lucifer, or Adam afterward — the one an angel, the other a man — who, having exalted themselves above their Maker, eagerly desired to become gods, so too, alas, this man, having overstepped the bounds of his own nature and desired and imagined things above himself, did not wish to ascend to the height of spiritual knowledge through humility and a Christ-imitating way of life, but through pride and arrogance.

Moreover, imagining himself to be in the heavens or even above the heavens, and fancying that he stands above them, he discourses about him who made heaven and earth and all that is in them.

Who, then, would call such a person a man, or even equal to the beasts, or possessing any sense at all?

For if man, formed in the image of God and deemed worthy of a life equal to the angels and immortal, was through the transgression of a single commandment of God justly deprived not only of that angelic way of life but also of eternal life, being condemned to death, corruption, and the curse, what then will happen to all those born of him who still bear the image of the earthly and attempt to theologize impurely?

But come, tell me — you who, instead of being taught concerning God and divine things, attempt to teach — did you first ascend from Hades and arrive upon the earth, and how did it come about that you experienced this, and by what supports and footholds, and through whom and what sort of helpers who cooperated and assisted in your ascent?

And having ascended, stinking and overflowing with corruption — or rather, still held fast by death and being dead still — how did you come to live and become stronger than death, and how did you manage to escape its hands?

Tell us this, then, and after that you will surely also say how, after ascending from Hades and setting foot on the earth, you were delivered from corruption and freed from the curse.

Then you will teach us how you were in turn taken up again from the earth — by what steps you ascended, by what wings, flying, you were raised up to the heavens, upon what chariot you mounted, being in the body yet without body, you passed beyond them, and what cloud received you.

Show us these things and teach us concerning them, and then we shall accept you as one who speaks of God, in some measure, and with fear and trembling.