論神聖之名 第 1 章 第 1/6 段

Now, O blessed one, after the Theological Outlines, I shall proceed, so far as is possible, to the unfolding of the divine names.

Let there be set before us even now, as already laid down, that rule of the Scriptures: that we are to establish the truth of what is said concerning God not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the demonstration of the Spirit-moved power of the theologians, by which we are joined, in a manner ineffable and unknowable, to things ineffable and unknowable, in a union surpassing our own rational and intellectual power and activity.

In sum, then, one must not dare to say, nor even to conceive, anything concerning the superessential and hidden Godhead beyond what has been divinely revealed to us from the sacred Scriptures.

For of its superessentiality, which transcends word and mind and being, there must be ascribed an unknowing.

To it we must ascribe the superessential knowledge, looking up toward the heights only so far as the ray of the divine Scriptures yields itself, contracted, in reverence and holiness toward divine things, before the higher splendors.

For indeed, if one must trust the all-wise and most true theology, divine things are revealed and contemplated according to the proportion of each of the minds, the divine goodness in its saving justice distributing immeasurableness, in a manner befitting God, as something uncontainable from those who are within measure.

For just as things intelligible are ungraspable and unseen by the things of sense, and the simple and formless by things in figure and shape, and to those moulded according to bodily forms the intangible and shapeless formlessness of incorporeal things—so, according to the same principle of truth, the superessential infinitude lies beyond beings, and the unity beyond mind lies beyond minds.

And to all understandings unthinkable is the One that is beyond understanding; ineffable to every word is the Good that is beyond word—a Unity that makes one every unity, and a superessential Being, and a Mind beyond mind, and a Word beyond utterance, being unreason, unintelligence, and namelessness in the manner of none of the things that are; the cause of being to all things, yet itself not being, as beyond all being, and as it alone could properly and knowingly declare concerning itself.

Concerning this, then, as has been said—the superessential and hidden Godhead—one must not dare to say, nor even to conceive, anything beyond what has been divinely revealed to us from the sacred Scriptures.

For as it has itself transmitted concerning itself in the Scriptures, in a manner befitting the Good, the knowledge and contemplation of what it is in itself is inaccessible to all beings, as being superessentially set apart from all.

And you will find many of the theologians who have hymned it not only as invisible and incomprehensible, but also as unsearchable and untraceable, since there is no track of any who have passed through into its hidden infinitude.

Yet the Good is by no means utterly uncommunicated to any of the things that are; rather, while firmly establishing in itself the superessential ray, it appears, in a manner befitting the Good, by illuminations proportioned to each of the beings, and lifts up toward such contemplation and communion and likeness of itself as is attainable, those holy minds that approach it as is permitted and in a holy manner—neither powerlessly presuming toward what is higher than the theophany harmoniously bestowed, nor slipping downward into descent toward the worse, but stably and unswervingly stretching up toward the ray that shines upon them, and, with holy reverence, soaring aloft with sober and holy love proportioned to the permitted illuminations.

Following these divine yokes—which also govern all the holy orderings of the supercelestial beings—honoring with unsearchable and holy reverences of mind that which is hidden, beyond mind and being, of the Godhead, and the ineffable things with sober silence, we stretch up toward the rays that shine upon us in the sacred Scriptures.

Illumined by them in a supermundane manner toward the divine hymns, and shaped toward the sacred hymnody, so that we may both see the divine lights granted to us through them in due measure, and may hymn the good-giving Source of all sacred manifestation of light, as it has itself transmitted concerning itself in the sacred Scriptures.

As, for instance, that it is the cause and origin and being and life of all things; the recall and resurrection of those who fall away from it; the renewal and re-formation of those who slip toward what corrupts the godlike; the holy establishment of those moved by some unholy agitation; the security of those who stand firm; the uplifting hand for those led up to it; the illumination of those enlightened; the principle of perfecting for those being perfected; the principle of deification for those being deified; the simplicity of those being made simple; the unity of those being made one; the superessentially supreme origin of every origin; the good imparter, so far as is permitted, of the hidden; and, simply to say, the life of the living and the being of beings, the origin and cause of all life and being, through its goodness that brings beings into being and holds them together.

These things we have been initiated into by the divine Scriptures.

And you will find, so to speak, the whole sacred hymnody of the theologians arranging the divine names in a revelatory and laudatory manner with reference to the beneficent processions of the Godhead.

Hence in almost every theological treatise we see the Godhead sacredly hymned: as Monad and Henad, on account of the simplicity and unity of its supernatural indivisibility, from which, as from a unifying power, we are made one, and our divided diversities, being supermundanely folded together, we are gathered into a godlike monad and a God-imitating union; and as Triad, on account of the threefold-hypostatic manifestation of its superessential fruitfulness, from which every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is and is named; and as cause of beings, since all things were brought forth into being through its being-making goodness; and as wise and beautiful, because all beings, preserving the uncorrupted properties of their own nature, are full of all divine harmony and sacred comeliness; and as preeminently loving-mankind, because in one of its hypostases it has truly and wholly entered into communion with the things that pertain to us, calling to itself and raising up the human extremity, from which the simple Jesus was ineffably composed, and the eternal received temporal extension, and he who superessentially transcends all the order of every nature came to be within our nature, while the unchanged and unconfused establishment of his own properties remained.

And whatever other deifying lights the hidden tradition of our divinely inspired guides has bestowed upon us in a revelatory manner, following the Scriptures, into these too we have been initiated: now, in a manner proportioned to us, through the sacred veils of the loving-kindness of the Scriptures and of the hierarchical traditions, which wrap intelligible things in things of sense, and superessential things in beings, and place forms and figures about the formless and figureless, and multiply and fashion the supernatural and figureless simplicity by the variety of divided symbols.

But then, when we shall have become incorruptible and immortal, and shall have attained the Christlike and most blessed allotment, we shall be always with the Lord, according to the Scripture, filled in all-pure contemplations with his visible theophany, which shall shine round about us with most radiant splendors, as upon the disciples in that most divine Transfiguration; and partaking in his intelligible light-giving in a mind impassible and immaterial, and in the union beyond mind, in the unknowing and blessed irradiations of the supremely shining rays.

For in a more divine imitation of the supercelestial minds, we shall be equal to the angels, as the truth of the Scriptures says, and sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.

But now, so far as is attainable for us, we use symbols proper to divine things, and from these again we stretch up, in proportion, toward the simple and unified truth of the intelligible visions; and after every conception befitting us of godlike things, ceasing our intellectual activities, we cast ourselves, so far as is permitted, into the superessential ray, in which all the limits of all kinds of knowledge pre-subsist in a manner more than ineffable—a ray which it is impossible either to conceive, or to speak, or in any way at all to contemplate, because it is set apart from all things and is more than unknowable, having pre-comprehended within itself, all together and superessentially, the consummations of all essential knowledge and powers, and being established above all things by an incomprehensible power, even above the supercelestial minds.

For if all kinds of knowledge are of beings, and have their limit in beings, that which is beyond all being is also set apart from all knowledge.

And indeed, if it is higher than every word and every kind of knowledge, and is altogether established beyond mind and being—being comprehensive and collective and anticipative of all things, yet itself altogether ungraspable by all, and there is of it neither sense-perception, nor imagination, nor opinion, nor name, nor word, nor contact, nor knowledge—how shall our treatise On the Divine Names be carried through, when the superessential Godhead is shown to be unnameable and beyond every name?

But as we said, when we set forth the Theological Outlines: the One, the Unknown, the Superessential, the Good-itself—which is what it is, the triadic Henad, I mean, equally God and equally Good—it is possible neither to speak nor to conceive.

But even the angel-befitting unions of the holy powers—which one must call either approaches or receptions of the more-than-unknowable and supremely-shining goodness—are ineffable and unknowable, and exist in those angels alone who have been deemed worthy of them beyond angelic knowledge.

The godlike minds, being united to these in an angel-imitating manner, so far as is attainable—since such a union of the deified minds toward the supremely-divine light comes about by a cessation of all intellectual activity—hymn it most properly through the negation of all beings, having been truly and supernaturally illumined in this from their most blessed union with it: that it is the cause of all beings, but is itself nothing, as superessentially set apart from all.

Now the superessentiality of the Godhead—whatever the superexistence of the supreme-goodness is—it is not permitted for any of those who are lovers of the truth that is beyond all truth to hymn either as word or power, or as mind or life or being, but as set apart, in a transcendent manner, from all habit, motion, life, imagination, opinion, name, word, thought, understanding, being, rest, establishment, union, limit, infinitude—from all things whatsoever that are.

But since, as the existence of goodness, by its very being it is the cause of all beings, the good-originating providence of the Godhead is to be hymned from all the things it has caused.

Since all things are both about it and for its sake, and it is itself before all things, and in it all things hold together.

And by its being is the production and subsistence of all things; and all things long for it: the intellectual and rational in a manner of knowing, those lower than these in a manner of sense-perception, and the rest by a vital movement, or by an essential and habitual aptitude.

Knowing this, then, the theologians hymn it both as nameless and from every name.

As nameless, indeed, as when they say that the Godhead itself, in one of the mystical visions of the symbolic theophany, rebuked him who said:

and, as it were, leading him away from all theonymic knowledge, said:

Why do you ask my name?

And is not this truly the wonderful name—the name that is above every name, the nameless name, the name established above every name that is named, whether in this age or in the age to come?

And as many-named, as when again they bring it in saying:

I am the One who is, the life, the light, God, the truth; and when the God-wise themselves hymn the cause of all things in many names from all the things it has caused: as good, as beautiful, as wise, as beloved, as God of gods, as Lord of lords, as Holy of holies, as eternal, as being, and as cause of ages, as supplier of life, as wisdom, as mind, as word, as knower, as possessing beforehand all the treasures of all knowledge, as power, as ruler, as King of those who reign, as Ancient of days, as ageless and unchanging, as salvation, as righteousness, as sanctification, as redemption, as surpassing all in greatness, and as in a gentle breeze.

And indeed they say that he is in minds and in souls and in bodies, and in heaven and on earth, and at the same time, in the same, the same one—within the world, around the world, beyond the world, beyond the heavens, beyond being; sun, star, fire, water, spirit, dew, cloud, stone-itself and rock, all the things that are, and none of the things that are.

Thus, then, to the cause of all things, which is also above all things, there will fit both the nameless and all the names of beings, so that it may be precisely the kingdom of the whole, and that about it may be all things, and that they may depend upon it as upon cause, as upon origin, as upon limit; and that it may be, according to the Scripture, all things in all (1 Cor 15:28), and may be truly hymned as the establisher of all, the principle-giving and perfecting and holding-together, the guard and the hearth, and that which turns all things back toward itself—and this in a unified, unrestricted, and transcendent manner.

For it is not only the cause of cohesion, or of life, or of perfecting, that, from this alone or from that one providence, the more-than-named goodness should be named.

Rather, it has pre-comprehended within itself all beings, simply and without limit, by the all-perfect goodnesses of its one and all-causing providence, and is harmoniously hymned and named from all beings together.

And indeed the theologians revere not only these theonymies—those from the all-perfect or partial providences, or from the things provided for—but they also name the more-than-shining and more-than-named goodness from certain divine apparitions which sometimes have shone upon the initiates or the prophets in the sacred sanctuaries or elsewhere, according to various causes and powers.

And they clothe it with shapes and figures—human, or fiery, or amber-like—and hymn its eyes, and ears, and locks of hair, and faces, and hands, and back, and wings, and arms, and hinder parts, and feet.

And they fashion about it crowns and thrones and cups and bowls and certain other mystical things, concerning which we shall speak, so far as we are able, in the Symbolic Theology.

But now, gathering from the Scriptures whatever pertains to the present treatise, and using the things said as a kind of canon, and looking toward them, let us proceed to the unfolding of the intelligible theonymies; and—as the hierarchical ordinance ever guides us in all our theology—let us, with a God-seeing mind, behold, properly speaking, the God-manifesting contemplations, and let us set our sacred ears beside the unfoldings of the sacred theonymies, enshrining holy things in the holy according to the divine tradition, and removing them from the laughter and mockery of the uninitiated—or rather, redeeming those very persons, if indeed there are any such men at all, from their fighting against God in this matter.

It is necessary, then, for you to guard these things, O noble Timothy, according to the most sacred instruction, and to make the divine things neither speakable nor utterable to the uninitiated.

But to me may God grant to hymn, in a manner befitting God, the beneficent many-names of the unsummoned and unnameable Godhead, and may he not take away the word of truth from my mouth (cf. Ps 119:43).

The whole supreme-divine existence—whatever it is—Goodness-itself, defining and revealing it, has been hymned by the Scriptures.

For what else is it possible to learn from the sacred theology, when it says that the Godhead itself, instructing, declared:

Why do you ask me concerning the Good?

No one is good except God alone.

This, then, has also been demonstrated by us, examined in other works: that all the God-befitting appellations are always hymned by the Scriptures not partially, but with reference to the whole and all-perfect and entire and full Godhead; and that all of them are ascribed, indivisibly, absolutely, without restriction, and as a whole, to the entirety of the all-complete and total Godhead.

And indeed, as we recalled in the Theological Outlines, if one were not to say that this is said concerning the whole Godhead, he blasphemes, and dares unlawfully to sunder the more-than-unified Henad.

It must be said, then, that this is to be understood of the whole Godhead.

For the good-natured Word himself said:

I am good; and one of the God-possessed prophets hymns the Spirit as the good (cf. Ps 143:10).

I am the One who is (Exod 3:14): if they say this is not hymned of the whole Godhead, but should force it to be circumscribed in one part, how will they hear the saying:

Thus says the One who is, who was, who is to come, the Almighty (Rev 1:8); and You are the same (Ps 102:27); and The Spirit of truth who is, who proceeds from the Father (John 15:26)?

And if they say that the source of life is not whole, how is true the sacred word which says:

As the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will (John 5:21); and that It is the Spirit that gives life (John 6:63)?

And that the whole Godhead also has the lordship of all things—concerning the God-begetting Godhead, or that of the Son, it is not even possible to say, as I think, in how many ways the title 'Lord' is sung throughout theology concerning Father and Son.

But the Spirit also is Lord (cf. 2 Cor 3:17).

And the beautiful and the wise too are hymned of the whole Godhead; and the light, and the deifying, and the causative, and all things whatsoever that belong to the whole supreme-divinity, the Scriptures refer to the whole supreme-divine hymnody—comprehensively, as when it says:

All things are from God (cf. 1 Cor 11:12); and distributively, as when it says:

All things were created through him and unto him (Col 1:16); and All things hold together in him (Col 1:17); and You will send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created (Ps 104:30).

And, to say it in sum, the supreme-divine Word himself said:

I and the Father are one (John 10:30); and All things that the Father has are mine (cf. John 16:15); and All that is mine is yours, and yours is mine (John 17:10).

And again, whatever belongs to the Father and to himself, he ascribes in common and in a unified manner to the supreme-divine Spirit: the divine operations, the worship, the unfailing fountain-cause and distribution of the good-befitting gifts.

And I think that none of those who have been nurtured in undistorted understandings of the divine Scriptures will gainsay this: that all the God-befitting things belong to the whole Godhead, according to the God-perfecting word.

These things, then, having been briefly and partially demonstrated and defined by us here from the Scriptures, but sufficiently elsewhere, whatever total theonymy we shall undertake to unfold, it is to be understood of the whole Godhead.

But if anyone should say that we are in this introducing a confusion of the God-befitting distinction, we, for our part, do not think that such an argument is sufficient even to persuade itself that it is true.

For if there is anyone at all who sets himself against the Scriptures, he will surely be far removed even from our philosophy; and if he has no care for the God-wisdom that comes from the Scriptures, how should we have any care to guide him toward theological knowledge?

But if he looks toward the truth of the Scriptures, then we too, using this as a canon and a light for our defense, shall walk unswervingly, so far as we are able, declaring that theology delivers some things in a unified manner, and others in a distinguished manner; and that it is permitted neither to divide the unified things nor to confuse the distinguished things, but, following it so far as we are able, to look up toward the divine flashings.

For having received from there the divine revelations as it were a most excellent canon of truth, we strive to guard within ourselves the things laid up there, unmultiplied and undiminished and unaltered, being guarded by the guard of the Scriptures, and being empowered by them, so that, by guarding them, we may ourselves be guarded.

The unified things, then, belong to the whole Godhead, as we demonstrated more at length from the Scriptures in the Theological Outlines: the more-than-good, the more-than-divine, the superessential, the more-than-living, the more-than-wise, and whatever belongs to the transcendent negation; together with which are also all the causative names—the good, the beautiful, the being, the life-generating, the wise, and whatever the cause of all good things is named from its good-befitting gifts.

But the distinguished things are the superessential name and reality of Father and of Son and of Spirit, no convertibility or any community at all being introduced among these.

And there is, besides this, yet another distinguished thing: the all-perfect and unchangeable existence of Jesus among us, and whatever essential mysteries belong to his loving-kindness toward mankind.

But it is necessary, as I think, rather to take up and set forth the all-perfect mode of the divine union and distinction, in order that the whole discourse may become easy for us to survey, refusing all that is intricate and obscure, but defining what is proper, so far as we are able, in a well-distinguished and clear and well-ordered manner.

For, as I said also in other works, the sacred initiates of our theological tradition call the divine unions the hidden and unemergent super-establishments of the more-than-ineffable and more-than-unknowable abidingness; and the distinctions, the good-befitting processions and manifestations of the Godhead.

And they say, following the sacred Scriptures, that there are certain particular unions and distinctions both of the aforementioned union and again of the distinction.

To the source-principle Triad, common is the superessential existence, the more-than-divine Godhead, the more-than-good goodness; the identity, beyond all, of the whole property that is beyond all; the unity beyond source-principle; the unspeakable, the many-voiced; the unknowing, the all-intelligible; the affirmation of all, the negation of all; that which is beyond every affirmation and negation; the abiding and establishment, if one may so speak, of the source-principle hypostases in one another—wholly more-than-unified and confused in no part—just as the lights of lamps (that I may use sensible and familiar examples) being in one house, are wholly in one another's wholes, and yet have an exact distinction from one another that subsists particularly: unified in distinction, and distinguished in union.

And indeed we see, in a house where many lamps are present, the lights of all of them united into some one light, and shining forth one undivided radiance; and no one, as I think, could distinguish, from the air that contains all the lights, the light of this particular lamp from the others, and see the one without the other, since all are wholly mingled in all without confusion.

But if one were to take one of the torches out of the room, all its own light will go out with it, drawing none of the other lights into itself, nor leaving any of its own with the others.

For, as I said, their whole union toward the whole was wholly unmingled and confused in no part—and this in a body, the air, and from material fire on which the light depended.

Whereas we say that the superessential union is super-established not only above the unions in bodies, but also above those in souls themselves and in minds themselves—unions which the godlike and supercelestial lights possess, wholly through wholes, without mingling and in a supermundane manner, according to a participation proportioned to those who partake of the union that is exalted above all.

But there is also a distinction in the superessential theology: not only the one I spoke of—that according to the union itself, each of the source-principle hypostases is established without mingling and without confusion—but also that the things of the superessential divine-begetting are not convertible with one another.

But the Father alone is the source of the superessential Godhead, the Father not being Son nor the Son Father, while the hymns proper to each of the supreme-divine hypostases are reverently preserved.

These, then, are the unions and distinctions according to the ineffable union and existence.

But if the divine distinction is also the good-befitting procession of the divine union, which, while more-than-unifiedly multiplying and manifolding itself in goodness, the unrelated impartations, the bringings-into-being, the bringings-into-life, the bringings-into-wisdom, and the other gifts of the goodness that is the cause of all, are unified according to the divine distinction; and according to these, the unparticipatedly-participated things are hymned from the participations and the participants.

And this is common and unified and one to the whole Godhead: that it is wholly participated by each of the participants, and by none in any part—just as a point in the center of a circle is participated by all the straight lines lying around it in the circle, and just as many impressions of a seal partake of the archetypal seal, and in each of the impressions the whole and the same seal is present, and in none in any part.

But the unparticipatedness of the all-causing Godhead transcends even these, in that there is neither any contact of it, nor any other commingled communion with the participants.

Nor is the seal whole and the same in all the imprints.

But of this the seal is not the cause—for it gives its whole self and the same to each—but the difference of the participants makes the impressions of the one and whole and same archetype to be dissimilar.

For instance, if the material be soft and easily-impressed and smooth and well-marked, and neither resistant and hard, nor easily-dissolved and unstable, it will have the figure pure and clear and abiding.

But if it be lacking in any of the said aptitude, this will be the cause of its not-being-participated and of its unclearness, and of the other defects which come about by an unfitness for participation.

...has communicated the principle—unless one should say it is according to the good-befitting and man-loving common-counsel, and according to all the transcendent and ineffable divine-working, which the unchangeable one performed when he became as we are: the one who is both God and the Word of God.

So we too strive both to unify the divine things in word, and to distinguish them, just as the divine things themselves are both unified and distinguished.

But of these unions and distinctions—as many as we have found in the Scriptures to be God-befitting causes—having treated of each separately, so far as is possible, in the Theological Outlines, we have set them forth, unfolding and expounding some by the true word, and bringing the sacred and untroubled mind to the radiant visions of the Scriptures, while to others, as mystical, we were united, according to the divine tradition, beyond intellectual activity.

For all divine things, even those that are manifested to us, are known by their participations alone.

But what they themselves are, in their own source and establishment, is beyond mind and all being and knowledge.

For instance, if we should name the superessential hiddenness God, or life, or being, or light, or word, we understand nothing other than the powers brought forth from it to us—the deifying, or being-making, or life-generating, or wisdom-bestowing powers.

But to it itself we cast ourselves by the release of all intellectual activities, seeing no deification or life or being which exactly resembles the cause that is set apart from all things in every transcendence.

Again, that the Father is the source-Godhead, while the Son and the Spirit are, if one may so speak, God-planted shoots and as it were blossoms and superessential lights of the God-begetting Godhead, we have received from the sacred Scriptures.

But how these things are, it is possible neither to say nor to conceive.