為神聖靜修者辯護 第 1 章 第 15/21 段

Does he not say clearly, in the Mystical Theology, that the Good Cause of all things is super-essentially set above all things, yet is manifested unveiled only to those who pass beyond all things both defiled and pure?

If, then, it is manifested to them, and that unveiled, how is it not manifested at all?

But if this manifestation is apophatic theology, and this alone is incomprehensibility — just as you insist — and if the Greeks also do theology according to this, as you yourselves also say, then they too have surpassed all purity, and even the divine light itself, the very substance of the good things to come.

Alas, that the knowledge of those wise men who have been made foolish not only comprehends, but even surpasses the promises of the good things to come!

...the heavenly sounds and the summits of all holy things — which he listed there in order, right afterward, as things that must be left behind — the purifications of Moses that preceded the foothill in Horeb, the sounds that met him after the foothill, and the visions of lights that appeared beforehand, the separation from the many, and, after all these, not the vision of God but of the place in which He stood — signifying this: that everything seen by an operation of sense-perception or of intellect consists of certain hypothetical accounts belonging to things subordinate to Him who transcends all things, through which — beyond every conception — not only He Himself but even His presence is shown; so that (p.

...) that vision of the place has even surpassed apophatic theology, which itself showed this very thing.

If, then, Moses' ascent extended only up to the vision of this place, then perhaps they would rightly teach, on the basis of such things, that there is no contemplation after apophatic theology.

But since he is released also from the vision of this place, and then enters into that truly mystical darkness, in the transcendent laying-aside of every cognitive operation, being united to the Unknown according to what is better, and seeing and knowing Him beyond mind — how shall we confine the vision that occurs in the divine darkness solely within apophatic theology and contemplation?

For Moses beheld this even before entering, by way of the place, into the darkness beyond light; so that the union and vision that occurs in the darkness is clearly something else — distinctly higher than such theology.

And why is it still necessary to teach by words, and not to show by the fact itself, the sure truth of what is said by us?

For did Moses, having been released from all things both seen and seeing, both realities and concepts, and having transcended the vision of the place, and having entered into the darkness — did he then see nothing at all in it?

But indeed there he saw the immaterial Tabernacle, which he displayed to those below by means of a material imitation; and this, according to the words of the saints, would be Christ, the Power of God and God's self-subsistent Wisdom — being in itself immaterial and uncreated by its own nature, yet showing beforehand, through the Mosaic tabernacle, that the super-essential and formless Logos would one day receive a fashioning and come into shape and being — He being the Tabernacle that surpasses, precedes, and encompasses all things, in which whatever is visible and whatever is invisible has been created and holds together, and who, having taken a body by an act of will on our behalf, was Himself High Priest from before the ages, and later also used Himself as a sacrificial victim on our behalf.

For this reason Moses, having come to be in the divine darkness, did not see the immaterial Tabernacle alone and sketch it out by means of matter, but also beheld that very reality of the Godhead itself (p.

The tabernacle, then, and everything pertaining to the tabernacle, the priesthood and the veils pertaining to the priesthood, were sensible symbols of the visions Moses beheld in the darkness.

But those visions themselves were not symbols; for to those who pass beyond all things both defiled and pure, and enter into the mystical darkness, those things are manifested unveiled.

For how could things that are manifested naked of every covering be symbols?

For this reason also the expounder of the Mystical Theology, praying at the outset, says: 'O super-essential Trinity, guide us to the topmost summit of the mystical realities, where the simple, absolute, and unchangeable mysteries of theology lie veiled beneath the darkness beyond light.'

Can anyone, then, still say that nothing is seen in the divine darkness, and that after apophatic theology there is no higher vision at all?

Or can anyone say this at least — that all the visions of the saints are symbolic?

And symbolic in such a way that they appear at times, but never truly exist?

For Moses saw what he saw during forty days and as many nights, according to Gregory of Nyssa, partaking, beneath the darkness, of the formless life; so that those visions were formless.

But they were also seen in the darkness; and all things in the darkness are simple, absolute, and unchangeable.

...unlike divisible and sensible things — not changeable, not composite, evidently not joined to the things that are, that is, to created things.

But since he was seeing, the things set before him were visible; therefore either they were themselves light, or they were visible in some other light; but all the things there are simple; therefore all those things were light.

But since, having transcended himself and having come to be in the darkness, he was seeing — he was seeing neither by sense-perception nor by intellect; that light, therefore, is self-manifesting, and it hides itself, in a transcendent way, from minds that have not become 'eyeless' (for how could that which sees itself and knows itself be seen through an operation of intellect (p.

...) whatsoever?); but when the intellect, having transcended every noetic operation, comes to be, in a transcendent manner, 'eyeless,' it is filled with this supremely beautiful splendor, coming to be in God by grace, and, through the union that is above mind, possessing that self-manifesting light ineffably through itself, and beholding it.

Could anyone, then, still say that the divine is hidden?

And how could it not be, seeing that it does not depart from its hiddenness, but even imparts this hiddenness to others, hiding them beneath the divine darkness?

For Moses himself was no longer seen there, being alone in it, according to what is written; and what is yet greater: having raised him up beyond himself, and released him ineffably from himself, and set him above every sensory and noetic operation, it made him hidden even to himself — O the wonder! — as also the divine Paul, so that, though seeing, they themselves did not know, but were at a loss as to what that seeing thing was; and yet again, what exceeds every paradoxical excess in a manner beyond excess itself: that even in that very ineffable and supernatural manifestation, that reality remains hidden also to those very ones who have been released and hidden — not only from all others, but even from themselves.

A proof of this super-unknowable hiddenness is Moses' longing, request, and ascent toward a clearer vision; but also the unceasing progress of the angels and saints, throughout the unending age, toward ever more manifest visions — so that even while seeing, by that very seeing, they know that light in a manner beyond sight; how much more, then, do they know beyond sight the God who is manifested through it!

For even our eye, having gazed intently at the disk of the sun, in seeing it, comes to know it in a manner beyond sight.

And again let no one seize upon the point that the example is not entirely fitting; let him understand only this: that for those who behold the divine light in revelation, the surpassing hiddenness of the divine is in no way lessened — rather, it is known even more, and (p.

...) is recognized far more distinctly by them than by us, who attempt, through symbols or the concepts derived from them, or through negation, to perceive together the incomprehensibility of the divine nature — namely, that it is incomprehensible.

For even a blind man, having heard and believed, knows that the brightness of the sun exceeds the capacity of sensible eyes — but not in the way that one who sees knows it; and when the sun is beneath the earth, we are able to see it noetically — not only we who have experience of healthy sight, but also whoever, among those deprived of sight, trusts those who see.

And not only that, but even one whose eyes have been gouged out could know that the disk of the sun possesses a brightness beyond sight; yet for him it is impossible to partake of and enjoy the light.

So, then, to see God noetically, and to know Him beyond mind through negation, could belong even to those who have had but brief experience of the vision of Him, and to those who have not yet opened wide that eye of union, which is beyond mind, toward Him — yet who nonetheless trust those who have opened it wide; but this seeing is not union. And even one who does not believe those who see, through the union beyond mind, that God is beyond mind, might himself also glorify the divine — but only as beyond his own noetic powers alone.

...knows of God — glorifying God not as being beyond the sole noetic power of the intellect, this human power (for many even of created things are beyond it), but as beyond also that most supernatural union, (p.

...) by which alone the intellect is united to that which is beyond intelligible things, in a more divine imitation of the supracelestial minds.

But taking up that point again, we say: if someone wishes to call this vision, which is beyond sight, an intellection beyond every noetic energy, he is in no way at variance with us.

This philosopher, however — supposing that we call this thing "vision" only in this exclusive sense, and not also an inconceivable intellection — raged against the very term "vision"; and having raged (with a madness by no means praiseworthy), having been forsaken in these arguments, he sinned very greatly against the prophetic grace.

But we, having briefly set forth a refutation of three or four errors, shall refrain from the rest.

That most of the prophets saw most of their visions while in ecstasy, no one who has attended even moderately to the sayings concerning them doubts.

Did the prophets see God by undergoing the ecstasy toward the worse?

And who would say this, unless he himself had undergone the ecstasy toward the worse?

But what of when Scripture itself says that God appeared to Moses in visible form, and not through riddles?

Did it, then, also on that occasion cast him into the ecstasy toward the worse?

And what of when, having stood outside himself for forty whole days and partaking, under the darkness, of the formless life, he both saw and heard?

Did he, then, undergo the ecstasy toward the worse?

Truly, the one who writes these things has departed as far as possible from the truth.

Here his error is doubled: for here too he falsely lays it to the charge of the great Dionysius — as if Dionysius held the same view and had said all the prophetic visions to be inferior to intellection — adducing what Dionysius wrote, as though the initiates were instructed from certain divine phantasms, or…

And indeed, this same Dionysius clearly says here too that these things occur according to different causes and powers, just as God also says that to one He appeared in a dream, to another while awake — yet through riddles — but to Moses in visible form and not through riddles.

How, then, did all the prophets see only by the imaginative power of the soul?

But the divine imagination also differs greatly from our human imagination; for the former imprints our ruling faculty, which is truly incorporeal, whereas our imagination arises in the corporeal-formed part of our soul; and what is imprinted there is the highest and topmost part of the rational soul, but in us it is nearly the lowest of the soul's powers; and this latter is imprinted by the movements arising from sense-perception, but there — if you wish to learn what it is that imprints the ruling faculty of the prophets — hear the great Basil: "For the prophets saw," he says, "their ruling faculty being imprinted by the Spirit"; so that it is the Holy Spirit that sits upon the mind of the prophets and, using the ruling faculty as matter, within it and through itself proclaims beforehand to them the things to come, and through them to us.

How, then, is this imagination equivalent and of equal honor with our imagination?

And how is this imagination inferior to our intellection?

Rather, how is it not shown by this very fact to be a light, contemplated by the intellect, other than intellection, and visions neither sensory nor imaginative, and altogether other than the knowledge derived from discursive thought?

But the philosopher also adduces another citation of the great Dionysius, which says: "the angel who fashioned the vision, in order to initiate the theologian into the things divine" — and even in these words, he says, by saying "fashioned" Dionysius has indicated what belongs to imagination; for none of…

…of what the mind contemplates through itself has been fashioned in this sense.

If, then, one were persuaded by this philosopher, one would suppose also that the heavenly dominions and powers — O the wonder! — undergo an ecstasy of intellection toward the worse, and that their visions are corporeal-formed according to imagination, and not only their visions, but even their very hypostases and essential existences turn out to resemble imagination.

For the same saint says, in the eighth chapter of the Celestial Hierarchy, extolling the revelatory title of the holy dominions, that their dominion aspires to the true dominion, in a goodness-like manner fashioning itself and what comes after it into the likeness proper to that true dominion.

If, then, nothing that the mind contemplates through itself has been fashioned, and all things that are fashioned are either imaginative or even sensory, and on this account far inferior to the things understood by us, then the dominions and powers no longer have a noetic likeness to God, but a corporeal-formed and imaginative one, inferior even to human intellection, inasmuch as it is a fashioned thing.

But if they have such a likeness to God, how could they be noetic in nature?

And the philosopher, again from another statement of the same author, tries to draw the same conclusion; for having heard of the angel who imprints the vision, imparting to the theologian, according to his capacity, his own sacred knowledge, he says: "How could the vision that was imprinted not be a thing of imagination?"

But we, again, shall turn him back by means of the celestial hierarchy.

"For the holy orderings of the heavenly essences," he says, "noetically imprinting themselves toward the God-imitating pattern, and desiring to form their noetic form toward the likeness of the source of divinity, fittingly partake more abundantly of the divine communion."

How, then, did you suppose from these terms that the prophets underwent the ecstasy toward the worse?

For I myself, from these terms, am not led to suppose the prophetic visions inferior to human discursive thought,

but rather superior to our own intellect, and I am taught to know their contemplations as equal to those of the angels.

For those prophets, having made themselves fit for angelic union through purity, and being joined to these angels by their upward striving toward the divine, are themselves fashioned and imprinted by them, just as those angels are by the angels who stand higher in rank; and their noetic form is transformed toward a God-like configuration, and through this sacred configuration they, as it were, cultivate within themselves the sacred knowledge that has been sown into them from thence.

"For a pure heart," he says, "is that which has presented the mind to God wholly without form, and ready to receive the impress of His imprints, through which He is by nature made manifest."

And Zechariah the son of Barachiah also taught that our very spirit is fashioned by God — whether showing that the bringing forth of our spirit from non-being into being comes from God, or showing the reshaping toward the better and the transformation into well-being; for, he says, "the burden of the word of the Lord upon Israel: thus says the Lord, who stretches out the heaven and lays the foundation of the earth and fashions the spirit of man within him."

Is, then, the spirit within us a body, because it is fashioned in being brought forth or transformed?

But he who prays to be himself good and a molder for those who desire it, and who says that his dear companion, while still a boy, was fashioned by the common teacher of Pontus with the best and purest fashioning — does he, then, praise the plastic art of bodies and consider it desirable and pray for it?

And how, according to the divine David, does God understand all our works, on account of having fashioned each one of our hearts individually, unless by "heart" here we…

…understand it, as fashioned by Him, to be the inner man?

Did not he who passed the night under the darkness in that formless life see divine imprints?

And did he too, having come to be in the divine darkness, undergo the ecstasy toward the worse and see by way of imagination, because he is recorded as having seen an imprint?

But the philosopher, who knows no difference between sensory things and imaginative things and noetic things and divine imprints, hearing that the theologian learned this and that from the things seen, and was initiated by the vision fashioned by the angel, and was led up to the noetic knowledge of the things that are, or of the things seen, concludes from this that knowledge is superior to contemplation, since it was from this contemplation, he says, that the prophet was led up to knowledge, and not led down.

Someone might then say: so too all those among us who expound at length the sense of the sayings lead us up from worse things to better; and the Lord, having given the Gospel as an abridged word upon the earth, gave us the worse thing, while those who elucidate it lead us away from the Gospel and raise our understanding up to something better?

Away with such ill-thinking! Rather, they do not depart from the sayings; but, having themselves received from them — since they are the causes of knowledge and a fount of ever-flowing light — those who teach knowledge lead our knowledge, from the ignorance that besets us, up to something better.

For in such cases these prepositions sometimes indicate motion, and sometimes cause.

When, therefore, Scripture says that the prophet was initiated "from" contemplation, or that an angel led him up "from" contemplation into initiation, it does not mean that it moved him away from contemplation, but that, from it as cause and provider of knowledge, the prophet was taught things not previously known; and the angel, understanding more purely the things of the contemplation, when…

…being an angel, expounded these things to the prophet and led him up from ignorance to understanding.

Now, the ignorance from which he was moved is indeed inferior to the knowledge to which he was led up; but the vision that gives the knowledge, and that possesses it within itself gathered together in a God-imitating manner — how is it not superior to the knowledge supplied by it?

Yet it was necessary that he who had set out against the Fathers should not leave even the prophets uninsulted.

For they are the first fathers, and the fathers of the fathers, in the Spirit; it was necessary, then, that they too share in the abuse.

Having now had his fill of contending against the Fathers and the prophets — he who found in those who embrace stillness a pretext for assailing, as he said, all things divine — he then sets himself up as expounder of the most mystical words of the Gospel, and thinks fit to teach how those pure in heart see God, and how the Son comes together with the Father and makes His abode with them.

"Those pure in heart," he says, "see God in no other way but according to analogy, or according to cause, or according to negation; and he is more of a seer of God who knows more of the parts of the world, or the better parts; and still more he who has more knowledge of what he knows; and most of a seer of God of all is he who has come to know both the visible portions of the world and the invisible powers, the sympathies of things toward the earth and the other elements, and the antipathies of all these toward one another, the differences, the properties, the communions, the energies, the conjunctions, the adaptations, the harmonies, and, simply, both the ineffable and effable compacts of this whole universe; for," he says, "whoever has been able to contemplate all these things well, he is able also to know God as the cause of all these, and from all these he knows God as cause, and, setting all these above himself again by negation, he thus knows Him above all things."

"For since," he says, "God is known only from the things that are, not from those which…

…one is ignorant of, but only from those which one knows will one know God."

O what statements he has let loose against himself — yet in no way discordant with his other opinions elsewhere! For elsewhere this man defines the perfect and wise man as the one who knows everything.

If, then, as he has just now here declared, it is possible to know the negations only of those things whose comprehension we possess, and to negate the divine only from these, it will be necessary — O what absurdity! — for the one who is to know God by the removal of all things, to be God.

For either one must know all things that are, in order to know God through the removal of all of them — and thus he introduces himself to us as God, for to know all things belongs to God alone — or, if he is ignorant of something, he must suppose that this is God; for it is impossible, as this man himself has said, for the divine to be stripped away from that of which one is ignorant.

And again, if one knows God as cause only of those things which one knows, then of whatever has escaped one's knowledge, one will not consider God to be the cause; therefore he will measure the divine power by the world, for he will not know it to be greater than this universe.

But we, having risen above knowledge, are persuaded that it would be among the easiest things for God to bring forth countless worlds — not only similar ones but also different ones — and we negate the divine wholly from all things, and even from things not yet known we come to know the power of infinite might.

Thus Paul says that Christ sits above every name, not only that which is named — that is, known — in the present age, but also that which shall be known in the age to come; and from…

…things not yet known he thus exalts the greatness of God, elsewhere too in his epistles, saying: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" And having enumerated all things sensible and intelligible, present and to come, he added: "nor shall any other creature be able to separate us from the love of God" — surveying together with things that are even things that are not, and predicating something of them as though they were.

But we, who from one thing understand countless things, and from the finite understand the infinite power, how shall we not, from moderate data, come to know all things concerning Him — as they say, know the lion from its claws, and the fabric from its fringe — and thus recognize God as cause of all things, and from all these remove predications, and add by faith also that which surpasses the knowledge of God derived from the things that are, namely that all things were brought forth from non-being by word alone?

This, then, is a knowledge transcending conception, common to all who have believed in Christ. But the goal of this true faith — which comes to be through the practice of the commandments — is furnished not from the things that are alone, whether known or unknown (for here we mean by "the things that are" created things in every case), but from the uncreated light, which is the glory of God and of Christ who is God, and of those who attain to the Christ-formed lot: "Christ shall come in the glory of the Father"; "in the glory of their Father, Christ, the righteous shall shine forth as the sun," and "they shall be light, and they shall see light" — that gracious and all-holy vision belonging to the purified heart alone, which even now, in the measure of a pledge, faintly appears to those who through dispassion have passed beyond all defiled things, and, through sincere and immaterial prayer, beyond impure things; but then it shall openly deify the sons of the resurrection, who shall share eternity and share glory together with Him who has imparted divine glory and radiance to our nature.

But glory and radiance, not even in the case of…

…created things, would ever be their essence. How, then, could anyone suppose the glory of God to be the essence of God — of God who, being unparticipable and invisible and untouchable, according to His supra-essential power becomes participable and is contained and shines through, and becomes one Spirit in contemplation with those who draw near through a pure heart, according to the most mystical and ineffable prayer of the common Father, offered on our behalf to His own Father?

"Grant them," He says, "that, just as I, Father, am in You and You in Me, so they also may be one in Us, in truth."

Such, then, being the vision of God — which alone shall be seen, throughout the unending age, by those deemed worthy of the blessed lot; which even now the chosen among the apostles beheld on Tabor, and Stephen while being stoned, and Anthony contending in stillness — or rather, all the saints, that is to say, those pure in heart, as anyone who wishes may learn from their own recorded words and the lives that go with them (and I myself would say that not even the prophets and patriarchs were untasting of this light; rather, that with few exceptions, all their visions, and especially the most divine among them, were not without a share in this light; for what alien light could he who possesses an eternal light of his own feign to show forth — a light that is visible to the pure in heart, though ineffably so, both now and in the age to come, as the great Dionysius also says)?

Such, then, being the vision of God, how is it that He who pronounces the pure in heart blessed does not promise this eternal vision, but instead the knowledge derived from created things, which could belong even to the wise of this age?

That the philosopher considers the knowledge derived from created things to be the most perfect vision of God, he has already taught us beforehand, saying that no superiority over this is left to anyone, who has known all the visible portions of the world and the…

"But to infer the one who acts from the energy, and to attain understanding of the transcendent wisdom from the harmony of the world — this could belong even to the wise of this age," says the divine Gregory of Nyssa; but I would say it belongs also to those who are not wise and not faithful, since we now see that even all the barbarians know the one God, maker of the universe — to whom apophatic theology, too, necessarily follows.

For the maker of the universe is none of the things made.

But what then? Do not many of those holding false doctrines also possess the wisdom of this age, and the understanding of God that comes from it?

Does the Lord, then, call them blessed?

And what of those among the Greeks who, in philosophy, far surpass present-day Christians, and who philosophize from the knowledge of created things?

Did they then also attain the blessed and eternal prize, and indeed all of it — not less, but even more so, than those who know nothing except the Lord Jesus Christ, and him crucified?

For how would it not be so, and indeed all the more, if God is known only from created things, and those who know more of these things are more capable of seeing God than others?

And yet we all have come to know the Son from the Father's voice, teaching us from above; and the Holy Spirit itself, and the ineffable light itself, showed to us him who is testified to be the Beloved from the Father; and the Son himself made manifest to us the name of his own Father, and, being taken up into the heavens, promised to send to us the Holy Spirit, that it might remain with us forever; and the Holy Spirit itself, having come upon us and remained in us, announced to us and taught us all the truth.

How then do we know God from created things alone, and not from that by which we remain ignorant of him, but rather from that by which we truly know him?

So then, if someone has not had experience of marriage, does he not know the union of God with the Church, since he cannot perceive the analogy from that experience — and will you counsel everyone to flee marriage? (p.

But you will be refuted by Paul, who, though unmarried, was the first to cry out that this mystery is great — but he said it with reference to Christ and the Church.