Those who draw near to perfection, and still see only in part the infinity and incomprehensibility of the things they behold, are amazed as they consider them; for to the degree that they penetrate into the light of knowledge, they receive the recognition of their own unknowing. But when that which appears to them dimly, as it were, and is shown as in a mirror, and which noetically illumines them only in part, is pleased to be seen more fully and to be united by participation with him who illumines — encompassing him wholly within itself, and he in turn being wholly left within the depth of the Spirit, as in the midst of an abyss of infinite waters of light — then, ineffably, he ascends into total unknowing, having become beyond all knowledge.
The mind, being simple, or rather stripped bare of every conception, and having entered wholly, in simplicity, into the divine light, being covered over by it, has nothing else besides that in which it exists to discover, that it might be moved toward the understanding of it; but it remains in the depth of the divine light, not being permitted to look outward at all.
The ever-moving mind then becomes motionless and altogether without conception, when it is wholly covered by the divine darkness and light; yet it exists in contemplation and perception and enjoyment of the good things in which it is.
All the things there are incomprehensible, ineffable, and inconceivable, wherein the mind, having passed beyond all things seen and thought, comes to be and moves and turns motionlessly in those alone, living a life above life within life, being light within light, and not light of itself; for then it does not see itself but him who is above it, and, its understanding being transformed by the glory from there, it becomes wholly ignorant of itself.
He who has arrived at the measures of perfection is dead and not dead: living in the God in whom he exists, as one no longer living to himself; blind, not seeing by nature — having become superior to all natural sight, as one who has received new and incomparably better eyes than those of nature, and who sees above nature; inoperative and motionless, as one who has fulfilled the whole of his own activity; without conception, as one who has come to be in union above conception and has come to rest where there is no operation of the mind, that is, no movement at all toward reflection, reasoning, or conception; for he is unable to understand or learn the incomprehensible and inexplicable things, and rests, as it were, in them — that rest which is the motionlessness of blessed insensibility — clearly delighting, without curious searching, in the ineffable goods, in a sure perception of them.
He who has not been deemed worthy to attain to such a measure of perfection, nor to come into possession of such goods, let him blame himself alone, and let him not say, making excuse, that the thing is impossible, or that perfection does indeed occur, but without being known; but let him know, being fully assured by the divine Scriptures, that the thing is possible and true, coming to pass in deed and being wrought knowingly, but that by the deficiency and idleness of the commandments each one, in proportion, deprives himself of these goods.
...let him say, making excuse, that the thing is impossible, or that perfection does indeed occur, but without being known; yet let him know, being fully assured by the divine Scriptures, that the thing is possible and true, coming to pass in deed and being wrought knowingly, and that by the deficiency and idleness of the commandments each one, in proportion, deprives himself of these goods.
Many indeed read the divine Scriptures, and others hear them being read, but few are those able rightly to know the meaning and sense of what is read — men who sometimes declare the things spoken by the divine Scriptures to be impossible, and sometimes consider them entirely unbelievable, or wrongly allegorize them, and judge that things spoken of as pertaining to the present time will come to pass in the future, while things said concerning the future they take as having already happened and as occurring each day; and thus there is in them neither right judgment nor true discernment in divine and human affairs.
God from the beginning made two worlds, the visible and the invisible, and one king of the things seen, bearing in himself the characteristics of the two worlds, both in respect of what is seen and of what is itself perceived by the mind.
Correspondingly to these, two suns also shine: this one sensible, and the other intelligible; and what the sun is among things seen and sensible, that is God among things unseen and intelligible, for he both is and is called the Sun of Righteousness.
Behold, then, according to this there are two suns, one sensible and one intelligible, just as there are also two worlds, as has been said; and the one of the two, namely the sensible world and all things in it, are illumined by this sensible and visible sun; while the other, that is, the intelligible world and those within it, are shone upon and made radiant by the intelligible Sun of Righteousness.
Thus the sensible things are illumined by the sensible sun, and the intelligible things by the intelligible sun, each separately from the other, there being no union at all between them, nor knowledge, nor communion whatsoever — neither of the intelligible things toward the sensible, nor of the sensible toward the intelligible.
Man alone, of all things seen and perceived by the mind, was created twofold by God: possessing a body composed of the four elements, together with sense and breath, through which he partakes of these elements and lives in them; and a rational, immaterial, and incorporeal soul, ineffably and inscrutably united and blended with these, yet without mixture and without confusion.
These together constitute one man: a living being mortal and immortal, visible and invisible, sensible and intelligible, an observer of the visible creation, a knower of the intelligible.
Just as, then, in the two worlds the two suns are divided in their operations, so also in the one man: for the one shines round about his body, and the other his soul, and each imparts to that which it illumines a share of its own light, richly or sparingly, according to that thing's receptive capacity.
The sensible sun does not speak, nor does it grant anyone the power to speak; but the intelligible sun both speaks to its own friends and graciously grants to all the power to speak.
The sensible sun, shining in the sensible garden, by the heat of its rays only dries up the moisture of the earth, but does not also fatten the plants and seeds; but the intelligible sun, having appeared in the soul, accomplishes both: it dries up the moisture of the passions, and purges away the foulness arising from them, and imparts fatness to the noetic earth of the soul, from which, being watered, the plants of the virtues are little by little nourished.
The sensible sun rises and illumines the sensible world and all things in it — men, wild beasts, cattle, and whatever else there is — spreading its light equally upon them; but again it sets, and leaves in darkness the place which it had illumined.
The intelligible sun shines always, and has always shone, wholly contained, uncontainably, in the whole universe, yet is separated from the things created by him, and, wholly, is distinct from them without any spatial interval; wholly in the whole of the universe, and nowhere; wholly in all visible creatures, and wholly outside them; wholly in things seen, and wholly in things unseen; and everywhere he is wholly present, and yet wholly nowhere at all.
1:3582
Τοῦαὐτοῦἕτερακεφάλαιαθεολογικάκαίπρακτικάρ
同一作者所著,另有一百章神學暨實踐篇章。
By the same author, other theological and practical chapters: one hundred.
Christ is beginning, middle, and end; for he who is in the first things is in all things, in the middle and in the last, just as he is in the first; for in him there is no difference in these respects — no barbarian, Scythian, Greek, or Jew — but Christ is all things and in all.
The Holy Trinity, permeating all things from the first to the last, as it were from a head to the feet, binds all together, glues and unites and joins them to itself, and in binding them together makes them firm and unbreakable; and in each one of them, one and the same reality is shown and made known, which is God, in whom the last become first, and the first become as the last.
We who are faithful ought to regard all the faithful as one, and to consider that Christ dwells in each one of them, and so to be disposed in love toward him as to be ready to lay down our own lives for him.
For we ought not to say or think at all that anyone is wicked, but to regard all as good, as we have said; for even if you see someone troubled by passions, do not hate your brother, but hate the passions that war against him; and if you see someone tyrannized by desires and preconceptions, have all the more compassion, lest you yourself also be tempted, being subject to the changeableness of matter that so easily besets you.
Just as the noetic ranks of the powers above are illumined by God in order, from the first order to the second, and from this to the next, and so on in succession, the divine ray of light passing through all of them, so too the saints, being illumined by the divine angels and bound together and united by the bond of the Spirit, become equal in honor to them and their rivals in excellence.
For the saints who, generation after generation, come after the earlier saints, through the working of God's commandments, cling to them and are illumined in like manner, receiving the grace of God by participation; and they become, as it were, a golden chain, each one of them being a single link, each bound to the one before by faith, by works, and by love, so that they become one and form a single chain in the one God, which cannot quickly be broken.
If anyone is counterfeit through hypocrisy, or blameworthy in his deeds, or has for a while been shattered by some one passion, or is somewhat deficient through negligence in part, he is not numbered together with the whole and perfect links, but is cast away as useless and unworthy, lest, at a time of tension, he cause the bond of the chain to be broken and produce a rupture among those who are otherwise unbroken, and grief on both sides — those before him grieving for those who come after, and these grieving over their separation from those who went before.
He who does not, through humility, aspire with love and fervent desire to union with the last of all the saints, but harbors some small measure of unbelief toward him, will never be united at all, nor will he be numbered together with the first and earlier saints, even though he may seem to have all faith and all love toward God and toward all the saints; for he will be cast out by them, as one who, through lack of humility, has not accepted to remain in the place in which he was appointed and to which he was ordained by God before the ages to be joined.
For to the degree that someone, from his soul, considers himself more sinful than all men, to that same degree hope grows together with his humility and flourishes in his heart, assuring him that through it he is going to be saved.
Each one ought to examine himself and take care neither to be confident in hope alone, apart from godly mourning and spiritual humility, nor in humility and tears alone, without the spiritual hope and joy that accompany them.
And they are vainly deceived in thinking this; for they have been deprived of the sweetness of the Spirit, which comes to be mystically in the noetic storeroom of the soul, and they do not taste the goodness of the Lord; wherefore such men are also quickly kindled to anger, and are unable to despise wholly the world and the things in the world.
But he who has not utterly despised these things and acquired from his soul a hatred toward them can never acquire a firm and undoubting hope of his salvation; but he is forever carried about here and there in doubt, not having laid his foundation upon the rock.
Mourning is twofold in its operations: as water, through tears, it extinguishes the whole flame of the passions and cleanses the soul from the defilement arising from them; and as fire, through the presence of the Holy Spirit, it gives life, kindles, sets ablaze, warms the heart, and inflames it with love and longing for God.
Observe and learn well the operations that come to be in you through humility and mourning, and search out the benefit that is added to you from them hour by hour.
For beginners, this consists in the laying aside of every earthly care, in freedom from attachment to and renunciation of all — parents, kinsfolk, and friends — and in freedom from anxiety and contempt for all possessions and money, not merely down to a needle, but even down to one's own body.
Just as, when a furnace is burning with flame, someone who casts dust upon it extinguishes it, in the same way worldly cares and every attachment, even to a paltry and very small thing, extinguishes the warmth of the heart that was kindled at the beginning.
He who, with full perception of heart and with joy, has made a renunciation of external things, of men, and of all that pertains to this life, and has attained forgetfulness of such things, having overcome attachment as one crossing over a wall, exists as a stranger to the world and to all that is in the world, gathering his mind together and making his sole meditation the remembrance and thought of death; wherefore he is also always anxious about the judgment and the recompense, and is wholly taken captive in these matters, struck by an unspeakable fear that comes from such thoughts and from constant meditation upon them.
Like a condemned man bound in fetters, so becomes, in the theater of this present life, the one who has conceived deep within himself the fear of the judgment.
...he appears to be dragged by the fear of some executioner and to be going the way that leads to death, reckoning nothing else but the toil alone and the pain which he is about to undergo from the eternal punishment; and bearing this indelibly in his heart, the fear that arises from it allows him to be anxious about nothing human at all. For as one already nailed to the wood and violently gripped by pains unto death, so he continues always, not even permitted to fix his eyes upon anyone's face, nor taking account of men's honor or dishonor; for since he holds himself from the heart worthy of all dishonor and contempt, he gives no thought to the insults brought upon him.
He who is pregnant with the fear of death will abhor all food and drink and adornment of clothing, and will not eat bread with pleasure, nor drink water; he will provide the body with only what is needed, as much as suffices merely for living, will renounce every will of his own, and will become the servant of all in discernment regarding what is commanded.
He who has given himself as a slave to his fathers according to God on account of the fear of punishment, when commanded, will not choose the things that lighten the pain of his heart, nor those that loosen the bond of fear, nor will he obey those who lead him toward such things in a friendly, flattering, or commanding manner; but rather he will prefer the things that increase it, and will desire the things that tighten the bond, and will love the things that strengthen the executioner, and will persevere in these, as one not expecting ever to receive freedom from them at all.
But he who imagines that he can lay a beginning without such pain and bond and executioner has not only laid the foundation of his own deeds upon sand, but even imagines that he is establishing a house in the air without foundations at all, which is altogether impossible.
For this pain will very soon give birth to all joy, and this bond will burst asunder the bonds of all sins and passions, and this executioner procures not death but eternal life.
Whoever does not wish to leap away and escape the pain that is born from the fear of eternal punishment, but with purpose of heart follows it and tightens its bonds upon himself the more, will accordingly journey the more swiftly and will present himself before the face of the King of kings.
And when this has come to pass, as soon as he beholds, however dimly, His glory, the bonds will immediately be loosed, the fearsome executioner will flee far from him, and the pain in his heart will be turned into joy and will become a spring, gushing forth sensibly with tears flowing ever like a river, and intelligibly with calm, gentleness, and ineffable sweetness, and further with courage and the readiness to run toward every obedience to the commandments of God freely and unhindered — which is at that time impossible for beginners, but for those who have advanced toward the middle degree it is their own attainment, while for those being perfected this spring becomes light, the heart being suddenly altered and transformed.
He who has within him the light of the all-holy Spirit, unable to bear seeing this, falls prostrate upon the ground, and cries out and shouts in amazement and great fear, having seen and suffered a thing beyond nature, beyond reason, beyond conception; and he becomes like a man whose inward parts have somehow been set aflame by fire, by which, being inflamed and unable to bear the burning of the flame, he exists as though beside himself; and being wholly unable to be master of himself, but being ceaselessly drenched with tears and cooled by them, he kindles the fire of longing all the more intensely.
He pours forth tears the more, and being washed by their outpouring, he shines forth the more brightly; and when, wholly set afire, he becomes as light, then is fulfilled the saying: God, united to gods and known by them, and, it may be, to such a degree as He has already been united to those joined to Him and revealed to those who have known Him.
To the extent that God wills to be known by us, to that extent He also reveals Himself; and to the extent that He is revealed, He is seen and known by the worthy.
It is not possible for anyone to experience or see such a thing unless he has first been united with the all-holy Spirit, having acquired through toils and sweats a humble, pure, simple, and contrite heart.
Before mourning and tears, let no one deceive you with empty words, nor let us deceive ourselves: there is in us no repentance, nor true contrition, nor fear of God in our hearts, nor have we condemned ourselves, nor has our soul come into perception of the coming judgment and the eternal torments.
For if it had acquired these things and come to be in them, it would immediately have brought down tears also; for without these, our hard heart can never be softened, nor can our soul acquire spiritual humility, nor shall we be able to become humble.
But he who has not become such cannot be united with the Holy Spirit; and he who has not been united with Him through purification can neither come to be in the contemplation and knowledge of God, nor is he worthy to be taught the mystical virtues of humility.
Just as, for one who is only now learning his letters by syllables, someone expounding the matters of rhetoric and philosophy will not only be of no benefit, but will even cause him to disregard what he has already begun and to abandon it, because his mind cannot at all grasp the force of what is said, so too he who speaks to beginners about the things of perfection — and all the more to those who are rather feeble-minded — will not only be of no benefit, but will even cause them to go backward.
For, having looked toward the height of virtue and having considered how far they fall short of its summit, and having supposed that it will be impossible for them to ascend to its peak, they will also despise as useless the things they had partly begun, and will sink down into despair.
When those still held captive and ruled by the passions hear that the man who is perfect according to God considers himself more unclean than every man and every animal and beast, that he rejoices when dishonored, blesses when reviled, patiently endures when persecuted, and prays for his enemies with tears and pain of heart, entreating and imploring God on their behalf — at first they disbelieve, trying to make themselves out to be equal to such men; then, being refuted by the divine Scriptures and confounded by the saints who have shown these things in deed, they confess that they are not able to attain to them; but when they also hear that without the fulfillment of these things it is impossible for them to be saved, then, altogether unwilling to make a cutting-off of evil and to repent for what they have sinned, they despair of themselves.
Those who feign virtue and, under the fleece of outward appearance, seem one thing while being another according to the inner man — perhaps filled with all injustice, full of envy and contentiousness and the stench of pleasures — the majority honor as dispassionate and holy, not having the eye of the soul purified, nor able to recognize them by their fruits; but those who live in reverence, virtue, and simplicity of heart, and who are truly holy, they misjudge as being like the rest of ordinary men, and pass them by with contempt.
The haughty, who are sick with the pride of the devil, turn away from the man who speaks in the Holy Spirit as though he were haughty and proud, being struck by his words rather than pierced with compunction; but they praise excessively and accept the man who speaks smoothly out of his belly or from mere learning, and who lies falsely concerning their own salvation; and thus among such people there is no one able to see and discern the matter rightly, as it truly is.
A pure heart, then, is not naturally accomplished by one virtue, nor by two or ten, but by all of them together, so to speak, as though being one and brought to perfection to the utmost degree; and not even so are they able by themselves alone to make the heart pure, apart from the presence and activity of the Spirit.
For just as the smith displays his craft through his tools, but apart from the working of fire he can construct nothing at all into a finished work, so also man does everything and uses the virtues as tools, but without the presence of the spiritual fire they remain inactive and unprofitable, not cleansing the filth and corruption of the soul.
And when this presence has come to be, all purity and holiness come to exist in the one worked upon by it, and God is seen by him, and God looks upon him; for, He says, upon whom shall I look but upon the meek and quiet man, who trembles at my words?
Man is able to struggle against the passions and conquer them, but by no means to root them out entirely; and he has received the power not to commit evil, but no longer the power not even to think of it.
But piety is not only doing good, but also not devising evil things; therefore he who devises evil things cannot acquire a pure heart. For how could he, when it is defiled by this as a mirror by mud?
I have understood a pure heart to be this: not merely not being troubled by some passion, but also not thinking of anything evil or worldly whenever one wishes, but having within oneself only the remembrance of God in unrestrainable love; for in pure light the eye sees God purely, with nothing else intervening in the contemplation.
This I call dispassion: not merely being outside the practice of the passions, but also being estranged from desire for them, and not even this only, but also our mind being stripped of the very notion of them, so that, whenever we wish, we may become above the heavens, coming to be outside all things visible and sensible, our senses being as it were shut off, and our mind entering into the things beyond sense, carrying along with itself in potency the senses, as an eagle its own wings.
That heart is called, and is, pure, which finds within itself no thought or worldly reasoning, which is so devoted and united to God as neither to remember the griefs of this life nor its joys, but to pass its time, as it were, in contemplation of a third heaven, and to be caught up into paradise, and to see the earnests of the blessings promised to the saints, and to conjecture from there, insofar as is possible for human nature, the very eternal goods themselves.
Just as he who is outside a house does not see those enclosed within, so neither does he who has been crucified to the world, that is, has been put to death, possess any perception at all toward the things in the world.
In the manner that a dead body has no perception whatever, either toward the living or toward the dead bodies lying beside it, so too he who has come to be outside the world in the Spirit and is with God cannot have perception toward the world, or be affected beforehand by its affairs, even though he is still subject to the necessities of the body.
Before death there is death, and before the resurrection of bodies there occurs a resurrection of souls, in deed, in power, in experience, and in truth.
For when the mortal mind-set is obliterated by the immortal intellect, and the deadness of life is driven out, the soul, as having risen from the dead, sees itself in truth, just as those who have arisen from sleep see themselves; and it recognizes the God who raised it, and, contemplating Him and giving Him thanks, it stands outside the senses and the whole world, being filled with ineffable pleasure, and it rests in Him from every intellectual movement of its own.
For if one does not offer what is his own with right reasoning, pious disposition, fervent faith, and much humility, God will not look upon him, nor will He accept what is offered; and if He does not accept these, neither will He in turn grant what is His own to the one so offering.
The world and those who belong to the world are dead in relation to the saints; therefore, even seeing, they do not see their good works, nor, even hearing, are they at all able to understand the divine words spoken by them in the Holy Spirit.