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St Gregory Palamas: Topics of Natural and Theological Science and on the Moral and Ascetic Life: One Hundred and Fifty Texts
1. That the world has an origin nature teaches and history confirms, while the discoveries of the arts, the institution of laws and the constitution of states also clearly affirm it. We know who are the founders of nearly all the arts, the lawgivers and those who established states, and indeed we know what has been written about the origin of everything. Yet we see that none of this surpasses the account of the genesis of the world and of time as narrated by Moses. And Moses, who wrote about the genesis of the world, has so irrefutably substantiated the tnith of what he writes through such extraordinary actions and words that he has convinced virtually the whole human race and has persuaded them to deride those who sophistically teach the contrary. Since the nature of this world is such that everything in it requires a specific cause in each instance, and since without such a cause nothing can exist at all, the very nature of things demonstrates that there must be a first principle which is self-existent and does not derive from any other principle.
2. That the world not only has an origin but also will have a consummation is affirmed by the fact that all things in it are contingent, and indeed it is partially coming to an end all the time. Moreover, sure and irrefutable assurance of this is furnished by the prophecy both of those inspired by God and of Christ Himself, the God of all; and not only the pious but also the impious must believe that what they say is true, since everyone can see that what they predicted about other things has proved correct. From them we leam that the world will not lapse entirely into non- being but, like our bodies and in a manner analogous to what will happen to us, it will be changed by the power of the Holy Spirit, being dissolved and transformed into something more divine.
3. The ancient Greek sages say that the heavens revolve in accordance with the nature of the world soul, and that they teach justice and reason. What sort of justice? What kind of reason? For if the heavens revolve not by virtue of their own nature but by virtue of the nature of what they call the world soul, and if this world soul belongs to the entire world, how is it that the earth and the water and the air do not also revolve? Yet though in their opinion the soul is ever-moving, none the less the earth is stationary by nature, and so is water, which occupies the lower region, whereas the heavens, which occupy the upper region, are by nature ever in motion and move in a circle. But what is the character of this world soul by virtue of whose nature the heavens revolve? Is it endowed with intelligence? If so, it must be self-determining, and so it would not always move the celestial body in the same way, for what is self- determining moves differently at different times. And what trace of deifomi soul do we observe in the lowermost sphere - the sphere of the earth - or in the elements most proximate to it, namely those of water, air, and even fire itself, for the world soul supposedly pertains to them as well? And again, how in their opinion are some things animate and others inanimate? And among inanimate things it turns out that not merely a few examples taken at random but every stone, every piece of metal, all earth, water, air and fire, moves by virtue of its own nature and not by virtue of a soul; for they admit that this is true even of fire. Yet if the soul is common to all, how is it that only the heavens move by virtue of the nature of this soul and not by virtue of their own nature? And how in their view can the soul that moves the celestial body be void of intelligence since according to them it is the source of our souls? But if it is void of intelligence it must be either sentient or vegetative. We observe, however, that no soul moves a body without the assistance of organs, and we cannot observe any such organ that specifically serves the earth, or the heavens, or any of the other element contained within them; for every organ is composed of various natures, while the elements severally, and above all the heavens, are simple and not composite. The soul is the actuality of a body possessing organs and having the potentiality for life; but the heavens, since they have no member or part that can serve as an organ, have no potentiality for life. How, then, can that which is incapable of life possibly have a soul? But those who have become 'vain in their reasonings' have invented 'out of their foolish hearts' (Rom. 1:21) a world soul that does not exist, never has existed, and never will exist. Yet they claim that this soul is the demiurge and governor and controller of the entire sensible world and, farther, that it is some sort of root and source of our souls or, rather, of every soul. Moreover, they say that it is born from the intellect, and that the intellect is other in substance than the supreme Intellect which they call God. Such doctrines are taught by those among them most proficient in wisdom and theology, but they are no better than men who deify wild beasts and stones. In fact their religiosity is much worse, for beasts, gold, stone and bronze are real things, even though they are among the least of creatures; but the star-bearing world soul neither exists, nor is it anything real, for it is nothing at all but the invention of an evil mind.
4. Since, they say, the celestial body must be in motion, and there is no place to which it can advance, it turns about itself and thus its 'advancement' is that of rotation. Well and good. So if there were a place, it would move upwards, like fire, and more so than fire since it is by nature lighter than fire. Yet this movement is due not to the nature of a soul but to that of lightness. Thus if the heavens' motion is rotational, and this motion exists by virtue of their own nature, and not that of the soul, then the celestial body revolves not by virtue of the nature of the soul but by virtue of its own nature. Hence it does not possess a soul, nor is there any such thing as a celestial or pancosmic soul. The only soul that possesses intelligence is the human soul, and this is not celestial, but supracelestial, not because of its location but because of its very nature, for its essence is noetic.
5. The celestial body does not move forward or upward. The reason for this is not that there is no place beyond it. For adjacent to the heavens and enclosed within them is the sphere of ether, and this too does not advance upward, not because there is no place to which it might proceed - for the breadth of the heavens embraces it - but because what is above is lighter. Hence, the heavens are by their own nature higher than the sphere of ether. It is not because there is no place higher that the heavens do not proceed upward, but because there is no body more subtle and light than they are.
6. No body is higher than the celestial body. Yet this is not to say that the region beyond the heavens does not admit a body, but only that the heavens contain every body and there is no other body beyond. But if a body could pass beyond the heavens, which is our pious belief, then the region beyond the heavens would not be inaccessible. God, who fills all things and extends infinitely beyond the heavens, existed before the world, filling as He now fills the whole region of the world. Yet this did not prevent a body from existing in that region. Thus even outside of the heavens there is nothing to prevent the existence of a region, such as that which surrounds the world or as that which is in the world, in which a body could abide.
7. Since there is no such hindrance, how is it, then, that the celestial body does not move upwards, but turning back upon itself moves in a circular fashion? Because, as it is the lightest of bodies, it rises to the surface of all the others and is the highest of them all, as well .as being the most mobile. Just as what is most compressed and most heavy is the lowest and most stationary, so what is more ranfied and lightest is the highest and most mobile. Thus since the celestial body moves by nature above the level of all other bodies, and since by nature it is impossible for it to separate itself from those things on the surface of which it is located, and since those things on which it is located are spherical, it must encircle them unceasingly. And this it does not by virtue of the nature of a soul but by virtue of its own proper nature as a body, since it passes successively from place to place, which is the movement most characteristic of the highest bodies, just as a stationary state most characterizes the lowest bodies.
8. It may be observed that in the regions close about us the winds, whose nature it is to rise upwards, move about these regions without separating themselves from them and without proceeding further in an upward direction. This is not because there is no place for them to rise to, but because what is above the winds is lighter than they are. They remain on the surface of the regions above which they are situated because by nature they are lighter than those regions. And they move around those regions by virtue of their own nature and not that of a soul. I think that Solomon, wise in all things, intended to indicate this partial likeness that the winds bear to the celestial body when he applied the same kind of language to the winds as is used of it; for he wrote, 'The wind proceeds circle-wise, and returns on its own circuits' (Eccles. I :6). But the nature of the winds round about us diners from the nature of higher bodies, in that the winds' motion is slower and they are more heavy.
9. According to the Greek sages, there are two opposing zones of the earth that are temperate and habitable, and each of these is divided into two inhabited regions, thus making four in all. Therefore they assert that there are also four races of men upon the earth, and that these are unable to have any contact with one another. There are, according to these philosophers, men living in the temperate zone lateral to us, who are separated from us by the torrid zone. And there are people who dwell antipodal to these latter, living from their point of view beneath the temperate zone and its inhabitants. In a similar way there are those who dwell beneath us. The first they say are opposite to us, while the second are antipodal and reversed. What these sages did not realize is that only one tenth of the earth's sphere is land, while the rest is almost entirely swallowed up by the abyss of the waters.
10. You should realize that, apart from the region of the earth which we inhabit, there is no other habitable land, since it is all inundated by the waters of the abyss. You should also bear in mind that (omitting ether) the four elements out of which the world is fashioned balance one another equally, and that each of the elements has its own sphere, the size of which is proportionate to its density, as Aristotle also thinks. Tor', he says, 'there are five elements located in five spherical regions, and the greater spheres always encompass the lesser: water encompasses earth; air encompasses water; fire, air; and ether, fire. This constitutes the world.'
11. Ether is more translucent than fire, which is also called 'combustible matter', and fire is many times greater in volume than air, and air than water, and water than earth which, as it is the most compressed, is the least in volume of all the four elements under the heavens. Since the sphere of water is many times greater in size than that of earth, if the two spheres - that of water and that of earth - had the same centre and the water was poured over the entire surface of the earth, the water would not have left any part of the earth's surface available for use by terrestrial animals, since it would have covered all the soil and the earth's surface would have been everywhere at a considerable depth beneath it. But since the waters do not entirely swallow up earth's surface - for the dry land we inhabit is not covered by them - the sphere of the waters must of necessity be eccentric to the earth's sphere. Thus we must try to discover by how much it is eccentric and where its centre lies, whether above or beneath us. Yet it cannot be above us, since we see a part of the water's surface below us. Thus from our point of view the centre of the sphere of water is beneath the earth's centre. We have still to discover how far this centre is from the centre of the earth.
12. You can see how far from our viewpoint the centre of water's sphere lies beneath the centre of earth's sphere if you take into consideration that the surface of the water visible to us and beneath us - just as the ground we walk upon is beneath us - coincides almost exactly with the surface of the earth which we inhabit. But the habitable region of the earth is about one tenth of its circumference, for the earth has five Stones, and we inhabit half of one of those five. Hence if you want to fit a sphere that encompasses the earth on to one that encompasses this tenth part of its surface you will find that the diameter of the exterior sphere is nearly twice as great as the diameter of the interior sphere, while its volume is eight times greater; and its centre will be situated at what is from our viewpoint the bottom extremity of the sphere of the earth. This is clear from the following diagram.
13. Let us represent the earth's sphere with a circle on the inside of which are the letters A, B, C, D; and around this let us draw another circle representing water's sphere, which touches the first circle at its highest point, and on the outside of this second circle let us write the letters E, F, G. H. It will be found that, from our point of view, the centre of the outer circle will lie on the circumference of the inner circle at its bottom extremity. And since the diameter of the outer circle is twice that of the inner circle, and since it can be demonstrated geometrically that the sphere whose diameter is twice that of another sphere is eight times the size of the latter, it follows that one eighth of the sphere of the element of water is contained by and merged with earth's sphere. It is for this reason that many springs of water gush forth from the earth and abundant, ever-flowing rivers issue from it, and the gulfs of many seas pour into it, and many lakes spread over it. There is scarcely any place on the earth where, if you dig, you will not find water flowing beneath.
1 4. As the above diagram and logic itself teach us, no region of the earth other than our own is inhabited. For just as the earth would be totally uninhabitable if both earth and water had the same centre, so, even more truly, if the water has its centre at what is from our point of view the lowest extremity of the earth, all the other parts of the earth, apart from the region where we live which fits into the upper section of the water's sphere, must be uninhabitable since they are flooded by water. And since it has already been demonstrated that embodied deiform souls dwell only in the inhabited region of the earth, and that there is but one such region on the earth - the one in which we live - it follows that land animals not endowed with intelligence also dwell solely in this region.
15. Sight is formed from the manifold impressions of colors and shapes; smell from odors; taste from flavors; hearing from sounds;
and touch from things that are rough or smooth on contact. The impressions that the senses receive come from bodies but, although corporeal, they are not bodies themselves. For they do not arise directly from bodies, but from the forms that are associated with bodies. Yet they are not themselves these forms, since they are but impressions left by the forms; and so, like images, they are inseparably separated from these forms. This is particularly evident in the case of sight, especially when objects are seen in mirrors.
16. These sense impressions are in turn appropriated from the senses by the soul's imaginative faculty; and this faculty totally separates not the senses themselves but what we have called the images that exist within them from the bodies and their forms. It stores them up like treasures and brings them forward ulteriorly - now one and now another, each in its own time - for its own use even when there is no corresponding body present. In this way it sets before itself all manner of things seen, heard, tasted, smelled and touched.
17. In creatures endowed with intelligence this imaginative faculty of the soul is an intermediary between the intellect and the senses. For the intellect beholds and dwells upon the images received in itself from the senses - images separated from bodies and already bodiless - and it formulates various kinds of thought by means of distinctions, analysis and inference. This happens in various ways - impassionately or dispassionately or in a state between the two, both with and without error. From these thoughts are born most virtues and vices, as well as opinions, whether right or wrong. Yet not every thought that comes into the intellect has its origin in the images of things perceived or is connected with them. There are some thoughts that do not come within the scope of the senses, but are given to the thinking faculty by the intellect itself. As regards our thoughts, then, not every truth or error, virtue or vice has its origin in the imagination.
18. What is remarkable and deserving our attention is how beauty or ugliness, wealth or poverty, glory or ill repute - and, in short, either the noetic light that bestows eternal life or the noetic darkness of chastisement - enter the soul, becoming firmly established within it, from merely transitory and sensible things.
19. When the intellect enthrones itself on the soul's imaginative faculty and thereby becomes associated with the senses, it engenders a composite form of knowledge. For suppose you look at the setting sun and then see the moon follow it, illuminated in the small part turned towards the sun, and in the subsequent days you note that the moon gradually recedes and is illuminated more brightly until the opposite process sets in; and suppose you then see the moon draw closer from the other side and its hght wane more and more until it disappears altogether at the point at which it first received illumination; suppose you take intellectual note of all this, having in your imagination the images you have previously received and with the moon itself ever present before your eyes, you will in this way understand from sense-perception, imagination and intellection that the moon gets its light from the sun, and that its orbit is much lower than the sun's and closer to the earth.
20. As in this way we achieve knowledge of things pertaining to the moon, so in a similar way we can achieve knowledge of things pertaining to the sun - the solar eclipses and their nodes - as well as of the parallaxes, intervals and varied configurations involving the planets, and in short of all phenomena concerning the heavens. The same holds true with regard to the laws of nature, and every method and art, and in brief with regard to all knowledge acquired from the perception of particulars. Such knowledge we gather from the senses and the imagination by means of the intellect. Yet no such knowledge can ever be called spiritual, for it is natural, things of the Spirit being beyond its scope (cf. I Cor. 2:14).
21. Where can we learn anything certain and true about God, about the world as a whole, and about ourselves? Is it not from the teaching of the Holy Spirit? For this teaching has taught us that God is the only Being that truly is - the only eternal and immutable Being - who neither receives being from non-being nor returns to non-being; who is Tri-hypostatic and Almighty, and who through His Logos brought forth all things from non-being in six days or, rather, as Moses states. He created them instantaneously. For we have heard him say, 'First of all God created heaven and earth' (Gen. 1:1). And He did not create them totally, empty or without any intermediary bodies at all. For the earth was mixed with water, and each was pregnant with air and with the various species of animals and plants, while the heavens were pregnant with various lights and fires; and so with the heavens and the earth all things received their existence. Thus first of all God created the heavens and the earth as a kind of all-embracing material substance with the potentiality of giving birth to all things. In this way He rightly rebuts those who wrongly think that matter preexisted on its own as an autonomous entity.
22. After this initial creation. He who brings forth all things from non-being proceeds as it were to embellish and adorn the world. In six days He allotted its own proper and appropriate rank to each of His creatures that together constitute His world. He differentiates each by command alone, as though bringing forth from hidden treasuries the things stored within, giving them form, and disposing and composing them harmoniously, with perfection and aptness, one to the other, each to all and all to each. Establishing the. immovable earth as the centre He encircled it in the highest vault with the ever-moving heavens and in His great wisdom bound the two together by means of the intermediary regions. Thus the same world is both at rest and moving. For while the heavenly bodies encircle the earth in rapid and perpetual motion, the immovable body of the earth necessarily occupies the central position, its state of rest serving as a counterbalance to the heavens' mobility. In this way the pancosmic sphere does not change its position as it would if it were cylindrical.
23. Thus by assigning such positions to the two bodies that mark the boundaries of the universe - the earth and the heavens - the Master-craftsman both made fast and set in motion what one might call this entire and orderly world; and He farther allotted what was fitting to each thing lying between these two limits. Some He placed on high, enjoining them to move in the upper regions and to revolve for all time round the uttermost boundary of the universe in a wise and ordered manner. Those are the light and active bodies capable of making bodies that lie beneath them fit and serviceable. They are most wisely set above the world's middle region so that they can sufficiently dispel the excessive coldness there and restrain their own excessive heat to its proper level. In some manner they also restrict the excessive mobility of the world's outermost, bounds, for they have their own opposing movement and they hold that outermost region in place through their counter-rotation. At the same time they provide us with beneficial yearly changes of season, whereby we can measure temporal extension; and to those with understanding they supply knowledge of the God who has created, ordered and adorned the world. Hence He commanded those bodies in the upper region to dance round it in swift rotation for two reasons: to fill the entire universe with beauty and to furnish a variety of more specific benefits. He set lower down in the middle region other bodies of a heavy and passive nature that come into being and undergo change, that decompose and are recompounded, and that suffer alteration for a useful purpose. He established these bodies and their relationships to one another in an orderly manner so that all things together could rightly be called 'cosmos', that is to say, that which is well-ordered.
24. In this manner the first of beings was brought forth into creation and after that another was brought forth, and after that still another, and so on, until last of all man was brought forth. So great was the honor and providential care which God bestowed upon man that He brought the entire sensible world into being before him and for his sake. The kingdom of heaven was prepared for him from the foundation of the world (cf Matt. 25:34); God first took counsel concerning him, and then he was fashioned by God's hand and according to the image of God (cf. Gen. 1 :26-27). God did not form the whole of man from matter and from the elements of this sensible world, as He did the other animals. He formed only man's body from these materials; but man's soul He took from things supracelestial or, rather, it came from God Himself when mysteriously He breathed life into man (cf. Gen. 2:7). The human soul is something great and wondrous, superior to the entire world; it overlooks the universe and has all things in its care; it is capable of knowing and receiving God, and more than anything else has the capacity of manifesting the sublime magnificence of the Master-Craftsman. Not only capable of receiving God and His grace through ascetic struggle, it is also able to be united in Him in a single hypostasis.
25. Here and in such things as these lie the true wisdom and the saving knowledge that procure for us the blessedness of heaven. What Euclid, Marinos or Ptolemy has been able to understand these truths? What Empedocleans, Socratics, Aristotelians and Platonists with their logical methods and mathematical demonstrations? Or, rather, what form of sense -perception has grasped such things, what intellect apprehended them? If the wisdom of the Spirit seemed something lowly to these philosophers of nature and their followers, this fact alone demonstrates its incomparable superiority. In much the same way as animals not endowed with intelligence are related to the wisdom of these men - or, if you wish, as children would consider the pastries they hold in their hands superior to the imperial crown and to all the knowledge of these philosophers - so are these philosophers in relation to the true and sublime wisdom and teaching of the Spirit.
26. To know God truly - in so far as this is possible - is incomparably superior to the philosophy of the Greeks, and simply to know what place man has in relation to God surpasses all their wisdom. For man alone among all terrestrial and celestial beings is created in the image of his Maker, so that he might look to God and love Him and be an initiate and worshipper of God alone, and so that he might preserve his own beauty by his faith in God and his devotion and affection towards Him, and might know that whatever is found on earth and in the heavens is inferior to himself and is completely void of intelligence. This the Greek sages could never conceive of, and they dishonored our nature and were irreverent towards God. 'They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator' (Rom. I :25), attributing to the sense -perceptible yet insensate stars an intelligence in each case proportionate in power and dignity to its physical size. They wretchedly worshipped these things, called them greater and lesser gods, and committed the lordship of all things to them. Did they not thus shame their own souls, dishonoring and impoverishing them, and filling them with a truly noetic and chastising darkness by their preoccupation with a philosophy based on sense -objects? 27. To know that we have been created in God's image prevents us from deifying even the noetic world. 'Image' here refers not to the body but to the nature of the intellect. Nothing in nature is superior to the intellect, for if there were then it would constitute the divine image. Since, therefore, the intellect is what is best in us and this, even though it is in the divine image, is none the less created by God, why, then, is it difficult to understand or, rather, how is it not self-evident that the Creator of that which is noetic in us is also the Creator of everything noetic? Thus every noetic being, since it is likewise created in the image of God, is our fellow-servant, even if certain noetic beings are more honorable than us in that they possess no body and so more closely resemble the utterly bodiless and uncreated Nature. Or, rather, those noetic beings who have kept their rank and who maintain the purpose for which they were created deserve our homage and are far superior to us, even though they are fellow-servants. On the other hand, the noetic beings who did not keep their rank but rebelled and rejected the purpose for which they were created are totally estranged from those close to God, and they have fallen from honor. And if they attempt to drag us after them and to make us fall, they are not only worthless and disgraced but are also God's enemies and destructive and inimical to the human race.
28. Yet natural scientists, astronomers and those who boast of possessing universal knowledge are unable to understand anything of what has just been said on the basis of their philosophy. Moreover, they have regarded the ruler of the noetic darkness and all the rebellious powers under him not only as superior to themselves but even as gods, and they have honored them with temples, made sacrifices to them and submitted themselves to their niinous oracles. In this way they were mocked exceedingly by the demons, through unholy sacred objects, through defiling purifications which only increased their accursed conceit, and through prophets and prophetesses who estranged them totally from the essential truth.
29. For a man to know God, and to know himself and his proper rank - a knowledge now possessed even by Christians who are thought to be quite unlearned - is a knowledge superior to natural science and astronomy and to all philosophy concerning such matters. Moreover, for our intellect to know its own infirmity, and to seek healing for it, is incomparably greater than to know and search out the magnitude of the stars, the principles of nature, the generation of terrestrial things and the circuits of celestial bodies, their solstices and risings, stations and retrogressions, separations and conjunctions and, in short, all the multiform relationships which arise from the many different motions in the heavens. For the intellect that recognizes its own infirmity has discovered where to enter in order to find salvation and how to approach the light of knowledge and receive the true wisdom that does not pass away with this present world.
30. Every spiritual and noetic nature, whether angelic or human, possesses life as its essence, whereby it continues immortal in its existence and does not admit dissolution. But the spiritual and noetic nature within us has life not only as its essence but also as its activity, since it quickens the body united to it. For this reason it is also called the body's life. And when it is called the life of the body, it is called life with reference to something else and is an activity of our nature; for when relative to something else it can never be called an essence in itself. The noetic nature of angels, however, does not possess life as an activity of this sort, because it did not receive an earthy body from God and was not united to it in such a way as to have a quickening power in regard to it. Yet their nature can admit opposites, that is, good and evil. This is confirmed by the fact that the wicked angels fell away because of their pride. Thus the angels are somehow composite, being formed of their essence and one of these contrary qualities of virtue or vice. Hence it is evident that even angels do not have goodness as their essence.
31. The soul of each animal not imbued with intelligence is the life of the body that it animates; it does not possess life as essence, but as activity, since here life is relative and not something in itself. Indeed, the soul of animals consists of nothing except that which is actuated by the body. Thus when the body dissolves, the soul inevitably dissolves as well. Their soul is no less mortal than their body, since everything that it is relates and refers to what is mortal. So when the body dies the soul also dies.
32. The soul of each man is also the life of the body that it animates, and possesses a quickening activity in relation to something else, namely, to the body that it quickens. Yet the soul has life not only as an activity but also as its essence, since it is self-existent; for it possesses a spiritual and noetic life that is evidently different from the body's and from what is actuated by the body. Hence when the body dissolves the human soul does not perish with it; and not only does it not perish but it continues to exist immortally, since it is not manifest only in relation to something else, but possesses its own life as its essence.
33. The spiritual and noetic soul possesses life as essence, yet it can admit contraries, that is to say, good and evil. Thus it is evident that it does not have goodness as essence, nor evil either; both are as it were qualities and when either is present it is because the soul has chosen it. They are present, not with respect to place, but whenever the noetic soul, having received free will from its Creator, inclines to one or the other and wills to live in accordance with it. Hence the spiritual and noetic soul is somehow composite, but not on account of the activity mentioned above; for this activity is related to something else, namely, the body, and so does not by nature produce what is composite. Rather the soul is composite on account of its own essence and the presence in it of one of the two contrary qualities - good and evil - of which we have just spoken.
34. The supreme Intellect, the uttermost Good, the Nature which transcends life and divinity, being entirely incapable of admitting opposites in any way, clearly possesses goodness not as a quality but as essence. Hence everything that we can conceive of as good is to be found in It or, rather, the supreme Intellect both is that good and surpasses goodness. And everything that we can conceive of as being in the Intellect is good or, rather, is both goodness and a Goodness that transcends goodness. Life, too, is to be found in It or, rather, the Intellect is life; for life is good and the life that is in the Intellect is goodness. And Wisdom is in It, or, rather, the Intellect is Wisdom; for Wisdom is good and the Wisdom that is in the Intellect is goodness. It is the same with eternity, blessedness and everything that we can conceive of as good. There is no distinction between life and wisdom and goodness and so on, for this Goodness embraces all these things comprehensively, umtively and in utter simplicity, and we conceive of It and call It Goodness by virtue of Its embracing every form of goodness. Whatever goodness we can conceive of and ascribe to It is one and true. Yet this Goodness is not only that which is truly conceived of by those who perceive with an intellect imbued with divine Wisdom and who speak of God with a tongue moved by the Spirit; it is also ineffable and incomprehensible and transcends these things, and is not inferior to the unitive and supernatural simplicity; for absolute and transcendent Goodness is one. It is by virtue of this alone - namely, that He is absolute and transcendent Goodness, possessing goodness as His essence - that the Creator and Lord of Creation is both intellectually perceived and described; and this solely on the basis of His energies which are directed towards creation. Hence in no way whatever does God admit what is contrary to goodness, since there is nothing contrary where essence is concerned.
35. This absolute and transcendent Goodness is also the source of goodness; and that which proceeds from It is likewise good and is supremely good and cannot be lacking in perfect goodness. The transcendently and absolutely perfect Goodness is Intellect; thus what else could that which proceeds from It as from a source be except Intelligence-content or Logos? But the divine Logos is not to be understood in the same way as the human thought- form that we express orally, for that proceeds not from the intellect but from a body activated by the intellect; nor is it to be understood in the same way as our human inner intelligence-principle, for this, too, is disposed within us in such a way as to give birth to different forms of sound. Neither is the divine Logos equivalent to the reasoning power in our mind, even though this is soundless and operates entirely according to impulses that are bodiless. For the reasoning logos, as a faculty dependent on us, requires for its functioning successive moments of time, since it emerges gradually, proceeding from an incomplete starting-point to its complete conclusion. Rather, the divine Logos is similar to the logos implanted by nature in our intellect, according to which we are made by the Creator in His own image and which constitutes the spiritual knowledge coexistent with the intellect. On the plane of the sublime Intellect of the absolute and transcendently perfect Goodness, wherein there is nothing imperfect, the divine Logos-Gnosis is indistinguishably whatever that Goodness is, except for the fact that it is derived from It. Thus the supreme Logos is also the Son, and is so described by us, in order that we may recognize Him to be perfect in a perfect and individual hypostasis, since He comes from the Father and is in no way inferior to the Father's essence, but is indistinguishably identical with Him, although not according to hypostasis; for His distinction as hypostasis is manifest in the fact that the Logos is begotten in a divinely fitting manner from the Father.
36. The Goodness, then, that issues by way of generation from the Source of noetic goodness is Logos. But no intelhgent person could conceive of a Logos or InteUigence-content that is hfeless and without spirit. Hence the Logos, God from God, possesses the Holy Spirit that issues together with Himself from the Father. Yet the Holy Spirit is spirit not in the sense whereby the breath conjoined to the word issuing from our lips is spirit, for this is a body and is conjoined to our speech through bodily organs; nor is it spirit in the sense whereby that which accompanies, albeit bodilessly, our innate reasoning process is spirit, for that, too, entails a certain impulse of the intellect that accompanies our thought-process through successive intervals of time, and progresses from incompletion to completion. The Spirit of the supreme Logos is a kind of meffable yet intense longing or eros experienced by the Begetter for the Logos born ineffably from Him, a longing experienced also by the beloved Logos and Son of the Father for His Begetter; but the Logos possesses this love by virtue of the fact that it comes from the Father in the very act through which He comes from the Father, and it resides co-naturally in Him. It is from the Logos's discourse with us through His incarnation that we have learned what is the name of the Spirit's distinct mode of coming to be from the Father and that the Spirit belongs not only to the Father but also to the Logos. For He says 'the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father' (John 15:26), so that we may know that from the Father comes not solely the Logos - who is begotten from the Father - but also the Spirit who proceeds from the Father. Yet the Spirit belongs also to the Son, who receives Him from the Father as the Spirit of Truth, Wisdom and Logos. For Truth and Wisdom constitute a Logos that befits His Begetter, a Logos that rejoices with the Father as the Father rejoices in Him. This accords with the words that He spoke through Solomon: 'I was She who rejoiced together with Him' (Prov, 8:30). Solomon did not say simply 'rejoiced' but 'rejoiced together with'. This pre-etemal rejoicing of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit who, as I said, is common to both, which explains why He is sent from both to those who are worthy. Yet the Spirit has His existence from the Father alone, and hence He proceeds as regards His existence only from the Father.
37. Our intellect, because created in God's image, possesses likewise the image of this sublime Eros or intense longing - an image expressed in the love experienced by the intellect for the spiritual knowledge that originates from it and continually abides in it. This love is of the intellect and in the intellect and issues forth from it together with its innermost intelligence or logos. This is shown clearly by the fact that even those who are unable to perceive what lies deeply within themselves possess an insatiable desire for spiritual knowledge. Yet in the Archetype, in this absolutely and transcendently perfect Goodness, wherein there is nothing imperfect, the divine Eros is indistinguishably whatever that Goodness is, except for the fact that it is derived from It. Hence this intense longing is - and is called - the Holy Spirit and the other Comforter (cf John 14:16), since He accompanies the Logos. Thus we know Him to be perfect in a perfect and individual hypostasis, in no way inferior to the Father's essence, but indistinguishably identical with the Son and the Father, although not according to hypostasis; for His distinction as hypostasis is manifest in the fact that He proceeds from God in a divinely fitting manner. Thus we worship one true and perfect God in three true and perfect hypostases - not, certainly, a threefold God but one who is simple. For Goodness is not something threefold, nor a triad of goodnesses. Rather, the most subhme Goodness is a holy, awe- inspiring and venerable Trinity flowing forth out of Itself into Itself without change and divinely established in Itself before the ages. The Trinity is without limits and is limited only by Itself; It limits all things, transcends all and permits no beings to be outside Itself.
38. The noetic and intelligent nature of angels also possesses intellect, and the thought-form (logos) that proceeds from the intellect, and the intense longing (eros) of the intellect for its thought-form. This longing is likewise from the intellect and coexists eternally with the thought-form and the intellect, and can be called spirit since by nature it accompanies the thought-form. But this spirit in the case of angels is not life- generating, for it has not received from God an earthy body conjoined with it, and so it has not received the power to generate and sustain life. On the other hand the noetic and intelligent nature of the human soul has received a life- generating spirit from God since the soul is created together with an earthy body, and so by means of the spirit it sustains and quickens the body conjoined to it. This makes it clear to those who possess understanding that the spirit of man 'that quickens the body is noetic longing (eros), a longing that issues from the intellect and its thought-form, that exists in the thought -form and the intellect, and that possesses in itself both the thought-form and the intellect. Through the spirit the soul possesses such a natural union of love with its particular body that it never wants to abandon it, and it would never leave it at all if it was not forced to do so by some grave illness or affliction that assails it from without.
39. Since the noetic and intelligent nature of the human soul alone possesses intellect, thought -form and life- generating spirit, it alone -more so than the bodiless angels - is created by God in His image. This image the soul possesses inalienably, even if it does not recognize its own dignity, or think and live in a manner worthy of the Creator's image within it. After our forefather's transgression in paradise through the tree, we suffered the death of our soul - which is the separation of the soul from God - prior to our bodily death; yet although we cast away our divine likeness, we did not lose our divine image. Thus when the soul renounces its attachment to inferior things and cleaves through love to God and submits itself to Him through acts and modes of virtue, it is illuminated and made beautiful by God and is raised to a higher level, obeying His counsels and exhortations; and by these means it regains the truly eternal life. Through this life it makes the body conjoined to it immortal, so that in due time the body attains the promised resurrection and participates in eternal glory. But if the soul does not repudiate its attachment and submission to inferior things whereby it shamefully dishonors God's image, it alienates itself from God and is estranged from the true and truly blessed life of God; for as it has first abandoned God, it is justly abandoned by Him.
40. The triadic nature sequent to the supreme Trinity - that is to say, the human soul - has more than other natures been made by the Trinity noetic, intelligent and spiritual. In this way it is created more than other natures in the image of the Trinity. Thus it ought to maintain its proper rank, be sequent to God alone, yoked to Him alone, and subject and obedient to Him alone. It ought to look only to Him and adorn itself with the constant mindfulness and contemplation of Him, and with most fervent and ardent love for Him. For by these means it is wondrously drawn back to itself or, rather, it draws to itself the mystical and ineffable glory of God's nature. Then the soul truly possesses the image and the likeness of God and is thereby made gracious, wise and divine. When this glory is manifestly present or when it approaches unnoticed, the soul now increasingly learns to love God more than itself and to love its neighbor as itself. From this it learns to know and preserve its own dignity and rank, and truly to love itself. On the other hand, 'He who loves injustice hates his own soul' (Ps. 11:5. LXX), and through tearing apart and crippling the image of God in himself he suffers in a way similar to the mentally deranged who pitifully rend their own flesh without being aware of it. Such a person unconsciously outrages and most wretchedly mutilates his innate beauty, mindlessly shattering the soul's triadic, supra-mundane and love -filled world. What can be more wrong- headed and pernicious than to refuse to remember, to refuse to gaze continually upon and love Him who created and adorned the soul with His own image, thus conferring the capacity for spiritual knowledge and love, as well as lavishing indescribable gifts and eternal life upon all who use this capacity aright.
41. The noetic serpent, the author of evil, is one of the beings inferior to our soul, as he is also far inferior to other creatures. He has now become an angel and herald of his own wickedness as a result of his wicked counsel to human beings. He is so much more base than and inferior to all other beings that he desired in his arrogance to become like the Creator in authority; and he was justly abandoned by God to the same degree that he himself had first abandoned God. So total was his defection from God that he became His opponent and adversary and manifest enemy. Thus if God is living Goodness and the Quickener of living things, clearly the devil is deadly and death-dealing evil. God possesses goodness as His essence and by nature does not admit of its opposite, that is, evil, so that whoever partakes of evil of any sort may not so much as draw near Him. How much more will He not drive as far as possible from Himself the creator and originator of evil and the cause of it in others? The evil one possesses not evil but life as his essence, and hence he lives immortally. Yet his essence was capable of admitting evil since he was honored with free will. Had he voluntarily accepted a subordinate status and cleaved to the everflowing Well-spring of goodness he would have partaken of true life. But since he deliberately gave himself over to evil, he was deprived of true life and was justly expelled from it, having himself abandoned it in the first place. Thus he became a dead spirit, not in essence - since death lacks substantial reality - but through his rejection of true life. Yet unsated in his pursuit of evil and adding more and more to his wretchedness, he made himself into a death-generating spirit, eagerly drawing man into communion with his own state of death.
42. The mediator and cause of death, twisted in character and inordinate in craftiness, once insinuated himself into a twisting serpent in God's paradise. He did not himself become a serpent (nor could he, except in an illusory form; and this he preferred not to adopt at that time, for fear of being detected); but, not daring an open confrontation, he chose a deceitful approach, trusting that by this means he would escape detection. Thus, having the. visible aspect of a friend he could secretly insinuate the most hateful things, and by the extraordinary fact of his talking- for the visible serpent was not endowed with intelligence, nor did it previously appear capable of speaking - he could astonish Eve and draw her whole attention entirely to himself and by his devices make her easy to deal with. In this way he was able immediately to induce her to subject herself to what is inferior and so to enslave herself to things over which she was appointed to reign worthily, as she alone among visible beings had been honored by God with intelligence and created in the image of the Creator. God permitted this so that man, seeing the counsel coming from a creature inferior to himself - and, indeed, how greatly is the serpent his inferior - might realize how completely worthless this counsel was and might rightly reject with indignation the idea of submitting to what was clearly inferior to him. In this way he would preserve his own dignity and at the same time, by obeying the divine commandment, would keep faith with the Creator. Thus he would have won an easy victory over the spirit that had fallen away from true life, and would have justly received blessed immortality and would abide eternally in life divine.
43. No being is superior to man so as to be in a position to advise him and propose opinions and thus discern and provide what is fitting for him. But this is the case only if man maintains his rank, knows himself and knows, too. Him who alone is superior to him, observing those things which he learns from God and resolutely accepting God's counsel alone as regards anything proposed to him by others. For although angels are superior to us in dignity, it is their task obediently to execute God's designs respecting us; for they are ministers sent to serve 'those who are to be the heirs of salvation' (Heb. I : 14) - not all angels, of course, but only the beneficent angels who have kept their own rank. The angels have received intellect, intelligence and spirit from God, three co-natural qualities; and like us they should obey the creative Intellect, Intelligence and Spirit. Although the angels are superior to us in many ways, yet in some respects - as we have said and as we will repeat - they fall short of us with regard to being in the image of the Creator; for we, rather than they, have been created in God's image.
44. The angels are ordained to serve the Creator effectively and their appointed role is to be ruled by God. But they are not appointed to rule over beings inferior to themselves unless they are sent to do so by the Sovereign Ruler of all. Yet Satan presumptuously yearned to rule contrary to the will of the Creator, and when together with his fellow apostate angels he forsook his proper rank he was rightly abandoned by the true Source of life and illumination and clothed himself in death and eternal darkness. But because man was appointed not merely to be ruled by God but also to rule over all creatures upon the earth, the arch-fiend looked upon him with malicious eyes and made use of every ploy to deprive him of his dominion. Being unable to use constraint, since he is prevented from doing this by the Sovereign Ruler who created all intelligent nature free and self-determining, he deceitfully suggested such counsel as would abolish man's dominion. He beguiled him or, rather, persuaded him to disregard, disdain and reject, and indeed to oppose and to act contrary to the commandment and counsel given him by God. In this way he induced man to share in his apostasy, and so to share also in his state of eternal darkness and death.
45. St Paul has taught us that the soul endowed with intelligence can be as if dead even though it possesses life as its being; for he writes, 'The self-indulgent widow is dead while still alive' (1 Tim. 5:6). He could not have said worse than this about the present subject of our discourse, namely, the soul endowed with intelligence. For if the soul deprived of the spiritual Bridegroom does not humble itself and mourn, and does not adopt the strait and grievous life of repentance, but is, on the contrary, profligate, sunk in sensual pleasure and self-indulgence, it is dead even while it lives and even though it is immortal in essence. It has the capacity for what is worse, death, and likewise for what is better, life. The apostle says that if a widow deprived of her earthly bridegroom lives self -indulgently, although alive in her body she is utterly dead in her soul. He also says elsewhere, 'Even when we were dead because of our sins God quickened us together with Christ' (Eph. 2:5). As St John says, 'There is sin that leads to death and there is sin that does not lead to death' (1 John 5:16- 17). And the Lord Himself, in commanding a man to 'let the dead bury their own dead' (Matt. 8:22), made it clear that those involved in the funeral, although alive in body, were utterly dead in soul.
46. The ancestors of our race willfully desisted from mindfulness and contemplation of God. They disregarded His commandment, made themselves of one mind with the dead spirit of Satan and, contrary to the Creator's will, ate of the forbidden tree. Stripped of their resplendent and life-giving garments of supernal radiance, they became, alas, dead in spirit like Satan. But since Satan is not merely a dead spirit, but also brings death upon those who draw near him, and since those who shared in his deadness possessed a body through which the deadly counsel took effect, they transmitted those dead and death-dealing spirits of death to their own bodies. The human body would have immediately decomposed and returned to the earth whence it was taken (cf Gen. 3:19), had it not been preserved by divine providence and power, patiently awaiting the decision of Him who brings about all things through His word alone. Without this decision nothmg at all is accomplished, and it is always just. As the Psalmist says, 'The Lord is just and He loves justice' (Ps. 11:7. LXX).
47. Scripture tells us, 'God did not create death' (Wisd. 1:13). Rather, He impeded its inception in so far as this was fitting, and in so far as it was consistent with His justice to obstruct those to whom He Himself had given free will when He created them. For from the beginning God gave them a counsel that would lead to immortality, and so that they would be safeguarded as far as possible He made His life-generating counsel a commandment. He clearly foretold and forewarned that death would be the consequence of rejecting this vivifying commandment, so that either through love or knowledge or fear they would protect themselves from the experience of death. For God loves, knows and has the power to effect what is profitable for every created being. If God only knew what is profitable but did not love it. He might have left unfinished what He knew to be good. Again, if He loved what is profitable but did not know it or was unable to accomplish it, perhaps against His will what He loved and knew would have remained unaccomplished. But since to the highest possible degree He loves, knows and is able to effect what is profitable for us, everything that comes to us from Him, even though it be without our wanting it, will certainly prove to be to our profit. On the other hand, it is greatly to be feared that whatever we engage in on our own initiative, as creatures endowed with free will, will prove to be unprofitable for us. When, however. God in His providence has plainly forbidden something, whether speaking directly, as He does in paradise and in the Gospel, or else speaking through the prophets, as He does to the Israelites, or through the apostles and their successors, as He does in the law of grace, it is clearly most unprofitable and destructive for us to desire and pursue it. And if someone proffers it to us and induces us to seek it, either by persuasive words or by enchanting us with apparent friendship, he is manifestly an enemy and hostile to our life.
48. Hence - whether out of love for Him who wants us to live (for why would God have created us as living creatures if He did not especially want us to live?), or because we recognize that He knows what is for our profit better than we do (and how could He who grants us knowledge and is the Lord of knowledge not know this incomparably better than we do?), or out of fear for His almighty power - we ought not to have been misled, lured and persuaded at that time into rejecting God's commandment and counsel; and the same now holds good with regard to those saving commandments and counsels which we later received, just as now those who do not choose courageously to resist sin, and who set the divine commandments at nought, end up - if they do not renew their souls through repentance - by following a path that leads to inner and eternal death, so our two primal ancestors, by not resisting those who persuaded them to disobey, violated the commandment. Because of this the sentence previously proclaimed to them by Him who judges justly immediately took effect, so that as soon as they ate of the tree they died. At this they understood in practice the meaning of the commandment which they had forgotten -the commandment of truth, love, wisdom and power -and they hid themselves in shame (cf Gen. 3:7-8), perceiving themselves to be stripped of the glory that bestows on immortal spirits a more excellent life and without which the life of spiritual beings is believed to be and is indeed far worse than many deaths.
49. That it was not yet to our ancestors' benefit to eat of the tree is made clear by St Gregory of Nazianzos when he writes: 'The tree, in my vision of things, is divine contemplation, which only those established in a high degree of perfection can safely approach, while it is not good for those who are still immature and greedy in their desires, just as solid food is not good for those who are yet tender and have need of milk.' But even if you do not want to refer that tree and its fruit anagogically to divine contemplation, it is not difficult, I think, to see that eating its fruit was of no benefit to our ancestors, since they were still immature. In my opinion they saw that the tree was the most attractive in paradise to look at and to eat from. But the food most pleasant to the senses is not truly and in every way good, nor is it always good, nor good for everyone. Rather it is good for those who can make use of it without being mastered by it, and then only when it is necessary and to the extent that it is necessary, and for the glory of Him who made it; but it is not good for those who are unable to make use of it in such a manner. It is on account of this, I think, that the tree was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (cf. Gen. 2: 17). For only those fully established in the practice of divine contemplation and virtue can have concourse with things strongly attractive to the senses without withdrawing their intellect from the contemplation of God and from hymns and prayers to Him. Only such people can make these things the material and starting-point for raising themselves to God, and through this noetic movement towards God can totally master sensual pleasure. And even though displeasure may be novel, and may be greater and more powerful because of its novelty, they will not allow their soul's intelligence to be overcome by that which is evil, even though at the time it is regarded as good by those totally captured and mastered by it.
50. Consequently our ancestors - who since they dwelt in the sacred land of paradise should never have forgotten God - ought first to have acquired more practice and, so to speak, schooling in simple, genuine goodness and to have gained greater stability in the life of contemplation. Being still in an imperfect and intermediate state - that is to say, easily influenced, whether for good or evil, by whatever they made use of - they should not have ventured on the experience of things pleasant to the senses. They ought especially to have been on their guard against things that by nature greatly allure and dominate the senses and that seduce the entire intellect and give access to evil passions, thus rendering plausible the originator and creator of these passions. Now, after the devil, the cause of the passions is the impassioned eating of the most delectable kinds of foods. For if, as Scripture testifies, simply the sight of the tree was enough to make the serpent an acceptable and trustworthy counselor, how much more would the taste of the fruit have the same effect? And if this is true for the taste, how much more is it so for eating to repletion? Thus is it not clear that it was not yet profitable for our ancestors to eat of that tree through the senses? And because they did eat of it at the wrong time, was it not necessary for them to be cast out of paradise, to prevent them from making that divine land a council-chamber and workshop of evil? And should they not have undergone bodily death immediately after their transgression? But the Lord was long-suffering and patient with them.
51. The soul's death sentence, brought into effect by man's transgression, was in accord with the Creator's justice; for when our forefathers forsook God and chose to do their own will. He abandoned them, not subjecting them to constraint. And, for the reasons we have stated above. God in His compassion had already forewarned them of this sentence (cf Gen. 2:17). But in the abyss of His wisdom and the superabundance of His compassion he forbore and delayed in executing the sentence of death upon the body; and when He did pronounce it He relegated its execution to the future. He did not say to Adam, 'Return whence you were taken', but 'You are earth, and to earth you will return' (Gen. 3:19). Those who listen to these words with intelligence can gather from them that God did not make death (cf. Wisd. 1:13), neither that of the soul nor that of the body. He did not originally give the command, 'Die on the day you eat of it'; on the contrary. He said simply, 'You will die on the day you eat of it' (Gen. 2:17). Nor did He say, 'Return now to earth', but 'You will return' (Gen. 3:19). This He said as a forewarning, but He then delayed its just execution, without prejudicing the eventual outcome.
52. Death was thus to become the lot of our forefathers, just as it lies in store for us who are now living, and our body was rendered mortal. Death is thus a kind of protracted process or, rather, there are myriads of deaths, one death succeeding the next until we reach the one final and long-enduring death. For we are born into corruption, and having once come into existence we are in a state of transiency until we cease from this constant passing away and coming to be. We are never truly the same, although we may appear to be so to those who do not observe us closely. Just as a flame that catches one end of a slender reed changes continually, and its existence is measured by the length of the reed, so we likewise are ever changing, and our measure is the length of life appointed to each of us.
53. That we should not be entirely ignorant of the superabundance of His compassion for us and the abyss of His wisdom. God deferred man's death, allowing him to live for a considerably longer time. From the first God shows that His discipline is merciful or, rather, that He delays a just chastisement so that we do not utterly despair. He also granted time for repentance and for a new life pleasing to Him, while through the succession of generations He eased the sorrow produced by death. He increased the human race with descendants so that initially the number of those being born would greatly exceed the number of those who died. In the place of one man, Adam, who became pitiable and impoverished through the sensible beauty of a tree, God brought forth many men who by means of things perceptible to the senses became blessedly enriched with divine wisdom, with virtue, with knowledge and divine favor: for example, Seth, Enos, Enoch, Noah, Melchisedec, Abraham, and those who were their contemporaries or who lived before them and after them, and who proved to be their equals, or nearly so. But there was no one among these great men who passed his life utterly free of sin, so that he might retrieve the defeat which our forefathers had suffered, heal the wound at the root of our race and be sufficient warranty for the sanctification. blessing and return to life of all who followed. God foreknew this; and during the course of time He chose out people from among the races and tribes who would produce that celebrated staff from which would blossom the Flower that was to accomplish the saving economy of our whole race (cf Num. 17:8; Isa. 11:1). 54. The depth of God's riches, wisdom and compassion (cf. Rom. I 1:33)! Had there been no death and had our race not become mortal prior to death - for it is from a mortal root - we should not in fact have been enriched with the firstfmit of immortality, nor should we have been called into the heavens, nor would our nature have been enthroned 'above every principality and power' (Eph. 1:21) 'at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens' (Heb. 8:1). Thus God in His wisdom, power and compassion knows how to change for the better the lapses we suffer as a result of our freely -willed perversion.
55. Many may blame Adam for being so easily persuaded by that wicked counselor and for rejecting the divine commandment, thus becoming the agent of death for us all. Yet to wish to taste a deadly plant before actually doing so, and to desire to eat of such a plant after having learned by experience that it is deadly, are not the same thing. The man who drinks poison knowing that it is poison, and so wretchedly causes his own death, is more culpable than he who takes poison and so kills himself without knowing beforehand that it is poison. Therefore each of us is more culpable and guilty than Adam. But, you might ask, is that tree really within us? Do we still have a commandment from God forbidding us to eat from that tree? Perhaps exactly that same tree is not within us, yet the commandment of God is with us even now. And if we obey it, and try to lead our life in accordance with it, it frees us from punishment for all our sins, as well as from the ancestral curse and condemnation. But if we now reject it, and choose instead the provocation and counsel of the evil one, we cannot but fall away from the life and fellowship of paradise and be cast into the gehenna of everlasting fire with which we were threatened.
56. What, then, is the divine commandment now laid upon us? It is repentance, the essence of which is never again to touch forbidden things. We were expelled from the land of divine delight, we were justly shut out from God's paradise, and we have fallen into this pit where we are condemned to dwell together with dumb creatures without hope of returning - in so far as it depends on us - to the paradise we have lost. But He who initially passed a just sentence of punishment or, rather, justly permitted punishment to come upon us, has now in His great goodness, compassion and mercy descended for our sake to us. And He became a human being like us in all things except sin so that by His likeness to us He might teach us anew and rescue us; and He gave us the saving counsel and commandment of repentance, saying: 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has drawn near' (Matt. 3:2). Prior to the incarnation of the Logos of God the kingdom of heaven was as far from us as the sky is from the earth; but when the King of heaven came to dwell amongst us and chose to unite Himself with us, the kingdom of heaven drew near to us all.
57. Since the Logos of God through His descent to us has brought the kingdom of heaven close to us, let us not distance ourselves from it by leading an unrepentant life. Let us rather flee the wretchedness of those who sit 'in darkness and the shadow of death' (Isa. 9:2). Let us acquire the fruits of repentance: a humble disposition, compunction and spiritual grief, a gentle and merciful heart that loves righteousness and pursues purity, peaceful, peace-making, patient in toil, glad to endure persecution, loss, outrage, slander and suffering for the sake of truth and righteousness. For the kingdom of heaven or, rather, the King of heaven - ineffable in His generosity - is within us (cf Luke 17:21): and to Him we should cleave through acts of repentance and patient endurance, loving as much as we can Him who so dearly has loved us.
58. Absence of passions and the possession of virtue constitute love for God; for hatred of evil, resulting in the absence of passions, introduces in its place the desire for and acquisition of spiritual blessings. How could the lover and possessor of such blessings not love God above all, the Master who is Benediction itself, the only provider and guardian of every good thing? For in a special way such a person is in God, and by means of love he also bears God within himself, in accordance with the words, 'He who dwells in love dwells in God, and God in him' ( I John 4: 16). Thus we can see both that love for God is begotten from the virtues and that the virtues are born of love. For this reason the Lord said at one point in the Gospel, 'He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me' (John 14:21), and at another point, 'He who loves Me will keep My commandments' (cf. John 14:23). But without love the works of virtue are not praiseworthy or profitable to the man who practices them, and the same is true of love without works. St Paul makes this folly clear with reference to works when he writes to the Corinthians, 'If I do this and that, but have no love, it profits me nothing' (cf. I Cor. 13:1-3); and with reference to love the disciple especially beloved by Christ writes, 'Let us not love in word or tongue but in action and truth' (1 John 3:18). 59. The sublime and worshipful Father is the Father of Truth itself, that is, of the Only-Begotten Son; and the Holy Spirit is a spirit of truth, as the Logos of truth proclaimed (cf John 14:17). Those who worship the Father 'in Spirit and in Truth', and who believe accordingly, are activated by Them. As St Paul says, 'It is through the Spirit that we worship and pray' (cf. Rom: 8:26), while the Only-Begotten Son of God says, 'No one comes to the Father except through Me' (John 14:6). Hence those who worship the supreme Father 'in Spirit and in Truth' are the true worshippers (John 4:23). 60. 'God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth' (John 4:24) - that is to say, by conceiving the Incorporeal mcorporeaUy. For thus they will truly behold Him everywhere in His spirit and His truth. Since God is spirit. He is incorporeal. That which is incorporeal is not situated in place, nor is it circumscribed by spatial boundaries. Thus he who claims that God must be worshipped in certain restricted places within the plenitude of heaven and earth neither speaks nor worships truly. As incorporeal, God is nowhere; as God, He is everywhere. For if there were a mountain or place or creature where God is not. He would be circumscribed by something. He is, therefore, everywhere, since He has no limit. But how can God be everywhere? As encompassed, not by a part, but by the whole? Assuredly not, for then once again He would be a body. Thus since He sustains and embraces everything. He is in Himself both everywhere and beyond everything, and is worshipped by His true worshippers in His Spirit and His Truth (cf. John 4:23).
61. Since angels and souls are incorporeal beings, they are not in a particular place, yet neither are they everywhere. They do not sustain all things, but themselves depend on Him who sustains them. Hence they, too, are in Him who sustains and embraces all things, and they are appropriately delimited by Him. The soul, since it sustains the body with which it is created, is everywhere in the body, although not in the sense of being located in a place or encompassed; but it itself sustains, encompasses and quickens the body, by virtue of the fact that it is in God's image.
62. Man is created more perfectly in God's image than the angels, both because he possesses in himself a sustaining and quickening power and because he has a capacity for sovereignty. There is within our soul's nature a governing and ruling faculty, and there is also that which is naturally subservient and obedient, namely, will, appetite, sense-perception, and in general everything that is sequent to the intellect and that was created by God together with the intellect. And these things may be termed subservient even though, incited by a sin-loving disposition, we rebel not only against the all-ruling God but also against the ruling power inherent in our nature. God, then, by virtue of our capacity for sovereignty, has given us lordship over all the earth. But angels do not have a body joined to them and subject to their intellect. Angels that have fallen have acquired a noetic volition which is perpetually evil, while the good angels possess one that is perpetually good and has no need of a bridle. The evil one has no dominion upon earth which he has not stolen, and it is therefore evident that he was not created as ruler of the earth. The Ruler of All appointed the good angels to be overseers of the earth after our fall and our subsequent loss of rank, even though, due to God's compassion, the fall was not total. For, as Moses said in his Ode, God established boundaries for the angels when He divided the nations (cf. Deut. 32:8). This division took place after Cain and Seth, when Cain's descendants were called men and Seth's descendants were called the sons of God (cf. Gen. 6:2). From that time, it seems to me, the race from which the Only -begotten Son of God would take His flesh was foretokened by the differentiation of names.
63. As others have also pointed out, the threefold nature of our knowledge likewise demonstrates that we, to a greater extent than the angels, are created in God's image. Indeed, this knowledge is not only threefold but also encompasses every form of knowledge. We alone of all creatures have a faculty of sense -perception in addition to our noetic and rational faculties. Since this faculty is united to our reason we have invented multifarious arts, sciences and forms of knowledge. Only to man is it given to farm, to build and to produce from nothing -but not from absolute non-being, for this pertains only to God. Indeed, even in God's case scarcely anything that He effects in the world starts from nothing or utterly perishes, but when differently combined together things take a different form. In addition, by the gift of God it pertains to men alone both to make the invisible thought of the intellect audible by uniting it with the air and to write it down so that it may be seen with and through the body. God thus leads us to a steadfast faith in the abiding presence and manifestation of the supreme Logos in the flesh. But angels have no share whatsoever in any of these things.
64. Even though we still bear God's image to a greater degree than the angels, yet as regards the likeness of God we fall far short of them. This is especially true if we compare our present state with that of the good angels. Leaving aside other matters for the present, I shall simply say that perfection of the divine likeness is accomplished by means of the divine illumination that issues from God. There is, I think, no one who reads the divinely inspired Scriptures with diligence and understanding who does not know that the evil angels are deprived of this illumination and are therefore 'under darkness' (Jude 6), whereas the divine intellects are entirely filled with divine illumination and for this reason are called 'a secondary light' and 'an emanation of the Primal Light'. As emanations of the First Light, the good angels also possess knowledge of sensible objects, though they do not apprehend these things by any physical faculty of perception, but know them by means of a divine power from which nothing present, past or future can be hidden.
65. Whoever partakes of this divine illumination, partakes of it to a certain degree; and to a proportionate degree he also possesses a spiritual knowledge of created things. All who assiduously study the writings of the divinely wise theologians know that the angels likewise partake of this illumination, and that it is uncreated but is not the divine essence. Yet those who hold the views of Barlaam and Akindynos think otherwise and blaspheme this divine illumination, obstinately affirming either that it is created or that it is the essence of God. And when they affirm it to be created, they deny that it is the light of the angels. But let the revealer of things divine, St Dionysios the Areopagite, concisely elucidate these three matters for us. 'The divine intellects,' he writes, 'move in a circular fashion, uniting themselves with the unoriginate and unending illuminations of the Beautiful and Good.' It is clear to everyone that by divine intellects he means the good angels. And by referring to these illuminations in the plural, he distinguishes them from the divine essence, since this is single and is altogether Indivisible; and by calling them unoriginate and endless, what else could he mean to say except that they are uncreated?
66. Through the fall our nature was stripped of this divine illumination and resplendence. But the Logos of God had pity upon our disfigurement and in His compassion He took our nature upon Himself, and on Tabor He manifested it to His elect disciples clothed once again most brilliantly. As St John Chrysostom says. He shows what we once were and what we shall become through Him in the age to come, if we choose to live our present life as far as possible in accordance with His ways.
67. Adam, before the fall, also participated in this divine illumination and resplendence, and because he was truly clothed in a garment of glory he was not naked, nor was he unseemly by reason of his nakedness. He was far more richly adorned than those who now deck themselves out with diadems of gold and brightly sparkling jewels. St Paul calls this divine illumination and grace our celestial dwelling when he says, 'For this we sigh, yearning to be clothed in our heavenly habitation, since thus clothed we will not be found naked' (2 Cor. (5:2). And St Paul himself received from God the pledge of this divine illumination and of our investiture in it on his way from Jerusalem to Damaskos (cf Acts 9:3). As St Gregory of Nazianzos, sumamed the Theologian, has written, 'Before he was cleansed of his persecutions Paul spoke with Him whom he was persecuting or, rather, with a brief irradiation of the great Light.'
68. The divine supraessentiality is never named in the plural. But the divine and uncreated grace and energy of God is indivisibly divided, like the sun's rays that warm, illumine, quicken and bring increase as they cast their radiance upon what they enlighten, and shine on the eyes of whoever beholds them. In the manner, then, of this faint likeness, the divine energy of God is called not only one but also multiple by the theologians. Thus St Basil the Great declares: 'What are the energies of the Spirit? Their greatness cannot be told and they are numberless. How can we comprehend what precedes the ages? What were God's energies before the creation of noetic reality?' For prior to the creation of noetic reality and beyond the ages - for the ages are also noetic creations - no one has ever spoken or conceived of anything created. Therefore the powers and energies of the divine Spirit - even though they are said in theology to be multiple - are uncreated and are to be indivisibly distinguished from the single and wholly undivided essence of the Spirit.
69. The theologians affirm that the uncreated energy of God is indivisibly divided and multiple, as St Basil the Great has explained above. And since the divine and deifying iUumination and grace is not the essence but the energy of God, for this reason it comes forth from God not only in the singular but in multiplicity as well. It is bestowed proportionately on those who participate in it, and corresponding to the capacity of those who receive it the deifying resplendence enters them to a greater or lesser degree.
70. Isaiah has said that these energies are seven in number, and for the Jews the number seven signifies a multiplicity. 'There shall come forth', he says, 'a rod out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall come from it; and seven spirits shall rest upon Him: the spirit of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, reverence, counsel, strength and fear' (cf. Isa. 11:1-2). Those who hold the views of Barlaam and Akindynos dementedly maintain that these seven spirits are created; but this error we have refuted exhaustively in our Refutation of Akindynos. Moreover, referring to these energies of the Spirit, St Gregory of Nazianzos says, 'Isaiah likes to call the energies of the Spirit spirits.' And Isaiah himself, the clarion voice of the prophets, not only distinguished them plainly from the divine essence by their number, but also indicated the uncreated nature of these divine energies by the words 'rest upon Him'. For to 'rest upon' is the privilege of a superior dignity. How, then, could those spirits that rest upon the humanity the Lord assumed from us have a created character?
71. Our Lord Jesus Christ cast out demons 'with the finger of God', according to Luke (11:20); but Matthew says 'by the Spirit of God' (12:28). St Basil explains that the finger of God is one of the Spirit's energies. If one of these energies is the Holy Spirit, most certainly the others are as well, as St Basil also teaches us. Yet there are not for this reason many gods or many Spirits. These energies are processions, manifestations and natural operations of the one Spirit and in each case the operative agent is one. Yet the heterodox make the Spirit of God a created being seven times over when they assert that these energies are created. But let them be humiliated sevenfold, for the prophet Zechariah calls these energies 'the seven eyes of the Lord that look upon all the earth' (4:10). And St John writes in Revelation, 'Grace be with you, and peace from God and from the seven spirits that are before His throne, and from Christ' (cf Rev. I :4-5), thus making it clear to the faithful that these are the Holy Spirit.
72. When God the Father preannounced through the prophet Micah the birth in the flesh of His Only -begotten Son, and wished to indicate also the unoriginate nature of Christ's divinity. He said: 'And His goings forth have been from the beginning, even from an eternity of days' (5:2. LXX). The holy fathers explain that these 'goings forth' are the energies of the Godhead, for the powers and energies are the same for Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Yet those who strive to vindicate the views of Barlaam and Akmdynos proclaim these energies to be created. Let them, however, come to their senses, late though it is, and comprehend who it is that exists from the beginning, and who it is to whom David says: 'From eternity' - which has the same meaning as 'from an eternity of days' - 'and to eternity Thou art' (Ps. 89:2). Let them intelligently consider, if they will, that when God said through His prophet that these goings forth are from the beginning. He did not say that they came into being, or were made or created. And St Basil, inspired by the Spirit of God, said, not that the energies of the Spirit 'came into being', but that they existed 'prior to the creation of noetic reality' and 'beyond the ages' ' Only God is operative and all-powerful from eternity, and therefore He possesses pre-etemal operations and powers.
73. In obvious opposition to the saints, those who champion the views of Akindynos say that there is only one thing that is uncreated, namely, the divine nature, and that anything that is in any way distinguished from the divine nature is created. Hereby they declare the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to be created beings, for there is one and the same energy for the three, and that of which the energy is created cannot itself be uncreated. Thus that which is created is not God's energy - this is impossible - but what is effected and accomplished by the divine energy. This is why St John of Damaskos teaches that the energy, although distinct from the divine nature, is also an essential, that is to say, a natural activity of that nature.' Since, then, it is the property of the divine energy to create, as St Cyril has said, how could this energy be something created, unless it was activated by another energy, and that energy in turn by still another, and so on ad infinitum. In this way we would always be looking for the uncreated source of the energy.
74. Because both the divine essence and the divine energy are everywhere inseparably present. God's energy is accessible also to us creatures; for, according to the theologians it is indivisibly divided, whereas the divine nature, they say, remains totally undivided. Thus St John Chrysostom says, 'A drop of grace filled all things with knowledge; through it miracles were wrought and sins forgiven.' Here, while indicating that this drop of grace is uncreated, he hastens to make it clear that it is an energy of God but not His essence. Further, in order to show how the divine energy diners both from the divine essence and from the hypostasis of the Spirit, he adds, 'I mean a part of the energy, for the Paraclete is not divided.' Therefore God's grace and energy is accessible to each one of us, since it is divided indivisibly. But since God's essence is in every way indivisible, how could it be accessible to any created being?
75. Three realities pertain to God: essence, energy, and the triad of divine hypostases. As we have seen, those privileged to be united to God so as to become one spirit with Him - as St Paul said, 'He who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit with Him' ( I Cor. 6: 17) - are not united to God with respect to His essence, since all the theologians testify that with respect to His essence God suffers no participation. Moreover, the hypostatic union is fulfilled only in the case of the Logos, the God-man. Thus those privileged to attain union with God are united to Him with respect to His energy; and the 'spirit', according to which they who cleave to God are one with Him, is and is called the uncreated energy of the Holy Spirit, but not the essence of God, even though Barlaam and Akindynos may disagree. Thus God prophesied through His prophet saying, 'I shall pour forth', not 'My Spirit', but 'of My Spirit upon the faithful' (cf Joel 2:28. LXX).
76. According to St Maximos, 'Moses and David, and whoever else became vessels of divine energy by laying aside the properties of then-fallen nature, were inspired by the power of God'; and. 'They became living icons of Christ, being the same as He is, by grace rather than by assimilation.' He farther says. The purity in Christ and in the saints is one.' As the divine Psalmist chants, 'May the splendor of our God be upon us' (Ps. 90:17. LXX). For according to St Basil, 'Spirit-bearing souls, when illumined by the Spirit, both become spiritual themselves and shed forth grace upon others. From this comes foreknowledge of things future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of things hidden, distribution of spiritual gifts, citizenship in heaven, the dance with the angels, unending joy, divine largesse, likeness to God, and the desire of all desires, to become God.'
77. The angels excel men with respect to this grace, resplendence, and union with God. On this account they are secondary luminaries, ministers of the supreme resplendence. The noetic powers and ministering spirits are secondary lights and irradiations of the primal Light.' The angels are 'the first luminous nature after the Primal Being, because they shine forth from It'. 'An angel is a secondary light, an emanation or a communication of the Primal Light.' The divine intellects move in a circular fashion, uniting themselves with the unonginate and unending illuminations of the Beautiful and Good', for 'God Himself and naught else is light for eternal beings'. 'What the sun is for sensory beings. God is for noetic beings. He is the primal and supreme light illumining all intelligent nature.' As St John Chrysostom says, when you hear the prophet saying, '1 saw the Lord sitting upon a throne' (Isa. 6:1), understand that he saw not God's essence but His gift of Himself, and this even more obscurely than the supreme powers behold it.
78. Every created nature is far removed from and completely foreign to the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature; but if every other thing is nature. He is not a nature, just as He is not a being if all other things are beings. And if He is a being, then all other things are not beings. And if you accept this as true also for wisdom, goodness, and in general all. things that pertain to God or are ascribed to Him, then your theology will be correct and in accordance with the saints. God both is and is said to be the nature of all beings, in so far as all partake of Him and subsist by means of this participation: not, however, by participation in His nature - far from it - but by participation in His energy. In this sense He is the Being of all beings, the Form that is in all forms as the Author of form, the Wisdom of the wise and, simply, the All of all things. Moreover, He is not nature, because He transcends every nature; He is not a being, because He transcends every being; and He is not nor does He possess a form, because He transcends form. How, then, can we draw near to God? By drawing near to His nature? But not a single created being has or can have any communication with or proximity to the sublime nature. Thus if anyone has drawn close to God, he has evidently approached Him by means of His energy. In what way? By natural participation in that energy? But this is common to all created things. It is not, therefore, by virtue of natural qualities, but by virtue of what one achieves through free choice that one is close to or distant from God. But free choice pertains only to beings endowed with intelligence. So among all creatures only those endowed with intelligence can be far from or close to God, drawing close to Him through virtue or becoming distant through vice. Thus such beings alone are capable of wretchedness or blessedness. Let us strive to lay hold of blessedness.
79. When created beings are compared among themselves, some are said to be naturally akin to God and others alien. The noetic natures that are apprehended by the intellect alone are, so it is claimed, akin to the Divinity, whereas all natures subject to sense-perception are in every way alien to It; and those among them that are utterly bereft of soul and unmoving are the most remote of all. Thus, when compared among themselves, created beings are said to be naturally either akin or alien to God. Properly speaking, however, all of them in themselves are alien to Him by nature. Indeed, it is no more possible to say how distant noetic nature is from God than how remote sense- perception and the things of the realm of the senses are from noetic beings. If we are, then, by nature so far removed from God, alas for us if we do not draw close to Him by freely choosing to act well and to conduct ourselves with probity.
80. The inspired and universal tongue of the divine theologians, St John of Damaskos, says in the second of his theological chapters: 'A man who would speak or hear anything about God should know with all clarity that in what concerns theology and the divine economy not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things unknowable nor are they all knowable. ' We know that those divine realities of which we desire to speak transcend speech, since such realities exist according to a principle that is transcendent. They are not outside the realm of speech by reason of some deficiency, but are beyond the conceptual power innate within us and to which we give utterance when speaking to others. For neither can our speech explain these realities by interpretation, nor does our innate conceptual power have the capacity to attain them of its own accord through investigation. Thus we should not permit ourselves to say anything concerning God, but rather we should have recourse to those who in the Spirit speak of the things of the Spirit, and this is the case even when our adversaries require some statement from us.
81. It is said that on the portals of Plato's academy were inscribed the words, 'Let no man enter who is ignorant of geometry.' A person incapable of conceiving and discoursing about inseparable things as separate is in every respect ignorant of geometry. For there cannot be a limit without something limited. But geometry is almost entirely a science of limits, and it even defines and extends limits on their own account, abstracted from that which they limit, because the intellect separates the inseparable. How, then, can a person who has never learnt to separate in his intellect a physical object from its attributes be able to conceive of nature in itselt7 For nature is not merely inseparable from the natural elements in which it inheres, but it cannot even exist at any time without them. How can he conceive of universals as universals, since they exist as such in particulars and are distinguished from them only by the intelligence and reason, being perceived intellectually as prior to the many particulars although in truth they can in no way exist apart from these many particulars? How shall he apprehend intellectual and noetic things? How shall he understand us when we say that each intellect also has thought and that each of our thoughts is our intellect? How shall he not ridicule us and accuse us of saying that each man possesses two or many minds?
If, then, someone is unable to speak or conceive of things indivisible as distinct, how will he be able to discuss or be taught anything of this sort concerning God, with respect to whom, according to the theologians, there are and are said to be many unions and distinctions? But although the unions pertaining to God prevail over and are prior to the distinctions, they do not abolish them nor are they at all impeded by them. The followers of Akindynos, however, cannot accept nor can they understand the indivisible distinction that exists in God, even when they hear us speaking - in harmony with the saints - of a divided union. For to God pertains both incomprehensibility and comprehensibility, though He Himself is one. The same God is incomprehensible in His essence, but comprehensible from what He creates according to His divine energies: according, that is, to His pre-etemal will for us. His pre-etemal providence concerning us. His pre-etemal wisdom with regard to us, and - to use the words of St Maximos - His infinite power, wisdom and goodness. But when Barlaam and Akindynos and those who follow in their footsteps hear us saying these things which we are obliged to say, they accuse us of speaking of many gods and many uncreated realities, and of making God composite. For they are ignorant of the fact that God is indivisibly divided and is united dividedly, and yet in spite of this suffers neither multiplicity nor compositeness.
82. St Paul, the mouth of Christ, the chosen vessel, the glorious chariot of the divine name, says, 'From the creation of the world the invisible realities of God, namely. His eternal power and divinity, may be perceived in created things by means of intellection' (Rom. I :20). May, then, the essence of God be perceived in created things by means of intellection? Certainly not. This is the madness of Barlaam and Akindynos and, before them, the delusion of Eunomios. For, prior to them but in the same manner, Eunomios in his discourses wrote that from created things we may comprehend nothing less than God's essence itself. St Paul, however, is very far from teaching any such thing. For having just stated, 'What can be known of God is manifest' (Rom. 1:19), and having thus indicated that there exists something else beyond that which can be known about God and which He Himself has made manifest to all men of intelligence, he then adds: 'For from the creation of the world the invisible realities of God may be perceived in created things by means of intellection.' You may in this way learn what it is that is knowable about God. The holy fathers explain that what is unknowable in God is His essence, while what may be known is that which pertains to His essence, namely, goodness, wisdom, power, divinity and majesty. These St Paul also calls invisible, though they are perceived in created things by means of intellection. But how could these things, which pertain to God's essence and may be perceived in things created, be themselves created? Therefore the divine energy, mtellected through created things, is both uncreated and yet not the essence. For the divine energy is referred to not only in the singular but also in the plural.
83. In refuting Eunomios, who claimed that the essence of God is revealed by created things, St Basil the Great writes that 'created things manifest wisdom, art and power, but not essence'. Thus the divine energy made manifest by created things is both uncreated and yet not God's essence; and those who like Barlaam and Akindynos say that there is no difference between the divine essence and the divine energy are clearly Eunomians.
84. Most excellently does St Gregory of Nyssa, St Basil's bodily and spiritual brother, say in his refutation of Eunomios: 'When we perceive the beauty and grandeur of the wonders of creation, and from these and similar things derive other intellections concerning the Divinity, we interpret each of the intellections produced in us by its own distinctive name. 'For from the grandeur and beauty of created things the Creator is contemplated by way of analogy' (Wisd. 13:5). We also call the Creator the Demiurge; Powerful, in that His power is sufficient to make His will reality; and Just, as the impartial judge. Likewise the term God (Theos) we have taken from His providential and overseeing activity. In this manner, then, by the term God we have been taught about a certain partial activity of the divine nature, but we have not attained an understanding of God's essence by means of this word.
85. St Dionysios the Areopagite, the most eminent theologian after the divine apostles, having clarified the distinction of the hypostases in God, says: 'The beneficent procession is a divine distinction, for the divine unity in a transcendently united manner multiplies and makes itself manifold through goodness.' And a little further on he says: 'We call divine distinction the beneficial processions of the Thearchy. For in bestowing itself upon all beings and abundantly pouring forth participation in all good things, it is distinguished in its unity, multiplied in its oneness, and made manifold without ceasing to be one ' Later he writes: 'These common and united distinctions - or, rather, these beneficent processions - of the whole Godhead we will try to praise to the best of our ability.'
Thus St Dionysios shows clearly that there is also another distinction in God besides the distinction of the hypostases, and this distinction that is different from that of the hypostases he calls the distinction of the Godhead. For, indeed, the distinction of the hypostases is not a distinction pertaining to the Godhead. And he says that according to the divine processions and energies God multiplies Himself and makes Himself manifold, and he states in this respect that the procession may be spoken of both in the singular and in the plural. In regard to the distinction of the hypostases, however, the Deity certainly does not multiply Himself, nor as God is He subject to distinction. For us God is a Trinity, but not triple. St Dionysios also affirms that these processions and energies are uncreated, since he calls them divine and says that they are distinctions pertaining to the whole Godhead. He likewise says that the very Thearchy itself multiplies and makes Itself manifold according to these divine processions and energies, though not certainly by assuming anything external. Furthermore, this most sublime of the divine hymnologists promises to celebrate these processions; but he adds, 'to the best of our ability', in order to show that they transcend all celebration.
86. Having said that the beneficent procession is a divine distinction, this same revealer of things divine adds: 'Yet the unconditioned communications are united with respect to the divine distinction.' Here he groups together all the processions and energies of God and calls them communications. He says further that they are unconditioned, lest anyone should suppose that these communications are created effects such as the individual essence of each thing that exists, or the physical life of animals, or the reason and intellect inherent in rational and noetic beings. For how could these things be unconditioned in God and at the same time be created? And how could God's unconditioned processions and communications be created things, since the unconditioned communication is naturally inherent in the communicator, as we see in the case of light?
87. St Dionysios now goes on to celebrate these processions and energies with other godlike names, calling them participable principles and essential participable principles. In many places in his writings he shows them to be superior to existent things, and that they are the paradigms or exemplars of existent things, pre-existing in God by means of a supra-essential union. How, then, could they be created? He then tells us what these paradigms are, saying: 'We call paradigms the essence-forming logoi or inner principles of existent things; they unitedly pre-exist in God, and theology refers to them as the predeterminations and divine and sacred volitions that determine and create existent things. It is in accordance with them that the Supra-essential both predetermines and brings forth everything that is.' How could me predeterminations and the divine volitions that create all existent things be themselves created? Is it not clear that those who maintain that these processions and energies are created degrade God's providence to the level of something created? For the energy that creates individual essence, life and wisdom, and in general makes and sustains created beings, is identical with me divine volitions and the divine participable principles and the gifts of supernal Goodness, the Cause of all.
88. The participable principle of absolute Being in no way participates in anything, as the great Dionysios also says. But the other participable principles, in that they are participable principles of existent things, also participate in nothing else whatsoever, for providence does not participate in providence, nor life in life. But in that they possess being they are said to participate in absolute Being, since without this they can neither exist nor be participated in, just as there can be no foreknowledge without knowledge. Thus, as essential participable principles, they are in no way created. Hence, according to St Maximos, they never began to be and they are seen to pertain to God in an essential manner, and there was never a time when they were not. But when the followers of Barlaam impiously suppose that because life itself, goodness itself and so forth, share in the common denomination of existent things they are therefore created, they do not comprehend that although they are called existent things, they are also superior to existent things, as St Dionysios says. Those who for this reason place the essential participable principles among created things could easily regard the Holy Spirit as created, whereas St Basil the Great says that the Spirit shares in names befitting the Divinity.
89. Should someone claim that only absolute Being is a participable principle since it alone does not participate in anything but is solely participated in, whilst the other participable principles participate in it, he should know that he does not think aright with regard to the other participable principles. For living things or holy things or good things are said to live and to become holy and good by participation, not simply because they exist and participate in absolute Being, but because they partake of absolute life, holiness and goodness. But absolute life - and the same applies to other such realities - does not become absolute life by participation in some other absolute life. As absolute life, it is among those realities that are participated in, not among those that participate. How could that which does not participate in life, but is itself participated in by living things and quickens them, be something created? And one may say the same with regard to the other participable principles.
90. Let St Maximos now lend us his support. He writes in his Scholia that the providence creating existent things is identical with the processions of God. He says: 'The creative providences and good-nesses' - those that bestow individual essence, life and wisdom - 'are common to the tri-hypostatic differentiated Unity ' By stating that these providences and goodnesses are many and distinct, he shows that they are not the essence of God, since that is one and ahogether indivisible. But because they are common to the tri-hypostatic differentiated Unity, he shows us that they are not identical with the Son or the Holy Spirit, for neither the Son nor the Holy Spirit is an energy common to the three hypostases. Yet by stating that they are not only providences and goodnesses but are also creative, he shows them to be uncreated. For if this were not the case, then the creative power would itself be created by another creative power, and that in turn by another, and so on to the uttermost absurdity, not even stopping at infinity. Thus God's processions and energies are uncreated, and none of them is either divine essence or hypostasis.
91. In the incomparable superabundance of His goodness He who brought forth and adorned the universe established it as multiform. He willed that some things should simply possess being, while others should possess life in addition to being. Of these latter He willed that some should possess noetic life, that others should enjoy merely a sensible life, while others again should possess a life mingled of both. When this last category of beings had received from Him rational and noetic life. He willed that by the free inclination of their will towards Him they should achieve union with Him and thus live in a divine and supernatural manner, having been vouchsafed His deifying grace and energy. For His will is generation for things that exist, whether for those brought forth out of non-being, or for those being brought to a better state; and this takes place in diverse ways. Because of the diversity of the divine will with respect to existent things, the one providence and goodness of God - or, in other words. God's turning towards inferior beings by reason of His goodness - both is, and is thus called by the divinely wise theologians, many providences and goodnesses, for they are indivisibly divided and differentiated among divisible things. Thus one is called God's power of foreknowledge, and another His creative and sustaining power. Further, according to the great Dionysios, some bestow individual essence, some life, and some wisdom. Now each of these powers is common to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and in each good and divine volition with respect to us it is Father, Son and Holy Spirit that are its essence-bestowing, life-bestowing and wisdom-bestowing energy and power. These St Dionysios calls unconditioned and undiminishable communications, elevating them above all created things and teaching us that they inhere by nature in Him who communicates them.
92. Just as the sun without diminution communicates heat and light to those who participate in them, and itself possesses these qualities as its inherent and essential energies, so the divine communications, since they inhere without diminution in Him who bestows communion, are His natural and essential energies. Thus they are also uncreated. When the sun sets beneath the horizon and is no longer visible, not even a trace of its light remains; yet when it is visible, the eye that receives its light cannot but be mingled with it and united by it to the wellspring of light. The sun's warmth, however, and its effects which contribute to the generation and growth of sensible things, and to the manifold diversity of humors and qualities, do hot desert these creatures, even when there is no contact with the sun through the sun's rays. In the same manner as indicated in this inadequate image taken from sensible reality, only those who aspire after the supernal and most divine light participate integrally in deifying grace and by it are united to God. All other beings are effects of the creative energy, brought forth from nothing by grace as a free gift but not illumined by grace, which is the same as God's resplendence.
93. This resplendence and deifying energy of God, that deifies those who participate in it, constitutes divine grace, but it is not the nature of God. This does not mean that God's nature is distant from those who have received grace - and this is Akmdynos' ridiculous slander - for God's nature is everywhere; but it means that it is not participable, since no created thing, as we have already shown, is capable of participating in it. The divine energy and grace of the Spirit, being everywhere present and remaining inseparable from the Spirit, is imparticipable, as though absent, for those who on account of their impurity are unfit to participate in it. Just as faces, so it is said, are not reflected by every material, but only by such materials as possess smoothness and transparency, so the energy of the Spirit is not found in all souls, but only in those possessing no perversity or deviousness. Again, it is said that the Holy Spirit is present to all, but He manifests His power only in those who are purified from the passions, and does not manifest it in those whose intellect is still confused by the defilement of sin.
94. The light of the sun is inseparable from the sun's rays and from the heat which they dispense; yet for those who receive the rays but have no eyes the light is imparticipable and they sense only the heat coming from the rays. For those bereft of eyes cannot possibly perceive light. In the same way, but to a greater extent, no one who enjoys the divine radiance can participate in the essence of the Creator. For there is absolutely no creature that possesses the capacity to perceive the Creator's nature.
95. Here let St John, the Baptist of Christ, as well as St John who was more beloved by Christ than the other disciples, and St John Chrysostom, now bear witness with us that the participated divine energy is neither created nor the essence of God. St John the Evangelist does so by what he writes in his Gospel, the Forerunner and Baptist of Christ when he says: 'It is not by measure that the Spirit is given to Christ by God the Father' (cf. John 3:34). St John Chrysostom explains this passage when he states: 'Here 'Spirit' means the energy of the Spirit. For all of us receive the energy of the Spirit by measure, but Christ possesses the Spirit's entire energy in full and without measure. But if His energy is without measure, how much more so is His essence.' By calling the energy 'Spirit' - or, rather, the very Spirit of God - as the Baptist did, and by saying that the energy is without measure, John Chrysostom showed its uncreated character. Again, by saying that we receive it by measure he indicated the difference between the uncreated energy and the uncreated essence of God. For no one ever receives the essence of God, not even if all men are taken collectively, each one receiving in part according to his degree of purity. John Chrysostom then goes on to reveal another difference between the uncreated essence and the uncreated energy, for he says, 'If the energy of the Spirit is without measure, how much more so is His essence '
96. If, according to the absurdities of Akmdynos and those who share his views, the divine energy does not in any respect differ from the divine essence, then the act of creating, which is something that pertains to the energy, will not in any respect differ from the act of begetting and the act of procession, -which are things that pertain to the essence. But if the act of creating is not distinct from that of begetting and of procession, then created things will in no way differ from Him who is begotten and Him who is sent forth. But if this is the case - as according to these men it is - then both the Son of God and the Holy Spirit will in no way differ from creatures: all created things will be begotten and sent forth by God the Father, creation will be deified, and God will share His rank with creatures. For this reason St Cyril, affirming the distinction between God's essence and energy, says, 'The act of generation pertains to the divine nature, whereas the act of creating pertains to His divine energy.' Then he clearly underscores what he has affirmed by saying, 'Nature and energy are not identical.'
97. If the divine essence does not in any respect differ from the divine energy, then the act of generation and of procession will in no respect differ from the act of creating. But God the Father creates through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Thus, in the view of Akmdynos and his adherents. He also begets and sends forth through the Son in the Holy Spirit.
98. If the divine essence does not in any respect differ from the divine energy, then neither does it differ from the divine will. Thus the Son, who alone is begotten from the Father's essence, is according to these people also created from the Father's will.
99. If the divine essence does not in any respect differ from the divine energy, and if the holy fathers testify that God has many energies - for, as shown above. He has creative providences and goodnesses - then God also has many essences. This is a view that no member of the Christian race has ever uttered or entertained.
100. If the energies of God do not in any respect differ from the divine essence, then neither will they differ from one another. Therefore God's will is in no way different from His foreknowledge, and consequently either God does not foreknow all things - because He does not will all that occurs - or else He wills evil also, since He foreknows all. This means either that He does not foreknow all things, which is the same as saying that He is not God, or that He is not good, which is also the same as saying that He is not God. Thus God's foreknowledge does differ from His will, and so both differ from the divine essence.
101. If the divine energies do not differ from one another, then God's creative power is not distinct from His foreknowledge. But in that case, since God began to create at a particular moment. He also began to foreknow at a particular moment. Yet if God did not have foreknowledge of all things before the ages how could He be God?
102. If God's creative energy does not differ in any respect from divine foreknowledge, then created things are concurrent with God's foreknowledge. Thus because God unongmately has foreknowledge and what is foreknown is unoriginately foreknown, it follows that God creates unoriginately, and therefore that created things will have been created unoriginately. But how shall He be God if His creatures are in no way subsequent to Him?
103. If God's creative energy in no respect differs from His foreknowledge, then the act of creating is not subject to His will, since His foreknowledge is not so subject. In that case God will create, not by an act of volition, but simply because it is His nature to create. But how will He be God if He creates without volition?
104. God Himself is within Himself, since the three divine hypostases co-naturally and eternally cleave to one another and unconfusedly interpenetrate each other. Yet God is also in the universe and the universe is within God, the one sustaining, the other being sustained by Him. Thus all things participate in God's sustaining energy, but not in His essence. Hence the theologians say that divine omnipresence also constitutes an energy of God.
105. If we have conformed ourselves to God and have attained that for which we are created, namely, deification - for they say that God created us in order to make us partakers of His own divinity (cf 2 Pet. I :4) - then we are in God since we are deified by Him, and God is in us since it is He who deifies us. Thus we, too, participate in the divine energy - though in a different way from the universe as a whole - but not in the essence of God. Hence the theologians say that 'divinity' is also an appellation of the divine energy.
106. The supra-essential, supra-existential nature that transcends the Godhead and goodness, in that it is more than God and more than goodness, and so on, can be neither described nor conceived nor in any way contemplated, since it transcends all thmgs and is surpassingly unknowable, being established by uncircumscribed power beyond the supracelestial intelligences, and always utterly ungraspable and ineffable for all. Neither in the present age nor in the age to come is there any name with which it can be named, nor can the soul form any concept of it or any word express it; and there can be no contact with or participation in it, whether sensible or noetic, nor any imagining of it at all. Thus the theologians hold that the closest idea we can have of this nature is that of its perfect incomprehensibility attained by means of negation, or apophasis, since this nature is transcendentally privative of all that exists or can be expressed. Hence he who possesses knowledge of the truth beyond all truth, if he is to name it correctly, cannot legitimately call it either essence or nature. Yet it is the cause of all things and all things pertain to it and exist on its account; and it is prior to all things and in a simple and undetermined manner it precontains all things in itself. Thus it can be named loosely and inexactly from all things. Accordingly it can be called both essence and nature, though property speaking we should name it the creative procession and energy whereby God creates individual essences; for the great Dionysios says that this is 'the proper theological name for the essence of Him who truly is'.
107. One can find the term 'nature' applied also to natural attributes, both in the case of created beings and in the case of God. Thus St Gregory of Nazianzos says somewhere in his poems, 'It is the nature of my King to bestow blessedness.' Now bestowing is not the nature of anything; it is, rather, the natural attribute of one who is beneficent. Similarly, with regard to fire one can say that its nature is to ascend upwards and to cast light upon those who behold it. Yet the motion in itself is not the nature of fire, nor is the production of light; rather its nature is the origin of the motion. Hence natural attributes are also called nature. This is confirmed by the great Dionysios when he says somewhere, 'It is the nature of the Good to bring forth and to save,' meaning that these acts are attributes of the divine nature. Thus when you hear the fathers saying that God's essence is imparticipable, you should realize that they refer to the essence that does not depart from itself and is unmanifest. Again, when they say that it is participable, you should realize that they refer to the procession, manifestation and energy that are God's natural attributes. When you accept both statements in this sense you will be in agreement with the fathers.
108. Even the smallest portion of an essence possesses all that essence's powers. Thus a spark is both brilliant and illuminating, it melts and bums whatever comes close to it, it is self -moving by nature and rises upwards and, in brief, it is whatever fire is, of which it is a part. Similarly a drop of water possesses every quality that water has, of which it is a drop; and a nugget possesses whatever quality is possessed by the metal of which it is a fragment. Thus if we participate in the unmanifest essence of God, then, whether we participate in the whole of it or a part of it, we would be all-powerful, and in the same way each existent being would be all-powerful. But all-powerfulness is not a quality that even all mankind or all creation collectively possesses. St Paul shows this with abundant clarity when referring to those who share in the deiiying gifts of the Spirit; for he testifies that not all the gifts of the Spirit belong to each individual. 'To one', he says, 'is given the quality of wisdom, to another the quality of knowledge, to another some other gift of the same Spirit' (cf I Cor. 12:8). And St John Chrysostom clearly thwarts in advance the error of Barlaam and Akmdynos when he says, 'A man does not possess all the gifts, lest he think that grace is nature.' Yet no intelligent person would suppose that grace, here distinguished from the divine nature, is created, for obviously no one would be in any danger of supposing a created thing to be the nature of God. Moreover, the grace of the Spirit, though differing from the divine nature, is not separated from it; rather, it draws those privileged to receive it towards union with the Holy Spirit.
109. An essence has as many hypostases as there are partakers of it. We make as many hypostases of fire as the number of lamps we light from a single lamp. Yet if, as our opponents assert. God's essence is participated in, and is even participated in by everyone, this means that His essence is not tn-hypostatic, but multi-hypostatic. Who trained in the divine doctrine will not recognize this as the absurdity of the Messalians? For the Messalians maintain that those who have attained the height of virtue participate in the essence of God. Yet the followers of Akindynos in their zeal to surpass this blasphemy say that not only do certain people distinguished in virtue participate in the divine essence, but all beings in general participate in it; and they say this on the spurious pretext that the divine essence is everywhere present. But St Gregory of Nazianzos, eminent in theology, long ago refuted the dotty views of both the Messalians and the Akindymsts when he said, 'He is 'Christ', the Anointed, on account of His divinity; for it is the divinity that anoints His human nature. This anointing sanctifies the human nature not merely with an energy, as is the case with all others who are anointed, but with the presence of the whole of Him who anoints.' With one voice the holy fathers have declared that the divinity dwells in those who are fittingly purified, but not as regards its nature. Thus a person does not participate in God either according to His essence or according to His hypostases, for neither of these can be in any way divided, nor can they be communicated to any one at all. Hence God is in this respect totally inaccessible to all, though indeed He is also everywhere present. But the energy and power common to the tri-hypostatic nature is variously and proportionately divided among those who participate in it, and is therefore accessible to those who are blessed with it. For, as St Basil says, 'the Holy Spirit is not participated in to the same degree by each person who receives Him; rather. He distributes His energy according to the faith of the participant; for though He is simple in essence. He is diverse in His powers.'
110. That which is said to participate in something possesses a part of that in which it participates; for if it participates not in a part only but in the whole, then strictly speaking it does, not participate in but possesses that whole. Hence, if the participant must necessarily participate in a part, what is participated in is divisible. But the essence of God is in every way indivisible, and therefore it is altogether unparticipable. On the other hand, the property of the divine energy is to be divisible, as the holy father St John Chrysostom frequently affirms. Hence it is the divine energy that is participated in by those who have been privileged to receive deifying grace. Listen, then, once more to St John Chrysostom, as he clearly elucidates both these points, namely, that it is the energy that is indivisibly divided and also participated in, and not the imparticipable essence from which the divine energy proceeds. Citing the gospel words, 'Of His fullness we have all received' (John I : 16), he says, 'If in the case of fire, where what is divided is both essence and body, we both divide it and do not divide it, how much more so is this the case with respect to the energy, especially the energy of the unembodied essence?'
111. Further, that which participates in something according to its essence must necessarily possess a common essence with that in which it participates and be identical to it in some respect. But who has ever heard that God and we possess in some respect the same essence? St Basil the Great says, 'The energies of God come down to us, but the essence remains inaccessible.' And St Maximos also says, 'He who is deified through grace will be everything that God is, without possessing identity of essence.' Thus it is impossible to participate in God's essence, even for those who are deified by divine grace. It is, however, possible to participate in the divine energy. To this does the measured light of truth here below lead me, to behold and experience the splendor of God,' states St Gregory of Nazianzos. As the Psalmist says, 'May the splendor of our God be upon us' (Ps. 90:17. LXX). There is a single energy of God and the saints,' St Maximos clearly writes, who was one of their number; they are 'living icons of Christ, being the same as He is, by grace rather than by assimilation.'
112. God is identical within Himself, since the three divine hypostases mutually coinhere and interpenetrate naturally, totally, eternally, mseparably, and yet without mingling or confusion, so that their energy is also one. This could never be the case among creatures. There are similarities among creatures of the same genus, but since each independent existence, or hypostasis, operates by itself, its energy is uniquely its own. The situation is different with the three divine hypostases that we worship, for there the energy is truly one and the same. For the activity of the divine will is one, originating from the Father, the primal Cause, issuing through the Son, and made manifest in the Holy Spirit This is clear from the created effects, for it is from the effects that we know every natural energy. Although they are similar, different nests are made by different swallows, and different pages are written by different scribes, though the materials used are the same. But with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit it is not the case that each one of the hypostases has His own particular effect. Rather, all creation is the single work of the three. Thus we have been initiated by the fathers to recognize from creation that the divine energy of the three Persons whom we worship is one and the same, and that they do not each possess an individual energy which merely resembles that of the other two.
113. Since Father, Son and Holy Spirit unconfusedly and unmixedly interpenetrate one another, we know that they possess an activity and energy that is strictly one and unique. The life or power mat the Father possesses in Himself is not different from that in the Son, since the Son possesses the same life and power as the Father; and the same can be said of the Son and me Holy Spirit. As for those who think that the divine energy does not differ from the divine essence because our life is nothing else but God Himself, and He Himself is pre-etemal life not in relation to something else but in Himself, they are both ignorant and heretics. They are ignorant because they have not yet learnt that the supreme Trinity is none other than God Himself, and that the supreme Unity is none other than God Himself, though this in no way prevents the Unity from being distinguished from the Trinity. They are heretics because they abolish both essence and energy, the one through the other. For what is dependent on another is not essence; and what is self-subsistent is not dependent on another. Thus if the essence and the energy in no way differ from each other, they abolish each other, or, rather, I should say that they expel from the number of the godfearing those who say that there is no difference between them.
114. We, on the contrary, confess that the Son of God is our life as regards cause and energy, and that He is also life in Himself absolutely and mdependently of all; and we declare mat He possesses both these attributes uncreatedly. We likewise confess the same thing with reference to the Father and the Holy Spirit. Thus this life of ours, that as the cause of living things quickens us, is none other than Father, Son and Holy Spirit. For our tri- hypostatic God is said to be our life as being its cause. And when in theology the divine life is spoken of not as cause, nor in relation to something else, but absolutely and in itself, again it is not anything other than the Father and also the Son and the Holy Spirit. Such doctrines in no way give offence to those who affirm that God is uncreated, not only as regards His essence and hypostases, but also as regards the divine energy that is common to the three. We proclaim in our theology one God in three hypostases, possessing a single essence, power and energy, as well as whatever other realities pertain to the essence - realities that are called in Scripture assembly and fullness of divinity (cf Col. 2:9), and are perceived and theologically declared to belong to each of the three holy hypostases.
115. Those who reject this divine energy, saying sometimes that it is created, and sometimes that it differs in no respect from the divine essence, fabricate at other times a new heresy, teaching the doctrine that the sole uncreated energy is the only-begotten Son of the Father. In order to validate this view they appeal to the words of St Cyril: 'The life that the Father possesses in Himself is nothing other than the Son, and the life that is in the Son is nothing other than the Father. Thus He speaks the truth when He says, '1 am in the Father and the Father is in Me' (John 14:11).' Briefly and so far as we can we will now clarify the sense of the saint's words, and we will refute the impiety of those who in their undisceming darkness oppose us. They wrongly maintain that the Son is not only unlike the Father, but is also posterior to the Father, because He possesses the faculty of life and life itself not by nature, but as something added from without, and by participation and adventitiously, and because He takes and receives life from the Father, according to the words of Scripture, 'For as the Father has life in Himself, so has He granted the Son also to have life in Himself (John 5:26).
St Cyril counters those who interpret the text of the Gospel in such an impious way. 'God', he says, 'is called life by virtue of His energy, as the Quickener of living things. He is Himself the life of things that naturally live, since He is the Creator of nature, just as He is also the Bestower of grace on those who live in a divine manner. But God is also said to be life in Himself, not in relation to another, but mdependently One Hundred and Fifty Texts
and in every way unconditionally.' The divine Cyril wanted to show that in neither of these two cases does the Son differ from the Father, and that the fact that the Son receives something from .the Father does not indicate that He is posterior to the Father, or that where His essence is concerned the Son is second to the Father in a temporal sense. Thus among many other things St Cyril says, 'It is not as receiving something that the Son possesses being, but as being He receives something.' Then he adds in conclusion: 'Therefore, the fact that the Son receives something from the Father does not mean that where His essence is concerned the Son is second to the Father in a temporal sense.' Here, then, he does not accept that the life which the Father has and which the Son receives from the Father is the divine essence.
116. Further, the divine Cyril shows that although the Son of God is said by virtue of His energy to be life in relation to living things, since He quickens them and is called their life, yet not even in this is He unlike the Father; rather, by nature He is their life and He quickens them, just as the Father does. Then, continuing, St Cyril writes, 'If the Son is not life by nature, how can He be speaking the truth when He says, 'He that believes in Me has eternal life' (John 6:47), and again, 'My sheep hear my voice, and I give them eternal life' (John 10:27-28)?' Shortly after St Cyril writes, 'To those who believe in Him He promises to give the life that belongs to and inheres in Him substantially. How, then, is it possible to think that the Son did not have this life but received it from the Father?' They should be ashamed, then, to say in their madness that, because this life is a natural attribute of God, therefore it must be identical with God's essence. For neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit offers us believers their essence. We must dismiss such impiety.
117. The great Cyril confutes in a similar way those who are infected with Barlaam's disease when he says shortly afterwards, 'In proceeding from the Father the Son takes with Him all that is by nature the Father's. Now one of the Father's attributes is life.' By the words, 'one of the Father's attributes', he clearly demonstrates that the Father has many attributes. In the opinion of those who think that life is the essence of God, this must mean that God has many essences. Yet, apart from this impiety, to say that being and attribute are the same, except perhaps with regard to some particular relation, also displays excessive ignorance. And even more senseless is it to say that being and attributes - in other words, the one and what is more than one - are in no way different. For it is utterly and completely impossible and senseless to assert that something should be both one and many with respect to the same thing.
118. In stating, then, that life is one of the Father's attributes, the divine Cyril shows that in this passage, when referring to life', he does not mean the essence of God. But let us produce his exact words where he states that God has many attributes. For slightly later he says, 'Many excellent properties pertain to the Father, but the Son is not without them either.' How could these many things that pertain to God be the divine essence? Wishing to indicate some of these excellent properties that pertain to the Father, he refers to the words of St Paul, To the immortal, invisible, and only wise God' (1 Tim. 1:17). Thus he shows even more clearly that none of God's attributes constitutes the essence. How, indeed, could immortality, invisibility, and in general all the things said of God privatively and apophatically, whether collectively or severally, be equated with the essence? For there is no essence unless there exists this or that definite object. If to the divine attributes described apophatically are added those that the theologians ascribe to God cataphatically, it is evident that none of them can be shown to disclose God's essence, even though when necessary we apply all the names of these attributes to the supra-essential Being that is absolutely nameless.
119. When attributes are in question, we necessarily ask what they pertain to. If they do not pertain to anything, they are not attributes, and it is wrong to call them such. But if the attributes pertain to any one thing, and if this is the essence, which according to our adversaries in no way differs from each one of the attributes and all of them together, then, since there are many attributes, the one essence will be many essences; and that thing which is one in essence will be many in essence, and therefore will have many essences. But if it is one and also has many essences, it is necessarily composite. Delivering his adherents from such impious and ignorant opinions, the divine Cyril says in his Treasuries: 'If that which pertains to God alone is inevitably also His essence. He will be composed of many essences. For there are many thmgs that pertain by nature to God alone and to no other being. Indeed, the divine Scriptures call Him King, Lord, incorruptible, invisible, and say many thousands of other things about Him. If, then, each of His attributes is ranked with essence, how can the simple God not be composite? But this is a most absurd view to hold.'
120. By many arguments St Cyril, wise in things divine, shows that even though the Son is life and is said to possess life as energy, since He quickens us and is the life of living things, still He is not on this account unlike the Father, for the Father, too, bestows life. He wanted also to show that even when the Son is said to be life and to have life not in relation to something else but altogether independently and absolutely, yet in this case also He will not be unlike the Father with respect to life. For when we call God our life, not in so far as He bestows life on us, but altogether independently and absolutely, then we are naming His essence on the basis of the energy that pertains to Him by nature, as we do also when we call Him wisdom, goodness, and so on. Wishing, then, to demonstrate this, St Cyril says: 'When we say that 'the Father has life in Himself' (John 5:16), we are at the same time calling the Son life, for He is other than the Father only with respect to His hypostasis, but not with respect to life. For this reason there is no question of compositeness or twofoldedness in the Father. And again, when we say that the Son has life in Himself, and we mean life absolute, we are at the same time calling the Father life. For as the Father is life, not in relation to anything else, but independently and in Himself, the Father and the Son coinhere in one another, as the Son Himself said: 'I am in the Father and the Father is in Me' (John 14:11).' In this way, then, the divine Cyril demonstrates that the life that is in the Father - namely, the Son - is somehow both other and not other than the Father. But our opponents say that the life that is in the Father is in no way other than the Father and is entirely identical with Him since it is in no respect different By proposing such things and affirming that this life is the Only- begotten Son of the Father, they necessarily range themselves not with the doctrines of the venerable Cyril but with those of Sabellius.
121. Do not the followers of Barlaam and Akmdynos roundly condemn themselves when they claim that the divine Cyril contradicts himself? To affirm sometimes one thing, sometimes another, when both affirmations are true, is a distinguishing mark of every orthodox theologian. But to contradict oneself does not betoken an intelligent person. St Cyril quite rightly says that by nature the Son has life, which He gives to those who believe in Him. By this he shows that not only the essence of God - which no one receives - but also His natural energy is called life. This life has been received as a gift of grace by those whom He has quickened, and thus they themselves are able to save - that is to say, to render immortal in spirit - those who previously were not alive in spirit, and sometimes to restore people lifeless in one of their limbs or even in their whole body. How could St Cyril, who has demonstrated these things so excellently and clearly, subsequently assert, with the intention of denying what he has said about the divine energy, that only God's essence is called life? For this is what is senselessly maintained by those who now pervert or, rather, misrepresent, what St Cyril says.
122. Not just the Only -begotten Son of God but also the Holy Spirit is called energy and power by the saints, and this because the Son and the Spirit possess precisely the same powers and energies as the Father. For according to St Dionysios God is called power, 'as both possessing it originally in Himself and transcending all power'. Therefore, whenever one of those two distinct hypostases, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is called power or energy, it is understood or expressed that He is so together with the Father. Thus St Basil the Great says. The Holy Spirit is a sanctifying power that possesses essence, existence and hypostatic subsistence.' But in his writing about the Spirit he also shows that the energies of the Spirit are none of them self-subsistent, in this way clearly distinguishing them in turn from created things; for what come forth from the Spirit as created objects
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are independent existences, for God creates them as essences with specific qualities.
123. Apophatic theology does not contradict or confute cataphatic theology, but it shows that although statements made cataphatically about God are true and reverent, yet they do not apply to God as they might to us. For example. God possesses knowledge of existent things, and we, too, possess this in some cases. But we know things in so far as they exist and have come into existence, whereas God does not know them solely in this way, since He knows them just as well even prior to their coming into existence. Thus he who says that God does not know existent things as existent does not contradict him who says that God knows existent things and knows them as existent. There is also a cataphatic theology which has the force of apophatic theologv, as when one says that all knowledge is affirmed of some object, namely, the thing known, while God's knowledge does not refer to any object. This is the same as saying God does not know existent things as existent, and He does not have knowledge of existent things - that is to say, does not have it as we do. In this way it can be said that in terms of His pre-eminence God does not exist But he who asserts this in order to show that people who say God exists are not speaking correctly, clearly employs apophatic theology not in a way that connotes pre-eminence, but as though it connoted deficiency and signified in this case that God has absolutely no existence whatsoever. This is the uttermost impiety, of which, alas, those are guilty who by means of apophatic theology attempt to deny that God has both an uncreated essence and uncreated energy. We, however, embrace both modes of theology, since the one does not exclude the other - rather, by means of each we confirm ourselves in a sound way of thought.
124. I think a brief patristic quotation will be sufficient to confute utterly all the sophistries of Barlaam's followers and prove them to be sheer folly. St Gregory of Nazianzos says: 'The Unoriginate, the First Originate and the One who is with the First Originate, constitute one God. But the First Originate is not, because it is the First Originate, separated from the Unoriginate. For its origin is not its nature, any more than to be without origin is the nature of the other. These things pertain to the nature, but are not the nature itself' What, then? Shall we say that because origin and unongmateness are not nature but pertain to the nature that they are therefore created? Not unless we are out of our mind. And is God composite because origin and unoriginateness are uncreated and pertain to His nature? Certainly not; for though they pertain to His nature, they are yet distinct from it. But, as St Cyril and other fathers teach at length, if the natural attributes of God are identified with the nature, then the Divinity is composite. Read through the writings against Eunomios by St Basil the Great and his brother, St Gregory of Nyssa, who fraternally shares his views. There you will find clearly that the followers of Barlaam and Akindynos are in agreement with Eunomios, and you will have ample refutations to use against them.
125. The Eunomians asserted that the Father and the Son did not have the same essence, and they came to this conclusion because they imagined that everything predicated of God is said with regard to His essence; and so they contentiously argued that because to beget and to be begotten are different, on this account there are also different essences. The Akindynists assert that it cannot be one and the same God who possesses both a divine essence and divine energy, because they imagine that everything predicated of God is essence; and so they contentiously argue that, if there is any difference between divine essence and energy, there are also many different gods. To refute both groups it is enough to show that not everything predicated of God is said with regard to His essence; it can be said relatively, that is, with relation to something that is not God's essence. For example, the Father is spoken of in relation to the Son, for the Son is not the Father. And God is called Lord in relation to the subject creation, for God is Lord over beings that are in time and in the eternal age, and also Lord over the ages themselves. But this dominion is an uncreated energy of God, distinct from His essence in that it is said in relation to something else, something which He Himself is not
126. The Eunomians maintain that everything that is attributed to God is essence. In this way they conclude that unbegottenness is God's essence, thus degrading - so far as they can - the Son to the rank of a creature because He differs from the Father. Their purpose, they claim, is to avoid positing two Gods; the first, unbegotten, and the one who comes second after Him, begotten. In imitation of the Eunomians, the Akindynists maintain that everything that is attributed to God is essence, and in this way they impiously degrade God's energy to the rank of creature - the energy that although inseparable from God nevertheless differs from His essence in that it originates from the essence and is participated in by created things; for, as St Dionysios says, 'AH things participate in the providence that wells forth from the Godhead, the Cause of all.' Their purpose, the Akindynists claim, is to avoid positing two Godheads: one, the tri- hypostatic essence that transcends name, cause, and participation; and the other, God's energy that proceeds from the essence, is participated in, and is named. They do not comprehend that, just as God the Father is called Father in relation to His own Son and fatherhood pertains to Him as an uncreated property, even though the name 'Father' does not betoken the essence, so likewise God possesses energy uncreatedly, even though energy differs from essence. When we speak of one Godhead, we speak of everything that God is, namely, both essence and energy. Consequently the Akindynists are the ones who impiously split God's single divinity into created and uncreated.
127. An accident is that which comes into existence and passes out of existence, and in this way we can conceive of inseparable attributes as well. From one point of view, a natural attribute is also an accident, since it increases and decreases, as, for instance, knowledge in the soul endowed with intelligence. But there is no such thing in God because He remains entirely changeless. For this reason nothing can be attributed to Him that is an accident. Yet not all things said of God betoken His essence. For what belongs to the category of relation is also predicated of Him, and this is relative and refers to relationship with something else, and does not signify essence. Such is the divine energy in God. For it is not essence, nor an accident, even though it is called a kind of accident by some theologians, who mean to say simply this, that it is in God and that it is not essence.
128. St Gregory of Nazianzos, when writing about the Holy Spirit, teaches us that, even though the divine energy is as it were also an accident, it is still seen to be in God without thereby making God composite. For he says, 'The Holy Spirit must either be ranked among beings that are self-existent or among those that are seen to be in another. Those skilled in such matters call the former essence and the latter accident. If the Holy Spirit were an accident. He would be an energy of God. For what else, or of whom else, could He be? And this avoids making God composite.' He is clearly saying that if the Spirit is one of the things seen to be in God, and so is not essence, but is an accident and is called Spirit, He cannot be anything other than God's energy. This he indicated by saying, 'For what else, or of whom else, could He be?' In order to make it clear also that apart from energy nothing else - not quality, or quantity, or anything else of this kind - can be seen to be in God, he adds, 'And this avoids making God composite.' But how does the energy, though it is seen to be in God, not introduce composition into God? Because only God possesses completely impassible energy: He alone acts without being acted upon. He does not come into existence, nor does He change.
129. Slightly before this, in contrasting this energy with what is created, St Gregory also shows that he regarded it as uncreated. For he says, 'Of the wise men among ourselves, some have supposed the Spirit to be an energy, others a created thing, and still others God.' By 'God' here he means the actual hypostasis; and by distinguishing the energy from what is created he clearly demonstrates that it is not created. Shortly afterwards he calls the energy an activity of God. How could God's activity not be uncreated? St John of Damaskos writes on this question: 'The energy is the dynamic and essential activity of the nature. That which possesses the capacity to energize is the nature from which the energy proceeds. That which is energized is the effect of the energy. That which energizes is what uses the energy, that is to say, the hypostasis. '
130. In the same work St Gregory also says, 'If He is energy, then He will be energized but will not energize; and He will cease to exist once He has been energized.' From this the followers of Akmdynos conclude and declare that the divine energy is created. They do not understand that being energized can also be said of uncreated realities, as St Gregory shows when he says that if 'Father' is the name of an energy, 'then what the Father energizes will be the consubstantiality of the Son'. And St John of Damaskos also says, 'Christ sat at the right hand of God, divinely energizing universal providence' Yet neither does the expression 'He rested' call in question the uncreated nature of the energy. For in creating God begins and ceases: as Moses says, 'God rested from all the works that He had begun to make' (Gen. 2:1). But the act of creating itself, with respect to which God begins and ceases, is a natural and uncreated energy of God.
131. After saying, 'The energy is the dynamic and essential activity of the nature', St John of Damaskos seeks to demonstrate that, according to St Gregory of Nazianzos, this energy is both actuated and ceases to act. For he adds, 'We should realize that the energy is an activity and is energized rather than energizes. As St Gregory the Theologian says in his homily on the Holy Spirit, 'If He is energy, then He will be energized but will not energize; and He will cease to exist once He has been energized'.' Thus it is obvious that those who share the views of Barlaam and Akindynos, and who teach that the energy of which St Gregory here speaks is created, mindlessly degrade to the rank of a creature God's natural and essential energy. Yet St John of Damaskos, when he affirms that this energy is not only energized but also energizes, shows thereby that it is uncreated. That in this St John does not disagree with St Gregory I have made abundantly clear in my longer works.
132. In God the hypostatic properties are affirmed relatively one to the other. The hypostases differ from each other, but not with respect to essence. Sometimes God is also referred to in relation to creation. Yet God, the All- Holy Trinity, cannot be called Father in the same way that He is called pre-etemal, pre-unoriginate, great and good. For it is not each of the three hypostases that is the Father, but only one of them, from whom and to whom subsequent realities are referred. None the less, in relation to creation the Trinity can also be called the Father, because creation is the joint work of the Three, brought forth from absolute nothingness, and because our adoption as sons is achieved through the bestowal of the grace common to the Three. The scriptural texts, 'The Lord your God is one Lord' (cf. Deut. 6:4) and 'One is our Father in heaven' (cf. Matt. 6:9; 23:9), refer to the Holy Trinity as our one Lord and God, and also as our Father who through His grace confers on us a new birth. As we said, the Father is called Father only in relation to His coessential Son. In relation to both Son and Spirit He is called Principle, as He is also called Principle in relation to creation, but here in the sense that He is the Creator and Master of all creatures. Thus when the Father is called such things in relation to creation, the Son is also Principle, though they constitute not two Principles but one. For the Son is called Principle in relation to creation, as He is likewise called Master in relation to the created things subject to Him. Thus the Father and the Son, together with the Spirit, are - in relation to creation - one Principle, one Master, one Creator, one God and Father, one Provider and Overseer, and so on. Yet none of these properties constitute the essence, for if it was the essence it could not have been spoken of in relation to another.
133. States, conditions, places, times, and any other such thing are not literally but metaphorically predicated of God. But to create and to energize can in the truest sense be predicated of God alone; for only God creates. He does not come into existence nor with respect to His essence is He acted upon. He alone through all things creates each one. He alone creates from absolute nothingness, since He possesses energy that is all-powerful. With respect to this energy He can be referred to in relation to creation and possesses potentiality. For He Himself in His own nature is not capable of being affected by anything at all, but if He wishes He is capable of adding to His creations. For God in His essence to be capable of being affected, of possessing or acquiring something, would denote weakness. But for God through His energy to be capable of creating, and of possessing and adding to His creations whenever He wishes, is a token of divinely fitting and almighty power.
134. All existent things can be grouped into ten categories, namely, essence, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, activity, passivity, possession and dependence; and these ten categories apply likewise to everything subsequently seen to pertain to essence. But God is supra-essential essence, in which can be seen only relation and activity or creation, and these two things do not produce in His essence any composition or change. For God creates all things without being affected in His essence. He is Creator in relation to creation, and also its Principle and Master in that it has its origin in Him and is dependent on Him. But He is also our Father, since by grace He confers on us rebirth. Yet He is Father, too, in relation to the Son who is completely without any temporal beginning. The Son is Son in relation to the Father, while the Spirit is the projection of the Father, coetemal with the Father and the Son, being of one and the same essence. Those who assert that God is only essence, with nothing to be seen in Him, fabricate a God who has neither creativity and energy nor relation. But if He whom they suppose to be God does not possess these properties, then He is neither active nor Creator, nor does He possess an energy; and neither is He Principle, Creator and Master, nor is He our Father by grace. For how could He be these things if relation and creativity are not to be envisaged in His essence? Furthermore, if relation is not to be envisaged in God's essence, the tri-hypostatic character of the Godhead is also abolished. But He who is not tn-hypostatic is not the Master of all or God. Thus those who hold the views of Barlaam and Akmdynos are atheists.
135. God also possesses that which is not essence. Yet because it is not essence it is not on that account an accident. For that which not only does not pass away but which also neither admits nor induces in itself the slightest increase or decrease, cannot be included among accidents. But the fact that it is neither an accident nor essence does not mean that it has no existence: it exists and it truly exists. It is not an accident, because it is altogether changeless. But again it is not an essence, because it is not among those things that are self-subsistent. It is because of this that some theologians say that it is in a certain way an accident, by which they wish only to indicate that it is not essence. But because each hypostatic property and each of the hypostases is neither an essence nor an accident in God, is it on this account totally nonexistent? Certainly not. In the same way, then. God's divine energy is neither an essence nor an accident, nor is it something utterly nonexistent. To speak in accord with all the theologians: if God creates by will and not simply because it is His nature to do so, then to will is one thing and natural being is another. If this is so, it means that God's volition is other than the divine essence. Does it follow from this that because in God the will is other than the nature and is not an essence it therefore does not exist at all? Certainly not: it does exist and it pertains to God, who possesses not only essence but also a will with which He creates. One may if one wishes say that it is in a certain way an accident, since it is not an essence; yet neither is it in the strict sense an accident, since it does not produce any composition or alteration. Thus God possesses both essence and that which is not essence, even if it should not be called an accident, namely, the divine will and energy.
136. Unless an essence has an energy distinct from itself, it will entirely lack actual existence and will be a mere mental concept. For man as a general concept does not think, does not have opinions, does not see, does not smell, does not speak, does not hear, does not walk, does not breathe, does not eat and, in short, does not have an energy which is distinct from his essence, and which shows that he possesses an individual state of being. Thus man as a general concept entirely lacks actual existence. But when man possesses an inherent energy distinct from his essence, whether it be one or many or all of those activities we have mentioned, it is known thereby that he possesses an individual state of being and does not lack actual existence. And because these energies are observed not only in one or two or three but in a great number of individuals, it is clear that man exists in countless individual states of being.
137. According to the true faith of God's Church which by His grace we hold, God possesses inherent energy that makes Him manifest and is in this respect distinct from His essence. For He foreknows and provides for inferior beings; He creates, sustains, rules and transforms them according to His own will and knowledge. In this way it is clear that He possesses an individual state of being, and that He is not simply essence lacking actual existence. But since all these energies are to be seen not in one but in three Persons, God is known to us as one essence existing in three individual states of being or hypostases. But the followers of Akmdynos, by asserting that God does not have inherent energy that makes Him manifest and is in this respect distinct from His essence, are saying that God does not possess an individual state of being, and they entirely deprive the tri-hypostatic Lord of actual existence. In this way they excel Sabellius the Libyan in heresy; for their total impiety is worse than his corrupt piety. 138. The energy of the three divine hypostases is one not in the sense that each has an energy similar to that of the others, as is the case with us, but in the sense of true numerical unity. This is something which those who hold the views of Akmdynos are unable to accept. For they say that there is no common, uncreated energy pertaining to the three hypostases and that the hypostases are energies of one another, since according to them there is no common divine energy. Thus they are unable to affirm that the three hypostases possess a single energy, and by excluding now one, now another energy they again deprive the tri-hypostatic God of actual existence.
139. Because those diseased in soul with Akmdynos's delusions say that the energy that is distinct from God's essence is created, they conclude that God's creative power is created. For it is impossible to act and create without an energy, just as it is impossible to exist without existence. Therefore, just as one cannot say that God's existence is created and at the same trnie affirm that His being is uncreated, so also one cannot say that God's energy is created and at the same time affirm that His power to act and create is uncreated.
140. According to those who hold the true faith - and contrary to Akindynos's nonsensical and impious ramblings - created things are not the energy of God, but they are the effects of the divine energy. For if the created things are the energy, either such things are uncreated - which is sheer folly, for it would mean that they exist before they are created - or else prior to created things God possesses no energy; and this is mere godlessness. For of course God is eternally active and all-powerful. Thus creatures are not God's energy, but things that (whatever the precise terminology employed) have been actualized and effected. But God's energy, according to the theologians, is uncreated and coetemal with God.
141. The energy is not known from the essence; but we do know from the energy that the essence exists, though we do not know what it is. Thus according to the theologians God's existence is known from His providence, not from His essence. Such, then, is the way in which energy can be distinguished from essence: the energy is that which makes known, while the essence is that whose existence is made known by the energy. The advocates of Akindynos's impiety,, in their anxiety to persuade us that the divine energy in no way differs from the divine essence, abolish that which makes God known, and so end up by trying to convince us that we cannot know that God exists - since they at any rate have no knowledge of Him. But he who does not even know that God exists will be the most godless and stupid of men.
142. When the Akmdymsts say that, although God possesses an energy, it does not in any way differ from His essence, they attempt thus to cloak their own impiety and sophistically to mislead and deceive their hearers. Sabellius the Libyan likewise said that God the Father has a Son who differs in no way from the Father. But just as he was guilty of teaching that the Father is without a Son, since he denied their hypostatic distinction, so now these people are guilty of holding that God has no energy whatsoever, since they assert that the divine energy in no way differs from the divine essence. If, indeed, there were no difference between these two, God would possess no capacity for creating and actuating, for according to the theologians it is impossible to act without an energy, just as it is impossible to exist without existence. For those who think rightly, there is also another fact which indicates that there is a difference between the divine energy and the divine essence. The energy actuates something else, not identical with the one who acts. God actuates and makes created things, but He Himself is uncreated. Further, a relationship is always affirmed in relation to something else: son is spoken of in relation to father, but a son is never father of his father. Therefore, as it is impossible for the relationship not to differ in any way from the essence and for it to be itself the essence instead of being in the essence, so likewise it is impossible for the energy not to differ from the essence but to be the essence, even though this may give offence to Akindynos.
143. St Basil the Great, when he writes of God in his Syllogistic Chapters, says, 'The energy is neither the one who energizes nor that which is energized. Therefore the energy is not to be confused with the essence.' St Cyril likewise affirms concerning God: To create pertains to energy, to beget pertains to nature. But nature and energy are not identical' And St John of Damaskos writes, 'Generation is an operation of the divine nature, but the creation is an operation of the divine will.' And elsewhere he says clearly, 'Energy is one thing and that which has the capacity to energize is another. For energy is the essential activity of the nature. That which possesses the capacity to energize is the nature from which the energy proceeds.' The energy, then, according to the holy fathers, differs in many ways from the divine essence.
144. God's essence is entirely unnamable since it is also completely incomprehensible. Therefore we name it on the basis of all its energies, although with respect to the essence itself none of those names means anything different from any other. For by each name and by all names together nothing other is named except that which is hidden and whose real identity is unknown to all. But with respect to the energies, each of these names has a different significance, for we all know that the acts of creating, ruling, judging, providential guidance, and of God's adopting us as sons through His grace, are acts that differ from one another. Thus when the Akindynists say that these natural, divine energies are created because they differ both from one another and from the divine nature, what else are they doing except degrading God and making Him a creature? For things that are created, ruled, judged and so on, are creatures and not the Creator, the Ruler, and the judge. And the same can be said of the acts of judging, ruling, and creating, which are acts that by nature pertain to God. 145. Just as the essence of God is altogether without name because according to the theologians it transcends all names, so it is also miparticipable in that according to them it transcends participation. Thus those who in our day disbelieve the teaching of the Spirit given through our holy fathers and who revile us when we agree with the fathers, say that if the divine energy differs from the divine essence, even though it is envisaged as wholly pertaining to God's essence, then either there will be many gods or the one God will be composite. They are unaware that it is not activating and energy but being acted upon and passivity that produce composition. God activates without in any way being acted upon or subject to change. Thus He is not composite on account of His energy. Furthermore, God also possesses relationship and is related to creation, as being its Principle and Master; but He is not on this account numbered among things that have come into existence. And how will there be many gods because of God possessing an energy, since the energy pertains to one God or, rather, since God Himself is both the divine essence, and the divine energy? All this is clearly folly deriving from a demented state of mind.
146. The Lord said to His disciples, 'There are some standing here who will not taste death till they have seen the kingdom of God come with power' (Mark 9:1); and after six days He took Peter, James and John, and when they had ascended Mount Tabor He shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light (cf Matt. 17:1-2). When the disciples could look at it no longer or, rather, because they lacked the strength to gaze at the brightness, they fell prostrate to the earth (cf. Matt. 17:6). None the less, in accordance with the Savior's promise they did see the kingdom of God, that divine and inexpressible light. St Gregory of Nazianzos and, St Basil call this light 'divinity', saying that 'the light is the divinity manifested to the disciples on the Mount', and that it is 'the beauty of Him who is almighty, and His noetic and contemplatable divinity'. St Basil the Great also says that this light is the beauty of God contemplated by the saints alone in the power of the divine Spirit; and again he writes, 'On the mountain Peter and the sons of thunder saw His beauty shining more brightly than the sun; and they were privileged to receive with their eyes a foretaste of His advent.' St John of Damaskos as well as St John Chrysostom call that light a natural ray of the Divinity. The former writes, 'Because the Son was begotten unoriginately from the Father, He possesses the natural, unongmate ray of the Divinity; and the glory of the Divinity becomes the glory of His body.' And St John Chrysostom says, 'The Lord appeared upon the mountain more radiant than Himself because the Divinity revealed its rays.'
147. This divine and inexpressible light. God's divinity and kingdom, the beauty and resplendence of the divine nature, the vision and delight of the saints in the age without end, the natural ray and glory of the Divinity - this the followers of Akindynos call an apparition and a creature. Further, they slanderously call ditheists those who refuse to blaspheme as they do against the divine light and who affirm God to be uncreated both in His essence and in His energy. But they should be ashamed, for though the divine light is uncreated, there is for us one God in one divinity, since, as has been shown above in many different ways, both the uncreated essence and the uncreated energy - that is, this divine grace and illumination - pertain to one God. 148. Because the followers of Akindynos at the Synod audaciously asserted and strove to demonstrate that the divine light that shone from the Savior on Tabor was an apparition and a creature, and because they did not change their views although they were frequently confuted, they were placed under a writ of excommunication and anathema. For they blaspheme God's economy in the flesh, and mindlessly say that God's divinity is created; and in this way-since the divinity of the three Persons is one and the same - they degrade the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit themselves to the rank of a creature. And when they claim to worship an uncreated divinity, they plainly profess that there are two divinities in God, the one created and the other uncreated. In this manner they strive to surpass in impiety all the ancient heretics.
149. At other times these people contrive to conceal their heresy by saying that the light that shone on Tabor is both uncreated and also the essence of God, and in this they blaspheme in many ways. For since that light was seen by the apostles, these people perversely imagine that the essence of God is visible. Let them listen to him who says, 'No one has been in such a position as to see or disclose the essence and nature of God.' Not only men but also the angels are unable to do so; for even the six-winged Cherubim cover their faces with their wings because of the surpassing brilliance of the illumination shining from the divine essence (cf. Isa. 6:2). God's supraessentiality has never appeared to anyone at any time. Thus when the followers of Akindynos identify it with the light of the Transfiguration, what they are asserting is that this light is entirely invisible, that not even the chosen apostles were able to see it on Mount Tabor, that the Lord did not truthfully promise them the sight of it, and that he who said, 'We saw His glory when we were with Him in the holy mount' (cf. John I : 14; 2 Pet. 1:18), and 'Peter and those with him stayed awake and saw His glory' (cf. Luke 9:32), did not speak the truth; nor did that other who says that Christ's especially beloved disciple 'saw disclosed upon the mountain the actual divinity of the Logos'. Thus they saw, they truly saw that uncreated and divine effulgence, while God yet continued invisible in His supraessential hiddenness, although Barlaam and Akmdynos and their followers may explode with indignation at this.
150. Whenever one asks the Akindynists who say that the light of the Divinity is the essence: 'Is, then, the essence of God visible?', they are forced to unmask their treachery. For they assert that this light is the essence, since through it the essence of God is manifest; thus God's essence can be seen by means of created things. So once again these wretches assert that the hght of the Lord's Transfiguration is a created thing. Yet that which is seen through created things is not God's essence but His creative energy. Therefore those who say that by means of creatures God's essence is seen speak irrehgiously and in agreement with Eunomios, so prohfic is the crop of their impiety. Thus we should shun them and their company, for their teaching is a soul-destroying and many-headed serpent, corrupting the tme faith in a multitude of ways.
