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St. Gregory Palamas Capita 150

(Τοῦ αὐτοῦ μακαριωτάτου ἀρχιεπισκόπου Θεσσαλονίκης Γρηγορίου)

Κεφάλαια ἑκατόν πεντήκοντα φυσικά και θεολογικά, ἠθικά τε και πρακτικά και καθαρτικά τῆς Βαρλααμίτιδος λύμης

Ἧρχθαι τόν κόσμον και ἡ φύσις διδάσκει και ἡ ἰστορία πιστοῦται, και τῶν τεχνῶν αἱ εὑρέσεις και τῶν νόμων αἱ θέσεις και τῶν πολιτειῶν αἱ χρήσεις ἐναργῶς παριστᾶσι . σχεδόν γάρ τεχνῶν ἀπασῶν ἴσμεν τούς εὐρετάς και τούς νομοθέτας τῶν νόμων και τούς τήν ἀρχήν κεχρημένους τα ς πολιτείαις. ἔτι γε μήν και τῶν συγγραωαμένων περί ὁτουδήποτε τήν ἀρχήν ἀπάντων, και οὑδένα τούτων ὁρῶμεν ὑπερβαίνοντα τήν τοῦ κόσμου και τοῦ χρόνου γένεσιν, ἣν ἱστόρησεν ὁ Μωϋσῆς, ὁ τήν ἀρχήν τῆς τοῦ κόσμου γενέσεως συγγραψάμενος, διά τοσούτων ἔργων και λόγων ἐξαισίων ἀναντιρρήτους παρέσχετο παρέσχετο πίστεις τῆς καθ» ἑαυτόν ἀληθείας, ὡς σχεδόν ἃπαν γένος ἀνθρώπων καταπειθές ἐξειργάσθαι και καταγελᾶν ἀναπεῖσαι τῶν τἀνατία σοφισαμένων. ἐπεί και ἡ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου φύσις ἀεί προσφάτου τῆς καθ΄ ἓκαστον ἀρχῆς δεομένη και χωρίς αὐτῆς μηδαμῇ συνίστασθαι δυναμένη, τήν πρώτην ἑαυτῆς, ἣτις οὐκ ἐξ ἄλλης ἦν. ἀρχήν. δι΄ αὐτῶν παρίστησι τῶν πραγμάτων.

Gregory, the Most Blessed Archbishop of Thessalonica

One Hundred and Fifty Chapters On Topics of Natural and Theological Science, the Moral and the Ascetic Life, Intended as a Purge for the Barlaamite Corruption

1. That the world had a beginning both nature teaches and history confirms; the discovery of the arts, the introduction of laws and the governance of states also clearly affirm this. For we know the founders of almost all the arts, those who established the laws, and those who first administered the states. Furthermore, we see none of the first writers on any subject whatever surpassing the account of the beginning of the world and of time, as Moses recorded it.207 And Moses himself, who described the beginning of the generation of the world, provided irrefutable proofs of his veracity through such extraordinary words and deeds that he convinced virtually every race of men and persuaded them to deride the sophists who have argued the contrary. Since the nature of this world is such that it always requires a new cause in each instance and since without this cause it cannot exist at all, we have in these facts proof for an underived, self-existent primordial cause.

2. The nature of the contingent existence of realities in the world proves not only that the world has had a beginning but also that it will have an end, as it is continually coming to an end in part. Sure and irrefutable proof is also provided by the prophecy of Christ, God over all, and of other men inspired by God,208 whom not only the pious but also the impious must believe as truthful, when they see that they are right also in all the other things which they have predicted. From these men we can learn that this world will not in its entirety return to utter non-being, but, like our bodies and in a manner that might be considered analogous, the world at the moment of its dissolution and transformation will be changed into something more divine by the power of the Spirit.209

3. The Hellene sages say that the heaven revolves by the nature of the World Soul and that it teaches justice and reason.210 What sort of justice? What reason? For if the heaven revolves not by its own nature but by the nature of what they call the World Soul, and if the World Soul belongs to the entire world, why does the earth not revolve too, and the water, and the air? But yet, although in their opinion the soul is ever-moving,211 by its own proper nature the earth is stationary with the water taking up the lower region;212 likewise the heaven too by its own nature is ever-moving in a circular motion, while occupying the upper region. Whatever sort of thing is the World Soul by whose nature the heaven moves? Is it rational? Then it would be self-determining and it would not move the celestial body in the same perpetual movements, for self-determining bodies move differently at different times. And also, what trace of a rational soul do we see in this lowest sphere, I repeat, of the earth, or in the most proximate parts about it, namely, those of water and air, or even fire itself, for the World Soul belongs also to these? Furthermore, why according to them are some things animate and others inanimate?213 And these are not things taken at random, but every stone, every metal, all earth, water, air, fire; for they say that fire too is moved by its own nature and not by a soul.214 If then the soul is universal, why is the heaven alone moved by the nature of this soul but not by its own nature? But how is the soul not rational which according to them moves the celestial body, if indeed the same soul according to them is the source of our souls? But if it were not rational, it would be sensible or vegetative. But we see no soul of any kind moving a body without organs and we see no member serving as an organ, either for the earth, or for the heavens, or for any other of the elements in them, since any organ is composed of different natures, but each of the elements and also the heaven especially consists of a simple nature.215 «The soul then is the actuality of a body possessed of organs and having the potentiality for life.»216 But since the heaven has no member or part to serve as an organ, it has no potentiality for life. How then could that which is incapable of life ever possess a soul? «But those who became foolish in their reasonings» have fashioned «out of their senseless hearts»217 a soul which neither exists, has existed, or will exist. And this they proclaim the Creator, the guide and the controller of the entire sensible world, and of our souls, or rather, all souls, like some sort of root and source which has its generation from mind. And that so-called mind they say is other in substance than the highest one whom they call God.218 The most advanced in wisdom and theology among them teach doctrines such as these. They are no better than those who deify beasts and stones; rather they are much worse in their cult, for beasts and gold and stone and bronze are real, though they are among the least of creatures, but the star-bearing World Soul neither exists nor possesses reality, for it is nothing at all but the invention of an evil mind.219

4. Since, they say, the celestial body must be in motion but there is no further place to which it might proceed, it turns back upon itself and its advance is a revolving motion.220 Well enough, Then, if there were a place, it would be borne upwards just as fire is and even more so than fire itself, since it is naturally still lighter than fire.221 But this movement belongs not to the nature of a soul but to the nature of lightness. If then the advance of the heaven is a revolving motion, and if it possesses this by its own nature but not by the nature of the soul, the celestial body, therefore, revolves not by the nature of the soul but by its own nature. Thus, it does not have a soul, nor does there exist any heavenly or pancosmic soul; rather, the only rational soul is the human one, which is not celestial but supercelestial, not because of its location but by its own nature, inasmuch as it is an intelligent substance.222

5. The celestial body has no forward movement and extension upwards. The reason for this is not that there is no further place beyond, for even the adjacent sphere of aether enclosed within it does not proceed upwards. It is not because there is no place to which it might proceed, for the celestial expanse embraces this sphere of aether. It does not extend further upwards, since this upper region beyond the aether is lighter than it. And so, the celestial body is higher than the aether by its own nature.223 Thus, it is not because it has no place higher than itself that the heaven does not proceed upwards, but because there is no body more rarefied or lighter than it.

6. No body is higher than the celestial body. But if is not for this reason that the region beyond is not capable of admitting a body, but because the heaven encompasses all body and there is no other body beyond.224 But if it were possible to pass through the heaven, as is our pious belief, that region beyond the heaven would not be without access. For the God ‘who fills all things’225 and extends infinitely beyond the heaven existed even before the world, filling even as now he fills every place in the world. And this in no way resulted in there being a body in him. Therefore, there will be no obstacle to the absence of any kind of place outside of the heaven which surrounds the world or is in the world with the result being the presence of a body in God.

Since there is no hindrance, why then is the movement of the celestial body not directed upwards but rather turns back upon itself in a circular motion? Because it is located at the top as the most rarefied of all bodies, it is the highest body of all226 and also the most mobile. For just as that which is compressed to the utmost degree and most heavy is lowest and at the same time most stable, so that which is very low in density and most light is highest and at the same time most mobile.227 Thus, since it moves while located on the upper surface by nature, and since, owing to its own nature, the body in this upper location cannot be separated from the surface on which it is located, and since the regions on which the celestial body is located are spherical, it necessarily runs around these without ceasing,228 not by the nature of a soul but by its own proper nature as a body.229 (This must be the case,) since it changes in part from place to place, which is the movement most proper to bodies, just as the opposing state is most proper to the opposite bodies.

You should note also in the proximate regions about us the winds which are naturally situated at the top, moving about these regions without being separated but in no way proceeding further upwards, not because there is no place but because the regions beyond the winds are lighter than they. They remain in the regions where they are situated at the surface, inasmuch as they are lighter in nature than these. And the winds move around these regions, not by the nature of a soul but by their own nature. And I think, Solomon, wise in all things, wishing to indicate this partial likeness, gave the celestial body the same name as the winds when he wrote about this: «The wind proceeds round in circles and on its circuits the wind returns.»230 The nature of the winds surrounding us is as different from that of the upper regions and their very rapid movement, as it is distinct also from their lightness.

9. According to the Hellene sages, there are two opposing temperate and habitable zones on the earth, and when each of these is divided into two inhabited regions they produce four.231 And so, they assert that there are also four races of men on earth, which are unable to cross over to one another. For according to them there are those inhabiting the opposing temperate region on our flank, who are separated from us by the torrid zone of the earth. And dwelling opposite the people just mentioned are those who live, from their viewpoint, below this zone of ours; just as among those who are in identical relation to us, they say some are opposite and some are antipodal and reversed in relation to us. For they were unaware that except for a tenth part of the terrestrial sphere almost all the rest is inundated by the abyss of the waters.

10. You should know that apart from the region we inhabit there is no other habitable part of the earth, since it is inundated by the abyss, that is, if you bear in mind that the four elements which make up the world stand in equal proportion, and that in proportion to its proper density each of these occupies its own extent of the sphere to a much greater degree than the other,232 as Aristotle also agrees. «For there are five elements,» he says, «located in five spherical regions, the lesser element always being encompassed by the greater, earth by water, water by air, air by fire, fire by aether, and this constitutes the world.»233

11. Aether then is very much brighter than fire, which is also called combustible fuel,234 and fire is many times greater in volume than the sphere of air, and air in turn more than water, and water more than earth, which, as it is the most compressed, is the least in volume among the four elements under the heaven. Since the sphere of water is many times greater in magnitude than the earth, if it bad been spread around the entire circumference of the earth so that both spheres (namely, earth and water) were drawn around one centre, the water would not allow the use of any part of the earth to land animals, for the water would cover all its ground area and extend in great measure beyond its entire surface. But since it does not encompass the entire surface of the earth (for the dry land of the region we inhabit is not covered), the sphere of water must necessarily be eccentric. Therefore, we must ascertain how eccentric it would be and where the centre would be, whether below or above us. But being above us is impossible, for we see the surface of the water in part below us. In relation to us then the centre of the sphere of water lies below even the centre of the earth itself. But we must still ascertain how far this centre is from the centre of the earth.

12. You should know how far below (from our viewpoint) the centre of the earth lies the centre of the sphere of water, if you bear in mind that the surface of the water visible to us and beneath us, just as the ground of the earth we walk upon, coincides almost exactly with the surface of the terrestrial sphere which we inhabit. Our habitable portion of the earth is about a tenth of its circumference, for the earth has five zones, and a half of one of these five is inhabited by us. If then you should wish to fit a sphere around the earth onto this tenth part of the surface, you will find that the diameter of the exterior sphere which encompasses also the interior one is almost twice that of the latter, and that the exterior sphere is eight times greater in magnitude, with its centre at what seems to us the lowest extremity of the earth. This is clear from the diagram.

13. Let the sphere of the earth be a circle on the inside of which is written A B Γ Δ, and around this let there be described, in place of the sphere of water, another circle coinciding along the surface with the upper tenth of the circle within it on which is inscribed E Z H Θ. Now, below us the extremity of the inner circle will be found to be the centre of the circle described on the outside. And since the latter is twice the former in diameter, and since there are geometric proofs to show that the sphere with twice the diameter is eight times the size of the sphere with half the diameter,235 it follows then that the eighth part of this moist sphere is merged with the earth. And so, a great many springs burst up from it and abundant, ever-flowing river streams issue forth, and the gulfs of not a few seas pour into it, and a multitude of marsh waters seep upwards. And there is scarcely anywhere on earth where you can dig and not find water welling up.

14. Both the diagram and the argument prove that besides the world-region we live in there is no other. For if there were the same centre for both earth and water, the entire earth would be completely uninhabitable. Likewise, even more truly, if the water has as its centre the extremity of the earth furthest below us, apart from the region where we live which fits into the upper part of that sphere, no other part can possibly be inhabited, because they are all awash in water. And it has already been proved that the embodied rational soul is found in the only inhabited region of the earth, which by the fact that it is one and the same as ours alone now constitutes additional proof. It follows then that among the irrational beasts the land animals dwell solely in this region.

15. Sight is formed from the manifold dispositions of colours and shapes, smell from odours, taste from flavours, hearing from sounds, touch from things rough or smooth according to position.236 The formations that occur in the senses arise from bodies but are not bodies though corporeal, for they do not arise from bodies in an absolute sense, but rather from the forms which are associated with bodies. They are not themselves the forms of bodies but the impressions left by the forms, like images inseparably separate from the forms associated with bodies. This is more evident in the case of vision and especially in the case of objects seen in mirrors.

16. The imaginative faculty of the soul, which in turn appropriates these sense impressions from the senses, completely separates not the senses themselves but what we have called the images in them from the bodies and their forms. And it holds them stored there like treasures, bringing them forward interiorly for its own use, one after another, each in its own time, even when a body is absent;237 and it presents to itself all manner of things, objects of sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.

17. This imaginative faculty of the soul in the rational animal constitutes an intermediary between the mind and the senses. For when the mind beholds and dwells upon the images received within itself from the senses as separated from bodies and already incorporeal, it formulates thoughts in various ways by distinctions, analyses and syntheses. This happens in different ways: with and without passion and somewhere between passion and apatheia, both with and without error. And these are the situations from which are born most virtues and vices, as well as both good and evil opinions.238 Since not every thought comes to the mind from these and concerns these, but you could find some things which cannot fall under the observation of the senses since they are passed on to thought by the mind, for this reason I said that in thoughts not every truth or error, virtue or vice has its origin in the imagination.

18. It is a great wonder and worthy of consideration, how beauty or ugliness, wealth or poverty, honour or dishonour, and, in a word, either the intelligible light which grants eternal life239 or the intelligible darkness of chastisement becomes fixed in the soul through transitory and sensible things.

19. When the mind lingers over the imaginative faculty of the soul and thereby becomes associated with the senses, it produces a composite knowledge. For on the basis of sense perception, imagination and intellection you could arrive at an understanding that the moon gets its light from the sun, and that the moon's orbit is quite near the earth and is much below that of the sun: that is, if you should gaze with your senses at the moon which follows upon the setting sun and which is illuminated in that small part which is turned towards the sun and which then recedes little by little in the following days and is illuminated to a greater extent until the process becomes reversed, and in turn, as the moon little by little draws near the other part, it gradually diminishes in its light and moves away from the place where it originally received illumination.240 These sights you examine through the mind, in that you have previous ones in the imagination and the one which is always present to the senses.

20. We know not only the phenomena of the moon but also those of the sun, both the solar eclipses and their nodes, the parallaxes of the other celestial planets and the distances separating them and the manifold configurations formed thereby, and the phenomena of the heavens in general. And further, the laws of nature and all its methods and arts, and in general all knowledge of anything collected from perception of particulars, we have gathered together from the senses and the imagination through the mind, and no such knowledge could ever be called spiritual but rather natural, which does not attain the things of the Spirit.

21. Where can we learn anything certain and free from deceit about God, about the world as a whole, about our own selves? Is it not from the teaching of the Spirit? For this teaching has taught us that God alone is true being, eternal being and immutable being, that he neither received being out of non-being nor returns to non-being, and that he is trihypostatic and omnipotent. In six days he brought forth beings from non-being by a word, or rather, as Moses says, he established everything at once, for we have heard him say, «In the beginning God created heaven and earth»;241 not absolutely void nor without any intermediary bodies at all, for the earth was mixed with water and each was pregnant with air, and with animals and plants according to their species, while the heaven was pregnant with the various lights and fires in winch he established the universe.242 In this way then God created heaven and earth in the beginning as a sort of all-containing receptacle of matter, bearing all things in potency.243 Thereby, he rightly drives far off those who wrongly hold that matter preexisted of itself.

22. Afterwards, embellishing even as he adorns the world, the one who brought forth all things from nothing allotted in six days the proper and appropriate order to each of those which are his and make up his world. He distinguished each by command alone and brought forth into form as from hidden treasuries the things stored therein, disposing and arranging them in harmony, excellence and aptness, one to the other, each to all and all to each. With the immovable earth as a centre-point he arranged the ever-moving heaven in a circle in the uttermost heights and bound the two together with great wisdom through the middle regions. And so, the same world continues to be both stationary and mobile at the same time. For since the bodies in very rapid and perpetual motion have been arranged all in a circle, the immovable body necessarily had to occupy the middle region as its portion, counterbalancing the motion with its stability, so that the pancosmic sphere would not change position as a cylinder does.244

23. Thus, after assigning such positions to each of the two bounds of the universe, the master craftsman245 both fixed and set in motion this entire, orderly world order, so to speak, and to each of the bodies between these bounds he in turn allotted what was fitting. Some bodies he positioned above and enjoined them to move about in the upper regions and to revolve round the uppermost, boundary of the universe in a constant and right orderly fashion for all time. These are the light and active bodies which transform substances into what is useful. Quite understandably, they are situated so far above the middle region that, flaming all round, they are able to break down sufficiently the excess of cold there and restrain in its place their own excess of heat. Somehow they stay also the excessive motion of the uppermost bounds because they have their own opposing movement and they hold those bodies in place by their opposing rotation, providing us with the beneficial, yearly changes of season, the measures of temporal extension, and to the wise the knowledge of God who created, ordered and adorned the world.246 Thus, for a twofold purpose did he permit some bodies to dance round in the upper air in fast rotation, namely, for the sake of the beauty of the universe and for manifold benefit. Other bodies he set below around the middle region. These possess weight, are passible in nature and naturally come into being and change, decomposing and coming together again, or rather, they are able to change to a useful purpose. He established these things and their proportion to one another in due order so that the All may truly be called Cosmos.

24. Thus was the first of beings brought forth in creation and after the first another and after that still another, and so forth, and after all things man. He was deemed worthy by God of such honour and providential care that before him this entire sensible world came into being for his sake, and before him right from the foundation of the world the kingdom of heaven was prepared for his sake247 and counsel concerning him was taken beforehand248 and he was formed by the hand of God and according to the image of God. He did not derive everything from this matter and the sensible world like the other animals but the body only; the soul he derived from the realities beyond the world, or rather, from God himself through an ineffable insufflation,249 like some great and marvellous creation, superior to the universe, overseeing the universe and set over all creatures, capable of both knowing and receiving God, and, more than any, capable of manifesting the exceeding greatness of the Artificer; and not only is the human soul capable of receiving God through struggle and grace, but also it was able to be united with God in a single hypostasis.250

25. Here and in such things lie the true wisdom and the saving knowledge which procure blessedness on high. What Euclid, what Marinos, what Ptolemy could understand? What Empedocleans, Socratics, Aristotelians or Platonists with their logical methods and mathematical proofs?251 Or rather, what sort of sense perception has grasped such things? What mind apprehended them? If the spiritual wisdom seemed earthbound to those natural philosophers and their followers, consequently the one who stands supereminently superior to it turns out also to be such. For almost as the irrational animals are related to the wisdom of those men (or, if you wish, like little children for whom the pancakes they have at hand would seem superior to the imperial crown, or even to everything known by those philosophers), just so are these philosophers to the true and most excellent wisdom and teaching of the Spirit.

26. Knowing God in truth to the extent that this is possible is not only incomparably better than Hellenic philosophy, but also, knowing what place man has before Cod, alone of itself, surpasses all their wisdom.252 For of all earthly and heavenly things man alone was created in the image of his Maker, so that he might look in him and love him, and that he might be an initiate and worshipper of God alone and might preserve his proper beauty by faith in him and inclination and disposition towards him, and that he might know that all other things which this heaven and earth bear are inferior to himself and completely devoid of intelligence. Since the Hellenic sages have not been able to understand this at all, they have dishonoured our own nature and acted impiously towards God; «They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator,»253 endowing the sense-perceptible and insensate stars with intelligence, in each case proportionate in power and rank to its corporeal magnitude. And worshipping these in their sorry manner, they address them as superior and inferior gods and entrust them with dominion over the universe. On the basis of sensible things and philosophy on such have these men not inflicted shame, dishonour and the ultimate penury on their own souls, and also the verily intelligible darkness of punishment?

27. The knowledge that we are made in the image of the Creator does not permit us to deify even the intelligible world, for it is not the bodily constitution but the very nature of the mind which possesses this image and nothing in our nature is superior to the mind. If there were something superior, that is where the image would be. But since our superior part is the mind – and even though this is in the divine image, it was nevertheless created by God -, why then is it difficult to understand, or rather, how can it not be self-evident that the maker of our intellectual being is also the maker of all intellectual being? Therefore, every intellectual nature is a fellow servant with us and is in the image of the Creator, even though they be more worthy of honour than we because they are without bodies and are nearer to the utterly incorporeal and uncreated nature. Or rather, those among them who kept to their proper rank and longed for the goal of their being, even though they are fellow servants, are honoured by us and because of their rank are much more worthy of honour than we are. But those who did not keep to their rank but rebelled and denied the goal of their being have become utterly alienated from those who are near God and they have fallen from honour. But if they try to draw us too towards a fall, they are not only worthless and without honour but also opposed to God and harmful and most hostile to our race.

28. But natural scientists, astronomers, and those who boast of knowing everything have been unable to understand any of the things just mentioned on the basis of their philosophy and have considered the ruler of the intelligible darkness and all the rebellious powers under him not only superior to themselves but even gods and they honoured them with temples, offered them sacrifices, and submitted themselves to their most destructive oracles by which they were fittingly much deluded through unholy holy things and defiling purifications, through those who inspire abominable presumption and through prophets and prophetesses who lead them very far astray from the real truth.

29. Not only are man's knowledge of God and his understanding of himself and his proper rank (which knowledge now belongs to those who are Christians, even those considered uneducated laymen) a more lofty knowledge than natural science and astronomy and any philosophy in these subjects, but also our mind's knowledge of its own weakness and the search for its healing would be incomparably superior by far to the investigation and knowledge of the magnitudes of the stars and the reasons for natural phenomena, the origins of things below and the circuits of things above, their changes and risings, their fixed positions and retrograde motions, their disjunctions and conjunctions, and, in general, the entire multiform relation that results from their considerable motion in that region. For the mind that realizes its own weakness has discovered whence it might enter upon salvation and draw near in the light of knowledge and receive true wisdom which does not pass away with this age.

30. Every rational and intellectual nature, whether you should call it angelic or human, possesses life essentially, whereby it subsequently perdures as immortal in its existence and incapable of destruction. But our rational and intellectual nature possesses life not only essentially but also as an activity, for it gives life even to the body joined to it. And so, life might be predicated of the body as well. And whenever life is predicated of the body, this life is so predicated as dependent upon something else and is an activity of that substance, for as dependent upon something else life could never be called a substance in itself. The intellectual nature of the angels, on the other hand, does not possess life as an activity of this sort, for it did not receive from God an earthly body joined to it, so as to receive in addition a life-giving power for this purpose. However, it is susceptible of opposites, namely, good and evil. The evil angels confirm this in that they experienced a fall because of their pride. Thus, in a sense, even the angels are composite on the basis of their own substance and one of the opposing qualities, I mean virtue and vice. And so, not even these are shown to possess goodness essentially.

31. The soul of each of the irrational animals constitutes the life for the body it animates and so animals possess life not essentially but as an activity, since this life is dependent on something else and is not self-subsistent. For the soul is seen to possess nothing other than the activities operated through the body, wherefore the soul is necessarily dissolved together with the passing of the body. The soul is no less mortal than the body, since everything which it is relates and refers to mortality, and so it dies when the body does.

32. The soul of each man is also the life of the body it animates, and it possesses a life-giving activity seen as directed towards something else, namely, to the body which it vivifies. But the soul possesses life not only as an activity but also essentially, since it lives in its own right, for it is seen to possess a rational and intellectual life which is manifestly distinct from that of the body and its corporeal phenomena. For that reason, when the body passes away, the soul does not perish with it. In addition to the fact that it does not perish with the body, the soul also perdures immortally, since it is not seen as directed towards another but possesses life essentially of itself.

33. The rational and intellectual soul possesses lift essentially but is susceptible of opposites, namely, good and evil. Whence it is shown not to possess goodness essentially, just as it does not possess evil in this way, but as a sort of quality, being disposed according to either one, whenever it might be present. The quality is not spatially located, but rather it is present when the intellectual soul, having received free will from the Creator, inclines towards the quality and wills to live in accordance with it. Thus the rational and intellectual soul is composite in a sense, but not on the basis of the above-mentioned activity, for since that activity is directed towards something else it does not naturally produce composition; but rather on the basis of its own substance and of whichever one of the just mentioned opposite qualities, I mean virtue and vice.

34. The supreme mind, the highest good, the nature possessed of supernal life and divinity,254 since it is utterly and absolutely incapable of admitting contraries, manifestly possesses goodness not as a quality but as a substance.255 Therefore, any particular good that one might conceive of is found in it, or rather, the supreme mind is both that good and beyond it. And anything in the supreme mind that one might conceive of is a good, or rather, goodness and a goodness which transcends itself.256 Life too is found in it; or rather, the supreme mind is itself life, for life is a good and life in it is goodness. Wisdom too is found in it; or rather, it is itself wisdom, for wisdom is a good and wisdom in it is goodness; and similarly with eternity and blessedness and in general any good that one might conceive of.257 And there is no distinction there between life and wisdom and goodness and the like, for that goodness embraces all things collectively, unitively and in utter simplicity;258 and it is subject to both thought and expression on the basis of all good things. It is both one and true, which are good things that one might both conceive and say concerning it. But that goodness is not only identical with that which is truly conceived by those who think with a mind endowed with divine wisdom and speak of God with a tongue moved by the Spirit;259 as ineffable and inconceivable, it is also beyond these things, and is not inferior to the unitive and supernatural simplicity, in that the absolute and transcendent goodness is one. For according to this fact alone, namely, that he is absolute and transcendent goodness possessing goodness substantially, the Creator and Lord of creation is subject to both thought and expression and, in this, only on the basis of those of his energies which are directed towards creation. Therefore, he is utterly and absolutely incapable of admitting contrariety in this respect, for no substance possesses a contrary.

35. This absolute and transcendent goodness is itself also the source of goodness, for this too is a good and the highest of goods, and it could not be lacking in perfect goodness.260 Since the transcendently and absolutely perfect goodness is mind, what else but a word could ever proceed from it as from a source?261 But it is not a word in the sense we use of a word expressed orally, for that does not belong to the mind but to the body moved by the mind. Nor is it in the sense we use of a word immanent in us, for that too is so disposed within us to correspond to types of sounds. But nor is it in the sense of a word in our discursive intellect, even though it be without sounds and is produced entirely by incorporeal mental impulses, for that too is posterior to us and requires both intervals and not a few extensions of time since it comes forth gradually and is brought from incompletion in the beginning towards its completion in the end. Rather, it is in the sense of the word naturally stored up within our mind, whereby we have come into being from the one who created us according to his own image, namely, that knowledge which is always coexistent with the mind. The knowledge also present there in a special way in the supreme mind of the absolutely and transcendently perfect goodness, in which there is nothing imperfect except that this knowledge is derived from it, is indistinguishably all things that goodness is. Therefore, the supreme Word is also the Son and is so named by us, in order that we may recognize him as being perfect in a perfect and proper hypostasis,262 since he is derived from the Father and is in no way inferior to the Father's substance but is indistinguishably identical with him, though not in hypostasis, which indicates that the Word is derived from him by generation in a divinely fitting manner.

36. Since the goodness which proceeds by generation from intellectual goodness as from a source is the Word, and since no intelligent person could conceive of a word without spirit, for this reason the Word, God from God, possesses also the Holy Spirit proceeding together with him from the Father. But this is spirit not in the sense of the breath which accompanies the word passing through our lips (for this is a body and is adapted to our word through bodily organs); nor is it spirit in the sense of that which accompanies the immanent and the discursive word within us, even though it does so incorporeally, for that too entails a certain motion of the mind which involves a temporal extension in conjunction with our word and requires the same intervals and proceeds from incomplete on to completion. But that Spirit of the supreme Word is like an ineffable love of the Begetter towards the ineffably begotten Word himself. The beloved Word and Son of the Father also experiences this love towards the Begetter, but he does so inasmuch as he possesses this love as proceeding from the Father together with him and as resting connaturally in him.263 From the Word who held concourse with us through the flesh we have learned also 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 Son. For he says, «The Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father,»264 in order that we may recognize not a Word alone but also a Spirit from the Father, who is not begotten but who proceeds, but he belongs also to the Son who possesses him from the Father as Spirit of truth, wisdom and word. For truth and wisdom constitute a word appropriate to the Begetter, a Word which rejoices together with the Father who rejoices in him, according to what he said through Solomon, «I was the one (i.e., Wisdom) who rejoiced together with him.»265 He did not say «rejoiced» but «rejoiced together with,» for this pre-eternal joy of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit in that he is common to them by mutual intimacy.266 Therefore, he is sent to the worthy from both, but in his coming to be he belongs to the Father alone and thus he also proceeds from him alone in his manner of coming to be.

37. Our mind too, since it is created in the image of God, possesses the image of this highest love in the relation of the mind to the knowledge which exists perpetually from it and in it, in that this love is from it and in it and proceeds from it together with the innermost word. The insatiable desire of men for knowledge is a very clear indication of this even for those who are unable to perceive their own innermost being. But in that archetype, in that absolutely and supremely perfect goodness wherein there is no imperfection, leaving aside the being derived from it,267 the divine love is indistinguishably identical in every way with that goodness. Therefore, this love is the Holy Spirit and another (name for the) Paraclete and is so called by us, since he accompanies the Word, in order that we may recognize him as perfect in a perfect and proper hypostasis, in no way inferior to the substance of the Father but being indistinguishably identical with both the Son and the Father, though not in hypostasis – a fact which indicates to us that he is derived from the Father by way of procession in a divinely fitting manner – and in order that we may revere one true and perfect God in three true and perfect hypostases, certainly not threefold, but simple. For goodness is not something threefold nor a triad of goodnesses; rather, the supreme goodness is a holy, august and venerable Trinity flowing forth from itself into itself without change and abiding with itself before the ages in divinely fitting manner, being both unbounded and bounded by itself alone, while setting bounds for all things, transcending all things and allowing no beings independent of itself.

38. On the one hand, then, the intellectual and rational nature of the angels also possesses mind, and word from the mind, and the love of the mind for the word, which love is also from the mind and ever coexists with the word and the mind, and which could be called spirit since it accompanies the word by nature. But the angelic nature does not possess this spirit as life-giving, for it has not received from God an earthly body joined with it in order that it might receive also a life-giving and conserving power for this purpose. But, on the other hand, the intellectual and rational nature of the soul, since it was created in conjunction with an earthly body, received this spirit from God as also life-giving, through which it conserves and gives life to the body joined to it. Thereby, it is shown to men of understanding that man's spirit, the life-giving power in his body, is intellectual love; it is from the mind and the word, and exists in the word and the mind, and possesses both the word and the mind within itself. Through it the soul naturally possesses such a bond of love with its own body that it never wishes to leave it and will not do so at all unless force is brought to bear on it externally from some very serious disease or trauma.

39. The intellectual and rational nature of the soul, alone possessing mind and word and life-giving spirit, has alone been created more in the image of God than the incorporeal angels. It possesses this indefectibly even though it may not recognize its own dignity nor think or act in a manner worthy of the one who created him in his own image. Therefore, we did not destroy the image even though after our ancestor's transgression through a tree in paradise we underwent the death of the soul which is prior to bodily death, that is, separation of the soul from God, and we rejected the divine likeness. Thus, on the one hand, if the soul rejects attachment to inferior things and cleaves in love to one who is superior by submitting to him through the works and the ways of virtue, it receives from him illumination, adornment and betterment, and it obeys his counsels and exhortations from which it receives true and eternal life. Through this life it receives also immortality for the body joined to it, for at the proper time the body attains to the promised resurrection and participates in eternal glory. But, on the other hand, if it does not reject attachment and submission to inferior things whereby it inflicts shameful dishonour upon the image of God, it becomes alienated and estranged from the true and truly blessed life of God, since if it has first abandoned the one who is superior, it is justly abandoned by him.

40. The triadic nature posterior to the supreme Trinity, since, more so than others, it has been made by it in its image, endowed with mind, word and spirit (namely, the human soul), ought to preserve its proper rank and take its place after God alone and be subject, subordinate and obedient to him alone and look to him alone and adorn itself with perpetual remembrance and contemplation of him and with most fervent and ardent love for him. By these it is marvellously drawn to itself, or rather, it would eventually attract to itself the mysterious and ineffable radiance of that nature. Then, it truly possesses the image and likeness of God, since through this it has been made gracious, wise and divine. Either when the radiance is visibly present or when it approaches unnoticed, the soul learns from this now more and more to love God beyond itself and its neighbour as itself268 and from then on to know and preserve its own dignity and rank and truly to love itself. For he who loves wrongdoing hates his own soul and, in tearing apart and disabling the image of God, he experiences suffering similar to that of madmen who pitilessly cut their own flesh to pieces without feeling it. For he unwittingly inflicts the most miserable sort of harm and rending upon his own innate beauty, and mindlessly breaks apart the triadic and supercosmic world of his own soul which was filled interiorly with love. What could be more wrong, what more ruinous than to refuse to remember, to look upon and to love perpetually the one who created and adorned in his own image and thereby granted the power of knowledge and love and also lavishly endowed those who use this power well with ineffable gifts and with eternal life?

41. One of the creatures inferior to our soul and inferior by far to others is the spiritual serpent and author of evil, who is now become an angel of his own wickedness as a result of his evil counsel to men; he became lower than and inferior to all to the extent that he aspired in his arrogance to become like the Creator in power. By the Creator he was justly abandoned to the same degree that he had previously abandoned him. So great was his defection that he became opposed, contrary and manifestly adversary to him. If then the Creator is living goodness bestowing life on the living, plainly this other one is mortal evil bestowing death. For if the former possesses goodness substantially and is a nature incapable of admitting the contrary, namely, evil, inasmuch as those who have any part in evil whatsoever must not approach him, how much more does he drive as far as possible from himself the creator and originator of evil and its motivation in others? But the evil one possesses not evil but life as his substance and so he lives on immortally in it. However, he possessed life with a capacity also for evil and was honoured with free will in order that by accepting a subordinate status of his own accord and by clinging to the ever-flowing spring of goodness he might have had a share in true life. Since he willingly deserted to evil, he was deprived of true life, justly expelled from that which he had previously fled, and he is become a dead spirit, not in substance (for there is no substance of «deadness») but by rejection of true life. But unsated in his impulse to evil and by his increased state of wretchedness, he made himself into a spirit who confers death in that he eagerly draws man too into fellowship with his own death.

42. As one crooked in his ways and mighty in treacheries, the mediator and agent of death once clothed himself as a crooked serpent in the paradise of God.269 It was not that he himself became a serpent (for that is impossible except in appearance, which at that time he did not know he had to use for fear of possible discovery), but rather, not daring an open encounter, he chose a deceitful one.270 And he chose that whereby he was more confident of escaping notice, in order that by appearing friendly he might secretly introduce most hateful things and by the extraordinary fact of his talking cause stupefaction (for the sensible serpent was not rational, nor did he previously appear able to speak); and in order that he might lure the attentive Eve completely to himself and by his devices easily manipulate her that then he might immediately accustom her to submit to inferior things and become enslaved to those things which it fell to her lot to rule worthily, as she alone among sensible living beings had been favoured by the hand and word of God and made in the image of the Creator.271 But God allowed this in order that man, seeing the counsel coming from that inferior creature (for how much inferior is a serpent to man, and clearly so!), might realize how completely worthless it is and be indignant with his subjection to what is obviously inferior end preserve his proper dignity and at the same time his faithfulness to the Creator by keeping his command. Thus, he will readily become victor over the one who fell from true life; he will justly receive blessed immortality and will abide forever in life divine.

43. No being is superior to man that it should give him counsel or propose an opinion and thereby know and provide what is fitting for him. But this is so only if he guards his own rank, knows himself and the one who alone is superior to him, and if, on the one hand, he gives heed to what he might learn from that one who is superior to him, and if, on the other hand, in what he might learn is not from him, he resolutely accepts God alone as his counsellor. The angels, too, though they surpass us in dignity, yet serve those counsels of his made on our behalf, for «they are ministers sent for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.»272 This is true not for all the angels, but for those who are good and who preserved their own rank. They possess from God mind, word and spirit, three connatural realities, and they are obliged, as we are, to give their obedience to the Creator, who is mind, word and spirit. They surpass us in many ways, but there are some in which they are inferior to us, namely, as we have said and will say again, with respect to being in the image of the creator, whereby we have come to be more in the image of God than they are.

44. The angels were emphatically ordained to serve the Creator and destined only to be ruled but were not appointed to rule those after them, unless perhaps they should be sent for this purpose by the ruler of the universe. But Satan aspired in his arrogance to rule contrary to the will of the Creator and, when he left his proper rank in the company of his fellow apostate angels, he was justly abandoned by the source or true life and light and he arrayed himself in death and eternal darkness. But since man was appointed not only to be ruled but also to rule all things on earth,273 the archevil one, viewing this with envious eyes, employs every device to depose man from his dominion. While he is unable to do so by force, inasmuch as he is prevented by the Lord of all who created rational nature endowed with both freedom and free will, he treacherously proffers counsel to deprive him of dominion. Thus he robs man, or rather, he persuades him to disregard, treat as nothing and reject, or, rather, to oppose and do the opposite of the command and counsel given by the superior one, and, as man shared in his apostasy, he persuades him to share also in his eternal darkness and death.

45. The great Paul has taught us that the rational soul can exist in such a way that it is dead, though it possesses life as its being; he writes, «The self-indulgent widow is dead even while she lives.»274 He could not have said worse than this about the present subject, namely, the rational soul. For if the soul deprived of the spiritual bridegroom is not sobered, mournful and effectively leading "the difficult and hard life» of repentance,275 but rather becomes dissipated, abandoned to pleasures and self-indulgent, «it is dead even while it lives» (for in substance it is immortal). It has the capacity for death which is the worse, just as for life which is the better. But even though he speaks of the widow deprived of the corporeal bridegroom, he says she is utterly dead in soul, though self- indulgent and alive in body, since Paul also says elsewhere that «even when we were dead through our trespass, he made us alive together with Christ.»276 And what is it that St. John said: «There is sin which is unto death and there is sin which is not unto death»?277 But even the Lord, who commanded a man to leave the dead to bury the dead, declared those grave diggers to be utterly dead in soul, though alive in body.

46. The ancestors of our race wilfully removed themselves from the remembrance and contemplation of God and by disregarding his command they became of one mind with the deathly spirit of Satan and contrary to the will of the Creator they ate of the forbidden tree.278 Stripped of the luminous and living raiment of the supernal radiance, they too – alas! – became dead in spirit like Satan. Since Satan is not only a deathly spirit but also brings death upon those who draw near to him and since those who shared in his deathliness also possessed a body through which the fell counsel was realized, they communicate those deathly and fell spirits of deathliness to their own bodies. This is the case whenever the human body is dissolved, returning forthwith to the earth from which it was taken,279 unless, conserved by a superior providence and power, it patiently suffers the sentence of the one who bears all things by his word alone, for without his decree nothing at all can be accomplished and it is always carried out justly. For, as the divine psalmist says, «The Lord is just and loves justice.»280

41. According to Scripture, «God did not create death,»281 but rather he prevented its inception insofar as it was necessary and as it was possible in justice to hinder those he had created with free will. For from the beginning he introduced his plan to confer immortality and with a most firm and life-giving counsel he established his commandment. Both the prohibition and the threat were clear: he had stated resolutely that rejection of the living commandment would mean death.282 He did this so that they would preserve themselves from the experience of death either by reason of desire or knowledge or fear.283 For God loves, knows and is able to effect what is good for each one of his creatures. On the one hand, then, if God only knew what was good but did not love it, perhaps he would have stopped and left undone what he knew to be good. On the other hand, if he loved but did not know what was good or was not able to effect it, perhaps, without his willing it, what he desired and knew would remain undone. But since in a special way God loves and knows and is able to effect what is for our good, whatever happens to us through his agency, even without our willing it, happens entirely for our benefit. In whatever we willingly involve ourselves by our natural endowment with free will, great is the fear that it should turn out to be for our misfortune. Whenever in God's providence some one thing among all others is emphatically forbidden -as, for example, in paradise and in the Gospel by the Lord himself, among the offspring of Israel through the prophets, in the law of grace through his apostles and their successors – it is clearly most unprofitable and destructive to desire that thing for itself and eagerly seek after it. And if someone proffers it to us and urges us to seek it eagerly, using persuasive words and luring us with attractive forms, he is clearly inimical and hostile to our lives.

48. Therefore, either out of desire, since God desires us to live (for why would he have created us living unless he particularly wanted it so?), or because we recognize that he knows what is good for us better than we do (for how could the one who granted us knowledge not be the Lord of knowledge284 to an incomparably greater extent?), or out of fear for his all-powerful might, we ought not to have been misled, lured and persuaded at that time into rejecting God's command and counsel. And the same is true now for the saving commandments and counsels given to us after the first one. Just as now those who high-mindedly refuse to stand opposed to sin and who set at nought the divine commandments attain the contrary, namely, that which leads to interior and eternal death, unless they regain their souls by repentance, so in the same way our two ancestors, by not opposing those who persuaded them to disobey, disregarded the commandment. Because of this the sentence announced to them beforehand by the one who judges justly immediately went into effect and accordingly as soon as they ate of the tree they died. Then they understood in reality what was the commandment of truth, love, wisdom and power given to them and which they had forgotten. In shame they hid themselves,285 stripped of the glory which grants a more excellent life to the immortal spirits and without which the life of the spirits 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 that tree is shown by the quotation: «The tree, in my opinion, represented contemplation, which can be safely approached only by those with a more perfect disposition, but it is not good for those who are still quite immature and greedy in their desires, just as "perfect food is of no use for those still immature and requiring milk».»286 But even if you do not want to transfer the significance of that tree and its fruit anagogically to contemplation, it is not very hard, I think, to see that it was not yet of benefit to those who were still imperfect. In my opinion, as far as the senses were concerned, among the trees in paradise that one was the most pleasant to look upon and to eat from. But the food most pleasant to the senses is not truly and necessarily good, nor always good, nor good for everyone. Rather it is good for those who are able to enjoy it in such a way that they are not overcome and who do so when it is necessary, to the extent that it is necessary and for the glory of the one who has created it. But it is not for those unable to enjoy it in this way. For this reason I think that tree was called ‘the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.’287 For it belongs to those with a perfect disposition of divine contemplation and virtue to be familiar with the most pleasant of sensible things without also drawing their mind away from contemplation of God and from hymns and prayers addressed to him. It also belongs to these to make the most pleasant of sensible things the material and the starting point for the ascent to God and to overcome sensible pleasure completely through the movement of the intellect towards superior things, even though such a movement may be strange, considerable and quite violent, still more because of its strangeness, namely, the effort not to deprive the soul of its rationality for the sake of what at that time is evil yet thought to be good by one who is captured by it and overcome utterly.

50. Therefore, while they lived in that sacred land, it was to the profit of our ancestors and it was incumbent upon them never to have forgotten God, to have become still more practised and, as it were, schooled in the simple, true realities of goodness and to have become accomplished in the habit of contemplation. But experience of things pleasant to the senses is of no profit to those who are still imperfect, those who are in mid-course and who, compared with the strength of the experienced, are easily displaced towards good or its opposite. And the same applies to those who by nature greatly degrade these things and who dominate and draw down the entire mind in company with the senses and give way to the evil passions and prove the persuasiveness of the originator and creator of such passions of which the origin, after Satan, was the impassioned eating of the sweetest victuals. For if sight alone of that tree, according to the account, rendered the serpent an acceptable and trustworthy counsellor, how much more would the sense of taste do so for subsequent generations? And if this is true for taste, how much more for eating to satiety? Is it not clear that it was not yet to the advantage of our ancestors to eat of that tree by way of the senses? Because they did not eat from it at the proper time, was it not needful that they be expelled from the paradise of God288 lest they make that divine land into a counsel chamber and workshop of wickedness? Would it not have been fitting if the transgressors had experienced death also of the body immediately at that time? But the master was forbearing.

51. The sentence of death for the soul which the transgression put into effect for us was according to the Creator's justice, tor without compulsion he abandoned those who abandoned him when they became self-willed. That sentence had been announced by God beforehand out of his love for man,289 for the reasons we have mentioned. But he restrained and deferred at first the sentence of bodily death and when he pronounced the sentence, out of the depth of his wisdom and the abundance of his love for man he postponed its execution for a future time: he did not say to Adam, «Return from whence you were taken!,» but rather, «You are earth and unto earth you shall return.»290 Those who listen intelligently can see from these words that God did not make death, neither for the soul nor for the body.291 For neither did he at the first give the command saying, »Die on the day that you eat of it!’ but rather, «You shall die on the day you eat of it.»292 Nor thereafter did he say, "Return now unto the earth!,» but rather, «You shall return.»293 After the prior announcement he let the matter go, but without hindering its just outcome.

52. Death, then, was to follow our ancestors just as it is laid up even for those who outlive us, and our body was rendered mortal. There is also a lengthy process which in a manner of speaking is a death, or rather, ten thousand deaths following one after the other in succession, until we should come to the one final and long-lasting death. For we come into being in corruption and while coming to be we are passing away until we cease both passing away and coming to be. We are never truly the same even though to the inattentive we may seem to be. Just as with the flame of a thin reed held at the end – for that too changes from one moment to the next – the length of the reed is the measure of its existence, similarly with us too in our transience the span of life given to each man is the measure of his existence.

53. Lest we be entirely unaware of the abundance of his love for man and the depth of his wisdom, God deferred the execution of death on this account and granted man to live for a long time still. In the beginning he showed compassion in his discipline, or rather, he permitted a just discipline lest we despair completely. He also granted a time for repentance and a new life pleasing to him. He alleviated the sorrow of death by a succession of generations. He increased the race with successors so that the multitude of those begotten would initially exceed by a large measure the number of those who died. In place of the one Adam, who became pitiable and poor because of the sensible beauty of the tree, God displayed many who proceeded from sensible things to become blessedly rich in knowledge of God, in virtue, in knowledge and in divine favour: witness Seth, Enosh, Enoch, Noah, Melchisedek, Abraham, and those who have appeared between, before and after them, who were like them or nearly so. But since among so many no one lived entirely without sin so as to be able to revoke that defeat of our ancestors and to heal the wound at the root of our race and to suffice for the sanctification, blessing and return of life for all who followed, God provided for this and made a choice from the nations and tribes whence there would arise the celebrated staff from which would come the flower294 whereby he would accomplish the saving economy of the entire race.

54. ‘O the depth of God’s riches, wisdom and love for mankind!’295 For if there had been no death, and if prior to death our race had not been mortal because of such a root, we would not in fact have gained the riches of the first fruits of immortality, nor would we have been summoned up to heaven, nor would our nature have been enthroned above every principality and power ‘at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens,’296 Thus, by his wisdom and power and out of love for mankind God knows how to change to the better the falls which result from our freely willed deviation from the course.

55. Many people perhaps blame Adam for the way he was easily persuaded by the evil counsellor and rejected the divine commandment and through such a rejection procured our death. But it is not the same thing to want a taste of some deadly plant prior to testing it and to desire to eat of it after learning by the test that it is deadly. For a man who takes in some poison after testing it and wretchedly brings death upon himself is more culpable than the one who does this and suffers the consequences prior to the test. Therefore, each of us is more abundantly culpable and guilty than Adam. But is that tree not within us? Do we not, even now, have a commandment, from God forbidding us to taste of it? This tree is not found in us in the same way as the former one, but the commandment of God is with us even now. On the one hand, if we obey it and set our will to live by it, it frees us from the punishment for all our sins and from the ancestral curse and condemnation. But, on the other hand, if we reject it even now and prefer to it the temptation and counsel of the evil one, we cannot but be banished from that life and society in paradise and fall into the Gehenna of eternal fire with which we were threatened.

56. What then is this commandment now laid before us by God? It is repentance, of which the principal characteristic is to touch forbidden things no more. For we were cast out of the land of divine delight and justly shut out from the paradise of God, and we have fallen into this pit and have been condemned to dwell and live out our lives in the company of the irrational animals and have rendered beyond hope the advent of our recall to paradise. Because of this, God, who at that time rendered his judgement in justice, or rather, allowed this to come upon us justly, now out of his goodness and love for mankind, for the sake of his mercy and compassion,297 has come down to us for our sake. According to his good pleasure he became a man like us except for sin that he may teach us anew and rescue like by like, and he introduced the saving counsel and commandment of repentance, saying to us, «Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.»298 Prior to the incarnation of the Word of God the kingdom of heaven was as far from us as the sky is from the earth. But when the King of heaven sojourned among us and was pleased to become one with us, the kingdom of heaven drew near to us all.

57. Now that the kingdom of heaven has drawn near to us through the condescension of God the Word unto us, let us not remove ourselves far from it by living an unrepentant life. Rather, let us flee the wretchedness of «those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death.»299 Let us acquire the works of repentance: a humble attitude, compunction and spiritual mourning, a gentle heart full of mercy, loving justice, striving for purity, peaceful, peacemaking, patient, glad to suffer persecutions, losses, disasters, slander and sufferings for the sake of truth and righteousness. For the kingdom of heaven, or rather, the King of heaven – O the unspeakable munificence! – is within us.300 To him we ought always to cling by works of repentance and perseverance, loving as much as possible him who loved us so much.

58. The absence of passions and the presence of virtues establish love of God, for hatred of evil things and the consequent absence of the passions introduce instead the desire for and the acquisition of good things. How could one who loves and possesses good things not love in a special way the master who is goodness itself and who alone is both provider and preserver of all good? In him he has his being in a singular manner and him he bears within himself through love, according to the one who said, «He who abides in love abides in God and God in him.»301 You should know not only that love for God is based on the virtues, but also that the virtues are born of love. And so the Lord says at one point in the Gospel, «He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me»;302 and on another occasion, «He who loves me will keep my commandments.»303 But neither are the works of virtue praiseworthy and profitable for those who practise them without love, nor indeed is love without works. Paul at one time makes ample demonstration of this when he writes to the Corinthians, «If I do such and such but have not love, I gain nothing.»304 And in turn, at another time, the disciple specially beloved by Christ does likewise when he says, «Let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth.»305

59. The supreme and worshipful Father is Father of Truth itself, namely, the Only-Begotten Son. And the Holy Spirit has a spirit or truth, just as the Word of Truth demonstrated previously. Therefore, those who worship the Father in spirit and truth and hold to this manner of belief also receive the energies through these. ‘For the Spirit,’ says the Apostle, ‘is the one through whom we offer worship and through whom we pray’;306 and the Only-Begotten of God says, «No one comes to the Father except through me.»307 Therefore, «those who thus worship the supreme Father in spirit and truth are the true worshippers.»308

60. «God is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth,»309 that is, by conceiving the incorporeal incorporeally. For thus will they truly see him everywhere in his spirit and truth. Since God is spirit, he is incorporeal, but the incorporeal is not situated in place, nor circumscribed by spatial boundaries. Therefore, if someone says that God must be worshipped in some definite place among those in all earth and heaven, he does not speak truly nor does he worship truly. As incorporeal, God is nowhere; as God, he is everywhere. For if there is a mountain, place or creature where God is not, he will be found circumscribed in something. He is everywhere then, for he is boundless. How then can he be everywhere? Because he is encompassed not by a part but by the whole? Certainly not, for once again in that case he will be a body! Therefore, because he sustains and encompasses the universe, he is in himself both everywhere and also beyond the universe, worshipped by true worshippers in his spirit and truth.310

61. The angel and the soul, as incorporeal beings, are not located in place but neither are they everywhere, for they do not sustain the universe but rather are dependent upon the one who sustains them. Therefore, they belong in the one who sustains and encompasses the universe in that they are appropriately bounded by him. The soul therefore as it sustains the body together with which it was created is everywhere in the body, not as in a place, nor as if it were encompassed, but as sustaining, encompassing and giving life to it because it possesses this too in the image of God.

62. Not in this respect alone has man been created in the image of God more so than the angels, namely, in that he possesses within himself both a sustaining and life-giving power, but also as regards dominion. Contained in the nature of our soul there is on the one hand a faculty of governance and dominion and on the other hand one of natural servitude and obedience. Will, appetite, sense perception and generally those things subsequent to the mind were created by God together with the mind, even though we are sometimes disposed towards sin in our will and rebel not only against our God and universal sovereign but also against the ruling power belonging to us by nature. Nevertheless, because of the faculty of dominion within us God gave us lordship over all the earth.311 But angels do not have a body joined to them so that it is subject to the mind. The fallen angels have acquired an intellectual will which is perpetually evil, while the good angels have acquired one that is perpetually good and required no charioteer at all. The evil one did not own, rather he stole power over the earth, whence it is clear that he was not created as ruler of the earth. The good angels were appointed by the universal sovereign to keep watch over the affairs of earth after our fall and the reduction of our rank that ensued, even though it was not complete because of God's love for mankind. As Moses says in the Ode, «God established bounds for the angels when he divided up the nations.»312 This division had taken place after Cain and Seth, with the posterity of Cain being called men while the descendants of Seth were called sons of God. As it seems to me, the name thereafter distinguishes and foretells the race from which the only-begotten Son of God would take flesh.

63. In company with many others you might say that also the threefold character of our knowledge shows us to be more in the image of God than the angels, not only because it is threefold but also because it encompasses every form of knowledge. For we alone of all creatures possess also a faculty of sense perception in addition to those of intellection and reason. This faculty is naturally joined to that of reason and has discovered a varied multitude of arts, sciences and forms of knowledge: farming and building, bringing forth from nothing, though not from absolute non-being (for this belongs to God), he gave to man alone. Scarcely anything at all effected by God comes into being and falls into corruption but rather, when one thing is mixed with another among the things in our sphere, it takes another form. Furthermore, God granted to men alone that not only could the invisible word of the mind be subject to the sense of hearing when joined to the air, but also that it could be put down in writing and seen with and through the body. Thereby God leads us to a clear faith in the visitation and manifestation of the supreme Word through the flesh in which the angels have no part at all.

64. But even though we possess the image of God to a greater degree than the angels, even till the present we are inferior by far with respect to God's likeness and especially now in relation to the good angels. Leaving other things aside for now, the perfection of the likeness of God is effected by the divine illumination that comes from God. I should think that no one who reads the divinely inspired scriptures carefully and intelligently would be unaware that the evil angels have been deprived of this illumination and therefore are under darkness, whereas the divine minds are informed thereby and so are called «a secondary light and an emanation of the First Light.»313 Thence the good angels possess also knowledge of sensible things, for they apprehend these things not by a sensible and natural power but rather know them by means of a divine power, from which nothing present, past or future can be hidden.

65. Those who participate in this illumination, possessing this to a certain degree, possess also the knowledge of beings to a proportionate degree. All who have read the divinely wise theologians with some care know that the angels too have a share in this illumination, that it is uncreated and that it is not identical with the divine substance. But those who hold the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos blaspheme against this divine illumination, since they maintain either that it is a creature or that it is the substance of God, and when they call it a creature they do not allow this to be a light belonging to the angels. So let the divine revealer of the Areopagus now come forward to clarify briefly these three matters, for he says, «As the divine minds move in a circle they are united with the illuminations of the good and the beautiful which are without beginning and without end.»314 It is clear to everyone, then, that he is calling the good angels divine minds, and by presenting these illuminations in the plural he has distinguished them from the substance of God for that is one and altogether indivisible. And when he adds «without beginning and without end» to his statement, what else has he indicated to us but that the illuminations are uncreated?315

66. Now that our nature has been stripped of this divine illumination and radiance as a result of the transgression, the Word of God has taken pity on our disgrace and in his compassion has assumed our nature and has manifested it again to his chosen disciples, clothed more remarkably on Tabor.316 He indicated what we once were and what we shall become through him in the future age if we choose here below to live according to his ways as much as possible, as John Chrysostom says.317

67. Before the transgression Adam too participated in this divine illumination and radiance, and as he was truly clothed in a garment of glory he was not naked, nor was he indecent because he was naked. But he was far more richly adorned, it is not too much to say, than those who now wear diadems ornamented with much gold and shining stones. The great Paul calls this divine illumination and grace our heavenly dwelling place when he says, «Here we groan and long to put on our heavenly dwelling, so that by putting it on we may not be found naked.»318 On his way from Jerusalem to Damascus Paul too received from God the pledge of this divine illumination and of our investiture – to use the words of the Gregory who has been aptly named after Theology – «before he was cleansed of his persecuting, when he conversed with the one he was persecuting, or rather, with a brief flash of the great Light.»319

68. The divine transcendent being is never named in the plural. But the divine and uncreated grace and energy of God is divided indivisibly according to the image of the sun's ray320 which gives warmth, light, life and increase, and sends its own radiance to those who are illuminated and manifests itself to the eyes of those who see. In this way, in the manner of an obscure image, the divine energy of God is called not only one but also many by the theologians. For example, Basil the Great says, «As for the energies of the Spirit, what are they? Ineffable in their grandeur, they are innumerable in their multitude. How are we to conceive what is beyond the ages? What were his energies before intelligible creation?»321 Prior to intelligible creation and beyond the ages (for also the ages are intelligible creations) no one has ever spoken or conceived of anything created. Therefore, the powers and energies of the divine Spirit are uncreated and because theology speaks of them in the plural they are indivisibly distinct from the one and altogether indivisible substance of the Spirit.

69. As it has been made clear above by Basil the Great, the theologians treat the uncreated energy of God as multiple in that it is indivisibly divided. Since therefore the divine and divinizing illumination and grace is not the substance but the energy of God, for this reason it is treated not only in the singular but also in the plural. It is bestowed proportionately upon those who participate and, according to the capacity of those who receive it, it instills the divinizing radiance to a greater or lesser degree.

70. Isaias named these divine energies as seven, but among the Hebrews the word seven indicates many: he says, «There shall come forth a rod from the root of Jesse and a flower shall come forth from it. And seven spirits shall rest upon him: the spirit of wisdom, understanding, knowledge, piety, counsel, might, fear.»322 Those who hold the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos foolishly contend that these seven spirits are created. This opinion we examined and refuted with clarity in our extensive Antirrhetics Against Akindynos. But Gregory the Theologian, when he called to mind these divine energies of the Spirit, said, «Isaias was fond of calling the energies of the Spirit spirits.»323 And this most distinguished voice among the prophets clearly demonstrated through this number not only the distinction with respect to the divine substance but also indicated the uncreated character of these divine energies by means of the word ‘rested upon,’ for "resting upon» belongs to a pre-eminent dignity. As for those spirits that rested upon the Lord's human nature which he assumed from us, how could they be creatures?

71. According to Luke, our Lord Jesus Christ says he casts out demons by the finger of God,324 but according to Matthew it is by the Spirit of God.325 Basil the Great says that the finger of God is one of the energies of the Spirit.326 If then one of these is the Holy Spirit, the others too certainly are, since Basil has also taught us this. But on this account there are not many Gods or many Spirits, for these realities are processions, manifestations and natural energies of the one Spirit and in each case the agent is one. When the heterodox call these creatures, they degrade the Spirit of God to a creature sevenfold. But let their shame be sevenfold, for the prophet again says of the energies, «These seven are the eyes of the Lord that range over the whole earth.»327 And when he writes in Revelation, «Grace to you and peace from God and from the seven spirits which are before the throne of God, and from Christ,»328 he demonstrates clearly to the faithful that these are the Holy Spirit.

72. Through Micah the prophet our God and Father foretold the birth of the Only-Begotten in the flesh and wishing to show as well the inoriginate character of his divinity said, «His goings forth have been from the beginning, from an eternity of days.»329 The divine Fathers explained that these «goings forth» are the energies of the Godhead, as the powers and energies are identical for the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yet word is being passed around about their being created by those who eagerly hold and defend the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos. But let those who have lately come to their senses understand who is the one from the beginning, who it was to whom David, said, «From eternity (which is the same as saying »from an eternity of days») and unto eternity you are.»330 And let them consider intelligently, if they will, that God, in saying through the prophet that these goings forth are from the beginning, in no way said they came into being or were made or were created. And Basil, when, in the Spirit of God, he made the theological statement, «The energies of the Spirit existed before intelligible creation and beyond the ages,»331 did not say ‘they came into being.’ God alone, therefore, is active and all-powerful from eternity since he possesses pre-eternal powers and energies.

73. In outright opposition to the saints, those who advocate the opinion of Akindynos say, «The uncreated is unique, namely, the divine nature, and anything whatsoever distinct from this is created.»332 Thus do they make into a creature the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for there is one and the same energy for the three, and that of which the energy is created cannot itself be uncreated. For this reason it is not the energy of God that is a creature – certainly not! – but rather the effect and the product of the energy. Thus, the holy Damascene taught that the energy which is distinct from the divine nature is an essential, that is, a natural movement.333 And since the divine Cyril said that creating belongs to the divine energy,334 how can this be a created reality, unless it shall have been effected through another energy, and that in turn through another, and so on ad infinitum; and the uncreated cause of the energy is always being sought after and proclaimed?

74. Because the divine substance and the divine energy are inseparably present everywhere, the energy of God is accessible also to us creatures, for according to the theologians it is indivisibly divided, whereas the divine nature remains utterly indivisible according to them. Thus, the Church Father, Chrysostom, says, «A drop of grace filled all things with knowledge; through it wonders took place, sins were loosed.»335 When he indicated that this drop of grace was uncreated, he then hastened to show that it was an energy and not the substance; and, further, he added the distinction of the divine energy with respect to the divine substance and the hypostasis of the Spirit when he wrote: «I am speaking of this part of the operation for indeed the Paraclete is not divided.»336 The divine grace and energy at least is accessible to each of us since it is itself divided indivisibly, but since the substance of God is utterly indivisible in itself how could it be accessible to any creature?

75. There are three realities in God, namely, substance, energy and a Trinity of divine hypostases. Since it has been shown above that those deemed worthy of union with God so as to become one spirit with him (even as the great Paul has said, «He who clings to the Lord is one spirit with him.»337) are not united to God in substance, and since all theologians bear witness in their statements to the fact that God is imparticipable in substance and the hypostatic union happens to be predicated of the Word and God-man alone, it follows that those deemed worthy of union with God are united to God in energy and that the spirit whereby he who clings to God is one with God is called and is indeed the uncreated energy of the Spirit and not the substance of God, even though Barlaam and Akindynos may disagree. For God foretold through the prophet not ‘My Spirit’, but rather, «Of my Spirit I will pour out upon those who believe.»338

76. Maximus says, «Moses and David and those who have become fit for the divine energy by laying aside their carnal properties were moved at a sign from God»;339 and, «They became living icons of Christ and the same as he is, more by grace than by assimilation»;340 and, «The purity in Christ and in the saints is one»;341 and, «The radiance of our God is upon us,» sings the most divine of melodists.342 For according to Basil the Great, «As souls that bear the Spirit are illumined by the Spirit they become spiritual themselves and send forth grace to others. Thence comes foreknowledge of the future, understanding of mysteries, apprehension of things hidden, distribution of spiritual gifts, citizenship in heaven, the dance with the angels, joy without end, divine distribution, likeness to God, and the summit of our longings, namely, to become God.»343

77. In this grace and radiance and with respect to union with God the angels have precedence over men. And so they are secondary radiances, ministers of the supreme radiance; and, «The intellectual powers and ministering spirits are secondary lights, effulgences of the First Light»;344 and the angels are said to be «a primary luminous nature subsequent to the first in that they are illumined thereby»;345 and, «An angel is a secondary light, a kind of emanation or communication of the First Light»;346 and, «When the divine minds move in a circle they are united with the illuminations of the good and the beautiful which are without beginning and without end.»347 «For God himself and no other is light for the eternal beings.»348 «What the sun is for sensible beings, God is for intelligible beings. He is the primal and supreme Light that illumines all rational nature.»349 The Church Father, Chrysostom, says, «Whenever you hear the prophet saying, "I saw the Lord seated upon a throne,» do not suppose that he saw the substance but rather the condescension, and this even more obscurely than the supreme powers.»350

78. Every nature is utterly remote and absolutely estranged from the divine nature. For if God is nature, other things are not nature, but if each of the other things is nature, he is not nature: just as he is not a being, if others are beings, and if he is a being, the others are not beings. If you accept this as true also for wisdom and goodness and generally all the things around God or said about God, then your theology will be correct and in accord with the saints. But God is the nature of all beings and is referred to as such, since all participate in him and receive their constitution by this participation, not by participation in his nature, far from it, but by participation in his energy. Thus is he the very being of beings and the form in the forms as the primal form and wisdom of the wise and generally all things of all things. He is not nature because he is beyond all nature, and he is not being because he is beyond all beings, and he is not nor does he possess form because he is beyond form. How then can we draw near to God? By drawing near to his nature? But not one of all created beings possesses or will possess any communion in, or affinity to, the supreme nature. If then anyone has drawn near to God, he has surely approached him by means of his energy. How then? Is it by a natural participation in that energy? But this is common to all created beings. Therefore, it is not for those who are near by nature but for those who approach by free choice to be near to or far from God. Now free choice belongs to rational beings alone. So only these among all other beings are either far from or near to God, either by drawing close through virtue or by drawing away through evil-doing. Therefore, these beings alone are capable of wretchedness or blessedness. But let us hasten to attain blessedness.

79. One creature compared with another is said to be akin or alien to God by nature. By akin to the Godhead is meant the intellectual natures apprehended by the mind alone, and by utterly alien, those natures that are subject to sense perception, and among the latter further still from God are those which are inanimate and unmoved. Therefore, when creatures are compared with one another they are said to be akin or alien to God by nature. But all these are in themselves and by nature alien to God. For it is no more possible to say how distant intellectual nature is from God than how far sense perception and sensibles are from intellectual beings. Therefore, this is how far from God we are by our nature – woe unto us indeed! – at least, if we should not draw near to him out of free choice for the good by means of good works and ways.

80. The inspired and common tongue of the divine theologians, the godly Damascene, says in the second of his theological chapters; «One who would speak or hear about God must know clearly that in what concerns the theology and the economy not all things are inexpressible and not all are capable of expression, and neither are all things knowable nor are they all unknowable.»351 We know that whatever divine realities one desires to speak of are beyond words, since these realities are according to a transcendent word, for they are not beyond words by deficiency but beyond the words which we have within our innermost being and which we bring forth from ourselves into the hearing of others. For neither could the latter explain them by interpretation, nor could the former attain them of its own accord by investigations. Thus, we should not have recourse to ourselves to say anything about God, but rather we should direct ourselves to those who speak of the things of the Spirit in the Spirit, even when our adversaries require a word of us.

81. They say that on the portals of Plato's school there was the inscription: «Let no one enter who is ignorant of geometry.»352 One who is unable to conceive and speak of inseparable realities as separate is a man absolutely ignorant of geometry. For a limit without something limited belongs to the realm of the impossible. In the case of geometry virtually all discussion concerns limits, and even apart from actual limited things limits are sometimes defined and proposed per se because the mind separates inseparables. If a man has never learned to separate in his mind the body from the properties around it, how can he entertain nature in itself? Nature as it inheres in bodies is not only inseparable from the natural properties, but it can never exist without them. How can he entertain the universals which exist as such in particulars bur are distinguished from them by the mind and reason alone and are conceived prior to the many though they have no existence at all apart from the many, in true reasoning at least. How can he entertain intelligibles and intellectuals? How will he understand us when we say that each mind possesses also thoughts and each of the thoughts is our mind? Will he not laugh and cry out accusing us of saying that each man possesses two or many minds? If in such instances he is unable to speak of or entertain indivisible realities as distinct, how will he be able either to speak of or be taught any such thing in God's case, where according to the theologians there are and are said to be many unions and distinctions. But since «the unions prevail and have precedence over the distinctions,»353 neither eliminating them nor being hindered in any way by these. The Akindynists do not accept nor are they capable of knowing the indivisible distinction in God, even when they hear us saying of the divided union in accord with the saints, that one aspect of God is incomprehensible and another is comprehensible; that God is one, the same being incomprehensible in substance but comprehensible from his creatures according to his divine energies, namely, his eternal will for us, his eternal providence over us and his eternal wisdom concerning us, and, to use the words of the divine Maximus, «his infinite power, wisdom and goodness.»354 When Barlaam and Akindynos and those who follow in their footsteps hear us saying that these are necessary truths, they accuse us of speaking of many gods and many uncreated realities and making God composite. For they do not know that God is indivisibly divided and united divisibly and experiences neither multiplicity nor composition.

82. The great Paul, the mouth of Christ, the vessel of election, the most famed bearer of the divine name, says, «Since the creation of the world the invisible realities of God, namely, his eternal power and divinity, are perceptible to the eye of the mind in created things.»355 Is the substance of God, then, perceived by the mind in created things? Certainly not! This is the sort of thing you find in the delirious thinking of Barlaam and Akindynos and in the madness of Eunomius before them. In his discourses Eunomius, prior to these men but in the same manner, wrote that from creatures nothing other than God's substance itself is conceived. The Divine Apostle was far from teaching such notions. For he had just taught that «what can be known about God is clear,»356 and he showed that there is also something else beyond that which is knowable about God and which he himself made manifest to all men of intelligence, and then the Apostle added, «For since the creation of the world his invisible realities are perceptible to the mind in created things.»357 In this way you could learn what it is that is knowable about God. The godly Fathers say in their explanations: «In God one aspect is unknowable, namely, his substance, but another aspect is knowable, namely, all the realities which are around the substance, that is, goodness, wisdom, power, divinity or grandeur.»358 These Paul calls invisible, though perceived by the mind in created things. As for the realities around the substance of God known by the mind from creatures, how could they in turn be creatures? Therefore, the energy of God known by the mind from creatures is uncreated and is not the substance, because it is presented not only in the singular but also in the plural.

83. «Created things manifest wisdom, art and power but not the substance,» Basil the Great says in reply to Eunomius who was claiming to disclose the substance of God on the basis of creatures.359 Therefore, the energy of God manifest from created things is uncreated and not the substance. And the followers of Barlaam and Akindynos who say the divine energy is not distinct from the divine substance are clearly Eunomians.

84. In the Antirrhetics his fraternally minded brother rightly says, «When we consider the beauty and grandeur of the wonders in creation and from such as these derive other concepts concerning the divinity, we interpret each of the concepts which arise within us with its own proper name. "For from the grandeur and beauty of creatures the Creator is contemplated by analogy.» We call the Creator Demiurge; and we call powerful the one who had sufficient power to make his will reality; and just, the impartial judge. But the word θεός we have understood to have taken its force from the activity of providential overseeing. And so, although we have been taught concerning a partial energy of the divine nature, we have not attained comprehension of the substance itself through this word.»360

85. Dionysius the Areopagite, toe most prominent of theologians next to the divine apostles, after clarifying the distinction of the hypostases in God, says, «If the beneficent procession is a divine distinction because the divine unity in transcendent manner compounds and multiplies itself with goodness...»;361 and later, «We give the name divine distinction to the beneficent processions of the thearchy. For in bestowing abundantly upon all beings participation in all good things it is distinguished, in its unity and multiplied in its oneness and it enters a multiplicity inseparable from the One»;362 and later on, «To the best of our ability we try to praise these common and unified distinctions or beneficent processions of the whole Godhead.»363 Thus he clearly shows that there is another distinction alongside that of the hypostases and a distinction belonging to the Godhead, for the distinction of the hypostases is not a distinction belonging to the Godhead. And he says that according to the divine processions and energies God is multiplied and enters multiplicity and at this point he says that the same procession is also processions; but at another point, the Divnity does not enter multiplicity – certainly not! – nor as God is he subject to distinction. For us God is a Trinity but he is not threefold. Dionysius demonstrates also the uncreated character of these processions and energies, for he calls them divine and says they are distinctions belonging to the whole Godhead; he mentions also that the very thearchy itself is compounded and multiplied in these divine processions and energies while it does not assume anything external – certainly not! But this most prominent of divine hymnodists announces he will praise these processions and adds «as far as possible» to show that these transcend our praises.

86. The same divine revealer who said above that the beneficent procession is a divine distinction adds, «The incomprehensible communications are united according to the divine distinction.»364 Thus he took here all the processions and energies together and called them communications and he added that they are incomprehensible lest anyone think them to be created effects, such as the substance of each being or the sensible life of animals or the reason and intellect inhering in rational and intellectual beings. For how could these realities be incomprehensible in God while being created? How could the incomprehensible processions and communications of God be creatures, if the incomprehensible communication inheres naturally in the one who bestows it, just as we see in the case of light?

87. This great man goes on to praise such processions and energies of God with other divinely fitting names and calls them participations and absolute participations. In many places in his treatises be shows that they are beyond beings and are exemplars of beings with a preexistence in God according to a transcendent unity. How then could these be creatures? And further, to teach what these exemplars are he adds, «We call exemplars those concepts or beings which pre-exist unitively in God and which bring forth the substances of things, concepts which theology names predeterminations and divinely good volitions which are responsible for the determination and creation of beings; in accordance with these the transcendent one predetermined and brought forth all beings.»365 How then can the predeterminations and divine volitions responsible for the creation of beings be created? As for those who posit these processions and energies as created, how can they not be manifest when they drag God's providence down to the level of a creature? The energy which bestows substance, life and wisdom and which in general creates and conserves created beings is identical with the divine volitions and the divine participations themselves and the bestowal of the goodness which is cause of all things.

88. Therefore, participation in absolute being in no way participates in anything, as the great Dionysius says.366 Other participations, in that they are participations and principles of beings, participate in nothing at all, for neither has providence participated in providence nor life in life. But in that they possess being they are said to participate in absolute being, since without this they neither exist nor possess participation, just as there is no foreknowledge without knowledge. Therefore, as absolute participations they are in no way created. Thus, according to the divine Maximus these realities never had a beginning of being and they are contemplated around the substance of God and there never was a time when they were not.367 But when the Barlaamites impiously consider absolute life, goodness and so forth as created because they share the common appellation of beings, they do not realize that although they are called beings they are also beyond beings, as the great Dionysius says himself.368 Those who for this reason would facilely range the absolute participations together with creatures would also consider the Holy Spirit created, although Basil the Great says that the Spirit shares in names befitting the divinity.369

89. If someone should claim that absolute existence is a participation since it alone does not participate but is only an object of participation, for the other participations participate in it, he should know that his notion regarding the other participations is devoid of understanding. That which is living, holy and good is said to be living, holy and good by participation, not because of absolute being and participation in absolute existence, but because they participate in absolute life, holiness and goodness. Absolute lift and other such things do not become absolute life by participation in another absolute life. And so, as absolute life, it belongs among the objects of participation but not among the things which participate. As for that which does not participate in life but is itself an object of participation and which bestows life, how could it be a creature? One can argue in similar fashion in the case of the other participations.

90. Now, the divine Maximus must agree with us that the providence responsible for the creation of beings is identical with those processions of God, since he writes in the Scholia: «The creative providences and goodnesses are common to the trihypostatic unity in its distinction» (that is, «the bestowals of substance, life and wisdom»).370 Thus, by saying that these are many and distinct, he showed that these are not the substance of God, for that is one and utterly indivisible. But since he said that they are also common to the trihypostatic unity in its distinction, he did indicate to us that they are not identical with the Son and the Holy Spirit, for none of these is an energy common to the three. But by saying that these are not only providences and goodnesses but also that these are creative, he showed that they are uncreated. For if they are not, the creative power therefore will have been created by another creative power and that in turn will have been created by another; and to drive this to the ultimate absurdity, «It will not come to a stop by proceeding on forever.»371 The processions and energies of God, therefore, are uncreated and they do not come under the categories of substance or hypostasis.

91. But since the one who brought forth and adorned the universe established it as multiform by an incomparable superabundance of goodness and willed that some possess only being but that others should acquire also life in addition to being, that some should relish the possession of intellectual life while others would enjoy only sensible life; and there are some beings whom he wished to possess life compounded of both. And when these received from him rational, intellectual life, he wished that by the inclination of their will towards him they should attain union with him and thus live in a divine and supernatural manner, having been deemed worthy of his divinizing grace and energy. For his will is creation for beings, either as they are brought forth from nothing or as they are changed for the better, and this takes place in different ways. On account of this difference in the divine will for beings, that unique providence and goodness, or, in other words, the return of God towards more inferior things for the sake of goodness, both is and is referred to by the divinely wise theologians as many providences and goodnesses, for they are indivisibly divided and made manifold among divisible things. And so, it is sometimes called God's power of foreknowledge and sometimes his power of creation and conservation, and for these in turn, according to the great Dionysius, there are the bestowals of substance, life and wisdom.372 Each of these is common to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And according to each good and divine volition in our regard the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are identical with the energy and power which bestows substance, life and wisdom, and these he has called illimitable and undiminishable communications, both removing them from all created things and teaching that they inhere by nature in the one who grants participation.

92. Just as the sun, in that without diminution it bestows a measure of warmth and light upon those who participate, possesses these activities as natural end essential energies, so too the divine communications, in that without diminution they inhere in the one who bestows participation, are natural and essential energies of God, and therefore are also uncreated. Even as there is not a trace left of the sun's light when the sun is under the earth and abandons those upon the earth, it is impossible for the eye that once enjoyed this ray not to be mingled with it and through it to be united with what causes the light to pour forth. The warmth of the sun and the effects brought about by it for the generation and growth of sensible creatures when it brings together the manifold differences of the humours and qualities do not abandon these creatures even when there is no contact with the sun through the ray. In the same manner as in an obscure sensible image, only those who set their path towards the supernatural and most divine Light participate purely in divinizing grace and are thereby united with God. All other things are effects of the creative energy, brought forth from nothing by grace as a free gift but not made resplendent by the grace which is a name for the radiance of God.

93. This very radiance and divinizing energy of God, by which the beings that participate are divinized, is a certain divine grace but not the nature of God. This does not imply that God's nature is distant from those who receive grace as the nonsensical slander of Akindynos would have it, for the nature of God is omnipresent, but rather it is not participable, since no created being, as previously shown, would be capable of participating in it. The divine energy and grace of the Spirit, while it is everywhere present and is inseparable from him, remains imparticipable, as though absent, for those who are unfit for participation on account of their lack of purification. For he says, «Just as the manifestations of the persons do not occur in other sorts of matter but in those that have acquired a certain refinement and transparency, so the energy of the Spirit is not manifest in all souls but rather in those that have no perversity or deviousness»;373 and again, «The Holy Spirit is present to all, but to those who are purified of the passions he manifests his own power, while he does not yet do so for those who have left their intellect troubled by the stains of sin.»374

94. The light of the sun is inseparable from its ray and the heat produced by it, but among those who enjoy the sun's rays the light is imparticipable to those who have not acquired eyes, who share only in the warmth from the ray, for those without the benefit of eyes have no perception of light at all. So too, and much more, will there be no participation in the substance of the Creator by any of those who enjoy the divine resplendence, for there is not, nor does there exist any creature who has a power capable of perceiving the nature of the Creator.

95. Now may John, the Baptist of Christ, bear witness together with us here, in the company with John more beloved by Christ than the other disciples, and John Chrysostom, that neither is the participated energy created nor is it the substance of God. The one will do so in his account and writing, the Precursor and Baptist of Christ in saying that ‘it is not by measure that the Spirit is given to Christ by God the Father,’375 and Chrysostom as he writes in his exegetical homily, «By Spirit he means here the energy. For we all receive the energy of the Spirit in measure, but Christ possesses the entire energy without measure, in its wholeness. But if his energy is without measure, much more so is the substance.»376 By calling the energy Spirit, or rather, the very Spirit of God, as the Baptist said, and by saying that the energy is without measure he indicated its uncreated character. But by saying we receive it by measure, he indicated the difference of the uncreated energy with respect to the uncreated substance. For no one ever receives the substance of God, not even if you should understand all men taken together, each one receiving these gifts in part according to the proportion of his own purification. Chrysostom, the Church Father, goes on to point out still another difference of the uncreated substance with respect to the uncreated energy, when he says, «If the energy of the Spirit is without measure, much more so is the substance.»377

96. If, according to the nonsense of Akindynos and those who share his opinions, the divine energy is not in any sense distinct from the divine substance, then creating, which belongs to the energy, will in no way differ from generation and procession, which belong to the substance. But if creating is not distinct from generation and procession, then creatures will in no way differ from the one begotten and the one sent forth. And if according to them this is the case, both the Son of God and the Holy Spirit will in no way differ from creatures, all creatures will be begotten and sent forth by God the Father, creation will become divine, and God will share his rank with creatures. For this reason the divine Cyril pointed out the distinction between the substance and energy of God when he said that «begetting belongs to the divine nature but creating to his divine energy,» adding the wise statement, «Nature and energy are not identical,»378

97. If the divine substance is not in any sense distinct from the divine energy, then generation and procession are not distinct from creating. God the Father creates through the Son in the Holy Spirit, and so, according to the opinion of Akindynos and his followers, he both begets and sends forth through the Son in the Holy Spirit.

98. If the divine substance is not in any sense distinct from the divine energy and has not been distinguished from his will, the Only-Begotten of the Father's substance will have been created, so it seems according to them, from his will.

99. If the substance of God is not in any sense distinct from the divine energy and if there is witness among theologians that God possesses many energies since as shown above he has creative providences and goodnesses, then God has also many substances – an opinion which no one of the Christian race has ever uttered or held!

100. If the energies of God are not in any sense distinct from the divine substance, neither will they have any distinction with respect to one another. Therefore, God's will is not at all distinct from his foreknowledge, with the result that either God will not know all things beforehand for he does not will everything that happens, or he wills also evil things because he has foreknowledge of all things, and either he has not had foreknowledge of all things, which is the same as saying he is not God, or he is not good, which is the same as saying he is not God. Therefore, the divine foreknowledge is distinct from the will, and thus each of these is distinct from the divine substance.

101. If the divine energies have no distinction with respect to one another, then also the creative power is not at all distinct from his foreknowing. Since then God began to create at a particular time, his foreknowledge thus also had a beginning. But how can he be God if he did not have foreknowledge of all things before the ages?

102. If the creative energy of God is in no sense distinct from the divine foreknowledge, created things will be coincident with God's foreknowledge, created without beginning as he himself creates without beginning, since his foreknowledge is also without beginning and the objects of his foreknowledge are foreknown without beginning. But how can he be God if his creatures are in no way posterior to him?

103. If the creative energy is in no way distinct from God's foreknowledge, creating is not subject to his will since not even his foreknowledge is so subject, and God creates not by willing but by nature alone. But how can he be God if he creates without will?

104. On the one hand, God himself is within himself since the three divine hypostases are connaturally and eternally related to one another and they coinhere in one another without confusion. On the other hand, God is within the universe and the universe is within God, the one sustaining, the other being sustained by him. Therefore, all things participate in the sustaining energy but not in the substance of God. Thus, the theologians maintain that these constitute an energy of God, namely, his omnipresence.

105. Those who have pleased God and attained that for which they came into being, namely, divinization – for they say it was for this purpose that God made us, in order to make us partakers of his own divinity379 – these then are in God since they are divinized by him and he is in them since it is he who divinizes them. Therefore, these too participate in the divine energy, though in another way, but not in the substance of God. And so the theologians maintain that "divinity» is a name for the divine energy.

106. The transcendent, supremely living, divine and good nature, in that it is supremely good and divine and suchlike, is neither spoken of, nor conceived, nor contemplated in any way at all because it transcends all things and is supremely unknowable and established beyond the supercelestial minds by an incomprehensible power and is always utterly inapprehensible and ineffable for all. For it has no name in this present age nor does it receive one in the age to come, since no word is formed in the soul nor expressed in speech; there is no contact and participation, sensible or intelligible, nor any imagining at all. And so the theologians prefer to posit as closer to it the most complete incomprehensibility by apophasis, since it is transcendently apart from all things which exist or are spoken of at all. And therefore, anyone who possesses knowledge of the truth beyond all truth, if he is to name it correctly, cannot legitimately name it substance or nature. But on the other hand, since it is cause of all things and all things are around it and exist for its sake, and since it is prior to all things, and since the divine nature has conceived all things within itself beforehand in a general and indeterminate manner, its name must be derived from all things inexactly and not in a proper sense. Thus, it must be called both substance and nature, but properly the substance-bestowing procession and energy of God, for the great Dionysius says that this is «the proper way for theology to name the substance of the One Who Truly Is.»380

107. One might find the name nature imposed also on natural attributes, both in the case of created beings and in the case of God, as the most theological of the Gregorys says somewhere in his poems, «The nature of my king bestows happiness.»381 For bestowing is not the nature of anything but rather this is a natural attribute of one who is beneficent. And in the case of fire someone might say that it has as its nature upward momentum and the instilling of light in those who see, but the motion in itself is not the nature of fire, nor is the production of light in a general sense; rather, its nature is the principle of motion as such. Natural objects are therefore called nature, as the great Dionysius himself says somewhere in his writings, «Bringing forth and saving constitute the nature of the Good,»382 namely, this belongs to it by nature. And therefore whenever you hear the Fathers saying that the substance of God is imparticipable, understand the substance as inaccessible and without manifestation. And in turn, when they say it is participable, take it as the procession, manifestation and energy belonging to God by nature. And thus by embracing both you will be in agreement with the Fathers.

108. A part of the substance, even the smallest, contains all of its powers – just as a spark is radiant and illuminating, capable of penetrating and burning those who come close, self-moved by nature and possessing upward momentum, and in general those powers which fire also possesses, of which it is a small part, and as a drop possesses all those qualities which water also has, of which it is a drop, and as a nugget possesses all those qualities which the metal has, of which it is a fragment. Therefore, if indeed we participate in that undisclosed substance of God, whether in all or part of it, we will be all powerful, and thus each being will be all powerful. But not even all together do we possess God's substance, even if you speak with the intention of including all creation. Paul demonstrated this abundantly when he witnessed to those in happy possession of the divinizing gifts of the Spirit that not all the Spirit's gifts belong to each individual: «But to one, he says, is given a word of wisdom and to another a word of knowledge and to another some other gift of the same Spirit.»383 The Church Father, Chrysostom, clearly anticipates the error of Barlaam and Akindynos when he says, «One does not possess all the gifts, lest he think that grace is nature.""384 But no intelligent person would consider the grace here distinguished from the divine nature to be created, because no one would ever worry that someone might take a creature to be the nature of God, and because, even if it were distinct from the divine nature, the grace of the Spirit does not sunder the worthy from this but rather attracts them towards union with the divine Spirit.

109. A substance has as many hypostases as it has participants. And as many torches as you light from a single one, just that many hypostases of fire have you created.385 Therefore, if indeed according to our opponents the substance of God is an object of participation for all even in these respects, it will turn out to be no longer trihypostatic but multi-hypostatic. Who among those nurtured on the divine doctrines does not know that this is the nonsense of the Messalians? According to the Messalians those who have attained the height of virtue have achieved participation in the substance of God, but the followers of Akindynos in their zeal to surpass this blasphemy say that not only those among men who have excelled in virtue but also all beings in general participate in the substance of God on the very foolish pretext that this is present everywhere. Long ago Gregory, mighty in theology, refuted the mad opinions of both Akindynists and Messalians, saying, «He is Christ on account of his divinity: for this is the anointing of the humanity which the divinity sanctifies not by energy, as with the other christs, but by the presence, whole and entire, of the one who bestows the anointing.»386 The divinely wise Fathers have declared by common agreement that the Godhead dwells in those who are suitably purified but not as regards nature. Therefore, one becomes a participant in God neither by substance nor by any sort of hypostasis, for neither of these can be divided in any way whatsoever nor can either be communicated to anyone at all. And so God is utterly inaccessible in some respects even though he is everywhere present in other respects. But the energy and power common to the trihypostatic nature is variously and proportionately divided among its participants and for this reason it is accessible to those who have received grace. For according to what Basil the Great says, «The Holy Spirit is not in a single measure an object of participation for those who are worthy, but rather he divides his energy in proportion to their faith: while remaining simple in substance, he is varied in his powers.»387

110. What is said to participate in something possesses a part of that in which it participates, for even if it participates not in a part but in the whole, it would be held to possess this in a genuine sense but not to participate in it. Thus, the object of participation is divisible if indeed what participates must participate in a part. But the substance of God is absolutely indivisible and therefore it is absolutely imparticipable. At many points in his writings the Church Father, Chrysostom, declares that divisibility is a property of the divine energy.388 This is therefore the object of participation for those deemed worthy of divinizing grace. Listen then once again to Chrysostom who taught both doctrines most clearly, namely, that it is the energy and not the substance which is participated and that it is the energy which is indivisibly divided and participated, and not the imparticipable substance from which the divine energy proceeds. Positing first the statement in the Gospel, «Of his fullness we have all received,»389 he says, «For if in the case of fire that which is divided is a substance and a body, and if we both do and do not divide it, how much more so will this be true in the case of the energy, indeed the energy from an incorporeal substance?»390

111. Further, that which participates in something by substance must possess a common substance with that in which it participates and be identical with it in some respect. Who then has ever heard of there being one substance shared by God and us in any respect? Basil the Great says, «The energies of God come down to us but his substance remains inaccessible.»391 And the divine Maximus affirms, «The man divinized by grace will be everything that God is, apart from identity of substance.»392 Thus it is not possible to participate in the divine substance, not even for those divinized by grace, but it is possible to participate in the divine energy. «For to this the measured light of truth here below leads me, namely, to see and experience the radiance of God,» says Gregory the Theologian;393 and, «The radiance of our God is upon us,» according to the prophet of the Psalms;394 and, «There is one energy of God and the saints,» with all clarity writes Maximus who is one of the latter;395 and, «These are living icons of Christ and identical with him more by grace than by assimilation.»396

112. God is identical within himself since the three divine hypostases are related to one another and coinhere in one another naturally, wholly, eternally and inaccessibly, but at the same time without mixture and without confusion, just as they have also a single energy. This you could not find among any creatures. For there are similarities among creatures of the same genus, but there is an energy proper to each created hypostasis which acts on its own. This is not the case for those three divine and revered hypostases. There the energy is truly one and the same, for the motion of the divine will is unique in its origination from the primary cause in the Father, in its procession through the Son and in its manifestation in the Holy Spirit.397 This is clear from the created effects, for every natural energy is known in this way. Therefore, in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit a proper created effect is not noted for each of the hypostases in the same manner as for similar created objects on the one hand, or on the other hand as different nests are made by different swallows, and as different pages are copied by different scribes even though they are made up of the same letters; rather, all creation is a single work of the three. Hereby we have been instructed by the Fathers to consider the divine energy as one and the same for the three revered persons and not as a similar energy allotted to each.

113. Since the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit copenetrate one another without confusion and without mixture, whence we know that they have genuinely one motion and energy, the life or power which the Father possesses within himself is not other than the Son since he possesses a life and power identical with the Father, and similarly in the case of the Son and the Holy Spirit As for those who think the divine energy is in no way distinct from the divine substance, since not another but God himself is our life and since he is eternal life not in dependence upon another but in himself, they are heretics and ignorant men. They are ignorant, because they have not yet learned that the supreme Trinity is none other than God himself and that the supreme unity is none other than God himself; and this presents no obstacle to the distinction of the unity from the Trinity. They are heretics, because they eliminate both the substance and the energy, the one through the other, for what is dependent, on another is not a substance and that which is self- subsistent is not dependent on another. If then these are in no way distinct from one another, they are eliminated by one another, or rather, they remove from the number of the pious those who say that these are in no way distinct.

114. But we confess that Son of God to be our life by cause and energy and the same to be life in himself absolutely and without qualification, and we say he possesses both uncreatedly; and similarly for both the Father and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, our very life, from which we receive life as cause of living beings, is none other than the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, for it is by cause that our trihypostatic God is said to be our life. And that which is not by cause nor in dependence on another, but which, absolutely and in itself, is called in theology divine life is none other than the Father and also the Son and the Holy Spirit. Such doctrines in no way offend against those who believe God to be uncreated not only in substance and hypostasis but also in the divine energy common to the three. «We hold in our theology one God in three hypostases, possessing a single substance, power and energy, as well as those other realities contemplated around the substance, which are also called in scripture assembly and fullness of Godhead and which further are observed and recognized by theology in each of the three holy hypostases.»398

115. Those who reject this divine energy, saying sometimes that it is created and sometimes that it is not at all distinct from the divine substance, concoct at other times a new heresy, teaching that the Only-Begotten of the Father is the sole uncreated energy. With the intention of establishing this opinion they bring forward statements of the venerable Cyril: «The life which the Father possesses within himself is nothing other than the Son. And because the life in the Son is nothing other than the Father, he speaks truly who says, "I am in the Father and the Father is in me».»399 Briefly and as far as we are able we shall indicate what the saint meant by these words and refute the impiety of those who oppose us in their undiscerning darkness. In their wickedness they say that the Son is not only unlike the Father but is also posterior to the Father, because he possesses living and life not by nature but externally and by participation and addition, and because he receives and accepts this from the Father, according to the scripture text, «As the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.»400 Thus, the divine Cyril counters those who hold so impious an understanding of this Gospel passage: «Since God is referred to as life also by energy because he bestows life on living beings, for he is life for those who possess life by nature as the Creator of nature and also for those who possess divine life as he is the provider of grace. But he is also said to be life in himself, not in dependence on another but independently and utterly without qualification.»401 The divine Cyril wanted to show that in each of these two cases the Son is not at all distinct from the Father and that receiving something from the Father does not indicate the Son is posterior to the Father nor that the Son is temporally second according to substance. In addition to many others, Cyril made this statement: «It is not in receiving something that he possesses being, but rather, as a being he receives something»; and he adds by way of conclusion, «Therefore, receiving something from the Father will not entail the necessity of the Son being temporally second in substance.»402 Here, the life which the Father has and which the Son receives from the Father, he does not take to be the substance.

116. Further, the divine Cyril demonstrated that even though the Son of God is referred to by his energy as life for living beings because he bestows life upon them and is called their life, not even in this is he unlike the Father; rather, being their life and bestowing life upon them belongs to the Son by nature, just as these belong also to the Father. Then, continuing on, he wrote, «If the Son is not life by nature, how can it be true when he says, «He who believes in me has eternal life»; and again, »My sheep hear my voice and 1 give them eternal life"»;403 and further on, «Since he promises to give those who believe in him the life which belongs to and inheres in him substantially, how then is it possible to think that the Son did not have this but received it from the Father?»404 They should therefore be ashamed, those who in their madness say that this life is identical with the substance of God, whenever they hear that it belongs to him by nature. For neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Holy Spirit offers his substance to us believers. Away with such impiety!

117. And in what follows the great Cyril no less opposes those who are infected with the opinions of Barlaam, saying, «When the Son proceeds from the Father he appropriates to himself all the Father's natural attributes; and life is one of the attributes proper to the Father.»405 Thus by saying «one of the attributes proper to the Father,» he clearly demonstrated that his attributes are many. If, then, life is identified with the substance of God, God possesses many substances, according to those with such opinions. Apart from the impiety, to say that being and attribute are identical (unless of course it be in some particular respect) lacks no excess of ignorance. And still more senseless by far is it to say that being and attributes (which is the same as saying »one and the many beyond the one») are in no way distinct. For it is utterly and absolutely impossible and irrational to say that something is one and many in the same respect.

118. The divine Cyril then, in saying that life too is one of the attributes proper to the Father, indicated that he was naming life here below, not the substance of God. Well then, let us have him come forward with his own words to say that these attributes of God are many. Thus, continuing on the same subject, he says, «The supreme attributes of the Father are said to be many but the Son cannot be stripped of these.»406 How then could these many things attributed to God be the divine substance? Wishing to point out some of these supreme attributes of the Father, he brought forth Paul who says, «To the incorruptible, invisible, only wise God.»407 Hereby he gave still further proof that none of the attributes of God is equated with the substance. For how could incorruptibility and invisibility and in general all the privatives and negations, either taken together or individually, be equated with substance? For there is no substance unless there is a real object or objects. As for the positive attributes of God ranged together with these by the theologians, none of them can be shown to divulge the substance of God, even though, whenever necessary, we use all these names for that transcendent being who is utterly nameless.

119. With attributes one necessarily seeks what they belong to. And if to nothing, they are not attributes. Therefore, the attributes are not attributes. But if the attributes belong to any one thing, and if this is the substance, and if according to them this substance differs in no way at all from each attribute and from all together, and if the attributes are many, that one substance will be many substances and that which is one in substance will be many in substance and therefore will possess many substances. But if it is one and possesses many substances, by every necessity it is composite. The divine Cyril, removing the faithful from such greatly impious and ignorant opinions, says in his Treasures, «If what belongs to God alone is certainly also his substance, he will be composed of many substances as we are. For many are the attributes which belong by nature to him alone but to no other being; for example, King, Lord, incorruptible and invisible. And in addition to these, the divine scriptures say many thousands of other things concerning him. If then each of his attributes lies in the order of substance, how can the simple one not be composite? This is a most absurd conception to hold.»408

120. Cyril, wise in divine truths, showed through many demonstrations that, even though the Son is life and is said to possess life by energy because he bestows life on us and is life for the living, the Son is not unlike the Father even in this for the Father too bestows life. He wanted also to show that even if the Son is life and is said to possess life not in dependence on some other but absolutely independently and unconditionally, he is not in this way dissimilar to the Father with respect to life. This is true because, when we are speaking of God, not as our life in that be bestows life on us, but absolutely freely and without qualification, in this case we are naming his substance on the basis of the energy which belongs to him by nature, such as wisdom, goodness and all the rest. Thus, with the intention of proving this he says, «Whenever we say in this way that the Father possesses life in himself, then we are naming the Son life for he is other than the Father only in hypostasis but not in life. And so there is no consideration of any composition or duality in his regard. And again, when we say that the Son possesses life in himself and when that is understood without qualification, we are naming the Father life, for as he is life not in dependence on another but independently in himself, the Father and the Son coinhere in one another. For he has said, ‘I am in the Father and the Father is in me’.»409 Such then are the proofs the divine Cyril proposes so as to show that the life in the Father (namely, the Son) is somehow other and not other than the Father. But they say that the life in the Father is in no way other than him and is identical with him in all things since it is in no way different. By proposing such things and by affirming that the Only-Begotten of the Father is this life, in ail necessity they range themselves not with the doctrines of the venerable Cyril but with those of Sabellius.

121. But if the followers of Barlaam and Akindynos present the divine Cyril in contradiction with himself, does this not recommend the greatest condemnation? For to say now one thing, now another, with both being true, is characteristic of an orthodox theologian, but to contradict oneself is characteristic of no intelligent person. If then someone states correctly that the Son by nature possesses life, which he gives to those who believe in him, and if he then proves that not only the substance of God, which no one receives, but also his natural energy is referred to as life, which those thus vivified by him receive by grace (and so through themselves they are able to save or, putting it in other words, to render immortal in spirit those who were previously not alive in spirit and to raise up some of those who were dead in some member or even in their whole body), how then could someone who has produced such fine and wise proofs subsequently propose calling the substance of God life with the intention of eliminating this divine energy? Similarly, those who now do violence to the opinions of this saint, or rather, denounce them as false, are making senseless affirmations.

122. Not solely the Only-Begotten of God but also the Holy Spirit is called energy and power by the saints, just as they possesses the same powers and energies in exactly the same way as the Father, since according to the great Dionysius God is called power «in that he possesses beforehand in himself, and transcends, every power.»410 And so the Holy Spirit possesses each of these two as understood or expressed together with him whenever the enhypostatic reality is called an energy or power, just as Basil, who is great in every way, says, «The Holy Spirit is a sanctifying power which is substantial, real and enhypostatic.»411 Also in his treatises on the Holy Spirit he demonstrated that not all the energies derived from the Spirit are enhypostatic;412 and thereby he in turn clearly distinguished these from creatures, for there are realities derived from the Spirit which are enhypostatic, namely, creatures, because God made created substances.

123. Apophatic theology does not contradict nor does it deny cataphatic theology; rather, with respect to cataphatic statements about God, it shows that they are true and are made in an orthodox manner, and that God does not possess these things as we do. For example, God possesses knowledge of beings and we too possess this in some cases, but our knowledge refers to things in the present and in the past, whereas God's does not, for he knows these no less even prior to their coming to be. Thus, the man who says that God does not know beings as such does not contradict one who says that God does know beings and knows them as such. There is a cataphatic theology which has the force of apophatic theology; as when someone says all knowledge is applied to some object, namely, the thing known, but God's knowledge is not applied to any object, for in that very regard he says that God does not know beings as such and he does not possess knowledge of beings, that is, as we do. In this way God is referred to as non-being in a transcendent sense. But one who says this for the purpose of showing that those who say God exists are not speaking correctly is clearly not using apophatic theology in a transcendent sense but rather in the sense of deficiency to the effect that God does not exist at all. This is the acme of impiety, suffered alas by those who attempt through apophatic theology to deny that God possesses both an uncreated substance and energy. But we hold on lovingly to both without having one eliminated by the other, or rather, by means of each we confirm ourselves in an orthodox understanding.

124. To destroy utterly all the idle sophistries of the Barlaamites and to show them up as expansive trumpery, I think a short patristic quotation will suffice. For he says, «The one without beginning and the beginning and the one with the beginning constitute one God. And the beginning is not, because it is a beginning, separated from that which has no beginning. For the beginning is not its nature, any more than the being without beginning is the nature of the other. For these are around the nature, not the nature itself.»413 What, therefore, shall we say? Because the beginning and that which is without beginning are not the nature but around the nature, will someone say these are created, unless he should be mad? But if these are uncreated and belong to God's nature, is God on this account composite? Certainly not – not as long as they are distinct from the divine nature. But along with the other Fathers, the great Cyril offers abundant teaching to show that if the natural attributes of God should rather be identified with the nature, the divinity is composite.414 But go through for me the writings against Eunomius by Basil the Great and by his brother who held fraternal opinions, for there you will find the followers of Barlaam and Akindynos clearly in accord with Eunomius and you will have ample refutations against them.

125. The Eunomians held the opinion that the Father and the Son do not have the same substance because they think that every attribute of God refers to substance, and they argue contentiously that because there is a difference between begetting and being begotten, there are also on this account different substances. The Akindynists hold the opinion that it is not the same God who possesses both the divine substance and the divine energy because they think every attribute of God refers to the substance, and they argue contentiously that if there is some difference between the divine substance and energy, there are also many different Gods. For the sake of these people proof is provided that not everything said of God refers to substance; rather, the reference can be made relatively, that is, in relation to something which God is not. For example, the Father is spoken of in relation to the Son, for the Son is not the Father: and Lord, in relation to subject creation, for God rules over creatures in time and eternity and over the ages themselves. Dominion is an uncreated energy of God distinct from his substance because it is spoken of in relation to something else which he is not.

126. The Eunomians hold that anything said of God is substance, in order that they can teach that ingeneracy is the substance and thence they degrade the Son, at least as far as they are concerned, to a creature because he is distinct from the Father. And their purpose, they claim, is to avoid a position where there would be two Gods, the first unbegotten and the second begotten. In imitation of the Eunomians, the Akindynists hold that everything said of God is substance in order to degrade to a creature, in their impious manner, the energy which is not separate but is distinct from the substance of God because it is from the substance, though it is participated by creatures – for he says, «All things participate in the providence pouring forth from the Godhead that is cause of all.»415 And their purpose, they claim, is to avoid a position where there would be two Godheads, namely, the triohypostatic substance beyond name, cause and participation, and the energy of God proceeding from the substance, yet participated and named. For they do not understand that just as God the Father is called Father in relation to his own Son and being Father belongs to him as an uncreated reality even though "Father» does not denote the substance, so too God possesses also the energy as an uncreated reality even though the energy is distinct from the substance. And when we speak of one Godhead we speak of everything that God is, namely, both the substance and the energy. Therefore, they are the ones who are impiously splitting the one divinity of God into created and uncreated.

127. An accident is that which comes into being and passes away again, whereby we understand also inseparable accidents.416 But there is a sort of accident and natural attribute such as can increase and decrease, like knowledge in the rational soul, but there is no such thing in God because he remains absolutely immutable and for this reason nothing could be predicated of him as an accident. Nor indeed does everything predicated of him denote the substance, for relation is predicated of him, which is relative and refers to relationships with another but is not indicative of substance. Such also is the divine energy in God, for it is neither substance nor accident, even though it is called a quasi-accident by some theologians who are indicating solely that it is in God but is not the substance.

128. Gregory, named after theology, in writing on the Holy Spirit, teaches us that the divine energy, even though it is referred to somehow as an accident, is nevertheless contemplated in God but does not bring about composition. For he says, «The Holy Spirit belongs either in the category of those beings that subsist of themselves or in that of things observed in another. Those with skill in these matters call the former substance, the latter accident. If then he were an accident, he would be an energy of God. For what else, or of whom else, could he be, for this is surely what also avoids composition?»417 He is clearly saying that if he is in the category of things contemplated in God, and so is not a substance but is an accident and is named Spirit, he cannot possibly be anything else except an energy of God. He made this clear by saying, «For what else or of whom else could he be?» In order to prove, as well, how he could be nothing else, not a quality, not a quantity, or any such thing observed in God, but an energy alone, he adds, «For this is surely what also avoids composition.» But how does the energy observed in God avoid composition? Because he alone possesses an energy completely void of passion, for by it he is active only but is not also acted upon, neither coming into being nor changing.

129. The Theologian demonstrated a little earlier that he knew this energy to be uncreated when he set it in contradistinction to creation. For he says, «Of the wise men amongst ourselves, some have conceived of the Spirit as an energy, some as a creature and some as God.»418 Now he is here speaking of the hypostasis itself as God. And by pointing out the energy as distinct from creation, he clearly proved that it is not a creature. And a little further on he described this energy as a motion of God.419 How then could God's motion not be uncreated? The godly Damascene wrote on this question in his fifty-ninth chapter: he says, «Energy is the efficient and essential motion of nature. The capacity for energy is possessed by the nature from which the energy proceeds. The product of energy is that which is effected by the energy. And the agent of energy is the person, or hypostasis, which uses the energy.»420

130. The Akindynists have supposed and declared the divine energy to be created on the basis of what the Theologian says here: «But if he is an energy he will be actuated but will not actuate and will cease to exist as soon as he has been actuated.»421 For they were unaware that being actuated can also refer to uncreated realities, as the Theologian points out elsewhere in his writings: But if ‘Father’ is the name of an energy, «the homoousion would be the result of this action.422 The godly Damascene also says, «Christ sat down at the right hand of the Father, divinely effecting universal providence,»423 but he did not apply the term ‘he rested’ to the uncreated character of the energy. For in creating, God initiates and ceases, as Moses says, «God ceased from all the works which he had begun to create.»424 However, this act of creation, wherein God makes a beginning and an end, is a natural and uncreated energy of God.

131. After he had stated that «Energy is the efficient and essential motion of nature,»425 the divine Damascene wanted to show that the Theologian had said that such an energy is activated and ceases, and added, «Note that the energy is a motion and is activated rather than activates, as Gregory the Theologian says in his treatise on the Holy Spirit, "If he is an energy he will manifestly be actuated and will not actuate and will cease to exist as soon as he has been actuated».»426 Thus, it is obvious that by teaching that the energy is created, those who hold the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos are in their madness degrading to the level of a creature what Gregory the Theologian has called here an energy, namely, the natural and essential energy itself of God, which the holy Damascene demonstrated to be uncreated after showing that it is not only actuated but also actuates. There is abundant demonstration in my treatises showing how there is nonetheless no disagreement on this matter between the Damascene and the Theologian.

132. In God the hypostatic properties are referred to as mutual relations and the hypostases are distinct from one another but not in substance. But sometimes God is also referred to in relation to creation. For it is not as eternal, pre-eternal, mighty and good that God the all-holy Trinity can be referred to as Father, for not each of the hypostases but one of the three is the Father, from whom and unto whom subsequent realities are referred. However, he could be called Father and Trinity in relation to creation because there is one work of the three brought forth into creation from absolute nothingness and for the sake of the adoption of sons by the grace given in common by the three. For the scripture texts, «The Lord your God is one Lord»427 and «Our Father who art in heaven,»428 call the Holy Trinity our one Lord and God and also our Father who brings us to new birth by his grace. But, as we have said, the Father alone is referred to as Father in relation to the consubstantial Son. In relation to the Son and the Spirit he is also called principle. The Father is also principle in relation to creation but as Creator and master of all creatures. Thus, whenever the Father is called these things in relation to creation, the Son too is principle and there are not two principles but one. For the Son too is called principle in the capacity of his relation to creation, just like a master in relation to his servants. Therefore, the Father and the Sun, together with the Spirit, in their relation to creation constitute one principle, one master, one Creator, one God and Father, provider and ruler, etc. – and not one of these is a substance, for it would not have been referred to in relation to another if indeed it were his substance.

133. Dispositions, states, positions, temporality or any such thing are not genuinely but rather metaphorically attributed to God. But creating and acting should be attributed in the truest sense to God alone. For God alone creates, but he does not come into being nor is he acted upon as far as concerns his own substance, and he alone in all respects creates each being and he alone creates out of absolute nothingness with his all-powerful energy. And according to this energy he is referred to in relation to creation and possesses potentiality. For he can admit no experience at all within his own nature, but he can add to his creations if he should wish. To possess the potentiality for experiencing, possessing or receiving anything by substance is an indication of weakness, but to possess the potentiality for creating, possessing and adding to creatures whenever one should wish belongs to the divinely fitting and all-powerful might.

134. Although all beings, as well as those realities that are subsequently observed in substance, can be included within ten categories, namely, substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, action, affection, possession and situation,429 God is a transcendent substance in which there are observed only relation and creation, which do not produce within it any composition or alteration. For God creates all things without being affected at all in substance. He is also Creator, principle and master in relation to creation in that it has its origin in him and is dependent on him. But he is also our Father because he grants us rebirth by grace. He is Father, too, in relation to the Son who has no temporal origin whatever, and Son in relation to the Father, and the Spirit as one sent forth from the Father, coeternal with the Father and the Son, belonging to one and the same substance. Those who assert that God is substance alone with nothing observed in him are representing God as having neither creation and operation nor relation. But if the one they consider God does not possess these things, he is neither active nor Creator nor does he possess an energy. But neither is he principle, Creator and master, nor is he our Father by grace. For how could he be these things if he does not have relation and creation observed in his own substance? The trihypostatic character of the Godhead is eliminated if relation is not observed in God's substance. And one who is not trihypostatic nor master of the universe is not even God. Therefore, those who thus hold the opinions of Barlaam and Akindynos are atheists.

135. God also possesses that which is not substance. Yet it is not the case that because it is not a substance it is an accident. For that which not only does not pass away but also admits or effects no increase or diminution whatever could not possibly be numbered among accidents. But it is not true that because this is neither an accident nor substance it belongs among totally non-existent things; rather, it exists and exists truly. It is not an accident since it is absolutely immutable, but it is not a substance for it is not one of those things that can subsist on its own. And so it is called a quasi-accident by some theologians who wish to indicate only that it is not a substance. What then? Since each of the hypostatic properties and each hypostasis is neither a substance nor an accident in God, are they each on this account ranked among non-existent things? Certainly not! Thus, in the same way, the divine energy of God is neither a substance nor an accident nor is it classed among non-existent things. And, to speak in accord with all the theologians, if God creates by will and not simply by nature, then willing is one thing and natural being is another. If this is true, the divine will is other than the divine nature. What follows then? Because the will is distinct from the nature in God and is not a substance, does it on this account not exist at all? Definitely not so! Rather, it exists and belongs to God who possesses not only substance but also a will whereby he creates, whether someone wishes to call this a quasi-accident because it is not a substance, nor is it an accident, as it produces no composition or alteration at all.430 Therefore, God possesses both what is substance and what is not substance, even if it should be called an accident, namely, the divine will and energy.

136. If the substance does not possess an energy distinct from itself, it will be completely without actual subsistence and will be only a concept in the mind. For what we call the universal «man» does not think, does not hold opinions, does not see, does not smell, does not speak, does not hear, does not walk, does not breathe, does not eat – and, to put it simply, does not have an energy which is distinct from the substance and shows that he has individual subsistence. And so the universal »man» is entirely lacking actual subsistence. But when a man possesses an inherent energy distinct from his substance, whether one or more or all those we have mentioned, it is thereby recognized that the man has an individual subsistence and is not lacking actual subsistence. And since such energies are not observed in one or two or three but in numerous individuals, it is proved that man exists in a great many hypostases.

137. According to the orthodoxy of God's Church which we hold by his grace, God possesses a natural energy which makes him manifest and in this respect is distinct from his substance. For he has both foreknowledge and forethought of inferior beings. He creates, preserves, rules and transforms them according to his own will and knowledge. And so he is shown to possess individual subsistence, rather than being solely a substance without such individual subsistence. And since all such energies are contemplated in not one but three persons, God is known to us as being one substance in three hypostases.431 When the Akindynists say that God does not have a natural energy which makes him manifest, and in this respect is distinct from his substance, they are saying that God does not possess individual subsistence and they completely deprive the trihypostatic Lord of real subsistence. Their excesses surpass the heresy of Sabellius the Libyan to the extent that their irreligion surpasses the wickedness of his impiety.

138. There is one energy of the three divine hypostases not in the sense of similarity as in our case, but in the sense of truly one even in number. Those who hold the opinions of Akindynos are unable to admit this because they say that there is no common uncreated energy of the three; rather, they claim that the hypostases are energies of one another since according to them there is no common divine energy. And so they are unable to speak of one energy of the three, but in eliminating now one, now another, they thereby deprive the trihypostatic God of actual subsistence.

139. Those who are diseased in soul with the error of Akindynos are saying that the energy distinct from God's substance is created and hold the opinion that God's creating, that is, his creative power, is created. For it is impossible to be active and create without an energy, just as one cannot exist without existence. Therefore, as one cannot speak of God's existence as created and think he possesses being in an uncreated manner, so one cannot speak of God's energy as created and think that he possesses the power of operating and creating in an uncreated manner.

140. Unlike the nonsensical opinions of Akindynos, the energy of God is not and is not referred to by orthodox thinkers in terms of God's creations (Perish such a heresy!); rather, the effects of the divine energy are creatures. For if the energy is in the category of creatures or if these are uncreated (What madness!) in that they exist before they have been created or before creatures (What impiety!), God would not have an energy. But indeed he is eternally active and all-powerful – it is certainly not the energy of God, but its products and effects, however they might be named, which are creatures. God's energy is uncreated and coeternal with God, according to the theologians.

141. With respect to the fact of its existence but not as to what it is, the substance is known from the energy, not the energy from the substance. And so, according to the theologians, God is known with respect to the fact of his existence not from his substance but from his providence. In this the energy is distinct from the substance, because the energy is what reveals, whereas the substance is that which is thereby revealed with respect to the fact of existence. The advocates of Akindynos» impiety, in their haste to convince people that the divine energy is not at all distinct from the divine substance, deny God's self-revelation and eagerly try to persuade us that we cannot know that God exists, because not even they have certain knowledge. One who does not have this knowledge would be the most godless and senseless of all men.

142. When these people say that God possesses an energy but one which in no way at all differs from the substance, they are in this way trying to obfuscate their impiety and mislead and deceive their listeners with sophisms. For thus the Libyan Sabellius used to say that God the Father possesses a Son who differs from him in nothing. Therefore, just as he was accused of speaking of the Father without the Son in denying their difference in hypostasis, so too these people today, because they are saying that the divine energy differs in nothing from the divine substance, are being exposed for thinking that God does not at all possess an energy. If these things are in no way different, God possesses no capacity for creation and operation, for according to the theologians, it is impossible to act without an energy, just as, according to them, it is impossible to exist without existence. Hence it should be clear to those who think rightly that the divine energy is distinct from the divine substance for the energy effects something else, not identical with the operator. God effects and makes creatures but is himself uncreated. Relation is always spoken of in reference to another, for a son is spoken of in relation to his father but a son is never father of his father. Therefore, as it is impossible for relation not to differ in any way from the substance, and not be observed in the substance but rather be the substance, so it is entirely impossible for the energy not to differ from the substance but rather be the substance, even if Akindynos should be displeased with this.

143. Basil the Great, when he treats of God in his Syllogistic Chapters, says, «The energy is neither the one operating, nor what is operated. Therefore, the energy is not indistinct from the substance.»432 The divine Cyril also in treating of God makes the theological statement: «Creating belongs to the energy but begetting to the nature. Nature and energy are not identical.»433 And the godly Damascene: «Generation is a work of the divine nature but creation is a work of the divine will»;434 and elsewhere again he says with clarity, «Energy and the capacity for energy are different. For energy is the essential motion of nature. The capacity for energy is possessed by the nature from which the energy proceeds.»435 Thus, according to the divine Fathers, the energy is in many ways distinct from the divine substance.

144. The substance of God is entirely unnameable since it is completely incomprehensible. Thus it is given names on the basis of all its energies although one of the names there differs from another in its denotation. For on the basis of each and all the names nothing other is named than the Hidden One, while "what it is» is in no way known. But in the case of the energies each of the names has a different meaning, for who does not know that creating, ruling, judging, guiding providentially and God's adopting us as sons by his grace are different from one another? Therefore, those who say that these natural divine energies are created because they differ from one another and from the divine nature, what else but God do they drag down to the level of a creature? For things that are created, ruled, judged and all such things in general are creatures, but not the Creator, and Ruler and Judge, nor even judging, ruling and creating in themselves, which are realities observed in his nature.

145. Just as the substance of God is absolutely unnameable since it is beyond names according to the theologians, so also is it imparticipable since it is beyond participation according to them. Therefore, those who now disobey the teaching of the Spirit through our holy Fathers and revile us who agree with them, say that either there are many gods or the one God is composite, if the divine energy is distinct from the divine substance even if it be observed entirely within the substance of God. They are unaware that it is not acting and energy but being acted upon and the passivity which constitute composition. But God acts without being acted upon and without undergoing change. Therefore, he will not be composite on account of the energy. God is also described in terms of relation and is related to creation as its principle and master, but he is not numbered among creatures on this account. And further, how will there be many gods because of God's possessing an energy, if it belongs to one God, or rather, if the same God is equated with the divine substance and the divine energy? This is therefore a clear instance of the nonsense resulting from their demented state.

146. The Lord said to his disciples, «There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God come in power,»436 and ‘after six days, he look Peter, James and John, and having ascended Mount Tabor he shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light,’437 for they were not able to look at it any more; rather, when they did not have the strength to gaze at this radiance, they fell to the ground with their faces downwards.438 Nevertheless, according to the promise of the Saviour they saw the kingdom of God, that divine and ineffable Light. The great Gregory and Basil called it divinity, saying, «Light is the divinity manifested to the disciples on the Mount»;439 and «A beauty of the truly Mighty One is his intelligible and contemplated divinity,»440 Basil the Great also says that that Light is the beauty of God contemplated by the saints alone in the power of the divine Spirit.441 And so he says in turn, «Peter and the sons of thunder saw his beauty on the Mountain, surpassing the brightness of the sun in its radiance. And they were deemed worthy to receive with their eyes a foretaste of his advent.»442 Damascene the Theologian together with John Chrysostom called the Light a natural ray of the divinity. The former wrote, «The Son without beginning, begotten from the Father, acquired from the divinity the natural ray without beginning. And the glory of the divinity became also the glory of the body.»443 Chrysostom says, «The Lord appeared on the Mountain more luminous than himself when the divinity disclosed its rays.»444

147. This divine and ineffable Light, the divinity and kingdom of God, the beauty and radiance of the divine nature, the vision and delectation of the saints in the age without end, the natural ray and glory of the divinity – this the Akindynists say is an apparition and a creature. And those who refuse to share in their blasphemy against this divine Light but rather think that God is uncreated both in substance and in energy, they in their calumny declare to be ditheists. But they should be ashamed, for though the divine Light be uncreated there is for us one God and one Godhead since, as has many times been proved above, both the uncreated substance and the uncreated energy (that is, this divine grace and illumination) belong to one God.

148. Since at the time of the Synod445 the Akindynists were audaciously talking about and attempting to establish their opinion that the divine Light which shone from the Saviour on Tabor is a phantom and a creation, and since, though many times confuted, they were not won over, they were placed under a writ of excommunication and an anathema. For they blaspheme against the economy of God in the flesh and in their madness say that the divinity of God is created and they drag down to the level of a creature, at least insofar as they are able, even the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, for one and the same is the divinity of the three. And if they are saying they revere the Godhead also as uncreated, they clearly hold that there are two divinities in God, one created and the other uncreated. In this way they contend to surpass in their impiety all the heretics of old.

149. At other times contriving to cover up their heresy in this matter too, they say that the Light which shone on Tabor is both uncreated and is also the substance of God, and in this they blaspheme mightily. For since that Light was seen by the apostles, they consequently think in their evil fashion that the substance of God is visible. But they should listen to the one who said: «No one ‘has stood in the being’ and in the substance «of the Lord» and has either seen or divulged the nature of God,»446 not only no man but also none of the angels, for even the six-winged Cherubim themselves covered their faces at the abundance of the illumination which was sent forth from it.447 Since therefore the transcendent being of God has never appeared to anyone, whenever the Akindynists say that the Light is equated with it, they bear witness that this Light is entirely invisible, and that not even the chosen apostles attained this vision on the Mount, nor did the Lord truly promise this to them, and he did not speak truly who said, «We saw his glory when we were with him on the Holy Mountain,» and: »Peter and those with him stayed awake and saw his glory."448 And another says that John, the one most beloved by Christ, «saw the divinity itself of the Word disclosed on the Mountain.»449 Thus they saw and saw truly the uncreated and divine illumination of the God who remains invisible in his transcendent hiddenness, even if Barlaam and Akindynos and those of like mind should protest.

150. But whenever one questions the Akindynists who say that the Light of the Godhead is the substance, and consequently the substance of God is visible, they are forced to reveal their deceit because they say that the Light is the substance, since through the Light the substance of God is made visible, for through creatures the substance of God is visible; and in turn these wretches maintain that the Light of the Lord's Transfiguration is a created thing. But as it is seen through creatures, it is not the substance but the creative energy of God. Thus, in agreement with Eunomius, they heretically say that the substance of God is visible through creatures. So the harvest of their impiety is abundant. We should therefore flee them and their company as one would a soul-destroying, many-headed serpent, or the manifold corruption of orthodoxy.

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208

E.g., Mk 13.31, Rev 21.1.

209

Cf. Basil, Hexaemeron 1.4, pg 29:12c (sc 26bis); Pseudo-Caesarius, Quaestiones et responsiones 1.72, pg 38:940 (ἔσται μέν τῆς κτίσεως διάλυσις, οὐ παντελής δέ ἀφανισμός, ἀλλά πρός τό κρεῖττον μεταποίησις)

210

Plato, Ti. 34b-c; Lg. 10 (896d-e, 898c).

211

Idem, Phdr. 245c.

212

According to Aristotle, Cael. 1.2 (296a2–28), earth and water have a natural downward motion and are stationary only when at rest.

213

Cf. Aristotle, De anima 1.5 (411a7–16).

214

Idem, Cael.1.2 (268b26–29).

215

On the elements as ἁπλᾶ σώματα, see Aristotle, Cael. 1.2 (268b26–29), 3.1 (298a29–31), 3.8 (306b9–11).

216

The definition comes ultimately from Aristotle, De anima 2.1 (412a27–28 and 412b5–6), but note the omission of πρώτη. This was the commonplace definition used from the early patristic through the Byzantine period. E.g., Hippolytus, Philosophoumena 7.19, ed. P. Wendland (gcs), p. 194.23; Simplicius, In Aristotelis De caelo commentaria 2.1 (284a14) in cag 7:381.5–6; John Philoponus, Dc opificio mundi 6.23, ed. G. Reichardt (Leipzig, 1897), p. 278.3–5; Nikephoros Gregoras, Salutiones quaestionum 6.1–4, ed. P. L. M. Leone, «Nicephori Gregorae "Antilogia» et ‘Solutiones quaestionum’,» Byzantion 4 (1970) 510. According to George Tornikes, Anna Komnena objected to the πρώτη in Aristotle's original definition on the grounds that it might suggest that the soul is inseparable from the body and thus subject to dissolution and mortality. She therefore proposed a double actuality (διπλῆ ἐντελέχεια) for the soul (Éloge d'Anne Comnène, ed. J. Darrouzès, George et Démétrios Tornikès. Lettres et discours [Paris, 1970], p. 289. 13–19).

218

I.e., the three primal hypostases of Neoplatonic philosophy, as in Plotinus, Enn. 5.1.

219

There is s close parallel to the last section of this chapter in Palamas, Triad 1.1.18 (51.18–53.11).

220

Aristotle, Cael. 1.2 (268b14–16), 2.3 (286a11–13).

221

This would be in contradiction to Aristotle, Cael. 1.3 (270a5–6), where the fifth or primary body is said to possess no lightness or heaviness at all.

222

For the common notion of the soul as νοερά οὐσία, see e.g., Pseudo-Athanasius, Quaestiones ad Antiochum 16, pg 28:608a; John Damascene, Expositio fidei 26.16–21, ed. B. Kotter (pts 12).

223

A distinction between the celestial body and the aether would be contrary to Aristotle, Cael. 1.3 (270b20–25).

224

Aristotle, Cael. 1.9 (278b8–279a12).

225

Cf. Eph 1.23, Wis 1.7.

226

Aristotle, Cael. 1.3 (270b20–25).

227

But Aristotle, in Cael. 1.3 (270a5–6), notes that the primary body can possess no lightness or heaviness at all.

228

Cf. Aristotle, Cael. 1.3 (270b23): ... ἀπό τοῦ θεῖν ἁεί τόν αίδιον χρόνον..

229

Cf. Idem, Cael. 2.3 (286a11–13): ... ὃ φύσει κινεῖται κύκλῳ ἀεί.

231

Cf. Cleomedes, De motu circulari corporum caelestium 1.2, ed. H. Ziegler (Leipzig, 1871). Further references can be found in the notes to the translation by R. Goulet, Cléomède, Théorie élémentaire (Histoire des doctrines de 1'antiquité classique 3; Paris, 1980), pp. 187–190.

232

I.e., they have equal mass but varying density.

233

Pseudo-Aristotle, De mundo 3 (393a1–4). Note that Palamas mentioned only four elements. Similar confusion over the number of the elements continues into the next chapter.

234

Cf. Aristotle, Mete. 1.4 (341b19–24).

235

E.g., Euclid, Elementa 12.18, ed. J. L Heiberg and E. S. Stamatis, 5 vols., 2nd edition (Leipzig, 1969–77), 4:134136.

236

Cf. Aristotle, De anima 2.6 (418a12–14).

237

Cf. Palamas, Homily 53.36 (ed. Oikonomos, p. 174.1–2): φαντασία δέ ἀπό ταύτης ἔχει τήν ἀρχήν, ἐνεργεῖ δέ τά ἑαυτῆς καί αἰσθητῶν ἀπόντων.

238

Cf. idem, Homily 53.36 (ed. Oikonomos, p. 174.3–4): καί νοῦς μέν λέγοιτ» ἄν, ᾗ δίχα τούτων ἐνεργεῖ παθητυώς δ ὅμως, ὡς οὐκ ἔξω μεριστῶν.

239

Cf. Jn 8.12.

240

Even with all his polemic against profane wisdom, Palamas occasionally illustrated his arguments with surprisingly detailed descriptions of astronomical phenomena, and thereby he inadvertently reflected the contemporary revival of interest in astronomy. For another example see Ep I Akindynos 11 (ps 1:215.21–216.6).

241

Gen 1.1. For ἀθρόον see Basil, Hexaemeron 1.6, pg 29:16c-17a (sc 26bis): ἤ τάχα διά τό ἀκαριαῖον καί ἄχρονον τῆς δημιουργίας εἴρηται τό, Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν, ἐπειδή ἀμερές τι καί ἀδιάςτατον ἡ ἀρχή... ἳνα τοίνυν διδαχθῶμεν ὁμοῦ τῇ βουλήςει τοῦ θεοῦ ἀχρόνως ςυνυφεςτάναι τόν κόςμον εἴρηται τό, Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐποίησεν...Ἐν κεφαλαίῳ ἐποίησεν ὁ θεός, τουτέστιν, ἀθρόως καί ἑν ὁλίγῳ In this last sentence Basil quotes Aquila's version of Gen 1.1. Compare Gregory of Nyssa, Hexaemeron, pg 44:72ab.

242

On κυοφόρος see Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio evangelica 1.7.6, ed. K. Mras, Eusebius Werke 8.1 (gcs), p. 26, where he quotes Diodorus of Sicily.

243

In Ti. 51a-b, Plato describes the Receptacle (ὑποδοχή) as ἀνόρατον εἶδος τι και ἄμορφον, πανδεχές. Cf. Palamas, Homily 43.3 (ed. Oikonomos, p. 135.20–21): πᾶσαν γαρ ἱδέαν αἰσθητῶν τε καί αἰσθητικῶν τήν ἀρχήν ἐμφυτεύσας ὁ θεός τῇ γῇ.

244

On the cylindrical form of the earth see Basil, Hexaemeron 9.1, pg 29: 188c; Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio evangelica 1.8.2 (gcs), pp. 28–29. Eusebius was quoting the Stromateis of Pseudo-Plutarch who in turn was citing Anaximander; cf. also John Philoponus, De opificio mundi 3.10, ed. W. Reichardt (Leipzig, 1897), p. 132.7–8.

245

Cf. Gennadius (d. 471), Fragmenta in Genesim, pg 85:1629b.

246

According to Gregory of Nyssa, Hexaemeron, pg 44:69d, Moses wrote the Book of Genesis as an εἰσαγωγικόν πρός θεογνωσίαν Cf. John Philoponus, De opificio mundi 1.1, ed. Reichardt, p. 3.11–14.

248

Viz. ποιήσωμεν τόν ἄνθρωπον, Gen 1.26.

249

Cf. Gen 2.7. For Theodoret of Cyr, Quaestiones in Genesim 23, pg 80:121ab, the soul is ἐκ τοῦ θείου ἐμφυσήματος. In De opificio mundi 1.10, ed. Reichardt, p. 24.11–23, John Philaponus interpreted Gen 2.7 as follows: τήν νοεράν αὐτῆς καί λογοτήν οὐσίαν διά τούτου δηλῶν. τῶν τε σωμάτων καί τῶν ἀλόγων ψυχῶν τῷ παντί διαφέρουσαν. καί τήν πρός τά ἄνω καί θεότερα συγγένειαν αἰνιττόμενος..

250

I.e., in the incarnation of the Logos.

251

Cf. Palamas, Triad 2.3.4 (393.25–395.6): «And if you were to ask the Parthian, the Persian, the Sarmatian, you would straightaway hear from him the reply, worthy of Abraham, «I venerate the God of heaven.» Ptolemy would not have said that, nor Hipparchus, nor Marinus of Tyre, wise men in your opinion who set their minds to the truth of the celestial cycles and epicycles and spheres, but nevertheless claimed the heaven to be divine and cause of all; nor would the Aristotles and Platos have replied so, for they believe the stars to be the bodies of gods.»

252

Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, De creation hominis 1.3.8–9, ed. H. Hörner. In Praeparatio evangelica 7.10.9 (gcs), p. 381, Eusebius describes first theology as the knowledge of God and the ordering of the universe and second theology as knowledge of the nature of man (μετά θεοῦ γνῶσιν ἀναγκαίον γνῶναι τινα ἑαυτόν).

254

ὑπέρζωος – cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 2.3, pg 3:640b; dn 6.3, pg 3:857b. ὑπέρθεος – ibid., dn 2.3, pg 3:640b; dn 2.4, pg 3:641a; dn 2.10, pg 3:648d; dn 2.11, pg 3:649c.

255

Cf. ibid., dn 4.1, pg 3:693b: «When the theologians speak of goodness transcendent to the supremely divine Godhead they are distinguishing, I think, the thearchic substance itself from all things.» Note also Aristotle, Cat. 5 (3b24–25) – «Substances never have contraries»; and Cat. 8 (10b12) – «Qualities admit contrariety.»

256

ὑπεράγαθος ἀγαθότης – cf. ibid., dn 2.4, pg 3:641a; dn 4.2, pg 3:696c.

257

After goodness, Pseudo-Dionysius considers being, wisdom and life, as in dn 5.2, pg 3:816c; note also the titles of dn, chapters 4–7. In c. 34.11–12 Palamas added ἀΐδιότης and μακαριότης merely as particular instances of goodness.

258

Cf. idem, dn 5.2, pg 3:816c-817a: οὐκ ἄλλο δέ εἶναι τάγαθον φησι καί ἄλλο τό ὂν καί ἄλλο τήν ζωήν ἢ τήν σοφίαν, οὐδέ πολλά τά αἴτια καί ἄλλων ἄλλας παρακτικάς θεότητας ὑπερεχσύσας καί ὑφειμένας, ἄλλ» ἑνός θεοῦ τάς ὃλας ἀγαθάς προόδους και τάς παῥ ἡμῶν ἐξυμνουμένας θεωνυμίας. Cf. also dn 5.6, pg 3:820cd: καί ἓστιν ἐξ αὐτῆς [sc. ἡ αὐτουπεραγαθότης].

259

Cf. ibid., dn 5.3, pg 3:816c: «Our word, therefore, longs to praise the divine names that reveal the providence of God. It makes no claim to express the absolutely transcendent goodness, being, life and wisdom of the absolutely transcendent Godhead which, as scripture says, is established in hidden places beyond all goodness, divinity, being, wisdom and life. Rather, it praises that goodness which is expressed transcendently as beneficent providence and as cause of all good things.» Cf. also dn 4.1, pg 3:693b: καί ἑν αὑτῇ καί αὐτό τό εἶναι καί αἱ τῶν ὃντων ἀρχαί καί τά ὃντα πάντα...καί τοῦτο ἀσχέτως καί συνειλημμένως καί ἐνιαίως.

260

Cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 4.1, pg 3:693b: «By the reality of its being, goodness as essential good extends goodness to all beings.» And dn 2.5, pg 3:641d: «The Father is the unique source within the transcendent Godhead.»

261

For a detailed discussion of the patristic and contemporary sources for c. 35–40, see above, pp. 21–35.

262

Cf. John Damascene, Expositio fidei 8.204, ed. Kotter (pts 12): φαμέν δέ ἓκαστον τῶν τριῶν τελείαν ἔχειν ὑπόστασιν.

263

Cf. John Damascene, Expositio fidei 8.173, ed. Kotter (pts 12): καί ἐν υἰῷ ἀναπαυόμενον.

265

Prov 8.30: ἐγώ ἤμην ἦ προσέχαιρεν.

266

I interpret χρῆσις in the same sense as χρῆται in 1.14. The lexicon of Lampe, however, gives a number of instances where χρῆσις can mean a saying taken from scripture or some author. Thus, the reference could be to Prov 8.30.

267

I.e., all and any imperfection belongs to the world of being which is derived from and subsequent to Archetypal Goodness.

270

There is some uncertainty about how this sentence should be construed. Perhaps, Palamas wished to say that the serpent knew that at this time he could not use unfallen man's faculty of imagination without fear of detection; whereas after the fall that would become one of his favoured avenues of attack.

271

Cf. Gen 1.27; Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 39.13, pg 36:348d.

272

Heb 1.14.

273

Stewardship over earthly creation was considered a sign of God's image in man, especially among Antiochene theologians. Cf. John Chrysostom, Hom. in Genesim 9.2, pg 54:67ab – ποιήσωμεν ἄνθρωπον κατ» εἰκόνα ἠμετέραν καί ὀμοίωσιν, τοῦτ» ἔστιν, ἳνα ἄρχων ᾖ και τῶν ὁρωμέντων καί τῶν ἐν αὐτῷ τικτομένων παθῶν. ἴνα ἀρχῇ καί μή ἄρχηται [i.e., by Satan or by the passions].

275

Cf. Mt 7.14.

277

1Jn 5.16–17. Cf. Palamas, Ad Xenam monialem, pg 150:1048ab.

281

Wis 1.13.

282

Cf. Gen 2.17.

283

The three motives given here, namely, desire, knowledge and fear, are associated with the three powers of the soul: ἐπιθυμητικόν, λογιστικόν, θυμητικόν (cf. Palamas, Homily 9, pg 151:108c).

284

Cf. 1 Kingdoms 2.3.

286

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 38.12, pg 36:324c – Or. 45.8, pg 36:632d-633a (cf. Heb 5.12–14).

291

Cf. Wis 1.13.

296

Heb 8.1.

297

Cf. Lk 1.78.

299

PS 106.10.

306

This is not a direct quotation, but a loose paraphrase of Jn 4.23–24.

310

Cf. Jn 4.23.

312

Ode 2.8 – Deut 32.8.

313

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 40.5, pg 36:364b. Note that this quotation appears also in ca 6.9.21 (ps 3:399.9–10).

314

Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 4.8, pg 3:704d.

315

Cf. Palamas, Triad 3.2.13 (667.25–669.3): «How then can these illuminations without beginning or end not be other than the imparticipable substance of God, possessing distinction with respect to it even though they are inseparable from it? For, first of all, the substance is one but these illuminations are multiple; they are sent in a proportionate and proper manner to those who participate and they pass into multiplicity according to the distinct power that these have for receiving them.»

317

Cf. Homilia 56 in Matthaeum, pg 56:552–554; Pseudo-Chrysostom, In transfigurationem 7.46–49, ed. M. Sachot, L'homélie pseudo-chrysostomienne sur la Transfiguration (Europäische Hochschulschriften, Reihe 23, Theologie 151; Frankfurt am Main, 1981).

319

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 39.9, pg 36:344b.

320

Cf. Basil, De spiritu sancto 9.22.35 (sc 17bis).

321

Idem, 19.49.1–4. The same passage is quoted elsewhere in Palamas’ works: e.g., Divine Energies 21 (ps 2:112.9–15), dob 20 (ps 2:183.1–9), Ep Daniel Ainos 7 (ps 2:380.27–381.8).

323

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 41.3, pg 36:432c.

326

Pseudo-Basil, Adversus Eunomium 5, pg 29:716c-717a.

327

Zech 4.10.

328

Rev 1.4.

329

Mic 5.1; cf. Palamas, Ep Daniel Ainos 10 (ps 2:384.2–10).

331

This quotation is conflated from two sentences in De spiritu sancto 19.49.2–4 (sc 17bis).

332

Unidentified. Although this is given in the form of a direct quotation, Palamas may simply be summarizing the Akindynist.

333

Cf. John Damascene, Expositio fidei 37 and 59.7–9, ed. Kotter (pts 12).

334

Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 18, pg 75:312c: τό μέν ποιεῖν ἐνεργείας ἐστί

335

John Chrysostom, Expositiones in Psalmos 44.3, pg 55:186.

336

Idem. The Chrysostom passage quoted in this chapter was much favoured by Palamas: see ca 2.16.78 (ps 3:141.4–11) and 5.24.97 (361.21–27; 362.6–8); Ep Athanasius 22 (ps 2:433); Ep Symeon 10 (ps 2:405).

339

Maximus the Confessor, Disputatio cum Pyrrho, pg 91:297a.

340

Idem, Ambigua, pg 91:1253d.

341

Ibid., cf. Ad Marinum, pg 91:33a.

343

De spiritu sancto, 9.23.18–25 (sc 17bis).

344

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 44.3, pg 36:609b.

345

Idem, Or. 45.2, pg 36:624c.

346

Ibid., Or. 40.5, pg 36:364b.

347

Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 4.8, pg 3:704d.

348

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 44.3, pg 36:609c.

349

Idem, Or. 40.5, pg 36:364b.

350

Cf. John Chrysostom, In Isaiam 6, pg 56:68 (Is 6.1).

351

John Damascene, Expositio fidei 2.2–4, ed. Kotter (pts 12).

352

This inscription is discussed at length by H. D. Saffrey. «ΑΓΕΩΜΕΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗΔΕΙΣ ΕΙΣΙΤΩ: Une inscription légendaire,» Revue des études grecques 81 (1968) 67–87.

353

Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 2.11, pg 3:652a.

354

Unidentified.

358

Cf. Basil, Ep 234.1, pg 32:869ab.

359

Adversus Eunomium 2.32, pg 29:648a (sc 305).

360

Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium 1 (12), pg 45:1105c-1108b – ed. Jaeger, 1:396–397 (Wis 13.5).

361

Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 2.5, pg 3:641d-644a.

362

Idem, dn 2.11, pg 3:649b.

363

Ibid., dn 2.11, pg 3:652a. These three texts come up for discussion several times in Palamas, Union: e.g., 2 (ps 2:69.24–70.2), 27 (ps 2:88.1–5), 31 (ps 2:92.13–16).

364

Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 2.5, pg 3:644a.

365

Idem, dn 5.8, pg 3:824c.

366

Unidentified; perhaps a paraphrase, but not a direct quotation.

367

Maximus the Confessor, Capita theologica 1.48 and 50, pg 90:1100cd and 1101ab.

368

Cf. Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 11.6, pg 3:953b-956b.

369

Basil, De spiritu sancto 9.22 (sc 17bis).

370

Maximus the Confessor, Scholia in Dionysii De divinis nominibus 2.5, pg 4:221ab.

371

Unidentified, apparently a proverb.

372

Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 2.5, pg 3:644a.

373

Pseudo-Basil, In Isaiam, pg 30:121c.

374

Ibid., 121d-124a.

376

John Chrysostom, Homilia in Ioannem 30.2, pg 59:174. This is one of the most frequently quoted texts of Chrysostom in the writings of Palamas.

377

Ibid.

378

Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 18, pg 75:312c. The discussion in c. 96 is similar to that in Palamas, Ep Gabras 16 (ps 2:342–344).

380

Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 5.1, pg 3:816b. Throughout this chapter Palamas relies heavily on Pseudo-Dionysian vocabulary.

381

Gregory Nazianzen, Poemata dogmatica 4.83, pg 37:422a.

382

Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 4.19, pg 3:716c.

384

Pseudo-Chrysostom, De spiritu sancto 3, pg 52:817.

385

Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Ep 24, pg 46:1089c.

386

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 30.21, pg 36:132b.

387

John Chrysostom (not Basil), Homilia 14 in Ioannem 1, pg 59:91.

388

E.g., Hom. 14 in Ioannem 1, pg 59:91–92; Hom. 30 in Ioannem 2, pg 59:174.

390

Hom. 14 in Ioannem 1, pg 59:91–92.

391

Ep 234.1, pg 32:869ab.

392

Maximus the Confessor, cf. Ad Thalassium 22, pg 90:320a; Ambigua, pg 91:1308b.

393

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 38.11, pg 36:324a.

395

Maximus the Confessor, Ad Marinum, pg 91:33a.

396

Idem, Ambigua, pg 91:1253d.

397

Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, pg 45:125c = ed. Jaeger, 3:1.47–48.

398

Pseudo-Athanasius, Sermo in annuntiationem deiparae 2–3, pg 28:920bc; cf. Palamas, Ep Athanasios Kyzikos 5 (ps 2:415.13–16, 22–24).

399

Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 14, pg 75:244bc (Jn 14.10).

401

Unidentified.

402

Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 14, pg 75:233b. Note that the Migne text reads: οὐ γάρ ἐν τῷ δέχεσθαι τό εἶναι, ἀλλά ὢν καί ὑπάρχων πρότερον δέχεται τι.

403

Idem, Thesaurus 14, pg 75:236bc (Jn 6.47, 10.27–28).

404

Ibid.

405

Ibid., Thesaurus 14, pg 75:236c.

406

Ibid., Thesaurus 14, pg 75:240a.

408

Thesaurus 31, pg 75:444bc. Cf. Palamas, dob 35 (ps 2:197.27–198.15).

409

Unidentified (Jn 14.10).

410

Pseudo-Dionysius, dn 8.2, pg 3:889d.

411

Pseudo-Basil, Adversus Eunomium 5, pg 29:713b.

412

Ibid., pg 29:772c and 689c.

413

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 42.15, pg 36:476a.

414

E.g., Thesaurus 31, pg 75:448d.

415

Pseudo-Dionysius, ch 4.1, pg 3:177c.

416

Cf. Porphyry, Isagoge, cag 4.1, p. 12.24–26; John Damascene, Dialectica 5 (13):1–2, ed. Kotter (pts 7), p. 82.

417

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 31.6, pg 36:140a (sc 250).

418

Ibid.

419

John Damascene, and not Gregory Nazianzen, describes the energy as κίνησιν θεοῦ (see note below).

420

John Damascene, Expositio fidei 59.7–10, ed. Kotter (pts 12).

421

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 31.6, pg 36:140a.

422

Idem, Or. 29.16, pg 36:96ab (sc 250).

423

Expositio fidei 74.9–11, ed. Kotter (pts 12).

425

John Damascene, Expositio fidei 59.7–8, ed. Kotter (pts 12).

426

Ibid., 59.13–16, ed. Kotter (Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 31.6, pg 36:140a).

429

I.e., Aristotle’s ten categories: Cat. 4 (1b26–27).

430

Palamas produced a lengthy discussion of the energy as συμβεβηχός πως in ca 6.21 (ps 3:443–446).

431

This is the classic formula of Cappadocian Trinitarian theology. See J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 5th edition (London, 1977), p. 264.

432

Cf. Pseudo-Basil, Adversus Eunomium 4, pg 29:689c.

433

Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus 18, pg 75:312c.

434

Cf. John Damascene, Expositio fidei 8.67–70, ed. Kotter (pts 12).

435

Ibid., 59.6–9, ed. Kotter, p. 21.

438

For πρηνεῖς εἰς γῆν κατέπεσον cf. Μηναῖον 6 August, 9th Ode of Orthros (πρηνρῖς εἰς γῆν καταπεσόντες), ed. G.G. Gegle (Athens: M. Saliberos, n.d.).

439

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 40.6, pg 36:364a.

440

Cf. Basil, Homilia in Psalmum 44 5, pg 29:400c.

441

Cf. the contrary opinion of the Akindynists noted by Palamas in Homily 34, pg 151:429b.

442

Basil, Hom. in Ps 44 5, pg 29:400cd.

443

John Damascene, Homilia in transfigurationem domini 12, pg 96:564b.

444

The same quotation appears also in Triad 1.3.26 (165.21–33), 2.3.2 (431.7–8), 3.1.12 (581.10–12). Neither Meyendorff nor Chrestou were able to identify the passage.

445

See above, pp. 52–54.

446

Gregory Nazianzen, Or. 28.19, pg 36:52b (Jer 23.18 lxx).

447

Cf. Is 6.2. Palamas has confused Cherubim with Seraphim.

449

Symeon Metaphrastes, Commentarius in divum apostolum Ioannem 1, pg 116:685d.


Источник: The one hundred and fifty chapters / Gregorius Palamas - Toronto : Pontifical inst. of mediaeval studies, 1988. - XI, 288 с. ISBN 0-88844-083-9

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