Бог

If God wants to stop someone and hold him in His hand, then this is most inevitable, most irresistible. He speeds up the swift, outwits the cunning, overthrows the strong, humbles the high, subdues the daring, suppresses all strength (1). Let us think, firstly, about the most excellent and highest of all things God (unless someone finds it most fitting to place Him above essence or to contain all being in Him, since being is communicated from Him to the rest); Let us think, secondly, about the beings who are first from God and around God, that is, about the Angelic and Heavenly Powers, who are the first to drink from the first Light and, enlightened by the word of truth, are themselves light and reflections of perfect Light. Nothing is more characteristic of these creatures than peace and serenity. For in the Divinity there is no disagreement, because there is no disunity (since disunion is a consequence of disagreement), but in Him there is so much agreement both with Himself and with secondary beings that, along with others and preferably before other names, whatever God wants to be called, this has primarily become His name. It is called peace (Eph. 2:14), love (1 John 4:16) and similar names, inspiring us by the names themselves to strive to acquire these perfections (1). Just as the sun exposes the weakness of the eye, so by His coming God reveals the weakness of the soul; and for some He is light, and for others He is fire, depending on what substance and what quality He meets in each (1). What the sun is for sensory beings, God is for spiritual beings: one illuminates the visible world, the other illuminates the invisible; one makes bodily gaze sun-like, the other makes rational natures god-like. And just as the sun, making it possible for the seer to see, and for the visible to be visible, is itself much superior to the visible, so God, who arranges that thinking beings should have the gift of thinking, and that the imaginable should be the object of thinking, is Himself above everything mental, and every desire stops at Him, but does not extend further anywhere. For beyond Him, the most wise, sublime and inquisitive mind finds nothing higher and even nothing at all. God is the last thing desired, the pacification of all former speculations. Whoever, with the help of reason and speculation, has managed to dissolve matter and the carnal (if you call it that) cloud, or veil, to approach God, as far as is possible for human nature, and to unite with the purest Light, he is blessed, because of both the ascent from here and the deification there, to which true wisdom and elevation above material duality for the sake of the unity mentally represented in the Trinity leads. And whoever has become worse from being associated with matter and has become so attached to the mortal that he cannot look at the radiance of truth and rise above what is below him, while he himself came from above and is called to what is above, he is pitiful to me because of his blindness, even if he was prosperous in this life; even more pitiful, the more he is deceived by his happiness and believes that there is another good besides the true good, reaping that harmful fruit of his harmful opinion, which either condemns him to darkness, or looks like fire at someone whom he did not recognize as light. Such wisdom, both from the new and from the ancients, has been achieved by a few (for there are few of God, although all are God’s creatures): achieved by legislators, military leaders, priests, prophets, evangelists, apostles, shepherds, teachers, by all spiritual fullness, by the entire spiritual council... Whom do I mean by those who have achieved? - Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the twelve Patriarchs, Moses, Aaron, Jesus, the Judges, Samuel, David, Solomon until a certain time, Elijah, Elisha, the prophets who lived before and after the captivity, and those in order of the last, but in reality the first, who are close to the time of Christ's incarnation or the taking on of the flesh by Christ - this lamp that foreshadowed the Light, this voice, who preceded the Word, this intercessor who preceded the Mediator, this mediator between the Old and New Testaments, this glorious John, and the disciples of Christ, and those who after Christ either presided over the people, or became famous for their teaching, or became famous for miracles, or were sealed with blood (1). God has always been, is and will be, or, better said, always is, for the words was and will mean the divisions of our time and are characteristic of a transitory nature, but the One who exists is always. And He calls Himself by this name when talking with Moses on the mountain (see Exodus 3:14), because He concentrates in Himself the entire being, which has not begun and will not cease. Like a certain sea of essence, indefinable and endless, stretching beyond any idea of time and nature, with one mind (and this is very unclear and insufficient, not in reasoning what is in Himself, but in reasoning what is around Him), through sketching out some outlines, He is shaded into one kind of image of reality, escaping before it is caught, and escaping before it is imagined, just as embracing with radiance what is sovereign in us, if it is purified, just as the speed of flying lightning illuminates the gaze with radiance. And this, it seems to me, is in order to attract those who are comprehended to Himself (for the completely incomprehensible is hopeless and inaccessible), and to surprise those who are incomprehensible, and through surprise to arouse a greater desire, and through the desire to purify, and through purification to make us God-like, and when we become such, we can already talk as with the eternal (one dares to say something bold) - we can talk with God, who has entered into unity with the gods and is known by them, can to be as much as He knows those whom He knows (see 1 Cor. 13:12). So, the Divinity is limitless and difficult to contemplate. In Him this one thing is completely comprehensible - His infinity; although others consider it an attribute of nature to be either completely incomprehensible or completely comprehensible. But let us examine what constitutes the essence of simple nature; because simplicity does not yet constitute his nature, just as complexity alone does not constitute the nature of complex beings. Reason, considering the infinite in two respects - in relation to the beginning and in relation to the end (for the infinite extends beyond the beginning and the end and does not lie between them), when it directs its gaze into the mountain abyss and does not find where to stop and where to put a limit to its ideas about God, then the infinite and unsearchable is called beginningless; and when, rushing into the deep abyss, he experiences the same as before, then he calls Him immortal and incorruptible; when it brings both into unity, then it calls it eternal; for eternity is neither time nor a part of time; because it is immeasurable. But what is time for us, measured by the flow of the sun, is for the eternal eternity, something coextensive with eternal beings and, as it were, some temporary movement and distance (1). God is the highest Light, unapproachable, unspoken, neither comprehended by the mind, nor expressed in words, enlightening all rational nature, He is the same in the spiritual world as the sun in the sensory world, as we are purified, represented, as we are represented, arousing love for Himself and, as love is again intelligible, only contemplated and attainable for Himself, and pouring out little on what exists outside Him. I am talking about the light contemplated in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the riches of which are in naturalness and in a single emission of lightness (1). When I name God, I mean the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, which divide the Divinities beyond this number of Persons, so as not to introduce a plurality of gods, so as not to limit them to a smaller number, so as not to condemn us in the poverty of the Divinity when we fall either into Judaism, defending unity of command, or into paganism, defending plurality. In both cases the evil is equal, although from opposite causes. Such is the Holy of Holies, hidden from the Seraphim themselves and glorified by the three Holy Places, Which converge into One Dominion and Divinity (1). There is one God, beginningless, guiltless, unlimited by anything either previously past or having to be after, both in the past and in the future, embracing eternity, boundless, great Father of the good, great, Only Begotten Son, Who in the birth of the Son did not suffer anything inherent in the body, because He is the Mind. There is one other God, but not another in Divinity - this is the Word of this God, the living seal of the Father, the one Son of the Beginningless and the Only One, equal to the Father in everything (except that one is entirely the Parent, and the other the Son), the Worldmaker and Ruler, the power and thought of the Father. One Spirit is God from the good God. Let everyone perish who has not been so imprinted by the Spirit to reveal His Divinity, who either has evil in the depths of their hearts or an unclean tongue - these half-bright, envious people, these self-taught sages - this blocked source (see Proverbs 25:27), a lamp hidden in a dark bosom (see Luke 11:33) (2)! God is either the mind, or another most perfect essence, comprehended only by the tensions of the mind. God knows whether He is completely comprehensible to higher minds, but is not clearly comprehended by us, over which is spread a cloud of coarse flesh - this hostile cover (2). God is not something higher, because He is incomparable (2). God is the essence and the first goodness (2). You might be interested in: