On the Divine Names (Dionysius the Areopagite)

Treatise sschmch. Dionysius the Areopagite “On the Divine Names” (13 chapters) is devoted to the consideration of the names of God found in the Old and New Testaments and in the ancient philosophical tradition. The essay is addressed to the Apostle Timothy, Bishop of Ephesus (the addressee of the Apostle Paul). Chapter 1 emphasizes the incomprehensibility of God, about whom only what He has revealed about Himself in the Holy Scriptures is known, as well as the fact that He is the Cause of everything that exists, and His namelessness and many names are explained. The names of God found in Scripture correspond to how God manifested Himself outside of His essence. Source of Divine names sschmch. Dionysius sees in the “general and particular providences” of God, cognizable in the world, and in the Divine visions of prophets and holy men. Chapter 2 deals with an attempt to philosophically understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity. Divine unities and differences are understood as the one nature and three Persons of the Holy Trinity, and as the unity of God (essence) and the outward flow of energy. Divine names glorify, first of all, the actions of Divine Providence outside. The author distinguishes in God a single essence and Three Hypostases and does not merge them. All Divine names or properties refer to the common Divine super-essence. The hypostases differ from each other by their hypostatic properties, the main of which are the monarchy of the Father and the “causality” of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Chapter 3 talks about prayer as a condition for knowledge of God. In the 4th chapter - about Good, Light, Beauty, Love as names of God, as well as about the nature of evil (it is not an independent essence, but only the absence of good). Chapter 5 examines the Old Testament name of God - Jehovah. Chapters 6-13 discuss the various titles of God (Life, Wisdom, Almighty, Ancient of Days, etc.). In conclusion, it is pointed out that all names are inaccurate and that ascent to God through negations remains the most reliable means of knowing God. All names correspond to symbols that have no external resemblance. Among the listed names there are those that are found in the Holy Scriptures, and those that are taken from the ancient tradition (they belonged to the “gods”, however, the master Dionysius the Areopagite refers them to the one God). Although the holy fathers never doubted the authorship of this work, however, according to modern patrolologists, it was written by an unknown author in the 5th-6th centuries. Chapter 1. What is the purpose of the essay and what is the tradition about the Divine names Chapter 2. Of united and divided theology, and what is divine union and separation Chapter 3. What is the power of prayer, about blessed Hierotheus, about reverence and about theological essay Chapter 4. About the names “Good”, “Light”, “Beauty”, “Love”, “Ecstasy”, “Zeal”, that evil does not exist, that it is not from the Existing and not among the Existing Chapter 5. About the name “Existing”, in it also about the prototypes Chapter 6. About the name “Life” Chapter 7. About the names “Wisdom”, “Mind”, “Word”, “Truth”, “Faith” Chapter 8. About the names “Strength”, “Justice”, “Salvation”, “Deliverance”, it also talks about inequality Chapter 9. About the names “Great”, “Small”, “Same”, “Different”, “Similar”, “Dissimilar”, “Rest”, “Movement”, “Equality” Chapter 10. About the names “Almighty” and “Ancient Day”, and here about eternity and time Chapter 11. About the name “World”, about what “Being-in-itself” means, what “Life-in-itself” is, “Power-in-itself” and other things thus expressed Chapter 12. About the names “Holy of Holies”, “King of Kings”, “Lord of Lords”, “God of Gods” Chapter 13. About the names “Perfect” and “One” Having immersed your lips in the sparkling mind, inscribed by God, You extol the beauty of the sacred names, and after death Singing godly hymns with living, wise speech. Co-priest Timothy - Priest Dionysius Chapter One What is the purpose of the essay and what is the tradition about the divine names 1. And now, O blessed one, after the “Theological Essays,” let us move on to explaining, as far as possible, the Divine names. And let it be our rule to discover the true meaning of what is said about God, not in the convincing words of human wisdom, but in the manifestation of the spirit-driven power (cf. 1 Cor. 2:4) of theologians, which inexpressibly and incomprehensibly connects us with the inexpressible and incomprehensible much better than is available to our verbal and mental strength and energy. It is absolutely not proper to dare to say or think anything about the super-essential and hidden Divinity other than what is divinely revealed to us by the sacred Sayings. After all, ignorance of its super-essentiality that exceeds the word, mind and essence should be dedicated to it by those who strive for the heavenly - as much as they reveal themselves with the radiance of the God-primary Sayings and who, for the sake of the highest lights, clothe their desire for the Divine with chastity and piety. For, if it is necessary to have at least some faith in the all-wise and truest theology, the Divine reveals itself and is perceived in accordance with the ability of each of the minds, and the divine goodness in saving justice in a manner befitting the Divinity separates immensity as inconceivable from the measurable. Just as for the sensible the mental is elusive and invisible, and for those endowed with form and image the simple and without image, and for those formed in the form of bodies the insensible and formless formlessness of the incorporeal, so, according to the same word of Truth, above the essences there is a super-essential indeterminacy and a unity exceeding the mind above the minds. And the One that exceeds thought cannot be comprehended by any thought; and no word that exceeds the word Good can be expressed; The unit that makes every unit one; Super-essential entity; The mind is inconceivable; The word is ineffable; Wordlessness, Inconceivability and Namelessness, existing in a different way than all that exists; The reason for universal existence. Itself does not exist, because it resides beyond the limit of any essence - how She Itself can, perhaps, truly and in a way accessible to knowledge. 2. So, it is not proper, as has been said, to dare to say anything or think about this super-essential and hidden Divinity other than what is divinely explained to us by the sacred Sayings. For any understanding and contemplation of her - as she herself has communicated about herself in a befitting Good manner in the Sayings - is inaccessible to all that exists, since she is superessentially transcendental for everything. And you will find that many theologians have praised it not only as invisible and incomprehensible, but also as inaccessible to research and study, because there is no sign that anyone has penetrated into its hidden immensity. However, Good is not completely unrelated to anything that exists, but, having erected only in Itself the source of Its super-essential light, It manifests itself in a manner befitting Good with illuminations commensurate with each of the existing ones, and elevates to possible contemplation, communion and assimilation with Him the sacred minds, as far as is permissible, in a befitting sacred way, rushing towards Him, not daring in self-confident relaxation to a higher than it should be, a manifestation of God and not sliding weakly down to the worse, but standing firmly and steadily rushing towards the light that shines for them, with sacred piety, chastely and Divinely inspired by the commensurate love of the radiances allowed. 3. Obeying these God-principal bonds that govern all the holy orders of super-heavenly entities, honoring the mystery of the God-Principal, which exceeds the mind and essence with sacred, not daring to explore mental piety, and the ineffable - with chaste silence, we rush towards the rays shining to us in the sacred Sayings, led by their light to the Divine chants, by them super-peacefully enlightened, inspired to sacred hymns, to contemplate, in proportion to us, the God-originating lights they bestow, to glorify the gracious Beginning of every sacred manifestation of light as It Expressed Itself in the sacred Sayings. For example, that It is the Cause of everything, the Origin, the Essence and the Life; those who fall away from Him are called and restored; those who have slipped into what destroys the Divine image, renewal and formation anew; wavering from some unholy shock, a sacred affirmation; safety of survivors; guidance that helps those who ascend to ascend upward to Him; enlightened radiance; dedicated to the hierarchy; the adored Godhead; simplified simplicity; united unity; the super-initial super-essential beginning of every beginning; a good giver of the hidden, as far as possible; and simply say, the Life of the living and the Essence of the existing, of all life and essence is the Beginning and Cause by virtue of His introducing existing things into being and supporting it there with goodness. 4. This we are taught by Divine Sayings. And you will find that every, one might say, sacred hymn of theologians, explaining and chanting the beneficent speeches of the Godhead, prepares Divine names. Thus, we see that in almost every theological work the Godhead is sacredly glorified either as a Monad or a Unit - because of the simplicity and unity of supernatural indivisibility, by which we are united as a unifying force, and our particular differences are super-peacefully united, and we are collected into a God-like monad and a God-like unity; or as the Trinity - due to the trinitarian manifestation of super-essential fertility, from which comes and according to which every fatherland in heaven and on earth is named (Eph. 3:15), or as the Cause of all things, since everything was brought into being by Her creative essence of goodness; or as the Wise and Beautiful - as preserving everything that exists, without violating its own nature, and as filled with all sorts of Divine harmony and sacred beauty; especially as the Lover of Mankind, since It truly and completely joined our nature with one of His hypostases, thereby calling to Himself and exalting human remoteness, from which the one Jesus was ineffably composed, and thereby the Eternal One took on the extension of time, and within our nature He found Himself super-essentially Surpassing every order of all nature, preserving the abode of His properties unchanged and unmerged. And the rest, as many as there are, Divinely influencing lights were given to us explanatoryly by the secret tradition of our God-inspired leaders. In this, too, we were instructed, as far as is possible for us now - through the sacred veils of the love of mankind characteristic of the Sayings and sacred primary traditions, enveloping the mental with the sensual, the super-essential existing, enveloping the formless and without form with forms and species, and multiplying and depicting the supernatural, imageless simplicity with various private symbols. And then, when we become incorruptible and immortal and are worthy of the most blessed peace characteristic of Christ and always, according to the Saying, we will be with the Lord (1 Thess. 4:17), then we will be filled with the visible manifestation of God in the most pure visions, illuminating us with the brightest radiance, as disciples during that most Divine Transfiguration, with a dispassionate and immaterial mind partaking of His mental light giving and transcending mind connection, when in an unknown and blissful way - in the most Divine imitation of super-heavenly minds - we will be attainable for bright rays, for, as the truth of the Sayings says, we will be equal to the Angels and the sons of God, being sons of the resurrection (Luke 20:36). Nowadays, as far as we can, when speaking about the Divine, we use the symbols available to us, and from them, to the best of our ability, we rush again to the simple and united truth of mental contemplations, and after all the understanding of God-visions inherent in us, we cease mental activity and achieve, as far as possible, the super-essential light, in which all the limits of all minds pre-exist in the highest degree, ineffably, which light cannot be conceived, nor described, nor in any way it is impossible to consider in an image, since it is beyond everything, super-unknowable and super-essentially contains in itself, before the implementation, the boundaries of all realized minds and powers and everything in general, incomprehensible to everything, a force that is above the super-heavenly minds. After all, if all knowledge is connected with existence and has a limit in existence, then what is beyond the limits of essence is also beyond the limits of all knowledge. 5. And if It surpasses every word and every knowledge and abides above any mind and essence, embracing everything that exists, uniting, combining and embracing in advance, while Itself being completely incomprehensible for everything, not perceived by feeling, imagination, judgment, name, word, touch, or knowledge, how can we write an essay “On the Divine Names,” when the super-essential Deity turns out to be unnameable and abiding above names? But, as we said in “Theological Essays,” about the One, the Unknowable, the Superessential, the Good-in-Itself, whatever It can be—I mean the trinitarian Unit, equal in Divinity and goodness—it is impossible to say or think. But even angelic compounds of holy powers, which should be called either phenomena or transmissions of super-unknowable and most luminous Goodness, are not subject to speech or knowledge and are known only to angels who have been awarded that which is higher than their angelic knowledge. God-like minds uniting with such, imitating as much as possible the angels, since after the cessation of all mental activity the adored minds are united with the super-divine light, they sing this in the most appropriate way by negating all that exists, to such an extent being truly and supernaturally enlightened by the most blissful union with that which is the Cause of all that exists, Itself being Nothing, as super-essentially transcendental to everything. The God-originating super-essentiality, whatever the super-existence of super-goodness, should not be sung by anyone who loves the Truth, which exceeds all truth, neither as word or power, nor as mind, or life, or essence, but - as every property, movement, life, imagination, opinion, name, word, thought, reflection, essence, state, abiding, unity, limit, infinity, everything that exists, exceedingly transcendental. Since, being the existence of Goodness, the very fact of its existence, It is the cause of everything that exists, the beneficent Providence of the Godhead should be sung on the basis of everything caused by Him, because everything is in Him and for His sake, and He exists first of all, and everything took place in Him, and His being is the reason for the appearance and stay of everything, and everyone desires Him: the intelligent and reasonable - rationally, the lower ones - sensually, and the rest - either in accordance with the movement of the living, or as substances suitably adapted to existence. 6. Knowing this, theologians glorify Him both as the Nameless One and as being consistent with every name. He is nameless, they say, because the Godhead said in one symbolic theophany from the category of mysterious visions, reproaching the one who asked: “What is Your name?” “- and as if taking him away from any knowledge of God’s name: “Why do you ask My name? It is wonderful” (Gen. 32:29; Judg. 13:17, 18). And isn’t this name truly amazing, which is above every name (Phil. 2:9), - unnamed, being above every name that is named both in this age and in the future (Eph. 1:21)? He has many names because at the same time He is represented as saying: “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14), “Life” (John 14:6), “Light” (John 8:12), “God” (Gen. 28:13), “Truth” (John 14:6), and at the same time the same godly wise men sing the Cause of everything, borrowing names from everything caused By her, such as: “Good” (Matt. 19:17), “Beautiful” (Ps. 26:4, 45:3), “Wise” (Rom. 14:26), “Beloved” (Is. 5:1), “God of gods” (Ps. 49:1, 135:2), “Lord of lords” (Ps. 135:3; 1 Tim. 6:15; Rev. 17:14), "Holy of Holies" (Dan. 9:24), "Eternal" (Deut. 33:27; Isa. 40:28), "He who is" (Exod. 3:14), and "Cause of Ages", "Giver of Life", "Wisdom" (Prov. 8:1, 9:1; 1 Cor. 1:30), “Mind” (1 Cor. 2:16), “Word” (John 1:1), “Competent” (Dan. 13:42), “Possessing in advance all the treasures of all knowledge” (cf. Col. 2:3), “Power” (1 Cor. 1:24), “Sovereign,” “King of kings” (1 Tim. 6:15; Rev. 17:14), “Old Day” (Dan. 7:9), “Ageless and Unchangeable,” “Salvation,” “Justice” (cf. Jer. 23:6), “Sanctification” (1 Cor. 1:30), “Deliverance” (Ibid.), “Exceeding all in greatness” and existing “in the subtle breath” (1 Kings 19:12). They also say that She is in minds, in souls, in bodies, in heaven and on earth, at the same time in Herself, in the world, around the world, above the world, above heaven, above existence; She is called the sun, star, “fire,” “water,” “spirit,” dew, cloud, gem, stone, everything that exists and nothing that exists. 7. Thus, both anonymity and all the names of existence approach the universal, all-exceeding Cause, as the real Queen of everything, on Whom everything depends and to Whom everything belongs as the Cause, as the Beginning, as the Completion. According to the Saying, She is all in all (1 Cor. 15:28), and She is rightly glorified as the Foundation of all, beginning everything, perfecting and preserving, the protector of all and the hearth, drawing everything to Herself and making it united, irresistible and transcendental. For She is the Cause not only of connection, life, or perfection, so that just from one or another of these cares She may be called the Supreme Goodness: She previously simply and unlimitedly contained in Herself everything that brings to fulfillment the goodness of Her one causeless Providence, and is rightfully praised and called by all beings. 8. Thus theologians borrow names for Her not only from general or particular providences, or objects of preoccupation, but also from certain Divine visions that have illuminated initiates or prophets in sacred churches or in other places. They call the Goodness that surpasses every name by the names of one or another reason and power, giving It human, fiery, or amber forms and appearance, chanting Her “eyes” (Ps. 10:4), “ears” (James 5:4), “hair” (Dan. 7:9), “face” (Ps. 33:17), “hands” (Job 10:8), “back”, “wings” (Ps. 90:4), “shoulders” (Ibid.), “back” (Ex. 33:23) and “legs” (Ex. 24:10). They supply Her with crowns (Rev. 14:14), thrones (Ezek. 1:26), cups, bowls (Ps. 74:9; Proverbs 9:2-5) and other things full of mysterious meaning, which we will talk about, to the best of our ability, in “Symbolic Theology.” And now, having collected from the Sayings what is relevant to the present work, and using what has been said as a kind of rule, looking at it, let us move on to the disclosure of the intelligible names of God. And, as required by the hierarchical charter, every time we do theology, we must contemplate with God-seeing thought in the full sense of the word the visions and contemplation that reveal God, and open our sacred ears to the explanations of the sacred names of God, on the holy holy, according to Divine Tradition, basing it, protecting it from the ridicule and mockery of the uninitiated - most importantly, if there are such people at all, thereby saving them from God-fighting. And you, O good Timothy, must protect yourself from such things, following the most sacred rule not to speak or show anything Divine to the uninitiated. May God grant me to gloriously sing the good-working plurality of the unnameable and unnameable Divinity and may He not take the word of truth (2 Cor. 6:7; Eph. 1:13; 2 Tim. 2:15) from my lips. Chapter Two About united and divided theology, and what is divine union and separation 1. As an integral God-initial being, determining and expressing whatever it is, goodness in itself is glorified by the Sayings. For is it possible to extract anything else from sacred theology when it says that the Godhead himself taught this, saying: Why are you asking Me about good things? No one is good except God alone (cf. Matthew 19:17). As has been stated and explained by us elsewhere, all the names befitting God are always sung by the Sayings as referring not to any part, but to the whole Divinity in its wholeness, totality and completeness, and all of them are inseparably, absolutely, unconditionally and wholly applicable to the whole integrity of the All-whole and complete Divinity. And if, as we noted in “Theological Essays,” someone begins to assert that this is not said about the entire Divinity, he will unreasonably dare to blaspheme and divide the super-united Unit. It is proper, therefore, to say that this applies to all Divinity. After all, the noble Word Itself said: I am good (Matthew 20:15; John 10:11), and one of the divinely inspired prophets praises the Spirit as good (Ps. 143:10). And again, if they say that the words “I am who I am” (Ex. 3:14) do not refer to the whole of Divinity, but only to one part of it, then how will they perceive the words: “This is what I am, who was and is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8) and You abid (Ps. 102:27), as well as “the Spirit of truth”, “who is”, “from coming from the Father" (John 15:26)? And if the Life Principle is not integral, as they say, then can the sacred word be true, which says: As the Father raises the dead and gives life, so the Son gives life to whomever He wants (John 5:21) - and that the Spirit gives life (John 6:63)? Since all divinity dominates everything, I believe it is impossible to say whether it concerns the God-giving divinity or the Filial divinity, how many times theology says “Lord” about the Father and how many times about the Son. But the Spirit is also Lord (cf. 2 Cor. 3:17). The names “Good”, “Wisdom” are applied to all Divinity, likewise the names “Light”, “God-creating”, “Cause” and everything that belongs to the entire Godhead is included by the Sayings in every initial praise of God - both in a compressed form, for example: All things are from God (1 Cor. 11:12), and in an extensive manner, for example: All things were created through Him and in Him (John 1:3; Rom. 11:36), All things were formed in Him (Col. 1:17), You will send Your Spirit, and they will be created (Ps. 103:30). And we can say in one word, as the God-originating Word Himself said: I and the Father are one (John 10:30) and All that the Father has is Mine (John 16:15) and All that is Mine is Yours, and Yours is Mine (John 17:10). And, again, what belongs to the Father and Him, he applies as a common property equally to the God-originating Spirit, such as: Divine works, holiness, the flowing and inexhaustible cause and the distribution of splendid gifts. And, I think, none of those who are fed by the uncorrupted thoughts of Divine Sayings will argue with the fact that, according to the divinely perfect Word, everything befitting Divinity is inherent in the Godhead in all its fullness. So, having spoken here briefly and in part about this, and in another place having sufficiently shown and established with the help of Sayings what kind of holistic denomination we have to explain, we will apply it to the entire fullness of Divinity. 2. If someone says that we thereby introduce fusion into divine separation, we will not consider such an argument sufficient to convince him of its truth. And if there is someone who is generally opposed to the Sayings, he will turn out to be completely far from our philosophy, and if he does not care about extracting divine wisdom from the Sayings, then why should we try to teach him theological knowledge? If he turns his gaze to the truth of the Sayings, then we, using this standard and light for its defense, will, to the best of our ability, steadily march, saying that theology conveys one thing united, and the other separately, and it is not permissible to separate what is united, nor to merge what is divided, but those who follow it must, to the best of their ability, strive towards the Divine radiances. And from there, having perceived the Divine explanations as some most beautiful measure of truth, let us try to preserve the treasure there within ourselves, without adding to it, without subtracting from it, and without distorting it, being protected by the conservation of the Sayings and by their conservation, gaining the power to protect them. 3. So, the uniting names refer to the entire Divinity, which we have shown more fully with the help of the Sayings in the Theological Essays. These are: “Super-good”, “Super-divine”, “Super-essential”, “Super-living”, “Super-wise”; as well as all expressions of negation that imply superiority, and all concepts of causality, such as: “Good”, “Beauty”, “Existence”, “Generating Life”, “Wise” - and all other names that the Cause of all good receives from its splendid gifts. The signs of separateness are the super-essential names and characteristics of the Father, Son and Spirit. They cannot in any way be rearranged or used as completely generic ones. Separate, in addition, is the perfect and immutable existence of Jesus in our nature, as well as all the essential mysteries of love for mankind associated with this. 4. However, it seems to me that it is appropriate for us to go back in order to better explain the image of Divine unity and difference, so that all our reasoning is understandable, containing nothing ambiguous or imprecise, revealing thoughts as clearly, clearly and harmoniously as possible. For, as we said elsewhere, people initiated into the sacred traditions of our theology call the hidden and inextricable super-abidences of the super-ineffable and super-unknowable constancy Divine unity, while divisions mean the magnificent appearances of God’s leadership in the outside and its explanations. Following the sacred Sayings, they say that both the mentioned unity and also the division have some kind of their own connections and divisions. Thus, in the Divine unity, that is, super-essentiality, the one and common thing for the original Trinity is a super-essential existence, a super-divine Divinity, a super-good goodness, an identity that exceeds everything, that surpasses any particularity, a super-uniform unity, silence, polyphony, ignorance, omniscience, the affirmation of everything, the negation of everything, that which exceeds all affirmation and negation, the presence and abiding of the initial hypostases, if so one might say, in each other, completely super-united, but not fused in a single part, just like - to use an example from the sensory sphere close to us - how the light of each of the lamps located in one room completely penetrates the light of the others and remains special, preserving its differences in relation to others: it unites with it, differing, and differs, uniting. And when there are many lamps in a room, we see that the light of them all merges into one indivisible glow, and I think that no one is able, in the air permeated with the general light, to distinguish the light of one of the lamps from the light of another and to see one of them without seeing the other, since they are all inextricably dissolved in each other. If someone takes one of the lamps out of the house, all of its light will come out, not taking any of the other lights with it and not leaving its others. But there was, as I said, a complete union of each of them with each other, without any mixing or merging of any of their constituent parts, and the light was emitted by immaterial fire in a truly material body - the air. Therefore, we say that the super-essential unity surpasses not only the unity in the corporeal environment, but even the unity of souls and the minds themselves, which the god-like super-celestial lights possess unmergedly and supra-peacefully with full penetration into each other, thanks to participation, to the extent of their strength, in the all-superior unity. 5. In addition to the fact that in the very unity each of the initial hypostases retains, as I have already said, its own existence, without mixing or merging with others, super-essential theologies also speak of one more difference: everything related to the super-essential birth of God cannot be reversed: the only Source of the super-essential Divinity is the Father; The Son is not the Father, and the Father is not the Son; and the hymns sacredly reserve special praises for each of the divine hypostases. These are the signs of unity and division, corresponding to the inexpressible unity and separateness. If the magnificent exit into the outside of the most divine super-unified Goodness due to Its increase and overflow is a sign of divine divisibility, then the signs of unity are: the unbridled endowment of goods that occurs through the divine division, the creation of new beings, their life-giving, endowing them with reason and other gifts of the all-causing Goodness, according to which - according to the sacraments and those who partake - the Unparticipant is glorified. And this is inherent in the whole, united and united Divinity - that each of those who partake of It partakes of the whole, and no one partakes of only some part of It. Likewise, all radii located in a circle are involved in its center, and seal impressions have much in common with its original: the original is present in each of the prints in its entirety and in none of them only in some part. The non-participation of the all-causal Divinity exceeds even this, since it is impossible to touch It, nor do any other means exist for the communion of those participating with It. 6. And if someone says that the seal is not visible entirely and equally in all prints, then this is not the reason for the print (since it is the same in all cases): the difference in the characteristics of the perceptive material creates defects in the prints of the same whole seal. So, if the material turns out to be soft, plastic, smooth and receptive, and not unreceptive and hard, not loose, not wrinkled, the result will be a clean, clear and durable print. If any of the listed properties is missing, this will be the cause of a defect, ambiguity and unusability of the print, and many other things that happen when contact is unsuccessful. Separated from the general splendid action of God in our nature are the complete and true perception from us of our essence, accomplished for us by the super-essential Word, and His deeds and suffering - the best, excellent deeds of His human divine activity. After all, the Father and the Spirit did not participate in this at all with the Word, unless someone says that it was only thanks to the magnificent and humane unity of will and the common highest inexpressible divine action that He who abides as God and God’s Word, unchangeable, did all this for us. Likewise, we try, when speaking, to both unite the Divine and divide, since the Divine itself is both united and divided. 7. Those divine reasons for the types of unity and division that we found in the Sayings, we, as far as possible, outlined them in “Theological Essays”, talking about each of them: revealing some of them with the true word and explaining them, turning the sacred and unclouded mind to the bright visions of the Sayings, and to others, as if they were secret, having received the Divine Tradition in accordance with the possibilities of mental comprehension. After all, everything Divine revealed to us is known only through participation. And what it is in its beginning and foundation is above the mind, above all essence and knowledge. So, when we call the super-essential Hiddenness God, Life, Essence, Light or Word, we mean nothing more than the forces emanating from It into our midst, deifying, creating essences, producing life and bestowing wisdom. We come to Her only having abandoned all mental activity, knowing no deification, no life, no essence that would exactly correspond to the transcendental all-surpassing Cause. Also, the fact that the source of Divinity is the Father, and the Son and the Spirit are products of the God-giving Divinity, so to speak, shoots of the divine plant, a kind of flowers, or super-essential lights, we received from the sacred Sayings. And how this is so is impossible to say or imagine. 8. All the power of our mental activity gives us the ability to understand only that every idea of ​​the Divine Fatherland and Sonship is given to us and to the super-heavenly forces beyond all the Fatherhood and the Sonship, thanks to Which God-like minds become and are called gods, sons of God, and fathers of gods - we are talking, of course, about fatherhood and sonship in the spiritual sense, that is, about the phenomenon incorporeal, immaterial, speculative, the God-originating Spirit is above all mental immateriality and deification, and the Father and the Son are supremely beyond all Divine Fatherland and Sonship. There is no exact similarity between effects and causes: effects perceive images of causes, but the causes themselves are transcendental for effects and exist above them, according to their very original meaning. If we use an example from our life, then pleasures and sorrows are considered to be the reasons that a person enjoys and grieves, but they themselves do not enjoy and do not grieve. And about the heating and burning fire they do not say that it itself burns or warms itself. And if someone says that self-life lives or that self-light is illuminated, he will say, in my opinion, incorrectly, unless he says it in some other respect, for what characterizes effects is already abundantly contained in causes as inherent in their essence. 9. The creation of Jesus in our form is brighter than any theology, it cannot be expressed in any words, it is not accessible to any mind, including the very first of the eldest angels. We mysteriously know that He was incarnated as a man, but we do not know how He was incarnated - contrary to nature, according to a different law - from virgin blood, and how He walked with dry feet with bodily mass and material weight on the unstable water element, as well as other things related to the supernatural physiology of Jesus. Elsewhere we have said enough about this, and our true mentor in his “Principles of Theology” excellently sang the same thing - either gleaned by him from the sacred theologians, or received as a result of a thoughtful study of the Sayings after a long painstaking study of them, or revealed to him by some most divine inspiration, when he not only recognized, but also experienced the divine, and from the sympathy he felt for him, so to speak, he achieved perfection in its uneducated and mysterious unity and faith. And in order to very briefly present the many and blessed visions of his sovereign thought, I will cite what he says about Jesus in the “Fundamentals of Theology” he compiled. FROM THE “FUNDAMENTALS OF THEOLOGY” BY THE HOLY HIEROTHEY 10. Being the cause of everything and fulfilling everything, the Divinity of the Son, preserving the parts in harmony with the whole, being neither a part nor a whole, and being both a whole and a part, everything in itself, both a part and a whole, containing, surpassing and preceding everything, it is perfect among the imperfect as the beginning-perfecter, but also imperfect among the perfect as superperfect and pre-perfect; a species that creates species in that which has no form as a species; formless among species as superior to species; essence, into all essences, without touching them, penetrating and super-essential, transcendental for every essence; separating all beginnings and ranks and remaining above every beginning and rank; she is the measure of all things, she is eternity, and she is above eternity and before eternity; it is the replenishment of what is insufficient and the overflow of what is fulfilled; it is inexpressible, silent, exceeds the mind, exceeds life, exceeds the essence. It is supernaturally characterized by the supernatural, super-essentially - super-essentially. Since the Divine One, through love for mankind, descended to nature and truly realized and became man (may the Glorified One, surpassing mind and word, be merciful to us), possessing, while remaining in that, the supernatural and super-essential, without suffering in the least from the unchangeable and unfused communion with us in the fullness of His inexpressible emptiness, He was the newest of all new things; among what is natural to us - supernatural; among those belonging to a being - super-essential, having everything that is ours from us above us in abundance. 11. So that's enough. Let us return to the purpose of our work, revealing, to the best of our ability, the common and united names of the Divine division. And in order to clearly differentiate everything in order at once, let’s say that the Divine division represents, as we have already said, the magnificent exits of the Godhead to the outside. Granted to all that exists and overflowing with the participation of all blessings, It is unitedly divided, multiplied individually and increased many times over, without being separated from unity. Since God is the Super-Essentially Existing One, grants existence to beings and produces all essences, they say that this One Existing One increases many times due to the emergence from Him of many existing things, and It does not diminish in the least and remains one in multitude; united, protruding outward and, dividing, complete for the reason that It superessentially remains transcendental in relation to everything that exists, and to the outflow that unites everything, and to the inexhaustible outpouring of His undiminished teachings. But being one and imparting unity to every part, and to the whole, and to the one, and to the many, It superessentially exists equally as the One, representing neither a part of the many, nor a many-part whole. And yet It is not one, is not part of the one, and does not have one. Far from this is the One, which is greater than the One; One for all things; indivisible set; unfillable overflow, every single, multiplicity that brings, perfects and contains. Again, because thanks to the deification that comes from Him and the perception, to the best of one’s ability, of each God’s image, a multitude of gods appears, it is imagined and said that there is a division and multiple multiplication of the one God, but He is no less the Beginning-God and the Super-God, the super-essentially one God, indivisible among the divisible, one with Himself, not mixed with the multitude and not multiplied. Having understood this supernaturally, our common and mentor's guide to the Divine light-giving, great in the Divine, the light of the world (Matthew 5:14), inspiredly says in his Divine writings the following: For, although there are so-called gods, either in heaven or on earth, since there are many gods and many lords; but we have one God the Father, from whom are all things, and we are for Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we through Him (1 Cor. 8:5, 6). For unities dominate and prevail over Divine divisions, and the united does not suffer when the unifying division is inseparable from the One. We will try, to the best of our ability, to sing these common and united divisions or beneficent processes outside of the entire Divinity, guided by the Divine names that reveal it in the Sayings, first, as has already been said, realizing that all beneficent Divine names applied to the God-initiated hypostases should be perceived as relating to the entire God-initial wholeness without exception. Chapter Three: What is the power of prayer, about blessed Hierotheos, about reverence and about theological writings 1. First, let us consider, perhaps, the all-perfect explanatory name of all God’s processes, calling upon the good and super-good Trinity, which clarifies all His supremely good providences. For first of all, it is appropriate for us to raise ourselves up to Her as the Good Leader through prayers, and as we approach Her, to be enlightened by the all-good gifts that surround Her. She is present in everything, but not everything is present in Her. And when we call on Her with all-pure prayers, an unclouded mind, and commitment to Divine union, then we are present in Her. For She does not dwell in any place in order to be absent from something or to move from one thing to another. But to say that She abides in all things is not enough to express Her all-exceeding and all-embracing infinity. Let us direct ourselves with prayers to ascend to the highest heights to the Divine and good rays, as if constantly intercepting with our hands a brightly luminous chain hanging from the sky and reaching here and thinking that we are attracting it to ourselves, but in reality it is not it, which is both above and below, pulling down, but raising ourselves to the highest radiances of the many-lighted rays. Or, as if being in a ship, grabbing ropes attached to a certain rock and stretched out to us so that we could moor, we would not attract the rock to ourselves, but in fact ourselves and the ship - to the rock. Just as, on the contrary, if someone in a ship pushed a stone lying on the shore, he would not do anything to the motionless stone, but would remove himself from it, and the harder he pushed it, the more he would push himself away from it. This is why it is appropriate to begin every work, and especially theology, with prayer - not in order to attract the omnipresent and nowhere-existing Power to oneself, but in order to entrust it to It and unite oneself with It. 2. It probably deserves justification that, although our glorious teacher Hierotheus compiled the wonderful “First Principles of Theology,” we, considering that they were not enough, wrote other theological works, including this one. If he had considered it worthy to consider all theological questions in order and had revealed, by giving small explanations, all the fundamentals of theology, we would not have reached such madness or ignorance as to try either to interpret theological themes even more clearly than he and even more Divinely, or to wastelessly say the same thing a second time, talking in vain, and besides, offending our teacher and friend, who, following the Divine Paul, taught us the fundamentals with his own words theology, appropriating his most famous theory and explanation. But, since this leader has truly expounded to us the truly Divine in general terms, embracing much in one single thing, as if commanding us and our teachers of newly converted souls to reveal and share with our moderate speech short, generalized and succinct words that contain the most intelligent power of this man, and you yourself repeatedly encouraged us to do this, and then sent us this book as excellent, therefore we consider him a teacher of perfect old-age thoughts, and the fact that he, having surpassed many, I wrote in sayings that follow immediately after those announced by God, and we will convey the Divine to the people of our time, to the best of our ability. After all, if solid food is the food of the perfect (Heb. 5:14), then what kind of perfection does it require to serve it to others? What we said is also correct that self-evident contemplation of mental utterances and their generalized presentation require senile strength, and understanding and studying the meaning of the words used for this is the work of those less sanctified and sacred. However, we were also very diligent in never touching on anything that had been discussed with complete clarity by the Divine Teacher himself, so as not to repeat it when explaining the Sayings he explained. After our God-inspired saints themselves (when we, as you know, and you yourself, and many of our sacred brothers came together to contemplate the life-giving and God-receiving body, and the brother of God James and Peter, the main and oldest leader of theologians, were also there, and then after contemplation all the saints decided to sing, as anyone can, the infinitely powerful goodness of God's infirmity, he, as you know, won among theologians of all those initiated into the mysteries of faith, having gone into complete frenzy, completely losing their temper, experiencing communion with what was being sung on the basis of everything that was heard, seen, recognized and not recognized) he was assessed as a divinely inspired and Divine hymnologist, what can I tell you about what was theologically sung there? After all, if my memory serves me right, I have repeatedly become acquainted, hearing from you, with some parts of these inspired chants. Such is your zeal to seek out the Divine not in passing. 3. But let’s leave the mentioned secret as something ineffable for the crowd, but known to you. And when he had to communicate with a crowd of uninitiated people and whoever it was possible to lead to our sacred knowledge, how much he surpassed many sacred teachers in the time spent, and the purity of mind, and the accuracy of evidence, and other sacred words, so that we never dared to look directly at such a great sun. For we were so focused with our feelings and mind on ourselves that we could not comprehend the meaning of the Divine, nor could we pronounce or pronounce what was said about the knowledge of God. Far from being inferior to him, we lack knowledge of the theological truth of Divine men, for the excess of piety has led us precisely to the complete impossibility of listening and saying anything about Divine wisdom other than what we have perceived with our minds; so it is not proper to neglect the knowledge of the Divine that we have received. And we were convinced of this not only by the natural aspirations of the mind, which always longingly strive for the possible contemplation of the supernatural, but also by the very best order of Divine laws, which turns us away from exploring what is above us, as undeserved and as unattainable, and commands us to diligently find out and plausibly pass on everything that is permissible and given to us. Submitting to this, not refusing or evading the permissible study of the Divine, and also not tolerating that those who do not have the strength for the best of our contemplations are left without help, we considered it our duty to write, not daring to introduce anything new, but by more detailed and separate studies of each question, analyzing and clarifying what was generally said by the true Hierotheus (lit. “Holy God” or “Priest of God”). Chapter Four About the names “Good”, “Light”, “Beauty”, “Love”, “Ecstasy”, “Zeal”, that evil does not exist, that it is not from the Existing and not among the Existing 1. Well, okay, let us now move on in our speech to that very title that theologians decisively distinguish from all others applied to the super-divine Divinity, calling Goodness, as it seems to me, the Divine Being itself, bearing in mind that for Good to exist - as for Good in essence - means to spread goodness into all things. For just as the sun in our world, without reasoning, without choosing, but simply existing, illuminates everything that, by its properties, is capable of perceiving its light, so the Good, superior to the sun, a kind of transcendental archetype, located above its obscure imprint, by virtue of its own existence alone imparts, in proportion to all things, the rays of complete Goodness. Thanks to them, all intelligible and rational entities, powers and energies arose; thanks to them they exist and have an inexhaustible and undiminished life, free from all corruption, death, matter and birth, above impermanence, fluidity and change that occurs in one way or another. Since they are incorporeal and immaterial, they are perceived by the mind, and since they are minds, they super-peacefully understand and appropriately enlighten the logoi of existence and then forward theirs to the related ones. And they have their abode from Goodness, and their abode comes from the same, and connection, and protection, and the focus of goods; Desiring it, they have both existence and happiness; as much as possible, becoming like Her, they are plausible and, communicating with those who are lower than them, they, as the Divine Law teaches, extend to them the gifts they receive from Good. 2. From there - their supermundane ranks; their unity with each other; placing them inside each other; unmerged divisions; their powers elevating those below them to superiority; the care of the elders for those who follow them; each of them guarding their own strength and constantly focusing them around themselves; their identity and extremeness in the pursuit of Good; and so on, which we talked about in the book “On Angelic Properties and Orders.” And also that which relates to the heavenly hierarchy: the purifications appropriate to angels, super-peaceful light-giving and the fulfillment of all angelic perfection come from the all-causing and exuding all Goodness, from Which they were given both beauty and the ability to manifest hidden goodness in themselves, and to be angels as heralds of Divine silence and as if shining lights explanatoryly emanating from the One who dwells in the reserved sanctuary. And under these sacred and holy minds, thanks to super-good Goodness, there also exist souls with their inherent goodness, such as: the ability to be rational, to have existence itself in the form of incorruptible essential life, and, moreover, the opportunity, rushing to the life of angels, with their help, as good mentors, to be raised to the Good Beginning of all good things, and, according to their dignity, to become partakers of the radiance pouring out from there, and to the best of their ability to partake of plausible gifts; and other things that we list in the book “On the Soul.” And also - if it is necessary to talk about them - those that relate to dumb souls, or animals: those who cut through the air, and who walk on the ground, and who bury themselves in the earth, and whose destiny is to live in water or as amphibians, and who live hidden and buried underground, and more simply - everyone who has a sensory soul or life - and they are all animated and enlivened thanks to the Good. From Good and plants, everyone has life associated with nutrition and movement. And everything that is soulless and lifeless is an essence thanks to Good and thanks to Him has been awarded the property of being an essence. 3. If Good exists above all things, as it actually is, then It gives form to the formless. And in Him alone, immateriality is the excess of essence, lifelessness is the highest life, madness is the highest wisdom, and everything else that in Good is associated with the excessive giving of form to the formless. And, if I may say so, the non-existent itself strives for the Good, which exceeds all things, striving to somehow itself be in the truly - after taking away everything - super-essential Good. 4. But this is what, by the way, escaped from us, escaped - that Good is the Cause of both the heavenly principles and limits, and this non-increasing, non-decreasing and completely unchanging smooth flow, and the silent, if one can say so, movements of the heavenly procession and stellar ranks, and beauty, and lights, and installations, and the diverse through passage of some moving stars; periodic circulation from the same places to the same two luminaries, called great in the Sayings, in accordance with which our limited days, and nights, and measured months and years delimit, calculate, determine and connect the circular movement of time and those staying in it. What can be said about the solar glow itself? This is the light emanating from Good, and the image of Goodness. That is why Good is glorified in the names of light, because It manifests itself in him as an original in an image. After all, just as the Goodness of the Divine, transcendental to all, reaches from the highest and oldest beings to the lowest and, moreover, remains above all, so that neither the highest can achieve Her superiority, nor the lowest can escape from the sphere of what is attainable by It, and also enlightens everything that has power, and creates, and revives, and holds, and perfects, and remains both the measure of what exists, and century, and number, and order, and totality, both the cause and the goal - in the same way, the image manifesting Divine goodness, this great all-illuminating ever-bright sun, an insignificant echo of Good, enlightens everything that can be involved in it, and has excess light, spreading the radiance of its rays throughout the visible cosmos in all directions. And if anything is not part of him, it is not because of the weakness or limitation of the light he spreads, but because of the inability to accept the light of those who do not strive to be partakers of it. Undoubtedly, bypassing many of them, the rays illuminate those behind them, and there is nothing visible that it, due to the excessive amount of its radiance, does not reach. It also contributes to the birth of sensual bodies, moves them to life, nourishes them, grows them, improves them, purifies them and renews them. And light is the measure and number of hours, days and all of our time. After all, it was precisely this light, although then still formless, according to the words of the divine Moses, that demarcated the first triad of our days (see Gen. 1:3–13). In the same way, Goodness attracts everything to Itself as the Beginning of the gathering of all those scattered, as the initial and unifying Divinity, to Which everyone strives as the Beginning, Connection and Completion. And, as the Sayings say, it was from Good that everything arose and exists, being deduced from the perfect Cause, and it was in Him that everything was created and was stored and contained, as if in an all-encompassing depth, and everything returns to Him as if it were its own limit for everyone, where everything strives: the mental and verbal - consciously, the sensory - sensually, those not involved in the feelings - by the innate instinct of preserving life, and the inanimate and only existing - only by necessity to participate in the one thing realized. According to the same meaning of a clear image, light collects and turns to itself everything that sees, moves, is illuminated, is warmed - everything that is contained under its radiance. That is why it is the sun (ἥλιος), because it combines everything (ἀολλῆ ποιεῖ) and collects what is scattered. And everything sensible needs it, striving either to see, or to move, or to be illuminated and warmed, and in general to remain in the light. I, however, do not follow the opinion of antiquity that the sun is God and the creator of all this creation, to whom belongs the government of the visible world, but I say that the invisible of God from the creation of the world is visible through the consideration of creation, His eternal power and Divinity (cf. Rom. 1:20). 5. But this is said in Symbolic Theology. Now we need to sing and name the speculative light-names of the Good, because the Good is called mental Light, for every super-heavenly mind is filled with mental Light, and at the same time He drives away from everyone into whose souls all ignorance and deception penetrates, and transmits to all of them the sacred light, and cleanses their mental eyes from the darkness of ignorance surrounding them, revives and opens them, with much weight of darkness adjacent, and gives them to see at first dim rays, and to those who have tasted the light and strive for more, then He shows Himself more and begins to shine upon them in abundance because they have loved much (cf. Luke 7:47), and constantly raises them to Himself according to their ability to look upward. 6. So, mental Light is called Good, which surpasses all light, as radiance emitting light and effervescent outpouring of light; enlightening all supramundane, near the world and in the world minds from its fullness; all their mental powers are renewing; all, embracing, embracing; surpassing everything in its superiority; as the primordial light and super-light in itself, concentrating, super-having and having decisive dominion over every luminous force; everything mental and rational that collects and combines. For just as ignorance is something that separates those who are mistaken, the phenomenon of mental light is something that gathers those who are illuminated, unites, perfects and turns them to the Truly Existent, turning them away from many opinions and different points of view, or, more precisely, ideas, gathering them to a single true, pure, uniform knowledge, filling them with a single connecting Light. 7. This Good is glorified by the sacred theologians as the Beautiful, and as Beauty, and as Love, and as the Beloved, and other, whatever beautiful names are applied to God, the grace-filled maturity that imparts beauty. Beautiful and Beauty should not differ in Their all-gathering Cause. For dividing Them in relation to all things into communion and participating, beautiful we call that which participates in Beauty, and beauty – participation in the Cause of all beauty that makes it beautiful. The super-essential Beautiful is called Beauty because from Him each person’s own charm is imparted to everything that exists; and because It is the Cause of the well-being and grace of everything and, like light, radiates to everyone His teachings of radiant radiance that make them beautiful; and because It attracts everyone to Itself (καλοῦν), which is why it is called beauty (κάλλος); and because It reduces everything in everything to identity. It is beautiful as all-beautiful and as super-beautiful and eternally existing in the same way and constantly beautiful; “neither arising nor disappearing; not increasing, not decreasing; not in one thing beautiful, but in something else ugly; not at one time it is like this, and at another time it is different; neither beautiful in relation to one, but ugly in relation to another; neither here is one thing, but there is another; neither beautiful to someone, but not beautiful to someone” (Plato. Symposium, 211 ff.), but as Itself being one in itself with Itself, eternally remaining beautiful; and how abundantly and in advance it has within Himself the charm of all that is beautiful, exuding from Him. For in the simple supernatural nature of all beauty, all charm and all that is beautiful pre-exist as a cause. From this Beauty it is given to all that exists to be beautiful in accordance with its own logos; and thanks to the Beautiful there is a combination, love and communication of all; and everything is united by the Beautiful; and the Beautiful is the Beginning of everything as a creative Cause, moving everything as a whole and uniting it with love for its own charm; It is both the Limit of everything and the Beloved - as the Cause that brings to perfection, for for the sake of the Beautiful everything appears; and the Pattern, for in agreement with Him everything is demarcated. That is why the Beautiful is identical with the Good, because for every reason everything strives towards the Beautiful and the Good, and there is nothing in existence that is not involved in the Beautiful and the Good. The Word even dares to say that the non-existent also participates in the Beautiful and the Good, for it too is the Beautiful and the Good when the super-essentially - after the removal of everything - is glorified in God. This one Good and Beautiful alone represents the Cause of the entire multitude of beautiful and good things. From Him are all the essential existences of things, unions and divisions, identities and differences, similarities and dissimilarities, the community of opposites, the immiscibility of the united, the Providence of the higher, the interconnection of equals, the circulations of the lower, everyone has their own motionless abodes and abodes that protect them, and also all with everyone - with each special - communication, adaptation and undisturbed community; and coherence of the whole; dissolution in general; and the insoluble union of beings; inexhaustible succession of what emerges; all states of rest and movement characteristic of minds, souls, bodies. For the rest and movement of all is that, every rest and every movement that exceeds that which embeds each one in his own logos and moves in accordance with his own movement. 8. They say that Divine minds move in a circle when they are united by the beginningless and endless illuminations of the Beautiful and the Good; in a straight line - when they go out to provide for the lesser, in order to do everything correctly; and in a spiral - when, providing for the lesser, they continue to remain inseparably in the same position relative to the Cause of identity, the Beautiful and the Good, constantly moving around Her in a circle. 9. The soul is characterized, firstly, by circular movement: it is given the ability to enter into itself from the outside and unite its mental powers as if in a certain circle, which gives it stability, turns it away from the multitude of what is outside it, and first concentrates it in itself, and then, as it becomes united, unites it with the only united forces and thus leads to the Beautiful and the Good, Which is above all things, one, identical, beginningless and infinite. The soul moves in a spiral when Divine knowledge illuminates it in the appropriate way - not mentally and unifyingly, but verbally and explanatoryly, as if mixed and transitional energies. And in a straight line - when, without entering into itself and not being moved by a unifying rationality (that is, as I said, in a circle), it goes outward to what is around it, and then from the outside, as if from a multitude of various symbols, it is raised to simple and integral contemplation. 10. The cause, connection and purpose of such movements, and the three types of sensory movement occurring anywhere, and even much earlier - the abodes, states of rest and foundations of each of them is the Beautiful and the Good, exceeding all rest and movement. Therefore, every state of rest and movement is from Him, in Him, into Him and for His sake. For from Him and thanks to Him come essence and all life, both mind and soul; and insignificance, equality and greatness in every nature; all measures, correspondences of existence and harmony; mergers, wholes and parts; all unity and plurality; connection of parts, unity of any plurality; perfection of integrity; quality and quantity; size and immensity; connections and separations; every infinity and every limit; all boundaries, orders, excesses, elements, species, every essence, every force, every energy, every property, every feeling, every word, every thought, every touch, every knowledge, every unity. And, simply put, everything that exists, arising from the Beautiful and the Good, being in the Beautiful and the Good, returns to the Beautiful and the Good. And everything that exists and appears exists and appears thanks to the Beautiful and the Good. Everything looks at Him, is moved and maintained by Him. And for His sake, through Him and in Him, there exists every principle that is a model, a performer, a creator, a species, an element, and in general every beginning, every connection, every limit. I will say, to generalize: everything that exists is from the Beautiful and the Good, and everything that is non-existent is super-essential in the Beautiful and the Good; and there is a beginning and a limit to everything - the Superinitial and the Superultimate; for from Him and thanks to Him, in Him, and into Him are all things (cf. Rom. 11:36), as the Holy Word says. For everyone, the Beautiful and the Good are desired, longed for and beloved; thanks to Him and for His sake, the worst passionately love the best, equals responsively love those equal in rank, and the best providentially love the worst, and each of them fundamentally loves himself; and everyone, desiring the Beautiful and the Good, does this and desires what they do and what they desire. The Word of Truth will directly say that He Himself, who is the Cause of everything, out of super-dimensional goodness loves everything, creates everything, perfects everything, preserves everything, returns everything, and is Himself the divine good Love for good for the sake of good. For the good-creating Love itself for existing things, pre-existing in Good in abundance, did not allow Itself to remain fruitlessly in Itself, and moved Itself to act for the abundant generation of everything. 11. And let no one think that we, contrary to the Sayings, honor the name Love. After all, in fact, it seems to me unreasonable and stupid to pay attention to the letter, and not to the meaning of speech. This is not characteristic of people who want to understand the Divine, but is characteristic only of those who perceive only sounds, and their meaning does not allow their ears to be perceived from the outside and does not want to know what such and such an expression means and how it can be clarified with the help of other equivalent and more expressive expressions - people partial to meaningless signs and letters, incomprehensible syllables and words that do not reach the mind of their souls, but only sound outside, in the space between lips and ears. As if it is impossible to denote the number four as twice two, straight lines as lines without bends, homeland as the fatherland, and anything else otherwise, when the same thing can be expressed in different words. In truth, it is appropriate to know that we use letters, syllables, speech, signs and words for the sake of feelings. And when our soul is moved by mental energies towards the speculative, then, together with the sensory, feelings become superfluous, as well as mental powers, when the soul, thanks to an incomprehensible unity, becomes god-like, rushes towards the rays of unapproachable light by perception without the participation of the eyes. When the mind, using the sensory, tries to rise to speculative contemplation, then for it it is much more valuable that from the sensory that is more easily perceived: clearer words, more clearly visible. Because if the subject of the senses is unclear, they themselves are not able to perfectly imagine the sensory to the mind. So that it does not seem, however, that we are saying this, deviating from the Divine Sayings, let those who do not like the name Love listen to the following: “Love her, and she will preserve you,” “Protect her, and she will exalt you; almost her, so that she will embrace you” (Prov. 4:6, 8), and other things that theology sings using the image of love. 12. After all, some of our clergy even consider the name Love more divine than the name Affection. After all, the divine Ignatius also writes: “My love was crucified” (Romans 7:2). And in the introductions to the Sayings you will find someone speaking about Divine Wisdom: “I was in love with Her beauty” (Wis. 8:2). So let us not be afraid of the name Love, and let no frightening word concerning this confuse us. For it seems to me that theologians consider the names Affection and Love to be the same, but apply to the Divine mainly the name True Love - because of the absurd prejudice of a certain kind of people. Although not only by us, but also by the Sayings themselves, True Love is sung in an appropriate divine way, the majority, not accepting the uniformity of naming God Love, have slipped to their own partial, meaning the body, separate understanding of love, which is in fact not love, but its image, or rather a falling away from True Love. For the majority cannot accommodate the unifying power of the Divine One Love. Why does it seem to many that the name attached to Divine Wisdom is completely inapplicable in order to elevate them and direct them to the knowledge of True Love and thus stop their indignation against it. People of low intelligence also often think that we are talking about something of ours and obscene in the words spoken by someone that deserve better assessment: “Love for you has come upon me, like love for women” (2 Samuel 1:26). And those who correctly hear the Divine will see that, when explaining the Divine, sacred theologians put the same meaning into the names Affection and Love. This is the property of a single-creating force that unites and in a special way mixes in the Beautiful and the Good a force that arose for the sake of the Beautiful and the Good, proceeding from the Beautiful and the Good for the sake of the Beautiful and the Good, proceeding and containing phenomena of the same order in relationship with each other, moving those who are superior to the care of the lesser and affirming those who are lower by turning to those who are higher. 13. Moreover, Divine Love is directed outward: it encourages those who love to belong not to themselves, but to their beloved. The higher ones show this by their concern for those in need; those who are on the same level - by connection with each other, and the lower ones - by a more Divine appeal to the superior ones. Why did the great Paul, being possessed by Divine Love, having partaken of Its outward-striving power, say with Divine lips: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). He said this as a truly loving one, going out of himself, as he himself says, to God and living not his own life, but the life of the Beloved as very desirable. For the sake of truth, we also dare to say that He Himself, who is the Cause of everything thanks to the love of the Beautiful and the Good in everything, through an excess of loving goodness finds itself outside of Himself, being attracted to everything that exists by Providence, as if by goodness, attraction and love, and from a state that transcends everything, is brought down by a super-essential force inseparable from Him that leads outward. That is why people experienced in the divine call Him a Jealous - as one who experiences a strong and kind love for things, as one who is prompted by His loving attraction to jealousy, as one who reveals Himself to be a Jealous One, jealous of what He desires, and as zealous in caring for things. In a word, attraction and love belong to the Beautiful and the Good, have a basis in the Beautiful and the Good, and thanks to the Beautiful and the Good they exist and arise. 14. Why do theologians sometimes prefer to call Him Love and Affection, and sometimes the Beloved and Desired? Because He is the Cause of one thing, so to speak the Producer and Parent, and He is the other. He is moved by one, and He moves by another, that is, as if He brings Himself together and moves Himself. So He is called Desired and Beloved as the Beautiful and Good, Love and Affection - since He is the driving Force and, at the same time, elevating Him to Himself, the only Beautiful and Good in Himself, representing as if an explanation of Himself through Himself, a good way out of transcendental unity, a simple, involuntary, impulsive movement of love, pre-existing in the Good, from the Good pouring out into existence and returning again into Good. This is where His endless and beginningless Divine Love primarily manifests itself, as a kind of eternal circle, along which through Good, from Good, in Good and into Good, a steady movement takes place, always occurring, abiding and renewed in the same way. This is what our glorious initiate into the sacraments divinely inspired in his hymns about love, which it is not inappropriate to recall here and include, as if some sacred chapter, in our word about Love. FROM HYMNS ABOUT LOVE BY THE HOLY HIEROTHEY 15. Whether we call Eros Divine, or angelic, or mental, or spiritual, or physical, let us imagine Him as a kind of connecting and binding Force, prompting the higher to take care of the lower, equals to communicate with each other, and those who have fallen to the limit to turn to the best who are above. FROM THE SAME HYMNS ABOUT LOVE 16. We have named many of His species originating from the one Eros, listing them in order, such as: the knowledge and powers of those in the world and supermundane loves, where, in accordance with the point of view proposed by reason, the ranks and orders of the rational and mental types of eros are superior, after which the mental-in-the-own-sense-words and the Divine are superior to other truly beautiful local types of eros. They are appropriately sung among us. Now, having again collected them all into a single folded Eros, let us collect and bring together from many and their common Father, first merging into two of them all the love forces in general, which are commanded and led by the completely transcendental irrepressible Cause of all Eros, to which the Love common to all existing things extends in a corresponding manner to each of the existing ones. FROM THE SAME HYMNS FILLED WITH LOVE 17. Now generalizing this, let us say that there is a certain single simple Force that moves Itself from the Good to some mixing with the last of existence, and then from it, passing through everything, in a circle - from Itself, thanks to Itself, by Itself again into Itself, into the Good - always returning in the same way. 18. But someone might say that if the Beautiful and the Good are desired for everyone, desired and loved by everyone (for even the non-existent, as has already been said, desires It and zealously strives to be in It, and It is a visionary for those who do not have a form, and in It the non-existent is super-essentially named and exists), then how come the demonic multitude does not desire the Beautiful and the Good, and, being committed to matter, having fallen away from the equal angelic desire for Good, is called the cause of all the evils that it causes both to itself and to others? Why is the demonic tribe, which comes entirely from Good, not good? Or why, having arisen as good from Good, did it change? And what made him bad? And what is evil anyway? And from what beginning did it come? And in which of the existing things is it? And why did the Good One want it to appear? And how, if you wanted to, could you do it? And if evil comes from another cause, what is the other cause of existence besides Good? Why does evil exist with the existence of Providence, how does it appear in the first place, and why is it not destroyed? And why does anything that exists desire it instead of Good? 19. Approximately this or something like this will be said by the doubting mind. We will consider him worthy to see how this really is, and first of all we will say the following frankly: Evil does not come from Good; and if it comes from Good, then it is not evil. For just as it is not in the nature of fire to cool, so it is not in the nature of Good to cause evil. And if everything that exists is from Good (for the nature of Good is to produce and preserve, and that of evil is to destroy and destroy), then nothing that exists comes from evil. And even that will not be evil, which is evil in relation to oneself. And if this is not evil, then evil in general is not evil, but has some share of Good to the extent that it exists at all. And if beings desire the Beautiful and the Good, and everything they do is done insofar as they consider it good, and every intention of beings has a beginning and an end in the Good (for no one does what he does, looking at the nature of evil), then how can there be evil among beings or existing in general, being deprived of such a good desire? And if all that exists is from Good, and Good is beyond the reach of those that exist, then in Good what exists and does not exist, and evil is not what exists, because otherwise it is not evil at all and is not non-existent. For in general there is nothing inherent, except for what can be said to be super-essentially existing and Good. So Good is above and before both simply existing and non-existent. But evil is not counted either among the existing or among the non-existent, and much more than the non-existent itself, it is separated from Good as something alien and insubstantial. Where, someone asks, did evil come from? After all, if there is no evil, then virtue and vice are one and the same, both in general, in relation to another whole, and in comparable particulars, and that which fights with Good will no longer be evil. However, chastity and fornication, justice and injustice are opposites. I am talking not only about the just and the unjust, the chaste and the prodigal, but also about the fact that before the difference between the virtuous and the opposite appears externally, much earlier, in the soul itself, vices are decisively opposed to the virtues, passions rebel against the meaning, and from here, of necessity, it should be recognized that evil is something opposite to Good. After all, Good is not opposite to Itself, but, as having one Beginning and as the product of one Cause, It rejoices in communication, unity and friendship. Likewise, the lesser good is not the opposite of the greater, just as lesser heat or cold is not the opposite of the greater. Thus, evil exists among beings, and is being, and it is opposite and resists Good. And although it represents the death of beings, this does not deprive evil of existence - on the contrary, it makes it existent and gives rise to beings. Isn't the death of one often the birth of another? Thus, it turns out that evil participates in the completion of everything and gives the whole the ability not to be incomplete. 20. The True Word says in response to this that evil, being evil, does not produce any essence or birth, and only to the best of its ability causes evil and damage to the face of existence. If someone says that it is capable of generating being and that, destroying one, it gives being to another, one should truly answer that it is not to the extent that it destroys one, it gives being to another, but that to the extent that it is destruction and evil, it only destroys and causes evil, while being and essence appear thanks to the Good. So evil turns out to cause destruction in itself, but is capable of generating thanks to Good, and evil, as such, is neither existing nor capable of creating existing, but thanks to Good it turns out to be both existing, and good existing, and creating good. Moreover, just as the same thing cannot be both good and bad in the same respect, so the destruction and generation of the same thing cannot be the result of the same action of the same force, be it a self-creative or self-destructive force. So evil, in the proper sense of the word, is neither a being nor Good, and is not capable of generating existence and creating beings and goods. Good, where It reaches perfection, creates perfect and unalloyed good. And that which participates in Him to a lesser extent is an imperfect good, with an admixture due to a lack of Good. And evil is neither completely good nor does it do good. But what approaches the Good more or less turns out to be good to the appropriate extent, since the all-perfect Goodness that passes through everything spreads not only to the all-good beings surrounding it, but also reaches those who are extremely distant from it, for some it remains entirely, for others - to a lesser extent, for others - extremely little, in accordance with the ability of each of the existing beings to be involved in It. And some participate in the Good in perfection, others are more or less deprived of It, others have an even more vague involvement in the Good, and to the fourth It appears in the form of an extremely weak echo. For if the Good were to appear to everyone not according to his ability, the most Divine and the oldest would be in the rank of the lowest. How is it possible for everything to equally participate in the Good, if not everything is equally worthy to fully participate in It? In fact, the “superiority of the greatness” of the power of Good is such that It gives even to those who are to some extent deprived of It the strength to fill the lack of Itself until full communion with It. And if we dare to tell the truth, then what fights with Him can exist and fight only by His power. Moreover, I will say briefly: everything that exists, insofar as it exists, is good, arising from Good, and since it is deprived of Good, it does not represent good and does not exist. After all, if we take other properties, such as heat or cold, then what is warmed or cooled exists even when it is deprived of heat or cold; and much of what exists is not involved in either life or mind. God, rising above the essence, exists super-essentially. In a word, as for all other properties, when they disappear or do not appear at all, existing things exist and are capable of becoming, but something that is in all respects devoid of Good has never existed anywhere, no, will not and cannot exist. Thus, the libertine, although he is deprived of the Good due to wordless lust - after all, he does not exist in Him and does not desire the Existing - nevertheless participates in the Good in this very weak imitation of union and love. And rage participates in Good by the very fact that it is moved and aroused against what seems bad in order to correct it and turn it towards what seems good. And even the one who strives for the worst life, since he generally strives for a life that seems to him the best, by the very fact that he strives and strives to live, and directs his gaze to a better life, participates in the Good. And if the Good is completely destroyed, there will be no essence, no life, no desire, no movement, and nothing else. So to beget after death is not the ability of evil, but the manifestation of a lesser Good, just as illness is a lack of order, but not its complete absence. For when this happens, then the disease itself does not remain. The disease remains and exists, having at least some order as its basis, giving it the possibility of existence. What is completely unparticipated in Good does not exist and is not among those that exist, but what is mixed is counted among those that exist thanks to Good, and therefore remains in beings and beings to the extent that it participates in Good. In general, everything that exists more or less exists - to the extent that it participates in the Good, for nothing that is in any way related to Being-in-the-proper-sense-of-the-word does not exist and cannot exist. And that which partly exists and partly does not exist, to the extent that it has fallen away from the Eternally Existing, does not exist, but to the extent that it has participated in Being, it exists and is an integral being, and thus its non-existence is retained and preserved. But evil, which has completely fallen away from Good, does not exist in either more or less good people. And that which is partly good and partly not good, fights with a certain good, but not with the Good as a whole. And this is preserved thanks to participation in the Good and realizes its insufficiency through its participation in the Good in general. If Good goes away completely, then there will be absolutely nothing good, nothing mixed, nothing evil in the proper sense of the word. After all, if evil represents imperfect good, then with the complete absence of Good, both imperfect and perfect good will recede. And then only evil will appear and will appear when for some it turns out to be evil as for the opposite, and it depends on others as on the good. For it is impossible for one and the same person to fight each other with the same thing in everything. Thus, evil does not exist. 21. But even among those who exist there is no evil. After all, if all that exists is from Good and in all existing It and everything embraces Good, then either there is no evil among the existing, or it is in Good. But in Good it cannot be, as in fire there cannot be cold, and the One who turns evil itself into good is not capable of perceiving evil. If it can, then how can there be evil in Good? From Him? This is ridiculous and impossible. For, as the Truth of the Sayings says, a good tree cannot bear bad fruit (Matthew 7:18) and vice versa. And if not from Him, then the beginning and cause are from others. And then either evil comes from Good, or Good from evil, or, if this is impossible, Good and Evil will turn out to come from different beginnings and causes. But every two is not the beginning, but one is the beginning of every two. However, it is absurd for two complete opposites to originate and exist from the same Unit: in this case, that very beginning is not simple and not one, but separate and twofold, opposite to itself and changeable. It is also impossible that existing things come from two principles, and that they exist in each other and in everything and are opposed. If this is accepted, then God will turn out to be neither immune from misfortune nor beyond difficulties. If there had been something that troubled Him, then everything would have been disorderly and would have been in eternal strife. However, Good conveys love to all beings and is glorified by sacred theologians as Peace-in-the-proper-sense-of-the-word and the Giver of Peace. Why is everything good friendly and harmonious and is the product of a single Life, and is united with a single Good, and is meek, and agreeable, and friendly to each other. So evil is not in God, and evil is not Divine. But evil is not from God either. For either He is not good, or He creates good and delivers good, and not so that sometimes it is one thing, sometimes another and not all, for in this case the most Divine of all – the Cause – will be subject to changeability and changeability. If being in God is Good, then it turns out that God, who changes the good, sometimes is Existent, and sometimes is not. If He has good through communion, then He takes it from another, and sometimes He will have it, and sometimes He will not. So, evil is not from God and not in God - not in general and not at times. 22. But evil is not in the angels. After all, if a comely angel proclaims divine Goodness, being himself by communion, secondarily, the same as what is essentially, primarily, the Announced, then the angel is the “image” of God, a manifestation of the unmanifested light, a “mirror” pure, bright, unsullied, undamaged, “unsullied,” perceiving all, if I may say so, the beauty of the comely image of God and shining unalloyed in itself, as far as it is perhaps by the grace of sacred silence. So the angels are not evil either. Or are those who torture sinners evil? In this sense, both those who admonish those who sin and those of the priests who remove the uninitiated from the Divine Mysteries are evil. But it’s not that it’s bad that they’re punished, but that they’ve become worthy of punishment; and not that the unworthy are removed from churches, but that he is defiled and unsanctified and incapable of receiving the most pure mysteries. 23. But demons are not evil by nature. For if they were evil by nature, they would not be of Good, not among those who exist, not from the good who have changed their nature, and would be eternally evil. And are they angry towards themselves or towards others? If in relation to themselves, then they destroy themselves, but if for others, then how and what do they destroy: essence, strength or energy? If the essence, then, first of all, not contrary to nature, because they do not destroy what is incorruptible by nature, but only what is subject to corruption. And this is not evil for everyone and not completely evil. And nothing of existence perishes in essence and by nature, only the logos of harmony and conformity loses - from the lack of order inherent in nature - the ability to remain the same. Weakness is not omnipotent, for if it were omnipotent, it would put an end to both corruption and that which is subject to it, and such destruction would be the destruction of itself. So this is not evil, but a lack of goodness. That which is completely unrelated to Good is not found among beings. This reasoning also applies to the destruction of strength and energy. Next, how can demons created by God be evil? After all, Good brings into being and reveals good. Although they, someone will say, are called evil, not because they exist, for they come from Good and received a good essence, but because they do not exist, being unable, as the Sayings say, to preserve their dignity (Jude 1:6). In what way, tell me, have demons become worse, we say, if not in the fact that they have lost the properties and energy associated with divine goods? Otherwise, if demons are evil by nature, then they are eternally evil. But evil is unstable. So, if demons remain eternally the same, then they are not evil, because eternal identity is a property of Good. If they are not always evil, then they are evil not by nature, but from a lack of angelic blessings. And they are not completely uninvolved in Good, since they exist, live, think, and in general they have some kind of movement of desire. They are said to be evil because they were incapable of activities appropriate to their nature. Their evil is apostasy, departure from what is due them, omission, imperfection and powerlessness, weakening, retreat and falling away from the power that creates their perfection. Specifically, what is demonic evil? Senseless rage, insane passion, unbridled fantasy? But this, although characteristic of demons, does not represent either complete evil, or evil for everyone, or evil in itself. After all, some animals are not possessed by this, but deprivation of this means death for the animal and evil. Obsession with this saves and makes it possible for the animal nature endowed with such properties to exist. Thus, the demonic race represents evil not by what it is by nature, but by what it is not. And all the good that was given to the demons did not change, but they fell away from all the good that was given to them. We will never say about the angelic gifts given to them that they have changed, because they exist and are unharmed and radiant, although they do not see them, having deprived themselves of the ability to see the Good. So, since demons exist, they exist from Good, and they are good, and they strive for the Beautiful-and-Good, wanting to be, to live and to comprehend what exists. And because of deprivation, removal and falling away from the benefits due to them, they are called evil. And they are evil to the extent that they do not exist. And desiring something that does not exist, they desire evil. 24. But let someone say that souls are evil? If it is because they prudently and salutarily coexist with the evil, then this is not evil, but good and from Good, virtuous even in relation to evil. If we say that souls become embittered, then why do they become embittered, if not from the impoverishment of good properties and abilities and because, due to their own weakness, they make mistakes and slip? After all, the air around us darkens, we say, from the decrease and absence of light. And the light itself is always the light that illuminates the darkness. So neither the evil inherent in demons nor the evil inherent in us represents real evil, but is only a deficiency, the absence of the fullness of the goods inherent in us. 25. But there is no evil in dumb animals either. After all, if you take away from them rage, lust and the like, which are called, but which are not simply evil inherent in their nature, then a lion that has lost courage and pride will no longer be a lion, a dog that has become affectionate towards everyone will no longer be a dog, unless the job of dogs is to admit their own and drive away strangers. So, what does not destroy nature is not evil, but the death of nature is weakness and lack of natural properties, energy and strength. And if everything that is born reaches perfection in time, then the imperfect is not completely outside of all nature. 26. But in all nature there is no evil. After all, if all natural logoi come from universal nature, then there is nothing that exists in spite of it. For each particular nature, one thing corresponds and the other does not. Different natures have different things that are unnatural, and what is natural for one is unnatural for another. Evil of nature is unnaturalness, denial of nature. So there is no evil nature, but the evil of nature consists in the inability to fulfill one’s nature. 27. But evil is not in bodies. For ugliness and disease are damage to the species and a violation of order. It is not a complete evil, but a lesser good. When there is a complete destruction of beauty, appearance and order, the body itself perishes. But the fact that the body is not the cause of the depravity of the soul is clear from the fact that depravity can appear without the body, as happened with demons. Evil for minds, souls, and bodies is weakness in use and evasion from possessing one’s own goods. 28. But - contrary to widespread opinion - evil is not in matter, which, as they say, occurs because it is matter. After all, she too is involved in the order of things, in their beauty and appearance. If, being outside of them, matter were qualityless and formless, how could it cause anything without itself possessing the ability to be affected? How else can matter be evil? If it does not exist in any way, then it is neither good nor evil. If it somehow exists, and everything that exists is from Good, then matter must come from Good, and either Good turns out to be the creator of evil, or evil, as coming from Good, turns out to be good, or evil turns out to be the creator of good, or good, as coming from evil, turns out to be evil, or there are two principles emanating from one dominant third. If, they say, matter is necessary for the completeness of the whole world, then how is matter evil? These are two different things – evil and necessity. Is it possible for the Good One to introduce something from evil for birth? Or maybe evil needs Good? Evil, after all, avoids the nature of Good. Matter, if it were evil, could it give birth to and nourish nature? After all, evil as such is not capable of generating, nourishing, or creating or preserving anything at all. If they say that it does not create evil in souls, but attracts them to it, how can this be true? Many of them are looking at the Good. However, would this be possible if matter completely attracted them to evil? So, evil in souls does not come from matter, but from disorderly sinful movement. If they say that this is inevitably connected with matter, but impermanent matter is necessary for those who are unable to be based on themselves, then how can evil be necessary or necessary - evil? 29. But what we call inferiority does not fight the Good with its own strength. For perfect inferiority is completely powerless; the partial has force not as a defect, but as an imperfect defect. After all, when the defect is partial, it is not yet evil, but as long as it becomes complete, the nature of evil has already gone. 30. To sum up, we can say that good comes from a single universal Cause, while evil comes from many partial impoverishments. God knows evil as good, and for Him the causes of evil are beneficent forces. If evil is eternal, creative, powerful, exists and acts, then where does it come from? From Good? Or from Good - from evil? Or are they both due to a different reason? Everything that is in accordance with nature is born for a specific reason. If evil is causeless and indefinite, then it is not in accordance with nature, for in nature there is nothing unnatural, just as there is no expression of artlessness in art. Or is the soul the cause of evil, like fire is heat, and causes evil to everything it approaches? Or is the nature of the soul good, but by its actions when is it such and when is it not? If by nature its very existence is evil, then where does it come from? Is it not from the creative good Cause of all things? If from Her, then can She be evil in her being? After all, all Her creations are good. If - by your actions, then this is not immutable. If not so, then where do her virtues and comeliness come from? It remains to be assumed that evil represents the weakness and decline of Good. 31. The cause of goods is one. If evil is the opposite of Good, then there are many causes of evil. It is not meanings and forces that produce evil, but impotence, weakness and a disproportionate mixture of dissimilar things. Evil is not motionless and not always the same, but unlimited, infinite, capable of being transferred to another, equally infinite. Of all evil, Good turns out to be the beginning and the end, for everything exists for the sake of Good - both that which is good and that which is opposite to it, for we do this too, desiring good: after all, no one, turning his gaze to evil, does what he creates. So evil has no substance, but only its likeness, appearing not for its own sake, but for the sake of Good. 32. Evil must be attributed to a random existence that arises thanks to another, and not from its own beginning. When it appears, it appears to be right, because it appears for the sake of Good, but in essence it is not right, because we take non-Good for Good. It turns out that you want one thing, but you get something else. Thus, evil is outside the path, outside the goal, outside the nature, outside the cause, outside the beginning, outside the end, outside the limit, outside the desire, outside the substance. Consequently, evil is defectiveness, lack, weakness, disproportion, sin, aimlessness, ugliness, lifelessness, madness, wordlessness, thoughtlessness, groundlessness, groundlessness, uncertainty, sterility, inactivity, futility, disorder, dissimilarity, unlimitedness, darkness, insubstantiality and never the non-existence of anything. How is evil even capable of anything? Mixing with goodness. For that which is completely unrelated to Good does not exist and is not capable of anything. But if the Good is existent, desirable, powerful and active, how can anything resist the Good, being devoid of will, strength, and energy? Not all evil is the same evil for everyone and in all cases. Demonic evil is existence outside the plausible mind, evil for the soul is meaninglessness, evil for the body is a contradiction to nature. 33. How does evil exist in general when Providence exists? Evil does not exist as evil; it does not exist and is not among those that exist. And nothing that exists is outside of Providence, and there is no existing evil that is not mixed with Good. And if there is nothing existing that is not involved in Good, evil is a lack of Good, nothing that exists is completely devoid of Good, in everything that exists there is God’s providence, and nothing that exists is outside of Providence. But even those who turn out to be evil, Providence makes good use of them for their own or others’ private or general benefit and provides for them in a manner appropriate to each of the beings. That is why we do not accept the unfounded opinion of many that Providence must lead us to virtue even against our will, that it is not characteristic of Providence to harm nature. For the saving Providence supports all the nature of those who move independently precisely as moving independently - both all together and each individually - to the extent that the nature of those for whom it provides is capable of receiving from the whole and all possible Providence the providential benefits given in proportion to each one. 34. So evil does not exist, and there is no evil among those that exist. Evil as such does not exist anywhere. Evil arises not from strength, but from weakness. Even among demons, what they are comes from Good and represents goodness. The evil inherent in them is a consequence of their falling away from their own goods, deviation from identity and inability to possess the angelic perfection appropriate to them. They wish well when they wish to be, live and think. And if they do not desire good, they desire what does not exist. And this is no longer a desire, but an error relative to a true desire. 35. Sayings are called sinners in the minds of those whose unforgettable knowledge or doing good runs out of weakness; who knows the Will and does not create; heard about Good, but weakened in faith or energy. And for some it is undesirable to understand how to do good, due to a change or impoverishment of desire. And in general, evil, as we have said many times, is exhaustion, weakness and impoverishment of either knowledge, or unforgettable knowledge, or faith, or desire, or the energy of Good. But someone will say that weakness deserves forgiveness, not punishment. If it were impossible to be strong, this would be fair. But if being strong depends on the Good, which, according to the Sayings, gives that which corresponds to everyone in general, then delusion, deviation, deliverance and falling away from one’s own benefits derived from the Good are not commendable. But we have said enough about this to the best of our ability in the treatise “On Fair and Divine Judgment.” In this sacred work, the truth of the Sayings flogged sophistical unjust and false statements about God as words devoid of meaning. Now we have sufficiently sung Good as something truly amazing, as the Beginning and End of everything, as the totality of beings, as the creation of non-existents, as the Cause of all good, as the non-cause of evil, as Providence and perfect Goodness, surpassing existing and non-existent, turning evil and lack of itself into good, desired by all, beloved by all, towards which everyone has an inclination, and everything else that was shown in the previous true, as I think, word. Chapter Five About the name “Existence”, and in it about prototypes 1. Now we should move on to the truly existing theological name of the truly Existing being. Let us remember that the purpose of the word is not to explain how the super-essential Essence is super-essential, since it is inexpressible, unknowable, completely inexplicable and transcends unity itself, but to glorify the essence-creating emergence of the God-initial Beginning of every essence into all that exists. After all, the divine name Good, which explains all manifestations of the universal Cause, extends to both existing and non-existent and exceeds both existing and non-existent. And the name Jehovah extends to all things and exceeds all things. And the name Life extends to all living things and exceeds living things. And the name Wisdom extends to everything that thinks, is rational and is perceived by the senses and exceeds all this. 2. Thus, the word strives to sing these Divine names that explain Providence. It does not promise to explain the self-super-essential Goodness, Essence, Life and Wisdom of the self-super-essential Divinity, super-founded, as the Sayings say, above all goodness, Divinity, essence, life and wisdom in the secret spheres, but only glorifies the explained beneficial Providence, Goodness par excellence and the Cause of all good things, beings, life, wisdom, and also the creator of beings, creating life and giving Wisdom the Cause of those who are involved in the essence, life, mind, meaning and feeling. It denies that Good is one thing, Existence is another, and Life or Wisdom is a third, that there are many causes and that different things are produced by different Divinities, higher and lower, but says that all the good manifestations and Divine names that we chant belong to the one God and that one explains the existence of the perfect Providence of the one God, and the others are more general or more particular His manifestations. 3. However, someone will say: since existence extends wider than life, and life wider than wisdom, are not the living above the living, the sentient - the living, the intelligible - the sentient, and the intelligible - the intelligible, since they exist near God and are closest to Him? After all, it is fitting for those who have received great gifts from God to be the best and surpass others. If anyone can imagine intelligent beings having neither existence nor life, then the reasoning is correct. If the Divine minds are superior to other beings, live above other living beings, understand and know that which exceeds feeling and reason, and more than all other beings strive for the Beautiful-and-Good and are involved in Them, then they are closer to the Good, as they are more involved in It and have received more great benefits from It, just as intelligent beings are superior to sentient beings with the gift of reason, those others - with feelings, and others with the presence of life. And it seems to me that it is true that those who are more involved in the one infinitely bestowing God are closer to Him than others, and are more Divine. 4. Since we have started talking about this, let us sing the Good as the truly Existing One, the creative existence of all beings in general. The Existent (Ex. 3:14) is the super-essential substantial Cause of every possible being, the Creator of the existing, existence, substance, essence, nature, beginning, and the Measure of ages, and the Reality of times, and the Eternity of beings, and the Time of those that arise, and the Being of everything that only happens, and the Birth of everything that only appears. From Being - eternity, and essence, and existing, and time, and emergence, and emerging, existing in existing and in any way possible and present. And the Existing God exists not in any other way, but simply and indefinitely, containing and pre-existing all being. That is why He is called the King of the ages (1 Tim. 1:17), because in Him and around Him is everything that relates to being, to what exists and to what has come, He Himself was not, will not be, and did not happen, He did not arise and will not arise, and - moreover - He does not exist. But He Himself represents being for beings; and not only those that exist, but also the very existence of those that exist - from the pre-eternal Existence, for He Himself is the Age of centuries, remaining to the ages. 5. Returning to the argument, let us say that the existence of all beings and ages is from the Pre-Existent; and all eternity and time are from Him; and of all eternity and time and everything that exists, He is the pre-existing Beginning and Cause; and all things participate in Him; and He does not retreat from anything that exists; and He Himself exists before everything, and everything was made up in Him; and in general, if anything is in the Pre-Existent, then it is, and is understood, and is preserved; and being is given before His other sacraments; and being itself is older than the being-in-itself of life, the being-in-itself of wisdom, the being-in-itself of the Divine likeness; and the rest, to which existing things participate, first of all participates in being; Moreover, everything that exists in itself participates in being in itself; and there is nothing that exists, the essence and age of which would not be existence itself. First of all, therefore, God is rightly praised from the eldest of all His gifts as Jehovah. For, having pre-existence and super-existence, He first created being in general - I mean being in itself - and then, with the help of being itself, created everything that exists. And all the principles of existence participate in being and essence, and the essence of the beginning, and first the essence, and then the essence of the beginning. And if you want to call the beginning of the living as living, then it is life itself, similar as similar - self-similarity, united as united - self-unity ordered as ordered - order in itself, and others participating in this or that, or both, or many, - this or that, or both, or many; and you will find that those who participate in themselves first participate in Being and first exist thanks to Being, and then become the cause of this or that, being, due to participation in Being, both existing and participating. And if they exist due to participation in Being, then even more so do those who participate in them. 6. Self-super-goodness is glorified as offering as the first gift Being itself for the most important, the first of the sacraments. From Her and in Her exist Being itself, and the principles of beings, and everything that exists, and everything held in any way by Being, and this happens irresistibly, collectively and unitedly. After all, every number uniquely pre-exists in one, and only one contains every number and all numbers are united in one, and the further a number moves away from one, the more it divides and multiplies. Likewise, all the lines of one circle passing through the center have one common point, and this point equally unites all these straight lines with each other and with their common beginning from which they emerge; in this center they are completely united. Having retreated a little from him, they disperse a little, moving away more - more. In short, the closer they are to the center, the more they are connected to it and to each other, and the further from it, the more they are removed from each other. 7. But in the entire universal nature, everything belonging to each individual nature is grouped into an unfused unity, and likewise in the soul - the providential powers of the whole body corresponding to the measure of each. There is nothing reprehensible in moving from weak images to the universal Cause, with super-peaceful eyes to see everything in the universal Cause - even what is opposite to each other - uniform and united, for She is the Beginning of existence, from which Being itself, and everything that exists in any way: every beginning, every boundary, every life, every immortality, every wisdom, every order, every harmony, every force, every protection, every foundation, every division, every understanding, every word, every feeling, every property, every immobility, every movement, every unification, every fusion, every love, every union, every division, every limit, and so on, which, thanks to Being existing, characterizes all that exists. 8. And from this universal Cause come the intelligible and rational essences of the godlike angels, and the natures of souls and the whole world, and that which is said to exist in any way, either in something else or in an idea. For the all-holy and most important powers, truly existing and established, as it were, on the eve of the super-essential Trinity, from Her and in Her have both existence and God-like existence, and after them the lesser ones - to a lesser extent, and the least ones - extremely little, but like angels - in relation to us - super-peacefully. And souls and everything else that exists in the same way have existence and well-being, and exist, and prosper, receiving being and prosperity from the Pre-Existent: in Him are both existing and well-being, beginning from Him, being preserved in Him, and being completed in Him. He gives eldership to the best beings, whom the Sayings call eternal. The existence of all beings itself never disappears. But Being itself is from the Pre-Existent, and Being belongs to Him, and not He to Being; and in Him there is Being, and not He in Being; and He has Being, and He is not Being. And He Himself is Eternity, and the Beginning, and the Measure of Being, existing before the essence, existence and eternity, and being the essence-creating Beginning, its Middle and End. And therefore, truly, the Pre-Existent One is multiplied many times over by Sayings according to every thought of those who exist and is glorified in justice as He was, is, will be, happened, is happening and will happen. For those who chant God-like, this all means that He is super-essential in relation to every thought and is the cause of existing things anywhere. And not that He is something, but He is not something, here He is, but there He is not; He is everything, as the Cause of everything that precedes everything, in Himself all the beginnings, all the endings of all things that have and pre-exist, and He is above all as first of all the super-essentially Superexistent. Why is everything attributed to Him at the same time, but He is none of everything. He is all-forming, all-seeing, formless, ugly, the beginnings, middles and ends of beings are unattainably and transcendentally pre-existent in Himself, sending to all, in accordance with one super-unified reason, unsullied being like light. After all, if our sun of the essence and qualities of sensory beings - although there are many of them and they are different, but it is one - shining with a homogeneous light, renews, and nourishes, and preserves, and perfects, and divides, and unites, and warms, and makes fruitful, and grows, and changes, and roots, and gives birth, and moves and vivifies everything, and each of all, in its corresponding way, participates in the same single sun, and the one sun in himself equally has the causes of many participants, then it should be recognized that He Who is the Cause of both the sun and everything is much more predominant in the prototypes of all beings in a single super-essential connection, since He reveals the essence after departing from the essence. We call archetypes the logoi of beings that pre-exist in God in unity, creating the essence of beings, which theology calls predestination and Divine and good wishes, dividing and creating beings, in accordance with which the Superessential both predetermined and realized all that exists. 9. The philosopher Clement considers what are called prototypes to be the most basic among beings, but he does not use the word in its main, full and simple meaning. Assuming that this too is said correctly, we should remember what theology says: “I did not show you this so that you would follow it,” but so that, using the knowledge corresponding to this, we ascend as best we can to the universal Cause. For everything that exists, in view of the transcendental unity of everything, should be connected with Her: after all, beginning the creation of the essence with extra-existence and goodness, and passing through everything, and filling all existence with Herself, and rejoicing in everything that exists, She has everything in Herself; with the single advantage of simplicity, having rejected all duality, She equally embraces everything with Her super-simple infinity, and personally participates in everything, just as a voice, being one and the same, is perceived by many ears as one. 10. Of all things, the Beginning and the End are the Pre-Existent: the Beginning is as the Cause, the End is as the One for whose sake they exist; in a way that surpasses their apparent opposition, He is both the Limit of all and the Infinity of all infinity and limit. All that exists is in one, as has often been said. He existed and created, being in everything and everywhere the same; and everything is like the same, penetrating and proceeding from everything, and remaining in Himself; both resting and moving, and not resting and not moving; having neither a beginning, nor a middle, nor an end, and being none of the things that exist, and not being anything that exists. And in general, nothing suits Him from those who exist eternally and from those subject to time, but for time, and for eternity, and for all those who are in eternity and in time, He is beyond, because eternity itself, and existence, and the measure of existence, and what is measured are through Him and from Him. But it would be more timely to talk about this another time. Chapter Six About the name “Life” 1. And now we should sing the praises of eternal life, from which life itself and all life comes, and from which the life inherent in everyone spreads into everything that is involved in life. Even the life and immortality of the immortal angels, and the very non-stopness of the angelic eternal movement - from Her and thanks to Her the essence and appeared; thanks to Her, they speak of always living as immortal, but on the other hand, as non-immortal, because they do not themselves have the opportunity to be immortal and live forever, but from the life-giving Cause that creates and contains all life. And just as we said about Being that He is the age of life-in-itself, so here again we will say that Divine Life-in-itself revives life and makes it substantial; and all life and life-movement proceed from Life, all life and every beginning of all life surpassing. From Her, souls have indestructibility, and all animals and plants have life, which is the most distant echo of life. With Her disappearance, according to the Sayings, all life will disappear, and with Her, those who died from the powerlessness to participate in Her, returning again, become alive again. 2. And the first to receive the gift of being life in itself is life, then all of life and separately each thing that is given to be is the ability to live in an appropriate way. Super-heavenly lives are given an immaterial, god-like unchanging immortality and a steady, immutable eternal movement, which, thanks to abundant goodness, extends to the life of demons, for not from another, but from the same Cause, it has the gift of being life and abiding. And people, as mixed people, are given angelic life if possible; out of abundance of philanthropy, she turns and calls those who have departed to her; and even more Divine is what is promised to transform us entirely, that is, the souls with the bodies associated with them, to perfect life and immortality. In ancient times this would have seemed unnatural, but you and I and the Truth consider this a Divine matter and transcending nature. I mean superior to the nature we see, not the omnipotent Divine Life, for in relation to It, the Nature of all living things and especially beings more Divine, no life is outside of nature or above nature. So let polemical words about this Simon's madness be driven far away from the Divine community and your sacred soul. For he forgot, as I think, and considers himself wise for this, that a prudent person should not use the obvious evidence of feeling as an ally in the struggle against the implicit Cause of everything. And he must be told: you are speaking against nature, for there is nothing that would be contrary to it. 3. All animals and plants receive life and care from Her. And whether intelligible, rational, sentient, or nutritious and vegetative, or any other life you name it, or the beginning of life, or the essence of life, everything from It, which exceeds all life, lives and is quickened, and in It, as a cause, pre-exists in one way. For the super-living and life-giving Life is the cause, the quickener, the multiplier and divider of all life and all life must be glorified, in accordance with the fertility of all living things, as all-possible and life in general - contemplated and glorified not as something in need of life, but as overflowing with life, living in itself, more life-giving and super-living, exceeding what a person can sing of the inexpressible Life. Chapter Seven About the names “Wisdom”, “Mind”, “Word”, “Truth”, “Faith” 1. Now, if you do not mind, let us sing the good and eternal Life as all-wise and as wisdom in itself, and most importantly, as the basis of all wisdom, above all wisdom and consciousness existing. For God is not only filled with wisdom, and His understanding is without number (Ps. 147:5), but He is also above all words, understanding and wisdom. Realizing this supernaturally, the truly Divine man, our common and mentor sun, said: “The foolish things of God are wiser than men” (1 Cor. 1:25) - not only because every human thought is some kind of deception in comparison with the Divine most perfect understandings with their firmness and steadfastness, but also because it is common for theologians to apply negations to God in the opposite sense. Thus, the all-luminous light of the Sayings is called “invisible”; They call the Many-sung and Many-named “Ineffable and Nameless”; Absent everywhere and found in everything – “Incomprehensible and Unfindable.” In the same way, they say, even now the Divine Apostle sings of the imaginary stupidity of God (cf. 1 Cor. 1:21, 25): what seems strange and absurd in it he raised to an inexpressible truth that precedes every word. But, as I said elsewhere, by comprehending what is superior to us in our own way, shrouded in our innate feelings, reducing the Divine to what is familiar to us, we are mistaken, trying to comprehend the inexpressible Divine Word through what is revealed. It should be known that our mind has the ability to think, thanks to which it sees what is thought, and a unity that surpasses the nature of the mind, thanks to which it touches what is higher than it. In accordance with this, the Divine must be comprehended not by our own strength, but by a frenzy full of ourselves from ourselves and by turning to God. It is better to be God’s than to be one’s own, for whoever finds himself with God will be given the Divine. In order to sing of such dumb, insane and stupid Wisdom in the best possible way, let us say that She is the cause of all mind and meaning, all wisdom and consciousness, that all will belongs to Her, all knowledge and consciousness come from Her, and in Her all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden (Col. 2:3). The super-wise and all-wise Cause, according to what has already been said, is the basis of wisdom itself, and of all wisdom in general and in all its forms. 2. From Her the intelligible and comprehending powers of angelic minds receive simple and blessed understandings. Not in particulars, or from particulars, or from feelings, or from words, do they collect divine knowledge, and do not use anything that has in common with this, but, pure from everything material and plural, they mentally, immaterially, uniformly understand the intelligible in the Divine. And their mental strength and energy remains clothed in unalloyed and untainted purity, capable of seeing Divine thoughts, reflecting, as far as possible, thanks to Divine Wisdom, the Divine super-wise Mind and Word with its indivisibility, immateriality and God-like unity. And souls are endowed with meaningfulness, and they tend to move forward and around the truth of beings, but due to partiality and varied variability, they remain below the united minds, however, thanks to the ability to collect many things together - to the extent that this is characteristic and possible for souls - they are awarded equal angelic understandings. But the feelings themselves, without sinning against the truth, can be called an echo of Wisdom. Also, the demonic mind - to the extent that it is a mind - comes from Her; but insofar as it is senseless and strives to achieve what it does not know and does not want, it should with great right be called a falling away from Wisdom. But, if divine Wisdom is called the beginning, cause, basis, completion, protection and limit of wisdom itself and all wisdom, all mind and meaning, and every feeling, how is the super-wise God Himself glorified as Mind, Word and Expert? For how can He perceive anything intelligible without mental energy, or how can He know the sensible, being above all sense? And the Sayings say that He knows everything, and nothing escapes Divine knowledge. But, as I have often said, the Divine must be understood in a manner befitting the Divine. After all, in relation to God, madness and insensibility must be interpreted, implying an advantage, and not a disadvantage, as well as attributing meaninglessness to the Transcendent of meaning, imperfection to the Superperfect and Properfect, imperceptible and invisible darkness to the inaccessible Light, superior to visible light. So the Divine Mind understands everything with knowledge beyond all, as the Cause of everything, concentrating in Itself the advanced knowledge of everything, knowing and producing angels before the appearance of angels, and knowing and introducing everything else into the being from the inside, from the very, so to speak, beginning. I think this is what the Sayings mean when they say: He who knows all things before they were (Dan. 13:42). After all, when studying existing things, the Divine Mind has knowledge not from beings, but from Itself and in Itself: as the Cause, He has and contains the understanding, knowledge and essence of everything, not judging each by appearance, but as knowing and containing the single cause of everything - just as light, being the cause of darkness, has its knowledge in itself, knowing darkness from nothing else but from light. After all, knowing Itself, Divine Wisdom knows everything material, immaterial, dismembered indivisible, the plural united, cognizing and producing everything through this one itself. And if for one reason God imparts existence to all beings, then for the same single reason He knows everything as existing from Him and pre-existing in Him, not receiving knowledge about them from existing ones, but Himself giving each of them self-knowledge and knowledge of others. Thus, God does not have a special knowledge, how He knows Himself, but another general one - how He embraces all things. Knowing Itself, the Cause of everything hardly knows what comes from It and of which It is the cause. So God knows things with the same knowledge that He knows Himself, and not as a result of studying things. The sayings say that the angels also know what is happening on earth, not with the help of the senses, cognizing this existence, although they, all these things, are perceptible, but according to the power and nature inherent in their god-like mind. 3. In addition to what has been said, we should ask the question how we know God, who is neither mental, nor sensory, nor even existing in general. Perhaps it would be correct to say that we know God not from His nature, for it is unknowable and transcends all meaning and intelligence, but from the structure of all things, for this is His work, preserving certain images and similarities of His Divine prototypes; venturing further into the denial of everything, going beyond the limits of everything in the way and order to the best of our ability, we ascend to the Cause of everything that surpasses everything. So God is known both in everything and outside of everything. God is known both through reason and through unreason. And He is characterized by understanding, and meaning, and knowledge, and touch, and feeling, and opinion, and imagination, and name, and everything else, and He is not understood, not realized, not named. And He is not one of the existing things, and is not cognizable in any of the existing ones. And He is all in all (1 Cor. 15:28) and nothing in nothing, and from all He is known by all, and by none from nothing. And what we say about God is correct, that from all beings whose cause He is, He is glorified accordingly. And there is also the most Divine knowledge of God, carried out through ignorance through a unity that transcends the mind, when the mind, having retreated from everything that exists, then leaving itself, uniting with the most luminous rays, from there and there is illuminated by the depth of Wisdom inaccessible to research. Although, as I said, it is appropriate to recognize Her in everything, for She, according to the Sayings, is the creator of everything, constantly governing everything, and the cause of indestructible conformity and order, constantly connecting the completion of the first with the beginning of the second, beautifully creating a single symphony and harmony from everything. 4. As the “Word,” God is glorified by the sacred Sayings, not only because He is the giver of the word, and the mind, and wisdom, but also because He in one way comprehends in Himself the causes of everything and spreads into everything, permeating, as the Sayings say (cf.: Wis. 7:24; 8:1), everything to the end, and above all because the divine Word in simplicity surpasses all simplicity and, free from everything, everything greatly exceeds. This Word represents a simple and truly existing truth, in accordance with which, as pure and undeceptive knowledge of existing things, there is Divine faith, the constant affirmation of believers, their truth and the truth affirming them in immutable identity. So believers have a simple knowledge of the truth. After all, if knowledge unites those who know and the known, and ignorance is the cause of eternal change and fragmentation of the ignorant in itself, then nothing will drive the one who believes in the Truth according to the sacred Word from the hearth of true faith, in which he is able to maintain a constant, immovable and immutable identity. After all, he who has united with the Truth knows well that he is in his right mind, even if many admonish him as if he is out of his mind. As it should be, it remains hidden from them that, thanks to real faith, he has emerged from deception into the Truth, and he himself truly knows that - contrary to what they say - he is not mad, but is freed from the fickle and changeable wandering in all possible varieties of deception by a simple and eternally equally equal Truth. So, after all, the foremost leaders of our divine wisdom die every day for the Truth, testifying in every word and deed, as befits, that the only Christian knowledge of the Truth is the most simple and Divine of all, and moreover, that it is the only truth and the one and simple knowledge of God. Chapter Eight About the names “Strength”, “Justice”, “Salvation”, “Deliverance”, it also talks about inequality 1. But since theologians sing of divine Truth and super-wise Wisdom both as Power and as Justice, and call Her Salvation and Deliverance, let us also explain these divine names, as far as possible. I don’t think that anyone, nourished by divine words, does not know that the Godhead is beyond any real or imaginable power. For theology repeatedly ascribes dominion to Him, separating Him even from super-heavenly powers. Why do theologians glorify as Power that which is beyond all power? Or how should we understand the naming of Power in relation to Him? 2. So, we affirm that God is Power, because He has in Himself and surpasses all power, because He is the cause of all power, bringing everything into existence by its inexorable and unlimited power; because He is the cause of the very existence of both the force as a whole and each force separately; and because, possessing immeasurable power, He not only gives power to everything, but also is above all power, even power in itself. He has the superpower to create an infinite number of times an infinite number of forces that are new compared to existing ones, and the infinite forces He endlessly creates cannot ever dull His super-limitless force-creating power. In addition, His inexpressible, unknowable, unimaginable, all-surpassing power, or excess of power, allows Him to give strength to weakness to support and strengthen its extreme expressions, as can be seen in the example of the senses: super-bright light reaches even dull vision, and loud sounds penetrate, say, into ears that do not perceive sounds very easily. For that which does not hear at all is no longer hearing, and that which does not see at all is no longer sight. 3. This immeasurably powerful teaching of God extends to everything that exists, and among existing things there is nothing that is completely devoid of all power, that does not have either mental, or verbal, or related to the senses, or vital or material power. And being itself, so to speak, has the power to be from a super-essential Power. 4. From Her come the god-like powers of the angelic orders; From Her comes the ability of angels to exist unchanged, and all the constant movements characteristic of their immortal minds, and their very steady and undiminished desire for good. From the infinitely good Force that sent them this, they received the strength to be such, and to always strive to be, and the very strength to always strive to have strength. 5. Outpourings of inexhaustible Power reach people, animals, plants and all of nature and give the united the power to love each other and communicate, and the divided – the power to exist in each way within its own limits, without merging with the other or mixing; they support the ranks and good orders of everything for their own good; keep the immortal lives of angelic units unharmed, and the substance and orders of celestial bodies, luminaries and stars unchanged; make it possible to exist for eternity; by forward movements they separate the cycle of time, and by returning to the previous state they connect; give the fire the strength not to go out, and the flow of water not to be exhausted; the mass of air is given boundaries; the earth is founded on nothing; its living offspring are preserved uncorrupted; the elements preserve in mutual harmony and unmerged and inseparable interpenetration; the union of soul and body is supported, the nutritional and plant forces of plants are brought into action; control all implementing forces; the indestructibility of everything is ensured; and deification itself is bestowed, giving strength for this to the initiates. And in general there is nothing in existence that is devoid of omnipotent protection and surrounded by Divine Power. For that which has no power at all does not exist, and does not represent anything, and has no place at all. 6. However, Elymas the magician says: “If God is omnipotent, why does your theologian claim that He cannot do something?” It is he who reproaches the divine Paul, who said that God cannot deny Himself (2 Tim. 2:13). Having recalled this, I am very afraid, seriously thinking about what theological meaning of this is, to be ridiculed for stupidity, as if I were trying to destroy the fragile houses built by children playing on the sand or trying to hit an inaccessible target. After all, renunciation of oneself is a falling away from the truth, but truth is existing, and falling away from truth is falling away from existing things. If, therefore, truth is existing, and the denial of truth is a falling away from existing, then God cannot fall away from existing, and there is no non-existence. As, perhaps, someone will say: He cannot but cannot and does not know due to lack of ignorance. The philosopher who does not understand this is reminiscent of inexperienced athletes, who in their imagination often consider their opponents weak, and, courageously struggling with the shadow of those who are absent and boldly striking the air with vain blows, imagine that they are defeating their opponents, and praise themselves, even without knowing what strength they have. We, imitating, if possible, the theologian, glorify the super-powerful God as omnipotent, as blessed, as the only Master, as the One who rules in His eternal dominion, as in no way fallen from being - moreover, surpassing and pre-existent with all that exists, super-essential in power and by the abundant outpouring of all beings from the excess of growing power, the ability to be and the very being who has bestowed. 7. God is also glorified as Justice - as the one who gives dignity to everyone, and decency, and beauty, and decency, and structure, and assigns all distributions and orders to everyone in accordance with the truly existing fair limit, and for each and every one of them is the Cause of independence. For Divine justice orders and determines everything, preserving everything unalloyed, not mixed with anything else, and bestowing on all existing things what is due to each, in accordance with the dignity belonging to each of the existing ones. And if we say this correctly, then those who reproach Divine justice themselves do not understand that they are guilty of obvious injustice, for they declare that mortals should have immortality, imperfect ones should have perfection, those who are free in movement should have external compulsion, those who are changeable should have identity, the perfection of power should be given to the weak, that those who exist in time should be eternal, those who are mobile by nature should be immutable, temporal pleasures should be eternal, and in general the properties of some are ready to be transferred to others. You should know that Divine justice is truly true justice because it gives to everyone what is proper to them, in accordance with the dignity of each of those who exist, and preserves the nature of each in accordance with its rank and strength. 8. But someone will say: there is no justice if righteous people are left without help when they are oppressed by evil people. To this we should answer: if the people whom you called righteous love what the adherents of matter desire on earth, then they have completely fallen away from divine Love, and I do not know how they can be called righteous, preferring to the truly beloved and divine what is undeserving of respect and love, unworthy of their praise. If they love truly existing things, then when someone, wanting something, receives what he wants, he should rejoice. Isn’t it then that people especially approach the angels in virtues when, in their pursuit of the Divine, they move away as far as possible from their attachment to material things? They practice this especially courageously when they endure troubles for the Good. So it will be true to say that the characteristic property of Divine justice is not to seduce and not to destroy the courage of the best people with material gifts and, if this begins to happen to someone, not to leave people without help, but to affirm them in a good and unrelaxed position and reward them according to their dignity for what they are. 9. This Divine justice is also glorified as the Salvation of all, because it supports and preserves each individual’s special essence and order, unmixed with others, being unalloyed the cause of the peculiarities of behavior characteristic of all. If someone praises Salvation for the fact that it salutarily takes away everything from the worst, we will fully accept and appreciate this hymn-singer of universal salvation because he considers the first thing in salvation to be the maintenance of everything unchanged, in agreement with oneself, not rebellious and not inclined to the worse; preserving everything invincible, unaffected by attacks, adorned with its own meanings for each; ridding everyone of all inequality and intrusion into other people's borders and maintaining the proportions of each without changing or turning into opposites. Not contrary to the thoughts of sacred theology, he will sing of this kind of salvation as delivering all that exists by saving everyone from falling away from their own goods, as far as the nature of each of those being saved allows this. That is why theologians call this Deliverance, because It does not allow what truly exists to fall into oblivion, and if something deviates towards error and disorder and suffers some damage in the fullness of its own goods, then It also delivers it from suffering, weakness and deprivation, replenishing what is missing and strengthening what is weak in a fatherly way, elevating it from evil and, moreover, restoring it in goodness, compensating for the fallen good, turning its chaos and disorder into order and order, returning it to an undamaged state and freeing it from everything corrupted. But this and Justice, which measures and determines the equality of all and removes all inequality resulting from the decrease in the equality inherent in everyone, has already been said. If someone means inequality, which generally distinguishes everyone from everyone else, then Justice protects such inequality, not allowing everything to be confused with everything, preserving everything that exists in accordance with the form in which everyone tends to be. Chapter Nine About the names “Great”, “Small”, “Same”, “Different”, “Similar”, “Dissimilar”, “Rest”, “Movement”, “Equality” 1. Since such names as Great, Small, Same, Other, Similar, Dissimilar, Rest and Motion are attached to the universal Cause, let us, to the best of our ability, consider these images of naming God. God is glorified in the Sayings as “Great”, and “in greatness”, and in “light breathing”, revealing the Divine smallness; and as “The Same” - when the Sayings say: You are the same (Ps. 101:28) and as “Another”, when the same Sayings depict Him as diverse and multi-faceted; and as “Similar” - as the substance of similarities and similarities; and as “Unlike all,” because there is no one like Him. And as “Standing”, “Immovable”, “Sitting forever” and as “Movable” - as in everything passing; and other similar Divine names, God is glorified in the Sayings. 2. God is called great as having His own special greatness, which is transmitted from Him to all the great, pouring out and extending beyond and above all greatness, embracing every place, surpassing every number, passing every immensity, and because of His being filled with great deeds and the gifts exuded by Him, since, becoming partakers of everyone, they do not diminish at all due to their immeasurable outpouring, remaining the same superabundant, and are not diminished from the participles, but flow even more. This greatness is limitless, immeasurable, and innumerable; this excess corresponds to the absolute and overextending outpouring of immense greatness. 3. They speak of Him as Small and Subtle insofar as He is beyond all volume and dimension and unhinderedly penetrates through everything. Small things are, after all, the cause of everything, for you will not find anything that is not involved in the idea of ​​smallness. In relation to God, the Small must be understood as His property to pass through everything without restraint and to act in everything, and to penetrate to the division of soul and spirit, the ligaments and marrow of the bones and the discriminating thoughts and understandings of the heart (cf. Heb. 4:12), and in general all things. For there is no creature hidden from Him (Heb. 4:13). This Small is innumerable, qualityless, elusive, infinite, indefinable, all-encompassing, and itself incomprehensible. 4. The name Same indicates the super-essentially Eternal, immutable, abiding in Itself, and likewise always equal to Itself; simultaneously present in everything equally; firmly and purely established by Itself in Itself within the best limits of super-essential identity; unchangeable, constant, unwavering, unchangeable, unalloyed, immaterial, simplest; having no need for anything, not growing, not decreasing, not being born; not as if not yet born, or not completely, or as if not born in some way or in some capacity, and not as if it had never existed in any way; but as the highest of all unborn, absolutely unborn, eternally existing; Being perfect-in-the-own-sense of the word; That which exists is the same in Itself; Uniformly and identically determined by Itself; with the same from Himself all those worthy to participate in the shining; combining one with another due to the abundance of identity; having in Itself equally and opposites, being the one and only Cause of all identity, surpassing identity. 5. God is called Other because He is providentially co-present with everything and for the sake of the salvation of all becomes “All in all,” remaining in Himself inseparable from His identity, by one continuous action and remaining and with inexorable power offering Himself for the deification of those converted. One should pay attention to the otherness in relation to God of His different images in multi-faceted phenomena, to some difference between the Manifesting and the manifested. After all, if, in order to describe the soul, we borrow images from the body and connect the parts of the body with something that has no parts, then by applying parts to it, we will give them a new meaning, characteristic of the soul; using their names to denote faculties, we will say that the head is the mind, the neck is opinion (as something mediating between speech and dumbness), the chest is anger, the belly is desire, and the legs and feet are nature; to a much greater extent, it is appropriate, through sacred explanations of the mysterious, to purify the otherness of forms and images applied to the One who is beyond everything. And if you want to apply the three-dimensionality of bodies to the untouchable and imageless God, then the “width” of God should be called the super-wide procession of God for everyone, the “length” is the power extended over everything, and the “depth” is His incomprehensible hiddenness and unknowability for all beings. But so that during the explanation of foreign images and forms we do not forget the incorporeal Divine names themselves, interspersing them with sensory symbols, we will talk about this in “Symbolic Theology”. And now let us note that we should understand the very fact of Divine otherness not as some kind of betrayal of the super-immutable identity, but as His unifying multiplication of Himself in uniform fruitful processes. 6. If someone calls God Similar, as being completely, unshakably and inseparably Similar to Himself in everything, we should not consider such a denomination unworthy. Theologians say that, surpassing everything, God as such is not like anything, but He gives God’s likeness to those who turn to Him, so that they, to the best of their ability, imitate the Being that is beyond all limit and word. The Divine likeness is characterized by the power to turn everything introduced into existence to the universal Cause. This should be called similar to God and existing in the Divine image and likeness (cf. Gen. 1:26), for God is not like that, just as man is not like his image: those made in the same way can be similar to each other, and they can be mutually likened to one another and their likeness can be turned in both directions, and both of them can be like each other, corresponding to the prototype of their likeness that precedes them; We cannot allow such reciprocity between cause and effect. And the ability to be similar is granted not only to such and such: God is the Cause of the ability to be similar to all those involved in the similarity and is the Substance of similarity itself. And what is similar for everyone is similar due to some trace of Divine similarity and contributes to their unity. 7. And do we need to say anything about this? After all, theology itself reveres Him as Incomparable and Incongruous with everything, as Differing from everything, and - what is even more paradoxical - says that there is nothing like Him. However, this does not contradict what has been said about the similarity to Him. The same thing is both like God and unlike - similar to the extent that it is possible to imitate the Inimitable, but unlike because the effects are inferior to the Cause, limitlessly, immeasurably not reaching It by any measures. 8. What can we say about the Divine “standing” or “sitting”? What else can this mean if not that God abides in Himself; that He is firmly established and super-established in unchangeable identity; that He acts alike concerning the same things in the same manner; that He remains unoriginating from Himself, and because of this immutability, He remains completely motionless, and, moreover, super-essentially. For He is the Cause of all standing and sitting, and He is above all sitting and standing, and in Him everything was made up and, because of the “standing” of its own goods, is unshakably preserved. 9. But what to think when theologians speak of everything Passing and Moving as Immobile? Shouldn’t this also be perceived in a manner befitting God? After all, His movement must be imagined piously, not as a random change, transformation, or oscillation, or movement in space in a straight line, or circular, or both at the same time, or as mental, spiritual, or physical, but as a movement by which God brings everything into existence, contains everything, understands everything in every possible way and is present in everything with an irresistible embrace of everything, providential appearances in all things and energies. So let the word and the movements of the motionless God be allowed to sing in a manner befitting God. Let movement in a straight line mean the immutability and steady flow of energies and the existence of everything coming from Him; spiral movement - firm departure and fruitful standing; movement in a circle - identity, embracing both the middle and the edges, both the encompassing and the encompassed, and the return to Him of those who came from Him. 10. If someone believes that the names of God Same and Justice have the meaning “Equal” in the Sayings, then it must be said that God is “Equal” not only as devoid of parts and unchangeable, but also as equally extending to everything and through everything, as a Substance of itself-in-itself-equality, according to which they all contain each other, each equally, according to his ability, receives the sacrament, equally, according to its dignity, is distributed alms, and also because He contains all equality - in mind, in reason, in word, in feeling, in being, in nature and desire - first transcendentally and unitedly in Himself, thanks to His creative power that surpasses all equality. Chapter Ten About the names “Almighty” and “Ancient Day” and here about eternity and time 1. It’s time to glorify the many-named God in word both as the Almighty and the Ancient of Days. The first is said because He is the all-supporting, connecting and uniting Ground, inseparably containing everything within Himself; producing everything from Itself, as from a root, all-powerful; all-powerfully turning everything into Itself, as into the abyss; holding everything on Himself, as on a foundation that supports everything; She protects everything supported by a single all-encompassing embrace and does not allow anything to perish, even something that has fallen away from Her, as if expelled from a universal refuge. The ruler of God is called the Almighty and as ruling over everything and, without mixing, governing his subjects, and as desired and beloved by everyone, and as a yoke, the desired and sweet torments of Divine, almighty and carefree love for his goodness, imposing on everyone. 2. As the Old One, God is glorified because He exists both as eternity, and as the time of everything, and before days, and before eternity, and before time. However, time, day, hour, and eternity must be attributed to Him in a god-like manner, because He remains unchanged and motionless with every movement, eternally moving, abiding in Himself and being the Cause of eternity, time, and days. That is why in sacred epiphanies, during mystical insights, God is depicted both as gray-haired and as young: an old man means that He is Ancient and existing “from the beginning”; the youth - that He does not grow old; and both show that He passes through everything from beginning to end; or, as our Divine celebrant says, both of them reveal Divine antiquity: the elder is the first in time, and the younger is more original in number, since the unit and the numbers closest to it are originally far removed from them. 3. It seems to me appropriate to learn from the Sayings also the nature of time and eternity. After all, not everything, even absolutely unborn and truly and completely infinite, they everywhere call eternal, and not everything that is incorruptible, immortal, unchangeable and abiding constant, as, for example, saying: “Be lifted up, eternal doors” (Ps. 23:7) and the like. They often apply a similar name to an older one. Sometimes they also call eternity the entire length of our time, since this is characteristic of eternity - to be ancient, unchangeable and measure being as a whole. Time is what is associated with birth, decay, change and stay in one state or another. Why does theology say that, limited here by time, we will partake of eternity when we reach the imperishable and unchangeable age. The sayings sometimes mean both a temporary age and an eternal time, although we mainly know from them that the Existing for the most part and in the proper sense of the word is called and appears eternal, and what is born is temporary. One should not, therefore, simply think that what is called eternal is co-eternal with the pre-eternal God, but, steadily following the most revered Sayings, the eternal and the temporal should be understood in accordance with the images known to them. Between the Existing and the begotten is that which partly participates in eternity, and partly in time. God can be sung both as Eternity and as Time - as the Cause of all time, and eternity, and the Old Day, as before time and above the time of the Existing One and changing times and summers (Dan. 2:21), also before the ages of the Existing One, since He is both before eternity, and above eternity, and His Kingdom is the kingdom of all ages (Ps. 145:13). Amen. Chapter Eleven About the name “World”, about what “Being-in-itself” means, what “Life-in-itself” is, “Power-in-itself” and other things thus expressed 1. Let us praise the Divine first-gathered World with peaceful hymns. After all, He unites everyone and generates and creates universal unanimity and harmony. That is why everyone desires Him, because He turns their divided multitude into an integral unity and unites those divided by the general internecine war into a homogeneous community. Indeed, it is precisely thanks to participation in the Divine World that the oldest of the unifying forces unite within themselves, with each other and with the one universal Beginning of the world, and unite those below them within themselves, with each other and with the one and perfect Beginning and Cause of the universal Peace. Inseparably present in everything, as if connecting those separated with some kind of bonds, He gives limits and boundaries to everything, protects everything and does not allow anything, when destroyed, to spill into something formless and indefinite, disordered and unstable, which turns out to be devoid of God, having come out of its unity and, mixed with everything, dissolved in each other. As for the Divine World itself - what He is - or Peace, which the sacred Just calls inexpressibility and emanating from everything knowable Stillness - how He remains Peace and remains Peace, exists in Himself and within Himself, the whole of Himself is more than united, and enters into Itself, and multiplies Itself many times over, and does not leave unity with Itself and passes into everything, remaining within everything as a whole for the sake of immeasurable all-encompassing unity - this is neither allowed nor possible for any of the existing ones to say or think. But, having applied to Him inexpressibility and unknowability, as to the Being above all else, let us consider how possible it is for people and for us, who lag behind many good people, to understand His intelligible and called sacraments. 2. And first of all, it must be said that He is the Substance of the world itself, the world as a whole and the world in all its manifestations, and that He unites everything with each other in an unfused unity, in which everything, inseparably and indissolubly united, remains, however, intact in the form characteristic of each, not distorted by a mixture with the opposite and not losing at all the connecting correctness and purity. Let us consider some single and simple Nature of peaceful union, uniting everything with Itself and with each other and preserving everything in the unfused embrace of everything, both unmixed and co-dissolved. Thanks to Her, the Divine intelligible minds unite with their thoughts and conceivables and then ascend to an unknown union with that which is above the mind. Thanks to Her, souls, having united and reduced their various ideas to a single mental purity, move in their proper way and order through the immaterial and partless understanding to the supramental Unity. Thanks to Her, in Her Divine harmony, the inextricable weaving of everything together takes place and perfect agreement, unanimity and union are achieved without merging the united and inseparably contents. For the integrity of the perfect World reaches all things with the simplest and unalloyed advent of His one-creating power, uniting everything and connecting the edges through the middle with the edges in a single equal pairing of love, granting Him to be enjoyed by the most distant limits of everything and everything through unity, identification, connection and gathering of kin; and the Divine World remains standing undivided, revealing everything in the One, passing through everything and not protruding from its own identity, for He reaches everything and accordingly conveys Himself to everyone; and is poured out with an excess of peaceful fruitfulness, and by the excess of unity the All remains in all completely with Himself super-unified. 3. But does anyone ask, does everyone want peace? Many, after all, rejoice in diversity and differences and do not want to voluntarily remain in peace. And if the speaker of this says that difference and differences are a property of each of the existing ones and that not a single being among the existing ones, whatever it may be, will ever want to lose it, we will not object to this, but will show such a desire for the world. After all, everyone loves to be in peace and unity with themselves and not to move away from themselves and from what belongs to them and not to fall away. And the perfect World is the Guardian of the unalloyed individuality inherent in everyone, preserving everything with its peace-giving providences, not divided by civil strife and not mixed with Itself and with each other, holding everything in mutual peace and immobility with an immovable and unwavering force. 4. And if everything that is movable does not want to remain at rest, but to perform its characteristic movement, then this is also the desire of the universal Divine Peace, which preserves everyone from themselves as having not fallen away and preserving the individuality and moving life of all the movable, unchangeable and not fallen away, in a state of peace with themselves and in the very activity that is characteristic of them. 5. If the one who speaks of the difference achieved by falling away from the World asserts that not everyone is adherents of the world, then the best answer to this is that there is nothing that exists that would completely fall away from all unity. For the completely impermanent, infinite, unestablished and imperfect does not exist and does not exist in beings. If he says that these are people who hate the world and the blessings inherent in the world and rejoice in discord, quarrels, outbursts of anger and confusion, then the pitiful semblances of the desire for peace hold them back, overwhelmed by manifold passions, and unreasonably wanting to hold them, and by replenishing the eternal flow of those hoping to calm themselves, worried about the lack of pleasures that dominate them. What can we say about Christ’s love for mankind, which pours out peace, looking at which, we learn to no longer fight either with ourselves, or with each other, or with the angels, but, to the best of our ability, to work with them in the Divine in accordance with the Providence of Jesus, all in all (1 Cor. 15:28) who produces and brings to pass from time immemorial the predestined ineffable peace, reconciling us to Him in spirit, and through Him and in Him to the Father. Quite a lot is said about these supernatural gifts in the Theological Essays, where the sacred breath of the Sayings also testifies with us. 6. But since you once asked me in a letter what I call being-in-itself, life-in-itself, wisdom-in-itself, and said that you were perplexed why I sometimes call God life-in-itself, and sometimes the Substance of life-in-itself, I considered it necessary, holy man of God, to resolve this perplexity of yours concerning me. And first of all, I will repeat what has already been said a thousand times: it is not a contradiction to call God power-in-itself, or life-in-itself and the Substance-in-itself of life or the world or power. In one case, He receives the name of beings, and especially of those originally existing, as the Cause of all beings, in the second - as super-essentially above all, including the originally existing ones, the Superexistent. What in general, you ask, are we talking about as being-in-itself or about life-in-itself, and what do we consider absolutely and initially existing and originally established by God? This, we say, is not difficult to explain, and can be done directly and simply. We do not assert that existence itself is some kind of Divine or angelic essence, which is the cause of the existence of all things, for the existence of all things and existence itself have one super-essential Beginning, one Essence and one Cause. Nor do we say that life comes from another Divinity besides the super-divine Life, which is the cause of everything that lives, and life itself. In short, we do not believe that among existing things there are any original creative essences and substances, which some rashly call gods and creators of existing things, which, truly and frankly, neither they themselves knew, since they do not exist, nor their fathers. By being and life-in-itself (and divinity-in-itself) we call - as something primordial, divine and being the Cause - the one super-initial and super-essential Beginning and Cause of everything, and as something involved - the providential powers given by the uninvolved God: self-realization, self-revival, self-deification, - correspondingly partaking of which, the existing appears, and is called both existing, and living, and deified, and the like. That is why the Good One is called the Creator of the first of them, then of them as a whole, then of them separately, then of those who participate in them as a whole, then of those who participate in them in part. And is it necessary to talk about this when some of our divine sacred teachers call the Ground of both goodness-in-itself and Divinity the One who surpasses both goodness and divinity, saying that goodness-in-itself and divinity are a beneficent and deifying gift emanating from God; and beauty-in-itself is the outpouring of the ability to be beautiful-in-the-own-sense of the word, creating both beauty in general and partial beauty, generally beautiful and partly beautiful; and the other things that are and will be said in this way are intended to reveal the providences and benefits that are participatory of beings, occurring and flowing in abundance from an unparticipated God, so that the Cause of everything remains strictly beyond everything, and the super-essential and supernatural everywhere and always exceeds all essence and nature. Chapter Twelve About the names “Holy of Holies”, “King of Kings”, “Lord of Lords”, “God of Gods” 1. Since about this, as much as it was necessary to say, to the end, as I think, it has been said, it is fitting for us to glorify the Infinitely named both as the “Holy of Holies” (Dan. 9:24) and as the “King of kings” (1 Tim. 6:15; Rev. 19:16), reigning forever, “for ever and ever,” and as “Lord of lords” (1 Tim. 6:15; Rev. 19:16) and “God of gods” (Ps. 49:1). And first of all, we need to clarify what we mean by holiness in itself, what by kingdom, by dominion, by Divinity, and what the Sayings want to show by doubling the names. 2. For holiness, as far as we can say it, is freedom from all defilement and perfect, undefiled purity in all respects. The kingdom is the distribution of all restrictions, regulations, laws and orders. Dominion is not only overcoming the worst, but also the all-perfect mastery of all good and blessings and their true and reliable provision. Why is “dominance” related to the words “lord”, “that-that-dominates”, “dominant”. Divinity is an all-seeing Providence, surrounding and containing everything with perfect goodness. She fills and surpasses everything that uses her Providence. 3. These names must be sung absolutely in reference to the all-transcending Cause, and to them must be added Transcendent Holiness, Dominion, Supreme Realm, and Simple Divinity. From Her, after all, one day suddenly grew and spread every unalloyed completeness of every impeccable purity, every order of beings and structure. She expels all disharmony, inequality and disproportion, rejoices in decency of identity and correctness and leads those worthy to participate in Her. She is characterized by complete and perfect possession of everything good, every good Providence that observes and supports those provided for. She presents herself splendidly for the deification of those who turn. 4. Since He who caused everything is filled with everything in one all-exceeding excess, He is glorified as the Holy of Holies and in other ways corresponding to the overflowing Cause and Its transcendental superiority. We can say: to the extent that the holy, Divine, lordly or royal surpasses what is not such, but the sacrament in itself - those who participate in it, so much higher than all existing things is the One who surpasses all existing things, who is not involved in everything - both those who participate and the sacrament - the One who caused everything. Saints, kings, lords and gods of the Speech call the first in the rank corresponding to each of them, through which the second, partaking of God's gifts, multiply what is transmitted to them simple, in accordance with their own characteristics, the diversity of which the first providentially and God-like add to their own unity. Chapter Thirteen About the names “Perfect” and “One” 1. Enough about those names. Let us finally turn the speech, if you think it reasonable, to the most significant of the names. After all, theology ascribes everything to the One who caused everything, and everything at once, and glorifies Him as Perfect and as One. He is perfect not only as self-perfect, uniformly limited by Himself and entirely perfect in His integrity, but also as superperfect, because He surpasses everything, limits every immensity, overcomes every limit, not being contained or comprehended by anything, but stretching into everything and above everything with incessant impulses of infinite energies. He is also called perfect because He does not increase, but is always perfect and does not decrease; as having everything in Himself and pouring out everything in one and the same unceasing process of superabundant, non-decreasing teaching, with which He makes everything perfect and fills it with His perfection. 2. He is called One because He alone is - by the superiority of the only unity - and everything is, without going beyond the limits of the One, the Cause of everything. For there is nothing in existence that is not part of the One. After all, just as every number participates in one - and it is said “one two,” “one ten,” or “one half,” “one third,” “one tenth,” so everything, and a part of everything, participates in one, and the existence of one means the existence of everything. He who causes everything is not one among many units: He precedes every one and many, and determines every one and many. After all, there is no plurality that is in no way involved in the unit, but the many in the parts are united as a whole; many coming from one subject; many in number or strength are one in appearance; many species are of the same genus; many manifestations have one beginning. And there is nothing among those that exist that is not in some way involved in the One, in its unity unitedly embracing everything in everything, everything as a whole, including opposites. Without a unit, you cannot get a plurality, but a unit without a plurality can exist as a unit that precedes any plural number. And if we assume that everything is united with everything, everything will be the whole One. 3. In addition, one should also know that what is united is united, they say, in accordance with the intended form of each one, and the One is the Foundation of everything. And if we exclude the One, there will be neither the whole, nor the part, nor anything else of existence. For the One contains and embraces everything in one form. That is why theology glorifies the Godhead as a whole, as the Cause of everything, calling Him the One. And “one God the Father”, “one Lord Jesus Christ”, “one and the same Spirit” is said because of the highest degree of inseparability of the integral divine unity, in which everything is gathered together and united and is essentially present. Why, in justice, everything ascends and is elevated to the Godhead, thanks to Whom, from Whom, Whom, in Whom and in Whom everything exists, is composed, abides, is contained, is replenished, and returns. And one cannot find anything in existence that would be what it is, would be perfected and preserved not thanks to the One, as all Divinity is super-essentially called. And it behooves us, turned by the power of Divine unity from the many to the One, to sing in a single way the whole and one Divinity - the One, which is the Cause of everything, prior to every unit and plurality, part and whole, border and limitlessness, limit and infinity, all that exists and Being itself, limiting, uniformly being the Cause of each and all in general, and at the same time existing before all and above all, above the One Existing One itself, limiting the One Existing One itself, if only the One Existing One is counted among the existing ones. Number, after all, is involved in the essence, but the Superessential One limits both the One Existing and every number, and Itself is the Beginning, the Cause, the Number and the Order of both the unit, and the number, and of all that exists. Why is the all-exceeding Divinity, glorified as Unity and as Trinity, and is neither one nor trinity in our or anyone else's understanding. But we call both the Trinity and the Unity the Divinity that surpasses every name and is super-essential in relation to beings, in order to truly glorify Her super-unity and God-bornness. After all, no unit, no trinity, no number, no unity, nor the ability to give birth, nor anything else from the existing, or to any of the existing, understandable, deduces from the all-exceeding, both the word and the mind, the hiddenness above all, the super-essentially super-existent Super-divinity, and there is neither a name nor a word for It, because She is in the inaccessible beyond. And we even apply the name Goodness to Her not because it is suitable, but because, wanting to understand and say something about Her ineffable nature, we first of all dedicate to Her the most honorable of names. And although in this we seem to agree with theologians, we are nevertheless far from the truth in the state of affairs. Why did they give preference to ascent through negations as it removes the soul from what is akin to it, leads through all Divine understandings, in relation to which He who is above every name, every word and knowledge is beyond, and as a result of everything unites with Him as much as it is possible for us to unite with Him. 4. Having collected together these intelligible names of God, we discovered, as far as possible, that they are far from not only accuracy (indeed, even angels can say this!), but also from the hymns of both the angels (and the lowest of the angels are higher than our best theologians), and the theologians themselves and their followers, or companions, and even the most modest among us. So, if what has been said is true and we, to the best of our ability, have actually managed to clarify the meaning of the Divine Names, then this must be attributed to the Cause of all blessings, who first grants the very ability to speak, and then the ability to speak well. Even if some of the names of equal strength turned out to be missing, we should understand it in exactly the same way. If this is incorrect or imperfect and if we have partially or completely deviated from the truth, it is up to your philanthropy to correct what we did not understand against our will, to give an explanation to those who want to learn, to come to the aid of those who do not have enough strength, and to heal those who do not want to be sick, finding one thing from ourselves, another from another, and receiving everything from Good and passing it on to us. Without getting tired, do good to a friendly person. You see that we did not hide any of the sacred initial words that were handed down to us, but we passed them on unchanged to you and other sacred men and will still pass them on as far as we are able to speak, and to those to whom it is spoken, to listen, without distorting the tradition in any way, unless we weaken in our ability to understand or express them. But this is how God likes it, so be it, and so it is said. For us, let this be the end of the explanation of the intelligible names of God. Known by God, let us move on to “Symbolic Theology.” You might be interested in: