Divine Names 1 part 4/6

And yet this too has a share in order and beauty and form.

But if matter, being apart from these, is in itself without quality and without form, how does matter produce anything—matter that of itself does not even have the capacity to be acted upon?

Besides, how is matter evil?

For if it in no way and nowhere exists, it is neither good nor evil.

But if it somehow exists, and all beings are from the Good, then it too would be from the Good; and then either the Good is productive of evil, or evil—as being from the Good—is good, or evil is productive of the Good, or the Good—as being from evil—is evil, or there are again two principles, and these dependent on some other single summit.

But if they say that matter is necessary for the completion of the whole cosmos, how is matter evil?

For evil is one thing and the necessary is another.

And how does the Good bring forth from evil certain things for generation?

Or how is that which has need of the Good evil?

For evil flees the nature of the Good.

And how does matter, being evil, beget and nourish nature?

For evil, in so far as it is evil, is generative or nourishing or in any way productive or preservative of nothing.

But if they should say that matter itself does not produce vice in souls, but draws them to it, how can this be true?

For many of them look toward the Good.

And yet how would this happen, if matter in every case drew them to evil?

So that evil in souls is not from matter, but from disordered and erring movement.

But if they say that even this follows of necessity upon matter, and that unstable matter is necessary for those things unable to stand on their own, how is evil necessary, or the necessary evil?

But neither is what we speak of evil.

Privation fights against the Good according to its own power.

For total privation is altogether powerless; partial privation has its power not in so far as it is privation, but in so far as it is not a total privation.

For while the privation of the Good is partial, there is not yet evil; and when it becomes total, the very nature of evil too has departed.

The Good is from one and the whole cause; but evil is from many and partial deficiencies.

God knows evil in so far as it is good, and with Him the causes of evils are good-producing powers.

If evil is eternal and creates and has power and exists and acts, whence does it have these?

Either from the Good, or to the Good from evil, or both from some other cause.

Everything according to nature is generated from a determinate cause.

If evil is causeless and indeterminate, it is not according to nature, for what is contrary to nature is not in nature, nor is there a principle of artlessness in art.

Is the soul, then, the cause of evils, just as fire is the cause of heating and fills with vice everything it comes near?

Or is the nature of the soul good, but in its activities it sometimes is one way, sometimes another?

If by nature, and its very being is evil, then whence does it have its being?

Either from the good cause that is the creator of all beings.

But if from this, how is it evil in its essence?

For all the offspring of this cause are good.

But if it is evil in its activities, even this is not unchangeable.

And if it were unchangeable, whence come the virtues, unless the soul too becomes good-formed?

It remains, then, that evil is a weakness and a deficiency of the Good.

The cause of good things is one.

If evil is contrary to the Good, the causes of evil are many.

Yet the producers of evils are not principles and powers, but impotence and weakness and the disproportionate mixture of unlike things.

Nor are evils unmoved and ever in the same state; rather, they are unlimited and indeterminate and borne along in other things, and these themselves unlimited.

Of all things, even of evils, the beginning and end will be the Good; for all things are for the sake of the Good, both whatever things are good and whatever are contrary; for these too we do while desiring the Good, since no one does what he does while looking toward evil.

To evil, existence must be assigned only by accident, and through something else, and not from a principle of its own.

So that what comes to pass seems to be right, because it is done for the sake of the Good, but in truth is not right, because we suppose the not-good to be good.

Therefore evil is contrary to the way and to the goal and to nature and to the cause and to the principle and to the end and to the limit and to the will and to the very subsistence of things.

Evil, then, is privation and deficiency and weakness and disproportion and error; it is aimless, beautyless, lifeless, mindless, irrational, imperfect, unstable, causeless, indeterminate, barren, idle, powerless, disordered, unlike, unlimited, dark, insubstantial—and itself in no way, nowhere, in no respect, anything at all.

How then can evil have any power at all by its mixture with the Good?

For that which is wholly without share in the Good neither exists nor has any power.

For if the Good is both being and willed and powerful and active, how can anything contrary to the Good—deprived of substance and will and power and activity—have any power?

Not all things are evil to all, and in every way, and the same in the same respect.

How is there evil at all, since Providence exists?

Evil, in so far as it is evil, neither exists nor is among the things that are.

And nothing among beings is without providence, for neither is evil a being existing unmixed with the Good.

And if nothing among beings is without share in the Good, and evil is the deficiency of the Good, and nothing among beings is wholly deprived of the Good, then divine Providence is in all beings, and nothing among beings is without providence.

But Providence also makes use, in a manner befitting the Good, of the evils that come to pass, for the benefit—whether their own or others', whether particular or common—and provides fittingly for each of the beings.

Evil, then, is not a being, nor is evil among the things that are.

For nowhere is evil, in so far as it is evil.

And the coming-to-be of evil is not according to power, but through weakness.

And as for the demons—that which they are is both from the Good and good.

But evil in them is from the falling-away from their proper goods, and the alteration concerning their identity, and the weakness of habit of the angel-befitting perfection that belongs to them.

And they desire the Good, in so far as they desire to be and to live and to think.

And if they do not desire the Good, they desire that which is not.

And this is not desire, but a failure of true desire.

The Scriptures call those who sin knowingly: those who grow weak in the unfailing knowledge of the Good or in its practice, and those who know the will and do not do it, who have heard but are weak in regard to faith or to the activity of the Good.

And for some, the understanding required to do good is unwilled, owing to the deviation or the weakness of the will.

And, in sum, evil—as we have often said—is weakness and impotence and deficiency, whether of knowledge, or of unfailing knowledge, or of faith, or of desire, or of the activity of the Good.

Weakness is not to be punished; on the contrary, it deserves pardon.

If the power were not available, the argument would be sound.

But if the power comes from the Good, who according to the Scriptures gives to all simply what befits them, then the sin and deviation and flight and falling-away from the habit of one's proper goods, which come from the Good, is not praiseworthy.

But let these things be said by us sufficiently, according to our ability, in the treatise 'On the Just and Divine Judgment,' in which sacred work the truth of the Scriptures has rebuked as senseless the words of the sophists who speak injustice and falsehood against God.

But for now, in so far as is possible for us, the Good has been sufficiently hymned: as truly worthy of wonder, as the beginning and end of all, as the embrace of beings, as the form-giver of non-beings, as the cause of all good things, as guiltless of evils, as Providence and Goodness all-perfect and surpassing both beings and non-beings, making good even evils and its own privation, as the object of all longing and love and affection, and as all the other things the true Word has shown forth, as I think, in what has gone before.

But now we must pass on to the truly existing essence-naming of God, the name proper to the truly Existent.

Let us recall only this much: that the aim of our discourse is not to reveal the superessential Essence in so far as it is superessential—for that is ineffable and unknowable and wholly unmanifest and transcends even union itself—but to hymn the essence-making procession of the divine source-of-being into all beings.

For the divine name 'Good,' manifesting all the processions of the cause of all, extends both to beings and to non-beings, and is above beings and above non-beings.

But the name 'Being' extends to all beings and is above beings.

And the name 'Life' extends to all living things and is above living things.

And the name 'Wisdom' extends to all intellectual and rational and perceptive things, and is above all these.

These, then, are the divine names manifesting Providence which the discourse longs to hymn.

For it does not undertake to express the supra-superessential Goodness and Essence and Life and Wisdom of the supra-superessential Godhead, which is established hiddenly above all Goodness and Godhead and Essence and Life and Wisdom, as the Scriptures say; rather, it hymns the manifested good-making Providence, the Goodness surpassingly and the cause of all good things, both Being and Life and Wisdom, the essence-making and life-making and wisdom-giving cause of those things that partake of essence and life and intellect and reason and perception.

(The name 'Good' is) manifestative of the all-perfect Providence of the one God, while the others (manifest) the more universal and the more particular (aspects) of the same.

Why, since Being is overextended by Life and Life by Wisdom, do living things excel non-living beings, and among living things the perceptive, and among these the rational, and among the rational the intellects—and these are around God and draw nearer to Him?

And yet those things that partake of the greater gifts from God ought to be both better and to excel the rest.

But if one were to suppose the intellectual beings to be without essence and without life, the argument would be sound.

But if the divine intellects do exist beyond the rest of beings, and live beyond other living things, and think and know beyond perception and reason, and beyond all beings desire and partake of the Beautiful and Good, then they themselves are more around the Good, being those who partake of it more abundantly and have received more and greater gifts from it—just as the rational excel the perceptive, being advantaged by the abundance of reason, and these excel by perception, and others by life.

And this, I think, is true: that those things which partake more of the one God of infinite gifts are nearer to Him and more divine than those that fall short.

Since we have also spoken of these things, come, let us hymn the Good as truly Being and as the essence-maker of all beings.

He who is, in the whole power of being, is the superessential subsisting cause and creator of being, of existence, of subsistence, of essence, of nature; the principle and measure of ages and times; the very being-ness and the age of beings, the time of things that come to be, the being for those that in any way are, the becoming for those that in any way come to be.

From the Existent come age and essence and being and time and becoming and that which becomes—the things that are among beings, and the things that in any way subsist and have being.

For God is not in some particular way existent, but simply and without limit has gathered together and possessed beforehand in Himself the whole of being.

But He Himself is the being for beings—and not only the beings, but the very being of beings from Him who is being before the ages; for He Himself is the age of ages, He who subsists before the ages.

Taking it up again, then, let us say that to all beings and to the ages, being comes from the Pre-existent.

And every age and time is from Him; and of every age and time and of everything that in any way is, the Pre-existent is the principle and cause; and all things partake of Him, and He stands apart from no being, and He is before all things, and in Him all things have been constituted; and simply, if anything in any way is, it both exists and is conceived and is preserved in the Pre-existent; and before His other participations being is set forth, and being itself in itself is more venerable than being-Life-itself and being-Wisdom-itself and being-divine-Likeness-itself; and the other things in which beings partake—before all of them, beings partake of being; nay rather, all those things-in-themselves in which beings partake, themselves partake of being-in-itself; and there is no being whose essence and age is not being-itself.

Reasonably, then, God is hymned as Being—more sovereignly than by all the other names—from the most venerable of His gifts.

For having pre-being and supra-being, possessing beforehand and surpassingly all being—I mean being-in-itself—He pre-established it, and by being itself He established everything that in any way is.

And indeed all the principles of beings, partaking of being, both are and are principles; and first they are, then they are principles.

And if you wish to speak of the principle of living things as living—Life-itself—and of like things as like—Likeness-itself—and of united things as united—Union-itself—and of ordered things as ordered—Order-itself—and of the others, whatever things, by partaking of this or that or both or many, are this or that or both or many: you will find the self-participations themselves first partaking of being, and by being, first being, then being principles of this or that; and by partaking of being, they both are and are partaken of.

And if these exist by participation in being, much more do the things that partake of them.

First, then, putting forth the gift of being-itself, the Self-supra-Goodness is hymned from the most venerable, the first, of its participations.

And being-itself, and the principles of beings, and all beings, and all things in any way held together by being, are from it and in it—and this in an unconstrained, gathered-together, and unitary manner.

For in the monad every number pre-exists in a unitary way, and the monad holds every number in itself singly; and every number is united in the monad, but in so far as it proceeds from the monad, to that degree it is differentiated and multiplied.

And in the center all the lines of the circle co-subsist according to one union, and the point holds in itself all the straight lines united in a unitary way both to one another and to the one principle from which they proceeded; and in the center itself they are wholly united.

But standing a little apart from it, they are also a little differentiated; and the more they stand off, the more (they are differentiated).

And in short, the nearer they are to the center, the more they are united both to it and to one another; and the more (they stand off) from it, the more they stand apart from one another.

But also in the whole nature of all things, all the principles of each particular nature are gathered together according to one unconfused union; and in the soul, in a single-formed manner, are the powers providentially caring for all the parts of the whole body.

There is nothing absurd, then, in ascending from these faint images to the Cause of all, and beholding with supramundane eyes all things in the Cause of all—even things contrary to one another—in a single-formed and united manner; for it is the principle of beings, from which come both being-itself and all things that in any way are: every principle, every limit, all life, all immortality, all wisdom, all order, all harmony, all power, all guarding, all establishment, all distribution, all thought, all reason, all perception, all habit, all rest, all motion, all union, all blending, all friendship, all concord, all distinction, every limit, and all the other things which by being characterize all beings.

And from the same Cause of all come the intelligible and intellectual essences of the godlike angels, and the natures of souls and of the whole cosmos, and whatever things are said either to exist in others or to be by conception.

And indeed the all-holy and most venerable powers, truly existing and as it were established in the vestibules of the superessential Trinity, have both being and godlike being from it and in it; and after these, the lower powers have their lower being, and the last their last being—as regards angels, that is; but as regards us, supramundanely.

And souls and all other beings, according to the same principle, have both being and well-being, and exist and exist well—having being and well-being from the Pre-existent, both being and being-well in Him, beginning from Him and guarded in Him and brought to their end in Him.

And He apportions the precedence of being to the superior essences, which the Scriptures also call eternal.

But being itself never abandons any of all beings.

And being itself is from the Pre-existent, and being is His and not He being's; and being is in Him and not He in being; and being possesses Him, and not He being.

And He Himself is the age and principle and measure of being, being before essence and being and age and all things; the essence-making principle and middle and end of all.

And for this reason, by the Scriptures, the truly Pre-existent is multiplied according to every conception of beings, and the 'was' and the 'is' and the 'will be' and the 'has become' and 'becomes' and 'will become' are properly hymned of Him.

For all these things signify, to those who hymn Him in a manner befitting God, that He superessentially is according to every conception of Him, and is the cause of things that are in every way.

For He is not this thing and not that thing, nor in one respect is and in another is not; but He is all things as the cause of all, and holding together and possessing beforehand in Himself all principles and all conclusions of all beings; and He is above all things, as being superessentially before all in a manner surpassing being.

All-shaped, all-formed, yet shapeless and formless and beyond beauty; having taken up beforehand in Himself, in an unconstrained and transcendent way, the beginnings and middles and ends of beings; and purely shining forth being upon all things according to one supremely-united cause.

For if our sun, though it is one and shines a single-formed light, renews and nourishes and guards and perfects and differentiates and unites and warms and makes fruitful and increases and changes and establishes and brings forth and stirs and gives life to all the essences and qualities of perceptible things—although they are many and diverse—and each of all things partakes, in a manner proper to itself, of the same one sun, and the one sun has taken up beforehand in itself, in a single-formed way, the causes of the many things that partake of it; much more, in the case of the Cause of both the sun and all things, must we grant that the paradigms of all beings pre-subsist according to one superessential union, since He also brings forth essences through a procession from essence.

And we call paradigms the essence-making and unitarily pre-subsisting principles of beings in God, which theology calls predeterminations and divine and good wills, definitive and productive of beings, according to which the Superessential both predetermined and brought forth all beings.

But if the philosopher Clement should think it fit also to speak of paradigms in a relative sense, as the more archetypal things among beings, his discourse does not proceed by proper and complete and simple terms.

Yet, conceding that this too is rightly said, we must call to mind the saying of theology: 'I did not show them to you that you should go after them, but that through the analogical knowledge of these we might be led up, so far as we are able, to the Cause of all.'

All beings, then, must be attributed to it according to one transcendent union of all; since, beginning from being—from the essence-making procession and goodness—and passing through all things and filling all things from itself with being, and rejoicing over all beings, it both possesses beforehand all things in itself according to one excess of simplicity, refusing all duality, and likewise embraces all things according to its super-simplified infinity, and is partaken of by all in a unitary way—just as a single and self-same voice is partaken of as one by many ears.

Of all beings, then, the Pre-existent is beginning and end.

Beginning as cause; end as that for the sake of which, and the limit of all; and infinity of all infinity and of all limit, transcendently, as of things opposed.

For in the One, as has often been said, all beings both are possessed beforehand and were given subsistence, He being present to all and everywhere, according to one and the same, and in the same respect entire, and proceeding upon all things and yet remaining in Himself; standing and moving, and neither standing nor moving; having neither beginning nor middle nor end; being in none of the beings, nor being any of the beings.

And nothing at all belonging to things that are eternal or to things that subsist in time pertains to Him; rather, He is exempt from time and age and from all things in age and in time, since He is Age-itself and the beings and the measures of beings and the things measured—through Him and from Him.

But concerning these things, let it be said more opportunely elsewhere.

But now we must hymn the eternal Life, from which come Life-itself and all life, and by which to all things that in any way partake of life, living is sown abroad in a manner proper to each.

And indeed the life and immortality of the immortal angels, and the very imperishability of the angelic ever-moving, both are and subsist from it and through it; on account of which they are called both ever-living and immortal—and yet again not immortal, because they do not have from themselves the being-immortal and the living-eternally, but have it from the life-making and life-producing and conserving cause of all life.

And just as we said concerning Being—that He is the age even of being-itself—so here again: the divine Life is life-giving and constitutive even of Life-itself; and all life and life-giving motion is from the Life that is above all life and above every principle of all life.

From it souls also have their imperishability, and all animals and plants have life according to the last echo of Life.

And when it is withdrawn, all life fails, according to the Scripture; and toward it, even the things that have failed—through their weakness for partaking of it—turning back again, become living things again.

And first it grants to Life-itself the being-life, and to all life and to each particular life it grants being, each in a manner proper to it—being what it is by nature to be.

Overextending—through abundance of goodness—godlike and unalterable immortality and unswerving, undeviating ever-motion even into the demonic life (for neither does that life have its being from another cause, but has both its being-life and its continuance from it); and granting also to men the angel-like life possible to them as composite beings; and by the overflowing of its love for mankind turning us, even as we go astray, back to itself and recalling us; and—what is yet more divine—it has promised to transfer us whole, soul and the bodies conjoined to them I mean, to perfect life and immortality.

A thing which to antiquity might perhaps seem contrary to nature, but to me and to you and to the truth is both divine and above nature.

And I say 'above nature' with reference to our visible nature, not to the all-powerful nature of the divine Life; for to it, as being the nature of all lives and especially of the more divine ones, no life is contrary to nature or above nature.

So let the refutatory arguments of Simon, on this point of his madness, be driven far from the divine choir and from your sacred soul.

For it escaped him, I think—though he supposed himself wise in this too—that the right-minded man ought not to use the apparent testimony of sense-perception as an ally against the Cause of all that is unseen.

And to him this must be said: that to call it 'contrary to nature'—for to it nothing is contrary.

From it all animals and plants are given life and are cherished.

And whether you call it intellectual or rational or perceptive or nutritive and augmentative life, or whatever life or principle of life or essence of life, from it both it lives and gives life—from that Life above all life—and in it, according to cause, it pre-subsists in a single-formed way.

For the supra-living and life-originating Life is the cause of all life, life-generating and life-fulfilling and life-distributing; and it is to be hymned from all life, according to the great fecundity of all lives, being beheld and hymned as manifold and as all life, and as needing nothing—nay rather, as over-full of life, as Life-itself, and as life-giving above all life, and as supra-living—or however one might hymn, in human fashion, that ineffable Life.

Come now, if it seems good, let us hymn the good and eternal Life both as wise and as Wisdom-itself—nay rather, as constitutive of all wisdom, and as being above all wisdom and understanding.

For not only is God over-full of wisdom, and of His understanding there is no number, but He is also established above all reason and intellect and wisdom.

And this the truly divine man, the common sun of us and of our master, having conceived in a way beyond nature,

says: 'The foolishness of God is wiser than men'—not only because all human thought is a kind of wandering when judged against the steadfast and abiding nature of the divine and most perfect thoughts, but also because it is customary for the theologians to predicate of God, by way of contrast, the things of privation.

Thus the Scriptures also call the all-radiant light 'invisible,' and the much-hymned and many-named 'ineffable and nameless,' and Him who is present to all and found from all 'incomprehensible and untraceable.'

In this manner, then, also now the divine Apostle is said to hymn the 'foolishness of God,' leading up the apparently paradoxical and absurd in it to the ineffable truth that is before all reason.

But, as I have said elsewhere, taking the things above us in a manner proper to ourselves, and being entangled in our companion the senses, and comparing the divine things to our own, we are deceived, pursuing the divine and ineffable Word according to its mere appearance.

According to this, then, divine things must be conceived not after our own fashion, but with our whole selves wholly going out from our whole selves and wholly becoming God's; for it is better to belong to God and not to ourselves.

For thus the divine things will be given to those who come to be with God.

Hymning, then, in a transcendent way this 'irrational and mindless and foolish' Wisdom, let us say that it is the cause of all intellect and reason and of all wisdom and understanding, and that all counsel is of it, and from it is all knowledge and understanding, and that in it are all the treasures of wisdom and of knowledge hidden.

For of Wisdom-itself, both the whole and that in each particular, it is the constituting cause.

From it the intelligible and intellectual powers of the angelic intellects possess their simple and blessed thoughts.

They do not gather divine knowledge piecemeal, or from divided things, or from senses, or from discursive reasonings, nor are they encompassed by anything common to these; but, cleansed of all that is material and manifold, they think the intelligibles of divine things intellectually, immaterially, in a single-formed way.

And in them the intellectual power and activity is resplendent with unmixed and undefiled purity, and synoptic of divine thoughts through indivisibility and immateriality, and through the godlike One, imprinted—so far as is attainable—upon the divine and supra-wise Intellect and Word.

But also, one would not miss the mark in saying that the senses themselves are an echo of Wisdom.

And indeed the demonic intellect too, in so far as it is intellect, is from it; but in so far as it is an intellect bereft of reason as to attaining what it desires, neither knowing nor willing, it should more properly be called a falling-away from wisdom.

But that the divine Wisdom is both principle and cause and constituting-source and perfection and guard and limit of Wisdom-itself and of all wisdom and of every intellect and reason and of all perception has been said; but how is God Himself, the supra-wise, hymned as Wisdom and Intellect and Word and Knower?

For how will He think any of the intelligibles, not having intellectual activities? Or how will He know the perceptibles, being established above all perception?

And yet the Scriptures say that He knows all things, and that nothing escapes the divine knowledge.

But, as I have often said, divine things must be conceived in a manner befitting God.