Divine Names 1 part 5/6

For the mindless and the perception-less must be ascribed to God by way of excess, not by way of deficiency—just as we attribute the irrational to Him who is above reason, and imperfection to the supra-perfect and pre-perfect, and the intangible and invisible darkness to the light unapproachable, by way of excess over visible light.

So that the divine Intellect holds all things together by the knowledge that transcends all things, having taken up beforehand in Himself, according to the cause of all, the knowledge of all—knowing the angels before they came to be, and bringing forth the angels, and knowing and bringing into being all other things from within, and from that, so to speak, very Principle.

And this, I think, the Scripture conveys when it says:

'He who knows all things before their coming-to-be.'

For the divine Intellect does not know beings by learning beings from beings; rather, from Himself and in Himself, according to cause, He possesses beforehand and has taken up beforehand the knowledge and understanding and essence of all—not applying Himself to each individually, but by one embrace of the cause knowing and holding together all things—just as the light too, according to cause, has taken up beforehand in itself the knowledge of darkness, knowing the darkness from nowhere else than from the light.

The divine Wisdom, then, knowing itself, will know all things: the material immaterially, the divided indivisibly, the many in a unitary way—knowing and bringing forth all things by that very One.

For if according to one cause God imparts being to all beings, according to the same single cause He will know all things as being from Him and pre-subsisting in Him; and He will not receive the knowledge of them from beings, but will be the supplier to each individual of the knowledge of itself, and to others of the knowledge of others.

It is not, then, that God has one knowledge proper to Himself and another that comprehends in common all beings.

For the very Cause of all, knowing itself, will hardly be ignorant of the things from itself and of which it is the cause.

In this way, then, God knows beings—not by the knowledge of beings, but by the knowledge of Himself.

For the Scriptures say that the angels too know the things upon the earth—not knowing them by the senses, perceptible though they are, but according to the proper power and nature of the godlike intellect.

Upon these matters it is needful to inquire how we know God, who is neither intelligible nor perceptible nor anything at all among beings universally.

God is known both through knowledge and through unknowing.

And of Him there are both thought and reason and knowledge and contact and perception and opinion and imagination and name and all the rest; and yet He is neither thought nor spoken nor named.

And He is none of the beings, nor is He known in any of the beings.

And He is all things in all, and nothing in none; and He is known from all things to all, and from nothing to none.

For we say these things rightly concerning God; and He is hymned from all beings according to the analogy of all things, of which He is the cause.

And yet again there is the most divine knowledge of God, which is known through unknowing, according to the union beyond intellect—when the intellect, withdrawing from all beings, and then letting go even of itself, is united to the supra-luminous rays, illumined from thence and there by the unsearchable depth of Wisdom.

And yet also from all things, as I have said, it must be known.

For this, according to the Scripture, is the maker of all things, ever fitting all things together, and the cause of the indissoluble adaptation and order of all, and ever joining the ends of the former things to the beginnings of the latter, and beautifully working the one concord and harmony of the whole.

And God is hymned by the sacred Scriptures as Word (Logos), not only because He is the supplier of reason and intellect and wisdom, but also because He has taken up beforehand in Himself, in a single-formed way, the causes of all things, and because He passes through all things, reaching, as the Scriptures say, to the end of all; and before these, because the divine Word is supremely simplified beyond all simplicity, and is, beyond all things, absolved from all according to His superessentiality.

This Word is the simple and truly existing Truth, around which—as the pure and unerring knowledge of all things—divine faith abides, the steadfast establishment of the persuaded, which establishes them in the truth and the truth in them, in an unalterable identity, the persuaded having the simple knowledge of the truth.

For if knowledge is unitive of those who know and the things known, while ignorance is ever a cause of change and of the division of the ignorant from himself, then he who has believed in truth, according to the sacred Word, nothing will move from the hearth of true faith, on which he will have the steadfastness of unmoved and unalterable identity.

For he who is united to the truth knows well that he is well, even though the many should admonish him as one who has gone out of his senses.

It escapes them, as is likely, that he has gone out from error to the truth through true faith; but he himself truly knows that he is not, as they say, mad, but has been freed from the unstable and changeable, manifold variety of the rush of error, through the simple truth that is ever the same and in the same state.

Thus indeed the foundational guides of our divine wisdom die for the truth every day, bearing witness, as is fitting, by every word and deed to the unitary true-knowledge of Christians—that it is of all knowledge both the simplest and the most divine; nay rather, that it is itself the only true and one and simple knowledge of God.

But since the theologians hymn the divine truth and supra-wise Wisdom also as Power and as Righteousness, and call it Salvation and Redemption, come, let us also unfold these divine names, so far as is possible for us.

And that the divine Source is exempt from and surpasses every power that in any way both exists and is conceived, I do not think anyone nurtured in the divine Scriptures is ignorant of.

For in many places theology has handed down, ascribing to it the lordship even over the supra-celestial powers themselves.

How then do the theologians hymn it, who is exempt from all power, also as Power?

Or how should we take the power-name as applied to it?

(We say) that it is Power-itself, both by its super-power and by its bringing forth other powers infinitely beyond the existing powers, and by the fact that the infinite powers, brought forth to infinity, could never blunt its supra-infinite making of power-producing power; and by the ineffable and unknowable and inconceivable character of its power that surpasses all things; or that, through the superabundance of its might, it empowers even weakness and holds together and sustains the last of its echoes—just as we observe also in the case of perceptible powers, that the over-brilliant lights reach even to dim sights, and they say that great sounds penetrate even into ears that do not very easily catch sounds.

For that which is wholly deaf is no hearing at all, and that which sees nothing at all is no sight.

This, then—the infinitely-powerful diffusion of God—passes into all beings, and there is nothing among beings that is wholly bereft of having some power, but it has either an intellectual or a rational or a perceptive or a vital or an essential power; and being itself, if it be lawful to say so, has the power to be from the superessential Power.

From it are the godlike powers of the angelic orders; from it they have their being unfailingly, and they have received from the infinitely-good Power all their intellectual and immortal ever-motions, and that very steadfastness and the undiminished desire for the Good—it granting to them both the being-able and the being of these things, and the desiring ever to be, and the very being-able to desire the ever-being-able.

And the workings of the inexhaustible Power proceed also into men and animals and plants and the whole nature of the universe; and it empowers things united toward mutual friendship and communion, and things distinct toward being—each according to its proper principle and limit—unconfused and unmixed; and it preserves the orders and good-arrangements of the universe toward their proper good; and it keeps unblemished the immortal lives of the angelic henads; and it keeps unaltered the heavenly and luminous and starry essences and orders, and makes the age able to be, and the cycles of time it differentiates by their processions and gathers by their restorations; and it makes the powers of fire unquenchable and the flowings of water inexhaustible, and bounds the diffusion of air, and establishes the earth upon nothing, and keeps undestroyed its life-bearing birth-pangs, and preserves the harmony and blending of the elements within one another unconfused and undivided, and holds together the bond of soul and body, and stirs up the nutritive and augmentative powers of plants, and sustains the essential powers of all things, and secures the indissoluble abiding of the universe, and grants deification itself, furnishing power for this to those who are being deified.

And in short, there is nothing whatsoever among beings that is deprived of the all-sovereign security and embrace of the divine Power.

For that which has no power at all neither exists, nor is anything, nor is there any positing of it whatsoever.

And yet Elymas the magician says:

'If God is all-powerful, how is He said by your theologian to be unable to do something?'

And he reviles the divine Paul, who said that God cannot deny Himself.

But in proposing this, I am exceedingly afraid lest I incur the laughter of folly, attempting—like children—to pull down sandcastles built on sand and weak, and hastening to take aim, as it were, at some unattainable target, namely the theological meaning concerning this matter.

For self-denial is a falling-away from truth, and truth is a being; and the falling-away from truth is a falling-away from being.

If, then, truth is a being, and the denial of truth a falling-away from being, then God cannot fall away from being; and 'the not-being is not,' as one might say; the not-being-able He is not able to be; and the not-knowing, by way of privation, He does not know.

And this the wise man, not having understood, imitates those untrained-in-victory athletes, who, often supposing their adversaries to be weak according to their own fancy, and bravely shadow-boxing against absent opponents, and confidently striking the air with empty blows, suppose themselves to have overcome their adversaries, and proclaim themselves victors—not even knowing the power of those others.

...of the age, as one who has fallen away in no respect from beings—nay rather, as both surpassing and possessing beforehand all beings according to a superessential power, and having granted, by a superabundance of His surpassing power, with ungrudging outpouring, to all beings the being-able to be and to be this particular thing.

For divine Righteousness orders and sets bounds to all things, and, preserving all things from all things unmixed and unmingled, grants to all beings the things that befit each, according to the worth that pertains to each of the beings.

And if we say these things rightly, then all who revile the divine Righteousness, without knowing it, pass a manifest verdict of injustice upon themselves; for they say that immortality ought to belong to mortals, and perfection to the imperfect, and the necessity of being moved-by-another to the self-moved, and identity to the changeable, and full-powered things to the weak, and that the temporal ought to be eternal, and things by nature in motion unchangeable, and seasonal pleasures everlasting—and, in short, they assign the things of some to others.

(They say) it is not of righteousness to leave holy men unaided, worn down by the base.

But as for this: if those whom you call holy love the things on earth that are coveted by the carnal, they have utterly fallen away from divine love; and I do not know how they could be called holy, while wronging the truly lovable and divine things by being—not piously—outdone by them in those things that are uncoveted and unloved by such men.

But if they love the truly existing things, then those who desire certain things ought to rejoice whenever they attain the objects of their desire.

Or do they not rather draw nearer to the angelic virtues when, so far as is possible, in their yearning for the divine they withdraw from attachment to material things, training themselves toward this most manfully amid the trials borne for the sake of the good?

So that it is true to say that this is rather the proper mark of the divine justice: not to enchant and destroy the manliness of the best souls by lavishing material things upon them, nor, if anyone should attempt to do this, to leave them without help, but to establish them in their noble and unyielding steadfastness and to render to such men what befits their worth.

This, then, is why the divine justice is celebrated as the salvation of all things, in that it preserves and guards the proper and pure essence and order of each thing apart from the others, and is purely the cause of right action proper to each within the whole.

But if anyone should celebrate salvation also as that which savingly snatches all things up out of the worse, we shall by all means accept this man too as a hymnodist of the all-embracing salvation; and we shall require him to define as the first salvation of all things that which preserves all things in their own state unchanged, unshaken, and uninclined toward the worse, guarding everything inviolate and unwarred-upon, each ordered according to its own principles, and which banishes from all things every inequality and meddling in others' affairs, and establishes the proportions of each thing as unfailing and immovable toward their contraries.

Since one would not be wide of the mark of the sacred theology in celebrating this salvation also: that all beings are, by the saving goodness of all things, ransomed from falling away from their own proper goods, in the measure that the nature of each saved thing admits.

And every inequality—that, namely, which arises through the privation of the equality proper to each individual thing—is banished.

For if one should take inequality to mean the differences within the whole of all things in relation to one another, justice is the guardian of this too, not permitting things, when they come to be commingled within the whole, to be thrown into confusion, but preserving all beings according to each kind, in that in which each is by nature meant to be.

[Chapter Nine] Since both the great and the small are ascribed to the Cause of all things, and the same and the other, and the like and the unlike, and rest and motion, come, let us contemplate these god-naming images also, so far as they are manifest to us.

God, then, is celebrated as great in the Scriptures, both in magnitude and in the still small breeze that manifests the divine smallness.

And as the same, when the Scriptures say: "Thou art the same."

And as other, when by the same Scriptures He is depicted as multiform and of many shapes.

And as like, as the establisher of like things and of likeness.

And as unlike all things, in that there is nothing like to Him.

And as standing and unmoved, and seated forever, and as moving, in that He goes forth upon all things.

And as many other god-names equal in power to these are celebrated by the Scriptures.

God, then, is named great according to His own proper greatness, which imparts itself to all great things and is poured out beyond and stretched out above all magnitude, encompassing every place, surpassing every number, traversing all infinity; and according to His overflowing fullness and His mighty working and His fountain-like gifts—inasmuch as these, being partaken of by all in an infinitely bountiful effusion, are wholly undiminished, retain the same superabundant fullness, and are in no way lessened by being shared, but rather overflow the more.

This greatness is both infinite and without quantity and without number; and this is His pre-eminence, according to the absolute and supremely extended effusion of an incomprehensible majesty.

And small, or fine, is said of Him as that which has gone forth beyond all bulk and dimension and which passes unhindered through all things.

And indeed the small is the cause of all things, for nowhere will you find the form of the small unparticipated.

Thus, then, the small is to be understood of God as that which passes unhindered upon all and through all things, and works and penetrates even to the dividing of soul and body, of joints and marrow, and of the thoughts of the heart—indeed, of all beings whatsoever.

For there is no creature hidden from His sight.

This small is without quantity and without magnitude, ungraspable, infinite, indefinite, embracing all things, while itself remaining unembraced.

And the Same is supersubstantially eternal, unchangeable, abiding in itself, ever in the same state and in the same manner, present to all in the same way, and standing of itself, in itself, firmly and inviolately established within the most beautiful bounds of supersubstantial sameness—immutable, unfalling, uninclined, unalterable, unmixed, immaterial, most simple, in need of nothing, incapable of increase, incapable of diminution, unoriginate: not as though not yet having come to be, nor as incomplete, nor as not having come to be by this or that, nor as in no way and by no means existing, but as beyond all unoriginate, and absolutely unoriginate, and ever-existing, and self-perfect, and being the Same of itself and by itself, defined in single and self-identical fashion, and shedding the Same out of itself upon all that are fit to partake, and conjoining the others to the others—superabundance and cause of sameness in itself, possessing the contraries beforehand in identical manner, according to the one, unitary, and transcendent cause of the whole of sameness.

And the Other, since God is providentially present to all things and becomes all things in all for the salvation of all, while remaining in Himself and never departing from His own sameness, standing fast in one ceaseless activity and giving Himself with unswerving power for the deification of those turned toward Him.

And the otherness of the manifold figures of God in His many-formed visions we must suppose to signify something other to those things that appear, beyond what they appear to be.

We said that the neck is glory, as standing midway between reason and unreason; the breast is the spirited part; the belly is desire; the legs and feet are nature—using the names of the bodily members as symbols of the powers. How much more, then, with regard to Him who is beyond all things, must the otherness of forms and figures be purified away by holy, god-befitting, and mystical unfoldings.

And if you wish to attach the three dimensions of bodies to the unfeeling and figureless God, then breadth must be called the supremely wide procession of God upon all things; length, the power that stretches out beyond all things; and depth, the hiddenness and unknowing that is incomprehensible to all beings.

But lest, in unfolding these other figures and forms, we should unwittingly confound the incorporeal god-names with those expressed through perceptible symbols—therefore, concerning these matters, we treat in the Symbolic Theology.

But now, as for this divine otherness itself, let us not suspect in it any alteration of the supremely immutable sameness, but rather His unitary multiplication and the uniform processions of His prolific outgoing upon all things.

But if one should call God like, in the sense of being the same—as being wholly and throughout like to Himself, abidingly and indivisibly—we must not dishonor the god-name of the like.

Yet the theologians say that God, who is above all, is, as He is in Himself, like to nothing; but that He bestows divine likeness upon those who turn toward Him, by imitation, so far as is possible, of Him who is beyond all definition and reason.

And the power of the divine likeness is that which turns all produced things back toward their Cause.

These things, then, must be called like to God and according to the divine image and likeness; for not even is God like to them, just as a man is not like to his own image.

For among things of the same rank it is possible both for them to be like one another and for the likeness to be reciprocal on either side, and for both to be like one another according to a prior common form of the like; but in the case of the Cause and the things caused we shall not admit such reciprocity.

For it is not to these or those alone that He grants the being-like, but to all that partake of likeness God becomes the cause of their being like, and He is also the establisher of self-likeness itself.

And the like that is in all things is like by some trace of the divine likeness, and it fulfills their union.

And what need is there to speak about this?

For theology itself maintains that He is unlike, and incommensurable with all things, as being other than all; and—what is yet more paradoxical—it says that there is nothing at all like to Him.

And yet this saying is not contrary to the likeness toward Him.

For the same things are both like and unlike to God: like, according to such imitation as is possible of the inimitable; unlike, according to their falling short, as caused things, of their Cause, lagging behind by measures infinite and incomparable.

And what shall we say concerning the divine rest, or session?

What else than that God abides in Himself, and is firmly fixed in unmoved sameness and supremely established, and acts in the same way and around the same and unchangingly; and that, according to His unremovableness, He utterly exists of Himself, and, according to His immovability, is altogether and wholly unmoved—and these things supersubstantially?

For He Himself is the cause of the rest and seat of all things, who is above every seat and rest; and in Him all things stand together, being kept unshaken by the rest derived from their own proper goods.

And again, when the theologians say that the Unmoved both proceeds upon all things and is moved—what then?

Must not this too be understood in a manner befitting God?

For we must piously suppose that He is moved—not by translation or alteration or change or turning or local motion, neither rectilinear nor circular nor compounded of both, neither intelligible nor psychic nor natural—but rather in His bringing of beings into existence and holding all things together and providentially caring for all things in every way, and in His being present to all by the unconstrained embrace of all, and in the providential processions and activities directed upon all beings.

But we must also concede that the word may, in a manner befitting God, celebrate the motions of God the Unmoved.

...the returning back to Himself of those that have proceeded forth from Him.

And if anyone should take the god-name of the Same in the Scriptures, or that of justice, in the sense of the equal, we must say that God is equal not only as indivisible and uninclined, but also as one who pervades all things and passes through all things equally, and as the establisher of equality itself, according to which He works equally the mutually pervading and like procession through all things, and the equal participation of those who share according to the fitness of each, and the gift distributed upon all things equally according to worth; and according as He has, in transcendent and unitary fashion within Himself, anticipated every equality—intelligible, intellective, rational, sensible, essential, natural, volitional—by the power that produces all equality, which is above all equality.

[Chapter Ten] It is now time for our discourse to celebrate the many-named God as Almighty and as the Ancient of Days.

For the former is said because He is the almighty seat of all things, containing and embracing the whole, establishing and grounding and binding it fast, and rendering the universe within Himself indissoluble, and bringing forth all things out of Himself as from an almighty root, and turning all things back into Himself as into an almighty foundation, and holding them together as the all-mighty seat of all things—securing all that is held together by one transcendent containment that surpasses all, and not suffering them, when fallen away from Himself, to perish like things set in motion away from an all-perfect hearth.

And the Godhead is called Almighty as ruling over all and as ministering unmixedly to the things governed, and as being desirable and lovable to all, and as laying upon all the willing yokes and the sweet birth-pangs of the divine and almighty and griefless love of His goodness.

And God is celebrated as the Ancient of Days, because He is both eternity and time of all things, and is before days and before eternity and time.

And yet He must also be called, in a manner befitting God, time and day and season and eternity, as being unchangeable and unmoved amid all motion, and as abiding in Himself while ever moving, and as the cause of eternity and time and days.

And we must, as I think, know also from the Scriptures the nature of time and of eternity.

For it does not everywhere call eternal only those things that are altogether and absolutely unoriginate and truly everlasting; but it calls eternal also the incorruptible and immortal and unalterable and things that remain in the same state—as when it says:

"Be lifted up, ye everlasting gates," and the like.

And often it characterizes the most ancient things by the appellation of eternity; and again it sometimes calls the whole span of time as we know it "eternity," inasmuch as it is also a property of eternity to be ancient and unalterable and to measure being as a whole.

And it calls time that which is in generation and corruption and alteration, and which is now in one way and now in another.

And in the Scriptures sometimes even temporal eternity is spoken of, and eternal time, although we know that, more properly and more authoritatively, beings are both said and signified by them to belong to eternity, and things in generation to time.

We must therefore not simply suppose that the things called eternal are coeternal with God who is before eternity; but, following the most venerable Scriptures unswervingly, we must understand things called eternal and things temporal according to the senses recognized in them; and as for things that are intermediate between beings and things-in-becoming—such as in part partake of eternity and in part of time—

...we must regard as existing inasmuch as He is both before eternity and above eternity, and His kingdom is a kingdom of all the ages.

[Chapter Eleven] Come, then, let us celebrate with peaceful hymns the divine Peace, the leader of all assembly.

For this is the unifier of all things, and the begetter and worker of the concord and natural union of all.

By participation in the divine Peace, the most senior of the unifying powers are united both to themselves and to one another, and to the one peace-principle of all things; and they unite the things beneath them, both to themselves and to one another, and to the one and all-perfect principle and cause of the peace of all—which, indivisibly mounted upon the whole, like certain bolts joining together what has been divided, bounds and limits and secures all things, and does not suffer them, when divided, to be poured out toward the infinite and indefinite, becoming disordered and unstable and forsaken of God, departing from their own union and confusedly commingled with one another.

Now concerning the divine Peace and stillness itself—what it ever is—which the holy Justus calls speechlessness and immobility with respect to every knowable procession; and how it is at rest and keeps stillness, and how it is in itself and within itself and is supremely united, whole to whole, to itself; and how it neither, when entering into itself and multiplying itself, abandons its own union, but also goes forth upon all things while remaining wholly within, through the excess of the union that surpasses all—of this it is neither lawful nor possible for any being either to speak or to conceive.

But, ascribing to it this too as unutterable and unknowable, as being beyond all things, let us consider its intelligible and utterable participations—and this too so far as is possible for men, and for us, who fall short of many good men.

And first we must say this: that it is the establisher of Peace-itself, both the whole and that which is in each individual; and that it blends all things with one another according to their unconfused union, by which they are indivisibly united and yet, undistanced, stand nevertheless pure each according to its proper kind, neither befouled through admixture with their opposites, nor blunting anything of the unitive exactness and purity.