Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

B
C
D
1117A
TEXTS 99
knowledge of the nature of things, we learn that there are
three general ways, accessible to human beings, in which God
has made all things—for giving us existence He has
constituted it as being, well being and eternal being—and the
two ways of being at the extremes are God’s alone, as the
cause, while the other one in the middle, depending on our
inclination 10 and motion, through itself makes the extremes
what they are, properly speaking, for if the middle term is not
present and ‘well’ is not added, the extremes are designated in
vain, and the truth that is in the extremes cannot otherwise
accrue to them or be preserved, or even come to be, if the well
being in the middle is not mixed in with the extremes, or
rather intended by eternal movement towards God. And then
they are to intensify the soul’s sight by natural reason, for it is
wrong to invert the natural activities, because the abuse of
natural powers necessarily signifies corruption. Hearing
reason crying out directly, they are taught by appropriate
natural reason to be borne towards [the soul’s] cause, that
thence for them being may simply be, and that they may
receive the addition of true being. For those who think about
these things fairly say, why should the gain be to that cause
that does not cause itself at the level of being but is moved
towards itself or another by God, when nothing is able to
procure from itself or from any other than God anything for
the meaning of its existence? Therefore they teach the mind to
concern itself with God alone and His virtues, and to cast itself
with unknowing into the ineffable glory of His blessedness;
reason to become the interpreter of things intelligible and a
singer of hymns, and to reason rightly about the forms that
bring things to unity; sense ennobled by reason to imagine the
different powers and activities in the universe and to
communicate, so far as possible, the meanings that are in
beings to the soul. With this teaching through mind and
reason, they are to guide the soul wisely, like a ship, so that it
passes dryshod 11 along this life’s path, which is fluid and
unstable, borne this way and that and swamped by the senses.
4
On the crossing of the sea12 Thus, perhaps, that great man, Moses, by a blow of allpowerful
reason, symbolized doubtless by the rod, drove
through the deceit of the senses, symbolized by the sea—or,
perhaps better, circumvented it—and provided for the people,
who were eagerly pursuing the divine promises, a firm and