Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

C
D
1124A
B
necessarily to be interpreted, I think, as deficiency and a
means of escape. By these the visible world is passed by and
abandoned, and the Lord receives those worthy of the spiritual
law of adoption, and becomes their adopted father, and in his
goodness concedes all of what He is wholly to these according
to the likeness through virtue and knowledge. Or perhaps
through father and mother the written law and the bodily
worship that it commends are hinted at, by retreat from which
the light of the spiritual law is made to dawn in the hearts of
those who are worthy, and they are given freedom from the
slavery of the law.
12
Contemplation of Elijah’s vision at Horeb 25
TEXTS 103
So Elijah is shown to be most wise after the fire and the
earthquake and the wind that rent the mountains, which I take
to be zeal, and discernment, and an eager, assured faith. For
discernment utterly alters the ingrained habit of evil,
assaulting it through virtue, like an earthquake breaking up
what is held together. And zeal, burning like fire, enkindles
those who have it to persuade the wicked by the warmth of the
spirit. And faith, in the form of a compelling wind, forces the
insensible to purification for the sake of God’s glory through
demonstration of the most lasting miracles and gives the truly
faithful man guidance through hidden water and deifying
fire. By it the famine of ignorance is cured, and those who
sacrifice to God by custom are kindly dealt with. By it the
teachers of evil—the trains of thought and the demons of
sophistry —are put to death, and those under the slavery of
the passions set free. After all these, by the gentle breeze, the
voice in which God existed, Elijah was secretly taught that
state of being, beyond any speech or demonstration, which is,
by the utterance of reason and by forms of life and conduct,
divine, untroubled, peaceful, completely immaterial, simple
and free from every shape or form. Therefore, wondering at its
glory and wounded by its beauty, he longs to emulate it rather
than just pursue it, that is to fight for truth’s sake everything
that is opposed to it, and judges it much more honourable to
see or know nothing that is opposed to the only God who is
wholly through all and in all. While still in the flesh, he is
preserved in that state, passing through matter by the divine
chariot 26 of the virtues, treating it as a veil through which the
mind finds a pure passage to the intelligible realm, and