Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

108 DIFFICULTY 10
D
1132A
B
by nature, and is manifested as hidden, lest he is believed by
the wise to be subtle in nature. So, on the one hand, what is
hidden is to be manifest to us through denial, and every power
of picturing what is true in shapes and riddles is rather to
pass away and raise us up ineffably to the Word itself from
the letter and what is apparent according to the power of the
Spirit. On the other hand, what is apparent is to be hidden in
attribution, lest, in a Gentile way, 41 we become murderers of
the Word and worship the creation instead of the Creator
(Rom. 1:25), believing that there is nothing higher than what
is seen or more magnificent than the objects of sense, or else,
in a Jewish way, looking only as far as the letter, we reduce
manifold reality to the body alone, and deifying the belly and
regarding what is shameful as glorious, 42 we receive the same
inheritance as the deicides, not discerning the Word who, for
our sake and by means of what we are, became flesh to be with
us and was thickened 43 in syllables and letters to be perceived
by us, inclining every power of the intelligible within us
towards himself. So the divine Apostle says, the letter kills, but
the spirit gives life (2 Cor. 3:6). For the letter, desired on its own
sole account, is accustomed to kill the indwelling reason of
those who desire it, just as the beauty of the creatures, if it is
not referred to the glory of the Maker, naturally defrauds of
rational reverence those who behold it. And again the Gospel
says, And if those days had not been shortened, clearly [those
days] of wickedness, no flesh would be saved, that is, any
reverent thought about God (Matt. 24:22). For the days of
wickedness are shortened, when the erring act of judgment
that fashions them according to the senses is circumscribed by
reason and lags behind reverent [rational] judgment. For the
law of the flesh in no way differs from that of Antichrist,
always wrestling with the Spirit and in opposition to its divine
law, until the present life becomes dear and beloved to those
who are overcome by it, and reason, not yet manifest by the
word of power, is abolished, which distinguishes the mortal
from the immortal, removing the wearying slavery from
freedom, and demonstrating truth itself, pure of any
falsehood, and marking off from the divine and the eternal
what is material and transitory, to which the mind naturally
inclines in error through its assimilation to them through the
senses and is killed by its irrational affection. For it was
especially and principally for the mind that the divinely-fitting
descent of the Word took place, to raise it up from the death of
ignorance, and repel its impassioned disposition to material