Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

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reality, and to restore its appetite for what is naturally lovely.
Therefore I necessarily think that those who are rational
should reflect on the body, which is much more important than
its clothes, that is on the divine and exalted thoughts,
disclosed by Holy Scripture and by looking at the created
order, eagerly hastening towards reason through reason (for as
the Word himself says, Is not the soul more than food and the
body more than clothing?: Matt. 6:25), lest at any time they
are convicted of not having these things, not grasping the
Word that brought and brings everything into being, like that
Egyptian woman who laid hold of only the clothes of Joseph
and completely missed intercourse with a lover. 44 Thus,
ascending the mountain of the divine Transfiguration, we
shall behold the garments of the Word, by which I mean the
words of Scripture, and the manifestation of creatures, which
are radiant and glorious by the dogmas that penetrate them,
rendered splendid by the divine Word for exalted
contemplation, and as we ascend we shall not at all be
repulsed in amazement from blessed contact with the Word,
like Mary Magdalene who thought that the Lord Jesus was the
gardener, not yet realizing that the fashioner of those things
that are subject to change and corruption is beyond the senses.
But we shall see and worship the Living One, who came to us
from the dead through closed doors, the power of the senses
within us being completely extinguished, the One who is the
Word Himself and God who is all in all. All the intelligible
thoughts that derive from his goodness we shall know as a body,
and all the things made perceived through the senses as a
garment. Concerning all this the following saying seems not
inappropriate: They shall all grow old like a garment (Heb. 1:
11), because of the corruption that holds sway over what is
beheld by the mind, and like a mantle you will roll them up
and they shall be changed (Heb. 1:12), because of the
anticipated grace of incorruptibility.
19
On the five modes of natural contemplation 45
TEXTS 109
In addition to this, taught by creation, we shall know the
meanings [logoi], that is to say the ultimate meanings that we
long to know, and connected with them the five modes of
contemplation. With these the Saints make distinctions within
the created order and have assembled reverently its secret
meanings, dividing them according to being, movement,