Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

110 DIFFICULTY 10
B
C
D
1136A
difference, mixture and position. 46 They say that three of them
are intended to lead us to the knowledge of God, that is, being,
movement and difference, in accordance with which God
makes himself known to men who from the things that are
conclude that He is the fashioner, provider, and judge. The
other two—mixture and position— educate us to virtue and to
assimilation to God. The man who forms himself in accordance
with these becomes God, experiencing what God is from the
things that are, as it were seeing with his mind the complete
impression of God in accordance with goodness, and forming
himself after this most limpidly with his reason. For what the
pure mind naturally sees with reverent knowledge this, they
say, it can also experience, becoming this itself in accordance
with the habit of virtue. Thus being becomes the teacher of
theology. Through it we, seeking the source of all things, teach
through them that He is, not endeavouring to know how He is
essentially, for there is no indication of this in the things that
are; but through it we return, as from a thing caused, to the
cause. Movement is indicative of the providence of beings.
Through it we behold the unvarying sameness of each of the
things that have come to be according to its being and form
and similarly its inviolable mode of existence, and understand
how everything in the universe is separated one from another
in an orderly manner in accordance with the logoi in which
each thing consists by the ineffable One who holds and
protects everything in accordance with unity. Difference is
indicative of judgment. Through it we are taught that God is
the wise distributor, in each of the things that are, of the
natural power of the individual logoi in a way proportionate to
their underlying being. I attribute providence to mind, not as
converting, or as it were dispensing the return of things subject
to providence from what is not necessary to what is necessary,
but as holding together the universe, and first of all preserving
the universe in accordance with the logoi by which it consists.
And judgment is not educative, and as it were punitive of
sinners, but the saving and preserving distribution of beings,
in accordance with which each of the things that has come to be,
in connection with the logoi in accordance with which it exists,
has an inviolable and unalterable constitution in its natural
identity, just as from the beginning the fashioner determined
and established that it was to be, what it was to be, and how
and how much it was to be. In other words, providence and
judgment are connected with our chosen impulses: they avert
us in many ways from what is wicked, and draw us wisely