Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church
Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church
Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church
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B<br />
C<br />
D<br />
TEXTS 111<br />
back to what is good, and by setting straight what is not in our<br />
control by opposing what is, they cut off all evil, whether<br />
present, future or past. For I do not say that in these things<br />
providence is one thing and judgment another. But I know<br />
them as potentially one and the same, but having a differing<br />
and many-formed activity in relation to us. Mixture (or<br />
composition) of beings is a symbol of our inclination. For when<br />
it cleaves to the virtues, and mixes them in itself, it is<br />
constituted at the level of mind as the divinely-fitting cosmos.<br />
Position is the teacher of the character that is chosen by<br />
inclination, steadily holding an opinion concerning the good<br />
and training those who oppose what is against it, and accept<br />
only on rational basis any kind of change. And again if they<br />
combine movement with position, and mixture with difference,<br />
they distinguish the substance of all things indivisibly 47 into<br />
being and difference and movement, and if they grasp that the<br />
cause is to be beheld from the things that are caused<br />
differently by an inventive and technical use of reason, they<br />
conceive this reverently as being and being wise and being<br />
alive. 48 Thence they are taught the divinely-perfect and saving<br />
meaning concerning the Father and the Son and the Holy<br />
Spirit, according to which they are hiddenly illuminated that<br />
the meaning of the cause is not simply that of being but are<br />
reverently initiated about the mode of existence. 49 And again<br />
carefully considering the whole of creation from the point of<br />
view of position alone, they contracted the five modes of<br />
contemplation mentioned into three, recognizing that creation<br />
in accordance with its own meaning teaches from heaven,<br />
earth and what is in between ethical, natural and theological<br />
philosophy. 50 Again beholding the creation from the point of<br />
view of difference alone, that is to say from the distinction<br />
between what is contained and what contains, I mean of<br />
heaven and what is within it, they reduce these three forms to<br />
two, by which I mean wisdom and philosophy, one that, as it<br />
were, circumscribes and receives in a way divinely fitting the<br />
above-mentioned reverent forms and encloses within itself the<br />
hidden and natural meanings of the others, while the other<br />
holds together, as it were, character and inclination, activity<br />
and contemplation, and virtue and knowledge, drawing them<br />
up by an intimate relationship to wisdom as cause. And again<br />
considering creation from the point of view of mixture as the<br />
harmonious composition of everything, and thinking of the<br />
fashioning Word as ineffably binding all things to one another