Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

D
1140A
B
C
TEXTS 113
transcended time and nature, and was worthy to be likened to
the Son of God. For, as far as is possible, he had become such
by grace and habit, as the Giver of grace is himself believed to
be by essence. For it is said of him that he is without father or
mother or genealogy (Heb. 7:3): what else can be understood
from this except that, by the the very highest pitch of grace in
accordance with virtue, he has perfectly put off natural
characteristics. And when it is said that he has neither
beginning of days nor end of life (ibid.), it bears witness to a
knowledge embracing the properties of all time and eternity,
and to a contemplation transcending existence of all material
and immaterial being. And when it says that resembling the
Son of God he remains a priest for ever (ibid.), it perhaps
declares that he is able in accordance with his unchangeable
habit of the most godlike virtue and a divine reaching out after
God to keep his mental eye attentive until the end. For virtue
naturally fights against nature, and true contemplation
against time and eternity, in order that it may remain
unenslaved to anything else that is believed to exist under
God, and unconquered, knowing God alone the begetter, and
uncircumscribed, remaining in none of those beings that have
beginning or end, in itself manifesting the image of God, who
defines every beginning and end and draws up to His ineffable
self every thought of intellectual beings in ecstasy. In these—I
mean, in knowledge and virtue—the divine likeness is shown,
and through them unmovable love towards God alone is
preserved in the worthy. In accordance with such love the
dignity of sonship, the divinely-fitting gift of continual
converse with God in his presence, is granted, exhibiting the
divine likeness to any who begs for it. Thus I take it that it is
probably not from time and nature, subject to which the great
Melchisedec reached his natural end, that it should be said of
those who have already transcended life and reason, that the
divine Word justified him, 53 but from and through those things
—I mean, virtue and knowledge —he deliberately changed
what he is called. Thus the deliberation 54 nobly struggles
through the virtues against the law of nature, that is so
difficult to fight against, and through knowledge the movement
of the mind steps without defilement over properties of time
and eternity. With these it is not right to regard as
characteristic the property of what is abandoned, but rather
the magnificence of what is assumed, from which and in which
alone they are and are known. Thus we who are naturally
concerned with visible things recognize and name bodies from