Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

122 DIFFICULTY 10
C
D
1156A
circumscribes. So in its two parts it is divided between these
things, and it draws these things through their own parts into
itself in unity. For the human being is circumscribed by both
the intelligible and the sensible, since it is soul and body, and
it has the natural capacity of circumscribing them, because it
can both think and perceive through the senses. God is simply
and indefinably beyond all beings, both what circumscribes
and what is circumscribed and the nature of those [categories]
without which none of these could be, I mean, time and
eternity and space, by which the universe is enclosed, since He
is completely unrelated to anything. Since all this is so, the
one who discerns with sagacity how he ought to love God, the
transcendent nature, that is beyond reason and knowledge and
any kind of relationship whatever, passes without relation
through everything sensible and intelli gible and all time and
eternity and space. Finally he is super-naturally stripped bare
of every energy that operates in accordance with sense or
reason or mind, and ineffably and unknowably attains the
divine delight that is beyond reason and mind, in the form and
fashion that God who gives such grace knows and those who
are worthy of receiving this from God understand. He no
longer bears about with him anything natural or written, since
everything that he could read or know is now utterly
transcendent and wrapped in silence.
27
Contemplation of the one who fell among
thieves 79
And perhaps this is the ‘whatever more you spend than the
two denarii’ (see Luke 10.35) given by the Lord for the care of
the one who had fallen among thieves at the inn where he was
to be cared for: it is what the Lord, when He comes again,
liberally undertakes to give, the complete negation of beings in
those who are perfect, something that comes to be through
faith (for the Lord says, whoever does not renounce all that he
has cannot be my disciple: Luke 14:33). Accordingly one who
gives up everything of his own —or to put it more
appropriately: above all things gives up himself —such a one
has made himself a lover of wisdom and is worthy to be with
God alone. He has received the adopted sonship, proclaimed in
the Gospels, after the manner of the holy and blessed
Apostles, who stripped themselves completely of everything
and cleaved to the one who is wholly and solely God and Word.