Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

124 DIFFICULTY 10
1157A
B
C
corruption as it is dissolved by flux itself. So Adam always
feels confident in the existence of such flourishing life and
thus both for himself and for us he preserves death. If rather
he had trusted in God and been nourished from the tree of life
(Gen. 2:9), that was there too, he would not have set aside the
immortality that had been granted. For such immortality is
eternally preserved by participation in life, since all life is
genuine and preserved by appropriate food. The food of that
blessed life is the bread that came down from heaven and gives
life to the world (John 6:33), just as the inerrant Word himself
declares about himself in the Gospels. In not wishing to be
nourished by Him, the first man rightly fell away from the
divine life, and took death as another parent. Accordingly he
put on himself the irrational form, and blackened the
inconceivable beauty of the divine, and delivered over the
whole of nature as food for death. Death is living on this
through the whole of this temporal period, making us his food,
and we no longer live, but are eternally eaten up by him
through corruption.
29
That from the present life the Saints understood
the future
The Saints, wisely grasping the futility and constant change of
this life, have learnt that the life that is given directly to men
by God is not this life, and have secretly taught that there is
another divine and genuine life, which they hold must be
directly and fittingly fashioned by God, who is good. Turning
the eye of the soul to this through wisdom in accordance with
the grace of the Spirit, so far as this is possible for men bound
under death, and receiving the divine longing for this within,
they rightly reckon that this present life is to be put aside, if
they are to receive purely that life, in accordance with the
binding character of reason. And since there is no putting
aside of life without death, they thought that its death is the
rejection of fleshly love, through which death gained entrance
into life, so that, thinking of death by death, they ceased from
living through death, and died an honourable death before the
Lord. This is truly the death of death, able to corrupt
corruption itself, and provide an entrance to the blessed life
and incorruption for those who are worthy. For I do not think
that the limit of this present life is rightly called death, but
rather release from death, separation from corruption, freedom