Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

128 DIFFICULTY 10
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1165A
which is the truth, and are brought into agreement with It, as
the beginning and end of the legal and prophetic work.
9 Or everything that is after God and has come into being
from God, that is the nature of beings and time, these appear
together, so far as is possible, with God who appears as cause
and maker. And of these, the type of time is Moses, not only as
the teacher of time and of number in accordance with time
(for he was the first to count time from the creation of the
world), 83 or as one who instituted temporal worship, but also
as not entering bodily into rest with those whom he had
instructed before the divine promise. 84 For such is time, not
overtaking or accompanying in movement those whom it is
accustomed to escort to the divine life of the age to come. For it
has Jesus as the universal successor of time and eternity. And
if otherwise the logoi of time abide in God, then there is
manifest in a hidden way the entry of the law given through
Moses in the desert to those who receive the land of possession.
For time is eternity, when movement is stilled, and eternity is
time, when it is measured by movement, since, by definition,
eternity is time deprived of movement, and time is eternity
measured by movement. 85 Elijah, however, is the type of
nature, not only as guarding inviolate the logoi within himself,
and keeping the intention according to inclination in them free
from any change due to passion, but also as educating in
judgment, like the natural law, those who use nature
unnaturally. For such is nature, punishing as much those who
are set to corrupt it, as those who aim to live contrary to
nature, who do not acquire the whole power of nature
naturally, and cause its soundness to deteriorate, and are
therefore fit to be punished, since they thoughtlessly and
mindlessly provide themselves with a deficiency of being
through their inclination towards non-being.
10 Equally anyone who says that the intelligible and
sensible creation of the fashioner Word is understood through
Moses and Elijah does not utterly stray from the truth. Of
these Moses offers the meaning [logos] of the sensible, that it
is subject to change and corruption, as his history of it clearly
shows, declaring its origination and death. For the sensible
creation is such as to have a beginning known in coming to
be, and to look for an end determined by destruction.86
Elijah [offers the meaning] of the intelligible, neither declaring
its coming to be in his account of it, as if it had been
generated, nor defining it as looking for corruption through
death, as if it were to die. For the intelligible creation is such