Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

162 TEXTS
1408C
D
1409A
B
TEXT
Of the same, from his songs:
The high Word plays in every kind of form, mixing, as he wills,
with his world here and there. 2
When the great David, in accordance with faith alone in the
spirit, directed his mind through the latches, as it were, of the
phenomena towards the intelligible, he received from the
divine wisdom a certain trace of the mysteries for which
human beings long, then, I think, he said, Abyss calls to abyss
in the noise of your cataracts (Psa. 41:8). By this he perhaps
shows that every contemplative mind, because of its invisible
nature and the depth and multitude of its thoughts, is to be
compared to an abyss, since it passes beyond the ordered array
of the phenomena and comes to the place of intelligible reality.
Or again, when in faith by the vehemence of its movement it
passes beyond what is fitting, and comes to rest in itself, in
every way fixed and unmoved, because it has passed beyond
everything, then it necessarily calls upon the divine wisdom,
which to the understanding is really and truly the
unfathomable abyss, to give to it the noise of the divine
cataracts, but not the cataracts themselves, as it asks to
receive in faith a certain trace of knowledge of the ways of
divine providence concerning the universe. Through this it will
be able to remember God from the land of Jordan and Hermon
(Psa. 41:7), in which was accomplished the great and dreadful
mystery in the flesh of the divine descent to the human level
of God the Word. In that mystery the truth of piety towards
God is given to human beings, which transcends any natural
order and capacity. The divine Paul, the great Apostle, who is
both an initiate himself and initiates others in the divine and
secretly-known wisdom, calls [this mystery] the foolishness of
God and his weakness, because, I think, of its transcendent
wisdom and power; the great and divinely-minded Gregory
calls it play, because of its transcendent prudence. 3 For Paul
says, The foolishness of God is wiser than men and the
weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Cor. 1:25); while
Gregory says, ‘The high Word plays in every kind of form,
mixing, as he wills, with his world here and there.’ Each, by
privation of what with us are most powerful attributes, points
to what the divine possesses, and by negations of what is ours
makes affirmation of the divine. 4 For with us foolishness,