Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

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1416A
DIFFICULTY 71 165
things himself, in his wonderful and good love for all things,
through the excess of his loving goodness, is carried outside
himself, in his providential care for all that is, so enchanted is
he in goodness and love and longing. Removed from his
position above all and beyond all, he decends to be in all
according to an ecstatic and transcendent power which is yet
inseparable from Himself.’ 11 Perhaps, then, as I said, from
these passages we may find a way of interpreting ‘The high
Word plays’. To use examples from things we are familiar with
to explain matters that are above us: it is like parents helping
their children, and out of indulgence seeming to take part in
their childish games. They play with nuts and dice, or prepare
for them many-coloured flowers, and clothes dipped in colours
that enchant the senses, and play hide and seek, or are
astonished, as if they had nothing else to do than play at
children’s games. But after a while they lead their children on
further, and begin to share with them more perfect reason and
their own concerns. So perhaps in these words the teacher is
saying that God who is above all leads us through the
historical nature, so to speak, of the appearance of created
things to amazement and a kind of ascent through
contemplation and knowledge of them, rather in the way in
which we care for children, and then introduces the
contemplation of the more spiritual meaning [logos] within
these things, and finally leads us by way of theology up to the
most hidden knowledge of himself, so far as this is possible, in
the early stages purifying us from everything that has form or
quality or shape or quantity, whether of multitude or size, and
from variety or composition, so that we may reach the goal of
contemplation—and this is called ‘playing’ by the God-bearing
Gregory, and ‘enchanting’ or ‘being carried outside himself’ by
the God-bearing Denys. 12
What is present and apparent, compared with that which
properly and truly is and will be manifest at the end, seems
to be simply play. For just as the order of things present and
visible, compared with the truth of properly divine and
primordial things, could not at all be thought to be in any way
capable of sharing the splendour of the divine beauty, so play,
compared with anything true and real, could not be thought to
exist at all.