Concerning "peace," and what is intended by "being-it- self," "life-itself," "power-itself," and things said in this
vein.
1. With reverent hymns of peace we should now sing the praises of 948D
God's peace, 248. for it is this which brings all things together. This is what unites everything, begetting and producing the harmonies and the agreement of all things. All things therefore long for it, and the
manifold and the divided are returned by it into a total unity; every 949A
civil war is changed into a unified household. Sharing in the divine peace, the higher gathering powers are drawn to themselves, to each other, and to unity and are at one with the source of peace in all the world. The ranks below them are united to themselves, to one another, and to the one perfect Source and Cause of universal peace. This Cause reaches out in its unsundered unity to everything, nailing down, as it were, the severed parts, giving to all things their defini- ____________________
245.Ps 77:5 (LXX); Rom 16:25; 2 Tm 1:9; Ti 1:2.
246.On the Neoplatonic language of "mean terms" see DN 11 952A 5, note 250, and CH 9 257C 24f., note 99.
247.Ps 145:13. 248.Eph 2:14.
-121-
tions, their limits, and their guarantee, allowing nothing to be pulled apart or scattered in some endlessly disordered chaos away from God's presence, away from their own unity and in some total jumbled confusion.
Now the sacred Justus 249. gives to that quality of divine peace and tranquility the name of "ineffable" and "unmoving," in terms of any known procession. The name is given to the way in which God is still and tranquil, keeping to himself and within himself in an absolutely
transcendent unity of self, turning in upon himself and multiplying 949B
himself without ever leaving his own unity, superabundantly one as he goes forth to all things while yet remaining within himself. With regard to such matters, what right has any creature to devise words or conceptions? How could he possibly do so? Therefore when talking of that peace which transcends all things, let it be spoken of as ineffable and unknowable. But to the extent that it is feasible for men and for me, the inferior of many good men, let us examine its conceptual and spoken participations.
2. The first thing to say is this. God is the subsistence of absolute 949C
peace, of peace in general, and of instances of peace. He brings everything together into a unity without confusion, into an undivided communion where each thing continues to exhibit its own specific form and is in no way adulterated through association with its opposite, nor is anything of the unifying precision and purity dulled. Let us therefore contemplate the one simple nature of that peaceful unity which joins all things to itself and to each other, preserving them in their distinctiveness and yet linking them together in a universal and unconfused alliance. From this comes the fact that the divine intelligences are at one with the workings and the objects of their intelligent activities, and they rise up to meet with what is beyond knowledge
and mind. So too with souls. They bring together their various pow 949D
ers of reasoning and they concentrate them in one act of pure intelligence. In their own way and in their own order they rise through immaterial and indivisible conceptions to a unity beyond all conceptions.
Hence there is one unshakable bond in all things, a divine harmony, a perfect concord, a oneness of mind and disposition, an
alliance in which nothing is confused and all things are held insepar 952A
ably together. Perfect Peace ranges totally through all things with the simple undiluted presence of its unifying power. It unites all things, ____________________
249.Acts 1:23, 18:7; Col 4:11.
-122-
joining the farthest frontiers with what is in between, binding all with the one homogeneous yoke. 250. It
grants the enjoyment of its presence to the outermost reaches of the universe. It grants unity, identity, union, communion, and mutual attraction to things, thereby ensuring their kinship. For the divine Peace is indivisible and is revealing of all in a single act and it permeates the whole world without ever departing from its own identity. It goes out to all things. It gives of itself to all things in the way they can receive it, and it overflows in a surplus
of its peaceful fecundity. And yet because it is transcendently one it 952B
remains in its own complete and utter unity.
3. "How is it that everything wishes for peace?" someone may ask. "There are many things which take pleasure in being other, different, and distinct, and they would never freely choose to be at rest." This is true, assuming that what is meant here is that being other and being different refer to the individuality of each thing and to the fact that nothing tries to lose its individuality. Yet, as I will try to show, this situation is itself due to the desire for peace. For everything loves to be at peace with itself, to be at one, and never to move or fall away
from its own existence and from what it has. And perfect Peace is 952C
there as a gift, guarding without confusion the individuality of each, providentially ensuring that all things are quiet and free of confusion within themselves and from without, that all things are unshakably what they are and that they have peace and rest.
4. If all moving things wish never to be at rest but aim always for their own appropriate movement, this too is because of a wish for that divine Peace of the universe which keeps everything firmly in its
own place and which ensures that the individuality and the stirring 952D
life of all moving things are kept safe from removal and destruction. This happens as a result of the inward peace which causes the things in movement to engage in the activity proper to themselves.
5. That peace may not be yearned for by all could possibly be imagined in the context of the opposition evident when there is a falling away from peace. Yet there is nothing which has totally fallen
away from unity. That which is completely unstable, unbounded, 953A
unestablished, undefined, has neither being nor a place among the things that have being. To the objection that hatred both of peace and of the benefits of peace is shown by those rejoicing in strife, anger,
____________________
250.As in DN 10 940A 6-8, this is the vocabulary of Neoplatonic "mean terms" between extremes. See CH 9 257C 24f., note 225.
change, and instability, I would answer that these too are influenced, however dimly, by the desire for peace. Stirred by various passions in ways they do not understand, they try to set these at rest. They imagine that a surfeit of ephemeral pleasure will give them peace, for they are actually disturbed by those unsatisfied urges which have swept over them.
Now there is no need to tell of the loving-kindness of Christ, bathed as it is in peace. But we must learn from it to cease from strife within ourselves, against each other and against the angels. We must work together and with the angels to do the things of God, and we must do so in accordance with the Providence of Jesus "who works all things in all," 251. making that Peace which is ineffable and was foreor
dained from eternity, reconciling us to himself and in himself to the 953B
Father.
But, using the testimony of the sacred inspiration of the scriptures, I have said enough about these supernatural gifts in my Theological Representations. 252.
6. In a letter to me you once asked what I meant by being itself, life itself, and wisdom itself. You said you failed to understand why I sometimes call God "life itself" and sometimes "subsistence of life
itself." Therefore, sacred man of God, I have thought it necessary to 953C
solve your problem.
To repeat something frequently asserted already, to call God "life itself' and "power itself" and then "subsistence of life itself," "subsistence of peace itself," "subsistence of power itself," involves no contradiction. The former names are derived from beings, especially the primary beings, and they are given to God because he is the cause of all beings. The latter names are put up because he is
transcendentally superior to everything, including the primary beings. "But," you may say, "what is meant when we talk of being itself, life itself, and all those other things to which we ascribe an absolute and primary existence derived ultimately from God?" My answer is this. This is not something oblique, but is in fact quite straightforward, and there is a simple explanation for it. The absolute being underlying individual manifestations of being as their cause is not a divine or an angelic being, for only transcendent being itself can be the source, the being,
and the cause of the being of beings. Nor have we to do with some 953D
____________________ 251.1 Cor 12:6.
252.On The Theological Representations, see DN 1, note 3.
-124-
other life-producing divinity distinct from that supra-divine life which is the originating Cause of all living beings and of life itself. Nor, in summary, is God to be thought of as identical with those originating and creative beings and substances which men stupidly describe as certain gods or creators of the world. Such men, and their fathers before them, had no genuine or proper knowledge of beings of this kind. Indeed, there are no such beings. What I am trying to express is something quite different. "Being itself," "life itself," "divinity itself," are
names signifying source, divinity, and cause, and these are applied to 956A
the one transcendent cause and source beyond source of all things. But we use the same terms in a derivative fashion and we apply them to the provident acts of power which come forth from that God in
whom nothing at all participates. I am talking here of being itself, of life itself, of divinity itself which shapes things in a way that each creature, according to capacity, has his share of these. From the fact of such sharing come the qualities and the names "existing," "living," "possessed by divinity," and suchlike. Hence the good is called the subsistence of the first beings, then of the whole, then of the parts, then of those with a complete share in the whole, and then of those with only a partial share. But my divine and sacred teachers have treated all this and it is unnecessary for me to say any more about it. It was they who gave the title "subsistence of goodness itself and of absolute divinity [itself]" to the One who is superior to goodness and to divinity. They bestowed the name "goodness itself" and "divinity itself" on
that gift which grants goodness and divinity to created beings. They 956B
gave the name "beauty itself" to the outpourings of what produces beauty itself, and in the same vein they talk of "whole beauty" and "partial beauty," things beautiful as a whole or in part. They talk in similar fashion of those other qualities which reveal that providence and goodness, shared by beings, come forth from the unshared God in a great flood rushing and overflowing from him. For the cause of all things is surely beyond them all and what he is, transcendently and supernaturally, is far above creatures, above their being and above their nature.
-125-