Concerning greatness and smallness, sameness and differ- ence, similarity and dissimilarity, rest, motion, equality.
1. Greatness and smallness, sameness and difference, similarity and 909B
dissimilarity, rest and motion—these all are titles applied to the Cause of everything. They are divinely named images 224. and we should now contemplate them as far as they are revealed to us.
God is praised in scripture as "great" and as in greatness 225. and in the "still, small breeze" 226. which reveals the divine smallness. Sameness is ascribed to him in the scriptural word, "Thou art the same," 227. and difference is evoked in the scriptural discussion of his many forms and qualities. His similarity is adverted to in the context of the fact that he is the subsistence of things similar and is responsible for this similarity of theirs. Yet he is also dissimilar to all in that "there is none quite like him." 228. There are references also to his being standing, 229. immovable, "enthroned forever," 230. moved and going forth into all things. These, and names like them, are given in scripture to God.
2. God is called great because of that characteristic greatness of 909C
his which gives of itself to everything great, is poured out on all greatness and indeed reaches far beyond it. His greatness takes in all space, surpasses all number, moves far beyond infinity in its abundance, in the overflowing of its great works and in the gifts welling up from it. These are gifts which however widely
they are shared by all remain nevertheless undiminished and possess the same super-fullness. They are not lessened by being partaken. Indeed, they pour out all the more generously. This greatness is infinite, with neither quantity nor number, and it reaches a flood as a result of the absolute transcendent outpouring of incomprehensible grandeur.
3. "Smallness" or subtlety is predicated of God's nature because 912A
he is outside of the bulky and the distant, because he penetrates with- ____________________ 224.Saffrey, "Nouveaux liens," pp. 6-11.
225.Pss 86:10, 145:3, 147:5.
226.1 Kgs 19:12 (LXX). See DN 1 596B 25f. and MT 3 1033C 43. 227.Ps 102:27; 1 Cor 12:6; Heb 13:8; Mal 3:6.
228.2 Chr 6:14; Pss 83:1 (LXX), 86:8. 229.Ps 82:1.
230.Ps 29:10; Bar 3:3.
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out hindrance through everything. 231. Indeed smallness is the most elementary cause of everything and you will find no part of the world without its share of smallness, which is why we use the word in this sense in regard to God. For what is here is something penetrating unhindered into and through all things, energizing them, "piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" and of everything, since "before 912B
him no creature is hidden. " 232. This smallness has neither quantity nor magnitude. It is unconquerable, infinite, and unlimited, comprehending everything and itself never comprehended.
4. God is transcendently, eternally, unalterably, and invariably the "same." He is forever thus, forever the same to all things, forever assuredly and unshakably located within the fine boundaries of his own supra- essential identity. In him there is no change, decline, deterioration, or variation. He is unalloyed,
immaterial, totally simple,
self-sufficient, subject to neither growth nor diminution. He is un 912C
born, by which is meant here that he was not once as yet unborn, that he was not in any way imperfect, that he did not come to birth from this or that source. Nor is it meant that he once was not. What is to be understood is that God is entirely and fully unbegotten, that he is eternal, absolutely perfect and always the same. He is defined by his singularity and sameness. He is the same enlightener in everything receptive to participation in it. He orders others with others in an abundant cause of sameness. In himself he
precontains all opposites in one single, universal cause of all sameness.
5. But "difference" too is ascribed to God since he is providen 912D
tially available to all things and becomes all things in all 233. for the salvation of them all. Yet at the same time he remains within himself and in his one unceasing activity he never abandons his own true identity. With unswerving power he gives himself outward for the sake of the divinization of those who are
returned to him. "Difference" means that the many visions of God differ in appearance from one another and this difference must be understood to indicate something other
than what was outwardly manifested. Imagine a discourse which rep 913A
resented the soul in corporeal form, so that what is actually indivisible would be thought of as having bodily parts. We would give each of ____________________
231.Wis of Sol 7:24; cf. DN 7 872C 29. 232.Heb 4:12f.
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the parts a significance appropriate to the indivisible character of the soul. We would therefore say that the head signifies the intellect, the neck opinion, since it is halfway between the rational and the irrational. We would take the breast to mean passion, the stomach desire, the legs and feet nature. In this way we would be using the names for parts of the body as symbols of faculties. Therefore when we speak of him who is beyond all things it is much more important for us to use holy, god-pleasing, and mystical explications in our clarification of the difference of forms and shapes attributed to God. You may, if you wish, attribute to the intangible and unshaped God the three dimensions of bodies so that his breadth is the immensity of his procession to all things, his length is his powers surpassing the universe, his
depth the hiddenness and unknowing incomprehensible to all crea 913B
tures. 234. Still, in explicating these differing forms and figures, we must not fall into the error of confusing
the bodiless divine names with those which include perceptible symbols. The latter is what I will discuss in my Symbolic Theology 235. but I would like now to emphasize that difference in God must not be supposed to indicate any variation of his totally unchanging sameness. What is meant is his unity amid many forms and the uniform processions of his fecundity to all.
6. Now while God is called "same" to indicate that he is totally, 913C
uniquely, and undividedly like himself, he is also described as "similar" and this is a divine name which we must not reject. The theologians say that the transcendent God is inherently similar to no other being, but that he also bestows a similarity to himself on all those who are returning to him in imitation as far as possible, of what is beyond all definition and understanding. It is the power of the divine similarity which returns all created things toward their Cause, and these things must be reckoned to be similar to God by reason of the divine image and likeness. 236. But we cannot say that God is similar to them, any more than we can say that man is similar to his own portrait. Things on the same level may be similar to one another with the result that similarity can be predicated of either of them. And they can be similar to each other through the workings of a prior form of similarity
which they share. But an interchange of this sort cannot be admitted 913D
in regard to Cause and effects, for God does not grant similarity ____________________ 234.Eph 3:18.
235.On The Symbolic Theology, see DN 1, notes 72 and 89. 236.Gn 1:26.
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merely to some objects. He is in fact the Cause of this in all that have the quality of similarity. He is the subsistence of absolute similarity,
and all the similarity in the world is similar to a trace of the divine 916A
similarity so that all creation is thereby made a unity.
7. But surely there is no need to dwell on this point, for scripture itself asserts that God is dissimilar and that he is not to be compared with anything, that he is different from everything and, stranger yet, that there is none at all like him. Nevertheless words of this sort do not contradict the similarity of things to him, for the very same things are both similar and dissimilar to God. They are similar to him to the extent that they share what cannot be shared. They are dissimilar to him in that as effects they fall so very far short of their Cause and are infinitely and incomparably subordinate to him. 237.
"resting" and "sitting"? Just this much, namely, that God remains what he is in himself, that he is
established alone in his immovable sameness and definitive grounding, that his actions are forever in the same mold and with the same objective and from the same unchanging center, that his stability begins totally from within himself, that he is absolutely immutable and immobile, and that all these qualities are his in a transcendent manner. He is the Cause of the rest and of the stability of everything and is himself beyond all stability and all rest. "In him all things hold together" 238. and they are so guarded that they are not dragged away from the rest of their own virtues.
9. And yet what do the theologians mean when they assert that 916C
the unstirring God moves and goes out into everything? This is surely something which has to be understood in a way befitting God, and out of our reverence for him we must assume that this motion of his does not in any way signify a change of place, a variation, an alteration, a turning, a movement in space either straight or in a circular fashion or in a way compounded of both. Nor is this motion to be imagined as occurring in the mind, in the soul, or in respect of the nature of God. What is signified, rather, is that God brings everything into being, that he sustains them, that he exercises all manner of providence over them, that he is present to all of them, that he embraces all of them in a way which no mind can grasp, and that from him, providing for everything, arise countless processions and activities.
____________________
237.The full discussion of similar and dissimilar symbols is found in CH 2. 238.Col 1:17; see DN 1 593D 45f. (note 19).
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And yet, in some mode conforming to what befits both God and reason, one has to predicate movement of the immutable God. One must understand the straight motion of God to mean the unswerving procession of his activities, the coming-to-be of all things from him.
The spiral movement attributed to him must refer to the continuous 916D
procession from him together with the fecundity of his stillness. And the circular movement has to do with his sameness, to the grip he has on the middle range as well as on the outer edges of order, so that all things are one and all things that have gone forth from him may return to him once again. 239.
10. Someone may take from scripture the titles "same" and 917A
"righteous" and "equal." God is called equal not simply because he is without parts and is unswerving, but also because he reaches out equally to all things through all things, and because he is the absolute
subsistence of the equality by which he brings about the equal commingling of all things, the
proportionate share, in accordance with their receptivity, which all things have in equality, and the equal gift all things have as their due. All equality, whether intelligent or intelligible, rational or perceptible, whether essential, natural, or willed, is transcendentally contained beforehand as something unified in him and as a super-abundant power which originates everything equal.