Divine understanding and the Father's eternal play

Lord God almighty, all things are in your power. Power and lordship lie in two things: in freedom and in the possession of many good things in peace. What is freedom? A pagan philosopher says, 'That thing is free which clings to nothing and to which nothing clings.' So there is nothing free but the first cause, that is, the cause of all things.

Lordship means the possession of many good and beautiful things. God is all good in all things, and so he possesses himself in all things. What God has, that he is, in all things. The love and will, the wisdom, the goodness that we say he has, these he is. If God is this, he is not nothing, for God came before nothing. God has no before and no after, but nothing has a sequel, and its sequel is something. What came before nothing was God, for he was before nothing. What issues from nothing is something. God then has no before and no after. Here is the cause of all things, self-subsistent, a distinct light which is himself. God is a light shining in itself in silent stillness. The one light, the one essence itself, which knows and understands itself. The understanding of this unique light is light from light, it is the eternal Person of the Son from the eternal Person of the Father. The Father spoke one Word, namely his Son. In this one Word he spoke all things. The Word of the Father is nothing other than his understanding of himself. The Father's understanding understands that it understands, and that his understanding understands is the same as that he is the one who understands. That is, light from light.

Job says that God spoke one Word; this was his own conception of himself, and it was his Son. In this one conception he conceives all things, and he sees them as issuing from nothing. In themselves they are that. But as they subsist eternally in him, they are without themselves. What they were without themselves, was he himself: God is nothing but God, for God has no other beside him. All creatures are a light, for they are conceived in the light of unity and eternity. Creatures flowing forth as light reveal the hidden light. As Saint James says, 'Every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of lights.' From this we may gather that all things are one light sent out by the Father in order to reveal his own hidden light. And just as all things have gone forth as one light, so they are all one light flowing back, if they do not turn away from it of their own free will. Those who stand firm in the face of multiplicity see what light and grace is shown to them. For the highest good is so arranged toward the soul that she does not receive it except by a means. As Saint Dionysius says, 'The means is light: the grace that gives understanding its light.' What is understanding? Understanding means seeing a thing quite clearly and without error. Saint Dionysius says, 'Free yourself entirely from things if you want to understand the highest good, namely God.' What are we to understand by God? That he is the one power. Let us therefore unify ourselves so that this one power can be at work in us. He is also the good that moves things toward their good, namely himself, though he himself stays unmoved. And he is perfect simplicity, and the simpler the soul is, the better she understands his simplicity. How can we become perfectly simple? By leaving behind things and ourselves, and by knowing our own mind and all the working of the powers of the soul, except the chief one, understanding: that we leave to God alone. The soul that stays passive stands to lose all this and let God work without hindrance; then he brings forth his perfect likeness in her and makes her like himself. Then she understands with him and loves with him. This is perfection. It is sometimes asked whether we love God with the same love the Father and the Son have for one another. Let us consider.

Two kinds of love belong to us. One is the virtue. In this love we go on growing, and any good we do in this love wins us eternal merit. But the love of the Father and the Son knows no increase, for it is the Holy Spirit. So our love is as nothing compared with the love of the Father and the Son: it is the virtue we grow by. The other love that is in us is the love of the Father and the Son. As Saint Paul says, 'God's love is poured into our heart.' In giving us his love, God has given us his Holy Spirit, so that we can love him with the same love he loves himself with. We love God with his own love, and being aware of this deifies us.

Intuition of the highest good, that is, of God. To have this is to have the life most worth having of any creature. God wills his own clear conception and his own delight. What is willing in the Godhead? It is the Father watching the play of his own nature.

What is this play? It is his eternal Son. This play has always been going on within the Father's nature. Player and audience are the same. The Father's view of his own nature is his Son. The Father embraces his own nature in the quiet darkness of his eternal being, which is known to no one but himself. The glance his own nature returns to him is his eternal Son. So the Son embraces the Father in his nature, for he is the same as his Father in nature. So from the Father's embrace of his own nature comes this eternal play of the Son. This play has been played eternally, before all creatures. As it is written in the Book of Wisdom, 'Before creatures, in the eternal now, I have played before the Father in his eternal stillness.' The Son has eternally been playing before the Father, as the Father has before his Son. The playing of the two is the Holy Spirit, in whom they both take their delight, and he takes his delight in both of them. Sport and players are the same. Their nature proceeds within itself. 'God is a fountain flowing into itself,' as Saint Dionysius says. The Father has eternally been loving himself in his Son, just as the Son has eternally been loving himself in the Father. Their mutual love is the Holy Spirit, the third Person, who proceeds from the other two as love. The essence of the Godhead does not beget. The Person of the Father begets the Person of the Son eternally, and together they pour forth their Holy Spirit, their mutual love. Father and Son are the pouring in, and the Holy Breath is the thing poured in, one in nature with them both. If the essence of the Godhead begot, there would be more than one essence, but there is not. There is one essence that gives all things life and being, for the Son is born out of the heart of the Father eternally, and will bring back into it again all the things that went out from it in him. As Christ says, 'When I am lifted up I will draw all things to myself.' The Holy Spirit went out as love to make our spirits one with him. The Son takes back with him all the things that went out in him, and the Holy Spirit returns with all that he breathed out. Saint Dionysius says, 'Son and Holy Spirit are the light of the God-bearing Godhead.' Saint Philip cried out, 'Lord, show us the Father and we will be satisfied.' Our Lord answered and said, 'Philip, whoever sees me sees my Father.' The Son revealed the mysteries of the Father, for he was like him in all things and of one nature with him. Nothing satisfies the soul except the Father, who is altogether good and perfectly simple. The simpler the soul is, the more like God she is. God has never spoken more than one word: his own simple understanding of himself. If the soul is to be simple, she must withdraw from multiplicity into his one conception. That can happen here only now and then.

The soul has three kinds of understanding. First, the understanding of things above her. Next, the understanding of herself. From this knowledge she moves on to the third, the one alone. There she loses herself, speaking no word, but holding herself in silence, for God has carried her up above herself to him. She is not and does not know by herself. What she understands, she understands with him, and even this she must give up, must hand over to the one by whom she understands it. As Saint Dionysius says, 'Make yourself passive, free of all definition. One single glimpse of the abstraction that God is unites the soul with God more than all the works of holy Christendom.'

Try hard, then, to get some grasp of truth. In conceiving it, your own habitual way of being is entirely lost, and you live in truth. Those exalted souls who stand in this can never be separated from God. They are the blessed, who know God in himself eternally. God is unchangeable, so they can never again be parted from him. We ought therefore to depart from all unlikeness to our highest good.