The kingdom of God: in the Trinity and in the soul

'Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all things shall be added unto you.' Since Christ tells us to seek the kingdom of God, it is our business to know what this kingdom is. Know then that God's kingdom is himself and his perfect nature. Second, there is God's kingdom in the soul. He himself says:

'The kingdom of God is within you.'

Consider first this first kingdom. Theologians say that God's kingdom is unity of essence in a trinity of persons. The question is, where is God happiest? I answer that God's happiness is all alike in him according to his unity, but according to our understanding God is far happier in his unity of essence than in his trinity of persons, as we will prove. According to some theologians there are three kinds of distinctions in the Godhead. First, rational distinctions, second, formal distinctions, and third, real distinctions, namely the mutual relations of the persons. Others say the Godhead has no more than two kinds of distinctions, rational and real.

Take first the distinction of persons. St John says, 'In the beginning was the Word.' This beginning or origin is the Father, as St Augustine says. The question is, does the Father have a beginning? The answer is yes, his beginning is primary, not something proceeding from another, as I will show. Theologians teach that we must distinguish in the Godhead between essence and being, that is, nature. Being in the Godhead is deity itself and is the first thing we grasp about God. Deity is the whole basis of divine perfection. The Godhead in itself is motionless unity and balanced stillness and is the source of all outflowing. So I assume a passive welling up. We call this first utterance being, for the most inward utterance, the first formal assumption in the Godhead, is being: being as the word of essence. God is being, but being is not God.

Now the origin of the Father is necessarily bound up in this assumption of a passive welling up. In other words, since the deity is in itself understanding, the divine nature steps forth into a relation of otherness, other but not another, for this distinction is rational, not real. So the first person arises in the Godhead passively, not from any active beginning. So its beginning is without any further property, or person, behind it.

The question is, what is the person of the Father? I answer that it is being in the Godhead, not according to essence but according to fatherhood, which is the formal notion that specifically marks the Father. The Father is the beginning of the Godhead. So some theologians say that if there were neither Son nor Holy Spirit in the Godhead there would still be the person of the Father. So when St John says, 'In the beginning was the Word,' we must not understand this beginning to be God's essence or his nature, for the Father alone is the active origin of the Son.

Notice how the Son is in the Father. Theologians say that the Father, looking into himself, actually conceives in himself his own undivided, overflowing nature. From this follows the mark of that nature. The same nature which in the Father is active is receptive in the Son, for they share it each according to their own property.

On this divine birth theologians teach that this word is to be taken in two senses: as word of essence and as word of person. The first, the word of essence, every person has by way of vision, but the Father has it both by vision and in reality. And this same Word as a person is the Son. The same power that is active in the Father is passive in the Son, the Son receiving his divinity from the Father. We must understand this as passivity born of passivity, divinity of divinity, these being properties of the persons by which the essence is marked out. For saints and teachers teach that the persons proceed from the essence as their origin, the essence being marked by the persons and the persons by their properties. As fatherhood is the formal notion that specifically marks the person of the Father, so sonship is the formal notion that distinguishes the person of the Son. These formal notions signal the relationship of the persons. And this property, this formal relationship of fatherhood and sonship, is the final attribute of divinity. Fatherhood and sonship are divine accidents and dependent properties.

Notice how in this birth from the Father the Word stays within as essence and goes forth as person. Philosophers teach that to every act of rational understanding there follows an intelligible word. Now when the Father conceives himself in himself, his own nature is the object of his understanding. The Father beholds himself, and his nature takes on another property, that of being beheld. Accordingly the Son stays within as essence and goes forth as person. Matching this divided character of the act, the Son is born and proceeds out of the Father's heart. So says Eternal Wisdom: 'I proceeded out of the mouth of the Most High,' that is, out of the natural conceiving of the word of the divine Father's essence. Not that there are in the Godhead two words in reality, only in the way we speak of it.

'The Word was with God.' That means, as a person distinct from the Father, as shown here.

Notice further, about these two, how they bring forth the Holy Spirit. Theologians teach that the Father, pouring himself out as love into the Son, has his love reflected back there, the Son pouring himself back into the Father. This mutual outpouring of love is the shared breathing forth of the Father and the Son. One might think this breathing forth is identical in the two persons, but it is not. For according to its formal origin, this breathing force differs in Father and Son, the Father being formally something other than the Son. But taken both formally and really, this breathing forth is the formal notion and the property that distinguishes the person of the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit proceeds from two formal sources as from one active origin.

Then the question comes whether this property, this person, of the Holy Spirit comes from the divine nature in the same way the property of the Son does. The answer is no, for if that were so the Holy Spirit would have to proceed by an act of nature, as the Son does, which is not the case, for then there would be two Sons in the Godhead. But the divine nature comes after the property of the Holy Spirit, which proceeds by the breathing forth of free will. So if it were possible to separate the nature from the person of the Holy Spirit in the Godhead, the Holy Spirit would still go on existing in itself apart from the nature. With the Son this would not be possible, since the Son comes forth from the Father as an intelligible word proceeding from the act of the Father's overflowing nature, and so could not exist apart from that nature. And just as the nature comes after the person of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit does not exist apart from that nature, so too it is true that the person of the Son comes after the nature. The nature does not exist apart from the Son, for the Son is the image of the Father from whom he comes forth by nature, which the Holy Spirit does not do, since the Spirit comes forth from free will. It follows that there is a mutual bond only between fatherhood and sonship, not with the Holy Spirit. Still, the mutual bond of the breathing power shared by fatherhood and sonship is rational, not real. Here, noble soul, seek the kingdom of God with understanding.

St John says, 'And God was the word,' meaning unity of nature. Rise up, noble soul, rise in holy wonder at this high fellowship: the three persons united in one undivided nature! The prophet says, 'The Lord shall reign for ever and beyond.' God reigns forever in distinction of persons, but his reign beyond that is in unity of nature. There God is the kingdom of himself, being beyond essence.

Then comes the question, can the divine essence as essence, apart from those formal distinctions which philosophers call the eternal eternities, be God's happiness or that of creatures? We answer no. Essence as essence is the same in God and creatures, but God's happiness, and the soul's too, lies in the divine nature. For the divine nature exists in itself with all its perfections, namely the eternal eternities that are built into it. Some teach that it is possible for the soul to find happiness in knowing one of these formal relations without the rest. But that is not true. If it were, each of these formal relations would have to stand on its own apart from the others and detached from the divine nature, which is impossible, so this view is false. But the soul's happiness lies in grasping all of these together, in one property, these eternal eternities that are the formal expression of the divine nature. For here there is no division. God is the one beyond essence, his own happiness and that of all creatures, in the full actuality of his Godhead. Be sure that in this unity God knows distinctions only as one undivided property.

In this unity God is idle. The Godhead does not do this or that, it is God who does all things. God in activity is manifold and knows multiplicity. God as one is wholly free of activity. In this unity God knows nothing except that he, beyond essence, is in his own self.

So we understand, 'God was the word,' as pointing to the unity of essence. 'The same was in the beginning with God,' his equal in wisdom, in truth, in goodness, and in all the perfections of essence, namely the eternal eternities, the formal modes, the fullness of the divine essence. This beyond-essence unity is what is meant by the divine kingdom, which the spirit seeks with knowledge and with love.

Second, by this kingdom of God we understand the soul, for the soul is of the same nature as the Godhead. So everything said here about the kingdom of God, how God is himself the kingdom, can be said with equal truth about the soul.

St John says, 'All things were made by him.' This refers to the soul, for the soul is all things. The soul is all things in that she is an image of God, and as such she is also the kingdom of God. As God is essentially in himself without beginning, so in the kingdom of the soul he is, as essence, without end. 'God,' says one philosopher, 'is in the soul in such a way that his whole Godhead hangs on her.' It is far better for God to be in the soul than for the soul to be in God. The soul is not happy because she is in God, she is happy because God is in her. You can count on this, God himself is happy in the soul, for when God broke forth and made the soul, he kept such a hold in her that he hid in her his divine treasure, his heavenly kingdom. So Christ says, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hid in a field.' This field is the soul, in which lies hidden the treasure of the divine kingdom. So God and all creatures are happy in the soul. What we say of the soul here applies to her as an image of God.

Let us see, then, where this image lies. One theologian says it lies in her powers, and this is generally held to be true. And it is true when rightly understood. If it is taken to mean that her powers are separate from one another, there is no final truth in it, but if the powers are understood to be one at the height of her activity, then it is true. In this divine activity the soul looks back immediately, with understanding, into the divine nature. In this divine act she grasps her own nature, beyond essence, in God. In this act everything is divine, right up to the highest image, which in its own activity is very God and happy, formally, not just as an object known. For gazing into itself it grasps God in himself at the same moment, without anything in between. So it is happy in him formally, and also as an object, owing to the divine nature. One teacher says that this high light flows immediately out of God, and at the same instant, by an act of understanding, is drawn back into God without anything between. So its going out of God and its remaining in God are one act of understanding, the undivided nature of the same intelligent act. In God, be sure, the soul in her highest pattern has never known a creature as a creature, nor has she ever possessed either time or space there. For in this image everything is God: sour and sweet, good and bad, small and great, all are one in this image. This image is no more changed by anything in time than the divine nature is changed by anything that is a creature, for it grasps and uses all things according to the law of godhood.

Now it may be asked: if this kingdom is in us why is it unknown to us? To which I answer that, owing to the soul's natural disposition towards creatures, all her acts are bound to originate in creaturely images; hence these acts are thought by some to be the seat of this image in the soul, though this is not the case. These people little know the nobility of the soul, whose activity in her ordinary understanding originates in an intelligible image

in the highest thought (or memory), begotten there as to form by images from the senses and as to essence by the supernal, God-beholding image from which the soul receives power to understand all truth. In the train of this understanding comes the ordinary will, which is nothing but the bias of the mind. Now since the ordinary understanding takes things for true and the will takes them for good, things are the object of both these activities, and these things are alien and remote from God. For God is neither good nor true. And as God is detached and free from all that creatures can understand, so also is the highest image of the Godhead.

It is a question whether there is mutual regard between God and creatures. I answer that God has no regard for creatures, for God has no regard except toward himself; but creatures have regard for God, for everything that ever issued from him is always gazing back toward him. Apply this to the highest image. The instant it glanced out from God, this highest image looked back again, with countenance unveiled, conceiving the divine nature without means. From this act it gets its whole existence. In this act this prototype is God and is called the image of God; in its breaking forth it is a creature and is called the image of the soul.

Consider then yourself, O noble soul, and the nobility within you, for you are honored above all creatures in that you are an image of God; and despise what is base, for you are destined to greatness!

That is what is meant by the soul being the kingdom of God.

'Seek first the kingdom of God.' It should be our only care, our only quest, to know the nobility of God and the nobility of the soul. Let us see then how to seek the kingdom of God.

In the Book of Love it is written: 'Do you not know yourself, O fairest among women? Then go forth and follow after the footsteps of your flocks!' These words refer to the soul; she is the fairest of all creatures and she shall go forth in perceiving her own beauty. Now observe in the soul three sorts of going-forth out of three sorts of nature which she has. The first is her creaturely nature. The second is the nature she has in the personal Word of the Trinity. The third is that which belongs to her in the exuberant nature at work in the Father, the beginning of all creatures.

Taking this first exodus, note how she has to go out of her creaturely nature. Christ says: 'If any man will come after me let him deny himself and follow me.' As surely as God lives, no man will ever go forth into the negation of himself until he is as free from his own self as he was when he was not. Doctors declare that man is to be known in two ways: as outward man and

as inward man. The outward whose works are bodily and the inward whose works are spiritual. By the inner man God is sought in the contemplative life, by the outer man God is sought in the active life. Now mark my words. I say again what I have said before: outward disciplines are of little worth; they are useful only in subduing natures that are still uncontrolled. Know that the discipline of outward acts, though it subdue nature, cannot kill it. Nature dies by spiritual acts. There are many to be found who, with the best intentions, cling on to themselves, not denying themselves. Truly I say, these people are mistaken, for it is contrary to human reason, contrary to the habit of grace and against the nature of the Holy Ghost. As for those who see their salvation in outward practices, I do not say they will be lost, but they will get to God only through hot cleansing fires; for they do not follow God who do not quit themselves; keeping hold of themselves they follow their own darkness. God is no more to be found in any bodily exercise than in sin. Nevertheless those who make much practice of outward disciplines are greatly regarded by the eyes of the world; which follows by analogy, for those who understand only what is bodily esteem highly the life they can grasp with the senses. None but a fool would prize any other!

Secondly, the work of the inner man is vision in knowing and loving. In this work lies the beginning of the holy life. These two activities define the nature of the soul. Doctors declare that every nature exists for the sake of its proper activity. Now since this nature (the soul) can be grasped only in these two activities, therefore they are the noblest activities in man. I have said before that virtue is a mean between vice and perfection; now love is the form of virtue without which no virtue is virtue. Whenever a person practices a virtue the works of the virtue are works of love, not of the person; each work of virtue having power in love to bring the person to God. St Dionysius says it is the nature of love to change a man into that which he loves. So we ought to live in such a way that our whole life is love. In this disposition all practices are praiseworthy, outward or inward. David says: 'They shall go from virtue to virtue, then shall the God of Gods be seen in Sion.' The vision of God transcends virtues. Virtue, as I said, is a mean between vice and perfection, and the fruit of virtue, the end and object of virtue that is to say, will never be obtained until the soul is caught up above the virtues. Be sure that as long as a man holds himself fast as thrall to virtue he will never taste the fruit of virtue, which is nothing else than seeing the God of Gods in Sion. God is not seen in Jacob, the practice of virtue, but God is seen in Sion. Sion

is as it were a polished mirror and stands for unveiled vision with the single eye of the divine nature. Rely on it, virtue has never seen this sight.

Now it may be asked, are we to abandon virtue altogether? To which I answer: no, we are to practice virtue, not possess it. The perfection of virtue is freedom from virtues. So Christ says: 'When you have done all that is possible for you, say: we are unprofitable servants.'

That is what is meant by the soul dying to her own works. The question we must now consider is how she loses her own nature. Doctors declare that everything made by God is ordered in such an excellent way that nothing can wish it did not exist. Yet the soul is to relinquish her existence. This means the death of the spirit. And in order to accomplish this death the soul must let go of herself and all things, retaining of herself and things no more than when she was not. Christ says: 'Unless a grain of wheat dies it remains alone.' To die is to be wholly deprived of life, so that while a man lives, as long as there is life in him, be sure that he knows nothing of this death. St Paul says: 'I no longer live.' Some people interpret this death to mean that one must live neither in God nor in oneself nor yet in any creature. And so it does, for death is the loss of all life. But I say more: a man may be dead to everything, to God and creatures, yet if God still finds in his soul a place that he can live in, then the soul is not yet dead and gone out into what follows created existence. For to die is, properly speaking, to lose everything. I do not say the soul is brought so utterly to nothing as it was before it was created; this nothing-ing applies to holding and possessing. In this respect the soul suffers total loss, God as well as creatures.

It sounds strange to say the soul must lose her God, yet I affirm that in a way it is more necessary to perfection that the soul lose God than that she lose creatures. Everything must go. The soul must subsist in absolute nothingness. It is the full intention of God that the soul shall lose her God, for as long as the soul possesses God, is aware of God, knows God, she is aloof from God. God desires to annihilate himself in the soul in order that the soul may lose herself. For that God is God he gets from creatures. When the soul became a creature she obtained a God. When she lets slip her creaturehood, God remains to himself what he is, and the soul honors God most in being free of God and leaving him to himself.

This is the lowest death of the soul on her way to divinity. Such souls are hardly to be recognized, for as St Paul says: 'You are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God.' If it be questioned

whether the unique virtue of these souls finds no outward expression, I answer: Yes, just as Christ, the pattern of perfection, was unneedy and a shining light to all mankind, so these men are turned towards humanity because of their selfless wisdom and godlike frame of mind.

So much for the first exodus in which the soul goes out of her creaturely nature seeking the kingdom of God.

Secondly, she must go out of the nature she has in her eternal prototype. Theologians teach that the prototype of the soul is the divine understanding. The divine understanding is the Person of the Son. Hence the Son is the pattern of all creatures and the image of the Father in which image broods the nature of all creatures. Now when the soul strips off her created nature there flashes out its uncreated prototype in which the soul discovers herself in uncreatedness, for things are all one in this prototype according to the property of the eternal image.

And now the soul fares forth out of this same prototype in which she discovers her nature according to the uncreatedness of the image, and this she does in the divine death. The soul is conscious that what she seeks is neither her exemplar nor its nature, in which she perceives herself to be in multiplicity and separation. For this final attribute of divinity is multiplicity. And since the eternal nature in which the soul now finds herself in her exemplar is marked by multiplicity, the Persons being in separation, therefore the soul breaks through her eternal exemplar to get to where God is a kingdom in unity. One philosopher declares that the soul's breaking-through is more noble than her emanation. Now Christ says: 'No man comes to the Father but through me.' Christ is the eternal exemplar. Though the soul's dwelling place is not in him, yet she must, as he says, go through him. This breaking-through is the second death of the soul and is far more weighty than the first. Of it St John says: 'Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord,' that is, in God.

O surpassing wonder! How can there be death in him who says of himself that he is the life? To which we answer: in the birth of the Son all creatures went forth receiving life and being, hence all things are vividly imaged in the Son. Now when the soul returns again within she loses the Son. Theologians declare that when the Son returns to unity of nature he is neither Person nor its property: the Son is lost in the unity of the essence. Likewise I say concerning the soul: when the soul breaks through and loses herself in her eternal prototype that is the death the soul dies in God. St Dionysius says: 'When God does not exist for the soul there does not exist for her either the eternal prototype, her source.' Equality belongs to the soul in her exemplar, for the Son is equal

with the Father. But in that they are one in nature they are not equal, for equality resides in separation. Accordingly I say concerning the soul: if she is to enter the divine unity she must lose the equality she has in her eternal exemplar. Dionysius declares that the soul's supreme delight is the nothingness of her prototype. And a pagan philosopher says: 'God's naught fills everywhere and his aught is nowhere.' God's aught, then, is not discovered by the soul until she has come to naught as regards finding or being able to find herself, whether created or uncreated, as we have shown her eternal prototype to be.

This is the second death and second exodus, the soul going out from the nature that is hers in her eternal prototype to seek the kingdom of God. One philosopher says: 'Whoever wants to come to God, let him come with nothing.'

The third nature out of which the soul goes is the overflowing divine nature at work in the Father. According to some theologians the Father always perceived within himself signs of emanation before he brought forth the Word. They all agree that God the Father conceived his own nature in originating the eternal Word and all creatures. Teachers distinguish between nature and essence. Essence, insofar as it is active in the Father, is nature. The distinction is therefore a logical one. From God in activity all creatures look forth as possibilities. But this is not the summit of divine union, so it is not the soul's resting place.

It must be clearly understood that the soul has to die to all the activity carried by the divine nature if she is to enter the divine essence where God is entirely at rest. This highest prototype of the soul sees, without any medium, the essence of the Godhead, completely free of activity. This higher image is the pattern to which the soul is brought by her dying.

Now pay attention. The Godhead, resting in itself, is complete in itself. God as Godhead goes beyond everything that any creature, as creature, has ever grasped or ever can grasp. As Saint Paul says: 'God dwells in light inaccessible.' Now when the soul has gone out of her created nature, and out of her uncreated nature where she finds herself in her eternal prototype, and entering into the divine nature still fails to grasp the kingdom of God, then, recognizing that no creature can ever get there, she gives up her very self and goes her own way, seeking God no more. In this way she dies her highest death. In this death the soul loses every desire and image, all understanding and form, and is stripped of any nature. And as surely as God lives, it is true that the soul, being spiritually dead, can no more show any man any way of being or image than a dead body can move. This spirit is dead and buried in the Godhead, and the Godhead lives for no one but itself.

Ah, noble soul, prove your nobility. But as long as you will not let go of your own self completely to drown in the bottomless sea of the Godhead, you cannot know this divine death. The wise man says: 'The Lord possessed me in the beginning in his own way.' God possesses all things in the Godhead's way, not in the soul's way, for God never received any creature, nor can any creature ever reach him, as creature.

Now when the soul has lost herself in every way, as described here, she finds herself to be the very thing she was vainly seeking. The soul finds herself in the higher image in which God truly is, in all his Godhead, where he is the kingdom in himself. There the soul recognizes her own beauty. From there she must go out in order to enter into her very self and understand that she and God are one happiness, the kingdom which, without seeking, she has found. As the prophet says: 'I poured out my soul into myself.' That is the meaning of: 'Do you not know yourself, fairest among women? Then go forth.' The soul has to go forth, as we have seen, in order to enter into herself, where she finds, without seeking, the kingdom of God. Saint Paul says: 'I consider the sufferings of this present time as nothing compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us.'

Look here. I said long ago, and I say again, that I already have now everything I will possess forever, for God in his happiness and in the fullness of his Godhead is enjoyed by my higher prototype, though this is hidden from the soul. As the prophet says: 'Truly, Lord, you are a hidden God.' This treasure of God's kingdom is hidden by time and by multiplicity, by the soul's own activity and by her creaturehood. The more the soul departs from all this multiplicity, the more God's kingdom is revealed in her. But the soul cannot do this without the help of grace. If she finds it, it is grace that has helped her to it, for grace is built into her highest prototype. There the soul is God, using and enjoying all things in God's way. There the soul no longer receives anything either from God or from creatures, for she is what she contains, and takes everything from her own self. Soul and Godhead are one. There the soul finds that she is the kingdom of God.

It may be asked what discipline best brings the soul to this end. I answer: this, that the soul remain in death, not shrinking back from death. Saint Paul says: 'Christ was obedient to the Father even to death on the cross. Therefore God has exalted him and given him a name above every name.' And I say the same about the soul: if she remains obedient to God in death, he will exalt her in the same way and will give her a new name above every name. For as the Godhead is beyond name and nameless, so too the soul, like God, is nameless, for she is the very same as he is. Christ said: 'From now on I do not call you servants but friends, for everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.' A pagan writer says: 'A friend is a second self.' God became my second self so that I might become his second self. And Saint Augustine says: 'God became man so that man might become God.' In God the soul receives a new life. In him she rises out of death into the life of the Godhead. Here God pours into her his divine fullness, here she receives a new name which is above every name. For as Saint John says, 'we have passed from death to life because we love.'

This is the meaning of Christ's words: 'Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.'

Now let us see how 'all things shall be added to us.' We can take this in two ways. First, as meaning that whatever perfection there is in things, we will find in that first kingdom. Second, that we must hold fast to perfection in everything we do: a person's works should be done according to the law of God's kingdom. If anyone acts in such a way that his deeds can bring him down, be sure he is not acting according to the law of God's kingdom. When works are done according to mere humanity, weeds and discord soon grow up among them, but the one whose work is done in the kingdom of heaven stays calm in every undertaking. The scriptures say: 'God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good.' And I say of the soul that all her acts are perfect as seen in the kingdom of heaven, for there all works are equal, my least is my greatest and my greatest is my least. Spoken of in human terms they are imperfect, for works in themselves are many and lead to multiplicity, and so in that regard one is close to the edge of discord. Hence Christ's words: 'Martha, Martha, you worry about many things, but one thing is necessary.'

Be sure of this: to reach perfection our activity must be of a kind so high that all our works are done as one single act, and this must happen in the kingdom of heaven where man is God. There all things answer back in a divine way, there man is lord over all his works. Truly I tell you: works done outside the kingdom of God are dead works, but works done in the kingdom of God are living works. The prophet says: 'God loves his own works no more than he is disturbed or changed by them.' And so it is with the soul when she works according to the law of God's kingdom. People of this kind are always the same whether they work or do not work, for works give them nothing and take nothing from them.

That is the meaning of: 'All things shall be added to you.'

This is said only for those who already know it as a living reality, or who at least hold it as the desire of their heart.

May it be revealed to us. So help us God. Amen.