Letter IV. To the same Gaius Therapeutes.

The Works of Dionysius the Areopagite, tr. by John Parker, [1897], at sacred-texts.com

LETTER IV. ⁶⁴ To the same Gaius Therapeutes.

How, you ask, is Jesus, Who is beyond all, ranked essentially with all men? For, not as Author of men is He here called man, but as being in absolute whole essence truly man. But we do not define the Lord Jesus, humanly, for He is not man only, (neither superessential nor man only), but truly man, He Who is pre-eminently a lover of man, the Super-essential, taking substance, above men and after men, from the substance of men. And it is nothing less, the ever Superessential, super-full of super-essentiality, disregards the excess ⁶⁵ of this, and having come truly into substance, took substance above substance, and above man works things of man. And a virgin supernaturally conceiving, and unstable water, holding up weight of material and earthly feet, and not giving way, but, by a supernatural power standing together so as not to be divided, demonstrate this. Why should any one go through the rest, which are very many? Through which, he who looks with a divine vision, will know beyond mind, even the things affirmed respecting the love towards man, of (the Lord) Jesus,--things which possess a force of superlative negation. For, even, to speak summarily, He was not man, not as not being man, but as being from men was beyond men, and was above man, having truly been born man, and for the rest, not having done things Divine p. 144 as God, nor things human as man, but exercising for us a certain new God-incarnate energy of God having become man.

Footnotes

143:64 C. II. § 6.

143:65 τῇ ταύτης περιουσίᾳ.