Yet it in no way diminishes their essential and natural difference. Therefore, as I have said, one hypostasis of these natures comes into being, and their natural difference remains unharmed.
For this reason, even after the union, the number of the given natures, though united, is preserved without diminution.
When the process of union brings absolutely no alteration or change upon those united, then the essential logos of each of the two united natures remains unharmed.
And in beings whose logos of essence remains unharmed even after union, the natures also remain wholly undamaged. Through the union they lose nothing that belongs to them.
For it befits the Creator of all, Who according to the divine economy became in nature what He was not, to preserve unchangeably both Himself, as He was by nature before this, and what came into being by economy in nature.
For in God no change can be observed. Nor can any movement be conceived in Him, through which change occurs in created beings that are set in motion.
This is the great and hidden mystery. This is the divine end for whose sake all created being came into existence.
This is the divine purpose conceived by God before the beginning of beings. We define it thus: it is the end forethought by God, for whose sake all created things exist, while it itself exists for the sake of none of them.
With this end in view, God brought into being the essence of all beings.
This is, in the proper sense, the limit of Providence and of the creatures for which He provides. According to this limit, all beings created by Him are recapitulated in God.
This is the mystery embracing all ages. It reveals the super-infinite and great Counsel of God, which existed before the ages without end or limit. Its Messenger was the very essential Word of God, become Man.
It revealed, if one may speak so, the deepest ground of the Father's Goodness. It showed in itself the End for whose sake, as is evident, creatures received the beginning of their being.
For through Christ, or through the mystery according to Christ, all the ages and all that is within the ages received both the beginning and the end of their being.
Before the ages, God had conceived the union of limit and infinity, measure and immeasurability, boundary and boundlessness, Creator and creation, rest and motion.
This union was manifested in Christ at the end of the times and fulfilled the Foreknowledge of God. Its purpose was that things moved by nature should ever abide around that which is unmoved by essence.
Yet they should abide there after wholly departing from motion with respect to themselves and to one another.
This also took place so that rational beings might receive by experience the active knowledge of Him in Whom they were deemed worthy to abide. This knowledge is unchangeable and always identical with itself.
It grants them spiritual delight in the One Who is known.
Scripture knows a twofold knowledge of the Divine. One is relative, since it abides in reason alone and in contemplations. It does not possess an active perception of what is known, acquired through experience.
By this knowledge we are guided in the present life.
The other knowledge is truly real and active, and is acquired only through experience, beyond reason and contemplations. By grace and participation, it grants a whole perception of the One Who is known.
Through this, in the future heavenly inheritance, we shall receive supernatural deification, acting without interruption.
Relative knowledge, which abides in reason and contemplations, is said to be the moving principle of striving toward knowledge by participation and action.
This latter knowledge, which through experience and participation grants perception of what is known, in turn removes the knowledge that abides in reason and contemplations.
Wise men say that understanding concerning God cannot coexist with the experience of God, nor can thought concerning Him coexist with the perception of Him.
By understanding concerning God I mean the proportionate, knowing contemplation of Him that arises from beings. By perception I mean the experience of supernatural goods that depends on participation in them.
By thought I mean the simple and singular knowledge concerning God that arises from beings.
Perhaps the same can be observed in all other things. When there is experiential consciousness of a certain thing, understanding concerning it ceases. When the thing is perceived, thought concerning it becomes inactive.
By experience I mean active knowledge that surpasses every understanding. By perception I mean participation itself in what is known, which is beyond every thought.
The great Apostle seems to teach this mystically when he says, "whether prophecies, they will cease; whether tongues, they will be silent; whether knowledge, it will be abolished" (1 Cor 13:8).
He is speaking of the knowledge that abides in reason and contemplations.
This mystery was foreknown before all ages by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit: by the Father according to good pleasure, by the Son according to self-operation, and by the Holy Spirit according to cooperation.
For there is one knowledge in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, because there is one essence and one power.
It cannot be said that the Father or the Holy Spirit did not know the Incarnation of the Son. In the whole Son, Who through the Incarnation Himself accomplished the mystery of our salvation, the whole Father was essentially present.
The Father was not Himself incarnate, but He was well pleased in the Incarnation of the Son. Likewise the whole Holy Spirit was essentially present in the whole Son.
The Spirit was not Himself incarnate, but He cooperated with the Son in His Incarnation for our sake.
Whether one calls this Christ or the mystery of Christ, only the one Holy Trinity possesses essential foreknowledge of it: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Nor should one be perplexed as to how Christ, being one of the Holy Trinity, is foreknown by the Trinity. It is known that He was foreknown not as God, but as Man.
That is, what was foreknown was His Incarnation according to the divine economy for the salvation of man.
For the Ever-Existing One, Who proceeds in a manner beyond cause and beyond reason from the Ever-Existing One, is never foreknown. Foreknowledge concerns only that which has the beginning of its being through some cause.
Christ was foreknown not in what He was in Himself by nature, but in what He later became for us according to the divine economy.
For it was necessary that He Who is truly by nature the Creator of the essence of beings should Himself become the Self-Worker of the deification of creatures by grace.
Thus the Giver of being would also appear as the Bestower of eternal well-being.
Since none of the beings possesses knowledge of its own essence or of the essence of another, none of the beings, of course, possesses by nature foreknowledge concerning what will some day be brought into being.
The exception, of course, is God, Who is beyond beings. He both knows Himself in His essence and possesses foreknowledge concerning the existence of everything created by Him before it is brought into being.
Moreover, in the future God will honor beings with knowledge by grace concerning what they themselves and others are by essence. He will also reveal to them the principles of their being brought into existence.
These principles preexist in Him in a unified manner.
Some assert that Christ was foreknown before the foundation of the world by those to whom He later appeared at the end of the times. They suppose that they existed before the foundation of the world together with the Christ foreknown by them.
We reject this teaching as foreign to the Truth, for it presents the essence of rational creatures as coeternal with God.
It is absolutely impossible for someone to be with Christ as He is, and then at some time be wholly separated from Him. This is so if the completion of the ages takes place in Him.
In Him the rest of those in motion is attained, through which there will never again be any change of beings.
The word of Scripture called Christ pure and spotless because, in His nature, He is wholly foreign in soul and body to the corruption that arose through sin.
For His soul had no disgrace of vice, and His body had no stain of sin.
THEOSIS