VISIO DECIMA, cap. IV
The Crystal Table of Foreknowledge and Love
A crystal table reveals that God's foreknowledge and Love are one, showing that those who submit to Love gaze upon God in the purity of faith.
And before the face of this same image there appears a kind of table, transparent as crystal, on which something is written: that the divinity, which has no beginning, can — though nothing lies beneath it from the beginning — receive it to fullness, because before the gaze of Love, God's foreknowledge is made visible, since Love and God's foreknowledge agree as one. For foreknowledge, clear and free from every cause for offense, bounded by neither beginning nor end, nor determined by any mortal creature, shows that the person who wants to be subject to Love loves the things that are in God and gazes upon God in the purity of faith, sets up no fleeting thing for himself, and places his seat in the higher joys — because God foresaw that he would come to that place.
Creation's Rising at Love's Gaze
As Love gazes into foreknowledge, the divine will moves to form creatures, bringing heaven and earth into being at God's command.
And this image looks upon the aforementioned table, and so the line on which it sits moves — because when the love of God gazed into his foreknowledge, in which all things that were future in creatures had appeared even before the creatures that were to be created yet existed, the will of God, to which Love is joined as if resting, moved itself for the forming of creatures, and so heaven and earth and the other creatures that are in them rose up at God's command.
The Fall of Angels and the Making of Humankind
While some angels fell by neglecting their Creator, man was wonderfully made, illuminated by the living breath, and protected as fire and flame.
For when angels came into being, some of them, neglecting their Creator, fell irrevocably, but others remained in service and love of him. So after the other creatures God created man, so that he might find prepared for him all the things he needed, and God illuminated him with the living breath, and when wonderfully made, protected him in two ways: namely, that he might be fire and flame — fire indeed in the soul, and flame that burns from the soul in the rational faculty.
The Flame of Choice in the Clay Vessel
The rational faculty, as a flame guided by the knowledge of good and evil, is placed by God within a clay vessel to carry out its work.
The flame of the rational faculty knows where it is at work with the kiss of choice — that is, the knowledge of good and evil — through which it does not burn in the thing it does not choose for its work, but flees from it with distress, because it does not want to work there unless the craftsman strikes it, so that it may burn a little where he wants to turn it; and where the flame sometimes burns even by choice, there the craftsman often makes it stop. And God placed these two powers in a clay vessel, so that it might work whatever was useful to itself. And just as fire contains flame within itself, so too the rational person has powers for working, and these two aforementioned powers are in the clay vessel, and the clay vessel itself exists along with them.
The Necessity of the Vessel and the Works of God
The soul's powers require the clay vessel and the rest of creation to operate, just as God, the living Spirit, accomplished the great work of the Incarnation to recover the lost.
But if the fire and the flame didn't burn in anything, where could their burning be seen? And so the powers just mentioned need something to work on — the clay vessel in which they are, the vessel in which the soul and the rational faculty carry out their operations. The wind too is sharp and fills the rest of creation, the creatures with whom human beings work — so much so that a human being wouldn't even exist if the rest of creation didn't. And God is fire and living Spirit, and he did a great work: from it his Son took a garment, and hiding his deity within it he performed very many miracles, and by means of it he passed through the world until he drew back to himself the tenth number that had been lost.✦
The Defeat of Pride and the Zeal of Praise
God's work overcomes the prideful enemy, while the rational faculty that turns back to its Creator ignites praise by the fire of the Holy Spirit.
God appointed this same work against the one who lusted after the north, and through it overcame him completely, striking him on the jaw so that he can no longer lift his head as he did before.✦✦ For Divinity clothed the good angels in his brightness and set them within himself, so that the work which they beheld in him, and which they would have followed by pursuing their own will and withdrawing from their Creator, he might restrain by the zeal of his punishment — because when the rational faculty operates according to the will of the flesh, it draws down God's vengeance on itself; but when it looks back to its Creator and says, 'You are my God,' that same faculty, by the fire of the Holy Spirit, sets its praises ablaze to multiply them, just as sparks from a fire multiply.✦
The Choice of the Rational Faculty
The rational faculty must choose between mutually exclusive allegiances, for a person first desires and then acts upon that choice.
And the rational faculty consists in two aspects of choice: it gathers to itself what it chooses and rejects the other, because in a single choice it cannot hold two things that are at odds with each other — for the person who serves another despises himself, and the person who works only for himself, by the very things he does, does not serve the other, and so these two cannot be brought into agreement. For a rational human being first longs and desires, and only afterward does the same person act on it in some concrete way.
The Eye of Faith Versus the Irrational Creature
Unlike the irrational creature bound to its nature, a human being dwells with God through the eye of faith.
An irrational creature lives as it was made to live, with no further capacity, since it has no eye of knowledge in its rationality; it turns back to the matter of its own nature. A human being, on the other hand, dwells with God through faith.
Judgment and the Changing of Times
God punished those who broke the natural law through the flood, marking the changing state of times from the beginning to the Incarnation.
On God's punishment of those who broke the natural law through the floodwaters, and on the changing state of times from the beginning right up to the Incarnation of the Lord.
Read the original Latin
Sed et ante faciem ejusdem imaginis quasi tabula ut crystallus perlucida apparet, scriptumque habens, quod divinitatem quae initio caret, nihil initio subjacens, ad plenum capere possit, quoniam coram Charitatis intuitu praescientia Dei ostenditur, quia Charitas et praescientia Dei in unum consentiunt. Praescientia enim absque omni offensione perlucida, nec initio aut fine conclusa, nec etiam a mortali creatura determinata, ostendit quod homo qui Charitati subjectus esse vult, cum ea quae in Deo sunt diligit, et Deum in puritate fidei inspicit, nec quidquam ipsi quod caducum est proponit, in superioribus gaudiis sedem sibi ponit, quoniam Deus eum illo venturum praevidit. Et imago haec praedictam tabulam inspicit, unde et linea in qua sedet movetur, quia cum charitas Dei praescientiam ipsius intuebatur, in qua omnia quae in creaturis futura erant apparuerunt, cum creaturae quae creandae erant nondum fuissent, voluntas Dei ad quam Charitas quasi quiescendo conjuncta est, ad formationem creaturarum se movit, et sic coelum et terra, caeteraeque creaturae quae in eis sunt, per jussionem Dei surrexerunt. Nam cum angeli praecesserunt, quidam ex ipsis Creatorem suum negligentes, irrevocabiliter corruerunt, quidam vero in servitute et dilectione illius perstiterunt. Deus itaque post alias creaturas hominem creavit, quatenus omnia quibus indigeret sibi praeparata inveniret, eumque viventi spiramine illuminavit, atque mirifice factum duobus modis munivit, scilicet ut ignis et flamma esset, ignis quidem in anima, et flamma quae de ipsa flagrat in rationalitate. Flamma autem rationalitatis novit ubi cum osculo electionis operetur, quod scientia boni et mali est, per quam non ardet in illo quod ad opus suum non eligit, sed cum molestia ab illo fugit, quod operari non vult, nisi faber eam percutiat, quatenus aliquantulum ibi ardeat, quo ipse eam vertere voluerit, et ubi illa etiam per electionem interdum ardet, ibi eam faber multoties cessare facit. Et has duas vires Deus in fictili vase posuit, quatenus illud quod sibi utile esset operaretur. Sed et sicut ignis flammam in se continet, sic et rationalis homo vires ad operandum habet, et istae duae praefatae vires in fictili vase sunt, ipsumque fictile vas cum illis existit.
Si autem ignis et flamma in nulla re arderent, ardor eorum ubi videri posset? Unde et praedictas vires oportet opus habere, quo fictile vas est, in quo anima et rationalitas opera sua exercent. Ventus quoque acrius est, reliquasque creaturas implet, cum quibus homo operatur, ita ut etiam homo non esset, si reliquae creaturae non fuissent. Et Deus ignis et vivens spiritus est, magnumque opus fecit, de quo Filius ejus indumentum tulit, per quod deitatem suam occultans, quamplurima miracula perpetravit, cum quo etiam mundum pertransivit quousque decimum numerum, qui perditus erat, sibi attraxit. Idem etiam opus contra illum qui aquilonem concupivit Deus constituit, eumque per illud omnino superavit, in maxilla ipsum ita percutiens, ut caput suum ulterius levare non possit sicut prius fecit. Divinitas enim bonos angelos claritate sua vestivit, et apud se ordinavit, ut opus suum quod in se ipsum aspiceret, et propriam voluntatem suam sequendo a Creatore suo recederet, zelo suo castigando comprimeret, quia rationalitas cum secundum voluntatem carnis operatur, ultionem Dei sibi attrahit; quod autem ad Creatorem suum respiceret dicens: « Deus meus es tu, » illud igne sancti Spiritus laudes suas ad multiplicandum accenderet, quemadmodum scintillae ignis multiplicantur. Sed et rationalitas in duabus partibus electionis consistit, et quod eligit hoc ad se colligit, et aliud reprobat, quoniam in una electione duo quae sibi dissentiunt habere non potest, quia qui alii ministrat, se ipsum despicit, et qui sibimetipsi operatur, per ea quae facit alii non ministrat, et ideo in unum haec non consentiunt. Rationalis enim homo primum optat et desiderat, et postea in aliquo idem operatur.
Irrationale vero animal vivit sicut ei constitutum est, nec plus valet, quia oculum scientiae in rationalitate non habet; sed ad materiam naturae suae se vertit; homo autem per fidem cum Deo habitat.
De ultione Dei in transgressores naturalis legis per aquam diluvii, et diverso statu temporum ab initio usque ad incarnationem Domini.
Scripture echoes
- ↩Luke.15.8-Luke.15.10 — Or what woman, having ten drachmas, if she loses one drachma, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? Luke.15.9 — and having found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the drachma that I had lost.' Luke.15.10 — In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
- ↩Isa.14.13 — And you said in your heart, 'I will ascend to the heavens; above the stars of God I will raise my throne, and I will sit on the mount of assembly, in the far reaches of the north." Keep the quotation open into v.14 for continuity.
- ↩Ps.3.7 — I will not be afraid of ten thousands of people who have set themselves against me round about.
- ↩Ps.34.23 — The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none who take refuge in him will be condemned.
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