Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names · 3 of 6 · tr. C.E. Rolt
Chapter 11, Section 1c
And the perfect Peace guards each several individuality unalloyed by Its providential gift of peace, keeping all things without internal or mutual discord or confusion, and establishing all things, in the power of unswerving stability, so as to possess their own peace and rest.
474 474 D.‘s paradox is the paradox of sanity.
We must hold at the same time two apparent contradictions.
On one side all things are, in a sense, merged, in the other side they are not.
Their Super-Essence is identical and is one and the same Super-Essence for all.
Yet each one severally and individually possesses it.
The paradox is due to the fact that the question is one of ultimate Reality.
All life and individuality start in the individual’s opposition to the rest of the world, for by distinguishing myself from the world I, in a sense, oppose myself to it.
This is the basis of selfishness and so of moral evil.
But being transmuted by Love, it becomes the basis of all harmony and moral good, and so leads to Peace: And the same principles of opposition and harmony are at work in the whole creation, animate and inanimate alike.
(Cf.
Dante, Paradiso , I.
103 to end.) 177 4.
And if all things which move be found desiring not to be at rest but always to perform their proper movements, this also is a desire for that Divine Peace of the Universe which keeps all things in their proper places so that they fall not, and preserves the individual and the motive life of all moving things from removal or declension.
And this it doth by reason that the things which move perform their proper functions through being in a constant state of inward peace.
475 475 Vide supra [Movet Deus sicut Desideratum]: True peace is restful energy, both elements of which are incomplete in the present world but complete in the Godhead.
5.
But if, in affirming that Peace is not desired by all, the objector is thinking of the opposition caused by a falling away from Peace, in the first place there is nothing in the world which hath utterly fallen away from all Unity; for that which is utterly unstable, boundless, baseless, and indefinite hath neither Being nor any inherence in the things that have Being.
And if he says that hatred towards Peace and the blessings of Peace is shown by them that rejoice in strife and anger and in conditions of variations and instability, I answer that these also are governed by dim shadows of the desire for Peace; for, being oppressed by the various movements of their passions, they desire (without understanding) to set these at rest, and suppose that the surfeit of fleeting pleasures will give them Peace because they feel themselves 178 disturbed by the unsatisfied cravings which have mastered them.
476 476 Cf.
Dante, Paradiso.
”E se altra cosa vostra amor seduce Non è se non di quella alcun vestigio,” etc.
There is no need to tell how the loving-kindness of Christ cometh bathed in Peace, wherefrom we must learn to cease from strife, whether against ourselves or against one another, or against the angels, and instead to labour together even with the angels for the accomplishment of God’s Will, in accordance with the Providential Purpose of Jesus Who worketh all things in all and maketh Peace, unutterable and foreordained from Eternity, and reconcileth us to Himself, and, in Himself, to the Father.
Concerning these supernatural gifts enough hath been said in the Outlines of Divinity with confirmation drawn from the holy testimony of the Scriptures.
6.
Pronoia — the doctrine that the divine actively orders the unfolding of the cosmos and human affairs toward intelligible ends, against pure chance or blind necessity.
The passage explicitly discusses God's 'providential gift of peace' and His active ordering of all things to maintain stability.
Augustinian and Plotinian doctrine that evil has no positive being of its own but is a lack, distortion, or absence of the good — denying ontological dualism while preserving moral seriousness.
The text defines moral evil as arising from opposition and instability rather than positive existence.
Diotima's staged ascent from love of beautiful bodies → beautiful souls → beautiful pursuits → beautiful knowledge → Beauty itself; the canonical scala amoris that grounds Plotinus's On the Beautiful and Bruno's Eroici Furori — distinct from generic spiritual_ascent in that eros is the specific motive force.
The passage links Love to the basis of harmony and moral good, implying an ascent through love.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
The text identifies the basis of selfishness and moral evil as opposition between the individual and the world.