Pseudo-Dionysius: The Divine Names · 4 of 5 · tr. C.E. Rolt
Chapter 9, Section 1d
Scripture itself declares 451 451 Cf.
e.
g.
Ps.
lxxxvi.
8 .
that God is Dissimilar to the world, and not to be compared therewith.
It says that He is different from all things, and (what is yet more strange) that there is nothing even similar to Him.
And yet such language contradicts not the Similitude of things to Him.
For the same things are both like unto God and unlike Him: like Him in so far as they can imitate Him that is beyond imitation, unlike Him in so far as the effects fall short of the Cause and are infinitely and incomparably inferior.
8.
Now what say we concerning the Divine attributes of “Standing” and “Sitting”?
Merely this—that God remains What He is in Himself and is firmly fixed in an immovable Sameness wherein His transcendent Being is fast rooted, and that He acts under the same modes and around the same Centre without changing; and that He is wholly Self-Subsistent in His Stability, possessing Very Immutability and an entire Immobility, and that He is all this in a Super-Essential manner.
452 452 i.
e.
This stability is due to Undifferentiation.
For He is the Cause of the stability and rest of all things: He who is beyond all Rest and Standing.
And in Him all things have their consistency and are preserved, so as not to be shaken from the stability of their proper virtues.
9.
And what is meant, on the other hand, when the Sacred Writers say that the Immovable God moves and goes forth unto all things?
Must we not understand this also in a manner befitting God?
Reverence bids us regard His motion to imply no change of place, variation, alteration, turning or 168 locomotion, whether straightforward, circular, or compounded of both; or whether belonging to mind, soul, or natural powers; but to mean that God brings all things into being and sustains them, 453 453 St.
Augustine frequently explains God’s activity to consist in His causing His creatures to act, while Himself resting.
and exerts all manner of Providence over them, and is present to them all, holding them in His incomprehensible embrace, and exercising over them all His providential Emanations and Activities.
Nevertheless our reason must agree to attribute movements to the Immutable God in such a sense as befits Him.
Straightness we must understand to mean Directness of aim and the unswerving Emanation of His energies, and the outbirth of all things from Him.
His Spiral Movement must be taken to mean the combination of a persistent Emanation and a productive Stillness.
And His Circular Movement must be taken to mean His Sameness, wherein He holds together the intermediate orders and those at either extremity, so as to embrace each other, and the act whereby the things that have gone forth from Him return to Him again.
10.
And if any one takes the Scriptural Title of “Same,” or that of “Righteousness,” as implying Equality, we must call God “Equal,” not only because He is without parts and doth not swerve from His purpose, but also because He penetrates equally to all things and through all, and is the Fount of Very Equality, whereby He worketh equally the uniform interpenetration of all things and the participation thereof possessed by things which (each according to its capacity) have an equal share therein, and the equal 454 454 i.
e.
“Due,” “right,” cf.
p.
161, n.
3.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The text references 'Emanations' and describes God's action over all things through a structured flow of energies.
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.
Effects are described as falling short of the Cause and being infinitely inferior to the divine source.