Revelations of Divine Love · 80 of 127 · tr. Grace Warrack
Chapter LIII-a
"In every soul that shall be saved is a Godly Will that never assented to sin, nor ever shall." "Ere that He made us He loved us, and when we were made we loved Him" And I saw that He willeth that we understand He taketh not harder the falling of any creature that shall be saved than He took the falling of Adam, which, we know, was endlessly loved and securely kept in the time of all his need, and now is blissfully restored in high overpassing joy.
For our Lord is so good, so gentle, and so courteous, that He may never assign default [in those] in whom He shall ever be blessed and praised.
And in this that I have now told was my desire in part answered, and my great difficulty some deal eased, by the lovely, gracious Shewing of our good Lord.
In which Shewing I saw and understood full surely that in every soul that shall be saved is a Godly Will that never assented to sin, nor ever shall: which Will is so good that it may never will evil, but evermore continually it willeth good; and worketh good in the sight of God.
Therefore our Lord willeth that we know this in the Faith and the belief; and especially that we have all this blessed Will whole and safe in our Lord Jesus Christ.
For that same Kind that Heaven shall be filled with behoveth needs, of God's rightfulness, so to have been knit and oned to Him, that therein was kept a Substance which might never, nor should, be parted from Him; and that through His own Good Will in His endless foreseeing purpose.
But notwithstanding this rightful knitting and this endless oneing, yet the redemption and the again-buying of mankind is needful and speedful in everything, as it is done for the same intent and to the same end that Holy Church in our Faith us teacheth.
For I saw that God began never to love mankind: for right the same that mankind shall be in endless bliss, fulfilling the joy of God as anent His works, right so the same, mankind hath been in the foresight of God: known and loved from without beginning in his rightful intent.
By the endless assent of the full accord of all the Trinity, the Mid-Person willed to be Ground and Head of this fair Kind: out of Whom we be all come, in Whom we be all enclosed, into Whom we shall all wend, in Him finding our full Heaven in everlasting joy, by the foreseeing purpose of all the blessed Trinity from without beginning.
For ere that He made us He loved us, and when we were made we loved Him.
And this is a Love that is made , [to our Kindly Substance], [by virtue] of the Kindly Substantial Goodness of the Holy Ghost; Mighty, in Reason, [by virtue] of the Might of the Father; and Wise, in Mind, [by virtue] of the Wisdom of the Son.
And thus is Man's Soul made by God and in the same point knit to God.
And thus I understand that man's Soul is made of nought: that is to say, it is made, but of nought that is made.
And thus:—When God should make man's body He took the clay of earth, which is a matter mingled and gathered of all bodily things; and thereof He made man's body.
But to the making of man's Soul He would take right nought, but made it.
And thus is the Nature-made rightfully oned to the Maker, which is Substantial Nature not-made: that is, God.
And therefore it is that there may nor shall be right nought atwix God and man's Soul.
The path of loving devotion and self-surrender to a personal deity as itself sufficient means of liberation — the Gita's 'to those constantly devoted, I come forward as their deliverer,' Kabir's and the Sant poets' love-religion, the devotional stream that parallels Sufi love-mysticism. Distinct from mystical_union (the resulting state), fana_annihilation (the ego's unmaking at the path's end), ladder_of_love (eros staged toward Beauty), and prayer (the practice of address): bhakti names devotion as the soteriological road itself.
The passage emphasizes a reciprocal relationship of love ('He loved us... we loved Him') and devotion as the central dynamic of the soul's existence.
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 centrally emphasizes God's 'endless foreseeing purpose' and the idea that mankind was known and loved from without beginning, indicating a comprehensive divine ordering of history.
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 passage suggests that the 'Godly Will' never assents to sin and that God assigns no default to the saved, implying that sin is a failure of the will rather than an inherent positive substance in the soul.
The divine conceived as active, present, and dynamic—not an abstract principle but a personal responsive reality.
God is depicted as intensely personal and active, described with human-like attributes of gentleness, courtesy, and a dynamic will to love and restore.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
The text argues that the human soul is 'knit and oned' to God's 'Substantial Nature' and that there is 'right nought atwix God and man's Soul,' describing a profound ontological union with the divine.
The doctrine that all existence is ultimately one substance or one divine reality; non-duality as a theological claim.
The assertion that 'there may nor shall be right nought atwix God and man's Soul' points to a fundamental ontological unity between the Creator and the created soul.