The Twofold Circumcision and the True God

They are dying men who are no longer gods and sons of the Most High, as it is signified by what is written: 'For where there is strife and jealousy among you, are you not fleshly and walking according to man?' (James 3:16).

For it is not possible to serve God and mammon, nor indeed to hope for injustice and God (Matthew 6:24). If it seems that the wealth of one who does not seize and does not act unjustly is flowing and diminishing, it is not necessary to add to the heart, so that the heart might not be grieved by the diminishing of the money.

Because the name of injustice signifies, on the one hand, inequality regarding exchanges and sharing, as in 'But you do wrong and deprive even your brothers,' and on the other hand, all practical wickedness, as it is said, 'I hated injustice and detested it' (1 John 3:15), so one must watch according to what the meaning of the word now presents. One says the former, making it clear through the fact that plunder and flowing wealth were accompanying him, while the other says the latter, as it is said, 'But he who loves injustice.' For this is the case, since injustice is not entirely one thing, nor is the seizing regarding money.

God is incorporeal, rather existing beyond all generated being, both material and intellectual, having nothing entangled with himself; thus, when God speaks, He speaks once, that is, monoidly and uncomposedly, not as I hear Him thus anymore. For what is spoken once, you hear as two, according to the manifestation; for this voice is a pointing voice.

He therefore says such a thing: as He speaks with a pure intellect and an uncomposed voice, I hear the things spoken as being two, with my imagination standing by, perceiving someone called a spoken word which turns out to be unspeakable, as He speaks with intellect and an uncomposed voice. And so, if the apostle, writing that he has heard unspeakable words (2 Corinthians 12:4), wishes to present this, the unspeakable ones are such that they are heard not by grasping syllables and sounds, but also by words being present, because the intellect possesses the truth. For where the truth is, there is a proposition. And it is necessary for the proposition to be from a name and a word.

And it must be said otherwise: we use vocal organs, and we are unable to say many things at once. Of God, speaking once and all at once, we hear doubly. Stop, lest it be possible to say a third. Of God, commanding once concerning sacrifice, we hear the command both sensuously and spiritually.

Just as we understand circumcision in two ways, once spoken by God: the bodily and the spiritual. Whether the Father is God, and the Son is Lord, and the Word stands among these, or whether the same God is both God and Lord, saying, 'Visit now' (Ps 62:2a); for what is being viewed is both pious and true in both respects. It is necessary to seek how he gives to each according to his works. For if the sufferings of the present time are not worthy of the glory that is about to be revealed (Rom 8:18), and he who has worked only trifles is not punished worthily. For if one observes iniquities, 'Lord, Lord, who will endure?' (Ps 69:1), how must one take judgment by equality? One must oversee lest it becomes not according to quantity but according to quality; and quantity is indicated by the word, the greater things of value being given praiseworthily to the righteous and the punishment being diminished. For equality is not according to corrective justice, but according to distributive justice, the equal and the unequal.

This is accomplished for the one who has come out of ignorance and malice, as 'The night has passed, and the day has approached' (Ps 62:2a). To this, 'Out of the night my spirit watches for you, O God' (Ps 62:2b) is conjoined. But if someone does the works of the night and darkness, how can he say 'I watch at dawn' without the dawn standing before him? And 'I watch toward you' is not to be heard locally. For God is not in a place, but in a disposition, becoming a relationship toward God by having leaped over the sensible things; for to this follows coming toward God. And also the saying, 'God, the God of mine.' For the God of the saints worshipping him is God once and for all, not of all those who have the 'is', but of some who have been set free. Therefore, the belly of those having desire for luxury is not simply called God; nor even the demons are strictly gods of the Gentiles, though called gods. God alone, and every truly wise man will say by nature and truly to God, 'God, the God of mine.'

'From all those present, let my longing depart' (Ps 62:3); I thirst with the soul to be toward God, a spring of water stretching toward me, changing into eternal life (Ps 62:3). And since the soul is being benefited and enlightened, and the flesh also partakes, and of these both as being one, how also it itself thirsts simply toward God and the power and the...