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Hymns on Faith

St Ephrem the Syrian, tr. Morris, 1847; selections

73. Rhythm the Seventy-third

Lo, there is a similitude between the sun¹ and the Father, the radiance and the Son, the heat and the Holy Ghost; and though it be one², a trinity is beheld in it! That incomprehensible who can explain? One is many, a one that is three and a three one. Mighty wonder, marvel visible! The sun is distinct from its ray; they are distinct, yet alike, since his ray is itself also the sun²; yet of two suns no one speaketh, though his ray is also the sun over things below³. We call Them not two Gods, though our Lord be also God over the creatures⁴. Who can search out how and where His Ray is bounden, bounden and yet free His Heat⁵? Though not divided, They are not confused; distinct, yet mingled⁶; bounden together, yet free. Mighty marvel!

Who can search and explore them, though they be thought to be simple and easy of explanation? Search me the sun from his ray; fix thine eyes and look upon its heat, if thou art able. Distinguish me the sun from its ray, and from both the heat, if thou canst. And as that sun is with things on high, the heat and light of it are with things below⁷; this is a visible mystery. That ray of his descendeth to the earth⁸; it dwells in the eye clothed with it as if with a body⁹, and when it is shut up in sleep, the ray putteth it off again, as the dead [body] that is to be raised up again.

And how the light pierceth into the eye no man comprehendeth, as [neither how] our Redeemer dwelt in the belly¹⁰. The light from within the eye putteth on a fair appearance, and goeth forth visiting the whole world, as our Redeemer clothed Himself with this vile body and went forth and sanctified the whole world. But when that ray passed to the fountain thereof (for it doth not separate¹¹ from its generator) it leaveth its heat here; as the Holy Ghost, whom our Lord left with His disciples, without changing from His own place.

Look at the likenesses among the creatures, and do not thou be divided about the Trinity, lest thou perish; since thine own life is too hard for thee, being one that is three, a trinity which is one¹².

Notes

S. are parables of
This is the doctrine of the Una Res, (see on Athan. p. 404, ref. 6.) it being here manifestly implied, that the Son is the selfsame Substance as the Father; They may not be spoken of as two Beings, as Eusebius (with some who defend him) and the Arians in general do, nor may They be brought under number, or be reasoned of as if subject to the laws by which we reason of all things, seeing They subsisted antecedently, and gave the laws, to all things. For even amongst the ‘all things’ we find things which involve contradictions in some degree similar to those the Church holds of the Trinity; similar at least as far as our ordinary conceptions and way of speaking of them go; for it is from these St. E. is arguing. See R. lxxvi. §. 1.
Comp. c. Scrut. R. i. §. 5.
See R. vi. §. 1. n. c. R. xl. §. 1. where there is the same transition from the Son as God to the Son as incarnate, as presently occurs in this Rhythm. Ass. paraphrases, Esto Dominus quoque noster suis per carnem affinis sit creaturis, Deus est. But it seems more likely that St. E. does not mean in this §. to introduce the subject of the Incarnation, but to point out how the Son viewed as the Brightness of the Father’s glory, by upholding all things as He doth by the word of His power, forms an Antitype to the ray in which, and not in person (so to speak), the sun visits the earth. Comp. vol. ii. p. 518. in p. 133. and p. 209, n. b. and Athan. as above.
The type and Antitype are here, as often, blended together. Ass. takes this passage to mean that the ray’s presence necessarily involves the sun’s presence, whereas the heat’s presence is possible after the ray has departed, as the Holy Ghost was present when Christ was gone; i. e. he takes it to anticipate §. 3. which he is obliged to do owing to his assumption that the Incarnation is meant by the words ‘God over the creatures.’ This (if I understand him) is to assume that when St. E. says the Ray is bounden, he refers, through the type, to the coinherence or Perichoresis of the Divine in the Human Nature of the Son; whereas in the next clause and the next sentence the word ‘bounden’ occurs with a reference to the Perichoresis of the Divine Persons in Each Other. In R. xviii. §. 2. the Spirit is spoken of as filling the Redeemer’s Body, though in no wise confined in it; which it is right to mention as seemingly confirming A.’s view. May not the text rather mean, Who can ascertain any mode by which, or limits to which, the sun’s ray is so confined, as to be else than coextensive with the sun? or any by which the Son is so confined, as to be else than coextensive, so to speak, (see p. 293, n. b.) with the Father? who can shew how the heat, which universally accompanies and is coinherent in this ray, is yet free or loose, i. e. has a separate subsistency from it? or who shew how the Spirit who is sent, (see R. xl. n. f. g.) as well as the Son, is, notwithstanding His coinherence in the Son, yet a distinct Person from the Son? If the passage be so interpreted, the words ‘bounden’ and ‘free’ will be taken throughout in one sense; and the thing which St. E. alludes to will be the Procession of Two Persons from the Father, of which Persons One proceeds in and from the Other. Hence he speaks in R. lxxv. §. 1. of the heat of the ray; see Veccus, quoted in p. 232, n. a. p. 308, ref. 1. p. 324, ref. 4. where the metaphors are mixed with the reality, as are ‘ray’ and ‘fountain’ in §. 3. in a way to shew, that St. E. does not conceive the notion of Mission and Eternal Procession as else than combined: see note a. on the next Rhythm, and c. Scrut. ii. fin. Of the two passages adduced in support of the Greek view by Zernikaw on the Procession of the Spirit, i. p. 25—6. folio ed. from St. E.’s works in Greek, the second (of which the Syriac is now published) is plainly not to his purpose in the original.
p. 210, ref. 4. p. 232, ref. 2. p. 265, ref. 7. p. 342, ref. 1. p. 349, ref. 3.
p. 234, 5.
R. vi. §. 1.
The object of this type is to shew that our Lord’s Divine Nature was not limited or confined by the assumption of the Human Nature; as light is made available to us by its entry into the eye, although capable of subsisting in its entirety without the eye, which we have proof of in sleep, when light, the soul of the eye, departs and leaves it dead as it were; so the Son through His Incarnation benefits us, though He subsists as He did before it, and independently of it, in His Divine Nature unimpaired. See p. 20. p. 42. p. 86, n. f. and St. Greg. Nyss. Or. Catech. cap. 5. where the same type is used with a kindred bearing, p. 51, c. “It was fitting that His light should not be unseen, nor His glory without witness, nor His goodness unenjoyed, and that the other attributes beheld in the Divine Nature should not be idle, with no one to participate of and enjoy them. If then the reason why man is brought into being is, that he may be partaker of God’s goodness, then is he necessarily formed of such a make as to have an aptitude for the participation of Divine goodness. For as the eye doth through the brightness naturally implanted in it find itself in communion with the light, through its natural power attracting what it hath affinity withal; so must there needs have been commingled with man’s nature that which hath affinity with God, that from such reciprocity it might towards that kindred Thing possess a yearning.” St. Greg. is shewing that man’s nature, if the effects of the fall were stayed, was not such as to make it unbecoming for the Word to take it; and therefore is rather comparing (as Basil de Sp. S. §. 61. does) the light in the eye to the indwelling of God in the elect, which has a certain likeness to the Union of the Godhead with the Manhood in Christ, and so is only mediately parallel to the text, on which see R. lxxiv. n. a. It should be added that nothing but meditation will enable us to enter fully into these wonderfully eliminated similitudes between the things of nature and of grace; these notes aim only at explaining some few points in them which, when explained, may help to the understanding of the whole.
comp. p. 86, n. f.
R. lxxv. §. 2.
p. 233, c. p. 332, a.