The distinction between reality and the concept of error

Let him not add 'only', for he is not forbidden to have the others. Again, let one have, bring, a shield and a sword and a helmet and a breastplate. If it is necessary to say that I have a shield, let him not add 'only', for it is not denied that he has the others. We have here said by him concerning the person: 'Save my soul from the sword.' Even if in another place he says, 'I have prepared a body for me', and there was no memory of the soul, and here there is a memory of the soul, and not yet that he says, 'Save my soul from the sword', he has spoken concerning the soul of himself alone.

2 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Psalm 22:1). The name of the forsaking, when spoken literally, does not reveal becoming being in darkness. For the martyrs, indeed, were not forsaken, though they were cast into the boiling pot. But those who sacrifice, even if they suffer nothing, were forsaken. When someone asks not to be forsaken, he asks this so as not to fall from his purpose. It seems that falling into abandonment does not happen to one suffering nothing, but sometimes it happens to him through malice, as I said, of the sacrificers. Abandonment, therefore, is the turning away of God from the one being forsaken.

Which Saul experienced: 'You have not listened to me,' he says, 'nor even in sleep' (1 Samuel 28:6); and he went toward the medium. If ever, therefore, you see a rich Christian having everything well, but having haste toward astrologers or toward necromancers or toward such things, these were forsaken. And if you see a poor man having fallen from wealth, but possessing God, such as Job was (Job 1:1), this one was not forsaken.

Since, therefore, the Savior came to a cross, and it seems to men to be abandonment to fall by such a death, he says this toward their assumption: 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Psalm 22:1). Perhaps he also speaks of abandonment as if of his own body; for the Hebrews were a body to him before this. Therefore, that people was forsaken. And he speaks of his own abandonment, since he was their head. 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' (Psalm 22:1); he demands the cause and the end of the abandonment, for what it is. 'For what reason have you forsaken me?'; he is demanding an end, not so that it might be known to him, but so that it might be known to the body.

His, to his own men. Far from my salvation are the words of my transgressions.

Here, so that we do not begin to mythologize, we are compelled to grasp a deeper theory. A thing and the concept of that thing are not the same. Many know the sensible things, but do not have a concept of them. It is a great thing to have a concept of realities. For in this way we separate a thing from the concept of the thing. And I mentioned color and appearance. But color is one thing and appearance is another, though they are inseparable from one another. Therefore, we separate them by concept. Color receives the more and the less. But appearance does not receive the more and the less, so that the color of the appearance is something different, even if it is never separated from it, even if it never exists without it. These things are said by those having a demonstration by subtraction. We subtract by concept this from that; it will not be sensed, it will not exist. When, therefore, we say that a line is a simple length, the sensible one is not simple. It certainly has width. But we subtract by concept.

I say: those who have transgressions that they will sense and that will exist do not know their concepts; for if they had known that it is harmful, that it turns toward destruction, they would not be acting them out. But there is having the concept of a transgression; for example, let it be a transgression being done against the law of God, such as to murder a man somehow. But when some judicial authority, serving the righteous law, puts to death the one worthy of death, just as Agag was murdered by Samuel (1 Sam 15:33), Elijah had the concept of a transgression, not a transgression, and Samuel. For the Savior says according to the man: for he himself is the one who has lost hope, the one saying these things: "Far from my salvation are the words of my transgressions" (Ps 38:13). Not "are far from my salvation"; for he did not know sin, he did not do it. But I have it by concept; I know what sin is. And therefore the words of transgressions were far from my salvation. Let my salvation not take a mixture so as to be darkened. For sometimes someone is saved because of something inherent in him as good; if it is evil, his salvation is diminished. Many, indeed, have often asked: if someone does many evils, but does a few goods, does he perish? To say that he perishes is a subtraction of the hope of the persons.