Divine Wisdom and the Nature of Love

The disciples show that, since God exists as light, there is no darkness in him. We offer this same message to you, so that you may have the same glory concerning God as existing light; for God is an intelligible, eternal light; for nothing sensible exists perpetually. Regarding this light, one must understand darkness as ignorance and a deficiency of control, since neither of the forms of darkness—neither ignorance nor evil—is in God; thus it is rightly said that there is no darkness in him.

If it is said anywhere, 'the darkness of his hiding,' darkness here refers to the obscurity found in incomprehensibility; and our ignorance may be that obscurity, but not the light of God being such.

To know in the Scripture does not always signify merely to have certain knowledge, but also to have experienced something and to be united to it, as in: 'not knowing sin' (1 John 3:8), and: 'I never knew you, workers of lawlessness' (Matthew 7:23); for he did not know sin as in not having certain knowledge of what sin is, but as in not having practiced it. Therefore, he who says he has known God must necessarily follow by being transformed by him and participating in him by keeping his commandments; thus he contradicts himself. The two meanings of knowing are made clear from the context; for he says, 'by this we know' (1 John 2:3), that is, we have certain knowledge, 'that we have known him' (1 John 2:3) by being united to him and keeping his commandments; for he who does not keep them is clearly found outside the knowledge of God.

Just as our Lord Jesus, being the fullness of wisdom and truth existing as God, is not deprived of not knowing sin or the workers of lawlessness, so also he is not deprived of not knowing the day of judgment. It is not diminished, not even, when it is said of God that he has forgetfulness, regret, or anger, for by that word those things are made clear, and by that word also concerning the unknown...

That the day might be released; for just as in the only wise God, who possesses the knowledge of all things, there exists no forgetfulness or regret or anything of that kind—as is said economically concerning Him—so also, since the ignorance of the wisdom and truth of God is not accepted, it is usefully stated that he is ignorant of the hour and the day of judgment. Truly, he speaks of a perfect love, from which the one contained by it cannot be separated from any of the evils or deceits.

Perhaps someone will say: how is it possible to understand the written commandment concerning love to be from the beginning and to have been heard by those to whom the epistle is written? For they were not Jews, as the end of the epistle demonstrates; for he says, 'Little children, keep yourselves from idols' (1 John 5:21). Therefore, is the commandment, existing from the beginning and heard by all men, a friendly disposition according to natural concepts? For all, being by nature diurnal and social animals, love their neighbors; whence the Savior, stirring up this natural disposition, says: 'Therefore, all that you wish that men would do to you, do likewise to them' (Matt 7:12).

So that no one might think the system of those in heaven and earth and those in them to be present here from the voice of the world, he interpreted what 'those in it' turns out to be, so that we too might accordingly receive it; for 'and those in it' signifies a passion and a material disposition indicated through the desire of the flesh, which wages war against the soul, and the lust of the eyes (1 John 2:16).

It is also possible from what has been set forth to derive a view concerning the visible world, which is no longer loved by those who have ascended to seeing not the temporal things, but the eternal things; and since those who prefer to love life in it handle the sensible things passively, it is appropriately stated that in it there is the arrogance of life, of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes.