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a mystery, of which the very Word of God according to essence became the messenger, by becoming man and, if it is right to say, making manifest the inmost depth of the Father's goodness and showing in Himself the end for which created things clearly received their beginning of being. For because of Christ, that is, the mystery according to Christ, all the ages and the things within those ages have received in Christ the beginning of their being and their end. For a union was forethought of the ages, of limit and limitlessness(1), and of measure and measurelessness, and of boundary and infinity, and of Creator and creation, and of rest (14Γ_190> and motion; which was made manifest in Christ in the last times, giving fulfillment to the foreknowledge of God through itself, so that things naturally in motion might come to rest around that which is in every way immovable according to essence, having completely passed beyond their motion both toward themselves and toward one another, and might receive by experience the knowledge in act of Him in whom they were deemed worthy to rest, unchangeable and abiding in the same way, providing them the enjoyment of what was known.

For the word knows a twofold knowledge of divine things(2): the one, relative, as consisting in word and concepts alone, and not having the sensation of the thing known through experience in act, by which we are governed in the present life; and the other, properly true, providing in experience alone, in act, without word and concepts, the entire sensation of the thing known by participation according to grace, by which, at the future cessation, we receive a divinization beyond nature, unceasingly actualized. And they say that the relative knowledge, as consisting in word and concepts, is kinetic of the desire for knowledge by participation in act(3), but that the knowledge in act, providing through experience the sensation of the thing known by participation, is eliminative of the knowledge that consists in word and concepts.

For the wise say it is impossible for the word about God to coexist with the experience of God, or the concept about Him with the sensation of God. And by word about God I mean the analogy from existing things of the cognitive contemplation concerning Him, and by sensation the experience in participation of the goods beyond nature(4), and by concept the simple and unified knowledge concerning Him from existing things. And perhaps this is also known in every other case, if indeed the experience of a given thing puts an end to the word about it, and the sensation of a given thing renders the concept about it idle (14Γ_192>. And by experience I mean the very knowledge in act that comes after all speech, and by sensation the very participation in the thing known that is revealed after every concept. And perhaps teaching this mystically the great apostle says: whether there are prophecies, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will be brought to nothing, speaking clearly about the knowledge that consists in word and concepts.

This mystery was foreknown before all ages by the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit alone, by the one according to good pleasure, by the one according to direct action, and by the one according to cooperation; for the knowledge of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one, because their essence and power is also one. For the Father was not ignorant of the Son's incarnation, nor was the Holy Spirit, because in the whole Son, who Himself worked the mystery of our salvation through the incarnation, was the whole Father according to essence, not becoming incarnate but approving the Son's incarnation, and the whole Holy Spirit was in the whole Son according to essence, not becoming incarnate but cooperating with the Son in the ineffable incarnation for our sake.

Whether, therefore, one says Christ or the mystery of Christ, the foreknowledge of this is held according to essence by the Holy Trinity alone, Father and Son and Holy Spirit. And let no one be perplexed as to how Christ, being one of the Holy Trinity, is foreknown by it, knowing that Christ was not foreknown as God, but as man, that is, His incarnation according to the economy for the sake of man. For that which always is from that which always is, beyond cause and reason, is never foreknown; for the