Antroposophia theomagica, das ist, eine Rede von der Natur des Menschen

...draws knowledge original: Erkenntnis schöpfft; continuing from the previous page, agrees as well with sound reason as it does with Divine Providence.

"The gods," says Iamblichus original: Jamblicus; a Neoplatonist philosopher, "conceive the whole work within themselves before they give birth to it" original: Dii concipiunt in se totum opus, antequam parturiunt. And the Spirit speaks here to Ezra original: Esdras: "Then I considered these things." He thought of them first and created them afterward. God, in his eternal image (Idea original: Idea; referring to the Platonic concept of a perfect mental blueprint), saw all those things beforehand of which no physical substance was yet present.

The goodness and beauty of the one moved him to create the other. Certainly, the reflection of his first pattern—according to which he unified it with the other—moved him to such love for his creation original: Creatur that, when it had become deformed by sin, he restored it through the suffering of that same model Jesus Christ according to which he had first prepared it.

Dionysius the Areopagite original: Dyonisius Areopagita; a Christian theologian and philosopher of the late 5th century who wrote under this name, who lived in the early times of the New Testament and received the mysteries of the Godhead directly from the Apostles, sometimes calls God the Father the Secret of the Divinity original: Arcanum Divinitatis. Sometimes he calls him that hidden, beyond-essential being original: Occultum illud supersubstantiale, and elsewhere he compares him to a root whose flowers signify the second and third Persons the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This is true: for God the Father is the foundation original: Untersatz or supernatural grounding of his creations; God the Son is the pattern in whose expressed image they were created; and God the Holy Spirit is the spiritual master-builder or mover, who leads the creature to a...