Paraphrasis in Dionysium Areopagitam

for example, partaking of the undefiled gifts, he is mystically initiated, without being taught, and practically [attains] sanctification. For this reason, such a mystical theology acts. But that which is through the understanding of faith persuades and leads up to the truth. And indeed, not only the legal tradition, but also the rite of our own mysteries required sacred symbols; and it is not surprising, since even the angels bring forward divine mysteries through enigmas. And the Lord Himself appears to theologize in parables as if in symbols; and [He did] this while delivering the deifying mysteries at the Supper, or those that work to make the participants divine, or those performed by the Master Christ and our God through a typical serving of the table. He speaks of "table-serving" then as the reclining at the table, but now as the mysteries performed at the divine table through the holy bread and the cup of blessing. For these things are performed in this way for two reasons: one, that the holy things may be separated from the many, who are unable to reach the things understood, for whose sake the symbols are made; and second, since our life is from soul and body, and is at once indivisible and divisible—the one, because of the indivisibility and incorporeality of the soul; the other, because of the varied and multipartite nature of the body—the divine dispensation also becomes twofold, illuminating us proportionally. And that which is impassible in the soul, that is, the intellectual [part], not as being entirely without participation in passion, but as not having the incentives to suffer from outside, as the body falls into many evils which the soul does not endure without its own willingness—this impassible [part], then, has been set apart for intelligible visions, which are also called simple and innermost, as if they were most secret. But its passionate [part], that which is through the senses—that is, the part receptive of things from outside—receives the...