The Divine Names

^9. This Divine Righteousness is also called the Salvation or Preservation of the world, because It preserves and keeps the particular being and place of each thing inviolate from the rest, and is the inviolate Cause of all the particular activity in the world. And if any one speaks of Salvation as the saving Power which plucks the world out of the influence of evil, we will also certainly accept this account of Salvation since Salvation hath so many forms. We shall only ask him to add, that the primary Salvation of the world is that which preserves all things in their proper places without change, conflict, or deterioration, and keeps them all severally without strife or struggle obeying their proper laws, and banishes all inequality and interference from the world, and establishes the due capacities of each so that they fall not into their opposites nor suffer any transferences.^[434] Indeed, it would be quite in keeping with the teaching of the Divine Science to say that this Salvation, working in that beneficence which preserves the world, redeems all things (according as each can receive this saving power) so that they fall not from their natural virtues. Hence the Sacred Writers call It Redemption, both because It allows not the things which truly exist^[435] “to fall away into nothingness,”^[436] and also because, should anything stumble into error or disorder and suffer a diminution of the perfection of its proper virtues, It redeems even this thing from the weakness and the loss it suffers: filling up that which it lacks and supporting its feebleness with Fatherly Love; raising it from its evil state, or rather setting it firmly in its right state; completing once more the virtue it had lost, and ordering and arraying its disorder and disarray; making it perfect and releasing it from all its defects. So much for this matter and for the Righteousness whereby the equality or proportion of all things is measured and given its bounds, and all inequality or disproportion (which arises from the loss of proportion in the individual things) is kept far away. For if one considers the inequality shown in the mutual differences of all things in the world, this also is preserved by Righteousness which will not permit a complete mutual confusion and disturbance of all things, but keeps all things within the several forms naturally belonging to each.^[437]

[434] Salvation is that which, when persons or things are in a right state, keeps them therein; when they are in a wrong state, transfers them thence. The first meaning is positive and essential, the second negative and incidental. The Scriptural view includes both sides, with the emphasis on the first. Protestantism (being in this as in other matters of a negative tendency) ignores the positive side to the great detriment of Religion.

[435] i. e. All good things.

[436] Nothingness includes (1) mere non-entity; (2) evil. (Perhaps both meanings are intended.) Salvation maintains all good things both in their being and in their excellence. If they fell away towards nothingness the result is first corruption and then destruction.

[437] The word ἰσότης implies that a thing is identical in size, etc. (1) with other things; (2) with its own true nature. It thus = (1) “equality”; (2) “rightness.” D. maintains that all things possess the latter though not the former.