Prologue

Ecclesiastes 1:7

To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

In these words we can understand the two things in which the matter of this third book consists: namely, the mystery of the divine Incarnation and its abundant fruit.

The mystery of the Incarnation is indicated by the return of the streams in the words, to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again (Eccl 1:7). The fruit of the Incarnation, on the other hand, is shown by the repetition of the flow, in the words, they flow again. The streams are the natural kinds of goodness that God pours forth into creatures, such as being, living, understanding, and the like, and the words of Isaiah 41:18 can be understood in reference to these rivers: I will open rivers on the highest of mountains. (The Revised Standard Version (RSV) reads on the bare heights.) The highest mountains are the noblest created things, in which the streams referred to are said to be opened, since it is in them that the natural goods are also received most abundantly, and manifested without any imperfection.

The place where these streams came from is God himself, about whom can be understood what is said in Isaiah 33:21: there the Lord in majesty will be for us, a place of broad rivers and streams; this is as if to say, in the place of the source of the rivers, the streams of natural goods are found more eminently. Thus he says broad in reference to the perfection of the divine goodness, according to all its attributes; and open in reference to its unfailing communication, since God’s goodness, from which all things flow, can neither be exhausted nor confined.

In other created things these streams are found to be distinct from one another, but in man in a certain way all of them are brought together. For man is, as it were, the horizon and boundary of the spiritual and the bodily natures, and, as though a middle between the two, participates in both bodily and spiritual goodness. This is also why, as blessed Gregory explains, (Gregory the Great, Homiliae in evangelia, bk. 2, serm. 29, para. 2 (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina [CCSL] 141:245; Patrologia Latina [PL] 76:1214).) man is understood by the phrase the whole creation at the end of the Gospel of Mark: preach the gospel to the whole creation (Mark 16:15).

And therefore, when human nature was conjoined to God in the mystery of the Incarnation, all of the rivers of natural goodness turned and went back to their beginning, so that what we read in Joshua 4:18 could be said that the waters of the Jordan returned to their place and overflowed all its banks, as before.

Accordingly, the Ecclesiastes verse continues, they flow again—in which the fruit of the Incarnation is indicated. For it was God himself who had poured forth all natural goods; but now, with the return of all things through the assumption of human nature into himself, not God alone, but God-and-man poured forth to man streams of graces in abundance, and from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace (John 1:16). And about this outpouring we read in Sirach 39:22: his blessing covers the dry land like a river.

And so the matter of Book III is clear.

Its first part treats the Incarnation in Distinctions 1–22;

while the second treats the virtues and the gifts brought to us through Christ in Distinctions 23–40.