In the previous discourse we set out clearly what sort of person a theologian should be, what subjects he may discuss, when he should do so, and how far he may go. As far as possible he should be pure, so that light may be grasped by light; he should speak among those who take such matters seriously, so that the word does not fall fruitlessly on barren ground; the proper time is when we have inward calm from the whirl of outward things, so that our breath is not broken up, as happens to people in a frenzy; and the proper limit is as far as we ourselves have advanced, or are advancing.
Since this is so, and since we have broken up for ourselves the divine fallow ground so that we do not sow among thorns, and have smoothed the face of the earth, being shaped by Scripture and shaping others by it, let us now approach the discourses of theology. Let us set at the head of our discourse the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, about whom we are to speak: that the Father may be well pleased, the Son may work with us, and the Holy Spirit may inspire us—or rather, that one illumination may come to us from the one Godhead, divided without division and united in distinction, which is indeed a wonder.
As I eagerly climb the mountain—or, to speak more truly, as I both eagerly desire and tremble, the first because of hope and the second because of weakness—I wish to enter within the cloud and commune with God, for this is what God commands. If anyone is an Aaron, let him come up with me and stand near, even if he must accept remaining outside the cloud. If anyone is a Nadab or an Abihu, or belongs to the elders, let him come up, but stand at a distance according to the measure of his purification. If anyone belongs to the multitude and is unworthy of such height and contemplation, let him not approach at all if he is wholly impure, for that is not safe. If he has at least been purified for a time, let him remain below and hear only the voice and the trumpet—the bare words of reverence. Let him see the mountain smoking and flashing with lightning, at once a threat and a wonder to those unable to ascend.
But if anyone is an evil and untamed beast, wholly incapable of receiving words of contemplation and theology, let him not lurk maliciously among the thickets, waiting to seize on some doctrine or expression, spring upon it suddenly, and tear sound teaching to pieces with his attacks. Let him stand far away and withdraw from the mountain, or he will be stoned, crushed, and perish miserably in his wickedness. True and solid words are stones to beastlike people.
If he is a leopard, let him perish with his spots; if a ravening, roaring lion seeking what he may devour from our souls or our words; if a boar trampling the beautiful and shining pearls of truth; if an Arabian and foreign wolf, or one still sharper in sophistry; if a fox—a deceitful and unbelieving soul, changing its shape with circumstances and needs, feeding on dead and stinking bodies or on little vineyards because the great ones have escaped it—or any other flesh-eating beast rejected by the Law as unclean for food or enjoyment, let our discourse withdraw from all such people.
Then let it be written on firm tablets of stone, on both sides: because the Law has what is visible and what is hidden, the one for the many who remain below, the other for the few who reach the heights.
What has happened to me, my friends, initiates, and fellow-lovers of the truth? I was running as though I would lay hold of God. So I went up the mountain, passed through the cloud, withdrew from matter and material things, and gathered myself inward as far as I could. But when I looked up, I scarcely saw the back of God—and this while sheltered by the Rock, the God the Word who became flesh for us.
Looking through only a little, I did not see the first and undefiled nature, known to itself—that is, to the Trinity—nor what remains within the first veil and is hidden beneath the cherubim. I saw only what comes last and reaches even to us: the majesty manifested in creatures, in what God has brought forth and governs—or, as the divine David calls it, His glory.
These are the back of God, the traces He leaves behind Himself, like shadows and reflections of the sun in water, which make the sun visible to weak eyes because we cannot look directly at its unmixed light. In this way, then, you should speak about God, even if you were Moses and a god to Pharaoh; even if, like Paul, you had been caught up to the third heaven and heard words that cannot be spoken; even if you had risen above them both to an angelic or archangelic rank and dignity. For even if a being were wholly heavenly, or above heaven, far higher by nature and nearer to God than we are, it would still be farther from God and from complete comprehension of His nature than it is raised above our mixed, lowly, earthward-sinking condition.
So we must begin again from this point. To conceive God is difficult; to express Him in words is impossible. So taught one of the Greek theologians, not without skill, as it seems to me: he said that God is difficult to know, perhaps so that he might appear to have attained some knowledge of Him, while escaping conviction of ignorance because it is impossible to put that knowledge into words.
But in my judgment it is impossible to express God, and still more impossible to comprehend Him. For what can be conceived might perhaps be made known by words—if not adequately, at least imperfectly—to someone who is not wholly deaf or dull in understanding. But to grasp the whole of so great a reality is utterly impossible and unattainable, not only for the careless and ignorant, but even for those who are highly exalted and love God, and indeed for every created nature. The darkness here below and the thick covering of the flesh stand in the way of full understanding of the truth.
I do not know whether the same applies to the higher and purer intelligences. Because they are nearer to God and illuminated by the fullness of His light, perhaps they see, if not the whole, at least more perfectly and clearly than we do—some more, some less, according to their rank.
Enough on this. As far as we are concerned, it is not only the peace of God that surpasses every mind and understanding, nor only the things God has stored up in promise for the righteous—things that eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and the human mind has scarcely conceived at all—nor only exact knowledge of creation that lies beyond us.
Even here you should know that you possess only a shadow when you hear, “I will consider the heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars,” and the order established in them. The Psalmist is not describing a complete present understanding, but what he hopes to contemplate more fully.
Far beyond these is the nature that is above them and from which they come: the incomprehensible and unbounded nature. I do not mean that we cannot know that God is, but that we cannot comprehend what He is. Our preaching is not empty and our faith is not vain; this is not what we teach. Do not turn our frank confession of ignorance into an excuse either for denying God through sophistry or for accusing us of arrogance. It is one thing to be convinced that something exists, and quite another to know what it is.
Our eyes and the law of nature teach us that God exists and that He is the cause who made and sustains all things. Our eyes do so because they rest on visible things and see them beautifully established, progressing in order, moving while remaining fixed in their appointed course. Natural reason does so because, from visible things and their order, it works back to their Maker.
For how could this universe have come into being or been held together unless God had called it into existence and continued to preserve it? Anyone who sees a finely made lyre and considers the skill with which it has been fitted and arranged, or hears its music, naturally thinks of the maker or player and is led back to that person in thought, even without seeing him. In the same way, the Maker, mover, and preserver of all created things is disclosed to us, though our mind does not comprehend Him.
A person who refuses to follow these natural indications even this far is very deficient in understanding. Yet even what we have imagined or reason has sketched for us does not demonstrate what God is. Suppose someone has reached some awareness that God exists. How will God's being itself be demonstrated? Who has ever reached the limit of such wisdom? Who has been found worthy of so great a gift? Who has opened the mouth of the mind and drawn in the Spirit, so that through the Spirit who searches all things, even the depths of God, he has taken God into his comprehension and no longer needs to advance, already possessing the highest object of desire—the goal toward which every noble life and every intelligence presses?
What, then, will you conceive the divine nature to be if you rely on the approximations of reason? Where will reason carry you, most philosophical of men and best of theologians, you who boast of familiarity with the unlimited?
Is God a body? How, then, is He infinite and without limit, without shape, intangible, and invisible? Are these properties of a body? That would be an astonishing claim, for such things do not belong to bodily nature.
Or will you say that He has a body but lacks these properties? What folly—to give God nothing beyond what we possess. How is He worthy of worship if He is circumscribed? And how will He escape being composed of elements, and therefore capable of being resolved back into them and even dissolved altogether?
Everything composite provides an occasion for conflict; conflict leads to separation; separation leads to dissolution. But dissolution is wholly foreign to God and to the first nature. Therefore there can be no separation, so that there may be no dissolution; no conflict, so that there may be no separation; and no composition, so that there may be no conflict. Therefore there can be no body either, so that there may be no composition. Thus the argument moves backward from the last consequence to the first.
And how shall we preserve the truth that God penetrates all things and fills all things, as Scripture says, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord,” and “The Spirit of the Lord fills the world,” if God partly contains and is partly contained?
Either He will fill an empty universe—in which case everything else has disappeared, and we have insulted God by making Him a body while stripping away the things He made—or He will be one body enclosed within other bodies, which is impossible. Or perhaps He will be intertwined with them or set against them, as liquids mingle so that one divides and is divided by another. That is more absurd and senile than even the atoms of Epicurus. So the bodily argument collapses, having neither body nor solid foundation.
But suppose we say that God is immaterial—perhaps like the “fifth element” imagined by some philosophers—and is carried around in circular motion. For the moment, let us grant that He is immaterial and even, if they wish, bodiless. I will not dispute that point now. In what sense, then, would He be one of the things that move and are moved? What an insult to make the Creator subject to the same motion as creatures, and to make the One who bears all things one with the things He bears.
Again, what moves this fifth element? What moves all things? What moves that mover? And what moves the mover of that? The regress has no end. And how can God avoid being contained in space if He is subject to motion?
If instead they say that He is something other than the fifth element—say an angelic nature—then they must show that angels are bodily and what kind of bodies they possess. And if God is only such a being, how much higher would He be than the angels who serve Him? If He is higher than they are, we are again faced with an irrational swarm of bodies and a bottomless depth of nonsense.
So we see that God is not a body. No inspired teacher has ever asserted or accepted such a notion, nor does the judgment of our own faith allow it. Nothing remains, then, but to conceive Him as incorporeal.
Yet even when “incorporeal” is granted, the word still does not set God's essence before us or contain it within its meaning—any more than “unbegotten,” “without beginning,” “unchanging,” “incorruptible,” or any other term used of God. What does it tell us about His being or substance to say that He has no beginning and cannot be changed or limited? The whole question of what He is remains for someone who truly has the mind of God and has advanced in contemplation.
To say of something, “It is a body,” or “It is begotten,” does not tell you clearly what the thing itself is. You must also name the subject to which the description belongs, since “bodily,” “begotten,” and “mortal” may be said of a human being, an ox, or a horse. In the same way, someone who eagerly seeks the nature of the One who truly is cannot stop at saying what God is not. He must go beyond negation and say what God is, since it is easier to grasp one positive point than endlessly strip away one denial after another in the hope of arriving at comprehension.
Someone who tells us only what God is not, without saying what He is, is like a person who, when asked what twice five is, answers: “Not two, not three, not four, not five, not twenty or thirty, not any number below ten, and not any multiple of ten,” but never says “ten” or settles the questioner's mind on a firm answer. It is far easier and shorter to show what something is not once you know what it is than to establish what it is merely by removing one thing after another that it is not. Surely this is clear to everyone.
Since we have established that God is incorporeal, let us carry the inquiry a little farther. Is He nowhere, or somewhere?
If He is nowhere, an overly inquisitive person might ask how He can exist at all. For if what does not exist is nowhere, perhaps what is nowhere does not exist either.
But if He is somewhere, He must be either within the universe or above it. If He is within the universe, He must be either in one part of it or in the whole. If in one part, He would be circumscribed by something smaller than Himself. If everywhere within it, He would be circumscribed by something larger and more extensive—the universe as a whole containing its parts—if indeed the universe itself is to contain God and no place is to be free of limitation. That follows if God is contained in the universe. And besides, where was He before the universe came into being? That is no small difficulty.
If He is above the universe, what distinguishes the place “above” from the universe itself, and where is that “above”? How could what transcends and what is transcended be distinguished in thought unless some boundary divided and defined them? Would there not have to be something between the universe and what is above it? And what could that be except place, which we have already rejected?
I have not even yet pressed the further point that God would be circumscribed if He were comprehensible to the mind, for comprehension itself is a kind of circumscription.
Why have I gone through all this—perhaps in more detail than most people want to hear, and in a style shaped by the present fashion for discourse, which despises noble simplicity and prefers what is crooked and intricate?
So that the tree may be known by its fruits: I mean, so that the darkness at work in such teaching may be exposed by the obscurity of its arguments. My aim has not been to win admiration for startling expressions or an excess of cleverness by tying knots and then untying them, as though I possessed Daniel's miraculous gift. I have wanted only to make clear the point toward which the argument has aimed from the beginning: the divine nature cannot be grasped by human reason, and we cannot even form an adequate representation of its greatness.
This is not because God is envious. Envy is utterly foreign to the divine nature, which is free from passion, wholly good, and Lord of all—least of all could God envy what is most honored among His creatures. What does the Word value more highly than rational creatures endowed with speech? Their very existence is evidence of His supreme goodness.
Nor is God incomprehensible for the sake of His own glory and honor, as though the fullness of His majesty depended on our inability to approach Him. It would be sophistical and unworthy—not merely of God, but of any reasonably good person who understands himself—to secure one's own superiority by placing an obstacle in another person's way.
Whether there are other reasons as well, let those who are nearer to God and who behold His unsearchable judgments consider them—if indeed there are people so eminent in virtue that they walk, as the saying goes, the paths of the infinite.
As far as we have reached, measuring difficult things with our little measure, perhaps one reason is that we should not lightly throw away a possession because it was gained too easily. People hold tightly to what they acquire through labor, while what comes easily is quickly cast aside because it seems easily recoverable. Thus even the difficulty of this blessing becomes a blessing to those who have understanding.
Or perhaps it is so that we do not suffer Lucifer's fate: receiving the full light and then stiffening our necks against the Lord Almighty, only to fall most pitiably from the height we had reached. Or perhaps it is so that a greater reward may await those who are purified here and who have endured long and nobly in pursuit of what they desire.
For this reason the darkness of the body has been placed between us and God, like the ancient cloud between the Egyptians and the Hebrews. Perhaps this is what is meant by, “He made darkness His hiding place”—our dullness, through which few can see even a little.
Let those whose business it is pursue that question and ascend as far as they can. For us, who are, as Jeremiah says, “prisoners of the earth,” covered by the density of bodily nature, this much at least is clear. A person cannot outrun his own shadow, however fast he moves, because the shadow moves with him. The eye cannot reach visible objects without the intervening air and light. A fish cannot move outside the water. In the same way, while we are in the body we cannot deal with purely intelligible realities altogether apart from bodily images. Something belonging to our own environment always slips in, even when the mind has withdrawn as fully as possible from visible things, gathered itself inward, and tried to apply itself to the invisible realities akin to it.
You can see this from the following. Are not Spirit, Fire, Light, Love, Wisdom, Righteousness, Mind, Word, and similar names used of the first nature?
Yet can you conceive spirit without motion or diffusion? Fire without fuel, upward movement, color, or shape? Light wholly unmixed with air and separated from what appears to be its source? What do you conceive a mind to be except something existing in a person other than itself, whose movements are thoughts, whether silent or spoken? And what is “word” except what either remains silent within us or is poured out in speech—I hesitate to say “released”?
If you think of wisdom, is it not the disposition of mind we know by that name, occupied with contemplation of divine or human things? And righteousness and love—are they not praiseworthy dispositions, one opposed to injustice and the other to hatred, now growing stronger, now relaxing, sometimes taking possession of us and sometimes withdrawing, in short making us what we are and changing us as colors change bodies?
Or should we leave all these images behind and look toward the divine nature itself as best we can, gathering only a fragmentary understanding of it from its images? What is this subtle reality that is expressed through all these names and yet is none of them? How can the unity that is simple and incomparable in its nature nevertheless be all these things and each of them perfectly?
Our mind grows faint trying to pass beyond bodily things and to commune with the incorporeal while stripped of every bodily image, because in its present weakness it looks toward things beyond its strength. Every rational nature longs for God and for the first cause, yet cannot grasp Him for the reasons already given.
Wearied by longing and restless under its inability, the mind therefore tries another path. Either it looks at visible things and makes a god out of one of them—a wretched device, since how could what is seen be higher and more divine than the one who sees, so that the latter should worship the former? Or, through the beauty and order of visible things, it rises toward what is above sight, without losing God because of the splendor of what can be seen.
For this reason some have made a god of the sun, others of the moon, others of the host of stars, and others of heaven itself with all its armies, assigning the guidance of the universe to them according to the character or extent of their movement.
Others have deified the elements—earth, air, water, and fire—because of their usefulness, since human life cannot continue without them. Others have worshiped whatever visible objects happened to attract them, setting up the most beautiful things they saw as gods.
There are also those who worship pictures and images. At first these were images of their own ancestors, especially among people moved strongly by affection and the senses, and the dead were honored with memorials. Later generations, separated by long intervals of time, came even to worship images of strangers. Through ignorance of the first nature they accepted inherited honor as lawful and necessary, because custom strengthened by time came to be regarded as law.
And I think some who served arbitrary rulers, praised bodily strength, and admired physical beauty eventually made a god out of the person they had honored, perhaps finding some myth to lend support to the deception.
Those most enslaved to passion even deified their passions, or gave them honor among the gods: anger, bloodthirstiness, lust, drunkenness, and every similar evil. In this way they manufactured a shameful and unjust excuse for their own sins.
Some gods they left on earth, some they hid beneath the earth—which was the only wise thing in their whole arrangement—and some they raised to heaven. What a ridiculous division of an inheritance! Then, by the authority and private judgment of their error, they gave each imagined power the name of a god or demon, set up costly statues that became a snare, and thought they honored them with blood, the smoke of sacrifices, and sometimes even with the most shameful acts, frenzies, and murders. Such honors were indeed fitting for such gods.
People have even degraded themselves by worshiping monsters, four-footed animals, reptiles, and the vilest and most absurd creatures, offering to them the glory that belongs to God. It is difficult to decide which deserves greater contempt, the worshipers or what they worship. Probably the worshipers do, by far: although they possess a rational nature and have received grace from God, they have set up what is worse as though it were better.
This was the trick of the Evil One, who, as so often, abused something good for an evil purpose. He seized their wandering desire as it searched for God, distorted its power toward himself, and stole the desire itself. Like a blind man misleading another blind man who asks for the road, he took them by the hand and scattered them in different directions, all into one pit of death and destruction.
That was their course. But reason receives us in our desire for God and in our sense that we cannot be without a leader and guide. It directs us toward visible things and toward what has existed from the beginning, but it does not stop there. Wisdom would not grant sovereignty to things that observation shows to be of equal rank. Through them reason leads us to what is above them, the One from whom they receive their being.
What ordered the things in heaven and on earth, the creatures moving through the air and those living in the water—or, before these, heaven and earth themselves, air and water? Who mingled them and distributed them? What gives them their mutual relation, dependence, and harmony? I admire the pagan thinker who asked such questions.
What gave all these things motion and drives their ceaseless, unhindered movement? Is it not their Craftsman, who implanted in them the rational order according to which the universe is moved and governed? Is it not the One who made them and brought them into being?
We cannot attribute such power to chance. Suppose their coming into existence were accidental. To what would you attribute their order? If you like, we will grant even that to chance. Then to what will you attribute their preservation and protection according to the terms of their first creation? To chance again? Surely not. What else can it be but God?
Thus reason that comes from God, implanted in everyone from the beginning—the first law within us, bound up with our very being—leads us through visible things up to God. Let us therefore begin again and examine the matter from this point.
What God is in His nature and essence no human being has ever discovered, nor can discover. Whether it will ever be discovered is a question anyone may examine and decide. In my judgment it will be known when what is godlike and divine in us—our mind and reason—has been united with what is like itself, and the image has ascended to the Archetype for which it now longs. This, I think, is the solution of the much-discussed saying, “Then we shall know as we are known.”
In the present life, however, what reaches us is only a small outflow, a faint radiance from a great Light. Therefore, if someone is said to have known God, or Scripture bears witness that he knew God, we should understand that he possessed a measure of knowledge that made him appear more fully illuminated than someone who did not possess the same degree of light. The relative superiority is spoken of as though it were absolute knowledge—not because it truly is absolute, but because it is greater by comparison with the other person's capacity.
Thus Enosh hoped to call upon the name of the Lord. What is praised in him is hope—not that he knew God's nature, but that he called upon Him. Enoch was translated, but it is not clear whether this happened because he had already comprehended the divine nature or so that he might come to comprehend it.
Noah's glory was that he pleased God. He was entrusted with preserving the whole world from the waters—or rather, preserving the seeds of the world—and escaped the flood in a small ark.
Abraham, great patriarch though he was, was justified by faith and offered a strange sacrifice, a type of the great Sacrifice. Yet he did not see God as God; he gave Him food as to a man. He was approved because he worshiped according to the measure of his understanding.
Jacob dreamed of a lofty ladder and ascending angels. In a mystery he anointed a pillar—perhaps signifying the Rock anointed for our sake—and named a place “House of God” in honor of the One he had seen. He wrestled with God in human form, whatever that wrestling of God with man may mean—perhaps a comparison between human virtue and divine strength. He bore in his body the marks of the struggle, displaying the defeat of created nature, and as a reward for his reverence received a change of name: from Jacob to Israel, that great and honored name.
Yet neither Jacob nor anyone descended from him, down to this day among the twelve tribes that were his children, could boast of having comprehended the whole nature of God or seen Him in His pure reality.
For Elijah, neither the violent wind, nor the fire, nor the earthquake signified God's presence, as the account teaches, but a gentle breeze—and even that signified His presence, not His nature. And who was Elijah? The man taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire, a sign of the righteous man's more-than-human excellence.
Consider also Manoah, the judge of old, and Peter the disciple in later times. Manoah could not bear even the sight of one who represented God and said, “We are doomed, wife, for we have seen God,” speaking as though even a vision of God were beyond human capacity, much more God's nature itself. Peter likewise could not endure Christ's presence in his boat and asked Him to depart, though Peter was more eager than the others for knowledge of Christ, was blessed for this, and was entrusted with the greatest gifts.
What shall we say of Isaiah or Ezekiel, who beheld very great mysteries, or of the other prophets? Isaiah saw the Lord of hosts seated on the throne of glory, surrounded, praised, and veiled by the six-winged seraphim. He himself was purified by the burning coal and equipped for prophetic service. Ezekiel describes God's cherubic chariot, the throne above the cherubim, the firmament over the throne, the One appearing upon the firmament, and the voices, powers, and deeds that accompanied the vision.
Whether these were waking appearances visible only to holy persons, or trustworthy visions of the night, or impressions upon the mind by which the future was experienced as present, or some other ineffable form of prophecy, I cannot say. The God of the prophets knows, and those who are inspired in this way know. But neither these men nor any of their companions ever stood within the council and essence of God, as Scripture says, or saw and proclaimed God's nature.
If Paul had been permitted to tell us what the third heaven contained, and what his own advance—or ascent, or being caught up—to that place involved, perhaps we would know something more about God's nature, if indeed that was the mystery of his rapture. But since the matter was unspeakable, we too will honor it with silence.
This much we hear Paul say: “We know in part and we prophesy in part.” Such are the confessions of a man who was not untrained in knowledge, who could demand proof that Christ was speaking in him—the great teacher and champion of the truth. For this reason he judges all earthly knowledge to be like seeing through a mirror dimly, because it rests on small images of the truth.
And unless I seem excessively careful or overanxious in pursuing this question, perhaps this is also what the Word Himself meant when He said that there were things the disciples could not bear then but would bear and understand later. John, the Forerunner of the Word and great voice of truth, declared in a similar way that even the whole world could not contain all that might be said.
Every truth, then, and every line of reasoning is difficult to trace and hard to contemplate. We are attempting a great work with a very small instrument when, by merely human wisdom, we pursue knowledge of the One who truly is. We do this while accompanied by the senses—or at least not free from them—though the senses carry us about and often lead us astray. We apply ourselves to realities grasped only by the mind, but we cannot bring a naked intellect into direct contact with naked realities so as to draw much nearer to the truth and shape the mind by the things themselves.
The subject of God is harder to reach precisely because it is more perfect than any other. It gives rise to more objections, and resolving them requires greater labor. Every objection, however small, interrupts the course of the argument and stops its advance, like someone suddenly pulling the reins on horses running at full speed and turning them around with the shock.
Thus Solomon, wisest of all people before him and in his own generation, received from God breadth of heart and a flood of contemplation more abundant than the sand. Yet the deeper he entered, the more dizzy he became, until he declared that the farthest point of wisdom was the discovery of how far wisdom remained from him.
Paul likewise tries to reach—not God's nature, since he knew that to be impossible—but God's judgments. Finding no way out and no resting place in the ascent, and finding that the mind's earnest search never reaches a final conclusion because some new and unattained point is always opening before it, he ends in wonder. He calls it the riches and depth of God and confesses that God's judgments are unsearchable. David says much the same: at one time he calls God's judgments a great deep whose foundations cannot be reached by measurement or sense; at another he says that God's knowledge of him and of his own constitution is wonderful, stronger than his own power to grasp.
Suppose, he says, I leave everything else aside and consider only myself: the whole nature and constitution of a human being; how our elements are mingled; what our movement is; how the mortal is joined to the immortal; how I am drawn downward and yet carried upward; how the soul is circumscribed and yet gives life and shares in sensation; how the mind is at once bounded and unbounded—dwelling within us while swiftly traveling across the universe in its movement and activity; how thought is both received and communicated through speech, passing through the air and entering another person; how the mind shares in sensation and yet can withdraw itself from sensation.
And even before these questions: what was our first formation and composition in nature's workshop, and what is our final development and completion? What is our desire for nourishment, and how is nourishment imparted? Who led us instinctively to the first springs and sources of life? How is the body nourished by food, and the soul by reason?
What is the pull of nature and the mutual relation between parents and children, by which they are held together as though by the spell of love? How do species remain constant and yet differ in their individual characteristics, when there are so many individuals that their particular marks cannot be fully described? How is the same kind of living creature both mortal and, in another sense, immortal—the individual dying while the kind continues through generation? One departs and another takes its place, like the flow of a river that is never still and yet remains continuous.
One could say much more about the members and parts of the body and their mutual fitting, both for usefulness and beauty: how some are joined and others separated; some more honorable and others less attractive; some united and others divided; some containing and others contained, all according to the law and reason of nature.
Much might also be said about voice and hearing. How is the voice carried by the organs of speech and received by the ears, the two being joined through the striking and resonance of the intervening air? And what of the eyes, which have an indescribable communion with visible things and move by the will alone, both together, affected in a manner closely corresponding to the mind? For with equal speed the mind reaches objects of thought and the eye objects of sight.
And what of the other senses, which reason has not exhausted? Or sleep and the images of dreams? Memory and recollection? Calculation, anger, desire? In short, what can we say of all the powers by which this little world called a human being is governed?
Should I list for you the differences among the other animals, both from us and from one another—their differences in nature, generation, nourishment, habitat, temperament, and even something resembling social life?
Why are some animals gregarious and others solitary; some plant-eating and others flesh-eating; some fierce and others tame; some affectionate toward humans and domesticated, others untamable and free? Some we might describe as bordering on reason and capable of learning, while others are wholly irrational and cannot be taught. Some have sharper senses, others duller; some cannot move from place to place, others walk; some are very swift and others very slow.
Some excel in size or beauty, or in one of these; others are very small, very ugly, or both. Some are strong, others weak; some equipped for self-defense, others timid and crafty, while others again are left exposed. Some are industrious and provident, others completely idle and careless.
And before reaching even these questions, why are some crawling creatures and others upright; some fixed in one place, others amphibious; some adorned with beauty and others without ornament? Why are some paired and others solitary; some restrained and others unrestrained; some very fertile and others not? Why do some live long and others only briefly?
It would take a very long discourse to go through every detail.
Look also at the tribes of fish gliding through the waters, as though flying through a liquid element. They breathe the air proper to them, yet are endangered by ours, just as we are endangered by water. Observe their habits and dispositions, their mating and reproduction, their size and beauty, their attachment to particular places, their migrations, their gathering and dispersal, and the characteristics that so closely resemble those of land animals—sometimes shared with them, sometimes contrary, both in name and in form.
Consider also the families of birds and their varieties of shape and color, both the voiceless kinds and the songbirds. What accounts for their melody, and who gave it to them? Who placed the lyre in the grasshopper's breast and gave it songs and chirping in the branches, so that when the sun stirs them they make music at midday, sing through the groves, and accompany travelers with their voices?
Who wove the swan's song, when it spreads its wings to the breeze and turns the rustling into melody? I will not speak of forced sounds and all the devices by which human art tries to imitate nature.
Where did the peacock, that proud bird of Media, acquire its love of beauty and praise—for it seems very conscious of its beauty? When it sees someone approaching, or when, as people say, it wishes to display itself before the females, it lifts its neck, spreads its tail in a circle, glittering like gold and studded like stars, and parades its beauty with stately steps before those who admire it.
Scripture itself marvels even at human skill in weaving and asks who gave a woman wisdom for weaving and knowledge of embroidery. Yet this belongs to a rational creature, one that surpasses the animals in wisdom and reaches in thought even to the things of heaven.
But I want you to marvel also at the natural knowledge found even in irrational creatures, and, if you can, explain its cause.
How do birds know to build nests on rocks, in trees, and under roofs, arranging them for safety, beauty, and the comfort of their young? Where do bees and spiders get their diligence and skill? Bees plan honeycombs and join them together with coordinated hexagonal cells, constructing their foundations through partitions and alternating angles with straight lines—and they do all this in dim hives and dark combs. Spiders weave elaborate webs out of threads so fine they seem almost like air, stretching them in different directions from nearly invisible beginnings, producing at once an ingenious dwelling and a trap for weaker creatures to provide food.
What Euclid ever imitated such work while pursuing philosophy with imaginary lines and exhausting himself with demonstrations? From what Palamedes did cranes learn their tactics, their formations, their ordered ranks, and the complexity of their flight? Who were their Phidiases and Zeuxises, their Parrhasii and Aglaophons, teaching them to shape and display such beautiful forms?
What harmonious Cretan chorus of Daedalus, made for a maiden and carried to the highest refinement of beauty, can compare? What Cretan labyrinth, so difficult to enter and unravel, constantly crossing itself by the ingenuity of its design?
I will not even speak of the ants: their storehouses and stewards, their collection of provisions in quantities suited to the time of need, their marches and leaders, and the remarkable order of their work.
If you understand all this and are familiar with such branches of knowledge, look next at the differences among plants, even down to the artistic form of their leaves, arranged both to delight the eye and to serve the fruit. Consider the variety and abundance of fruits, especially the remarkable beauty of those most necessary for life.
Think of the power of roots, juices, flowers, and fragrances—not only delightful but useful in medicine—and of the grace and qualities of colors, and again of the costly brilliance and transparency of precious stones. Nature has set all these before you like a rich banquet open to everyone, supplying both what life needs and what adorns it, so that, if nothing else will teach you, at least God's benefits may lead you to know Him, and your own need may make you wiser.
Then travel in thought through the length and breadth of the earth, the common mother of all; consider the gulfs of the sea, linked with one another and with the land; the beautiful forests; the rivers and springs, abundant and perennial. Some waters are cold, drinkable, and flow on the surface. Others run beneath the earth and through caverns, then are driven outward with force, heated through this pressure and struggle, and burst forth wherever they find an opening. In many places they provide hot baths, and together with cold waters offer healing freely and naturally.
Tell me: how and from where do these things come? What is this vast web woven without human art? They are no less marvelous in their relations to one another than when each is considered by itself.
How does the earth stand firm and unmoving? On what is it supported? What holds that support? Reason itself finds nothing beneath it on which to rest except the will of God. Why is one part raised into mountain peaks and another spread into plains, with countless variations? Because the differences are gradual, the earth both meets our needs more richly and becomes more beautiful through variety: some regions are given for habitation, while others—the high mountains and broken coastlines—remain uninhabited.
Is this not a very clear display of God's majestic workmanship?
And even if I did not marvel at the sea's vastness, I would marvel at its restraint: though fluid, it remains within its boundaries. If not at its restraint, then surely at its greatness. Since I marvel at both, I praise the power revealed in both.
What gathered it together? What set its limits? Why does it rise and then grow calm again, as though respecting the neighboring land? How does it receive all the rivers and yet remain the same, because of the immense abundance of its waters? How can sand alone be the boundary of so vast an element?
Have your natural philosophers, with all their expertise in useless details, anything to tell us—those who try, so to speak, to measure the sea with a cup and God's mighty works with their own notions? Or shall I give you Scripture's explanation, concise yet more satisfying and true than the longest arguments? “He has bounded the face of the waters by His command.” That command is the chain that restrains fluid nature.
And how does God carry across the sea this land-dwelling sailor, the human being, in a little vessel moved by a little wind? Do you not marvel at the sight? Is your mind not astonished? Thus earth and sea are joined through human needs and commerce, and realities separated so widely by nature are brought together for our use.
What are the first sources of springs? Search them out, if you can. Who cut paths through plains and mountains for the rivers and gave them an unhindered course? And how does the opposite marvel occur: that the sea never overflows and the rivers never cease to run?
What power in water nourishes living things, and why are its effects so different? Some things are watered from above; others drink through their roots—if I may allow my language to become a little luxuriant while speaking of God's luxuriant gifts.
Now leave the earth and earthly things and rise in thought into the air, so that our discourse may advance in order. From there I will lead you to the heavenly things, to heaven itself, and to what is above heaven. Beyond that my discourse hesitates to climb, though it will still rise as far as it can.
Who poured out the air, that vast and abundant wealth? It is not measured to people according to rank or fortune, not fenced by boundaries, not distributed by age. Like the manna, it is received according to need and valued because it is shared equally. It is the vehicle of winged creatures, the dwelling of the winds, the regulator of the seasons, the quickener of living things—or rather the preserver of bodily life. In it bodies live; through it we speak; through it light and everything illuminated by light are seen.
But consider what follows. I cannot assign to the air itself complete mastery over everything associated with it. Where are the storehouses of the winds? Where are the treasuries of snow? Who, as Scripture says, has begotten the drops of dew? From whose womb came the ice? Who binds the waters in the clouds, holding some there—what a marvel!—by His word though water naturally flows, and pouring the rest over the whole earth at the right season and in proper measure?
He does not let the whole mass of moisture run free and uncontrolled: the cleansing in Noah's days was enough, and the One who cannot lie does not forget His covenant. Nor does He hold it all back, leaving us to need another Elijah to end a drought.
If God shuts heaven, who will open it? If He opens the floodgates, who can close them? Who can send excessive rain or withhold sufficient rain unless He governs the universe by His own measures and balances?
And what scientific account will you give of thunder and lightning, you who thunder from the earth but cannot flash even a small spark of truth? Will you explain clouds as vapors rising from the earth, or by thickening air, or by pressure and collision among unusually thin clouds, making pressure the cause of lightning and collision the cause of thunder? Or will you say that wind trapped without an outlet produces lightning by compression and thunder by bursting free?
Now, if in thought you have passed through the air and all that belongs to it, come with me to heaven and the heavenly things. Let faith lead us more than reason, if you have learned from matters close at hand how weak reason is before realities beyond reason. Learn reason's proper limits by recognizing what exceeds it, so that you may not remain wholly earthbound because you are ignorant even of your own ignorance.
Who spread out the sky around us and set the stars in order? Or first, tell me from your supposed knowledge of heavenly things what the sky and the stars themselves are. You do not know what lies at your feet and cannot even take the measure of yourself, yet you insist on investigating what is above your nature and staring into the limitless.
Grant that you understand their circuits and periods, waxing and waning, settings and risings, degrees and minutes, and all the other measurements that make you so proud of your wonderful knowledge. You still have not comprehended the realities themselves. You have only observed certain movements. When long practice confirms many observations, gathering the experience of many people into one general rule and then drawing a law from it, we call the result “science,” just as repeated observation has made the moon's phases familiar to our sight. But such knowledge is not comprehension of the thing's nature.
If you are truly learned in these matters and deserve admiration, tell me the cause of this order and motion.
How did the sun become a beacon for the whole world and for every eye, like the leader of a chorus who conceals the rest of the stars by his brightness more completely than some stars conceal others? The proof is that they may rise while he shines, yet his light overwhelms them so thoroughly that their simultaneous rising is not even noticed.
Beautiful as a bridegroom, swift and mighty as a giant—I will let my own Scriptures sing his praise—he is so powerful that from one end of the world to the other his heat reaches everything, and nothing is hidden from it. He fills every eye with light and every embodied creature with warmth, heating but not burning because of the measured gentleness of his nature and the ordered course of his movement. He is present to all and embraces all equally.
Have you considered the significance of a pagan philosopher's comparison: that the sun stands among visible things as God stands among intelligible realities? The one gives light to the eyes, the other to the mind; the one is most beautiful among things seen, the other among things understood.
But who first set the sun in motion? What continually carries it around its circuit, though it remains constant in its nature—truly tireless, giving and sustaining life, and deserving all the other titles the poets rightly give it, never resting either from its course or from its benefits?
How does it make day when it is above the earth and night when it is below—or however we ought to describe the matter when contemplating the sun? What explains the mutual advance and retreat of day and night, their regular irregularity, if I may use that expression?
How does the sun make and divide the seasons, which come and go in ordered sequence, weaving through one another like a dance and yet remaining distinct according to a law at once of harmony and order? They mix little by little and gradually encroach on their neighbors, as days and nights do, so that sudden change does not trouble us.
Enough about the sun.
Do you know the nature and phenomena of the moon, its measures and courses of light? Do you know why the sun rules the day and the moon governs the night, why the moon gives confidence to wild animals while the sun calls human beings to their work, each rising or lowering according to what is useful?
Do you know the bonds of the Pleiades or the enclosure of Orion, as the One does who counts the number of the stars and calls them all by name? Do you know how the glory of one star differs from another, and the order of their movements? If not, why should I trust you when from the stars you weave predictions about human affairs and arm the creature against its Creator?
What then? Shall we stop here, having spoken only about matter and visible things? Or, since Scripture understands Moses' tabernacle as an image of the whole creation—the entire order of visible and invisible realities—shall we pass through the first veil, go beyond the realm of sense, and look into the Holy Place, the intelligible and heavenly creation?
Yet not even this can we see in a wholly incorporeal way, although it is incorporeal. Scripture calls it “fire” and “spirit”: God is said to make His angels spirits and His ministers a flame of fire—unless “make” here means preserve by the Word through whom they came into being. An angel is called spirit as belonging to the intelligible order, and fire because of a purifying nature. I know that these same names are also used of the first nature.
At least in comparison with us, then, let the angelic nature be called incorporeal, or as near to incorporeal as possible.
Do you see how dizzy we become as the discourse reaches these things, and how little farther we can go? We know that there are angels and archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, splendors, ascents, intelligent powers or intelligences: pure and unmixed natures, immovable toward evil or at least very difficult to move, forever circling around the first cause—however one should sing their praise.
From there they receive the purest illumination, one in one degree and another in another, according to nature and rank. They are so formed and impressed by beauty that they become secondary lights and can enlighten others through the overflow and communication of the first Light.
They are ministers of the divine will, powerful with strength both natural and bestowed, traversing all things and readily present wherever they are sent because of their eagerness for service and the lightness of their nature. Different orders take responsibility for different parts of the world or are appointed over different regions of the universe, as the One who ordered and distinguished all knows.
They bring everything toward one harmony, toward the single will of the Creator of all. They sing the divine majesty and eternally contemplate eternal glory—not so that God might gain glory, since nothing can be added to the One who is full and who gives every good to others, but so that these first natures after God may never cease to receive His beneficence.
If we have spoken of these things worthily, the grace belongs to the Trinity, the one Godhead in the Three. If our account has fallen short of what we desired, even so it has achieved its purpose: to show that even the secondary, created intelligible natures surpass the power of our understanding. How much more, then, does the first—and I hesitate merely to call it the nature above all—the one and only divine nature surpass us.