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| Against Those Who Assert that Things that are Infinite Cannot Be Comprehended by the Knowledge of God.
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Chapter 18.—Against Those Who
Assert that Things that are Infinite555
| 555 I.e.indefinite, or an indefinite succession of
things. | Cannot Be Comprehended by the
Knowledge of God.
As for their other assertion, that
God’s knowledge cannot comprehend things infinite, it only
remains for them to affirm, in order that they may sound the depths
of their impiety, that God does not know all numbers. For it is
very certain that they are infinite; since, no matter of what
number you suppose an end to be made, this number can be, I will
not say, increased by the addition of one more, but however great
it be, and however vast be the multitude of which it is the
rational and scientific expression, it can still be not only
doubled, but even multiplied. Moreover, each number is so defined
by its own properties, that no two numbers are equal. They are
therefore both unequal and different from one another; and while
they are simply finite, collectively they are infinite. Does God,
therefore, not know numbers on account of this infinity; and does
His knowledge extend only to a certain height in numbers, while of
the rest He is ignorant? Who is so left to himself as to say
so? Yet they can hardly pretend to put numbers out of the
question, or maintain that they have nothing to do with the
knowledge of God; for Plato,556
their great authority, represents
God as framing the world on numerical principles: and in our
books also it is said to God, “Thou hast ordered all things in
number, and measure, and weight.”557
The prophet also says,” Who
bringeth out their host by number.”558
And the Saviour says in the
Gospel, “The very hairs of your head are all numbered.”559
Far be it,
then, from us to doubt that all number is known to Him “whose
understanding,” according to the Psalmist, “is infinite.”560
The
infinity of number, though there be no numbering of infinite
numbers, is yet not incomprehensible by Him whose understanding is
infinite. And thus, if everything which is comprehended is
defined or made finite by the comprehension of him who knows it,
then all infinity is in some ineffable way made finite to God, for
it is comprehensible by His knowledge. Wherefore, if the infinity
of numbers cannot be infinite to the knowledge of God, by which it
is comprehended, what are we poor creatures that we should presume
to fix limits to His knowledge, and say that unless the same
temporal thing be repeated by the same periodic revolutions, God
cannot either foreknow His creatures that He may make them, or know
them when He has made them? God, whose knowledge is simply
manifold, and uniform in its variety, comprehends all
incomprehensibles with so incomprehensible a comprehension, that
though He willed always to make His later works novel and unlike
what went before them, He could not produce them without order and
foresight, nor conceive them suddenly, but by His eternal
foreknowledge.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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