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| Still Further of the Difference Between the Knowledge and Word of Our Mind, and the Knowledge and Word of God.
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Chapter 13.—Still Further
of the Difference Between the Knowledge and Word of Our Mind, and
the Knowledge and Word of God.
But is it so, that God the Father,
from whom is born the Word that is God of God,—is it so, then,
that God the Father, in respect to that wisdom which He is to
Himself, has learned some things by His bodily senses, and others
by Himself? Who could say this, who thinks of God, not as a
rational animal, but as One above the rational soul? So far at
least as He can be thought of, by those who place Him above all
animals and all souls, although they see Him by conjecture through
a glass and in an enigma, not yet face to face as He is. Is it that
God the Father has learned those very things which He knows, not by
the body, for He has none, but by Himself, from elsewhere from some
one? or has stood in need of messengers or witnesses that He might
know them? Certainly not; since His own perfection enables Him to
know all things that He knows. No doubt He has messengers,
viz. the angels; but not to announce to Him things that He
knows not, for there is nothing He does not know. But their good
lies in consulting the truth about their own works. And this it is
which is meant by saying that they bring Him word of some things,
not that He may learn of them, but they of Him by His word without
bodily sound. They bring Him word, too, of that which He wills,
being sent by Him to whomever He wills, and hearing all from Him by
that word of His, i.e. finding in His truth what themselves
are to do: what, to whom, and when, they are to bring word. For we
too pray to Him, yet do not inform Him what our necessities are.
“For your Father knoweth,” says His Word, “what things ye
have need of, before you ask Him.”989
Nor did He become acquainted with
them, so as to know them, at any definite time; but He knew
beforehand, without any beginning, all things to come in time, and
among them also both what we should ask of Him, and when; and to
whom He would either listen or not listen, and on what subjects.
And with respect to all His creatures, both spiritual and
corporeal, He does not know them because they are, but they are
because He knows them. For He was not ignorant of what He was about
to create; therefore He created because He knew; He did not know
because He created. Nor did He know them when created in any other
way than He knew them when still to be created, for nothing accrued
to His wisdom from them; but that wisdom remained as it was, while
they came into existence as it was fitting and when it was fitting.
So, too, it is written in the book of Ecclesiasticus: “All things
are known to Him ere ever they were created: so also after they
were perfected.”990
“So,” he says, not otherwise;
so were they known to Him, both ere ever they were created, and
after they were perfected. This knowledge, therefore, is far unlike
our knowledge. And the knowledge of God is itself also His wisdom,
and His wisdom is itself His essence or substance. Because in the
marvellous simplicity of that nature, it is not one thing to be
wise and another to be, but to be wise is to be; as we have often
said already also in the earlier books. But our knowledge is in
most things capable both of being lost and
of being recovered, because to us to be is not the same as to know
or to be wise; since it is possible for us to be, even although we
know not, neither are wise in that which we have learned from
elsewhere. Therefore, as our knowledge is unlike that knowledge of
God, so is our word also, which is born from our knowledge, unlike
that Word of God which is born from the essence of the Father. And
this is as if I should say, born from the Father’s knowledge,
from the Father’s wisdom; or still more exactly, from the Father
who is knowledge, from the Father who is wisdom.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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