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| He discusses the incomprehensibility of the Divine essence, and the saying to the woman of Samaria, “Ye worship ye know not what.“
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§5. He discusses
the incomprehensibility of the Divine essence, and the saying to the
woman of Samaria, “Ye worship ye know not
what.”
Now if any one should ask for
some interpretation, and description, and explanation of the Divine
essence, we are not going to deny that in this kind of wisdom we are
unlearned, acknowledging only so much as this, that it is not possible
that that which is by nature infinite should be comprehended in any
conception expressed by words. The fact that the Divine greatness has
no limit is proclaimed by prophecy, which declares expressly that of
His splendour, His glory, His holiness, “there is no end587
:” and if His surroundings have no
limit, much more is He Himself in His essence, whatever it may be,
comprehended by no limitation in any way. If then interpretation by way
of words and names implies by its meaning some sort of comprehension of
the subject, and if, on the other hand, that which is unlimited cannot
be comprehended, no one could reasonably blame us for ignorance, if we
are not bold in respect of what none should venture upon. For by what
name can I describe the incomprehensible? by what speech can I declare
the unspeakable? Accordingly, since the Deity is too excellent and
lofty to be expressed in words, we have learnt to honour in silence
what transcends speech and thought: and if he who “thinketh more
highly than he ought to think588
,” tramples upon
this cautious speech of ours making a jest of our ignorance of things
incomprehensible, and recognizes a difference of unlikeness in that
which is without figure, or limit, or size, or quantity (I mean in the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), and brings forward to reproach
our ignorance that phrase which is continually alleged by the disciples
of deceit, “‘Ye worship ye know not what589
,’ if ye know not the essence of that
which ye worship,” we shall follow the advice of the prophet, and
not fear the reproach of fools590
, nor be led by their
reviling to talk boldly of things unspeakable, making that unpractised
speaker Paul our teacher in the mysteries that transcend knowledge, who
is so far from thinking that the Divine nature is within the reach of
human perception, that he calls even the judgments of God
“unsearchable,” and His ways “past finding out591
,” and affirms that the things promised
to them that love Him, for their good deeds done in this life, are
above comprehension so that it is not possible to behold them with the
eye, nor to receive them by hearing, nor to contain them in the heart592
. Learning this, therefore, from Paul, we
boldly declare that, not only are the judgments of God too high for
those who try to search them out, but that the ways also that lead to
the knowledge of Him are even until now untrodden and impassable. For
this is what we understand that the Apostle wishes to signify, when he
calls the ways that lead to the incomprehensible “past finding
out,” showing by the phrase that that knowledge is unattainable
by human calculations, and that no one ever yet set his understanding
on such a path of reasoning, or showed any trace or sign of an
approach, by way of perception, to the things
incomprehensible.
Learning these things, then,
from the lofty words of the Apostle, we argue, by the passage quoted,
in this way:—If His judgments cannot be searched out, and His
ways are not traced, and the promise of His good things transcends
every representation that our conjectures can frame, by how much more
is His actual Godhead higher and loftier, in respect of being
unspeakable and unapproachable, than those attributes which are
conceived as accompanying it, whereof the divinely instructed Paul
declares that there is no knowledge:—and by this means we confirm
in ourselves the doctrine they deride, confessing ourselves inferior to
them in the knowledge of those things which are beyond the range of
knowledge, and declare that we really worship what we know. Now we know
the loftiness of the glory of Him Whom we worship, by the very fact
that we are not able by reasoning to comprehend in our thoughts the
incomparable character of His greatness; and that saying of our Lord to
the Samaritan woman, which is brought forward against us by our
enemies, might more properly be addressed to them. For the words,
“Ye worship ye know not what,” the Lord speaks to the
Samaritan woman, prejudiced as she was by corporeal ideas in her
opinions concerning God: and to her the phrase well applies, because
the Samaritans, thinking that they worship God, and at the same time
supposing the Deity to be corporeally settled in place, adore Him in
name only, worshipping something else, and not God. For nothing is
Divine that is conceived as being circumscribed, but it belongs to the
Godhead to be in all places, and to pervade all things, and not to be
limited by anything: so that those who fight against Christ find the
phrase they adduce against us turned into an accusation of themselves.
For, as the Samaritans, supposing the Deity to be compassed round by
some circumscription of place, were rebuked by the words they heard,
“‘Ye worship ye know not what,’ and your service is
profitless to you, for a God that is deemed to be settled in any place
is no God,”—so one might well say to the new Samaritans,
“In supposing the Deity to be limited by the absence of
generation, as it were by some local limit, ‘ye worship ye know
not what,’ doing service to Him indeed as God, but not knowing
that the infinity of God exceeds all the significance and comprehension
that names can furnish.” E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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