Theological Oration 2: On the Doctrine of God 19–31

For Elijah, neither the violent wind nor the fire nor the earthquake, as you hear in the story, but a light breeze sketched the presence of God, and not his nature. And what an Elijah! One whom a chariot of fire carried up to heaven, to show that the righteous man was more than human. And Manoah the judge earlier, and Peter the disciple later: how can you not marvel at them? The one could not bear even the sight of God as he appeared, and so said, “We are lost, wife; we have seen God,” as though not even an appearance of God could be borne by human beings, let alone his nature. The other would not let even the visible Christ come near his boat, and so sent him away; and yet Peter was more ardent than the others in recognizing Christ, and was called blessed for it, and entrusted with the greatest things. What would you say of Isaiah, and of Ezekiel, who beheld the greatest things, and the rest of the prophets? The one saw the Lord of hosts seated on a throne of glory, surrounded, praised, and hidden by the six-winged seraphim, and himself purified by the coal and equipped for prophecy. The other describes the cherubim, the chariot of God, the throne above them, the firmament above it, and the one who appeared in the firmament, and certain voices, movements, and actions. Whether this was a vision by day, seen only by the saints, or a truthful sight by night, or an impression on the ruling faculty that dealt with future things as present, or some other unspeakable form of prophecy, I cannot say; the God of the prophets knows, and those who are moved by such things. But neither these of whom I speak nor any other like them “stood in the substance and being of the Lord,” as it is written, nor saw or declared the nature of God.

If what the third heaven gave Paul, and his progress or ascent or assumption up to it, could be uttered, we might perhaps know something more about God, if indeed this was the mystery of his being caught up. But since it was unspeakable, let us too honour it with silence. This much let us hear from Paul himself, that we know in part and prophesy in part. This and the like is confessed by one who was no layman in knowledge, who threatened to give proof of Christ speaking in him, the great champion and teacher of the truth; and he reckons all knowledge here below as no more than mirrors and riddles, since it rests on small images of the truth. If I do not seem to some too elaborate and meddlesome in examining such things, perhaps these, and nothing else, were the things that cannot be borne now, which the Word himself hinted at as things to be borne and made clear one day; and the things that John, the forerunner of the Word, the great voice of the truth, declared that even the whole world below could not contain.

All truth, then, and every account is hard to make out and hard to see. We are, as it were, doing great work with a small tool, hunting the knowledge of what exists with human wisdom and approaching intelligible things with the senses, or not without the senses, which carry us about and lead us astray; we cannot come nearer the truth by meeting bare realities with a bare mind and having the mind shaped by what it grasps. And the account of God, the more perfect it is, the harder it is to reach, and the more objections it faces and the more laborious its solutions. For every obstacle, even the smallest, checks and hinders the course of the argument and cuts off its forward movement, like men who suddenly haul back galloping horses with the reins and upset them with the unexpected jerk. So Solomon, who was wiser than all who came before him and in his own time, to whom breadth of heart was given as God’s gift and a flow of contemplation more abundant than the sand, the further he goes into the depths, the dizzier he becomes, and he makes it the end of wisdom to discover how far it has escaped him. And Paul tries to reach, I do not yet say the nature of God, for he knew that was wholly impossible, but only God’s judgments; and since he finds no way through and no resting point in the ascent, and the mind’s inquiry ends in no clear limit, some remainder always appearing (how marvellous, that I too should feel the same!), he closes the discourse in amazement, calls this the riches and depth of God, and confesses that God’s judgments are incomprehensible, saying almost the same as David, who sometimes calls God’s judgments a great abyss, whose bottom cannot be reached by measure or by sense, and sometimes says that knowledge of God has been made too wonderful for him and his frame, and has grown stronger than his power and grasp.

“For leaving the rest aside,” he says, “let me look at myself and at all of human nature and its structure.” What is this mixture of ours? What is our movement? How is the immortal blended with the mortal? How do I flow downward and yet am borne upward? How is the soul circumscribed? How does it give life and share in suffering? How is the mind both circumscribed and unlimited, remaining in us and yet ranging over all things with the speed of its motion and flow? How is it received and shared by speech, passing through the air and entering with things? How does it share in sensation, and withdraw from the senses? And before this, what is our first moulding and composition in nature’s workshop, and what our last formation and completion? What is the desire for food and its distribution? And who led us to the first springs and sources of life, of our own accord? How is the body nourished by food, and the soul by reason? What is the attraction of nature and the relation between parents and children, so that they are held together by love? How do species remain fixed and distinct by their characteristics, when there are so many, and their peculiarities are beyond our reach? How is the same living being mortal and immortal, the one by departure, the other by generation? For one goes out and another comes in, as in the flow of a river that neither stands nor stays. You could philosophize much more about limbs and parts and their harmony with one another, put together for use and beauty at once, joined and separated, surpassing and surpassed, united and divided, containing and contained, by the law and reason of nature; much about voices and hearing, how the one is carried by the vocal organs and the other receives it, and they mingle with one another through the striking and shaping of the air between; much about sight, which is united in an unspeakable way with visible things, moved at the same moment by the will alone, and affected in the same way as the mind, for with equal speed the mind mingles with its objects and sight with what it sees; much about the other senses, which are certain receptions of things from outside, not discerned by reason; much about rest in sleep and the shapes formed in dreams, about memory and recollection, reason, anger, and desire; in short, about everything by which this little world, man, is governed.

Would you like me to list the differences of the other animals, from us and from one another, their natures, births, and rearing, their homes and habits and, so to speak, their civic life? How some live in herds and some alone; some eat grass and some flesh; some are fierce and some tame; some love human beings and live with them, others are untameable and free; some are, as it were, nearer to reason and learning, others wholly irrational and unteachable; some have more senses and some fewer; some are immobile and some move about; some are very swift and some very sluggish; some excel in size and beauty or in one of these, others are very small or very ugly or both; some are strong and some weak; some defend themselves, others are suspicious and treacherous; some are watchful and some unguarded; some are industrious and thrifty, others wholly idle and improvident. And before this, how some creep and others walk upright; some keep to one place and others are amphibious; some love finery and others are unadorned; some pair and some do not; some are chaste and some unrestrained; some are prolific and some not; some long-lived and some short-lived? Whoever went through them one by one would weary us.

Consider also the swimming creatures that glide through the waters and, as it were, fly through the liquid element, drawing their own air but endangered by ours, as we are in the waters; their habits and passions, matings and births, sizes and beauties, their attachment to places and their wanderings, their gatherings and departures, and peculiarities almost like those of land animals, and in some cases shared and in others opposite, both in kinds and in names. Consider the flocks of birds and their variety of shapes and colours, both the others and the songbirds; what is the principle of their melody, and from whom? Who gave the cicada the lyre on its breast, and the songs and chirping on the branches, when they are stirred by the sun to make their noonday music, fill the groves with sound, and escort the traveller with their voices? Who weaves the song for the swan, when it spreads its wings to the breezes and makes music of their whistling? I say nothing of forced voices, and of all that the arts contrive against the truth. Where does the peacock get it, the boastful bird of Media, that he is so fond of beauty and display that (for he is aware of his own beauty), when he sees someone approaching, or when he is preening himself for the hens, as they say, he raises his neck and spreads his golden, star-studded feathers in a circle and puts on a show of his beauty for his admirers with a proud strut? Holy Scripture also admires the wisdom of women in weaving, saying, “Who gave women wisdom in weaving and skill in embroidery?” This belongs to a rational creature, one excelling in wisdom, that makes its way even to heavenly things.

Now marvel at the natural intelligence even of irrational creatures, and give an account of it. How do birds have nests in rocks and trees and roofs, made for safety and beauty at once, and suited to their young? Where do bees and spiders get their love of work and craft? The bees weave their honeycombs and hold them together with hexagonal cells set back to back, and secure their stability by the partition in the middle and by the alternation of the angles fitted to the straight walls; and they do this in hives so dark and with structures that cannot be seen. The spiders weave their many-stranded webs from threads so fine and almost airy, stretched in many ways, and that from invisible beginnings, to be at once a precious dwelling and a trap for weaker creatures, to feed on. What Euclid ever imitated these, philosophizing with lines that do not exist and toiling over his proofs? From what Palamedes come the tactical movements and formations of cranes, as they say, and the same drills as they move in order, with their varied flight? What Pheidias, Zeuxis, Polygnotus, Parrhasius, or Aglaophon, men who knew how to paint and sculpt surpassing beauty? What harmonious dance of Daedalus at Knossos, wrought for a maiden to the height of beauty, or Cretan labyrinth, hard to get through and hard to unwind, to speak poetically, and often meeting itself by the ingenuity of its art? I say nothing of the storehouses and stewards of ants, their laying up of food suited to the season, and all the other things we have learned from reports about their paths, their leaders, and the good order of their work.

If you can give an account of these and understand the intelligence in them, consider also the differences of plants, down to the artistry of their leaves, made at once most pleasant to the eye and most useful for the fruit. Consider the variety and abundance of fruits, and above all that the most necessary are the most beautiful. Consider the powers of roots and juices and flowers and scents, not only very pleasant but also good for health, and the charms and qualities of colours; and further, the costliness and brilliance of stones. For nature has set all things before you, as at a common feast, both the necessary and the enjoyable, so that, if nothing else, you may know God from his benefits and become wiser about yourself through your own need. Then go over for me the breadth and length of the earth, the common mother of all, and the gulfs of the sea, bound to one another and to the land, and the beauty of groves, and rivers, and abundant, ever-flowing springs, not only of cold, drinkable water on the surface of the earth, but also those that flow under the earth and run through certain channels, then are driven out by a violent wind and repelled, then set on fire by the force of the struggle and resistance, burst out little by little wherever there is room, and so give us hot baths in many places on the earth, and, with their contrary power, free and spontaneous healing. Tell me how and from where these things come, what this great web is, woven without art, no less admirable in their relation to one another than when each is considered alone. How does the earth stand firm and unmoved? On what does it ride, and what supports it? And what supports that? For reason has nothing on which to rest except the will of God. And how is it that the earth, part raised into mountain peaks and part settled into plains, in many different ways and with gradual changes from one to another, is both more abundant for our needs and more pleasing in its variety; part assigned for dwelling and part uninhabited, as much as the heights of the mountains cut off, and one part split off and ending at one boundary and another at another; is this not the clearest token of God’s mighty work?

As for the sea, if I could not marvel at its size, I would marvel at its gentleness, and how it stays, unconfined, within its own bounds; and if not at its gentleness, then surely at its size. Since it has both, I will praise the power in both. What gathered it? What bound it? How does it rise up and stop, as though in awe of its neighbour, the land? How does it receive all the rivers and remain the same, because of its excess of volume, or I know not what to say? How is sand a boundary to so great an element? Have the natural philosophers, wise in vanities, anything to say, they who really measure the sea with a cup, measuring such great things by their own notions? Or shall I philosophize about this briefly from Scripture, more convincingly and more truly than their long discourses? “He drew a circle by command on the face of the water.” This is the bond of the liquid element. And how does it carry the land-dwelling sailor with a small piece of wood and a wind (do you not marvel at this when you see it? is your mind not astonished?), so that land and sea may be bound by needs and commerce, and things so far apart in nature may come together into one for man? What are the first springs of springs? Search, O man, if you can track down or find any of these things. And who cut through plains and mountains for rivers and gave them their unhindered course? And how does the marvel come from opposites, the sea not overflowing and the rivers not stopping? What is the nourishment of the waters, and what is its difference, some plants being watered from above and others drinking through their roots, so that I too may take some delight in my discourse as I describe the delight of God?

Come now, leave the earth and what concerns the earth, and lift yourself to the air on the wings of thought, so that our discourse may proceed in order. From there I will lead you up to the heavenly things, to heaven itself, and to what is above heaven. The discourse shrinks from approaching what follows, but it will approach as far as it may. Who poured out the air, this great and abundant wealth, not measured by rank or fortune, not held by boundaries, not divided by age, but like the distribution of the manna, received by each as enough and honoured by equal shares: the vehicle of the winged creatures, the seat of the winds, the right timing of the seasons, the life-breath of animals, or rather the preservation of the soul in the body, in which bodies move and with which speech goes, in which is light and what is lit, and sight that flows through it? Consider with me what follows, for I do not allow the air the whole sovereignty over what is thought to belong to the air. What are the storehouses of the winds? What are the treasuries of snow? Who, as it is written, has begotten the clods of dew? From whose womb comes the ice? Who binds up water in the clouds, and keeps part of it on the clouds (how marvellous!), a flowing nature held by a word, and pours out part on the face of the whole earth, sowing it in due season and fairly, neither letting all the watery substance loose and unchecked (for the cleansing in Noah’s time is enough, and the most truthful one does not forget his own covenant), nor holding it back entirely, so that we do not again need some Elijah to end the drought? “If he shuts heaven,” it says, “who will open it? If he opens the floodgates, who will hold them back?” Who could bear an excess of rain in either direction, unless he governed the universe by his own measures and weights? What philosophy will you give me about lightning and thunder, you who thunder from the earth and are not lit by even small sparks of the truth? What vapours from the earth will you blame for making clouds, or some condensation of the air, or the pressing or collision of the thinnest clouds, so that the pressing produces lightning for you and the bursting produces thunder? Or what wind, confined and with no way out, so that when compressed it flashes and when it bursts out it thunders? If you have gone through the air in your reasoning, and all that concerns the air, touch now with me heaven and the heavenly things. And let faith lead us rather than reason, if you have learned your weakness in things nearer at hand, and have come to know that it is reason to know what is beyond reason, so that you may not be wholly earthly or earthbound, ignorant even of this very thing, your ignorance.

Who set the heavens revolving and ordered the stars? Or rather, before that, can you say what heaven and stars are, you who have your head in the air, who do not know what lies at your feet and cannot even measure yourself, and yet busy yourself with what is above your nature and gape at the immeasurable? Suppose you grasp orbits and periods, approaches and withdrawals, settings and risings, degrees and minutes, and all the things by which you dignify this wonderful science of yours: that is not yet a comprehension of realities, but observation of a certain motion, which, confirmed by longer practice, gathering into one the observations of many, and then devising a rational account, has been called a science; just as the phases of the moon have become known to most people, their knowledge beginning from sight. But if you are so expert in these things and rightly seek to be admired, tell me: what is the cause of this order and motion? How does the sun act as a beacon for the whole world and every eye, like the leader of a chorus, hiding the other stars by its brightness more than some of them hide others? The proof is that they shine against one another, but it outshines them and does not even let it be known that they rise with it, beautiful as a bridegroom, swift and great as a giant (for I will not praise it from any source but my own Scriptures); so great in power that from one end to the other it reaches all things with its heat, and nothing escapes its sense, but every eye is filled with light and every bodily nature with heat, warming but not burning, by the mildness of its temperature and the order of its motion, present to all and embracing all equally.

And how great is this, if you have considered it: “What the sun is among sensible things, God is among intelligible things,” as one of the outsiders said. For as the sun lights up sight, as God does the mind, so it is also the most beautiful of visible things, as God is of intelligible things. But what moved it in the beginning? And what always moves it and drives it round, though in principle it stands still and is not moved, truly tireless, life-giving, life-producing, and all the other things the poets rightly sing of it, never ceasing either from its course or from its benefits? How is it the maker of day above the earth and of night below the earth? Or I do not know what to say when I look at the sun. What is the lengthening and shortening of these, and the equality of their inequality, to say something paradoxical? How is it the maker and divider of the seasons, which come and go in good order and, as in a dance, intertwine with and separate from one another, the one by the law of friendship, the other by the law of order, mixing little by little and stealing upon us by their nearness, just as days and nights do, so as not to distress us by their strangeness? But let the sun go. Do you know the nature of the moon, its phases, the measures of its light, and its courses, and how the sun has rule over the day and the moon presides over the night; how the moon gives boldness to wild beasts and the sun rouses man to his work, rising or sinking as is most useful? Have you understood the chain of the Pleiades or the fence of Orion, like him who numbers the multitude of the stars and calls them all by name, and knows the difference of each one’s glory and the order of its motion, so that I may trust you when you weave our affairs out of these and arm the creation against the Creator?

What do you say? Shall we stop our discourse here, at matter and visible things? Or, since the Word knows the tabernacle of Moses as a figure of the whole universe, I mean the system of things visible and invisible, shall we pass through the first veil, go beyond sense, and look into the holy place, the intelligible and heavenly nature? We cannot see this either in an incorporeal way, even though it is incorporeal, since it is called or becomes fire and spirit. For he is said to make his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire; unless “make” here means “preserve” by the word by which they came to be. It is called spirit and fire, the one as intelligible nature and the other as purifying; for I know that the first substance is given the same names. But for us let it be incorporeal, or as near as possible. You see how we grow dizzy over this subject, and cannot go further than to know that there are angels and archangels, thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, splendours, ascents, intellectual powers or minds, pure and unalloyed natures, immovable toward evil or hard to move, always dancing around the first cause. Or how could one sing their praise, illuminated from there with the purest illumination, or one with one light and another with another in proportion to their nature and rank; so moulded and shaped by the good that they become other lights and can illuminate others by the outflowings and impartings of the first light; ministers of the divine will, strong with natural and acquired strength, ranging over all things, readily present to all everywhere by their zeal in service and the lightness of their nature; some having charge of one part of the world, others set over some other part of the universe, as he knows who ordered and assigned them; bringing all into one, toward one consent of the maker of all things; singers of the divine majesty, beholders of the eternal glory, and eternally, not so that God may be glorified (for nothing can be added to the one who is full, who supplies good things to others), but so that even the first natures after God may not lack his benefits? If these things have been praised worthily, the grace belongs to the Trinity and to the one Godhead in the three; if less than we desire, even so the argument has won. For it was striving to show this: that even the nature of the secondary beings surpasses our mind, not to speak of the first and only nature, which (I hesitate to say) is above all things.