On First Principles 1.1.1–1.1.9

I know that some will try to say, even on the basis of our Scriptures, that God is a body, because they find it written in Moses, “Our God is a consuming fire,” and in the Gospel according to John, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” Fire and spirit, in their view, will be thought to be nothing other than body. I want to ask them what they say about the statement that God is light, as John says in his Epistle: “God is light, and in him there is no darkness.” This is indeed the light that illuminates the whole understanding of those who can receive the truth, as is said in the thirty-fifth Psalm: “In your light we shall see light.” For what else is to be called the light of God, in which one sees light, but the power of God, by which a person, once illuminated, either sees through to the truth of all things or knows God himself, who is called the truth? Such, then, is the meaning of “In your light we shall see light”: that is, in your Word and Wisdom, who is your Son, in him we shall see you, the Father. Because he is called light, will he be thought similar to the light of this sun? And how could anyone gain even the slightest understanding, so as to derive the cause of knowledge from this bodily light and find an understanding of the truth?

If, then, they accept this assertion of ours, which reason itself has demonstrated about the nature of light, and admit that God cannot be understood to be a body on the understanding of light, a similar account will be given of the consuming fire. For what will God consume in being fire? Will he be thought to consume bodily matter, such as wood or hay or stubble? And what is said in this that is worthy of the praises of God, if God is a fire consuming materials of this kind? Let us rather consider that God does indeed consume and destroy; but he consumes the evil thoughts of minds, consumes shameful deeds, consumes the desires of sin, when he enters the minds of believers; and those souls which are made capable of his Word and Wisdom, dwelling in them together with his Son according to the saying, “I and the Father will come and make our abode with him,” he makes a pure temple for himself and one worthy of him, when all their vices and passions have been consumed. To those who think, because of the saying “God is spirit,” that God is a body, I think the answer should be this. It is the custom of holy Scripture, when it wishes to designate something contrary to this grosser and more solid body, to call it spirit, as when it says, “The letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” There, without doubt, by “the letter” it means bodily things, and by “the spirit” intellectual things, which we also call spiritual. The Apostle also says: “Even to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies over their heart; but when anyone turns to the Lord, the veil will be taken away; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” For until someone turns to spiritual understanding, a veil lies over his heart; and by this veil, that is, by a grosser understanding, Scripture itself is said or thought to be veiled. This is what is meant by the veil laid over Moses' face when he spoke to the people, that is, when the law was read publicly. But if we turn to the Lord, where the Word of God also is, and where the Holy Spirit reveals spiritual knowledge, then the veil will be taken away, and then with unveiled face we shall behold the glory of the Lord in the holy Scriptures.

Again, although many saints share in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit certainly cannot be understood as some body, divided into bodily parts, of which each of the saints receives a part; rather he is a sanctifying power, in which all are said to have a share who have merited to be sanctified by his grace. And so that what we say may be more easily understood, let us take an example from things that are, however, unequal. There are many who share in the discipline or art of medicine: are we then to think that all who share in medicine take for themselves particles of some body called medicine, placed in their midst, and so receive a share in it? Or are we rather to understand that whoever with ready and prepared minds grasp an understanding of the art and discipline itself are said to share in medicine? But these examples from medicine, compared with the Holy Spirit, are not to be thought wholly similar; they serve only to prove that what is shared by many is not on that account to be thought a body. For the Holy Spirit differs greatly from the principle or discipline of medicine, inasmuch as the Holy Spirit is an intellectual subsistence and properly subsists and exists, whereas medicine is nothing of the kind.

But now we must pass to the very saying of the Gospel where it is written that “God is spirit,” and show how it should be understood consistently with what we have said. Let us ask when our Saviour said this, to whom, and what was being asked. We find without doubt that he said this when speaking to the Samaritan woman, who thought, according to the opinion of the Samaritans, that God ought to be worshipped on Mount Gerizim: to her he said that God is spirit. For the Samaritan woman, thinking him to be one of the Jews, asked him whether God ought to be worshipped in Jerusalem or on this mountain, and said: “Our fathers all worshipped on this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” To these opinions of the Samaritan woman, then, who thought that God was worshipped less rightly or properly either by the Jews in Jerusalem or by the Samaritans on Mount Gerizim, because of the privilege of bodily places, the Saviour replied that whoever wishes to follow the Lord must give up presumption about bodily places, and said: “The hour is coming when the true worshippers will worship the Father neither in Jerusalem nor on this mountain. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” And see how fittingly he has joined truth to spirit, naming spirit by way of distinction from bodies, and truth by way of distinction from shadow or image. For those who worshipped in Jerusalem, serving the shadow and image of heavenly things, will not worship God in truth or in spirit; and likewise neither will those who worship on Mount Gerizim.

Having refuted, as far as we could, every notion which suggests that anything corporeal is to be understood of God, we say that in truth God is incomprehensible and beyond measure. For whatever it is that we have been able to perceive or understand about God, we must believe that he is better by many degrees than what we have perceived. Suppose we saw someone who could barely look at a spark of light or the light of a very small lamp, whose eyesight could not take in more light than we have said, and we wished to teach him about the brightness and splendour of the sun: should we not have to tell him that the splendour of the sun is unspeakably and immeasurably better and more excellent than all this light which you see? So our mind, when it is shut within the barriers of flesh and blood and made duller and more obtuse by its sharing in such matter, although it is held to be far superior in comparison with bodily nature, yet when it strives toward incorporeal things and seeks to gaze upon them, scarcely holds the place of a spark or a lamp. And what among all intellectual, that is, incorporeal, beings is so surpassing all, so unspeakably and immeasurably excellent, as God? His nature certainly cannot be grasped or beheld by the sight of the human mind, even the purest and clearest mind.

It does not seem absurd, however, if for a clearer demonstration of the matter we also use another comparison. Sometimes our eyes cannot look at the nature of light itself, that is, at the substance of the sun; but by looking at its brightness, or at its rays shining in, perhaps, through windows or any small openings for light, we can consider how great is the source and fountain of bodily light itself. In the same way, then, the works of divine providence and the art of this universe are like rays of the nature of God, in comparison with his very substance and nature. Since, therefore, our mind cannot by itself behold God himself as he is, it understands the parent of the universe from the beauty of his works and the comeliness of his creatures. God, therefore, is not to be thought either a body or in a body, but a simple intellectual nature, admitting in himself no addition whatever, so that he may not be believed to have in himself a greater and a lesser, but is in every respect a unity (μονάς) and, so to speak, a oneness (ἑνάς), and mind, and the fountain from which all intellectual nature, or mind, takes its beginning. Now mind, in order to move or operate, needs no bodily place, nor sensible magnitude, nor bodily shape or colour, nor does it need at all any of the other things that are proper to body or matter. For this reason that simple nature, wholly mind, can have no delay or hesitation in moving or operating anything, lest by an addition of this kind the simplicity of the divine nature should seem to be in some measure circumscribed or hindered, and lest what is the beginning of all things should be found composite and diverse, and be many, not one; for, being foreign to all bodily admixture, it must consist of one sole form, so to speak, of deity. That mind does not need place in order to move according to its own nature is certain also from the contemplation of our own mind. For if it remains within its own measure and no dullness comes upon it from any cause, it will never be slowed by difference of place from acting by its own movements; nor again does it gain any increase or growth of mobility from the quality of a place. And if anyone objects, for instance, that in those who sail and are tossed by the waves of the sea the mind is somewhat less vigorous than it usually is on land, it must be believed that it suffers this not from the difference of place but from the agitation or disturbance of the body to which the mind is joined or in which it is implanted. For the human body seems to live at sea as though against nature, and therefore, through a kind of unevenness of its own, to receive the movements of the mind in a disorderly and irregular way and to convey the strokes of its sharpness through a duller service; no less than happens to people on land who are gripped by fevers. In their case it is certain that if the mind, through the force of the fevers, performs its function less well, the cause must be laid not to the place but to the disease of the body, by which the body, disturbed and confused, by no means renders to the mind its usual services along its known and natural lines, since we human beings are a living creature composed of the meeting of body and soul; for in this way it was possible for us to dwell upon the earth. But God, who is the beginning of all things, must not be thought composite, lest perhaps elements should be found prior to the beginning itself, from which everything is composed that is called composite, whatever it may be. Nor does mind need bodily magnitude in order to do anything or to move, as the eye does, which in looking at larger bodies is spread out, but is narrowed and contracted for seeing small and tiny things. Mind does indeed need intelligible magnitude, because it grows not bodily but intelligibly. For the mind is not increased by bodily growth together with the body up to the twentieth or thirtieth year of age; rather, when instruction and exercises are applied, the sharpness of the intellect is polished, the powers implanted in it are called out toward understanding, and it is made capable of greater understanding, not enlarged by bodily growth but polished by the exercises of learning. It cannot receive these at once from boyhood or from birth, because the frame of the limbs, which the mind uses as instruments for its own exercise, is still weak and feeble, and can neither bear the force of working nor supply the capacity for receiving instruction.

But if there are any who think that the mind itself and the soul are a body, I wish they would answer me how it receives the reasons and proofs of matters so great, so difficult and so subtle. Whence does a body have the power of memory, whence the contemplation of invisible things, whence indeed the understanding of incorporeal things? How does a bodily nature investigate the disciplines of the arts and the contemplations and reasons of things? How, too, can it perceive and understand divine teachings, which are clearly incorporeal? Unless perhaps someone should think that, just as this bodily form and the very shape of the ears or eyes contribute something to hearing and seeing, and the individual members formed by God have some fitness, from the very quality of their form, for what they were naturally appointed to do, so too the shape of the soul or mind should be understood as aptly and suitably formed for perceiving or understanding particular things and for being moved by vital movements. But what colour of mind anyone could describe or name, in so far as it is mind and moves intelligibly, I do not see. Further, to confirm and explain what we have said about the mind or soul, that it is superior to the whole bodily nature, the following may also be added. Underlying each bodily sense there is a certain sensible substance proper to it, toward which the bodily sense itself is directed. For example, colours, shape and size underlie sight; voices and sound, hearing; smells, good or bad, the sense of smell; flavours, taste; hot or cold, hard or soft, rough or smooth, touch. That the sense of the mind is much better than these senses we have mentioned is clear to all. How then does it not seem absurd that substances should underlie these inferior senses for them to be directed toward, while to this power, which is better, that is, to the sense of the mind, nothing substantial at all is subject, but the power of an intellectual nature is something that befalls bodies or follows from them? Those who say this without doubt say it to the insult of the substance which is the better part in themselves; indeed, by this an injury is done even to God himself, when they think that he can be understood through a bodily nature, so that according to them he is a body, and that which can be understood or perceived through a body; and they are unwilling to have it understood that there is a certain kinship of the mind with God, of whom the mind itself is an intellectual image, and that through this it can perceive something of the nature of the Godhead, especially if it is more purified and separated from bodily matter.

But perhaps these assertions may seem to have less authority with those who wish to be instructed about divine things from the holy Scriptures, and who seek to have it proved to them from there how the nature of God surpasses the nature of bodies. See, then, whether the Apostle does not say the same when he speaks of Christ, saying: “who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” For it is not the case, as some think, that the nature of God is visible to some and invisible to others; for the Apostle did not say “the image of God invisible to human beings” or “invisible to sinners,” but pronounces with great firmness about the very nature of God, saying, “the image of the invisible God.” John too, by saying in the Gospel, “No one has ever seen God,” clearly declares to all who can understand that there is no nature to which God is visible: not as though he were visible by nature and escaped and exceeded the sight of a frailer creature, but because by nature it is impossible for him to be seen. And if you ask me what I think also about the Only-begotten himself, whether I say that the nature of God, which is naturally invisible, is not visible even to him, do not let this seem to you at once either impious or absurd; for we shall give the reason in due course. It is one thing to see, another to know. To be seen and to see belong to bodies; to be known and to know belong to intellectual nature. Whatever, therefore, is proper to bodies is not to be thought of either the Father or the Son; but what belongs to the nature of the Godhead holds between the Father and the Son. Indeed, even in the Gospel he did not say, “No one has seen the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father,” but said, “No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son.” From this it is clearly indicated that what among bodily natures is called seeing and being seen is, between the Father and the Son, called knowing and being known, by the power of knowledge, not by the frailty of visibility. Since, then, of an incorporeal and invisible nature neither seeing nor being seen is properly said, therefore in the Gospel the Father is not said to be seen by the Son, nor the Son by the Father, but known.

If anyone puts to us the question why it is said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” our assertion will, in my opinion, be strengthened all the more by it. For what else is seeing God with the heart but, as we have explained above, understanding and knowing him with the mind? For the names of the bodily members of sense are often applied to the soul, so that it is said to see with the eyes of the heart, that is, to infer something intellectual by the power of intelligence. So too it is said to hear with the ears when it perceives the sense of a deeper understanding. So too we say that it can use teeth when it chews and eats the bread of life which comes down from heaven. In the same way it is said to use the services of the other members, which are transferred from their bodily meaning and fitted to the powers of the soul, as Solomon also says: “You will find a divine sense.” For he knew that there are two kinds of senses in us: one kind mortal, corruptible, human; the other immortal and intellectual, which he here called “divine.” By this divine sense, then, not of the eyes but of a “pure heart,” which is the mind, God can be seen by those who are worthy. You will indeed find the heart named for the mind, that is, for the intellectual power, abundantly in all the Scriptures, new and old. In this way, then, having understood the nature of God, though far below what is fitting, as the weakness of human understanding allows, let us now see what the name of Christ means.