On Prayer 23.1

When the Father of the saints is said to be “in heaven,” we must not suppose that he is circumscribed by a bodily shape and dwells “in heaven”; for then God would be found to be contained, and less than the heavens, since the heavens would contain him. We must be persuaded rather that by the ineffable power of his divinity all things are contained and held together by him. And in general, the expressions that, taken literally, seem to simpler people to say that God is in a place, must be reinterpreted in a way fitting to great and spiritual conceptions of God, such as these in the Gospel according to John: “Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end”; and a little after, “knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God”; and after other things, “You heard me say to you, I am going away, and I am coming to you. If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father”; and again after other things, “But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, Where are you going?” For if these are to be taken in a local sense, clearly so too must this: “Jesus answered and said to them, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.”