Monologion: Chapter 65
MONOLOGION
knowledge that the thing most certainly exists, even if his understanding cannot fathom how it is so. Nor should we withhold any of the certainty of faith from beliefs that are asserted on the basis of necessary proofs and are contradicted by no other argument, simply because, owing to the incomprehensibility of their natural sublimity, they do not yield to explanation. Now what is as incomprehensible, as ineffable, as the one who is above all things? Therefore, if the conclusions we have reached thus far concerning the supreme essence have been asserted on the basis of necessary reasons, their solid certainty is in no way shaken even though the understanding cannot fathom them so as to be able to explain them in words. For if our earlier reflection62 rationally comprehends that it is incomprehensible how that supreme wisdom knows the things he made, about which we ourselves must know so many things, who will explain how he knows or utters himself, about whom nothing, or scarcely anything, can be known by a human being? Therefore, if in uttering himself the Father generates and the Son is generated,"Who will tell of his generation?"63
Chapter 65 How a true conclusion has been reached regarding an ineffable thing But once again, if the nature of his ineffability is like this—or rather, since it is indeed like this—how will any of our conclusions concerning the relation of the Father, the Son, and him who proceeds from them, remain intact? For if that has been explained by a sound argument, in what way is he ineffable?
Or, if he is ineffable, how can our conclusions be correct? Is it that he could to some extent be explained, and therefore nothing prevents our conclusions from being true,but since he could not be thoroughly understood,he is therefore ineffable? But how could one reply to the point that was made earlier in this very discussion:64 that the supreme essence is so much above and beyond every other nature that even if sometimes words are applied to him that are common to other natures, their meanings are in no way common? For what meaning did I understand in all the words I thought, if not the common and familiar one? So if the familiar meaning of words is foreign to him, none of my reasoning applies to him. How then is it true that something has been discovered about the supreme essence if what has been discovered is vastly different from him?
What then? Is it that in one way something has been discovered about an incomprehensible thing, and in another way nothing about it has been fully
62 In Chapter 36.
63 Isaiah 53:8.
64 In Chapter 26.