Catechesis 6: For Candidates For Baptism Concerning The Unity Of God'S Rule, On ‘I Believe In One God’; And Concerning H
CATECHESIS 6: For candidates for baptism Concerning the unity of God's rule, on ‘I believe in one God’; and concerning heresies
Reading: Is 45.17ff (LXX): ‘Be renewed for me, you islands. Israel is saved by the Lord with an eternal salvation
1 ‘Blessed is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ’ (2 Cor 1.3). One should not think of God without thinking of him as Father, to make the glory paid to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit complete and inseparable. For the Father's glory is not different from the Son's, but one and the same. Since the Son is the Father's Only-begotten, he shares the Father's glory when the Father is glorified; for glory accrues to the Son from honour paid to the Father, while glory paid to the Son is greatly to the honour of the Father of one who is so excellent.
2 Though the intellect is very swift in its understanding, the tongue needs the medium of words and long verbal formulas. In the same way the eye encompasses a large number of the host of the stars, but if you want to indicate them one by one, which is the Morning and which the Evening star, and each of the others, you have to use many words. In a similar way again the intellect encompasses land and sea and all the ends of the world in the briefest moment; but it needs many words to explain what it has grasped in an instant. These comparisons are significant, but they are still weak and feeble. For we do not say as much as needs to be said about God, but as much as human nature can grasp and our weakness can bear. We do not explain what God is; we admit with a good grace that we do not know the exact truth about him. For in what concerns God the height of knowledge is to admit one's ignorance. So magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together, all as one’ (Ps 33.4 (34.3)). For singly we are incapable; or rather, even if we all join our voices, it will still be beyond us to do what we ought. I am not just speaking about all of you present; for even if all the Church's offspring throughout the whole world, both now and in the future, were to join voices, they would be incapable of singing their shepherd's praises as he deserves.
3 Abraham was a great and honoured man; but great only in comparison with other men. But once he was admitted to God's presence, he declared truthfully and with a good grace: ‘I am earth and ashes’ (Gen 18.27). He didn't say ‘I am earth’ and leave it there, not wishing to give himself the name of the great element; he added: ‘and ashes’, to indicate his corruptible and defective side. Is there anything, he means, that is finer and lighter than ash? Compare, he means, ash with a house, a house with a city, a city with a province, a province with the Roman Empire, the Roman Empire with the whole world and all its confines, the whole world with the heavens which embrace it—the world which is to the heavens what the hub of a wheel is to the whole circumference; and bear in mind that this visible first heaven is smaller than the second, and the second than the third; and when you have conceived in your mind all the heavens, even these heavens will not be able to praise God as he is, even if they speak louder than the thunder. If these great vaults of the heavens cannot sing the praise of God as he deserves, when will earth and ashes, the smallest and least of all beings, be able to raise a hymn that is worthy of God, ‘who holds together the circle of the earth and views its inhabitants as locusts’ (Is 40.22 (LXX))?
4 If anyone will undertake to speak about God, let him first give an account of the boundaries of the earth. You live on earth, but you do not know the ends of the earth, which is your own dwelling; how can you form an adequate concept of its Maker? You gaze at the stars, but you cannot gaze at their Creator. First count what you can see, and then explain the One you cannot see, who ‘numbers the hosts of the stars and calls each one of them by name’ (Ps 146 (147).4). Not long ago there was a violent downpour and the raindrops all but killed us. Calculate the number of the raindrops that fell on this city alone; calculate, if you can, the number that fell in a single hour, I won't say on the whole city, but on your own house; then, if you can't, you will realize your own inadequacy. This shows you the extent of God's power. For ‘he numbers the raindrops’ (Job 36.27 (LXX)) which pour down over the whole earth—not only today but ever. The sun is God's creation; it is vast, but compared with the whole sky it is very small. First gaze at the sun, and then speculate about its Lord. ‘Do not inquire into what is too deep for you, or examine what is too strong for you; ponder on what has been assigned to you’ (Sir 3.21–2).
5 Perhaps someone will say: ‘If the divine substance is incomprehensible, why do you discuss these things yourself?’ But since I can't drink up a whole river, does this mean that I can't take as much as is good for me? Since the construction of my eyes doesn't allow me to take in the whole sun, does this mean that I can't see enough for my own needs? Or if I enter a great garden and can't eat all the produce of the fruit-trees, do you want me to leave totally famished? I praise and glorify our Maker, for the divine command tells us: ‘Let every breath give praise to the Lord’ (Ps 150.6). My purpose now is to glorify the Lord, not to explain him, knowing that I shall fall short of glorifying him worthily, but regarding it as a work of devotion simply to make the attempt. For the words of the Lord Jesus console me in my weakness: ‘No one has ever seen God’ (Jn 1.18).
6 ‘What?’, someone will say. ‘Doesn't Scripture say that the angels of the little ones “always behold the face of my Father in heaven”’ (Mt 18.10)? But the angels see God not as he is, but according to their capacity. For Jesus himself said: ‘Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the one who is from God, he has seen the Father’ (Jn 6.46). The angels see according to their capacity, and the archangels according to their ability; the Thrones and Dominations more than the first, but still fail to do him justice. Only the Holy Spirit, together with the Son, can see adequately. ‘For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God’ (1 Cor 2.10), just as the Only-begotten Son, together with the Holy Spirit, knows the Father adequately. For Jesus says that ‘no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son reveals him’ (Mt 11.27). For he sees God as he needs to see him and reveals him through the Spirit according to each one's receptivity; for the Only-begotten Son shares in the Father's godhead together with the Holy Spirit. The Begotten knows his Begetter, and the Begetter knows the one he has begotten. Therefore since angels are ignorant (for the Only-begotten reveals according to each one's power through the Holy Spirit, as we have said), let no human be ashamed to confess his ignorance. I am speaking now, as everyone speaks when occasion offers; but how we speak, we cannot say. How then can I give an account of the one who gives me the power of speech? I have a soul, but I cannot list its properties; how will I be able to give a full account of the one who gave me my soul?
7 There is only one thing that religion will require us to know, and that is that we have a God: a God who is one, a God who exists, who exists eternally, who is always like himself, who has no other as his father, who has no one stronger than himself, whom no successor can expel from his kingdom, who is many-named, all-powerful and uniform in substance. For the fact that he is called good and just and all-sovereign and Sabaoth does not make him subject to difference and diversity; remaining one and the same, he radiates myriad divine energies. He is not more developed on one side and less on another; in everything he is like himself. He is not great only in love of mankind and small in wisdom; he is equally powerful in wisdom and love of mankind. He is not endowed with sight in one part of his being and deprived of it in another; he is all eye and all hearing and all mind. He is not endowed with thought in one part of his being and without consciousness in another, as we are; that would be a blasphemous idea and unworthy of the divine substance. He has foreknowledge of all that is; he is holy and all-sovereign; he is more excellent and greater and wiser than any being. We shall never be able to ascribe to him shape or form. ‘His voice you have never heard; his form you have never seen’ (Jn 5.37), says Scripture. So too Moses told the Israelites: ‘Keep it firmly in your hearts that you have seen no likeness of him’ (Deut 4.15 (LXX)). For if it is impossible for his general likeness to be manifested, will thought come close to his substance?