Our Knowledge of God as It Is Here on Earth

Part I: The Knowability of God

Chapter II: The Quality of Man’s Knowledge of God According to Divine Revelation

The arguments for the existence of God not only prove His existence, but at the same time reveal each some one or other aspect of the Divine Essence.¹ Whatever knowledge of the Divine Essence we may thus acquire from a consideration of finite things, is sure to be stamped with the birth mark of the creature. It may be ennobled and transfigured by Revelation and faith, but they cannot change its substance. Not until we are admitted to the beatific vision in Heaven, does the abstractive and analogous knowledge of God acquired here on earth give way to that intuitive and perfect knowledge which enables us to see the Blessed Trinity as It is. Such are the limitations of the created intellect that it cannot even enjoy the beatific vision except by means of a specially infused light, called “lumen gloriae.”

We shall treat of the two modes of knowing God, the earthly and the heavenly, in the next two sections, reserving a third section for the consideration of Eunomianism and Ontologism.

Section 1: Our Knowledge of God as It Is Here on Earth

In this section we shall consider: (1) the imperfection of our knowledge of God here below; (2) the threefold mode by which man can know God, viz.: (a) affirmation or causation, inferring the nature of His attributes from the nature of His works; (b) negation or remotion, excluding the idea of finite limitation; (c) intensification or eminence, ascribing every perfection to God which is consistent with His infinity, to the exclusion of all quantitative and temporal measures and comparisons;² and (3) certain theological conclusions flowing therefrom.

Article 1: The Imperfection of Our Knowledge of God in This Life

1. Preliminary Remarks. — The perfection or imperfection of any act of cognition depends upon the manner in which we acquire our concepts. These may be, on the one hand, either abstractive or intuitive; or, on the other, either analogous or univocal.

a) We form an intuitive concept, when consciousness and intellect put us into direct communication with objective truth (such is, e.g., the concept of a tree). A concept is abstractive — this term must not be confounded with “abstract” — when its compound elements are derived from some other object or objects, and transferred to the object under consideration (e.g., the concept of a golden calf). Whence it follows, that every intuitive concept is an immediate one (conceptus immediatus), while an abstractive concept is always mediate (conceptus mediatus), because it can be gained only by means of other concepts or of syllogistic conclusions. It follows also that an abstractive concept can never represent its object adequately, while an intuitive concept may, though it must not do so.

b) An analogous (conceptus analogus) differs from a univocal concept (conceptus univocus) in the same way that a metaphorical differs from a proper concept (conceptus improprius — proprius). A univocal or proper concept is one which applies to every individual comprehended under it in the same sense, as for example the concept “man” applies to Peter, Paul, John, etc. An analogous concept, on the other hand, is predicated of a number of objects partly in the same and partly in a different sense, as e.g., “healthy” of the human body, the color of one’s face, the climate, etc.³

c) Here we shall have to borrow from philosophy two important truths. The first is, that all rational knowledge is grounded on sense perception, so that the material objects of the senses must be said to be the primary, proportionate, and adequate object of our intellect. The second truth is based upon the first: Our earthly knowledge of God is not the fountain-head and source, but the consummation and climax of human cognition.⁴ This gives us the status quaestionis of the problem we are studying. If it is true that in this life we can acquire a knowledge of God only from the contemplation of nature, it follows that our concept of Him is not intuitive (immediate, adequate) but abstractive (mediate, inadequate). And if the concept we form of God does not represent Him as He is in Himself, but only analogically, it follows further that our knowledge of God cannot be univocal, but must be analogous. Being abstractive and analogical, then, it must be very imperfect — and this imperfection not even supernatural belief in God (fides in Deum) can remove.⁵

2. The Dogma in Sacred Scripture and Tradition. — The imperfection of man’s knowledge of God here below may be said to be included in the dogma of God’s incomprehensibility or inscrutability (ἀκατάληψια). “Deus … incomprehensibilis”;⁶ “Ecclesia credit … Deum verum et vivum … incomprehensibilem.”⁷ How the term “incomprehensible” is to be understood, and in what the essence of incomprehensibility consists, the Church has never defined.

a) The Scriptural argument, drawn from the Old and New Testaments, covers both our natural and our supernatural knowledge of God (i.e., that based on faith and grace). In the Old Testament, besides the Book of Job,⁸ it is especially the Sapiential Books which insist that we cannot comprehend God while we are wayfarers on this earth; nay, that He remains incomprehensible to our mind even in the hereafter, when we enjoy the light of glory.⁹ The principal text in proof of our thesis is drawn from the New Testament, viz., I Cor. XIII, 12: “Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem; nunc cognosco ex parte, tunc autem [i. e. in coelo] cognoscam, sicut et cognitus sum — We see now through a glass in a dark manner; but then face to face. Now I know in part; but then I shall know even as I am known.” St. Paul here makes a sharp distinction between two modes of knowing God, the one earthly, the other heavenly, which are opposed to each other (nunc — tunc, ἄρτι — τότε). Limiting ourselves to the former (the latter will engage us later), human knowledge of God here below is characterized by three essential marks. It is represented first as a “seeing through a glass,”¹⁰ a mode of perception directly opposed to intuitive vision “face to face.” As in Rom. I, 20, so here St. Paul describes our earthly knowledge of God as an abstractive, mediate, inadequate knowledge, which remains a vision per speculum even if a man “should have all faith.”¹¹ The second mark is “enigmatic,”¹² which means that the human mind on earth can conceive God only by analogy drawn from His creatures; for a proper and univocal concept of God could not be designated as enigmatical or compared to seeing “in a dark manner.” This characteristic is completed by the third mark, viz., partiality (ex parte, ἐκ μέρους), which clearly designates our knowledge of God as being a knowledge “in part.” All three of these notes prove the imperfection of our earthly knowledge of God as conclusively as they establish God’s incomprehensibility by the human mind so long as man lingers in “this vale of tears.”¹³

b) The Fathers of the fourth and fifth centuries defended this dogma against the Eunomians, who claimed that the human mind is able to comprehend God adequately here below. They defended it first as mere witnesses to the ancient Tradition, and secondly as philosophers discussing the How and Why.

α) One of the first of these witnesses is St. Justin Martyr, who insists both on the incomprehensibility of God and the spontaneousness of our concept of Him. He says: “That same Being, which is beyond all essence,¹⁴ I say, is unutterable, and inexplicable, but alone beautiful and good, coming suddenly into souls well-dispositioned, on account of their affinity to and desire of seeing Him.”¹⁵ Gregory of Nyssa appeals to the Bible to give testimony against Eunomius: “All those Scriptural expressions which have been invented to glorify God, designate something which belongs to God,¹⁶ … whereby we are taught, either that He is almighty, or insusceptible of corruption, or immense… . His own essence, however, since it cannot be comprehended by reason, nor expressed in language, He has not exposed to curious searching, inasmuch as He commanded [men] to venerate silently that which He withheld from their certain knowledge.”¹⁷ “By the very act of confessing our ignorance,” according to Cyril of Jerusalem, “we profess a deep knowledge of God.”¹⁸ Of special importance in this connection are the five homilies of St. Chrysostom against the Eunomians, entitled: “Of Him Who is Inscrutable.” We hear the same string faintly vibrating in the writings of the last of the Greek Fathers, for John of Damascus teaches: “The supreme, unutterable, impenetrable Being is alone in knowing Itself. True, it is manifest to all creatures that God exists; but they are utterly ignorant of what He is according to His substance and nature.”¹⁹ To quote at least one representative of the Latins, St. Augustine says beautifully: “Verius enim cogitatur Deus quam dicitur, et verius est quam cogitatur — For God is more truly thought than He is uttered, and exists more truly than He is thought.”²⁰

β) In their capacity as metaphysicians, the Fathers seek to refute Eunomianism partly by a close analysis of the elements that enter into the human conception of God, partly by opposing to it a complete theory of knowledge.

In regard to the first point, the Fathers involved in the Eunomian controversy, especially the Cappadocians, prove the impossibility of man’s having an intuitive, adequate knowledge of God here below, by an analysis of the logical constituents of the various concepts we are able to form of God. Their argument may be summed up as follows: A careful classification of all these different concepts shows some of them to be affirmative, while others are negative in quality. The affirmative concepts connote some perfection, either concrete (e.g., God is wise), or abstract (e.g., God is wisdom). In the case of the former (affirmative), the human mind forms the concept of a being in which “being wise” inheres after the manner of an accidental form; in the case of the latter (negative) notions, we conceive a form abstracted from its subject — a form, therefore, which does not exist as such. Now, this mode of conception is proper to creatures, but not to God; for God, as Infinite Being, is neither the subject of accidental forms of perfection, nor Himself an abstract form of perfection. He is Substantial Wisdom, which is really identical with every other perfection, though it does not enter into any composition, either physical or metaphysical. On the other hand, the negative concepts we form of God deny the existence in Him of any imperfection of the kind common to creatures (e.g., God is incorporeal), and hence do not express God’s essence such as it is in itself. But a concept which, in order to be a true concept, must first shed all imperfections, cannot possibly claim to be adequate, intuitive, or univocal.²¹

The theory of knowledge elaborated by the Fathers, assumes that all our concepts are derived from sense perception, and concludes that a concept of God drawn from such a source must needs be imperfect. Thus, e.g., Gregory of Nyssa argues: “God’s epithets are based upon the things He works in us… . But His essence is anterior to its operations, and we derive our knowledge of these operations from the things we perceive by our senses.”²² The great Basil²³ and John of Damascus²⁴ express themselves in like manner. Several of the Fathers go into the subject more deeply, anticipating as it were the Scholastic axiom: “Cognitum est in cognoscente non ad modum cogniti, sed ad modum cognoscentis,” and emphasizing the truth that “the measure (τὸ μέτρον) of our knowledge of God is immanent in man, who is a synthesis of spirit and matter;” that is to say, the more perfect the power of cognition, the nobler is the resultant act or knowledge. Man, ranking midway between angels and brutes, apprehends the material things below him according to a higher, i.e., the notional, mode of being; but his apprehension of the things that are above him (the angels, God) is cast in a more imperfect mould.²⁵ Consequently, our idea of God is necessarily imperfect.

γ) There are on record certain utterances of the Fathers which appear to contradict or at least to weaken the doctrine we have just propounded. But in reality they confirm it. The oft-repeated phrase, We know that God exists, but we do not know His essence, does not mean that we can have no knowledge of God whatever, but merely that our knowledge of His essence is imperfect. Nor can the Patristic dictum that we merely know what God is not, but do not know what He is, be cited in support of the Neo-Platonic teaching of a purely negative cognoscibility,²⁶ or of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Philosophy of the Unknowable. St. Augustine, e.g., insists: “Si non potestis comprehendere, quid sit Deus, vel hoc comprehendite, quid non sit Deus; multum profeceritis, si non aliud quam est de Deo senseritis — If ye are not able to comprehend what God is, comprehend at least what God is not: you will have made much progress, if you think of God as being not something other than He is.”²⁷ We have his own authority²⁸ for explaining that he merely intends to define the sublimity of the divine Essence as surpassing all categories of human thought; that is to say, he merely emphasizes the purely analogical and abstractive character of our knowledge of God. Therefore Gregory Nazianzen admonishes us: “It is not enough to state what [God] is not; but he who would discover the nature of Him Who is (τοῦ ὄντος), must also define what He is. For he who defines only what God is not, is like unto a man who would answer the question: How much is twice five? by saying: It is not one, nor two, etc., omitting to tell his questioner that it is ten.”²⁹

c) The dogma here under consideration is supported also by the authority of the great Scholastic theologians, notably St. Thomas Aquinas.³⁰ Following in the footsteps of the Fathers, the Schoolmen worked out a theory of knowledge which conforms not only to the psychology of the thinking mind, but likewise to the principles of revealed religion. As the foundation of their system they adopted the philosophy of Aristotle, for the reason that this system — at least in its fundamental lines — fitted in best with both the nature of the human intellect, and supernatural Revelation. Inasmuch as Sacred Scripture and the Fathers favor the basic principles of the Aristotelian theory of knowledge, this theory can claim our unconditional assent, and we must admit that in its essential features, aside from incidental details, it cannot be false. In making this assertion, we do not, of course, wish to advocate a slavish restoration of the ancient psychology, nor to condemn every effort at originality in stating and developing its principles. Our sole object is to impress upon the reader that not every system of psychology can be fitted into the framework of revealed theology. Thus, e.g., the critical Idealism of Kant, based as it is upon radically false premises, cannot be harmonized with Revelation. It is a mistake to believe that, by clinging to Scholastic Aristotelianism, the Church puts a brake upon theologians who endeavor to clear up special questions. On the contrary, was not, for instance, the psychology of Albertus Magnus, a heteroclite amalgam of omnigenous philosophical elements, which it required the master mind of an Aquinas to sift and transfuse into a coherent system, by eliminating all extraneous ingredients?³¹

Article 2: The Threefold Mode of Knowing God Here on Earth

1. Preliminary Observations. — Our previous article will receive confirmation from the detailed exposition, which we now undertake, of the manner in which man acquires such knowledge of God as is vouchsafed him here below. He attains to it in a threefold manner: via affirmationis seu causalitatis (θέσις), via negationis (ἀναίρεσις), and via superlationis seu eminentiae (ὑπεροχή). Every one of these methods is exceedingly imperfect. As we do not perceive God in his own form (in specie propria), but in that of some other being (in specie aliena), that is to say, by means of analogous concepts derived from His creatures, it is plain that our knowledge of Him must involve many imperfections, notably a certain inaccuracy in the notion of God, which calls for incessant correction if the judgments we formulate of God and divine things are not to be entirely wrong. When we affirm some divine perfection, such as, e.g., wisdom, we are immediately constrained to eliminate from this perfection, by an act of negation, every species of imperfection common to creatures (e.g., human wisdom), and furthermore to raise the perfection thus purged by a series of negations to its superlative degree and into the domain of the infinite (e.g., superhuman, absolute wisdom). This threefold process of affirmation, negation, and intensification, is therefore merely a natural and necessary result of the abstractive and analogous character of our conception of God.³²

It appears, then, that we may indeed claim to have a knowledge of the divine Essence, but only in a certain limited sense. As our earthly knowledge of God is neither intuitive nor univocal, we do not apprehend the divine Essence in the manner claimed by the Eunomians; though, on the other hand, as the Fathers insisted against the Gnostics and Neo-Platonists (who would admit the possibility of none but a purely negative knowledge of the divine Essence), it must be held that our cognition of God comprises more than merely His abstract existence (ὅτι ἔστιν), inasmuch as we are able, by means of affirmative (positive) concepts of quality in a limited measure to conceive the Divine Essence and to differentiate it distinctly from all other objects (τὰ περὶ Θεοῦ). The doctrine that we know God by mode of affirmation is held by theologians to be fidei proxima, because Holy Scripture applies positive as well as negative attributes to the Godhead.

2. These Three Modes of Cognition are Inseparable. — The three modes of knowing God which we have just explained, are like parts of a cripple’s crutch — the human mind cannot proceed by means of one of them alone, it must employ all three simultaneously.

a) The positive predicates at which we arrive by means of the via affirmationis, express either a simple or a mixed divine perfection.³³ The difference between the two classes is, that the concept of a simple perfection (e.g., sanctity), does not include any sort of imperfection, while a mixed perfection always connotes some defect (e.g., syllogistic reasoning). Now it is obvious that no mixed perfection can be affirmed of God that has not previously been subjected to a process of logical purification. We may not even apply our notions of simple perfections unconditionally to God, except with the express restriction that such and such a quality exists in God not after the manner of the creature (negation), but in an infinitely higher mode, in what is called the eminent sense.

b) With regard to the via negationis we must observe that this method is able to impart more than a purely negative knowledge of God; for inasmuch as it eliminates defects or limitations, it is essentially a negation of a negation, and thus attains to the dignity of an affirmation.³⁴ Thus the infinity of God, being essentially a denial that there are limitations in Him, postulates the plenitude of all being in God; which implies not only an affirmation, but also a modus eminentior, a more eminent mode of being. Hence there is no reason why, after the example of the Calvinist theologian, John Clericus, we should reject the via negationis as unfruitful and meaningless.

c) Inasmuch as the superlative degree is merely the positive degree intensified, the via superlationis, or mode of eminence, naturally entails affirmations. But the process also implies a negation which serves the purpose of complement and correction. And for this reason, since even the purest perfections in God differ radically from those proper to creatures, in applying to God the notion of any created perfection, we must exclude every species of limitation. Language has three terms for three different forms of the superlative: First, abstract terms; e.g., God is goodness (ipsa bonitas — αὐταγαθότης); second, terms compounded with the adverbs “all” or “alone”; e.g., God is all-powerful or, “God alone is powerful” (cfr. the “Tu solus altissimus” of the “Gloria”); and third, terms compounded with the prefix “super” (e.g., God is super-temporal, i.e., above time, independent of it).

The Scotist Frassen³⁵ appropriately compares these three modes of cognition with the modus procedendi peculiar to the three arts of painting, sculpture, and poetry. The painter produces a portrait as it were “affirmatively,” by brushing his colors upon the canvas; the sculptor may be said to proceed “negatively” in carving a statue; while the poet treats his subject “superlatively,” by applying to it all sorts of tropes, metaphors, and hyperboles.³⁶

3. How This Threefold Mode of Cognition Accords with Divine Revelation. — The three modes by which the mind of man conceives God, as explained above, are clearly indicated in Holy Scripture and Tradition, and their existence and objective fitness must be admitted to be certain from a theological point of view.

a) We have a plain Scriptural argument in Ecclus. XLIII, 29–32, a text which picturesquely describes the works of God, winding up as follows: “Consummatio autem sermonum [i. e., briefly stated]: Ipse [scil. Deus] est in omnibus [τὸ πᾶν ἔστιν αὐτός, i. e., He contains all created perfections = via affirmationis s. causalitatis]. Gloriantes ad quid valebimus? Ipse enim omnipotens super omnia opera sua [the Septuagint has: αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁ μέγας παρὰ πάντα τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ, i. e., He is nothing of the things He has made = via negationis], … Glorificantes Dominum, quantumcunque potueritis, supervalebit enim adhuc [ὑπερέξει ἔτι, i. e., He is high above every thing = via eminentiae].” St. Thomas Aquinas finds the three modes or stages indicated also in Rom. I, 20: “‘Invisibilia Dei’ cognoscuntur per viam negationis; ‘sempiterna virtus’ per viam causalitatis; ‘divinitas’ per viam excellentiae.”³⁷

b) The most famous and the best known formula that has come down to us from Patristic times, is that of the Pseudo-Dionysius: Θεός … πάντων θέσις καὶ πάντων ἀφαίρεσις ἡ ὑπὲρ πᾶσαν θέσιν καὶ ἀφαίρεσιν αἰτία.³⁸ The same early writer, whoever he may have been, sailing in the wake of the Neo-Platonists, cultivated with a certain predilection the via superlationis: “Nihil eorum, quae sunt … explicat arcanum illud omnem rationem et intellectum superans superdeitatis superessentialiter supra omnia superexistentis” (τῆς ὑπὲρ πάντα ὑπερουσίως ὑπερβεβηκυίας ὑπερθεότητος).³⁹ He is equally familiar with the via negationis, though in employing this mode he does not adopt the one-sided view of the Neo-Platonists. “God” — he says — “is not substance, not life, not light, not sense, not spirit, not wisdom, not goodness, not divinity, but something that is far higher and nobler than all these.”⁴⁰ Summing up the teaching of the Greek Fathers, St. John of Damascus says: “It is more becoming to speak of God negatively, denying all things about Him. Not as if He were nothing Himself, but inasmuch as He is above everything which exists, nay, above being itself.”⁴¹ For many other confirmatory passages, see Thomassin, De Deo, IV, 7–12.

As every negative conception of God essentially involves affirmations and intensifications, the negative mode of apprehending God is not quite so striking as one might conclude from the manner in which it was urged by the Fathers. Far from employing it for the purpose of proving the (Gnostic) “incognoscibility” of God or the (Neo-Platonic) “purely negative cognoscibility” of God, the Fathers rather strive by means of it to throw light both on the super-substantiality (ὑπερουσία) of God, and on our (relative) ignorance of things divine. For as Pseudo-Athanasius correctly remarks, Θεὸς γὰρ καταλαμβανόμενος οὐκ ἔστι Θεός. This explains why ever since the days of the Pseudo-Areopagite, the mystics have defended the principle that “The highest knowledge we can have of God is that we do not know Him.”⁴² Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa devoted an entire book to the development of this thought. “In rebus divinis scire est scire, nos ignorare,” he writes.⁴³ In speaking, as they often do, of a “mystic night,” in which God’s obscurity reveals itself to us most clearly, the medieval mystics merely vary the dictum of the Apostle of the Gentiles: [Deus] “lucem … inhabitat inaccessibilem, quem nullus hominum vidit, sed nec videre potest — [God] inhabiteth light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen, nor can see.”⁴⁴

Article 3: Theological Conclusions

1. God’s Ineffability. — a) Language is merely the expression of thought, and therefore, if God is incomprehensible, it follows that He must also be ineffable or unutterable. “Deus … ineffabilis” says the Fourth Lateran Council.⁴⁵ And St. Augustine beautifully observes: “Quid quaeris, ut ascendat in linguam, quod in cor hominis non ascendit?”⁴⁶ As God alone comprehends Himself, so He alone can utter Himself adequately. It is in this sense, that the Fathers designate God as the “ineffable” or “nameless” one (ἀνώνυμος).

b) Nevertheless man is able to conceive God, though inadequately, by a series of concepts representing His different attributes; and consequently can utter Him in a variety of names. Hence the Patristic term πολυώνυμος, “He of many names,” and the still larger term employed by some of the Fathers, παντώνυμος, i.e., “all-names,” “He to Whom all names apply.” In his sublime “Hymn to God,” Gregory Nazianzen beautifully sums up these conceptions: “Σὺ πάντων τέλος ἐσσὶ καὶ εἷς καὶ πάντα, καὶ οὐδὲν σὺ ἓν ἐών, οὐ πάντα. Παντώνυμε, πῶς σε καλέσω, τὸν μόνον ἀκλήτρατον.”⁴⁷ St. Augustine expresses himself in a similar manner: “Omnia possunt de Deo dici et nihil digne dicitur de Deo. Nihil latius hac inopia. Quaeris congruum nomen? Non invenis. Quaeris quoquo modo dicere? Omnia invenis — All things can be said of God, and nothing is worthily said of God. Nothing is wider than this poverty of expression. Thou seekest a fitting name for Him; thou canst not find it. Thou seekest to speak of Him in any way soever; thou findest that He is all.”⁴⁸

c) A comparison of the logical elements of the various names applied to God, shows that all taken together yet fall far short of expressing the fulness of his infinite and super-notional Being; hence the Patristic term ὑπερώνυμος. We need not call attention to the fact that this threefold mode of appellation (πολυώνυμος, παντώνυμος, ὑπερώνυμος) corresponds exactly to the threefold mode of our apprehension of God, as explained above.⁴⁹

2. The Composite Character of our Conception of God in Relation to His Simplicity. — The three modes by which we apprehend God produce in the human mind a great variety of concepts expressing attribution; hence the inevitably composite character of our conception of God. We have a typical example of such composition in the “Dogmatic Constitution on the Catholic Faith” adopted by the Vatican Council: “Ecclesia credit et confitetur, unum esse Deum verum et vivum, Creatorem ac Dominum coeli et terrae, omnipotentem, aeternum, immensum, incomprehensibilem, intellectu, ac voluntate omnique perfectione infinitum, etc. — The Holy Catholic Apostolic Roman Church believes and confesses that there is one true and living God, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intelligence, in will, and in all perfection.”⁵⁰

There naturally arises the question: How can a composite conception of God be harmonized with the absolute simplicity of the Divine Essence? Already the Eunomians raised the objection that the doctrine of the abstractive and analogous character of our knowledge of God must necessarily lead to an (impossible) piecing together of the Divine Essence, though it is quite evident that the supremely simple Being can be conceived only by the agency of an equally simple concept, and that consequently the various names applied to God are mere synonyms. The Fathers, in particular Basil and Gregory of Nyssa, solved this cunning objection by pointing out that though our knowledge of God is very imperfect, the Divine Essence comprises all perfections and consequently cannot be compressed into a finite concept. While our abstractive analogical mode of cognition compels the intellect to conceive God by a series of partial concepts, the infinite fulness of the Divine Being renders it impossible for us to exhaust that Being by means of conceptions formed in our finite mind.⁵¹

3. Our Conception of God is a True Conception, despite its Imperfections. — Our inability to form an adequate conception of God is apt to make us suspect that the conception we do arrive at is false. Eunomius expressly declared it to be so, insisting that, in order not to be misled into forming wrong notions of God, it must necessarily be in man’s power to construct an adequate notion of Him. Proceeding from the axiom that no conception can be true that represents a thing otherwise than it is, this heretic insisted that man must have the ability to form an adequate concept of God; because otherwise he would be doomed to form inadequate notions, and consequently to be deceived.

a) In undertaking to refute this specious objection, we must stress the fact that the truth and correctness of the concept which man forms of God by the agencies of reason and revelation, is a dogma coinciding with that of the cognoscibility of God.⁵² Among the divine predicates that human reason gathers from the consideration of nature, St. Paul⁵³ expressly mentions two: ἡ ἀΐδιος αὐτοῦ δύναμις, i.e., the eternal power manifested in the creation of the universe, and θειότης, i.e., a Divine Essence differing from all created things. As a third predicate the Book of Wisdom⁵⁴ adds the attribute of divine “beauty.” Elsewhere the Bible refers to God as “He who is,” i.e., Who has the plenitude of being; the Eternal, the Allwise, the Immense, etc. — all predicates which, if they were incorrect or untrue, would belie the Word of God.

b) The Eunomian contention, that unless we assume the possibility of man’s forming an adequate idea of God, we are placed before the alternative of forming either a false conception of Him or no conception at all — is met by the Fathers with the retort that it rests upon a confusion of the separate and distinct notes of “imperfect” and “incorrect” on the one hand, and their contradictories, “perfect” and “correct,” on the other. The Fathers insist that there is such a thing as a true though imperfect concept of God; that our knowledge of God, in spite of its inevitable defects, is true and remains true for the very simple reason, among others, that we are fully aware, and do so judge, that the perfections we ascribe to God exist in Him in a quite different way than they exist in His creatures and in the concepts of the human mind; that, whatever wrong elements may enter into our conception of God, are eliminated by an express judgment; while on the other hand the Eunomians themselves are open to the charge of counterfeiting the notion of God when they pretend to be able to conceive God and to comprehend Him as He is, though in matter of fact they derive their conceptions of Him from analogy.⁵⁵

Readings: — Suarez, De Divina Substantia eiusque Attributis, lib. I, cap. 8–12. — Thomassin, De Deo, lib. IV, cap. 6–12. — Franzelin, De Deo Uno, thes. 10–13. — Chr. Pesch, S.J., Der Gottesbegriff, Freiburg 1886. — M. Glossner, Der spekulative Gottesbegriff in der neuen und neuesten Philosophie, Paderborn 1894. — Simar, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 4th ed., Vol. I, pp. 113 sqq. — W. Humphrey, S.J., “His Divine Majesty,” pp. 16 sqq., London 1897. — M. Ronayne, S.J., God Knowable and Known, 2nd ed., New York 1902. — T. J. Gerrard, The Wayfarer’s Vision, London 1909.