Letter 234

234. To the same, on another question.

Do you worship what you know, or what you do not know? If we answer, 'What we know, this we worship,' their reply comes at once: 'What is the substance of the one you worship?' And if we confess that we do not know the substance, again they turn upon us and say: 'Then you worship what you do not know.' But we say that to know has many meanings. For we say that we know the greatness of God, and his power, and his wisdom, and his goodness, and the providence by which he cares for us, and the justice of his judgement—but not his very substance. So the question is captious. For he who says he does not know the substance has not confessed that he does not know God, since our conception of God is gathered from the many things we have enumerated. 'But God is simple,' he says, 'and whatever you reckon among the things known of him belongs to his substance.' But this is a sophism that holds countless absurdities. Of all these things enumerated, are they all names of one substance? And is his terribleness of equal force with his loving-kindness, his justice with his creative power, his foreknowledge with his recompensing, his majesty with his providence? Or, whichever of these we name, do we declare the substance? If indeed they say this, let them not ask whether we know the substance of God, but let them inquire of us whether we know God to be terrible, or just, or loving toward men. These things we confess that we know. But if they say that the substance is something else, let them not cheat us by appeal to his simplicity. For they themselves have confessed that the substance and each of the things enumerated are different. But the activities are various, while the substance is simple. We, however, say that we know our God from his activities, but we do not promise to draw near to his very substance. For his activities come down to us, but his substance remains inaccessible.

'But if you do not know the substance,' he says, 'you do not know him.' But you, reverse it: if you say you know the substance, you do not know him. For neither does the man bitten by a mad dog, who sees the dog in the cup, see more than those who are healthy; rather he is pitiable for this reason, that he supposes he sees what he does not see. Do not, then, marvel at him for his profession, but judge him pitiable for his derangement. Know, therefore, that it is the talk of triflers: 'If you do not know the substance of God, you worship what you do not know.' But I, that he exists, I know; what the substance is, I set above the reach of thought. How, then, am I saved? Through faith. And faith is sufficient to know that God exists, not what he is, and that he becomes a rewarder to those who seek him out. The knowledge, then, of the divine substance is the perception of his incomprehensibility; and what is to be reverenced is not the apprehension of what the substance is, but that the substance exists.

And let them be questioned in turn thus. 'No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.' What did the only-begotten declare of the Father—the substance or the power? If the power, then so much as he declared to us, so much we know. If the substance, tell me, where did he declare the substance of his unbegottenness? When did Abraham worship—was it not when he believed? And when did he believe—was it not when he was called? Where, then, here was an apprehension testified to him by Scripture? And when did the disciples worship him—was it not when they saw the creation made subject to him? For from the sea and the winds obeying him they recognized his deity. From his activities, then, comes knowledge; and from knowledge, worship. 'Do you believe that I am able to do this?' 'I believe, Lord'—and he worshipped him. So worship follows upon faith, and faith is confirmed from power. But if you say that he who believes also knows, then from the things he believes, from these also he knows; or, conversely, from the things he knows, from these also he believes. And we know God from his power. So that we believe in him who has been known, and we worship him who has been believed.