Естество Божие

Would you call the Divine a body? But how can you call it infinite, without limits or outlines, intangible, invisible? Is this really what bodies are like? How arbitrary! The nature of bodies is not like that. Or is the Divinity a body, and at the same time not infinite, not limitless, etc., so that It has no advantages over us in anything? What a rude concept! How can the Deity be venerable if It has an outline? Or how will It avoid not being composed of the elements, again decomposing into them and not being destroyed at all? For complexity is the beginning of struggle, struggle is the beginning of division; division means destruction, and destruction is completely alien to God and the first nature. So there is no division in Him, otherwise there would be destruction; there is no struggle, otherwise there would be division; there is no difficulty, otherwise there would be a struggle. Therefore, the Divine is not a body, otherwise there would be complexity in Him. The word stops here, ascending from the last to the first. Moreover, God’s property is to permeate everything and fill everything, according to what was said: Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord (Jer. 23, 24), and again: the Spirit of the Lord fills the universe (Wis. 1, 7), - how will it be preserved if God limits Himself to other things, and Himself to others? Or He will penetrate a world filled with nothing, and everything among us will be destroyed to the reproach of God, Who will become a body and lose everything He has created; or He will be a body among other bodies, which is impossible; or will rise both in conjugation and in opposition to bodies; or it will mix with them like a liquid, and will divide some and divide others, which is more absurd and meaningless than Epicurus's atoms 80; and thus our doctrine of the corporeality of God will disintegrate and will have neither density nor coherence. If we say that God is an immaterial body and, moreover, as some people think, a fifth and rotating body (let an immaterial and a fifth, and if you wish, even an incorporeal body be admitted; since their words flow and are composed arbitrarily, but this is not what I am arguing about now), then to what kind of movable and portable will this body belong? I am not saying how offensive it is to assume that the creator with the created and the wearer with the wearer move in the same way, if only they assume this. But what motivates Him again? How does everything move? What sets things in motion and what makes everything move? And then, what motivates this very thing? - and so on ad infinitum. Moreover, how can He not need to be contained in a place, if only there is something portable? But if they say that God is some other body besides the fifth, even, for example, an angelic one, then how do they know that Angels are bodily, what kind of bodies they have, and the higher the Angel will be God, to Whom the Angel serves? And if the body is higher than the angelic, then again an innumerable swarm of bodies will be introduced and such a depth of idle talk that it will be impossible to stop anywhere. From this it is clear that God is not a body. Yes, none of the inspired men said or allowed this; such a teaching is not of our yard. Therefore, we can only assume that God is not corporeal. But if it is not corporeal, then it does not depict and does not embrace the essence, just as the words “unborn,” “beginningless,” “immutable,” “incorruptible,” and what else is said about God and about the things that belong to God, do not embrace the essence. For in Him - the Existing One - does nature and independence express that He has no beginning, does not change, is not limited? On the contrary, whoever truly has the mind of God and has perfected himself in speculation has yet to continue his speculation and research and comprehend all of existence. To depict and explain one or another of the objects of your reasoning, it is not enough to say: this is the body or this is the born; on the contrary, if you want to completely and satisfactorily define the conceivable, you must name the subject of these predicates (for this bodily, and begotten, and perishable is either a man, or an ox, or a horse). So here too, the one who explores the nature of Being will not stop by saying what He is not, but on the contrary, to what He is not, he will add what He is (especially since it is easier to embrace one thing with the mind rather than deny everything one by one); will add, so that through the exclusion of what is not, and through the position of what is, the conceivable becomes intelligible. And whoever, having said what it is not, is silent about what it is, acts almost in the same way as if, when asked: how much is twice five, answering: it will not be two, three, four, five, twenty, or thirty - in short, none of the numbers contained in ten or tens, and yet not say: this will be ten, that is, the questioner’s thoughts cannot stop on the very thing sought. For, as everyone clearly sees, it is much easier and more likely to explain about an object what it is not, by means of what it is, than, excluding what it is not, to show what it is (1). What I did not consider with myself in my loving mind, what I did not enrich my mind with, where I did not look for a similarity for this, but did not find anything to which God’s nature could be applied. If some small similarity is found, then much more slips away, leaving me down with what was chosen for comparison. Following the example of others, I imagined a spring, a spring and a stream and reasoned: are not the Father similar to one, the Son to another, and the Holy Spirit to a third? For the spring, the spring and the stream are not separated by time, and their coexistence is continuous, although it seems that they are separated by three properties. But he was afraid, firstly, so as not to allow some kind of flow in the Divinity that never stops; secondly, so as not to introduce numerical unity through such similarity. For the spring, the spring and the stream are one in relation to number, but they are different only in the image of representation. I again took into consideration the sun, the ray and the light. But here, too, there is a fear that in an uncomplicated nature one may not imagine any complexity noticeable in the sun and in that which is from the sun; secondly, so that, by attributing essence to the Father, one does not deprive other persons of their independence and make them the powers of God, which exist in the Father, but are not independent. Because both the ray and the light are not the sun, but some solar outpourings and essential qualities of the sun. Thirdly, so as not to attribute to God both existence and non-existence (to which conclusion this example can lead); and this is even more absurd than what was said before. I also heard that someone found the desired similarity in the reflection of the sun, which appears on a table and is shaken by the movement of the waters, when the beam, collected by the air and then scattered by the reflecting surface, comes into a strange vibration, for due to numerous and frequent movements it runs from place to place, making up not so much one, but many, and not so much many, but one; because due to the speed of rapprochement and divergence, it escapes before his gaze catches it. But, in my opinion, this cannot be accepted either. Firstly, because what sets things in motion is too visible here, but there is nothing more primary than God that would set Him in motion, because He Himself is the cause of everything, and does not have a cause that would be more primary than Him. Secondly, because this similarity suggests the previous thought about movement, about complexity, about an unstable and unsteady nature, while nothing of the kind should be imagined about the Divine. And in general I find nothing that, when considering what is represented, would stop the thought on the selected similarities, unless someone with due prudence takes one thing from the image and discards everything else. Finally, I concluded that it is best to abandon all images and shadows as deceptive and far from reaching the truth, to adhere to a more pious way of thinking, focusing on a few sayings, to have the Spirit as a guide, and whatever illumination is received from Him, then preserving it to the end, with it, as with a sincere accomplice and interlocutor, to go through the present century, and, to the best of one’s ability, to convince others to worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit - To the One Divinity and One Power (1). Epicurus's hypothesis about the arbitrary deviation of atoms from a vertical fall not only explains the formation of the world in the process of collisions of atoms during their fall in empty space, but also provides a natural philosophical justification for the free will inherent in an individual: the atoms of the soul have indeterministic freedom, and our actions, which are not subject to any coercion, depend on them. – Approx. ed. You might be interested in: