Works (City of God, On the Trinity, etc.) 38 part 2/5

For where there is no understanding, neither can there be wisdom; and therefore, if the Father does not understand for Himself but the Son understands for the Father, assuredly the Son makes the Father wise. And if for God to be is the same as to be wise, and that essence is His which is His wisdom, then it is not the Son who has essence from the Father — which is true — but rather the Father who has essence from the Son, which is most absurd and most false. That we discussed, refuted, and cast away this absurdity in the seventh book is most certain. Therefore God the Father is wise by that wisdom which He Himself is, His own; and the Son is the wisdom of the Father from the wisdom which is the Father, from whom the Son was begotten. Wherefore, consequently, the Father is also understanding by that understanding which He Himself is, His own;

for one who was not understanding would not be wise. But the Son is the understanding of the Father, begotten of the understanding which is the Father. This can not unfittingly be said of memory also. For how is he wise who remembers nothing, or does not remember himself? Accordingly, because the Father is wisdom and the Son is wisdom, just as the Father remembers Himself, so also the Son; and just as the Father remembers both Himself and the Son by a memory not of the Son but His own, so the Son remembers both Himself and the Father by a memory not of the Father but His own. Where too there is no love, who would say there is any wisdom? From which it is gathered that the Father is His own love just as He is His own understanding and His own memory.

Behold, then, those three — that is, memory, understanding, and love or will — in that highest and unchangeable essence which is God are not the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, but the Father alone. And because the Son too is wisdom begotten of wisdom, just as neither the Father nor the Holy Spirit understands for Him, but He for Himself, so neither does the Father remember for Him nor the Holy Spirit love for Him, but He for Himself; for He too is His own memory, His own understanding, His own love — but that He is so is His from the Father, of whom He was born. The Holy Spirit likewise, because He is wisdom proceeding from wisdom, does not have the Father as memory and the Son as understanding and Himself as love;

for He would not be wisdom if another remembered for Him and another understood for Him, and He Himself only loved for Himself; rather, He Himself has these three, and so has them that He Himself is these very things. Yet that it is so is His from Him from whom He proceeds. Who, then, among men can comprehend that wisdom by which God knows all things in such a way that neither do the things called past pass away there, nor are the things called future awaited as though lacking, so that they may come; but both past and future, together with things present, are all present; nor are individual things thought one by one, and one pass by thinking from some to others, but in one gaze all things at once are present?

Who among men, I say, comprehends that wisdom, and the same prudence, and the same knowledge, seeing that not even our own is comprehended by us? For those things which are present to our senses or to our understanding we can in some way behold; but those which are absent and yet were once present, we know through memory — those which we have not forgotten. Nor do we conjecture past things from future, but future from past, yet not with sure cognition. For certain of our thoughts, which we foresee as future — those, as it were, more manifestly and certainly nearest at hand — we do this by the working of memory, when we are able to do it, as far as we are able; and this seems to pertain not to things future but to things past.

This may be tested in those speeches or songs whose sequence we render from memory; for unless we foresaw in thought what follows, we assuredly would not utter it. And yet it is not foresight that instructs us to foresee, but memory. For until all that we say or sing is finished, there is nothing that is brought forth without being provided for and foreseen. And yet when we do this, we are said to sing or speak not by foresight but from memory; and those who are most able in bringing forth many things in this way have their memory, not their foresight, praised. That these things come about in the soul, or by our soul, we know and are most certain.

But how they come about — the more attentively we wish to observe, the more both our speech gives way and our very attention does not endure, so that our understanding, even if not our tongue, may arrive at something clear. And do we suppose that we, with such infirmity of mind, can comprehend whether God's foresight is the same as His memory and understanding — He who does not look upon individual things by thinking, but embraces all that He knows in one, eternal, unchangeable, and ineffable vision? In this difficulty, then, and these straits, it is pleasing to cry out to the living God: 'Thy knowledge is become wonderful from me; it hath prevailed, and I shall not be able to attain unto it.'

For from myself I understand how wonderful and incomprehensible is Thy knowledge, by which Thou madest me, since I am not able even to comprehend my own self whom Thou madest; and yet in my meditation a fire is kindled, that I may ever seek Thy face. [VIII 14] I know that in bodily substance there is wisdom, and that there is a light in which are seen those things which are not seen by the eyes of the flesh; and yet a man so great and so spiritual says: 'We see now through a glass in an enigma, but then face to face.' If we ask what this glass is and what it is, assuredly this occurs to us: that in a glass nothing is discerned but an image. This, then, is what we have tried to do — that through this image which we ourselves are, we might in some way see Him by whom we were made, as through a glass.

This too is signified by what the same apostle says: 'But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.' He said 'beholding' — that is, seeing through a glass (per speculum) — not looking out from a watchtower (de specula). This is not ambiguous in the Greek language, from which the apostolic letters were translated into Latin. For there a mirror, in which the images of things appear, differs entirely even in the sound of the word from a watchtower, from whose height we gaze upon something farther off. And it is sufficiently clear that the apostle spoke of beholding the glory of the Lord from a mirror, not from a watchtower.

But when he says, 'we are transformed into the same image,' he assuredly wishes the image of God to be understood, calling it 'the same,' namely this one — that is, the one we behold — because the same image is also the glory of God, as he says elsewhere: 'The man indeed ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God'; concerning which words we have already discoursed in the twelfth book. 'We are transformed,' then, he said — we are changed from form to form and pass over from an obscure form to a bright form, because that obscure image too is the image of God; and if an image, then assuredly also a glory, in which we men were created, surpassing the other animals. For of human nature itself it was said: 'The man indeed ought not to veil his head, since he is the image and glory of God.'

When this nature, most excellent among created things, is justified from its impiety by its Creator, it is transformed from a deformed form into a beautiful form. For in that very impiety, the more damnable the vice, the more certainly is the nature praiseworthy. And for this reason he added, 'from glory to glory' — from the glory of creation to the glory of justification. Although this too, 'from glory to glory,' can be understood in other ways: from the glory of faith to the glory of sight; from the glory by which we are sons of God to the glory by which we shall be like Him, since we shall see Him as He is. But when he added, 'as by the Spirit of the Lord,' he showed that the good of so desirable a transformation is conferred upon us by the grace of God.

[IX 15] These things have been said on account of what the apostle says, that we now see through a glass. But because he added 'in an enigma,' this is unknown to many who are ignorant of those writings in which there is a certain teaching about the modes of speech which the Greeks call 'tropes,' and which Greek word we too use in place of a Latin one. For just as we more commonly say 'schemata' than 'figures,' so we more commonly say 'tropes' than 'modes.' But it is most difficult and most unusual to express in Latin the names of the individual modes or tropes, so that each single name may be referred to each single thing.

Whence certain of our translators, where the apostle says 'which things are in allegory,' being unwilling to put the Greek word, translated by a circumlocution, saying, 'which things signify one thing from another.' But of this trope, that is, of allegory, there are several species, among which is also that which is called an enigma. Now the definition of the general name itself must necessarily embrace all the species too. And therefore, just as every horse is an animal but not every animal is a horse, so every enigma is an allegory but not every allegory is an enigma. What, then, is allegory but a trope in which one thing is understood from another — such as that passage to the Thessalonians: 'Therefore let us not sleep, as also the rest do, but let us watch and be sober'?

'For they that sleep, sleep in the night; and they that are drunken, are drunken in the night; but let us, who are of the day, be sober.' But this allegory is not an enigma. For unless to the very dull, its sense is obvious. An enigma, however, is — to explain it briefly — an obscure allegory, such as: 'The horseleech had three daughters,' and whatever is like it. But where the apostle named allegory, he did not find it in the words but in the deed, when, from the two sons of Abraham, one of the bondwoman and the other of the free woman — which was not merely spoken but even done — he showed that two testaments were to be understood. This, before he expounded it, was obscure. Accordingly such an allegory, which is a general name, could specifically be called an enigma.

But because not only those who are ignorant of the writings by which tropes are learned ask what the apostle meant by saying we now see 'in an enigma,' but even those who know them nevertheless desire to know what that enigma is in which we now see; from both must one meaning be found — namely from that which he says, 'we see now through a glass,' and from this which he added, 'in an enigma.' For it is one whole when the whole is thus said: 'We see now through a glass in an enigma.' Accordingly, as it seems to me, just as by the name of glass he wished an image to be understood, so by the name of enigma he wished a likeness to be understood, but one obscure and difficult to perceive.

Since, therefore, by the name of glass and enigma whatever likenesses were signified by the apostle can be understood as those which are suited to understanding God in the way that is possible, yet nothing is more suited than that which is not without reason called His image. Let no one, then, wonder that even in this mode of seeing which is granted to this life — namely through a glass in an enigma — we labour so that we may see in whatever way we can. For the name of enigma would not sound here if there were ease of vision. And this is a greater enigma: that we do not see what we cannot not see. For who does not see his own thought? And who does see his own thought (I do not say with the eyes of the flesh, but with the inner gaze itself)?

Who does not see it, and who does see it? Since thought is a certain vision of the mind, whether those things be present which are also seen by the bodily eyes or perceived by the other senses, or whether they be not present and their likenesses are discerned by thought; or whether none of these, but those things are thought which are neither bodily nor likenesses of bodily things, such as the virtues and vices, such as thought itself, in short, is thought; or those things which are handed down through the disciplines and liberal doctrines; or the higher causes and reasons of all these are thought in the unchangeable nature; or whether we even think evil and vain and false things, either with the senses not consenting or with consent erring.

[X 17] But now let us speak of those things which we think as known, and have in our knowledge even if we do not think about them — whether they pertain to the contemplative knowledge which I have argued should properly be called wisdom, or to the active knowledge which should properly be called science. For both together are of one mind, and are one image of God. But when the lower is treated more distinctly and separately, then it is not to be called the image of God, although even then some likeness of that Trinity is found in it, as we showed in the thirteenth volume. Now, then, we speak of the whole knowledge of man together, in which are known to us whatever things are known, which are assuredly true — otherwise they would not be known. For no one knows false things except when he knows them to be false.

But if he knows this, he knows the truth; for it is true that those things are false. Of these things, then, we now discourse — which we think as known, and which are known to us even if they are not thought about by us. But surely, if we wish to speak them, we cannot except by thinking them. For even if the words do not sound aloud, he who thinks certainly speaks in his heart. Whence that passage in the book of Wisdom: 'They said within themselves, thinking not aright.' For he explained what it is to say within oneself when he added 'thinking.' Like this is that in the Gospel, when certain scribes, having heard the Lord say to the paralytic, 'Take heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee,' said within themselves: 'This man blasphemeth.' For what is 'they said within themselves' but by thinking? Then follows:

'And when Jesus saw their thoughts, He said: Why do you think evil in your hearts?' Thus Matthew. But Luke narrates this same thing thus: 'The scribes and Pharisees began to think, saying: Who is this that speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone? But when Jesus knew their thoughts, answering He said unto them: What do you think in your hearts?' As in the book of Wisdom it is 'they said, thinking,' so here it is 'they thought, saying.' For both there and here it is shown that to say within oneself and in one's heart is to say by thinking. For 'they said within themselves,' and it was said to them: 'Why do you think?' And of that rich man whose field brought forth abundant fruits, the Lord Himself says:

'And he thought within himself, saying.' Certain thoughts, therefore, are speeches of the heart, where the Lord shows there is also a mouth, when He says: 'Not that which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which proceedeth out of the mouth, this defileth a man.' In one sentence He embraced two certain mouths of man, one of the body, the other of the heart. For assuredly, that whereby they supposed a man to be defiled enters into the mouth of the body; but that whereby the Lord said a man is defiled proceeds from the mouth of the heart. For thus He Himself expounded what He had said. For a little later He says to His disciples concerning this matter: 'Are you also yet without understanding? Do you not understand that whatsoever entereth into the mouth goeth into the belly and is cast out into the privy?' Here He most plainly showed the mouth of the body.

But in what follows, showing the mouth of the heart, He says: 'But the things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts,' and the rest. What could be clearer than this exposition? And yet, because we say that thoughts are speeches of the heart, they are not therefore also not visions arisen from the visions of knowledge, when they are true. For outwardly, when these things come about through the body, speech is one thing, vision another; but inwardly, when we think, both are one. Just as hearing and seeing are two things distinct from each other in the senses of the body, so in the soul to see and to hear is not one thing and another.

And therefore, since speech outwardly is not seen but rather heard, yet the holy Gospel said that the inner speeches, that is, the thoughts, were seen by the Lord, not heard. 'They said,' it says, 'within themselves: This man blasphemeth,' and then it added: 'And when Jesus saw their thoughts.' He saw, therefore, what they said. For He saw by His own thought their thoughts, which they supposed that they alone saw.

Whoever, therefore, is able to understand a word, not only before it is uttered aloud, but even before the images of its sounds are turned over in thought (for this is what belongs to no language, that is, to none of those which are called the languages of the nations, among which ours is Latin) — whoever, I say, is able to understand this, can already see through this mirror and in this enigma some likeness of that Word of which it was said: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' For it is necessary that, when we speak what is true, that is, when we speak what we know, a word be born from that very knowledge which we hold in memory, a word that is altogether of the same kind as the knowledge from which it is born.

For a thought formed from the thing which we know is the word that we speak in the heart, which is neither Greek nor Latin nor of any other language; but when it is needful to convey it to the knowledge of those to whom we are speaking, some sign is taken up by which it may be signified. And most often a sound, sometimes also a gesture, is displayed — the one to the ears, the other to the eyes — so that through bodily signs the word which we bear in the mind may become known even to the senses of the body. For what is it to make a sign, except in a certain way to speak visibly? There is in the Holy Scriptures a testimony to this saying. For in the Gospel according to John it is thus read: 'Amen, amen I say to you, that one of you shall betray me.' The disciples therefore looked upon one another, hesitating of whom he spoke.

There was therefore one of his disciples in the bosom of Jesus, whom Jesus loved. Simon Peter therefore made a sign to him and said to him: 'Who is it of whom he speaks?' Behold, by making a sign he said what by uttering aloud he did not dare to say. But these and suchlike bodily signs we display either to the ears or to the eyes of those present to whom we speak. Letters too were invented, by which we might converse even with those absent; but these are signs of vocal sounds, while the vocal sounds themselves in our speech are signs of the things which we think. Accordingly the word which sounds outwardly is a sign of the word which shines within, to which the name of 'word' more properly belongs.

For that which is uttered by the mouth of flesh is the vocal sound of the word, and it too is called a word on account of that from which it was taken up in order to appear outwardly. For thus our word becomes in a certain way a bodily voice, by taking up that in which it may be manifested to the senses of men, just as the Word of God was made flesh by taking up that in which it too might be manifested to the senses of men. And just as our word becomes a voice yet is not changed into a voice, so the Word of God was indeed made flesh, but far be it that it should be changed into flesh. For by taking up that flesh, not by consuming itself into it, both this word of ours becomes a voice and that Word was made flesh.

Wherefore, whoever desires to attain to some likeness — however unlike through many things — of the Word of God, let him not gaze upon our word which sounds in the ears, neither when it is uttered by the voice, nor when it is thought in silence. For the words of all sounding tongues are thought even in silence, and songs are run through by the mind while the mouth of the body is still; nor only the numbers of the syllables, but even the modes of the melodies, though they are bodily and pertain to that sense of the body which is called hearing, are present through certain incorporeal images of their own to those who think, and who silently turn over all these things.

But these things must be passed over, so that we may arrive at that word of man through whose likeness, whatever it be, the Word of God may somehow be seen as in an enigma. Not that word which came to this or that prophet (and of which it was said: 'But the word of God grew and was multiplied'; and of which again it was said: 'Therefore faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ'; and again: 'When you had received from us the word of the hearing of God, you received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God'). And innumerable things are likewise said in the Scriptures concerning the word of God, which is scattered abroad through human hearts and mouths in the sounds of many and diverse tongues.

And it is called the word of God for this reason, because divine and not human doctrine is handed down. But we now seek to see, in whatever way, through this likeness, that Word of God of which it was said: 'God was the Word'; of which it was said: 'All things were made through him'; of which it was said: 'And the Word was made flesh'; of which it was said: 'The fountain of wisdom is the Word of God in the highest.'

We must therefore come to that word of man, to the word of a rational living being, to the word of the image of God — not born of God but made by God — which is neither utterable in sound nor thinkable in the likeness of sound such as must belong to some language, but which precedes all the signs by which it is signified and is begotten of the knowledge which abides in the mind, when that same knowledge is spoken within just as it is. For the vision of thought is most like the vision of knowledge. For when it is spoken through sound or through some bodily sign, it is not spoken as it is, but as it can be seen or heard through the body.

When, therefore, that which is in the knowledge is also in the word, then it is a true word and truth of the kind which is looked for from man, so that what is in the former is also in the latter, and what is not in the former is not in the latter either. Here is recognized: 'It is, it is; no, no.' Thus this likeness of the made image approaches, as far as it can, to that likeness of the born image, by which God the Son is proclaimed substantially like the Father in all things. In this enigma too must be observed this likeness of the Word of God: that just as it was said of that Word, 'All things were made through him' — where God is proclaimed to have made all things through his only-begotten Word — so there are no works of man which are not first spoken in the heart. Whence it is written:

'The beginning of every work is the word.' But here too, when the word is true, then it is the beginning of a good work. And a word is true when it is begotten of the knowledge of working well, so that even there may be preserved: 'It is, it is; no, no'; so that if it is in that knowledge by which one must live, it may be also in the word through which one must work; and if not, not. Otherwise such a word will be a lie, not truth, and thence sin, not a right work. There is in this likeness of our word this likeness also of the Word of God: that our word can exist which is not followed by a work; but a work cannot exist unless a word precede it — just as the Word of God could exist though no creature existed, but no creature could exist except through that same One through whom all things were made.

And therefore not God the Father, not the Holy Spirit, not the Trinity itself, but the Son alone, who is the Word of God, was made flesh — although with the Trinity working it — so that, our word following and imitating his example, we might live rightly, that is, having no falsehood in either the contemplation or the operation of our word. But this is the perfection of this image which is to come at some time. To attain this the good Master instructs us by the Christian faith and the doctrine of piety, that with unveiled face — freed from the veil of the Law, which is the shadow of things to come — beholding the glory of the Lord, that is, gazing as through a mirror, we may be transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord, according to the earlier discussion of these words.

When therefore by this transformation this image shall have been renewed to perfection, we shall be like God, since we shall see him not through a mirror, but as he is — which is what the Apostle Paul says, 'face to face.' But now, in this mirror, in this enigma, in this likeness of whatever sort, how great also is the unlikeness — who can explain? Yet I shall touch on some points, as I am able, by which it may be perceived. First, that very knowledge from which our thought is truly formed when we speak what we know — of what quality or how great can it come to a man, however most skilled and most learned?

For, setting aside those things which come into the mind from the senses of the body — in which so many things are otherwise than they appear, that a man over-crammed with their verisimilitude, who is out of his mind, seems sane to himself (whence the Academic philosophy so prevailed that, doubting all things, it raved much more wretchedly) — these things, then, being set aside which come into the mind from the senses of the body, how much remains of things that we know as surely as we know that we live?

In which we do not at all fear that we may perhaps be deceived by some verisimilitude, since it is certain that even he who is deceived lives; nor is this reckoned among those visions which are cast at us from without, so that the eye may be deceived in it as it is deceived when in the water an oar seems broken, and to those sailing a tower seems to move, and six hundred other things that are otherwise than they appear — because neither is this discerned through the eye of the flesh. It is an inmost knowledge by which we know that we live, wherein not even that can the Academic say: 'Perhaps you sleep and know it not, and see things in dreams.' For who does not know that the visions of dreamers are most like the visions of the waking? But he who is certain of the knowledge of his own life does not say in it: 'I know that I am awake,' but:

'I know that I live.' Whether therefore he sleeps or is awake, he lives. Nor in this knowledge can he be deceived through dreams, because both to sleep and to see things in dreams belong to one who lives. Nor can the Academic say this against that knowledge: 'Perhaps you are mad and know it not, because the visions of the mad are most like the visions of the sane' — but he who is mad lives. Nor does he say against the Academics: 'I know that I am not mad,' but: 'I know that I live.' Never therefore can he who has said that he knows that he lives be deceived or lie. Let a thousand kinds of deceptive visions therefore be cast at him who says: 'I know that I live.' He will fear none of these, since even he who is deceived lives.

But if such things alone pertain to human knowledge, they are very few — except that in each single kind they are so multiplied that not only are they not few, but they are found to stretch toward an infinite number. For he who says: 'I know that I live' says that he knows some one thing. Accordingly, if he says: 'I know that I know that I live,' there are two things. But this very fact, that he knows these two, is a third thing to know. Thus he can add a fourth and a fifth, and innumerable things, if he suffices. But because he cannot either comprehend an innumerable number by adding them one by one, or say them innumerably, this very thing he comprehends most certainly and says: that this is true, and so innumerable that he cannot comprehend and say the infinite number of it.