The Mystery of Faith. Introduction to Orthodox Dogmatic Theology

Here is the mystery: there are souls who have come to know the Lord; there are souls who have not known Him, but believe; and there are those who not only do not know, but also do not believe... Unbelief comes from pride. A proud person with his mind and science wants to know everything, but he is not given to know God, because the Lord reveals Himself only to humble souls... Both in heaven and on earth, the Lord is known only by the Holy Spirit... And among the pagans, the soul felt that God exists, although they did not know how to worship the true God. But the Holy Spirit taught the Holy Prophets, then the Apostles, then our Holy Fathers and Bishops, and thus the true faith has come down to us... O people, God's creation, know the Creator. He loves us. Know the love of Christ and live in peace... Turn to Him, all the peoples of the earth, and offer up your prayers to God; And the prayer of the whole earth will go to heaven, like a beautiful quiet cloud, sanctified by the sun... Know, O nations, that we were created for the glory of God in heaven, and do not cleave to the earth, for God is our Father, and loves us as dear children. is an obvious and embodied reflection of the true teaching, a gift that was sent down to the Greeks from God. And it does not distract us from faith... on the contrary, we protect ourselves with philosophy as a kind of strong bulwark, discovering in it an ally, together with whom we then substantiate our faith... Before the coming of the Lord, philosophy was necessary for the Greeks to achieve a kind of righteousness... She was the same guide for the Greeks as the Law was for the Jews, and brought them as children to Christ (Gal. 3:23-24)... Without a doubt, there is only one way to the Truth, but streams flow into it, some on one side, others on the other, joining in its bed into a river that already flows into eternity.Clement of AlexandriaReading the books of the Platonists made me search for the incorporeal truth: I saw "the invisible, understood through creation," and, thrown back, I felt that, in the darkness of my soul, contemplation was impossible for me. I was sure that You existed, that You were infinite, but not spread out in space... And so, I eagerly grasped at the venerable books dictated by Thy Spirit, and above all the epistles of the Apostle Paul... I began to read and found that everything true that I had read in the books of the philosophers was also said in Your Scriptures... (But in the books of the philosophers) there was no form of this piety, no tears of confession... "a contrite and humble heart" (Psalm 50:19), there was not a word about the salvation of the people, about "a city adorned like a bride" (Rev. 21:2), about "the earnest of the Holy Spirit" (2 Corinthians 1:22), about the Chalice that redeemed us. No one there sings: "Is not my soul subject to God? From Him is my salvation..." (Psalm 61:2). No one will hear the call, "Come unto me, ye that suffer." They (philosophers) will contemptuously turn away from Him Who is "meek and lowly in heart" (Matt. 11:25-28). To those who love God, who are called according to His will, all things work together for good. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined (to be) like the image of His Son... and those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He glorified. What can be said to this? If God is for us, who is against us?Apostle PaulFaith in Christ is a new paradise. For this reason God foresaw before the foundation of the world all those who believed and should believe in Him, whom He called and will not cease to call until the end of the world, and glorified and glorified, and justified and justified, clearly showing them to be conformed to the image of the glory of His Son through holy Baptism and the grace of the Holy Spirit, mysteriously making them sons of God and restoring them from the old to the new, from mortal to immortal... St. Symeon the New Theologian

Etymology of the word "God"

In different languages, the word "God" is related to different words and concepts, each of which can say something about the properties of God. In the ancient era, people tried to find those words with the help of which they could express their idea of God, their experience of contact with the Divine.In the Russian language and in other languages of Slavic origin belonging to the Indo-European group, the word "God", according to linguists, is related to the Sanskrit bhaga, which means "giving, endowing", in turn originating from bhagas - "possession", "happiness [1]". "Wealth" is also related to the word "God." This expresses the idea of God as the fullness of being, as all-perfection and bliss, which, however, do not remain within the Divinity, but are poured out on the world, people, and all living things. God bestows upon us, endows us with His fullness, His riches, when we partake of Him.The Greek word theos, according to Plato, comes from the verb theein, meaning "to flee." "The first of the people who inhabited Hellas worshipped only those gods who are still revered by many barbarians: the sun, the moon, the earth, the stars, the sky. And since they saw that all this is always running, making a cycle, it is from this nature of running that they were given the name of gods," writes Plato [2]. In other words, the ancients saw in nature, its rotation, its purposeful "running" indications of the existence of some higher rational force, which they could not identify with the one God, but represented in the form of a multitude of divine forces. "For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, a jealous God," says the Bible (Deuteronomy 4:24); these words will be repeated by the Apostle Paul, pointing to God's ability to destroy and burn all evil (Heb. 12:29). "God is fire, and the devil is cold," write Saints Barsanuphius and John [3]. "God is a fire that warms and inflames hearts and wombs," says St. Seraphim of Sarov. - So, if we feel in our hearts the coldness that comes from the devil... let us call upon the Lord: when He comes, He will warm our hearts with perfect love not only for Him, but also for our neighbor. And from the face of warmth will flee the coldness of the hater of good [4]."St. John of Damascus gives a third etymology of the word theos from theaomai - "to contemplate": "For nothing can be concealed from Him, He is all-seeing. He contemplated everything before it came into being. .. [5].In languages of Germanic origin, the word "God" - English God, German Gott - comes from a verb meaning "to prostrate oneself", to fall down in worship. "People who in early times strove to say something about God," says Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh in this regard, "did not make an attempt to describe Him, to outline, to say what He is in Himself, but only to point out what happens to a person when he suddenly finds himself face to face with God, when suddenly Divine grace, Divine light shines upon him. All that a man can do then is to prostrate himself in sacred terror, worshipping Him Who is incomprehensible and at the same time has revealed Himself to Him in such intimacy and in such wondrous radiance [6]." The Apostle Paul, whom God shone upon on his way to Damascus, was struck by this light, and immediately "fell to the ground... in awe and terror" (Acts 9:4,6).The name with which God revealed Himself to the ancient Hebrews - Yahweh (Yahweh) means "He who is", having existence, having being, it comes from the verb hayah - to be, to exist, or rather from the first person of this verb ehieh - "I am". However, this verb has a dynamic meaning: it does not mean simply the fact of existence in itself, but a kind of ever-present being, a living and active presence. When God says to Moses, "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14), it means: I live, I am here, I am next to you. At the same time, this name emphasizes the superiority of God's being over the being of everything that exists: it is an independent, primary, eternal being, it is the fullness of being, which is super-being: "In his significance, Being supernaturally transcends the totality of being, being the sole Cause and Creator of all that exists: matter, essence, existence, being; Being is the beginning and measure of eternity, the cause of time and the measure of time for everything that exists, and in general the becoming of everything that becomes. From Being proceed eternity, essence, being, time, becoming, and becoming, because in Being abides all things, both changing and unchanging... God is not just the Being, but the Being, Whom eternally and infinitely contains in Himself the totality of all forms of existence - both present and future," writes the author of the treatise "On the Divine Names [7].Ancient tradition says that the Jews in the era after the Babylonian captivity did not pronounce the name Yahweh - the Eternal out of reverent awe before this name. Only the high priest once a year, when he entered the Holy of Holies for incense, could pronounce this name inside. If an ordinary person or even a priest in the temple wanted to say something about God, he replaced the name Eternal with other names or said "heaven". There was also such a tradition: when it was necessary to say "God", a person fell silent and put his hand to his heart or pointed his hand to the sky, and everyone understood that it was about God, but the sacred Name itself was not pronounced. In writing, the Jews designated God with the sacred tetragram (YHWH). The ancient Hebrews were well aware that there is no name, word, or term in human language that can be used to describe the nature of God. "Divinity is unnameable," says St. Gregory the Theologian. "Not only reason shows this, but... the wisest and most ancient of the Jews. For those who honored the Divinity with special inscriptions and did not suffer that both the name of God and the names of creatures should be written in the same letters... could they ever dare to pronounce in an absent-minded voice the Name of the indestructible and unique nature? Just as no one has ever breathed all the air into himself, so neither the mind has completely contained, nor the voice embraced the essence of God [8]." By refraining from pronouncing the name of God, the Jews showed that it is possible to commune with God not so much through words and descriptions, as through reverent and trembling silence... M. Vasmer. Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language, Moscow, 1986. T. 1. Ss. 181-182 ^ Plato. Cratylus 397b ^ Barsanuphius and John. A Guide to Spiritual Life, Answer 18. St. Petersburg, 1905. P. 14 ^ Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery. St. Petersburg, 1903. P. 113 ^ John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1, 9 ^ Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Conversations about Faith and the Church. P. 96 ^ Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names 5, 4 [PG 3, 817C] ^ Gregory the Theologian. Homily 30 (On Theology 4), [Creations in 2 volumes. St. Petersburg, without a year (published by Soykin). Vol. 1. p. 440] ^

Divine Names

In the Holy Scriptures there are many names of God, each of which, not being able to describe Him in essence, indicates one or another of His properties. The famous treatise of the fifth century "On the Divine Names", attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, is the first Christian systematic exposition of this topic, although before that it was developed by other writers, in particular by St. Gregory the Theologian. The name Lord (Greek: Kyrios) denotes God's supreme dominion not only over the chosen people, but also over the entire universe. The names of the Lord of hosts, that is, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of ages, the Lord, the King of glory, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, are also included here: "Thine, O Lord, is the majesty, and the might, and the glory, and the victory, and the splendour, and all that is in heaven and on earth is Thine; Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom, and Thou art above all things as the Ruler. Both riches and glory are from Thy presence, and Thou hast dominion over all things; and in thy hand is power and might, and in thy power strengthen all things" (1 Chron. 29:11-12). The name Pantokrator (Greek: Pantokrator) means that God holds everything in His hand, maintains the universe and order in it: "My hand founded the earth, and My right hand stretched out the heavens" (Isaiah 48:13); The names Holy, Holiness, Holiness, Sanctification, Goodness, Goodness show that God has in Himself all the fullness of goodness and holiness, and He pours out this good on all His creatures, sanctifying them. "Hallowed be Thy name," we turn to God in the Lord's Prayer. That is, let Your name be holy not only in heaven, in the spiritual world, but also here on earth: may it be sanctified in us, that we may become holy as You... God is also called Wisdom, Truth, Light, Life: "Wisdom as knowledge of divine and human affairs... Truth as one, and not plural by nature (for the true is unique, and falsehood is many)... Light as the brightness of souls purified in mind and life, for if ignorance and sin are darkness, then knowledge and divine life are light..., Life, because he is the light, support and realization of all rational nature" (Gregory the Theologian [1]).Holy Scripture calls God salvation, Redemption, Redemption, Resurrection, because only in Him (in Christ) is the salvation of man from sin and eternal death realized, Resurrection to a new life.God is called Truth and Love. The name of Truth emphasizes Divine justice: He is the Judge who punishes evil and rewards good. In any case, this is how the Old Testament perceives God. However, the New Testament Gospel reveals to us that God, being just and just, surpasses all our conception of justice: "Do not call God just," writes St. Isaac the Syrian. - Although David calls Him just and just, the Son has revealed to us that He is rather good and gracious... Why does man call God just, when in the chapter on the prodigal son... he reads that at one of the contritions that the son showed, the father ran and fell on his neck and gave him power over all his riches?.. Where is God's justice? That we are sinners, and Christ died for us?.. Where is the recompense for our deeds? [2]" The New Testament supplements the Old Testament concept of God's justice with the teaching of His love, which surpasses all justice. "God is love," says the holy Apostle John the Theologian (1 John 4:18). This is the most sublime definition of God, the truest thing that can be said about Him. As St. Gregory the Theologian says, this name is "more pleasing to God than any other name [3]."In the Bible there are also names of God borrowed from nature and which are not His characteristics, not attempts to determine His properties, but as if symbols and analogies having an auxiliary meaning. God is compared to the sun, star, fire, wind, water, dew, cloud, stone, rock, fragrance. Christ is spoken of as the Shepherd, the Sheep, the Lamb, the Way, the Door, the image of God. All these names are simple and concrete, they are borrowed from everyday reality, from everyday life. But their meaning is the same as in the parables of Christ, when under the images of a pearl, a tree, leaven in dough, seeds in a field, we guess something infinitely greater and more significant.In many texts of Holy Scripture God is spoken of as a human-like being, that is, as having a face, eyes, ears, hands, shoulders, wings, legs, breath; it is said that God turns or turns away, remembers or forgets, is angry or calms, is surprised, grieves, hates, walks, hears. At the heart of this anthropomorphism is the experience of a personal encounter with God as a living being. In trying to express this experience, man resorted to earthly words and images. In biblical language there are almost no abstract concepts that play such an important role in the language of speculative philosophy: when it was necessary to designate a certain period of time, they did not say "epoch" or "period" - they said "hour", "day", "year" or "age"; When it was necessary to speak of the material and spiritual worlds, they did not say "matter" and "spiritual reality," but "heaven" and "earth." Biblical language, in contrast to philosophical language, has the utmost concreteness precisely because the experience of the biblical God was an experience of a personal encounter, and not an abstract speculative speculation. The ancients felt God next to them - He was their king, leader, He was present at their services, holidays, meetings. And when David says, "The Lord has heard my supplication" (Psalm 6:10), this does not mean that God did not hear before, but now He has heard: God has always heard, it is just that man did not feel it before, but now he felt it. And the words "show Thy face to Thy servant" (Psalm 30:17) are not a request that God, Who was not there before, should suddenly be here, because He is present always and everywhere, but that man, who had not noticed God before, would be able to see, feel, cognize, and meet Him. for Abraham does not recognize us, and Israel does not recognize us as their own; But Thou, O Lord, our Father, from eternity Thy name is our Redeemer" (Isaiah 63:16). In recent years, it has been increasingly said in the Protestant world that since God has no gender, He should not be called "Father." Some so-called feminist theologians insist that God is equally the Mother, and in the Lord's Prayer they say "Our Father and Mother" instead of "Our Father," and in the translation of Scripture they replace the pronoun "He" with "He-She" where God is mentioned. These ridiculous distortions of the biblical concept of God stem from a failure to understand the fact that the division into two sexes exists in the human and animal worlds, but not in the divine being. This is a kind of pseudo-anthropomorphism, which has little in common with biblical anthropomorphism. For us, the only thing that is indisputable is that, appearing to the people of Israel, God revealed Himself with the name Father. It is also obvious that when God became incarnate, He became not a woman, but a man - Jesus Christ. Ibid. [Vol. 1, pp. 442-443] ^ Isaac the Syrian. Homily 60 [Isaak tou Syrou eurethenta asketika. Athenai, 1977. Sel. 245] ^ Gregory the Theologian. Homily 23 [Vol. 1, p. 338] ^

Attributes of God

It is difficult to speak of the attributes of Him whose very nature is beyond words. Nevertheless, based on God's actions in the created world, man can make assumptions and conclusions about the properties of God. According to St. John of Damascus, God is beginningless, infinite, eternal, permanent, uncreated, immutable, unchangeable, simple, uncomplicated, incorporeal, invisible, intangible, indescribable, boundless, incomprehensible, immense, incomprehensible, good, righteous, Creator of all things, Almighty, Almighty, All-seeing, Provider of all things, Lord of all. He does not need anything else, free from external coercion and influence: "Who understood the spirit of the Lord, and was His counselor, and taught Him? With whom does He consult, and who admonishes Him, and guides Him in the way of righteousness, and teaches Him knowledge, and shows Him the way of wisdom?" (Isaiah 40:13-14).Infinity and infinity mean that God exists outside the categories of space, free from all limitation and deficiency. He cannot be measured, He cannot be compared or contrasted with anyone or anything. God is eternal, that is, He exists outside the categories of time, for Him there is no past, present and future: "I am the same, I am the first, and I am the last," says God in the Old Testament (Isaiah 48:10); "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, Who is, and was, and is to come," we read in John the Theologian (Rev. 1:8). Having neither beginning nor end in time, God is uncreated - no one created Him: "Before Me there was no God, and after Me there will be none" (Isaiah 43:10). God has permanence, immutability and immutability in the sense that "He has no change and shadow of change" (James 1:17), He is always true to Himself: "God is not a man to lie to Him, and not the son of man, that he might change" (Num. 23:19). In His essence, actions, and properties, He is always the same.God is simple and uncomplicated, that is, He is not divided into parts and does not consist of parts. The trinity of Persons in God, which will be discussed in the next chapter, is not the division of the one divine nature into parts: the nature of God remains indivisible. The concept of the perfection of the Godhead excludes the possibility of dividing God into parts, since any partial being is not perfection. What does the essence of simple nature mean? - asks St. Gregory the Theologian. And in trying to answer this question, he says that reason, if it wants to investigate the infinite God, finds neither beginning nor end, because the infinite extends beyond the beginning and the end, and is not contained between them; and when the mind rushes up or down, trying to find some limits or limits to its ideas of God, it does not find them. The absence of all boundaries, divisions and limits is simplicity in God [2].God is called incorporeal because He is not a material substance and does not have a body, but is spiritual by nature. "God is Spirit," says Christ to the Samaritan woman (John 4:24). "The Lord is the Spirit," repeats the Apostle Paul, "and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17). God is free from all materiality: He is not somewhere, He is not anywhere, He is not everywhere. When the Bible speaks of God's presence everywhere, it is again an attempt to express the subjective experience of a person who, wherever he is, meets God everywhere: "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there; if I descend into hell, and there Thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, and dwell on the edge of the sea, there Thy hand shall lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 138:7-10). But subjectively, a person can feel God everywhere, or he can feel Him nowhere - God Himself remains completely outside the category of "somewhere", outside the category of "place". No matter how much we try to investigate God, no matter how much we speculate about His names and attributes, He still remains elusive to the mind, because He surpasses all our thoughts. "It is difficult to understand God, but it is impossible to utter it," writes Plato [3]. St. Gregory the Theologian, polemicizing with the Hellenic sage, says: "It is impossible to speak, and it is even more impossible to understand [4]." St. Basil the Great says: "I know that God exists. But what is His essence - I consider it beyond understanding. Therefore, how do I save myself? Through faith. And faith is content with the knowledge that God exists (and not that He is)... The consciousness of the incomprehensibility of God is the knowledge of His essence [5]." God is invisible - "no man has ever seen Him" (John 1:18) in the sense that none of the people could comprehend His essence, embrace Him with their sight, perception, and mind. A person can join God, become a partaker of Him, but he can never understand God, because to "understand" means in a sense to exhaust. John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1, 14 ^ Gregory the Theologian. Homily 45 [Vol. 1, p. 663] ^ Op. cit. by: Gregory the Theologian. Homily 28 [Vol. 1, p. 393]. For the exact text, see: Plato. Timaeus 28c ^ Gregory the Theologian. Ibid. ^ Basil the Great. Letter 226 [Creations in 3 volumes. St. Petersburg, 1911 (published by Soykin). Vol. 3. P. 283] ^

Cataphatism and apophaticism

When we consider the names of God, we conclude that none of them can give us a complete picture of Him. When we speak of God's attributes, we also find that the totality of them is not God. God transcends any name: whether we call Him being, He transcends being, He is superbeing; whether we call it truth or justice, in His love He surpasses all justice; whether we call it love - He is more than love, He is super-love. God is also superior to any attribute we can attribute to Him, whether omniscient, omnipresent, or immutable. In the end, we come to understand that nothing can be said affirmatively about God at all: everything we say about Him is incomplete, partial, and limited. Hence the natural conclusion: we cannot say of God that He exists, but can only say that He is not. This way of reasoning about God is called apophatic (negative) theology, in contrast to cataphatic (positive) theology. In the words of Archpriest George Florovsky, God "is higher... all limitation, above all definition and affirmation, and therefore above all negation... The apophatic "not" is equivalent to "above" (or "outside", "except") - it does not mean limitation or exclusion, but exaltation and superiority... Divinity is above all speculative names and definitions... God is neither soul, nor reason, nor imagination, nor opinion, nor thinking, nor life, He is neither word nor thought... God is not the "object" of knowledge, He is above knowledge... Therefore, the path of knowledge is the path of abstraction and negation, the path of simplification and silence... We know God only in the peace of the spirit, in the peace of ignorance. And this apophatic ignorance is rather super-knowledge, not the absence of knowledge, but perfect knowledge, therefore incommensurable with all partial knowledge. This ignorance is contemplation... God is known not from afar, not through contemplation of Him, but through an incomprehensible union with Him. .. [1] "The apophatic ascent of the mind to God is compared by the Fathers and teachers of the Church (in particular, Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa) with the ascent of Moses on Mount Sinai to God, Who surrounded Himself with darkness (cf. 2 Sam. 22:12). Divine darkness means the absence of anything material or sensual. To enter the Divine darkness means to go beyond the limits of intelligible being. The people of Israel at the time of Moses' encounter with God had to be at the foot of the mountain, that is, within the limits of the cataphatic knowledge of God, and only Moses could enter the darkness, that is, having renounced everything, to meet God, Who is beyond everything, Who is where there is nothing. Cataphatically we say of God that He is Light, but in saying this we involuntarily liken God to sensual light. And if it is said of Christ, transfigured on Tabor, that "His face shone like the sun, and His garments became white like light" (Matt. 17:2), then the cataphatic concept of "light" is used here symbolically, since we are talking about the uncreated radiance of the Godhead, which surpasses any human concept of light. Apophatically we may call the divine light, which transcends all conception of light, superlight or darkness. Thus, the darkness of Sinai and the light of Tabor are one and the same.Terminologically, apophaticism can be expressed in several ways: 1) through the use of terms beginning with the prefix "not-" (non-being, bearing, invisible, incomprehensible); 2) through the use of terms with the prefix "super-" (super-existent, super-good, even "super-God", hypertheos, as in Dionysius the Areopagite); 3) through the use of concepts that are deliberately opposite to what is expected ("Divine darkness" instead of "Divine light", "ignorance" instead of "knowledge"); 4) through the use of oxymorons - verbal pairs, in which one word is opposite in meaning to another ("to see the invisible", "to comprehend the incomprehensible", "bright darkness").In our understanding of God, we often operate with cataphatic concepts, since it is easier and more accessible to the mind. But cataphatic knowledge has its limits, which it cannot overstep. The path of negation corresponds to the spiritual ascent into that Divine abyss where words are silenced, where reason freezes, where all human knowledge and comprehension ceases, "where God is." Not on the paths of speculative knowledge, but in the depths of prayerful silence, the soul can meet God, Who reveals Himself to it as incomprehensible, unapproachable, invisible, and at the same time alive, close and dear, as God the Person. Archpriest George Florovsky. Byzantine Fathers of the V-VIII centuries. Paris, 1937. pp. 102-103 ^

Anthology of Holy Texts

A hard-to-comprehend mystery... Constantly it goes forward and hides from the one who seemed to be already close to achieving it. And yet God, who is far from man, moves near him. Oh, the ineffable miracle! "I am the God that draweth near," saith the Lord, "though in my being I escape from your senses." And indeed. For under what name can the Uncreated draw near to that which He has created? And yet He surrounds us with His omnipotence... He constantly watches over us, constantly does good to us, guides us, is present with us, embracing us all equally. For this reason, Moses, convinced that man is incapable of knowing God by his wisdom, exclaimed: "Show me Thyself" (Exodus 23:13). And he strove to penetrate into the darkness of the clouds, where the voice of God thundered, that is, he tried to comprehend the deepest and most impenetrable ideas of existence. But God is not in the cloud or in any other place. It is beyond space, not subject to the limitations of time, not embraced by the properties of things... Heaven, though called His throne, still does not embrace Him; He only rests there, satisfied with the creation of His hands.Clement of Alexandria"It is not easy to know the Father and Creator of this universe, and once you have found it, you will still not be able to proclaim Him to all, because the mystery of His essence cannot be expressed in words like other teachings," says Plato, a sincere friend of truth. He heard, no doubt, what was said about Moses, in whom wisdom also dwelt, how, preparing to ascend the mountain to contemplate face to face this most magnificent of mysteries perceptible to the mind, he was compelled to forbid the people to follow these inscrutable revelations. And when the Scriptures say: "And Moses entered into the darkness where God is" (Exodus 20:21), these words for a person capable of understanding meant that God cannot be seen with the eye or depicted by the word of man. And one should not consider that negation contradicts the statement, since She is much more primary and higher... of any negation or affirmation... The divine Moses... Only after every purification did he hear the many-voiced trumpets and saw many lights, purely radiant, and various rays. After that, he left the crowd and, with the chosen priests, reached the pinnacle of the divine ascents. But even there he did not converse with God Himself, nor did he see Him Himself, for He is invisible, but the place where He stood. This indicates, it seems to me, that the most divine and highest of the objects of contemplation are but some conjectural expressions of the footstools of the All-Transcendent, by means of which the presence of Him who rests on the intellectual summits of His holiest places is revealed. And then Moses breaks away from all that is visible and seeing, and penetrates into the darkness of ignorance, truly mysterious, after which he ceases rational perception and finds himself in complete darkness and blindness, being completely beyond everything, belonging neither to himself nor to anything else.

Further, ascending, we say that She is not a soul, not a mind; She has neither imagination, nor opinion, nor word, nor understanding; It is neither word nor thought; It is inexpressible in words and incomprehensible; It is not number, not order, not magnitude, not smallness, not equality, not inequality, not likeness, not difference; It does not stand, does not move, is not at rest, has no power, and is neither force nor light; It does not live and does not live; It is neither essence, nor age, nor time; It is not characterized by mental perception; It is not knowledge, nor truth, nor kingdom, nor wisdom; It is not one or unity, not divinity or goodness; It is not spirit in the sense we know, nor sonship, nor fatherhood, nor anything else that is accessible to our perception or to anyone else's perception; It is not something of non-being, and it is not something of being... Above all affirmation is the perfect and only Cause of all, and above all negation is Her superiority, as completely abstract from everything and transcendent for everything.Dionysius the AreopagiteThus, it is clear that God exists. And that He is in essence and nature is completely incomprehensible and unknown... The Unborn and the Beginningless, and the Unchangeable, and the Incorruptible... - does not mean that God exists, but that He is not. And to those who wish to speak about the essence of something, it must be explained that it is, and not that it is not. However, it is impossible to say of God that He is in essence. Rather, it is more common to speak (of Him) through the denial of everything. For He is not something of existence, not as Non-Being, but as Being above all that exists, and above being itself... Thus, the Divinity is boundless and incomprehensible. And this alone - infinity and incomprehensibility in Him - is comprehensible. And what we say about God affirmatively shows not His nature, but what is near nature. Whether you call Him good, or righteous, or wise, or anything else, you will not speak of the nature of God, but of that which is near nature. Also, some (of what) is said of God in the affirmative has the meaning of an excellent negation; as, for example, when we speak of darkness in relation to God, we do not mean darkness, but that which is not light, but is above light; St. John of DamascusAccording to the Scriptures, God sleeps (Psalm 43:24), awakens (Dan. 9:14), is angry (Deut. 11:17), walks and has cherubim as his throne (Isaiah 37:16)... In accordance with our concept, we have also called the things of God by names taken from ourselves. When God, for reasons known to Him, ceases His care and carelessness, as it were, for us, it means that He is asleep, because our sleep is such inactivity and carelessness. When, on the contrary, he suddenly begins to do good, it means that He is awakening... He punishes, and we have made of it - he is angry, because with us punishment is the result of anger. He acts here and there, but according to ours - He walks... And also every other power of God and every other action of God is depicted in us by something taken from the body.

Chapter III: The Trinity