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Faith And Experience XI Revelation And Human Experience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
“No one has ever seen God; but the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, has interpreted him to us” (Jn 1:18). The early Christian theologians who develop the view that man cannot know God truly unless God reveals himself to him are conscious that they are not only following the teaching of scripture, but also echoing and confirming a belief which has deep roots in Greek tradition. Clement of Alexandria can quote several texts from the Greek poets expressing the difficulty or impossibility of any man on earth penetrating very far into the mind of God. An Orphic hymn is cited, which says that God is “utterable only by the immortals”; Pindar is shown echoing the sentiments of Isaiah 40:13: “Why hope for wisdom? One man is not much better than another. It is hard for a mortal mind to search out the counsels of the gods”. Hesiod too says, “There is no seer among men on earth who could know the mind of Zeus”. Solon similarly says, “The mind of the immortals is quite unclear to men”. Even more radically, Xenophanes is quoted by Sextus Empiricus as saying: “As far as anything clear goes, no man has seen anything nor will any man see anything concerning the gods and all the other things I am talking about; even if he should hit the mark with outstanding accuracy and say something quite perfect, he would not know it himself. Everything is subject to opinion”. In Sextus’ view, Xenophanes is one of the philosophers who have rejected outright the idea that there is some “criterion of truth” available to us; he interprets him as meaning: “at least in matters which are not apparent, no man knows what is true and knowable; even if he does happen to hit on it, he still does not know that he has hit on it, he is left simply With a suspicion and an opinion”. Xenophanes ridicules people for generating gods in their own image, and, in anticipation of Rupert Brooke’s delightful poem about fishes’ concept of heaven, says that if cows could draw, they would make their gods look like cows. For himself, he only claims to be saying what seems probable.
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- Copyright © 1979 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Clem. Al., Str. V 126,1; 129,3‐6. Orphica, frag. 248 Kern; Pindar, frag. 50 Bowra; Hesiod, frag. 303 MW; Solon, frag. 17 West.
2 Sextus Emp., Adv. Log. 148‐51. Xenophanes, frag. 34DK.
3 Frags. 14‐15 DK.
4 Frag. 35 DK.
5 C. Cels.VI 12. Heraclites, frag. 90M (78DK).
6 C.Cels. VI 13.
7 Tim. 72d.
8 AdAutol. Ill 17.
9 Corpus Hermeticum 11,1.
10 In Hex. III 8.
11 Athenagoras, Leg, 7.
12 Hom. Clem. II 5‐8.
13 Ibid. II 39, III 50.
14 Ibid. Ill 9‐10.
15 Ibid, m 49,2.
16 Didascalia, trans. Connolly, p. 218.
17 Ibid. p. 34.
18 E.g. Justin, IApol. 12; 10; 30ff. Origen.c, Ceh. passim (see vol V of the Sc edition. p. 214).
19 E.g. Justin, IApol. 14,2ff;Origen,c.Cels. 19; Athanasius, de Inc. 50ff.
20 E.g. Athanasius, de Inc. 30.
21 Hymns de Fide 26,11.
22 Ibid. 67,15‐17.
23 CCels. VII 42; 33.
24 Origen.in Matt. XVII 7 (GCS edition p. 603).
25 Session III, ch. 2‐3; Anathemas II1, III 2,3,5.
26 Session III, ch. 3.
27 Ibid.
28 Vita Anton. 77. Anon. Latin version ed. G.J.M. Bartelink (Mondadori, 1974).
29 1011a 3‐13.
30 Clem. Al., Str. VII 2,2; 95,3ff.
31 Cf. Cicero, de Nat. Deorum I 1L Greg. Thaum., Pan. Orig. 151ff.
32 Greg. Thaum., Pan. Orig, 162f.
33 On Certainty, 471.
34 Philosophical Investigations 1213.
35 Str. VI 125,3.
36 Str. I 56,3.
37 Adv.Haer. 11,20.
38 Hymns c. Haer. 2,16‐17.
39 E.g. Barnabas 2,9; 4,1 etc. Hermas40,4.
40 Fynn, Mister God this is Anna, p. 77 etc.
41 Cf. AndrMéhat, EAtude sw les Stromates, pp. 125ff.
42 Peter Donovan, Interpreting Religious Experience, p. 91.
43 QD de Malo q. 1, art. 3.
44 Flew & Maclntyre, New Essays in Philosophical Theology, pp. 47ff.
45 H, D. Lewis, Philosophy of Religion (Teach Yourself Books), p. 77.
46 E.g. R. Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, p.l; Robin Attfield, God and the Secular, p.165; Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness, pp. 175f; John J. Shepherd, Experience, Inference and God, pp. 114f. (I owe these references to Brian Davies O.P.).
47 Eugene Ionesco, Un Homme en Question, p.15.
48 Ibid. p. 19.
49 Charles Williams, The Forgiveness of Sins, pp. 28‐32 (in the edition combined with He Came down from Heaven, pp. 129‐131).
50 Baudelaire, p. xl.
51 Robert Liddell, Cavafy, p.206.
52 C. P. Cavafy, Collected Poems, with translation by Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard, pp. 374‐5.1 quote from this translation.