https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqzRPFCWTWQ
Early Christianity on
Understanding God the Father
Post-Apostolic Church
INTRO
This is the fourth video in a series on what
the Pre-Nicene Christians believed about the Divinity. And this is the
first video about God the Father.
First of all, understanding God the Father is
not simple. Is fully comprehending Him
even possible? Let’s look at what the
early Christians wrote.
GOD IS INCOMPREHENSIBLE
Aristides wrote,
The self-same being,
then, who first established and now controls the universe—him do I affirm to be
God who is without beginning and without end, immortal and self-sufficing,
above all passions and infirmities, above anger and forgetfulness and ignorance
and the rest…. He is neither male nor
female. The heavens do not limit him,
but the heavens and all things, visible and invisible, receive their bounds
from him. (Aristides. AD 125.
ANF, vol 9, page 263-264.)
Clement of Alexandria wrote,
The apostle will
testify: “I know a man in Christ, caught up into the third heaven, and from
there into Paradise, who heard unutterable words which it is not lawful for a
man to speak,* ”—implying thus the impossibility of expressing God, and
indicating that what is divine is unutterable by human power. (Clement of Alexandria
* 2Cor 12:2-4
Origen wrote similarly and gave an analogy showing
that understanding God is like understanding the Sun when all a person has seen
is a small lamp.
According to strict
truth, God is incomprehensible, and incapable of being measured. For
whatever be the knowledge which we are able to obtain of God, either by
perception or reflection, we must of necessity believe that He is by many
degrees far better than what we perceive Him to be. For, as if we were to
see anyone unable to bear a spark of light, or the flame of a very small lamp,
and were desirous to acquaint such a one, whose vision could not admit a
greater degree of light than what we have stated, with the brightness and
splendor of the sun, would it not be necessary to tell him that the splendor of
the sun was unspeakably and incalculably better and more glorious than all this
light which he saw? (Origen. AD 225.
ANF, vol 4, page 243.)
Cyprian points out the irony in that we can
truly comprehend God when we say He is not comprehensible.
He cannot be seen—He is
too bright for vision; nor comprehended—He is too pure for our discernment; nor
estimated—He is too great for our perception. Therefore, we are only worthy in estimating
Him when we say that He is inconceivable.
(Cyprian. AD 250. ANF, vol 5, page 467.)
Arnobius wrote to God,
O You who are Yourself
unseen, and who art incomprehensible! …You
are limitless, unbegotten, immortal, enduring forever, God Yourself alone, whom
no bodily shape may represent, no outline delineate; of virtues inexpressible,
of greatness indefinable; unrestricted as to locality, movement, and condition,
concerning whom nothing can be clearly expressed by the significance of man’s
words. (Arnobius. AD 303.
ANF, vol 6, page 421.)
Lactantius wrote,
The secret of the Most
High God, who created all things, cannot be attained by our own ability and
perceptions. Otherwise there would be no
difference between God and man.
(Lactantius. AD 310. ANF, vol 7, page 9.)
SCRIPTURES: MANKIND CANNOT COMPREHEND GOD
In all
those quotations, the early Christians emphasized what has already been said in
the Scriptures about the Father. His
mind and thoughts are, indeed, far beyond anything mankind can understand.
Isaiah wrote,
The everlasting God,
Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, faints not, neither is [He]
weary; there is no searching of His understanding. (Is 40:28, Brenton)
God Himself said through Isaiah,
“For My counsels are
not as your counsels, nor are My ways as your ways,” says the Lord. “But as the heaven is distant from the earth,
so is My way distant from your ways, and your thoughts from My mind.” (Is 55:8-9, Brenton)
Paul wrote,
For who among men knows
the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him? In the same way, no one knows the thoughts of
God except the Spirit of God. (1Cor
2:11)
If we
cannot fully comprehend the thoughts of our fellow man, then how could we
possibly comprehend the thoughts of God?
EXCEPT THROUGH JESUS CHRIST
At this point, you may be asking: then how can
we know anything about the Father? What
we can know about Him comes from His revelations about Himself in Scripture and
in His Son, Jesus Christ. The true
understanding of the Father comes best through His Son, who said,
All things have been
entrusted to Me by My Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no
one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son desires to
reveal Him. (Matt 11:27)
CONCLUSION
It is appropriate for a study on God the
Father to begin like this. As we
continue looking at what the early Christians believed about God, it is
important to realize how difficult these concepts about the Father will be to
completely understand. No person other
than God’s Son, Jesus Christ, can fully comprehend the Father. So if a person thinks he can comprehend God,
His nature, His will, His power, His love, His holiness, His providence, His
sovereignty, etc., then he is thinking himself to be the same as God.
But this
doesn’t mean that Jesus and the Scriptures have left us completely in the
dark. The early Christians have given us
a wealth of knowledge about the Father, but it is important to know that no one
can fully understand everything.
Blessings
and so forth.
