"But take the case of the other, who recognizes the existence of absolute beauty, and is able to distinguish the idea from the objects which participate in the idea, neither putting the objects in the place of the idea nor the idea in the place of the objects—is he a dreamer? or is he awake?
"He is the reverse of a dreamer, he replied.
"And may we not say that the mind of the one has knowledge, and that the mind of the other has opinion only?
"Certainly."
And how Augustine, the Christian father, spoken of as "the brightest, clearest, most comprehensive" of Christian philosophers. ("Lectures on the History of Christian Philosophy"—Elmendorf—p. 92):
"And I inquired what iniquity was, and found it to be no substance, but the perversion of the will, turned aside from Thee, O God, the Supreme, towards these lower things, and casting out its bowels, and puffed up outwardly.
"And I wondered that I now loved Thee, and no phantasm for thee. And yet did I not press on to enjoy my God; but was borne up to Thee by Thy beauty, and soon borne down from Thee by mine own weight, sinking with sorrow into these inferior things. This weight was carnal custom. Yet dwelt there with me a remembrance of Thee; nor did I any way doubt, that there was One to Whom I might cleave, but that I was not yet such as to cleave to Thee; for that 'the body which is corrupted, presseth down the soul, and the earthly tabernacle weigheth down the mind that museth upon many things.' And most certain I was, that 'Thy invisible works from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even Thy eternal power and God-head.' For examining whence it was that I admired the beauty of bodies celestial or terrestrial; and what aided me in judging soundly on things mutable, and pronouncing, 'This ought to be thus, this not'; examining, I say, whence it was that I so judged, seeing I did so judge, I had found the unchangeable and true Eternity of Truth above my changeable mind. And thus, by degrees, I passed from bodies to the soul, which through the bodily senses perceives; and thence to its inward faculty, to which the bodily senses represent things external, whitherto reaches the faculties of beasts; and thence again to the reasoning faculty, to which what is received from the senses of the body, is referred to be judged. Which, finding itself also to be in me a thing variable, raised itself up to its own understanding, and drew away my thoughts from the power of habit, withdrawing itself from those troops of contradictory phantasms; that so it might find what that light was, whereby it was bedewed, when, without all doubting, it cried out:
"'That the unchangeable was to be preferred to the changeable'; whence also it knew That Unchangeable, which, unless it had in some way known, it had had no sure ground to prefer it to the changeable. And thus with the flash of one trembling glance it arrived at That Which Is. And then I saw 'Thy invisible things understood by the things which are made.'"
6. Patristic Doctrine of God of Pagan Rather Than of Christian Origin—Data Not in the Old Testament: The data for the doctrine that God is "pure being," "being absolutely bare of all quality," are not found in the Old Testament, for that teaches the plainest anthropomorphic ideas respecting God. It ascribes to Him a human form, and many qualities and attributes possessed by man, which, in the minds of orthodox Christian philosophers, limit Him who must be, to their thinking, without any limitation whatsoever, either as to essence, or form, or passion, or quality; and ascribes relativity to Him who, according to their conceptions, must not be relative but absolute. The passage usually depended upon as giving the data for this "being absolutely bare of quality," and that is held to identify the ground plan of the philosophy of Moses and Plato—"I am that I am"—the God who appeared to Moses in the burning bush; and Who replied when the Hebrew prophet asked what he should say when the Egyptians and Israel should ask who had sent him—"Say, I Am sent me;" that is the Self-Existing One sent me. This passage, I say, does not furnish the data for the Orthodox Christian conception of God, that He is "being, absolutely free from all quality"; not material (the "without body" of the creeds), without parts, and without passions; for to be self-existent does not demand the absence of quality; indeed, to be without quality, run to its last analysis, would mean non-existence.
Data Not in the New Testament: The data for the doctrine of God's absolute "simplicity," or, "being absolutely without quality," do not come from the New Testament; for the writers of that volume of scripture accept the doctrine of the Old Testament respecting God, and even emphasize its anthropomorphic ideas, by representing that the man Christ Jesus was in the "express image" of God, the Father's person; was, in fact, God manifest in the flesh (1 Tim. 3: 16); "the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1: 5); God, the Word, who was made flesh, and dwelt among men, and they beheld His glory (St. John 1:1-14). Hence the Orthodox Christian doctrine of God's "simplicity" cannot claim the warrant of New Testament authority.