Maximus of Tyre says:
“God, the Father and Fashioner of all things that are, He who is older than the sun, older than the sky, greater than time and lapse of time and the whole stream of nature, is unnamed by legislators, and unspoken by the voice and unseen by the eyes: and since we cannot apprehend His essence, we lean upon words and names and animals, and forms of gold and ivory and silver, and plants and rivers and mountain-peaks and springs of waters, longing for an intuition of Him, and in our inability naming by His name all things that are beautiful in this world of ours.”[461]
And again:
“It is of this Father and Begetter of the universe that Plato tells us: His name he does not tell us, for he knew it not: nor does he tell us His colour, for he saw Him not; nor His size, for he touched Him not. Colour and size are felt by the touch and seen by the sight: but the Deity Himself is unseen by the sight, unspoken by the voice, untouched by fleshly touch, unheard by the hearing, seen only—through its likeness to Him, and heard only—through its kinship with Him, by the noblest and purest and clearest-sighted and swiftest and oldest element of the soul.”[462]
Plotinus similarly, in answer to the old problem, “how from the One, being such as we have described Him, anything whatever has substance, instead of the One abiding by Himself,” replies:
“Let us call upon God Himself before we thus answer—not with uttered words, but stretching forth our souls in prayer to Him, for this is the only way in which we can pray, alone to Him who is alone. We must, then, gaze upon Him in the inner part of us, as in a temple, being as He is by Himself, abiding still and beyond all things (ἐπέκεινα ἁπάντων). Everything that moves must have an object towards which it moves. But the One has no such object; consequently we must not assert movement of Him.... Let us not think of production in time, when we speak of things eternal.... What then was produced was produced without His moving: ... it had its being without His assenting or willing or being moved in anywise. It was like the light that surrounds the sun and shines forth from it, though the sun is itself at rest: it is reflected like an image. So with what is greatest. That which is next greatest comes forth from Him, and the next greatest is νοῦς; for νοῦς sees Him and needs Him alone.”[463]
But the conception of transcendence is capable of taking two forms. It may be that of a God who passes beyond all the classes into which sensible phenomena are divisible, by virtue of His being pure Mind, cognizable only by mind; or it may be that of a God who exists extra flammantia moenia mundi, filling the infinite space which surrounds and contains all the spheres of material existence. The one God is transcendent in the proper sense of the term; the other is supra-cosmic. In either case He is said to be unborn, undying, uncontained; and since the same terms are thus used to express the elements of both forms of the conception, it is natural that these forms should readily pass into each other, and that the distinction between them should not always be present to a writer’s mind or perceptible in his writings. But the conception in one or other of its forms fills a large place in later Greek philosophy. It blended in a common stream with the new currents of religious feeling. [The process is well illustrated by Philo.]
The words “I am thy God” are used not in a proper but in a secondary sense. For Being, quâ Being, is out of relation: itself is full of itself and sufficient for itself, both before the birth of the world and equally so after it.[464] He transcends all quality, being better than virtue, better than knowledge, and better even than the good itself and the beautiful itself.[465] He is not in space, but beyond it; for He contains it. He is not in time, for He is the Father of the universe, which is itself the father of time, since from its movement time proceeds.[466] He is “without body, parts or passions”: without feet, for whither should He walk who fills all things: without hands, for from whom should He receive anything who possesses all things: without eyes, for how should He need eyes who made the light.[467] He is invisible, for how can eyes that are too weak to gaze upon the sun be strong enough to gaze upon its Maker.[468] He is incomprehensible: not even the whole universe, much less the human mind, can contain the conception of Him:[469] we know that He is, we cannot know what He is:[470] we may see the manifestations of Him in His works, but it were monstrous folly to go behind His works and inquire into His essence.[471] He is hence unnamed: for names are the symbols of created things, whereas His only attribute is to be.[472]
(2) The Revelation of the Transcendent.—Side by side with this conception of the transcendence of God, and intimately connected with it, was the idea of beings or forces coming between God and men. A transcendent God was in Himself incommunicable: the more the conception of His transcendence was developed, the stronger was the necessity for conceiving of the existence of intermediate links.[473]