Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XXXVIII
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
XXXVIII.
Since we hold that the great God is in essence
simple, invisible, and incorporeal, Himself pure intelligence, or
something transcending intelligence and existence, we can never say
that God is apprehended by any other means than through the
intelligence which is formed in His image, though now, in the words of
Paul, “we see in a glass obscurely, but then face to
face.”4767
And if we use
the expression “face to face,” let no one pervert its
meaning; but let it be explained by this passage, “Beholding with
open face the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image,
from glory to glory,” which shows that we do not use the word in
this connection to mean the visible face, but take it figuratively, in
the same way as we have shown that the eyes, the ears, and the other
parts of the body are employed. And it is certain that a
man—I mean a soul using a body, otherwise called “the inner
man,” or simply “the soul”—would answer, not as
Celsus makes us answer, but as the man of God himself teaches. It
is certain also that a Christian will not make use of “the
language of the flesh,” having learnt as he has “to mortify
the deeds of the body”4768
by the spirit, and
“to bear about in his body the dying of Jesus;”4769
and “mortify your members which are on
the earth,”4770
and with a true
knowledge of these words, “My spirit shall not always strive with
man, for that he also is flesh,”4771
and again, “They that are in the flesh cannot please
God,”4772
he strives in every
way to live no longer according to the flesh, but only according to the
Spirit.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
