Note (return) — Chapter V

The doctrine of God was fixed by the old Catholic Fathers for the Christendom of succeeding centuries, and in fact both the methodic directions for forming the idea of God and their results remained unchanged. With respect to the former they occupy a middle position between the renunciation of all knowledge—for God is not abyss and silence—and the attempt to fathom the depths of the Godhead.520 Tertullian, influenced by the Stoics, strongly emphasised the possibility of attaining a knowledge of God. Irenæus, following out an idea which seems to anticipate the mysticism of later theologians, made love a preliminary condition of knowledge and plainly acknowledged it as the principle of knowledge.521 God can be known from revelation,522 because he has really revealed himself, that is, both by the creation and the word of revelation. Irenæus also taught that a sufficient knowledge of God, as the creator and guide, can be obtained from the creation, and indeed this knowledge always continues, so that all men are without excuse.523 In this case the prophets, the Lord himself, the Apostles, and the Church teach no more and nothing else than what must be already plain to the natural consciousness. Irenæus certainly did not succeed in reconciling this proposition with his former assertion that the knowledge of God springs from love resting on revelation. Irenæus also starts, as Apologist and Antignostic, with the God who is the First Cause. Every God who is not that is a phantom;524 and every sublime religious state of mind which does not include the feeling of dependence upon God as the Creator is a deception. It is the extremest blasphemy to degrade God the Creator, and it is the most frightful machination of the devil that has produced the blasphemia creatoris.525 Like the Apologists, the early Catholic Fathers confess that the doctrine of God the Creator is the first and most important of the main articles of Christian faith;526 the belief in his oneness as well as his absoluteness is the main point.527 God is all light, all understanding, all Logos, all active spirit;528 everything anthropopathic and anthropomorphic is to be conceived as incompatible with his nature.529 The early-Catholic doctrine of God shows an advance beyond that of the Apologists, in so far as God's attributes of goodness and righteousness are expressly discussed, and it is proved in opposition to Marcion that they are not mutually exclusive, but necessarily involve each other.530