st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

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74 ST. JOHN OF DAMASCUS.
God; if uncreated,
there could be in them no
liability to change or decay. But we witness the
latter all around us. Therefore the other alternative
must be the true one : the world has been created,
and that proves a Creator. The order and regularity
prevailing in the universe strengthens this conclusion
r (c. iii.).
What follows is on the attributes of God ;
and in treating of this we have the same peculiarities
as at the first The negative method of shutting out
conceptions is "
pursued. Whatever we say of
, God by way of affirmation/ are his words, "shows
wise, or anything else, you are not expressing the
nature of God, but only
its surroundings. Some
things there are spoken affirmatively of God, which
have the force of negation in excess ; as, for instance,
when we speak of darkness with God, we do not
mean positive darkness, but that which is not light
from its
being above light. So when we use the
word light of Him, we mean the negation of darkv
not His nature, but only the surroundings of His
nature. If you speak of Him as good, or just, or
ness
(c.
iv.).
It will be noted that it is on the
or transcendental attributes of God that
metaphysical
Damascenus dwells, rather than on the ethical.
His
arguments for the existence of a Son of God, and a
Holy Spirit, may strike us as somewhat too much in
the nature of inferences from words and names. The
Fatherhood of God implies a Son. The Spirit must
pertain to Him as necessarily as the breath (spirit) of
man which is in his nostrils pertains to him (c. vii.).
This Holy Spirit we may also call the Spirit of the
Son, but we must not say that He is
from the Son