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Augustine: Scripture makes use of bodily things to speak of God ("under the shadow of Thy wings," etc.). It also uses human things ("I am jealous," "I regret making man," etc.). It uses these as enticements to draw our understanding upward. #AugDeTrin
But Scripture "rarely mentions things properly ascribed to God peculiarly, that is, things not found in any creature." Augustine means this as a rebuke to cocky Platonists who boast of thinking rightly about God because they philosophize about transcendence. #AugDeTrin
When they come up w/elaborate accounts of That Which Transcends Creatures, accounts not guided by revelation, they are even more wrong than somebody who thinks God is a rock or a soul. "Not only is God not like that," says Augustine, "nothing is like that." #AugDeTrin
Biblical statements that pick out what is peculiar to God are scarce in Scripture, which prefers speaking analogically from created body or mind. Here are a few: "I am who I am," "who alone has immortality," "with whom is no shadow of change," & "thou art the same." #AugDeTrin
The claim that such speech is rare ("because it is difficult o contemplate and to comprehend the substance of God") reminds me of Calvin's claim in Inst I:13, "God, to keep us sober, speaks sparingly of his essence." #AugDeTrin
