Chapter IVOn Archetypal Theology

Having freed ourselves from that homonymy of sacred theology, we must now at last deliver, concerning each separately, what belongs to our plan. First we shall say briefly about archetypal theology what seems to belong to this place; then we shall unfold more freely the explanation of the other, ectypal (ἐκτύπου), theology. Being about to speak of archetypal theology, we have briefly comprehended in Thesis VII what can be said by us about it, and likewise what cannot: Archetypal theology is the divine wisdom of divine things. This we adore; we do not investigate it. In the first clause we religiously mark off what can be said by us about it; in the second, what cannot.

What, then, can be said of it, we show as best we can by a proper description (for the infinite certainly cannot be defined), stating common things that nature and Scripture teach, when we say that archetypal or prototypal (πρωτότυπον) theology is nothing else than the divine wisdom of divine things. By these words we do not lay down a definition, but a quasi-definition, or a kind of analogical description taken from the example of our own things and applied to divine things by a certain shaping of our speech. For wisdom is not the genus of this theology, but is posited as a quasi-genus for the sake of teaching; unless perhaps (as the scholastics hold, and quite rightly) we say that wisdom is predicated of God univocally, and of us equivocally. On this account wisdom is not a genus, but an adequate (as they call it) property, attributed to God in the highest and most proper sense, which is transferred thence to created things in our speech equivocally. Likewise, what serves us as a difference neither is a difference in God nor makes one. For how could a difference be attributed to that most simple essence, utterly foreign to all composition, since a difference constitutes the account of its species as form constitutes that of its matter? God is so utterly simple in essence that no composition at all can be attributed to him even in any plausible thought: not of matter and form, not of parts, not of essence and existence, not of subject and accidents; because whatever is in God is God.

This is why, by way of restriction, or in place (as it is commonly called) of a specific difference, we added that this wisdom is divine: to show that we are dealing here with the essential, supereminent wisdom of God, raised outside and above every genus. For it is not wisdom in the sense in which the philosophers distinguished the genus of wisdom. [col. 1378] That human wisdom has its origin from elsewhere, as an accident. It is a habit; it is begotten by principles; it is nourished by the understanding composing and dividing; it joins reasons together; it links conclusions from them; it produces knowledge; it is the arbiter and judge of all these; and it establishes the parts, and the order of the parts, that are subject to human wisdom. But this wisdom is eternal, essential, indeed the essence of God, to which all things are most fully present, not from any principles, by composition and division of the understanding, reasoning, conclusions, knowledge, judgment, and ordering, but most simply, by a single intuition of all things at once, and not successively, as happens with created things. This wisdom begets principles from itself; [p. 52] it is not begotten by them. It produces understanding, reason, conclusions, sciences, and wisdom itself in others, while remaining immutable and unvaried in itself. Finally, while it varies all things in others outside itself by parts, order, and succession, it is, as the universal and unmoved principle of all principles, understandings, reasons, conclusions, and sciences, the wisdom that is the mother of all wisdom. Of it you may say most truly with Job (ch. 28): "Surely there is a vein for the silver, and a place for gold which the refiners melt. Iron is taken out of the dust, and brass is molten out of the stone, etc. But where shall wisdom be found? and where is the place of understanding? Man knoweth not the price thereof; neither is it found in the land of the living. The depth saith, It is not in me: and the sea saith, It is not with me, etc. God alone understandeth the way thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof. For he looketh to the ends of the earth, and seeth under the whole heaven," and what follows. Hence, if we are to come to the difference (if indeed it can be called a difference), we shall observe not only that divine things are known, judged, and ordered by this wisdom in its object, mode, and end, but also that in its very subject (for we may, for the sake of teaching, call God a subject, though he is most simple) it is a divine wisdom, which grasps all divine things, and each, unceasingly and at once, by a single and infinite intuition, without parts of things, without order of parts, without motion and succession of times (to use the scholastics' language): the whole at once, and wholly. For this is also why we declare this wisdom divine, in the proper and not a figurative sense: so that whenever this wisdom is discussed, we may always lift our minds outside and above all human, temporal, and created things.

That this may be better understood, come, let us bring forward certain attributes of this theology by which its difference from our created theology may be discerned. This archetypal theology, then, is a wisdom uncreated, formal, absolute, infinite, whole at once; incommunicable, and communicating with created things only its images or even its traces. It is uncreated: for it has no beginning from anything, nor any manner of beginning or creation; indeed it has not even any appearance of a beginning; for it is the very principle of principles, reaching from one end to another mightily, and sweetly ordering all things (Wis. 8[:1]). It is formal: for it is essential to the divine form, or Deity, and indeed is the very essence of God; since God is in every respect most simple, and in him to be, to be wise, and to know are the same, although we distinguish them in our minds according to reason. It is absolute and most perfect: lacking nothing, redundant in nothing, containing nothing variable, but free in itself from all defect, progress or growth, and change. It is infinite: for it extends to all things universally and individually, as the principle of all; and there is nothing (to use the Apostle's words, Heb. 4:13) that is hidden from it; all things are naked and opened unto its eyes. It is whole at once, in the manner of that spiritual continuity (συνεχείας) which even Aristotle named in On the Soul, book 2. For it is not in God by parts or successively, nor does it vary in itself; it is according to the mode of God himself, whose essence being whole at once, without parts and unalterable (ἀμέριστος καὶ ἀναλλοίωτος), by the same account his eternal wisdom is plainly free of parts, succession, and all motion. It is incommunicable: for it is proper to the Deity, and therefore can be communicated to no created thing, nor in fact has it been communicated to anything that is other than God. For neither of these can ever happen: either that God himself should yield this glory of his to another, as he once spoke through his Prophets, or that another should take it up and hold it as his own. Lastly, it is communicative, not properly of itself, but at most only of its image. For of that inaccessible, infinite, and incomprehensible (ἀκαταλήπτου) wisdom, which no creature can bear, much less [col. 1379] contain, of that wisdom, I say, an image is transmitted to created things and impressed on them; an emanation (ἀποῤῥοή) is drawn off; a radiance (ἀπαύγασμα) shines forth; and a small fragment (ἀποσπασμάτιον), as it were, falls off for their enlightening; yet that highest exemplar, fountain, sun, and trunk [p. 53] (so to speak), or whole body, remains intact. "With God," says Job (12:13), "is wisdom and strength; he hath counsel and understanding." What more, then, shall we say of this infinite and wonderful wisdom of God, when we have already said in a word that we do not search it out but rather adore it? Whatever we can say of it is nothing in comparison with it; whatever it is, is infinite, which cannot be spoken; wonderful in itself, and to be looked up to by us with the highest reverence. By this argument the wise man testifies that the honor of God lies in concealing a thing, and by this very argument makes our slightness evident; for our gracious Father provides for our weakness by hiding it from his children (Prov. 25:2). Therefore the Apostle, carried away in wonder at this wisdom, cried out most vehemently, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge (or science) of God!" (Rom. 11:33). And we too, struck with awe (πτοηθέντες), halt our steps here. For since that is an abyss of wisdom, it is better that we now come to the streams communicated through it and flowing out of it, lest, if we commit ourselves to that sea, its vastness swallow up our slightness.