(3) But we
what we are generally taught about God. Where God is not as a man to be deceived
nor as the son of man to be threatened, we learn through this text that God
is not a man, but through another text that God is a man, when it says, For
the Lord your God has taught you as a man teaches his son, and again, As
a man he takes on the manner of his son. Hence whenever the scriptures
speak theologically about God in relation to himself and do not involve is plan
for human matters, they say that he is not as a man. For there will
be no limit to his greatness, and he is more feared than all of the gods,
and praise him, all you angels of God; praise him, all his hosts; praise
him, sun and moon; praise him, all stars and light. You can find numerous
other passages when you select from the sacred Scriptures, to which you can
relate the words, God is not as a man.
(4) But
whenever the divine plan involves human matters, it carries the human intellect
and manners and way of speaking. And just as we, if we are talking with a
two-year-old child, speak inarticulately because of the child—for it is
impossible, if we observe that is fitting for the age of a full-grown man, and
when talking to children, to understand the children without condescending to
their mode of speech—something of this sorts also seems to me the case with God
whenever he manages to race of man and especially those still infants.
See also how we, mature men, change the name of things for babies, and we call “food”
in a special way for them, and we call “drink” in another way of speaking, not
using a vocabulary of adults which we use for adults of our age but a kind of
childlike or babyish way of speaking. And if we name garments for children, we
put upon them other names, as if we form a childlike name. Are we then for this
reason immature? And if any of us should hear those who talk to children, will
he say that this old man has become senseless, this man has forgotten his
beard, the age of a man? Or is it granted that out of consideration when he
converses with the child he does not speak in an elderly or adult language, but
in a childlike language? (Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah and 1 Kings 28 [trans.
John Clark Smith; The Fathers of the Church 97; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1998], 198-99)