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Is our word, then, born of our knowledge only? Do we not say many
things also that we do not know? And say them not with doubt, but
thinking them to be true; while if perchance they are true in respect
to the things themselves of which we speak, they are yet not true in
respect to our word, because a word is not true unless it is born of a
thing that is known. In this sense, then, our word is false, not
when we lie, but when we are deceived. And when we doubt, our word
us not yet of the thing of which we doubt, but it is a word concerning
the doubt itself. For although we do not know whether that is true of
which we doubt, yet we do know that we doubt; and hence, when we say
we doubt, we say a word that is true, for we say what we know. And
what, too, of its being possible for us to lie? And when we do,
certainly we both willingly and knowingly have a word that is false,
wherein there is a word that is true, viz. that we lie, for this we
know. And when we confess that we have lied, we speak that which is
true; for we say what we know, for we know that we lied.
But that Word which is God, and can do more than we, cannot do
this. For it "can do nothing except what it sees the Father do;"
and it "speaks not of itself," but it has from the Father all that
it speaks, since the Father speaks it in a special way; and the great
might of that Word is that it cannot lie, because there cannot be
there "yea and nay," but "yea yea, nay nay." Well, but that is
not even to be called a word, which is not true. I willingly assent,
if so it be. What, then, if our word is true and therefore is
rightly called a word? Is it the case that, as we can speak of sight
of sight, and knowledge of knowledge, so we can speak of essence of
essence, as that Word of God is especially spoken of, and is
especially to be spoken of? Why so? Because to us, to be is not the
same as to know; since we know many things which in some sense live by
memory, and so in some sense die by being forgotten: and so, when
those things are no longer in our knowledge, yet we still are: and
while our knowledge has slipped away and perished out of our mind, we
are still alive.
25. In respect to those things also which are so known that they can
never escape the memory, because they are present, and belong to the
nature of the mind itself, as, e.g., the knowing that we are alive
(for this continues so long as the mind continues; and because the
mind continues always, this also continues always); I say, in
respect to this and to any other like instances, in which we are the
rather to contemplate the image of God, it is difficult to make out in
what way, although they are always known, yet because they are not
always also thought of, an eternal word can be spoken respecting them,
when our word is spoken in our thought. For it is eternal to the soul
to live; it is eternal to know that it lives. Yet it is not eternal
to it to be thinking of its own life, or to be thinking of its own
knowledge of its own life; since, in entering upon this or that
occupation, it will cease to think of this, although it does not cease
from knowing it. And hence it comes to pass, that if there can be in
the mind any knowledge that is eternal, while the thought of that
knowledge cannot be eternal, and any inner and true word of ours is
only said by our thought, then God alone can be understood to have a
Word that is eternal, and co-eternal with Himself. Unless,
perhaps, we are to say that the very possibility of thought since that
which is known is capable of being truly thought, even at the time when
it is not being thought constitutes a word as perpetual as the knowledge
itself is perpetual. But how is that a word which is not yet formed in
the vision of the thought? How will it be like the knowledge of which
it is born, if it has not the form of that knowledge, and is only now
called a word because it can have it? For it is much as if one were to
say that a word is to be so called because it can be a word. But what
is this that can be a word, and is therefore already held worthy of the
name of a word? What, I say, is this thing that is formable, but
not yet formed, except a something in our mind, which we toss to and
fro by revolving it this way or that, while we think of first one thing
and then another, according as they are found by or occur to us? And
the true word then comes into being, when, as I said, that which we
toss to and fro by revolving it arrives at that which we know, and is
formed by that, in taking its entire likeness; so that in what manner
each thing is known, in that manner also it is thought, i.e. is said
in this manner in the heart, without articulate sound, without thought
of articulate sound, such as no doubt belongs to some particular
tongue. And hence if we even admit, in order not to dispute
laboriously about a name, that this something of our mind, which can
be formed from our knowledge, is to be already called a word, even
before it is so formed, because it is, so to say, already formable,
who would not see how great would be the unlikeness between it and that
Word of God, which is so in the form of God, as not to have been
formable before it was formed, or to have been capable at any time of
being formless, but is a simple form, and simply equal to Him from
whom it is, and with whom it is wonderfully co-eternal?
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