Mulling over the absolute

Andrew Heanngam Pamei *

As I came of age, never did a thought of mulling over the absolute ever crossed the horizon of my mind, but, somewhere along an intellectually stimulating sojourn five summers syne, the credo that I professed got shaken when a spiritually-blinding light of academic knowledge beamed forth to hold sway over my intellect and reason, thereby, I traversed a boulevard of bewilderment-engulfed-agnosticism.

Thenceforth, I fumbledfor truth like a doubting Thomas, contending lofty ideas of philosophers and theologians, but they waffled and shrugged, so bewilderment whacked-Should I mull over the absolute ? Which is more significant- to know God or to call upon God ? To call upon God or to praise God ? But who can call on God without knowing Him ? Fora benighted soul may beckon Him as other than who He is.

Flummoxed, skeptical yet undeterred, I decided to delve deep into the scripture and into the abyss of my mind; my mind, because, as in the trinitarian God-the Father, the Son and the Holy spirit, so also trinity exists in the mind-Memory, Intellect and Will. After half a decade, as I look back in profound retrospection, it dawned on me that Agnosticism was a ticket effectuating my bamboozled soul into a cogitative quest for the Absolute, which concomitantly rekindled the long lost credo. This write-up is not merely a delineation of who God is, but who God is not, chalked-up through spiritual cogitation.

Who then is God ? God, all goodness, most high, most just; most hidden, yet most present, most beautiful and most strong; stable yet mysterious; unchangeable, yet changing all things; never new, never old; making all things new and bringing age upon the proud though they knew it not, ever working, yet ever at rest; still gathering, yet lacking nothing; sustaining, filling and protecting; creating, nourishing and maturing; seeking, yet possessing all things.

God, who loves without passion, who is jealous without anxiety, who repents yet have no sorrow; who gets angry, yet serene; who change ways, yet whose plans are unchanged; who recover what He finds, having never lost it; never in need, yet rejoicing in gain; never covetous, yet requiring interest; who pay debts, owing nothing; who remit debts, losing nothing.

God, through whom all things, which of themselves were not, tend to be. God, who withholds from perishing even that which seems to be mutually destructive. God, who, out of nothing, has created this world, which the eyes of all perceive to be most beautiful. God, who does not cause evil, but causes that it be not most evil. God, who to the few that flee for refuge to that which truly is, shows evil to be nothing.

God, through whom the universe, even taking in its sinister side, is perfect. God, from whom things most widely at variance with You effect no dissonance, since worser things are included in one plan with better. God, who art loved, wittingly or unwittingly, by everything that is capable of loving. God, in whom are all things, to whom nevertheless neither the vileness of any creature is vile, nor its wickedness harmful, nor its error erroneous.

God, who has not willed that any but the pure should know the truth. God, the Father of truth, the Father of wisdom, the Father of the true and crowning life, the Father of blessedness, the Father of that which is good and fair, the Father of intelligible light, the Father of our awakening and illumination, the Father of the pledge by which we are admonished to return to You.

God, the Truth, in whom and from whom and through whom all things are true which anywhere are true. God, the Wisdom, in whom and from whom and through whom all things are wise which anywhere are wise. God, the true and crowning Life, in whom and from whom and through whom all things live, which truly and supremely live. God, the Blessedness, in whom and from whom and through whom all things are blessed, which anywhere are blessed.

God, the Good and Fair, in whom and from whom and through whom all things are good and fair, which anywhere are good and fair. God, the intelligible Light, in whom and from whom and through whom all things intelligibly shine, which anywhere intelligibly shine. God, whose kingdom is that whole world of which sense has no ken. God, from whose kingdom a law is even derived down upon these lower realms.

God, from whom to be turned away, is to fall; to whom to be turned back, is to rise again; in whom to abide, is to stand firm. God, from whom to go forth, is to die; to whom to return, is to revive; in whom to have our dwelling, is to live. God, whom no one loses, unless deceived; whom no one seeks, unless stirred up; whom no one finds, unless made pure. God, whom to forsake, is one thing with perishing; towards whom to tend, is one thing with living; whom to see is one thing with having.

God, towards whom faith rouses us, hope lifts us up, with whom love joins us. God, through whom we overcome the enemy. God, through whose gift it is, that we do not perish utterly. God, by whom we are warned to watch. God, by whom we distinguish good from ill. God, by whom we flee evil, and follow good. God, through whom we yield not to calamities. God, through whom we faithfully serve and benignantly govern. God, through whom we learn those things to be another’s which aforetime we accounted ours, and those things to be ours which we used to account as belonging to another.

God, through whom the baits and enticements of evil things have no power to hold us. God, through whom it is that diminished possessions leave ourselves complete. God, through whom our better good is not subject to a worse. God, through whom death is swallowed up in victory. God, who turns us to Yourself. God, who strips us of that which is not, and arrays us in that which is. God, who makes us worthy to be heard.

God, who fortifies us. God, who leads us into all truth. God, who speaks to us only good, who neither terrifies into madness nor allows another so to do. God, who calls us back into the way. God, who leads us to the door of life. God, who causes it to be opened to them that knock. God, who gives us the bread of life. God, through whom we thirst for the draught, which being drunk we never thirst.

God, who convinces the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. God, through whom it is that we are not disturbed by those who refuse to believe. God, through whom we disapprove the error of those, who think that there are no merits of souls before You. God, through whom it comes that we are not in bondage to the weak and beggarly elements. God, who cleanses us, and prepares us for Divine rewards.

God, the one true and eternal substance, where is no discord, no confusion, no shifting, no indigence, no death. Where is supreme concord, supreme evidence, supreme steadfastness, supreme fullness, and life supreme. Where nothing is lacking, nothing redundant. Where Begetter and Begotten are one. God, whom all things serve, that serve, to whom is compliant every virtuous soul.

By whose laws the poles revolve, the stars fulfill their courses, the sun vivifies the day, the moon tempers the night; and all the framework of things, day after day by vicissitude of light and gloom, month after month by waxings and wanings of the moon, year after year by orderly successions of spring and summer and fall and winter, cycle after cycle by accomplished concurrences of the solar course, and through the mighty orbs of time, folding and refolding upon themselves, as the stars still recur to their first conjunctions, maintains, so far as this merely visible matter allows, the mighty constancy of things.

God, by whose ever-enduring laws the stable motion of shifting things is suffered to feel no perturbation, the thronging course of circling ages is ever recalled anew to the image of immovable quiet;by whose laws the choice of the soul is free, and to the good rewards and to the evil pains are distributed by necessities settled throughout the nature of everything. God, from whom distil even to us all benefits, by whom all evils are withheld from us.

God, above whom is nothing, beyond whom is nothing, without whom is nothing. God, under whom is the whole, in whom is the whole, with whom is the whole. Who has made man after His image and likeness, which he discovers, who has come to know himself. To the few who have found God, He is their Lord, their King, their Father, their Cause, their Hope, their Wealth, their Honor, their House, their Country, their Health, their Light, their Life. God, though known to few is to those few known so well.

God; the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are at the same time the Trinity, the trinity of unity and the unity of trinity; one Being, supreme above all. The Trinity, the name with so great excellence, one God, of whom are all things, through whom are all things, in whom are all things. Thus the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and each of these by Himself, is God, and at the same time they are all one God; and each of them by Himself is a complete substance, and yet they are all one substance.

The Father is not the Son nor the Holy Spirit; the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit is not the Father nor the Son: but the Father is only Father, the Son is only Son, and the Holy Spirit is only Holy Spirit. To all three belong the same eternity, the same unchangeableness, the same majesty, the same power. In the Father is unity, in the Son equality, in the Holy Spirit the harmony of unity and equality; and these three attributes are all one because of the Father, all equal because of the Son, and all harmonious because of the Holy Spirit.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, of one and the same substance, God the Creator, the Omnipotent Trinity, work indivisibly; but that this cannot be indivisibly manifested by the creature, and least of all by the bodily creature, which is far inferior; just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cannot be named by our words, which certainly are bodily sounds, except in their own proper intervals of time, divided by a distinct separation, which intervals the proper syllables of each word occupy.

Since in their proper substance wherein they are, the three are one, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the very same, by no temporal motion, above the whole creature, without any interval of time and place, and at once one and the same from eternity to eternity, as it were eternity itself, which is not without truth and charity. But, in my words, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are separated, and cannot be named at once, and occupy their own proper places separately invisible letters.

And as, when I name my Memory, and Intellect, and Will, each name refers to each severally, but yet each is uttered by all three; for there is no one of these three names that is not uttered by both my memory and my intellect and my will together (by the soul as a whole); so the Trinity together wrought both the voice of the Father, and the flesh of the Son, and the dove of the Holy Spirit, while each of these things is referred severally to each person.

And by this similitude, to certain degree I discerned, that the Trinity, which is inseparable in itself, is manifested separably by the appearance of the visible creature; and that the operation of the Trinity is also inseparable in each severally of those things which are said to pertain properly to the manifesting of either the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit.

In this Trinitarian God is the supreme source of all things, the most perfect beauty, and the most blessed delight. Those three, therefore, both seem to be mutually determined to each other, and are in themselves infinite. But here in corporeal things, one thing alone is not as much as three together, and two are something more than one; but in that highest Trinity one is as much as the three together, nor are two anything more than one.

And They are infinite in themselves. So both each are in each, and all in each, and each in all, and all in all, and all are one. Let anyone who see this, whether in part, or through a glass and in an enigma, rejoice in knowing God; and honor Him as God, and give thanks; but let anyone who does not see it, strive to see it through piety, not to cavil at it through blindness. Since God is one, but yet is a Trinity.

Too late have I found you, O beautiful Trinity, ancient yet ever new. Too late have I loved you ! And behold you were within, but I was outside, searching for you there-plunging, deformed amid those things of beauty which you had made. You were with me but I was not with you. Things held me far from you, which, unless, they were in you did not exist all. You called and shouted and burst my deafness.

You gleamed and shone upon me, and chased away my blindness. You breathed fragrant odours on me, and I held back my breath, but now I pant for you. I tasted, and now I thirst for you. You touched me, and now I yearn for your spirit.