Telling about God Vol. III Understanding: Understanding

I am convinced that there is one sole everlasting principle. This I have always believed. But what he is like in himself, this no one has ever come to know perfectly. Nor will he come to know it, even if he devotes his whole life and all his effort to this task. He will only come to find by experience that much remains for him to investigate, and that the only fruit he has acquired by his past labor is this: he knows that God is. Those words were written about 1600 years ago by a great theologian, St. Ephraem the Syrian. Let them be a warning to you and to me: to me lest I ambition too much in what remains of a lifetime of theology: to you, lest you expect too much of me. As hopefully, we shall understand more profoundly at the conclusion of this work, St. Ephraem's words are far from minimizing. What he sums up as the fruit of a lifetime's effort is in a sense the sum of all that can be said in telling about God, with ever firmer grasp of the meaning of the words, by any one who has come to some degree of understanding within a life of faith. Yet, I hope too that we shall come to some deeper meaning of St. Ephraem's words, to a complementary affirmation, and to a realization that when we shall have finished any stage of our telling about God, there will always remain another, more vital step.