John of Damascus Quotes on God
John of Damascus (c.675–c.749) — the Greek-speaking Christian theologian writing under the Umayyad caliphate and the principal philosophical defender of icon veneration during the Iconoclastic controversy — gave late patristic Greek theology its most influential systematic synthesis in the three-part Source of Knowledge, of which the third part, On the Orthodox Faith, became the standard handbook of Greek theology in the East and (via Latin translation) the principal patristic source for the medieval Western scholastics. The treatment of God develops the apophatic-cataphatic dialectic of the Cappadocian and Pseudo-Dionysian traditions: the divine essence is unknowable in its proper character, but the divine energies through which God is manifested in creation and salvation history can be named and contemplated. The framework, transmitted intact through the Byzantine theological tradition and shaping the Latin Scholastic engagement with Greek patristics through Peter Lombard and Aquinas, remains the principal late patristic systematic theology.
Quotes
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Attributed to John of Damascus:
“I shall not paint God in his own nature; I shall paint the visible flesh of God.”
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Attributed to John of Damascus:
“The image is a likeness which carries within itself the prototype.”
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Attributed to John of Damascus:
“Knowledge of God is given to us by revelation, not invented by reason.”
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Attributed to John of Damascus:
“Faith is the unhesitating confession of what is to be hoped for.”
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Attributed to John of Damascus:
“All bodies are circumscribed; God alone is uncircumscribable.”
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“In the relics of the saints the Lord Christ has provided us with saving fountains which in many ways pour out benefactions and gush with fragrant ointment. And let no one disbelieve. For, if by the will of God water poured out of the precipitous living rock in the desert, and for the thirsty Sampson from the jawbone of an ass, is it unbelievable that fragrant ointment should flow from the relics of the martyrs? Certainly not, at least for such as know the power of God and the honor which the saints have from Him.”
In Saint John of Damascus: Writings (The Fathers Of The Church A New Translation Vol. 37), 1958, 1999, Frederic H. Chase, Trans. -
“Alternate translation: Christ gives us the relics of saints as health-giving springs through which flow blessings and healing. This should not be doubted. For if at God’s word water gushed from hard rock in the wilderness-yes, and from an ass’s jawbone when Samson was thirsty -why should it seem incredible that healing medicine should distill from the relics of saints”
In Relics: The Shroud of Turin, the True Cross, the Blood of Januarius: History, Mysticism, and the Catholic Church , by Joan Carroll Cruz, 1984 , p. 37. -
“Defense against those who attack the holy images," as translated by Andrew Louth, Three Treatises on the Divine Images , (Saint Vladimir’s Seminary Press: 2003) p. 46”
Images are books for the illiterate and silent heralds of the honor of the saints, teaching those who see with a soundless voice and sanctifying the sight.