[51] Having made this point sufficiently clear let us consider the next words, which are as follows, “I will blot out man whom I made from the face of the earth, from man to beast, from creeping things to fowls of heaven, because I was wroth in that I made him” (Gen. 6:7).
[52] Again, some on hearing these words suppose that the Existent feels wrath and anger, whereas He is not susceptible to any passion at all. For disquiet is peculiar to human weakness, but neither the unreasoning passions of the soul, nor the parts and members of the body in general, have any relation to God.
All the same the Law giver uses such expressions, just so far as they serve for a kind of elementary lesson, to admonish those who could not otherwise be brought to their senses.
[53] Thus, in the laws which deal with commands and prohibitions (laws, that is, in the proper sense of the word), there stand forth above others two leading statements about the Cause, one that “God is not as a man” (Num. 23:19); the other that He is as a man.
[54] But while the former is warranted by grounds of surest truth, the latter is introduced for the instruction of the many. And therefore also it is said of Him “like a man He shall train His son” (Deut. 8:5). And thus it is for training and admonition, not because God’s nature is such, that these words are used.
[55] Among men some are soul lovers, some body lovers. The comrades of the soul, who can hold converse with intelligible incorporeal natures, do not compare the Existent to any form of created things. They have dissociated Him from every category or quality, for it is one of the facts which go to make His blessedness and supreme felicity that His being is apprehended as simple being, without other definite characteristic; and thus they do not picture it with form, but admit to their minds the conception of existence only.
[56] But those who have made a compact and a truce with the body are unable to cast off from them the garment of flesh, and to descry existence needing nothing in its unique solitariness, and free from all admixture and composition in its absolute simplicity. And therefore they think of the Cause of all in the same terms as of themselves, and do not reflect that while a being which is formed through the union of several faculties needs several parts to minister to the need of each,