Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – 215) was an early proponent of apophatic theology.[45][5] Clement holds that God is unknowable, although God's unknowability, concerns only his essence, not his energies, or powers.[45] According to R.A. Baker, in Clement's writings the term theoria develops further from a mere intellectual "seeing" toward a spiritual form of contemplation.[46] Clement's apophatic theology or philosophy is closely related to this kind of theoria and the "mystic vision of the soul."[46] For Clement, God is transcendent and immanent.[47] According to Baker, Clement's apophaticism is mainly driven not by Biblical texts, but by the Platonic tradition.[48] His conception of an ineffable God is a synthesis of Plato and Philo, as seen from a Biblical perspective.[49] According to Osborne, it is a synthesis in a Biblical framework; according to Baker, while the Platonic tradition accounts for the negative approach, the Biblical tradition accounts for the positive approach.[50] Theoria and abstraction is the means to conceive of this ineffable God; it is preceded by dispassion.[51]
According to Tertullian (c. 155–c. 240):
[T]hat which is infinite is known only to itself. This it is which gives some notion of God, while yet beyond all our conceptions – our very incapacity of fully grasping Him affords us the idea of what He really is. He is presented to our minds in His transcendent greatness, as at once known and unknown.[52]
Saint Cyril of Jerusalem (313–386), in his Catechetical Homilies, states:
For we explain not what God is but candidly confess that we have not exact knowledge concerning Him. For in what concerns God to confess our ignorance is the best knowledge.[53]
Filippo Lippi, Vision of St. Augustine, c. 1465, tempera, Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.Augustine of Hippo (354–430) defined God aliud, aliud valde, meaning 'other, completely other', in Confessions 7.10.16,[54] wrote Si [enim] comprehendis, non est Deus,[55] meaning 'if you understand [something], it is not God', in Sermo 117.3.5[56] (PL 38, 663),[57][58] and a famous legend tells that, while walking along the Mediterranean shoreline meditating on the mystery of the Trinity, he met a child who with a seashell (or a little pail) was trying to pour the whole sea into a small hole dug in the sand. Augustine told him that it was impossible to enclose the immensity of the sea in such a small opening, and the child replied that it was equally impossible to try to understand the infinity of God within the limited confines of the human mind.[59][60][61]
