[ 5 ] After that we turned to the right where the educated laity were,
and behind them the uneducated laity. We heard the following state-
ments coming from the educated laity.
“We know that the wisest people among the ancients worshiped a
God who was beyond their power to picture, whom they called Jehovah.
Later on in the age that followed, however, people deified their deceased
rulers, among whom were Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, and
Minerva, Diana, Venus, and Themis. People built temples for them and
worshiped them as divinities. As the times worsened, that worship led to
idolatry and eventually made the whole world insane. With unanimous
consent, therefore, we agree with our priests and elders that there are
three divine persons from eternity, each of whom was and is God. We are
satisfied that these three are beyond our power to picture.”
The uneducated laity behind them added, “We agree. God is one
thing and a human being is another. We are aware, though, that if some-
one proposes the existence of a human God, the common people with
their sensory concept of God are going to welcome the idea.”
[ 6 ] Then the spirits’ eyes were opened and they saw us nearby.
Annoyed that we had heard them, they immediately stopped talking.
The angels, with a power that had been given them, closed the outer or
lower levels of the spirits’ thought, which were the source of the state-
ments they had just made. The angels opened instead the inner or higher
levels of the spirits’ thought and compelled them to speak about God
from those levels.
The spirits then spoke and said, “What is God? We haven’t seen the
way he looks or heard his voice. What then is God except nature with all its
levels? Nature we have seen, because it shines in our eyes. Nature we have
heard, because it sounds in our ears.”
On hearing that, we asked them, “Have you ever seen Socinus, who
acknowledged only God the Father, or Arius, who denied the divinity of
the Lord the Savior, or any of their followers?”
“No, we haven’t seen them,” they answered.
“They are deep beneath you,” we said.
Soon we summoned some of the spirits from down there and asked
them about God. They said the same type of things as these spirits had
been saying. The spirits from below also said, “What is God? We can
make as many gods as we want.”
[ 7 ] We said, “It is pointless to talk to you about the Son of God born
into the world, but we are going to do it nonetheless.
singke
(singke)
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