The answer
St. John Chrysostom answers: “wanting to show how great the disparity is between this knowledge here and that knowledge there, and that there is a great deal lacking here, he made this clear by certain images, saying: When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face (1 Cor. 13:11–12). Do you see how great the disparity is? As much as between a young child and a full-grown man, as much as between seeing through a mirror and by riddles and all the other obscure ways of seeing things—and clear vision (this is the meaning of face to face) … Why do you not pay heed to Paul when he says: But nay, O man, who are you to reply against God? Shall the thing formed say to him who formed it, Why have you made me thus (Rom. 9:20)? …
“But He Whom you subject to inquisitive scrutiny is indestructible, unchangeable, always existing and existing in the same way, without beginning, everlasting, incomprehensible, exceeding the mind, surpassing reason, inexpressible, ineffable, and inapprehensible—not only to you and to me and to the prophets and the apostles, but also to the powers on high, who are pure, invisible, and bodiless, and who continually abide in heaven.”549
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
549 St. John Chrysostom, On the Providence of God by St. John Chrysostom, (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, 2015): pp. 39–41, amended.