Some things mentioned in the Bible are not factual; some factual things are not mentioned; some nonfactual things receive no mention there; some things are both factual and mentioned. Do you ask for my proofs here? I am ready to offer them. In the Bible, God “sleeps,” “wakes up,” “is angered,” “walks” and has a “throne of cherubim.” Yet when has God ever been subject to emotion? When do you ever hear that God is a bodily being? This is a nonfactual, mental picture. We have used names derived from human experience and applied them so far as we could, to aspects of God. His retirement from us, for reason known to himself into an almost unconcerned inactivity, is his “sleeping.” Human sleeping, after all, has the character of restful inaction. When he alters and suddenly benefits us, that is his “waking up.” Waking up puts an end to sleep, just as looking at somebody puts an end to turning away from him. We have made his punishing us, his “being angered”; for with us, punishment is born of anger. His acting in different places, we call “walking,” for walking is a transition from one place to another. His resting among the heavenly powers, making them almost his haunt, we call his “sitting” and “being enthroned”; this too is human language. The divine, in fact, rests nowhere as he rests in the saints. God’s swift motion we call “flight;” his watching over us is his “face”;12 his giving and receiving is his “hand.” In short every faculty or activity of God has given us a corresponding picture in terms of some thing bodily.
There, at last, gaze on “In the beginning was the Word.” The Word was not, you see, made at some time or other; but it just was in the beginning. Not like creation, of which it is said, “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” As for the Word that was in the beginning, there was no time when it was not. So this that “was in the beginning, and was the Word with God, and the Word itself was God; and all things were made through him, and without him was nothing made”; and in him “what was made is life.” This Word came to us. To whom? To us as worthy? Perish the thought! No, but to us as unworthy. After all, “Christ died for the ungodly,” and the unworthy, while being worthy himself. We were unworthy, you see, for him to have pity on; but he was worthy to take pity on us, to be told, “Because of your pity, Lord, deliver us.” Not because of any previous merits of ours, but “because of your pity, Lord, deliver us; and be lenient with our sins, because of your name,” not because of our merit. Obviously, not because of the merit of our sins, but “because of your name.” I mean, the merit of our sins, of course, is not reward but revenge. So therefore, “because of your name.”
As for those who insult over them in their trials, and when ills befall them say, “Where is thy God?” we may ask them where their gods are when they suffer the very calamities for the sake of avoiding which they worship their gods, or maintain they ought to be worshipped; for the family of Christ is furnished with its reply: our God is everywhere present, wholly everywhere; not confined to any place. He can be present unperceived, and be absent without moving; when he exposes us to adversities, it is either to prove our perfections or correct our imperfections; and in return for our patient endurance of the sufferings of time, he reserves for us an everlasting reward. But who are you, that we should deign to speak with you even about your own gods, much less about our God, who is “to be feared above all gods? For all the gods of the nations are idols; but the Lord made the heavens.”
...He subjoins, "Remember not our iniquities of old" [Psalm 79:8]. He says not bygone, which might have even been recent; but "of old," that is, coming from parents. For to such iniquities judgment, not correction, is owing. "Speedily let Your mercies anticipate us." Anticipate, that is, at Your judgment. For "mercy exalts above in judgment." [James 2:13] Now there is "judgment without mercy," but to him that has not showed mercy. But whereas he adds, "for we have become exceeding poor:" unto this end he wills that the mercies of God should be understood to anticipate us; that our own poverty, that is, weakness, by Him having mercy, should be aided to do His commandments, that we may not come to His judgment to be condemned.
[AD 390] Gregory of Nazianzus on Psalms 79:5-10