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Liberal Education Imperiled3 4 1follow. The Bible claims, however, that all other divine laws are frauds, andthat the law it proclaims is the one true divine law.This law comes from the one true God who is also a personal God. He isalso omnipotent, unknowable, and not controlled by anything outside Himself.God is mysterious, something He acknowledges when He says in Exodus“I shall be what I shall be.” 90 God is free to do what He wants, when He wants.We know God only because He has imparted to us His promises. This presentsa problem for philosophy because the philosopher cannot contemplatethis kind of God because God is “the only possible one.” 91 Philosophy contemplatesthe whole and understands ideas—class characteristics—that areuniversal. Common nouns are an example of this phenomenon and assistus in making ideas intelligible. 92 Once someone understands the idea of atree, he can imagine particular trees and distinguish the particular from theuniversal. The God of the Bible cannot be imagined. The fact that He cannotbe imagined, or contemplated in reason, requires believers to accept God onfaith. Therefore, in any attempt to reconcile reason and revelation, even bythe Christian theologians of whom St. Augustine is the most important, faithtakes the primary position: “If God is one, and if there can be no other God,there can be no idea of God.” 93 Philosophic reasoning about the Whole, theGood, or Nature will never lead men to the idea of God that we read aboutin the Bible. For the theologian, who is a partisan of the unknowable God,philosophy becomes a challenge to the way of life of the faithful.Despite these tensions, the American experience made reason and revelationallies for the first time. Nature’s God and the Creator were inspirations ofthe Founding. They became friendly to one another in the service of freedom.As opposed to the ancient city where the foundation of the polis was obedienceto the gods, the American Founding formed a détente between reason90Strauss, “Jerusalem and Athens,” 162.91Jaffa, “Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy,” 197; Strauss, “Progress or Return?,” 253–57.92Jaffa, American Conservatism and the American Founding, 71. Scot Zentner has a nice discussion ofthis idea as well in “The Philosopher and the City: Harry Jaffa and the Straussians,” Interpretation 30,no. 3 (Summer 2003): 290–91.93Jaffa, “Leo Strauss, the Bible, and Political Philosophy,” 197; Ernest L. Fortin, “St. Augustine,” inHistory of Political Philosophy, ed. Strauss and Cropsey, 177. Payton, Light from the Christian East,55, writes that Augustine more than any other paved the way for Western Christianity’s acceptanceof philosophy. However, while that may be true, he was preceded by many who also tried to makephilosophy and Christianity friendly. They include Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen.See ibid., 52.