title: Knowing The Unknowable God: Ibn Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas
author: David B. Burrell C.S.C.
description: David B. Burrell, C.S.C., is currently Theodore Hesburgh Professor in Philosophy and Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of <i>Friendship and Ways to Truth</i> and <i>Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions</i>, also published by the University of Notre Dame Press.
zlib_text: PROLOGUE
  
  Being an account of how Belgarion's Son was stolen and how he learned the
  Abductor was that Zandramas against whom the puissant Orb ofAldur had warned.
  —from The Lives ofBelgarion the Great (Introduction, Vol.
  
  IV)
  
  Now, as has been told, in the earliest of days the Gods created the world and
  filled it with all manner of beasts and fowls and plants.
  
  Men also they created, and each God chose from among the races of men those
  whom they would guide and over whom they would rule. The God Aldur, however,
  took none, choosing to live apart in his tower and study the creation which
  they had made.
  
  But a time came when a hungry child arrived at Aldur's tower, and Aldur took
  the child in and taught him the Will
  
  1
  
  2
  
  KING OF THE MURGOS
  
  and the Word, by which all power may be used, in the manner that men call
  sorcery. And when the boy showed promise, Aldur named him Belgarath and made
  him a disciple. Then in time others came, and Aldur taught them and made them
  also his disciples. Am