Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 37 part 27/28

Likewise spiritual vision has need of intellectual, that it may be judged; but this intellectual has no need of the lower spiritual. And thus corporeal is subject to spiritual, and both to intellectual. When therefore we read, 'The spiritual man judges all things, but he himself is judged by no one,' we ought not to take it according to the spirit by which the mind is distinguished—as in that which is said, 'I will pray with the spirit, I will pray also with the mind'—but by that notion by which it was said, 'But be renewed in the spirit of your mind.' For we have already taught above that in another manner the mind itself is also called spirit, according to which the spiritual man judges all things.

Wherefore I judge it not absurd nor unfitting that spiritual vision should hold, as it were, a certain middle place between the intellectual and the corporeal. For I think it is not incongruously called a middle, that which indeed is not body but is like a body, between that which is truly body and that which is neither body nor like a body. But the soul is deluded by the likenesses of things, not through the fault of those likenesses, but through that of its own opinion, when it approves the things which are like as being those things to which they are like, failing away from understanding.

The soul is therefore deceived in corporeal vision when it supposes that something happens in the bodies themselves which in fact happens in the senses of the body — as when to those sailing the objects that stand still on land seem to move, and to those gazing at the sky the stars seem to stand still though they are moving; and when, if the rays of the eyes are drawn apart, two flames appear where there is one, and an oar in water appears broken, and many things of this kind — or when it supposes a thing to be that which is similarly coloured, or sounds alike, or smells alike, or tastes alike, or feels alike to the touch. For hence a certain medicinal salve boiled in a pot is taken for a vegetable dish, and the noise of a passing carriage is taken for thunder; and if it is tested by no other senses but lies open to smell alone, the citron is taken for the herb called bee-balm, and food seasoned with some sweetish juice is taken to be flavoured with honey, and an unfamiliar ring handled in the dark is taken to be of gold, when it is of copper or silver — or when the soul, disturbed by sudden and unexpected bodily sights, supposes that it sees in sleep, or is affected by some spiritual vision of that kind:

Hence in all corporeal sights the corroboration of the other senses too, and above all of the mind itself and of reason, is brought to bear, so that what is true in this class of things may be found out so far as it can be found out. But in spiritual vision — that is, in the likenesses of bodies which are seen by the spirit — the soul is deceived when it judges the things it thus sees to be the bodies themselves, or when it supposes to be also in the bodies that which it has fashioned for itself by suspicion and false conjecture, conjecturing about things that are not seen. But in those intellectual sights it is not deceived. For either it understands, and then it is true; or, if it is not true, it does not understand: whence it is one thing to err about the things one sees, and another to err for the very reason that one does not see.

Wherefore, when the soul is caught up into those sights which are perceived by the spirit as like corporeal things, in such a way that it is turned away from the bodily senses more fully than it is wont to be in sleep, yet less than in death, then it belongs to divine admonition and help that the soul should know that it is beholding spiritually not bodies but the likenesses of bodies — just as those who know they are seeing in dreams, even before they awake.

There, if future things are also seen in such a way that they are wholly known as future things — whose images are seen as present, whether by the man's own mind being divinely aided, or by someone among the very sights expounding what they signify, as it was expounded to John in the Apocalypse — it is a great revelation, even if perhaps the one to whom these things are shown does not know whether he has gone out of the body or is still in the body but sees these things with his spirit estranged from the bodily senses; for one thus caught up can be ignorant of this, if this too is not shown to him.

But further, if — just as he was caught up from the bodily senses so as to be among those likenesses of bodies which are seen by the spirit — he is likewise caught up even from these, so as to be borne up into that region, as it were, of intellectual or intelligible things, where truth is beheld transparent without any likeness of body, obscured by no mists of false opinions, there the virtues of the soul are not laborious and toilsome; for neither is lust bridled there by the work of temperance, nor are adversities endured by the work of fortitude, nor are wrongs punished by the work of justice, nor are evils avoided by the work of prudence. There the one and whole virtue is to love what you see, and the highest happiness is to possess what you love.

For there the blessed life is drunk at its own fountain, whence something is sprinkled upon this human life, so that amid the temptations of this age one may live temperately, bravely, justly, and prudently. For it is in order to attain that state — where there will be secure repose and the ineffable vision of truth — that toil is undertaken: the toil of holding back from pleasure, of enduring adversities, of coming to the aid of the needy, and of resisting deceivers.

There the brightness of the Lord is seen, not through a signifying vision whether corporeal — as it was seen on Mount Sinai — or spiritual — as Isaiah saw it, or John in the Apocalypse — but through His very presence and not through enigmas, so far as the human mind can grasp it, according to the grace of the God who takes it up, so that God may speak mouth to mouth with the one whom He has made worthy of such converse — not the mouth of the body, but of the mind, as I judge is to be understood of what is written concerning Moses.

For he had greatly desired, as we read in Exodus, to see God — not indeed as he had seen Him on the mountain, nor as he saw Him in the tabernacle, but in that very substance by which God is God, with no bodily creature assumed to be presented to the senses of mortal flesh, nor in the spirit through likenesses of bodies figuratively shaped, but through God's own very presence, so far as the rational and intellectual creature can grasp it when withdrawn from every bodily sense and from every enigmatic sign of the spirit. For thus it is written: 'If then I have found grace in Your sight, show me Your very self, that I may see You manifestly' — while a little before it is read: 'And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.'

He perceived, therefore, what he did see, and he desired what he did not see. For a little later, when God had said to him, 'You have found grace in My sight, and I know you above all,' he answered Him, 'Show me Your brightness.' And then indeed he received from the Lord an answer given in figurative form — about which it would now take long to dispute — when He said to him: 'You cannot see My face and live; for man shall not see My face and live.' Then He added and said to him: 'Behold, there is a place beside Me, and you shall stand upon the rock; as soon as My majesty shall pass by, I will set you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with My hand over you until I pass; and I will take away My hand, and then you shall see My back parts; for My face shall not appear to you.'

Yet the Scripture that follows did not relate that this too took place corporeally, and by this it is sufficiently shown that it was said figuratively in signification of the Church. For God Himself is 'the place beside Him,' because the Church is His temple; and she herself is built upon the rock; and the other things said there agree with the same understanding. Nevertheless, unless Moses had merited to see the coveted and desired brightness of God, God would not say to Aaron and Miriam his brother and sister, in the book of Numbers: 'Hear My words: if there be a prophet of yours, I the Lord will be made known to him in a vision and will speak to him in a dream; not so is My servant Moses, who is faithful in all My house;'

'mouth to mouth I will speak to him, in His own presence and not through enigmas, and he saw the brightness of the Lord.' For this is not to be understood according to the substance of a body which is presented to the senses of the flesh; for indeed He spoke to Moses in that way — face to face, one presence over against another — when nevertheless Moses said to Him, 'Show me Your very self,' and now He was likewise speaking, even to those very ones whom He was rebuking and to whom He thus preferred the merit of Moses, in that same way, through a corporeal creature presented to the senses of the flesh.

In that manner, therefore, in that very presence by which God is, He speaks by far more ineffably, more secretly and more intimately, with an ineffable utterance, where no living man sees Him with this life by which one lives mortally in these senses of the body; but unless one somehow dies to this life — whether by wholly going out of the body, or by being so turned away and estranged from the carnal senses that, as the Apostle says, he rightly does not know whether he is in the body or out of the body — when he is caught up and borne on high to that vision.

Wherefore, if the Apostle called that third kind of vision — which is higher not only than all corporeal vision, by which bodies are perceived through the senses of the body, but also than all that spiritual vision by which the likenesses of bodies are discerned by the spirit and not by the mind — the third heaven, then in this the brightness of God is seen, for the seeing of which hearts are cleansed. Whence it is said:

'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God' — not through some signification figured corporeally or spiritually, as through a mirror in an enigma, but face to face, which was said of Moses as 'mouth to mouth,' that is, through the very presence by which God is whatever He is, insofar as the mind — which is not what He Himself is, even when cleansed from every earthly stain, estranged and snatched away from every body and likeness of body — can grasp Him: from whom we are pilgrims, weighed down by a mortal and corruptible burden, so long as we walk by faith, not by sight, and while we here live justly.

But why should we not believe that to so great an Apostle, the teacher of the Gentiles, caught up even to this most excellent vision, God willed to show the life in which we must live for ever after this life? And why should this not be called that paradise, apart from the one in which Adam lived corporeally among the leafy and fruitful trees? — since even the Church, which gathers us into the bosom of charity, has been called a paradise with the fruit of orchards. But this was said figuratively, as though the Church were signified, through the form of what is to come, by that paradise where Adam properly was.

Although to those who consider more carefully it may perhaps occur that by that corporeal paradise, in which Adam was corporeally, there was signified both this life of the saints which is now lived in the Church, and that life which after this one will be for ever: just as Jerusalem — which is interpreted 'vision of peace,' and yet is shown to be a certain earthly city — signifies our eternal mother Jerusalem which is in the heavens, whether in those who are saved by hope and, hoping for what they do not see, await it through patience, according to whom 'the sons of the desolate are more than the sons of her who has a husband,' or in the holy angels themselves, through the Church, of the manifold wisdom of God, with whom, after this pilgrimage, we must live without toil and without end.

But if we take the third heaven, to which the Apostle was caught up, in such a way that we believe there to be also a fourth and several yet higher heavens above, below which is this third heaven — as some allege seven, some eight, some nine, or even ten, and affirm that in that one which is called the firmament there are many, step by step, and thereby either reason or opine that they are corporeal — about whose reasoning and opinion it would now take long to discourse; but it may well be that.

someone may even contend that in spiritual or intellectual things too there are certain many grades, or, if he can, may show them, and that they are distinguished according to some advance in revelations more or less illustrious — but however these things may stand and be received, taken by one this way and by another that way, I for my part cannot as yet either know or teach any kinds of sights or visions besides these three: those of the body, of the spirit, or of the mind. But how many and how great are the differences of each kind, so that in each one thing rises step by step above another, I confess that I do not know.

But just as in this corporeal light there is the heaven which we look up to above the earth, whence the luminaries and stars shine — bodies far better than earthly ones — so in that spiritual kind, in which the likenesses of bodies are seen by a certain incorporeal light of their own, there are certain excellent and deservedly divine things. These the angels display in wondrous ways: whether by some easy and all-powerful joining or blending they even make their own sights to be ours, or whether, knowing it, they in some way I know not how form our vision in our spirit — this is a matter hard to grasp and harder still to tell.

But there are other sights, customary and human, which arise either from our own spirit in manifold ways, or are in some manner suggested to the spirit from the body, according as we have been affected either in the flesh or in the mind. For not only do waking men turn their cares over in thought amid the likenesses of bodies, but even sleepers often dream of that which they lack; for they carry on their affairs out of the desire of the mind, and press eagerly upon feasts and cups, if perhaps they have fallen asleep hungry and thirsty. All these things I think are to be regarded, when compared with those angelic manifestations, just as if within this nature of bodies earthly things were compared with heavenly.

So too in that kind of intellectual sights there are some things which are seen in the soul itself, such as the virtues to which the vices are contrary — whether those that will endure, like piety, or those useful for this life and not to be hereafter, like the faith by which we believe things we do not yet see, and the hope by which we await future things with patience, and patience itself, by which we endure all adversities until we come where we wish. For these and such-like virtues, which are now very necessary for the passing through of this pilgrimage, will not exist in that life for the attaining of which they are necessary; and yet these too are seen intellectually, for they are neither bodies nor have shapes like bodies.

But something else is the very light by which the soul is illumined, so that it beholds all things truly understood, whether in itself or in that light. For that light is now God Himself, whereas this soul is a creature, though rational and intellectual, made to His image; and when it tries to gaze upon that light it quivers in its weakness and is not strong enough. Yet from thence comes whatever it understands, so far as it is able. When therefore it is caught up thither and, drawn away from the carnal senses, is presented to that vision more expressly — not by spaces of place, but in a certain manner of its own — it even sees above itself that by whose help it sees whatever it also sees by understanding within itself.

But if it is asked, when the soul has gone out of the body, whether it is borne to some corporeal places, or to incorporeal ones like corporeal things, or rather neither to these, but to that which is more excellent than both bodies and the likenesses of bodies — I would readily answer that either it is not borne to corporeal places except together with some body, or it is not borne in a local manner. Now whether it has any body when it has gone out of this body, let him who can show it; but I for my part do not think it does.

But to spiritual regions it is borne according to its merits, or to penal places like corporeal ones, such as have often been shown to those who were caught away from the senses of the body and lay like dead men and saw the pains of hell — since they too bore in themselves a certain likeness of their own body, through which they could be borne to those places and experience such things by likenesses. For I do not see why the soul should have a likeness of its own body when the body itself lies senseless yet not wholly dead, while it sees such things as many have related who were restored alive from that withdrawal, and should not have it when by complete death it has utterly gone out of the body.

Either, then, it is borne to those penal places, or to those likewise like corporeal things and yet not of punishments, but of rest and joys. For it cannot rightly be said either that those pains are false, or that that repose and gladness is false; for they are false then, when through the errors of opinion some things are taken for others. For Peter, not only when he saw that vessel and in it supposed not the likenesses of bodies but bodies, was assuredly deceived in this, but also when at another time, loosed from his chains by the angel, he went walking in the body and was presented with corporeal forms and supposed that he was seeing a vision, was none the less deceived.

For those forms in the vessel were spiritual forms like corporeal ones, and that corporeal manifestation of one loosed from chains was, on account of the miracle, like a spiritual one. But the soul was deceived in both cases, only in that it took some things for others. Although, therefore, they are not corporeal but like corporeal things, by which souls stripped of bodies are affected whether for good or for ill — since even the souls themselves appear to themselves like their own bodies — yet there is both true gladness and true distress, made of spiritual substance. For even in dreams it makes a great difference whether we are among joyful or among sorrowful things.

Whence some, placed among the things they had desired, grieved that they had awakened; and again, harried and vexed by grievous terrors and torments, when they were roused, feared to sleep, lest they be called back into the same evils. And assuredly it is not to be doubted that those things which are called infernal are more expressly represented, and on that account are felt more vehemently. For even those who were withdrawn from the senses of the body — less indeed than if they had died altogether, yet more than if they were sleeping — related that they had seen more expressly than if they had been recounting dreams. There is, therefore, altogether a substance of the underworld; but I judge it to be spiritual, not corporeal.

Nor are those to be listened to who affirm that the nether regions are worked out in this life and do not exist after death; let them see for themselves how they interpret the fictions of the poets. We ought not to depart from the authority of the divine Scriptures, by which alone faith is to be held in this matter. Although we could show that even the wise men of those very poets by no means doubted about the substance of the nether regions which, after this life, receives the souls of the dead. But why they are said to be beneath the earth, if they are not corporeal places, or why they are called 'inferi' if they are not beneath the earth, is deservedly asked. But that the soul is not corporeal I dare to profess not that I think, but plainly that I know;

yet whoever denies that it can have a likeness of a body and of bodily members altogether, is able to deny that it is the soul which in dreams sees itself either walking, or sitting, or borne to and fro hither and thither by a step or even by flight — which does not happen without a certain likeness of a body. Accordingly, if it bears this likeness — not corporeal, but like a body — even among the nether regions, then it likewise is seen to be in places not corporeal, but like corporeal ones, whether in rest or in pains. And yet I confess that I have not yet found the nether regions named as the place where the souls of the just repose.

And that the soul of Christ indeed came even to those places in which sinners are tormented, in order to loose from their torments those whom, by His justice hidden from us, He judged were to be loosed, is not without reason believed. For I do not see how otherwise is to be understood what is said: 'Whom God raised up, having loosed the pains of hell, because it was not possible that He should be held by them,' except that we understand that He loosed the pains of certain ones among the nether regions by that power by which He is Lord, to whom every knee bows, of things in heaven, on earth, and in the nether regions — by which power He could not be held even by those pains which He loosed.

For neither Abraham, nor that poor man in his bosom — that is, in the secret place of his repose — was in torments; between whose repose and those infernal torments we read that a great chasm was fixed; nor are they said to be among the nether regions. 'It came to pass,' it says, 'that the poor man died and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom; the rich man also died and was buried. And when he was in torments among the nether regions,' and the rest. And so we see that mention of the nether regions was not made in the repose of the poor man, but in the punishment of the rich man.

That also which Jacob says to his sons, 'You shall bring down my old age with sorrow to the nether regions,' seems rather to have feared this: lest he be so disturbed by excessive sorrow that he should go not to the repose of the blessed, but to the nether regions of sinners. For sorrow is no small evil of the soul, since even the Apostle so anxiously feared for a certain man, lest he be swallowed up by too great sorrow. Accordingly, as I have said, I have not yet found, and I still seek, nor does it occur to me, that Scripture — at least the canonical — has set 'the nether regions' anywhere in a good sense; but whether anyone can bear to take Abraham's bosom and that repose, whither the devout poor man was carried by the angels, in a bad sense, I do not know. And therefore how we may believe it to be among the nether regions, I do not see.

But while we inquire into this and either find it out or do not find it out, the length of this book urges us at last to bring it to a close. Wherefore, since we undertook a discourse about paradise on account of that which the Apostle says — that he knows a man was caught up to the third heaven, but does not know whether in the body or out of the body, and that he was caught up into paradise and heard ineffable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter — we do not rashly affirm whether paradise is in the third heaven, or whether he was caught up both into the third heaven and thence again into paradise.

For if properly it is a leafy place, but by a transferred meaning every spiritual region too, as it were, where it is well with the soul, can deservedly be called paradise — not only the third heaven, whatever it is (which is assuredly something great and sublimely glorious), but even within man himself a certain gladness of a good conscience is paradise. Whence also the Church is rightly called a paradise for the saints living temperately and justly and piously, abounding in the affluence of graces and in chaste delights, since even in tribulations she glories, rejoicing greatly in patience itself, because according to the multitude of sorrows in her heart the consolations of God delight her soul.

How much more, then, after this life, can even that bosom of Abraham be called paradise, where now there is no temptation, where there is such great repose after all the sorrows of this life — for indeed there too is not lacking a light proper and of its own kind, and assuredly a great one, which that rich man, from the torments and darkness of the nether regions, saw even from so great a distance, though a great chasm was in the midst, in such a way that there he recognized that poor man once despised.

If these things are so, then the nether regions are said or believed to be beneath the earth for this reason: because fittingly, in the spirit, they are thus displayed through those likenesses of corporeal things, so that — since the souls of the departed, worthy of the nether regions, sinned through love of the flesh — there may be exhibited to them, through those likenesses of bodies, that which is wont to happen to the dead flesh itself, namely, that it be laid away beneath the earth. Finally, the nether regions (inferi) are so called in Latin from the fact that they are below (infra); and just as, according to the body, if they keep the order of their weight, all heavier things are lower, so according to the spirit, all more sorrowful things are lower: whence also in the Greek tongue the origin of the name by which the nether regions are called is said to resound from this, that they have nothing sweet.

Nor yet did our Saviour, having died for us, disdain to visit that very part of things, in order to loose from thence those whom, according to His divine and secret justice, He could not fail to know were to be loosed. Wherefore to the soul of that thief, to whom He said, 'Today you shall be with Me in paradise,' He assuredly did not grant the nether regions, where the punishments of sinners are, but either that repose of Abraham's bosom — for Christ is nowhere absent, since He Himself is the Wisdom of God, reaching everywhere on account of His purity — or that paradise whether in the third heaven or wherever else it is, whither the Apostle was caught up after the third heaven, if indeed it is not some one thing called by diverse names, where the souls of the blessed are.

If, therefore, we rightly take the first heaven to be all this corporeal realm, under the general name of whatever is above the waters and the earth; the second, that which in a corporeal likeness is discerned by the spirit, such as that vessel let down full of animals to Peter in his ecstasy; but the third, that which is beheld by the mind, so secret and remote and wholly snatched away from the senses of the flesh and cleansed, that it is able ineffably to see and hear the things that are in that heaven — even the very substance of God, and God the Word, through whom all things were made — through the charity of the Holy Spirit: then not incongruously do we judge both that the Apostle was caught up thither, and that there perhaps is paradise better than all, and, if it must be said, the paradise of paradises.

For if the good soul's gladness lies in good things throughout every creature, what is more excellent than that gladness which is in the Word of God, through whom all things were made? But if anyone is troubled as to what need there is for the spirits of the departed to receive their bodies again in the resurrection, if that supreme beatitude can be granted to them even without bodies, it is indeed a more difficult question than can be perfectly settled in this discourse;

yet nevertheless it is by no means to be doubted that both the mind of a man caught up from the senses of the flesh, and, after death, when the flesh itself is laid aside and even the likenesses of corporeal things are transcended, cannot see the immutable substance as the holy angels see it — either for some more hidden cause, or for this reason: that there is in it a certain natural appetite for administering a body; by which appetite it is in some way retarded, so that it may not go forth with the whole intent of its striving into that highest heaven, so long as there is not present beneath it a body, in the administration of which that appetite may find rest.