For from that very One, whom we see in Himself, that highest love of Him flows down to us; and therefore He who is not from another and so makes us blessed is more rightly to be called the highest good of man. The Philosopher: That opinion concerning the highest good indeed pleases me, which is not unknown even to our philosophy. But if this vision of God, which makes blessed, lies open—as you say—only to the eyes of the mind, not of the body, what need is there for holy souls, as you say, to take up their bodies again at last, as though by this their glory or blessedness were to be increased?
For since, as you say, the measure that belongs to man is also that which belongs to the angel, what does the resumption of bodies profit your blessedness—bodies which, though the angels lack them, in no way hinder or diminish their blessedness? Christian: Of all that God does, He turns it not so much to our blessedness as to His own glory, even those things which to some are harmful. Whence Solomon says: 「God created all things for His own sake, the wicked also for the evil day.」 Even the very punishment of the wicked, by which God punishes his iniquity, commends the justice of God and so glorifies Him.
And so, although we should suppose that the resumption of bodies confers no blessedness on the holy souls, yet we would not judge it superfluous, since it avails much for the praise of the divine power. For the more we have known these bodies to be formerly inferior and subject to suffering, so much the more afterward will they show that God is to be glorified; and when we shall see them thus made solid and indissoluble, so that no suffering can come to us from them and no dissolution can befall them. Hence too the souls seem to draw not a little blessedness, because, the more they experience the greatness of the divine power, the more they cannot be denied to love Him and to be more blessed. Philosopher:
This too, I beg, make clear: whether that vision of God, in which blessedness consists, can be increased or diminished by any difference of place, or whether it can be exhibited to all in all places; or whether some definite place is appointed for it, to which all who are to enjoy that vision must of necessity come. Christian: Those who do not doubt that God is everywhere through the greatness of His power, but believe all places to be so present to Him that in all of them He can do whatever He wills, and that the places themselves as well as all things in them are conducted or disposed by His operation—such persons are in no way to be troubled by this question.
For He Himself is the One who, now also subsisting without any local position just as before all time, is to be said not so much to be in a place—He who is in no way local—as to enclose all places within Himself, even holding the heavens, as it is written, in His palm. For He who existed before all things without place, and afterward fashioned places not for Himself but for us, whose blessedness can neither be diminished nor increased nor undergo any variation, assuredly has no local position now, just as He had none before, He whose eternity remains wholly simple and incorporeal.
Since therefore He is nowhere locally—that is, enclosed by a local position—yet He is said to be everywhere, that is, both in all places and around all places, through the power of His operation. For in all places nothing is done except by His disposing, and thus all places are present to Him, or He to them, so that whatever He wills must of necessity come to pass there, and thus He is said to be everywhere, as has been said, through the greatness of His power. Whence He Himself speaks through the prophet: 「I fill heaven and earth.」 And the Psalmist, considering that he could nowhere escape the power of the angered one, said: 「Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy face? If I ascend into heaven, Thou art there; if I descend into hell, Thou art present,」 and so on.
But just as He is said to be in all places, or within all things, through the operation or disposition of His power—because, namely, all things must there be disposed by Him—so too, enclosing those very places, He is no less asserted to be around them; that is, to hold them so in His power that nothing can be done in them without Him or His disposing. Since therefore through His power, as has been said, God is both within all things and outside them, and penetrates all things by His own virtue, however solid they may be, what place could hinder Him from being able, wherever He wills, equally to impart His knowledge to all?
For in the same manner in which He is said to be within or over all places through power, not through local position, He is able to impart the knowledge of Himself everywhere, to whomsoever He wills; nor can that supreme and spiritual power, to which all places that exist are pervious, be hindered by any solidity or quality.
Indeed, since the brightness of the sun so penetrates the most solid glass that through it too it pours its illumination upon us, and since we believe that our bodies after the resurrection will be of such subtlety that, having now in some way been made spiritual, no matter can stand in their way—whence also the Lord's body, which had hitherto been born mortal from a closed womb, after the resurrection, now immortal and impassible, entered to the disciples through closed doors—how much more, then, must we believe that that supreme vision of the divine brightness can be hindered by no obstacle, nor be aided to illuminate by nearness of place.
For you also say that fire, which is subtler than the other elements, does not on that account admit of division, because its parts cannot be divided without the interposition of some body. But much less is a spiritual substance, which is far subtler than every body, hindered by any corporeal obstacle. And since the divinity is of such subtlety that, in comparison with it, all other natures are reckoned corporeal, and it alone, in respect of the others, is judged incorporeal, how could its supreme brightness, which considers all things by knowing them, have any obstacle? By it also, those who enjoy it, since they behold the One who sees all things, are not ignorant of whatever it is fitting for them to know, however remote it may be.
Otherwise those who enjoy paradise would not behold the torments of hell, so that they might love God all the more, the more they saw that they had escaped graver evils through His grace. And that this paradise consists everywhere in the very vision of God, the Lord Jesus plainly intimates when, on the very day on which His soul, having suffered in the flesh, descended to the lower regions to free His own from thence, He said to the thief who confessed Him: 「Amen I say to thee, this day thou shalt be with Me in paradise.」 From which paradise indeed the soul of Christ was not even then a stranger, when, as has been said, it descended to the lower regions.
According therefore to this our faith and to manifest reason, in whatever place the faithful soul may be, since everywhere, as has been said, it finds God present, and since it is hindered by no obstacle, everywhere it equally perseveres in its blessedness—which, namely, we obtain as poured into us by Him from the vision of God, not as grasped by our own powers. Indeed, neither do we ascend to grasp the brightness of the corporeal sun, but it pours itself into us, that we may enjoy it.
So also both God draws near to us and He to us, as it were pouring His brightness upon us from above and the warmth of His love—to whom also, though He nowhere subsists locally, if in any way we are said to draw near, this must be understood to come about not by places but by merits; namely, in proportion as we are made more like Him in good or agree more with His will, so, on the contrary, we are to be understood to withdraw from Him. This the venerable doctor Augustine, most skilled also in your own teachings, diligently disclosing, says:
「To God,」 he says, 「who is everywhere, we are near or far not by places, but by morals.」 Whence, since after the resurrection the bodies of the saints will be of such facility that, wherever the souls will, they are believed to be there at once, yet no withdrawal of theirs will hinder the vision of God so as to prevent the souls from being blessed; nor can any quality of place be penal to those in whom there will be nothing to be punished, just as before sin nothing could have been harmful to the first human beings. Whence also, when the holy angels sent to us carry out God's commands, they are in no way deprived or emptied, by any quality or interval of place, of that vision by which they are blessed.
Nor are the demons dwelling in the air—whence they are also called the birds of heaven—although by their position of place they may seem to be higher than we, on that account to be said to draw nearer to God (who by the dignity of His proper nature is higher than all natures) more than we do. Whence Satan, coming among the sons of God and standing in the sight of the Lord and conversing with Him mutually, as is written in the book of Job, is in no way by that coming of his released from his misery so as to become more blessed. He too, by falling lower than the other heavens, plainly shows that dignity of place confers nothing to blessedness.
For not because, coming among the sons of God—that is, among the holy angels—he stood in the sight of God, did the Lord come into his sight, namely so that the Lord should be beheld by him; rather, he was beheld by the Lord—as a blind man standing in the sun among those who see, differing from them not by position of place but by the benefit of light. For what the quality of bodies does in the vision of the corporeal sun, this the quality of merits does in the vision of the spiritual sun; and just as here no difference of virtues consists in the quality of bodies or of places, so neither there does any difference of recompenses;
and that vision of the divine glory, by which they are made blessed, appears so much the more wonderful, the more it can be hindered or aided to this end by no quality or diversity of place—since, even among those who are not separated by place, it acts in such a way as to beatify some by illuminating them and to abandon others, wretched, in their blindness, just as in this life also it does not cease to act through the imparting of its grace. For God is thus said to be everywhere through power, yet to be no less present somewhere through grace, and somewhere to be said to be absent.
In whatever manner, therefore, the grace of the divinity is said to be present or absent, or to come or to withdraw, this comes about not locally or corporeally, but rather spiritually or through some efficacy of His operation. For if He were everywhere locally, whither could He come locally, or whence withdraw? Sometimes He is said to descend to us, either through some benefit of His grace conferred upon us, or through some manifestation by a visible sign, or while He performs something unusual on earth. So this sun is said to descend to us, or to fill the world itself, not locally but efficaciously—that is, not by a local position of itself, but by the operation of illumination. Philosopher:
I marvel that you, with your own reasonings by which you strive to refute me, also bring forth those authorities from your Scriptures, by which you have no doubt that I am by no means to be compelled. Christian: My purpose, as you know, is not to bring forward to you my own opinions, but to disclose to you the common faith or doctrine of our elders. The testimonies, therefore, which I adduce from our own writings, I do not intend that you should be compelled by them, but that you should understand these things to be rather of others than feigned by myself. Philosopher: Certainly I do not disapprove even of this, if such an intention has proceeded. But now let us hasten to the rest.
If therefore, as you assert, the power of the divine vision is so great that, wherever the souls may be, by participation of itself it can make them equally blessed, why, I pray, is the kingdom of heaven specially assigned to God and to the holy souls, so that they are said to be chiefly in heaven, as though they had their being there more blessedly? This too your Christ exhibited by His own example to such a degree that He ascended into heaven corporeally in the sight of His own, and there, as it is written, sitting at the right hand of the Father, is promised to come thence to judgment, with those running to meet Him in the air.
Why, therefore, is no region of the world but heaven assigned to the divine habitation, if, as you say, God, existing everywhere, everywhere equally enjoys His blessedness, and the brightness of His vision, pouring itself equally as it wills upon whomsoever it wills and wherever it wills, equally makes them everywhere blessed, needing for this no support, no quality or nearness of place, but being wholly sufficient of itself? When, I say, the Lord, existing everywhere through power and yet enclosing as it were the dwelling of His majesty in one place, says:
「Heaven is My throne,」 and when all the writers, both of the New and of the Old Testament, assign no other part of the world but heaven to His habitation, it can not without reason seem that the serenity of this higher place confers no little blessedness on them or on us. Whence also through Isaiah, for the fullness of this blessedness, the light of the moon is promised to be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun to shine then sevenfold, and a new creation both of heaven and of earth, so that by this very renewal of things our felicity may be increased. Christian:
If you knew how to prophesy rather than to judaize in the letter, and knew that those things which are said of God under a corporeal appearance are to be understood not corporeally according to the letter but mystically through allegory, you would not, like the common crowd, take what is said. For if indeed you follow the common opinion, and your understanding does not transcend the faith of those who conceive in their mind nothing but the corporeal or what closely resembles a corporeal thing, you will assuredly slip into such error that you will be able to understand God in no other way than as a certain corporeal thing, consisting of certain parts—namely, composed of head, hands, and feet, or the remaining members—especially since nearly all the parts of the human body are assigned to Him according to some likeness in the Scriptures.
For who among the unlettered or simple men could bear to hear you, if you should preach that God has neither eyes nor ears nor the other members that seem necessary to us? For at once he will object that He who has no such eyes can in no way see, and likewise can neither hear nor work, He who lacks ears and hands. As therefore you judge all these things which belong to the body to be understood in God only parabolically, so do not doubt that whatever is said of the divinity concerning corporeal position of place is likewise to be taken. When therefore you hear Isaiah saying: 「Thus says the Lord: Heaven is My seat and the earth My footstool. What is this house that you will build for Me, and what is this place of My rest?」
「All these things My hand has made,」 and so on. Just as you by no means understand Him to be corporeal, so neither understand heaven to be His corporeal seat, nor the earth the corporeal footstool of His feet, nor any local position of His by which He is supposed to sit, any more than when His angels are called His throne. For far be it that His majesty should have any weakness, so as to need to be supported by any seat or footstool! By the name of heaven, therefore, and of earth in this place are distinguished good and evil souls, as it were higher and lower according to their merits. The good souls, accordingly, are called as it were His temple or heaven, according to that saying of the Psalmist:
「The Lord is in His holy temple, the Lord's throne is in heaven,」 because He presides over those who are loftier in merits, and as in His own house and temple, sanctified to Himself, dwells through grace. But the carnal souls, which namely gape after earthly and lowest desires, He as it were tramples like a footstool under His feet, because those whom He despises He does not mercifully raise up to Himself, but presses down as left below, and by trampling grinds them and reduces them as it were to dissolved dust. When therefore the Lord, who dwells not in things made by hand, says:
namely, 「I dwell in so excellent a seat in the holy souls, and hold carnal and earthly men in such contempt—why do you seek to build for Me an earthly edifice as though it were a necessary house, and do not rather build for Me a spiritual house within yourselves? Otherwise the signification of the visible temple is empty, if the invisible is lacking.」 When therefore you hear heaven or the kingdom of heaven called the future blessedness, understand the sublimity of the future life rather than the corporeal position of heaven! Which sometimes is established to be designated by the name of earth on account of its stability, just as also by the name of heaven on account of its dignity. Whence also the Psalmist: 「I believe to see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living;」
and through Ezekiel the Lord Himself, promising to His elect the future blessedness after the resurrection, says: 「Behold, I will open your tombs and lead you out of your graves, O My people, and I will bring you into the land of Israel, and I will make you rest upon your own soil.」 But that our Lord Christ corporeally and visibly ascended the corporeal heavens profited not His glory—in whom the fullness of the divinity dwells corporeally—but our faith.
He therefore who earlier, by entering to the disciples through closed doors, had shown from His own resurrection the subtlety of the bodies to be raised—by which, namely, they may penetrate all things—afterward in His ascension exhibited so great a future lightness of those bodies, that, by no mass of earthliness by which they were formerly weighed down (as it is written: 「The body that is corrupted weighs down the soul」), are they any longer hindered from ascending anywhere, but, wherever the souls will, they are at once transported thither without any difficulty.
But that He is recorded to have ascended up to the right hand of the Father—just as neither is the right hand of the Father understood to be corporeal, so neither is that sitting, by which the Father Himself sits, a local position; but by this is equally expressed the power of ruling with the Father and an equal dignity, when He is said to have sat collaterally at His right hand. And since to sit at the right hand cannot stand corporeally according to the letter, that too which is set forth concerning His corporeal ascension—although in fact it was so done corporeally—nevertheless designates a certain better ascent of His in the minds of the faithful. Concerning which ascent He had Himself already before said to Mary: 「Touch Me not, for I have not yet ascended to My Father.」
For Christ is then, as it were in a cloud, lifted up from the eyes of men to heaven, that He may sit at the right hand of the Father, when, by the preaching of the saints, having been withdrawn from the sight of the present and laborious life, He is preached as so exalted in glory that, co-reigning with the Father, He equally rules over all, and, as a co-equal substance or Son, equally has dominion over all. But as to what you have added concerning the splendor of the moon or the sun being multiplied—as though this should pertain corporeally to the future blessedness—it is easy to refute, both from the authority of the very prophet who said it, and from manifest reason. For the Lord afterward, speaking through the same Isaiah to Jerusalem and promising her the brightness of the future life, says:
「The sun shall be no more thy light by day, neither shall the brightness of the moon illuminate thee, but the Lord shall be unto thee for an everlasting light, and thy God for thy glory. Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy moon be diminished to thee. But the Lord shall be unto thee for an everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended; and thy people, all the just, shall inherit the land,」 and so on. What is this land to be inherited by those who shall be just forever, and to be illuminated by the presence of the divine brightness as by a sun that never sets, except that eternity of the future blessedness?
Which brightness indeed, since it is so great that it needs no help to illuminate, this sun is rightly said to lose any further office of illuminating, after, namely, having been made no longer animal but spiritual, we shall experience that which was set forth before: 「the measure of man, which is also of the angel.」 Who, finally, is ignorant that lesser luminaries, placed beside greater ones, are at once darkened by the prevailing light, or lose their vigor of illuminating? What office of illuminating, therefore, could corporeal light there have, where the presence of the divine brightness will so illuminate the hidden things of darkness that it will manifest even the very counsels of hearts? 「We see now,」 says the Apostle, 「through a glass and in a riddle, but then face to face.」
「Now I know in part, but then I shall know, even as I am known.」 For then indeed all things shall be known by us perfectly, then most truly, just as by the angels, through the eyes of the heart, where the offices of all the senses, of all administrations, shall cease, when God shall be all in all. For His vision shall so satisfy all our desires through all things, that it shall by itself confer upon us all the things that are necessary to true blessedness. That very vision of the divine majesty shall be to us an unfailing light, the highest sanctity, perpetual rest, the peace that surpasses all understanding, in fine every good, every virtue, every joy.
Since therefore God shall be all in all, it is established then, as the same Apostle says, that all principality and power shall be brought to nought, when, namely, that power alone shall rule through itself, which, as has been said, ministers all good things to all the elect through the vision of its presence. No longer shall any principality, angelic or human, in any administration, no power in any rule, preside over us; because nothing will be able to be lacking where God shall be all in all, where, when that which is perfect shall come, that which is in part shall be done away. For nothing now profits us except in some part; nothing suffices to confer upon us all things necessary.
Whatever now profits us toward doctrine, or toward any virtue, or toward any administration, acts imperfectly, because God alone is He who can do all things. There shall cease, therefore, whatever things are done imperfectly, when He shall suffice through Himself, who can do all things. That, therefore, we shall there resume the eyes of the flesh together with the other members of the body, will assuredly not come about on account of their offices, of which we have need, but for the glorifying of God, as we have said before. In which, namely, we shall experience His power so much the more, the more we perceive those members to be stronger in performing their offices, if there were need, and shall see them to have attained a far stronger and better state.
But if we should also take the light of the sun and moon being multiplied corporeally, not only mystically, it is to be referred to the glory of the Creator rather than to the necessity of its office, just as also the whole state of the world is to be changed for the better—because even by the help or change of the heavenly luminaries, or of the world, God will manifestly become known to us; that what they had less before came about not from the impotence of the Creator, but for the necessity of our mortal and infirm life, which could by no means bear such or so great things, nor even be worthy to use such great benefits.
Yet it is easy to understand mystically that the moon then shines like the sun—that is, the Church of the elect like its sun, God, has the unfailing light, and yet that very sun of hers then also transcends the light of the moon itself, so that in that sun alone is the perfection of light, which is designated by the sevenfold number. Philosopher: As far as I see, if these things are so as you say, God seems to owe much to your faith, whose glory you proclaim above all in everything. But it now remains that you should diligently disclose what is also to be thought concerning the lower regions. For as the highest good of man is the more to be sought, the more it is known, so on the contrary the highest evil will be the more to be avoided, the less it shall be unknown. Christian:
On this point indeed, among us as among you, there has of old existed a diverse opinion. For some suppose hell to be a certain corporeal place under the earth, which, from its very local position too—being lower than the other parts of the world—is called the lower region (infernus); others, however, judge hell to be not so much a corporeal as a spiritual torment, so that, just as by the name of heaven, which is the upper part of the world, we distinguish the highest blessedness of souls, so by the name of hell we distinguish the highest misery, which is held to lie so much the lower, the more it is known to be farther distant from that highest blessedness, and the more it seems contrary to it.
For just as that which is better is, by the excellence of its dignity, called high, so on the contrary that which is worse is, by its abjectness, called lowest. Indeed both the Old and the New Testament relate many things concerning the punishments of hell, which seem by no means able to be taken according to the letter. For what is there according to the letter in what the Lord says through Isaiah concerning the just and the wicked: 「And they shall go forth and see the carcasses of the men who have transgressed against Me. Their worm shall not die, and their fire shall not be quenched.」 What is the corporeal going forth of the saints, that they should see the punishments of the wicked? Or what are corporeal worms in the bodies of the reprobate, which are to rise again whole in all their members, just as the bodies of the saints?
What gnawing of worms shall there be there, where there shall likewise be the immortality of all bodies, without any defect? But also that which the Lord relates in the Gospel concerning the rich man and Lazarus who had died—how can it stand according to the letter, since that soul of the rich man cannot have a corporeal burial in hell? Or what is that corporeal bosom of Abraham, to which the soul of Lazarus is reported to be carried by the angels? What tongue does the soul of the rich man have there, or what finger does the soul of Lazarus have? Or what corporeal water is there, a drop of which, poured upon his burning tongue, could quench or diminish its burning? Whence, since these things can by no means happen according to the letter in souls now stripped of the flesh—just as neither can that which is said elsewhere: