but the surpassing love of the knowledge of Christ is assuredly that in which is that peace which surpasses all understanding. But whether this in these apostolic words was also perceived by that evangelical disputant, or perhaps something else more fitting, yet you also see this, unless I am mistaken, does not shrink from the rule of faith. But whence we are now treating on account of spiritual contemplation, when he had said: 'He who has known what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and the surpassing love of the knowledge of Christ, has seen both Christ and the Father,' lest to anyone very slow he might seem to speak of bodily vision, 'for we,' he says, 'now know Christ no longer according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.
For the Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord.' What he says in this place, 'we know,' he said according to the faith which now is, not according to the contemplation which shall then be; because we know even this, whatever we retain by unfeigned faith—although not yet by beholding through the form, yet by unshakably believing. Finally, when he had said that he now knows Christ no longer according to the flesh, as the Apostle says, and had added a testimony from the prophet, 'For the Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord,' he immediately subjoined: 'May he deign to fill us by his mercy into all the fullness of God, that he may be able to be seen by us.'
Certainly it is manifest that that knowledge, where he had said 'we know,' he set down out of faith, by which the just now lives, not out of the contemplation by which we shall see God as he is. For this he consequently wished for himself and for us, and signified it to be future by saying: 'May he deign to fill us by his mercy into all the fullness of God, that he may be able to be seen by us.' This fullness of God, certain ones in the Apostle's discourse have understood in such a way as to think that we shall become altogether what God is. For these words, as you recognize, the Apostle set down, speaking thus: To know also the surpassing love of the knowledge of Christ, that you may be filled unto all the fullness of God.
Wherefore if, they say, we shall have anything less than God and shall be in some respect lesser, how shall we be filled unto all the fullness of God? But since we shall be filled, we shall assuredly be equal. You turn away from and detest this error of the human mind, I know; you do rightly. But in what manner this fullness is to be understood, by which it was said that we are to be filled unto all the fullness of God, we shall afterward, if God wills, discuss according to the powers he shall give. But now, whether what you had set before me, and which seemed difficult to explain, has been explained, attend diligently by recalling what has been said. For if you ask whether God can be seen, I answer: he can. If you ask whence I know, I answer:
because in the most truthful Scripture it is read: Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God, and other such things. If you ask in what manner he is called invisible, if he can be seen, I answer that he is invisible by nature, but is seen when he wills, as he wills; for by very many he has been seen, not as he is, but in whatever form it pleased him to appear. If you ask in what manner even the wicked Cain saw him, when he was interrogated and judged by him concerning his crime, or even the devil himself, when he came with the angels to present himself before him—if 'blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God'—I answer that it is not indeed consequent that those also see God who at some time hear voices made by him; for they did not see him who heard him.
When he said to the Son: I have both glorified it and will glorify it again; nevertheless it is not to be wondered at, if some even not clean of heart see God in a form which his will has made, while the invisible and, in respect of himself, unchangeable nature remains hidden. If you ask whether even as he is he can at some time be seen, I answer that this has been promised to the sons, of whom it is said: We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. If you ask whence we shall see him, I answer: whence the angels see, to whom we shall then be equal;
for just as those things are seen which are called visible, no one has ever seen God nor can see him, since he dwells in inaccessible light and is by nature invisible as he is incorruptible—which things the Apostle set down in a connected passage, saying: But to the King of the ages, invisible, incorruptible; because, as he is now incorruptible and will not afterward be corruptible, so is he not only now but even always invisible. For 'not in a place is he seen, but with a clean heart, nor is he sought with bodily eyes, nor circumscribed by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by address, nor perceived by walking.'
But the Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, declares the nature and substance of the deity soundlessly, and therefore to worthy and fit eyes he shows it, even invisibly, by so great a beholding. For these are the eyes of which the Apostle speaks: The enlightened eyes of your heart; and of which it is said: Enlighten my eyes, that I never sleep in death. For the Lord is Spirit; whence, he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit; accordingly, he who can see God invisibly, he himself can cleave to God incorporeally. I think that now there is not in the question which you have proposed anything further that you might seek.
But in this whole discussion of ours consider what you have seen, what you have believed, what you still do not know—whether because I have not said it, or because you have not understood it, or because you have not judged it to be believed. And those things which you have seen to be true, still discern whence you have seen them—whether by recalling that you saw them through the body, as heavenly or earthly bodies, or whether you never touched them with the bodily sights, but discerned them to be true and certain by the mind alone contemplating, as you do your own will, which I am able to believe you when you speak of it; but that will, as it is seen by you, I myself cannot see. And when you have distinguished both of these, attend also to this, whence you distinguish them.
For although we see some things by the body, others by the mind, yet the very discernment of these two kinds is seen by the mind, not by the body. And those things which are beheld by the mind need no bodily sense in order that we may know them to be true; but those which are seen through the body, unless the mind be present to receive such things reported, can be contained by no knowledge. And what is reported it seems as it were to receive, it leaves outside; but their images, that is, the incorporeal likenesses of bodies, it incorporeally commits to memory, whence, when it shall have willed and been able, it may judge them as brought forth from custody and exhibited to the gaze of thought.
And when it is able, it even discerns these two: what it left outside in the bodily form, and what likeness of it it beholds within; and it distinguishes that the former is absent, the latter present—just as, when I am absent, you think of the face of my body, and that image is present to you, but the face, whose image it is, is absent; and this is a body, but that is an incorporeal likeness of a body. With these things, therefore, which you see, carefully and confidently examined and distinguished, attend to what you believe in this whole discourse itself, from which I began to speak to you by these letters. And in those very things to which, not being seen, you accommodate faith, weigh by discerning the very weights of the witnesses themselves. For you do not so believe me as you do Ambrose, from whose books I have set down those great testimonies;
Or if you think that we two are to be believed with equal weight, will you in any way compare us to the Gospel, or set our writings on a level with the canonical Scriptures? Surely, if you judge rightly in your discernment, you see that we stand far below that authority, and I indeed further below still; yet however much you may believe each of us, in no way do you compare either of us with that excellence. Therefore what is written, 'No one has ever seen God,' and, 'He dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen nor can see,' and, 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,' and whatever else I have cited from those holy books, you believe more firmly than that which Ambrose said:
'God is neither seen in a place nor sought with bodily eyes, nor circumscribed by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by a footstep.' For such indeed he understood or believed God to be, who is beheld by the pure heart; and I confess that this is my judgement also. Therefore you receive by faith those divine words in one way, these in another. For concerning us perhaps some scruple lurks in you, lest in these divine sayings we should understand something less clearly, and lest they be expounded by us not as they were spoken, but as we surmise. For perhaps you say within yourself: What if God is both seen by the pure heart and yet seen in a place? Or:
What if the pure in heart shall also see God with bodily eyes, when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, when we shall be equal to the angels of God? How much therefore you ought or ought not to believe us you perhaps do not know, and you take heed lest, by believing us more or less than you ought, you be deceived; yet you do not doubt that the divine Scriptures, even when not yet clearly understood, must be believed. But this reflection surely, of believing or not believing, and the difficulty of knowledge, and the surge of doubt, and the devout faith which is owed to divine utterances—all this you observe and see in your mind just as it is; nor about these things at all, that they stand thus with you—whether as I have said or rather as you yourself know—do you have any doubt.
You see therefore your own faith, you see your own doubt, you see your own zeal and will to learn; and since you are moved by divine authority to believe the things you do not see, you nevertheless see that you believe these things without hesitation. You distinguish and discern all these things.
Will you then in any way compare bodily eyes with those eyes of your heart, with which you behold all these things to be true and certain, and with which you discern and distinguish them as present to you invisibly? For even concerning visible things themselves, which are in a manner irradiated by the keenness of bodily eyes, and concerning the bodily eyes themselves and their keenness, whatever and however great it be—how far it stands from things invisible—do you judge, not by those same eyes of the flesh, but by those inner eyes: not from things more excellent (to which, even though unseen, you owe faith), but from those which I have mentioned, which you do not believe as absent but behold as present in the mind?
Since therefore the inner eyes are the judges of the outer eyes, while these serve those by a kind of office of announcing and by ministry, and those see many things which these do not see, whereas these see nothing which those, as presiding, do not judge—who would not set those before these by an incomparable estimation? Since these things are so, I beseech you: when this so great matter is transacted within you, when you distinguish the inner things from the outer and set the former before the latter beyond all utterance, and when, leaving the outer behind, you dwell within among the former and judge them by measuring them with certain incorporeal bounds of their own—do you reckon that you are engaged in no light at all, or in some light?
For I judge that so great and such things—so true, so clear, so certain—cannot be seen there without light. That very light therefore, in which you discern all those things, gaze upon and see whether any ray of bodily eyes can approach it. Surely it cannot. Take heed also, and answer whether you see in it any spaces or intervals of places. You find nothing of the sort there, I think, if you vigilantly drive away from your inmost gaze whatever the sense of the outer man has brought in of bodily images. But perhaps it is difficult;
for from the habit of the carnal life there rushes even upon the inner eyes themselves a crowd of phantasms in the likenesses of bodies. Striving to resist it, at least by divine authority, I cried out grieving in that short letter and said: 'Let the flesh, drunk with carnal thoughts, hear: God is a Spirit.' For by that rebuke I restrained no one's mind more than my very own from vanity of this kind. For we are more easily inclined to what is customary, and it is dear to the weakness of the soul either to send or to admit bodily conversation inward—not where it may stand sound, but where in a manner it may lean upon or lie down in weakness.
Accordingly, if you cannot clear the keen edge of your mind from the cloud, as it were, of bodily likenesses, attend vigilantly to those very likenesses within yourself. Behold heaven and earth by thinking, as you have been accustomed to discern them by the eyes of the body; and those images of heaven and earth, which have been brought forth before the eyes of thought, see that they are likenesses of bodies, not bodies. So then judge against yourself for yourself: if you cannot in every way drive away from the edge of your mind the imaginary forms of bodily qualities, then from that by which you are overcome, thence gain the conviction.
For there is no one, I think, so given over even to such imaginations that he believes there to be in his memory, or in the very gaze of his thought, the sun, moon, stars, rivers, seas, mountains, hills, cities, and finally the walls of his own house or even of his own bedchamber, and whatever else he has come to know and holds through the eyes of the body—so as to stand or move by spaces and intervals of places.
Further, if the things in our mind that are most like bodily and local things are nevertheless not contained by the spaces and bounds of places, nor stored in our memory by local intervals, how much more do those things which bear no likeness of bodies—charity, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance—hold no spaces of places, are separated by no gap, nor seek out any intervals for the eye of the heart to cast its rays and behold them! Are not all things in one, without narrowness, and known within their own bounds, without any circuit of regions?
Or tell me, in what place do you see charity, which is nonetheless known to you insofar as you can behold it with the keenness of the mind—which you do not know to be great because you have surveyed some huge mass by gazing at it? Nor, when it speaks within you that you should live according to it, does it din with any sounds; nor, that you may discern it, do you raise up the light of bodily eyes; nor, that you may hold it firmly, do you make ready the strength of bodily muscles; nor, when it comes into your mind, do you perceive its footstep. Behold, you sing even this—of how much soever consists within our will and is visible to us—'it is neither seen in a place nor sought with bodily eyes, nor circumscribed by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by a footstep.'
How much more God himself, whose pledge of this is within us! For if our inner man—however small an image of him, not begotten from him but created by him, though as yet it be renewed day by day—already nonetheless dwells in such a light, to which no sense of bodily eyes attains; if the things which we behold in that light with the eyes of the heart are both distinguished among themselves and separated by no spaces of places—how much more God, who dwells in a light unapproachable to the senses of the body, to which there can be no access save of the pure heart itself!
When therefore we have set that light above all bodily light, not only by the judgement of reason but also by the appetite of love, the more we prevail at this, the better shall we prevail, until all the sicknesses of our soul are healed by him who is gracious to all our iniquities. For in this more living life, having been made spiritual, we shall be able to judge all things, while we ourselves are judged by no one. But the natural man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God; for it is foolishness to him, and he cannot know it, because it is spiritually discerned.
But if we cannot yet prefer the judging light to that light which is judged, prefer the understanding life to a life that is merely sentient, prefer a nature which has not this thing in one place and that in another, but has all that it has together in one—as is our very understanding—to a nature which so consists of parts that a part is less than the whole, as is every body: then we dispute superfluously about such great and such things. But if we can now do this, let us believe God to be something better than our understanding, that his peace, which surpasses all understanding, may guard our hearts and our understandings in Christ Jesus.
For that very peace, which surpasses all understanding, is surely not less than our understanding, so that, since the latter is invisible to bodily eyes, the former should be thought to be visible. Or is the peace of God one thing and the splendour of God another, since he himself is the same only-begotten Son, whose also is that charity which excels knowledge, by knowledge of whom we shall be filled unto all the fullness of God—which is not inferior to the light of our mind, that is bestowed by his illumination? Further, if that light is unapproachable to the eyes of the flesh, how much more that which incomparably excels this! And by this, since something of ours is visible, such as this body, but something invisible, such as the inner man, and since our best part—that is, the mind and
understanding—is invisible to the eyes of the body, how shall that which is better than our best be visible to what is inferior in us? I judge that you now grant, all these things considered, that it was rightly said that 'God is neither seen in a place, but by the pure heart, nor sought with bodily eyes, nor circumscribed by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by a footstep.' And if in these matters we understand something too little, or are otherwise minded, that too God will reveal to us, if in that to which we have attained, in that we walk. Now we have attained to believe that God is not a body but a Spirit;
we have attained also to believe that no one has ever seen God, and that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all, and that with him there is no variableness nor shadow of turning, and that he dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen nor can see; and that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God without any diversity and separation of nature; and that the pure in heart shall see him, and that we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; and that God is charity, and he who abides in charity abides in God, and God in him; and that we ought to follow after peace and sanctification, without which no one shall be able to see God; and that this corruptible and mortal body of ours shall be changed in the resurrection and shall put on incorruption and immortality; and that it is sown a natural body and shall rise a spiritual body, the Lord transfiguring the body of our humiliation, that he may make it conformed to the body of his glory; and that God made man to his own image and likeness; and that we are renewed in the spirit of our mind unto the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created us.
Walking by faith in these and suchlike authorities of the holy Scriptures, those who by an understanding given or aided from on high have made spiritual progress and have been able to compare spiritual things with spiritual, have seen that it is better to see with the mind than with the body, and that those things are seen with the mind which are not contained in places, nor separated among themselves by intervals of places, nor less in a part than in the whole. Hence it is that that man confidently said that 'God is neither seen in a place, but by the pure heart, nor sought with bodily eyes, nor circumscribed by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by a footstep.' Whence, since in the holy Scriptures both his substance is commended as invisible and he is found in the same authorities to have been seen
by very many, through a body and in bodily places, in those same authorities—that holy man set apart from the nature of God visions of this kind, seen by the spirit, whereby bodily images are discerned through some likeness of a body, incorporeal though it be, as in dreams or in ecstasy; and he said that these are such as the will of God had chosen, not such as nature had formed. For God makes these, whereby he may appear as he wills, to whom he wills, when he wills, while his own substance remains hidden and in itself unchangeable.
For if our will, remaining in itself and hidden without any change of itself, utters words through which it may somehow show itself, how much more easily can Almighty God—his nature remaining hidden and unchangeably abiding—appear in whatever form he wills, to whomsoever he wills, who created all things out of nothing and, abiding in himself, renews all things! But to that vision by which we shall see God as he is, he admonished that hearts must be cleansed.
For because bodies, by the habit of speech, are called visible, therefore God is called invisible, lest he be believed to be a body—not because he will defraud pure hearts of the contemplation of his substance, since this great and highest reward is promised to those who worship and love God, the Lord himself saying, when he was appearing visibly to bodily eyes and was promising himself to be beheld invisibly by pure hearts: 'He who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will show myself to him.' For this nature of his, equally with the Father invisible, is likewise equally incorruptible; which, as was said above, the Apostle set forth continuously, commending, as best he could, the divine substance to men by his preaching.
And if bodily eyes, in the resurrection with the quality of bodies changed, shall behold it—let those see to it who are able to assert this; I am more moved by the judgement of him who assigned this, not even in the resurrection itself, to bodily eyes, but to pure hearts.
And concerning the quality of the spiritual body, which is promised to those who shall rise, I do not refuse either to learn something further or to inquire—provided that, in disputing about this matter, we can be free from those vices which are for the most part kindled by human zeals and contentions, while, beyond what is written, one is puffed up for one against another, lest, while by wrangling we seek to trace out how God can be seen, we lose that very peace and sanctification, without which no one shall be able to see God: which may he himself avert from our hearts, that he may render and keep them pure for his contemplation. Yet that which I do not doubt, I do not inquire into—namely, that the nature of God is never seen in a place.
Now whether something which is not seen in a place can be seen with the eyes of this body, I am ready to hear with the peace of love from those who are able to show it by discoursing, and to bring into common counsel that of which they admonish me. For there are certain persons who presume that God himself is altogether a body, thinking that whatever is not a body is no substance at all. These I judge must be turned away from in every way. There are, however, others who by no means doubt that God himself is not a body, but who for this reason think that those who shall rise to eternal life will see God even through the body, because they hope for such a quality of the spiritual body that even that which had been flesh becomes spirit.
But if this is so, how far it stands from the former opinion, and how much more tolerable this is, even if it be not true, I think is very easily judged: first, because it makes a great difference whether one thinks something otherwise concerning the Creator or concerning the creature—which the truth holds; then, because the effort of a mind willing, however it be, to convert a body into spirit is somehow to be borne, not one willing to convert God into a body; lastly, because that which I said in that letter of mine concerning these eyes of our flesh—that they neither now can nor then will be able to see God—is true even so;
for it was said only of bodily eyes, that they will not then exist, if the body itself will be spirit; and by this bodily eyes will never see God, because, when he is seen, spirit—not body—will see him. The whole question, therefore, has now remained concerning the spiritual body: in what manner this corruptible and mortal shall put on incorruption and immortality, and in what manner it shall be changed from natural into spiritual. This must be treated more diligently and more anxiously, chiefly on account of the body of the Lord himself, who transfigures the body of our humiliation, conformed to the body of his glory, that he may be able to subject all things to himself.
For since both God the Father sees the Son and the Son the Father, without doubt those are not to be heeded who are unwilling to attribute vision except to bodies. For it is not lawful to say that the Father does not see the Son, or that, in order that he himself may see, he is clothed with a body, if sight pertains only to a body. What of the fact that in the very beginning of the world, before any form of a servant had been assumed by the Son, God saw the light, that it was good, and the firmament, and the sea, and the dry land, and every herb and every tree, the sun, the moon, the stars, the creeping things of living souls, the birds of heaven, the living soul? Finally, God saw all things that he had made, and behold, they were very good.
Since Scripture repeated this so often through each of the creatures, I wonder whence that opinion arose by which it was supposed that vision pertains only to bodies. From whatever manner of speaking that opinion sprang, the holy Scriptures at least are not wont to speak thus; for unless they attributed vision not only to the body but also to the spirit, and rather to the spirit than to the body, they would not properly have called those men 'seers' (prophets) who saw even future things not with the body but with the spirit. But we must take thought, lest we dare anything presumptuously, if we should say that the body loses in the glory of the resurrection not only its mortality and corruptibility, but even this very thing—that it is a body—and becomes spirit.
For in that way either the substance of spirit will be doubled, if the body too will be spirit; or, if there will be one spirit of man, such that, when the body is changed and converted into spirit, it is doubled neither by twinning nor by increase, nor is at all augmented by the accession of any quantity—then it is to be feared lest nothing else seem to be said than that bodies will not remain immortal by that change, but rather will be nothing at all and will utterly perish.