Wherefore, until by diligent inquiry, if the Lord shall help, it be found what according to the Scriptures is more probably to be held concerning the spiritual body which is promised in the resurrection, let it meanwhile suffice for us that the only-begotten Son, who is also the mediator of God and men, the man Christ Jesus, so sees the Father as he is seen by the Father. But let us not attempt to transfer from this world that lust of the eyes to that vision of God which is promised to us in the resurrection, but with pure hearts let us strive with devout affection toward the cleansing; nor let us imagine a bodily face when the Apostle says: 'We see now through a glass in a riddle, but then face to face'—especially since the Apostle said still more expressly:
'Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as also I am known.' If then we shall then know God with a bodily face, we are now known by his bodily face; 'for then,' he says, 'I shall know even as also I am known.' Whence, since he cannot understand that in that passage he wished also to signify that face of ours of which he says in another place, 'But we, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord'—namely from the glory of faith into the glory of eternal contemplation? For this indeed is what this transformation effects, by which the inner man is renewed day by day; of whom the Apostle Peter also, when he admonished it to be adorned, said:
'Let it not be that which is outwardly adorned with braidings of hair or with gold and pearls or costly apparel, but the hidden man of the heart, who is rich before God.' For upon what face the Jews have a veil, by not passing over to Christ—since, when anyone has passed over to Christ, the veil shall be taken away—with that same face unveiled we are transformed into the same image. And most plainly he says: 'The veil is placed upon their hearts.' There, therefore, is the face, which being unveiled we now behold in faith, though through a glass and in a riddle, but then face to face. And if you approve these things, hold with me the judgement of the holy man Ambrose, now confirmed not by his authority but by the very truth.
For it does not therefore please me because the Lord chiefly through his mouth freed me from error, and through his ministry granted me the grace of saving baptism, as though I favoured too much my planter and waterer; but because concerning this matter he too said that which the truth—who speaks even through him that gives the increase, that is, God—says to one who thinks piously and understands rightly. 'In that very resurrection,' therefore, 'it is not easy to see God except by those who are pure in heart; and therefore: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' How many blessed had he already reckoned, and yet had not promised these the faculty of seeing God! If therefore those who are pure in heart shall see God, surely others shall not see him;
for neither shall the unworthy see God, nor can he who has been unwilling to see God see God. God is neither seen in a place, but by the pure heart, nor is God sought with bodily eyes, nor circumscribed by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by a footstep; and, when he is thought to be absent, he is seen, and when he is present, he is not seen. In fine, not even all the apostles saw Christ, and therefore he says: 'So long a time have I been with you, and yet you have not known me.' For he who has known what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and the charity of Christ which surpasses knowledge, has seen Christ also, has seen the Father also. For we now know Christ no longer according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
For the Lord Christ is a Spirit before our face, who may deign in his mercy to fill us unto all the fullness of God, that he may be seen by us. These words of the holy man, which are not carnal but spiritual, in so far as you understand them and acknowledge them to be true—not because he himself said it, but because the truth cries out without noise—in so far do you understand whereby you may cleave to the Lord, and prepare yourself inwardly as an incorporeal place of his dwelling, to hear the silence of his narration and to see his invisible form.
For blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God—not that he will appear to them like a body from some interval of place, but when he shall have come to them and made his abode with them; since thus they shall be filled unto all the fullness of God, not when they too shall be full God, but when they shall have been perfectly filled with God. But if we think only of bodies, and cannot even worthily think of that from which we may think of the bodies themselves, let us not seek what we may say against our own selves, but rather, praying away from this carnal habit and stretching ourselves forth to the things that are before, let us cleanse our hearts.
For that I may say not only what blessed Ambrose but also what holy Jerome said: 'Not only the divinity of the Father, but not even that of the Son nor of the Holy Spirit—since there is one nature in the Trinity—can the eyes of the flesh behold, but the eyes of the mind, of which the Saviour himself says: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' For, as the same Jerome elsewhere briefly and truly defined, 'an incorporeal thing is not seen with bodily eyes.'
These judgements of such great men on so great a matter I have not wished to insert for this reason—that you should think the opinion of any man to be followed as though it were the authority of canonical Scripture—but that those who are otherwise minded may endeavour to see with the mind what is true, and in simplicity of heart to seek God, lest they rashly reprehend such learned expositors of the divine oracles. Nor let it move you that by certain persons it is said, with too little consideration: What then shall bodily eyes see, if they shall not see God? Or perhaps they will be blind, or will exist without cause? For those who say these things do not attend that, if there shall be no bodies, surely those eyes will not be bodily; but if there shall be bodies, there will be that which bodily eyes can see.
But let these things now suffice to have been said, which, when from the beginning of this little work of mine you consider them, diligently read and re-read, you will perceive—perhaps without any doubt—that in order to see God you ought, by his help, to prepare a pure heart. But concerning the spiritual body, if the Lord shall help, we shall try in another work what we may be able to discuss. CXLVIII. A REMINDER TO THE HOLY BROTHER FORTUNATIANUS. As I asked when present, so also now I remind you, that you would deign to see and to ask our brother, of whom we spoke together, that he pardon me, if he received anything said against him too harshly and sharply in that letter which I do not repent of having written in that manner, because I said that the eyes of this body neither see God nor will see him.
I added, indeed, the reason why I said this: namely, lest God himself be believed to be corporeal and visible within the space and interval of a place — for the eye of this body of ours can see nothing in any other way — and lest that which was said, 'Face to face,' be so understood as though God were bounded by the members of a body. For that reason I do not regret having said it, lest we should think of God himself so impiously as to suppose him not wholly everywhere but divisible through local spaces; for it is such things that we know by these eyes.
But if anyone, thinking nothing of the sort about God, yet believing him to be an immutable and incorporeal Spirit, wholly everywhere, supposes that so great a change of this body of ours will come to pass — when from an animal body it shall have become spiritual — that we shall be able to see, through such a body, even an incorporeal substance which is neither divisible by the intervals or spaces of places nor bounded by the outlines and limits of members, but is wholly everywhere: let him tell me, and let him teach me, if he is wise with the truth. But if in this he is mistaken, it is far more tolerable to arrogate something to a body than to detract something from God. And if that opinion is true, it will not be contrary to my words which I set down in that letter.
For I said that the eyes of this body will not see God when I considered this: that the eyes of this body cannot at all discern anything except bodies, which are separated from them by some interval of place; for if there be no interval, we do not see even those bodies themselves through them.
Furthermore, if our bodies shall be changed into so great an unlikeness to themselves that they may have eyes through which may be seen that substance which is neither diffused nor bounded through spaces of places — having one part here and another there, a lesser part in a lesser place and a greater in a greater — but is wholly everywhere in an incorporeal manner: then these bodies will be something far other, and will not be the same; nor will they be something other merely by the removal of mortality and corruption and the heaviness of weight, but will in some manner be converted into the very power of the mind — if they shall be able to see in the way that then it will be granted to the mind, whereas now it is not granted even to the mind itself to see.
For if, when a man's character is changed, we say that he who once was, is no more; if, in short, when the ages of life are changed, we say that the body itself is no longer that which it was: how much more will that body itself not be the same, being changed by so great a conversion that it not only lives immortally but even sees the invisible! Wherefore, if they shall see God, it will not be the eyes of this body that see him, since in this very thing it will not be the same body, once it has been changed unto that power and might; and so this opinion is not contrary to those words of my letter.
But if to this extent it will not be the same — because now it is mortal, then immortal; now weighing down the soul, then, by no weight, most ready for every motion — and yet most ready for seeing those things which are truly discerned by the spaces and intervals of places; if it will be nothing other than itself, it will in no way see an incorporeal substance that is wholly everywhere. Whether, then, the former or the latter be true, according to either it is true that the eyes of this body will not see God: for either they will be of this body and not see, or they will not be of this body, if they see, since by so great a change they will be the eyes of a body far other. But I am prepared, if this brother knows anything better on this matter, to learn it either from himself or from him from whom he learned it.
But if I were to speak in mockery, I would also say concerning a God who is corporeal and divisible through places by his members that I was prepared to learn it. This I do not say, because I do not speak in mockery, and I have no doubt whatever that such a God does not exist at all; and it was lest he be believed to be such that I wrote that letter. In writing it, while I was anxious to admonish, I was — though names were passed over in silence — excessive and imprudent in my rebuke, and I did not regard the fraternal and episcopal person, as a brother and a bishop, in the manner that would have been fitting. This I do not defend, but reprehend; this I do not excuse, but accuse. I ask that it be pardoned; let him call to mind our former love, and forget the new offence. Let him surely do the very thing for whose omission he was angry with me;
let him have gentleness in granting pardon, which I did not have in composing that letter. This I ask through your charity, which, being present, I had not wished to ask of him present, had I the opportunity. When I had attempted it — a venerable man, to be honoured above all of us, writing to him — he was unwilling to come, having perhaps suspected some guile of mine, as most human things are wont to be suspected, so far as I judge. Do you, as far as you can, give him assurance that I am far from any such thing — you who, being present, can more easily do so. Tell him with how great and how true a grief I spoke with you about the offence to his mind. Let him know how far I am from despising him, and how greatly I fear God in him, and how I think upon our Head, in whose Body we are brethren.
To the place where he dwells I did not think I ought to come, lest we should make a spectacle to be laughed at by strangers, to be grieved over by our own, and to be ashamed of by ourselves. Through your holiness and charity the whole matter can be rightly settled; for it is settled by him who, through his faith, dwells in your heart — whom I believe he does not spurn in you, since he acknowledges him in himself. As for myself, in this case I have not found what better I might do than to ask pardon of the brother who has complained that he was wounded by the harshness of my letter. He too, as I hope, will do what he knows is commanded of him by him who, speaking through the Apostle, says: 'Forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as God in Christ hath forgiven you.'
'Be ye therefore imitators of God, as most dear children; and walk in love, even as Christ also hath loved you.' Walking in this love, if we can do so more diligently, let us harmoniously inquire concerning the spiritual body which we shall have in the resurrection; for even if in anything we are otherwise minded, this also God will reveal to us, if we abide in him. Now he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him, for God is love — whether as its source, existing ineffably, or by bestowing that love upon us through his Spirit. If, then, it can be taught that love will one day be seen with bodily eyes, perhaps God too could be so seen;
but if it can never be, much less can the very source of it, or whatever more excellent and fitting thing can be said concerning so great a matter. Certain great men, most learned in the Holy Scriptures, who by their writings have greatly aided the Church and the good studies of the faithful, when occasion was given them, said that the invisible God is seen invisibly — that is, through that nature which in us also is invisible, namely, by a pure mind or heart. Blessed Ambrose, when he was treating of Christ according to that whereby he is the Word, said: 'For Jesus is seen not with bodily but with spiritual eyes'; and a little after: 'The Jews did not see him,' he says; 'for their foolish heart was blinded' — showing thereby whence he is seen.
Likewise, when he was speaking of the Holy Spirit, he interposed the words of the Lord saying: 'I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom this world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.' 'Rightly, therefore,' he says, 'was he shown forth in a body, since in the substance of the Godhead he is not seen. We have seen the Spirit, but under a bodily appearance; let us see the Father also, but, since we cannot see him, let us hear him.' And a little after: 'Let us hear, then,' he says, 'the Father — for the Father is invisible; but the Son also is invisible according to the Godhead, for no man hath seen God at any time. Since, therefore, the Son is God, in that very respect in which he is God, the Son is not seen.'
And holy Jerome says: 'To see God as he is, in his own nature, the eye of man cannot — not man only, nor angels, nor Thrones, nor Powers, nor Dominions, nor any name that is named; for neither can a creature behold its Creator.' By these words the most learned man sufficiently shows what he thought, even concerning the world to come, in what pertains to this matter. For however much the eyes of our body be changed for the better, they will be made equal to the eyes of angels. But here he said that the nature of the Creator is invisible to these very angels and to the whole heavenly creation altogether.
But if from this too a question arises and any doubt is brought in — whether we shall not be greater than the angels — there is an open sentence of the Lord himself on this point, where he says of those who shall rise into the Kingdom: 'They shall be equal to the angels of God.' Whence the same holy Jerome elsewhere speaks thus: 'Man, therefore, cannot see the face of God; but the angels even of the least ones in the Church always behold the face of God. And now we see in a mirror, in an enigma, but then face to face — when we shall have advanced from men into angels, and shall be able to say with the Apostle:
'But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord' — although no creature sees the face of God according to the property of his own nature, and it is then discerned by the mind, when it is believed to be invisible.' In these words of the man of God many things are to be considered. First, that according to the Lord's most manifest sentence, he too holds that we shall then see the face of God when we shall have advanced into angels — that is, been made equal to them — which will surely be in the resurrection of the dead. Next, by the Apostle's testimony he made it sufficiently plain that the face to be understood is not that of the outward but of the inward man, when we shall see face to face;
for the Apostle was speaking of the face of the heart when he said what Jerome here recalled: 'But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image.' But if anyone doubts this, let him review the same passage and attend to what the Apostle was speaking of — namely, of the veil which remains in the reading of the Old Testament, until each one pass over to Christ, that the veil may be taken away. For there he says: 'But we all, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord' — which face was not unveiled in the Jews, of whom he says: 'A veil is put upon their heart' — so as to show that the face of the heart is unveiled to us when the veil is removed.
Finally, lest anyone, gazing on these things too little and discerning them too little, should believe God to be visible either to angels or to men — when we shall have been made equal to the angels, whether now or in the future — he most evidently expressed what he thought, saying that 'no creature sees the face of God according to the property of his own nature, and it is then discerned by the mind, when it is believed to be invisible.' Whence he sufficiently signified that, when he was seen by men through the eyes of the body as though himself corporeal, he was not seen according to the property of his own nature, in which he is then discerned by the mind, when he is believed to be invisible.
To what beings is he invisible except to bodily sights — even to the heavenly ones, as he said above concerning the angels and Powers and Dominions — how much more to the earthly? Whence in another place he says more evidently: 'Not only the Godhead of the Father, but not even that of the Son and of the Holy Spirit — which is one nature in the Trinity — can the eyes of flesh behold, but the eyes of the mind, of which the Saviour himself says: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' What could be clearer than this declaration? For if he had only said that the eyes of flesh cannot behold the Godhead of the Father, nor of the Son, nor of the Holy Spirit, and had not further added 'but the eyes of the mind,' it might perhaps be said that it ought no longer to be called flesh, since the body will be spiritual.
Therefore, by adding and saying 'but the eyes of the mind,' he estranged this kind of vision from every sort of body. And lest anyone should suppose that he spoke only of the present time, he added also the Lord's testimony, wishing to show which eyes of the mind he meant — by which testimony the promise not of a present but of a future vision is declared: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.' The most blessed Athanasius also, bishop of Alexandria, when he was dealing against the Arians — who say that only God the Father is invisible, but suppose the Son and the Holy Spirit to be visible —
asserted the equal invisibility of the Trinity by the testimonies of the Holy Scriptures and by the diligence of his own disputation, most urgently persuading that God has not been seen except by the assumption of a creature, but that according to the property of his own Deity God is altogether invisible — that is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit — save in so far as he can be known by mind and spirit. Gregory too, a holy bishop of the East, says most openly that God, invisible by nature, when he was seen by the fathers — as by Moses, with whom he spoke face to face — was able to be seen by the disposition of some visible matter that was assumed, while his invisibility remained safe.
This is what our own Ambrose also says: that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are seen in that appearance which the will has chosen, not which nature has formed; so that both that saying be true — 'No man hath seen God at any time,' which is the voice of the Lord Christ himself — and: 'Whom no man of men hath seen, nor can see,' which is the voice of the Apostle, or rather of Christ through the Apostle; and so that those testimonies of the Scriptures be not rejected in which God is related to have been seen — because he is both invisible through the proper nature of his Deity, and, when he wills, can be seen through an assumed creature, as it shall have pleased him.
Furthermore, if invisibility belongs to his very nature, as does incorruptibility, then surely that nature will not be changed in the world to come so as to become visible from invisible, since neither will it be able to become corruptible from incorruptible; for at the same time it is also immutable. And certainly the Apostle commended his nature when he set down these two things together, saying: 'Now to the King of the ages, the invisible, the incorruptible, the only God, be honour and glory unto the ages of ages.' Whence I do not dare so to distinguish as to say: 'Incorruptible indeed unto the ages of ages, but invisible not unto the ages of ages, but only in this age.' Yet because neither can those testimonies be false — 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,' and:
'We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is' — we cannot deny that the sons of God shall see God, but as invisible things are seen, as he promised he would show himself, who appeared visible to men in the flesh, when he said: 'And I will love him, and will show myself to him' — though he was speaking conspicuous before the eyes of men. But whence are invisible things seen except by the eyes of the heart, of which I said a little before what Jerome thought concerning the seeing of God? Hence it is that the aforementioned bishop of Milan too said, concerning the very resurrection, that it is not easy to see God save for those who are pure in heart, and that for this reason it is written: 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.'
'How many blessed ones,' he says, 'had he already reckoned, and yet had not promised them the faculty of seeing God!' Then he adds and says: 'If, then, those who are pure in heart shall see God, surely the others shall not see him.' And lest we should take those others to be they of whom it was said, 'Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek,' and the rest, he immediately subjoined: 'For neither shall the unworthy see God' — wishing the unworthy to be understood as those who, although they rise again, will not be able to see God, since they rise unto damnation, because through true faith, which worketh by love, they were unwilling to cleanse the heart. And so it follows, and he says: 'Nor can he who has been unwilling to see God see God.'
Then, because it might occur to one that even all the impious wish to see God, at once, in order to show in what sense he had said 'he who has been unwilling to see God' — namely, because in that way the impious man does not wish to see God, in that he does not wish to cleanse the heart by which he could be seen — he went on, added, and said: 'God is not seen in a place, but by a pure heart; nor is God sought with bodily eyes, nor circumscribed by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by gait.' By which words blessed Ambrose wished to admonish what men who wish to see God ought to prepare — that is, to cleanse the heart by faith, which worketh by love, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, of whom we have received a pledge, whereby we may learn to desire that vision.
Now concerning the members of God, which Scripture continually mentions, lest anyone should believe us to be like God according to the form and figure of this flesh, on that account the same Scripture said that God has wings also, which we certainly do not have. Therefore, just as, when we hear of wings, we understand protection, so also, when we hear of hands, we ought to understand operation; and when we hear of feet, presence; and when we hear of eyes, the vision by which he knows; and when we hear of a face, the recognition by which he is made known. And if the same Scripture mentions anything else of the kind, I think it is to be understood spiritually — nor I only, nor I the first, but all who by whatever spiritual understanding resist those who on this account are named Anthropomorphites.
Lest, by recalling many things from their writings, I make greater delays, I insert this one saying of holy Jerome, so that this brother may know that he ought not to deal with me on this matter more than with those before me, if anything moves him against it. When, therefore, that man most learned in the Scriptures was expounding the psalm where it is said: 'Understand, therefore, ye that are unwise among the people; and ye fools, be at length wise. He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? or he that formed the eye, doth he not consider?' — among other things he says: 'This passage makes most of all against those who are Anthropomorphites, who say that God has members such as we too have. For instance, God is said to have eyes: The eyes of the Lord behold all things; the hand of the Lord doeth all things;
and, it says, Adam heard the sound of the feet of the Lord walking in paradise. These things they hear simplistically, and refer human weaknesses to the majesty of God. But I say that God is wholly eye, wholly hand, wholly foot. He is wholly eye, because he sees all things; wholly hand, because he works all things; wholly foot, because he is everywhere. See, therefore, what it says: He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? And it did not say: He that planted, therefore he himself has not an ear; it did not say: Therefore he himself has not eyes; but what did it say? He that planted the ear, shall he not hear? He that formed the eye, doth he not consider? It took away the members, it gave the efficacies.'
All these things from the writings of those, both Latins and Greeks, who, living before us in the Catholic Church, treated of the divine oracles, I have judged ought to be recalled, so that this brother may know that, if he holds anything otherwise than these men, with the bitterness of dissension laid aside and the sweetness of fraternal charity restored intact and preserved, it must be sought or learned or taught with diligent and tranquil consideration.
For neither ought we to hold the disputations of any men whatsoever — however Catholic and praiseworthy — as though they were the canonical Scriptures, so that it should not be lawful for us, with the honour that is due to those men preserved, to disapprove and reject something in their writings, if perchance we find that they thought otherwise than the truth has it — understood, by divine help, either by others or by us. Such am I in the writings of others; such do I wish the readers of my own to be.