And at that very coming of His, which we read of in the Acts of the Apostles, fire appeared through a division of tongues, which also settled upon each one of them — which agrees with Exodus, where it is written: 'Now the whole of Mount Sinai was smoking, because God had descended upon it in fire,' and somewhat after: 'The appearance,' it says, 'of the majesty of the Lord was like burning fire upon the summit of the mountain before the children of Israel.' Or if these things were done for this reason, that neither the Father nor the Son could there be presented in that manner without the Holy Spirit, by whom that very law had to be written, then we know indeed that God appeared there not through His own substance, which remains invisible and unchangeable, but through that appearance of the creature.
But some one person of the Trinity, by some proper sign, so far as pertains to the capacity of my understanding, we do not see. [XVI 27] There is also that whereby many are wont to be moved, because it is written: 'And the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as one speaks to his friend'; while a little after the same Moses says: 'If therefore I have found grace before thee, show me thyself manifestly, that I may see thee, that I may be finding grace before thee, and that I may know that this nation is thy people'; and a little after again: 'And Moses said to the Lord: Show me thy majesty.'
What is this, that in all the things which were done above, God was thought to be seen through His own substance — whence He was believed by wretched men to be, not through a creature but through Himself, the visible Son of God — and that Moses' having entered into the mist seemed to be for this purpose, that to the eyes of the people indeed the misty darkness might be shown, but that he within might contemplate and hear the words of God as though His face? And how was it said: 'The Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as one speaks to his friend'? Behold, the same man says: 'If I have found grace in thy sight, show me thyself manifestly.' He knew therefore what he saw bodily, and he sought spiritually the true vision of God.
For that speaking which took place in voices was so modulated as if it were that of a friend speaking to a friend. But God the Father — who sees Him with bodily eyes? And that Word which 'was in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,' through which all things were made — who sees it with bodily eyes? And the Spirit of Wisdom — who sees it with bodily eyes? What then is: 'Show me thyself manifestly, that I may see thee,' but 'Show me thy substance'? But if Moses had not said this, the fools who think that through those things which were done or said above the substance of God was visible to his eyes, would somehow have to be borne with;
but since here it is most openly shown that this was not granted even to one who desired it, who would dare to say that through those like forms, which had appeared visibly to this man too, not a creature serving God but that very thing which God is appeared to the eyes of any mortal? And here indeed there is what the Lord afterward says to Moses: 'Thou canst not see my face and live; for man shall not see my face and live. And the Lord said: Behold, there is a place with me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock as soon as my majesty passes by, and I will place thee in a cleft of the rock. And I will cover thee with my hand over thee until I pass, and I will take away my hand, and then thou shalt see my back parts; for my face shall not appear to thee.'
[XVII] Not unfittingly this is wont to be understood as prefigured from the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, so that His back parts are taken to be His flesh, in which He was born of the Virgin and died and rose again — whether they are called 'back parts' on account of the lastness of mortality, or because He deigned to assume it near the end of the age, that is, later. But His face is that form of God, in which He counted it not robbery to be equal with God the Father, which indeed no one can see and live; or because after this life, in which we are pilgrims away from the Lord, and where the body which is corrupted weighs down the soul, we shall see face to face, as the Apostle says. For of this life it is said in the Psalms:
'Verily every man living is altogether vanity,' and again: 'For in thy sight shall no living man be justified.' In which life, according to John also, it has not yet appeared what we shall be. 'We know,' he says, 'that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is' — which surely he wished to be understood as after this life, when we shall have paid the debt of death and received the promise of resurrection. Or because even now, in so far as we spiritually understand the Wisdom of God through which all things were made, in so far we die to carnal affections, so that, accounting this world dead to us, we ourselves also die to this world and say what the Apostle says: 'The world is crucified to me, and I to the world.'
For of this death he likewise says: 'But if ye are dead with Christ, why do ye yet, as though living, decree concerning this world?' — Not therefore undeservedly will no one be able to see the face, that is, the very manifestation of the Wisdom of God, and live. For this is the very appearance for the contemplating of which everyone sighs who longs to love God with his whole heart and with his whole soul and with his whole mind; toward the contemplating of which he also, as far as he can, edifies his neighbour who loves his neighbour too as himself — on which two precepts hang the whole law and the prophets. Which is signified also in Moses himself. For when he had said, on account of the love of God with which he especially burned:
'If I have found grace in thy sight, show me thyself manifestly, that I may be finding grace before thee,' immediately, on account of the love of neighbour also, he subjoined and said: 'And that I may know that this nation is thy people.' That, then, is the appearance which ravishes every rational soul with desire of itself, the more ardently the purer it is, and the purer the more it rises to spiritual things, and the more it rises to spiritual things the more it dies to carnal things.
But while we are pilgrims away from the Lord and walk by faith, not by sight, we ought to see the back parts of Christ, that is, His flesh, through that very faith — that is, standing on the solid foundation of faith, which the rock signifies, and beholding it from such a most safe watchtower, namely in the catholic Church, of which it was said: 'And upon this rock I will build my Church.' For so much the more surely do we love the face of Christ, which we desire to see, as in His back parts we recognize how much Christ first loved us. But in the flesh itself the faith of His resurrection saves us and justifies us. 'For if thou shalt believe,' it says, 'in thy heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved'; and again:
'He was delivered up,' it says, 'for our offences, and rose again for our justification.' And therefore the merit of our faith is the resurrection of the Lord's body. For that that flesh died on the cross of the passion, even His enemies believe; but that it rose again, they do not believe. This, believing most firmly, we behold as from the solidity of the rock, whence with sure hope we await adoption, the redemption of our body; because we hope this in the members of Christ, which we ourselves are, which we know to be perfected in Him, as in our Head, by the soundness of faith. Hence He wills His back parts to be seen only when He has passed by, that His resurrection may be believed. For Pascha is a Hebrew word which we interpret 'passing over.'
Whence also John the Evangelist says: 'Now before the feast day of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour was come that He should pass out of this world to the Father.' But those who believe this, yet believe it not in the catholic Church but in some schism or in heresy, do not see the back parts of the Lord from the place which is with Him. For what does the Lord mean when He says: 'Behold, there is a place with me, and he shall stand upon the rock'? What earthly place is with the Lord, unless that which touches Him spiritually is with Him? For what place is not with the Lord, who 'reacheth from end to end mightily and ordereth all things sweetly,' and of whom it is said, 'Heaven is His seat and earth His footstool,' and who said: 'What house will ye build me?'
'Or what is the place of my rest? Hath not my hand made all these things?' But evidently the place with Him, in which one stands upon the rock, is understood to be the catholic Church herself, where one healthfully sees the Passover of the Lord, that is, the passing over of the Lord, and His back parts, that is, His body — whoever believes in His resurrection. 'And he shall stand,' it says, 'upon the rock as soon as my majesty passes by.' For in very truth, as soon as the majesty of the Lord passed by, in the glorification of the Lord by which, rising again, He ascended to the Father, we were made solid upon the rock.
And Peter himself was then made solid, so that with confidence he might preach Him whom, before he was made solid, he had thrice denied out of fear — being indeed already by predestination placed on the watchtower of the rock, but with the Lord's hand still set over him lest he should see. For he was to see His back parts, and He had not yet passed over, nor lived from death to life; He was not yet glorified by the resurrection. For what follows too in Exodus, He says: 'I will cover thee with my hand over thee until I pass, and I will take away my hand, and then thou shalt see my back parts.' Many Israelites, whose figure Moses then was, after the Lord's resurrection believed in Him as though now seeing His back parts, His hand having been removed from their eyes. Whence also the Evangelist recalls such a prophecy of Isaiah:
'Make gross the heart of this people, and stop up their ears, and make heavy their eyes.' Finally, in the Psalm it is not absurdly understood to be said from their person: 'For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me' — by day perhaps, when He worked manifest miracles and yet was not recognized by them; but by night, when in the passion He was dying, when they more certainly supposed Him, like any man whatever, to have been slain and extinguished. But since, when He had passed over so that His back parts might be seen, the Apostle Peter preaching to them that Christ must suffer and rise again, they were pricked with the sorrow of penitence, so that there might come to pass in the baptized what is said at the head of that Psalm: 'Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered.' Therefore, when it had been said:
'Thy hand was heavy upon me' — as though when the Lord passed by so as now to remove His hand and His back parts might be seen — there follows the voice of one sorrowing and confessing, and receiving from faith in the Lord's resurrection the remission of sins: 'I was turned,' he says, 'in my anguish, while the thorn was fastened in. I acknowledged my sin, and my injustice I did not cover. I said: I will pronounce against myself my injustice to the Lord, and thou didst forgive the impiety of my heart.' For we ought not to be so wrapped in the cloud of the flesh as to suppose that the face indeed of the Lord is invisible, but His back visible — since in the form of a servant both appeared visibly; but in the form of God, far be it that any such thing should be thought.
Far be it that the Word of God and the Wisdom of God should have on one side a face, on the other a back, like a human body, or be changed at all by any appearance or motion, whether by place or by time. Wherefore, if in those voices which were made in Exodus, and in all those bodily demonstrations, the Lord Jesus Christ was shown — either at times Christ, as the consideration of this passage persuades, at times the Holy Spirit, as those things which we have said above admonish — this does not bring it about that God the Father was never seen by the fathers in any such appearance.
For many such visions were wrought in those times, without any explicit naming or designation therein of either Father or Son or Holy Spirit, yet through certain highly probable indications, since some tokens were present, so that it would be exceedingly rash to say that God the Father never appeared to the patriarchs or prophets through any visible forms. For this opinion has been begotten by those who could not understand within the unity of the Trinity what is said: 'Now to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God,' and: 'Whom no man hath seen, nor can see' — which is understood by a sound faith of the very substance, supreme and supremely divine and unchangeable, wherein both Father and Son and Holy Spirit are one and the only God.
But those visions were made through a changeable creature subject to the unchangeable God, showing God not properly as He is, but figuratively, as befitted the causes and seasons of things. Yet I do not know how these men understand what appeared to Daniel: the Ancient of Days, from whom the Son of Man — who for our sake deigned to be such — is understood to have received the kingdom; namely from Him who says to Him in the Psalms: 'Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee; ask of me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance,' and who 'hath put all things under his feet.'
If, then, both the Father giving the kingdom and the Son receiving it appeared to Daniel in bodily form, how do these men say that the Father was never seen by the prophets and therefore alone ought to be understood as invisible, whom no man hath seen nor can see? For thus Daniel related: 'I beheld,' he says, 'till the thrones were set, and the Ancient of Days did sit. And his garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was a flame of fire, its wheels a burning fire, and a stream of fire drew forth before his sight. Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. And the judgment was set, and the books were opened,' and the rest. And a little after: 'I beheld,' he says, 'in the vision of the night;'
'and behold, one like the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came even to the Ancient of Days, and was brought near before him. And there was given him dominion and honour and a kingdom; and all peoples, tribes, and tongues shall serve him. His power is an everlasting power, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.' Behold the Father giving and the Son receiving an everlasting kingdom, and both are in the sight of the prophet under a visible form. Not unfittingly, therefore, is it also believed that God the Father is wont to appear to mortals in this manner. Unless perchance someone should say that the Father is on that account not visible, because He appeared in the sight of one dreaming, whereas the Son is visible and the Holy Spirit, because Moses beheld all those things while awake.
As if indeed Moses beheld the Word and Wisdom of God with carnal eyes, or as if a spirit can be seen — whether the human spirit which quickens this flesh, or that bodily thing itself which is called wind — how much less that Spirit of God who surpasses the minds of all men and angels by the ineffable excellence of the divine substance; or as if anyone should be cast headlong into such error as to dare to say that the Son and the Holy Spirit are visible even to waking men, but the Father only to those who dream. How, then, do they take of the Father alone: 'Whom no man hath seen nor can see'? Or when men sleep, are they then not men?
Or is He who can form a likeness of a body to signify Himself through the visions of dreamers unable to form the very bodily creature itself to signify Himself to the eyes of the waking, seeing that His very substance, whereby He is that which He is, can be shown by no likeness of a body to the sleeper, by no bodily form to the one awake — and this not only of the Father, but also of the Son and the Holy Spirit?
And certainly, as for those who are moved by the visions of the waking to believe that not the Father but only the Son or the Holy Spirit appeared to the bodily sight of men — to pass over the great breadth of the holy pages and their manifold meaning, from which no one of sound mind ought to affirm that the person of the Father was nowhere shown to the eyes of the waking through some bodily form; but, to pass over this, as I have said — what do they say of our father Abraham, to whom certainly, while he was awake and ministering, when Scripture had first said, 'The Lord appeared to Abraham,' not one nor two but three men appeared, of whom none was said to have towered more loftily than the others, none to have shone more honorably, none to have acted more imperiously?
Wherefore, since in that threefold division of ours we first set out to inquire whether it was the Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit; or sometimes the Father, sometimes the Son, sometimes the Holy Spirit; or without any distinction of persons, as God is called one and only, that is, the Trinity itself — that appeared to the patriarchs through those forms of creation;
having inquired of the passages of the Holy Scriptures what we could, in so far as it seemed sufficient, a modest and cautious consideration of the divine mysteries, as I judge, persuades nothing other than that we should not rashly say which person of the Trinity appeared to any of the patriarchs or prophets in some body or likeness of a body, unless the continuous context of the reading sets around it some probable indications. For that very nature or substance or essence, or by whatever other name that which God is ought to be called — whatever it be — cannot be seen bodily.
But it must be believed that through a subordinate creature, in bodily form or likeness, not only the Son or the Holy Spirit but also the Father was able to give to mortal senses a signification of Himself. Since these things are so, lest the length of this second book proceed too immoderately, let us look at what remains in what follows.