Letters 147.16–147.33

For what the Lord said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” can, when considered a little more attentively, be seen not to be contrary to what he said: “No one has ever seen God.” For he did not say, “Because you have seen me, you have seen the Father”; but by saying, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” he wished to show the unity of substance of the Father and the Son, so that they should not be thought unlike each other in anything. And so, since it was truly said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” surely, since no one of men has ever seen God, no one is to be thought to have seen either the Father or the Son, insofar as the Son is God and one God with the Father; for insofar as he is man, he was certainly seen on earth and lived among men.

But it is a great question how it is not contradictory that so many of the ancients saw God, if no one has ever seen God, whom no one of men has seen or can see. You see how difficult a question you have put to me, on which you wanted me to write something long and full, on the occasion of a short letter of mine which seemed to you to need a more careful and ample explanation. Will you, then, attend meanwhile to what I have found in other distinguished commentators on the divine Scriptures as to what they thought about the vision of God, in case it should satisfy your desire, although perhaps you know it already? Attend, then, if you please, to these few things. When blessed Ambrose, bishop of Milan, expounding the Gospel, came to the place where an angel appeared in the temple to Zechariah the priest, see how much and what kind of things he discussed on this occasion about the vision of God as well.

“Not without reason,” he says, “is the angel seen in the temple, because the coming of the true priest was now being announced and the heavenly sacrifice was being prepared, at which angels would minister. And he is well said to have appeared to one who saw him suddenly. Divine Scripture is accustomed to keep this usage especially of angels or of God, that what cannot be foreseen is said to appear. For thus you have: ‘God appeared to Abraham at the oak of Mamre’; for one who is not perceived beforehand but is seen by a sudden sight is said to appear. For sensible things are not seen in the same way as he in whose will it lies to be seen, and whose nature it is not to be seen, but whose will it is to be seen. For if he does not will it, he is not seen; if he wills it, he is seen. For God appeared to Abraham because he willed to; to others, because he did not will to, he did not appear. Stephen also, when he was being stoned by the people, saw heaven opened; Jesus too was seen standing at the right hand of God, and he was not seen by the people. Isaiah saw the Lord of hosts, but another could not see him, because he appeared to whom he pleased. And why do we speak of men, when even of the heavenly virtues and powers themselves we have read that ‘No one has ever seen God’? And he added what is beyond the heavenly powers: ‘The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.’ Either, then, it must be accepted, if no one has ever seen God the Father, that the Son was seen in the Old Testament, and let the heretics stop giving a beginning from the virgin to him who was seen before he was born of the virgin; or at least it cannot be refuted that the Father, or the Son, or certainly the Holy Spirit, if there is indeed a vision of the Holy Spirit, is seen in that form which the will has chosen, not which nature has formed; since we have learned that the Spirit too was seen in a dove. And so no one has ever seen God, because no one has beheld that fullness of the Godhead that dwells in God, no one has grasped it with mind or eyes; for ‘seen’ must be referred to both. Then, when it is added, ‘The only-begotten Son, he has declared him,’ a vision of minds rather than of eyes is set forth. For a form is seen, but a power is declared; the one is grasped by the eyes, the other by the mind. But what shall I say of the Trinity? A seraph appeared when he willed, and Isaiah alone heard his voice. An angel appeared, and he is present even now, but he is not seen. For it is not in our power to see, but in his power to appear. Yet, even if we have no power of seeing, there is the grace of deserving, so that we may be able to see. And so he who had grace merited the abundance; we do not merit the abundance, because we do not have the grace of seeing God. And what wonder if in the present age the Lord is not seen except when he wills? In the resurrection itself, too, it is not easy to see God except for those who are pure in heart; and so: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ How many had he already numbered as blessed, and yet he had not promised them the ability to see God! If, then, those who are pure in heart will see God, others certainly will not see him; for neither will the unworthy see God, nor can he who has not wished to see God see God. Nor is God seen in a place, but by a pure heart; nor is God sought with bodily eyes, nor bounded by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by his gait; and when he is thought absent, he is seen, and when he is present, he is not seen. Then, not all the apostles saw Christ, and so he says: ‘Have I been with you so long, and you have not yet known me?’ For whoever has known what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, has seen both Christ and the Father. For we no longer know Christ according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For the Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord, who in his mercy may deign to fill us with all the fullness of God, so that he may be seen by us.”

If you understand these words, what remains to be asked further of me, since the question that seemed difficult has already been solved? For it has been distinguished how it was said, “No one has ever seen God,” and how the righteous of old saw God: the former was said because God is by nature invisible, while those who saw God saw him because he appears to whom he wills, as he wills, in the form that his will has chosen, while his nature remains hidden. For if, when the fathers saw God, his very nature appeared to them (although, if he had not willed it, it certainly would not have appeared), how has no one ever seen God, when by his will his very nature was beheld by so many fathers? But if it is said that the Son was seen by the fathers, so that “no one has ever seen him” is understood as said of God the Father, Ambrose did not indeed miss the opportunity to refute from this certain heretics, namely the Photinians, who ascribe to the Son of God a beginning from the virgin’s womb and will not believe that he existed before. But because he saw others, namely the Arians, lying in wait more dangerously, whose error would without doubt be supported if the Father’s nature were believed invisible and the Son’s visible, he asserted that the nature of both is one and equally invisible, adding also that of the Holy Spirit. This he conveyed briefly but admirably where he went on to say: “Or at least it cannot be refuted that the Father, or the Son, or certainly the Holy Spirit, if there is indeed a vision of the Holy Spirit, is seen in that form which the will has chosen, not which nature has formed.” He could have said “not which nature has shown,” but he preferred to say “has formed,” so that God should not be thought to form from his own nature the very form in which he chose to appear, and from this be convicted of being a changeable and mutable substance: a thought which may God himself, merciful and kind, turn away from the faith of the godly!

God, then, is by nature invisible, not only the Father but the Trinity itself, one God; and because he is not only invisible but also unchangeable, he appears to whom he wills in the form he wills in such a way that his invisible and unchangeable nature remains entire in him. But the desire of the truly godly, by which they long to see God and burn with eager yearning, does not, I think, burn to behold that form in which he appears as he wills, which he himself is not, but that substance by which he is what he is. For holy Moses, his faithful servant, showed the flame of this desire of his when he said to God, with whom he spoke face to face as a friend: “If I have found grace before you, show me yourself.” What then? Was that not he himself? If it were not he himself, he would not say to him, “Show me yourself,” but “Show me God”; and yet, if he were beholding his nature and substance, he would much less say, “Show me yourself.” He himself, then, was in that form in which he had willed to appear, but he did not appear himself in his own nature, which Moses longed to see; for that is promised to the saints in another life. Hence what was answered to Moses is true: that no one can see the face of God and live, that is, no one living in this life can see him as he is. For many have seen, but what the will chose, not what nature formed. And what John says, if rightly understood: “Beloved, we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be; we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is”: not as men saw him when he willed, in the form he willed, not in the nature in which he lay hidden in himself even when he was seen, but as he is, which is what was asked of him when he was told, “Show me yourself,” by the one who spoke with him face to face; not that anyone has ever grasped the fullness of God, not only with the eyes of the body but even with the mind itself.

For it is one thing to see, another to grasp the whole by seeing. Something is seen when it is perceived as present in any way at all; but the whole is grasped by seeing when it is so seen that nothing of it is hidden from the one seeing, or when its boundaries can be surveyed: as nothing of your present will is hidden from you, while you can survey the boundaries of your ring. I have given two examples, one of which belongs to the gaze of the mind and the other to the bodily eyes; for sight, as he says, must be referred to both, that is, to the eyes and to the mind.

Further, if no one has ever seen God because, as the writer whose words we are considering says, “no one has beheld the fullness of his Godhead, no one has grasped it with mind or eyes; for ‘seen’ must be referred to both,” it remains to inquire how the angels see God, because of what I quoted from the Gospel: “Their angels always see the face of my Father.” For if he appears to them too not as he is, but in the form he wills while his nature is hidden, it must be asked all the more how we shall see him as he is, and as Moses desired when he asked that God, who was in his sight, should show him himself. For this is promised to us as the highest reward in the resurrection, that we shall be equal to the angels of God; and so, if even they do not see him as he is, how are we going to see him so when we have been made equal to them in the resurrection? But see what our Ambrose says next: “Then,” he says, “when it is added, ‘The only-begotten Son, he has declared him,’ a vision of minds rather than of eyes is set forth. For a form is seen, but a power is declared; the one is grasped by the eyes, the other by the mind.” He who had said a little before that vision must be referred to both now assigned it not to the mind but to the eyes; not, I think, from carelessness about his own words, but because in speaking we more commonly attribute vision to the eyes, as form to the body. For common usage applies this word more often to things contained in places and varied by colors. But if there were no form to be beheld by the mind, it would not be said, “He is beautiful in form above the sons of men”; for this was not said according to the flesh rather than according to a spiritual form. Form, then, is also spoken of as belonging to the gaze of the mind; but because it is more commonly said of bodies or of likenesses of bodies, he therefore said: “A form is seen, but a power is declared; the one is grasped by the eyes, the other by the mind.” Accordingly, as the only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, declares him by an ineffable declaration, the rational creature, pure and holy, is filled with the ineffable vision of God, which we shall attain when we have been made equal to the angels. For no one has ever seen God in the way these visible things known to the bodily senses are seen; since, if he was ever seen in that way, he was not seen as such a nature is seen, but by his will, appearing in the form he willed, while his nature was hidden and remained unchangeably in itself. But in the way in which he is seen as he is, he is now perhaps seen by some angels, and by us he will be seen so then, when we have been made equal to them.

Then, having added that not even the powers of heaven, such as the seraphim, are seen except when they will and as they will, so that from this one might infer how great is the invisibility of the Trinity, he says: “Yet, even if we have no power of seeing, there is the grace of deserving, so that we may be able to see. And so he who had grace merited the abundance; we do not merit the abundance, because we do not have the grace of seeing God.” By these words he, who teaches not his own ideas but expounds the Gospel, did not wish it to be understood that some of those to whom, when they believed, he gave power to become children of God will see God and some will not, since what was said, “We shall see him as he is,” applies to them all. But by saying, “We do not merit the abundance, because we do not have the grace of seeing God,” he indicated that he was speaking of this age, in which God, though not in his own nature but in the form he willed, deigned to appear to some, as to Abraham, as to Isaiah, and to others like them; but to the rest, countless though they are and belonging to his people and eternal inheritance, he shows himself in no such form. But in the age to come, those who are to receive the kingdom prepared for them from the beginning will all see him with a pure heart, and there will be none but such in that kingdom.

Notice, then, what he adds, beginning now to speak of that age: “And what wonder,” he says, “if in the present age the Lord is not seen except when he wills? In the resurrection itself, too, it is not easy to see God except for those who are pure in heart; and so: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’ How many had he already numbered as blessed, and yet he had not promised them the ability to see God! If, then, those who are pure in heart will see God, others certainly will not see him; for neither will the unworthy see God, nor can he who has not wished to see God see God.” You see how circumspectly he speaks now of those who will see God in the age to come: not all, but those who are worthy. For both the worthy and the unworthy of that kingdom where God will be seen will rise again, since all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, but with a great difference: those who have done good, to the resurrection of life; those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment. Here judgment means eternal punishment, as was also said: “He who does not believe is judged already.”

When, therefore, holy Ambrose says, “nor can he who has not wished to see God see God,” what else did he mean to be understood but that he who will not spend on cleansing his heart the care that so great a thing deserves does not wish to see God? See, accordingly, what he adds: “Nor is God seen in a place,” he says, “but by a pure heart.” What could have been said more clearly, more expressly? From this vision, then, the devil and his angels and all the wicked with them are excluded without any cloud of doubt, since they are not pure in heart. And so, from what is written in the book of Job, that the angels came into the sight of God and the devil came with them, it is not to be believed on that account that the devil saw God. For they are said to have come into the sight of God, not God into their sight. And those things come into our sight which we see, not those by which we are seen. They came, then, as is read in many manuscripts, to stand before the Lord, not that God should stand before them. Nor is there need to dwell on this passage, to try as far as we can to show how this too happens in time, when all things are always in God’s sight.

For the question now is how God is seen, not in that form in which he willed to appear to some even in this age, when he spoke not only with Abraham and other righteous men but even with Cain the fratricide, but how he is seen in that kingdom where his children will see him as he is. For then their desire will be satisfied with good things, the desire with which Moses burned, for whom speaking to God face to face was not enough, and who said: “Show me yourself openly, that I may see you”; as if he were saying what is sung in the psalm from the same desire: “I shall be satisfied when your glory is made manifest.” With this desire Philip too was on fire, and longed to be satisfied in this way, saying: “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Speaking of this vision, Ambrose, himself a lover and longer for it, says: “Nor is God seen in a place” (as at the oak of Mamre, as on Mount Sinai) “but by a pure heart”; and he goes on, knowing what he desires, what he yearns for, and what he hopes: “Nor is God sought,” he says, “with bodily eyes” (with which he showed himself to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others in this age), “nor bounded by sight” (because of what was said, “You shall see my back”), “nor held by touch” (as when he wrestled with Jacob), “nor heard by speech” (as he was heard not only by so many saints but even by the devil), “nor perceived by his gait” (as once, when he walked in paradise in the evening).

You see how this holy man strives to call our minds away from all the senses of the flesh, to make them fit to see God. And yet what does such a planter and waterer from outside accomplish, unless God, who gives the growth, works within? For who, without the help of the Spirit of God, could conceive that there is something, and something that is more than all things perceived through the body, which is not seen in a place, nor to be sought with the eyes, nor heard by speech, nor held by touch, nor perceived by gait, and yet is seen, but by a pure heart? For he was not speaking of this life when he said this, since he distinguished clearly enough from this age, in which God has appeared not as he is but in the form he willed to whom he willed, the life of the age to come, by a very plain distinction, where he says: “And what wonder if in the present age the Lord is not seen except when he wills? In the resurrection itself, too, it is not easy to see God except for those who are pure in heart; and so: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’” From here he began to speak of that age, where God will be seen not by all who rise again, but by those who rise to eternal life; not by the unworthy, of whom it was said, “Let the wicked be taken away, that he may not see the glory of the Lord,” but by the worthy, of whom the Lord himself said, when he was present and not seen: “He who loves me keeps my commandments,” and, “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and show myself to him”; not by those to whom it will be said, “Go into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels,” but by those to whom it will be said, “Come, blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” For the former will go into eternal burning, but the righteous into eternal life. And what is eternal life, but what the Life itself says elsewhere: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”; but in the way he promised to show himself to those who love him, as one God with the Father, not in the way he was seen in the body in this age by the good and the wicked?

For at the future judgment too, when he will come in the same way as he was seen going into heaven, that is, in the same form of the Son of Man, that same form will be seen by those to whom he will say, “I was hungry and you did not give me to eat,” since even the Jews will look on him whom they pierced; not that form of God in which he did not think it robbery to be equal with God. In that form of God those will see him then who will see him as he is. And they will see him not because in this life they were poor in spirit, because meek, because mourning, because hungering and thirsting for righteousness, because merciful, because peacemakers, because they suffered persecution for righteousness’ sake (although the same people are all these), but because they are pure in heart. That is why among those beatitudes, though those who have a pure heart do all these things, “they shall see God” is placed nowhere except where it was said, “Blessed are the pure in heart”; for he will be seen by a pure heart who is not seen in a place, nor sought with bodily eyes, nor bounded by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by gait. For no one has ever seen God, either in this life as he himself is, or even in the life of the angels as these visible things are seen that are perceived by bodily vision; because the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him. Hence what he declares is said to belong not to the vision of bodily eyes but to that of minds.

But again, so that our desire might not move from one bodily sense to another bodily sense, that is, from the eyes to the ears, after he had said, “Nor is God sought with bodily eyes, nor bounded by sight, nor held by touch,” he added, “nor heard by speech,” so that, if we can, we may understand the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, as declaring him in the way that he is also the Word: not a sound striking the ears but an image making itself known to minds, so that there, in an inner and ineffable light, what was said may shine clear, “He who has seen me has seen the Father,” which was said here to Philip when he both saw and did not see. For Ambrose, that eminent lover of this vision, goes on to say: “And when he is thought absent, he is seen, and when he is present, he is not seen.” He did not say “when he is absent” but “when he is thought absent”; for he is never absent who fills heaven and earth, and is neither enclosed in small spaces nor spread out in large ones, but is everywhere whole and contained in no place. Whoever understands this with a mind rising above itself sees God, even when he is thought absent; but whoever cannot, let him pray and act so that he may deserve to be able, and let him not knock at the door of a human disputant so as to read what he has not read, but at that of God the Savior, so that he may be able to do what he cannot. And why he said, “And when he is present, he is not seen,” he went on to explain, saying: “Then, not all the apostles saw Christ, and so he says: ‘Have I been with you so long, and you have not yet known me?’” See how God was present and was not seen.

But why did he not dare to say, “Then, the apostles did not see Christ,” but said, “not all the apostles,” as if some then saw him with that vision in which he and the Father are one? Perhaps he had in mind that, when Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” he received the reply: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” Yet whether that revelation was made in his mind by faith in so great a thing believed, or by the vision of a thing beheld, does not seem clear to me, since Peter himself still showed himself so little a child that he feared to lose in death the one whom he had confessed a little before to be the Son of the living God, that is, the fountain of life.

Next, it may be asked how the very substance of God could already be seen by some still placed in this life, because of what was said to Moses: “No one can see my face and live”; unless it is because the human mind can be divinely caught up from this life to the angelic life before it is released from the flesh by this common death. For so was he caught up who heard there unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter, where his attention was so far turned away from the senses of this life that he said he did not know whether he was in the body or out of the body: that is, whether, as usually happens in more intense ecstasy, the mind was carried away from this life into that life while the bond of the body remained, or whether there was a complete release, such as happens in full death. Thus it comes about both that what was said is true, “No one can see my face and live,” because the mind must be withdrawn from this life when it is taken up into the ineffability of that vision; and that it is not incredible that even this excellence of revelation was granted to some saints who had not yet died in such a way that corpses remained to be buried. I think he had this in mind who would not say, “the apostles did not see Christ,” but said, “not all the apostles saw Christ,” believing that to some of them the vision of the Godhead itself, of which he was speaking, could have been given even then; certainly because of blessed Paul, since he too, though the last, was certainly an apostle, and he did not keep silent about that ineffable revelation of his.

And yet it would be surprising if to Moses too, that faithful servant of God of old, who was still to labor on this earth and still to rule that people, it was not granted, as he asked, to see the glory of the Lord, to whom he had said: “If I have found grace before you, show me yourself openly.” For he received at the time a fitting answer, that he could not see God’s face, which no one could see and live; God thus indicating that this vision belongs to another, better life. Then in God’s words the mystery of the future Church of Christ was figured. For Moses bore the type of the Jewish people who were later to believe in Christ after his passion; that is why he was told, “When I have passed by, you shall see my back,” and the rest that is said there, a wonderful sacrament foretelling the Church that was to be, which it would take long to discuss now. But what I had set out to say, that in response to his desire even what he had asked was granted, is shown later in the book of Numbers, where the Lord rebukes the insolence of his sister and says that to other prophets he appears in a vision and in sleep, but to Moses in clear form and not in riddles, adding: “And he saw the glory of the Lord.” What, then, made him such an exception, unless perhaps that God already then held such a ruler of his people, faithful as a servant in all his house, worthy of that contemplation, so that he saw God as he is, as he had desired, the contemplation that is promised to all his children at the end?

Considering these things, I believe, that holy man whose words we are treating said, “not all the apostles saw Christ,” since perhaps some of them had seen him even at that time, in the way I have described. And to prove what he said, that not all saw him, he added at once: “And so he says: ‘Have I been with you so long, and you have not yet known me?’” Then, adding by whom God is seen in that contemplation as he is, he says: “For whoever has known what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, has seen both Christ and the Father.”