Letters 147.34–147.51

I usually understand these words of the apostle Paul in this way: in the breadth, the good works of love; in the length, perseverance to the end; in the height, the hope of heavenly rewards; in the depth, the unsearchable judgments of God, from which this grace comes to men. I also fit this understanding to the sacrament of the cross: in the breadth is taken the crossbeam on which the hands are stretched out, signifying works; in the length, the part from the crossbeam down to the ground, where the whole crucified body is seen to stand, which signifies persisting, that is, remaining with long-suffering; in the height, the part from the crossbeam upward that rises to the head, signifying the expectation of things above, so that those good works and perseverance in them may not be thought to be done for the sake of God’s earthly and temporal benefits, but rather for the eternal thing above which faith, working through love, hopes for; and in the depth, that part of the wood which is fixed and hidden in the secret of the earth, but from which rises all that stands out, just as by the hidden will of God a man is called to share in so great a grace, one in this way and another in that; and the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, surely that love where there is the peace that surpasses all understanding. But whether that expounder of the Gospel also took this sense from these apostolic words, or perhaps something more fitting, you see, unless I am mistaken, that this too is not contrary to the rule of faith.

But to return to what we are now discussing, namely spiritual contemplation: when he had said, “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,” so that he might not seem to some very slow person to be speaking of bodily vision, he says: “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.” What he says here, “we know,” he said according to the faith that exists now, not according to the contemplation that will exist then; for we also know whatever we hold by faith unfeigned, even if not yet beholding it in clear sight, yet already believing it unshakeably. Then, when he had said that he no longer knew Christ according to the flesh, as the apostle says, and had added the testimony from the prophet, “For the Spirit before our face is Christ the Lord,” he went on at once: “who in his mercy may deign to fill us with all the fullness of God, so that he may be seen by us.” Certainly it is clear that the knowledge he spoke of where he said “we know” he placed in faith, by which the righteous now lives, not in the contemplation by which we shall see God as he is. For this he went on to wish for himself and for us, and showed it to be in the future, by saying, “who in his mercy may deign to fill us with all the fullness of God, so that he may be seen by us.”

Some have understood this fullness of God in the apostle’s words as meaning that we shall become altogether what God is. For the apostle, as you recall, used these words, saying: “To know also the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” “Therefore,” they say, “if we have anything less than God and are lesser in any respect, how shall we be filled with all the fullness of God? But since we shall be filled, we shall surely be equal.” You turn away from this error of the human mind and detest it, I know; you do well. But how this fullness is to be understood, by which it was said that we are to be filled with all the fullness of God, we shall discuss later, God willing, according to the strength he gives.

Now consider carefully, recalling what has been said, whether what you put to me, which seemed difficult to explain, has been explained. If you ask whether God can be seen, I answer: he can. If you ask how I know, I answer: because in the most truthful Scripture we read, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” and other such things. If you ask how 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 he has been seen by very many, not as he is, but in whatever form it pleased him to appear. If you ask how even the wicked Cain saw him, when he was questioned and judged by him about his crime, or even the devil himself, when he came with the angels to stand before him, if the pure in heart are blessed because they shall see God, I answer that it does not follow that those who sometimes hear words made by him also see God; for those did not see him who heard when he said to the Son, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Yet it is not to be wondered at if some even who are not pure in heart see God in a form his will has made, while his invisible nature remains hidden and unchangeable in itself. If you ask whether he can ever be seen as he is, I answer that this has been promised to his children, of whom it was said: “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” If you ask by what means we shall see him, I answer: by that by which the angels see, to whom we shall then be equal. For in the way these things called visible are seen, no one has ever seen God or can see him, since he dwells in unapproachable light and is invisible by nature, as he is incorruptible; and the apostle put these together, saying, “To the King of the ages, invisible, incorruptible”: because, as he is incorruptible now and will not be corruptible later, so he is invisible not only now but always. For he “is not seen in a place, but by a pure heart; nor is he sought with bodily eyes, nor bounded by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by gait.” But the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, declares without sound the nature and substance of the Godhead, and therefore shows it, invisibly too, to eyes worthy and fit for so great a sight. These are the eyes of which the apostle says, “the eyes of your heart enlightened,” and of which it is said, “Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep in death.” For the Lord is the Spirit; hence he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit; accordingly, he who can see God invisibly can cleave to God incorporeally.

I think there is now nothing more for you to ask in the question you proposed. But in this whole discussion of ours consider what you have seen, what you have believed, and what you still do not know, whether because I have not said it, or because you have not understood, or because you have not judged it worthy of belief. And among the things you have seen to be true, distinguish further by what you have seen them: whether by remembering that you saw them through the body, as heavenly or earthly bodies, or whether you have never touched them with bodily sight, but have perceived them to be true and certain by beholding them with the mind alone, like your will, about which I can believe you when you tell me, but which I cannot myself see as it is seen by you. And when you have distinguished both of these, notice also by what you distinguish them. For although we see some things with the body and others with the mind, the distinction itself between these two kinds is seen by the mind, not the body. And the things perceived by the mind need no sense of the body for us to know that they are true; but the things seen through the body cannot be held in any knowledge unless the mind is present to receive such reports. And what it is said, as it were, to receive as reported, it leaves outside; but it commits their images, that is, the incorporeal likenesses of bodies, incorporeally to memory, from which, when it wills and can, it brings them out as from a store and sets them before the gaze of thought, and judges them. And when it is able, it distinguishes these two things as well: what it left outside in bodily form, and what likeness of it it beholds within; and it recognizes the one as absent and the other as present: as, when I am absent, you think of the face of my body, and that image is present to you, while the face of which it is the image is absent; and the face is a body, while the image is an incorporeal likeness of a body.

When you have carefully and confidently examined and distinguished these things that you see, consider what you believe in this whole discourse in which I began to speak to you in this letter. And among the very things to which, unseen, you give your faith, weigh and distinguish the weight of the witnesses. For you do not believe me in the same way as Ambrose, from whose books I have set down those great testimonies; or, if you think both of us are to be believed in equal balance, will you in any way compare us to the Gospel, or make our writings equal to the canonical Scriptures? Surely, if you judge rightly, you see that we stand far below that authority, and I farther; but however much you believe either of us, you in no way compare either to that excellence. Therefore you believe more firmly what is written, “No one has ever seen God,” and, “He dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one of men has seen or can see,” and, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” and whatever else I have quoted from those holy books, than what Ambrose said: “Nor is God 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 such he understood or believed God to be, who is beheld by a pure heart; and I confess that this is my opinion too.

You receive, then, these words in faith in one way, and those divine words in another. For about us there may perhaps remain some scruple in you, lest we understand something in these divine utterances less clearly, and expound them not as they were said but as we suppose. For perhaps you say to yourself: “What if God is seen by a pure heart and yet is seen in a place?” Or: “What if those who are pure in heart will see God even with bodily eyes, when this corruptible has put on incorruption, when we shall be equal to the angels of God?” Perhaps, then, you do not know how far you ought or ought not to believe us, and you take care not to be deceived by believing us more or less than you should; but you do not doubt that the divine Scriptures must be believed even when they are not yet clearly understood. But certainly this weighing of believing or not believing, the difficulty of knowledge, the turmoil of doubt, and the pious faith owed to the divine utterances, you notice in your mind just as they are, and you see them, and you have no doubt at all that they are so in you, whether as I have said or as you yourself know better. You see, then, your faith, you see your doubt, you see your eagerness and will to learn; and though you are moved by divine authority to believe things you do not see, you see without hesitation that you believe them. You sort and distinguish all these things.

Will you, then, in any way compare your bodily eyes with these eyes of your heart, by which you behold all these things to be true and certain and invisibly discern and distinguish them as present to you? For it is not with those same eyes of the flesh but with those inner ones that you judge even about the visible things themselves, which are in a sense irradiated by the beam of the bodily eyes, and about the bodily eyes themselves and their beam, of whatever quality and strength it may be, and how far they stand from invisible things: not from the more excellent ones, to which you owe faith even unseen, but from those I have mentioned, which you do not believe as absent but behold as present to the mind. Since, then, the inner eyes are judges of the outer eyes, while the outer serve the inner in a kind of office of reporting, and the inner see many things the outer do not see, while the outer see nothing on which the inner do not pass judgment as presiding, who would not set the inner above the outer by a value beyond comparison?

This being so, I beg you: when this great business is going on within you, when you distinguish the inner from the outer and set the former ineffably above the latter, and, leaving the latter outside, dwell inwardly in the former and judge them by measuring them by certain incorporeal bounds of their own, do you think you are in no light, or in some light? For my part, I think that things so great and of such a kind, so true, so clear, so certain, cannot be seen there without light. Look, then, at that light itself in which you discern all those things, and see whether any ray of the bodily eyes can reach it. Surely it cannot. Notice also, and answer, whether you see in it any spaces or distances of places. You find nothing of the kind there, I think, if you vigilantly drive from your inmost sight whatever images of bodies the senses of the outer man have brought in. But perhaps it is difficult; for from the habit of carnal life a crowd of phantasms in the likenesses of bodies rushes in even upon those inner eyes. Trying to resist it, at least by divine authority, I cried out in sorrow in that short letter and said: “Let the flesh, drunk with carnal thoughts, hear this: God is spirit.” For by that rebuke I restrained no one’s mind from vanity of this kind more than my own. For we are more easily inclined to what is habitual, and it is congenial to the weakness of the soul to send or let carnal ways of thinking within, not where it may stand firm in health, but where, in a sense, it may lean or lie down in its sickness.

Accordingly, if you cannot clear the gaze of your mind plainly of the cloud, as it were, of bodily likenesses, attend vigilantly to these very likenesses within yourself. Look at heaven and earth in thought, as you are accustomed to discern them with the eyes of the body, and see that those images of heaven and earth which have been brought before the eyes of thought are likenesses of bodies, not bodies. Judge thus against yourself and for yourself, if you cannot drive altogether from the gaze of your mind the imaginary forms of bodily qualities; and refute yourself by the very thing that defeats you. For there is no one, I think, so given over even to such imaginings as to believe that the sun, moon, stars, rivers, seas, mountains, hills, cities, even the walls of his house or of his bedroom, and whatever of that kind he has come to know and holds through the eyes of the body, are in his memory, or in the very view of his thought, in such a way that they stand or move in spaces and distances of places. Further, if those things in our mind which are most like bodies and places are nevertheless not contained in spaces and bounds of places, nor stored in our memory by local distances, how much more do those things that bear no likeness to bodies (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control) occupy no spaces of places, are separated by no gap, nor do the eyes of the heart look for any distances across which to send their rays and see them! Are they not all in one without narrowness, and known within their own limits without any circuit of regions? Or tell me, in what place do you see love, which is nevertheless known to you just so far as you can behold it with the gaze of the mind? You do not know it to be great because you have surveyed some huge mass by looking at it; nor, when it speaks to you within so that you may live according to it, does it make any sound; nor, to discern it, do you raise the light of your bodily eyes; nor, to hold it firmly, do you prepare the strength of your bodily arms; nor, when it comes into your mind, do you perceive its gait.

See, even love, however small it is in our will and visible to us, “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.” How much more God himself, of whom this is the pledge in us! For if our inner man, however small an image of him, not begotten of him but created by him, though still being renewed from day to day, already dwells in such a light that no sense of the bodily eyes reaches it; if the things we behold with the eyes of the heart in that light are both distinguished from one another and separated by no spaces of places; how much more God, who dwells in light unapproachable to the bodily senses, to which there can be no approach except by a pure heart! When, therefore, we have set this light above all bodily light, not only by the judgment of reason but also by the longing of love, the more strongly we do this, the better we shall be, until all the sicknesses of our soul are healed by him who is gracious to all our iniquities. For in that more living life, made spiritual, we shall be able to judge all things and ourselves be judged by no one. But the natural man does not perceive the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.

But if we cannot yet prefer the light that judges to the light that is judged, prefer the life that understands to the life that only perceives by sense, prefer a nature that has not one thing here and another there but everything it has together in one, as our very understanding is, to a nature made of parts, so that a half is less than the whole, as every body is, then we are discussing such great matters to no purpose. But if we can do this already, let us believe that God is something better than our understanding, so that his peace, which surpasses all understanding, may guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus. For that peace which surpasses all understanding is certainly not less than our understanding, so that, while our understanding is invisible to bodily eyes, that peace should be thought visible. Or is the peace of God one thing and the splendor of God another, when the only-begotten Son is both? And is not his love too, which surpasses knowledge, by the knowledge of which we shall be filled with all the fullness of God, not inferior to the light of our mind, which is given by its enlightening? Further, if this light is inaccessible to the eyes of the flesh, how much more that which surpasses it beyond comparison! And so, since something of ours is visible, like this body, and something invisible, like the inner man, and since the best part of us, that is, mind and understanding, is invisible to the eyes of the body, how will what is better than our best be visible to our lower part?

I think that, having considered all these things, you now grant that it was rightly said that “God is not seen in a place, but by a pure heart; nor is he sought with bodily eyes, nor bounded by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by gait.” And if in these matters we understand anything less well or think otherwise, God will reveal that also to us, if we walk in what we have attained. And we have attained this: to believe that God is not a body but spirit. We have attained also to believe that no one has ever seen God; that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all; that with him there is no change nor shadow of a moment; that he dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one of men has seen or can see; that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one God without any difference or separation of nature; that the pure in heart will see him; that we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is; that God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God abides in him; that we must pursue peace and holiness, without which no one will be able to see God; that this corruptible and mortal body of ours will be changed in the resurrection and will put on incorruption and immortality; that it is sown a natural body and will rise a spiritual body, the Lord transfiguring the body of our lowliness to conform it to the body of his glory; that God made man in his image and likeness; and that we are renewed in the spirit of our mind to the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created us. Walking by faith in these and similar authorities of the holy Scriptures, those who, by an understanding given or helped by God, have made spiritual progress and have been able to compare spiritual things with spiritual have seen that seeing with the mind is better than seeing with the body, and that those things are seen with the mind which are not contained in places, nor separated from one another by distances of places, nor less in part than in the whole.

That is why he said confidently that “God is not seen in a place, but by a pure heart; nor is he sought with bodily eyes, nor bounded by sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by speech, nor perceived by gait.” Hence, since in the holy Scriptures his substance is declared invisible, and yet in the same authorities he is found to have been seen by very many, either through the body and in bodily places, or by the spirit, by which bodily images are discerned, through some likeness of a body, incorporeal though it is, as in sleep or in ecstasy, that holy man separated visions of this kind from the nature of God and said that they were those which God’s will had chosen, not those which nature had formed. For God makes these, by which he appears as he wills, to whom he wills, when he wills, while his substance remains hidden and unchangeable in itself. For if our will, remaining in itself and hidden without any change of itself, utters words by which it shows itself in some fashion, how much more easily can almighty God, while his nature remains hidden and unchangeable, appear in whatever form he wills to whomever he wills, he who created all things from nothing and, remaining in himself, renews all things!

But for that vision by which we shall see God as he is, he urged that hearts be cleansed. For since in common speech bodies are called visible, God is called invisible so that he may not be believed to be a body, not because he will cheat 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 appeared visibly to bodily eyes and promised himself, invisible, to be beheld by pure hearts: “He who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and show myself to him.” For this nature of his is invisible equally with the Father, as it is equally incorruptible; and the apostle, as was said above, put these together, declaring the divine substance to men as far as he could by his preaching. Whether bodily eyes will behold it in the resurrection, when the quality of bodies has been changed, let those see to it who can establish this; I am more moved by the opinion of him who attributes this, even in the resurrection, not to bodily eyes but to pure hearts.

As for the quality of the spiritual body promised to those who will rise, I do not refuse either to learn or to inquire further, provided that in discussing this matter we can be free of those faults which are usually stirred up by human zeal and contention, when one is puffed up for one against another beyond what is written; lest, while by wrangling we seek to trace how God can be seen, we lose the very peace and holiness without which no one will be able to see God. May he himself turn this away from our hearts, so as to make them pure for his contemplation and keep them so. But this I do not doubt, and so I do not inquire: that the nature of God is never seen in a place. Whether, further, something that is not seen in a place can be seen by the eyes of this body, I am ready to hear, in the peace of love, from those who can show it by argument, and to share with others what convinces me. For there are some who presume that God himself is altogether a body, thinking that whatever is not a body is no substance at all. Such people I judge must be turned away from in every way. But there are others who have no doubt that God himself is not a body, but think that those who rise to eternal life will see God even through the body, because they hope for such a quality of the spiritual body that what was flesh will itself become spirit. If this is so, I think it is very easily judged how far it differs from the former opinion, and how much more tolerable it is, even if it is not true: first, because it makes a great difference whether one thinks otherwise than the truth about the Creator or about the creature; second, because the effort of a mind that wishes to turn the body into spirit, not God into a body, is somehow to be borne; finally, because what I said in that letter of mine about these eyes of our flesh, that neither now can they nor then will they be able to see God, is true even so. For it was said only of bodily eyes, which will not exist then if the body itself is to be spirit; and so bodily eyes will never see God, since, when he is seen, it will be spirit, not body, that sees him.

The whole question, then, now remains about the spiritual body: how far this corruptible and mortal puts on incorruption and immortality, and how far it is changed from natural to spiritual. This must be treated with special care and concern, above all because of the body of the Lord himself, who transfigures the body of our lowliness to conform it to the body of his glory, so that he can subject all things to himself. For since God the Father sees the Son and the Son the Father, those are certainly not to be listened to who will attribute vision only to bodies. For it is not lawful to say that the Father does not see the Son, or that he too, in order to see, has put on a body, if sight belongs only to a body. What of the fact that at the very beginning of the world, before any form of a servant had been taken by the Son, God saw the light, that it was good, and the firmament and the sea and the dry land and every plant and every tree, the sun, the moon, the stars, the creeping things of living souls, the birds of the sky, the living soul? Finally, God saw all that he had made, and behold, it was very good. Since Scripture repeated this so many times through each of the creatures, I wonder where that opinion arose by which it was thought that vision belongs only to bodies. From whatever manner of speaking that opinion arose, the holy Scriptures do not usually speak so; if they did not attribute vision not only to the body but also to the spirit, and to the spirit more than to the body, they would not have called the prophets, in the proper sense, “seers,” who saw even future things, not with the body but with the spirit.

But we must take care not to venture anything presumptuous, if we say that the body loses through the glory of the resurrection not only mortality and corruptibility but also its very being a body, and becomes spirit. For in that way either the substance of spirit will be doubled, if the body too is to be spirit; or, if a man’s spirit is to be one, so that when the body has been changed and turned into spirit it is neither doubled by duplication nor by increase, nor augmented at all by the addition of any quantity, it is to be feared that nothing else would seem to be said than that bodies will not remain immortal by that change, but will rather be nothing and perish altogether. Therefore, until by careful inquiry, if the Lord helps, it is found what is more probably to be thought according to the Scriptures about the spiritual body promised in the resurrection, let it suffice us meanwhile that the only-begotten Son, who is also the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, sees the Father as he is seen by the Father. As for us, let us not try to carry this lust of the eyes over from this world to that vision of God promised to us in the resurrection, but let us strive with pious affection to cleanse our hearts; and let us not think of a bodily face when the apostle says, “We see now through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face,” especially since the apostle said more expressly, “Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I have been known.” If, then, we shall then know God by a bodily face, we are now known by his bodily face; for “then I shall know,” he says, “even as I have been known.” Hence who would not understand that in that place he meant our face too, 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,” that is, from the glory of faith to the glory of eternal contemplation? For this is what this transformation does, by which the inner man is renewed from day to day; of whom the apostle Peter also speaks, when he urged that he be adorned: “not with outward adornment of braided hair or gold and pearls or costly clothing, but the hidden man of the heart, which is rich before God.” For in that face on which the Jews have a veil because they do not pass over to Christ (since, when anyone passes over to Christ, the veil will be taken away), we, with that face unveiled, are transformed into the same image. And he says most plainly: “A veil is laid over their hearts.” There, then, is the face with which, unveiled, we now behold in faith, though through a mirror and in an enigma, but then face to face.