Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.36–12.37

For then too, surely, there will be these three kinds of vision, but by no falsity will one thing be approved for another, neither in bodily sights nor in spiritual ones, much less in intellectual ones, which the soul will enjoy so present and clear that, compared with them, these bodily forms which we touch with the sense of the flesh lie before us now with far less evidence; yet many are so given over to them that they suppose they alone exist and think that whatever is not of that kind does not exist at all. The wise, however, are so placed among these bodily sights that, although these seem more present, they are nevertheless more certain about the things which, apart from bodily form and apart from the likeness of a body, they foresee in some way by understanding, though they cannot behold them with the mind as they look at these with the sense of the body. But the holy angels both preside over judging and governing these bodily things and are not bent toward them as toward more present and familiar things; and they discern their signifying likenesses in the spirit and handle them, in a way, with such power that they can even mingle them with the spirits of human beings by revealing; and they so behold that unchangeable substance of the Creator that by vision and love they prefer it to all things, judge all things according to it, and are directed toward it to be moved, and from it direct whatever they do. Finally, even though the apostle was snatched from the senses of the flesh into the third heaven and paradise, this certainly was lacking to him for that full and perfect knowledge of things which is in the angels: that he did not know whether he was in the body or out of the body. This will certainly not be lacking when, the bodies received back in the resurrection of the dead, this corruptible shall put on incorruption and this mortal shall put on immortality. For all things will be evident, without any falsity, without any ignorance, arranged in their orders, the bodily and the spiritual and the intellectual, in a nature made whole and a happiness made perfect.

I know, indeed, that some of those who are praised for having treated the holy Scriptures before us in the catholic faith have also explained what the apostle calls the third heaven in such a way that they took it to mean the differences between the bodily, the animal, and the spiritual man, and held that the apostle was caught up to contemplate with excellent evidence that kind of incorporeal things which even in this life spiritual people love above all other things and long to enjoy. Why I preferred to say “spiritual” and “intellectual” where they perhaps said “animal” and “spiritual,” so that I would only be giving other names to the same things, it will suffice that I have discussed in the first parts of this book. If we have argued these things rightly, according to our small measure, either the spiritual reader will approve them, or, so that he may become spiritual, he will make some progress from this reading with the help of the Holy Spirit. But now at last we conclude with this ending this whole work, which is contained in twelve volumes.