Letters 147.52–149.1

If you approve these things, hold with me the opinion of the holy man Ambrose, now confirmed not by his authority but by the truth itself. For it does not please me because through his mouth above all the Lord freed me from error and through his ministry granted me the grace of saving baptism, as if I favored my planter and waterer too much, but because on this matter he too said what God, who gives the growth, also speaks to one who thinks piously and understands rightly: “In the resurrection itself, 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 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.”

In so far as you understand these words of the holy man, which are not carnal but spiritual, and recognize them as true, not because he said them but because the truth cries out without noise, to that extent you understand by what you cleave to the Lord, and you prepare yourself within as an incorporeal place for his dwelling, to hear the silence of his declaring and to see his invisible form. For blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God: not when he appears to them like a body from some distance of place, but when he comes to them and makes his dwelling with them; since thus they will be filled with all the fullness of God, not when they themselves are fully God, but when they are perfectly full of God. But if we think of nothing but bodies, and cannot worthily think even of that by which we think of bodies themselves, let us not look for things to say against ourselves, but rather let us cleanse our hearts from this carnal habit by praying and stretching out to what lies ahead. For, to quote not only blessed Ambrose but also holy Jerome: “Not only the divinity of the Father but not even that of the Son or 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 Savior himself says, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’” For, as the same Jerome defined briefly and truly elsewhere, an incorporeal thing is not seen with bodily eyes.

I wished to insert these opinions of such great men on so great a matter, not so that you should think any man’s view is to be followed like the authority of canonical Scripture, but so that those who think otherwise may try to see with the mind what is true and to seek God in simplicity of heart, and not rashly criticize such learned expounders of the divine utterances. And do not be troubled by what some say rather thoughtlessly: “What then will bodily eyes see, if they will not see God? Will they perhaps be blind, or exist for no purpose?” For those who say this do not notice that, if there are no bodies, there will certainly be no bodily eyes; but if there are bodies, there will be something that bodily eyes can see. But let what has been said be enough now. Considering it, read and reread carefully from the beginning of this little work of mine, you will perhaps see without any doubt that, to see God, you must by his help prepare a pure heart. As for the spiritual body, we shall try in another work, if the Lord helps, to see what we can say.

As I asked you in person, so now I remind you: be so kind as to see our brother of whom we spoke, and ask him to pardon me if he took anything said against him in that letter as too harsh and sharp. I do not regret having written it in that way, because I said that the eyes of this body neither see God nor will see him. For I added the reason why I said this: namely, that God himself should not be believed to be corporeal and visible in a space and distance of place (for the eye of this body cannot see anything otherwise), and that what was said, “face to face,” should not be taken as though God were bounded by the members of a body. So I do not regret having said it, lest we think so impiously of God himself as to suppose that he is not everywhere whole but divisible through local spaces; for such are the things we know with these eyes.

But if anyone, thinking nothing of this kind about God but believing him to be an unchangeable and incorporeal spirit, everywhere whole, thinks that so great a change of this body will take place, when from natural it has become spiritual, that through such a body we shall be able to see even an incorporeal substance, not divisible by distances or spaces of place, nor bounded by the outlines and limits of members, but everywhere whole, I wish him to teach me too, if what he thinks is true. But if he thinks falsely in this, it is far more tolerable to claim something for the body than to take something away from God. And if that opinion is true, it will not be contrary to the words I set down in that letter. For I said that the eyes of this body will not see God, with this in view: that the eyes of this body can see nothing at all but bodies separated from them by some distance of place; for if there is no distance, we do not see even bodies through them.

Further, if our bodies are to be changed into such unlikeness to themselves that they have eyes through which that substance can be seen which is neither spread out nor bounded through spaces of places, having one part here and another there, a smaller part in a smaller place and a larger in a larger, but is everywhere whole incorporeally, these bodies will be something very different and will not be themselves; and they will be something else not merely by the removal of mortality and corruption and the heaviness of weight, but they will be turned in some way into the power of the mind itself, if they are able to see in the way it will then be granted to the mind to see, though now it is not granted even to the mind itself. For if, when a man’s character has changed, we say he is not the man he was, and if, when his age has changed, we say the body itself is not what it was, how much more will it not be itself when changed by so great a conversion that it not only lives immortally but even sees the invisible! Therefore, if they see God, it will not be the eyes of this body that see, because in this too the body will not be itself, having been changed into that force and power; and this opinion is not contrary to those words of my letter. But if it is not itself only in this respect, that now it is mortal and then immortal, now weighing down the soul and then, without any weight, most nimble for every movement, but suited to see the things discerned in spaces and distances of place, if it is to be nothing other than itself, it will in no way see the incorporeal substance which is everywhere whole. So whether that or this is true, on either view it is true that the eyes of this body will not see God; for either they will be of this body and will not see, or they will not be of this body, if they see, since by so great a change they will be of a very different body.

But I am ready, if this brother knows anything better on this matter, to learn it either from him or from the one from whom he learned it. If I were saying this mockingly, I would also say that I am ready to learn that God is corporeal and divisible into members through places. That I do not say, because I am not speaking mockingly, and I have no doubt at all that God is not such, and it was so that he should not be believed to be such that I wrote that letter. In it, while I was anxious to admonish, I was excessive and incautious in reproving, though without naming names, and did not consider, as a brother and a bishop ought to have done, the person of a brother and a bishop. This I do not defend but blame; I do not excuse but accuse. Let me be pardoned, I ask; let him remember our old affection and forget the new offense. Let him at least do what he was angry with me for not doing: let him show gentleness in granting pardon, which I did not show in writing that letter. I ask this through Your Charity, which I would have wished to ask face to face, if I had had the opportunity of meeting him. When I attempted this, and a venerable man, to be preferred in honor to all of us, wrote to him, he would not come, suspecting perhaps some trick of mine, as I think, as human things mostly go. Assure him, as far as you can, that I am far from that; you can do it more easily in person. Tell him with how great and how genuine sorrow I spoke with you about the offense to his feelings. Let him know how far I am from despising him, and how much I fear God in him and think of our Head, in whose body we are brothers. I did not think I should come to the place where he lives, lest we make a spectacle to be laughed at by outsiders, grieved over by our own, and shameful to ourselves. Through Your Holiness and Charity the whole can be rightly managed; for it is managed by him who dwells by his faith in your heart, whom I believe he does not spurn in you, since he recognizes him in himself.

For my part, I found nothing better to do in this case than to ask pardon of the brother who complained that he was hurt by the harshness of my letter. He too will do, I hope, what he knows is commanded him by the one who says, speaking through the apostle: “Forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another, as God in Christ forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ also loved you.” Walking in this love, let us inquire in harmony, if we can do so more carefully, about the spiritual body which we shall have in the resurrection; because, if we think otherwise in anything, God will reveal this too to us, if we abide in him. And he who abides in love abides in God and God in him, because God is love, whether as existing ineffably as its fountain, or as bestowing it on us through his Spirit. If, then, it can be taught that love will someday be seen with bodily eyes, perhaps God too can be; but if love can never be, much less can its very fountain, or whatever more excellent and fitting thing can be said of so great a matter.

Certain great men, most learned in the holy Scriptures, who have greatly helped the Church and the good studies of the faithful by their writings, have said, when occasion was given them, that the invisible God is seen invisibly, that is, by that nature which is invisible in us too, namely by a pure mind or heart. Blessed Ambrose, when he was treating of Christ as the Word, says: “For Jesus is seen not with bodily but with spiritual eyes”; and a little later: “The Jews did not see him,” he says, “for their foolish heart was darkened,” showing from this by what he is seen. Again, when he spoke of the Holy Spirit, he inserted the words of the Lord saying: “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth, whom this world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.” “Rightly, then,” he says, “he showed himself in a body, since in the substance of the Godhead he is not seen. We have seen the Spirit, but in bodily form; let us see the Father too, but, since we cannot see him, let us hear him.” And a little later: “Let us hear the Father, then,” he says, “for the Father is invisible; but the Son too is invisible according to his divinity, for no one has ever seen God; since, then, the Son is God, in that he is God the Son is not seen.”

And holy Jerome says: “The eye of man cannot see God as he is in his nature; and not only man, but neither angels, nor Thrones, nor Powers, nor Dominions, nor every name that is named; for the creature cannot behold its Creator.” By these words this most learned man shows clearly enough what he thought of the age to come too, as far as this matter is concerned. For however much the eyes of our body may be changed for the better, they will be made equal to the eyes of the angels. But here he said that the nature of the Creator is invisible both to them and to the whole heavenly creation altogether. Or if a question arises here, and some doubt is raised whether we shall not be superior to the angels, the Lord’s own judgment on this is plain, where he says of those who will rise to the kingdom: “They will be equal to the angels of God.” Hence the same holy Jerome says elsewhere: “Man, therefore, cannot see the face of God; but the angels even of the least in the Church always see the face of God. And now we see in a mirror, in an enigma, but then face to face, when we have advanced from men to angels and can 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 nature, and he is then discerned by the mind, when he is believed invisible.”

In these words of the man of God many things are to be considered. First, that, following the Lord’s very plain statement, he too holds that we shall see the face of God when we have advanced to the angels, that is, when we have been made equal to them, which will certainly be in the resurrection of the dead. Second, that by the apostle’s testimony he showed clearly enough that the face of the inner man, not the outer, is to be understood when we shall see face to face; for the apostle was speaking of the face of the heart when he said what Jerome quoted here: “But we, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image.” If anyone doubts this, let him go over the same passage and note what the apostle was speaking of: namely, the veil that remains in the reading of the Old Testament until each one passes over to Christ, so that the veil is taken away. For there he says, “But we, with unveiled face beholding the glory of the Lord,” a face which was not unveiled in the Jews, of whom he says, “A veil is laid over their heart,” so as to show that the face of the heart is unveiled for us when the veil is removed. Finally, so that no one who considers and distinguishes these things less carefully might believe that God is or will be visible either to angels or to men when we have been made equal to the angels, he expressed most clearly what he thought, saying that “no creature sees the face of God according to the property of his nature, and he is then discerned by the mind, when he is believed invisible.” By this he indicated sufficiently that, when he was seen by men through the eyes of the body as though he himself were corporeal, he was not seen according to the property of his nature, in which he is discerned by the mind when he is believed invisible. Invisible to what but to bodily sights, even heavenly ones, as he said above of angels and Powers and Dominions? How much more to earthly ones?

Hence he says more clearly in another place: “Not only the divinity 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 the flesh behold, but the eyes of the mind, of which the Savior himself says, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.’” What could be clearer than this declaration? For if he had said only that the eyes of the flesh cannot behold the divinity of the Father or the Son or the Holy Spirit, and had not then added “but the eyes of the mind,” it might perhaps be said that it should no longer be called flesh when it has become a spiritual body. By adding and saying “but the eyes of the mind,” he removed such a vision from every kind of body. And so that no one should think he spoke only of the present time, he also added the Lord’s testimony, wishing to show what he called the eyes of the mind; and by this 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.”

Most blessed Athanasius too, bishop of Alexandria, when he was arguing against the Arians, who say that only God the Father is invisible but think the Son and the Holy Spirit visible, asserted the equal invisibility of the Trinity by testimonies of the holy Scriptures and by the care of his argument, urging most insistently that God was not seen except by the assumption of a creature, but that according to the property of his Godhead God is altogether invisible, that is, Father and Son and Holy Spirit, except so far as he can be known by mind and spirit. Gregory too, a holy bishop of the East, says most plainly that God, invisible by nature, when he was seen by the fathers, as by Moses, with whom he spoke face to face, could be seen by taking on the arrangement of some visible matter, while his invisibility remained intact. This is what our Ambrose also says, that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are seen in that form which the will has chosen, not which nature has formed; so that both that is true, that no one has ever seen God, which is the voice of the Lord Christ himself, and “whom no one of men has seen or can see,” which is the voice of the apostle, or rather of Christ through the apostle; and those testimonies of the Scriptures are not rejected in which God is related to have been seen, because he is both invisible by the proper nature of the Godhead and, when he wills, can be seen through a creature assumed as he pleases.

Further, if invisibility belongs to his very nature, as incorruptibility does, that nature will certainly not be changed in the age to come so as to become visible from invisible, because neither will it be able to become corruptible from incorruptible; for it is also unchangeable. And certainly the apostle was commending his nature when he put these two together, saying: “To the King of the ages, invisible, incorruptible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever.” Hence I do not dare to make the distinction of saying, “Incorruptible for ever and ever, but invisible not for ever and ever, but only in this age.” But since those testimonies too cannot be false, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” and, “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is,” we cannot deny that the children of God will 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 show myself to him,” while he spoke in plain view before men’s eyes. And by what are invisible things seen but by the eyes of the heart, about which I said a little earlier what Jerome thought concerning the seeing of God?

That is why the bishop of Milan mentioned above also said that in the resurrection itself it is not easy to see God except for those who are pure in heart, and that therefore it is written, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” “How many,” he says, “had he already numbered as blessed, and yet he had not promised them the ability to see God!” Then he adds and says: “If, then, those who are pure in heart will see God, others certainly will not see him.” And so that we should not take those others to be the ones of whom it was said, “Blessed are the poor, blessed are the meek,” and so on, he added at once: “For neither will the unworthy see God,” meaning by the unworthy those who, though they rise, will not be able to see God, since they will rise to condemnation, because they would not cleanse their hearts by the true faith which works through love. And so he goes on to say: “nor can he who has not wished to see God see God.” Then, since it occurred to him that all the wicked wish to see God, at once, to show why he had said “he who has not wished to see God” (because the wicked man certainly does not wish to see God in that way, since he will not cleanse the heart by which he could be seen), he went on to add: “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 gait.” By these words blessed Ambrose wished to remind us what people who wish to see God ought to prepare: that is, to cleanse the heart by faith working through love, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, from whom we have received the pledge by which we may learn to long for that vision.

For as to the members of God, which Scripture constantly mentions, so that no one should believe that we are like God according to the form and shape of this flesh, the same Scripture also said that God has wings, which we certainly do not have. Just as, then, when we hear of wings we understand protection, so also when we hear of hands we ought to understand working; when we hear of feet, presence; when we hear of eyes, the sight by which he knows; when we hear of a face, the knowledge by which he makes himself known; and whatever else of this kind the same Scripture mentions I think is to be understood spiritually. Nor do I alone think this, or first, but all those who, with whatever spiritual understanding, resist those who for this reason are called Anthropomorphites. Of their writings, so as not to cause greater delay by quoting many, I insert this one passage of holy Jerome, so that this brother may know that, if anything moves him against this, he must take the matter up not with me more than with those before us.

When, then, that man most learned in the Scriptures was expounding the psalm where it is said, “Understand, then, you who are foolish among the people, and you fools, be wise at last. He who planted the ear, will he not hear? Or he who formed the eye, does he not consider?” he said among other things: “This passage tells most of all against those who are Anthropomorphites, who say that God has members such as we also have. For example, God is said to have eyes: the eyes of the Lord look upon all things; the hand of the Lord makes all things; and Adam heard, it says, the sound of the feet of the Lord walking in paradise. They hear these things simply and attribute human weaknesses to the majesty of God. But I say that God is all eye, all hand, all foot. All eye, because he sees all things; all hand, because he works all things; all foot, because he is everywhere. So see what he says: ‘He who planted the ear, will he not hear?’ And he did not say, ‘He who planted it, therefore he himself does not have an ear’; he did not say, ‘therefore he himself does not have eyes.’ But what did he say? ‘He who planted the ear, will he not hear? He who formed the eye, does he not consider?’ He took away the members, he gave the powers.”

I thought all these things should be quoted from the writings of both Latins and Greeks who, living before us in the Catholic Church, expounded the divine utterances, so that this brother may know that, if he thinks anything otherwise than they, it must be sought, learned, or taught by careful and calm consideration, the bitterness of dissension laid aside and the sweetness of brotherly love fully restored and preserved. For we ought not to treat the discussions of any men, however Catholic and praiseworthy, as canonical Scriptures, so that we may not, with due respect to those men, disapprove and reject something in their writings, if we happen to find that they thought otherwise than the truth holds, as understood either by others or by us with divine help. Such am I toward the writings of others; such I wish the readers of mine to be. Finally, in all these things I have quoted from the works of holy and learned men, Ambrose, Jerome, Athanasius, Gregory, and whatever similar things of others I have been able to read, which I thought it too long to quote, I believe unshakeably with the Lord’s help, and understand as far as he grants, that God is not a body, nor has members of human form, nor is divisible through spaces of places, and that he is by nature unchangeably invisible, and that he appeared to those to whom he appeared, when he is related in the holy Scriptures to have been seen through the eyes of the body, not by that same nature and substance but by taking on a visible form, as he willed.

But as to the spiritual body which we shall have in the resurrection: how great a change for the better it admits; whether it passes into the simplicity of spirit, so that the whole man is then spirit, or (as I rather think, but do not yet affirm with full confidence) the spiritual body will be such that it is called spiritual because of a certain ineffable ease, yet will keep a bodily substance, which cannot live and perceive by itself but through the spirit that uses it (for even now, because the body is called natural [animal], the nature of the soul is not the same as that of the body); and whether, if the nature of the body, though now immortal and incorruptible, is preserved, it will then help the spirit somewhat to see visible, that is, bodily, things, as now we cannot see anything of that kind except through the body, or whether our spirit will then be able to know bodily things even without the instrument of the body (for God too does not know such things through bodily senses); and many other things that may arise in this question: I confess that I have not yet read anywhere anything I thought sufficient for me, either for learning or for teaching.

And so, if this brother is not displeased with my caution, such as it is, let us meanwhile, because of what is written, “for we shall see him as he is,” prepare a pure heart for that vision as far as we can, with his help. And let us inquire more peaceably and carefully about the spiritual body, in case God may deign to show us something certain and clear according to his Scriptures, if he knows this to be useful for us. For if more careful inquiry finds that the change of the body will be so great that it can see invisible things, such a power of the body will not, I think, take vision away from the mind, so that the outer man could then see God while the inner man could not; as if God were only outside man and not within man, when it is most plainly written, “that God may be all in all”; or as if he who is everywhere whole without any spaces of places were within in such a way that he could be seen outside by the outer man but not within by the inner man. If these things are most absurd to think (for the saints will rather be full of God, not empty within and surrounded by him without; nor will they, blind within, fail to see him with whom they will be full, and, having eyes only on the outside, see him by whom they will be surrounded), it remains that meanwhile we should be most certain about the vision of God according to the inner man. But if the body too, by a wonderful change, is able to do this, something will be added; that will not be taken away.

We do better, then, to affirm what we do not doubt at all: that the inner man will see God, the inner man who alone can now see love (in whose praise it was said, “God is love”), who alone can see peace and holiness, without which no one will be able to see God. For no eye of the flesh now sees love, peace, holiness, and the like; yet the eye of the mind already sees all these, as far as it can, the more purely the purer it is; so that we may believe without doubt that we shall see God, whether or not we find what we are seeking about the quality of the future body, while we have no doubt that the body will rise and be immortal and incorruptible, since on this we hold the plainest and firmest statements of the holy Scriptures. But if this brother already holds as most certain what I am still inquiring about the spiritual body, he will have just cause for anger if I do not listen calmly to him teaching, so that he too may listen calmly to me inquiring. Now, however, I beg you through Christ to obtain for me from him pardon for that harshness of my letter, by which I have learned that he was not without reason offended, and to gladden me, with the Lord’s help, by a reply.

The Lord soon gladdened us about the very prosperous arrival of our brother and fellow presbyter Quintus and those who sailed with him, through the letter of Your Holiness bringing the news. Giving thanks to him who refreshes the afflicted and comforts the lowly, I now pay my reply to the sincerity of your heart by the nearest opportunity that has offered, our son and fellow deacon Rufinus; for he has set out from the shore of Hippo. And I approve the plan of mercy which the Lord inspired in you and which you were so kind as to make known to me. May he help this too, may he prosper it, who has already greatly relieved our anxiety, since our dearest friend has been carried safely over and commended not only by your good works but also by your holy prayers.