Literal Commentary on Genesis 12.3–12.13

But if they were seen out of the body and were not bodies, it can still be asked whether they were images of bodies or that substance which bears no likeness to a body, like God, like the human mind itself or understanding or reason, like the virtues—prudence, justice, chastity, love, godliness—and whatever others there are, which we enumerate, distinguish, and define by understanding and thinking; not, of course, by looking at their outlines or colours, or how they sound or smell or taste in the mouth, or what they report to those who touch them of heat or cold, softness or hardness, smoothness or roughness, but by another kind of vision, another light, another evidence of things, and one far more excellent and certain than the others. Let us, then, return again to those very words of the apostle and examine them more carefully, having first established without doubt that the apostle knew much more, and incomparably more fully, what we are trying in some way to know about incorporeal and corporeal nature. If, then, he knew that spiritual things cannot be seen through the body at all, nor bodily things outside the body, why did he not distinguish, through the very things he saw, how he could also have seen them? For if he was certain that they were spiritual, why was he not consequently certain, just the same, that he had seen them out of the body? And if he knew they were bodily, why did he not also know that they could be seen only through the body? Why, then, does he doubt whether he saw them in the body or out of the body, unless perhaps he also doubts in the same way whether they were bodies or likenesses of bodies? So let us first see what there is in the sequence of these words about which he has no doubt; and then, when what he doubts remains, perhaps from the things he does not doubt it will appear how he also doubts that. “I know,” he says, “a man in Christ fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one caught up to the third heaven.” So he knows that fourteen years ago a man in Christ was caught up to the third heaven. This he does not doubt at all; nor, then, should we. But whether in the body or out of the body he doubts; and since he doubts, which of us would dare to be certain? Does it perhaps also follow from this that we should doubt that it was the third heaven to which he said the man was caught up? For if the thing itself was shown, the third heaven was shown; but if some image resembling bodily things was formed, that was not the third heaven, but the showing was so arranged that he seemed to himself to ascend the first heaven, above which he saw a second, to which ascending again he saw yet another higher, and when he had reached it he could say he had been caught up into the third heaven. But that it was the third heaven to which he was caught up he neither doubted nor wished us to doubt. For this reason he put “I know” first and began from there, so that only one who does not believe the apostle would not believe to be true what the apostle says he knows.

He knows, then, that the man was caught up to the third heaven. Accordingly, that to which he was caught up is truly the third heaven; not some bodily sign, like that shown to Moses, who perceived so clearly that the very substance of God was one thing and the visible creature in which God presented himself to human and bodily senses another, that he said, “Show me yourself”; nor some image of a bodily thing, like those John saw in the spirit and asked what they were, and was answered, “It is a city,” or “They are peoples,” or something else, when he saw a beast or a woman or waters or something of the kind. But “I know,” he says, “that a man was caught up to the third heaven.” If he had wished to call a spiritual image resembling a bodily one “heaven,” then in the same way the image of his body too, in which he had been caught up and ascended there, would have been such. So he would have called it his body, though it was an image of his body, just as he called that heaven, though it was an image of heaven, and he would not have taken care to distinguish what he knew and what he did not know—namely that he knew that the man was caught up to the third heaven, but did not know whether in the body or out of the body—but would simply have narrated the vision, calling the things he saw by the names of those things they resembled. For we too say, when we tell our dreams or some revelation in them, “I saw a mountain, I saw a river, I saw three men,” and so on, giving to those images the names that the things themselves have which they resembled; but the apostle says, “This I know, that I do not know.” But if both appeared as images, both are equally known or equally not known; and if it was properly heaven—and therefore known—how could that man's body appear as an image? For if a bodily heaven was being seen, why was it hidden whether it was seen with bodily eyes? And if it was uncertain whether it was seen with the eyes of the body or by the spirit—and therefore it is said, “whether in the body or out of the body I do not know”—how was it not also uncertain whether a heaven was truly seen as a body or was shown as an image? Again, if an incorporeal substance was seen, not in some image of a body but as justice, wisdom, and the like are seen, and this was the heaven, it is also plain that such a thing cannot be seen with the eyes of this body. And therefore, if he knew he had seen something of this kind, he could not doubt that he had not seen it through the body. “I know,” he says, “a man in Christ fourteen years ago.” Let no one who believes me doubt this “I know”; “but whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.”

What, then, do you know, which you distinguish from what you do not know, so that believers may not be deceived? “That the same man,” he says, “was caught up to the third heaven.” But that heaven was either a body or a spirit. If it was a body and was seen with bodily eyes, why is it known to be heaven and not known to have been seen in the body? But if it was a spirit, either it presented the image of a body, and then it is as uncertain whether it was a body as it is uncertain whether it was seen in the body; or it was seen as wisdom is seen by the mind without any images of bodies, and then it is certain all the same that it could not have been seen through the body. So either both are certain, or both uncertain; or how is what was seen certain, but that through which it was seen uncertain? For it is plain that an incorporeal nature could not have been seen by him through the body. Bodies, even if they could not be seen without a body, are certainly not seen through the body in that way; rather, that mode is very different, if there is any such. Hence it would be a wonder if, being so very similar, it could deceive the apostle or force him into doubt, so that, if he saw a bodily heaven with eyes not bodily, he would say that it was uncertain to him whether he saw it in the body or out of the body. It remains, then, perhaps, that—since the apostle could not lie, who took such care to distinguish what he knew from what he did not know—we should understand that he was ignorant of just this: whether, when he was caught up to the third heaven, he was in the body as the soul is in the body when the body is said to be alive, whether of one awake or asleep or in ecstasy estranged from the senses of the body; or whether he went out of the body altogether, so that the body lay dead until, that showing completed, the soul was restored to the dead members, and he did not wake as from sleep or return to his senses as one estranged in ecstasy, but came back to life altogether, having been dead. Accordingly, what he saw when caught up to the third heaven—which he also affirms that he knows—he saw properly, not as an image. But because it was uncertain whether that estrangement from the body left the body altogether dead, or whether the soul was there in the manner of a living body while his mind was snatched away to see or hear the ineffable things of that vision, perhaps for that reason he said, “whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows.”

What is seen not as an image but properly, and not through the body, is seen by that vision which surpasses all the others. I shall try to explain the kinds and differences of these visions as far as the Lord helps me. Look: when this one commandment is read, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” three kinds of vision occur. One is through the eyes, by which the letters themselves are seen; another through the spirit of man, by which the neighbour is thought of even when absent; the third through the intuition of the mind, by which love itself is understood and beheld. Of these three kinds, the first is plain to all; for by it are seen heaven and earth and all things in them that are visible to our eyes. Nor is it hard to point out the second, by which absent bodily things are thought of; for we think of heaven and earth themselves and the things we can see in them even when we are in darkness, where, seeing nothing with the eyes of the body, we still behold bodily images in the mind, whether true ones, as we have seen the bodies themselves and keep them in memory, or invented ones, as thought has been able to form them. For we think of Carthage, which we know, in one way, and of Alexandria, which we do not know, in another. But the third, by which love is understood and beheld, contains those things which have no images resembling them that are not what they themselves are. For a man or a tree or the sun, and any other bodies, whether heavenly or earthly, are both seen when present in their own forms and thought of when absent in images impressed on the mind, and they produce two kinds of things seen: one through the senses of the body, the other through the spirit in which those images are held. But is love seen in one way when present, in the form in which it exists, and in another when absent, in some image resembling it? Certainly not. Rather, so far as it can be discerned by the mind, it is discerned more by one, less by another; but if something of a bodily image is thought of, it is not love itself that is discerned.

These are the three kinds of vision, about which we said something in the earlier books too, as the matter seemed to require, though we did not mention their number. And now that we have briefly pointed them out, since the question undertaken demands that we discuss them somewhat more fully, we must mark them with fixed and fitting names, so as not to cause delay by constant circumlocution. Let us call the first, then, bodily, because it is perceived through the body and presented to the senses of the body; the second spiritual, for whatever is not a body and yet is something is already rightly called spirit; and certainly the image of an absent body, though it resembles a body, is not a body, nor is the very gaze by which it is discerned; and the third intellectual, from intellect, since to say “mental,” from mind, would be too absurd because of the novelty of the word. If I were to give a more subtle account of these terms, the discussion would be longer and more involved, when there is no necessity requiring it, or certainly not so great a one. It is enough, then, to know that something is called bodily either properly, when bodies are in question, or by a transferred use of the word, as it is said, “For in him dwells the whole fullness of divinity bodily.” For divinity is not a body; but because he calls the sacraments of the old covenant shadows of what was to come, he said, in comparison with the shadows, that the fullness of divinity dwells bodily in Christ, because in him are fulfilled all the things prefigured by those shadows, and so in a certain way he is himself the body of those shadows, that is, he is the truth of those figures and significations. Just as the figures themselves, which signify, are called shadows by a transferred use of the word and not properly, so in saying that the fullness of divinity dwells bodily he used a transferred word. “Spiritual,” however, is said in several ways. For the apostle calls even the body that will be in the resurrection of the saints spiritual, where he says, “It is sown an animal body, it will rise a spiritual body,” because in wonderful ways it will be subject to the spirit with complete ease and incorruption, and, without any need of bodily nourishment, will be given life by the spirit alone; not because it will have an incorporeal substance; for neither does this body, such as we have now, have the substance of the soul and is what the soul is, because it is called animal. Again, “spirit” is said either of this air or of its blowing, that is, its movement, as it is said, “Fire, hail, snow, ice, spirit of the storm.” “Spirit” is also said of the soul, whether of a beast or of a man, as it is written, “And who knows whether the spirit of the sons of men goes upward, and whether the spirit of the beast goes downward into the earth?” The rational mind itself is also called spirit, in which there is a kind of eye of the soul, to which the image and knowledge of God belong. Hence the apostle says, “Be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new man, who is created according to God,” while elsewhere he says of the inner man, “who is renewed in the knowledge of God according to the image of him who created him.” Again, when he had said, “So then I myself serve the law of God with the mind, but with the flesh the law of sin,” recalling the same thought in another place he says, “The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh, so that you do not do what you will”; what he called mind, this he also called spirit. God too is called spirit, as the Lord says in the Gospel, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

From all these ways that we have mentioned in which “spirit” is used, we did not take this word by which we have called this kind of vision, which we are now treating, “spiritual,” but from that one way which we found in the letter to the Corinthians, in which spirit is distinguished from mind by a most evident testimony. “For if I pray,” he says, “in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful.” Since “tongue” in this place is understood to mean obscure and mystical significations, from which, if you remove the understanding of the mind, no one is edified by hearing what he does not understand—hence he also says, “For one who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men but to God; for no one hears, but the spirit speaks mysteries”—he shows clearly enough that he calls “tongue” in this place that in which there are significations like images and likenesses of things, which need the gaze of the mind to be understood. But when they are not understood, he says they are in the spirit, not in the mind; hence he says more plainly, “If you bless with the spirit, how will one who fills the place of the uninstructed say ‘Amen’ to your blessing, since he does not know what you are saying?” Since, then, it is also with the tongue, that is, with the bodily member that we move in the mouth when we speak, that signs of things are given, and not the things themselves brought forth, he therefore called by a transferred word any utterance of signs before they are understood a “tongue”; and when understanding is added to it, which is proper to the mind, there comes revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching. Accordingly he says, “If I come to you speaking in tongues, how shall I benefit you, unless I speak to you in revelation or in knowledge or in prophecy or in teaching?”—that is, when understanding is added to the signs, that is, to the tongue, so that what is done is done not only with the spirit but also with the mind.

Accordingly, for those to whom signs were shown in the spirit through likenesses of bodily things, unless the work of the mind was added so that they were also understood, there was not yet prophecy; and he who interpreted what another had seen was more a prophet than he who had seen it. Hence it appears that prophecy belongs more to the mind than to this spirit, which in a certain proper sense is called spirit: a power of the soul lower than the mind, where likenesses of bodily things are formed. So Joseph, who understood what the seven ears of grain and the seven cows signified, was more a prophet than Pharaoh, who saw them in dreams; for the spirit of the one was formed so that he saw, the mind of the other illuminated so that he understood. And therefore in the one there was tongue, in the other prophecy, because in the one there was imagination of things, in the other interpretation of the imaginings. He, then, is less a prophet who sees in the spirit only the signs of the things signified, through images of bodily things; and he is more a prophet who is endowed only with the understanding of them; but he is most a prophet who excels in both, so that he both sees in the spirit the signifying likenesses of bodily things and understands them by the liveliness of the mind; as the excellence of Daniel was tested and proved, who both told the king the dream he had seen and disclosed what it signified. For the bodily images themselves were formed in his spirit, and the understanding of them was revealed in his mind. From this way, then, in which spirit is spoken of in this distinction—according to which the apostle said, “I will pray with the spirit, but I will pray with the mind also,” so that the signs of things are formed in the spirit and their understanding shines out in the mind—according to this distinction, I say, we have now called “spiritual” that kind of things seen by which we also think of the images of absent bodies.

The intellectual kind, however, is more excellent, being proper to the mind. Nor does it occur to me at all that “intellect” can be used in as many ways as we have found “spirit” to be used; and whether we say “intellectual” or “intelligible,” we mean the same thing. Some, however, have wanted there to be some difference, so that the intelligible is the thing itself that can be perceived by the intellect alone, while the intellectual is the mind that understands. But whether there is anything that can be discerned by the intellect alone and does not also understand is a great and difficult question. That there is a thing which perceives by the intellect and cannot also be perceived by the intellect, I do not think anyone either thinks or says; for the mind is seen only by the mind. Because, then, it can be seen, it is intelligible; because it can also see, it is intellectual, according to that distinction. Therefore, setting aside that most difficult question, whether there is anything that is only understood and does not understand, we now use “intellectual” and “intelligible” with the same meaning.

These three kinds of things seen, then—bodily, spiritual, intellectual—must be considered one by one, so that reason may ascend from the lower to the higher. We have already given an example above in which all three kinds are seen in one sentence. For when one reads, “You shall love your neighbour as yourself,” the letters are seen bodily, the neighbour is thought of spiritually, love is beheld intellectually. But the letters, when absent, can also be thought of spiritually, and the neighbour, when present, can be seen bodily; love, however, can neither be discerned by the eyes of the body in its own substance nor thought of by the spirit through an image resembling a body, but is known and perceived by the mind alone, that is, by the intellect. Bodily vision certainly presides over neither of these kinds; rather, what is perceived through it is reported to the spiritual as to one presiding. For when something is discerned by the eyes, its image is at once formed in the spirit; but it is not recognized as formed until, having taken our eyes off what we were seeing through the eyes, we find its image in the soul. And if the spirit is irrational, as in a beast, the eyes' report goes only that far; but if the soul is rational, it is reported also to the intellect, which presides over the spirit too; so that, if what the eyes have taken in and reported to the spirit, so that its image is formed there, is the sign of something, either what it signifies is understood at once or it is sought; since it can be neither understood nor sought except by the work of the mind. King Belshazzar saw the fingers of a hand writing on the wall, and at once, through the sense of the body, the image of the thing done bodily was impressed on his spirit; and when the sight itself was done and past, that image remained in his thought. It was seen in the spirit and not understood; nor was this sign understood when it happened bodily and appeared to the bodily eyes; yet it was already understood to be a sign, and this he had from the work of the mind. And because it was sought what it signified, the mind was certainly conducting the inquiry itself too. When this was not found, Daniel came forward, and with his mind illuminated by the prophetic spirit he disclosed to the troubled king what was portended by that sign; he himself being more a prophet through this kind of vision, which is proper to the mind, than the king, who had seen bodily the sign done bodily, and discerned its image in the spirit by thinking of it after it had passed, and could do nothing with his intellect except know that it was a sign and ask what it signified. Peter, in a rapture of mind, saw a vessel tied by four cords let down from heaven, full of various animals, when he also heard the voice: “Kill and eat.” When, restored to his senses, he was pondering the vision, behold, the Spirit announced to him those whom Cornelius had sent, saying, “Behold, men are seeking you; but rise, go down and go with them, for I have sent them.” When he came to Cornelius, he himself showed what he had understood in that vision, where he had heard, “What God has cleansed, do not call common,” saying, “And God has shown me that I should call no man common or unclean.” So when he saw that sheet, estranged from the senses of the body, he heard those words, “Kill and eat” and “What God has cleansed, do not call common,” in the spirit. But when restored to the senses of the body, he discerned in the same spirit, by thinking, the very thing that he had kept in memory as seen and heard. All these were not bodily things but images of bodily things, both when they were first seen in the rapture itself and when they were afterwards recalled and thought of. But when he was pondering and seeking to understand those signs, it was the action of the mind striving, but the result was lacking, until those who came from Cornelius were announced; and when this bodily vision was also added, and the Holy Spirit again said to him in the spirit, “Go with them,” where he had also shown that sign and impressed the words, the mind, divinely helped, understood what was being done in all those signs. When these and similar things are carefully considered, it is clear enough that bodily vision is referred to spiritual, and spiritual to intellectual.

But when we are awake and not estranged in mind from the senses of the body, and are in bodily vision, we distinguish from that vision the spiritual one, by which we think of absent bodies through images: whether recalling from memory those we know, or forming in some way, in the spirit's very thinking, those we do not know but which exist, or inventing at will or by opinion those that exist nowhere at all. From all these we distinguish those bodily things which we see and in whose presence the senses of our body are, in such a way that we do not doubt that these are bodies and those images of bodies. But when, either through excessive intensity of thought, or through some force of disease, as usually happens to those delirious with fever, or through the intermingling of some other spirit, whether evil or good, images of bodily things are so formed in the spirit as if bodies were presented to the very senses of the body, while the attention still remains in the senses of the body, then the images of bodies formed in the spirit are seen just as bodies themselves are seen through the body; so that at the same time one man who is present is discerned by the eyes and another who is absent by the spirit as if by the eyes. For we have known people so affected, and they spoke both with those who were truly present and with others who were not present, as if they were present. When they come to themselves, some report what they saw, some cannot; just as some forget their dreams and some remember them. But when the attention of the soul is wholly turned away and snatched from the senses of the body, then it is more usually called ecstasy. Then whatever bodies are present are not seen at all, even with the eyes open, and no voices whatever are heard: the whole gaze of the soul is either on the images of bodies through spiritual vision or on incorporeal things, figured by no image of a body, through intellectual vision. But when spiritual vision, with the soul wholly estranged from the senses of the body, is held by images of bodily things, whether in sleep or in ecstasy, then if what is seen signifies nothing, these are the soul's own imaginings; just as people who are awake and healthy and moved by no estrangement turn over in thought images of many bodies which are not present to the senses of the body. But there is this difference, that these people distinguish them from present and true bodies by a steady disposition. If, however, they signify something—whether they are presented to people asleep, or to people awake, when they both see present bodies with their eyes and discern images of absent ones by the spirit as though they were before their eyes, or in what is called ecstasy, with the soul wholly estranged from the senses of the body—it is a wonderful thing if it can happen through the intermingling of another spirit, that it shows what it itself knows, through images of this kind, to the one with whom it is mingled, whether he understands them or so that they may be disclosed to him as understood by another. For if these things are shown, and they certainly cannot be shown by a body, what remains but that they are shown by some spirit?

Some indeed hold that the human soul has in itself a certain power of divination. But if so, why can it not always do it, since it always wants to? Or is it because it is not always helped so as to be able? When, then, it is helped, can it be helped by no one, or by a body? It remains, therefore, that it is helped by a spirit. Then, how is it helped? Does something happen in the body by which its attention is, as it were, released and darts forth, so that it comes to the point where it sees in itself the signifying likenesses that were already there but were not seen, as we have many things in memory too that we do not always look at? Or are things formed there that were not there before? Or are they in some spirit, into which the soul, breaking out and emerging, sees them there? But if they were already in it as its own, why does it not also understand them consequently? For sometimes, indeed usually, it does not understand them. Or, just as its spirit was helped to see them in itself, so too the mind cannot understand what the spirit has unless it is helped? Or perhaps it is not that bodily hindrances are removed or, as it were, loosened, so that the soul by its own impulse is thrust out toward what is to be seen, but that it is itself wholly taken up into these things, whether they are only to be discerned spiritually or also to be known intellectually? Or does it sometimes see these things in itself, sometimes through the intermingling of another spirit? Whichever of these it is, it should not be rashly affirmed. But this should not be doubtful: that the bodily images discerned by the spirit are not always signs of other things, whether in people awake or asleep or ill; but it would be a wonder if there can ever be an ecstasy in which those likenesses of bodily things do not signify something. It is certainly no wonder if even those who have a demon sometimes tell true things that are absent from the senses of those present: this certainly happens by some hidden mixture, I know not what, of the same spirit, so that the spirit of the sufferer and of the tormentor is as though one. But when a good spirit takes up or snatches the human spirit into these visions, there is no doubt at all that those images are signs of other things, and of things it is useful to know; for it is a gift of God. Discernment is indeed most difficult when the malign spirit acts more quietly, as it were, and, without any torment of the body, having taken up the human spirit, says what it can; when it even says true things and foretells useful ones, transforming itself, as it is written, as if into an angel of light, so that, once it has been believed in things plainly good, it may seduce people to its own. I do not think this spirit is discerned except by that gift of which the apostle speaks, when he was speaking of the various gifts of God: “to another, the discernment of spirits.”