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| New Testament Passages Quoted. They Attest the Same Truth of the Son's Visibility Contrasted with the Father's Invisibility.
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Chapter XV.—New
Testament Passages Quoted. They Attest the Same Truth of the
Son’s Visibility Contrasted with the Father’s
Invisibility.
If I fail in resolving this article (of our faith)
by passages which may admit of dispute7937
out of the Old Testament, I will take out of the New Testament a
confirmation of our view, that you may not straightway attribute to the
Father every possible (relation and condition) which I ascribe to the
Son. Behold, then, I find both in the Gospels and in the (writings of
the) apostles a visible and an invisible God (revealed to us), under a
manifest and personal distinction in the condition of both. There is a
certain emphatic saying by John: “No man hath seen God at any
time;”7938
meaning, of course,
at any previous time. But he has indeed taken away all question
of time, by saying that God had never been seen. The apostle confirms
this statement; for, speaking of God, he says, “Whom no man hath
seen, nor can see;”7939
because the man
indeed would die who should see Him.7940
| 7940 Ex. xxxiii. 20; Deut. v. 26; Judg. xiii.
22. | But the very
same apostles testify that they had both seen and “handled”
Christ.7941
Now, if Christ is
Himself both the Father and the Son, how can He be both the Visible and
the Invisible? In order, however, to reconcile this diversity between
the Visible and the Invisible, will not some one on the other side
argue that the two statements are quite correct: that He was visible
indeed in the flesh, but was invisible before His appearance in
the flesh; so that He who as the Father was invisible before the flesh,
is the same as the Son who was visible in the flesh? If, however,
He is the same who was invisible before the incarnation, how comes it
that He was actually seen in ancient times before (coming in) the
flesh? And by parity of reasoning, if He is the same who was visible
after (coming in) the flesh, how happens it that He is now declared to
be invisible by the apostles? How, I repeat, can all this be,
unless it be that He is one, who anciently was visible only in
mystery and enigma, and became more clearly visible by His incarnation,
even the Word who was also made flesh; whilst He is another whom
no man has seen at any time, being none else than the Father,
even Him to whom the Word belongs? Let us, in short, examine who it is
whom the apostles saw. “That,” says John, “which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have
handled, of the Word of life.”7942
Now the Word
of life became flesh, and was heard, and was seen, and was handled,
because He was flesh who, before He came in the flesh, was the
“Word in the beginning with God” the Father,7943
and not the Father with the Word. For
although the Word was God, yet was He with God, because He is God of
God; and being joined to the Father, is with the Father.7944
| 7944 Quia cum Patre apud
Patrem. | “And we have seen His glory, the glory
as of the only begotten of the Father;”7945
that is, of course, (the glory) of the Son, even Him who was
visible, and was glorified by the invisible Father. And therefore,
inasmuch as he had said that the Word of God was God, in order that he
might give no help to the presumption of the adversary, (which
pretended) that he had seen the Father Himself and in order to
draw a distinction between the invisible Father and the visible Son, he
makes the additional assertion, ex abundanti as it
were: “No man hath seen God at any time.”7946
What God does he mean? The Word? But
he has already said: “Him we have seen and heard, and our
hands have handled the Word of life.” Well, (I must again
ask,) what God does he mean? It is of course the Father, with whom was
the Word, the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, and
has Himself declared Him.7947
He was both heard
and seen and, that He might not be supposed to be a phantom, was
actually handled. Him, too, did Paul behold; but yet he saw not the
Father. “Have I not,” he says, “seen Jesus Christ
our Lord?”7948
Moreover, he
expressly called Christ God, saying: “Of whom are the fathers,
and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God
blessed for ever.”7949
He shows us also
that the Son of God, which is the Word of God, is visible, because He
who became flesh was called Christ. Of the Father, however, he says to
Timothy: “Whom none among men hath seen, nor indeed can
see;” and he accumulates the description in still ampler terms:
“Who only hath immortality, and dwelleth in the light which no
man can approach unto.”7950
It was of Him, too,
that he had said in a previous passage: “Now unto the King
eternal, immortal, invisible, to the only God;”7951
so that we might apply even the contrary
qualities to the Son Himself—mortality, accessibility—of
whom the apostle testifies that “He died according to the
Scriptures,”7952
and that “He
was seen by himself last of all,”7953
—by means, of course, of the light
which was accessible, although it was not without imperilling his sight
that he experienced that light.7954
A like
danger to which also befell Peter, and John, and James, (who
confronted not the same light) without risking the loss of their reason
and mind; and if they, who were unable to endure the glory of the
Son,7955
had only seen the Father, they must have
died then and there: “For no man shall see God, and
live.”7956
This being the
case, it is evident that He was always seen from the beginning, who
became visible in the end; and that He, (on the contrary,) was not seen
in the end who had never been visible from the beginning; and that
accordingly there are two—the Visible and the Invisible. It was
the Son, therefore, who was always seen, and the Son who always
conversed with men, and the Son who has always worked by the authority
and will of the Father; because “the Son can do nothing of
Himself, but what He seeth the Father do”7957
—“do” that is, in His mind
and thought.7958
For the Father acts
by mind and thought; whilst the Son, who is in the Father’s mind
and thought,7959
| 7959 The reading is,
“in Patris sensu;” another reading substitutes
“sinu” for “sensu;” q.d.
“the Father’s bosom.” | gives effect and
form to what He sees. Thus all things were made by the Son, and
without Him was not anything made.7960
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