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| Of the Beatific Vision.
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Chapter 29.—Of the Beatific
Vision.
And now let us consider, with such
ability as God may vouchsafe, how the saints shall be employed when
they are clothed in immortal and spiritual bodies, and when the
flesh shall live no longer in a fleshly but a spiritual fashion.
And indeed, to tell the truth, I am at a loss to understand the
nature of that employment, or, shall I rather say, repose and ease,
for it has never come within the range of my bodily senses. And
if I should speak of my mind or understanding, what is our
understanding in comparison of its excellence? For then shall be
that “peace of God which,” as the apostle says, “passeth all
understanding,”1669
—that is to say, all human, and
perhaps all angelic understanding, but certainly not the divine.
That it passeth ours there is no doubt; but if it passeth that of
the angels,—and he who says “all understanding” seems to make
no exception in their favor,—then we must understand him to mean
that neither we nor the angels can understand, as God understands,
the peace which God Himself enjoys. Doubtless this passeth all
understanding but His own. But as we shall one day be made to
participate, according to our slender capacity, in His peace, both
in ourselves, and with our neighbor, and with God our chief good,
in this respect the angels understand the peace of God in their own
measure, and men too, though now far behind them, whatever
spiritual advance they have made. For we must remember how great
a man he was who said, “We know in part, and we prophesy in part,
until that which is perfect is come;”1670
and “Now we see through a glass,
darkly; but then face to face.”1671
Such also is now the vision of
the holy angels, who are also called our angels, because we, being
rescued out of the power of darkness, and receiving the earnest of
the Spirit, are translated into the kingdom of Christ, and already
begin to belong to those angels with whom we shall enjoy that holy
and most delightful city of God of which we have now written so
much. Thus, then, the angels of God are our angels, as Christ is
God’s and also ours. They are God’s, because they have not
abandoned Him; they are ours, because we are their
fellow-citizens. The Lord Jesus also said, “See that ye despise
not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, That in heaven
their angels do always see the face of my Father which is in
heaven.”1672
As,
then, they see, so shall we also see; but not yet do we thus see.
Wherefore the apostle uses the words cited a little ago, “Now we
see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.” This
vision is reserved as the reward of our faith; and of it the
Apostle John also says, “When He shall appear, we shall be like
Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”1673
By “the face” of God we are
to understand His manifestation, and not a part of the body similar
to that which in our bodies we call by that name.
And so, when I am asked how the
saints shall be employed in that spiritual body, I do not say what
I see, but I say what I believe, according to that which I read in
the psalm, “I believed, therefore have I spoken.”1674
I say,
then, they shall in the body see God; but whether they shall see
Him by means of the body, as now we see the sun, moon, stars, sea,
earth, and all that is in it, that is a difficult question. For
it is hard to say that the saints shall then have such bodies that
they shall not be able to shut and open their eyes as they please;
while it is harder still to say that every one who shuts his eyes
shall lose the vision of God. For if the prophet Elisha, though
at a distance, saw his servant Gehazi, who thought that his
wickedness would escape his master’s observation and accepted
gifts from Naaman the Syrian, whom the prophet had cleansed from
his foul leprosy, how much more shall the saints in the spiritual
body see all things, not only though their eyes be shut, but though
they themselves be at a great distance? For then shall be “that
which is perfect,” of which the apostle says, “We know in part,
and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come,
then that which is in part shall be done away.” Then, that
he
may illustrate as well as possible, by a simile, how
superior the future life is to the life now lived, not only by
ordinary men, but even by the foremost of the saints, he says,
“When I was a child, I understood as a child, I spake as a child,
I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish
things. Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to
face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am
known.”1675
If,
then, even in this life, in which the prophetic power of remarkable
men is no more worthy to be compared to the vision of the future
life than childhood is to manhood, Elisha, though distant from his
servant, saw him accepting gifts, shall we say that when that which
is perfect is come, and the corruptible body no longer oppresses
the soul, but is incorruptible and offers no impediment to it, the
saints shall need bodily eyes to see, though Elisha had no need of
them to see his servant? For, following the Septuagint version,
these are the prophet’s words: “Did not my heart go with
thee, when the man came out of his chariot to meet thee, and thou
tookedst his gifts?”1676
Or, as the presbyter Jerome
rendered it from the Hebrew, “Was not my heart present when the
man turned from his chariot to meet thee?” The prophet said
that he saw this with his heart, miraculously aided by God, as no
one can doubt. But how much more abundantly shall the saints
enjoy this gift when God shall be all in all? Nevertheless the
bodily eyes also shall have their office and their place, and shall
be used by the spirit through the spiritual body. For the prophet
did not forego the use of his eyes for seeing what was before them,
though he did not need them to see his absent servant, and though
he could have seen these present objects in spirit, and with his
eyes shut, as he saw things far distant in a place where he himself
was not. Far be it, then, from us to say that in the life to come
the saints shall not see God when their eyes are shut, since they
shall always see Him with the spirit.
But the question arises, whether,
when their eyes are open, they shall see Him with the bodily eye?
If the eyes of the spiritual body have no more power than the eyes
which we now possess, manifestly God cannot be seen with them.
They must be of a very different power if they can look upon that
incorporeal nature which is not contained in any place, but is all
in every place. For though we say that God is in heaven and on
earth, as He, Himself says by the prophet, “I fill heaven and
earth,”1677
we do not
mean that there is one part of God in heaven and another part on
earth; but He is all in heaven and all on earth, not at alternate
intervals of time, but both at once, as no bodily nature can be.
The eye, then, shall have a vastly superior power,—the power not
of keen sight, such as is ascribed to serpents or eagles, for
however keenly these animals see, they can discern nothing but
bodily substances,—but the power of seeing things incorporeal.
Possibly it was this great power of vision which was temporarily
communicated to the eyes of the holy Job while yet in this mortal
body, when he says to God, “I have heard of Thee by the hearing
of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor
myself, and melt away, and count myself dust and ashes;”1678
although
there is no reason why we should not understand this of the eye of
the heart, of which the apostle says, “Having the eyes of your
heart illuminated.”1679
But that God shall be seen with
these eyes no Christian doubts who believingly accepts what our God
and Master says, “Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall
see God.”1680
But
whether in the future life God shall also be seen with the bodily
eye, this is now our question.
The expression of Scripture, “And
all flesh shall see the salvation of God,”1681
may without difficulty be
understood as if it were said, “And every man shall see the
Christ of God.” And He certainly was seen in the body, and
shall be seen in the body when He judges quick and dead. And that
Christ is the salvation of God, many other passages of Scripture
witness, but especially the words of the venerable Simeon, who,
when he had received into his hands the infant Christ, said, “Now
lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word:
for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”1682
As for the words of the
above-mentioned Job, as they are found in the Hebrew manuscripts,
“And in my flesh I shall see God,”1683
no doubt they were a prophecy of
the resurrection of the flesh; yet he does not say “by the
flesh.” And indeed, if he had said this, it would still be
possible that Christ was meant by “God;” for Christ shall be
seen by the flesh in the flesh. But even understanding it of God,
it is only equivalent to saying, I shall be in the flesh when I see
God. Then the apostle’s expression, “face to face,”1684
does not
oblige us to believe that we shall see God by the bodily face in
which are the eyes of the body, for we shall see Him without
intermission in spirit. And if the apostle had not
referred to
the face of the inner man, he would not have said, “But we, with
unveiled face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are
transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the
spirit of the Lord.”1685
In the same sense we understand
what the Psalmist sings, “Draw near unto Him, and be enlightened;
and your faces shall not be ashamed.”1686
For it is by faith we draw near
to God, and faith is an act of the spirit, not of the body. But
as we do not know what degree of perfection the spiritual body
shall attain,—for here we speak of a matter of which we have no
experience, and upon which the authority of Scripture does not
definitely pronounce,—it is necessary that the words of the Book
of Wisdom be illustrated in us: “The thoughts of mortal men are
timid, and our fore-castings uncertain.”1687
For if that reasoning of the
philosophers, by which they attempt to make out that intelligible
or mental objects are so seen by the mind, and sensible or bodily
objects so seen by the body, that the former cannot be discerned by
the mind through the body, nor the latter by the mind itself
without the body,—if this reasoning were trustworthy, then it
would certainly follow that God could not be seen by the eye even
of a spiritual body. But this reasoning is exploded both by true
reason and by prophetic authority. For who is so little
acquainted with the truth as to say that God has no cognisance of
sensible objects? Has He therefore a body, the eyes of which give
Him this knowledge? Moreover, what we have just been relating of
the prophet Elisha, does this not sufficiently show that bodily
things can be discerned by the spirit without the help of the
body? For when that servant received the gifts, certainly this
was a bodily or material transaction, yet the prophet saw it not by
the body, but by the spirit. As, therefore, it is agreed that
bodies are seen by the spirit, what if the power of the spiritual
body shall be so great that spirit also is seen by the body? For
God is a spirit. Besides, each man recognizes his own life—that
life by which he now lives in the body, and which vivifies these
earthly members and causes them to grow—by an interior sense, and
not by his bodily eye; but the life of other men, though it is
invisible, he sees with the bodily eye. For how do we distinguish
between living and dead bodies, except by seeing at once both the
body and the life which we cannot see save by the eye? But a life
without a body we cannot see thus.
Wherefore it may very well be, and
it is thoroughly credible, that we shall in the future world see
the material forms of the new heavens and the new earth in such a
way that we shall most distinctly recognize God everywhere present
and governing all things, material as well as spiritual, and shall
see Him, not as now we understand the invisible things of God, by
the things which are made,1688
and see Him darkly, as in a
mirror, and in part, and rather by faith than by bodily vision of
material appearances, but by means of the bodies we shall wear and
which we shall see wherever we turn our eyes. As we do not
believe, but see that the living men around us who are exercising
vital functions are alive, though we cannot see their life without
their bodies, but see it most distinctly by means of their bodies,
so, wherever we shall look with those spiritual eyes of our future
bodies, we shall then, too, by means of bodily substances behold
God, though a spirit, ruling all things. Either, therefore, the
eyes shall possess some quality similar to that of the mind, by
which they may be able to discern spiritual things, and among these
God,—a supposition for which it is difficult or even impossible
to find any support in Scripture,—or, which is more easy to
comprehend, God will be so known by us, and shall be so much before
us, that we shall see Him by the spirit in ourselves, in one
another, in Himself, in the new heavens and the new earth, in every
created thing which shall then exist; and also by the body we shall
see Him in every body which the keen vision of the eye of the
spiritual body shall reach. Our thoughts also shall be visible to
all, for then shall be fulfilled the words of the apostle, “Judge
nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring
to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the
thoughts of the heart, and then shall every one have praise of
God.”1689
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