Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| How the Back Parts of God Were Seen. The Faith of the Resurrection of Christ. The Catholic Church Only is the Place from Whence the Back Parts of God are Seen. The Back Parts of God Were Seen by the Israelites. It is a Rash Opinion to Think that God the Father Only Was Never Seen by the Fathers.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter 17.—How the Back Parts of God Were Seen. The
Faith of the Resurrection of Christ. The Catholic Church Only is
the Place from Whence the Back Parts of God are Seen. The Back
Parts of God Were Seen by the Israelites. It is a Rash Opinion to
Think that God the Father Only Was Never Seen by the
Fathers.
Not unfitly is it commonly
understood to be prefigured from the person of our Lord Jesus
Christ, that His “back parts” are to be taken to be His flesh,
in which He was born of the Virgin, and died,
and rose again; whether they are called back parts312
on account
of the posteriority of mortality, or because it was almost in the
end of the world, that is, at a late period,313
that He deigned to take it: but
that His “face” was that form of God, in which He “thought it
not robbery to be equal with God,”314
which no one certainly can see and
live; whether because after this life, in which we are absent from
the Lord,315
and where
the corruptible body presseth down the soul,316
| 316 Wisdom 9.15" id="iv.i.iv.xviii-p7.1" parsed="|Wis|9|15|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Wis.9.15">Wisd. ix. 15 | we shall see “face to face,”317
as the
apostle says—(for it is said in the Psalms, of this life,
“Verily every man living is altogether vanity;”318
and again,
“For in Thy sight shall no man living be justified;”319
and in this
life also, according to John, “It doth not yet appear what we
shall be, but we know,” he says, “that when He shall appear, we
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is,”320
which he
certainly intended to be understood as after this life, when we
shall have paid the debt of death, and shall have received the
promise of the resurrection);—or whether that even now, in
whatever degree we spiritually understand the wisdom of God, by
which all things were made, in that same degree we die to carnal
affections, so that, considering this world dead to us, we also
ourselves die to this world, and say what the apostle says, “The
world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”321
For it was
of this death that he also says, “Wherefore, if ye be dead with
Christ, why as though living in the world are ye subject to
ordinances?”322
Not
therefore without cause will no one be able to see the “face,”
that is, the manifestation itself of the wisdom of God, and live.
For it is this very appearance, for the contemplation of which
every one sighs who strives to love God with all his heart, and
with all his soul, and with all his mind; to the contemplation of
which, he who loves his neighbor, too, as himself builds up his
neighbor also as far as he may; on which two commandments hang all
the law and the prophets.323
And this is signified also in Moses
himself. For when he had said, on account of the love of God with
which he was specially inflamed, “If I have found grace in thy
sight, show me now Thyself plainly, that I may find grace in Thy
sight;” he immediately subjoined, on account of the love also of
his neighbor, “And that I may know that this nation is Thy
people.” It is therefore that “appearance” which hurries away
every rational soul with the desire of it, and the more ardently
the more pure that soul is; and it is the more pure the more it
rises to spiritual things; and it rises the more to spiritual
things the more it dies to carnal things. But whilst we are absent
from the Lord, and walk by faith, not by sight,324
we ought to see the “back
parts” of Christ, that is His flesh, by that very faith, that is,
standing on the solid foundation of faith, which the rock
signifies,325
| 325 [Augustin here gives the
Protestant interpretation of the word “rock,” in the passage,
“on this rock I will build my church.”—W.G.T.S.] | and
beholding it from such a safe watch-tower, namely in the Catholic
Church, of which it is said, “And upon this rock I will build my
Church.”326
For so much
the more certainly we love that face of Christ, which we earnestly
desire to see, as we recognize in His back parts how much first
Christ loved us.
29. But in the flesh itself, the
faith in His resurrection saves and justifies us. For, “If thou
shalt believe,” he says, “in thine heart, that God hath raised
Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved;”327
and again, “Who was delivered,”
he says, “for our offenses, and was raised again for our
justification.”328
So that the
reward of our faith is the resurrection of the body of our Lord.329
For even His
enemies believe that that flesh died on the cross of His passion,
but they do not believe it to have risen again. Which we believing
most firmly, gaze upon it as from the solidity of a rock: whence we
wait with certain hope for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of
our body;330
because we
hope for that in the members of Christ, that is, in ourselves,
which by a sound faith we acknowledge to be perfect in Him as in
our Head. Thence it is that He would not have His back parts seen,
unless as He passed by, that His resurrection may be believed. For
that which is Pascha in Hebrew, is translated Passover.331
| 331 Transitus = passing by. | Whence John
the Evangelist also says, “Before the feast of the Passover, when
Jesus knew that His hour was come, that He should pass out of this
world unto the Father.”332
30. But they who believe this, but
believe it not in the Catholic Church, but in some schism or in
heresy, do not see the back parts of the Lord from “the place
that is by Him.” For what does that mean which the Lord says,
“Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand
upon a rock?” What earthly place is “by” the Lord, unless
that is “by Him” which touches Him spiritually? For what place
is not “by” the Lord, who “reacheth from one end to another
mightily, and sweetly doth order all things,”333
| 333 Wisdom 8.1" id="iv.i.iv.xviii-p26.1" parsed="|Wis|8|1|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Wis.8.1">Wisd. viii. 1 | and of whom it is said, “Heaven
is His throne, and earth is His footstool;” and who said,
“Where is the house that ye build unto me, and where is the place
of my rest? For has not my hand made all those things?”334
But
manifestly the Catholic Church itself is understood to be “the
place by Him,” wherein one stands upon a rock, where he
healthfully sees the “Pascha Domini,” that is, the “Passing
by”335
of the Lord,
and His back parts, that is, His body, who believes in His
resurrection. “And thou shalt stand,” He says, “upon a rock
while my glory passeth by.” For in reality, immediately after the
majesty of the Lord had passed by in the glorification of the Lord,
in which He rose again and ascended to the Father, we stood firm
upon the rock. And Peter himself then stood firm, so that he
preached Him with confidence, whom, before he stood firm, he had
thrice from fear denied;336
although, indeed, already before
placed in predestination upon the watch-tower of the rock, but with
the hand of the Lord still held over him that he might not see. For
he was to see His back parts, and the Lord had not yet “passed
by,” namely, from death to life; He had not yet been glorified by
the resurrection.
31. For as to that, too, which
follows in Exodus, “I will cover thee with mine hand while I pass
by, and I will take away my hand and thou shalt see my back
parts;” many Israelites, of whom Moses was then a figure,
believed in the Lord after His resurrection, as if His hand had
been taken off from their eyes, and they now saw His back parts.
And hence the evangelist also mentions that prophesy of Isaiah,
“Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy,
and shut their eyes.”337
Lastly, in the Psalm, that is not
unreasonably understood to be said in their person, “For day and
night Thy hand was heavy upon me.” “By day,” perhaps, when He
performed manifest miracles, yet was not acknowledged by them; but
“by night,” when He died in suffering, when they thought still
more certainly that, like any one among men, He was cut off and
brought to an end. But since, when He had already passed by, so
that His back parts were seen, upon the preaching to them by the
Apostle Peter that it behoved Christ to suffer and rise again, they
were pricked in their hearts with the grief of repentance,338
that that
might come to pass among the baptized which is said in the
beginning of that Psalm, “Blessed are they whose transgressions
are forgiven, and whose sins are covered;” therefore, after it
had been said, “Thy hand is heavy upon me,” the Lord, as it
were, passing by, so that now He removed His hand, and His back
parts were seen, there follows the voice of one who grieves and
confesses and receives remission of sins by faith in the
resurrection of the Lord: “My moisture,” he says, “is turned
into the drought of summer. I acknowledged my sin unto Thee, and
mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my
transgressions unto the Lord, and Thou forgavest the iniquity of my
sin.”339
For we ought
not to be so wrapped up in the darkness of the flesh, as to think
the face indeed of God to be invisible, but His back visible, since
both appeared visibly in the form of a servant; but far be it from
us to think anything of the kind in the form of God; far be it from
us to think that the Word of God and the Wisdom of God has a face
on one side, and on the other a back, as a human body has, or is at
all changed either in place or time by any appearance or motion.340
| 340 [This explanation of the “back
parts” of Christ to mean his resurrection, and of “the place
that is by him,” to mean the church, is an example of the
fanciful exegesis into which Augustin, with the fathers generally,
sometimes falls. The reasoning, here, unlike that in the preceding
chapter, is not from the immediate context, and hence extraneous
matter is read into the text.—W.G.T.S.] |
32. Wherefore, if in those words
which were spoken in Exodus, and in all those corporeal
appearances, the Lord Jesus Christ was manifested; or if in some
cases Christ was manifested, as the consideration of this passage
persuades us, in others the Holy Spirit, as that which we have said
above admonishes us; at any rate no such result follows, as that
God the Father never appeared in any such form to the Fathers. For
many such appearances happened in those times, without either the
Father, or the Son, or the Holy Spirit being expressly named and
designated in them; but yet with some intimations given through
certain very probable interpretations, so that it would be too rash
to say that God the Father never appeared by any visible forms to
the fathers or the prophets. For they gave birth to this opinion
who were not able to understand in respect to the unity of the
Trinity such texts as, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal,
invisible, the only wise God;”341
and, “Whom no man hath seen,
nor can see.”342
Which texts are understood by a
sound faith in that substance itself, the highest, and in the
highest degree divine and unchangeable, whereby both the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit is the one and only God. But those
visions were wrought through the changeable creature, made subject
to the unchangeable God, and did not manifest God properly as He
is, but by intimations such as suited the causes and times of the
several circumstances.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
