Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II:
City of God: Chapter 29

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 p. 508 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 p. 509 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

Footnotes

Phil. 4.7.

1 Cor. 13:9, 10.

1 Cor. 13.12.

Matt. 18.10.

1 John 3.2.

Ps. 116.10.

1 Cor. 13:11, 12.

2 Kings 5.26.

Jer. 23.24.

Job 42:5, 6.

Eph. 1.18.

Matt. 5.8.

Luke 3.6.

Luke 2:29, 30.

Job 19.26.  [Rev. Vers.; “from my flesh,” with the margin:  “without my flesh.”—P.S.]

1 Cor. 13.12.

2 Cor. 3.18.

Ps. 34.5.

Wisd. 9.14.

Rom. 1.20.

1 Cor. 4.5.