De visione Dei

How God is seen beyond the coincidence of contradictories: and how seeing is being. I stand before the image of your face, my God: which I look upon with sensible eyes: and I strive with inward eyes to behold the truth, which is signed in the picture: and it meets me, Lord, that your gaze speaks. For your speaking is not other, than your seeing: since they do not differ really in you, who are absolute simplicity itself. Then clearly I experience: that you see all and each at once. For I at once and together while I preach: speak to the gathered church, and to each existing in the church, I speak one word: and in that one I speak to each. What the church is to me: this to you, Lord, is this whole world, and each creature that is or can be. Thus therefore you speak to each: and what you speak to, you see. Lord, who are the highest consolation of those hoping in you: you inspire that I praise you from myself. For you have given me one face¹ as you willed: and it is seen by all to whom I preach singly and at once. My one face is therefore seen through each: and my simple speech is heard whole by each. I, however, cannot hear all speaking discretely at once, but one after another: nor see all discretely at once, but one after another. But if there were in me such power that being heard coincided with hearing, so too being seen and seeing, so too speaking and hearing as in you, Lord, who are the highest power: then I would hear and see all and each at once. And as I would speak to each at once: so also in the same then when I spoke, I would see and hear the answers of all and each. Whence in the gate of the coincidence of opposites which the angel set in the entrance of paradise guards: I begin to see you, Lord. For there you are: where speaking, seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, reasoning knowing, and understanding are the same, and where seeing coincides with being seen, and hearing with being heard, and tasting with being tasted, and touching with being touched, and speaking with hearing and creating with speaking. If I saw as I am visible: I would not be a creature. And if you, God, did not see as you are visible: you would not be omnipotent God. By all creatures you are visible: and you see all. For in that you see all: you are seen by all. For otherwise creatures cannot be: for by your vision they are. But if they did not see you seeing: they would not receive being from you. The being of the creature: is your seeing, alike and being seen. You speak by your word to all that are: and call to being what are not. You call therefore that they hear you: and when they hear you, then they are. When therefore you speak: you speak to all, and all hear you, to whom you speak. You speak to the earth, and call it to human nature: and the earth hears you. And this hearing of it: is becoming man. You speak to nothing as if it were something, and call nothing to something: and nothing hears you, for it becomes something which was nothing. O infinite power: your conceiving is speaking. You conceive heaven: and it is as you conceive. You conceive earth: and it is as you conceive. While you conceive: you see, and speak, and work, and whatever can be said. But you are wonderful, my God. Once you speak. Once you conceive. How then are not all things at once, but many successively? How so many diverse things from one concept? You enlighten me standing at the threshold of the gate: for your concept is eternity itself most simple. But nothing is possible to become after most simple eternity. Infinite duration therefore, which is eternity itself,, encompasses all succession. All therefore that appears to us in succession: is by no means after your concept, which is eternity. For your one concept, which is also your word: enfolds all and each. Your eternal word: cannot be manifold, nor diverse, nor variable, nor mutable, for it is simple eternity. Thus I see, Lord, after your concept there is nothing: but all things are because you conceive. But you conceive in eternity. Succession, however, in eternity: is without succession eternity itself, your word itself, Lord God. A thing which appears to us temporally: you did not conceive before it is. For in eternity in which you conceive: all temporal succession coincides in the same now of eternity. There is therefore nothing past or future: where future and past coincide with present. But that things in this world exist according to before and after: is because you did not conceive such things to be before. If you had conceived before: they would have been before. But in whose concept before and after can fall, so that he conceives one thing before and another after: he is not omnipotent. Thus because you are omnipotent God: you are within the wall in paradise. But the wall is that coincidence: where the later coincides with the earlier, where the end: coincides with the beginning, where alpha and ω are the same. Always therefore things are: for you say that they be. And they are not before: for you do not say before. And when I read Adam was so many years ago, and today such a one is born: it seems impossible that Adam then was, for then you willed, and likewise today born for now you willed, and that yet you did not will Adam to be before today born. But what seems impossible: is necessity itself. For now and then: are after your word. And therefore to one approaching you: they meet in the wall which surrounds the place where you dwell in coincidence. For now and then coincide: in the circle of the wall of paradise. But you, my God, exist and speak beyond now and then: who are absolute eternity.