Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD AS HE IS IN HIMSELF, OR ON THE BEATIFIC VISION.

No creature has a natural immediate vision of the divine essence.

« Not only is God in himself absolutely invisible to the bodily eye; but also no created intellect, according to its natural mode of knowing, can gaze upon the divine essence in itself, and as it is in itself; it can know it only through another created object, and so only analogically. »

Vision, although by its first imposition of the name it is said of perception by the sense of sight, is used in a derived meaning of intellectual knowledge, and so is altogether the same as understanding. But just as sensible vision is the immediate and clear perception of a visible object in itself, so also mental vision, said simply, especially when it is referred to God as the object of the vision, in its proper sense signifies a clear and immediate understanding of the object in itself. Hence Paul simply calls the invisible things of God, but of their mediate understanding he speaks of conspection only with an added explanation: « For the invisible things of him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made » Rom. I. 20. (above p. 38.). That this signification of vision, and its distinction from mediate knowledge, whether of reason or of faith, may be more precisely determined, it is customary to call it, by an added defining term, intuitive vision.

Now, first of all, in Scripture there is a twofold series of testimonies. In one, it is not only said that God is not seen by us in this life, namely with that immediate and intuitive vision of which we treated in the preceding chapter; but God is simply presented as invisible to the created intellect and visible to himself alone. In the other series of testimonies, however, for angels and men in eternal life, the intuitive vision itself is preached and promised, but as a grace of God and as the reward and crown of the merits of grace. In quite the same sense ecclesiastical preaching and the whole tradition declare and set forth more explicitly this distinction between the invisibility and the vision of God in himself. Such revealed doctrine, as is plain, contains at last this dogma: that God in himself is invisible to the natural powers of a creature; that this creature, however, can be raised, and in fact has been raised by grace, to the intuitive vision of God, in which accordingly perfect supernatural beatitude and the ultimate (formal) supernatural end are constituted. Since moreover this very vision, as an operation of a created mind however elevated by a supernatural light, remains a finite understanding, while its object, as infinite being, is infinitely knowable, therefore the vision of God in a creature admits of degrees of perfection without limit, and can never be adequately commensurate with the whole infinite knowability of the object: in this sense the comprehension of God is said to belong to the infinite intellect alone. There can therefore be distinguished, as it were, four orders, altogether diverse from one another in kind: sensible vision; then intellectual vision of God, but in an improper sense and mediate through the things that are made; intuitive vision of God in the proper sense; and finally comprehensive vision. The first is in itself impossible; the second, and it alone, can be in the natural order; the third is granted to a creature in the supernatural order; the fourth belongs to God alone. Therefore, looking at vision through the bodily sense, or looking at the natural powers of the created intellect and taking vision in its proper sense for immediate intuition, God can and ought to be called simply invisible both to angels and to men; looking also at the supernatural order, but understanding by the name of vision that which is comprehensive, corresponding in its perfection to the whole knowability of the object, God in this sense is absolutely invisible to the created intellect and visible to himself alone. Hence, in opposition to the heresy which asserts (as the Eunomians did) a natural comprehensibility of God for the human intellect (see above th. X.), God must be called invisible to the creature in both senses, whether intuitively by natural powers or simply comprehensively. This distinction, as we shall show in its place, can reconcile the opinions of many most weighty Fathers, and without it they cannot be reconciled with Catholic doctrine or with one another.

We must therefore inquire about the invisibility of God for the natural powers of the creature, which we shall treat in this thesis; in what follows we shall then speak of the supernatural intuitive vision of God, whether it is; and then finally, in our manner and as far as is permitted, we shall inquire how this supernatural and intuitive vision of God is.

I. That God is invisible to the bodily eyes, certainly both from revelation and from reason, is indubitable in theology, I say, and in philosophy. Nevertheless this very invisibility of God can be viewed in two different ways: namely, a) that God of himself is not an object proportionate in his nature to the perception of the senses; or b) that, as God is pure spirit and therefore in his nature wholly above the object of the senses, so the sense cannot be raised supernaturally to spiritual perception, and so to seeing God who is pure spirit (cf. Suarez l. II. c. 6. n. 3. seqq.). In the first way the question concerns the very nature of God, and in this sense the invisibility of God for the bodily eye is as certain as it is certain that God is pure spirit; the divine nature, however, is understood to be spiritual from Christian principles, and will be demonstrated lower down in its place. But in the second sense the question is not so much about the nature of God, which is supposed to be spiritual, as about the nature, or rather about the obediential power (as they call it) of bodily sight, whether its elevation to spiritual perception is absolutely repugnant or not repugnant. See S. August. ep. 147. ad Paulinam n. 49.

In the first sense, then, the revealed invisibility of the divine nature is contained both in all those passages where God is called spirit, and in those where God is expressly declared to be invisible. « No one has ever seen God » Io. I. 18; 1. Io. IV. 12. Christ « the image of the invisible God » (τον Θεον του ἀοράτου) Col. I. 5; « honour to the immortal, invisible, the only God » ¹ 1. Tim. I. 17; « who alone has immortality and dwells in light inaccessible, whom no man has seen nor can see » ib. VI. 16. For in such passages the invisibility of God simply stated, although it includes invisibility also for the powers of the created intellect, is nevertheless directly, and in a certain way a fortiori, the exclusion of bodily vision. In the teaching of the Church and in the exposition of the Fathers, if it were necessary to demonstrate that this dogma has always been indubitable, appeal could be made to the disputes of the Fathers against the Gnostics and the Manichaeans, against the Anthropomorphites, against the Arians, who affirmed that the Son and the Holy Spirit, though not indeed the truly divine essence, were or could be made visible, being of an inferior nature.

In the second sense, the invisibility of God, namely that the bodily eye cannot be raised to the vision of the divine substance, follows from the truth of faith now declared, and from a certain truth: that a power cannot be carried beyond its object, or, for the present matter, that the bodily sense cannot be raised to an operation intrinsically intellectual; for by that very fact it would no longer be a body but a spirit. « Whoever, however, wishes to know with what eyes God is seen, let him think of God himself, because he is wisdom, is truth, is charity (substantial). Wherefore with the eyes with which wisdom, truth and charity are seen, with those same eyes of the soul is that wise and true divinity seen. Therefore God promises his vision not to the eyes of the body but to the eyes of the soul, which he constitutes capable of wisdom, truth and charity » Fulgent. ad Ferrand. ep. 14. quaest. 3. n. 31. Cf. Aug. ep.147. n. 43. 44.

Nevertheless, in the fifth century there were some Catholics who affirmed not only that it could happen, but that it would indeed come to pass, that after the resurrection the eye of the glorified body would see God in his substance ². St Augustine in ep. 92. ad Italicam, in the year 408, rejects this invention indeed as « foolishness » and « madness » (ib. n. 5. 6.); but since some were offended by this severe judgement, he began to adopt a milder manner of speaking in ep. 147. (or in the book on seeing God, as he himself calls it) ad Paulinam n. 48. seqq., and in ep. 148. ad Fortunatianum, where he concedes to his opponents that it is still necessary to inquire more diligently whether this our earthly body is to be so converted into a spiritual one that the eye of the spiritual body sees God. He himself nevertheless always persisted in his earlier and true opinion, and strove to confirm it from the Fathers and Doctors Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, Jerome. Yet, to placate a certain bishop who was angry with him on account of those harsher censures, he adds: « Let us inquire more calmly and diligently about the spiritual body, lest perhaps God, if he knows it to be useful to us, may deign to demonstrate something certain and clear according to his Scriptures. For if a more diligent inquiry shall find that such a change of the body is to come, that it can see invisible things, I think that no such power of the body will take away from the mind its vision, so that the outer man could then see God, and the inner man could not... It remains that in the meantime we be most certain of the vision of God according to the inner man; but if the body too, by a wonderful change, is able to do this, something will be added, nothing will be taken away. » ep. 48. n. 17.

St Augustine most beautifully resolved this question about the year 427, in de Civ. Dei l. XXII. c. 29. The blessed know God « not through creatures but in a creature, » as St Bonaventure says (above p. 77.); and therefore when after the resurrection, with their glorified bodily eyes, they will see « a new heaven and a new earth, » in the creature which « shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God » (Rom. VIII. 21.), they will most clearly behold by the intellect the presence, power and essence of God, not indeed in himself but through another thing visible to the glorified eyes themselves ³ « That the divine presence is known through the intellect from the bodies themselves at once when they are seen, comes about from two things, namely from the clearness of the intellect and from the radiance of the divine brightness in the renewed bodies » S. Th. 1. q. 12. a. 3. ad 2. In this way the words of St Augustine are to be understood: « Wherefore it can happen, and it is very credible, that we shall see the worldly bodies of the new heaven and new earth in such a way that we shall see God present everywhere and governing all bodies, through the bodies which we shall carry, and through those (things) which we shall look upon, with the clearest perspicuity, wherever we turn our eyes; not as now the invisible things of God, understood through the things that are made, are beheld through a mirror in an enigma... but as men, among whom we live, exerting living motions and vital movements, as soon as we look upon them we do not believe that they live, but see that they do... so, wherever we carry those spiritual lights of our bodies, we shall behold the incorporeal God governing all things, even through bodies » Aug. ib. n. 6. Cf. Lupum Ferrariens. ep.30. (Bibl. Max. PP. T. XV. p. 15.).

II. But in the Scriptures and in the ecclesiastical exposition, chiefly and in the first intention, the discourse concerns the invisibility of God not for the bodily eyes but for the created intellect.

1°. In the words of Rom. I. 20., examined above (th. II.), that wonderful conjunction of invisibility and visibility is recalled: « the invisible things of him through the things that are made are clearly seen, being understood⁴. « Mediate vision, that is, the knowability and knowledge of God for the created intellect through notions derived from elsewhere, is affirmed in such a way that God in himself, or all the things that are in God, are simply called invisible. Now indeed a) the whole question there concerns intellectual visibility and invisibility. b) Invisibility is predicated of the subject as an intrinsic and essential mark of the attributes of God, and therefore (on account of his all-round simplicity) of God himself. Whence this invisibility cannot be understood as restricted to the human intellect alone, but must be understood simply, from its intrinsic character, for every created intellect; for that God is perfectly visible and comprehensible to himself is supposed as self-evident. c) This invisibility excludes the immediate vision of God even in himself, as is plain from the opposition by which the invisible things of God are described as visible to the intellect and seen through another. d) Both in this place and whenever elsewhere there is talk of the invisibility of God, it cannot be understood to exclude vision through an intellect elevated to the supernatural order and mode of understanding, because an explicit revelation, in another series of testimonies, explicitly claims this supernatural immediate vision for angels and for men, as we shall see, as the ultimate end and crown, and eternal life. The divine things are therefore said to be invisible in themselves for the natural faculty of every created intellect (cf. above p. 38.).

In the same sense the invisibility of God is again described by the Apostle: « blessed and only mighty... who alone has immortality, and dwells in light inaccessible, whom no man has seen nor can see » 1. Tim. VI. 16. The very intrinsic perfection of the divine Esse, incommunicable to creatures, described by the Apostle according to certain attributes, is the reason why God dwells in inaccessible light. For by its infinite perfection it is in itself infinitely knowable, and therefore it is said to dwell in light; but from the same reason of infinite perfection it comes about that vision properly so called, that is, immediate knowledge of the divine Esse as it is in itself, surpasses every intellect that is outside this light, that is, every created intellect knowing naturally; and therefore light is said to be simply inaccessible. Hence Paul infers a denial not only of the fact but also of the possibility: no man has seen nor can see. Although the inference is particular, about men, the universal principle, that light is said to be simply inaccessible, is not on that account restricted to men alone.

2°. In comparing the divine intellect with the created intellect, the vision of God is said to be natural to God alone, so that this is the proper mark distinguishing and the character of divinity. « No one has ever seen God (οὐδεὶς ἑώρακε πώποτε), the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him » Io. I. 18. « Not that anyone has seen the Father, except he who is from God (in the bosom of the Father), he has seen the Father » ib. VI. 46. « No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son is willing to reveal him » Matth. XI. 27. « For who among men knows the things of a man, except the spirit of man which is in him? So also the things of God no one has known except the Spirit of God » 1. Cor. II. 11. In all passages of this kind the divine things are set forth which God alone has in vision, and which men cannot know except through God's own revelation, and therefore not by the light of reason but by supernatural faith. Whence it might seem that the opposition is only between the vision as it is in God and natural human reason in the state of the present life; and so one might suppose that natural immediate vision is not excluded for the human intellect in any state, much less for every created intellect. But although the direct aim is to teach that supernatural faith is the one by which alone men can attain to knowing these divine things, and to demonstrate this God is brought in as a revealer who, sees the divine things immediately by his own nature, nevertheless this very vision is set forth as natural to God alone, because God is, and therefore supernatural beyond every creature.

3°. The holy Fathers more distinctly declare not only the thing itself but also the intrinsic reason of this invisibility of God in relation to the natural faculty of a finite intellect. a) First of all there could be brought forward all those Fathers who, disputing against the Eunomians, most steadfastly affirm that God in himself and in his substance can be seen neither by angels nor by men, but is comprehensible only to himself, to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; the proof of which all of them derive from the testimonies of Scripture cited just before, and especially from that John I. 18. and 1 Cor. II. 11. They bring forward the reason: « because every created nature cannot see the uncreated » Chrysost. in Io. hom. XV. So teach against the Eunomians both Gregory Nazianzen and Gregory of Nyssa, both Cyrils, and especially Chrysostom (see Petav. de Deo l. VII. c. 5.). To understand the mind of these Doctors, two things must be noted. The Eunomians claimed above all immediate intuition of God from the natural light of reason; and then they said that this intuition of theirs, on account of the simplicity of the divine being, was a perfect comprehension, as was demonstrated by us in the preceding chapter. Hence a) those Fathers absolutely denied, in the case of the angels themselves and of every created intellect, comprehension of God, but with expressions which excluded no less than immediate vision, which the heretics asserted, namely natural vision. For that reason β) those same Fathers did not indeed deny to the angels and to blessed men an immediate vision, but said that it is « by a certain condescension of God » (συγκαταβασιν Chrysost. or. III. de Incomprehens.), and that it is by a special « conjunction with God, and because they are illumined by his whole light (διὰ το πλησιον εἶναι θεου καὶ ὅλῳ τῷ φωτι καταλαμπεσθαι Nazianz. or. 34.); and so from those same Fathers it must be judged that God, who is invisible to the powers of a created nature, makes himself visible only through a supernatural light.

b) More directly, and therefore also more clearly, other Fathers explain this invisibility of God and its proper reason. They consider, namely, the eminence of God according to his Esse above all created things, and from this very fact they deduce his eminence in knowability, in his own essence, above every created intellect: « thus he surpasses everything we can think or know, just as he surpasses everything we are » Fulgent. ad Transimund. l. II. c. 1. St Chrysostom expresses the principle itself thus: « a substance, a more eminent substance⁵ cannot perfectly know »⁶ Hom. V. de Incomprehens. n. 3. T. I. p. 485. On this principle the teaching of St Irenaeus, among others, runs thus. God first of all, « according to his greatness », that is by his nature, is « incapable » to all created things, and he presents himself visible, « according to love », that is by a supernatural gift, only. « One God, therefore, who made and arranged all things by the Word and Wisdom (the Holy Spirit)... according to his greatness indeed is unknown to all those who have been made by him... but according to love he is always known through him by whom he made all things... Indeed according to his greatness and wondrous glory no one shall see God and live (Exod. XXXIII. 20.); for the Father is incapable: but according to love and humanity (φιλανθρωπιαν cf. Tit. III. 4.), and because he can do all things, he also grants this to those who love him, namely to see God, which the prophets also prophesied. » Then Irenaeus distinguishes the supernatural vision of God in three ways: namely the vision through symbols in the theophanies of the Old Testament; the vision of the Word in the assumed human nature, both of which are a vision through another and not of the divine nature in itself; lastly, after both of these, the vision of God immediately in himself, in which eternal life is drawn from the very vision of God. He calls the first the vision through the Spirit of prophecy, the second adoptive in the Son, that is, in the human nature adopted or assumed by the Son, and the third paternal vision. For manifestation outside God is attributed by Irenaeus and others to the Word and the Holy Spirit (see de Trin. th. VI. XI. XIII.), and so the immediate manifestation of God in his own nature is called the manifestation of the Father, in whom both the Son and the Spirit are seen as in the fountain and root of the Trinity. If therefore that first vision is as it were in shadow, and the second as it were a preparation, which is supernatural, so much the more the third, namely the immediate vision, is above the powers of created nature, and is to be bestowed only through the supernatural divine light. « For man does not see God of himself. He, however, is seen by men when he wills, to whom he wills, and as he wills; for God is powerful in all things: indeed then (in the Old Testament) he is seen through the Spirit of prophecy, and he is seen also through the Son by adoption, but he will be seen in the kingdom of heaven paternally: the Spirit indeed preparing man for the Son⁷ of God, but the Son bringing him to the Father, and the Father bestowing incorruption for eternal life, which falls to each one from the fact that he sees God. For as those who see the light are within the light and receive its brightness, so also those who see God are within God, receiving his brightness. Now the brightness gives them life; therefore they receive life who see God. And for this reason the incapable and invisible God makes himself visible and comprehensible and capable to men, so that he may give life to those who receive him and see him » ⁸ Iren. l. IV. c. 20. n. 4. 5. (al. c. 37.).

c) The Fathers complete this doctrine of the invisibility of God, on account of the very eminence of the divine Esse above all created things, and explain it more distinctly by considering the very manner in which any natural knowledge stands. They establish as a principle evident in itself, which we have already indicated above (th. X.) from Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria and Dionysius, that all knowledge which is indeed natural is by this very fact proportionate not to the nature of the thing known but to the nature of the knower, and that it cannot be a mode of natural knowledge above the perfection of the knowing nature; for it is the same to say natural as to say proportionate to the nature. This is expressed by that axiom most famous in the schools: « the mode of acting follows the mode of being » (τοῦ εἶναι); and therefore also « everything known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. » Every intellect, therefore, whatever it understands according to the faculty and character of its nature, it understands according to the mode of its own proper being. Hence, moreover, it conceives objects of a lower order in a nobler mode than that in which they are in themselves, but adapts higher things to itself and to the mode of its nature. God understands all things in his essence as in an exemplar cause, in an infinitely perfect mode; angels naturally know all things according to the analogy of their own proper essence; the human soul, as long as it is the form in a material body, has as its proper and most proportionate object of knowledge material being, and from that it ascends to knowing spiritual things, which it cannot naturally know as they are in themselves, but only according to the analogy of the object proportionate to itself.

Now God, by the whole character of being and by the mode of his infinite Esse, transcends all created things, so that these are of a plainly different order, and are nothing but analogical shadowings of the divine essence. Therefore no created intellect, as long as it knows according to the proportion of its nature, can conceive God as he is in himself; nor can God be to it the immediate object of intuition.

It cannot know God as he is in himself. For it knows according to the mode of its own being, not according to the mode of the Esse known. And by this very fact God cannot be the immediate object of intuition for a created intellect which knows naturally. For a) when that most simple Esse is in itself the object of intuition, it is necessarily known as it is in itself. Indeed this is true generally of every knowable thing which is known in itself and not through another. We do not say that God, if as efficient cause he immediately gives the knowledge of himself, is therefore known as he is in himself; but we say that the idea or perception which the mind forms in itself and informs from the divine Esse itself as from the immediate object, cannot but be knowledge of God as he is in himself. β) Because every intellect which knows naturally has its own object proportionate to itself, through which, or according to whose analogy, it knows all the rest; therefore the divine intellect alone has the divine essence as the proportionate object, and therefore as the immediate object of intuition; but for every created intellect, just as its proportionate object, so its immediate object of intuition is something created; nor can it understand God except according to its analogy, and therefore by mediate knowledge.

This doctrine is whole in the cited works of the holy Fathers, and St Thomas repeats it in summary: « It is impossible that any created intellect should see the essence of God by its natural powers. For knowledge takes place according as the thing known is in the knower. The thing known, however, is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Hence the knowledge of any knower is according to the mode of its nature. If, therefore, the mode of being of some thing known exceeds the mode of the nature of the knower, it is necessary that the knowledge of that thing be above the nature of that knower.... It follows therefore that to know the subsisting Esse itself is connatural only to the divine intellect, and that it is above the natural faculty of any created intellect, because no creature is its own esse, but has esse participated » S. Th. 1. q. 12. a. 4. Cf. Suarez, Metaphys. disp. XXX. sect. XI. n. 13; de Deo 1. II. c. 9. Namely, God is Esse itself in every line of perfection, and therefore infinite and most simple, and by his essence necessarily actual; but every creature is an analogical shadowing of this infinite Esse, from its essence only in the state of possibility, through the free creation of God actual according to some analogical perfection, but according to degrees of possible perfections without limit not actual but in potency; and thus having some esse participated, wholly of another and different order from the absolute divine Esse. Hence, since every intellect, as long as it remains in its natural mode of knowing, knows according to the mode of its being, the object of knowledge for any created intellect, as it is in itself through its proper notions, can only be something created; the absolute Esse it can know only according to the analogy of this its own proper object, and therefore not according to the mode in which the absolute Esse is in itself; and by this very fact it cannot know that absolute Esse immediately in itself, but only through another. Yet the more perfect the esse of a creature is, that is, the nearer its imitation of the divine Esse, the more perfect is its intellect and the more perfect its mode of knowing, as follows from what has been said; and therefore also the more perfect the mode of knowing the absolute Esse analogically.

Corollary. From what has been demonstrated so far it is plain what must be answered to the question which somewhat more recent Scholastics raise, and which they do not all solve in the same way: whether a creature is possible to which the immediate vision of God, and therefore the intuition of the divine Esse as it is in itself, would be natural. First of all, Scripture and the Fathers universally affirm the invisibility of God and deny natural visibility before all creatures, not only historically, as a fact in the present order, but metaphysically, from the very intrinsic reason of the divine being, by which it comes about that this intuitive vision is natural to God alone. Then the Fathers further explain the reason from the difference between divine being and created being, and from the nature of the act of knowing itself, according to the principle: whatever is (naturally) known is known according to the mode of the knower. Hence the proper and immediate object of natural knowledge, and that by which an object is known as it is in itself, must agree with the nature of the knower, at least in the proper reason of being, for any intellect; from this, then, in this proper object all the rest are known (as we said a little before): the lower things, namely, are understood in a more perfect mode than they are in themselves; but those which by their whole reason of being are above the nature of the knower can be known only mediately and according to the analogy of the proper object of knowledge itself. Wherefore a creature, for which the immediate intuition of the divine being as it is in itself would be natural, would have to be in the same reason of being as the divine being is, and so would not be a creature but God.

But if these things are so, how is it that God can nevertheless raise an intellectual creature supernaturally to the intuitive vision of God? Why cannot God create an intellect for which that natural mode of knowing would be natural, which he can make connatural to another created intellect through a superadded and supernatural gift? The arguments put forward in this difficulty, among many others, have persuaded John Major and some more recent Scholastics, among whom are Ripalda (de Ente supernaturali T. I. disp. 23; T. II. disput. 132, or the last, sect. 40.) and Becanus (in 1. P. Tract. I. c. 9. q. 5.), of the possibility of a created substance supernaturalis, as they called it; that is, a created substance for which the beatific vision of God, and consequently the gifts of grace which are supernatural for creatures existing in the present order, would be commensurate and natural. For us, however, the difficulty put forward, if it has any force, rather seems to prove that this possibility, just as the exaltation to the intuitive vision of God, and the whole order of grace and supernatural sanctification, cannot be known and demonstrated by the light of reason alone (cf. Suarez 1. II. c. 7. n. 12.). Yet once the revelation of a supernatural elevation is supposed, the difficulty is easily solved.

First, in the proper sense and absolutely, supernatural is only that divine order which exceeds the connatural exigence and the powers of all natures (or substances) of the created order. For if supernatural were said only relatively, so that what is natural to a higher order of creatures is supernatural in relation to a lower order, then many things also in the present order which are theologically and simply natural could be called supernatural relatively to lower orders (e.g. rationality in relation to brute animals, etc.); and thus the very notion of a truly supernatural order would be thrown into confusion. But if the true theological notion of the supernatural order is retained, a created supernatural substance involves a contradiction in terms (see Suarez 1. II. c. 9. n. 14. 15.).

2°. A substance for which the intuitive vision of God would be commensurate would have to be in the order of divine being, and so would not be a creature, as we have proved. But it is not therefore evident that there is a contradiction; and from revelation it is known that there is no contradiction, in that a creature may be raised by God, through superadded qualities, above the exigence of created nature to participation in the divine order, and in particular to the participated mode of seeing God, which is natural to God alone and by that very fact supernatural to every creature. In relations which would be external favour of God, this would be easily understood; for example, since every creature is in a servile condition before God, adoption into the sonship of God cannot be natural to it, but is above the exigence of any created nature. But since divine adoption is constituted, not as among men by a mere external relation, but by an intrinsic transformation and by inherent gifts: these very gifts, as the formal cause of that supernatural dignity of being a son of God through adoption, are supernatural; and just as adoption, so also the gifts of adoption, and the consequent right of inheritance, and the inheritance itself corresponding to sonship, cannot by the power of created nature itself be owed to any creature. This does not mean that the gifts themselves are not something effected by God in the creature, and in this sense something belonging to the created order; but that they are the formal cause of such assimilation, participation and union with the uncreated, as is proportionate and owed to no created substance from its congenital principles; and in this sense the gifts belong to the divine order. Thus, for example, if we explain the matter from the highest grade of supernatural things, no created nature can from its intrinsic principles belong to it so as to be the proper nature of a divine Person; for this is intrinsic to the divine nature alone. Therefore when the Word made the human nature his own, this union is above the proportion and the due not only of human nature but of any nature; and in the same way the dignity, rights and gifts which follow from this union and are owed to the nature so united with the divine Person are supernatural. Nevertheless these are something effected by God in the created and united nature. In a similar way the supernatural reason is to be understood and explained in the union through grace, and through the ultimate perfection of grace in the beatific vision; although this union is not identical with that other, the hypostatic union, but only analogous. The difference of supernaturality in the created substance itself, where it is repugnant, and in superadded gifts, where it in fact obtains, Suarez explains thus: « An inferior substance cannot by itself participate what is proper to the superior; but to have the divine essence as the most proper and connatural visible object is proper to God, inasmuch as his substance is his intellect, and therefore it cannot belong to a created substance by the power of its natural virtue. But accidents are instituted (that is, this is the proper intrinsic reason of accidents) to perfect substances and to supply their defects, and therefore through superadded accidents an inferior substance can in some way participate what is proper to the superior. The more so, because in every thing the first foundation, and as it were the measure, of all its connatural properties is its own substance, and therefore a contradiction is involved in the very terms⁹, when one speaks of a supernatural substance. But accidents are added to a substance, and when they come from outside, it is not necessary that they be wholly commensurate with the imperfection of the thing in which they are received; they can be participations of a higher nature, and have their perfection from the object or from elsewhere: there is therefore no similar reason » Suarez 1. II. c. 9. n. 15. See Ysambert in 1. P. q. 12. disp. IV.

The immediate vision of God as he is in himself is proposed and promised to us in revelation as our ultimate end.

« The revealed Word of God, set forth in the holy Scriptures and in the preaching and explicit declaration of the Catholic Church, clearly teaches that the intuitive vision of God, as he is in himself, constitutes in the present order the supreme beatitude of rational creatures. »

How God is necessarily the ultimate end of every creature, and in a special way of the rational creature, we shall explain in another, more fitting place, where we shall consider God as he is the supreme good; here we look only at the mode of knowing God through intuitive vision, which, as is clear from what has gone before, is supernatural, and to which God has willed to raise his rational creatures; this now is to be demonstrated from revelation.

I. We consider revelation as it is recorded in the Scriptures.

1° As an inheritance of sons, and as the fruit, reward, and crown of supernatural sanctification, eternal life is described: « you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end, eternal life... But the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, D. N. » Matth. XIX. 29; XXV. 46; Marc. X. 30; Io. III. 16; VI. 40; X. 28; XVII. 2; Rom. VI. 22; Gal. VI. 8; 1. Tim. I. 16; Tit. I. 2; Iac. I. 12; 1. Pet. III. 22; Apoc. II. 20. etc. This eternal life is God himself, not only as efficient cause but also as beatifying object: « he has given us understanding that we may know the true God, and be in his true Son. This is the true God and eternal life » Io. I. 4; XIV. 6; Col. III. 4; 1. Io. V. 20. etc. The same eternal life is described as the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, in which God will reign glorified in all the saints as in his own image, and all will enter into the kingdom of God to possess the kingdom, reigning with God and in God, glorified by God through participation in his glory, so that God may be all in all: « then the just shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father; » « and they shall reign (βασιλεύσουσι reges erunt) for ages of ages; » « in Christ all shall be made alive... when all things shall have been subjected to him, then the Son himself (the head with all the members) shall be subjected to him who subjected all things to himself, that God may be all in all » Matth. V. 3. 10; VIII. 11; XIII. 43; XXV. 34; 1. Cor. VI. 9. 10; XV. 28; 2. Tim. IV. 18; 2. Pet. I. 11; Apoc. XXII. 5. Wherefore this life and this eternal kingdom is the glory of God in his saints, the eternal weight of glory, the unfading crown of glory, or the supreme glory of God, extrinsic in this order, through the glory of the sons of God which is intrinsic to them and shall be revealed in them: « our momentary and light tribulation works in us beyond measure, in sublimity, an eternal weight of glory; » « the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory which shall be revealed in us; » « when Christ shall appear, your life, then you also shall appear with him in glory »¹; « and I (the Son of God) have given them the glory (τὴν δόξαν) which you gave me... I will that where I am, they also may be with me, that they may see the glory which you gave me » Io. XVII. 22. 24²; Rom. V. 2; VIII. 18; 2. Cor. IV. 17; Col. III. 4; 1. Pet. V. 4. This life, this kingdom, this glory, is the joy of the Lord, into which the faithful servants enter, the joy of the Lord remains in them full³Matth. XXV. 21. 23; Io. XV. 11; XVII. 13. Cf. XVI. 22. 24. This joy presupposes the absence of every evil Apoc. VII. 16. 17; XXI. 4. and is constituted by the fullness of all the goods of the Lord Matth. XXIV. 47; Luc. VI. 38. Under another image it is set forth as the marriage supper of the Lamb Apoc. XIX. 7-9; as the banquet at the table of the Lord, where they will be satisfied with blessedness; as the drink from the fountains of eternal life Matth. V. 6; XXVI. 29; Luc. XXII. 30; Apoc. VII. 17; XXI. 6.

2°. God himself is therefore the object whose participation, communication and enjoyment make all the saints live the blessed life, and reign, and are glorified, and rejoice with the joy of the Lord, and are filled with the abundance of good things and satisfied for ages without end. Now it is asked, how do they apprehend and possess God as the object of their full beatitude? The same revelation in which that eternal life is made manifest to us and promised also teaches us that the mode of possession and enjoyment is through the intuitive vision of God, as he is in himself.

Paul explicitly declares this intuition in 1. Cor. XIII. 8-12, comparing it not only with natural knowledge but also with the knowledge of faith, such as is possible in this life. « Knowledge (of this present imperfection) will be destroyed⁴ (γνώσις καταργηθήσεται). It will be destroyed, however, not by privation of perfection, but insofar as it is imperfect, by elevation to perfect knowledge in another, higher order: « for we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part will be done away⁵. » This knowledge, which compared with the future is called imperfect (ἐκ μέρους), is all knowledge of this life, even supernatural and most perfect; for the Apostle calls knowledge thus imperfect and partial, even in the case of « if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith » v. 2. The imperfection of this knowledge and the perfection of the future knowledge, however, is intrinsic, from the very mode of knowing. For « now we see through a glass in a riddle, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know, even as I also have been known⁶ ».

Three things are said about the knowledge of the present time. a) This whole knowledge of divine things, although supernatural, is through a mirror, that is, knowledge of things not immediate in themselves, but mediated through another medium. Hence, because all our knowledge of divine things is through a mirror, this mirror can be nothing but creatures previously known (cf. above th. II.XIV.). b) Therefore this our knowledge of divine things is in a riddle; that is, analogical, through likenesses of created things⁷, not knowledge of divine things as they are in themselves. c) For this very reason the knowledge is ex parte, that is, imperfect.

Over against these imperfections, in the other member, is set the perfection of the vision of God, which is promised to us for the future life. Over against mediated and analogical knowledge is set the vision face to face. This vision is evidently the immediate vision of God in himself, or intuitive, and for this very reason the vision of God as he is in himself. For a) this phrase, derived from Hebrew usage, face to face⁸ always signifies the immediate presence of one person to another. Hence to see face to face, or to see the face, signifies the immediate intuition of a person in himself, usually with the added sense of intimate familiarity and at the same time of grace, which is granted by the greater to the lesser. I have said that this is the meaning of the expression to see face to face; yet when the term face to face is joined with other verbs, it does not by itself signify vision, although it always expresses immediate presence. Thus « the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend » Exod. XXXIII. 11; nevertheless God declares to the same Moses: « you cannot see my face; for no man shall see me and live. » Cf. Irenaeus 1. IV. c. 20. n. 9. Thus another passage is also explained: « for I shall speak with him mouth to mouth, and plainly, and not through riddles and figures does he see the Lord » ⁹ Num. XII. 8.

But b) that in Paul that vision face to face is intuitive is still much clearer from the parallelism of the members; for this vision is opposed to mediated and analogical knowledge.

Above all, c) this sense is demonstrated from the other member. For to the present knowledge, which is ex parte, is opposed the future vision, by which we shall know God as we have been known by God. The comparison cannot be understood as an equality of perfection in our vision and in the divine vision; but nevertheless the perfection of our vision of God as he is in himself is clearly expressed, and therefore of the essence and of all the perfection that is in God. This is indeed understood also from the opposition to knowledge which is ex parte. Just as from the fact that the knowledge of the present life is mediated and analogical (through a mirror in a riddle), it follows that the same knowledge is ex parte: so in the fact that the future vision is face to face it is contained that through it we shall know God as also we have been known, that is, perfectly, as he is in himself. Necessarily, therefore, face to face in Paul is understood as the immediate vision of God in himself, or intuitive vision.

In the same sense, 2. Cor. V. 6-8., « to be on pilgrimage away from the Lord » and to walk « by faith » in the present life are opposed to what in the future life will be a perpetual « presence with the Lord » and the state of « vision »¹⁰.

In this intuitive vision Christ, God himself, teaches that both the end of blessedness and the supreme excellence of the rational creature are constituted: « Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God » Matth. V. 8; « I say to you, that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father, who is in heaven » ib. XVIII. 10.

3°. Further, contained in this very vision as its formal resulting effect are the kingdom of heaven, consolation from all weeping and mourning, full satiety of hunger and thirst for justice, the perfection of the adoption of sons: « Blessed are they, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, a copious reward in heaven, for they shall be consoled, they shall be satisfied, they shall be called sons of God » Matth. V. This adoption as sons is already in this life through inner transformation and through participation in the divine nature, and thus through elevation to a supernatural likeness with God 2. Pet. I.4; Io. I.13;III. 6; Iac. I. 18; 2.Cor.V. 17; Gal.VI.15; Eph.IV.23; 1. Io. III. 9: but now it is still, as it were, hidden and not yet full in its effects; in the future we await it full and manifested in all its effects. « You have received the Spirit of adoption of sons... for the Spirit himself bears witness to our spirit that we are sons of God; and if sons, then heirs. » Yet « the expectation of the creature waits for the revelation of the sons of God... and we ourselves groan within ourselves, awaiting the adoption of sons » Rom.VIII. 15-24. This full and manifest adoption and assimilation of the sons is in the beatific vision. « Now we are sons of God; and it has not yet appeared what we shall be: we know that when it shall appear (ἐὰν φανερωθῇ), we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is » 1. Io. III. 2.

II. As this intuitive vision of God is revealed in the Scriptures, so its truth, lest any doubt be possible about the sense of Scripture, has been explicitly defined by the Church. It is worth the greatest attention, however, that there was no controversy about the truth of the intuitive vision itself, but only about the mode or the time of attaining to it: so universal and constant, indeed, was the consensus on the truth itself, clearly expressed in the Scriptures. On the occasion, however, of the condemnation of errors of this kind, the intuitive vision of God itself was declared more distinctly.

1°. The doctrine is most plain in the dogmatic Constitution of Benedict XII. « We define... that (all the blessed), after the passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen and see the divine essence by intuitive and even facial vision¹¹, no created thing standing in the reason of the object seen, but the divine essence immediately showing itself to them nakedly, clearly and openly, and that, seeing thus, they enjoy the same divine essence; and also that from such vision and enjoyment the souls of those who have already departed are truly blessed and have eternal life and rest » etc. Constit. Benedictus Deus (Bullar.Roman.T. III.P.II.p.214; Raynaldi Annales ad ann.1336. n. 3. Confer ibi n. 4. seqq. tractatum ipsius Pontificis Benedicti de eodem argumento).

Shortly after this definition, the same Pontiff, among the errors which he ordered the Armenians to abjure (in the year 1341), records this as the eighth: « What the Armenians say, that the souls of baptized children and the souls of very perfect men..... will not see the divine essence, because no creature can see it; but they will see the brightness of God, which flows from his essence, as the light of the sun flows from the sun, and yet it is not the sun...¹² and in this they say that the blessedness of the holy perfect men and of baptized children consists » (apud Raynald. anno 1341. n. 51.). The Armenians, at a council of 29 bishops and of some masters of the Church, abbots and archpriests, although they denied that most of those errors were theirs, nevertheless condemned them as heretical. About this eighth error they speak thus: « what he says, that they will not see the essence of God, etc., is contrary to the evangelical and apostolic doctrine, in which the Church of the Armenians believes » (they cite the texts Matth. XVIII. 8. sqq.; 1. Cor. XIII. 8. sqq.; 1. Io. III. 2., and their liturgical prayers, in which the vision of God is asked for). Moreover they say: « because we shall see his essence, greatness, brightness, wisdom and goodness, which are all God in God; yet not so much as he himself sees... Although we posit various degrees in the vision of the divine essence, yet not in the brightness, which is not God (that is, in the vision of a brightness distinct from God), as he seems to say in the article; because the brightness of God, and everything that is essentially in God, is God. And we speak of the difference of degrees of the vision of God thus: since the essence of God will be seen and loved more intensely by one than by another, because just as the intellectual power of one will be more perfect with the light of glory than that of another, so much the more will one see the one and same God; just as in sensible things too the one and same sun is seen by many more and less according to the measure of visual power » (Mansi XXV. p. 1196. sq.).

Before Benedict XII, at the Council of Vienne, the universal Christian profession of this intuitive vision of God is presupposed, when the error of the Beguards is condemned: « that the soul does not need the light of glory elevating it to see God and to enjoy him blessedly » (Clementin. l. V. tit. 3. c. 3.). The same presupposition, and an explicit doctrine, is found in the Council of Florence in the decree of union. « We define that their souls (who incurred no stain of sin after baptism, and souls perfectly purified) are received at once into heaven, and see clearly the triune and one God himself, as he is¹³, yet with a difference of merits, one more perfectly than another. »

2°. The ancient Fathers had to defend against the Eunomians the eminence of the divine essence as it is in itself, beyond the natural knowledge of the created intellect, and the absolute incomprehensibility of God beyond every exaltation of a creature; but there was no controversy with heretics about the supernatural intuitive vision of God in the heavenly homeland. Hence it is that among the Fathers we find that eminence and incomprehensibility of God demonstrated with deliberate effort and with manifold arguments; but on the other hand they presuppose the intuitive vision of God, clearly expressed in the Scriptures, in the common Christian profession, and speak of it almost only incidentally and mostly in the very words of holy Scripture. Unless one attends to this different state of the twofold question in Christian antiquity, one will easily fall into the error of interpretation, so that the Fathers who deny the comprehensibility of God seem to deny absolutely the intuitive vision; for in fact, since the question had not yet been raised, speaking more safely they were accustomed to designate comprehension by the name of perfect vision, and to deny it both to angels and universally to every creature; of which doctrine of the Fathers we shall speak presently. Thus Vasquez was deceived, who, not sufficiently attending to the aim of the holy Fathers, ascribed to many of them this error of denying the intuitive vision of God (Vasquez in 1. P. disp. 37. c. 1-4.).

But the Fathers, above all before the controversy about the incomprehensibility of God held with the Eunomians, profess with common consent the intuitive vision of God in eternal life as the reward and crown of the merits of faith; and they expressly call it the vision of God in himself, beyond every even supernatural and most sublime knowledge which is granted in this life, and which they say was had by Moses himself and by the prophets not as a vision of God in himself, but in symbols and according to analogies. Irenaeus l. IV. c. 20. al. 37. n. 5-11; Theophilus Antioch. ad Autolyc. l. I. n. 7. (Galland. T. II. p. 82.); Recognit. Clementin. l. III. c. 27. 29. 30. (Galland. ib. p. 257.); Clemens Alex. Strom. V. p. 548; Origenes in Io. tom. I. n. 16. (Opp. T. IV. p. 17.); Cyprian. ep. 56; de Exhortat. martyrii (ed. Baluz. p. 94. 273.); Novatianus Trin. c. 18. al. 26. (Galland. III. p. 301.).

Moreover, those Fathers who defended the incomprehensibility of God more distinctly against the Eunomians, or at least wrote when the Eunomian error was already known, taught the intuitive vision of God no less explicitly than the preceding ones, whenever the occasion offered. Basilius ep. VIII. n. 7. (T. III. p. 85. 86.); de Spir. S. c. 16. n. 38. p.33; de imper. et potest. n. 3. (from the lost sermon on the incomprehensible, T. III. p. 525.); Gregor. Nazianz. or. 28. al. 34. n. 4. 17;.or. 32. al. 26. n. 15; Gregor. Nyss. or. de Meletio T. II. p. 1025. 1026; Chrysostomus in 2. Cor. hom. X. n. 2. 4. (T. X. p. 508. 512.); in Phil. hom. III. n. 3. (T. XI. p. 216.); ad Theodor. lapsum paraenes. I. n.10. (T. I. p. 17.); Cyrillus Alex. in Io. l. X. (T. IV. p. 827.); Hilarius in Ps. 118. litt. 8. n. 7. 8; Augustinus ep. 147. (where he also brings forward and declares the doctrine of St Ambrose on the same matter, n. 24. sqq.); ep. 148. (where in n. 7. he appeals to the opinion of St Jerome); de Civ. Dei l. XI. c. 29; XXII. c. 29; Trinit. XIV. c. 16. and elsewhere; Fulgent. ep. XIV. ad Ferrand. q. III. n. 33; most clearly St Gregory the Great, Moral. l. XVIII. n. 90-93; in Ez. l. I. hom. 2. n. 20.

I shall quote the words of Basil from ep. VIII, not only because Basil is one of those Fathers whom Vasquez (1. P. disp. 37. c. 4.) accuses of denying the intuitive vision, but chiefly because the sense of the holy Doctor seems to me not to have been rightly explained by the editors, but in such a way as to show a manifest contradiction in that explanation. Basil there interprets, by a somewhat Origenian exegesis, that saying of Christ by which he said that he did not know the day of judgment, Marc. XIII. 32. The sum of the doctrine is this. The Apostles were asking about the supreme blessedness (τὴν ἐσχάτην μακαριότητα), and the Lord says that this is unknown to the angels and to himself. In what sense, then, is that not knowing to be understood? To know and not to know in God amount to the same as to be and not to be; hence « God is said to know what he himself is, and not to know what he is not: God is said to know justice and wisdom, insofar as he is justice itself and wisdom itself; but to be ignorant of injustice and malice, for he is not injustice and malice ». Now « our Lord¹⁴ according to the consideration of the humanity and the cruder teaching (that is, if one regards him solely insofar as he is man, and generally according to our present knowledge) is not the supreme good (τὸ ἰσχατον ὁρεκτον): thus our Saviour does not know the end and the supreme blessedness (that is, he is not himself, according to his humanity, the supreme blessedness and end of goods). But neither do the angels, he says, know. That is (since from what Basil has said above not knowing is taken in that sense in which it is said not to be), neither is the contemplation which is busied about the angels, nor the doctrine about their ministries, the supreme good; for even the knowledge of these things is crude in comparison with that which is face to face¹⁵. For the Father alone, he says, knows. Since indeed he himself is the end and the supreme blessedness; for when we shall no longer know God in mirrors and through other things, but shall attain to him himself as to the one and only (by immediate vision), then we shall know the supreme end (the end of goods) (by enjoyment). For they say that the kingdom of Christ (in this earthly life, before he hands over the kingdom to God and the Father, 1. Cor. XV. 24–28.) is all knowledge through material things, but that the kingdom of God the Father is immaterial (not through other things and sensible ones) and, as one might say, the vision of the deity itself .¹⁶ Moreover the Son too is the end and supreme blessedness by reason of the Word. For what does he say in the Gospel? And I will raise him up on the last day; calling resurrection the transition from knowledge through material things to immaterial vision, and calling the last day that knowledge after which there is no other. For then our mind rises and is lifted up to blessed sublimity, when it shall see the unity and monad of the Word. But since our mind, being cruder, is bound to the earth and mingled with mire (the body), and cannot attend to pure vision; hence, led by the hand through beauties akin to its body, it considers the works of the Creator, and meanwhile knows these divine things from their effects, so that thus, gradually increased, it may at some time be able to attain to the naked divinity itself. »

The opinion of Chrysostom must also be set before our eyes, since doubt about him is usually greater on account of other passages, in which he impugned the comprehension of God asserted by the Eunomians (Vasquez 1. P. disp. 37. c. 3.). Speaking of the vision of Christ's glory at his transfiguration, Chrysostom says: « For if Peter, seeing a certain obscure image of things to come, straightway threw everything out of his mind because of the pleasure aroused by such a vision: what will be said when the very truth of things shall be present, when, with the royal halls opened, it will be permitted to behold the King himself no longer in a riddle nor through a mirror, but face to face, no longer through faith but through sight (vision) » ad Theodor. laps. n. 10. Consistently he sets over against each other the knowledge of faith in this life and clear vision in the other, obscure thought and manifest experience itself in the kingdom of heaven (ἡ ἐννοια ἀμυδρα – αὐτη ἡ πειρα ἡ σαφης); presence with God here as in the courtyard and through faith, there face to face¹⁷ ll. cc.

Since after Augustine, St Gregory the Great expounded the doctrine also polemically and therefore more distinctly, it must not be omitted here. First he proposes and resolves a doubt about the intuition of the divine essence itself. « It must be known that there were some who said that God is seen even in that region of blessedness in his brightness indeed, but in his nature not seen at all. These were misled, surely, by a lesser subtlety of inquiry: for to that simple and unchangeable essence, brightness is not one thing and nature another; but to it its brightness is its nature, and its brightness is nature itself. For since this wisdom of God sometimes showed itself to its lovers, he himself promises, saying: he who loves me... I will manifest myself to him (Io. XIV. 21.); as if he were plainly saying: you who see me in your (human) state, it remains that you see me in my (divine) nature ». Then, the testimonies Matth. V. 8; 1. Cor. XIII. 12. having been adduced besides, he explains the difficulty from 1. Pet. I. 12: « into which the angels desire to look »; whereas on the other hand Christ testifies: « their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father, who is in heaven » Matth. XVIII. 10. The reconciliation of both truths is this: « For the angels both desire to see God, and thirst to behold, and behold.... For lest there be anxiety in desire, they who desire are satisfied; and lest there be disgust in satiety, they desire to be satisfied: and so they desire without labor, because satiety accompanies desire; and they are satisfied without disgust, because satiety itself is always kindled from desire. So too we shall be, when we come to the very fountain of life: thirst and satiety will be delightfully impressed on us together » Moral. l. XVIII. l. c.

On the light of glory.

« Since the intuitive vision of God, beyond any created intellect, is supernatural, a supernatural aid is necessary by which the created mind is raised to the beatific vision. Although indeed there is some disagreement of opinions about the proper reason of this aid, which is called the light of glory, nevertheless it must be held that the light of glory is a lasting gift of God, by which the intellect so informed is supernaturally made like the divine intellect for the immediate beatific vision of God. »

Just as understanding, especially clear and immediate understanding of an intelligible object, is called vision, a name derived from that sensible perception which has the greater analogy with mental understanding: so, by the same derivation from the sensible order, light is called all that which is the cause of intellectual vision¹. Moreover, since there is a threefold distinct perfection of the rational creature: the perfection of nature, grace on the way to the end, and glory in the final consummation; and to each of these states of perfection its own distinct knowledge corresponds, for which intellectual light is necessarily proportioned: from this it is made manifest that there must also be distinguished a threefold intellectual light: light indeed of natural reason, light of grace on the way, light of glory in the homeland. The author and source of this threefold light in the created intellect is certainly God, « the sun of intelligibles, » but according to the diversity of light, in accordance with the threefold different aspect: as creator in the order of nature, as sanctifier in the order of grace, as consummator and beatificator in the order of glory. It is of this last that we now speak.

The light of glory can in turn be considered in four ways. a) The light of glory, objective, which is seen, is God himself, insofar as he manifests himself to be seen not through another object, but through himself and in himself; for the sun is not made visible by another light, but makes itself visible by its own splendor². Hence also it is that theologians teach, by a far more common opinion, that for the beatific vision no impressed species of God is given; but God himself, by his own essence, is united to the mind of the seer as the object of vision. Indeed St Thomas (1. q. 12. a. 2; quodlib. VII. a. 1; 4. dist. 49. q. 2. a. 1; de verit. q. 8. a. 1; compend. theolog. c. 105.) and many of his disciples hold that absolutely no intelligible impressed species can be, by which God may be seen as he is in himself. Cf. Suarez 1. II. c. 13. Further, b) the light of glory formally, under which God is seen, is a supernatural effect of God and a supernatural gift in the created mind, by which this mind is raised and constituted in proximate first act for seeing God as he is. c) The actual vision of God itself may also be called the light of glory. Finally, d) all these things can be understood together under the name of light of glory, so that God is as the fountain of light and the term of vision, manifesting himself through light and vision in the created mind: « For with you is the fountain of life, and in your light we shall see light » Ps. XXXV. (heb. 36.) 10.

As to the first point, that God himself is light to the blessed minds, nothing further is to be treated in this place beyond what we said in the preceding thesis. But God is manifested to the blessed only through the light and vision by which they are informed, and they see intuitively and, by seeing, possess God most blissfully. For, as Suarez rightly says (1. II. c. 14. n. 5.), the uncreated light of glory does not properly elevate the human intellect, except insofar as God works something in the intellect itself above its nature. Moreover, comparing light and vision: vision as second act presupposes the first act and follows from it connaturally; it presupposes, of course, a mind informed and raised by supernatural powers to the intuitive vision itself. Now these supernatural powers, or the intuitive power superadded to the mind, are properly called and understood by theologians light of glory simply so called: in much the same way as grace is uncreated God himself, to whom we are joined, and graces are the supernatural acts of faith, hope and charity, by which we tend toward God; but grace simply so called is understood as the formal participation in the divine nature in us, through habit and aid, which join us to God and from which acts proceed.

With this sense now determined, the question is raised about the truth and about the proper reason of the light of glory.

I. The truth of the matter is demonstrated, whether it is: 1°, from all those things by which it was shown in the two preceding theses, that the immediate vision of God, natural to God alone, surpasses the natural powers of any created intellect; and that nevertheless this vision is promised to us by God as our ultimate end and supreme blessedness. For in these very things it is contained that the created intellect must be equipped and raised by supernatural powers or supernatural aid for this vision. Therefore, as long as the light of glory is spoken of only generically as supernatural elevation, without a more distinct determination of the proper reason of this light, it is established by Catholic faith as certainly as it is certain that eternal life is supernatural blessedness, of which it is written: « you have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life... For the grace of God is eternal life » Rom. VI. 23.

2°. The truth of the light of glory is demonstrated more specifically from the truth of the habits and supernatural gifts, which are already granted to us on the way as the beginning and preparation for consummation in the homeland. For we can understand the perfection and fullness of the gifts in the blessed end in no better way than from the order of the graces, from the pledge and earnest given to us on the way. We are renewed in the spirit of our mind through the justice inhering in us, and we receive the virtues of faith, hope and charity, infused and remaining in us (Conc. Trid. sess. VI. c. 7.), to which supernatural acts correspond; for supernatural acts, in order that they may come about as if connaturally, require a principle supernaturally raised by habitual gifts. Just as, therefore, the habit of charity remains in the homeland: « for charity never falls away » 1. Cor. XIII. 8: so for the habit of faith, which passes into vision, another habitual gift is required. For when what is in faith as knowledge ex parte has been done away, and what is perfect has come (ib. v. 10.), namely when sight is substituted for faith, that is, face-to-face vision; this supernatural act, the most sublime of all, of the beatific vision presupposes supernatural powers in the intellect corresponding to the act itself, no less, indeed even more, than the act of faith presupposes infused habitual faith. That very gift, by which the powers of the intellect are so raised, is and is called light of glory. « Everything that is raised to something exceeding its nature must be disposed by some disposition which is above its nature... Since, therefore, the natural power of the created intellect does not suffice to see the essence of God, as has been shown, it is necessary that from divine grace an increase of power to understand accrue to it. And this augmentation of intellectual power we call illumination of the intellect, just as the intelligible itself is called light, of which it is said (Apoc. XXI. 23.) that the brightness of God will illuminate it, namely the society of the blessed who see God. And according to this light they are made deiform, that is, like God, according to that (1.Io.III.2.): when he shall appear we shall be like him, and we shall see him as he is » S. Th. 1. q. 12. a. 5.

3°. Hence, among the « accursed errors » of the Beguards and Beguines « in the kingdom of Germany », there was condemned at the Council of Vienne this, fifth in place: « that every intellectual nature is in itself naturally blessed; and that the soul does not need the light of glory elevating it to see God and to enjoy him blessedly » (Clementin. l. V. tit. 3. c. 3). The Catholic truth defined by the ecumenical Council is therefore this: « the soul needs the light of glory elevating it to see God and to enjoy him blessedly ». Certainly both those heretics and the Pontiff, « with the sacred Council approving, condemning and reprobating that sect itself with the aforesaid errors », used the name light of glory, which at the beginning of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was most well known in all the schools, and which, at least generically, for a supernatural aid or elevating gift, had a certain and established meaning; they could understand nothing other by it than this very gift or aid, whereas the Pontiff condemned the denial of the light of glory for the intellectual nature by those who denied its necessity. Although therefore the controversies which existed among Catholic theologians about the nature and properties of this light are not settled by that definition, at least that in which all the schools agreed has been authentically declared: namely, that the light of glory is given as a supernatural aid by which the soul is raised to see God. Moreover, this very thing, even leaving aside theological usage of speech, the very words of the definition state so clearly that this sense cannot be denied³. They are to be read: Vasquez disp. 42. c. 2; Hiquaeus in commentar. ad Scotum (inter Opp.

Scoti T. X. p. 566. seqq.); Petavius 1. VII. c. 7. n. 3; to be compared, Suarez 1. II. c. 14. n. 4. seqq.

4°. The Scriptures present God as the light which of itself illumines all the blessed minds in the heavenly Jerusalem. For God is spiritual light, that is, a spirit infinitely knowable, making every intellect to know by some participation (assimilation) in his infinite intellect. Hence in that supernatural vision face to face God, as the sun of spirits⁴ shining on the saints, and forming them, as it were, parelia, that is, mock suns, in his own image⁵ makes those who see him see him as he is in himself, since he is the immediate object and at the same time the cause that imparts the light or power for his own vision. « And they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads, and there shall be no night, and they shall need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God shall illuminate them » Apoc. XXII. 4. 5. Cf. Is. LX. 19. If now already, through faith (which is the root of all holiness), beholding the glory of God in the mysteries of Jesus Christ, as the Apostle testifies, we are formed by that glory as so many mirrors⁶ and are transformed into his image 2. Cor. III. 18: how much more, advancing from the inchoate light and brightness to perfect light and brightness, will our minds be transformed, so that through participation in the intellectual power by which God himself beholds himself and enjoys himself, we shall be deiform in the beatific vision: « we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. » Cf. Aug.Trin. l. XIV. c. 17; in Ps. 35. n. 14.

II. From what has been said, the proper reason of the light of glory is also deduced, what it is.

Here, first, it must be supposed as entirely certain that, just as all understanding, so also the intuitive vision of God is an immanent act of the seeing mind itself. It is therefore produced by the mind, continually depends on the mind, and informs the mind. For vision is a vital act in a living mind: and just as life is necessarily intimate to the living being, so every vital act is necessarily produced by the living being itself and proceeds from within. Hence two things are required, and sufficient, for intellectual vision: a) on the side of the object, that the object be present not only physically but intellectually, or what is the same, that the object be in itself actually intuitively knowable; b) on the side of the knower, that the intellectual powers be proportioned, in the order of knowledge, not indeed ontologically but logically, to the object to be seen intuitively. « For both sensible and intellectual vision two things are required, says St Thomas 1. q. 12. a. 2, namely visual power, and the union of the thing seen with the sight. » A defect may occur on either side, or on one of them, by which it comes about that the object cannot be seen. Thus in sensible things a body may be visible in itself, and may also be physically present to an eye sufficiently equipped with power for seeing; but unless the object is illuminated, it is neither optically, or visibly present to the eye, nor actually visible. Conversely the sun is visible in itself, can be visibly present to the eye, and thus is actually visible on its own side; but (as is customarily drawn from Aristotle) the eye of the owl, on account of a defect of visual power, cannot gaze at the sun. Although indeed both defects can at least be supplied supernaturally by a change in the visual power alone, namely by its supernatural elevation, nevertheless a distinction will always remain: either the defect of actual visibility on the side of the object must be supplied, even assuming proportion to its object on the side of the power; or the defect on the side of the power must be supplied, assuming the actual visibility of the object in itself.

Now, 1°, God in himself is spiritual light, that is, in himself most highly and infinitely knowable; and by his essence he is intimately present to every intellect, not only physically but knowably, as far as the power and actual disposition and proper mode of the created intellect is capable. On the side of the object, therefore, no other light is required by which it is rendered visible to the intellect, nor an intelligible species by which it is joined to the intellect⁷; but God himself, by himself, is present to the intellect as a visible object, provided the powers and proper mode of the knowing intellect are equal to the object to be seen.

But the defect is on the side of the powers of the knowing intellect; for no created intellect, by natural powers and according to its own connatural mode of knowing, can intuitively see God as he is in himself; as we demonstrated above in th. XIV. Therefore the powers of the intellect must necessarily be supplied, raised, and strengthened by a supernatural charism for the beatific vision; and this charism is, and is properly called, light of glory. But these things being posited, this charism can be understood in several ways. For⁸

2°. The aid could be conceived in the manner of a supernatural concurrence of God, so that no intrinsic change takes place in the faculty of the mind itself; but God, the created intellect remaining in its natural powers, uses it as an instrument to elicit the supernatural act of the beatific vision. For they say that in the intellect, besides the natural positive powers of understanding, there is an obediential power, by which the intellect, under the immediate operation of God, can elicit any intellectual act which in itself does not repugn to the creature. In this way the beatific vision is in fact produced: no theologian admits it (unless perhaps you except Durandus); on the contrary, most condemn this opinion with rather sharp censure, on account of the reasons which we have set forth in n. I. But if the question is about possibility, many very weighty theologians hold that the beatific vision through such extrinsic elevation does not repugn (see Suarez 1. II. c. 13; Toletus in 1. q. 12. a. 5. conclusione 3^a. etc.). I confess that I am unable, by any reasoning, to understand a vital act, supernatural, elicited by the mind itself through extrinsic aid, and without any change taking place in the mind itself and supernatural powers being added to it intrinsically. In this sense, therefore, the doctrine of Capreolus in 4. dist. 49. q. 4; of Dominic Soto ib. q. 2. a. 4; of Cajetan; of Bañez in 1. q. 12. a. 5, and of others, who hold that the beatific vision through supernatural concurrence alone, without the inhering light of glory, absolutely repugns, seems true to me. But whatever is thought about possibility, it is certain and established among all theologians, as I have said, that the light of glory does not in fact consist in such a concurrence of God.

3°. The light of glory can be conceived by way of actual aid, so that the natural powers of the intellect are raised and strengthened in themselves and intrinsically, or supernatural powers are added through the continuous operation of God; but it would not be a permanent quality by way of a habit. The opinion explained thus, of intrinsic actual aid, cannot be judged condemned by the Clementine definition cited above⁹. Yet the analogy of supernatural habits, and especially the habit of faith, which is infused in this life for the connatural elicitation of supernatural acts, and the habit of charity remaining also in the other life, and the common acceptance among theologians of light of glory for an inhering habitual gift, according to which usage light of glory must therefore also be understood in the Clementine decree, sufficiently demonstrate that the light of glory must be understood not only by way of actual aid but by way of an immanent habit, by analogy not to actual grace but to habitual grace. « It is fitting to inquire not only into the absolute omnipotence of God, but into what the due order of things requires. For God disposes all things sweetly. Therefore, since he has equipped natural things with their powers and virtues, and in regard to supernatural things has also given us infused habits by which we may exercise fitting actions, why should it be denied that, since the intellect cannot naturally see God, it can be divinely perfected for this office by some light and supernatural power? » Dominic. Soto 4. dist. 49. q. 2. a. 4.

4°. There were not lacking those who taught that the created mind in the beatific vision is related merely passively, and this in three ways: for either a) they said light of glory is an infused power by which alone the vision is produced, and this vision is received in the mind as in a subject; or b) they said that the act of vision itself is effected and infused immediately by God, so that the light of glory is nothing other than the actual vision itself; or c) the light of glory was conceived as a disposition of the subject for receiving the act of vision infused immediately by God. It is established that all these opinions are wholly false, from the fact that vision is essentially a vital act of the seeing mind itself, about which what has been said a little above is sufficient (see Suarez l. II. c. 10; c. 15. n. 22; Lessium de Summo bono l. II. c. 7.).

5°. Some are recorded (cf. Lessium l. c. c. 2.) who said that the vision of God in the blessed is the uncreated vision itself, by which God sees himself, and which he communicates to the blessed.

Thomassinus revived this opinion, or rather this fiction (De Deo l. VI. c. 16.), in ways of conceiving and speaking that are very confused and, in my own view, altogether false. He says a) that the Word itself is an impressed species in the blessed, by which they see the Father. « God is seen by the blessed through no other intelligible species than the Word himself informing the mind. The Father makes and perfects his works by impressing his Word... the last and most absolute impression of that same Word must therefore be such that the impressed species of the creature to be perfected is the Word itself » there, n. 1. 2. Further, b) for Thomassinus the light of glory is the Holy Spirit himself in his substance; in the blessed, therefore, God is seen by himself, because the power and force by which he is seen is the Holy Spirit. « Note, he says, that in your light we shall see light means the same as: in the Holy Spirit we shall see the Word; and therefore the light of glory by which God is seen is the Holy Spirit... Note how their parts are fittingly assigned to each of the divine persons... so that the mind, strengthened by the Spirit, enters into the form of the Word, through which it sees the Father.... Note that this light is not so much a gift, or some created light infused into the mind by the Holy Spirit, as the Holy Spirit himself flowing into the mind..... God is seen in such a way that the evangelical and apostolic axiom holds, that no creature can see God; for the mind informed by the Holy Spirit himself and tempered to him, now raised above creatures, is now carried on to God. Thus it is clear how the blessed see God, and yet God cannot be seen except by himself: God is not seen except by God, because the power and force by which he is seen is the Holy Spirit; the species by which he is seen is the Son himself; and yet the created mind under this species, hidden in this light, sees God.... Therefore the Holy Spirit is that very light which they call of glory, by which the mind is illumined so that it can sustain and gaze upon the face of the Father » ibid. n. 8–11.

At the outset, against this doctrine taken in general there are obvious arguments. Vision, as we said a little earlier, is a vital act of the seeing mind itself, and therefore elicited by the mind itself; it cannot therefore be an uncreated divine act: the blessed themselves see and love God by their own vital act, and are beatified by these very acts of theirs; but these acts cannot be formally acts of God, by which God sees himself and loves himself and is blessed in himself. In particular, moreover, the view and statement of Thomassinus, if understood in the obvious sense of the words, is refuted on several counts of absurdity. For a) that « fitting assignment of parts to each of the persons of the Most Holy Trinity » contradicts the very mystery of three persons, who are one in essence and operation, and who are intuitively seen by the blessed all in one and the same reason and vision, just as they are, identified with the divine essence; this distribution, I say, is contrary unless it is understood purely by appropriation, according to which the Fathers cited by Thomassinus speak, who nevertheless are not treating of the beatific vision but of grace and supernatural knowledge in the present life. b) If by appropriation the Word (for the divine essence under the formal reason of truth) is called impressed species, and the Holy Spirit (for the divine essence under the formal reason of illuminating cause) is called light of glory; this can be admitted only in the sense declared above: as regards the species, indeed, in a negative sense, that no species is given, but God in himself is the object of vision; as regards the light of glory, that God is light, or the object of vision, and at the same time the cause of that infused light by which the blessed minds are informed and raised to the intuitive vision of God; but in no way can God be, as Thomassinus says, the species and the light informing the mind. For to say nothing of the fact that every form is in itself imperfect and in potency toward a further perfection; a mind whose form, properly speaking, were God, would itself be God. This absurdity the words of Thomassinus, in their obvious sense, would express: « no creature can see God; for the mind informed by the Holy Spirit himself, now raised above creatures, is now carried on to God. »

6°. With the false notions of the light of glory set aside, its true and proper character, as is sufficiently clear from all that has been said so far, can be understood in no other way than according to the common explanation of theologians: that it is a certain supernatural power of understanding, more eminent than every natural power, superadded to the intellect of the blessed and informing the mind by way of a habit, and raising it to the intuitive vision of God, as he is in himself. For since the rational mind, as the image of God, has by its very nature an imperfect and inchoate power of knowing God, this power of knowing can be raised, or completed and perfected, by a superadded supernatural virtue, so that it can already clearly and perfectly intuit God in himself. Hence this superadded virtue of the intellect is a certain supernatural assimilation of the created mind to the divine intellect in the very mode of knowing the divine essence, and thus a certain supreme participation in that infinite light by which God sees himself: and so we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. « For our vision or rest will be in some way similar to his vision or rest; but it will not be equal. For.... in some way we go toward him; and this very going of ours is less than resting; and yet to go thus is perfectly to rest. And so there is a perfect rest, because God is discerned; and yet it is not to be equated with the rest of him who does not pass from himself to another in order to rest. Thus rest is, so to speak, similar and dissimilar, because what his rest is, ours imitates..... Nor are we excluded from him whom we can imitate; for both by seeing we participate, and by participating we imitate » S. Gregor. M. Moral. l. XVIII. n. 93. See Lessius, De Summo bono l. II. c. 8. n. 50. sqq.

On the extensive breadth of the beatific vision, with regard to its principal object and to its secondary objects.

« The blessed, by the very fact that they see God as he is in himself, 1° see both all God's absolute perfections and the divine persons. 2° Among things distinct from God, it is to be judged that there is an object of vision for all the comprehensors, which for wayfarers is the object of faith; but other things are seen by them, so far as follows from the intuitive vision of the first cause, and so far as the status and rank of each in the heavenly hierarchy requires. »

I. The first part of this thesis is wholly certain, given what is demonstrated below concerning the perfection and simplicity of absolute Being, and concerning the identity of the persons with the divine essence in the Treatise on the Trinity. The one most simple divine essence is itself absolute Being, that is, without any distinction in itself is every perfection that can be conceived without imperfection. We do not intuit that absolute Being as it is in itself, but from creatures we form notions of perfections (of intellect, will, wisdom, goodness, holiness, justice, etc.), and according to these notions of perfections we understand analogically what God is. Hence in God we distinguish diverse perfections, not of course judging them to be distinct in God himself, but conceiving the one without an express concept of the other. To these reasons of perfections and to our notions there corresponds one most simple divine Being, which in reality is both infinite wisdom and infinite justice, etc. Accordingly, each of those perfections is in God every perfection and is God himself, since they are the infinite Being itself. Hence to intuit this divine Being as it is in itself, means the same as to intuit it as being all absolute perfection. It is therefore an evident contradiction to affirm that God is seen by the blessed as he is in himself, and yet that some perfection which is formally in God is not seen. For by the very fact that some perfection which is the absolute Being itself is not seen, that Being is not seen as it is in itself; or better, it is not seen intuitively in itself at all; for in itself there is every perfection without any distinction. Compare the doctrine of the Bishops of Armenia cited above (th. XV. n. II.).

The same holds entirely of the intuition of the three divine persons. For the divine essence as it is in itself is, by its intrinsic perfection, the Father expressing the Word by understanding, and the Father and the Son producing the Holy Spirit by love; the paternal intellect necessarily has the Word as its intrinsic term, and the love of the Father and of the Son equally necessarily has the proceeding love as its intrinsic term. Whoever does not intuit these things does not intuit the essence as it is in itself. See above, loc. cit., the definition of the Council of Florence.

This is the common doctrine of the theologians; nevertheless, there are not lacking some who dissent. For although they agree unanimously regarding the fact of the vision of the Most Holy Trinity, since the truth has been defined at the Council of Florence; yet as to possibility, not a few teach that the intuitive vision of the divine essence is not repugnant even though neither all the absolute perfections nor the persons are seen. Indeed Cardinal Toletus, in 1 q. 12. a. 7, and Thomassinus, De Deo l. VI. cc. 19. 20 (destroying what he himself had affirmed shortly before in c. 17), teach that in fact by the blessed « not every perfection of God is perceived, » as Toletus says; or « the blessed do not see more and more degrees of the perfections of God to infinity, » and so « it is not seen by them with such acuity that they see the whole, or wholly from the whole. » But in holding that every perfection of God cannot be seen by any created intellect, however elevated, the same theologians, Toletus¹ and Thomassinus, constitute the incomprehensibility of God, of which we shall speak below.

Both opinions, the former regarding possibility and still more the latter regarding the fact of the vision of the essence without the vision of all the divine perfections, derive from a less sincere concept of the fullness and simplicity of divine Being; and hence they are easily refuted from what we have said. Setting aside Thomassinus, in whose hands there is great confusion of things, Toletus, moreover, a great man, has some points whose explanation can help to illustrate the true doctrine.

The most learned Cardinal's arguments for proving his opinion are four. 1°. Augustine defines comprehension thus: to comprehend is, when nothing of the thing lies hidden from the one seeing, ep. 112. (now 147. n. 21.). Therefore, if « nothing of God remains unknown, » God is comprehended by the blessed, which by the confession of all is false and impossible. 2°. « To perceive ten attributes distinctly is of greater power than to perceive eight; therefore to perceive infinite things is of infinite power. The divine perfections are infinite. Therefore it is impossible for them all to be perceived by the created intellect. » 3°. The reason² for the common opinion of theologians is drawn from the simplicity of God, because « all the perfections of God are one single thing and are formally in God. » But Toledo replies: « by this argument it would also be proved that all creatures, even possible ones, are seen in God, because they are one in him, and the eminence of creatures is formally in God. » But theologians do not admit this; « therefore simplicity does nothing to make God be seen totally. » 4°. « It would follow that all the judgments of God, all hidden wills, would be manifest to the blessed; because all such things are formally in God himself. » But to assert such a vision for the blessed would be erroneous. Thus far Toledo, l. c.

Reply to the first. In that letter Augustine distinguishes a threefold vision of God: that by which God was seen even with the bodily eyes, « not in his own nature but in a species, as he willed; » then another, mental, vision in this life³; and finally a third, « in that kingdom where his sons will see him as he is, » « in his own nature, » « in the form of God. » By the words of Augustine cited by Toletus, « comprehension » is clearly opposed by Augustine to vision received in the first and second ways. Nevertheless we shall not say against Toletus that comprehension is here to be taken in a looser sense for the very vision of God as he is in his own nature; although the meaning of these terms among the Fathers is not so fixed and established that comprehension is never taken for intuitive vision⁴ (cf. Didacus Ruiz, De scientia Dei disp. VI. sect. 1.), or conversely that under the name perfect vision comprehension, by which God alone comprehends himself, is not very often called. But we assume, as is in fact proved from the context of Augustine, that comprehension is understood in its proper sense, even in opposition to intuitive vision; and granting this, let us look at the very words of Augustine. « Not because anyone at some time comprehends the fullness of God, not only with the eyes of the body, but even with the mind itself. For it is one thing to see, another to comprehend the whole by seeing. For that is seen which is somehow felt as present; but the whole is comprehended by seeing when it is seen so that nothing of it lies hidden from the one seeing, or whose limits can be surveyed, just as nothing of your present will (volition) is hidden from you, and you can survey the limits of your ring » Aug. loc. cit. The saint does not place comprehension in this, that no perfection of the thing lies hidden; rather comprehension is said insofar as one reaches the limits of the knowable thing, that is, not only is the whole seen, but it is seen with that perfection of understanding which fully corresponds to the intrinsic knowability of the object. Augustine himself says elsewhere: « whatever is comprehended by knowledge is limited by the comprehension of the knower » Civ. Dei 1. XII. c. 18. Cf. S. Th. 1. q. 12. a. 7. ad 2; 4. dist. 49. q. 2. a. 3. ad 2. But according to his whole infinite knowability, God is comprehensible by no created intellect, but only by himself, the infinite intellect. Even if therefore the blessed see the whole, that is, the whole perfection which is formally in God and is God himself, they nevertheless do not see wholly, that is, not with such a perfection of vision as God is knowable. But we shall speak below of the comprehension of God compared with intuitive vision.

To the 2ᵘᵐ argument of Toledo the reply is easy. We distinguish many perfections and degrees of perfection in God, because we first draw the notions of the perfections from creatures; and according to these diverse reasons, to all of which one most simple fullness of the divine Esse corresponds, we know God analogically, but we do not intuit that Esse as it is in itself. But those who intuit the divine Esse as it is see its whole perfection without any distinction of many perfections and degrees, because in reality there is no such distinction there; although in intuiting that infinite perfection they see most clearly the foundation and reason why many perfections can and must be distinguished by those who know this Esse only through concepts derived from elsewhere. If therefore it is said that in God there are infinitely many distinct perfections in number, some of which can be seen as they are in themselves while others cannot be seen; this is entirely false. For whatever perfection were seen there without being seen at the same time as the fullness of all absolute perfection, would no longer be known intuitively, as it is in itself. But if it is said that in the finite vision itself there can be degrees of perfection without limit, so that the infinitely knowable essence of God may be known with ever greater intensity, this indeed is most true, but nothing⁵ pertains to the present question.

The reply to the third is this. Concerning possible creatures two entirely different things are to be considered. a) The divine essence, insofar as it is imitable outwardly by beings and created perfections, is the foundation and supreme norm of all possibles. Under this formal reason and this respect of outward imitability the same essence can be called the objective idea and the eminent being of creatures. Thus the eminent being of creatures, for example of an angel or of a man, in God is not angelic or human being, nor creatable or created being; but it is the divine essence itself under that formal reason, insofar as the divine perfection can be shadowed forth by angelic or human being, which before creation is nothing in itself actually, but is creatable. If, however, it is created, it is indeed a certain actual being; but in its whole nature it is different from the divine Being, and is only some shadow of this divine Being. Hence b) possibles can be considered in another way in themselves, according to their own creatable being, which indeed, as we said, is not actually; but it would be a created reality if it were produced by God.

This being so, those who intuit the divine essence as it is in itself undoubtedly see it as the foundation of all possibles, so that whatever analogous perfection can exist outside God, they see can exist only according to that essence as norm and exemplar cause, from it as efficient cause, and toward it as final cause; and thus they also see it as the eminent being of possible creatures. But from the fact that they see divine Being as it is in itself, it by no means follows that they also see the whole possible or creatable being, which is wholly different in its nature from that; or, to say the same thing in other words, from the fact that they see the divine essence as indefinitely imitable outwardly, it does not follow that they distinctly see all the beings in which it is imitable. It is true that all these things are knowable in the divine essence; but they are knowable only to him who knows the divine essence as far as it is knowable, that is, who comprehends it.

The solution to the fourth argument of Toletus can be gathered from what we have just said. For the counsels in God are the one simple essence itself under the formal reason of intellect and will, with a relation of reason to the outside, that is, with a connotation of an object wholly distinct and different from God. Hence the diversity of counsels in relation to creatures, whether there are some or not, whether these or others, introduces no diversity in God, or in those things which are formally in God; the whole change and diversity is outward, in creatures. Just as, therefore, one who sees the divine essence as it is in itself does not for that reason see all creatures, whether possible or real, which are something wholly different from God: in exactly the same way one who sees the essence, and therefore the divine wisdom and will, as they are in themselves, does not for that reason also see the divine wisdom and will insofar as they are related to all things to be created or created, nor all the effects of this wisdom and will. This connotation of effects, adding nothing real and changing nothing in God himself, is that by which the divine essence (wisdom and will) is conceived under the aspect of divine counsels. Therefore one who sees the divine essence, wisdom, and will as they are in themselves does not thereby see the divine counsels, unless he comprehends the divine essence according to its whole knowability.

II. Concerning the extent, perfection, and mode of the knowledge which, cohering with the beatific vision of God, relates to those things which are outside God and under God, or can be so, the Lord in his positive and explicit revelation willed to teach us little; so that, namely, from the very manner in which he clearly revealed and promised the vision of himself, and as it were kept silent about the vision of others, we might understand that God himself, a very great reward, and his glory when it appears, abundantly suffice to fulfil all our desire and to satiate the whole thirst for blessedness: « I shall be satisfied when your glory appears. » Nevertheless, certain principles are known to us, from which we can deduce something with certainty or probability about the very high perfection of this knowledge also in the blessed.

1°. In general, the exaltation of the intellect by supernatural illumination, which is called the light of glory, is there at its most sublime for the perfect understanding and penetration of things and truths, as far as befits those who intuit the infinite essence and the first truth, and as far as the status of each individual requires; who, although they differ among themselves as star from star, are nevertheless all blessed comprehensors of the last end.

Hence, 2° in particular: all the mysteries, all the truths revealed to wayfarers, the whole economy of revelation and of the supernatural order, which in the way pertain of themselves to the object of faith, are there at the terminus the object of intuition and understanding without veil. For vision succeeds faith as its perfection, as the inchoate to the complete. « When what is perfect has come, what is in part will be done away….. we see now through a mirror in an enigma, but then face to face » 1. Cor. XIII. 9. seqq. « We have… the prophetic word, to which you do well in attending as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts » ⁶ 2. Pet. I. 19. « There we shall see, and our heart shall rejoice. Nor has he expressed what we shall see; but what, except God? that the promise of the gospel be fulfilled in us: the blessed in heart, for they shall see God; and all those things which now we do not see, believing them according to the measure of human capacity far less than they are, and conceiving them incomparably… Here you believe, there you will see » Aug. Civ. Dei 1. XX. c. 21. n. 1. We are not speaking here of the truths of faith which are revealed to us immediately about God himself; for these pertain to the principal object of the beatific vision (n. I.); but the secondary object of vision consists of the things of faith which are outside God: the incarnation of the Word, how God is truly man, and what the exaltation of our nature in the Word is; the redemption of the human race through the blood of the immaculate Lamb; the Church, which as the mystical body of Christ, as founded, is nourished and cherished by Christ as a bride by her bridegroom, and is perpetually under the conservation, government, and assistance of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; the charisms and gifts of grace; the sacraments and the power of the sacraments from God the sanctifier and from the merits of Jesus Christ; in particular the sacrament and sacrifice of the Eucharist; these things, I say, and the others which are revealed to us by the word of God to be believed, lie open to the blessed without veil, in themselves, through spiritual vision, since with what is in part done away, what is perfect has come, and with the day dawning the morning star has risen in their hearts, that is, in their intellects.

3°. The saints in the beatific vision intuit God in himself, yet with many different degrees of intensity and clarity, as exemplary cause of all beings, which can be a certain shadowing forth and participation of him who is (יהוה ὁ ὤν); as efficient cause and conserving universal cause, on which all existing things necessarily depend, not only to be produced but also to persevere in being, as the light of the sun depends on the sun; as final cause, to which all things are ordered by the intrinsic necessary natures of things: « from him, and through him, and in him (εἰς αὐτον) are all things » (Rom. XI. 36.). Wherefore if the blessed saw the divine essence as far as it is knowable, that is, if they comprehended it, they would also perfectly comprehend in it all possibles and all things existing at any time. But this comprehension is of infinite perfection, and therefore proper to God alone (cf. S. Th. 1. q. 12. a. 8.).

Yet a) by the very fact that the blessed see the divine essence as it is in itself, they also intuit how that infinite Being is the exemplar and norm of all things that can have participated being; although for this reason they do not yet see all possibles, or each of them, in themselves, as we said above. Likewise they see how nothing besides God can actually exist except dependently on that infinite goodness, wisdom, and power, which they intuit as it is in itself; and how all that is must necessarily be ordered to that infinite good as to its essential end. Yet by this very fact they do not yet see all things, or each thing, actually existing.

But b) that same supernatural light by which the blessed minds are raised to intuit the first Being, true, and good, as it is, is also valid, according to its diverse degree of intensity and perfection, for knowing, with greater or lesser breadth, the possible beings, truths, and goods which have their exemplar and foundation in it; and for the proportionate vision of the things that actually exist, which depend on that first cause and final end. Cf. S. Th. 1. q. 57. a. 2. Although, indeed, the extent and intensity of this vision, even insofar as it is common to all the blessed comprehensors, cannot be defined by us one by one, it seems nevertheless to be said that that spiritual vision extends in all the blessed to the whole created universe, insofar as it consists of permanent substances; namely, to see perfectly the greatness, order, beauty, species and essences of the whole universe, as much as is needed for them to see perfectly in the whole universe the glory of God, that is, to see in the things that have been made the essence, power, goodness, wisdom, and beauty of God shining forth, who is the exemplary, efficient, conserving, and final cause of all. And so they see the divine ideas and the eternal reasons according to which all these things were made, and in the divine essence which they intuit in itself; or (speaking by appropriation) in the Word they see these created things, and in creatures they in turn see and glorify God. « The holy angels, to whom we shall be made equal after the resurrection…. without doubt first knew the whole creature, in which they themselves were principally created, in the Word of God himself, in whom are the eternal reasons of all things, even those made in time, as in that by which all things were made; and then in the creature itself, which they so knew as looking down from below, and referring it to the praise of him in whose unchangeable truth they principally see the reasons according to which it was made. There, therefore, as by day…. but here, as by evening; yet continually morning comes…. because angelic knowledge does not remain in what is created, but continually refers this to their praise and charity, in which it is known that this was not made but is to be made; in standing in this truth there is day ⁷ » S. Aug. Gen. ad litt. l. IV. c. 24; Civit. Dei 1. XI. c.7. 29. Vide Suarez de Deo 1. II. c. 28; Lessius de Summo bono 1. II. c. 9. 10.

4°. The blessed comprehensors, all of them, both angels and men (that is, the blessed souls), belong to the heavenly hierarchy, arranged in diverse grades: they are all citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem, which is our mother; and so they are members of the Church in manifold variety, in which, according to its threefold division into the Church triumphant, the Church purgative and the Church militant, there is the communion of saints, which we profess in the very creed of faith. Of the Church still militant on earth it has been said: « You have come to Mount Sion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the company (πανηγύρει) of many thousands of angels, and to the Church of the firstborn (πρωτοτόκων), who are enrolled in the heavens, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect » (καὶ πνεύμασι δικαίων τετελειωμένων) Heb. XIII. 22. 23. Cf. Eph.II. 19. Wherefore each of the blessed, according to his own state and grade in which they are established in the kingdom of heaven, has a different order in the communion of saints, and different relations to the whole Church. Moreover the very perfection of consummated spirits requires that each one intellectually see, in a manner befitting the light of glory, all the things which pertain to his state. Each one therefore sees first of all the whole heavenly Jerusalem: « they see all the orders, number, merits, dignity, and glory of the blessed angels and men; for it is fitting that they know their city and their father's house, and their brothers and fellow citizens, most thoroughly, and wonder at and praise the goodness and mercy of God in each one » Lessius de Summo bono 1. II. c. 9. n. 61. For all these things pertain above all to that perfect state of each one. But of those things which are done in the Church, whether purgative or militant, and in the human race, especially those which pertain to the supernatural order of grace (cf. Luc. XV. 7. 10.), each one knows those things which pertain to their own ministries according to their diverse state and order, which they hold in the heavenly hierarchy and in the communion of saints. Hence it is clear that the worship and supplications directed to the saints are known by them not only through a special revelation of God, but that this knowledge is fitting for them and connected with their own perfect state in the communion of saints. On this matter compare Bellarmin. de Beatitud. SS. 1. I. c. 20. ad argument. III.

Moreover, the blessed souls who have come from this pilgrimage on earth to the fatherland do not lose the knowledge of human affairs, nor their relations with human beings; but only what was imperfect is emptied out and raised to perfection. Just as their bodies, dead on earth, have an order to future life and glorification in heaven, so much more do the souls living in glory retain special relations to human things, with that perfection which befits the perfection of their charity toward God and toward men to be sanctified and saved by God. These things, therefore, insofar as they pertain to the state of each one, are to be judged to pertain to their knowledge, not only, but also to a special care. Vide S. Thom. contra gent. III. 59; Toletum in 1. q. 12 a. 8; Suarez de Deo 1. II. c. 28. n. 17; Lessius de Summo bono 1. II. c. 9. n. 66; c. 10. n. 69.

On the reason why God, though clearly seen, is still to the blessed incomprehensible.

« Although the blessed see God intuitively in his very essence, God is nevertheless incomprehensible to every created intellect. The proper reason of incomprehensibility, however, is that God is infinite in perfection and also in intrinsic knowability, and therefore cannot be known by a created intellect intensively, as far as he is knowable; whence it follows that through the intuitive vision of the divine essence in itself, not all the things of which the divine essence itself is the exemplar, or which are eminently in the divine essence, are seen by a created intellect extensively. »

I. Just as comprehension is said of bodily things in two ways, both of the apprehension of a thing and of the full inclusion of one thing in another, so too, by analogy with these, in spiritual and intellectual things the meaning of the same word is twofold, especially in ecclesiastical usage when the comprehension of God is the topic. For it is sometimes taken for the attainment of the end, a metaphor derived from runners in the stadium: « So run, that you may comprehend » 1. Cor. IX. 24; Phil. III. 12. 13. Hence all who have reached the last end are called blessed comprehensors. « In this way comprehension is one of the three endowments of the (blessed) soul, which corresponds to hope, as vision corresponds to faith, and enjoyment to charity…. The blessed have these three in God, because both they see him, and in seeing hold him present, having him always in their power to see; and holding him they enjoy him as the last end fulfilling desire » S. Th. 1. q. 12. a. 7. ad 1. From this itself it is clear that comprehension is understood in a quite different and stricter sense when God is said to be comprehended by no created intellect, even one placed in the highest supernatural elevation, and is simply predicated as incomprehensible.

1°. At the Fourth Lateran Council this profession is made: « we firmly believe and simply profess that there is one only true God, eternal, immense and unchangeable, incomprehensible, almighty, and ineffable » chapter Firmiter. Just as here the attributes of eternity, immensity, etc. are to be understood as absolute, and not only in a certain respect, so also incomprehensibility and ineffability, which are referred to the intellect, must be understood before any intellect that is distinct from the infinite divine intellect¹, not merely before some single intellect, or before merely natural powers. For in this way in a certain respect incomprehensibility could also be predicated of an angel; nor would it be a property proper to God, expressing the infinity of God, as is intended in that declaration of the Council. And so it must be judged altogether contrary to what Vasquez said (disp. 42. c. 3. n. 10.). He says: « since God is said by the Council to be ineffable, and yet the blessed see clearly by the light of glory, so also by the tongue of the mind they can utter and express him as he is, and he is not said to be ineffable to them in mind; so also he will not be said to be incomprehensible to them. » But just as God is in some true sense incomprehensible to the blessed in the light of glory, which Vasquez himself certainly does not deny, so in exactly the same sense he is ineffable to them; for these two, incomprehensibility and ineffability, stand in the same relation; or rather, what is in some sense incomprehensible is in the same sense a fortiori ineffable. Therefore in the sense in which Vasquez says the blessed utter God with the mind as he is, they also indeed comprehend him; but this comprehension is nothing other than the intuitive vision of God as he is. In the stricter sense, however, in which God is predicated as absolutely incomprehensible, altogether as comprehensible to himself alone, so he is ineffable to himself alone. For this full divine uttering, considered relatively, is in the Father the expression or generation of the consubstantial Word; considered absolutely, it is the divine comprehension itself (cf. supra p. 162. 163.).

2°. In Scripture the incomprehensibility of God is expressed first implicitly, wherever the infinite perfection of God is declared. Explicitly, God is then predicated as incomprehensible; for the Scriptures join to the perfections proper to God alone an inaccessible knowability, or the light of God: « the only Potentate…. who alone has immortality, and dwells in light inaccessible² » 1 Tim. VI. 16. Likewise the incomprehensibility of his counsels is inferred from the height, or depth of his perfection: « O height of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God³; how incomprehensible are his judgements, and his ways past finding out! » Rom. XI. 33. In the same sense the Lord of hosts is called most strong, great, and mighty, « great in counsel, and incomprehensible in thought » Ierem. XXXII. 18. 19.⁴ This is indeed the height of riches (βάθος πλούτου), which only the Spirit of God searches: « for the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God » (τὰ βάθη τοῦ θεοῦ) 1. Cor. II. 10. (See on this passage the Treatise on the Trinity, th. XVII.)

In the book of Job, Zophar the Naamathite declares the incomprehensibility of God from his infinity: « Perhaps you will comprehend the traces of God, and reach to the perfection of the Almighty?⁵ it is higher than heaven…. deeper than hell…. longer than the earth…. and broader than the sea » Job XI. 7–9. The first two clauses can be rendered literally from the Hebrew: « Will you find the depth of God? Will you reach the end (the extremity of perfection) of God? » In each clause, the depth of God and the end in the perfection of God is the infinite perfection of God, which no created intellect and no investigation can penetrate according to its whole knowability. This description of incomprehensibility is opposed to comprehension, as Augustine defined it: « it is comprehended whose limits can be surveyed; » « if whatever is bounded through knowledge by the comprehension of the knower, then certainly all infinity is in some ineffable way bounded for God » Aug. ep. 147. n. 21; Civ. Dei XII. 18. Cf. S. Th. 1. q. 14. a. 3. In the following clauses, in the words of Job, the infinite of perfection is declared by way of immensity (cf. S. Gregor. Moral. l. X. c. 9. n. 14.).

This sense, that the end of infinite perfection cannot be reached, Ecclesiasticus expressed most beautifully: « Glorifying the Lord as much as you can, for he will still surpass even that, and his wondrous magnificence; bless the Lord, exalt him as much as you are able, for he is greater than all praise⁶…. do not labour, for you will not comprehend⁷: who shall see him and declare him? and who shall magnify him as he is from the beginning? » Ecclesi. XLIII. 30. 31. As to « who shall see him and declare him? », in the proper meaning of the Greek verb ἐκδιηγεῖσθαι⁸ it must be explained: who shall fully express him and, by declaring, as it were exhaust him? For God is in this way ineffable to every creature, because he is incomprehensible. « No one has ever seen God: the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him » Io. I. 18: yet he cannot be fully declared to us; nor did John say ἐκδιηγήσατο but ἐξηγήσατο. The argument for incomprehensibility drawn from those two clauses, « you will not comprehend, who shall see him and declare him? », Vasquez (disp. 52. c. 2. n. 7.) vainly tries to undermine by what follows: « who shall magnify him as he is? » For although the blessed see God as he is, yet they cannot magnify him as much as he deserves; but he alone loves and glorifies himself in himself according to the whole dignity, just as he alone sees himself according to the whole knowability⁹.

As in Job it is said that there is no way to reach the end in the knowledge of God, so in exactly the same way in Ps. CXLIV. (heb. 145.) 3. it is predicated: « Great is the Lord and exceedingly to be praised, and of his greatness there is no end, » where according to the Hebrew text it is understood: there is no end to the penetration of the knowledge of God¹⁰, which indeed is the very definition of incomprehensibility. Likewise, as Ecclesiasticus says, God cannot be fully declared; so Ps. CXLVI. (heb. 147.) 5. says: great is our Lord, and great is his power; and of his wisdom there is no number¹¹.

Therefore in the Scriptures the incomprehensibility of God is not only predicated indeterminately; but this attribute is described clearly enough that we can deduce from it its formal reason.

II. The whole difficulty lies in the question of how comprehension, taken in the strict sense (by which God remains simply incomprehensible even before the highest elevation of the created intellect), differs from the intuitive vision of God described above. For the blessed, as has been demonstrated, know by intuitive vision that he is infinite Being, namely the divine essence as it is in itself, with all its formal reasons, both absolute and relative, that is, with all perfections and with the divine persons, which are really the divine essence itself; whence the blessed could be judged to see God in such a way that nothing of him lies hidden from those seeing, and consequently this knowledge adequately corresponds to the knowability of the object, and is comprehension in the strict sense. For comprehension does not require the mode of knowing itself to be the most perfect of all, in the way in which God alone knows; otherwise every knowable thing would have to be called incomprehensible to a finite intellect, and comprehended only by an infinite intellect.

The reconciliation of this twofold member, that the blessed see the essence of God according to all perfections, as it is, and that nevertheless that same divine essence remains incomprehensible to them, some very weighty theologians seem to have despaired of. Therefore some denied the first member: Victoria, Toletus, Thomassinus, whom we refuted in the previous thesis; others so dissolved the second member, namely incomprehensibility, that the explanation seems almost equivalent to a denial; among these are Gabriel Vasquez and, to some extent, Petavius.

Vasquez laid down these two points. a) « By the power of the vision of God nothing created is seen… For the essence of God is not a medium by which any creature is known, let alone clearly seen…. therefore no creature is seen in God by the power of that vision itself; but by a peculiar revelation some possible or future creatures are known by the blessed, not by the same knowledge simultaneously with the divine essence, but by a different one »¹² disp. 50. c. 4–6. Further, b) he says that God is not comprehended by the blessed, and that this must be explained solely by the fact that the blessed do not see all possibles and all future things in God. « Although a blessed person sees in God whatever is in him formally, yet he does not see all the things which can follow from him and depend on him; for the blessed one knows neither all possibles nor future things which depend on the counsel of God: wherefore it is rightly said that God is not comprehended by the blessed » disp. 53. c. 4.

Now, if the essence of God in itself is not a medium for knowing possibles; and if the essence is known through intuitive vision, while possibles are known by another, different knowledge, arising from a peculiar revelation made to the blessed: this knowledge of possibles does not make the vision of the essence more perfect, nor does it pertain to it at all. Hence if nothing else is lacking to the intuitive vision of the essence for it to be comprehension, except that the blessed do not know all possibles through that other knowledge, which has nothing to do with the vision of God as he is in himself; then certainly nothing whatever is lacking to the intuitive vision of God for the notion of true comprehension. Nor does the explanation of Vasquez help, which, manifestly contradicting himself, afterwards adds: « in order that something be comprehended by the intellect, not only must whatever is in it be known, but also whatever can be done by it or derived from it, by the power of that same vision by which it is seen » loc. cit. n. 17. This is indeed most true in our view, who say that the divine essence is in itself so knowable that by the vision itself of that first truth every truth is known in one and the same act, and that this knowledge of the essence, as far as it is knowable, is comprehension in the proper sense; but in the principles of Vasquez that addition is inconsistent. For he first teaches that the divine essence is not so knowable that by the power of that vision all possibles can be known in it as in a primary object; secondly he expressly rejects the doctrine by which it is said that for comprehension of God it is required that God be known as far as he is intensively knowable; but he affirms that for comprehension it is sufficient that extensively nothing be in the object itself which is not known as it is. « For the infinite to be comprehended, he says, it is not necessary that the knowledge be infinitely perfect according to being or according to intensity; but it is required that the thing itself appear in every way in which it can be known, that is, that in it whatever is, and as it is, be seen; and this mode is on the side of the thing known, not on the side of the knowledge: and in this way the blessed one sees the substance of God in every way in which it can be seen, that is, the whole that is in him, and as it is in him » disp. 53. c. 2. n. 8. From these principles, therefore, the beatific vision of God would indeed not be an infinite knowledge of all truth; but it is in no way understood how the intuitive vision of the divine essence would not, in the true sense, be a comprehension of the essence.

Petavius very nearly agrees with Vasquez, who finally places the proper and formal reason of the incomprehensibility of God in this: that although the blessed see all that is in God formally, which would be enough for comprehension, « they nevertheless do not know all the things that God can produce by his infinite power. » And not without a certain acrimony he rebukes the theologians who, for the true reason of comprehension, « further require that the perfection of knowledge be as great as the perfection of knowability in the object; or that it be perceived with such clarity and perfect knowledge as it of itself demands. » Petavius then, as if doing something else, turns this aside, as though the theologians required, for the formal reason of comprehension, an ontological equality, or equality in the reason of being, between the knowledge and the object comprehended; whence he himself, as if by reduction to absurdity, concludes that, according to the explanation of the theologians, then « any substance can be comprehended by no one other than God, because every knowledge, however perfect, is an accident, and is therefore at a great distance from substance » Petav. de Deo l. VII. c. 3. et 4.

But the doctrine of these theologians, and among them of Didacus Ruiz (De scientia Dei disp. VI.), whom Petavius specifically attacks, is quite different; and we follow above all the principles of St Thomas in reconciling the vision of the essence of God as it is with the incomprehensibility of that same essence.

The explanation, moreover, runs thus. That beatific vision admits of degrees without limit, so that always another and a more perfect one is possible, just as in blessed minds in act the vision has diverse degrees of perfection according to the diverse degrees of charity (S. Th. 1. q. 12. a. 6.). We do not look directly at degrees of perfection in the very entity of the vision, in the way that God knows even a finite object by an infinite vision; but we look in the vision of the blessed at possible degrees, more perfect without limit, inasmuch as God, being an infinite object, is infinitely knowable; whence indeed, as it were obliquely, it follows that the vision will also be entitatively more perfect through indefinite degrees, the more intensely and perfectly it sees the infinite object. With these things supposed we say: just as within the reason of created being, or of created perfection, there is no supreme degree beyond which another is not possible; but the supreme being is infinite, and the divine being is outside and above the whole reason of created being: so altogether, within the reason of created vision of God, there is no supreme degree of perfection; but the supreme vision is infinite, since the object of the vision is infinite and therefore infinitely knowable; and accordingly this supreme vision is outside and above the whole reason of created vision; and it is proper to God alone, and no more communicable to a creature than the formal Esse of the divinity itself. This vision, which adequately corresponds to the knowability of the object, is properly and in the strict sense comprehensive, by which, namely, the object, as far as it is knowable, as Augustine speaks (Civ. Dei XII. 18.), is bounded by the comprehension of the one knowing. No one has ever affirmed that for comprehension, considered generally and in itself, there is required a supreme perfection of vision on the part of the act, and consequently an infinitely perfect act¹³; or that there is required an act entitative equal to the object comprehended, and so a substantial act for the comprehension of a substance. This opinion, certainly absurd, Petavius unjustly attributes to the Scholastics and by name to Diego Ruiz¹⁴. From both it would follow that no object, however finite, or certainly no substance, could be comprehended by a created and finite intellect. This very thing shows that comprehension in this sense could never have been understood by anyone who acknowledged the incomprehensibility of God as a proper attribute. When knowledge of the object is demanded for comprehension, as far as it is knowable, what is understood is not extrinsic knowability on the part of the act, as if there were demanded the supreme perfection of the knowing act, that is, infinite perfection, by which God alone knows; but what is understood is intrinsic knowability in the object, that it be known according to its whole perfection, intensively and extensively, as far as it demands of itself to be known, that is, as much knowledge as it can of itself provoke. God knows finite things infinitely more perfectly than they are knowable intrinsically and of themselves; for he knows all things by the infinite knowledge of his own essence, and does not draw knowledge from things according to their own knowability. Likewise, in comprehension there is not affirmed an ontological equality between the act and the object; but an intentional one, as the ancients said, or, as they now speak, an ideal adequation between the knowledge and the intrinsic knowability of the object. Although if the question is not of comprehension in general but of the comprehension of God, whose knowability is infinite, it follows from the eminence of the object to be known that the perfection of the comprehending act must be infinite, and accordingly the act must be divine, which is entitatively equal to the divine essence, or rather is the divine essence and substance itself. To the present point Augustine rightly says: « insofar as we know God, we are like him (cf. 1. Io. III. 2.); but not like in equality, because we do not know him as much as he knows himself... although that knowledge is some likeness of God, yet it is inferior, because it is in an inferior nature: the mind indeed is a creature, but God the creator » Trin. IX. c. 11. (We shall speak of the identity of essence and comprehension in God, where we shall explain how God is substantial truth itself.)

Now, 1°, from, as it were, the very nature of the thing and the intrinsic reason of the dogma it can be shown that, in the sense we have explained, the attribute of incomprehensibility is to be understood when God, being infinite, is predicated simply as incomprehensible before every created intellect. For a) that incomprehensibility considered in this way truly belongs to God and is a real divine attribute is evident from the very infinity of God. b) That this real attribute of God is called incomprehensibility not by a feigned name but most properly is evident from the thing itself, that is, from the proper reason of this attribute; indeed it cannot be expressed by a more apt name, nor is it found expressed in Scripture, the Councils and the Fathers in any other way. Therefore when in these documents of revelation the incomprehensibility of God is predicated simply, or the comprehension of God is denied to all creatures, even to angels and the blessed, this attribute described a little before must be understood. Otherwise it would have to be supposed—which assuredly cannot be admitted—that the incomprehensibility of God, simply predicated, is not proposed in the most proper sense, but in some less strict sense, of which, however, there is at least no indication in those documents; indeed there are arguments clear enough, as I shall show presently, which demonstrate that this very most proper sense was understood by the Fathers. c) Incomprehensibility, or the attribute of eminence above every created intellect, is predicated in order to manifest the infinite perfection of the divine essence. Now the infinity of perfection, insofar as it is referred to the intellect, consists in the very infinity of knowability; and therefore God, according to his whole reason of knowability, can be understood only by an infinite intellect. Therefore the absolute incomprehensibility of God in this sense is to be judged proposed in revelation: namely, that God, infinitely knowable, can be known by no finite intellect as far as he is knowable. Accordingly, conversely, the comprehension of God is nothing other than adequate knowledge of God according to the whole infinite reason of knowability.

2°. In this way St Thomas explains the incomprehensibility of God in all the places where he takes up the question of it. « Whatever is comprehended by some knower is known by it as perfectly as it is knowable.... But the divine substance is a certain infinite thing in comparison with every created intellect, since every created intellect is limited under a certain species (has a determinate and finite degree of perfection in knowing). It is impossible, therefore, that the vision of any created intellect should be adequate in seeing the divine substance, namely by seeing it so perfectly as it is visible. Therefore no created intellect will be able to comprehend it » S. Th. contr. gent. III. c. 55. n. 1. 2. « This is the most perfect way of attaining the divine likeness, namely that we know him in the way in which he knows himself, that is, through his essence; although we do not comprehend him as he comprehends himself—not because we are ignorant of some part of him, since he has no part; but because we shall not know him as perfectly as he is knowable; since the power of our intellect in understanding cannot be adequate to the truth of him, according to which he is knowable, since his clarity or truth is infinite, while our intellect is finite; but his intellect is infinite, as also his truth; and therefore he alone knows himself as much as he is knowable » Compend. theolog. c. 106. Cf. 1. q. 12. a. 7; 3. q. 10. a. 1. ad 2; 4. dist. 49. q. 2. a. 3; de veritate q. 8. a. 2; Compend. theol. c. 216; in Eph. III. lect. V ; in I. Decretalem (T. VIII. p. 84. ed. de Rubeis).

In the same sense the older Scholastics explain the comprehension and incomprehensibility of God, at dist. 2 or 3 of the first book, where they treat of the knowledge of God; or at dist. 14 of the third book, where the knowledge of the soul of Christ is discussed; or at dist. 49 of the fourth book, where eternal beatitude is inquired into. Alexander of Hales, 1. P. q. 7. m. 1; Albert the Great, 1. dist. 2. a. 4; 3. dist. 14. a. 1; St Bonaventure, 1. dist. 3. P. I. q. 1; 3. dist. 14. a. 1. q. 2; Giles of Rome, 3. dist. 14. P. I. a. 1; Thomas of Strasbourg, 3. dist. 14. a. 3; Richard of Middleton, 3. dist. 14. q. 4; Scotus, 3. dist. 14. q. 2. n. 7; Gabriel Biel, 3. dist. 14. a. 3. dub. 2; Dominic Soto, 4. dist. 49. q. 3. a. 1; Bañez, in 1. q. 12. a. 7. etc. As a sample I set down the words of Richard, l. c.: « The soul of Christ, in knowing the Word, does not comprehend him, because.... the object of the intellect is being: therefore, as much as a thing has of entity, so much does it have of intelligibility; but the eternal Word is of infinite entity, therefore it is of infinite intelligence (intelligibility). Hence, so far as it is on its own side, the intelligible is actu infinito intensive, or in its power; but the soul of Christ, since it is a creature, cannot understand any intelligible intellectione infinita intensive; for no creature can elicit an action that is infinite intensively.... But if it comprehended him by knowing, it would understand him as far as he is knowable on his own side... Because the Word is simple and infinite; therefore, insofar as he is simple, he is seen whole by whoever sees him; and insofar as he is infinite, something of his depth lies hidden from every intellect that does not see him as far as he is visible on his own side. For if two eyes are supposed, one weak and the other strong, each of which sees one whole colour, some of the beauty of that colour, which is not hidden from the strong eye, is hidden from the weak eye; so some depth of the treasure of divine beauty is manifest to the divine intellect, which is hidden from any creature. » That is to say, indeed no perfection lies hidden, which we refuted above at thesis XVII; but a perfection which is seen whole is not seen totally, that is, not with the whole infinite intensity and clarity by which it is knowable of itself; and thus the knowability is not exhausted by the knowledge of the one who sees. Hence Richard did not say that some divine perfection lies hidden, if perfections are regarded as it were extensively; but that some depth, something of the depth of the divine beauty lies hidden. In this same way the definition of St Augustine, ep. 147. n. 21, which the Scholastics commonly adopted, and which we explained above at pp. 209. 210., can be explained in the words of Richard. « The whole is comprehended by seeing, says St Augustine, which is so seen that nothing of it lies hidden from the one seeing, or whose limits can be surveyed. » Indeed, comprehension requires that nothing be hidden of the whole, as it were regarded extensively; but also that nothing be hidden of its depth, of that which is seen as whole: not as if in God there were grades of perfections which are not seen by those who see God as he is (see above p. 210.), but rather that in the intensity and clarity of the created vision there are grades without end, in all of which the same thing is seen, but not with the same perfection¹⁵. Hence this distinction between the extension and the intension of vision is not only necessary for explaining incomprehensibility; it also comes into use where it must be made clear how, in the very intuitive vision of the divine essence as the object of essential beatitude, the blessed differ among themselves as one star differs from another star. « Joy is said to be equal not intensively (since one sees God more clearly than another), but extensively, because one rejoices in the same things and in as many things as another rejoices in » St Bonaventure, 4. dist. 49. P. I. q. 6. ad 1. et 2.

3°. From the intensive comprehension of God itself there follows comprehension as it were extensive, that is, that in the divine essence, as the supreme truth and fount of every truth, every truth is comprehended in one and the same act. Conversely, from the very fact that the divine essence, infinitely knowable, is intensively incomprehensible to a finite intellect, it follows that in the aforesaid manner it also cannot be comprehended extensively, that is, that through the vision of the divine essence, intensively finite, not every truth is seen—or, as is commonly said by synecdoche, not all possibles are seen; and so the vision, intensively finite, is also extensively limited with respect to those truths which, although knowable in the divine essence, are nevertheless distinct from God and different. This is signified when it is said that the blessed indeed see all the things that are in God formally, but not all that are there eminently, because for this vision the comprehension of God would be required.

In substance this is also the teaching of Suarez, briefly in 1. II. de Deo c. 29. n. 13., but set out at greater length in 3. P. T. I. disp. 26. sect. 1.; and in the same sense perhaps Gregor. de Valentia T. I. disp. I. q. 12. puncto 5. can be understood. But in one mode of explanation we cannot agree with Suarez. He himself judges that the distinction of intension and extension in knowing is not necessary for explaining the comprehension and incomprehensibility of God, because the vision of all things—not only those which are in God formally but also those which are eminently in God—by this very fact has the whole intensive perfection which is necessary for the true reason of comprehension. Hence further he explains the reason why the intuitive vision of the blessed is not comprehension, from this alone: that by the power of the intuition of the divine essence, although they know all things which are formally in God, they do not however know all things which are eminently in the essence of God. He also tries in this sense to interpret the teaching of St Thomas.

But as for a): that through the vision of the divine essence all truths are understood, even those which are distinct from God, this is not the formal reason of the comprehension of the essence in itself, but is some property or some consequent of comprehension. Although therefore from this as a consequent one may infer comprehension of the essence as a principle; yet this still requires explanation in its own formal reason, which is an intellection adequate to the intrinsic intelligibility of the object; and accordingly the comprehension of an infinitely intelligible essence, from its formal reason, is an intellection intensive infinite. It is better understood that extensive adequation follows as a consequent from intensive adequation as from a principle, than in the reverse order. Hence also the formal reason of the incomprehensibility of God consists in this: that an infinite perfection, infinitely knowable, cannot be known by any finite intellect as far as it is knowable; not in this, that through the created vision of the essence not all things can be known which, distinct from God, have the character of some truth.

b) The formal reason of the inequality in the intuitive vision, by which all the blessed see God as he is in himself, insofar as it is the vision of the essence as the primary object, is constituted by a greater or lesser intension and clarity of the vision, not by a greater or lesser extension as regards the secondary object, although this difference of extension follows from the difference of intension. In this way Suarez himself explains that inequality in the vision and in essential beatitude (1. II. c. 19. n. 4. 12; c. 22. n. 1. 8.). Therefore in the same way the formal distinction between comprehension and intuitive vision is to be declared from the vision of the primary object itself; and as regards this they do not differ in extension but only in intension and clarity. For the teaching of St Thomas (1. q. 12. a. 7. ad 2.) is true, as described by Suarez himself (l. c. c. 22. n. 8.) in these words: « the blessed do not comprehend God, not because they do not see whatever is in him; but because they do not see perfectly: and in the reply to the third objection he explains that this perfection (by which the vision of the blessed differs from comprehension) is not to be considered on the part of the object, but on the part of the manner of seeing; for the whole object is seen, and every mode which is in it, namely that it exists infinitely and is infinitely knowable, although it is not seen infinitely. »

c) The teaching of St Thomas in all the places cited above (pp. 229, 230) is without doubt that which we have hitherto explained, and it is evident even from those passages which we have just seen described by Suarez. For the Angelic Doctor teaches that, just as in the beatific vision there are differences arising from the clearer or less clear manner of seeing the same object, so comprehension of the divine essence and power differs from every created vision by the very manner of knowing: that comprehension knows the infinite essence and power as far as it is knowable in itself, and accordingly with an infinite perfection of vision; whereas no created vision can know the same essence and power as far as it is knowable, but knows what is infinitely knowable in a finite manner. Moreover St Thomas indeed concedes and teaches that by the comprehension of the divine essence and power there are known not only this in itself but also all possible effects, because all are knowable in it; conversely, that one who does not comprehend the divine essence and power in itself is not able to know all possible effects. Therefore an intellect which knew all possible effects would, by the teaching of the Angelic Doctor, indeed also be said to comprehend the divine essence and power in itself; not that the knowledge of effects is formally the comprehension itself of the divine essence and power, but that that knowledge is contained in this comprehension and can be only through it. « In the vision of God there is a degree, according as some see God more clearly than others, who is the cause of all things. But the more fully a cause is known, the more effects can be perceived in it...... And hence it is that of those who see the essence of God, some regard more effects or reasons of divine works in God himself than others who see less clearly... The soul of Christ, therefore, obtaining the highest perfection of divine vision among the other creatures, fully beholds in God himself all the divine works and their reasons, whatever they are, or will be, or have been.... Yet the soul of Christ cannot attain to the comprehension of the divinity. For that is comprehended by knowing, which is known only as far as it is knowable. For each thing is knowable insofar as it is being and true; esse of God, moreover, is infinite, and likewise its truth: therefore God is infinitely knowable. But no creature can know infinitely, even if what it knows is infinite. Therefore no creature can comprehend God by seeing him..... Therefore the soul of Christ does not comprehend God...... Now it is to be considered that the comprehension of the essence of a thing and of its power is of the same reason; for each thing can act insofar as it is being actually. If therefore the soul of Christ cannot comprehend the essence of the divinity, as has been shown, it is impossible that it comprehend the divine power. But it would comprehend, if it knew whatever God can do, and by what reasons it can produce effects. But this (to comprehend the divine power) is impossible: therefore the soul of Christ does not know whatever God can do, or by what reasons it can operate » S. Th. Compend. theolog. c. 216. See 1. q. 12. a. 7, compared with a. 8.

The more difficult modes of speaking are explained, by which the holy Fathers deny comprehension, but not the intuitive vision, of the divine essence.

« From the time the Eunomian heresy arose, the holy Fathers have been wont to teach more insistently that not even the holy angels themselves can attain to the comprehension of God; yet even those who did not explain the immediate vision of God more distinctly are not to be judged to have denied it, unless perhaps for the state of this life, or as if it were a bodily vision. »

Gabriel Vasquez (disp. 37. cc. 2-4.), against the common interpretation of other theologians, held that St John Chrysostom above all, and then also very many other Fathers, both Greek and Latin, can be understood in no other sense than that they denied the intuitive vision of God to the holy angels and consequently to all the blessed in the homeland. That we may show this interpretation of Vasquez and of many more recent writers to be false, and explain the genuine sense of the holy Fathers in obscurer locutions of this kind, this is the aim of the present thesis.

Certain general principles, however, must be kept before our eyes. a) The present question is in itself hermeneutical and historical, not immediately dogmatic. For since in the Catholic Church there is some progress in the explanation of the revealed deposit, it could absolutely speaking have come about that in the fourth and fifth centuries the doctrine concerning the manner of heavenly beatitude was not yet sufficiently explained; in which stage of explanation, even within the bounds of the Church and among some very weighty doctors, there can be, without loss to faith, not only obscure and confused notions but also errors, which afterward, once the question has been sifted, are eliminated.

Yet b) here we are dealing with a doctrine in itself most weighty, which it matters most of all for all the faithful to know explicitly, a doctrine plainly set down in the Scriptures and preached by the ancient holy doctors with great agreement and clarity, as we demonstrated in thesis XV. In such dogmas, however, the dissent of very well-known doctors of great authority in the Church of God, such as Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, both Cyrils, Ambrose and Jerome, named by Vasquez, can never be admitted unless it is evidently demonstrated. Their ambiguous and obscure locutions must therefore, on this hypothesis, necessarily be understood in that sense in which they agree with the other Fathers and with the dogma, which is certainly known at least from the subsequent centuries. These principles and their grounds we have demonstrated in their proper place in Tract. de Traditione, and more briefly in Tract. de Trinit., thesis X.

Moreover c) one must consider the state of the question and of the controversy which those Fathers were handling, and accordingly the aim which they alone had in view. Nearly all the more obscure locutions occur in those places where the Fathers dispute solely against the doctrine of the Eunomians, who claimed for themselves a perfect knowledge of God, « as God knows himself, » and so claimed the comprehension of God (see above thesis X.). In this state of the question the Fathers dispute against the heretics in two ways. For they often consider only our mode of knowing God in this life; and then they declare that the very origin of our idea and notion of God is derived from the divine manifestations ad extra, and by this very fact deny, for our present mode of knowing, an immediate intuition of God, as was demonstrated in thesis X. Such places, however, have nothing to do with the present matter, and there is nothing obscure in them, except that testimonies which speak of our present knowledge through a mirror in an enigma are torn from their context and transferred to the knowledge which will be face to face. But no less frequently the Fathers have in view the exclusion of that blasphemous doctrine by which the Eunomians claimed for themselves a full and adequate knowledge, as God knows himself. This perfection the holy doctors deny not only for our knowledge but absolutely for every finite knowledge, even for heavenly and angelic vision, and they demonstrate that it belongs to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit alone. Hence in this second manner of disputing the question was not about heavenly knowledge what sort it is, whether immediate or mediate; but, the immediate vision being supposed—which the adversaries not only did not deny but even called comprehensive—it had to be demonstrated what sort it is not; namely, that not even the angelic and supreme knowledge of a creature in the heavenly light can be so full and perfect as the heretics asserted their own human knowledge to be in this dim place. Just as, therefore, in this state of the question an explanation of the beatific vision is not to be expected from the Fathers, so the denial of perfect vision would be unjustly understood altogether as a denial of immediate vision. But no less clear is this: in this manner of disputing, while the Fathers are not concerned with intuitive vision and press solely and more vehemently the exclusion of perfect vision, there may occur locutions which, considered in themselves, seem to deny the intuitive vision itself, and which can be rightly explained only by considering the aim and a careful comparison of the passages. Nor do we say that before these questions were raised the notions of the beatific vision were equally clear and distinct among all the ancient Fathers, as they were afterward determined as the explanation of the dogma advanced; but we contend that the very matter of the intuitive vision of God is not denied by Chrysostom and by the many others who are accused.

With these matters established we must come to the particular explanations of the doctrine of these Fathers according to the threefold class indicated in the thesis; for some are to be judged to have excluded, not the immediate vision, but the comprehension of God for the heavenly homeland itself; others to have excluded sensible vision; and others to have denied both vision and comprehension of the divine essence only in the knowledge of this life.

1°. It is certain that the Fathers too, who most clearly declare, with no one contradicting, the intuitive vision in heaven, distinguished between intuitive vision and perfect vision; and while they teach the one, they deny the other. Thus Pope Gregory the Great, whose most open teaching we saw in thesis XV, nevertheless denies that in that very vision which is face to face, God can by a creature be seen perfectly. « In the height of reward God can be found by the species of contemplation (from 2. Cor. V. 7.), but nevertheless he cannot do so perfectly. For the angelic or the human mind, when it gazes at the unbounded light, by that very fact narrows itself, by which it is a creature; and indeed it is stretched above itself through advancement (seeing by supernatural light), but nevertheless, even when expanded, it does not suffice to comprehend its brilliance..... Whence it is further added (Iob XI. 8.): higher than heaven is... because the very elect spirits too do not perfectly penetrate the vision of so great a height » S. Gregor. Moral.1.X.n.13.14. « The angelic spirits themselves cannot contemplate fully the power of our Creator.... before whose power even those powers tremble in humility » ibid.¹ 1. XXVI. n. 19. In much the same way, before Gregory, St Augustine compared the vision of God in his substance with the comprehension of the fullness of God. « The desire of the truly pious, by which they wish to see God and burn with eager longing, I think does not blaze toward that appearance to be beheld, in which he appears as he wills (in theophanies), which he is not; but toward that substance in which he is what he is... For this is promised to the saints in the other life.... Not that anyone at some time comprehends the fullness of God, not only with the eyes of the body, but even with the mind itself; for it is one thing to see, another to comprehend the whole by seeing » Aug. ep. 147. n. 20-21.

Now indeed this same distinction is, among the Fathers whose sense we now seek, between vision simply and adequate vision; and it is only this second, adequate vision I say, which is excluded by them in the knowledge of the holy angels.

Chrysostom, whom we chiefly ask about, we have seen clearly teaching in thesis XV. that the blessed in heaven see God himself face to face; but where he refutes the comprehension asserted by the Eunomians, he no longer considers, in the knowledge itself of angels and blessed, what is perfect in it; but for his purpose he presses and describes what in that knowledge lacks absolute perfection. He does not simply deny to the angels the vision of God but a certain vision, which he calls ἀκριβῆς κατάληψις τῆς οὐσίας, ἀκριβῆς καὶ τετρανωμένη γνῶσις, γνῶσις μετὰ ἀκριβείας ἁπάσης, full comprehension of the essence, full and penetrating knowledge, knowledge in the whole fullness Chrys. de Incomprehens. hom. IV. n. 2. 3. 4; hom. V. n. 3. 4.

What, then, does this ἀκρίβεια mean for Chrysostom? The holy Father, in the very passage which Vasquez objects to, in Io. hom. XV. al. XIV. n. 2., openly declares this accurate or full knowledge in such a way that it is nothing other than the comprehension proper to God alone. He explains that saying of Matth. XI. 27: no one knows the Father except the Son². « What then? Do we all live in ignorance? Far from it. But no one knows as the Son does. Therefore, as many have seen him according to their capacity.... so no one knows his substance, what it is, except he who is begotten of him; for here he calls knowledge the full (accurate) vision and comprehension, and such as the Father has of the Son³... Therefore...... he did not say: the Son who saw, related; but he put something more than to see, when he said: who is in the bosom of the Father..... For he who simply sees does not altogether have full (accurate) knowledge of the thing seen; but he who dwells in the bosom will never be ignorant of anything....⁴ So question the contradicter (the Arian): does the Father know and see the Son.... with a certain accurate vision and knowledge⁵? He will certainly confess this. From this, gather the accurate knowledge of the Son concerning the Father.

Two things here are most worthy of note for understanding the manner of speaking of Chrysostom in the doctrine of the vision of God. a) The full or accurate knowledge (ἀκριβῆς γνωσις) is that alone by which God knows himself; and so it is the comprehension of God in the strict sense; whence b) the knowledge which among Chrysostom is called full or accurate differs, by his own testimony, from vision simply so called. Therefore, according to the usage of speaking which Chrysostom kept, to the angels and the blessed full or accurate knowledge is indeed to be denied; nor yet on that account is the immediate vision of God denied to them.

In the same way Chrysostom, in other places where he disputes against the Eunomian comprehension, describes full and accurate knowledge as adequate comprehension, and distinguishes it from the vision of God.

At the very start of the sermons « on the incomprehensible nature of God », he declares that in the blessed there is perfect knowledge (γνωσιν τελειαν). For, he says, what the Apostle says (1. Cor. XIII. 8.): knowledge will be destroyed, « he speaks not of perfect knowledge but of knowledge which is in part, calling the destruction an advance to something better, so that when that which is in part is destroyed, it will no longer be in part but perfect knowledge... this destruction is therefore consummation and into greater increase » ⁶ de Incomprehen. hom. I. n. 2. Moreover, in these homilies he explains the same difference, as in the homily cited on John, between the vision of God as he is, and full knowledge of God; and the latter he understands to be nothing other than the comprehension by which God alone comprehends himself. In those words of John I. 18. « No one has seen the Father except he who is from God; this one has seen the Father », he says it is declared immediately and clearly, and that the vision of the Father, as he is; is asserted of the Son; but it is not yet said by this very fact full knowledge, as the Father knows himself⁷. He then proves this full knowledge from the explicit words of John X. 15: « as the Father knows me, and I know the Father » hom. V. n. 4. Hence he teaches that if ever the vision of God seems to be taken away even from the angels themselves, this ought to be understood of full knowledge⁸⁹ hom. IV. n. 4; for this full knowledge (γνωσιν μετα ἀκριβειας) is a sign and demonstration of equality according to nature: hence only the Son and the Spirit thus know the Father hom. V. n. 3.

Moreover, also hom. III. n. 3. 5., from which Vasquez presses the difficulty, it is not simply vision but the comprehension of God that is denied to the heavenly powers. Chrysostom explains the theophanies described in Is. VI and Ezech. I in such a way that, as for those prophetic visions in which the Seraphim and Cherubim covered their faces with their wings and dared not look even upon the condescension of God (συγκατάβασιν), that is, that form visible to the eyes of the body by which God adapted himself « to the mode of knowing » not now of angels (as Vasquez thinks) but of prophets, the holy Doctor judges it to be symbolically signified « that God is comprehensible to no created power » (καταληπτον), and that he cannot be seen « fully (μετα ἀκριβειας) » by any. Note, however, the manner in which Chrysostom explains the symbols. « Therefore the prophet says: the Seraphim stood around him, not indicating a place, but declaring by the nearness of place that those powers (by nature) are nearer to God than we are. For we do not know him, the incomprehensible (το ακαταληπτον), as those powers do, by as much as they are purer, wiser and keener-sighted than human nature. For just as the blind man does not know the inaccessible rays of the sun (το των ηλιακων ακτινων ἀπρόσιτον¹⁰) as the one who sees does: so too we do not know God, the incomprehensible, as those do; for as great as the difference is between the blind man and the seeing man, so great is the difference between us and them..... Just as the wings declare their sublimity; and the throne, that God rests in them; and the eyes, their keenness; and the nearness of the throne and the perpetual hymns, their vigilance and freedom from sleep: so also their names signify their wisdom, and the others' purity. For what does Cherubim mean? complete knowledge (πεπληρωμένη γνῶσις); what does Seraphim mean? fiery mouths¹¹ ... But if where complete knowledge is, they cannot fully see (ἰδεῖν μετὰ ἀκριβείας) even the condescension of God; where there is knowledge in part, as Paul says: we know in part, and through a glass and in a riddle; how great would be the madness of thinking those things known and plain to ourselves, which not even those can look upon? »

Chrysostom therefore concedes that the knowledge of the heavenly powers, if it is compared with our mediate knowledge through a mirror and in an enigma, is a vision of God that is incomprehensible; but if vision is taken for comprehension, in this way he denies that the incomprehensible can be seen by the angels themselves: as with bodily eyes we indeed see the sun, but do not comprehend it.

After these explanations of Chrysostom's sayings, whatever in most of the other Fathers might seem obscure in this matter has now been made clear. For Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, both Cyrils, Ambrose, Primasius, whose words may be read in Petavius (l. VII. c. 5. n. 6. sq.; c. 6. n. 7. sq.), say nothing other than that the angels themselves do not see God with that full vision by which God sees himself, or what comes to the same, by which the Son and the Holy Spirit alone see the Father. In this sense Augustine himself (ep. 147. nn. 20-22.) interpreted the words of Ambrose from the commentary on Luke (l. I. n. 25.). « And why do we speak of men, when we have read of the heavenly powers and potestates themselves: No one has ever seen God? And he added what is beyond the heavenly potestates: the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.... No one has ever seen God, because no one has looked upon, no one has comprehended with mind or eyes, that fullness of divinity which dwells in God; for has seen is to be referred to both. »

If there is any difficulty in Isidore of Seville (in Exod. cap. 42. T. V. p. 389.), it is of another kind and pertains nothing to the present place. « Although human nature, even after the resurrection, advances to angelic equality, and rises tirelessly to contemplate God, it does not prevail to see his essence fully, which not even angelic perfection attains to know in its whole or entirely..... For the Trinity alone is known to itself entirely, and the humanity assumed, which is the third person in the Trinity. » That which is said, that God is seen not fully, not in the whole or entirely, is the interpretation and best declaration of the doctrine of the Greek Fathers, who say that God is not seen μετα πασης ακριβειας. In the last clause, however, the editors of the works of Isidore, Grialius and then Arevalo, thought that the abstract humanitas suscepta should be taken for the concrete homo Christus, who is one of the three persons. In another place (sententiar. l. III. c. 3. T. VI. p. 120.) Isidore has the same words; but in the last clause there it is said more correctly: « the Trinity alone is known to itself entirely, and the humanity assumed by Christ, which (the person Christ) is the third (one of the three) person in the Trinity. »

2°. Not infrequently the Fathers call God invisible, insofar as he can in no way be seen by bodily eyes. This explanation is commonly rejected as inept in all those places where they call God invisible even to the angels; for those Fathers, at least, who acknowledged the angels to be pure spirits, could not think of bodily eyes in their case. But it must be noted that in this doctrine of the Fathers concerning the invisibility of God, the discourse is directly and of itself not about bodily eyes but about the spiritual and intelligible nature of God; and so it is said that God cannot be known either by men or by angels as a corporeal and sensible nature, without anything being determined about the manner in which angels know sensible things. Moreover, God is said hypothetically to be invisible to eyes not only human but also angelic, if he were; in that manner of speaking which the Apostle also used, Gal. I. 8. In this way Origen (de Princip. l. I. c. 1. n. 8.), to show that the nature of God is not corporeal but purely spiritual, says « that not even to the only-begotten is the nature of God visible, which by nature is invisible »¹² He declares it thus: « it is one thing to see, another to know; to see is a thing of bodies, but to know and to be known belongs to an intellectual nature... whatever among corporeal natures is said to be seen and to see, this between the Father and the Son is said to be known and to know, by the power of knowledge and not by the frailty of visibility ».

In this sense Chrysostom, in Io. hom. XV. n. 1., cited above, teaches that the Son, just as the Father, was by nature invisible to the angels themselves before the incarnation, against the Arians, who attributed the theophanies of the Old Testament to the Son alone, because they thought him to be visible by his own nature and only the Father invisible. But the Son incarnate became visible not in the divine but in his human nature. « The manifestation was made through flesh, not according to the (divine) essence: for Paul shows that he (the Son) is invisible not only to men but also to the supernal powers. For when he had said: he was manifested in flesh; he added: he was seen by angels (1.Tim.III.16.). Therefore he was then seen by angels when he put on flesh; but before, they did not so see him (οὐχ εωρων αυτον ουτως), since even to them the essence was invisible. »

In this way, perhaps, Theodoret (dialog. de Incommut.), whose words I cited above at p. 186., can be understood to have taken vision for the vision of a sensible thing, when he said that the angels see not the divine essence but a certain glory of God (δοξαν τινα).

In this sense St Augustine (ep. 148. al. 111. nn. 7-8.) explained the words of St Jerome concerning the denial of bodily vision. He brings forward a threefold testimony of Jerome. The first reads thus: « the eye of man cannot see God as he is in his own nature; not only man, nor angels nor thrones nor powers nor dominions nor any name that is named; for a creature cannot look upon its Creator. » Augustine explains: « however much the eyes of our body may be changed for the better, they will be made equal to the eyes of angels (if there were any); but here Jerome said that the nature of the Creator is invisible to them and to the whole heavenly creation altogether. » For the second testimony of Jerome he cites from his commentary in Is. I.10.T.IV. p. 20: « a man cannot see the face of God, but angels, even of the least ones in the Church, always see the face of God... then we shall see face to face, when we have advanced from men to angels... although no creature sees the face of God according to the property of its nature, and then it is discerned by the mind, when it is believed to be invisible. » In the added commentary Augustine declares: « lest anyone believe that God is visible either to angels or to men, when we have become equal to angels, whether he is now or will be in future... (Jerome) signified sufficiently when he was seen by men through the eyes of the body as if he were himself corporeal, that he was not seen according to the property of his nature, in which he is then discerned by the mind, when he is believed to be invisible: to whom he is invisible, except by bodily sights even heavenly ones, as he said above of the angels and powers and dominions, how much more by earthly ones? » Lastly Augustine confirms his explanation by adducing the third testimony from the commentary in Is. VI. 1. T. IV. p. 90: « not only the divinity of the Father but not even of the Son or the Holy Spirit, since in the Trinity there is one nature, can the eyes of the flesh look upon; but the eyes of the mind, of which the Saviour himself says: blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God » ¹³.

In the same way, concerning the invisibility of God as regards bodily eyes, Augustine in this ep. 148. n. 6. explains the words of Ambrose from l. II. nn. 93. 94. on Luke. Nor are those words of Isidore in his Etymologies, l. VII. c. 1. n. 23., to be understood otherwise: « No one has ever seen God; for he is an invisible thing, and therefore is to be sought not with the eye but with the heart. » For, as Augustine says: « we cannot deny that the sons of God will see God, but as invisible things are seen..... but whence are invisible things seen, except by the eyes of the heart? » ep. 148. n. 1.

3°. Finally, those Fathers are to be set aside who say nothing other than that God cannot be seen by mortals in this life. Among these is St Gregory of Nyssa in that place (or. VI. de beatitud. T. I. p. 813. seqq.), whom Vasquez (l. c. n. 11.) unjustly calls into suspicion; and to the same class belong Eucherius (l. Spiritual. formular. c. 1. n. 2. 15. Bibl. Max. PP. T. VI. p. 825.) and Dionysius, de coelest. hierarch. c. 4., whose words may be read in Petav. l. VII. c. 5. n. 7; c. 6. n. 8.