The Eyes of the Heart

But perhaps what I have said so far will carry less weight with people who want to be taught about God out of the holy Scriptures, and who look for proof from that source that God’s nature is above the nature of bodies. So look and see whether the apostle does not say the same thing when he says of Christ that he is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.” He does not mean, as some suppose, that God’s nature is visible to some and invisible to others. The apostle does not say “the image of the God who is invisible to human beings,” or “invisible to sinners.” He states what God’s nature is, and he never varies: “the image of the invisible God.” John says the same in his Gospel when he writes that “no one has ever seen God.” To anyone able to follow him he plainly declares that there is no nature at all to which God is visible — not that God is by nature a visible being who merely slips past or baffles the sight of a weaker creature, but that by the nature of his being it is impossible for him to be seen. [a]

And if you ask me what I think about the only Son himself — whether God’s nature, which is invisible by nature, is not visible even to him — do not take the question to be absurd or irreverent right away, because we will give you a reasoned answer. Seeing is one thing and knowing is another. Seeing and being seen belong to bodies; knowing and being known belong to a nature that thinks. So whatever belongs to bodies cannot be said of either the Father or the Son; but what belongs to God’s own nature holds between the Father and the Son.

Finally, even he himself, in the Gospel, did not say that no one has seen the Father except the Son, and no one the Son except the Father. What he said was: “No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son.” This makes it clear: what among bodily natures is called seeing and being seen is called, between the Father and the Son, knowing and being known — by the power of knowledge, not by the weakness of eyesight. And since neither seeing nor being seen can properly be said of a nature that has no body and cannot be seen, the Gospel nowhere says that the Father is seen by the Son or the Son by the Father. It says that each is known by the other.

Now, if someone puts before us the passage that says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God,” then in my opinion our position only gains strength from that very passage. For what is seeing God in the heart, other than what we explained above — understanding and knowing him with the mind? The names of the sense organs are often applied to the soul, so that the soul can be said to see with the eyes of the heart, that is, to perform an act of understanding by its power of understanding. In the same way it is said to hear with ears when it catches the deeper sense of something said. And in the same way we say it uses teeth when it chews and eats the bread of life that comes down from heaven. [g]

It is said to use the services of the other parts of the body in just the same way: their bodily names are transferred and applied to the powers of the soul. This is what Solomon means when he says, “You will find a divine sense.” He knew that there are two kinds of senses in us: one mortal, perishable, human; the other undying and belonging to the mind, and this is the one he here calls divine. So it is by this divine sense — not the sense of the eyes, but of a pure heart, which is the mind — that God can be seen by those who are worthy. You will certainly find, all through the Scriptures, old and new, that the word “heart” is used again and again for the mind, that is, for the power of understanding. This, then, is how we have spoken about the nature of God: far below what the subject deserves, as people who take it in within the limits of human understanding. Next, let us look at what is meant by the name of Christ.