The Treasure in the Letter

This going down of the holy fathers into Egypt will be seen as something God’s providence granted to this world, to give light to others and to teach the human race, so that by this means other souls might be helped toward the light. For they were the first to be given the privilege of speaking with God, since theirs is the only people said to see God — which is what the name “Israel” means when it is interpreted. It follows, then, that in this same way we should take and explain the account of how Egypt was struck with ten plagues so that God’s people could leave, and what was done with the people in the wilderness, and the building of the tabernacle out of contributions from the whole people, and the wearing of the priestly robes, and the vessels used in the public service — because, as it is written, these really do hold within them “the shadow and outline of heavenly things.” Paul says of them openly: “They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.” [a]

The same law also contains the rules and institutions by which people are to live in the holy land. Threats hang over those who break the law. Different kinds of cleansing are prescribed for those who needed cleansing, since they were liable to be defiled again and again, so that through these they might arrive at last at the one cleansing after which no further defilement is allowed. The people themselves are counted, though not all of them. The souls of children are not yet old enough to be counted under God’s command; and neither are those souls who cannot become the head of another but are themselves placed under others as under a head — the ones called “women.” They are certainly not included in the count God orders. Only those called “men” are counted, and by this it could be shown that the women were not to be counted separately, but were included in those called men.

But those especially belong to the sacred number who are ready to go out to Israel’s battles and are able to fight the enemies, public and private, whom the Father puts under the Son — the Son who sits at his right hand to destroy every rule and power, and who, through these companies of his soldiers, men on service for God who do not tangle themselves up in civilian business, overturns the kingdom of his adversary. They carry the shields of faith and swing the weapons of wisdom; among them the helmet of hope and salvation shines out, and the breastplate of brightness guards a chest that is filled with God. It seems to me that soldiers like these, made ready for wars of that kind, are the ones meant by the people whom God commands in the sacred books to be counted. And among these, far the most complete and the most distinguished are those of whom even the hairs of the head are said to be counted. Those who were punished for their sins, whose bodies fell in the wilderness, seem to be a picture of people who had made no small progress but could not, for one reason or another, reach the end and be complete; for they are reported to have grumbled, or worshiped idols, or been sexually immoral, or done some evil thing the mind ought not even to imagine.

I do not think even this next thing is empty of hidden meaning: that certain Israelites, owning large flocks and herds, took possession ahead of time of country suited for pasture and the feeding of cattle — the very first land the Hebrews’ own right hand had won in war. By asking Moses for this region, they are cut off by the waters of the Jordan and set apart from any holding in the holy land. And this Jordan, in the pattern of heavenly things, may be seen as watering and flooding thirsty souls and the senses that lie next to it. Along with this, it does not seem pointless to notice that in Leviticus it is Moses who hears from God what is written down, while in Deuteronomy the people are Moses’ hearers and learn from him what they could not hear from God. For Deuteronomy is called, so to speak, the second law, which to some will seem to carry this meaning: that when the first law given through Moses had come to an end, a second body of law seems to have been enacted, handed on by Moses specifically to his successor Joshua — who is certainly believed to be a figure of our Savior, and by whose second law, the commands of the good news, all things are brought to completion.

But we should consider whether a deeper meaning may not be hinted at here: that just as in Deuteronomy the law is made known more clearly and more plainly than in the books written before it, so the coming of the Savior which he carried out in his humble state, when he took the form of a servant, may point to that far more famous and celebrated second coming in his Father’s glory. In that second coming the figures of Deuteronomy would be fulfilled, when in the kingdom of heaven all the holy ones will live by the laws of the everlasting good news. And as in his present coming he fulfilled the law that holds a shadow of the good things to come, so by that glorious coming still ahead the shadows of the present coming will be fulfilled and brought to completion. This is what the prophet said about it: “The breath of our face, Christ the Lord, of whom we said, Under his shadow we will live among the nations” That is, the time when he will more worthily carry all the holy ones over from a temporary good news to an everlasting one, using the phrase John employs in Revelation, “an everlasting good news.” [i]

In all these matters, let it be enough for us to shape our understanding to the rule of godliness, and so to think about the words of the Holy Spirit that we do not judge the language to be the ornamented composition of weak human eloquence. Rather, we hold with Scripture that “all the glory of the king is within,” and that the treasure of God’s meaning is shut up inside the fragile jar of the ordinary letter. And if some inquisitive reader still asks for an explanation of each separate point, let him come and listen along with us to the apostle Paul. Paul tried to press into the depths of God’s wisdom and knowledge with the help of the Holy Spirit, who searches even “the deep things” of God; and when he could not reach the bottom, so to speak, or come to a thorough knowledge, he cried out in despair and amazement: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the knowledge and wisdom of God!” [k]

And that he said this out of despair of ever reaching a complete understanding, hear his own words: “How unsearchable are God’s judgments, and how untraceable his ways!” He did not say that God’s judgments are hard to find out, but that they cannot be searched at all; nor that his ways are simply hard to track, but that they cannot be tracked at all. However far a person carries his inquiry, however much progress he makes by unbroken study, helped even by the grace of God and with his mind given light, he will not be able to reach the end of the things he is investigating. No created mind can think it possible in any way to arrive at a full grasp of things. After it has found some of what it was looking for, it sees still others waiting to be searched out; and if it manages to master those, it will see many more coming after them that must be investigated in turn. This is why Solomon, the wisest of men, looking at the nature of things by his wisdom, says: “I said, I will become wise — and wisdom herself was put far from me, further off than she was; and a deep depth, who will find it?”

Isaiah too knew that the beginnings of things cannot be discovered by a mortal nature, nor even by those natures which, though more divine than human, were themselves still created or formed. Knowing that none of them could discover either the beginning or the end, he says: “Tell us the former things that have been, and we will know that you are gods; or announce what the last things are, and then we will see that you are gods.” My Hebrew teacher used to teach the same thing. Since the beginning and the end of all things can be grasped by no one except our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, Isaiah spoke, in the form of a vision, of two seraphim only, who with two wings cover God’s face, with two his feet, and with two fly, calling to one another in turn and saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts; the whole earth is full of your glory.”

That the seraphim alone hold their wings over God’s face and over his feet we venture to say means this: that neither the armies of holy angels, nor the “holy thrones,” nor the “dominions,” nor the “rulers,” nor the “authorities” can fully understand the beginning of all things and the limits of the universe. But we are to understand that those “holy ones” whom the Spirit has enrolled, and the “powers,” come very close to those beginnings and reach a height the others cannot reach. And yet, whatever these “powers” have learned by revelation from the Son of God and from the Holy Spirit — and they will certainly be able to learn a great deal, those of higher rank far more than those of lower — it is still impossible for them to grasp everything, as the saying goes: “The greater part of God’s works are hidden.” So it is to be wished that everyone, according to his strength, would always stretch out toward the things that lie ahead, “forgetting what lies behind,” reaching both for better works and for a clearer grasp and understanding, through Jesus Christ our Savior, to whom be glory forever.

So let everyone who cares about truth trouble himself little about words and language, since every nation has its own way of speaking. Let him give his attention to the meaning the words carry rather than to the nature of the words that carry it — especially in matters this weighty and this hard. Take, for instance, the question whether there is any “substance” in which no color, no shape, no feel, and no size is to be understood as present: something visible to the mind alone, which anyone may name as he pleases. The Greeks call such a thing asōmaton, that is, “bodiless,” while the holy Scriptures call it “invisible”; for Paul calls Christ the “image of the invisible God,” and says again that through Christ all things were created, “visible and invisible.” [q]

This is a way of declaring that among created things there are certain “substances” which by their own particular nature are invisible. And although these are not themselves “bodily,” they still make use of bodies, while being themselves better than any bodily substance. But that “substance” of the Trinity which is the beginning and cause of all things — “from whom are all things, and through whom are all things, and in whom are all things” — cannot be believed to be a body or to be in a body; it is altogether bodiless. Let this brief word be enough on these points — a digression, though one the subject itself forced on us — meant to show that there are certain things whose meaning cannot be unfolded at all by any words of human language, but which are made known more by simple insight than by any property of words. And the understanding of the sacred Scripture must be brought under this same rule, so that what it says is judged not by the poverty of the letter but by the divinity of the Holy Spirit, at whose breathing it was written.

Now that we have gone as quickly as we could over the topics under discussion, it is time to gather up what we have said in different places and to restate the individual points — and first of all our conclusions about the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. [t]

Since God the Father is invisible and inseparable from the Son, the Son is not generated from him by being “put forth,” as some suppose. For if the Son is something the Father “put forth” — the term being used for the kind of generation that ordinarily happens with animals or with people — then of necessity both the one who put forth and the one put forth are bodily. We do not say, as those who teach error suppose, that some part of God’s substance was turned into the Son, or that the Son was brought forth by the Father out of things that do not exist — that is, from outside his own substance — so that there was once a time when he did not exist. Instead, putting away every bodily notion, we say that the Word and Wisdom was begotten out of the invisible and the bodiless, without anything bodily being felt, as an act of the will comes out of the mind. And since he is called the Son of God’s love, it will not seem absurd if in this way he is called the Son of his will.

John also indicates that “God is light,” and Paul declares that the Son is the brightness of everlasting light. And just as light could never exist without its brightness, so neither can the Son be understood to exist without the Father; for he is called the “exact imprint of his being,” and the Word and Wisdom. How, then, can anyone assert that there was once a time when he was not the Son? That is nothing other than to say that there was once a time when he was not the Truth, or the Wisdom, or the Life — though in all of these he is judged to be the complete being of God the Father, since these cannot be cut off from him or even separated from his being. And although these qualities are said to be many when we think about them, in their nature and being they are one, and in them is the fullness of divinity.

Now the expression we use — “there never was a time when he did not exist” — has to be taken with an allowance. The very words “when” and “never” have a meaning that belongs to time, while what is said about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is to be understood as going beyond all time, all ages, and all eternity. For the Trinity alone exceeds what can be grasped not only by an understanding bound to time but even by one that is eternal, while the other things, which are not included in it, are to be measured by times and ages. No one, then, will reasonably suppose that this Son of God is contained in any place — not as he is the Word who is God and who was in the beginning with God, and not as he is “Wisdom,” or “Truth,” or the “Life,” or “Righteousness,” or “Holiness,” or “Redemption.” None of these properties needs space in order to act or to work; each of them is to be understood of the individuals who share in his power and his working.

Now suppose someone were to say that, through those who share in the “Word” of God, or in his “Wisdom,” or his “Truth,” or his “Life,” the Word and Wisdom itself seemed to be contained in a place. We would have to answer him that there is no doubt Christ was in Paul as “Word” and “Wisdom” and all the rest, and that this is why Paul said: “Do you want proof that Christ is speaking in me?” And again: “I live — yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” Since, then, he was in Paul, who will doubt that he was in the same way in Peter and in John and in every one of the holy ones — and not only in those who are on the earth, but in those who are in heaven as well? For it is absurd to say that Christ was in Peter and in Paul but not in Michael the archangel or in Gabriel. [x]

This shows plainly that the divinity of the Son of God was not shut up in some one place; otherwise it would have been in that place only and not in another. But since, in keeping with the greatness of its bodiless nature, it is confined to no place, so also it cannot be understood to be missing from any. The only difference to be understood is this: although he is in different individuals, as we have said — in Peter, or Paul, or Michael, or Gabriel — he is not in the same way in all beings whatever. He is more fully and more clearly, and so to speak more openly, in archangels than in other holy men. This is evident from the statement that when all who are holy ones have arrived at the summit of completeness, they are said to be made like the angels, or equal to them, as the Gospels declare. From this it is clear that Christ comes to be in each individual to the degree that the measure of what he deserves allows.