Origen on Whether the Son Sees the Father

But I have said that these men could not have found grounds for accusation in the points I have mentioned, however they take them, unless they had first falsified them. So it seems right to me to put into this Apology the chief passage on which they have laid their forgers’ hands. Otherwise they might think I am deliberately keeping it out of sight, because, after making their own additions to it, they bring it forward as grounds for a false accusation. In the book I translated there is a passage examining the beliefs of those who hold that God has a bodily shape, and who picture him clothed with human limbs and clothing. The heretical sects of the Valentinians and the Anthropomorphites openly assert this, and I see that those who now accuse us have been far too ready to hold out a hand to them. In this passage Origen defended the faith of the church against them, affirming that God is wholly without bodily form, and therefore also invisible. Then, following out his inquiry logically, he says a few words in answer to the heretics, which I translated into Latin as follows: [a]

“But these arguments will perhaps carry little weight with those who want to be taught the things of God from the Holy Scriptures, and who ask that the proof that the nature of God is higher than that of the human body be drawn from that source. See, then, whether the apostle does not say the same thing when he speaks of Christ like this: ‘Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.’ The nature of God is not, as some think, visible to some and not to others. For the apostle does not say ‘the image of the God who is invisible to men,’ or ‘to sinners.’ He speaks quite plainly of the nature of God in itself when he says, ‘the image of the invisible God.’ “John too says in his Gospel, ‘No one has ever seen God,’ and by this he plainly declares, to all who can understand, that there is no being to whom God is visible. He does not mean that God is visible by nature and, like a being of very fine substance, escapes and eludes our gaze, but that by his own nature it is impossible for him to be seen. “But perhaps you will ask me what I think about the only Son himself. Well, if I should say that even to him the nature of God is invisible, since it is its very nature to be invisible, do not dismiss my answer as ungodly or absurd, for I will give you my reason at once. Notice that seeing is one thing and knowing is another. To see and to be seen belong to bodies; to know and to be known belong to the intellectual nature. Whatever, then, is merely a property of bodies we must not attribute to the Father or the Son; but what belongs to the divine nature governs the relation of the Father and the Son. “Moreover, Christ himself in the Gospel did not say, ‘No one sees the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son,’ but, ‘No one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the Father except the Son.’ This shows clearly that what is called seeing and being seen among bodily beings is called knowing in the case of the Father and the Son. Their communion is carried on by the power of knowledge, not by the weakness of being visible. Since, then, a nature without a body cannot properly be said to see or to be seen, the Gospel does not say that the Father is seen by the Son or the Son by the Father, but that each is known by the other. “And if anyone should ask how it is that it is said, ‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God,’ I think that this text will confirm my claim still more. For what else is it to see God with the heart than, as I have explained above, to understand him with the mind and to know him?”