Seeing the Invisible God

As for his greatness, God cannot be known, because the Father cannot be measured. But as for his love — and it is love that leads us to God through his Word — when we obey him we are always learning that there is a God this great, and that it is he who by himself established and chose and adorned and holds together all things; and among “all things” are we ourselves and this world of ours. So we too were made, along with everything he holds. This is the one of whom Scripture says, “And God formed man, taking clay from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life.” [a]

It was not angels, then, who made us or formed us. Angels had no power to make an image of God, and neither did anyone else — no one but the Word of the Lord, and no Power set at a distance from the Father of all. God did not need such beings in order to carry out what he had already decided with himself should be done, as though he had no hands of his own. With him the Word and Wisdom were always present, the Son and the Spirit, through whom and in whom he made all things, freely and of his own accord. It is to them that he says, “Let us make man after our image and likeness.” From himself he took the substance of the creatures he formed, and the pattern of the things he made, and the shape of every ornament in the world.

So Scripture was right when it said, “First of all believe that there is one God, who established all things and brought them to completion, and who caused all things to come into existence out of what had no being” — he who contains all things and is himself contained by no one. Malachi too was right when he said among the prophets, “Is it not one God who established us? Have we not all one Father?” And in line with this the apostle says, “There is one God, the Father, who is above all, and in us all.” And the Lord likewise says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father” — plainly by the one who made all things, for he did not hand over to him what belonged to someone else, but what was his own. And in “all things” nothing at all is held back from him.

That is why the same person is the Judge of the living and the dead, “holding the key of David: he will open, and no one will shut; he will shut, and no one will open.” For no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the Father’s book or to look at him, except the Lamb who was slain and who bought us back with his own blood. He received power over all things from the same God who made all things by his Word and adorned them by his Wisdom, when “the Word was made flesh.” So, as the Word of God held the sovereignty in the heavens, he might hold the sovereignty on earth as well, since he was a righteous man “who committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth”; and so that he might have the first place among the things under the earth, being himself made “the firstborn from the dead”; and so that all things, as I have said, might see their King; and so that the Father’s light might meet and rest upon the flesh of our Lord and reach us from his shining flesh, and man might so come to immortality, wrapped about with the Father’s light.

I have also shown at length that the Word, that is the Son, was always with the Father, and that Wisdom, which is the Spirit, was with him before any of creation. He declares it through Solomon: “God founded the earth by Wisdom, and by understanding he established the heaven. By his knowledge the depths burst open, and the clouds dropped down the dew.” And again: “The Lord created me the beginning of his ways for his work. He set me up from everlasting, at the beginning, before he made the earth, before he established the depths, before the springs of water gushed out; before the mountains were made firm, and before all the hills, he brought me forth.” And again: “When he prepared the heaven, I was with him; and when he established the springs of the deep; when he made the foundations of the earth firm, I was with him, arranging them. I was the one he took delight in, and day by day, all the time, I was glad before his face, when he rejoiced at the world’s completion and delighted in the sons of men.”

There is therefore one God, who made and arranged all things by his Word and his Wisdom. And this is the Craftsman who granted this world to the human race — unknown, as regards his greatness, to everyone he has made, for no one has traced out his height, neither any of the ancients who have gone to their rest nor anyone alive now; but known always, as regards his love, through the one by whom he ordered all things. And this is his Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, who in the last times was made a man among men, so that he might join the end to the beginning — that is, man to God.

That is why the prophets, who received the gift of prophecy from the same Word, announced his coming in the flesh, the coming by which the mingling and the fellowship of God and man took place, as the Father was pleased to have it. From the beginning the Word of God foretold that God would be seen by men and would live among them on earth, would talk with them, and would be present with his own creation, saving it and becoming something it could take in; and that he would set us free from the hands of all who hate us — that is, from every spirit of wickedness — and would make us serve him in holiness and righteousness all our days, so that man, having taken hold of the Spirit of God, might pass into the glory of the Father.

The prophets set all this out in the manner of prophecy. But they did not announce, as some claim, that the one the prophets saw was a different God, with the Father of all remaining invisible. Yet that is what these people say, who know nothing whatever about what prophecy is. Prophecy is the foretelling of things to come, a setting out in advance of what will happen later. So the prophets indicated in advance that God would be seen by men, just as the Lord also says, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” But as regards his greatness and his marvelous glory, “no one will see God and live,” for the Father cannot be taken in. Yet as regards his love and his kindness and his measureless power, he grants even this to those who love him — to see God, which is what the prophets foretold. “For what is impossible with men is possible with God.”

A man does not see God by his own powers. When God is pleased to be seen, he is seen by men: by whom he wills, when he wills, and as he wills. For God is able to do all things. He was seen in the past in the way of prophecy, through the Spirit; he is seen in the way of adoption, through the Son; and he will be seen in the way of a father, in the kingdom of heaven — the Spirit preparing man in the Son of God, and the Son leading him to the Father, and the Father granting him a life beyond decay, everlasting, which comes to each person from the very fact of seeing God.

For as those who see the light are inside the light and share its brightness, so those who see God are in God and receive of his splendor. And his splendor gives them life; so those who see God receive life. This is why the one who is beyond comprehension, boundless and invisible, made himself visible and comprehensible and able to be held by those who believe: so that he might give life to those who receive him and look at him through faith. For as his greatness cannot be traced out, so his goodness cannot be put into words; and by that goodness, being seen, he gives life to those who see him. It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship with God; and fellowship with God is to know God and to enjoy his goodness.

Men, then, will see God in order to live, made deathless by that sight and reaching all the way to God. As I have already said, this was declared in figures by the prophets: that God would be seen by men who carry his Spirit in them and always wait patiently for his coming. Moses also says in Deuteronomy, “We shall see on that day that God will speak with man, and he will live.”

Some of these men used to see the prophetic Spirit and his workings poured out for every kind of gift. Others saw the coming of the Lord and the ordering that has held from the beginning, by which he carried out the Father’s will for things in heaven and things on earth. Others saw glories of the Father fitted to their own times, and to the people who saw and heard them then, and to everyone who would hear of them afterward. That is how God was revealed: God the Father is displayed through all these workings, the Spirit at work, the Son serving, the Father approving, and man’s salvation being brought about. As he also says through the prophet Hosea: “I have multiplied visions, and by the hands of the prophets I have used comparisons.”

The apostle explained this very passage when he said, “Now there are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are different kinds of service, but the same Lord; and there are different kinds of workings, but it is the same God who works all things in all. And the showing of the Spirit is given to each person for the common good.” But since the one who works all things in all is God, then as to what he is like and how great he is, God is invisible and past describing to everything he has made — and yet he is in no way unknown. For all things learn through his Word that there is one God the Father, who contains all things and grants existence to all, as it is written in the Gospel: “No one has ever seen God, except the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has made him known.”

So the Son of the Father declares him from the beginning, since he was with the Father from the beginning. It was he who showed the human race the prophetic visions, and the different kinds of gifts, and his own acts of service, and the glory of the Father, all in order and in sequence, at the fitting time, for people’s good. Where there is a regular sequence, there is steadiness; where there is steadiness, there is fitness to the moment; and where there is fitness, there is benefit.

That is why the Word became the one who hands out the Father’s grace for the benefit of men, for whom he made such great arrangements. He revealed God to men and presented man to God; and at the same time he kept the Father invisible, so that man should never come to despise God, and so that he should always have something still to press on toward. Yet he also revealed God to men through many arrangements, so that man should not fall away from God altogether and cease to exist. For the glory of God is a living man, and the life of man is the seeing of God. If the showing of God that comes through creation gives life to everything living on the earth, how much more does that revealing of the Father which comes through the Word give life to those who see God.

The Spirit of God pointed out through the prophets the things that were to come, forming us and fitting us beforehand for being made subject to God. But it was still in the future that man should see God, by the good pleasure of the Holy Spirit. So the men through whom the future was announced had themselves to see God — the God they said men would see — so that God, and the Son of God, and the Son, and the Father should not only be announced by prophecy but also be seen by all his members who are made holy and taught the things of God; and so that man might be trained in advance and given practice beforehand for being received into that glory which is to be revealed later in those who love God.

For the prophets did not prophesy in words alone, but in visions too, and in the way they lived, and in the actions they performed at the Spirit’s prompting. It was in this way, invisibly, that they saw God, as Isaiah also says: “I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of hosts” — pointing out that man would see God with his eyes and hear his voice. In this way too they saw the Son of God as a man living among men, while they were prophesying what was going to happen: saying that the one who had not yet come was present, proclaiming that the one who cannot suffer was subject to suffering, and declaring that the one who was then in heaven had gone down into the dust of death.

As for the rest of the arrangements about the summing up he was to make, some of these the prophets saw in visions, others they proclaimed in words, and others they acted out as signs — seeing with their eyes what was to be seen, announcing by mouth what was to be heard, and carrying out by real action what was to happen by action; but announcing all of it as prophecy. That is why Moses said that God is a consuming fire to a people who broke the law, and warned that God would bring a day of fire upon them; but to those who feared God he said, “The Lord God is merciful and gracious, patient and full of pity, and true, keeping justice and mercy for thousands, forgiving wrongdoing and offenses and sins.”

And the Word spoke to Moses, appearing before him, “just as a man might speak to his friend.” But Moses wanted to see openly the one who was speaking with him, and was told: “Stand in the deep place of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand. When my splendor passes by, then you will see my back; but my face you shall not see, for no one sees my face and lives.” Two things are signified here: that it is impossible for man to see God, and that by the wisdom of God man will see him in the last times, in the depth of a rock — that is, in his coming as a man. And this is why the Lord did speak with him face to face on the top of a mountain, with Elijah there as well, as the Gospel tells us, making good in the end the ancient promise.

So the prophets did not openly see the actual face of God. What they saw were the arrangements and the hidden things through which man would afterward see God. Elijah too was told: “You will go out tomorrow and stand in the presence of the Lord. And look: a great, strong wind, which will tear the mountains apart and break the rocks in pieces before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, a voice barely to be heard.”

By such means the prophet — furious as he was over the people’s lawbreaking and the killing of the prophets — was taught to act more gently. At the same time the Lord’s coming as a man was pointed out: that it would come after the law given through Moses, and would be mild and quiet, and in it he would not break a bruised reed or put out a smoldering wick. The mild and peaceful rest of his kingdom was shown in the same way. For after the wind that tears the mountains, and after the earthquake, and after the fire, come the quiet and peaceful times of his kingdom, in which the Spirit of God gives life to mankind and makes it grow in the gentlest way possible.

Ezekiel made this still clearer: that the prophets saw the arrangements of God in part, but did not see God himself. This man saw the vision of God, and the cherubim, and their wheels; he told over the mystery of that whole procession; he saw the likeness of a throne above them, and on the throne a likeness like the figure of a man, and what was about his waist like the appearance of amber, and what was below like the look of fire. And when he had set out all the rest of the vision of the thrones, then, so that nobody should happen to think he had actually seen God in those visions, he added: “This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of God.”

If, then, neither Moses nor Elijah nor Ezekiel saw God, though all of them had many heavenly visions; and if what they did see were likenesses of the splendor of the Lord and prophecies of what was to come; then it is clear that the Father is invisible. Of him the Lord also said, “No one has ever seen God.” But his Word, as he himself willed and for the good of those who saw, did show the Father’s brightness and explained his purposes — as the Lord also said, “The only Son, God, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known” — and he himself interprets the Word of the Father as rich and great.

He appeared to those who saw him not in one figure and not in one character, but according to the reasons and the ends aimed at in his arrangements, as it is written in Daniel. At one time he was seen with the men around Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, present with them in the furnace of fire, in the burning, keeping them safe from what the fire could do: “And the appearance of the fourth,” it says, “was like the Son of God.” At another time he is “a stone cut out of the mountain without hands,” striking all the kingdoms of this present age and blowing them away, and himself filling the whole earth. And then this same one is seen as the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven and drawing near to the Ancient of Days and receiving from him all power and glory and a kingdom. “His rule,” it says, “is an everlasting rule, and his kingdom will not pass away.”

John also, the Lord’s disciple, when he was looking at the priestly and glorious coming of his kingdom, says in the Revelation: “I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And when I had turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the middle of the lampstands one like a son of man, dressed in a robe reaching to the feet and with a golden sash across his chest. His head and his hair were white, white as wool and as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire; his feet were like fine bronze, as though it burned in a furnace. His voice was like the sound of many waters. In his right hand he had seven stars, and out of his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in its strength.”

In these words something of the glory the Son has from his Father is set out, where he mentions the head; and something about the priestly office, in the long robe reaching to the feet — which is exactly why Moses dressed the high priest in that fashion. Something points to the end of all things as well: the fine bronze burning in the fire, which stands for the power of faith and the keeping on in prayer, because of the consuming fire that is coming at the end of time.

But John could not bear the sight. “I fell at his feet as though dead,” he says, so that what was written might come true: “No one sees God and lives.” And the Word brought him back to life and reminded him that this was the one on whose chest he had leaned at the supper, when he asked who would betray him; and he declared: “I am the first and the last, and the living one; I was dead, and look, I am alive forever, and I have the keys of death and of the grave.” After this, seeing the same Lord in a second vision, he says: “For I saw in the middle of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the middle of the elders, a Lamb standing as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.”

And again, speaking of this very same Lamb, he says: “And look, a white horse; and the one sitting on it was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written that no one knows but himself. He was wrapped in a garment sprinkled with blood, and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies of heaven followed him on white horses, dressed in pure white linen. Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword, to strike the nations with it; and he will shepherd them with a rod of iron; and he treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. And on his garment and on his thigh he has a name written: King of kings and Lord of lords.” So the Word of God always keeps, as it were, the outlines of the things that are to come, and shows men the various forms of the Father’s arrangements, teaching us the things that have to do with God.

It was not only through visions that were seen and words that were spoken that the prophets beheld him. They beheld him in real actions as well, so that through those actions he might mark out and display beforehand what was to come.

This is why Hosea the prophet took “a wife of prostitution,” prophesying by the act itself that “the earth will utterly prostitute itself away from the Lord” — meaning the men who are on the earth. And out of men of that sort it would please God to take out a church, made holy by fellowship with his Son, just as that woman was made holy by union with the prophet. This is why Paul says that “the unbelieving wife is made holy by the believing husband.” Then the prophet names his children “Not Pitied” and “Not a People,” so that, as the apostle says, “what was not a people might become a people, and she who had not obtained mercy might obtain mercy. And it will happen that in the place where it was said, This is not a people, there they will be called the children of the living God.” What the prophet did in figure by his actions, the apostle shows was done in truth by Christ in the church.

In the same way Moses took an Ethiopian woman as his wife, and by doing so made her an Israelite — showing beforehand that the wild olive is grafted into the cultivated olive and made to share its richness. For the one who was born as Christ according to the flesh had to be hunted down by his own people in order to be killed, but was to be set free in Egypt — that is, among the nations — in order to make holy those who were there in their infancy, and it was from them that he brought his church to completion in that place; for Egypt belonged to the nations from the beginning, as Ethiopia did too. So by the marriage of Moses the marriage of the Word was shown; and by the Ethiopian bride the church taken from among the nations was made plain. And those who run it down, accuse it and mock it will not be clean: they will be covered with leprosy and driven out of the camp of the righteous.

So too Rahab the prostitute condemned herself, since she belonged to the nations and was guilty of every sin; and yet she took in the three spies who were scouting out the whole land and hid them at her house — and those three, no doubt, stand for the Father and the Son together with the Holy Spirit. And when the whole city she lived in fell in ruins at the sound of the seven trumpets, Rahab the prostitute was kept safe at the very end, along with her whole household, through faith in the scarlet sign. The Pharisees, of course, cancel the meaning of the scarlet thread, which stood for the Passover and the redemption and the going out of the people from Egypt. And to those who did not receive his coming the Lord said, “The tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of heaven ahead of you.”