Chapter XIV.—The Natural Invisibility of the Father, and the Visibility of the Son Witnessed in Many Passages of the Old Testament. Arguments of Their Distinctness, Thus Supplied.

Moreover, there comes to our aid, when we insist upon the Father and the Son as being Two, that regulating principle which has determined God to be invisible. When Moses in Egypt desired to see the face of the Lord, saying, “If therefore I have found grace in Thy sight, manifest Thyself unto me, that I may see Thee and know Thee,”153    Ex. xxxiii. 13.God said, “Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live:”154    Ver. 20. in other words, he who sees me shall die. Now we find that God has been seen by many persons, and yet that no one who saw Him died (at the sight). The truth is, they saw God according to the faculties of men, but not in accordance with the full glory of the Godhead.  For the patriarchs are said to have seen God (as Abraham and Jacob), and the prophets (as, for instance Isaiah and Ezekiel), and yet they did not die. Either, then, they ought to have died, since they had seen Him—for (the sentence runs), “No man shall see God, and live;” or else if they saw God, and yet did not die, the Scripture is false in stating that God said, “If a man see my face, he shall not live.” Either way, the Scripture misleads us, when it makes God invisible, and when it produces Him to our sight. Now, then, He must be a different Being who was seen, because of one who was seen it could not be predicated that He is invisible. It will therefore follow, that by Him who is invisible we must understand the Father in the fulness of His majesty, while we recognise the Son as visible by reason of the dispensation of His derived existence;155    Pro modulo derivationis. even as it is not permitted us to contemplate the sun, in the full amount of his substance which is in the heavens, but we can only endure with our eyes a ray, by reason of the tempered condition of this portion which is projected from him to the earth. Here some one on the other side may be disposed to contend that the Son is also invisible as being the Word, and as being also the Spirit;156    Spiritus here is the divine nature of Christ. and, while claiming one nature for the Father and the Son, to affirm that the Father is rather One and the Same Person with the Son. But the Scripture, as we have said, maintains their difference by the distinction it makes between the Visible and the Invisible. They then go on to argue to this effect, that if it was the Son who then spake to Moses, He must mean it of Himself that His face was visible to no one, because He was Himself indeed the invisible Father in the name of the Son. And by this means they will have it that the Visible and the Invisible are one and the same, just as the Father and the Son are the same; (and this they maintain) because in a preceding passage, before He had refused (the sight of) His face to Moses, the Scripture informs us that “the Lord spake face to face with Moses, even as a man speaketh unto his friend;”157    Ex. xxxiii. 11. just as Jacob also says, “I have seen God face to face.”158    Gen. xxxii. 30. Therefore the Visible and the Invisible are one and the same; and both being thus the same, it follows that He is invisible as the Father, and visible as the Son.  As if the Scripture, according to our exposition of it, were inapplicable to the Son, when the Father is set aside in His own invisibility. We declare, however, that the Son also, considered in Himself (as the Son), is invisible, in that He is God, and the Word and Spirit of God; but that He was visible before the days of His flesh, in the way that He says to Aaron and Miriam, “And if there shall be a prophet amongst you, I will make myself known to him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream; not as with Moses, with whom I shall speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, that is to say, in truth, and not enigmatically,” that is to say, in image;159    Num. xii. 6–8. as the apostle also expresses it, “Now we see through a glass, darkly (or enigmatically), but then face to face.”160    1 Cor. xiii. 12. Since, therefore, He reserves to some future time His presence and speech face to face with Moses—a promise which was afterwards fulfilled in the retirement of the mount (of transfiguration), when as we read in the Gospel, “Moses appeared talking with Jesus”161    Mark ix. 4; Matt. xvii. 3.—it is evident that in early times it was always in a glass, (as it were,) and an enigma, in vision and dream, that God, I mean the Son of God, appeared—to the prophets and the patriarchs, as also to Moses indeed himself. And even if the Lord did possibly162    Si forte. speak with him face to face, yet it was not as man that he could behold His face, unless indeed it was in a glass, (as it were,) and by enigma. Besides, if the Lord so spake with Moses, that Moses actually discerned His face, eye to eye,163    Cominus sciret. how comes it to pass that immediately afterwards, on the same occasion, he desires to see His face,164    Comp. ver. 13 with ver. 11 of Ex. xxxiii. which he ought not to have desired, because he had already seen it? And how, in like manner, does the Lord also say that His face cannot be seen, because He had shown it, if indeed He really had, (as our opponents suppose). Or what is that face of God, the sight of which is refused, if there was one which was visible to man? “I have seen God,” says Jacob, “face to face, and my life is preserved.”165    Gen. xxii. 30. There ought to be some other face which kills if it be only seen. Well, then, was the Son visible? (Certainly not,166    Involved in the nunquid.) although He was the face of God, except only in vision and dream, and in a glass and enigma, because the Word and Spirit (of God) cannot be seen except in an imaginary form. But, (they say,) He calls the invisible Father His face. For who is the Father? Must He not be the face of the Son, by reason of that authority which He obtains as the begotten of the Father? For is there not a natural propriety in saying of some personage greater (than yourself), That man is my face; he gives me his countenance?  “My Father,” says Christ, “is greater than I.”167    John xiv. 28. Therefore the Father must be the face of the Son. For what does the Scripture say? “The Spirit of His person is Christ the Lord.”168    Lam. iv. 20. Tertullian reads, “Spiritus personæ ejus Christus Dominus.” This varies only in the pronoun from the Septuagint, which runs, Πνεῦμα προσώπου ἡμῶν Χριστὸς Κύριος. According to our A.V., “the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord” (or, “our anointed Lord”), allusion is made, in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, to the capture of the king—the last of David’s line, “as an anointed prince.” Comp. Jer. lii. 9. As therefore Christ is the Spirit of the Father’s person, there is good reason why, in virtue indeed of the unity, the Spirit of Him to whose person He belonged—that is to say, the Father—pronounced Him to be His “face.” Now this, to be sure, is an astonishing thing, that the Father can be taken to be the face of the Son, when He is His head; for “the head of Christ is God.”169    1 Cor. xi. 3.

CAPUT XIV.

0170C

Adhuc et illa nobis regula adsistit duos vindicantibus Patrem et Filium, quae invisibilem Deum determinavit. Cum enim Moyses (Exod. XXXIII, 13, 29) in Aegypto desiderasset Domini conspectum, dicens: Si ergo inveni gratiam coram te, manifesta mihi te, ut cognoscenter videam te: Non potes videre, inquit, faciem meam; non enim videbit homo faciem meam, et vivet; id est, morietur qui viderit. Invenimus enim et a multis Deum visum, et neminem tamen eorum, qui eum viderant, mortuum. Visum quidem Deum secundum hominum capacitatem, non secundum plenitudinem divinitatis: nam patriarchae Deum vidisse referuntur, ut Abraham et Jacob, et prophetae, 0170D ut Isaias, ut Ezechiel; et tamen mortui non sunt. 0171A Igitur aut mori debuerant, si eum videraut; Deum enim nemo videbit, et vivet; aut si Deum viderunt, et mortui non sunt, Scriptura mentitur, Deum dixisse, Faciem meam homo si viderit, non vivet; aut Scriptura mentitur, cum invisum, aut cum visum Deum profert. Jam ergo alius erit qui videbatur, quia non potest idem invisibilis definiri, qui videbatur; et consequens erit, ut invisibilem Patrem intelligamus, pro plenitudine majestatis; visibilem vero Filium agnoscamus, pro modulo derivationis: sicut nec solem nobis contemplari licet, quantum ad ipsam substantiae summam quae est in coelis; radium autem ejus toleramus oculis pro temperatura portionis quae in terram inde porrigitur. Hic ex diverso volet aliquis etiam Filium invisibilem contendere, ut sermonem, ut spiritum; 0171B et dum unicam conditionem Patris et Filii vindicat, unum potius atque eumdem confirmare Patrem et Filium. Sed diximus Scripturam differentiae patrocinari, per visibilis et invisibilis distinctionem. Nam et illud adjiciunt ad argumentationem: Quod si Filius tunc ad Moysen loquebatur, ipse faciem suam nemini visibilem pronuntiaret, quia scilicet ipse invisibilis Pater fuerit in Filii nomine. Ac per hoc, sic eumdem volunt accipi visibilem et invisibilem, quomodo eumdem Patrem et Filium: quoniam et paulo supra, antequam faciem Moysi negasset, scriptum sit, Dominum ad Moysen locutum coram, velut si quis loquatur ad amicum suum, non minus quam et Jacob: Ego vidi, inquit (Gen. XXXII, 30), Dominum facie ad faciem. Ergo visibilis et invisibilis idem. Et quia 0171C idem utrumque, ideo et ipse, qua Pater, invisibilis; et qua Filius, visibilis. Quasi non expositio Scripturae quae fit a nobis, Filio competat, Patre seposito in sua invisibilitate. Dicimus enim et Filium suo nomine eatenus invisibilem, qua sermo et spiritus Dei ex substantiae conditione jam nunc, et qua Deus, et sermo, et spiritus: visibilem autem fuisse ante carnem eo modo quo dicit (Num. XII, 2.) ad Aaron et Mariam; Et si fuerit Prophetes in vobis, in visione cognoscar illi, et in somnio loquar illi, non quomodo Moysi. Os ad os loquar illi in specie, id est in veritate; et non in aenigmate, id est, non in imagine. Sicut et Apostolus: Nunc videmus tanquam per speculum in aenigmate, tunc autem facie ad faciem (I Cor. XIII, 12). Igitur cum Moysi servat conspectum suum et colloquium 0171D facie ad faciem in futurum (nam hoc postea adimpletum est in montis secessu, sicut legimus in Evangelio (Luc. IX, 30.) visum cum illo Moysen colloquentem); 0172A apparet retro semper in speculo, et aenigmate, et visione, et somnio Deum, id est, Filium Dei, visum tam Prophetis et Patriarchis, quam et ipsi adhuc Moysi. Et ipse quidem Dominus si forte coram ad faciem loquebatur, non tamen ut est, homo faciem ejus videret, nisi forte in speculo et in aenigmate. Denique, si sic Moysi locutus est Dominus, ut et Moyse faciem ejus cominus sciret, quomodo statim atque ibidem desiderat faciem ejus videre quam, quia viderat, non desideraret. Quomodo aeque et Dominus negat videri faciem suam posse, quam ostenderat, si tamen ostenderat? Aut quae est facies Dei, cujus conspectus negatur, si erat quae visa est? Vidi, inquit Jacob, Deum facie ad faciem, et salva facta est anima mea (Gen. XXXII, 30). Alia debet esse facies, 0172B quae si videatur, occidit. Aut numquid Filius quidem videbatur, et sic facies, sed ipsum hoc in visione, et somnio, et speculo, et aenigmate, quia sermo, et spiritus, nisi imaginaria forma videri non potest. Faciem autem suam dicit invisibilem Patrem. Quis enim Pater? non facies erit Filii, nomine auctoritatis, quam genitus a Patre consequitur? Non enim et de aliqua majore persona congruit dicere: facies mea est ille homo; et: faciem mihi praestat. Pater, inquit, major me est (Joan. XIV, 28). Ergo facies erit Filii Pater. Nam et Scriptura quid dicit? Spiritus personae ejus, Christus Dominus (Thren. IV, 20). Ergo si Christus personae paternae spiritus est, merito cujus spiritus persona erat, id est Patris, eum faciem suam, ex unitate scilicet, pronuntiavit. Mirarer plane, an facies 0172C Filii Pater accipi possit, qui est caput ejus: Caput enim Christi Deus (I Cor. II, 3).