44. Whether God's Essence Can Be Seen by the Bodily Eye

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Lecture Notes

Main Topics #

Bodily Vision and God #

• God’s essence cannot be seen by bodily sight, imagination, or any power of the sensitive part
• Every sensory power is the act of a bodily organ; God is bodiless; therefore sensory knowledge of God is impossible
• Acts are proportional to that of which they are acts; bodily powers cannot extend beyond bodily things
• Only the understanding (intellect) can know God

The Problem of Transcending Imagination #

• Human minds naturally struggle to transcend imagination because we understand nothing without the continuous and time
• Images are continuous and tied to the temporal; we always frame understanding in terms of past, present, and future
• The common Greek opinion that “whatever is must be somewhere” reflects the difficulty of conceiving immaterial reality
• Study of immaterial substances belongs to the last part of philosophical education, after the mind has been perfected by sensible and imaginable things

Analogous vs. Metaphorical Uses of ‘See’ and ‘Eye’ #

• The word ‘see’ is an analogous word (ἀνάλογον) with multiple meanings ordered to one another
• Primary meaning: the act of the bodily eye
• Secondary meaning: to imagine (to picture in the mind’s eye)
• Tertiary meaning: to understand (intellectual vision)
• When carrying ‘see’ from the eye to imagination to understanding, the word takes on a new meaning in each case
• The word ’eye,’ by contrast, is used metaphorically when applied to imagination or intellect because it is much more distant from its primary meaning than the word ‘see’ is
• This is why we naturally say “mind’s eye” or “eye of the soul” rather than simply “eye” when speaking of imagination or reason
• In philosophical discourse, metaphorical extension of ’eye’ requires qualification to avoid misleading the listener

Distinguishing Metaphor from Analogy #

• In metaphorical speech, the meaning of the words is not the meaning of the speaker (e.g., calling someone “a rat” does not mean they are literally a rodent)
• In analogous speech, the speaker means what the word means, but with an extended or new meaning that has its own definition
• Metaphor is sometimes called “improper proportion” while analogy is called “proper proportion”
• The connection in metaphor is typically one of likeness; the speaker conveys irony or comparison through words that do not literally state the intended meaning

The Glorified Vision of God #

• The glorified intellect will see God not through the bodily eye but through the mind raised to extraordinary clarity
• God will be seen through his effects with perfect acuity, analogous to how we now recognize that someone is alive
• Augustine teaches that the glorified eyes will excel beyond the sight of serpents or eagles; they will see not only bodies but also incorporeal things
• The glorified mind will be so sharp that every effect of God will immediately manifest God as its cause

Key Arguments #

Against Bodily Vision of God #

• From the Nature of Sensory Powers: Every sensory power is the act of a bodily organ. Acts are proportional to that of which they are acts. Therefore, no sensory power can extend beyond bodily things. Since God is bodiless, he cannot be sensed.
• From the Nature of Imagination: Imagination is also based on bodily organs; it produces images that are motions caused by sensory acts. Therefore, imagination too cannot reach God.

Scriptural Objections Addressed #

• Job 19:26 (“In my flesh I will see God”): Should be understood as the soul seeing God while joined to the resurrected body, not the bodily eye seeing God. The soul, not the flesh, performs the act of seeing God.
• Isaiah 6:1 (“I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne”): This is an imaginative vision, not a sensible or bodily vision. Imaginative vision originates from sensations but produces images that can fade and weaken like a diminished motion.
• Ephesians 1:18 (Paul speaks of “the eyes of your heart” being enlightened): Here ‘see’ is used to mean intellectual understanding, not bodily sight. The word ’eye’ is used metaphorically for the mind/reason.

Recognition of Life as an Analogy #

• We do not see life (vita) with our bodily eyes as something sensible per se (by itself)
• Life is sensible per accidens (by accident): we see color, shape, and movement with our eyes, and through these sensations, our reason recognizes that the subject is alive
• Distinctions from Aristotle’s De Anima:
  • Proper sensibles: Known by one sense alone (e.g., color by sight)
  • Common sensibles: Known by multiple senses (e.g., shape by sight and touch)
  • Sensibles per accidens: Things known not by the senses as such but by another knowing power (reason) conjoined with sensation
• Similarly, in the beatific vision, when bodies are seen in the renewed world, the divine presence will be known from them by the understanding
• This knowledge arises from two factors:
  1. The clarity (parasympicastia) or sharpness of the glorified mind
  2. The flowing back (refulgentia) of divine clarity in bodies renovated by mediation (meditation/renewal)

Important Definitions #

Analogous Word (ἀνάλογον) #

A word that is carried over with a new meaning from one primary meaning to secondary and tertiary meanings, with an order among the meanings. The primary meaning determines the others.

Metaphor #

A figure of speech where the meaning of the words is not the meaning of the speaker; the speaker conveys a different meaning through likeness or comparison, often with irony or rhetorical effect.

Sensible Per Se (κατ’ αὐτὸ) #

That which is directly perceived by a sensory power as its proper object.

Sensible Per Accidens (κατὰ συμβεβηκός) #

That which is perceived by the senses only incidentally, in conjunction with something sensible per se, but is actually known through another cognitive power (such as reason).

Imaginatio #

The faculty (imagination) that produces images from sensory motions; still a bodily power dependent on sensory organs.

Examples & Illustrations #

The Mother’s Childhood Memory #

Berquist’s cousin (a philosopher) tried to explain to his mother that God has no body in his divine nature. The mother remembered imagining as a child that “God with his little finger could move the whole world.” This illustrates the common difficulty in transcending bodily imagination when thinking of God.

The Russian Cosmonaut #

When the Soviet astronaut radioed back that there was “no God up here,” this reflects the common (though unreflective) assumption that if God is real, he must be somewhere in space—revealing how deeply imagination shapes our conception of existence.

Hamlet’s ‘Mind’s Eye’ #

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when Horatio doubts the soldiers who have seen the ghost with their eyes, he says he will not believe until he sees it himself. Later, when Hamlet speaks of the ghost appearing again, he says: “I can see my father now…in my mind’s eye.” This illustrates the distinction between sensible sight and imaginative sight, and shows how the word ‘see’ is naturally extended to imagination while ’eye’ requires the qualifier ‘mind’s eye’ to indicate metaphorical use.

The Dream and Waking #

When dreaming, we often believe we are seeing with our eyes when we are actually imagining. Only upon waking do we realize we were imagining. Even in dreams, however, we do not confuse the eye with the understanding; we do confuse imagination with thinking, as shown by the common expressions “I imagine that’s so” and “I think that’s so.”

Berquist’s Personal Dream #

When he was first teaching and had difficulty finding a classroom one day, he dreamed that night that he was an inadequate teacher who couldn’t find the classroom and would be dismissed. In the dream, this small real incident became magnified. This shows how imagination represents things differently from reality and how we experience these representations as if they were sensible perceptions.

Recognition of Life in Others #

When I see you moving and reacting, I immediately recognize that you are alive. I do not actually see your life with my eyes; I see your color, shape, and movements, and my reason grasps at once that you are alive. In the next life, recognizing God’s effects with the glorified mind will be as immediate and certain as our recognition that another person is alive—but extended to every effect of God we encounter.

The Tree as God’s Effect #

In the world to come, when walking around a corner and seeing a tree, the glorified mind will recognize “another effect of God” with the same immediate clarity that we now recognize “another live one” when we see a person.

Questions Addressed #

Can the Bodily Eye See God’s Essence? #

No. Every sensory power is the act of a bodily organ, and acts are proportional to that of which they are acts. Since God is bodiless, he cannot be the object of bodily sight or any sensory power. Only the intellect can know God.

What Do the Scriptural Passages Mean That Speak of Seeing God? #

They are to be understood in different ways:

• Job’s “in my flesh I will see God” means the soul (in the resurrected body) will see God, not that the bodily eye will see him
• Isaiah’s vision of the Lord on a throne is an imaginative vision, a vision through images originating from sensations
• Paul’s reference to “the eyes of your heart” being enlightened refers to the intellect, using ’eye’ and ‘see’ metaphorically for intellectual understanding

How Will the Glorified See God If Not by Bodily Sight? #

The glorified intellect, elevated by grace and made extraordinarily sharp, will recognize God’s presence in all effects. Just as we recognize life in another through seeing their bodily movements, so the glorified will recognize God as the cause of all effects with perfect clarity. This is analogous to the way sensible per accidens objects are known—not by the senses as such, but by the reason conjoined with sensation.

Notable Quotes #

“In my flesh I will see God, my Savior.” (Job 19:26, cited as scriptural objection)

“The eyes of the glorified will excel right…they will not only see as acutely as serpents or eagles…but the eyes of the blessed will see also incorporeal things.” (Augustine, City of God, Book XXII, Chapter 29, cited via Berquist)

“Whoever is able to see bodiless things is able to be raised up to seeing God; therefore, the glorified eye is able to see God.” (Argument from Augustine, cited in lecture)

“I see that you’re alive. But do I really see your life? No. I really see your movements. But right away, I’m sharp enough to see that you’re alive.” (Berquist, illustrating how we recognize life per accidens)

“In my mind’s eye, Horatio.” (Shakespeare, Hamlet, cited to illustrate imagination as distinct from bodily sight)

“It is impossible for God to be seen by the sense of sight or by any other sense or power of the sensitive part, for every power of this sort is the act or form of a bodily organ…God is bodiless…Therefore, neither by sense nor by imagination…but only by the understanding.” (Thomas Aquinas, cited in lecture)

“It is hard for us to transcend the imagination…we understand nothing without the continuous and time.” (Berquist, on the difficulty of thinking about God)

“In the case of figurative speech, the meaning of the words is not the meaning of the speaker.” (Thomas Aquinas, cited in lecture on metaphor)

“In daily life, you find it in Hamlet. You find it in Gregory the Great. It’s hard sometimes to draw the line between what they call an equivocal word and a metaphor.” (Berquist, on the distinction between analogous and metaphorical extension)