Prima Pars
Lecture 44: Whether God's Essence Can Be Seen by the Bodily Eye

Transcript
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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. God, our enlightenment, guardian angels, strengthen the lights of our minds, or to illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. St. Thomas Aquinas and Jellic Doctor, remain here for us, and help us to understand what you have written. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Actually, I ran across those three things that we have in the prayer to the angels, and so on, and the sentences right together, that's three. Okay, we're up to Article 3, right? Whether the essence of God, the substance of God, the nature of God, is able to be seen by the bodily eye. For it's said in the book of Job, in the 19th chapter, in my flesh I will see God, right? And in 42, by the ear of the ear, right? Or by the hearing of the ear, I have heard you, and now my eye sees you. Of course, you have to realize that the word sight can be used metaphorically, right? Although here, I think the way he's going to understand that first passage is that when my soul is joined in my body again, I will be seeing God with the soul, right? My soul will be the body, right? So that my soul and my flesh will see God, right? But not through the flesh, right? More of Augustine says in the last book of the City of God, chapter 29, that the, what, eyes of the glorified, huh, will excel right, huh? That they will not only, what, see more acutely than the serpents or the eagles supposed to be able to fly towards the sun, like, say, John, represented by the eagle, which, no matter how accurate they get to be, you know, these senses of the serpents or the eagles and so on, they cannot see nothing but bodies, right, huh? But the eyes of the blessed will see, right, also incorporeal things, huh? A lot of times, I guess, it has to be explained, huh? And Thomas will, of course, explain. What Augustine means to say, huh? Okay. But whoever is able to see bodiless things is able to be raised up to seeing God, right? Therefore, the glorified eye is able to see God, huh? But Thomas will be solving that in a way which, you know, I say that, I see that you're alive. But do I really see your life? No. No. I really see, you know, your movements. But right away, I'm sharp enough to see that you're alive, huh? Yeah. And you're going to see God in everything, huh? The way St. Francis does, right? Mm-hmm. And, uh, but it's because your mind will be so sharp, right? The power of God is able to be seen by man by an imaginary vision. For it is said in the book of Isaiah, chapter 6, I saw the Lord sitting upon a, what, throne, I guess it is? Mm-hmm. But imaginary vision has its origin from the, what, senses. For the image, as Aristotle says, is a motion made by the sense and act, huh? So you stick in the first image, you're like, if I look at you and I close my eyes, I still kind of, what, see you, right? Mm-hmm. But it's because, what, there's a motion set inside of me from what I saw originally with my eyes, huh? But now I don't want to see you with my eyes, but you kind of fade away, right? Mm-hmm. But there's a kind of, you know, motion there. It's weaker than the original thing because it's, you know, you hit one ball and hit another ball, it gradually gets weaker, right? But, um, uh, Isaiah says his vision, right? So in church in my hometown, there's got this big guy out there, you know, but it's like Isaiah, I suppose, inspired by Isaiah, he's sitting there. Mm-hmm. Okay. Therefore, God is able to be seen by a, what, sensible vision, I don't know if you can imagine God or picture God. But against this is what Augustine says in the book about seeing God to Paulina, that God no one has seen ever in this life as he is or in the life of the angels as those, what, physical things are right, which are discerned by bodily, corporale, visione, by bodily vision. So Thomas says, I answer, it should be said that it is impossible for God to be seen by the sense of, what, sight, huh? Or by any other sense or power of the sensitive part, huh? For every power of this sort is the act or form of a bodily organ, right? As will be said later when he talks about the human soul. I think we read that one time, didn't we, here? I'm going to get through to the anima, I think we went to the part of the summa. Mm-hmm. But act is proportional to that of which it is an act, huh? Whence no power of this kind can extend itself beyond, what, bodily things. But God is bodiless, as has been shown above, right? Whence neither by sense nor by imagination, which also is a bodily organ, huh? But is he able to be seen, but only by the, what, understanding, huh? Okay. So even the painter will not see him, right? With his bodily eye, that is to say, right? Or by his imagination, huh? You talk to an average Catholic, right? And you kind of, you know, wonder whether they think that God is bodiless, really, huh? Yeah. And I remember my cousin, who was a philosopher, trying to tell his mother that God, in his divine nature, has no body, and she just couldn't understand this. I remember this thing, you know, when she was a little girl, you know, thinking, God with his little finger could move the whole world, right? I don't know what she meant by that. But it's hard for us to transcend the, what, imagination, too, right? Like, as Aristotle says in the book on the sense of the sensible, we understand nothing without the, what, continuous and time, huh? Because the images are continuous, right? And they're tied up with the temporal. And so even in our statements, we always have the past, the present, and the future. And so if we try to understand something that is not continuous, either we don't understand it at all, or falsely try to imagine it, or else we have to negate what we, what, imagine, right? Say God is not a body, right? God has no parts, right? And so as Bwedi says in the book on the Trinity, you have to, in talking about God, transcend the imagination, right? And that's very hard. And I mention often this famous text from Aristotle there in the fourth book of Natural Hearing, and he's talking about place on the beginning of the fourth book. And he quotes the common opinion of the Greeks before him, that whatever it is must be somewhere. And if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't, what, exist. Well, to be somewhere, to be in place, is a property of an actual body, right? So if you're thinking that whatever it is must be somewhere, if it isn't somewhere, it doesn't exist, you're thinking that what it is is the same as bodies and what is in bodies, right? And so you can't really transcend the imagination, right? Remember when the Russians out, the Sputnik guy, you know, he radioed back there, he said, no God up here is there. But I mean, most people, you know, think that, right? Mm-hmm. A lot of times, you know, if you ever think about your soul after you die, right, you know? Gee, where will I be? But you're still thinking of your soul as kind of like being a body, right? So it's very hard to overcome that, right? And that's why the philosopher said that the study of the immaterial substances belongs to the last part of life. Your mind has really been perfected by studying these other things. But you begin with Euclid's geometry there, you're dealing with what a triangle is and what a circle is and other things that can be imagined, right? And then you go on to natural things which are sensible too and can be to some extent imagined. And then you have to, what, either stop there, as most people do, or else you have to reason out that there's something that is not continuous, not a body. And then you are knowing this more by kind of a distant likeness, but more by negation, right? And so, if you go back to what we said about God, everything seems to be, for the most part, negative, right? And even if the words are affirmative, like you say, God is simple, you examine the truth and the simplicity of God, it's showing that he's not composed, he's not put together, that you and I are put together, in more than one way. And God's not put together, right? Can't even put him together the definition. But we tend to know simple things in a composed way. So, we say God is pure act, and we say first matter is pure ability. But the word pure, in one case, is negating any passive ability, in the other case, is negating any act. So, what is more simple is being known to what is a mixture of act and ability, and by kind of a, what, negation of one of those, huh? That's why I really like that, you know, when Aristotle is explaining how Homer taught the other Greeks how they're good plot. They didn't take everything that happened, he didn't give us the whole history of the Trojan War, I say. But he takes up in one year, and he takes a course of events, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, huh? When Aristotle defines beginning, middle, and end, he defines the middle as what has something before it and something after it. He defines the beginning and the end by, what? One of those affirmed and one negated. So, the beginning is before, but not after, and the end is after, but not before. So, in a sense, it's like we know the middle of things better, right? But you could say that the pure act is the beginning of all things. And what's firmest away from pure act is pure ability. That's the end, in terms of, or last, you might say, in terms of its perfection and so on. And what's most known to us is the middle, the things that are a mixture of act and ability. And so we know the extremes, the beginning and the end, by, partly by negation of what we find in the middle. But it's kind of interesting that it's reflected in the definitions of beginning, middle, and end, huh? And it repeats itself at that level. Okay, the first objection, now, was taken from the book of Job, huh? Which Thomas says is the book that is there to, what? Defend faith, right? Because he says the chief objection against God is, what, the evil in the world, huh? And the bad things that happen even to good people, right? And that book is addressing itself to that problem. So the book of Job is kind of the first of the sapiential books, but it's kind of defending the faith against the most common objection, huh? I was invited down to B.C. one time there to hear some atheist, right? But this whole argument was from the Holocaust and so on, right? I mean, it's just this catty explained, you know? And so, I mean, it's an objection, really, that you have in Job, huh? And so it's not a new objection, right? But it's an old one, yeah. So the first, therefore, it should be said that when it is said in the book of Job, or Job says, in my flesh I will see God, right, my Savior, it should not be understood that God will be seen by the eye of the flesh, right? But that he, Job, existing in the flesh, right? Or his soul existing in the flesh, after the resurrection, right? We'll see God, right, huh? So it's kind of a belief there expressed in that text of the resurrection, right? I also thought that I'd take the words there, you know, from out of my tomb, you know. So, I believe that I shall see my Redeemer, and in my flesh I will see, you know, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's why that psalm, was it? Psalm 62, I think it is, 63. O God, you are my God, whom I seek for you, my flesh pines, and my soul thirsts. And you have a flesh mention as well there. But the soul is thirsty to see God, right? But the flesh, in the sense, is once a resurrection, too. Likewise, when it is said, now my eye sees you, it is understood about the eye of the, what? Mine, then. As is said, for example, in Paul's epistle to the Ephesians. The apostle. Now notice, he, what? St. Paul is called the apostle by, what? Yeah, yeah. Paul and Peter, I guess, are called apostles by Antonio Messiah. I remember how John Paul II would call them the princes of the apostles. Another way of talking about this, an emphasis upon them. But you'll notice that in the text themselves, you know? And they refer to themselves as the apostle. Apostle the Gentile and the apostle the Gentile, the king of the Jews. He'll give you a spirit of wisdom in your knowledge, illuminating, having illuminated, enlightened, the eyes of your, what? Heart, right? Okay. Now, I'll go back a bit here. If you take these two words, to see and the eye, right? They're both carried over, but I think the word to see can be carried over with a new meaning. But the word eye is carried over only metaphorically. Now, when I was a little boy, my mother would say, I see, said the blind man. But he couldn't see at all, right? So, it's a punning upon two meanings of the word to see, right? But the word to see here is a word equivocal. It has many meanings, but it's equivocal by reason. There's an order among the meanings. And the first meaning of to see is the act of the, what? Eye. And that should be the only name for that act, right? Okay. Now, I asked them, what is the next meaning of the word to see? And they usually want to say to understand because I've quoted my mother and so on, right? Well, the thing I realized is that when you pun, you like to pun meanings that are far apart because then the person knows that you're using them in two different senses, right? But is there a sense of the word to see that's closer to the act of the eye than is to understand, right? To imagine, to imagine, to picture, right? And I often take the example from Hamlet, right? Where the Horatio doubts the soldiers who have seen the ghost, seen with their eyes now, right? Seen the ghost of Hamlet's father walking in the thing at Elsinore in Denmark there, right? And so he's not going to go there, right? I mean, he's not going to leave them unless he sees his own eyes. And of course, he does see his own eyes, right? And he says, I would not believe this without me. You know, two doubts of the man others. Well, then they come to Hamlet to tell him about this. And before they have a chance to tell Hamlet about it, Hamlet says, I can see my father now. He says, work, work. Look around, you know, the ghost appeared again. And Hamlet says, in my mind's eye, right? You know, the ghost appeared again. You know, the ghost appeared again. You know, the ghost appeared again. You know, the ghost appeared again. You know, the ghost appeared again. Now, I use my mind there to refer not to the reason, but to refer to the imagination, right? You can picture his father and where he looked and so on, right? So I can see my grandchildren now, right? But now the way I can see you guys now, right? But that that sense of to see is very much like to see with the eyes, a sign of that is that in a dream, we think often we're seeing with our eyes and we're actually imagining, picturing these things, right? And it's not until we wake up that you realize that we're imagining these things and not actually seeing them, right? And usually we're relieved with something that we don't want to be going on, right? One day when I was first teaching, I couldn't find them. I had a hard time finding the classroom or something like that. I found them in time for my class, but, you know, a little thing like that becomes a big thing in a dream. And I dreamt that I had to come crying. So he's a good teacher, but he can't find the classroom. And we'll have to let him go because he doesn't get the classroom. What good is he doing? And so, but that was my imagination. Reality wasn't quite that bad. But even in a dream, you don't confuse what? The eyes and the understanding here. That they're further apart, huh? But we do confuse imagining, at least with thinking. And we say, I imagine that's so. I think that's so, right, huh? And you read the English philosophers, the empiricists, and so on. And they use the word idea. It's not too clear whether they're thinking about a, what, image or a thought, right? And in daily speech, we use the word idea sometimes, meaning one, sometimes the other, right? So if the girl says, the guy don't get ideas, it's probably images, right? If you say the philosopher's an idea, we hope it's a thought. Some philosophers don't hold me an image, huh? But, you know, we'll say, I think that's so. I imagine that's so. It would be meant almost the same thing, right? Now, when you carry the word to see from the act of the eye, to imagine, and from to imagine, to understand, right? I think that the word is taking on a new meaning in each case, right? Okay? But notice, in addition to that same word taking on a new meaning, we also have another name for those other two acts, right? So to see with the imagination, we can call it to imagine, right? And instead of to see with the reason, to understand, right? But now, if you take the word I, and carry the word I over to the imagination now, would that be a new meaning? Or would you be using the word I in a kind of metaphorical sense? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because the word I is much different from the imagination, and much, much more different from the reason, understanding, right? By the word to see is something a little more spiritual, and something more material. And the same way the word light, I think, can be made, given a new meaning, right? Manifestation, and so on. So, when Hamlet says, I see my father now, they say, where? He says, in my mind's eye. Well, he doesn't just say I. They say, in my mind's eye, right? You know? And Gregory the Great uses the word I sometimes for the reason, like in the second text that he's explaining here. And Gregory the Great says that anger disturbs the eye of the soul. Okay? So, there's a likeness there. The eye of the soul and the eye of the body, right? But, you'll say the eye of the soul, right? To use the word eye by itself would be too misleading, right? Well, we'll tend to use the word to see, you know, class, or something like that. You say, do you see what I mean? Well, you know, we don't have to add, do you see with your mind what I mean? Right? You see? Because the word to see has taken on that new meaning for you, right? See? But, I use the word eye for reason or for imagination. I tend to say with the eye of the soul, right? You know? Because it's, especially in philosophical discourse, right? Okay? So, besides that, like Thomas is drawing this out of nowhere or something, you know, or just because of this particular text, he's trying to give the word a metaphorical use here. But, you find it in daily life. You find it in Hamlet. You find it in Gregory the Great, right? But, it's hard sometimes to draw the line between what they call an elogist word and a metaphor. But, you see? But, in the case of analogous word there, a word like to see, the word is carried over with a new meaning. But, in the case of the metaphor, the word doesn't really have a new meaning. And that's why when Thomas explains, figures of speech, or figurative speaking, he says that the meaning of the word is not the meaning of the speaker. Mm-hmm. See? Do you see what I mean? But, when I say that, my meaning is the meaning of the word to see. It's the third meaning of the word to see, right? Okay? When I say, you're a rat! Or, I say, my wife, honey or something, right? I don't mean what the word means, right? But, there's some connection between what the word means and what I mean, right? In the case of metaphor, it's one of likeness. Mm-hmm. What's common to all, then, is that the meaning of the words is not the meaning of the speaker. Do you see that? So, that's what makes a metaphor, I've heard it referred to as an improper proportion, whereas an analogy is proper. Meaning that, if I use it with a new meaning, then I mean what the word means. It has a definition that corresponds to the word and my use of it. Whereas, if it's improper, then I'm using it. I just say, I'm carrying over the word. Yeah, but I think it's more clear to say that, in the case of figurative speech, the meaning of the words and the meaning of the speaker are not the same, right? The example I'd use, or just in class, when I was taught Assumption there, I'd say, if I come in on a weekend and I find you drunk under the table, and I'd say, what a fine example of an Assumption college student. You know I don't mean this, right? But even day in life, people are a little bit mean to you, you know, see, you're nice. You know, something a little bit nasty, you know, see, gee, you're nice. You find it very common, right? And everybody realizes that the person doesn't, the speaker doesn't mean what his word means. But in this case, in opposition to metaphor, it's the opposite. I mean the opposite of what I said, right? You know, in Mark Anthony's famous speech in Julius Caesar, you know, he starts out by saying, you know, the assassinators and so on, that there are no men, right? He keeps on giving reasons for showing that it's not honorable what they've done, right? And so the irony is very effective, though. Sometimes it's more effective, you know, to say that, right? But they're all honorable, right? And the audience, of course, is understanding the figure of speech. So I think the word I, you see, is being used metaphorically, right? If you call reason and I. And because it's being used metaphorically, that's why we tend to use a phrase, right? The mind's eye for the imagination or the eye of the soul for reason, huh? Okay. So it's interesting that in this first, by this first objection, which had two texts, I guess, from Job, right? One of them, of course, Thomas is saying that the word I is being used in its proper sense, right? And he's taking that whole phrase as not meaning that he's using, he's seeing God, right? But he's seeing God with his reason when his soul is in his body, right? But his soul is not seeing God through the eyes. Okay? In the other case, he's saying, you know, the word sight or... ...or... Or I is being used, what? Metaphorically, yeah. I'd say the documentis, right? But notice that's the same phrase that Shakespeare uses for the imagination, right? Which shows how the mind, the word mind, is sometimes used by people for what? Imagination sometimes for the reason that you don't have a great idea of it, right? It used to be a psychological column in Danish paper called Mirror of Your Mind, right? In mind, you actually didn't refer to anything going on inside you, not just imagination or reason, but your emotions, you know? And so then we become equivocal. Sometimes in the directions to logic, they call the first, the Arab philosopher is called the first act of reason, imaginatio per intellectum. The image and the thought are both a likeness, a different kind of likeness, but both are, has something in common. Okay. To the second it should be said, and I was taking the text of Augustine here in the City of God, that Augustine spoke there, inquiring in those words, right? Okay. And under what? Condition. Condition, yeah. Which is clear from what he sets forth beforehand, right? That the eyes of the glorified, right? Will be much different, right? Than they are now. If through them we see, what? A bodily nature, right? But then you obviously see a different power, right? Okay. But afterwards he determines this saying, valde credibiliton. It's very believable, right? That just as now we see what bodily, earthly bodies, right? And the new heavens and the new earth, right? That God, everywhere present, right? And governing the universe, right? Or governing all bodies, right? With a most clear perspicacity, right? We will see. Not as now we see the visible things of God to the things which are made, right? And that makes a comparison that God is making other. But as men among whom we are living, right? And exercising, right? Vital emotions and so on. Right away, as living right, we see, right? Okay. We don't believe them to live, but we see it to our lives. I see it to our lives. Okay. From which it is clearly says that in this way Augustine understands the glorified eyes will see God just as our eyes see the life of someone, right? Okay. Just as I can see in your body that you're alive, right? Although I don't even see your life with my eyes, right? But when I see your body, the movements of your body, my reason is so sharp. I recognize that you're alive. I know you're not a dead body over there. So our mind would be so glorified, right? And see God so clearly that in every effect of God, once you see an effect of God, you will what? Say, hey, this is an effect of God. Let's just say, God's the cause of this. So he says, life is not seen by the bodily eye, taking this comparison now, as something visible through itself. Do you remember that distinction in the second book about the soul of Aristotle? Where he distinguishes the sensible per se, or sensible as such, and the sensible peraccidance, or by happening? Okay. And then he distinguishes the first into two common sensibles, right? And the proper or private sensibles, huh? So if I say, I see your color, right? I see your shape, and I see a man, right? Okay. I don't see those three exactly the same way, right? The eye alone sees your color, right? The eye and the hand could know what shape, right? So your color and your shape, the first, my eyes know as such, right? And only my eyes. Your shape, both my sense of sight and my sense of touch, as such know, but it's not private one, it's common. It calls that a common sensible. But those two are sensed as such. But you, a man, do I see a man in the same way? No. So my reason to recognize is that there's a man there, right? When I see your shape and color and your movement and so on, right? Okay. So your life is not a, what, private or a common sensible. It's not as sensible as such, right? But it's known by something else in you when I see your color and shape and movement, huh? So he says, life vita, huh? Life is not seen by the bodily eye as something seeable to itself, right? Or by itself. But as something sensible by happening. Or brachidentity is a lot of the words, right? Kind of some bibrikas in Greek. Which is not known by the senses as such. But it's known at once with the sense by some other knowing power, namely the reason, right? Okay. So the sensible parachidens is not just anything known by the reason, right? Like I know what a sojism is, but that's not sensible, you see? But it's something known not by the senses as such, but known by its mother power in us when we sense something, right? That, however, at once, bodies being seen, the divine presence is known from them by the understanding, right? Happens from two things, huh? One is from the, what? Clarity of the mind, huh? The parasympicastia, the sharpness, I suppose, of the mind, huh? And secondly, from the, what? Flowing back, you might say, huh? Of the divine clarity in the bodies that have been renovated by the, what? Meditation, renewal. Set on the transfiguration, right? We've got a button to make it as bright as the sanctified bodies, but they'll partake a little bit of this, huh? And so, notice what it is, then, huh? You see the analogy that Thomas is using, right? Just as I know now that you're alive, right? But not through my senses as such, right? But when I sense your color and movement and so on, right? My reason, by the way, grabs the idea that you're alive, right? So it would be like that when I see anything that's an effect of God, right? My senses will see that it is an effect of God as such, right? But we just run away and we'll see, yeah, that's another effect of God. That's another thing that he did. Another thing. You see? And this would be because my mind would be so sharp, right? So, okay. That's kind of interesting to think about, right? Because it's very clear to me that you guys are alive. I don't really doubt about you being alive. And right away when I see you moving and reacting and so on. But when I walk out there and I see the tree, you know, it's not as clear. This is an effect of God as it is that you guys are alive. But in the next world, it would be as clear to me right away when I see that tree. I walk around the corner and there's a tree there. Oh, another effect of God, right? You see? It's like when I walk in there, you say, oh, another live one. Another live body. Live wire. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, quick, you see? Yeah, quick, huh? That's interesting, huh? That's very interesting comparison, right? That's what Augustine is saying, right? So, I need Thomas to explain Augustine, huh? On occasion, you know, Thomas to explain Aristotle. A lot of times you do, but people have us understood Aristotle sometimes, huh? You know, I always think of this text in the 12th book, the wisdom of Aristotle seems to be saying that God knows only himself and nothing else, right? Right?