Summa I q.12 a.3–4: Can the Bodily Eye See God? The Meanings of 'to See' and 'Eye', and Why No Creature Sees God by Nature

Orientation #

He does not say what was done last time beyond “I think we read that one time” (on the soul as form of the body) and that the reply to the first objection recalls “what we said about God” being mostly negative. He ends inside article 4 after the sed contra. The previous class worked through Thomas’s article on whether God’s essence can be seen by a created intellect and the light of glory; the next continues q. 12 aa. 4-5 on why a created intellect cannot naturally see the divine essence.

The class, in order #

1. Article 3: the objections and the sed contra (“In my flesh I will see God”) #

The point: he reads the three objections and the sed contra of a. 3, whether God’s substance can be seen by the bodily eye.

• Obj. 1, Job 19 “in my flesh I will see God” and Job 42 “by the hearing of the ear I have heard you, now my eye sees you.” He previews: “sight” can be used metaphorically; and the first text will mean that the soul, joined again to the body, sees God, “but not through the flesh.”
• Obj. 2, Augustine, City of God, last book ch. 29: the eyes of the glorified will excel serpents and eagles (the eagle that flies toward the sun, St John’s symbol), whose senses, however acute, see only bodies; the glorified eye will see incorporeal things, so it can be raised to seeing God. He previews the reply: as “I see that you’re alive” though I really see only your movements, so in glory you will see God in everything, as St Francis does, because the mind will be so sharp.
• Obj. 3, Isaiah 6 “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne”: imaginary vision originates from sense, for the image, as Aristotle says, is a motion made by the sense in act (close your eyes and you still “see” the person, fading, like one ball striking another and weakening); so God is seen by sensible vision. Aside: the big figure on the throne in his hometown church, presumably inspired by Isaiah.
• Sed contra: Augustine, On Seeing God to Paulina: no one has seen God as He is, in this life or the angelic life, the way bodily things are discerned by bodily vision.

2. The body of the article and the difficulty of transcending imagination (“act is proportional to that of which it is an act”) #

The point: God cannot be seen by sight, any sense, or the imagination, but only by the understanding.

1. Every power of the sensitive part is the act or form of a bodily organ (to be shown later, on the human soul).
2. Act is proportioned to that of which it is the act; so no such power extends beyond bodies.
3. God is bodiless (shown above). Conclusion: neither sense nor imagination (which also has a bodily organ) sees God; only the understanding. So not even the painter sees Him with eye or imagination. Aside developed at length: the average Catholic hardly grasps that God is bodiless (his philosopher cousin could not convince his mother; a little girl’s God moving the world with his little finger). Reasons and remedies he gives:

• Aristotle, On Sense and the Sensible: we understand nothing without the continuous and time; images are continuous and tied to the temporal (even our statements carry past, present, future). So of the non-continuous we either understand nothing, understand falsely by imagining, or must negate what we imagine (“God is not a body,” “has no parts”); Boethius, On the Trinity: in speaking of God one must transcend the imagination.
• Physics IV, on place: the common Greek opinion that whatever is must be somewhere, else it does not exist; but being in place is a property of an actual body, so that opinion identifies “what is” with bodies. The Sputnik cosmonaut’s “no God up here”; wondering “where will I be” after death still pictures the soul as a body.
• Hence the philosophers put the study of immaterial substances in the last part of life: begin with Euclid (triangle, circle, imaginable), then natural things (sensible, partly imaginable), then either stop, as most do, or reason to something not continuous, known by distant likeness and mostly by negation.
• Even affirmative words about God are negations: “simple” means not composed (we are put together in more than one way; God cannot even be put together in a definition). “Pure act” negates passive ability; “pure ability” (first matter) negates act: the simple extremes are known through the middle, the mixture of act and ability, by negating one side.
• He likes that this repeats in Aristotle’s account of Homer’s plot (a course of events with beginning, middle, end, not the whole Trojan War): the middle is defined as having something before and after; beginning and end by affirming one and negating the other. Pure act is the beginning, pure ability the end, and what we know best is the middle.

3. Reply to obj. 1: Job, the resurrection, and the eye of the mind (“Job, existing in the flesh”) #

The point: Job’s two texts are read differently: the first with “flesh” proper, the second with “eye” for the mind.

• Job is the book that defends the faith, since the chief objection against God is evil befalling even the good; the atheist he heard at BC arguing from the Holocaust was making Job’s old objection.
• “In my flesh I will see God”: not seen by the eye of the flesh, but Job existing in the flesh, after the resurrection, will see God; a belief in the resurrection expressed there. Asides: he thought of putting those words on his tomb; Psalm 62 or 63 (he is unsure which) “my flesh pines, my soul thirsts”: the soul thirsts to see God, the flesh in a sense wants the resurrection.
• “Now my eye sees you”: the eye of the mind, as Ephesians, “the eyes of your heart” enlightened. Aside: Paul (and Peter) called “the apostle” by antonomasia; John Paul II’s “princes of the apostles.”

4. Digression: “to see” is analogous, “eye” is metaphorical (“I see, said the blind man”) #

The point: the two words in Job’s text are carried over differently.

• “I see, said the blind man” (his mother’s pun) plays on two meanings of “to see.” The word is equivocal by reason, with an order: first meaning, the act of the eye (the only name for that act). Students want the next meaning to be “understand,” but puns use far-apart meanings; the meaning closer to the eye is to imagine, to picture. Hamlet: Horatio will not believe the soldiers’ ghost without seeing it with his own eyes; Hamlet then says “I can see my father now … in my mind’s eye,” meaning imagination, not reason (as he can “see” his grandchildren now). Sign that imagining is close to sight: in dreams we think we see with the eyes, and are relieved on waking (his early-teaching dream of being fired for not finding the classroom).
• We never confuse eye with understanding, even in dreams, but we do confuse imagining with thinking: “I imagine that’s so / I think that’s so”; the empiricists’ “idea,” unclear whether image or thought; “don’t get ideas” (images) vs. a philosopher’s idea (hoped to be a thought).
• Each carrying-over of “to see” gives a new meaning, and each further act also has its own name (to imagine, to understand). But “eye” carried to imagination or reason gets no new meaning; it is metaphorical, because an eye is much more different from those powers than the more spiritual act of seeing is. Likewise “light” can take a new meaning (manifestation). Hence the phrases “mind’s eye,” and Gregory the Great’s “anger disturbs the eye of the soul”: bare “eye” would mislead, whereas bare “you see what I mean” is fine.
• Analogous word vs. metaphor: in an analogous word the word itself has a new meaning and the speaker means what the word means (his “you see” is the third meaning of “to see”); in figurative speech, as Thomas says, the meaning of the word is not the meaning of the speaker (“you’re a rat,” “honey”), connected by likeness (metaphor) or, in irony, by opposition. Student: metaphor as “improper proportion,” analogy as proper; he accepts it but finds it clearer to say the speaker’s and the word’s meaning are not the same. Examples: finding a student drunk under the table, “what a fine example of an Assumption College student”; “you’re nice” said nastily; Mark Antony’s “honorable men.” Thomas’s own Latin phrase here is the same one Shakespeare uses for imagination [unclear in recording; likely “oculus mentis” (inferred)], showing “mind” is used for imagination, for reason, and (the newspaper column “Mirror of Your Mind”) for anything going on inside, even emotions. Aside: the Arab philosophers in logic introductions call the first act of reason “imaginatio per intellectum”; image and thought are both likenesses, of different kinds.

5. Reply to obj. 2: life as a per accidens sensible (“as men among whom we are living”) #

The point: Augustine spoke inquiring and under a condition, and in the end means the glorified eye will see God as our eye sees a man’s life.

• Condition: if we see bodily nature through glorified eyes, they must be a different power. But he then determines “valde credibile,” it is very believable, that we will see God everywhere present and governing the new heavens and earth with a most clear perspicacity, not as now through the things made, but as we see men among whom we live to be living: we do not believe them alive, we see it.
• Aristotle, De Anima II: sensible per se (proper or private: color, seen by the eye alone; common: shape, known as such by sight and touch) vs. sensible per accidens (a man): not sensed as such but known at once, when we sense, by another power, the reason. Not everything reason knows is a per accidens sensible (a syllogism is not), only what is known with the sensing.
• Life is not seen by the bodily eye as visible per se but as sensible per accidens. That, on seeing bodies, the divine presence is at once known by the understanding comes from two things: the clarity (perspicacity) of the mind, and the refulgence of divine clarity in the renewed bodies (a lesser share of what the transfiguration showed).
• He finds it “very interesting”: now it is clearer to him that the students are alive than that the tree outside is an effect of God; in the next world, rounding the corner, “oh, another effect of God” will be as immediate as “another live one.”
• Aside: Thomas explains Augustine as he explains Aristotle, refusing to let so great an author mean something stupid, e.g. Metaphysics XII, where Aristotle seems to say God knows only Himself: Thomas reads it as what God knows primarily, since Aristotle elsewhere criticises Empedocles because on his position we would know hate and God would not.

6. Reply to obj. 3: imaginary vision and scriptural metaphor (“some form is formed in imagination”) #

The point: in imaginary vision God’s substance is not seen, but a form representing Him by some likeness, as Scripture describes divine things metaphorically through sensible things.

• “The Lord is a rock”: the speaker does not mean God is a rock but that He is like one in support and firmness. The same metaphor serves good and bad: “stony heart” is no compliment, “Stonewall” Jackson is; the devil a lion seeking whom to devour (cruelty) vs. Aslan and the lion of Judah (strength, kingship; the English lion, St Mark’s lions in Venice).
• The other senses are carried over too: “taste and see how sweet is the Lord,” the ointments in the Song, the good odor from saints’ graves; ear and eye most of all, though hearing God with the bodily ear (Samuel, after some hesitation over Nathan) is not merely imaginary.

7. Article 4: objections and sed contra (“through its natural powers, to see”) #

The point: he reads a. 4, whether a created intellect can see the divine substance by its natural powers, up to the sed contra.

• Obj. 1: Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4: the angel is a pure, most clear mirror receiving, if one may say so, the whole beauty of God; a thing is seen when its mirror is seen; the angel naturally understands himself, so he naturally sees God. Aside: tomorrow’s feast of Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, one feast for three (Raphael missing from a calendar there).
• Obj. 2: what is most visible is less visible to us through a defect of sight, bodily or intellectual (Physics I: we know confusedly before distinctly; Aristotle: as the bat’s eyes to daylight, so our reason to the most knowable); the angel’s understanding has no such defect, God is most knowable in Himself, so most knowable to the angel. He adds the difference: the object of our understanding is understandable only in ability and we must make it actually understandable, that is the act of understanding; the angel’s object is understandable in act, and God is most understandable in act.
• Obj. 3: bodily sense cannot be raised to a bodiless substance because it is above its nature; so if seeing God were above the nature of every created understanding, none could be raised to it, which is erroneous (shown above); therefore it is natural.
• Sed contra: Romans (he says ch. 6 v. 23) “by the grace of God, eternal life”; John 17 “this is eternal life, that they know Thee.” So by grace, not by nature alone; and it shows “vision” refers to understanding, not the body.
• Aside, from a text of Thomas he saw today on the commandments: lesser sins are included under “thou shalt not commit adultery” or “kill,” but not via syllogistica: one can argue from fornication bad to adultery bad, from cutting off an arm bad to killing bad, not the reverse; rather like a seed, and like reason going from more known to less known, so morally from the easier to the harder. “Via” is the Latin road, translating Greek hodos (“I am the hodos,” the way); no syllogistic road there, but the sed contra itself is a syllogism.

His words #

• “Natural Hearing”: his name for Aristotle’s Physics [ed.: Physics].
• “ability”: pure ability, first matter [ed.: potency].
• sensible “as such” / “by happening”: sensible per se / per accidens; common and proper (private) sensibles.
• “equivocal by reason”: a word with ordered meanings (to see); vs. metaphor, where the meaning of the word is not the meaning of the speaker.
• antonomasia: Paul called “the apostle.”
• “valde credibile”: Augustine’s “very believable.”
• “perspicacia”: sharpness or clarity of the mind.
• “imaginatio per intellectum”: the Arab philosophers’ name for the first act of reason.
• “via syllogistica” / via / hodos: syllogistic road; road, way.

Texts #

Read in class

• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 3 (objections, sed contra, body, three replies).
• Thomas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 4 (three objections and sed contra).
• Augustine, City of God, last book, ch. 29 (as quoted in a. 3).
• Job 19 and 42; Isaiah 6; Ephesians (“eyes of your heart”); Romans (“grace of God, eternal life”); John 17.

Mentioned

• Augustine, On Seeing God, to Paulina.
• Aristotle, On Sense and the Sensible (continuous and time); Physics IV (place); Physics I (confused before distinct); De Anima II (sensibles); Metaphysics XII (God knows Himself); Poetics on Homer’s plot, beginning, middle, end (inferred locus); the bat’s eyes to daylight.
• Boethius, On the Trinity; Gregory the Great (anger and the eye of the soul); Dionysius, Divine Names ch. 4; Psalm 62/63; Shakespeare, Hamlet and Julius Caesar; Thomas on the commandments, “not via syllogistica” (locus not stated).
• Summa Contra Gentiles IV, ch. 15 is listed as a verified text match, but nothing in the transcript names or discernibly reads it.

His questions #

• Whether “in my flesh I will see God” means seeing with the eye of the flesh? No: Job existing in the flesh after the resurrection will see God, with the soul, not through the flesh.
• What is the next meaning of “to see” after the act of the eye? To imagine, to picture (Hamlet’s “mind’s eye”), then to understand.
• Would “eye” carried over to imagination take a new meaning, or be metaphorical? Metaphorical, which is why we say “mind’s eye” and “eye of the soul.”
• Do I see your color, your shape, and a man in the same way? No: color proper sensible, shape common sensible, the man a per accidens sensible known by reason.
• How will the glorified eye see God, according to Augustine? As our eyes see the life of a man: not per se but per accidens, from the mind’s perspicacity and the divine clarity in renewed bodies.
• Is the divine substance seen in imaginary vision? No: a form representing God by some likeness, as Scripture speaks of God through sensible things.
• Is eternal life natural to the created understanding? By grace, not by nature alone (Romans, John 17); the body of a. 4 left for next time.