For that reason Jesus departed from the city, so that when you depart from this world, you may be above the world. Moses, who alone saw God, kept the tabernacle outside the camp when he spoke with God. And while the blood of the sacrificial victims, which was shed for sin, was carried to the altars, the carcasses, however, were burnt beyond the camp, because no one located within the vices of this world puts off sin nor is his blood accepted by God, unless he departs from the filth of this body.

The whole life of the saints and of the blessed, the example of the Lord himself while he was with us in the flesh, are aids to us in this matter. Moses, through long perseverance in fasting and prayer,^[1] received the law and heard the words of God, as a man is inclined to speak to his friend.

Fasting these forty days and nights holy Moses too merited to speak with God, to stand and stay with him and to receive the precepts of the law from his hand. For although this human condition prevented him from seeing God, yet the grace of his fasting drew him into close contact with the Divinity. For to fast frequently is a portion of God’s virtues in ourselves, since God himself always fasts. He is more familiar, intimate and friendly with the person in whom he sees more of his works, as Scripture says: And Moses spoke with God face to face like one speaking with his friend.

Again, in ancient times, in the case of the faithful servant of God, Moses, who was destined to labor on this earth and to rule the chosen people, it would not be surprising that what he asked was granted: that he might see the glory of the Lord, to whom he said, If I have found favor before you, show me yourself openly. He received an answer adapted to present conditions: that he could not see the face of God, because no man could see him and live. Thus God made clear that the vision belongs to another and better life. In addition to that, the mystery of the future church of Christ was foreshadowed by the words of God.

As a result Moses, convinced that God will never be known to human wisdom, says, Reveal yourself to me, and finds himself forced to enter into the darkness where the voice of God was present; in other words, into the unapproachable, imageless, intellectual concepts relating to ultimate reality. For God does not exist in darkness. He is not in space at all. He is beyond space and time and anything belonging to created beings. Similarly he is not found in any section. He contains nothing. He is contained by nothing. He is not subject to limit or division.

Moses says to him, Show me yourself.^[1] You see that then also the prophets saw Christ, that is, in the measure each was able. Show me yourself, that I may see you clearly. But he said, No one sees me and still lives. Therefore, because no one could see the face of the Godhead and live, he assumed the face of human nature, that seeing this we might live. Yet when he wished to show even this with a little majesty, at the time when his face shone as the sun,^[2] the disciples fell to the earth terrified. His bodily countenance shined, not according to the full power of him who wrought it but in the measure the disciples could bear. Now if this terrified them and even thus they could not bear it, how could anyone gaze upon the majesty of the Godhead? It is a great thing which you desire, O Moses, the Lord says; and I approve your insatiable longing and this word will I do^[3] for you, but according to your capacity. Behold, I will set you in the hollow of the rock;^[4] for as you are small, you will lodge in a small place.

The saintly Moses, his faithful servant, showed the flame of this desire of his when he said to God, with whom he spoke face to face as to a friend: If I have found favor before you, show me yourself. What, then? Was it not himself? If it were not himself, he would not have said Show me yourself but Show me God; yet, if he really beheld his very nature and substance, he would have been far from saying Show me yourself. It was himself, therefore, under that aspect in which he willed to appear (but he did not appear in his own very nature) which Moses longed to see, inasmuch as that is promised to the saints in another life. Hence the answer made to Moses is true that no one can see the face of God and live; that is, no one living in this life can see him as fully as he is. Many have seen, but they saw what his will chose, not what his nature formed . . . when he willed . . . not in his nature under which he lies hidden within himself even when he is seen.

This is why love which longs to see God, even if it lacks judgment, does have the spirit of devotion. This is why Moses dares to say, If I have found favor in your sight, show me your face. This is why another man says, Show us your face.^[1] Finally, this is why the Gentiles fashioned idols. In their errors they wanted to see with their eyes what they were worshiping.

Now here please note carefully what I am to say, because of the Jews. For it is our purpose to demonstrate that the Lord, Jesus Christ, was with the Father. The Lord then said to Moses, I will make all my beauty pass before you, and in your presence I will pronounce my name, ‘Lord.’ Being himself the Lord, what Lord does he proclaim? You see how in a veiled manner he was teaching the holy doctrine of Father and Son. Again, in what follows, it is written in express terms: Having come down in a cloud, the Lord stood with him there and proclaimed his name, ‘Lord.’ Thus the Lord passed before him and cried out, ‘The Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious, slow to anger and rich in kindness and fidelity, and guarding justice and continuing his kindness for a thousand generations, and forgiving wickedness and crime and sin.’^[1] And thereafter: Moses at once bowed down to the ground in worship before the Lord proclaiming the Father, and said, O Lord, do come along in our company.^[2]

So if the whole world was being detained in captivity, it was quite in order to say, I will be merciful to whom I will be merciful and show mercy to whom I will show mercy.^[1] If the whole world is in captivity, the whole world in sin, the whole world very justly sentenced to punishment, but part of it set free through mercy, who can say to God, Why do you condemn the world? How can God, the just judge, be indicted when the guilty world is convicted? You’re guilty. If you consider what you owe, it is called punishment, and you cannot in fairness blame the one who inflicts it for exacting from you what you owe. You may blame the debt collector if he seizes what you don’t owe, but who can blame a creditor for demanding payment of a debt, even though you are hoping he will let you off?

What did he here teach us but that as death is the just due of the clay of the first man, it belongs to the mercy of God and not to the merits of man that anyone is saved. And . . . therein there is no injustice with God, because he is not unjust either in forgiving or in exacting the penalty. Mercy is free where just vengeance could be taken. From this it is more clearly shown what a great benefit is conferred on the one who is delivered from a just penalty and freely justified, while another, equally guilty, is punished without injustice on the part of the avenger.

He would not have shown himself to his servant if the sight were such as to bring the desire of the beholder to an end, since the true sight of God consists in this, that the one who looks up to God never ceases in that desire. For he says, You cannot see my face, for man cannot see me and live.

Scripture does not indicate that this causes the death of those who look, for how would the face of life ever be the cause of death to those who approach it? On the contrary, the divine is by its nature life-giving. Yet it is the characteristic of the divine nature to transcend all characteristics. Therefore he who thinks God is something to be known does not have life, because he has turned from true being to what he considers by sense perception to have being.

Hence the answer made to Moses is true that no one can see the face of God and live, that is, no one living in this life can see him as he is. Many have seen, but they saw what his will chose, not what his nature formed, and this is what John said, if he is rightly understood: Dearly beloved, we are the sons of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like to him, because we shall see him as he is;^[1] not as men saw him when he willed under the appearance that he willed; not in his nature under which he lies hidden within himself even when he is seen, but as he is. This is what was asked of him by the one who spoke to him face to face, when he said to him, Show me yourself, but no one can at any time experience the fullness of God through the eyes of the body any more than by the mind itself.

And as a matter of fact the words which the Lord later says to Moses . . . are commonly and not without reason understood to prefigure the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus the back parts are taken to be his flesh, in which he was born of the Virgin and rose again, whether they are called the back parts [posteriora] because of the posteriority of his mortal nature or because he deigned to take it near the end of the world, that is, at a later period [posterius]. But his face is that form of God in which he thought it not robbery to be equal to God the Father,^[1] which no one surely can see and live. . . . After this life, in which we are absent from the Lord,^[2] where the corruptible body is a load upon the soul,^[3] we shall see face to face, as the apostle says.^[4] (For it is said of this life in the Psalms, Indeed all things are vanity: every man living,^[5] and again, For in your sight no man living shall be justified.^[6] In [this] life too, according to John, it has not yet appeared what we shall be. For we know, he said, that when he shall appear we shall be like to him, because we shall see him as he is.^[7] And he certainly meant this to be understood as after this life, when we shall have paid the debt of death and shall have received the promise of the resurrection.) Or [is it] that even now, to whatever extent we spiritually grasp the Wisdom of God, through which all things were made, to that same extent we die to carnal affections. . . . Since we regard this world as dead to us, we also die to this world, and may say as did the apostle: The world is crucified to me and I to the world.^[8]

No one sees the power itself alone, for no one has ever seen God.^[1] And since power is life in repose and knowledge in repose but life and knowledge are actions, if someone were to see God he must die, because the life and knowledge of God remain in themselves and are not in act. But every act is exterior. Indeed, for us to live is to live externally [in a body]; to see God is therefore a death. No one, says the Scripture, has ever seen God and lived. Indeed, like is seen by like. External life therefore must be forgotten, knowledge must be forgotten, if we wish to see God, and this for us is death.

Who shall see my face and live? Scripture said, and rightly so. For our eyes cannot bear the sun’s rays, and whoever turns too long in its direction is generally blinded, so they say. Now if one creature cannot look upon another creature without loss and harm to himself, how can he see the dazzling face of his eternal Creator while covered with the clothing that is this body? For who is justified in the sight of God,^[1] when the infant of but one day cannot be clean from sin^[2] and no one can glory in his uprightness and purity of heart?^[3]

As regards this life, Moses is told, Nobody has seen the face of God and lived. You see, we are not meant to live in this life in order to see that face; we are meant to die to the world in order to live forever in God. Then we won’t sin, not only by deed but not even by desire, when we see that face which beats and surpasses all desires. Because it is so lovely, my brothers and sisters, so beautiful, that once you have seen it, nothing else can give you pleasure. It will give insatiable satisfaction of which we will never tire. We shall always be hungry and always have our fill.

Another point that can trouble us is how it was possible for the very substance of God to be seen by some while still in this life, in view of what was said to Moses: No man can see my face and live, unless it is possible for the human mind to be divinely rapt from this life to the angelic life, before it is freed from the flesh by our common death.

The place is the church, the rock is the Lord, Moses is the multitude of the people of Israel, who did not believe in the Lord when he preached on the earth. So that multitude stood on the rock and beheld the back parts of the Lord as he passed by. After the Lord’s passion and ascension they were led into the church and merited to receive faith in Christ. They did not recognize him face to face on earth but later acknowledged him from behind.

What is this that has happened to me, O friends and initiates and fellow lovers of the truth? I was running to lay hold on God, and thus I went up into the mount and drew aside the curtain of the cloud and entered away from matter and material things. And as far as I could I withdrew within myself. And then when I looked up, I scarce saw the back parts of God, although I was sheltered by the rock, the Word that was made flesh for us. And when I looked a little closer, I saw not the first and unmingled nature known to itself—to the Trinity, I mean; not that which abides within the first veil and is hidden by the cherubim; but only that nature which at last even reaches to us. And that is, as far as I can learn, the majesty or, as holy David calls it, the glory which is manifested among the creatures, which it produced and governs. For these are the back parts of God, which he leaves behind him as tokens of himself, like the shadows and reflection of the sun in the water, which show the sun to our weak eyes, because he is too strong for our power of perception.

Like to these is the saying of God to Moses: Lo, I have set you in a cleft of the rock, and you shall see my back parts. That rock which is Christ is therefore not completely closed but has clefts. But the cleft of the rock is he who reveals God to men and makes him known to them; for no one knows the Father, save the Son.^[1] So no one sees the back parts of God—that is to say, the things that are come to pass in the latter times—unless he be placed in the cleft of the rock, that is to say, when he is taught them by Christ’s own revealing.

For it is well known that he, that is, the one who gave the oracles to Moses, says, You shall not see my face but my back. Certainly these statements must be understood by the aid of that symbolism which is appropriate to the understanding of divine sayings, and those old wives’ fables, which ignorant people invent on the subject of the front and back parts of God, must be utterly rejected and despised. Nor indeed must anyone suppose that we have entertained some impious thought in saying that the Father is not visible even to the Savior, but he must consider the exact meaning of the terms we use in controverting the heretics. For we have said that it is one thing to see and be seen, another to perceive and be perceived or to know and be known. To see and be seen is a property of bodies, which it would certainly not be right to apply either to the Father or to the Son or to the Holy Spirit in their relations one with another. For the Trinity by its nature transcends the limits of vision, although it grants to those who are in bodies, that is, to all other creatures, the property of being seen one by another. But incorporeal and above all intellectual nature is capable of nothing else but to know and be known, as the Savior himself declares when he says, No one knows the Son save the Father, neither does any know the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him.^[1] It is clear then that he did not say, No one sees the Father save the Son but No one knows the Father save the Son.