THE PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE

AND BYZANTINE PATRISTIC TRADITION

By t VLADIMIR LOSSKY

The vision of God "face to face," "as He is," as promised to

the elect in the future age, presents for Christian thought a
problem which, in the course of centuries, has received various
theological solutions. Nevertheless, all these doctrines of the
final vision of God must agree on two points to remain faithful
to the demands of Scriptural authority (I John 3, 2; I Cor. 13,
12):
1) the object of the vision is God Himself and not another
reality which would represent Him;
2) this vision of God is direct, without any intervention in
the created or divine order.
Now, it is precisely the presence of these two conditions in
the patristic doctrines of the vision of the blessed which was
questioned by Gabriel Vasquez, a theologian of scholastic for-
mation, too attached to the doctrinal landscape and particular
terminology of one school to admit the truth of solutions
obtained by other means and expressed in terms having another
value; and too honest to be content with a facile reconcilation
between patristic doctrines and the theology with which he was
familiar. The way in which the question of the visio beata was
posed among the Fathers at the end of the sixteenth century
and disputed in the course of the first half of the seventeenth
century by theologians was not without importance for
patristic studies of more recent times. In particular, the last
phase of these discussions concerning the doctrines of the face
to face vision which might have seemed suspect in Greek
tradition, contributed in large part to the formation of an
unfavorable prejudice as regards fourteenth century Byzantine
theology, a prejudice which holds firm even today in the West.
I shall allow myself to retrace briefly the more salient
moments of this long controversy by theologians concerning
the vision of God in the patristic tradition. We shall then seek
to determine among certain Greek Fathers some doctrinal traits
231
232 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
which might characterize theological conceptions of the face to
face vision, where the moment of the knowledge of God
κατ9 οοσίαν does not intervene.
The controversy about the beatific vision in the theology of
the Church Fathers was opened by the learned Jesuit Gabriel
Vasquez (1557-1604), who taught theology at Rome and
Madrid. In his Commentaries and Discussion on the first part of
the Summa Theologica,1 while treating the question of the
visio Dei sicuti est, he notes (on the word of an author whom he
calls Armacanus) that the Armenians and the Greeks of a not
too distant time had professed an erroneous doctrine according
to which a clear vision of God even in His essence would be
refused to the blessed; the latter could not see God in any other
way than by a sort of image or light coming from Him
(tantum per quandam illius similitudinem, aut lucem ab eo
derivatam). According to Alphonsus de Castro, the author of a
voluminous refutation of all heresies, Abelard was supposed to
have begotten the same error in the West. His aberration was
supposedly communicated to Amaury de Bene through Arnaud
Brescia during the reign of Innocent III, the period in which
the Albigensian heretics had also received it. 2 Without attempt­
ing to defend Abelard, Vasquez wonders a moment about St.
Bernard's silence before such a grave error. But the opinions of
a disreputable philosopher do not disturb him any more than
the doctrines of the Armenians or the schismatic Greeks:
"What is important (quod caput est) is that among the greatest
Church Fathers several seem to have been rather close to this
opinion" (non longe ab hac sententia fuisse videntur nonnulli
ex gravioribus Ecclesiae Patribus).

1. Commentariorum ac disputationum in primam partem S. Thomae t. I

(Antverpiae 1621), disp. XXXVII, pp. 195-200.
2. The fantastic description of the history of an error, which Alphone de
Castro wanted to attribute, in the first place, to Abelard (Alfonsi a
Castro, Zamorensis, Ordinis Minorum regularis Observantiae, Provinciae
sane ti Jacobi, adversus omnes Haereses, Libri XIIII. -- Antverpiae, in
aedibus Johannis Steelsii, anno MDLVI, fol. 90v--91 r), (Chronicon
Pontificum et Imperatorum, in MGH. SS. XXII, 438): Item dixit
(Amalericus), quod sicut lux non videtur in se, sed in aere, sic Deus nee
ab angelo nec ab homine videtur in se, sed tantum in creaturis. . . Qui
omnes errores inveniuntur in libro, qui intitulatur peri phiseon. Cf. G.
C. Capelle, Amaury de Bene (Biblioteque thomiste, XVI, Paris 1932),
pp. 52-53; 65; 105-108.
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 233
How was Vasquez led to make so troubling a statement? He
had before him a text by St. Thomas to explicate, an article
from the Summa Theologica3 where these arguments, contrary
to the thesis of the vision of God per essentiam, had been
borrowed from two Greek patristic authorities: St. John
Chrysostom and the Pseudo-Dionysius, Chrysostom's text was
drawn from his Fifteenth Homily on the Gospel of St. John and
refers to 1, 18: "No one has ever seen God." He says (PG 59,
col. 98): "Neither the prophets, the angels, nor even the arch-
angels have seen what God is by Himself. In reality, how could
that which is of a created nature see that which is uncreated?"
Dionysius' text is a paraphrase of the negative passage of the
Parmenides, (142a, end of the first hypothesis about the One)
which the author of The Divine Names ( 1 , 5: PG 3, col. 593a)
applies to the superessential Thearchy: "There is no sensation,
image, opinion, reasoning, or knowledge of it." St. Thomas
replies that these two authorities refer rather to the impossi-
bility of adequately comprehending rather than the impossi-
bility of knowing the divine essences (Dicendum quod utraque
auctoritas loquitur de visione comprehensionis). In what con-
cerns Dionysius' authority, Vasquez fully admits this solution
of the difficulty: having been explicated by the Angelic Doctor
and other medieval Latin theologians, the most daring of the
apophatic texts by the presumed disciple of St. Paul could not
alarm anyone in the West. Chrysostom's case was different:
Did St. Thomas have sufficient proof to interpret his doctrine
of the vision of God correctly? The context in the passage of
this Greek Father quoted in the Summa and especially the
study of the Homilies on the Unknowable as well as other
studies undertaken by Vasquez in the patristic writings against
the Anomeans, lead him to believe that the interpretation sug-
gested by St. Thomas was untenable. "We can prove with
evidence," he said, "that one should not interpret the (negative)
doctrine of these Fathers in the same sense of the vision which
the Scholastics call comprehensive, but rather in the sense (of
the impossibility) of any clear and intuitive notion of God as
He is."
Before this obvious error, which brings the fourth century

3. I a , q. 12, a. I: Utrum aliquis intellects creatus possit Deum per

essentiam videre?
234 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Fathers close to the Armenians' impiety, Vasquez will go as far

as to justify, to a certain extent, Eunomius' thesis which
sustained the total comprehensibility of God's essence for the
human mind. "Eunomius was not, for all that, so foolish (nee
enim ita amens fuit Eunomius) as to claim that the notion that
he could have of God might be the same as the notion that God
has of Himself." The equality of knowledge which Eunomius
supported against the Fathers would refer solely to the object.
All he meant was that there is nothing which might formally be
in God and might be the object of divine knowledge without
also being known by him, Eunomius. But one must also
concede this to the blessed who see God as He is. Actually,
then, all that which is formally in God is God, being identical
with His essence; thus, nothing which is in God and is the
object of His knowledge would remain hidden for the blessed.
By thus transposing Eunomius' theological epistemology onto
the scheme of the intuitive vision of a future age, Vasquez
welds this rationalist optimism of the anomena onto the
Scholastic doctrine of the vision of the divine essence, and
reproaches the Fathers who took issue with Eunomius for
having denied the possibility of seeing God "as He is."
The list of Fathers who were supposed to have professed this
error grows as Vasquez pursues his patristic study. After St,
John Chrysostom come those who preceded him in the anti-
Eunomian polemic: SS. Basil and Gregory of Nyssa. But one
must also add to this St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Epiphanius, St.
Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret, St. John Damascene, and
others less important. Alone among the always suspect Greek
Fathers, Origen, St. Gregory Nazianzus, and Dionysius would
have professed a completely orthodox doctrine of the face to
face vision of God. Nor did the Latin Fathers escape Vasquez'
accusations: according to the Spanish theologian, St. Ambrose,
St. Jerome, Primasius, and St. Isidore of Seville also have
refused the vision of God sicuti est to the blessed.
In the face of such reproaches levelled against the Church
Fathers, other theologians sought to defend the accused.
Francis Suarez (1548-1617) finds it unlikely that so manifest an
error, contrary to the Scriptures, might have been received by
the common agreement of so many Fathers. This would be in
effect an "intolerable error" (intolerabilis lapsus) which he
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 235
refuses a priori to admit in the patristic tradition. Thus, Suarez
explains all the "obscure passages" concerning the "clear
vision" among the Fathers quoted by Vasquez in the Scholastic
sense of the impossibility of a comprehensive vision of the
divine essence. While recognizing all the while the difficulties
presented by Chrysostom's texts (Chrysostomus obscurius et
difficilius loquitur), Suarez remains no less convinced that with
a bit of good will one can overcome all the obstacles of the
Περί Ακατάληπτου, Wanting to defend several other Fathers
not mentioned by Vasquez against all possible accusations,
Suarez only succeeds in rendering suspect two more: SS.
4
Cyprian and Athanasius.
Another of St. Thomas' commentators, the Jesuit theologian
Diego Ruiz de Montoya (1562-1632), almost gave a new turn
to the questions raised by Vasquez. Having noticed that the
same Fathers who seem to have denied the vision of God
sicuti est in certain passages of their works allow it in others,
Ruiz wonders if the correct interpretation of patristic thought
is possible without a preliminary study of the modes of
theological expression proper to the Church Fathers. He would
have wanted, as did Suarez, to interpret these doctrines of the
face to face vision of God, limiting their negative declarations
to the impossibility of a visio comprehensiva; on the other
hand, like Vasquez, he realized that the Scholastic distinction
between clear knowledge and comprehension, applied to the
patristic texts, does not resolve all difficulties. But Ruiz'
attitude is opposite to that of Vasquez: the latter, defending
Eunomius against the Fathers, overly approximated the knowl­
edge of God with comprehension; whereas Ruiz will seek to
dissociate even more these two moments. Thus the Disputatio
Via of his commentary on St. Thomas will be entitled:
Utrum sola divina seientia sit comprehensiva Dei. 5 Ruiz is sure
that the doctrines of the Fathers, so difficult to interpret, do
not refuse the face to face vision of God simpliciter et omni
modo to the blessed. But in order to recapture the patristic

4. Commentarla ac Disputationes in I a m Partem Divi Thomae: De Deo

uno et trino. Cap. VII: An Deus sit invisibilis in se et in substantia sua
respectu omnis intellectus creati (Moguntiae 1607), pp. 45-49.
5. Commentarii ac Disputationes de sciçntia, de ideis, de ventate ac de
vita Dei. Ad primam partem S. Thomae, a q. 14 usque ad 18 (Lut-
etiae Parisiorum 1629), pp. 44-60.
 236 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

"mode" which would correspond to the vision-knowledge, it is

necessary to define exactly what vision-comprehension means
for the Scholastics. To understand is to know perfectly; now,
knowledge of a thing cannot be called perfect without the
thing being known in the very measure that it is knowable.
Thus only the uncreated knowledge that God has of Himself is
comprehension, that is to say, knowledge adequate to the
cognizance of the uncreated object. The beatific vision, since it
remains a created knowledge, can never reach the perfection of
a comprehensive knowledge of God. Diego Ruiz concludes:
absolute loquendo, divinae scientiae et visionis beatificae
formale objectum non est prorsus idem in ratione cognoscibilis
et objecti. Thus, wanting to defend the Fathers against
Vasquez' accusations, Ruiz adopts a method which is contrary
to that of Suarez: instead of interpreting the texts of the
ancient authors in the Scholastic sense, he seeks to reform in
St. Thomas the doctrine of divine incomprehensibility, practi-
cally touching on a kind of agnosticism: inasmuch as it is
possible to know Him perfectly, God is not an object absolutely
identical for Himself and for the created intellects which enjoy
the vision of His essence.
It would take too long to list all the theologians (John de
Lugo, Nicholas Isambert, and others) who took part in these
debates: what has been said shows well enough the failure of
the attempts to interpret successfully the patristic texts while
remaining in the usual framework of sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century Scholastic theology. By trying to reconcile the Fathers
and the Scholastics, people have attributed doctrines to one or
the other which they never professed. This was very well under-
stood by Denis Pétau (or Petavius, 1583-1652) who was an
historian as well as a theologian. In his Opus de theologies
dogmatibus,6 Pétau attacks Ruiz de Montoya for having badly
interpreted Thomas. If comprehension were a knowledge
identical to the knowability of the thing known, not only divine
essence but created substances as well would be incomprehensi-
ble to us. Comprehension refers only to the extent of the thing
known; this allows us to maintain in the case of the vision of
the divine essence a perfect identity of the object of infinite

6. See De Deo Deique proprietatibus, lib. VII, in quo de Dei visione

agitur(ed. J. B. Thomas, Bar-le-Duc 1864), pp. 553-605.
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 237

comprehension of God and the final knowledge of the elect.

The two are "representative" of the object of "objective" as
the philosophers would say, taking this term from the province
of the Scholastic theologians.7 However, the knowledge of the
blessed would never be able adaequare amplitudinem rei
cognitae. The patristic texts which seem to deny the possibility
of knowing God ought to be interpreted proceeding from this
principle. However, while forcing himself to make the Fathers
and the Scholastics agree, Pétau refused to do them violence,
"twisting their necks" (obtorto quodammoda collo, vique iis
illata); such a method would be totally foreign to the task of
an honest and prudent theologian as well as to his own habits
and ways (quod ut ab officio probi ac prudentis theologi, sic a
meis moribus et institutis alienissimum est).
Did Denis Pétau succeed in putting to an end the trouble
caused by Vasquez' declaration by showing the true sense of the
patristic doctrines of the face to face vision? If he did not do
violence to the first-century Fathers by imposing upon them at
all costs the framework of Scholastic theology, he did not dare
either to adopt fully their way of stating the problem of the
vision of God by going to the very core of their thought in
order to render it understandable. Remaining at the level of the
superficial, he sought, above all, to save the honor of several of
the most eminent Greek and Latin Fathers whom Vasquez had
discredited. He succeeds in this more or less, not without
admitting several times his extreme discomfort, for example,
when confronted with St. John Chrysostom's Homilies on the
Unknowable. In the face of certain Greek and Syrian theolo-
gians, Pétau found himself obliged to renounce all attempts at
an interpretation unfavorable to the Scholastic tradition. He
discovered yet another author, Clement of Alexandria, who
would certainly have professed a doctrine of the vision of the
divine essence. In a word, Patau's list of theologians who are
not in accord with good doctrine is less impressive than
Vasquez' list. It contains only little known names or people

7. Despite this unkind allusion to Descartes, it can be asked whether, in

his turn, Petavius has not "usurped" the modern sense of the words
"objectum", "objective", "repraesentativus" in the Third Meditation
(Oeuvres completes, ed. Ch. Adam and P. Tannery, vol. VII, pp. 40-
42;vol.IX,pp. 31-33).
238 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
more or less involved in the Nestorian affair. They are Titus of
Bostra, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyrus, Basil of
Seleucia, Oecumenius, Anastasius Sinaita, Theophylact of Bul-
garia.
Here Petavius, undoubtedly unsatisfied by the results of his
patristic study, abandoned the ancient authors who could have
denied, obscure vel evidentius, the intuitive vision of the divine
essence in order to execute a diversionary maneuver in the
camp of more recent theologians among whom he wanted to
find a manifest error regarding the subject of the vision of God
as He is. These are the Armenian heretics and especially the
Byzantine schismatics of the sixteenth century, along with the
"coryphaeus of their new faction," a certain Gregory Palamas
whose ridiculous doctrines (ridicula dogmata) on divine at-
tributes had already been expressed above (in the first book of
the same work by Pétau, pp. 145-160). The "honest and
prudent theologian" has no scruples about doing violence to a
doctrine in which he foresees the source of error about the
vision of God for which he had reproached the Armenians in
1641. It is all the more surprising that this scholar and author
of several works, especially devoted to questions of chronology,
should completely neglect the science of dates, letting it be
understood that the Armenians mentioned by Vasquez would
have undergone the influence of Palamas' new doctrine. Pétau
could not have been unaware of who the "Armacan" was whom
Vasquez cited as the source of his information on the Ar-
menians; it was Richard Fitz-Ralph, who was Archbishop of
Armagh between 1347-1360. In 1341-1342 Fitz-Ralph was at
Avignon where Benedict XII assigned him to examine the
doctrine of the Armenians who had come at this time to seek
an agreement with the Church of Rome. Richard Fitz-Ralph, a
rather well-known theologian, was an "Averroizing Augus-
tinian." For someone who wished to identify the intellectual
agent of Averroes with God, the problem of the intuitive vision
of the divine essence must have had a particular interest. Thus
Richard gave to the study of this article a rather important
place in his Summa in quaestionibus Armenorum.8 Although

8. The only edition of this Summa in 19 books, edited in the form of a

dialogue between the teacher and the disciple is rather rare: Summa
Domini Armacani in questionibus Armenorum, noviter impressa et
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 239

he attributes the negation of a clear and intuitive vision of the

divine nature especially to "modern Greek doctors" (Tenent
graecorum doctores moderni et etiam armenorum aliqui,
etc.), Richard Fitz-Ralph could not have had in view the
teaching of St. Gregory Palamas. In fact, the first Palamite
Council was meeting in Constantinople in 1341, at the moment
when the Armenian theologians were arriving in Avignon. The
last possible date for the beginning of the Hesychast con-
troversy is 1337. If one wants to see in "Palamism" a new
doctrine alien to the theological tradition of Byzantium, one
could not possibly claim that it had so rapid a diffusion outside
of Byzantine orthodoxy in Armenian Monophysite circles.
Richard Fitz-Ralph's Graecorum doctores moderni had to
belong to a period prior to the debates on the Light of Tabor;
it was undoubtedly the thirteenth-century Byzantine theolo-
gians (probably contemporaneous with the Council of Lyons)
whose doctrine of the face to face vision would have impressed
the Westerners. In any case, if it was necessary to look among
the Greek Orthodox for the source of the opinion of the
Monophysite Armenians censured in 1341, one would find
himself obliged to go much further back in history, perhaps to
the great centuries of patristic theology before Chalcedon.
Gabriel Vasquez was not wrong in conducting his study as far
back as the first-century Fathers. His error consisted in the
narrowness of his judgement regarding the doctrines of the
vision of God face to face in a tradition which remained un-
familiar to him. The disputes which followed his declaration
were distorted by unsuccessful attempts to reconcile the
Fathers and the Scholastics. After a controversy which lasted
almost fifty years, the problem posed by Vasquez remained un-
answered: instead of resolving the difficulties of interpreting
the patristic teachings, Pétau merely shifted the problem by
casting at the sixteenth-century Byzantine theologians the
accusation of having broken with the patristic tradition of a

correcta a. . Johanne Sudoris (Parisiis), venales habentur in vico divi

Iacobi sub Lilio aureo (1511). Book 14, where Richard Fitz-Ralph
treats the question which interesta us (fol. 109vb-118vb) is presented
in this way: Incipit liber decimus-quartus in quo tractabitur questio
grecorum de visione nuda et clara divine essentie a veris beatis. Et
habet viginti capitula.
240 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

sound doctrine about the vision of God "as He is." Neverthe­

less, the long debate by theologians remains very instructive for
all those who try not t o confuse the unity of Christian tradi­
tion, rich with different theological perspectives, with the
doctrinal uniformity of a schematized teaching.
In order to be able to reinstate in their doctrinal contexts
the various solutions of the problem of the face to face vision
of God which occurred in the Byzantine patristic tradition, it
would have been necessary to study in its totality the thought
of each of the theologians discussed in the course of the con­
troversy raised by Vasquez. Therefore, our task will be limited
to several remarks which will be only a sketch, a program of
studies to develop rather than a completely finished description
which would act as a positive answer to Vasquez' negative
study. In the five paragraphs which follow I shall touch briefly
on the different doctrinal aspects which come into play when
one wishes to interpret the vision of God in the patristic
thought of the Greek tradition.
1. It will first be necessary to say several words on the
subject of the anti-Eunomian polemic of SS. Basil and Gregory
of Nyssa. Here the problem of the face to face vision of God
was not posed directly. It was rather a question for Eunomius
of a possible conceptual knowledge of the divine essence,
identified with the Father and expressible by the concept of
άγεννηοια which could have the positive sense of aseity. The
Cappadocians, attacking Eunomius's intellectual optimism,
wished to find in this theory of knowledge, where the seminal
rationales of the Stoics became the essential names of things
sown in the human soul by the Creator-God of Genesis, a
philosophy of language very close to Cratylus's in a dialogue
which bears this name (Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium
XII: PG 45, 1045c). Resuming, in part, Socrates's arguments,
Basil and Gregory maintain against the essential revelation of
things in name-concepts, the thesis which lends a positive value
to the part of convention in the imposing of names. The names
correspond to the properties rather than to the very essences of
the things which we seek to know. In this context, the knowl­
edge of things κατ' ουσίαν , so dear to Eunomius, had by
necessity to reduce created reality, while knowledge
κατ* έπίνοιαν defended by the Cappadocians, allowed the dis-
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 241

covery in each being of an inexhaustible richness in concepts,

irreducible to an adequate notion of essence. The sense of the
term ουσία in St. Basil was not understood either by his
accuser or by his Scholastic defenders: for Basil (and even more
for his brother), to know a thing by its essence is to replace the
knowledge of the real object by the knowledge of a concept.
There is still an aspect of the same problem, expressed particu­
larly by Gregory of Nyssa; our mind discovers the properties of
things; upon this we base their names to the extent that this is
crucial to our life (Idem: col. 949b; cf. 1041d); God alone
knows created essences: if we could see the essential founda­
tions of created beings, we would be amazed by the creative
power which produces them (Ibid: 939: In Hexaemeron:
44, 73 ab and 76 ab). The knowledge οΐ/σιωδης of created
beings surpasses our cognitive faculties.9
In the writings of St. Basil, as in his brother, the impossi­
bility of knowing created essences did not render knowledge of
the things of this world less direct. Similarly, in affirming that
God makes Himself known in His power (δύναμις), or in his
works ( ένέργιαι ), while essential knowledge of Him remains
inaccessible to created beings (S. Basil, Contra Eunomium,
I, 6: PG 29, 521-524; II, 4: 577-580; II, 32, 648; Ep. 234,
To Amphilochius: PG 32, 869. - S. Gregory of Nyssa, On the
Beatitudes, horn. VI: PG 44, 1269), neither Basil nor Gregory
made impossible for the blessed the vision of God "as He is".
The refusal of a vision of the ουσία points out only the impos­
sibility of knowing God in His absolute transcendence, outside
of all relation with created beings, beyond his revelation in the

9. I will allow myself to point out here, in Joseph Pieper's article, "De
l'élément négatif dans la philosophie de S. Thomas d'Aquin" (in Dieu
vivant 20, p. 43) this instructive passage: "According to St. Thomas, it
is inherent in the essence of things as created beings that their knowl-
edge cannot be exhausted by a finite understanding, because the cause
of this ability to know (luminousness, visibility) at the same time has
necessarily as an effect making these things unfathomable." (The
italicized words were written this way by the author of the article
cited). If it is so, the "Thomism" of Thomas was, perhaps, closer to the
thought of the Cappadocians than to the eclectic "Thomism" of the
seventeenth-century theologians. There are such regroupings of great
doctrine which one suddenly discovers when one is not seeking to have
them agree at any price.
242 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
creative and redemptive economy. As the consubstantial Trinity
is independent of its economic relations with the created world,
the *'theologians" will have to speak of the ουσία ; but they
will only be able to do so "tropologically" and "allegorically",
guiding their thought towards a superior sense of understanding
(S. Basil, Contra Eunomium, I, 4: 29, 544).
Here we recall the patristic idea of Θεολογία and of
οικονομία a duality of aspects in theognosy which is very
important for understanding the true sense of the distinction
outlined by the Cappadocians between the inaccessible ουσία
and the δύναμις or ένεργια which "descends even to us". We
are aware of the importance in Byzantine theology, properly
so-called, after Pseudo-Dionysius (especially in the fourteenth-
century theologians), that St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa's
δυνάμεις and ένέργειαι were to have. In contradistinction to
Eunomius who separated !vlpyia from divine ουσία to attri­
bute it to the Λόγος, the only being immediately created by the
Άγεννητος (Apotôgy: PG 30, 859), St. Basil maintained the
inseparability of these two moments: if it were otherwise, God
would remain unmanifest and unknown in his relations with
created beings. But at the same time, Basil insisted on the
necessity of distinguishing them: otherwise, the relation to
created beings would determine in some way the ουσία of the
Trinity, doing away with the absolute nature of its transcen­
dence (Contra Eunomium II, 32: PG 29,649).
The two aspects "theology" and "economy", being in­
separable, one is manifested by the other, and since the
Incarnation of the Son is the central moment of the economy,
one cannot know the Trinity outside of the Incarnation. The
face to face vision of God will thus be for St. Basil a trinitarian
revelation - of the Father, by the Son, in the Holy Spirit as well
as the "theoria" of the Person of the incarnate Son. He says in
the "Treatise on the Holy Spirit" (IX, 23: PG 32, 109b;
Sources chrétiennes, p. 147): "Like the sun when it meets a
pure eye, (the Holy Spirit) will show you in Himself the Image
of the Invisible. In the beatific contemplation of this Image,
you will see the awesome beauty of the Archetype." The Image
is the Son; the Invisible, the Archetype - the Father. One
could cite several other similar texts 1 0 applicable to the mystic
10. Cited in a note in the edition of Sources chr., loc. cit.; e.g., this passage
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 243
contemplation as well as to the final vision of God for the
blessed. Without being able to dwell here on the special sense
that "face to face" receives in St. Gregory of Nyssa. I will
point out, however, the moment of "shadow" and of "un­
knowing" which for him characterizes the essential transcen­
dence of God. The consciousness of God's transcendental
nature incites the created vous to go beyond itself in an
"infinite progression" of the deifying union without end. This
negative moment will be developed and systematized by
Pseudo-Diony sius.
2. Another doctrinal element which, in Eastern patristic
tradition, is part of the problem of the face to face vision
makes itself felt especially in spirituality. This is the moment
of the divine Light.
The great Cappadocians criticized in Eunomius' doctrine,
not only an Arian simplification of Origen's "mystic spiritual­
ism," but also (indirectly) Origenism itself which connected
him to the theocosmology of moderate Platonism. On the
spiritual plane, Origenist intellectualism was represented by
Evagrius of Pontus, whose considerable contribution to Byzan­
tine spirituality can be measured - and appreciated - especially
by those who have forced themselves to overcome the latent
Origenism in his doctrine of the human vous ·
Like Origen, Evagrius does not allow going beyond the vous
in the experience of the union with God. If he speaks of the
απέραντο s αγνωσία it is neither as a Gregory of Nyssa nor
later as a Dionysius would have, in the sense of a mystic
11
apophasis. Father Hausherr showed very well that this ex­
pression in Evagrius must signify the exclusion of all knowledge
which is not knowledge of God. Finding itself in the state of
pure prayer, the vous γυμνό$ finds at the same time the light
of the Trinity of which it is the natural receptacle. This
yvccKTis ουσιωδη$ is due, of course, to grace, but it does not
presuppose any the less the idea of a certain connection
between the intellectual and the divine in the Origenist back-
from Letter 226 (PG 32, 849a): "Illumined by the Spirit, our spirit
fixes its gaze on the Son and in the Latter, as in an Image, contemplates
the Father."
11. In the article "Ignorance infinie" in Orientalia Christiana periodica
(Rome 1936), II, nn. 3-4, pp. 351-352.
244 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

ground of Evagrius' thought. The uniform character of the

"essential gnosis," always equal to itself without growths or
reductions, permits one to compare it to the intellectual
κατάληψη which the elect will have, according to Evagrius, in
the "face to face gnosis" (Pseudo-Basil, Ep. VIII: PG 32,
257a), an accomplished knowledge which the angels do not yet
possess and which Christ Himself could not have in His humani­
ty. We understand why, in the course of the discussion raised
by Vasquez, St. Basil's defenders, wishing to attribute to him a
doctrine of the vision of the divine essence, sought to base
themselves especially on the eighth Letter of Pseudo-Basil,
which is in reality a writing of Evagrius.
The theme of the divine light is treated by Evagrius in the
framework of an intellectualist mystique. Thus, if his God
transcends sensible creation, one cannot see how He could also
be transcendent in relation to the world of created intelligences.
The Platonic dualism is introduced into pre-Byzantine spiritual­
ity and one has the impression that the Evagrian Trinity with its
essential light is placed in the realm of the intelligible, like a sun
of the κόσμο ς νοητός.
Judging from what we know about the Messalian sect, their
doctrine of the vision of the essence of God by corporeal eyes
would represent a sort of antithesis of the Origenist spiritualism.
Thus, there would have been two opposing currents in the
fourth century: on one side, the keen penetrating spiritualism
of Evagrius, with its divine intelligible light; on the other side,
the mystic materialism of the Messalian sect, based on stoic
monism, vulgarized and debased, with the tangible luminosity
of the Divinity. Orthodox spirituality will seek to transcend in
the notion of the divine light the opposition of "tangible light"
and "intelligible light," two categories which belong equally to
created reality.
The Spiritual Homilies of St. Macarius (or of the Pseudo-
Macarius) which one wished wrongly to see as a Messalian
writing, speak of an immaterial "divine fire" which is not, how­
ever, spiritual in the intellectualist sense of Evagrius. In the
affective mystical doctrine of "experienced grace," the ex­
perience of the light does not properly belong either to the
senses or to the intellectual faculties, but rather to the
consciousness of the human subject. We can say the same thing
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 245

of St. Diadochus of Pontus who is perhaps closer to Evagrius

than the author of the Spiritual Homilies had been. The proper
object of the face to face vision for Diadochus ("Vision,"
answer 21: Sources chrétiennes edition, p. 17s) as for Macarius
(XVII, 4: PG 34, 625), is Christ, the God-Man, in His eternal
glory.
The stages of overstepping the intellectualist limits of Origen-
Evagrius in the problem of the vision of God can be found in St.
Maximus (Schol. in N.D. I, 4: PG 4, 197), in St. John Damas-
cene, and finally in St. Symeon the New Theologian, notably in
his doctrine of the uncreated light. 12 The distinction between
"tangible light," the "intelligible light," and the "uncreated
light," the latter transcending the opposition of the first two,
this distinction will be clearly expressed in the Hagioritic Tome
attributable to St. Gregory Palamas. 13 The mystical doctrine of
the divine Light will receive here its theological foundation.
While pointing out this second doctrinal moment which is
part of the problem of the face to face vision in the patristic
tradition of Byzantium, we are leaving open the question of
whether among the fourteenth-century Armenians, a vision of
the light replaces the direct intuition of God sicuti est, as
Richard Fitz-Ralph, and after him Vasquez and others had
claimed. Let us note, however, that the response of the
Armenian theologians (Mansi XXV, 1197) allows the supposi-
tion that scholars did not know how to interpret accurately
their doctrine of the face to face vision of God in 1341.
3. Let us now consider another aspect of the problem,
especially that aspect which made certain passages of St. John
Chrysostom, pointed out by Vasquez and Petau, so hard to
interpret in the sense of a direct vision of God "as He is." We
are speaking of the christological implications of the question
which received a specific meaning among the theologians of
Antioch.
We shall leave aside the negative moment in St. John
Chrysostom, developed especially in the five homilies "On the

12. For a more exact idea of St. Symeon's doctrine, one should consult the
critical edition of his works, prepared by Father Basil Krivoshein.
13. As it appears in his letter to Akindynos, published by John Meyendorff
in Theologia, vol. 24 (Athens, 1952).
246 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

Unknowable," 1 4 and in his bare essence (ουσία γυμνή) or

simple nature (φύσις απλή). This expression does not merely
have a moral sense here; it receives its theological, value when
one compares it to the term οικονομία indicating the workings
of Providence in the government of the world. Now these divine
"economies" remained in part unknown to even the angelic
powers (On the Unknowable IV: PG 48, 729) who could only
learn them with us, and thanks to us, by the Incarnation of the
Son (col. 730), this "economy" par excellence (ibid. V: col.
738d), the συγκατάβαση strictly speaking. Thus, according to
Chrysostom, before the Word became flesh, the angels could
not see God otherwise than in their thought ( κατάδιά-
νοιανοψις), "imagining" (φαντάζονται) in their pure and
watchful natures (On St. John XV, 2: PG 59, 100). The vision
of God is thus conditioned for created things by the Incarna­
tion. It is in this christological context that St. John
Chrysostom comments on the "face to face" of I Corinthians
13, 12: "Then I will know as I was known" would mean for
him: " I will know by coming towards God as God came
towards me." (In Ep. ad Cor. I: PG 6 1 , 287-288). If knowledge
"in part" ( έκ μέρους ) refers to the "economies" or divine dis­
pensations, this does not mean that the perfect, total knowledge
of God will be knowledge of God's actual essence. We will know
totally, fully, the divine economy realized in the Incarnation of
the Son. As to the exact gnosis (την ακριβή) or comprehension
(κατάληψη) of the essence, that belongs only to the Son and
the Holy Spirit, both of the same essence as the Father. Created
knowledge will continue to depend on the Unigenitus who
"expliqua" ( Ιξηγήσατο John I, 18) the invisible God (On St.
John XV, 2 : P G 5 9 , 1 0 0 ) .
Here there intervenes a very important theme: the theme of
the Person of the Son as "Image" of the Father. In order to be
a perfect Image of the Invisible, the Son must be Himself
invisible in His divine nature. If the Image of the Invisible
becomes visible to the angels and to men when it becomes
incarnate, it is certain that this manifestation of God "in the
flesh" is not "according to essence." Chrysostom does not make

14. See on this subject Fr. Jean Daniélou's study in the introduction to
Περί Άποκαλήπτου , Sources chrétiennes.
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 247

explicit the trinitarian moment of this theology of the Image;

it remains in the strict christological framework. However,
since it is the image itself which becomes known in its Incarna-
tion, the Person of the Son, having become visible, makes the
Father known. Here below, during Christ's earthly life, the
"Image of God Invisible" did not manifest itself in His
humanity except "by reflection and by enigmas." Even when
He was transformed before His disciples, Christ showed them
only an "obscure figure of future bliss" adapted for mortal
eyes. But in a time to come, the blessed will see Christ face to
face in the fullness of His divine glory. Since God manifested
.Himself by becoming man, we will see God in the humanity of
Christ.
One could say that this christological conception of the
vision of God is common to the theologians of the Antiochian
tradition. However, the moment of the "invisible Image"
become visible by the Incarnation, the moment of the Logos-
Image, which safeguards orthodoxy in the writings of St. John
Chrysostom, is missing in Theodore of Mopsuestia: for him, it
is solely the man Jesus who is the image of the invisible
Divinity. (On the Epistle to the Colossians I, 15: PG 66,
928c). It is the same for Theodoret of Cyrus. The unchange-
ableness of the divine Word in the Incarnation entails the
absolute invisibility of God. One could not then speak of a
"syncatabasis" in the hypostatis sense: the divine Person of the
Son is not revealed in becoming human, but remains hidden
under the veil of human flesh which it uses to show its presence
by signs which are above all Christ's miracles (Eranistes,
First Dialogue on the Immutable: PG 83, col. 45-52). If
Theodoret affirms that at a future time the Lord Himself will
be seen face to face, this means that "the faithful as well as the
infidels will see the nature which He had taken of us adored by
all creatures" (On the Epistle to the Ephesians II: PG 82, 521).
This is a vision of Christ's humanity, nothing more. Among the
Nestorianizing representatives of the theology of Antioch, a
faulty Christology, we must admit, makes the doctrine of the
face to face vision of God impossible. For once, perhaps,
Vasquez was right.
4. The Christ-centeredness of the Antiochian theologians has
a limiting character: even when it does not replace the knowl-
248 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

edge of God "as He is" by a vision of Christ's humanity, this

exclusive attachment to the "economic" moment of the In­
carnation hardly allows making explicit other doctrinal aspects
of the problem. But they are not rejected because of this. Thus,
Chrysostom's very sober exegesis - " t o know God as He knew
us, that is, to come towards Him as He came towards u s " --
implies that the descent of the divine Word become man makes
possible the raising of man towards God. For the Alexandrian
school this is the theme of deification: yet another aspect of
the problem of the vision of God about which something must
be said.
The christological moment in the doctrine of the face to face
vision is not the exclusive idea of the Antiochian theologians:
it is no less important for their great opponent, St. Cyril of
Alexandria. But the role of the Holy Spirit, agent of deification,
made prominent in Cyril's thought, gives his doctrine of the
final beatitude a richness unknown to the theologians of
Antioch. If the Incarnation of the Son allows us to become in
turn "sons of God," - not by nature, but by participation
( μέθεξις ) - it is up to the Holy Spirit to make us like the Son, a
unique perfect Image of the Father (On St. John XVII,
18-19, PG 74, 541d). We become like the Son - and "sons by
participation" - by participating in the divine nature through
the Holy Spirit (Treasure, ass. 34: PG 75, 597c). To be deified
is to receive in created nature the beauty of the divine nature,
(Ibid., ass. 33: 572c; ass. 34: 609a; cf. On the Trinity, dialogue
VII: 75, 1089) by allowing oneself to be penetrated by
Divinity, like cloth which receives the perfume of aromatic
essences (On St. John XVI, 24: PG 74, 452d-453a). Progressive
deification accompanied by a more and more perfect knowledge
of God, is accomplished in the sacramental life. The perfect
gnosis of Christ is obtained by the baptism and the illumination
of the Holy Spirit. The body must have a role in the spiritual
life in union with God; this appears especially in the Sacrament
of the Eucharist which is, for Cyril, a corporeal union with
Christ (On St. John VI, 54: PG 73, 577bc). It is the Holy
Spirit, source of the spiritual life, Who makes us conscious of
God's presence in us (Ibid., XVII, 18-19: 75, 545a). He is thus
the principle of gnosis. St. Cyril even calls Him the "Mind of
Christ," the vous Χρίστου which, according to St. Paul, the
faithful must have.
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 249

Like St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Cyril often spoke of illumi­

nation (φωτισμός) and left no room for shadow, i.e., for
"knowledge through ignorance." The partial character
(έκ μέρους) of our knowledge of Christ is due to the "economy
according to the flesh," and will finish with it (Idem, XVI, 25:
464b). The imperfect "theoria" will fade before the illumina­
tion of the future age, giving way to a "more luminous gnosis"
when "we will see our King and God face to face" (Glaphyra
on Exodus, II: PG 69, 432d). Our mind will be filled with " a
divine and' ineffable light" (Θειου τινός καΓαπορρήτου φωτός
- On Malâchy: PG 72, 360a). Having "the face uncovered"
(γυμνξρ Λ . τξοπροσωπω) and " t h e thought unfettered"
(αταραποδίστω διάνοια ), we will have in our mind
(εννοήσομεγ ) the beauty of the divine nature of God the
Father ( TO της θείας Φύσεως του Θεού και Πατρός. . • κάλλος ),
"by contemplating the glory of the One Who has shone forth
from Him" (την του πεφηνότος Ιξ αυτού Θεωρήσαντος δόξαν).
For we will see Him as He is when the time of the economy
according to the flesh comes to an end and Christ appears "in
His own glory, which is also that of the Father" (On St. John
XVI, 25: PG 74, 464b). St. Cyril cites II Corinthians 5, 16 --
"although we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now hence­
forth know we Him no more," in order to show that the
οικονομία of the Incarnation leads to the trinitarian θεολογία
(Glaphyra on Exodus, II: PG 69, 428d-429a); the latter will
achieve its final perfection in the face to face vision of the
incarnate Son, shining forth from this "beauty of the divine
nature" in which the blessed will also participate in the Holy
Spirit. We can say, however, that the perfect* gnosis of the
Alexandrians in St. Cyril's doctrine is no longer the last end as
such, but one of the principal aspects of final deification, of the
union with God: a "spiritual mode of the delight of the future
age" ( τ ρ υ φ η ς . . . τρόπος π ν ε υ μ α τ ι κ ό ς - - On St. John XIV,
2 1 : PG 74, 284c).
The theologians of Byzantium will deceive the heritage of
these two traditions in their doctrines of the vision of God: one
from Antioch, especially through St. John Chrysostom; and the
other from Alexandria through St* CyriL The Anti$ehian
doctrine remains attached to the economic ^condescension"
which adapts the manifestations of God to the faculties of
250 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
created beings; it is by necessity christological. Alexandrian
thought wants to follow the inverse movement, that of man
rising up towards union with God, towards final deification;
this doctrine of the vision thus has a pneumatological accent.
The equilibrium between these two moments and the indis­
soluble unity of the οίκονομία with the Θεολογία, left by the
thought of the "great Cappadocians," will find a new expres­
sion in the christological framework among the post-Chalce-
donian Fathers. The beauty (κάλλος) of the divine nature
which the Holy Spirit, bringing about the deification of
Christians, shows to the elect in the incarnate Logos, according
to St. Cyril, will become a narrow part of the hypostatic union
of Christ, brought out in the doctrine of the "perichoresis,"
or energetic communication of the' divine properties to the
humanity of the God-man. This allows us to consider Christ's
transfiguration on Mount Tabor as an anticipation of the
eschatological vision "face to face" of the divine incarnate
Hypostasis. 15
5. The role of the Transfiguration which has such an
important place in Byzantine spirituality will be the object of
our last remark on the doctrinal points which we must take into
account when interpreting the theology of the "face to face"
vision of God in the tradition of the Eastern Church.
Three authors, after the fifth century, tried to accomplish a
sort of doctrinal synthesis concerning the question which
concerns us: the Pseudo-Dionysius, St. Maximus, and St. John
Damascene.
In the Divine Names (I, 4: PG 3, 592) final beatitude is called
"the Christoform destiny" of the elect (χ ριστοειδος λήξις).
Those who will become "sons of God" being "sons of the
resurrection" will always be with the Lord (I Thess. 4,16) and
will enjoy "his visible theophany" ( της . . . ορατής αυτού Θεο-
φανείας), "the very pure theories" of his brilliant splendor, just
like the disciples at the time of his divine transfiguration. But
in their impassible and immaterial intelligence ( νους ), they will
participate in the intelligible illumination of Christ

15. This concept was not foreign to the "Cappadocians". See, e.g., St.
Basil, Homily on the P&alms XLIV, 5: P.G 29, 400. Cf. St. Gregory
Nazianzen, Sermon 40, On Baptism: PG 36, 365.
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 251
(νοητής αυτού φωτοδοσίας). Finally, beyond the knowable,
they will have union with God, a union which transcends intel­
ligence (Ι'νωσις.. · inrèp νουν). The first element of this face to
face vision, the glorified humanity of the Son, recalls the
conception of St. John Chrysostom; but this "visible theo-
phany" assumes a doctrine of spiritualized senses, foreign to
the Antiochians. The second element -- an intellectual knowl­
edge of God in His light - would make us think of Evagrius, if
the unknowable superabundance of this light did not require
that human persons go beyond knowledge in a union beyond
the νοΟς. In this third element, the doctrine of the face to
face vision in Dionysius' thought is reunited with the "infinite
progress" of St. Gregory of Nyssa. Thus, upon seeing the
Hypostasis of the Son face to face, we receive the full mani­
festation of God in his revealing διάκρισις, yet his "super-
essential" nature always remains inaccessible and unknowable
in the deifying ε νωσις because created beings will never become
God by nature.
There would be a great deal to say about the theological
elaboration of the theme in the teaching of St. Maximus. We
shall limit ourselves to a few observations. The two prophets
who spoke with Christ at the moment of his Transfiguration
must represent, according to Maximus, moral perfection and
knowledge, while the glorified Christ would be "theology"
(Cap. theol. et oeconom. II, 16: PG 90, 1132). These three
steps of perfection, established by Origen and developed by
Evagrius, will be transformed and recreated, based on a christo­
logical plan: the πρακτική will correspond to the body of
Christ; the physical gnosis or knowledge of God in creation, to
his soul; as for the theology, it will comprise for St. Maximus
two steps: the "simple mystagogy of theological knowledge,"
corresponding with the human spirit of Christ, and the
apophasis of unknowability, beyond the created νους, referring
to the Divinity of the incarnate Son (De ambiguis: PG 91,
1360). Now, in the hypostatic union of the God-man, not only
the human νους of Christ, but also his soul and body are
transfigured by their participation in his Divinity. This
"perichoresis" or energetic penetration of the created by the
uncreated in Christ, has its analogy in the created persons who
become "gods by grace": thus, in their active life, grace places
them "above matter" according to the body; in their con-
252 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW
templative life, grace places them "above the form"
(υπέρ το είδος) according to intelligence. (Idem., col. 1273c).
Those who have followed Christ in action and in contemplation
will be transformed to an ever better state, "transforming
themselves from glory to glory;" we would not have enough
time if we wanted to describe all the ascensions (αναβάσεις) and
revelations (αποκαλύψεις) of the blessed (Idem., col. 1364a).
The energetic revelation of the Divinity in the incarnate
Hypostasis goes beyond the intellect as well as the senses of the
elect: who have become uniformly one ( ενοειδως εν); deified
men will be freed of the "differences common to the com­
posed" ( των κατά σύνθεσιν Ιτεροτήτων - - Schol. in Div.
Nom. 1, 4: PG 4: PG 4, 197). The face to face vision belongs to
the entire man: it is a personal communion of deified man with
the Person of the Son Who, divine by nature, has become Man
by the Incarnation.
In the teaching of St. John of Damascene, who had relied
considerably on Maximus for his christological synthesis, the
manifestation of the Divinity incarnate in the Word of God is a
corollary of the doctrine of the deified humanity of Christ.
"The body (of Christ) was glorified, said he, at the same time
that it was brought from non-being into existence, with the
result that it must be said that the glory of the Divinity is also
the glory of the body ( καί ή της Θεότητος δόξα καΐ δόξα του
σώματος λέγεται ); . . . "never did the holy body exist without
participation in the divine glory" (On the Orthodox Faith VI,
18: PG 94, 1188bc. Cf., Homily on the Transfiguration: PG
96, 564). At the moment of the Transfiguration Christ did not
become what He had not been before; on the contrary, He
appeared to His disciples as He was, opening their eyes, giving
sight to those who were blind. The change in appearance was
only a change in perception. It is thus that we must understand
the words of the Gospel: "He was transformed before t h e m "
(On the Transfiguration, ibid., col. 564). This is not a text of
Gregory of Palamas that we are quoting here. It is a homily of
St. John Damascene. The Hesychasts will add nothing to this
theology of the Transfiguration. Participating in the same divine
glory, "the just and the angels will shine like the sun in eternal
life with our Lord Jesus Christ, forever seeing Him and being
seen by Him, drawing from Him an incessant joy, praising Him
with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ages of ages (On the
 PROBLEM OF THE VISION FACE TO FACE 253
Orthodox Faith, IV, 27: PG 1228).
Instead of going further, towards St. Symeon the New
Theologian and St. Gregory Palamas, let us go back to the
beginnings of patristic thought. We shall find in the christology
of St. Irenaeus a moment which lends the same importance to
the Transfiguration in the doctrine of the face to face vision.
"The Word became flesh . . . so that all that exists might see
. . . its King; also, so that the paternal light might spread itself in
the body of our Lord and come from His body to us, so that
man might thus arrive at incorruptibility, being bathed in the
light of the Father" (IV, 20, 2: PG 7,1033).
We have pointed out in this rapid sketch several aspects of
the problem of the face to face vision of God which mo$t often
escaped the accuser as well as the defenders of the Fathers in
the seventeenth-century controversy. Other studies on these
elements of patristic thought could lead to a more profound
understanding of the medieval theology of Byzantium which
continued the same tradition. Vasquez was consistent in his
formal and narrow judgements: he did not hesitate to condemn
in the Church Fathers the same "error" that he thought was
found among the doctores Graecorum recentiores. The example
of the Spanish Jesuit should be followed in the opposite sense:
because we want to free ourselves from an a priori opinion
determined by a schobl of thought in order to bring a positive
judgement to the doctrines of the Greek Fathers of the first
eight centuries, there is no reason why we should refuse the
same generosity to the Byzantine tradition of more recent
times. If one persists in judging St. Symeon the New Theologian
or St. Gregory Palamas by transposing their doctrines to frame-
works that are foreign to them, there is no reason that the false
problem posed by Vasquez should not raise once more a sterile
and interminable controversy concerning the face to face vision
of God among the Fathers and in Scholastic theology.
The five elements of patristic thought which we have pointed
out represent the same number of subjects of study to be done
on the problem of the face to face vision of God. They are:
1. A theological epistemology where the knowledge of the
divine would have an unacceptable meaning, different
from the meaning that the vision of God according to His
essence has for Scholastic theology.
254 THE GREEK ORTHODOX THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

2. The notion of the light, revealed by the Divinity, with all

the different meanings which it can receive among theolo-
gians and contemplatives.
3. The christological moment in the doctrines of the face to
face vision.
4. The pneumatological moment and the role of man's
deification.
5. The theme of humanity deified by Christ and the sense
that the Transfiguration receives in the doctrines con-
cerning the eschatological vision of God.
By studying each of these doctrinal elements in the context
which is right for it, historians of Christian thought could
render an inestimable service to theologians. It is useful to
remember from time to time that the bliss promised to the sons
of God goes beyond the means of theological expression in the
limits of a given system. We could not reduce the problem of
the vision of God to one possible perspective without the risk
of substituting a theology of a given school of thought for the
Tradition of the Church - one but never uniform. When we stop
opposing or reconciling the Fathers and the Scholastics, we
discover in both the true richness of their thought.

TRANSLATED BY THOMAS E. BIRD

QUEENS COLLEGE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK