His Greatness is Unsearchable

Written by Michael R. Walker

Monday, 11 August 2008 11:56

Today's "morning Psalm" is a justly famous one, sometimes called "The Praise of David," for it exalts God with some of the most memorable phrases in the Psalms, such as "The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love."

Prayer is an exercise in humility and surrender before the face of God, and to praise God is to exalt him with a bit of imagination, or beyond what we could imagine, as the Psalm opens by confessing "Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable" (v. 3). Any exaltation of God worthy of the name rises above the limited categories our minds possess. We cannot possess the greatness of God; we exalt God in his greatness. As Calvin puts it, David "intimates that we only praise God aright when we are filled and overwhelmed with an ecstatic admiration of the immensity of his power. This admiration will form the fountain from which our just praises of him will proceed, according the measure of our capacity."

Yet our praise is not an abstract exercise, the praise of an idea or animated by some unknowable characteristic of God. The praise of God's greatness is also specific, concrete, real to our experience: "on your wondrous works, I will meditate. The might of your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed" (v. 5-6). God is exalted in his immeasurable greatness by giving thanks for our experience of all of God's particular blessings. Calvin: "the greatness of God is not that which lies concealed in his mysterious essence, and in subtle disputation upon which, to the neglect of his works, many have been chargeable with mere trifling, for true religion demands practical not speculative knowledge."

Such praise should be echoed in our hearts beyond those times of abundance, when our hearts are naturally moved to spontaneously exalt the goodness of God. Praising God for his greatness seen in his wondrous works shapes our experience of life as much as it is a response to that experience. The "abundant goodness" of God (v. 7) is never separated from particular times and events of God's activity, but it does transcend them, as we are reminded: "One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts" (v. 4). The chorus of the faithful throughout the ages raises our vision above our particular context and beyond our particular time, sending us back into the present moment with eyes ready to interpret our reality differently.

Calvin: "Having said that he would speak of, or meditate upon God’s works, (for the Hebrew word, אשיחה, asichah, as we have elsewhere seen, may be rendered either way,) he transfers his discourse to others, intimating, that there will always be some in the world to declare the righteousness, goodness, and wisdom of God, and that his divine excellencies are worthy of being sounded, with universal consent, by every tongue."

The Notebook

"Weight which listeners felt": Chadwick on Calvin's Preaching

"Calvin lay back on his bed thinking out what to say, but he could preach or lecture without notes and usually took with him only the Greek or Hebrew text of the Bible to expound. The words went ﬂowing out of him. Every other week he preached every weekday and every Sunday he preached twice, that is 260 sermons in a year, with very numerous lectures in addition. Anyone who tries to speak knows that in a far lower frequency of utterance no one can talk sense all the time because no one, not even a person who takes so short a time for sleep as Calvin, has time to suck in enough to make good what goes out; not at least without an excess of repetition. But audiences were not bored. They were supposed to go to church but did not need to go to Calvin’s church and most preferred it. His sermons were not amusing nor anecdotal. They were not decked with the devices of eloquence; they did not come over with passion, though sometimes interesting through vehemence of denunciation; they had none of Luther’s fun and fewer ﬂashes of original insight; but they thumped away, like a battery of hits that landed on target, with clarity of thought, style, and arrangement, reinforced by the manifest conviction of truth in the speaker. No witness said that he had a musical voice. It was weight which listeners felt." Owen Chadwick, The Early Reformation on the Continent. Oxford, 2001, pp. 195-6.

Augustine on "Seeing God" (Beatific Vision / Visio Beatifica or Vision of God / Visio Dei

Below is St. Augustine wrestling with the meaning of biblical references to "seeing God" in the resurrected life, such as 1 John 3:2: "Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure." (As in the beatitude, "Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God.")

Here Augustine wrestles with issues such as: Whether it is a kind of "seeing" that requires the aid of the body, i.e. the eyes. What kind of sight will it be? What will our resurrected "spiritual" bodies (1 Cor. 15) be capable of seeing? Perhaps even the incorporeal? Or that, in seeing Christ, who has a body and so can be seen with the eyes, one sees God. Etc.

Augustine's City of God, ch. 22, section 29: "Of the Beatific Vision":

And now let us consider, with such ability as God may vouchsafe, how the saints shall be employed when they are clothed in immortal and spiritual bodies, and when the flesh shall live no longer in a fleshly but a spiritual fashion. And indeed, to tell the truth, I am at a loss to understand the nature of that employment, or, shall I rather say, repose and ease, for it has never come within the range of my bodily senses. And if I should speak of my mind or understanding, what is our understanding in comparison of its excellence? For then shall be that "peace of God which," as the apostle says, "passes all understanding" -- that is to say, all human, and perhaps all angelic understanding, but certainly not the divine. That it is beyond our understanding there is no doubt; but if it is beyond that of the angels -- and he who says "all understanding" seems to make no exception in their favour -- then we must understand him to mean that neither we nor the angels can understand, as God understands, the peace which God Himself enjoys. Doubtless this passes all understanding but His own. But as we shall one day be made to participate, according to our slender capacity, in His peace, both in ourselves, and with our neighbour, and with God our chief good, in this respect the angels understand the peace of God in their own measure, and men too, though now far behind them, whatever spiritual advance they have made.

For we must remember how great a man he was who said, "We know in part, and we prophesy in part, until that which is perfect is come;" and "Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face." . Such also is now the vision of the holy angels, who are also called our angels, because we, being rescued out of the power of darkness, and receiving the earnest of the Spirit, are translated into the kingdom of Christ, and already begin to belong to those angels with whom we shall enjoy that holy and most delightful city of God of which we have now written so much. Thus, then, the angels of God are our angels, as Christ is God's and also ours. They are God's, because they have not abandoned Him; they are ours, because we are their fellow-citizens. The Lord Jesus also said, "See that you despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always see the face of my Father which is in heaven." As, then, they see, so shall we also see; but not yet do we thus see.

Wherefore the apostle uses the words cited a little ago, "Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face." This vision is reserved as the reward of our faith; and of it the Apostle John also says, "When He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." By " the face "of God we are to understand His manifestation, and not a part of the body similar to that which in our bodies we call by that name.

And so, when I am asked how the saints shall be employed in that spiritual body, I do not say what I see, but I say what I believe, according to that which I read in the psalm, "I believed, therefore have I spoken."

I say, then, they shall in the body see God; but whether they shall see Him by means of the body, as now we see the sun, moon, stars, sea, earth, and all that is in it, that is a difficult question. For it is hard to say that the saints shall then have such bodies that they shall not be able to shut and open their eyes as they please; while it is harder still to say that every one who shuts his eyes shall lose the vision of God. For if the prophet Elisha, though at a distance, saw his servant Gehazi, who thought that his wickedness would escape his master's observation and accepted gifts from Naaman the Syrian, whom the prophet had cleansed from his foul leprosy, how much more shall the saints in the spiritual body see all things, not only though their eyes be shut, but though they themselves be at a great distance?

For then shall be "that which is perfect," of which the apostle says, "We know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Then, that he may illustrate as well as possible, by a simile, how superior the future life is to the life now lived, not only by ordinary men, but even by the foremost of the saints, he says, "When I was a child, I understood as a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

If, then, even in this life, in which the prophetic power of remarkable men is no more worthy to be compared to the vision of the future life than childhood is to manhood, Elisha, though distant from his servant, saw him accepting gifts, shall we say. that when that which is perfect is come, and the corruptible body no longer oppresses the soul, but is incorruptible and offers no impediment to it, the saints shall need bodily eyes to see, though Elisha had no need of them to see his servant? For, following the Septuagint version, these are the prophet's words: "Did not my heart go with thee, when the man came out of his chariot to meet thee, and you took his gifts?" Or, as the presbyter Jerome rendered it from the Hebrew, "Was not my heart present when the man turned from his chariot to meet thee?" The prophet said that he saw this with his heart, miraculously aided by God, as no one can doubt. But how much more abundantly shall the saints enjoy this gift when God shall be all in all?

Nevertheless the bodily eyes also shall have their office and their place, and shall be used by the spirit through the spiritual body. For the prophet did not forego the use of his eyes for seeing what was before them, though he did not need them to see his absent servant, and though he could have seen these present objects in spirit, and with his eyes shut, as he saw things far distant in a place where he himself was not. Far be it, then, from us to say that in the life to come the saints shall not see God when their eyes are shut, since they shall always see Him with the spirit.

But the question arises, whether, when their eyes are open, they shall see Him with the bodily eye? If the eyes of the spiritual body have no more power than the eyes which we now possess, manifestly God cannot be seen with them. They must be of a very different power if they can look upon that incorporeal nature which is not contained in any place, but is all in every place. For though we say that God is in heaven and on earth, as He Himself says by the prophet, "I fill heaven and earth," we do not mean that there is one part of God in heaven and another part on earth; but He is all in heaven and all on earth, not at alternate intervals of time, but both at once, as no bodily nature can be. The eye, then, shall have a vastly superior power.….the power of seeing things incorporeal.

Possibly it was this great power of vision which was temporarily communicated to the eyes of the holy job while yet in this mortal body, when he says to God, "I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee: wherefore I abhor myself, and melt away, and count myself dust and ashes;" although there is no reason why we should not understand this of the eye of the heart, of which the apostle says, "Having the eyes of your heart illuminated." But that God shall be seen with these eyes no Christian doubts who believingly accepts what our God and Master says, "Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God." But whether in the future life God shall also be seen with the bodily eye, this is now our question.

The expression of Scripture, "And all flesh shall see the salvation of God," may without difficulty be understood as if it were said, "And every man shall see the Christ of God." And He certainly was seen in the body, and shall be seen in the body when He judges quick and dead. And that Christ is the salvation of God, many other passages of Scripture witness, but especially the words of the venerable Simeon, who, when he had received into his hands the infant Christ, said, "Now let Thou Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word: for mine eyes have seen Thy salvation."

As for the words of the above-mentioned Job, as they are found in the Hebrew manuscripts, "And in my flesh I shall see God," no doubt they were a prophecy of the resurrection of the flesh; yet he does not say "by the flesh." And indeed, if he had said this, it would still be possible that Christ was meant by "God;" for Christ shall be seen by the flesh in the flesh. But even understanding it of God, it is only equivalent to saying, I shall be in the flesh when I see God.

Then the apostle's expression, "face to face," does not oblige us to believe that we shall see God by the bodily face in which are the eyes of the body, for we shall see Him without intermission in spirit. And if the apostle had not referred to the face of the inner man, he would not have said, "But we, with unveiled face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord."

In the same sense we understand what the Psalmist sings, "Draw near unto Him, and be enlightened; and your faces shall not be ashamed." For it is by faith we draw near to God, and faith is an act of the spirit, not of the body. But as we do not know what degree of perfection the spiritual body shall attain-for here we speak of a matter of which we have no experience, and upon which the authority of Scripture does not definitely pronounce -- it is necessary that the words of the Book of Wisdom be illustrated in us: "The thoughts of mortal men are timid, and our forecastings uncertain."

For if that reasoning of the philosophers, by which they attempt to make out that intelligible or mental objects are so seen by the mind, and sensible or bodily objects so seen by the body, that the former cannot be discerned by the mind through the body, nor the latter by the mind itself without the body -- if this reasoning were trustworthy, then it would certainly follow that God could not be seen by the eye even of a spiritual body. But this reasoning is exploded both by true reason and by prophetic authority. For who is so little acquainted with the truth as to say that God has no cognisance of sensible objects? Has He therefore a body, the eyes of which give Him this knowledge?

Moreover, what we have just been relating of the prophet Elisha, does this not sufficiently show that bodily things can be discerned by the spirit without the help of the body? For when that servant received the gifts, certainly this was a bodily or material transaction, yet the prophet saw it not by the body, but by the spirit.

As, therefore, it is agreed that bodies are seen by the spirit, what if the power of the spiritual body shall be so great that spirit also is seen by the body? For God is a spirit. Besides, each man recognises his own life -- that life by which he now lives in the body, and which vivifies these earthly members and causes them to grow -- by an interior sense, and not by his bodily eye; but the life of other men, though it is invisible, he sees with the bodily eye. For how do we distinguish between living and dead bodies, except by seeing at once both the body and the life which we cannot see save by the eye? But a life without a body we cannot see thus.

Wherefore it may very well be, and it is thoroughly credible, that we shall in the future world see the material forms of the new heavens and the new earth in such a way that we shall most distinctly recognise God everywhere present and governing all things, material as well as spiritual, and shall see Him, not as now we understand the invisible things of God, by the things which are made, and see Him darkly, as in a mirror, and in part, and rather by faith than by bodily vision of material appearances, but by means of the bodies we shall wear and which we shall see wherever we turn our eyes.

As we do not believe, but see that the living men around us who are exercising vital functions are alive, though we cannot see their life without their bodies, but see it most distinctly by means of their bodies, so, wherever we shall look with those spiritual eyes of our future bodies, we shall then, too, by means of bodily substances behold God, though a spirit, ruling all things. Either, there- fore, the eyes shall possess some quality similar to that of the mind, by which they may be able to discern spiritual things, and among these God -- a supposition for which it is difficult or even impossible to find any support in Scripture -- or, which is more easy to comprehend, God will be so known by us, and shall be so much before us, that we shall see Him by the spirit in ourselves, in one another, in Himself, in the new heavens and the new earth, in every created thing which shall then exist; and also by the body we shall see Him in every body which the keen vision of the eye of the spiritual body shall reach. Our thoughts also shall be visible to all, for then shall be fulfilled the words of the apostle, "Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the thoughts of the heart, and then shall every one have praise of God."

The Feeds

Reflections Feed

Notebook Feed

Combined Feed