{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/103/1030227.htm","path":"chr/ecf/103/1030227.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/103/1030227.htm","text":"Chapter 8.\u2014How the Apostle Says that God is Now Seen by Us Through a Glass.\n14. I know that wisdom is an incorporeal substance, and that it is the light by which those things are seen that are not seen by carnal eyes; and yet a man so great and so spiritual [as Paul] says, \u201cWe see now through a glass, in an enigma, but then face to face.\u201d 961 If we ask what and of what sort is this \u201cglass,\u201d this assuredly occurs to our minds, that in a glass nothing is discerned but an image. We have endeavored, then, so to do; in order that we might see in some way or other by this image which we are, Him by whom we are made, as by a glass. And this is intimated also in the words of the same apostle: \u201cBut we with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.\u201d 962 \u201cBeholding as in a glass,\u201d 963 he has said, i.e. seeing by means of a glass, not looking from a watch-tower: an ambiguity that does not exist in the Greek language, whence the apostolic epistles have been rendered into Latin. For in Greek, a glass, 964 in which the images of things are visible, is wholly distinct in the sound of the word also from a watch-tower, 965 from the height of which we command a more distant view. And it is quite plain that the apostle, in using the word \u201cspeculantes\u201d in respect to the glory of the Lord, meant it to come from \u201cspeculum,\u201d not from \u201cspecula.\u201d But where he says, \u201cWe are transformed into the same image,\u201d he assuredly means to speak of the image of God; and by calling it \u201cthe same,\u201d he means that very image which we see in the glass, because that same image is also the glory of the Lord; as he says elsewhere, \u201cFor a man indeed ought not to cover his head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God,\u201d 966 \u2014a text already discussed in the twelfth book. He means, then, by \u201cWe are transformed,\u201d that we are changed from one form to another, and that we pass from a form that is obscure to a form p. 207 that is bright: since the obscure form, too, is the image of God; and if an image, then assuredly also \u201cglory,\u201d in which we are created as men, being better than the other animals. For it is said of human nature in itself, \u201cThe man ought not to cover his head, because he is the image and glory of God.\u201d And this nature, being the most excellent among things created, is transformed from a form that is defaced into a form that is beautiful, when it is justified by its own Creator from ungodliness. Since even in ungodliness itself, the more the faultiness is to be condemned, the more certainly is the nature to be praised. And therefore he has added, \u201cfrom glory to glory:\u201d from the glory of creation to the glory of justification. Although these words, \u201cfrom glory to glory,\u201d may be understood also in other ways;\u2014from the glory of faith to the glory of sight, from the glory whereby we are sons of God to the glory whereby we shall be like Him, because \u201cwe shall see Him as He is.\u201d 967 But in that he has added \u201cas from the Spirit of the Lord,\u201d he declares that the blessing of so desirable a transformation is conferred upon us by the grace of God.","title":"Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Vol. III: Doctrinal Treat...","type":"page"}