Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Yet another rule stands by us as we claim two, Father and Son — the rule that fixed the invisibility of God. For when Moses, in Egypt, longed to see the Lord face to face, saying, "If then I have found favor before you, show yourself to me, that I may see and know you plainly," he was told: "You cannot see my face; for no man shall see my face and live" — that is, whoever sees it will die. [2] Yet we find that God was seen by many, and none of those who saw him died: God was indeed seen, but according to the capacity of men, not according to the fullness of his divinity. For the patriarchs are said to have seen God — Abraham, for instance, and Jacob — and the prophets too, Isaiah, Ezekiel — and yet they did not die. So then, either they ought to have died, if they had seen him — for "no one shall see God and live" — or, if they saw God and did not die, Scripture is lying when it says God said, "If a man sees my face he shall not live"; or Scripture is lying when it presents God as seen [after saying he cannot be seen]. [3] So then it must be someone else who was being seen, since the very one defined as invisible cannot be the one who was seen: and it follows that we must understand the Father as invisible, in the fullness of his majesty, while we recognize the Son as visible, in the measure of his derivation — just as we are not permitted to gaze upon the sun itself, in the full substance it has in the heavens, yet we can bear its ray upon our eyes, tempered to the portion of it that reaches down to earth. [4] At this point someone will, from the opposite side, want to argue that the Son too is invisible, as Word, as Spirit — and in claiming one and the same condition for Father and Son, will instead be confirming that Father and Son are one and the same. [5] But we have said that Scripture supports the distinction through the difference between "visible" and "invisible." They add this to their argument too: that if it was the Son who was speaking to Moses then, he himself would be declaring his own face invisible to anyone — since, on their view, the invisible Father was present under the name of "Son." And by this they mean the same one to be taken as both visible and invisible, just as they take Father and Son to be the same one — since a little earlier, before he refused Moses his face, it is written that the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend, no less than Jacob, who said, "I have seen the Lord face to face." [6] "So then," they say, "visible and invisible are the same; and because both belong to the same one, the Father too is invisible in the same way the Son is visible." As though the exposition of Scripture which we make concerning the Son — leaving the Father aside — did not perfectly fit the Son in his own visibility. For we do say that the Son too, under his own name, is invisible in the sense that he is the Word and Spirit of God, by the very condition proper to that substance [and inasmuch as he stands as God, being both Word and Spirit belonging to God]; yet he could still be seen prior to his taking on flesh, in the manner in which it is said to Aaron and Miriam: "Should there arise among you one who prophesies, I will disclose myself to that person through a vision, conversing with him by means of a dream — unlike my converse with Moses, mouth to mouth, openly" (that is, in truth) "and not in a riddle" (that is, not in an image) — just as the apostle says, "Now we see as through a mirror, in a riddle, but then face to face." [7] So then, since with Moses he reserves his own appearance and face-to-face converse for a future time (for this was later fulfilled on the mountain in seclusion, as we read in the Gospel, where Moses is seen conversing with him), it is clear that all along, before that, it was in a mirror and a riddle and a vision and a dream that God — that is, the Son of God — was seen, both by the prophets and patriarchs and by Moses himself, up to that point. [8] And even the Lord himself, if perhaps he spoke face to face, was not thereby seen in his face the way a man is seen, except perhaps as in a mirror and in a riddle. In fact, if the Lord spoke to Moses in such a way that Moses already knew his face at close range, how is it that he immediately, on that very occasion, longs to see his face — a face he would not have longed for if he had already seen it? And how, equally, does the Lord deny that his face can be seen, when he had just shown it — if indeed he had shown it? Or what is this "face of God" whose sight is denied? If there was one that was seen — "I have seen God face to face," says Jacob, "and my soul was saved" — then the face that kills, if seen, must be a different face. [9] Or was it in fact the Son who was being seen — in a face, yes, but this very thing occurring in a vision and a dream and a mirror and a riddle, because Word and Spirit cannot be seen except in some imagined form — while he calls the Father's face invisible, calling it "his own face"? For who is the Father? Will he be "the face of the Son," by the title of authority which the begotten one receives from the Father? For is it not equally fitting to say, of someone ranked above another, "That man stands as my face," or "He presents my likeness on my behalf"? [10] "The Father," he says, "is greater than I": so the Father would then be the Son's face. And what does the text tell us? "Breath drawn from that presence — Christ, our Lord." If Christ, then, is the breath belonging to the Father's own presence, it follows that this breath — belonging as it did to that presence, namely the Father's — declared that presence's countenance to be its own, by virtue of their oneness. It is remarkable, truly, whether the Father might be reckoned the Son's face, seeing he is head over the Son: since, as it is written, God stands as head over Christ.