Augustine says (De Vid. Deum, Ep. cxlvii): “No one has ever seen God either in this life, as He is, nor in the angelic life, as visible things are seen by corporeal vision.”
Thus St. Gregory says in the Catena: “So long as we live here in mortal flesh, God may be seen by certain manifestations or images of Him, but as He is in His own nature He cannot be seen.”
The short answer to this question is that we can’t visibly see God due to His nature being incorporeal since He is infinite, perfect, omnipotent and immaterial, while we are the opposite of those qualities. But humans being such curious animals, we naturally cannot end there.
“It is written in the Gospel of St. John (John 4:24): “God is a spirit.” ST, I, A1, Q3
One may ask themselves, “Is what is infinite, knowable?” At first glance, obviously not, and as we know that God is infinite what would follow is that we can’t even know God at all, but this is wrong. We can at least know the infiniteness of God as a characteristic can’t we? The important thing to note here, is that what is infinite is not knowable in a certain way, but is in another. I’m referring to knowing sensibly, and knowing intellectually. We, while not being able to fully grasp what is infinite, are able to make out that it is infinite, we can know of God’s own self existence while not being able to entirely grasp it, we are in a certain way, knowing, while also acknowledging our own inability to truly know.
“Further, everything infinite, as such, is unknown. But God is infinite, as was shown above (ST, I:7:1). Therefore in Himself He is unknown.”
Why we can’t see God as we see creatures here on earth we must first note and understand that the act of seeing derives from our eyes which is an act that utilizes a corporeal or bodily organ, that is, the eye. Since our eyes are corporeal, they are bound to seeing corporeal things, things that are purely physical like us. Since God is incorporeal, we err in thinking we can see Him when we would both lack the necessary requirements to see and presume that He is physically visible in the way we see the material world. The first part is clear by understanding the principle that acts are proportional to the nature which possesses it. Thus St. Thomas Aquinas wrote in regard to this;
“It is impossible for God to be seen by the sense of sight, or by any other sense, or faculty of the sensitive power. For every such kind of power is the act of a corporeal organ… The Act however, is proportional to the nature which possesses it. Hence no power of that kind can go beyond corporeal things. For God is incorporeal, as was shown above. Hence He cannot be seen by the sense or the imagination, but only by the intellect.” ST, I, Q3, A3
According to St. Thomas we read that the intellect is the only way that we can see God, though it’s not how one may initially think of it. For instance, In knowing of His existence, we can say that we see Him, but we see him metaphysically, not materially, only with the mind, the intellect. We must understand that there is a distinction between a thing sensed and understood, if we can know certain concepts which are prior to individually experiencing them, this means that one can see things intellectually. Take for instance someone learning math without having experienced the physicality of the numbers or operations he is conducting. Can someone say that they have converted a decimal number to a percentage in real life before learning it theoretically? Yet nobody will deny that they can see in their mind’s eye, that decimal and percentage. The same can actually be applied with most things in life, for instance, how can someone that has not seen a supernova himself, know that it exists? Further, let’s say he only saw a representation of a supernova through a computer generated simulation or what have you, it still isn’t a first hand experience for you would have had to have seen the supernova yourself, with your own eyes, not solely from a representation. Yet most of the common people will believe that supernovas are real without a doubt, and this goes for other things like black holes and extraterrestrial life too.
We can continue to show how God is incapable of being seen by parallel, He is incorporeal while we are corporeal, He is infinite, while we are finite, He is perfect, while we are imperfect, we exist because He created our existence while He is His own existence. It’s clear that what we are in these aspects, God is the opposite, He is superior in every way. This is why God can know us perfectly but not the other way around. Not only are we unproportioned to God in general, we are simply inferior to Him. We should ask ourselves, can a little sugar ant know man? Perhaps the ant can react to us in a vague instinctive way, but very obviously they cannot know us. We can however know them, we can study their anatomy, their behavior, we can get pretty close to really knowing the sugar ant, although only through reason and never more, which is inferior to how God knows things.
Likewise, what would we have to be to the ant for the ant to sense us in his own capacity? Would we not need to be tiny, have antennae and be close to like an ant? This is what one asks of God for Him to be known to us in our own capacity. One might also ask, cannot God condescend to us if He is superior? Can He not make Himself man for us to see Him? I digress. Even if it was not the case that God had not become incarnate, we very well could achieve an intellectual knowledge of him. Something which is given to humanity as it naturally yearns to it’s final home.
“To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in us by nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude. For man naturally desires happiness, and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known to him. This, however, is not to know absolutely that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching; for many there are who imagine that man’s perfect good which is happiness, consists in riches, and others in pleasures, and others in something else.” ST, I, Q2 A1
Further, those things are said to be self-evident which are known as soon as the terms are known, which the Philosopher (1 Poster. iii) says is true of the first principles of demonstration. Thus, when the nature of a whole and of a part is known, it is at once recognized that every whole is greater than its part. But as soon as the signification of the word “God” is understood, it is at once seen that God exists. For by this word is signified that thing than which nothing greater can be conceived. But that which exists actually and mentally is greater than that which exists only mentally. Therefore, since as soon as the word “God” is understood it exists mentally, it also follows that it exists actually. Therefore the proposition “God exists” is self-evident. FP Q2 A1
In this way we are seeing Him through the intellect power, and while it’s not accurate since we are bound to our bodily organs, our senses, our physical way of imagination, we are able to see something of Him anyway, as a result, God is not actually entirely unknown as most atheists suppose it, for if He was entirely unknown, not even the most primitive concept of Him would exist.
The intellect power, the ability to reason, is the thing that is solely given to us, for no other creature can reason, but other creatures obviously share the corporeal organs of the eyes. Since reason, the intellect power, is what is given to us and defines us by God, it is the exact part of humanity that shares a likeness to God, it is the part of us that was made in His image. This is why our intellect has the similitude required to see Him in some lesser and blurred form, through our imagination and in a metaphorical fashion. The very fact that you would admit that we are reasonable creatures unlike any other creature known is admittance that we are different, that we have something special, that something special leads us to knowing about God.
The part of us that makes us able to see God is the part that other animals lack, the rational soul, the intellect, this is the part of us that God made to His own image, which was spoken of in Genesis 1:27. In the same way, the other parts of us, like the bodily eyes, hands, nose, etc. are the parts that we share with God’s other creations. These things are not shared in similitude with God and this is why we cannot use an organ which is not spirit, not rational, to do something that is entirely contingent on itself being a corporeal and material organ to begin with. The eye is for sensing the sensible, the rational soul is for searching for, serving and knowing God, note however, this is still not seeing God as we commonly understand seeing. Nevertheless, we can see that things must have a similitude to each other as part of their function. However, the similitude alone is not all that is needed, we must have help from God since we still cannot reach what is superior, uncreated and perfect with our simply just our intellect. It is God that through our intellect, gives us grace to see Him, but not as the divine essence really is.
Thus St. Thomas writes;
Therefore it must be said that to see the essence of God, there is required some similitude in the visual faculty, namely, the light of glory strengthening the intellect to see God, which is spoken of in the Ps. 35:10, “In Thy light we shall see light.” The essence of God, however, cannot be seen by any created similitude representing the divine essence itself as it really is. ST, I, Q12 A2
The “light of glory strengthening the intellect to see God”, this is our intellect by God’s grace, giving us the illumination to see Him. This is where one must not fall into rationalism. The intellect, though it has similitude to God is still not all that is required to see Him. It is God that allows us and gives us the ability through the intellect to do so. This is why faith is a special theological virtue which cannot be simply rationalized as if nature were the author, and not God Himself.
