God: The One Who can be Seen

Christ is risen!

Truly he is risen! 

“While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” These things Jesus spoke, and departed, and was hidden from them. . . . “I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not abide in darkness. And if anyone hears My words and does not believe, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.” (John 12:36… 46-47)

Christ says that he came “as a light into the world” and that He is the Light of the world (John 8:12, 9:15). God’s Light enters into us both through the organ of the eye but also even more through the spiritual eye of our heart. “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light; but if your eye is not sound, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23) If we have Christ the Light in ourselves, we never walk in darkness.

Archimandrite Aimilianos points out that the Greek word for “God” (Theos) is related to words about being able to be seen – that which is visible. When Christ talks about being the Light, He is talking about being God.

… the eyes are the windows through which … God enters. This is why Christ is always presented as being seen, looked upon, and beheld (John 1:14; 1 John 1:1-3). And this is why God is called Theos, which comes from the word theasthai, and literally means: ‘He who can be seen.’ This is why God is light: so that He can be seen. Thus the phrase: He was seen by them for forty days means that, during a period perfect interval of time, Christ revealed Himself to the most powerful, the most gripping, of human senses, thereby providing us with the most compelling and permanent experience of God.  (THE WAY OF THE SPIRIT, p 181)

The comments of Aimilianos bring to my mind Genesis 1:3 in which God says, “Let there be light“. God, “He who can be seen”, makes Himself visible or creates the conditions in which He can be seen. God then brings into existence creatures capable of seeing God. Humans are created precisely as beings capable of seeing God, so when we don’t see God we are some how less than fully human, maybe even inhuman at a certain level. There is a synergy here between God and humans: To allow God to be Himself – fully divine (“the one who can be seen”) and to allow God Himself to be seen, God brings into existence creatures capable of seeing God. God is fully God, “the one who can be seen”, when there are creatures capable of seeing God. Eve and Adam apparently could both see and talk with God, but they chose no longer to see Him as God their Lord and so felt they could disobey Him and disregard Him. Their expulsion from Paradise was confirmation that they no longer could see God.

One other point, in Genesis 1:4, we read: “And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.” What we are seeing (excuse the word play) is that God separates that which can see God or in whom God is visible (the Light) from that which can’t see God or where God is invisible (the darkness). God wishes us all to dwell in the unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16).

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” (Matthew 5:8)