Commenting on the 13th century theologian William of Alton’s understanding of how Old Testament figures could see God in bodily form, Timothy Bellamah noted:
While reflections on
prophecy show up throughout the corpus of his biblical commentary, the most
prolonged one appears in his commentary on Isaiah, specifically, in his
exposition of the account of the prophet’s vision in the sixth chapter. His
exegetical interests in this passage are several. Primary among them is to make
sense of Isaiah’s claim to have seen the Lord (Vidi Dominum) without
prejudice to the understanding, generally held by Jews and Christians alike,
that no flesh may see God, at least not this side of the grave. More broadly,
he tries to provide a general framework for prophecy capable of account for the
various theophanies experienced by the patriarchs, prophets, and, notably, St.
Paul 9cf. 1 Cor 12:2-4). Then, he situates his account between two opposing
erroneous propositions, first, that Isaiah (and by implication the other
prophets) saw the divine nature, and second, that the angels and the blessed in
heaven do not. Put another way, while asserting that the prophets normally had
no beatific vision while living in this world, William is concerned to avoid
implying that the same holds true for the blessed in patria:
Therefore he says IN
THE YEAR THAT KING UZZIAH DIED, I SAW THE LORD SITTING etc. Note that
according to the Glossa on 2 Corinthians 12 (4), concerning the rapture
of Paul, there are three kinds of visions. One of them, evidently, is
corporeal, by which God is seen in a created subject by corporeal eyes. So it
was that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses saw him, as Jerome explains in the
original of his exposition of this passage. Another is imaginary, by which
God is seen by the eyes of the heart under an imaginary figure, just as Isaiah
saw him in this passage, Daniel in chapter 7, and Ezekiel in chapter 1. The
third is intellectual, by which God and spiritual creatures are seen in a wondrous
revelation by the gaze of the pure mind. So it was that Paul saw him in 2
Corinthians 12 (4). In heaven (in patria) this vision will be perfect,
on the way (in via) imperfect and only in a few. Therefore, the Glossa’s
statement here that Isaiah saw God is to be explained as by the eyes of the
heart, i.e., it happened by an imaginary vision, which was by the eyes of the heart,
not those of the flesh. Concerning what the Glossa saws below in chapter
38 (1), it should be said that this is magisterial. Or that reading in the Book
of Foreknowledge is seeing God not in his substance, but in an illumination or
in a locution from spirit to spirit. Concerning Chrysostom’s statement: “Not
even an angel can see God in his nature,” one is to understand—as fully as the
Son.
In evidence here is a
more explicit formulation of the same three fold typology wherein God manifests
himself variously by way of corporeal creatures, imaginary representations, and
direct intellectual contact. William evidently regards the second mode as the most
common. Here, it is Isaiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel whom he credits with such
perception of imaginary representations by the “eye of the heart.” Elsewhere,
he describes the visions of Jeremiah and Abraham in similar terms. (Timothy Bellamah,
The Biblical Interpretation of William of Alton [Oxford Studies in
Historical Theology; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011], 108-9, emphasis in
bold added)
"Spiritual Eyes" in pre-1830 Literature
