“You can’t see God and live”

More from The Wound of Knowledge:

“You can’t see God and live”.. and Gregory interprets this very ingeniously and unexpectedly by denying that the sight of God can itself be fatal and suggesting that the meaning is that God’s ‘face’, that which can be seen of God, is, on its own, less than life-giving. To be content with the ‘face’ of God is to be content with less than God. Even to behold Christ is not life-giving, unless it is supplemented by something further..

Moses is set ‘upon the rock’ to see God passing by, and the rock is, predictably, Christ; but, we are told, Moses sees God’s back because he is following God.. what lies ahead is [always] God’s back, the figure of the Lord leading us further and further out of self into his own country and his own life.

“And they were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; and they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid” Mark 10:32.

The vision of God is discipleship.