Origen of Alexandria : Like to this also is that which is said by God through Moses: "Behold, I have set you in a hole of the rock, and you shall see My back parts." Therefore this rock, which is Christ, is not closed on every side, but has a hole. And the hole of the rock is that which reveals God and makes Him known to men. No one, then, sees the Father except the Son; no one, then, sees the last things of God — that is, the things which come to pass in the last times — except one placed in the hole of the rock, namely when he has learned those things by the revelation of Christ. — COMMENTARY ON THE SONG OF SONGS, BOOK 4 Origen of Alexandria : For it is well known that he, that is, the one who gave the oracles to Moses, says, "You shall not see my face but my back." Certainly these statements must be understood by the aid of that symbolism which is appropriate to the understanding of divine sayings, and those old wives' fables, which ignorant people invent on the subject of the front and back parts of God, must be utterly rejected and despised. Nor indeed must anyone suppose that we have entertained some impious thought in saying that the Father is not visible even to the Savior, but he must consider the exact meaning of the terms we use in controverting the heretics. For we have said that it is one thing to see and be seen, another to perceive and be perceived or to know and be known. To see and be seen is a property of bodies, which it would certainly not be right to apply either to the Father or to the Son or to the Holy Spirit in their relations one with another. For the Trinity by its nature transcends the limits of vision, although it grants to those who are in bodies, that is, to all other creatures, the property of being seen one by another. But incorporeal and above all intellectual nature is capable of nothing else but to know and be known, as the Savior himself declares when he says, "No one knows the Son save the Father, neither does any know the Father save the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him." It is clear then that he did not say, "No one sees the Father save the Son" but "No one knows the Father save the Son." — ON FIRST PRINCIPLES 2.3