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1 Timothy 6:16

Who only has immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man has seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen.
Read Chapter 6

Ambrose of Milan

AD 397
There would be no purpose in the world if it were not seen. In fact, God himself was in the light, because he “dwells in light inaccessible,” and he “was the true light that enlightens every man who comes into the world.” But he wishes the light to be such as might be perceived by mortal eyes. The person who desires to erect a house as a fitting habitation for the head of a family determines first how it may receive light abundantly before he lays the foundation. This is the first requisite. If this is lacking, the whole house is without beauty and is uninhabitable. It is light which sets off the other beautiful objects in the house. .
1 min1/22
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Ambrose of Milan

AD 397
How could the Son not have immortality who has life in himself? He has it in his nature. He has it in his essential Being. God has it not as a temporal grace but owing to his eternal Godhead. He has it not by way of a gift as a servant but by peculiar right of his generation, as the coeternal Son. He has life in the same way that the Father has life. .
< 1 min2/22
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Augustine of Hippo

AD 430
God, Father Son and Holy Spirit, is in his own proper nature invisible. But he has appeared when he wished and to whom he wished; not as he is but in whatever way he wished, being served after all by all creation. If your mind, though it is invisible in your body, can appear by uttering your voice, and the voice in which your mind appears when you speak is not the substance of your mind, it means that mind is one thing and voice another, and yet mind becomes apparent in a thing which in itself is not. So too God, if he appeared in fire, is all the same not fire; if he appeared in smoke, still he isn’t smoke; if he appeared in a sound, he isn’t a sound. These things are not God, but they indicate God. If we bear this in mind, we may safely believe that it could have been the Son who appeared to Moses and was called both Lord and angel of the Lord.
1 min3/22
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Augustine of Hippo

AD 430
This, then, is charity, however small a thing it appears to us, as it inheres in our will; “it is not seen in any locality, nor sought by bodily eyes, nor limited by our sight, nor held by touch, nor heard by its utterance, nor perceived in its approach.” How much more true this is of God, of whom charity is the pledge within us! If our interior man is an image of him—insignificant, indeed—not begotten of him but created by him, and, although it is still renewed day by day, it now dwells in such light that no faculty of corporeal sight comes near to it, and if those things which we perceive with the eyes of the heart by means of that light are distinguished from each other and separated by no intervals of space, how much more is this true of God, who inhabits light inaccessible to the bodily senses, to whom there can be no approach except for the clean of heart! Letters.
1 min4/22
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Augustine of Hippo

AD 430
If you ask whether he can also be seen at any time as he is, I answer that this was promised to his sons, of whom it is said, “We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” If you ask by what means we shall see him, I answer: as the angels see, for we shall then be equal to them, as the angels see those things which are called visible; but no one has ever seen God nor can see him, because “he inhabits light inaccessible,” and his nature is invisible as it is immortal. .
1 min5/22
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Augustine of Hippo

AD 430
So if God alone has immortality, is the soul mortal? That’s why I said the soul is immortal after its own fashion. You see, it can also die. Your graces must try to understand, and then the problem will be solved. I make bold to say, the soul can die, can be killed. Certainly it’s immortal. So there you are; I make bold to say it is both immortal in one sense and capable of being killed in another sense. And that’s why I said there is a kind of immortality, that is to say, an absolute and total unchangeableness, which God alone has, as it says of him, “Who alone has immortality.”
1 min6/22
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Augustine of Hippo

AD 430
I am doing the right thing in taking my time over this question [about the origin of the soul], because I have no doubt at all that the soul is immortal, not as God is, “Who only has immortality,” but in a certain way according to its own nature, and that it is a created being, not the substance of the Creator: this I hold most firmly, as well as all other truths about the nature of the soul. .
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Augustine of Hippo

AD 430
Already you have told me, O Lord, by means of a loud voice in my interior ear, that you are eternal, alone possessing immortality, since you change in relation neither to any form nor to motion. Your will is not altered in regard to periods of time, because no will is immortal if it is now one way and now another. In your sight this is clear to me. May it become more and more clear, I pray, and may I continue to live soberly under your protecting wings, within the influence of this revelation. .
< 1 min8/22
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Cassiodorus Senator

AD 585
Since Paul says, “Only he that has immortality and inhabits inaccessible light,” how can the psalmist say here, “Come to him, and be enlightened? But the problem is solved by this brief statement of the truth: his light is said to be inaccessible when the unique and almighty nature of its substance is described; but when the grace of the sacred Godhead pours forth, we both approach him and obtain blessed enlightenment.
< 1 min9/22
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Clement Of Alexandria

AD 215
How then shall the Greeks any longer disbelieve the divine appearance on Mount Sinai, when the fire burned, consuming none of the things that grew on the mount; and the sound of trampets issued forth, breathed without instruments? For that which is called the descent on the mount of God is the advent of divine power, pervading the whole world, and proclaiming "the light that is inaccessible.". For it is impossible that he who has been once made perfect by love, and feasts eternally and insatiably on the boundless joy of contemplation, should delight in small and grovelling things. For what rational cause remains any more to the man who has gained "the light inaccessible"
1 min10/22
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George Leo Haydock

AD 1849
Who only hath immortality; i.e. is immortal of himself, and by his own nature. Light inaccessible; to human eyes or understandings. (Witham)
< 1 min11/22
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Gregory of Nyssa

AD 394
But we, even when we are told that God “only has immortality,” we understand by “immortality” the Son. For life is immortality, and the Lord is that life, who said, “I am the Life.” And if he is said to dwell “in the light that no man can approach,” again we make no difficulty in understanding that the true Light, unapproachable by falsehood, is the Onlybegotten, in whom we learn from the Truth itself that the Father is. Are we to think of the Onlybegotten in a manner worthy of the Godhead, or to call him, as heresy prescribes, perishable and temporary? Against Eunomius
1 min12/22
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Gregory the Theologian

AD 390
God is light: the highest, the unapproachable, the ineffable, that can neither be conceived in the mind nor uttered with the lips, that gives life to every reasoning creature. He is in the world of thought what the sun is in the world of sense; presenting himself to our minds in proportion as we are cleansed; and loved in proportion as he is presented to our mind; and again, conceived in proportion as we love him; himself contemplating and comprehending himself and pouring himself out on what is external to him. That light, I mean, which is contemplated in the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, whose riches is their unity of nature and the one outleaping of their brightness.
1 min13/22
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Hippolytus of Rome

AD 235
7. The beloved generates love, and the light immaterial the light inaccessible.
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John Chrysostom

AD 407
But if Paul said elsewhere, “God was manifested in the flesh,” do not wonder, because the manifestation took place in the flesh, not in his substance. Furthermore, Paul also testified here that God himself was invisible, not only to men but also to the powers above. Having said “was manifested in the flesh,” he added, “he appeared to angels.” Thus he became visible to the angels as well, at the time when he put on the flesh…. Similarly, when he said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” he was speaking of mental vision—which is within our power—and also of thought about God, so, likewise, it may be said of the angels that by reason of their pure and constant nature, they continually think of nothing else but God….Therefore, just as he has been seen by many, in whatever way vision of him was possible for them, but no one has ever beheld his essence, so also we all now know God, but no one knows his substance, whatever it is, except only he who has been begotten from ...
1 min15/22
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John Chrysostom

AD 407
And pay heed to the accuracy with which Paul speaks. He did not say, “Who is an unapproachable light” but “Who dwells in unapproachable light.” Why? So that you may learn that if the dwelling is unapproachable, so much more so is the God that dwells in it. But Paul did not say this to make you suspect that there is a house or place surrounding God. Rather, he wished you to have a deeper and superior knowledge that God is beyond our comprehension…. A thing is unapproachable which, from the start, cannot be investigated nor can anyone come near to it. We call the sea incomprehensible because, even when divers lower themselves into its waters and go down to a great depth, they cannot find the bottom. We call that thing unapproachable which, from the start, cannot be searched out or investigated.
1 min16/22
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John Chrysostom

AD 407
Who only has immortality. What then? Has not the Son immortality? Is He not immortality itself? How should not He, who is of the same substance with the Father, have immortality? Dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto. Is He then Himself one Light, and is there another in which He dwells? Is He then circumscribed by place? Think not of it. By this expression is represented the Incomprehensibleness of the Divine Nature. Thus he speaks of God, in the best way he is able. Observe, how when the tongue would utter something great, it fails in power. Whom no man has seen nor can see. As, indeed, no one has seen the Son, nor can see Him. To whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen. Thus properly, and much to the purpose, has he spoken of God. For as he had called Him to witness, he speaks much of that Witness, that his disciple may be in the greater awe. In these terms he ascribes glory to Him, and this is all we can do, or say. We must not enquire too curiously, who He ...
1 min17/22
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Methodius of Olympus

AD 311
For the unbegotten and incorporeal beauty, which neither begins nor is corruptible but is unchangeable and grows not old and is in need of nothing, he resting in himself and in the very light which is in unspeakable and inapproachable places, embracing all things in the circumference of his power, creating and arranging, made the soul after the image of his image. Therefore, also, it is reasonable and immortal.
< 1 min18/22
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Methodius of Olympus

AD 311
For the unbegotten and incorporeal beauty, which neither begins nor is corruptible, but is unchangeable, and grows not old and has need of nothing, He resting in Himself, and in the very light which is in unspeakable and inapproachable places. I am one in the choir with Christ dispensing His rewards in heaven, around the unbeginning and never-ending King. I have become the torch-bearer of the unapproachable lights. Mple drawn before the ark of the covenant, which typified thee, that the truth might be laid open to me, and also that I might be taught, by the types and figures which went before, to approach with reverence and trembling to do honour to the sacred mystery which is connected with thee; and that by means of this prior shadow-painting of the law I might be restrained from boldly and irreverently contemplating with fixed gaze Him who, in His incomprehensibility, is seated far above all.
1 min19/22
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Tertullian of Carthage

AD 220
There is a certain emphatic saying by John, “No man has seen God at any time”; meaning, of course, at any previous time. But he has indeed taken away all question of time, by saying that God has never been seen. The apostle confirms this statement. For, speaking of God, he says, “Whom no man has seen, nor can see,” because the man indeed would die who should see him. But the very same apostles testify that they had both seen and “handled” Christ. Now, if Christ is himself both the Father and the Son, how can he be both the Visible and the Invisible? … It is evident that he was always seen from the beginning, who became visible in the end; and that he, on the contrary, was not seen in the end who had never been visible from the beginning; and that accordingly there are two—the Visible and the Invisible. It was the Son, therefore, who was always seen…. For the Father acts by mind and thought, while the Son, who is in the Father’s mind and thought, gives effect and form to what he sees.
1 min20/22
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Tertullian of Carthage

AD 220
The apostle confirms this statement; for, speaking of God, he says, "Whom no man hath seen, nor can see; ". Of the Father, however, he says to Timothy: "Whom none among men hath seen, nor indeed can see; "and he accumulates the description in still ampler terms: "Who only hath immortality, and dwelleth in the light which no man can approach unto.". -the Son, in fact, by the Father? Moreover, how comes it to pass, that the Almighty Invisible God, "whom no man hath seen nor can see; He who dwelleth in light unapproachable; "
< 1 min21/22
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The Apostolic Constitutions

AD 375
Let the bishop add this prayer, and say: O God Almighty, the true God, to whom nothing can be compared, who art everywhere, and present in all things, and art in nothing as one of the things themselves; who art not bounded by place, nor grown old by time; who art not terminated by ages, nor deceived by words; who art not subject to generation, and wantest no guardian; who art above all corruption, free from all change, and invariable by nature; who inhabitest light inaccessible.
< 1 min22/22
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Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation - 2 Peter 1:20

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