To See as God Sees: Love as the Restoration of the Divine Image

“The true lover ‘actually sees something, perceives with his eyes, something other than that which other men see’: he sees the ideality that is the true reality; in an inchoate way he sees the beloved person as God sees him, which is indeed the only way  God wills to see him. And to let this ideality be true, to make it true, is ‘the beginning of the visible restoration of God's image in the material world.’”

— Hans Urs von Balthasar (citing Solovyov), Glory of the Lord III, 348-49

This quote describes true love as a kind of divine seeing, in which the lover perceives the beloved not merely as they appear outwardly, but as they are in their deepest, most ideal reality—how God sees them. This vision is not fully formed, but inchoate—a glimpse of the beloved’s eternal form, their divine image. To love in this way is to cooperate with God’s own desire: not to dwell on the fallen or superficial, but to affirm and call forth the true, hidden beauty of the soul. In doing so, the lover participates in the visible restoration of God’s image in the world—making eternal truth manifest in time through the gaze of love.