The Vision of God (2)

 Some sources of modern difficulties

Thus far, in exploring the divine knowledge, we have used only the compasses and guide books of philosophy. All that has been said is an inevitable implication of the proof for the existence of God. The mind of man can go thus far unaided, though there is authority at hand to help those who are prevented by circumstance from following the philosophical argument. Yet the contrast between the modern philosophical limitation or denial of divine knowledge and the all including sweep of divine knowledge we have portrayed is so great as to be a little ludicrous. Even more striking is the determined, and patent, resistance against the acceptance of a really divine knowledge in God. If reason can come to grasp the fact of this divine knowledge, why does the reason of so many highly trained men make such a desperate fight against this truth of reason?

The thing is puzzling. Certainly we cannot uncover reasons to justify this modern stand, for there are no valid arguments to justify an attack on truth. We may, however, be able to understand it to some extent by seeing something of the very human weaknesses that creep in to color the thoughts of men. There are a great number of these, perhaps for the most part not fully realized. Thus, for example, an understandable conceit or intellectual pride may move a man to blind boasting about the human mind, as when he insists that the mind of man, as the peak of evolution, is the measuring stick of all knowledge, thc supreme rule which simply cannot admit a superior; on the other hand, the same pride may be at the root of a pathetic eagerness to deny all intellectuality, all validity of the intellectual efforts of man. In this last case, the evident weakness of our best efforts has so discouraged the modern thinker that he indulges in the petty gesture of despair that strives to chain man down to the world of animals; at least here he can be the biggest frog in the pond. Surely some of this resistance to truth can be traced to a timid snobbery evident in the mob fear of obstructing the wheels of progress, of not paying the full meed of worship to the scientific method, of being old-fashioned. Certainly fear plays its part. We like to have a few dark corners in which to stow away the unpleasant litter of life; human life, without a basement or an attic where things can be hidden away and forgotten, is a fearful thing. To have to stand up, in the clear light of our own knowledge and the much clearer light of another's perfect knowledge, and face the responsibilities of all our actions every minute of every day, admit they clang out in the halls of eternity for all time -- this is a bit too much to demand of human courage.

Perhaps the most seductive element in this resistance is the apparent comfort, the alluring softness of the doctrines of psychological mechanism, evolution and positivism; they assure us that we are as free as a bird, which is to say that we are not free at all. We are offered escape from responsibility at the cost of our humanity. The subjective sentimentalities of the various forms of humanism are the deceptive resemblances of a decadent nobility; their superficial interest in man has the appearance of nobility, but without nobility's mind and heart. For communal groupings of men and their aspirations which leave the individual out of consideration, losing him in a fog or crushing him in a crowd, have no solid claim to the respect of men; the individual must not, cannot, be lost, not even a hair of his head is unimportant enough not to be numbered. To attack the truth of God in the name of man on this basis may be sentimentally attractive in some strange way; but the attraction is a soft, decadent, effeminate thing, repulsive to the touch.

Man's knowledge of God: The effects of God

God knows us inside and out because He made us. What do we know of God? In attacking this question, we can safely put aside the modern aberrations of a man-made, a human or an inhuman god and honestly face the facts; after all, these things have been sufficiently refuted in the second chapter of this book. In the light of the facts and the proofs already offered, it must be clear that we can know God from the world as we know an author from his book, as we know any cause from its effects. This is the sole knowledge we have been using thus far in our discussion on the nature and attributes of God. We have seen that it necessarily involves the removal of the limitation or imperfection of the creature from our concept of the perfections of God; it means the tracing of every perfection in the universe to God, but understanding these perfections to be analogically in God, in an eminent fashion, somewhat as the beauty of a poem is in a poet. This is rock bottom knowledge. It is absolutely dependable; it starts from the most indisputable of facts and goes no farther than those facts allow, or rather than those facts insist upon.

Revelation

From what this solidly certain knowledge has told us of God, it is immediately evident that God can tell us things about Himself. We have seen Him as supremely intelligent, knowing Himself perfectly, the first truth. Obviously then, He cannot deceive Himself. Clearly God cannot be guilty of silly boasting or a downright lie; He is truth itself. He can tell us things about Himself; and those things will always be true. This is the knowledge of God which comes to us by way of revelation.

Direct vision of God

There is yet another possibility. Can man know God, not indirectly through his effects, not darkly through faith in revelation, but clearly, openly, directly, face to face, through the immediate union of his intellect to the divine essence? The very question itself is a refutation of the idea that God is a fictional sop given in kindly pity to the little weak ones unable to munch the solid food of truth; it is not the weak, the defeated, the cowardly who advance boldly to peer at divinity itself, it is the violent who storm the kingdom of heaven for a direct vision of the beauty of God.

Possibility of this vision

Quite frankly, this idea of seeing God face to face is so high and bold that it probably would never have occurred to the mind of a man left to himself. The solid basis of the affirmative answer to the question is not the facts of the sensible world, not the firm steps of intellectual proof, but simply and solely the authority of God, the word of Him Who can neither deceive nor be deceived. (1) The supernatural is not to be reached by the instrumentality of any created thing; it is utterly, wholly above nature, the proper field of God.

From our side, once the possibility has been revealed to us, we can readily see how beautifully the vision harmonizes, perfects, completes our nature. For here is the ultimate quenching of our thirst to get at the cause of things, here the ultimate answer to our perpetual "why," here is the ultimate peace for that intellectual restlessness that refuses to be satisfied with anything the world of nature has to offer. Here is a fulfillment of our potentialities for all truth, a fulfillment so great that its abundance can be accommodated only by the gift of still greater potentialities within us. In this vision is the goal of our searching, the home for our wandering feet, the quiet for our clamoring heart; only God can offer us these things, and only by this vision can we directly, immediately come home to God.

Coming down to particulars and attempting to be objective about the question, we take John Jones as the average man. How is he going to see God? He has a fine, sharp pair of eyes, but they will be of no help to him; God is not a body and so not to be seen with bodily eyes. John Jones has a good enough mind when he can whip up the energy to use it; but again, this is not sufficient. How can God be seen through any image or concept? What finite concept can show us the infinite God as He is in Himself? Before this infinite essence all the natural powers of our intellect are as helpless as the eyes of an owl in the midday sun; this light is too bright to be seen in its undiminished brilliance by the eyes of our minds. What is known is in the mind of the knower in the way that is peculiarly proper to him. So a man can know sand and sugar; in a sense these are in his mind, not scratching or scarring it but ennobled by it, lifted up to its immaterial, universal level. In the same way a man must know all other things; what is beneath him must be lifted up to his level, what is above him must be dragged down to his level and taken apart that it might be carried through the narrow door of a human mind. God, brought down to the level of the human mind, is not God seen as He is in himself. For this, the human mind must be lifted to a higher level as a child is hoisted up to see over a crowd; our mind must be lifted up to the heights of divinity and by the strength of One Who is divine. That supernatural help given to the mind of man in order that it might see God is called by theologians "the light of glory."

Object of this vision: The divine essence and all formally contained in it.

Perched thus on the shoulder of God, head and shoulders over the world, we look at a sight that opens our eyes wide with awe -- and which will keep them so for all of eternity. By this vision we see the unveiled beauty of God; not just a shining part of it, not an unending succession of its splendors, but all of it at once. It can be no other way, for God is simple; you must see all of Him or see Him not at all. The magnificence of that beauty is eternity's secret; the eye has not seen, nor has the ear heard, nor has it entered the mind of man to conceive it. Some faint shadow of it is thrown across our lives, however, in the glimpses we get into the gallantry of courage, the splendor of love, the sincerity of sacrifice. In the knowledge of what these faint, distorted images of divinity can do to our heart we have a foretaste of the rapture of the blessed in heaven. There it will not be the image but the original; we shall see all of it, though our finite minds, even with divine help, will never be able to exhaust, to comprehend the infinitude of that divine perfection.

The perfections of creatures

As a matter of fact, we shall see a great deal we missed on earth for in heaven our insight into the perfections of creatures will not be limited to territory of a few squares in a city, of a few miles in a country or of a few years of life. God has in Himself all the perfections of creatures: the full story of the thoughts, hopes, and struggles of those closest to our heart, a detailed account of the complicated laws of the universe. All these we shall see: not exhaustively, for that would be to comprehend the plans of God; not equally, but in proportion to the degree of that supernatural help which is the light of glory; not by images or concepts, but as God sees them, in His very essence. And we shall see them, not bit by bit, day by day, year by year, but all at once. This, however, is the work of heaven and the proper material of the second and fourth volumes of this work.

The achievement of this vision

Earlier in this chapter it was said that the contrast between the affirmative and negative answers to the question of God's knowledge was so great as to be ludicrous. When we turn to the implications of these two answers for the living of human life, the contrast is utterly tragic, so tragic, indeed, that the choice made by the modern thinker numbs the mind with its horror. Only a kind of madness could lead men into even a moment's hesitation between the two answers.

Freedom and slavery

The one answer sets a man free; the other enslaves him. In the divine knowledge, as we have portrayed it, we have an invitation to enjoy the utmost limits of our possibilities. We are not only privileged to wander up and down the highways of the universe finding knowledge where we can, our mind is given wings to soar to heights undreamed of by any mind in nature. The modern philosopher limits our possibilities of knowledge to the sense level of a high grade animal; he not only puts the mind in the limited area of nature's jail, forbidding its flight to the heights of divinity, he builds a partition across the cell, further narrowing the space. There we can pace back and forth until we have driven ourselves insane.

Inspiration and despair

The one answer to the question of divine knowledge is an inspiration; the other is a condemnation to despair. The one throws open the gates of all desire, putting no limits to what we can desire because it puts no limits to what we can know. It offers us the completion of our human nature, its fulfillment; it assigns reasons for individual dignity, for individual self-respect, for a personal goal and so for a life with a distinctive personal meaning. The other offers us the opposite of all these things. We are counselled to lose ourselves in a mass, a process, a group; to strive for an impersonal goal, to live a meaningless life of bitter, hopeless striving to inevitable defeat and oblivion.

Humility and conceit

The one answer confers on us the nobility of humility's truth; the other wraps us about with the pettiness of conceit. The one demands a recognition of our responsibilities, our privileges, our possibilities, our realities; yes, and of our failures, our defeats, our dangers, the battle we must face. But it also sees the possibility of success and of a victory well worth all the danger, the struggle, all the intermediate failures. The other invites us to eat our meals by candle light in order to create the theatrical air of romance, to destroy the mirrors about the house that we might the better hug the illusion of our peerless beauty, to close our eyes that we might contemplate only the illusion of our beauty and might the better deny perfection to everything else.

Courage and fear

The one is a courageous answer. Only a brave man can face his life knowing how open every detail of it is to the eyes of God. Only a very brave man, with a full knowledge of his own defects, could aim at a direct vision of God. Bravery is not without its compensations, particularly in this matter. For the brave answer does give a meaning to things, does bring the assurance that an intelligence is directing the world and all in it. This brave man knows what it is all about, where he is going, and why and how. The other answer is so timid an answer as to be despairing. The man who has made this answer his own faces the terror of the unknown, a terror increased by the conviction that this unknown is unknowable, or even is devoid of all meaning. The world he faces has all the terror of darkness where light would reveal worse horror, the terror of blind, resistless force, of being hopelessly at the mercy of the unfeeling sweep of the elements or of a god gone mad.

The vision of God and life

There is much truth in the statement that man cannot see God and live. Surely he cannot know God and merely plod through the bare routine of existence; he cannot know God and not have his heart moved to high things by the vision of the horizons of hope, of courage, of golden goals such knowledge opens up to him. He cannot know God and miss the greatness of man. It is even more profoundly true that man cannot live without seeing God, for he cannot see man in the vague twilight of a godless world, he cannot see a goal towards which life can advance, he cannot see an instrument of action that will not crumble in his hands. Perhaps the greatest horror of this murky world is not what cannot be seen, but what can be seen, for it is a world divorced from the first truth and so devoid of all truth.

----------
Notes:

(1) Sacred Scripture gives explicit testimony to this direct vision: I John, ch. 3, v. 2: "We shall see him as he is." Matt. ch. 5, v. 8: "Blessed are the clean of heart for they shall see God." Cf. Matt. ch. 18, v. 10; I Cor. ch. 13, v. 12.
The definitions of the Church are no less explicit: thus the Constitution Benedictus Deus of Benedict XII (Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, #530): ". . . they (the dead) see the divine essence by an intuitive vision, face to face, without the medium of any other creature; but the divine essence shows itself immediately to them, nakedly, clearly, openly...." Cf. Council of Florence (Ibid., #693). 
----------