Divine Being and Its Relevance According to Thomas Aquinas 9789004413993, 9789004413986

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Divine Being and Its Relevance According to Thomas Aquinas

William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

Studies in Systematic Theology Edited by Jim Fodor (St. Bonaventure University, NY, usa) Susannah Ticciati (King’s College London, UK) Editorial Board Trond Skard Dokka (University of Oslo, Norway) Junius Johnson (Baylor University, usa) Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (Fuller Theological Seminary, usa) Rachel Muers (University of Leeds, UK) Eugene Rogers (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, usa) Katherine Sonderegger (Virginia Theological Seminary, usa)

volume 20

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sist

William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

Divine Being and Its Relevance According to Thomas Aquinas By

William J. Hoye

leiden | boston

William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

Cover illustration: Holle Frank, “Engramm,” 1991, slate, 35 x 33 cm The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1876-1518 ISBN 978-90-04-41398-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-41399-3 (ebook) Copyright 2020 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

For Niclas and Lukas

⸪

William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

Contents Abbreviations  IX 1

Introduction  1

2

Divine Being as the Creator  6

3

God’s Eternity  15

4

Divine Being as the Good  19

5

Divine Being as Happiness  31

6

Divine Being as Truth Itself  37

7

Divine Being as the Ground of Freedom of the Will  40

8

The Unity of a Human Being  52

9

Prayer and Providence  60

10

Is God a Person?  86

11

God as Love  89

12

God and Violence  104

13

The Incarnation of Divine Being  121

14

Divine Being’s Unknowability  129

15

The Trinity  140

16

Divine Being as the Ground of Laughter  168

17

The Question of the Existence of Divine Being  177

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Contents

How Can We Speak about God?  187

Appendix  202 Bibliography  203 Index  211

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Abbreviations a. articulus c corpus c. capitulum cf. compare CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum LW Lateinische Werke von Meister Eckhart. Stuttgart 1964 PG Patrologia graeca, ed. J.-P. Migne 1857–1866 PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne. 1844–1855 q. quaestio sol. solutio

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Chapter 1

Introduction The uniqueness of divine being can be succinctly expressed by saying that ­divine being is the only being that is not possible, whereas every other being is the being of a possibility. Not only does God not have possibility; he also does not have being. As Thomas often puts it: God does not have his being; he is his being. In other words, saying that divine being exists is like saying that running runs. Seeing such sentences as paradoxical is a good preparation for appreciat­ ing divine being, as the following chapters will try to explicate. Treating God under the aspect of his being may not be a customary ap­ proach, but it relies substantially on theological and philosophical traditions. Usually, God is thought of as a being, for example, the highest being. This is understandable, since we naturally see reality as consisting of beings and want to locate God somewhere within reality—or, in the case of an atheist, exclude him therefrom. But actually, this approach, whether affirmative or negative, entirely loses sight of God, for his reality does not fit into the categories of be­ ings. Put shortly, God is more than simply a being: he is being itself—what Thomas Aquinas refers to as esse ipsum or ipsum esse per se subsistens (to ex­ press God’s lack of possibility). Brian Davies has put it well: “We should not suppose that Aquinas thinks of esse as if it were an individual of some kind (as Mary is an individual woman, or Paul an individual man).”1 It makes all the dif­ ference that divine being is its being rather than having it. Fundamentally, we know two kinds of being that have their being: the ob­ jective beings of the world and the thoughts of the being of consciousness. Divine being differs from both. The distinction between these three kinds of being is the explicit articulation of something which we are normally con­ scious of, albeit unintentionally. Whatever has being is a participation in being itself, which it presuppose in order to become, which is an essential character­ istic of the realities in our world. This is neither abstract nor concrete, or better, both unified. It has no individual members, but rather is the ontological ground of everything. Beyond objective and subjective being, no more than a third kind, namely divine being, seems thinkable. This presents problems not only for thought but also for language. The term ‘being’ may be accessible to most people, but the distinction between ‘beings’ 1 Davies, “Aquinas on What God Is Not,” 236.

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and ‘being,’ that is, between individual beings and being itself, requires height­ ened concentration. This is an essential characteristic of Thomas’ thought. Specific aspects of the relationship of beings to being will be taken up in the following chapters. Beforehand, a brief introduction to each may be helpful: 1. Calling God the creator appears at first sight to be easily understandable, but in fact it is a highly abstract idea. The teaching that everything is ­created by God and that he finds everything good puts demands on reason. Actually, divine being is itself the act of creation. The distinction between being as (mere) existence and being as fulness, encompassing the whole, is crucial. It is essential to appreciate that, in creation, there is no real succession, no development, no evolution. Especially difficult today is the realization that creatures exist in God. Being aware that divine being is the act of creation means, moreover, seeing that realities happen; they are not just present. 2. God’s eternity is also an extremely abstract idea. It is dependent on our understanding of time, which is notoriously difficult to comprehend. To be exact, God is not eternal; he is eternity itself. Our experience of the present ‘now’ and the succession of ‘nows’ provide a point of departure from which to define eternity. It must be seen as an aspect of divine being. 3. God is not just good; he is the good, that is, goodness itself. Even hate is motivated by love for a particular good, the opposite of which is hated. Moral evil (sin) must also be seen as a certain constellation of the good: the preference of the lesser of two goods. The role of the good in morality must be clarified. The good itself defies definition, and the attempt to do this by identifying a certain moral ideal with the good can turn out to be itself immoral. This can be a temptation for idealists. 4. Fulfilled human happiness is, in its essence, and indeed in its entirety, union with divine being. God does not make us happy; he is our happi­ ness. Though impossible to comprehend, this tells us the final meaning of our present life, which is nothing other than a preparation for happiness. As the fulfillment of all desires, happiness reveals that the essence of our present life consists in desires and strivings for being. Death, then, is a precondition for happiness. 5. What does it mean to call God truth itself? Seeing truth from the view­ point of human reality reveals that truth is an ontological becoming of an object; consciousness becomes what it grasps. The objection to the truth claim of Christianity dissolves if one distinguishes, as Thomas does, be­ tween truth and the truth. The truth is abstract and cannot come into conflict with a specific truth. Understood in this sense—and this is the

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object of Christian faith—Christians do not possess truth; they believe in truth. In light of this, there can be no conflict with a particular truth. 6. As being itself, God is the ground of freedom of the will. Freedom of choice is caused by a way in which reason thinks. The abstract makes the concrete free. If the will chooses a general good, then the will is free if a derivation takes place from the general good to the particular good by way of deliberation, so that alternatives can be considered. However, if the derivation is deductive, then the will is not free in choosing the par­ ticular good. The most general good is divine being; it is the ground for all free choices, while it itself, ironically, is not susceptible to being an object of free choice. 7. Explaining how a human person can comprise a unity despite the inher­ ent discrepancies and outright contradictions in his or her nature seems to be possible only by taking divine being into consideration. Otherwise, the soul, which is the ur-actuality (the primordial act of all human acts), would have no grounding for its possibility. Understood not just as life but also as being, the soul can subsume both the mind and body in a way that is the opposite of reductionism. In this way, something immaterial can be joined to matter. 8. What is prayer when it is directed to divine reality? According to Thomas Aquinas, prayer takes place in the practical reason, which relates imme­ diate affairs to the meaning of life as a whole. Prayer must be harmonized with the eternal divine providence. If divine reality is unchangeable, what do prayers mean? As being itself, God cannot be the intelligent de­ signer of the world. Prayer is the advocate of natural desires, including the desires of sensuality. Moreover, it is not inappropriate to pray for something against God’s will. This can be applied to the paradox of suf­ fering, which makes sense—or at least is not senseless—if viewed in the light of divine being. 9. Is God a person? Although, strictly speaking, God does not really fit into the category of a person, since he does not have individual personhood, it is nevertheless justifiable to regard him as a person if one takes the viewpoint of human reality. He lacks nothing positive that is characteris­ tic of a person. But he should not be viewed as a vis-à-vis of another person. 10. God loves, is loved, and is love. This highly paradoxical statement can be understood only if one appreciates what divine being implies. God is not an abstract notion. He unifies the subject, object, and verb in the state­ ment that God is love. Love is, in its deepest essence, not a feeling or a doing, but a form of becoming of the other. As Thomas expresses it: love

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precedes desire, which is understandable only from the viewpoint of ­being. Love of human beings and love of God can be seen in their union, which permits no separation. Love of neighbor is love of God, and vice versa. Other human beings can be loved only in God. Due to its imma­ nent transcendence, love in the present life remains ultimately disap­ pointing and unfulfilled, thus pointing to eternal life. From the perspec­ tive of being itself, self-love and the love of enemies can be better appreciated. 11. How does violence relate to God, if God is being itself? The common ac­ cusation that Christianity, being a monotheistic religion, causes conflict, violence, and ultimately war becomes groundless if God is appreciated as absolute being. The Christian adherence to truth exists at a higher level than conflicts. The clear distinction between absolute truth and individ­ ual truths is essential in this context. The mode in which truth is given in scriptural revelation must be appreciated; it must be interpreted in ac­ cordance with reason, as medieval hermeneutics maintained and as is clearly the Thomistic position. The aggressive critique of the sociologist Ulrich Beck must be treated here in detail. The adherence to absolute truth makes true tolerance and peace possible. If peace is valued above truth, as Beck proclaims, then it loses its own basis. 12. The faith teaching of the Incarnation—that God has become human— presents reason with a distinct contradiction, demanding a solution. Moreover, dogma teaches that God is unchangeable. Actually, it seems to make no sense that divine being becomes a member of worldly reality. Is this a contradiction or a paradox? How can it at least be adequately for­ mulated? What is the difference between creation and the Incarnation? What does ‘becoming’ mean ? In what sense can God become concrete? From the viewpoint of being, no articulation for these questions can be found. 13. God’s unknowability proves to be absolute when he is seen as being itself. Moreover, its foundation lies in the ultimate unknowability of the uni­ verse. This insight is accessible to reason. Nevertheless, it justifies the simplest piety and mythological metaphors. The role of symbols in reli­ gion and religious language can thus be better understood, although the­ ology is not merely language. According to Thomas, even divine revela­ tion cannot tell us what God is. The ontological proof of God’s existence mistakenly presumes that we know something, however little, about what God is. 14. The revelation of the Trinity does not alleviate God’s incomprehensibi­ lity; rather, it accentuates it. The traditional dogmatic teaching presents

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exasperatingly abstruse problems. They are not perspicuous, and the in­ tellectual confrontation with them cannot be facile. In any case, without ending in mythology, theology must show that the Trinity is an absolute mystery. Karl Rahner’s programmatic solution, which overlooks the rele­ vance of divine being, although it appeals to Thomas Aquinas, must be precisely studied, but finally, I argue, it must be rejected. The old idea of relations to explain the three divine persons is revived in this chapter and critically thought through. 15. How does the ability to laugh arise? One has to wonder at the human ability to laugh at the humorous. Without the perspective of divine being, it would not be easy to see God as the ground of laughter. When one real­ izes that laughter in response to the humorous assumes that one stands above the situation and has an overview that embraces both the congru­ ous and incongruous and is guided by benevolence, then the relevance of divine being becomes clearer. Laughter is a form of freedom from con­ crete reality. 16. The question on God’s existence is extremely paradoxical. This must be appreciated if one is to pose the question in an adequate manner. Ac­ cording to negative theology, the statement that God does not exist must contain more truth than the statement that he does exist. The critical question in this context is how existence relates to being. In a legitimate sense, we can know God’s existence but not his being. In the final analy­ sis, all we can really know about God is that he exists. Wondering about the phenomenon of becoming and pondering what it means to be con­ crete present points of departure for such a conclusion. 17. Language is not made for speaking about God, since it develops out of worldly realities. It must be manipulated and, in a certain way, distorted. An adequate statement about God must be paradoxical if it is really to refer to God. It is also legitimate, if done deliberately, to use anthropo­ morphic predications, or even more rudimentary ones. God may be called, for example, our friend or light. In any case, univocal language is not possible, although one must also avoid purely mythological language. The norm is reason, even when one is dealing with divine revelation. Sev­ eral fundamental rules for speaking about God can be established. These apparently disparate themes reveal a simple and coherent unity when they are looked at from the viewpoint of divine being.

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Chapter 2

Divine Being as the Creator “Through him all things came into being, not one thing came into being except through him” (Jn 1, 3). “Everything there is comes from him and is caused by him and exists for him” (Rom 11, 36). All things are created by God. But how can this deceptively simple sentence be thought? This rudimentary catechesis of faith presents our reason with a unique challenge. Are we really able to think the notion ‘all things,’ or is that merely a name, void of content? Coincidentally, neither the idea of ‘all things’ nor that of creation can be adequately grasped only under the aspect of being. The Thomistic teaching on creation is based on an appreciation of the difference between beings [entia] and being itself [ipsum esse]. With the term ‘beings,’ or ‘realities,’ we grasp all that is; all things are, without exception, realities. Furthermore, with the term ‘being’—but not taken in a plural sense, not as the sum of all beings—we have an apprehension of the act of creation. By its essence, divine being is creation. This is quite different from human creation. When we create something, we do not cause its being, but rather the form of its being, which is itself presupposed. Causality in the world is restricted to the form. Divine being does not change. Time does not exist before creation. Strictly speaking, it does not make sense to speak of ‘continual creation.’ Creation does not occur at the beginning at all, but rather lies beyond the category of time. Change presumes a duality of potency and actuality. Thomas states: “To be is more universal than to be moved […]. So, above the kind of cause which acts only by moving and changing there must exist that cause which is the first principle of being, and this […] is God. Thus, God does not act only by moving and changing.”1 However, in the human way of thinking, it does appear as change: “Creation appears to be a kind of change from the point of view of our way of understanding only, namely, in that our intellect grasps one and the same thing as not existing before and as existing afterwards.”2

1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, ii, c. 16. “For all motion or change is the ‘act of that which exists potentially, as such.’ But in the action which is creation nothing potential preexists to receive the action, as we have just shown. Therefore, creation is not a motion or a change.” Ibid., c. 17. 2 Ibid., c. 18.

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A change is defined as the actualization of a potency. The reality is not present before the change, but the potentiality to it must be present. Changing my standing position by walking means that, at the start, I am at one point and able to go to another point. And when I go to the other point, that is the actualization of the possibility that I had beforehand. Apprehending change means that one sees the same reality as both actual and possible; the possibility is apprehended in the actuality. Since nothing has the potency to be created and creation causes the whole, creation cannot involve change. Furthermore, it follows that all creation is without succession. “From the foregoing it is also clear that all creation is without succession. For success­ ion characterizes motion. But creation is not a motion, nor the term of a motion, as a change is; hence, there is no succession in it.”3 The following is a succinct expression: “Creation is instantaneous. Thus, a thing simultaneously is being created and is created, even as a thing at the same moment is being illuminated and is illuminated.”4 To be sure, contemporary theology has trouble understanding this. Creation does not really imply a succession; it is occurring now. It is not evolution, for it does not occur within the temporal dimension. It goes without saying that the biblical presentation of it as the work of six days may not be taken literally. For our way of thinking, however, creation does appear as a change, since it involves seeing one and the same thing as previously nonexistent and afterward existent. Every change is included in the horizon of creation. It is neither a process nor the result of a process. Between being and nonbeing there is nothing. There is nothing, then, that could be the bearer of change. Change always presumes something that changes. A further reason why creation is not a process is that it occurs in an instant. As Thomas Aquinas states, “Creation takes place in an instant: a thing is at once in the act of being created and is created, as light is at once being shed and is shining.”5 Whereas God creates the whole, human creative action is not creation in the strict sense, since it causes changes to something preexisting. It is not absolute and unconditional. Being is not a quality added to others. It is the actual reality itself of things. It is what everything that is has. Everything is, so to speak, included in being. In this sense, ‘being’ is not merely the pinnacle of the pyramid of abstractions. It

3 Ibid., c. 19. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid.

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is not simply the most general notion at the apex of a hierarchy of notions. It encompasses everything universally, but in a unique manner that is not merely based on degrees of abstraction. It is not like the ascending levels of abstraction presumed in the notions ‘chair,’ ‘furniture,’ ‘product,’ and ‘thing.’ Seeing something as a being involves more than abstraction. According to the way in which we use the term, we can distinguish between ‘mere’ being and, say, ‘intensive’ being. The former sense is minimal, while the latter is maximal. Mere being is existence understood as added to an essence. Unicorns have various qualities, but they lack existence. Intensive being is the actualization of the whole; everything that comes into existence does so according to a mode of being, and all of its components also have modes of being. The least that can be said about something is that it exists, that it has being. But being also is the most that can be said about something. To say that it lives or is conscious expresses more than existence in this minimal sense; there is more involved. Living and thinking are forms of being in the maximal, intensive sense. Hence, to live is more than merely to exist or simply to be in being; it represents a fuller form of being. For this reason, the most adequate name for God is being—understood in the intensive sense—since he includes everything that is real. Divine being is not a form of being; it is the whole. It is not merely empty existence. If we were able to apprehend this, then being would be the only necessary notion for God. But, since we cannot reach it in itself because we cannot form a conception of being, we require many notions. The reality of the world consists of many forms of being, and since our notions for God derive from the world, we find many of them, too. If understood as the actuality of all realities, being is the act of being created. Realities take part in being. This is a universal causality, leaving nothing out; it happens, and it is the act of happening. Moreover, it is the only way to conceive of creation. Saying that God created all things is the same as saying that he creates being. The kind of causality involved in creation is unique. It is not one of the four causes discussed by Aristotle. In any case, it is not efficient causality, as is often asserted by theologians. An efficient cause is separate from its product and presupposes some sort of being, which it changes. Change is the object of physics, natural laws being laws of change. But creation involves no real change. Furthermore, creation is not like the causality by which redness causes things to be red. Rather, it resembles the causality of light causing colors. Colors emerge without light having changed. Since creation causes being, it presumes no previous matter. There can be nothing out of which it occurs. Its ‘product’ is the whole. “The proper mode of

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his action,” writes Thomas, “is to produce the whole subsisting thing, and not merely an inhering entity, namely, a form in a matter.”6 It is not easy to appreciate this. Everything that exists and occurs, every other causality, lies within the horizon of creation. Every other causality represents a mode of creation. It is evident that God is the cause enabling all operating agents to operate. In fact, every operating agent is a cause of being in some way, either of substantial or of accidental being. Now, nothing is a cause of being unless by virtue of its acting through the power of God […]. Therefore, every operating agent acts through God’s power.7 This holds true for free choices, since they too are acts of being. Creation does not imply necessity. Freedom of choice is not like a free space left open for individual independence. In this world, there can be no independence from creation, even in the case of the qualified independence of free will. Creation is the actualization of all other kinds of causality, a kind of metacausality. All other causes presuppose being, while being itself causes without presuppositions. It causes, as the teaching of faith says, ‘out of nothing.’8 The Catechism (n. 297) states: “Scripture bears witness to faith in creation ‘out of nothing’ as a truth full of promise and hope.”9 The Catechism quotes 2 Macc 7, 28: “Look at the heaven and the earth and see everything that is in them, and recognize that God did not make them out of things that existed. Thus also humankind comes into being.” Thinking of the meaning of ‘out of nothing’ is possible only by bearing being itself in mind. Creation is a relationship of dependence. “Creation is not a change, but the very dependency of the created act of being upon the principle from which it is produced. And thus, creation is a kind of relation; so that nothing prevents its being in the creature as its subject.”10 But the bearer of the relationship does not exist beforehand. The very fact of the relationship itself is an effect of creation.

6 Ibid., c. 16. 7 Ibid., iii, c. 67. 8 Cf. Lateran Council iv (1215) (DS 800); Catechism of the Catholic Church, nn. 296 and 297. 9 Ibid. 10 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, ii, c. 18.

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Chapter 2

Relations to God Are Not Real in Him

We speak of relations to God, the fundamental one being creation. When I turn to God with a request, a complaint, or a paean of praise, then a real relationship to God occurs in my reality. But divine being cannot really sustain relations, since nothing lies outside of it to which it could relate. Creatures can have real relations to God, but such relations are not real in God. Strictly speaking, divine relations are merely objects of our thought; that is, I think of them as being relations that he has to me. They are similar to objects of my knowledge. When I see something, it is seen. Nonetheless, it is not really effected by being seen. It is not false to regard it as now having the quality of being visible as though this were an inherent quality. The fundamental relation to God is creation itself. Consequently, we call God the creator. But this relation is real only from our point of view. God is not changed by creating, as though something new occurs. Most of what we predicate of God is like this. It is legitimate to think as though something new occurred, but this remains a human perspective. If a point is added to a geometrical line, the line does not become longer. We speak of God as though the relations that we have to him existed reciprocally in him. This is only natural. When I refer something to God, then I cannot help but think that the reference has an effect in God. Actually, they do exist in him, since he is being itself and includes all that exists, but in him, everything is simple. Since he is being itself, nothing new can be added to him. Hence, he cannot have something. In our own case, we exist first and then we acquire relations. We are familiar with an analogous situation within thought: individual things have a relation to universal concepts. For example, when a new dog is born, the concept ‘dog’ remains unchanged, although it is the relation to it that makes the new dog be a dog. One could say that the universal concept ‘dog’ is present—unqualifiedly—in every dog, making it what it is. Nonetheless, each new dog is included in the notion ‘dog.’ Analogous to the influence of a universal notion on the individual case, the divine causality does not impinge on the causality of creatures; rather, it makes causality in the world real. Even freedom is no exception. Free choice takes place within the horizon of reality. It does not cause reality, but has influence only within it. The autonomy of our freedom does not conflict with divine causality any more than the causality of light conflicts with specific colors. In fact, divine causality within the existing world takes place through the causality of creatures. Providence takes place through creatures. Where divine reality is indeed most intensely present in the world is in free will. Human dependence on the creator is precisely its autonomy.

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11

The Immanence of Creatures in God

It is a traditional teaching in theology that creatures exist in God. For us today, this has become more foreign than the idea that God is present in creatures, but an appreciation of it can be nonetheless fruitful. For Nicolaus Cusanus, who articulates it in his own way, the traditional conviction is obvious: The Divine Simplicity enfolds all things. Mind is the image of this Enfolding Simplicity. Hence, if you call the Divine Simplicity ‘Infinite Mind,’ then that Mind will be [considered] the Exemplar of our minds. If you say that the Divine Mind is the All-encompassing Unity of the [respective] true nature of [all] things, then you will say that our mind is an all-encompassing unity of the [respective] assimilation of [all] things, so that it is an all-encompassing unity of [all] concepts. The Divine Mind’s Conceiving is a producing of things; our mind’s conceiving is a conceptualizing of things. If the Divine Mind is Absolute Being itself, then its Conceiving is the creating of beings; and our mind’s conceiving is an assimilating of beings. For what besuits the Divine Mind as Infinite Truth besuits our mind as a close image of the Divine Mind. If all things are present in the Divine Mind as in their precise and proper Truth, then all things are present in our mind as in an image, or a likeness, of their proper Truth. That is, they are present conceptually, for knowledge comes about on the basis of [conceptual] likeness. All things are present in God, but in God they are exemplars of things; all things are present in our mind, but in our mind they are likenesses of things. Just as God is Absolute Being itself that is the Enfolding of all beings, so our mind is an image of that Infinite Being itself—an image that is the enfolding of all [other] images [of God].11 Realities have at least two modes of being: They exist in the concrete world and in God. Of course, they can also enjoy a third mode of reality, since they can exist in consciousness. In God, they are identical with God himself, as Cusanus remarks: Color is not sensible color or intellectual color but is divine, indeed, is God Himself; whatever in the sensible world lacks movement and life and 11

Nicolaus Cusanus, Idiota de mente, c. 3, nn. 72–73.

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whatever has vegetative, sensitive, rational, or intellectual life is the Divine Life itself, which is Immortality itself, which God alone possesses; in God all things are God. In that kingdom [the King] is the joyfulness of all the joys taken in by means of the eyes, the ears, taste, touch, smell, the senses, life, movement, reason, and intellect. [He is] joyfulness that is infinite, divine, and inexpressible. And [He is] the restfulness of all joyfulness and delight; for He is Theos, God, Beholding, and Hastening, who sees all things, who is present in all things, and who traverses all things. All things look unto Him as unto their King. By His command all things are moved and hasten about; and every hastening unto an end of rest is [a hastening] unto Him. Therefore, Theos—who is the Beginning from which things flow forth, the Middle in which we are moved, and the End unto which things flow back—is everything.12 In the divine reality, they have truer reality. This is an insight that Thomas Aquinas, and perhaps only Thomas Aquinas, thanks to his theology of being, can appreciate: “The creature has truer being in God than in itself.”13 This is more than the presence that Cusanus has in mind, which is limited to formal causality. (For Cusanus, even being is included in formal causality, for he understands being in the abstract sense of beingness.) Furthermore, in God, realities are infinite, as Thomas Aquinas attests: In themselves all things that are caused are finite; but in God they are infinite, since in God they are the divine essence itself. […] In themselves they contain opposition and diversity; in God they are all joined together simultaneously. […] In themselves, they are a multitude; but in God they are one.14 Meister Eckhart echoes the tradition: “My body is more in my soul than my soul is in my body. My body and my soul are more in God than they are in themselves.”15 Eckhart emphasizes that creation means that creatures are made in God. Being outside of God means being outside of being, that is, being nothing. Outside of being, there can be no becoming, for becoming means

12 13 14 15

Nicolaus Cusanus, De quaerendo deum, 1, n. 31. Thomas Aquinas, In i Sententiarum, dist. 36, q. 1, a. 3, ad 2. Thomas Aquinas, In De divinis nominibus, c. 5, n. 641. Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen Werke, i, 161, 5–7.

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coming into being. Whatever God makes and does, he makes and does in himself.16 There is not just a mirrored image or an exemplar of a creature in God. More than its idea is in the creator. But this is not the way objects exist in our consciousness. There they are not in their totality in us, but are rather what we call truth, which is, so to speak, a weak form of being in which the object takes on conscious being. In God, the entire thing is present, including its matter. Aquinas makes the following differentiation: The creature is said to be in God in two ways. First, as in its governing cause and preserver of its being: and in this sense the creature is understood as already existing distinct from the Creator, so that we may say that the creature derives its being from the Creator. For the creature is not understood to be preserved in being except as already having being in its proper nature, in respect of which being the creature is distinguished from God. Wherefore in this sense the creature as existing in God is not the creative essence. Secondly, the creature is said to be in God as in the power of the causal agent or as the thing known in the knower. In this sense the creature, insofar as it exists in God, is the very essence of God according to Jo. 1, 3: That which was made, in him was life.17 In God, therefore, creatures enjoy uncreated being, whereas they enjoy created being in themselves. In God, moreover, all creatures are identical with the essence of God himself. According to Anselm of Canterbury, the creature in the creator “is the creative essence.”18 This is reiterated by Thomas: “In God nothing differs from him. Therefore, insofar as creatures are in God, they are nothing other than God himself, for creatures in God are his creative essence.”19 They are “entirely one.”20 The presence of creatures in God is similar to their presence in thought. In thought, we grasp the concrete in a general notion. I see a concrete chair, for example, through my notion of ‘chair.’ The notion includes a multitude of chairs—virtually an infinite number. And yet this multitude is one. This 16 17 18 19 20

Cf. Meister Eckhart, Allgemeine Vorrede zum dreiteiligen Werk [Prologus generalis in opus tripartitum], nn. 16–17. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 3, a. 16, ad 24. Anselm of Canterbury, Monoloquium, c. 36, 190D. Thomas Aquinas, In i Sententiarum, dist. 36, q. 1, a. 3, ad 1. Cf. De potentia, q. 2, a. 5c. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 2, a. 3, ad 3.

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multitude in unity takes place in a kind of reality that grasps the object, but not the whole of its being. It abstracts from the concrete, thus leaving out its concrete being. In God, to the contrary, there is no loss. The whole is included. Knowing that God is the creator of everything in the world means seeing that things happen. This viewpoint apprehends a dynamic in everything. As the actuality of all acts, being is active. It is not simply the fact of existing. Things come toward us. That is the beginning of all that happens.

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Chapter 3

God’s Eternity Analogous to the way in which concrete particulars are included in universal concepts, time is contained in eternity. When related to God, the notion of eternity can be understood only as the simultaneous unity of the whole of all temporal moments. In other words, eternity subsumes under itself all temporal moments.1 A popular definition that understands eternity as never-ending time, or time with neither beginning nor end, can apply only to the realities within our world. For theology, the idea of unceasing duration is, strictly speaking, not enough, in spite of the fact that it is the prevalent biblical notion of eternity. The technical term ‘aeviternity’ [sempiternitas] distinguishes it from eternity [aeternitas]. This does not mean that we comprehend eternity, or even the idea of eternity. We have no other approach but to define eternity by viewing it as a function of time and using temporal categories that are then manipulated. The result is not really a definition, but rather just a pointing in the right direction. Jorge Luis Borges has given the problematic an apt articulation in his essay “The New Refutation of Time”: The eternal is the world of archetypes. In this eternity, there are, for ex­ ample, no triangles. There is only one triangle, which is neither equilateral nor isosceles nor scalene. This triangle is all three things and none of them. The fact that this triangle is unimaginable has no meaning at all: This triangle exists.2 Strictly speaking, God is not eternal. ‘Eternal’ is merely an attribute belonging to something (a substance). But in God, this would be too extrinsic. Rather than the adjective, it is more fitting to use the abstract substantive form ‘eternity’ and say rather that God is eternity. “Eternity,” declares Aquinas, “is nothing other than God himself.”3 Precisely because he is being itself, God is 1 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 10, a. 2, ad 4. 2 Borges, “Die Zeit,” 70 (my translation from the German). 3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 10, a. 2, ad 3. Ratio aeternitatis consequitur immutabilitatem, sicut ratio temporis consequitur motum […]. Unde, cum Deus sit maxime immutabilis, sibi maxime competit esse aeternum. Nec solum est aeternus, sed est sua aeternitas, cum tamen nulla alia res sit sua duratio, quia non est suum esse. Deus autem est

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his eternity. Moreover, there is nothing else other than God to which this artificial way of speaking can be applied. I do not see how one could deal with this question without using philosophy, contrary to what some theologians believe. Oscar Cullmann, for example, has maintained, “If we want to understand the original Christian idea of eternity, we must try to think as unphilosophically as possible.”4 In support of my position and its legitimation as orthodox theology, I can appeal, for example, to Pope Benedict xvi: “The content of the notion of eternity has in the most seldom cases been thought through: This is a task that goes beyond the immediate religious concern and requires philosophical thinking.”5 If time is understood as having no beginning and no end, as though it always was and always will be, then time would still be distinct from eternity, arising from the fact that eternity is simultaneously the whole, whereas time is not. Eternity is the measure of a permanent being (namely, God), while time is a measure of movement. Change, or changeableness, is the object of physics. If one conceives of the universe as temporally infinite, then it could not be measured by time as a whole, although, insofar as it exists in time, it could be measured by time. This distinction is relevant for some ideas that contemporary physicists entertain. To understand this better, our experience of the present provides a helpful approach. Eternity is not simply a forever-existing present. But one can say that, in eternity, all temporal moments exist analogously to the mode in which the present exists for us. In other words, past and future moments in divine being are comparable to the present in our temporal world. For this reason, it can be said that, for an instant, we participate partially in eternity. The difference lies in the fact that there is no flow of present moments in eternity, but in time, the present is continually being superseded. Actually, what time is consists in this flowing from one present to the next. Aquinas differentiates accordingly: The ‘now’ of time is the same as regards its subject in the whole course of time, but it differs in regard to an aspect under which it is viewed; for inasmuch as time corresponds to movement, its ‘now’ corresponds to what is movable; and the thing movable has the same one subject in all the moments of time, but differs under the aspect of being here and there; and such alteration is movement. Likewise the flow of the ‘now’ as suum esse uniforme, unde, sicut est sua essentia, ita est sua aeternitas (ibid., corpus). Cf. Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 61. 4 Cullmann, Christus und die Zeit, 55. 5 Cf. Ratzinger, “Ewigkeit,” 1268–1269 (my translation).

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alternating in aspect is time. But eternity remains the same according to both subject and aspect; and hence eternity is not the same as the ‘now’ of time.6 But the fact that eternity is a permanent, unchanging totality does not mean that change is foreign or extrinsic to it. The reason why it does not change is that it already includes in itself all of the reality of real and possible changes. Eternity is not something completely different from time, since it includes time in itself. Nicolaus Cusanus emphasizes this aspect by calling it a rest that is move­ ment. As he says, addressing himself to God: “You are not mutable, since You are fixed eternity. But since eternity does not desert time, it seems to be moved with time, even though in eternity motion is rest.”7 He adds the following explanation of the paradox: You are moved with all that is moved, and You remain stationary with all that is stationary. And because there are some things which are moved while others remain stationary, You O Lord, at once, are both moved and stationary; at once You both advance and are at rest. For if, in different things, being moved and being-at-rest occur contractedly and at the same time, and if nothing can exist apart from You, then neither motion nor rest exists apart from You. O Lord, You are present at one and the same time to all these things, and You are present as a whole to each [of them]. Nevertheless, You are not moved and You are not at rest, because You are superexalted and are free from all these things, which can be conceived or named.8 In eternity, there is no succession and the real actualization is not restricted to the present [nunc temporis], but extends to all temporal instants. On the basis of our experience of a succession of ‘nows,’ we can form a conception of eternity as a permanent, unchanging ‘now.’ From our experience of a flow of ‘nows’ [fluxum ipsius nunc], we can conceive of eternity as a ‘now standing still’ [nunc stans]. As Thomas explains: The ‘now’ that stands still [nunc stans], is said to make eternity according to our apprehension. As the apprehension of time is caused in us by the 6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 10, a. 4, ad 2. 7 Nicolaus Cusanus, De visione Dei, c. 8, n. 31. 8 Ibid., c. 9, n. 37.

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fact that we apprehend the flow of the ‘now,’ so the apprehension of eternity is caused in us by our apprehending the ‘now’ standing still. When Augustine says that ‘God is the author of eternity,’ this is to be understood of participated eternity. For God communicates his eternity to some in the same way as he communicates his immutability.9 In other words, we can think of many ‘nows,’ but without succession, such that we can understand eternity as consisting, so to speak, in all moments of time at one and the same time. Taken in this sense, it is a kind of duration. As Thomas expresses it, “a duration that is the whole at once.”10 It includes all that duration consists of. Time is based on change, whereas our idea of eternity is based on unchangeableness.11 That is to say, change is subsumed under unchangeableness. The classic definition of Boethius, which is “authoritative for theological and philosophical thought till this day,”12 articulates this: “Eternity is the simultaneously whole [tota simul] and perfect possession of interminable life.”13 Aquinas offers the following commentary on this: “Two things are to be considered in time: time itself, which is successive; and the ‘now’ of time, which is imperfect. Hence the expression ‘simultaneously-whole’ is used to remove the idea of time, and the word ‘perfect’ is used to exclude the ‘now’ of time.”14 But it would be a misunderstanding if eternity being the totality of all temporal instants were taken as though it were a universal concept of time. In eternity, every ‘now’ is simultaneously present in its full reality, not like the way in which every dog is present in ‘dog.’ While a multiplicity of present moments is not something that we humans are able to comprehend, this does not prevent it from being predicated of eternity. Divine reality lies beyond our mode of experiencing the present. It must lack the imperfection of that mode, but without losing whatever we know as real in its positive content. In short, the idea of eternity can be approached only through paradoxical statements. The idea of divine being justifies these statements. 9 10 11

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 10, a. 2, ad 1. Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibet x, q. 2c. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 10, a. 2, ad 3: “Eternity is nothing else but God himself. Hence God is not called eternal, as if he were in any way measured; but the idea of measurement is there taken according to the apprehension of our mind alone.” 12 Historisches W’orterbuch der Philosophie, 2, 840. 13 Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, 858. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 10, a. 1, obj. 1. 14 Ibid., ad 5.

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Chapter 4

Divine Being as the Good Discussion of ‘the good’ is a tradition that stretches back at least to Aristotle, who understands the good as that which is desirable. Thus, it is a reciprocal term, taken together with desire. Obviously, then, God is good. But, again, one must ascend to a higher level and say that he is not only good, but the good— he is goodness itself. Everything that is good has a relation to him. He is what makes good things good. He is thus more than the best. He is the measure that determines what else is good and what is better than something else. But the mistake must be avoided of imagining that he is an efficient cause, like the carpenter who makes a good table. Moreover, ‘good’ is a fundamental notion that enjoys the peculiarity of belonging not only to everyday language but also to biblical and philosophical language. We seem to know intuitively what it means. We certainly do not restrict it to morality, as is often presumed. Christians are convinced that everything is good in some way or another. Ultimately, the universality of such a conviction is derived from the fact that being is good. Everything that has being has been created and affirmed by divine being, and its existence is desired by it. It is an important and often neglected characteristic of the idea of the good that it cannot be defined, although it is presumed and normally used without any problems. In fact, trying to define it means losing it. The good is incomprehensible. Whoever knows that God is incomprehensible knows that the good cannot be defined or concretized in itself, although it can obviously be participated in by the concrete. The concrete can be good, albeit not the good. Is morality, then, not the good? If it is seen in the right perspective, then it certainly is good. But if the perspective is wrong, then—ironically—morality turns bad. The error lies in the concretization of the good—taken as goodness. It must remain abstract, so to speak, like the vanishing point in a picture that adds a third dimension. It can become concrete in everything else, but not in itself. It would be like trying to define the color of light. Concretizing it means losing it. If one maintains an awareness of being itself, then there is little danger that one will try to comprehend it. Nevertheless, there exists a natural tendency to try to determine what the good is. In fact, it offers an effective means for tempting a well-meaning person. Such a person wants to envision his or her goal. The striving for a moral life

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can deceive one into thinking that the moral good is identical with goodness itself. But realizing that divine being is goodness itself protects one from absolutizing morality. Religion goes beyond morality. It offers the justification for morality. Christianity has an ethics, but it is not its ethics. The moral good lies in the free choice of a concrete good, although it is not adequately grasped by this description. This good must necessarily be ambivalent, since every choice implies a rejection and no good in this world is absolute. A good person, therefore, does not have clean hands. A moral idealist may imagine that he or she is striving for the good itself, but his or her intentions remain in temporal reality, whereas the good exists in divine being. The good for humanity is happiness. The moral idealist is in danger of being self-righteous because he or she is blinded to the ambivalence involved. The purity of his intentionality lends itself to rigorism. We see this exemplified today in Islamic extremism. Sin is the preference for the lesser good. The sinner neglects the greater good. “He loves the lesser good more,” explains Thomas.1 Something good is chosen, but a better good is sacrificed.2 The moral choice is always between possibilities that are all good—at least in the eyes of the individual faced with the moral decision. Otherwise, they would have no appeal. Human beings are incapable of choosing evil as evil. If we choose objective evil, we see it subjectively as being somehow good. But the aspect seen does not adequately represent the essence of the object in itself. It is a partial, inadequate truth. Moreover, a good person is often solicitous because of not being in a position to take all possibilities into consideration, since the world is too complex. The far-reaching effects of an action are incalculable. In contrast to the moral idealist, who sees his or her ideal as free of ambivalence, the good individual can never be certain of whether he or she has chosen the objective good. For us, who live in the modern age, ironically, morality is the strongest enemy of religion if it reduces religion to ethics. Viewed like this, ethics and religion are in truth opponents. Our age even tries aggressively to free morality from religion, to make ethics autonomous. Religion is often even depicted as the contradiction of morality. Usually, in such cases, attention is focused on the institution of the Church in order to show that religion is immoral. But religion itself, and Christianity in particular, is also criticized as being in its essence immoral. A popular thesis today is that religion causes conflict and war. The claim is that religions are absolute, each considering itself to be in possession of the absolute truth. If a religion realizes that absolute truth exists in divine reality, 1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 78, a. 1c. 2 Cf. ibid., i, q. 48, a. 1, ad 2; i–ii, q. 75, a. 2c; Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 3, a. 6c.

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then it is obvious that it cannot claim absolute truth for itself, for “no one is good but God alone” (Mk 10, 18; cf. Lk 18, 19). The relation of Christianity to absolute truth—namely God—is faith, not knowledge; Christians obviously do not possess God. As Robert Spaemann has succinctly put it: “Morality is itself not a goal, but the means for a successful life.”3 Morality is not like the work that earns its wages; rather, it is like the brush strokes of the artist that produce a picture. Morality itself cannot be happiness, since it has no content in itself. Morality is a way of apprehending possibilities. Strictly speaking, there are no moral values. The moral perspective evaluates the possibilities to determine a hierarchy of values. A certain value may be the greater in one concrete situation but the lesser in another. A contribution to a good cause may be better than no contribution, but if the cause is evil, the hierarchy of values is just the opposite. Morality is concerned with the comparative, not with the superlative. With divine reality as a background or measure, we are able to compare concrete goods. Without it, morality would become blind. We would still see good things, but not as good. And for this reason, we would be unable to draw relevant comparisons. Rather than being itself tantamount to the moral good, it only makes morality possible. God is love. It is not enough to say that God loves us or that he is the highest love (among others), for he is love itself. He embraces all the kinds of love that we know, from the lowest to the highest, all consisting in love of being. Viewing God as being itself makes this self-evident. Similarly, the love called charity— understood in its proper theological sense as a ‘theological’ virtue—includes all other forms of human love. God embraces all three: the lover, the beloved, and the act of loving. It follows that the love of any reality is implicitly love of God. If God is allembracing being and love is an affective union with or toward a reality, then God is implicitly loved in every instance of love, and this includes hate (as shall be shortly shown; p. 23). There is no alternative between God and anything else that is loved. All love is grounded in being itself because love is always directed to reality. What is loved is the existence of the beloved. This holds true even for self-love, since self-love is love for my own reality, which, like every other reality, derives from divine reality. Consequently, striving for self-fulfillment or self-realization is striving for God. Every desire, whether spiritual or sensual, arises out of love. Through love of any good, goodness itself is loved. In other words, the origin and end of all human love is God. Thomas Aquinas has claimed universally, “The goal of all human acts and all 3 Spaemann, Glück und Wohlwollen, 101.

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human striving is love of God.”4 This has been frequently reiterated by him, for example in the following manner: A secondary cause can influence its effect only in so far as it receives the power of the first cause. The influence of an efficient cause is to act; that of a final cause is to be sought or desired. A secondary agent acts only by the efficacy of the first agent existing in it; similarly a secondary end is sought only by reason of the worth of the principal end existing in it inasmuch as it is subordinated to the principal end or has its likeness. Accordingly, because God is the last end, he is sought in every end, just as, because he is the first efficient cause, he acts in every agent. This is what tending to God implicitly means.5 It follows, then, that love of neighbor and love of God form a unity, the latter being included in the former and vice versa.6 Furthermore, it follows, as Aquinas confirms, that “to love God above all things is natural to man and to every nature, not only rational but irrational, and even to inanimate nature according to the manner of love which can belong to each creature.”7 Thomas argues concisely: Since God is the universal good, and under this good both man and angel and all creatures are comprised, because every creature in regard to its entire being naturally belongs to God, it follows that from natural love angel and man alike love God before themselves and with a greater love. Otherwise, if either of them loved self more than God, it would follow that natural love would be perverse, and that it would not be perfected but destroyed by charity.8 Even in sin, according to Aquinas, God is loved: “By loving anything good, the will loves the greatest good. But he who loves never sins unless he turn himself by his love to a mutable good. Therefore in every sin man loves the highest good, the love of which is charity. Therefore charity can never be lost by sin.”9 4 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii–ii, q. 27, a. 6c. 5 Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 22, a. 2c. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De virtutibus, q. 2, a. 7, ad 3. 6 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii–ii, q. 44, a. 2, ad 4. 7 Ibid., i–ii, q. 109, a. 3c. 8 Ibid., i, q. 60, a. 5c. 9 Thomas Aquinas, De virtutibus, q. 2, a. 12, ad 16.

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Even hate does not really contradict love, for one hates the opposite of what one loves. Love is the condition of the possibility of hate. Whatever is hated appears as the contradiction of something loved. The negative in this world always exists somehow in the good. There is no such thing as absolute evil, although there is absolute goodness. Evil exists in the good. This may be the meaning of Jesus’ words when he tells us that our Father in heaven “causes his sun to rise on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike” (Mt 5, 45). 1

The Ideal of Peace as a Temptation

Sometimes, especially in a secular age, it is presumed that life is the good itself. Survival, then, would be the equivalent of the good. But I would argue that survival cannot be the ultimate purpose of living. In this sense, even the ideal of political peace is criticized by the well-known dissident and first president of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel. Since this standpoint is decidedly unpopular today and usually rejected without further ado, I want to underscore it and take it up again on p. 119. He calls the peace ideal a bait and argues that a life that is not willing to sacrifice itself for its own meaning is not worth living at all. Making peace the highest value is equivalent to renouncing the meaning of life. But without the horizon of the highest sacrifice, every sacrifice loses its meaning, implying that nothing has any meaning. As Havel does not hesitate to assert, what absolutizing the ideal of peace comes down to is nothing less than a philosophy of the pure negation of human existence.10 Thus, even a high moral ideal like peace can become seductive if removed from the ambivalent sphere of realities and rendered pure and unequivocal. This can be done by abstraction. An abstract notion can be devoid of ambiguity, which makes abstractions dangerous for morality. Moral evil does not arise by choosing something evil. Rather, it is the reversing of the hierarchy of values that causes moral evil: something good is held to be better than it really is within its context in reality. Immorality consists in valuing a good more than it deserves. According to Havel, there is nothing that could really stand in contradiction to the natural striving for meaning. “I am convinced,” he claimed, “that there is nothing in this vale of tears that, of itself, can rob man of hope, faith and the

10

Cf. Havel, Am Anfang, 104–106.

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meaning of life.”11 There is no positive opposition to it; one cannot really directly oppose it. What is possible, though, is lethargy: I think that resignation, indifference, the hardening of the heart and laziness of the spirit are dimensions of a genuine “unbelief” and a genuine “loss of meaning.” The person who has fallen into that state not only ceases to ask himself what meaning life has, he no longer even spontaneously responds to the question existentially by living for something—simply because he must, because it will not let him alone, because he is the way he is. The person who has completely lost all sense of the meaning of life is merely vegetating and does not mind it; he lives like a parasite and does not mind it; he is entirely absorbed in the problem of his own metabolism and essentially nothing beyond that interests him: other people, society, the world, Being—for him they are all simply things to be either consumed or avoided, or turned into a comfortable place to make his bed.12 Not even atheism can oppose humanity’s natural striving or contradict faith, for atheism does not occur at the same level as faith in the transcendent meaning of life, which reaches beyond the life in the world, and hence cannot contradict faith. Transcendence is a peculiarity of the human essence. Denying transcendence robs human life of an indispensable factor. The alternative to a truly human life is the life of an unreflecting animal: To give up on any form of transcending oneself means, de facto, to give up on one’s own human existence and to be contented with belonging to the animal kingdom. The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.13 2

Should I Will What God Wills?

If God is the good, then everything that he desires must be good. Good for me? Should we desire what God desires? God wills the good; should not what I will 11 Havel, Letters, 236. 12 Ibid., 236–237. 13 Ibid., 237. “Without the awareness of death, nothing like the ‘meaning of life’ could exist, and human life would therefore have nothing human in it: it would remain on the animal level” (ibid., 240).

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also be the good? Is that not obvious for a Christian? Nonetheless, when one gives it intense consideration, it becomes clear that the answer must be that we should not will whatever God wills. For example, I should not will that my daughter be killed in an automobile accident because it is the will of God (and will happen). This would imply that God would be causing me to be immoral and irresponsible. There would be a conflict between God and my conscience. Clearly, then, we must distinguish between what God wills to happen and what God wills me to will. In other words, the good has a subjective dimension. Responsibility is individual. The responsibility of the goalkeeper does not coincide with the responsibility of the opposing attacker. In principle, it is possible for an individual to rebel against a state and be morally justified; a revolutionary can be a hero even when in error. Two opponents may both be morally good in spite of the fact that their objective goals may be contradictory. Both may be seeking the true good in their individual, subjective goals. Accordingly, Thomas rejects the argument that God’s law deserves to be obeyed more than conscience.14 Otherwise conscience would be relativized. Thomas even goes so far as to assert that God’s will regarding the concrete particulars in moral decisions and actions remains unknown to us: “We know not what God wills in particular: and in this respect we are not bound to conform our will to the divine will.”15 Actually, it is impossible for us to separate God’s will from the dictate of one’s own conscience, since “the dictate of conscience is nothing other than the delivery of a divine command to him who has the conscience.”16 Even when conscience errs, its dictate is seen as God’s law.17 Aquinas is quite precise. It may come as a surprise that he poses the question at all of whether we must will what God wills, the question of what is objectively good. But his negative answer is even more surprising. To deal with this, he distinguishes between what God wills and what God wills that we will. What we human beings should will is what God wills that we will. The good retains an ambivalence in our world. The good is not itself concrete. Reason can see different aspects of a possible act. Under one aspect, it may be good, but under another, bad. It is often impossible to know exactly 14 15

16 17

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 17, a. 4. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 19, a. 10, ad 1. He qualifies here: “We can know in a general way what God wills. For we know that whatever God wills, He wills it under the aspect of good. Consequently whoever wills a thing under any aspect of good, has a will conformed to the Divine will, as to the reason of the thing willed.” Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 17, a. 4, ad 2. Cf. ibid, ad 1.

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which aspect another person is seeing. This is an important grounding for tolerance. If the aspect that I choose is good, then my choice is morally good (although possibly objectively bad). Choosing something under a bad aspect is morally bad. If, for example, I choose to do something good because of opportunism, then my choice is not good. 3 Conscience Thomas’ original insight into the importance of the idea of the erroneous conscience for the dignity of the human individual should not be claimed as an achievement of the Enlightenment, nor does it belong to Marxism, for which conscience is the internalization of norms held in society.18 A leading thinker of the Enlightenment like Immanuel Kant thought the idea was nonsense,19 and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, another, claimed that conscience never errs and cannot err.20 Thomas’ examination of possible objections to his thesis leaves no room for doubt. What is the case when an erroneous conscience not only is false in itself but also stands in contradiction to a legitimate authority? The conclusion seems to be unavoidable: Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.21 In spite of the fact that, in this example, the objective authority is objectively right, Thomas remains firm in his logical stringency, according to which the conscience of an individual always retains the primacy, even in contradiction

18 19 20 21

Cf. for example Marxistisch-leninistische Ethik, 130. Cf. Immanuel Kant, Über das Misslingen aller philosophischen Versuche in der Theodizee, A 219: “Moralisten reden von einem irrenden Gewissen. Aber ein irrendes Gewissen ist ein Unding.” Cf. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Das System der Sittenlehre nach den Prinzipien der Wissenschaftslehre (1798), 15, corollaria in Fichtes Werke, 4:173–174. Paul, Letter to the Romans, 13, 1–2.

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to the authority of a superior. The conscience of the subordinate is higher. Thomas argues from the fact that God stands higher than the superior: to compare the bond of conscience with the bond resulting from the command of a superior is nothing else than to compare the bond of a divine command with the bond of a superior’s command. Consequently, since the bond of a divine command binds against a command of a superior, and is more binding than the command of a superior, the bond of conscience is also greater than that of the command of a superior. And conscience will bind even when there exists a command of a superior to the contrary.22 Compared to the voice of conscience, which is God’s voice, the voice of the superior is merely the voice of the superior. The question can be further radicalized. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostojewskij formulated the extreme question by posing himself the fictional choice between truth and Christ. He answered in favor of Christ, preferring to stay with Christ rather than truth.23 Aquinas’ gives preference to truth.24 Even when the biblical figure Job disputes with God himself, Thomas defends him. He states consistently: For a man to dispute with God does not seem fitting because of the excellence by which God excels man. However, one must consider that the truth does not change because of the difference of persons and so when someone speaks the truth, he cannot be convinced of the contrary no matter with whom he argues.25 When it is a question of conscience, subjective truth maintains precedence over objective truth. Even when one individual judges an action to be good while another judges the very same action to be bad, it is possible that the two are not contradictory at the level of the moral status of the respective acts of judgment themselves. For, as Thomas says: 22 23 24 25

Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 17, a. 5. Cf. Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostojewskij, Letter of Februar 20, 1854 to Natal’ja D. Fonvizin, in: idem, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Russian Academy of Sciences, 30 vols. (Leningrad: Russian Academy, 1972–1990), 12:297. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 19, a. 5c. Thomas Aquinas, In Job, c. 13.

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A thing may be considered in various ways by reason, so as to appear good from one point of view, and not good from another point of view. And therefore if a man’s will wills a thing to be, according as it appears to be good, his will is good: and the will of another man, who wills that thing not to be, according as it appears evil, is also good. Thus a judge has a good will, in willing a thief to be put to death, because this is just: while the will of another, e. g. the thief’s wife or son, who wishes him not to be put to death, inasmuch as killing is a natural evil, is also good.26 And conversely: “There is no opposition of wills when several people desire different things, but not under the same aspect: but there is opposition of wills when, under one and the same aspect, one man wills a thing which another wills not.”27 Conscience is a key to this condition humaine. It lies at a point of intersection between objective and subjective reality. It seeks the true good, but it has to deal with concrete acts. Therefore, it tries to find out what is the good in the concrete situation. Conscience is obviously not infallible, being human reason and not divine reason. Nevertheless, it is always binding, even when it errs, since it chooses what it chooses as the concretization of the good, which is life’s final goal. The apprehended aspect is decisive for the moral character of the individual. In Christian thought since the Middle Ages, it was the traditional conviction that an erroneous conscience binds. This means that, when an individual conscience fails to find the true good, it still has an obligatory authority from the fact that it always seeks the true good. Conscience does not grasp the good itself, but rather strives after it, and in this lies its dignity. Possibly, only Christians can understand this. Be that as it may, one can ask how a secular culture can justify the binding force of an erroneous conscience. Why is one morally obliged to do what is objectively false? In my eyes, it is explainable only from a religious point of view—certainly not sociologically. Since we normally do not know what God wills factually to happen, the idea of a global ethics is an illusion. Actually, although it appears good, the idea can be seductive bait. Human morality revolves around the comparative; the superlative lies beyond it. The best is an object of striving, not something that we can find or a factor within an ethical analysis. The good of the whole world falls under God’s responsibility. It cannot be an object of human conscience, which is restricted to concrete goods.

26 27

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 19, a. 10c. Ibid., ad 3.

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Should State Law Forbid What Is Morally Wrong?

A further related problem that arises is whether state law must conform to moral values. Must the state, in other words, forbid what is morally bad? Looked at differently: is theocracy legitimate? This is undoubtedly a difficult question in today’s world. In Thomas’ opinion, this cannot be required. The main reason is that, while the state makes laws for all citizens, not all citizens are capable of avoiding whatever is immoral. This has nothing to do with the fact that a society may be pluralistic, nor with social tolerance. Even if a Christian church dominated a society, it would still not be legitimate to make morality binding for all in every case. It might be surprising that Aquinas defended this position, which might at first appear heretical. The basis of his position is the fact that responsibility and the scope of conscience are limited and individual. For Thomas, there exists an ambivalence in the nature of human society and in the essence of state laws independent of the influence of religion. In Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 96, a. 2, Thomas argues as follows: Laws must be suitable to those governed by them. Children are different from adults; individuals who are disabled differ from those who are not. Laws must be adapted to those falling under them. Furthermore, a human act arises out of a corresponding habit. Individuals who lack the corresponding habit will not be able to perform the act as well as those who have acquired the habit. For this reason, children not having developed certain habits are less capable of performing a particular act and, hence, are not liable to the same punishments as adults. Hence, more can be expected from adults who possess the corresponding habit. In moral matters, more can be demanded of virtuous persons, in spite of the fact that the act can be performed by everyone. Since state laws are directed to a multitude of people and the majority is not very strong in virtue, laws are not made solely for the virtuous, from whom the acts can be expected. The unvirtuous can perhaps be capable of performing the act but lack the supporting virtue. Thus, the state does not forbid everything that is a vice, but rather limits itself to extreme cases that are simply necessary for a society to exist, like murder and thievery. This, of course, can change with time. It is not a matter of laxness or compromise. The further argument can be cited that worse conditions may arise as a result of a law that is overly stringent. In favor of this position, the Bible can be cited: “For by churning the milk you produce butter, by wringing the nose you produce blood” (Prov 30, 33); “nor do people put new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, the wine runs out, and the skins are lost” (Mt 9, 17).

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Although we cannot define it, our awareness of the good is essential for ­ uman life. It should be acknowledged as the ultimate goal of a good life. In h some cases, especially in ethics, where subjective good can be more important than objective good, the good must be clearly distinguished from a concrete good.

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Chapter 5

Divine Being as Happiness In the final analysis, the important questions concern God and happiness. Humanity’s good purely and simply is happiness. Christian faith declares that happiness consists in the immediate union of human consciousness with divine being. God does not make us happy; he is our happiness. Once again, faith presents an extreme demand on human reason. Here it is clear that faith is not just something for the simpleminded. It is certainly not justly described as a childish phase preceding the mature phase of the enlightened intellect. Theology, if it acknowledges the challenge of faith, must not necessarily be intellectually inferior to philosophy. It can require philosophy to ascend to an unexpected level. Although it is quite bewildering for contemporary convictions, it has been the traditional Christian teaching that the essence of eternal life and happiness is a kind of knowledge. In John’s Gospel, we read: “This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn 17, 3). In contemporary theology, this teaching is normally ignored, but a promising opportunity is thereby lost. It took many centuries for the idea that God himself will be the object of eternal life to be established as a part of the teaching of the faith. Until the thirteenth century, it was also orthodox to claim that the object is not God himself, but divine theophanies, which are intermediaries. In 1241, the bishop of Paris, William of Auvergne, closed the debate among theologians on the question. Since then, it has remained the official teaching of the Church that the divine essence itself will be seen. This definition, of course, has given rise to further interpretations. Considering God as being itself offers a fruitful approach to the teaching. The reality in which we live is split and we are not satisfied. We yearn for more essential contact with which to seal this rift. In divine being, this is possible. Our contact with reality is real; I really do see my dog. If I become acquainted with him, I may even love him. But I wonder what he is thinking, or ‘thinking.’ What is it like to be a dog? I can ask this about everything in my world. We do not know even a beloved person exhaustively. Knowledge may indeed reach truth, but it inevitably remains merely partial truth. Accordingly, happiness is ineluctably partial happiness.

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Even I myself am split. Like our entire life, present happiness is confined to temporal moments; time comes and goes immediately. What is more, although we do have contact with realities, we are unable to become one with them as we sometimes wish. Self-consciousness knows my self, but only indirectly. My I is an accompanying phenomenon; it represents a partial identity. It is actualized only while something else is conscious to me. I see the dog, and along with this seeing, I become aware that I am the one doing the seeing. We may desire a pure I, an I that apprehends itself directly, but it never occurs. Everything, including ourselves, remains ultimately a mystery to us. God is the only being who can be united to us directly by and through himself, but without decrease of mystery. As being itself, God admits no cleavage; rather, all cleavages are brought to unity in him. In all other cases, we experience a difference between ‘whatness’ and being; everything but God consists of a possibility and its actuality. In God, being is identical with essence, or ‘whatness.’ This is articulated in the idea of divine being. And solely from this viewpoint can essence and being in God be thought of as identical. In contrast to concrete things, abstract notions can be present in consciousness in their totality. An idea like ‘justice’ is not split. And ‘mammel’ includes ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ without loss. In a universal notion, all the individual elements are included; its compass is virtually infinite. When we know ‘dog,’ we do not know all dogs in their material individuality. But if, hypothetically, they were not materially individualized, then we would know all of them at the same time. To draw an analogy: in light, all colors are included. If we could see light itself, we would be seeing all colors simultaneously. We can differentiate, therefore, between concrete objects and abstractions. Moreover, we know that there are levels of abstraction and different kinds of abstractions. We can distinguish, for example, between dogs and ‘dog.’ A higher level of abstraction would be ‘mammal.’ The mathematical abstraction that regards a number of dogs represents a quite different kind of abstraction. And the abstraction that sees realities as such is still another. Happiness is different for each person, but in all cases, it consists in the subsumption of desires under being. Happiness is individually defined by the desires of the individual; it represents the fulfillment of these desires. It is not a general state, independent of the individual desires. The realization of the forms of desire defines the individual’s happiness—together with the so-called light of glory (which is nothing other than the creative divine being). A person cannot be made happy, therefore, independently of his or her explicit or virtual desires, as though the same happiness were to be granted to each. Happiness is not simply human happiness, but the individual happiness of a specific person.

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Love determines happiness, as Thomas maintains: He will have a fuller participation of the light of glory who has more love; because where there is greater love, there is more desire; and desire in a certain degree makes the one desiring apt and prepared to receive the object desired. Hence, he who possesses more love, will see God more perfectly, and will be more beatified.1 A simple analogy that might be helpful is the relationship between the celluloid filmstrip of a movie and the movie itself as viewed in the theater. The filmstrip is brought to life by the projector light. When I look at the filmstrip, I see nothing moving, nothing alive, just one state after another. In the theater, I forget where I am and submerge into a new reality. I laugh, fear, sympathize, wonder, and so on. What happens when the projector light illuminates the film and moves it at the proper speed is like a new creation. Yet, it remains true that everything is contained in the filmstrip, except for the light and movement. I would like to think of eternal life as the illumination of my life history through divine light. Eternal life is, thus, anthropologically predetermined. The traditional theological axiom whereby grace presupposes nature and fulfills it indicates that grace stands in correlation to nature. “Grace perfects nature according to the manner of the nature,” as Thomas maintains. “As every perfection is received in the subject capable of perfection, according to its mode.”2 As Aquinas states: “Now it is manifest that nature is to beatitude as first to second; because beatitude is superadded to nature. But the first must ever be preserved in the second. Consequently, nature must be preserved in beatitude: and in like manner the act of nature must be preserved in the act of beatitude.”3 A human being is not defined independently of his or her own curriculum vitae. What is eternally relevant in human life is the desire that a person has discovered and developed during it. In a certain sense, albeit a mysterious one, the experiences transcend the time dimension. The definition of a human being is a process. It is not only what he or she is at death that defines the person, but his or her whole conscious lifetime. One’s curriculum vitae defines who one is. Who a person is resembles more a novel than a blueprint.

1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 12, a. 6c. Cf. In iv Sententiarum, dist. 49, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2. 2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 62, a. 5c. 3 Ibid., a. 7c.

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If my mother becomes senile and no longer knows that she is my mother, she remains nonetheless my mother. It seems that a person represents what he or she has been during life. What perdures is not matter, not the genes. There is no resurrection of the genes, there is no resurrection of the brain; they are not included in the idea of happiness. In divine being, nothing is forgotten. The relationship of the reality of consciousness to the known objective realities offers us an analogy. When something concrete emerges into consciousness, it transcends time to a certain extent. Whereas the concrete is always restricted to a specific time, this is not so in consciousness. Thoughts do not lie separate from one another. A thought in consciousness exists in the concrete when, for example, I write a sentence on paper with ink. And vice versa, when another reads the sentence, the meaning is subsumed into that person’s conscious reality. Of course, the mutual presence is of different natures. The abstract notions in my consciousness enjoy nonempirical aspects. ‘Dog’ has an infinite openness, and even if there are no more dogs in the world, the notion would remain unchanged. It is not itself limited to certain times, like the things in the concrete world. Yet, it is not simply timeless; rather, it incorporates time in itself. It should be of no surprise if we are unable to explain what happens when a human being is united to divine being. But, then, it is likewise unexplainable how a concrete reality comes to exist in conscious reality. Be that as it may, perfect happiness would consist in a union with divine being, which contains all realities and the fulfillment of all desires. A question can be raised here: Why are we not united with divine being now? Why are we not perfectly happy now? Of course, we are united with divine being as our creator; the union could not be deeper. God is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves, as the well-known statement of Augustine’s says. But creation is not happiness, although happiness is a form of creation. Happiness must be a union in our consciousness—God as an object of consciousness, so to speak. What is preventing this union now? Another way of posing the question is to ask why it takes so long for the fulfillment of happiness to begin. In other words, why do we have to live a whole life, whether short or long (it seems to make no difference how long a life is), before final happiness commences? I think the latter question is easier to answer than the former. We live a life in order to develop desires for reality. Desires are developed in a positive sense on the basis of our pleasures and joys, as well as on the basis of our suffering. In fact, suffering awakens desire even better than joys do. In this way, life is a preparation for the afterlife. Complete happiness is not simply a reward for having lived a good life; rather, it is its fulfillment. If there are no desires, happiness is groundless. In the course of our lives, our happiness, our eternal destiny, is William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

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defined. I am what I have become through my desires, whether explicit or implicit. The relationship between happiness and my desires is reciprocal. We desire union with that which we love. But not a union that would entail my own annihilation; I do not want to lose my own identity, for then I would no longer be the one who is happy. The realities that make up happiness must be present in a truer mode than they now are, for it is the apprehension of truth itself.4 In other words, the content is not absolutely new. The friends that I somehow meet again must be the same friends I made in the present life. What is new is the manner of seeing, of experiencing. It will be immediate, with no intermediaries, no cesuras, no adaequatio between subject and object, as there is with truths in this world. We cannot conceive or imagine how this is, but we can know that it must be so. It can be helpful to compare divine being with light. Both happen and cause other things. When divine being is united to human consciousness, it is somewhat like light shining on an eye. It is physically joined to the eye. But the eye cannot see the light as such. All it can do is see colors thanks to the light. Light requires physical objects in order to become visible. But God is not dependent on objects. He embraces light and the colored objects and overcomes their separateness. As truth itself (veritas), God includes all truths (vera). Light is united to the eye in this life too. In divine being, it would be still united, but without individual objects. It would be light alone that we see. If one bears in mind the dogma that God never changes, then it follows that God initiates nothing really new, strictly speaking. The hindrance, therefore, must lie with us. Why does death make a difference? Why is it the conditio sine qua non? What happens at death that is decisive? We cannot know what eternal life is like concretely—concreteness being sublated under it—but we can conclude that it must have certain minimal qualities. Eternal life must be a human life,5 including corporeal existence, which does not mean consisting of matter; sensuality as it occurs in consciousness is that corporeal existence that we are interested in.6 Above all, it must somehow include beloved persons. And eventually beloved things. Union with God in one’s consciousness does not mean that God is comprehended. It resembles more the union through the act of creation. Happiness does not go beyond human capabilities. If weaknesses belonging to our essence, whether general or individual, were to be alleviated, we would cease to be ourselves.7 Making an angel of a human being would come down to annihi4 5 6 7

Cf. Hoye, The Emergence of Eternal Life, esp. 176–179. Cf. ibid., 169–179. Cf. ibid., 237–275. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In iv Sententiarum, dist. 49, q. 2, a. 3, ad 8. William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

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lating the human being and replacing him or her with something else. Union with God would then cause our annihilation. Happiness for us must be true, conscious happiness. I have to be aware that I am happy in order to be really happy. I have to observe myself being happy, and the observing must itself also participate in it. But, as I have said, this selfobservation perforce undermines happiness. Inevitably, we distinguish between what is happening and that it is happening, between ‘whatness’ and existence. This dualism is typical of human conscious life. Ecstasy is pure happiness only in our memory or in our hope. As it occurs in actual reality, happiness is accompanied by a strain of disappointment. Hence, the longing effected by love is insatiable—at least in the kind of split existence that characterizes our temporal existence. Happiness is the fulfillment of love, but love is not happiness. Rather, it is the condition for the possibility of happiness. In our present kind of existence, human happiness is never more than partial happiness. What we long for is ultimately not beings, but divine being, in which all beings are included in a truer form of being.

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Chapter 6

Divine Being as Truth Itself ‘God is truth’ is an enigmatic statement. Moreover, as far as I know, it seems to be a specifically Christian teaching. No antique Greek philosopher, including Plato, ever uttered it—an indication of how problematic the statement is. A higher estimation of truth is hardly imaginable. Truth is deified. God is not only true; he is identified with truth itself. And only of God can such a predi­ cate be expressed. Christianity’s claim of truth, which arouses so much opposi­ tion today, reaches here its pinnacle. One interpretation that may certainly be rejected is that God is the abstract notion of truth, which would imply that he would be constricted to the reality of our thought. But, on the contrary, God is truth precisely because he is being itself. If one understands truth according to the classical and predominant defini­ tion as the correspondence, or conformity, of a consciousness with a reality (adaequatio rei et intellectus), then one wonders what the statement can mean at all. How can there be a correspondence between subject and object in God, where all is one? If it is to make sense, one must conclude that it must be a matter of an absolute radicalization of the idea of truth. As Aquinas empha­ sizes, “God’s truth is the first, the highest and the most perfect truth.”1 “God is not only true, He is truth itself.”2 This reveals that truth as we know it is, by es­ sence, deficient. ‘Truth’ is undoubtedly a fundamental notion in Christian theology. One might think that such high esteem for the truth would be judged positively, but some people instead oppose Christianity as being excessive in its truth claim, and even arrogant. Yet, the puzzling nature of the sentence “God is truth” (the ambiguity regarding what that means) makes such opposition surprising. How can one reject what is inconceivable—that is, without knowing what one is rejecting? In spite of its fundamental role in Christian teaching, the notion is in 1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, i, c. 62. 2 Ibid., c. 61. “Truth is a certain perfection of understanding or of intellectual operation. But the understanding of God is His substance. Furthermore, since this understanding is, as we have shown, the divine being, it is not perfected through any superadded perfection; it is perfect through itself, in the same manner as we have shown of the divine being. It remains, there­ fore, that the divine substance is truth itself. […] Furthermore, nothing can be said of God by participation, since He is His own being, which participates in nothing. But, as was shown above, there is truth in God. If, then, it is not said by participation, it must be said essentially. Therefore, God is His truth” (ibid, c. 60).

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fact incomprehensible. The truth claim of Christianity is anything but simplis­ tic or fundamentalist. Nonetheless, the rejection of the statement that God is truth is not without reason. One can argue from the duality of truth as we know it. Since it is a rela­ tion of a subject to an object, it would seem that truth cannot be predicated of God, since there is no duality between subject and object in him. Because he is one with everything, God does not think predicatively as we do, by affirming one thing and denying another in regard to a subject.3 But our truths are actually deficient by essence. Truth for us is, on the one hand, a union with reality, and as such, a unique achievement in our world, being perhaps the epitome of human possibilities. But, on the other hand, it remains an imperfect union, since the knower is always a constitutive factor. Truth is a union of object and subject. But God’s knowledge is not less than ours, since he does not lack anything that our kind of truth includes. Divine truth overcomes this duality of truth. The reason for this lies in the fact that identity represents a kind of unity that is more than the unity of cor­ respondence or conformity. In God, subject and object form a perfect unity, since God is his being and whatever exists in him builds a perfect unity with him. In God, knowledge not only grasps its object; his knowledge is the object. This would be a good justification for negative theology, which could now meaningfully deny that God is truth. When God knows something, he knows himself. On the other hand, if our mind were able to reach a perfect union with the object, so to speak, a pure truth, then we would actually have no knowledge at all, for human truth re­ quires a conformity, that is, a relation to the object, and not its complete subla­ tion. Such knowledge would be as though a single insight were to include a sentence, and not just a notion. But human truth is always predicative, consist­ ing of two elements. Our notions, being universal, can embrace many cases of the universal; ‘dog’ includes many dogs in unity. But we are unable to embrace a predicative act in a single insight. Our truths are necessarily ‘broken,’ so to speak. In divine thought, truths are like insights, sublimating the duality. 1

God as the Ontological Truth of Things

Since creation arises out of God’s knowledge, one can speak of the truth inher­ ent in creatures. According to the classical definition of truth, they correspond to the divine knowledge. Our truths correspond to the things of the world, 3 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 14, a. 14, obj. 1; q. 16, a. 5.

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whereas the truth of things corresponds to divine truth. This suggests the con­ clusion that human knowledge is a kind of reading of divine knowledge in the things of the world. The world is then like a book. This interpretation would imply that God is the cause of our knowledge of the things of the world. In other words, the ontological truth of things is the basis for our truths about them. Our knowledge of the world is thus also knowl­ edge of divine thoughts. This subtle misinterpretation has illustrious defend­ ers, for example, Galileo Galilei and Ratzinger. To clarify, this is not the same as saying that all of our knowledge is implicitly knowledge of God. The difference lies in the role of truth. Implicit knowledge of God does not require a contact with God’s thoughts. It is not the divine truth that we implicitly know in things. The being of things suffices for our knowledge; there is no direct connect­ ion between our knowledge and God’s knowledge. The connection between our knowledge of things and our implicit knowledge of God is not ground­ ed in truth, but in being. For this reason, science without reference to God is possible. This position is supported by Thomas Aquinas, who declares: The being [esse] of a thing, not its truth, is the cause of the truth of our intellect. […] Although the truth of our intellect is caused by the thing, yet it is not necessary that truth should be there previously, any more than that health should be previously in medicine, rather than in the ani­ mal: for the capability of medicine, and not its health, is the cause of health, for here the agent is not univocal. In the same way, the being of the thing, not its truth, is the cause of truth in the intellect.4 Behind our truths, making them possible, is not God as truth itself, but God as being itself, which bestows being on both the object and subject. Precisely because he is being itself, God is truth itself. 4 Ibid., a. 1c and ad 1. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In I Sententiarum, dist. 19, q. 5, a. 1, solutio.

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Chapter 7

Divine Being as the Ground of Freedom of the Will 1

Is Free Will Real?

Freedom of choice is made possible through the light of divine being. In this light, it emerges out of the brain and is not reducible to the brain. Looked at theoretically, freedom is controversial. The most popular argument today against it seems to come from the neurosciences and is simply an application of the much older thesis of reductionism. The presumption of reductionism makes it superfluous to give an explanation for the process in the brain cells that gives rise to free choice or to the idea of free choice. In spite of the facts that one seems to experience free choice directly and that explanations do exist for free choice, the reductionist says that this cannot be, since all phenomena are explainable physically and, therefore, there is no explanation for how brain cells can be free, seeing as all neuronal processes are deterministic. The argument concludes that what one assumes to be real experience is nothing but a delusion. Consequently, we are actually nothing but machines (albeit wonderfully conceived ones) that operate completely determinately. Science, it is often argued, knows no alternative, and the conclusion therefore is that there is none. Science presupposes monism. Every other position is considered to be dualism and, as such, is rejected without further ado. How likely is it that things like responsibility, regret, guilt, remorse, forgiveness, praise, and so on are merely deceptive phenomena of brain cells operating in accordance with natural laws and have no meaning in themselves? How do we conceive of such things if there is no real freedom? How do we come to such an unlikely idea as free will if there is no such thing in reality? If it is simply nonsense? How human beings could ever think up something like freedom is explained in different ways by the rejectors of free choice. For example, as is said, it is much easier to educate children if one presupposes that much of what they do is free. Criminals can be punished if you believe they were free to commit their crimes. We can be free to praise achievements if they are not deterministic. When one asks how free choice can be rejected by reducing it to a function of the brain if we do not adequately understand how the brain functions, the answer of the reductionists is definitive: that there can be a priori no such possibility is explained by appealing simply to reductionism. If one asks further how the reductionist knows that reductionism is true, one receives no answer.

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Clearly it is not a result of neuroscientific research. It is rather a philosophical, or ideological, postulate. Furthermore, it raises the claim to be true. But truth, too, cannot be physically grounded. How do processes within the brain arrive at the quality of objectivity in its objects? They cannot even conceive of such a thing. Reductionism usually renders it superfluous to listen to the arguments of supporters of free will. Indeed, one must acknowledge that it offers strikingly facile solutions to many problems. The supporter of free will, on the other hand, normally has no trouble presuming that the free subject is dependent on the brain. This is not a fallback position resulting from the reductionist attacks. In the thirteenth century, for example, Thomas Aquinas knew that an injured brain can result in the cessation of thinking, including even the most incorporeal act of self-reflection.1 In other words, there is no self that can be active independently of the brain. Our awareness of the self is indirect and comes down to an apprehension of its existing in other operations, but not separately in itself; even by self-reflection, I still do not know what I am. To support free choice, therefore, one does not have to presume complete independence from the brain. (The ink with which I am writing and without which I could write nothing on the paper does not explain the meaning of what I write.) The question is not whether there is a dependence on the brain, but whether the brain explains all. When explicitly asserted, reductionism is self-refuting, for the position itself is certainly not a product of reduction to neuronal processes. Rather, it is ­clearly an idea that arises in nonempirical consciousness and, consequently, presupposes its own refutation. In reality, free choices stem from goals. They are made in the light of goals. This presence of the goal in the concrete, of the end in the means, is a nonempirical relationship, whether the choice is necessarily implied in the end or is free and grounded in intentionality. Above and beyond the indirect argument, the proponents of free will can maintain that it is based on a kind of causality that is quite different from the causality studied by the natural sciences, for it is a kind of causality that is not deterministic like the causality of natural laws. 2

How Does Free Choice Emerge?

Freedom lies in the will but emerges through the will’s relation to reason. Free choice arises because of the way in which reason thinks truth. Humanity is free 1 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 2, ad 7.

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in its choices, then, because of the way it thinks. Because it views concrete ­reality abstractly, reason gains an overview of the concrete. The overview of abstraction occurs even when there is only one single object. The universal notion ‘dog’ represents an overview of many dogs, but even if there is only one single instance of the notion, the manner in which it is apprehended is universal. Indicative of this is the fact that the notion, or name, can be projected on other objects and one can see that they are not elements of the universal notion. Westminster Abbey signifies something singular, but I am capable of applying it to other things and denying that they are Westminster Abbey. This kind of intellectual freedom is not yet morality, but it is a source for it. The good is dependent on truth. Only a true good is really good. Abstraction is the human way of grasping the particular. I can see this ­concrete chair in my notion of ‘chair.’ The universal and the particular, the abstract and the concrete, are grasped in a single apprehension. What is more, we can see universals as particulars of more comprehensive universals. A dog, for example, is an animal. Such multiple abstractions can be separate from one another, but they can also form a hierarchy. ‘Animal’ includes ‘mammal,’ which includes ‘carnivore,’ which includes ‘dog,’ which includes my dog. When we turn our attention to the external acts to which thought may be directed, then a dynamic aspect is introduced. We think about things, but we also do things. In this case, the relationship is not only between universal and particular but also between end and means to the end. For example, first, I may decide to travel to London, and then the question arises of by what means. Is it better to go by train or by plane? I look at these possibilities as means of getting to London. When I have chosen, say, the train as the most suitable means, I see the train in the light of London, my goal. In this sense, London is present from the start of the journey. Traveling to London is a universal concept, which includes the train trip. The freedom to choose the train is caused by deciding to travel to London. The overview enables freedom. The dynamic tendency arises out of the will; free external actions stem from the will. And the will is capable of obeying reason. Taken together, they comprise morality. The complication that belongs to a moral decision is a characteristic of human consciousness. Thomas Aquinas has emphasized that the whole idea of freedom depends upon the manner of knowing. […] To judge about one’s own judgment belongs only to reason, which reflects upon its own act and knows the relationships of the things about which it judges and of those by which it judges. Hence the whole root of f­ reedom

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is located in reason. Consequently, a being is related to free choice in the same way as it is related to reason.2 The end of an action can lie beyond the action, or it can lie within the action itself. I may walk in order to get to another place; I may dance for the sake of dancing, for the enjoyment of it. But the role of reason should not be overemphasized. The intellect does not just think within itself; it is an apprehension of reality. It brings truth to the will, making the resulting activity a true good, or evil. Without the intellect, the will would have no true contact with reality. The objective reality of the action, mediated by reason, belongs integrally to morality. Freedom itself resides in the will, but reason is the cause of this freedom. Again, Thomas teaches clearly: “The root of liberty is the will as the subject thereof; but it is the reason as its cause. For the will can tend freely towards various objects, precisely because the reason can have various perceptions of good.”3 Freedom of choice can apply to both what I do and whether I do it. I can choose this or that, and I can choose not to choose at all. Both can be free. However, if the choice follows with necessity from another choice, then it would not be free. If I decide freely to travel to London, for example, then I cannot choose not to move, for if I refused to move, I would not really have chosen to travel to London. A free decision cannot occur alone. It is grounded in an end, which may or may not be freely chosen. Freedom always occurs in an end–means relationship. Love can be unfree and nevertheless be liberating. Love of the necessary produces freedom. In the quasi-passive state of falling in love, one is a slave and yet given wings. Another factor must be mentioned. The passage from end to means may not be deductive, for then it would be unavoidable, and hence not free. If I really desire my health, then I must necessarily be ready to do something for it. The passage from end to means is free, however, if it is the result of a deliberation. I compare the possibilities with one another. Without deliberation, there is no freedom. Freedom is neither spontaneity nor unintelligibility. In fact, if it is not intelligible, it cannot be free. Freedom of choice is thus not an inexplicable mystery. Nor must it be a surprise. I can follow the deliberation of another

2 Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 24, a. 2c. 3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 17, a. 1, ad 2.

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without the other losing his or her freedom. Prevision does not undermine free choice. Nor do, of course, neuronal activities. Four steps can thus be distinguished in a free choice: (1) the apprehension of an end; (2) the desire for the end; (3) the search by deliberation for a means to reach the end; (4) the choice of the means. Three regions of human life are involved: reason, will, and action. Actions, being concrete, are characterized by having many aspects and many consequences. Each of these aspects can be the object of deliberation. Hence, there is no action that must necessarily be chosen. Since we never reach an overview of the implications of the action, we cannot help but be insecure if we are honest with ourselves. The good person is not characterized by selfassurance. Abstractions are much simpler than concrete actions. This sometimes leads to misconceptions, since they simplify the truth of concrete reality. With a single abstract idea, one cannot come to a decision on what is to be done. Peace, for example, is good, but peace without justice is not good. Concrete actions are not simply the concretization of an abstract ideal. They can concretize many abstract ideals simultaneously. In order to deduce a specific action from a single ideal, other aspects must be neglected. This is how sin happens and why idealists may be immoral, if they have made themselves blind to relevant aspects. 3

The Inner Forces against Free Will

The forces that make an individual unfree come not only from outside. Interior forces in ourselves can also make us unfree. Unfree means, in this case, not choosing what one really wants. And this means not choosing what our reason proposes, what appears to be in conformity with reality. This kind of determination of the person can derive from instinct, sensual appetite, habit, or other forces like envy, fear, anger, and so on. Such forces are in me, in my very nature, and it could be said that I am doing what I want when I obey them. But passions are uncompromising, and one certainly does not feel free when one submits to them. Real self-determination and autonomy derive from reason and obedience to reason. When reason contradicts one of these forces and we submit to reason, we experience freedom. Other beings do not have natures with inborn contradictions. Of course, we are more than our reason, but reason should be the judge when a moral conflict occurs in us, since it alone seeks objective reality. William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

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Freedom interpreted as the overcoming of a sensual inclination through obedience to reason, which was the dominant conception in the Enlightenment, certainly has a basis in experience. The alcoholic is doing what he or she wants when taking another drink, but this is not freedom; this is slavery in one’s own house. The more common forces moving us lie in the nature of humanity. Envy, jealousy, laziness, hate, gluttony, lust, greed, fear, anger, and pride are some of them. When it is said that freedom consists in doing what one wants, this should be differentiated. Whoever is determined by these forces is doing their own will in a certain sense, but we would certainly not call this an experiencing of the self as free. The alcoholic who claims the ability to take it or leave it does not really feel free when actually taking it. 4

How Do We Apprehend Alternatives?

Abstract thinking can view several alternatives in one thought. For example, if I see that one dog is bigger than the other, this means that I am seeing both simultaneously. A computer is unable to compare really; it only appears to do so. It expresses ‘bigger than’ or ‘smaller than,’ but it does not ‘think’ this. A computer cannot perform a single operation on two members at precisely the same time; a single operation cannot have itself as its object. In other words, the computer is not capable of self-reflection. It may express ‘I,’ but it does not really execute what the ‘I’ does; it does not perform two things in one operation. It is not, in one operation, the knower and the known. Nor can the computer see in one operation a means and an end in their relationship. 5

Physical Causes and Mental Causes

Often free choice is defined as spontaneity, for example, by Leibniz, Fichte, Kant, and contemporary neuroscientists who reject free will. Spontaneity means that there is no cause behind the free act. The person simply decides spontaneously. Understood in this sense, free will may be rejected as an illusion. There is no way to prove that spontaneity is free, since it cannot be analyzed. The explanation I have been defending asserts causes, but causes of a kind that natural science cannot reach. Such causes are the source of freedom. They take place in thought, even though they are always accompanied by neuronal processes. They lie beyond the range of causes studied by the natural sciences, which are unconditionally active. Insight plays a role in mental causa­ lity. U ­ niversal notions, for which neuroscience has no explanation, are also William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

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constitutive. Most important of all is the fact that the processes take place within self-consciousness. The person is aware of himself or herself making the decision, thus providing the condition for responsibility. Because of the nature of mental phenomena, this process is not deterministic. It takes place in a sphere of relationships between universals and particulars. The decisive factor is deliberation, which is not a deterministic operation. Through deliberation, a means is derived from a universal. The concept of ‘dog’ can never univocally determine this dog. This takes place in the light of selfconsciousness, but self-consciousness does not cause its content; it is aware of what is happening, but without influencing it. What it apprehends is the existence of what is occurring, not what it is. If I have a text in front of me, I can look at it empirically and see that it is ink on paper. But looking at it mentally, I see meanings. A sentence is not just a collection of words; it conveys meaning to the reader who has the mental ability to understand it. When I hear a melody, I am apprehending more than a series of notes. That would be an empirical apprehension that a computer is capable of—with astounding success. Mental causality is not necessarily always arbitrary. The truth of the idea that a part can never be larger than the whole is compulsory. Mathematical deductions are compelling, although they are not influenced by natural laws. It is correct that this position is a kind of dualism, but not an absolute dualism; there exists an interconnection. It is a fact that something occurs in thought that is not explainable by brain cells. To claim that the neuronal causes are the real causes and that the mental causes are just asserted afterwards seems far-fetched. The argument that an ontological dualism must be avoided under all conditions is not scientific. Reductionism is, in the final analysis, arbitrary. The mental causes are immediately known to us and are not just unexplained assumptions made because we do not experience any other causes. 6

An Initial Determination of Free Choice

Free choice begins with an initial determination that may or may not itself be free. This is the cause of the free choice, but does not necessarily predetermine it. This is not spontaneity. Free choice is always conditional. It occurs in a deliberation that starts with a premise. The premise itself may be the result of a free deliberation or it may be unfree. I may be hungry and decide to eat something; this decision leads to the deliberation that results, say, in choosing fruit; from this determination, I can go on to choose which fruit. The beginning may

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also be necessary. Say I slip on some ice crossing the street and fall. This was not free, but it opens up some free possibilities. In any case, I must do something: I can stand up, or call for help, or wait for help, and so on. I could also choose to just lie there and despair. If there were no necessities in my life, then I would not be free at all. Instead, I would be an individual without any will. I would not have a will directed toward reality. My autonomy is clearly not absolute, although this is often asserted today. At different levels, I react to reality; I submit to it and go on from there. In order to make a free choice, I must will something presupposed, which initiates a deliberation. 7

The Expansion of the Possibilities

The ends that we intend can be expanded. Some ends can become means to higher ends. It is a sign of maturity to see one’s ends and means in a kind of harmonious network, such that everything is seen leading finally to a vanishing point, which would be the end of all ends. What one sees as his or her final end determines what kind of a person one is. The hedonist, for example, sees pleasure and joy as the final end. For the avaricious person, it would be money and possession. For the ambitious, it could be power over others. For the good person, it is reality. There are different degrees or levels of freedom. They are determined by the scope of the overview attained by reason. Subjective reason determines how extensive one’s freedom is. Hence, there are different degrees of freedom, depending on the extension of reason. The more extensive the overview is, the greater the extension of freedom is. Someone who puts alcohol above his health has poorer chances to be healthy than someone who can adequately appreciate his health, with all that it includes. If one holds something else as an even higher value, it is even possible to neglect health for that higher value. The mother who endangers her own life in order to make the education of her child possible possesses more freedom than someone who knows nothing higher than health. However, there are limits. The hope of one’s own resurrection, which lies at a level in our being below the level of free choice, covers the whole of an individual’s conscious life, not just its corporality. As Rahner argues, “an act of hope in one’s own resurrection is something which takes place in every person.”4 4 Rahner, Foundations, 268.

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It lies below what is explicit and free. If one recognizes it, it can be explicitly affirmed or denied (implying a self-contradiction), although this response does not change the fundamental hope. Such response can, however, enhance it or suppress it. Rahner’s explanation is that “every person wants to survive in some final and definitive sense, and experiences this claim in his acts of freedom and responsibility, whether he is able to make this implication of the exercise of his freedom thematic or not, and whether he accepts it in faith or rejects it in despair.”5 Our belief in eternal life is based essentially on this hope, and not on the immortality of the soul. Eternal life must be fulfillment and not just ongoing existence. Our hope for definitive fulfillment, including our sensuality, encompasses the whole of a person’s concrete existence. It “promises the abiding validity of his single and entire existence.”6 Fulfillment is something else than continuing to exist for eternity. The final horizon is being. My nature desires being above everything else. But this is not an experience of being, or of God. It is an unlimitedness—one that can be fulfilled only by God 8

Divine Being as the Horizon and Ground of Free Will

Without the effective presence of divine being, free will would not be possible. Here what is meant is not God as the creator, but rather as the ultimate final cause. Truth is the union of consciousness with reality; truth itself, taken in the quasi-abstract universal sense, would be union with being itself. True happiness is union of the will with divine being. Individual truths set us free within a limited radius and ultimately: “The truth will set you free.”7 Faith as a theological virtue is directed to the human mind. Its object is truth itself, but truth itself is not seen through faith, as Thomas Aquinas asserts (ut non apparens; non visum).8 Individual truths of revelation are like the materiality, while truth itself is the formality underlying such truths.9 The material object of my sentence on the blackboard is, for example, the chalk; the 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid. 7 Jn 8, 32. 8 Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 14, a. 3, ad 6; Summa theologiae, ii–ii, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2; De veritate, q. 14 a. 8 ad 3. 9 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii–ii, q. 1, a. 1c.

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formal cause is the meaning of the sentence. Similarly, revealed truths are the material objects of faith, while truth itself is the formal object. But the moral decision does not involve God as an alternative. Were that the case, one would necessarily have to choose God—which would come down to the ultimate freedom. Moral choices are directed to realities, whether actual or possible. In any case, the realm of freedom is opened by being itself. Implicitly, what is willed in every choice is ultimately always being. Every possibility is a realization of being, a mode of being. Truth is the grasping of being. It is just the opposite of a projection. Being is the background. Being is the most universal end—and yet unknown, reached not as an experience or idea in reason, but as the beloved. The causes of freedom of the will are being, happiness, and truth. As Aquinas writes: “The rational nature, in as much as it apprehends the universal notion of good and being [universalem boni et entis rationem], is immediately related to the universal principle of being [essendi principium].”10 Religion begins not with an experience of God, but with such existential wonder. It awakens, moreover, a striving. Wonder about reality is an indication that we are destined for the future, no matter what might come. Wonder is the connector between reality and belief. Believing is trusting in the dynamics of wonder about reality. Happiness belongs to the will, and truth to reason. Human life is the interaction of both. The will motivates reason to seek truth; reason proposes the truths that it seems to have found to the will. The only real happiness is true happiness. Faith and charity are supernatural virtues, their cause being God. They accompany concrete life, but they themselves are not the concrete content—­ unless one reflects in a certain sense upon them and objectifies them. Reality is not caused by us; it is not a projection originating with us. Rather, reality pulls on us, so to speak, and opens us. But it is certainly not violent; to the contrary, it is in accordance with our nature, as though it awakened an instinct in us. To this corresponds the fact that faith is a so-called supernatural virtue, a received disposition caused by God. There is no act that in itself must necessarily be chosen, since every concrete act has many aspects, some of which are desirable and others repulsive. Which one becomes decisive for a specific individual is not predetermined. There can always be some conceivable reason for rejecting any concrete act. The only object of the will that is never free is happiness—at least as long as one is thinking about it. “For our will to be happy does not appertain to free 10

Ibid., q. 2, a. 3.

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will, but to natural instinct.”11 Of course, this leaves open the determination of what happiness consists in. It is inapprehensible because divine being is inapprehensible. Strictly speaking, happiness can never be a real choice between possibilities, and yet it is an object of willing. It is the foundation of willing in all of its modes and could be called ‘foundational’ willing. Therein lies the ­dynamic of every choice: every choice involves some kind of medium for happiness. We choose between beings, while being itself is presupposed. If we could be perfectly happy now, grasping being itself, free choice would be superfluous. The desire for fulfilling happiness is more like an instinct than a free choice. It conforms to human nature and is originally not the object of reflection. It is what our nature strives for, and the reflection upon it can occur but does not need to occur. If we reflect on it, we can affirm it or deny it, but this does not affect whether or not it occurs. Neither can this striving find fulfillment in temporal reality, nor can it be extinguished. Only indirectly can suicide be a choice for nothing; rather, what one desires is presumably something like relief from pain, or the forgetting of guilt, or the proof of autonomy, or some kind of sacrifice for the good of another. It is important that we remain unable to define the content of happiness. Formally, we can say, with a tradition that originates with Boethius, that it is the (unspecified) realization of all desires, but that is very abstract. This is how divine reality becomes present. What we desire most of all and always is reality. We are being drawn by it without being able to say concretely what it is that is drawing us. Since we cannot define happiness, there would seem to be little danger of dealing here with a projection. The assertion that belief in an afterlife is a projection claims to know more about the afterlife than Christians do. Happiness is not an experience as long as we are still living. Rather, its motivating presence causes an inner tension. In this unspecified desire, a reflection takes place that is not the apprehension of an apprehension. It does not consist of an additional step, but occurs simultaneously with the apprehension. For example, if I am looking at a tree, I am at the very same time aware both that I am looking at the tree and that I am precisely the one who is doing the looking. It is also possible to reflect in a separate step. For example, if I now reflect on the tree that I saw yesterday, the apprehension of the tree is not occurring now. It is the remembrance of the apprehension that I now reflect upon. Here two separate acts of consciousness take place, temporally separate. This is not, however, self-reflection in the full sense. True self-reflection requires that, in one and the same conscious act, a 11 Ibid., i, q. 19, a. 10.

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double apprehension takes place: I see the tree and concomitantly see my seeing. More precisely, I am aware of the act of existence of the seeing of an object. Self-reflection is the apprehension of existence—namely, the existence of the object and of the apprehension of it. I see both as acts of being. No matter what horizon an individual has reached, being is always present. It is not simply the apex of horizons; it is present at all levels and in all individuals. Moreover, a general notion of existence arises out of this instantaneous ­apprehension of existence. When one thinks the notion of existence, one is not restricted to temporal moments, but rather has an unlimited openness. This desire does not strive for God directly. Nor is immortality its object. Its object is fulfilling happiness. This longing lies more deeply in human nature than does morality. Havel maintains that this striving, lying in the very nature of the human person, cannot be opposed by anything. “I am convinced,” he claims, “that there is nothing in this vale of tears that, of itself, can rob man of hope, faith and the meaning of life.”12 What is possible, however, is lethargy (see p. 24 above). The ultimate human interest, as Havel rightly says (together with Thomas), is being. Ultimately, freedom is religious; it is a response of obedience to the pull of being. The final end of our willing is happiness, the meaning of life. The willing of the final end—the end of all ends, rendering all other ends as means—which is the good itself, is not a free choice. Happiness cannot be an object of free choice because it is not derived from a higher end. But it is decidedly an object of willing. As such, it is the very foundation for all free choices. One could say: truth and necessity comprise the grounds of ‘fundamental’ willing and freedom. In this way, our will has an unlimited range, in principle open to all that appears in the light of being. 12 Havel, Letters to Olga, 236.

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The Unity of a Human Being Normal consciousness bears witness to the fact that each of us comprises a unity, a whole. A sign of this is that all of my activities can be attributed to the term ‘I’: I walk, I see, I think, I feel, I love, and I am even aware that I am doing these things. One can even think that I am aware that I am aware that I am doing these things. The term ‘I’ expresses the unity of the person in its manifold activities, including its self-reflections (it is always I, even when I observe myself), without, of course, explaining this unity. Although the fact itself of the unity seems indisputable, reaching an understanding of it is so difficult that it took until the thirteenth century for a solution to be found. My thesis is that, without reference to being, it is impossible to conceive the unity of a person, regardless of the fact that we experience it. The crux of the problem is that human activity can sometimes be contradictory. Body and mind are not always compatible with one another. My body may be striving to eat something, while my mind rejects it as being unhealthy. Seeing and being conscious that I am seeing are two quite different realities. The activity of self-consciousness is quite different from the other activities of consciousness. I somehow know myself and know that I am knowing myself. How can such disparate activities be included in a unity? Mind and body are sometimes even contradictory. Bodily activities are always concrete, but the mind grasps them abstractly, implying that the mind can embrace many concrete things at one and the same time. For example, in my notion of ‘dog,’ all dogs are included. The mind can be here and somewhere else simultaneously, whereas the body is limited to existence in one place at a time. That is why human persons can make a journey: both their present position and their destination are simultaneously present to them. In sum, human being is characterized by a dualism of the physical and spiritual, of the concrete and the abstract, of the object and subject. It is surprising to see how neuroscientists who maintain that they have rendered centuries of philosophy obsolete have little awareness of what has been taught in philosophy about the soul. I know of no neuroscientist who shows acquaintance with the classical understanding of the notion of the soul, which goes back to Aristotle and continues to be prevalent today, for example, even in catechism theology. Normally, these neuroscientists conceive of the soul

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without further ado as an entity, such that a dualism between two realities is presupposed—and this what they reject. The easiest way to explain the dualism in human nature is the position of reductionism, which raises the claim that dualism is a misunderstanding and that everything that appears to be nonempirical is reducible to the empirical, in particular to the brain. Since this assertion has not been demonstrated empirically, the position may be called a philosophy, the philosophy of reductionism. Maybe it would be more appropriate to call it an ideology, seeing that it lies outside of empirical verification. 1 Form All concrete realities, as we have seen and will see (see especially p. 187 below), are comprised of two factors: ‘whatness’ and the act of existence. What I call the ‘whatness’ (in Greek μορφή or εἶẟοϛ and in Latin forma) is a potentia in relation to the existence. Existence is not an attribute added to the whatness; it is the actualization of the whatness. It cannot exist without some whatness, but it is not reducible to a whatness. Whatever can answer to the question ‘what is that?’ is a form. Examples of forms are redness, largeness, roundness, life, consciousness, meaning, and so on, practically without end. The forms are as diversified as the diversity in the world. Furthermore, there is what can be called the form of the whole. My horse may be brown, big, fast, and beautiful, but as a whole, it is a horse. ‘Horseness’ is the form of the whole. This is important when dealing with the unity of the whole. Especially difficult for modern thinking is the causality of a form. The common error is to imagine that it is an efficient cause. Instead, the formal cause is what determines what something is. It is not the causality of the artist who makes the painting, but of the art out of which the painting arises. “Whatever appears explicitly in the artist’s work,” Thomas Aquinas notes, “is contained implicitly and originally in art.”1 The human way of thinking tends to entify everything, to think of everything as an individual reality. This is a crucial mistake in most neuroscientific treatments of the soul. For the soul is not an entity. 1 Thomas Aquinas, In iv Sententiarum, dist. d. 44, q. 1, a. 2 qc. 1c.

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2 Soul The form of a living being taken as a whole is called the soul. It encompasses the whole of the living being in all its diversity and actuality. Neuroscientists in particular commonly believe in a dualistic understanding of the soul, separating the soul from the body. Understandably, they then reject the soul, often adding an aggressive rejection of religion, which, according to them, understands the soul like this. For example, the English biologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel Prize laureate Francis Crick understands the soul as an animate being without a body, possessing reason and a will.2 To be sure, there do exist dualistic theories, that of Descartes being the best example, but this is out of place in Christian theology. As the actuality of a body, the soul includes the body in itself. This is an old teaching in Christian thought. On the one hand, it can be said that the soul is in the body, but it must be understood that saying that the body is in the soul is more fitting. Meister Eckhart speaks for a tradition when he writes: “Normally we say that the soul is in the body, although in truth the body is more in the soul and the soul gives the body being.”3 He elaborates: “My body is more in my soul than my soul is in my body. And my body and soul are more in God than in themselves.”4 Thomas differentiates accordingly: “The soul is in the body as containing it, not as contained by it.”5 The Aristotelian definition of the soul is precise, although it may appear to be foreign to our common way of thinking. “The soul,” he states, “is the ‘first’ actuality [ἡ πρώτη εντε�έχεια; actus primus] of a physical body having life potentially in it.”6 Instead of the term ‘first,’ I suggest saying ‘primordial,’ thus emphasizing that it is the act of all acts, the ur-act. It is not the first link in a chain; it is the chain itself, under the aspect of its actuality. It encompasses all the acts of the being. It is not the core or the substance. It is not the genome. Cloning is a matter concerning formal causality, but not the formal cause of the whole. All other acts are called second acts; there are no third, fourth, and so on acts. Canine life, for example, is the primordial act of a dog. All other acts are second acts. If I see a small animal lying inert on my path and want to know whether it is alive, I may touch it and see if it makes any kind of movement on its own. 2 Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis. 3 Meister Eckhart, Lateinische Werke, ii, 364, 9–13. 4 Meister Eckhart, Deutsche Werke, i, 161, 5–7. 5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 52, a. 1c. Cf. also Quaestiones Quodlibetales, i, q. 3, a. 1c. 6 Aristotle, De anima, ii.1.412 a 27f.

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If it does, then I conclude that it is alive, in other words, that it has a soul, the ur-act of any second act, like moving. The notion of soul makes us aware of the dynamic character of h ­ appening in living beings. One could say that a soul is more like a verb than a substantive. The term ‘potentially’ in the definition draws attention to the actuality–­ potentiality structure. Everything else in a living being consists in possibilities. The soul is the actuality of all the actualities of the being. Thomas accentuates this teaching by saying that the eye of a corpse is not really an eye any longer (or merely in an equivocal sense), since the act of seeing can no longer take place.7 3

The Human Soul

When we come to the human soul, a dilemma arises. Within the being of a human, many conflicts and even contradictions occur, as has been mentioned. This makes grasping human activities as a unity especially challenging. Some activities can be spiritual, and others can be physical, but still others do not seem to be compatible with this division. The physical activities can be seen as a unity if we see them all as bodily; running and hearing are bodily activities. But how can I see body and spirit as a unity? The unity of a living body is grounded in a soul, which represents the ac­ tualized potency. If I stretched the definition of soul a little, then one could speak of the soul of the spiritual life, at least in the case of human beings, having bodies. The soul is an act of being. A reference to a body is essential to the definition of a soul. According to Thomas Aquinas, a body is implied in the definition of the soul.8 According to him, the body does not belong to the essence of the soul, but by its essence, the soul does have a relationship to a body. Although he indicates no attempt to solve the dilemma, Aristotle does seem to be aware of it when he writes: Mind or the power to think seems to be a widely different kind of soul, differing as what is eternal from what is perishable; it alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers. All the other parts of soul, it is evident from what we have said, are, in spite of certain

7 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 76, a. 8. 8 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 9.

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s­tatements to the contrary, incapable of separate existence though, of course, distinguishable by definition.9 Mind and body exhibit tensions and even contradictions. The body always involves concreteness, whereas consciousness knows abstractions. The concrete is restricted to singularity in time and, usually, in space, whereas consciousness attains universality. ‘Dog’ in the concrete is always one only, but in the abstract, it includes dogs without end. A bodily instinct can pull in the opposite direction of the movement of the mind. What is required is a level of consideration that encompasses these two kinds of existence. We cannot reach a higher level of abstraction like the way in which we encompass all bodily activities in the notion of body. We cannot really get beyond the act of existence. Aristotle holds that the soul is the form of any living thing, that it is not a distinct substance from the body that it is in, that it is the possession of a soul (of a specific kind) that makes an organism an organism at all, and thus that the notion of a body without a soul, or of a soul in the wrong kind of body, is simply senseless. It is difficult to reconcile these points with the popular picture of a soul as a sort of immaterial substance ‘inhabiting’ a body. It is not an existent in itself, but it is what makes an existent exist, what makes it actually real. Combined with matter, it is a principle that is life. Life does not occur alone without some body (with the exception of the human soul). Aristotle has been so influential throughout centuries that one should not avoid direct interaction with his teaching, especially if one is to reject it. In Christian theology, the Aristotelian definition of the soul has been upheld up to the present day. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 365), it is applied even to the human soul. A soul is not a reality in itself that is joined to matter. To repeat, it is the actuality of the matter, its happening and its actualization of a potentiality. The soul is united as the form of the living body, with ‘form’ being that which makes something be what it is. It does not exist in its own right. You could call it the whatness of a body. In the case of the soul, it is life that is the form. And life is nothing other than the actuality of a body capable of living. With Thomas Aquinas, one can accentuate the relevance of this by saying that, without a body, a human being would not be a person.10 “The mind

9 Aristotle, On the soul, 2.2.413b. Cf. ibid., 3.5.430a: “The intellect can be separated from the body.” 10 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 9, a. 2, ad 14.

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[mens], existing in its own nature, is not a person, but a part of the person.”11 “My soul is not me,” as he puts it.12 Thomas rejects the argument that the spirit is more like God without its body, seeing that God is pure spirit. Thomas’ argument is that the human is more like God when it has what belongs to its nature.13 He compares it to a heart: It is more like God when it is moving than when it is not moving, although God is unmovable.14 4 Being Aristotle begins his treatment of the soul by conceding that attempting to attain any assured knowledge of it “is one of the most difficult questions in the world.”15 When it comes to the human soul, the difficulty is considerably increased. It represents a dilemma. Within the being of a human, tensions and conflicts and even contradictions occur. How can the unity of the human be grasped? One could, of course, simply speak of the ‘unity,’ but this is just a word, an assertion conveying no knowledge. Or one could say that conscious life and physical life are two forms of life and that, in ‘life,’ they possess a unity. But ‘life’ in this abstract sense is not a reality of its own. For the problem of unity, it would be merely an abstraction that offers no real explanation. The only reality that is adequate is no less than divine reality. It is the creator, the creator of all beings and, in the case of human being, the only real basis for unity. As a unity, a person can be understood only with reference to divine reality. Put in other words: a human being is certainly not itself identical with being itself, but it is the only religious creature, having an explicit reference to God. The traditional teaching of Christian faith that each individual human soul is created directly by God finds a fitting explanation here. In order to see a person as a unity, one must, as Thomas sees it, take the standpoint of the act of existence, which is unique in our knowledge. All other knowledge is directed to what things are. We do not arrive at an awareness of existence by way of an abstraction, nor is it a kind of actuality, like, for example, running, eating, thinking, choosing, or loving. What must be seen is actuality 11 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iv, c. 26. 12 Thomas Aquinas, In I ad Cor., xv, lect. 2. 13 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 5, a. 10, ad 5. 14 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In iv Sententiarum, dist. 49, q. 1, a. 4, qc.1, ad 1. 15 Aristotle, On the soul, i.1.

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itself, distinct from kinds of actuality. This is possible only by realizing that a person is happening, is being created. As a happening, it forms a unity, although what happens may be diverse. But we are able to see that both the mental and physical kinds of acts of existence are participants in existence itself. But this existence is not an abstract notion, although it is universal. This implies seeing the all-embracing act of existence in relationship to divine reality—that is, as created. This seems to be the only standpoint that enables us to see all human activities as comprising a unity. Of course, this does not mean that human reality is still not distinct from divine reality. Rather, it is viewed in reference to divine reality, meaning that it is not just seen in itself, but as a participation in God’s being. This is equivalent to seeing human beings as creatures. They exhibit an ontological dependence on God. Existence includes the whole organism, but in a different way from that in which the notion ‘body’ includes the whole organism. Running and hearing are parts of the body, but it makes a big difference whether the running and hearing are real. Existence is not an attribute next to others (as the ontological proof of God’s existence presumes). It is the reality, the actuality, the act of existing. It is far from the Aristotelian understanding to conceive of the soul as the self, or the person, or the core of consciousness. It should not be envisaged as a center or substrate of the life of the individual. It is not an incomprehensible something in living things. It is more like the light that makes colors visible, colors being nothing but light waves that approach us and effect the nerves of our eyes. The soul is the primordial actuality of the whole, whereas the mind and body are modes of actuality. The soul relates to the body as seeing relates to the eye, both soul and seeing being actualities. The soul is the form of a living being. The substantial form determines what it is in its totality. Accidental forms determine aspects of the totality. But how do they come together? How can the form of the whole be mind and simultaneously associated with the body? A human being cannot have two forms of the whole, for then it would be two beings and not a unity. The solution arrived at by Thomas Aquinas consists in seeing the soul both as the spirit itself and as the form of the body. The substantial form is the spirit and the form of the body. In his own words: “For there are not two forms in the soul, but only one, which is its essence. For by its essence it is spirit, and by its essence it is the form of the body.”16 The spirit is united with the body as its form. 16

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“The soul communicates that existence in which it subsists to the corporeal matter, out of which and the intellectual soul there results unity of existence; so that the existence of the whole composite is also the existence of the soul.”17 The mind is the formal cause of the human body. It is possible for immaterial being to be united to physical being if it is its form. One reality is the form of another. It is like putting a thought on paper: The meaning of the sentence made out of ink comes from the writer’s thought, and this is the essence of the sentence. As Thomas explains: “The form and the matter must be joined together in the unity of one act of being, which is not true of the union of the efficient cause with that to which it gives being.”18 A thought can be united to matter if it is united as the form. A sentence is the materialization of a thought. Efficient causality cannot be the explanation, because it implies two separate beings: the cause and the effect. The formal cause makes something be what it is.19 When I write down this sentence, I am the efficient cause of it, but the thought that I am expressing is the formal cause of the sentence, determining what it essentially is, its meaning. If I draw a circle on the blackboard and ask you what it is, you probably will say a circle, and not chalk (although this would not be absolutely false). Formal causality can form a unity, whereas an efficient cause is always separate from its effect. Thomas asserts that “it is not unfitting that the composite and its form should subsist in the same act of being, since the composite exists only by the form, and neither of them subsists apart from the other.”20 And this single act of being is that in which the composite substance subsists: a reality that is one in being and composed of matter and form. The act of existence is the pivotal point that makes the union possible and which, by the way, was neglected by Aristotle. As Thomas states precisely in summary: “The intellectual soul is united by its very being [per suum esse] to the body as a form.”21 To the best of my knowledge, no neuroscientist, including those who explicitly reject it, has given any indication of an awareness of this position. 17 18 19 20 21

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 76, a. 1, ad 5. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, ii, c. 68. Cf. ibid. Ibid., c. 71. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, q. 76, a. 6, ad 3.

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Chapter 9

Prayer and Providence It cannot be claimed that there is a single definition of prayer that is universally recognized by Christians. Probably the most frequently quoted—also cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 2559)—is the following: “Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.”1 Praying is a human act, obviously requiring a certain degree of humility. For a secular age that sets the human individual at the final pinnacle, this may require a perspective that is an overcoming of oneself. Humility in the true sense recognizes the truth of one’s own heteronomy and acknowledges divine transcendence. In other words, my strengths are created. Secularization finds perhaps nothing more difficult than overcoming oneself in prayer. Like much in religion, prayer is paradoxical. As the explicit turning of one’s attention to God, it is the conscious expression of the human relationship to God. What could be more real in human existence? But, as we have seen, this does not imply that, for God, this relationship is real. On the other hand, we nonetheless have a justification for thinking that it is so and imagining a relationship on the part of God. 1

The Reality of Prayer

The main question that I want to treat here is how prayer impacts the view of God as absolute being. As Eleonore Stump states: “One will never understand what Aquinas wrote on prayer if one does not recognize that, like so much else that he writes, it flows from his conviction that God is Ipsum Esse Subsistens (‘Subsisting Being Itself’).”2 Embracing all that is real, he already knows what I express in prayer and he already knows how he will respond. The only theologian who seems to me to adequately appreciate this problem is Thomas Aquinas. His own understanding of prayer emphasizes the role of reason. For him, prayer is the deliberate direction of the practical reason toward the meaning of life as a whole. Without reason, it is impossible for us to raise our heart to God explicitly and because of this, only human beings have religion. In other words, reason—and through reason, the heart—is aware of being. 1 John Damascene, De fide orth., 3.24.1089C. 2 Stump, “Prayer,” 468.

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What does prayer mean then? Can it move God to change his decisions? Can he perhaps be mollified by the intercession of his Mother or other saints? Can he appreciate our praise? Or is prayer actually void of meaning, like a glass pearl game? According to Aquinas, prayer is an awareness of the final end of life and its relevance in the concrete. It is not an experience of God. It focuses the plethora of concrete aspects of life on God. It sees them in their fragmentariness and ineluctable unsatisfactoriness, and it expresses a striving for absolute fulfillment and happiness. Prayer views concrete life in an ultimate perspective. What is relevant in prayer is not theoretical reason, which is directed to the contemplation of God, but practical reason. It is concerned with actions, and more exactly, with thinking about actions. Reason taken as a source for action is the practical reason.3 Praying means ordering one’s actions in the light of the final goal of life. It takes place essentially in the intellect, not in the will or in an affect. It is not in its essence a feeling, although feelings, to be sure, can accompany prayer and comprise the matter of prayer. The role of the heart in prayer is not as the essence of prayer, but as the matter presumed by prayer. In her excellent study of prayer according to Thomas Aquinas, Lydia Maidl has emphasized clearly the crucial role of the practical reason in prayer: “The anchoring in the practical reason is constitutive for the whole intentionality of the Thomistic theology of prayer. Prayer is for him neither an act of the will nor of the speculative reason.”4 Prayer is not an experiential contact with God, but rather a coordination of one’s activity in view of the final end, which is God. For this it is not necessary to know what God is, but only that he is. This suffices to ground transcendence. Prayer has both a transcendent and a concrete dimension. It sees both the goal and the way to the goal. Maidl calls it “an incarnated desire and an interiorized return.”5 Prayer does not originate from belief or from sin. Rather, it is the articulation of the inborn striving of human nature. This is where religion begins. Grace presumes nature. To be sure, faith can support and supplement prayer. But prayer is first of all a natural phenomenon. A church can well be the best environment for it, but it does not originate in the Church. One must distinguish between the essence of prayer and its matter. Everything in life can belong to the matter.

3 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii–ii, q. 83, a. 1. 4 Maidl, Desiderii interpres, 138. 5 Ibid., 139.

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It is important to see that divine being does not itself belong to the matter. God is not the content of prayer; he is the goal to which it is directed. Thomas Aquinas accordingly maintains that religion is not a theological virtue, for God is not its content, but rather its end: “It is evident that God is related to religion not as matter or object, but as end: and consequently religion is not a theological virtue whose object is the last end, but a moral virtue which is properly about things referred to the end.”6 For the end—that is, the meaning of life— determines the perspective. Religion is instead a moral virtue, which coordinates means to an end. Since divine being embraces all that is, prayer can also be sensual. Human beings need external things in order to support inner acts. Religion includes both. The inner act is, to be sure, more important, but a human being is dependent on external acts. Through them, one can be inspired.7 In Christ’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane—“‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by. Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it’” (Mt 26, 39)—it is clear that we can pray for things that will not be granted, even things that God does not want to happen. It is possible to pray, out of a natural affect, for something that God does not want. We can rebel while keeping in mind that, in the final instance, we are prepared to accept God’s will. As Maidl writes: “In prayer, man may freely stand before God with all his fears and needs, with his affective resistance, yes, with his protest. He may turn to God in his totality, with all of his emotions.”8 In prayer, as Aquinas puts it, the human can be the advocate of sensuality [tanquam sensualitatis advocata].9 Thomas also calls prayer the translator and interpreter of human striving.10 1.1 Providence and Predestination A problem arises when one reflects that God is being itself and not a vis-à-vis of another person. The person praying initiates a new relationship with God, but without God reacting. God does not change, for he already includes all changes. This would seem to be a contradiction. Why is God not changed through our prayers? Are our prayers free, if God has determined what will happen through predestination? Does predestination consist of a free choice on God’s part, a choice that can be revised? 6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii–ii, q. 81, a. 5c. 7 Cf. ibid., a. 7c. 8 Maidl, Desiderii interpres, 305. 9 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, iii, q. 21, a. 2c. 10 “Prayer is in a certain way the interpreter to God of our desire” (Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 83, a. 9c).

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To be sure, there must be a misunderstanding here, deriving, I believe, from a confusion of the realm of participated realities with reality itself. If we look at it from the point of view of worldly reality, where change takes place in time, then it would be appropriate to say that God changes. But it would be better, and less anthropomorphic, to say that he does not change because he has already changed, or to be exact, that he has already changed while the prayer is being expressed. But from the viewpoint of divine being, God is unchangeable, although he is not static, as though lacking change. The two kinds of being must be clearly distinguished. Speaking of change in God would be like asking, whether the notion ‘dog’ is brown or black, since the universal notion ‘dog’ is, of course, both and neither. Or like asking whether running runs. Again, this is a confusion of reality levels. Shakespeare himself cannot occur in one of his plays and enter into dialogue with one of his characters. From a temporal point of view, the unity of divine being has the form of eternity, since eternity is transcendent time, so to speak. It could be called the resurrection of time. Now, in eternity, past and future instances are present; that is, they have the characteristic of the present as we know it. For us, the present is that temporal moment that is directly experienced, whereas the past can be remembered and the future expected. In eternity, this is different. ­Augustine gives the following explanation: It is not as if God’s knowledge were of various kinds, knowing in different ways things which as yet are not, things which are, and things which have been. For not in our fashion does he look forward to what is future, nor at what is present, nor back upon what is past; but in a manner quite different and far and profoundly remote from our way of thinking. For he does not pass from this to that by transition of thought, but beholds all things with absolute unchangeableness; so that of those things which emerge in time, the future, indeed, are not yet, and the present are now, and the past no longer are; but all of these are by him comprehended in his stable and eternal presence.11 If I now want to walk into the next room, then my intention exists in the present, while being in the next room does not yet exist. When I walk into it, then being in the next room—called, interestingly, my ‘presence’ in the room—­ exists in the (new) present and the intention no longer exists; it is fulfilled. Now, it would be absurd to imagine that I could reach the other room without 11 Augustine, The City of God, 11.21.

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­ oving. Aquinas compares a refusal to pray because everything is already prem determined by divine predestination to the absurdity of refusing to move in order to reach a certain room or refusing to eat in order to nourish oneself. Divine being is itself also providence—unchanging and eternal providence, embracing all temporal moments. For this reason, God is not like an intelligent designer. He has no plans or intentions, since the development of existence from the present to the future is transcended in him, both being present, as it were, simultaneously. If a human being knows with certainty what will occur in the future, then the occurrence is not free. If the person really knows it, then it will happen. But this is not the case with God. God knows of my being in the next room only if I really go there. It is not valid to say that, since providence already has determined that I will be in the next room, I do not have to start moving now. If I do not move there, then providence has not predetermined it. In other words, it makes an essential difference whether or not I turn to God and express a petition. If I neglect to do it, then it is not predetermined. It is illuminating that providence also pertains to chance happenings. In fact, as Thomas explains, “it would be against the essence of divine providence if everything happened out of necessity. […] Hence, it would be against the essence of divine providence if nothing happened by chance.”12 Divine providence thus transcends natural laws. Maidl expresses it precisely: “Praying […] does not want to alter the divine disposition but rather is intended to carry it out: Through his petition, man can bring about what God has disposed that it be brought about through the petitioning.”13 Hence, on the one hand, we must avoid claiming that everything that happens does so by necessity, in submission to divine providence. On the other hand, it must be maintained that divine providence is unchangeable. This demands a careful analysis. Thomas’ solution is the following: In order to throw light on this question, we must consider that divine providence disposes not only what effects shall take place, but also from what causes and in what order these effects shall proceed. Now among other causes human acts are the causes of certain effects. Wherefore it must be that men do certain actions, not that thereby they may change the divine disposition, but that by those actions they may achieve certain effects according to the order of the divine disposition: and the same is to 12 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 74. 13 Maidl, Desiderii interpres, 145.

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be said of natural causes. And so is it with regard to prayer. For we pray not that we may change the divine disposition, but that we may impetrate that which God has disposed to be fulfilled by our prayers.14 Hence, prayer does not attempt to change God’s providence, but rather fulfills it. It is not God who is affected by our prayers, but we ourselves. God’s knowledge (his providence) includes not only what exists but also what is to be done. The latter is the object of predestination, which is a part of providence, and this is an important insight. It would be heretical to interpret this as predestination meaning that our way of living has no influence on our eternal fate. This idea has been rejected as heretical by the Church. Predestinarianism is a heresy that teaches that humans are not free to determine whether they arrive at eternal happiness or eternal damnation. It can be concluded from this that predestination does not contradict free choice. Even John Calvin did not go so far as that. He calls it “a drunken thought” to conclude that our efforts are superfluous.15 Predestination, therefore, is quite different from the idea called intelligent design. Predestination is restricted to divine knowledge as a part of providence.16 It is not an efficient cause, which actually leads the person to his or her goal. To be exact, it belongs to providence to see things as directed toward their ends without itself actually doing the directing. “Predestination is not something in the predestined,” asserts Thomas, “but only in the person who predestines. Now providence is not anything in the things provided for, but is an idea existing in the mind of the provider [in mente divina existens].”17 Predestination is like the archer’s act of aiming before actually shooting an arrow. The shot arrow, moving toward the target, on the other hand, is not an object of predestination. Predestination is comparable to the plan of the house in the thought of the architect before the house is built. Or it is like the concept of the artist before the work is produced. This is different from the idea of an 14 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii–ii, q. 83. a. 2c. 15 Calvin, Von der ewigen Vorherbestimmung Gottes, 116. 16 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 23, a. 1. 17 Ibid., a. 2c. “Hence, properly speaking, a rational creature, capable of eternal life, is led towards it, directed, as it were, by God. The reason of that direction pre-exists in God; as in Him is the type of the order of all things towards an end, which we proved above to be providence. Now the type in the mind of the doer of something to be done, is a kind of pre-existence in him of the thing to be done. Hence the type of the aforesaid direction of a rational creature towards the end of life eternal is called predestination. For to destine, is to direct or send. Thus it is clear that predestination, as regards its objects, is a part of providence” (ibid., a. 1c).

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intelligent agent who moves things as an efficient cause. Predestination means, therefore, that God has the knowledge of the act in his intellect. As a part of providence, predestination means that the movement is known to him. The actual movement itself is not predestination. 2

God and Suffering

Our present existence cannot be the fulfillment of a person, but is rather the gradual definition of the person. In prayer, the challenge presented by suffering becomes most acute. The problem of suffering radicalized in prayer heightens every suffering. An atheist cannot be so deeply moved by suffering. It is in this context that suffering must be viewed. If seen in the light of divine being, suffering takes on a new depth. Christian faith intensifies everything in life. In certain cases, it may have the effect of alleviating suffering, but essentially it deepens suffering, giving it a definitive quality. I believe that, for every other position, suffering is fundamentally incongruous. God is not like a father or physician who could help us but, for some reason or other, does not or postpones helping, or like a teacher who has a pedagogical method in view. Of course, it is possible to interpret suffering in this way, and doing so even has a biblical foundation. But suffering in this life can also be viewed as a preparation for happiness in the next, which essentially consists in a conscious union with divine being. Since happiness is the fulfillment of desire, suffering is undoubtedly quite successful in arousing desire. In this sense, it is a preparation for happiness. On the other hand, in this life, it grounds and guarantees an ineluctable unsatisfactoriness. Eternal life causes suffering to become eternal. But that is not the last word. Within divine being, all that is evil ultimately becomes good. Stump has emphasized “the oddness of Aquinas’s views” on suffering in comparison with our contemporary understanding of life. She writes: “Aquinas’s views here also seem upside down. If he is right, everything we typically think about what counts as evil in the world is the exact opposite of what we ought to think.”18 She concludes: “For many people, the reaction to this view of Aquinas’s will be indignation. […] We are likely to find it so alien to our own sensitivities that we reject it as outrageous.”19 Besides, there is no higher reality that could be the measure for God. We instinctively consider his being good; all that is desirable is included in it, even though we cannot see this concretely in our temporal reality. “Whatever is 18 Stump, Aquinas, 468. 19 Ibid., 469–470.

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d­ esirable in whatsoever beatitude, whether true or false,” Thomas underscores, “pre-exists wholly and in a more eminent degree in the divine beatitude.”20 It is similar with truth: it is impossible to reject truth. That we rebel against reality in the present world is understandable, especially when we are suffering, for we are not yet united with divine reality. The theodicy problem is not the essential problem with respect to suffering and God. If it can be shown that suffering does not imply the denial of God’s existence, then we are still faced with the question of the meaning of suffering itself; indeed, this is the more radical question. The theodicy problem does not really deal with concrete suffering, but rather exists in the realm of theory, derived from abstract ideas. Furthermore, it seems to me that theodicy can hardly be a real problem. It is theoretical and consists in nothing other than a misunderstanding. Nonetheless, it is a misunderstanding existing in our reason and requires subjectively that we answer it responsibly. It may be an illusion, but it is an illusion that many human beings have, and hence, it must be addressed. The problem is rationalistic, being a problem created by human reason for human reason. Theodicy presupposes that human reason is both the plaintiff and the judge. Consequently, it is a problem not for God, but for human beings. Can it honestly be expected that, in a situation like this, justice could be brought about? Is it not instead a matter of human arrogance? Can human reason sit in judgement of its creator? Yes, I believe it can. It is a question of conscience, and conscience, although it is subjective, is binding. I must judge according to my fallible conscience. Otherwise, it would be immoral for me. In the case of Job’s remonstrance to God—that is, an individual fallible conscience against truth itself—Aquinas maintains that Job is justified in protesting: when someone is speaking the truth, that person cannot be vanquished, no matter with whom he is disputing.21 In spite of this, the problem remains virulent and apparently perennial. Even without arriving at a solution, it provides us, in any case, with a ­moral exo­ neration for our own misdeeds, which appear almost irrelevant in comparison. If the problematic is looked at from the perspective of being itself, it becomes even more acute, only ultimately to disappear. Actually, this is what one would expect. God cannot really be unjust, and the accusation cannot be but absurd. One could argue that the presence of unjust suffering in the world proves that God does not exist. But then there would be no problem at all. Theodicy is only a problem when one presupposes a God who is almighty, 20 21

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 26, a. 4c. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In Job, c. 13.

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­ erciful, and good. In other words, it is only a problem when one presupposes m Christian theology to a certain degree. An atheist should not be bothered by a theodicy problem. For the atheist, of course, the problem of suffering continues to exist, but the theoretical issue of reconciling God and suffering is not a part of it. However, a fundamentally affirmative stance toward reality as a whole— which is not far from classic Christian theology’s understanding of supernatural— can be confronted by the problem. Perhaps such a stance is even instinctive and unavoidable for everyone. Be that as it may, under this condition, theodicy is a problem for all reflecting persons. And at this point, then, the question of the sense of suffering arises. The contradiction disappears if love does not necessarily exclude suffering. To be sure, love can certainly exclude suffering in many cases, and it always rejects suffering in itself. In itself, suffering cannot be good, although it can have good effects. Nevertheless, love does not exclude suffering under all circumstances. In his classic book on love, Erich Fromm22 rejects the illusion that love necessarily means the absence of conflict. C.S. Lewis remarks that love is even more sensitive than hatred to every blemish in the beloved.23 Augustine, to cite another thinker, expressed it repeatedly: “Love reprimands, ill will echoes,”24 and “the friend speaks bitterly and loves, the disguised foe flatters and hates.”25 Love does not say: “Remain as you are! I love you as you are—­ including your faults!” Instead, love wants the beloved to be “perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” (Mt 5, 48). Love does not require more than what the beloved is capable of, but it does set down a challenge to improve as much as is really possible. In Holy Scripture, the same (perhaps) disconcerting, teaching can be found: “For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and ­chastises every son whom he receives” (Hebr 12, 6). The (unpopular) text continues: God is treating you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?26

22 Fromm, The Art of Loving. 23 Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 39. 24 Augustine, In epistolam Johannis ad Parthos 7.8.2033. 25 Augustine, Sermones de tempore 49, 4.322. 26 Hebr 12, 7–9. William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

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Holy Scripture certainly does not shy away from the problem of suffering— Christ’s extreme suffering was surely not unchristian or a collateral effect. On the contrary, the problem arises only when faith in an unlimited totality of meaning is presupposed. Only when one presumes an all-good and almighty God can suffering become a provocation. In a universe enclosed in itself, suffering occurs, of course, but it does not occasion the radical intellectual question on its meaning. If the possibility exists, then specific remedies can be sought, but in this case, unavoidable suffering is simply suffered. 2.1 Some Proposed Responses to the Theodicy Problem Commiseration with the suffering of fellow humans is, of course, a legitimate effect of suffering, but it can be only the first step of the search for an explanation. In fact, it magnifies the conflict. We cannot simply go on having hope and living with the contradiction that our conscience sees, regardless of whether it might be an erroneous conscience. It is certainly not senseless to appeal to the suffering Christ. But trusting him is hardly a solution to a problem of conscience. Christ is, in fact, a model for suffering, but we must be able to make some kind of sense of suffering. If we think we see a contradiction, then we cannot simply leave the question of God’s existence open. Perhaps the simplest response of all is an ontological dualism that presumes that God did not create everything. The conclusion drawn from this is that suffering and every evil stems from what God did not create. He has no responsibility for what he does not cause. For example, the dualism can posit a second creator who causes evil and stands in conflict with the Christian God, or it can claim that matter precedes creation and renders the creative causality of God imperfect, with the result that the world represents an ontological mixture for which God is not completely responsible. Another kind of explanation presumes that God is not almighty. He is doing his best, as it were, although it does not seem in our eyes to be enough. He may even be thought to commiserate with us. He accompanies us and helps as much as he can. He may even join us in the fight against evil. Some theologians turn the problem around, making of theodicy an anthropodicy. Suffering is then a moral problem. According to this, free humans are the cause. Obviously, this is true in certain respects, but hardly in all; nature, of course, is also responsible for some kinds of suffering. The response to suffering is in this case restricted to the future. The hope is that, if human beings change, then suffering too will be eliminated. God creates free choice and out of this independence, suffering arises. One may be surprised to find this position defended by an enlightened philosopher like Immanuel Kant, who views this miscarried freedom as a punishment for the original sin of Adam and Eve: William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

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Before reason awoke, there was neither command nor prohibition and hence no transgression; but when reason began its business and, weak as it is, got into a scuffle with animality in its whole strength, then there had to arise ills and, what is worse, with more cultivated reason, vices, which were entirely alien to the condition of ignorance and hence of innocence. The first step out of this condition, therefore, was on the moral side a fall; on the physical side, a multitude of ills of life hitherto unknown were the consequence of this fall, hence punishment. The history of nature thus begins from good, for that is the work of God; the history of freedom from evil, for it is the work of the human being.27 Other theologians appeal to mystery. They desist from trying to resolve the theodicy problem and call it essentially unsolvable, a mystery. But, in my opinion, it is the opposite of a mystery; as the problem is posed, it is a contradiction, and human reason finds nothing clearer than a contradiction, the falsehood of which is more stringent than a truth. A contradiction cannot be a truth. A mystery is an excessive demand on reason, whereas a contradiction is anything but an excessive demand. The well-known solution of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716) counters the theodicy contradiction by arguing, with ingenuous rationality, that God cannot do otherwise than to let evil occur. God is rational, and Leibniz’s argument is rational. The point of departure is the universal principle that everything that happens has an adequate reason for happening. According to Leibniz, this rational principle holds true even for God. Accordingly, God must inevitably do the best possible thing whenever he does anything at all. And, therefore, it must be concluded without further ado that, while this world may not be perfect, it is the best of all possible worlds. Otherwise, God would not have chosen to create it. Our imagination that it could be better or that we would have made a better world if we had the power to create is, according to him, clearly a deception. We are deceived because we do not know the repercussions of any improvement. God does not will evil directly, but even he must accept it. Leibniz does not try to analyze our world in order to see whether it is the best possible one; he concludes deductively, rationalistically, to this position. Questions like that of the sense of certain forms of suffering have no relevance. For, all is regulated, once for all, with as much order and harmony as is possible, since supreme wisdom and goodness cannot act except with perfect

27 Kant, Conjectural Beginning of Human History, 169 (emphasis in original).

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harmony. The present is big with the future, the future could be read in the past, and the distant is expressed in the near.28 2.2 A Response from the Perspective of Divine Being Answering the theodicy problem does not imply finding an intrinsic explanation for all suffering. The problem arises on the basis of a clear contradiction between an all-good and all-powerful God, on the one hand, and the evil of suffering, on the other hand. The logic is stringent and compelling. Even if only one case of a contradiction could be found, the existence of God would be refuted, or God’s nature would have to be quite different. But is there really a contradiction? Thomas grants that there is a contradiction between the existence of evil [mala fieri] and the nonexistence of evil [mala non fieri], but he claims—­ subtly—that there is no contradiction between wanting evil to exist [velle mala fieri] and wanting evil not to exist [velle mala non fieri], since both are affirmations. Now, it can be said that God neither wants evil to exist nor wants it not to exist. But the possibility is now open (since he would not be contradicting himself) for him to permit the existence of evil, and this—it can be claimed—is something good.29 It seems to me that the theodicy problem can be treated by keeping divine being in mind. But this pertains only to theodicy, not to suffering itself. Being a human construction, theodicy is not of comparable importance. To start, it is clear that suffering, like everything negative, is not absolute. Whereas the good can be absolute, evil cannot. Like everything else, it is subsumed under the unity of divine being. We may not be able to follow concretely how this takes place, but it at least gives us a point of departure. One aspect is that suffering never exists alone. The fact that we rebel against suffering or inquire about its meaning shows that we realize that it exists in a context. Ultimately, all is one in divine being. Suffering brings one closer to reality. Its negativity is not a contradiction of reality, but a way in which reality becomes present to us. Under certain conditions, of course, suffering can even be a better way of encountering reality than pleasure and joy, which are the opposite of suffering. It goes without saying that this claim does not imply finding suffering good in itself. This would be masochism or sadism and is, in fact, an objection that is often raised against theists.

28 29

Cf. Leibniz, The Principles of Natur. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 19, a. 9, ad 3.

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Divine reality is the coincidence of opposites. Contradictions and opposites exist only in temporal realities. Nicolaus Cusanus has expressed the relationship under different aspects. As an example, I quote the following passage, in which he refers to divine reality as the absolute Maximum: Therefore, because the absolutely Maximum is absolutely and actually all things which can be (and is so free of all opposition that the Minimum coincides with it), it is beyond both all affirmation and all negation. And it is not, as well as is, all that which is conceived to be; and it is, as well as is not, all that which is conceived not to be. But it is a given thing in such way that it is all things; and it is all things in such way that it is no thing; and it is maximally a given thing in such way that it is it minimally.30 In a later work, written for a community of Benedictine monks and treating other aspects, Cusanus writes: But this coincidence is Contradiction without contradiction, just as it is End without an end. O Lord, You tell me that just as in oneness otherness is present without otherness, because [in oneness otherness is] oneness, so in Infinity contradiction is present without contradiction, because [in Infinity contradiction is] Infinity. Infinity is simplicity; contradiction does not exist apart from otherness. But in simplicity otherness is present without otherness, because [in simplicity otherness is] simplicity itself. For whatever is predicated of absolute simplicity coincides with absolute simplicity, because in absolute simplicity having is being. The oppositeness of opposites is oppositeness without oppositeness, just as the End of finite things is an End without an end. You, then, O God, are the Oppositeness of opposites, because You are infinite. And because You are infinite, You are Infinity. In Infinity the oppositeness of opposites is present without oppositeness.31 To be sure, we do not now exist consciously in God’s reality with our problem, and so we are unable to see suffering as it appears there in its truest form. In the Book of Job, our theodicy reproach is answered not with an argument or explanatory sentences, but rather by Job being allowed to see God himself. Job’s response to God’s self-revelation is: “Before, I knew you only by hearsay

30 31

Nicolaus Cusanus, De docta ignorantia, i, c. 4, n. 12. Nicolaus Cusanus, De visione Dei, c. 13, n. 55.

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but now, having seen you with my own eyes, I retract what I have said, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42, 5–6). Conversely, if there is no all-good and all-powerful God, then there can be no problem at all in justifying suffering, for why should one expect meaning in suffering if the world has no grounding in goodness? To continue believing in God, we must show that the apparent contradiction between God and suffering is not ineluctable. In other words, if there is no necessary contradiction, then it is not necessary to be able to explain the meaning of suffering in order to be a theist. The inexplicability of suffering, consequently, is not enough reason to reject the idea of God. No doubt, it is easy to see that not every kind of suffering is inexplicable. Pain as a signal for sickness, for example, has an obviously meaningful purpose. Stump has correctly concluded: And so, although Aquinas supposes that there is available to human beings a good and acceptable theodicy, it remains the case that, on his views, any particular case of suffering is likely to remain a mystery to us. A theodicy, as Aquinas understands it, cannot give a specific answer to the question why Aunt Sallie was hit by a car.32 Nonetheless, it is difficult to claim something positive about suffering in general without hearing the objection that one is a sadist or masochist, as though asserting meaning means enjoying suffering. But, if suffering in general has any meaning at all, then the crux of the matter is that it is not enjoyable. In precisely this way, it seems to me, it has its specific role in the total meaning of life. What is more, the deeper meaning of life lies more in suffering than in pleasure. Affirming what is enjoyable demands no justification. But it remains possible to pose the question of what the meaning of enjoyment is, and then it turns out that, taken ultimately, it has the same meaning as suffering. The meaning of life embraces the whole of life. If life itself is meaningful, then suffering must be meaningful. In his commentary on 1 Cor 15, N.T. Wright declares: “Paul then uses the image of birth pangs—a well-known Jewish metaphor for the emergence of God’s new age—not only of the church in verse 23 and of the Spirit a couple of verses later but also here in verse 22 of creation itself.”33

32 Stump, “Providence and the problem of evil,” 411–412. 33 Wright, Surprised by Hope, 103.

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Advocates of the Meaningfulness of Suffering

There have been a small number of individuals who have realized that, under certain conditions, suffering can be meaningful and who have given poignant expression to this insight. Some defenders of this minority position deserve serious reflection. As a first example, I cite Oscar Wilde, who states a profound thought: “Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realise what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do.”34 It would seem unlikely that the role of suffering in human life could be better appreciated than Wilde does. During two torturous years in prison, he reached a deep awareness of the positive meaning of suffering. He describes his situation movingly: I have lain in prison for nearly two years. Out of my nature has come wild despair; an abandonment to grief that was piteous even to look at; terrible and impotent rage; bitterness and scorn; anguish that wept aloud; misery that could find no voice; sorrow that was dumb. I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said—“Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark / And has the nature of infinity.”35 Wilde even refers to suffering as “the secret of life”: There is about sorrow an intense, an extraordinary reality. I have said of myself that I was one who stood in symbolic relations to the art and culture of my age. There is not a single wretched man in this wretched place along with me who does not stand in symbolic relation to the very secret of life. For the secret of life is suffering. It is what is hidden behind everything.36 He speaks of suffering as a treasure: But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all. 34 Wilde, De profundis, 5. 35 Ibid. The quotation comes from W. Wordsworth, The White Doe. 36 Wilde, De profundis, 5 (emphasis added).

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That something hidden away in my nature, like a treasure in a field, is Humility. It is the last thing left in me, and the best: the ultimate discovery at which I have arrived.37 The conviction that suffering is unjust can perhaps be traced back to the Christian idea that happiness awaits us in the afterlife. Applying this to the present life might be a kind of secularization. Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker describes it, in fact, as secular eschatology: Christian Europeans knew what all religions know, namely, that human life is finiteness, suffering and guilt. However, Europe of the Modern Age is characterized by radical projects and an orientation toward happiness. Radical projects are the abstract constitutional state of absolute monarchs and liberals, the secular eschatology of the technocrats and socialists. What these projects are striving for and what the contemporary ­citizen considers his undisputed right is happiness in this life.38 Weizsäcker offers the following astute analysis of our present paradoxical state: The positive side lies “in the resulting suffering that arouses insight. Its danger lies in the incorrigible acceptance of partial happiness.”39 It goes without saying that this is not to imply the passive acceptance of concrete suffering. To the contrary, opposition to it belongs to its essence. Suffering motivates us to move on, while pleasure and joy tempt us to stand still. For this reason, John of the Cross could maintain that “the road of suffering is more secure and even more profitable than that of fruition and action.”40 This idea is old; more than a millennium earlier, Boethius wrote: Strange is the thing I am trying to express. And for this cause I can scarce find words to make clear my thought. For truly I believe that Ill Fortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune. For Good Fortune, when she wears the guise of happiness, and most seems to caress, is always lying; Ill Fortune is always truthful, since, in changing, she shows her inconstancy. The one deceives, the other teaches; the one enchains the minds of those who enjoy her favor by the semblance of delusive good, the other delivers them by the knowledge of the frail nature of happiness. Accordingly, 37 Ibid. 38 Weizsäcker, Bewuß tseinswandel, 92–93. 39 Weizsäcker, Garten, 245 (not included in the English translation). 40 John of the Cross, Dark Night, 16.9.

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thou mayst see the one fickle, shifting as the breeze, and ever self-­ deceived; the other sober-minded, alert, and wary, by reason of the very discipline of adversity. Finally, Good Fortune, by her allurements, draws men far from the true good; Ill Fortune oftentimes draws men back to true good with grappling-irons.41 It could be concluded from this that suffering might be more advantageous for a successful life than pleasure or joy. No doubt, one can profit in one’s personal growth through pleasure and joy, but suffering can in fact be more effective for maturing. The danger is that suffering can result in discouragement and despair. In any case, a successful life is not necessarily a life of joy. The ultimate purpose of life is to learn to love, to strive for unending fulfillment. No suffering person desires to remain in pain, but joy does have this characteristic. The tendency is not to leave it, whereas suffering has just the opposite effect. Suffering and joy both give rise to longing, the former in a negative way and the latter in a positive one. Both represent a form of longing. Since joy appears to have its meaning in itself, it is not so easy to discern its ultimate meaning. In it, there occurs a striving for happiness, but it is easy to mistake it for fulfilling happiness itself, since we normally would find it superfluous to ask the question of why we consider joy worth striving for, since it provides its own justification. This is a kind of shortsightedness. In both ways, we are opened to reality, as it were; reality itself opens us. This insight has been vividly expressed by Rainer Maria Rilke in his poem “Motto”42: That is longing: living in turmoil and having no home in time and those are wishes: gentle dialogs of day’s hours with eternity And that is life. Until out of a yesterday the most lonely hour rises which, smiling differently than the other sisters (hours) silently encounters eternity Religion expresses the relativization of the self. The self is able to reflect on itself and realize that it is not the center of everything surrounding it, thus becoming aware that there are other selves who see me as an object in their own 41 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, 2.8. 42 In: Rilke, Mir zur Feier.

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worlds. We can rise to a reflection of ourselves and view ourselves as one center among others, such that an individual can recognize that, in a given situation, another has more right to something. On the other hand, reflection can reveal to us that, in a certain case, justice demands that we be preferred over others. We can thus be humble, for example, without disavowing our own abilities and achievements. Humility is not the depreciation of oneself; rather, it is grounded in the truth of the self, in its contingency. According to Weizsäcker, religion implies “the complete relativization of the I.”43 Wilde’s deep awareness that “nothing in the whole world is meaningless, suffering least of all,” is valid even for the depths of a Nazi concentration camp. In this state, the will to live becomes dependent on the realization that, inherent in apparently senseless suffering, there can be a larger sense. Suffering may stand in contradiction to happiness, but nevertheless, not to the meaning of our present life. To live is to suffer in some way or other. Surviving in an extreme situation like the abyss of a concentration camp can be achieved by viewing one’s apparently senseless suffering in the context of a larger sense. Suffering stands in contradiction to happiness, but not to living. To live is to suffer. To survive extreme suffering, one must find meaning in suffering. If life has any purpose at all, then there has to be purpose both in suffering and in dying. Viktor E. Frankl experienced this insight in the extreme situation of a concentration camp during World War ii and defends this conviction: The experience of camp life shows that man does have a choice of action. There were enough examples, often of a heroic nature, which proved that apathy could be overcome, irritability suppressed. Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress.44 The fact that a few prisoners were able to make sacrifices for others is a proof for Frankl that, even in a concentration camp, there remains freedom in a fundamental sense. Frankl movingly espouses this possibility: We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the 43 Weizsäcker, Garten, 540. 44 Frankl, Man’s Search, 65 (emphasis in original).

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human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.45 Frankl is convinced that a human being can never be reduced to a mere function of abasing external circumstances. Even if we are unable to act externally, the possibility still remains of reacting within one’s own person and, thus, maturing morally: The mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him—mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp.46 Frankl cites Dostojewskij, who maintains that one can become worthy of suffering: Dostojewskij said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.47 45 Ibid., 65–66. 46 Ibid., 66. 47 Ibid.

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In Frankl’s opinion, the ultimate meaning of life can depend on one’s attitude towards existence: There is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful.48 Frankl arrives at the conclusion that the meaning of suffering can be deepened if the presence of inevitable suffering is fundamentally affirmed. The difference between ‘I cannot’ and ‘I will not’ is decisive: If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete. The way in which a human accepts his or her fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life.49 Frankl summarizes his position in the following words: Whenever one is confronted with an inescapable, unavoidable situation, whenever one has to face a fate which cannot be changed, e. g., an incurable disease, such as an inoperable cancer; just then one is given a last chance to actualize the highest value, to fulfill the deepest meaning, the meaning of suffering. For what matters above all is the attitude we take toward suffering, the attitude in which we take our suffering upon ourselves. […] A bit later, I remember, it seemed to me that I would die in the near future. In this critical situation, however, my concern was different from that of most of my comrades. Their question was, “Will we survive the camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning.” The question which beset me was, “Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning?” For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance—as whether one escapes or not—would ultimately not be worth living at all.50 48 Ibid., 67. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid.

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Survival alone cannot be the meaning of living. Contrary to a widespread criticism, individuals like those I have cited are not neurotic in realizing that suffering can have positive meaning. The ultimate meaning of life cannot be reduced to mere surviving. Hopefully, these witnesses may have convinced the reader that suffering cannot be seen as an inescapable contradiction to an all-good God. Moreover, one need not be a Christian to be aware of the positive meaning of suffering. A well-known text in Aeschylus’ (525–456 bc) Agamemnon that portrays wisdom as arising from suffering presupposes, in any case, a religious horizon: “He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of god.”51 Wilde perceptively criticizes the approach that sees suffering as a mystery. For him, it is rather a revelation: Clergymen and people who use phrases without wisdom sometimes talk of suffering as a mystery. It is really a revelation. One discerns things one never discerned before. One approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint. What one had felt dimly, through instinct, about art, is intellectually and emotionally realised with perfect clearness of vision and absolute intensity of apprehension.52 He does not fall short in calling it “the supreme emotion of which man is capable” and “at once the type and test of all great art.”53 In Wilde’s view, the explanation of suffering lies in love of humanity: Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul.54 51 Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 179–182. 52 Wilde, De profundis. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid.

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Christianity is not in the first place a struggle against suffering—that is, a reaction to suffering after it has started. Simone Weil expressed the following insight: “The infinite greatness of Christianity stems from the fact that it does not seek supernatural relief for suffering but rather a supernatural usage of suffering.”55 A traditional explanation of suffering views it eschatologically, as Paul does in his Letter to the Romans (8, 18–24), where he compares it to labor pains that presage new life: In my estimation, all that we suffer in the present time is nothing in comparison with the glory which is destined to be disclosed for us, for the whole creation is waiting with eagerness for the children of God to be revealed. It was not for its own purposes that creation had frustration imposed on it, but for the purposes of him who imposed it—with the intention that the whole creation itself might be freed from its slavery to corruption and brought into the same glorious freedom as the children of God. We are well aware that the whole creation, until this time, has been groaning in labor pains. And not only that: we too, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we are groaning inside ourselves, waiting with eagerness for our bodies to be set free. In hope, we already have salvation; in hope, not visibly present, or we should not be hoping—nobody goes on hoping for something which is already visible. But having this hope for what we cannot yet see, we are able to wait for it with persevering confidence. To the fetus, birth appears to be death. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, to quote Lao-tse, the rest of the world calls a butterfly. Of course, it goes without saying that this approach does not eliminate or even alleviate suffering in itself. Nonetheless, it does draw attention to an aspect that is meaningful, and thus suggests a way to legitimatize suffering ultimately. If we were unable to find any meaning whatsoever in suffering, then we would be forced to reject God as understood in the Christian tradition. In any case, simply reacting with consternation, speaking of a mystery, and then going on living as before, as is common among theologians, does not seem to me to be a real alternative.

55 Weil, Cahiers, 3.32.

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The Reversal of the Theodicy Problem

There is also the possibility of turning the classic theodicy problem around and asserting, as Boethius does: “If evil exists, God exists” [Si malum est, Deus est].56 Thomas Aquinas presents a similar argument based on the awareness of evil and the protest against it. He argues that the conviction that evil should not occur presupposes a fundamental good that stands in contradiction to it: “For there would be no evil, if the order of goodness were taken away, the privation of which is evil; and this order would not be, if God were not.”57 In other words, the theodicy problem arises only if God exists, since evil consists in a contradiction of God’s goodness. Moreover, this argument provokes a deeper reflection on suffering that delves more deeply than the truncated response of an atheist. A Christian can do more than simply concentrate on a promised relief in heaven. In any case, we have, on the one hand, the question of where evil comes from, and on the other hand, the question of where the good comes from. In the Letter to the Hebrews (2, 10), we find the teaching on being “made perfect through suffering”—a statement that provokes even deeper reflection. Furthermore, John’s Gospel (16, 20) states that joy will arise out of sorrow. Franz Kafka makes a penetrating, albeit enigmatic, observation that seems similar: “Only here is suffering really suffering. But not as though those who suffer here will be elevated someplace else because of this suffering, but in such a way that what in this world is called suffering in another world, unchanged and only freed from its contradiction, is happiness.”58 Suffering contributes to the inner determination of happiness. Aquinas assumes Augustine’s position that God allows suffering because he is able to make something good out of it. At the beginning of his Summa theologiae, Thomas’ first objection given against God’s existence is the argument from evil, which is traditionally considered the strongest argument against the divine existence. He defends God’s existence despite the reality of suffering, meeting this argument’s denial of God’s existence with the response that, if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be altogether destroyed. In his own words: “But the word ‘God’ means that he is infinite goodness. If, therefore, God existed, there would be no evil discoverable; but there is evil in the world. Therefore, God does not exist.” He here quotes Augustine:

56 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, i, prosa 4. 57 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 71. 58 Kafka, Aphorismen, n. 97.

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As Augustine says: “Since God is the highest good, he would not allow any evil to exist in his works, unless his omnipotence and goodness were such as to bring good even out of evil.” This is part of the infinite goodness of God, that he should allow evil to exist, and out of it produce good.59 This is quite different from the erroneous misunderstanding according to which God permits evil in order to produce good. Aquinas does not justify the means by the end. In other words, there is no contradiction between suffering and an all-good God, since infinite goodness integrates even suffering into itself. Aquinas makes no attempt to relativize divine goodness, as if evil were somehow beyond the bounds of goodness—pure nothingness, as it were. Therefore, suffering and joy are not simply juxtaposed, with the former being negative and the latter positive. Instead, the positive encompasses the negative. Thomas notes that “good is more vigorous in goodness than evil in badness.”60 If any instance of suffering had no ultimate meaning, then it would be impossible to justify it. No suffering whatsoever lies beyond divine providence. The reproachful question of why God permits suffering is not as naive as it seems. Salvation must be the salvation of suffering, and not merely a compensation for it. “Grace perfects nature.” Without suffering, certain joys would be impossible, since there would be no potentiality in the individual for the fulfillment that suffering has made possible. Only a mother knows the joy of the cessation of the birth pains. In the words of Thomas : “Good is better known in contrast with evil, and while evil results come about, we more ardently desire good results: as sick men best know what a blessing health is.”61 The joy of arriving at one’s destination cannot be had without the journey. Can the delight of seeing a long-lost friend again be had without having missed that friend? In short, there can be no fulfillment of longing without that preceding longing being suffered. Eternal life is no exception.

59

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1. According to Augustine, Enchiridion, c. xi, “In the universe, even that which is called evil, when it is regulated and put in its own place, only enhances our admiration of the good; for we enjoy and value the good more when we compare it with the evil. For the Almighty God, who, as even the heathen acknowledges, has supreme power over all things, being himself supremely good, would never permit the existence of anything evil among his works, if he were not so omnipotent and good that he could bring good even out of evil. For what is that which we call evil but the absence of good?” 60 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 71. 61 Ibid.

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The Paradoxicality of Suffering

Hence, suffering is paradoxical. In itself, it is not good and is naturally and rightly rejected. The rejection of suffering is made possible by a belief in the ultimate goodness of reality. But the rejection of religion on the basis of suffering derives from a misunderstanding of human nature, which can find negative aspects even in happy experiences (e.g., their temporariness). Feeling need belongs to human life. Someone who never experiences hunger is sick, for we need food. The pain of an infected appendix is meaningful and life-saving. Like some other kinds of pain, it is a signal. It can be argued that, if God were not the fulfillment of human life, then it would be senseless to seek absolute meaning. Whatever arouses a consciousness of the need for God contributes to a meaningful life. In the subjective response to failure, one’s real attitude toward existence is disclosed. Salvation implies the insufficiency of life in time. At least under the eschatological aspect, it can be revealed that suffering has a positive dimension. Ironically, this depends on our natural resistance to suffering. But it would be a misunderstanding to presume that the eschatological viewpoint weakens the fight against suffering. To the contrary, it gives support to the fight. However, concentrating on resisting suffering can lessen, or even deter, a more authentic response. For example, it can distract us from compassion, which is often appropriate and requires a certain amount of contemplative attention. Similarly, the readiness to grant forgiveness for a suffered injustice is quite different from resistance. It is made possible by the existence of guilt, which is actually a form of suffering. Certain valuable things like repentance, forgiveness, perseverance, and patience would be meaningless in a world without suffering. The fact may be visible only to God, but the coexistence of good and evil can be compared to the beauty of a composition, “as an interval of silence makes music sweet.”62 If we are overly convinced that suffering should not really exist, we can easily overlook its essence—as well as the essence of life. In fact, we also overlook the essence of human life if we presume that suffering is not part of it, or should not be, believing perhaps that external factors that can be eliminated are its cause. Weizsäcker asks: “The idea that suffering is simply a result of reproachable social developments is naive (or a projection); why do we have the ability to feel physical and psychological pain if we did not have need of these indicators?”63 It is important to appreciate that suffering is more than an ­impulse to action. We can learn to see “what blessing lies in not repressing the 62 Ibid. 63 Weizsäcker, Garten, 245 (not included in the English translation).

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presence of suffering.”64 Action is not the only appropriate reaction. To be sure, it is undoubtedly good to do something to eliminate suffering, but its ambivalence should not be ignored; ignoring it is not good. It should be noted, finally, that perhaps the most ineluctable cause of suffering lies in self-consciousness. Owing to its characteristic of both reflecting on the object and being simultaneously aware of its reflection, thus bringing about a cleft between its object and itself (the observer observes himself or herself from a distance, as it were), self-consciousness involves a kind of suffering through disunity. On the other hand, the conscious awareness of suffering makes it possible to realize its deeper meaning. Moreover, the suffering caused by self-consciousness cannot be overcome, for it belongs to the very nature of human life. Of course, if self-consciousness could be eliminated, suffering would also be eliminated. Simone Weil has remarked poignantly that the only way to eliminate all suffering would be not to think. “The awakening of thought,” she writes, “is painful.”65 Kafka seems to express the same insight when he writes: “The bone of his own forehead obstructs his way; he knocks himself bloody against his own forehead.”66 The fact that self-consciousness also consists of an awareness of absolute being reveals a relationship of suffering to divine being. 64 Ibid., 114 (not included in the English translation). 65 Weil, Fabriktagebuch, 61. 66 Kafka, “Er,” 292–293.

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Chapter 10

Is God a Person? After all that has been said in the previous pages, one wonders whether God is a person, or better, in what sense he can be regarded as a person. Undoubtedly, Christian faith looks upon God as a person. But how literally is this to be taken? In the normal sense of the word, a person is an individual, enjoying self-­reflection and freedom. When predicated of God, the idea of personhood is not without problems. It even presents problems to assert a multitude of persons. Troubling things like envy, jealousy, and hate arise only because other persons exist. But of course, good things like love in its different forms also arise for this reason. Even though human persons may be worlds of their own—that is, so-called microcosms—as such, each is distinct from other persons and things. How can this be, if a person includes the world within the self, at least insofar as something is known to the self. Everything revolves around me, at the center of my microcosm. Other persons, therefore, are present to me only in my own consciousness. But how can relationships between persons then take place? Through reflection on how knowledge of objects originate in my senses, I know that they are actually other, that they are more than what I experience. Human truths, as has been remarked, are always partial, approximate truths. Microcosms are not all identical, although each is in a certain sense infinite. Reciprocal relations can arise between human persons thanks to our ability to reflect. I can regard myself as on object among other objects, and I can identify with other persons. The macrocosm, of course, never has all its dimensions included in a microcosm. The notion ‘dog’ does not include everything that a concrete dog consists of; the dog in my consciousness is immaterial (in spite of the fact that I have a notion of its materiality). Analogously, God transcends both a microcosm and the macrocosm. As being itself, he is simple and one, embracing all realities. He is not a vis-à-vis of another. A further difficulty could be mentioned: strictly speaking, God has no relations to human persons (see above, p. 10). Be that as it may, God is certainly not less than a person. He is the creator of persons, and must therefore possess all of the positive qualities that persons possess, such as individuality, subjectivity, autonomy, and relations. Out of his study of Holy Scripture, the exegete Klaus Berger arrives at this conclusion: “Whether God transcends some of the attributes of a person and, above all, which ones, we do not know.”1 That God is more than a person can be expressed 1 Berger, Ist Gott Person? 36. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004413993_011

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in the manner of negative theology—namely, by denying that he is a person. He is not an individual distinct from other individuals. In fact, he himself establishes the difference between persons, as Rahner has noted.2 A person is an individual being, but God is not a being. As Thomas asserts: The first cause is above being [ens] insofar as he is infinite being itself [ipsum esse]. A being [ens] is said to be something that finitely participates in being [esse]. […] Our intellect can grasp only what has a quiddity participating in being; but God’s quiddity is being itself [ipsum esse] and hence he lies beyond our intellect.3 In the Bible, God’s personal characteristics are not especially pronounced. In the New Testament, the attributes of God as person, especially the aspect of subjectivity, are not accentuated. In the Bible, God hears and speaks, even in the form of a soliloquy, and in this sense, he is a person.4 He appears as a vis-àvis to human beings, for example, in conversing with them. But, even if God is not a person in himself, he can still be a person for us, seen from the human perspective. We cannot help but see reality as composed of individuals, and we naturally apply this viewpoint spontaneously to God. Although it is not, strictly speaking, a biblical notion, the explicit notion ‘person’ arose and was developed in Christianity. We can, of course, speak of personal characteristics of God, if not of God as a person. “Such personal traits, which we are able to distinguish, are the ability to speak a language, free will, and the ability to love and be true.”5 As in similar cases of terminology for divine being, ‘person’ must be understood analogically. This means that the dissimilarity between divine and human personhood is greater than the similarity. As in the case of all positive predicates of God, we must be able to attain a higher point of view in order to deny that God is a person. He is personal, possessing all the positive characteristics of a person, but he is not a person in a univocal sense. In particular, he is not concrete, in spite of the fact that all that is concrete comes from him. Rahner concludes rightly: Or course the subjectivity and personhood which we experience as our own, the individual and limited uniqueness through which we are 2 3 4 5

Cf. Rahner, Foundations, 74. Thomas Aquinas, Supra De causis, lect. 6. Cf. In Epistulam ad Col., c. 1, lect. 4, prol. Cf. Berger, Ist Gott Person? 87. Ibid., 35. William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

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d­ istinguished from others, the freedom which has to be exercised only under a thousand conditions and necessities, all of this signifies a finite subjectivity with limitations which we cannot assert with these limitations of its ground, namely, God. And it is self-evident that such an individual personhood cannot belong to God, who is the absolute ground of everything in radical originality.6 When we form statements about God, we take the concrete world as our point of departure. God is the creative cause of the concrete. Whatever is in the effect must be in the cause, albeit in a different mode of being. The cause cannot be reduced to categories that are existent among the effects. Hamlet cannot stand vis-à-vis Shakespeare. ‘Dog’ is neither brown nor not brown, although a dog is either brown or not brown. God is transcendent. A peculiar complication should be mentioned. The dogma of the Trinity names three persons, referred to as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The persons of the Trinity will be treated in a later chapter (pp. 140–167 below). In my opinion, it is very wise that the notion of person is neither defined nor described in the revelation of dogmas. Its meaning here is left fully open; ‘person’ is more like a name than a notion. Hence, it can at least be said that the three divine persons present no relevant problem for what has thus far been said about God as a person. In any case, regarding God as a person is certainly justifiable and can hardly be avoided, given our accustomed thought categories; a certain amount of ­naïveté is legitimate. But it remains nevertheless true that, strictly speaking, God cannot be reduced to a person. 6 Rahner, Foundations, 74.

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Chapter 11

God as Love The assertion that God is love has the characteristics of an authentic statement about God: It is paradoxical and at the same time suggestive. ‘Love’ has the appearance of an abstraction, but of course, God is not an abstract notion. He does, however, possess characteristics of both the abstract and the concrete. Having the reality of the concrete and the universality of the abstract, God is, as it were, concrete love. Both aspects are included when love is predicated of God. He does have a structure that universal notions possess: the unifying of many in one. God unifies the subject and object of our love. Active and passive aspects are brought together. God loves and is loved. The degree of abstraction in this teaching is difficult to conceive. We must at least try to think something meaningful. Can we see a common ground in our uses of the term ‘love,’ which we apply to God, to human beings, to dogs, to golf, to wine, and to many other things? Both the mystic and the scoundrel speak of love. We should be astonished that Christianity holds love for the deepest foundation of reality. It is fitting that, in Dante’s Divine Comedy, the “laughing of the universe” is seen by Dante once he has reached the high perspective of heaven.1 The being of the world is filled with love—a quite astounding metaphysics when compared with alternatives based in things like light, time, energy, and matter. If the world were not full of love, we would be unable to presume a meaning of life. To be sure, within a limited horizon, we can find meaning, but not for life as a whole. What we are capable of producing or changing cannot fill our entire life with meaning. Final meaning must be given to us; we cannot make it. We cannot go that far by taking our lives in our own hands. “Since God has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4, 10),” Benedict xvi argues, “love is now no longer a mere ‘command’; it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.”2

1 Dante, Paradiso, canto xxvii; see p. 171 below. 2 Benedict xvi, Deus caritas est, n. 1.

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Divine Being as Love

“God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4, 16). If God is understood as being itself, then this apparent paradox becomes meaningful, although when viewed empirically, it is still nonsense. For how can love cause two things to be mutually in one another? Marxism can see the human only as the worker, and the reason for this is perhaps because it is an atheistic philosophy. It sees no foundation of the world; the world itself is the ultimate. An atheistic humanism does not apprehend the act of creation. It does not see that the foundation of the world is being itself. If one has an appreciation of what being is, then one can be aware that all that happens in the world represents a becoming. Becoming is the fundamental specificum of the world. Therein lies the essential possibility of all that is concrete. All that happens comes down to a participation in being. When participated in temporally, being has the form of becoming; becoming is coming to be, coming into being. Doing and making can be seen as modes of becoming. In its essence, love is a becoming of the other, and at its deepest point, it is understandable only in the light of divine being. Without an awareness of being, one cannot really understand love. Then there is nothing left but to interpret love as a feeling, or as a form of doing. One can then speak of the praxis of love. To be sure, the feeling can very well be present, but it is an accompanying effect of love, not to be confused with love itself. And the praxis of love is also an effect of love and not love itself. 2

Love of God and Love of Neighbor

Love of other human beings is a kind of becoming. Implicitly, therefore, it is love of God. These dimensions of love are interdependent on one another, regardless of whether or not such interdependence is conscious. It is impossible to love a person without being in God. Thank God that this functions in essence independent of our thoughts about it. Otherwise, a real atheist would be unable to love deeply. Walking through a woods with closed eyes will be more painful and frustrating than with open eyes. A friend is a second self. Love implies a becoming of the other. It is a union. Although different from the love of friendship, even the love for things is a kind of union. Love is willing something good, either for myself or for someone else.

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If I love something for someone else, then this is friendship, an extension of self-love to embrace the other as another self. In its essence, love lies in the will. It is in the will that one is united to the beloved, and benevolence arises out of this. In the words of Aquinas: Love being twofold, namely love of concupiscence and love of friendship; each of these arises from a kind of apprehension of the oneness of the thing loved with the lover. For when we love a thing, by desiring it, we apprehend it as belonging to our well-being. In like manner when a man loves another with the love of friendship, he wills good to him, just as he wills good to himself: wherefore he apprehends him as his other self, in so far, to wit, as he wills good to him as to himself. Hence a friend is called a man’s ‘other self,’3 and Augustine says,4 “Well did one say to his friend: Thou half of my soul.”5 One can differentiate three kinds of union with respect to love. First, there is the union that initiates love. If it is a matter of self-love, then the union is a substantial union with oneself. If it is a matter of love of the other, then the union is one of likeness, for the object of love is then present in knowledge through a kind of similitude, since similar qualities are a form of union. In this case, the similarity lies in knowledge. If I see a red rose, then, in a certain sense, the red rose exists not only in nature but also in my consciousness. It has become a part of me. Another form is the desire for a certain quality that one does not possess. This is a union of a potentiality with the actuality. It resides in the will and has the form of desire. This might be considered a weak possession of what is desired, but it is still real and can be an occasion for love. Secondly, the essence itself of love is also a union. It is not a union with the lover himself or herself, but more exactly, with the lover’s will, with his or her striving. It is a unio affectus. The affective union must be distinguished from the effective union, which is being together physically. So, there is, thirdly, the union that is the effect of love. The lover wants to be physically close to the beloved. The lover of wine wants to drink it. This is real union, which the lover seeks with the object of love. Love has two different kinds of objects, similar to the direct and indirect objects of verbs. We love something (accusative) for someone (dative), either 3 Aristoteles, Nicomachen Ethics, 9.4. 4 Augustine, Confessions, 4.6. 5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 28, a. 1c.

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for ourselves or for a friend, a friend being an extension of the self. Self-love and true friendship—friendship that is not valued simply because it is either useful or pleasurable—are not contradictions, tending in opposite directions. Rather, friendship is a maturing of self-love. In other words, it is an increased becoming, meaning that it is essentially a greater participation in being. It lies deeper than simply wishing someone something good. This can apply to all human beings. It takes place in the will and is a union of the will with the beloved. Love of neighbor, then, is more than morality taken in the sense of doing something for others. The important principle in Thomas’ thought is that love occurs earlier than desire, the willing of good. “Love precedes desire,”6 states Thomas Aquinas, who writes that, analogously, truth precedes knowledge.7 Whereas knowledge is in the intellect, love is first of all a becoming of the will. Thereupon, the will is actuated in the form of desire. Since I am first of all a union with myself, selflove arises naturally. In a certain sense, knowledge divides, whereas love unites. An abstraction is both an apprehension of the object and a removal from it. In the emergence of love, knowledge represents the first step. As a result of knowledge, love occurs and differs from knowledge in that it regards the object in itself—not ­abstracted—and is a movement that “penetrates into the beloved.”8 In knowledge, there is also a kind of union with the object, but knower and known still remain separate from one another. Furthermore, in knowledge, the known is united to the knower, but in love, conversely, the lover is united to the beloved.9 There is a mutual presence of the lover and the beloved. Thomas has distinguished the two: The beloved is contained in the lover, by being impressed on his heart and thus becoming the object of his complacency. On the other hand, the lover is contained in the beloved, inasmuch as the lover penetrates, so to speak, into the beloved. For nothing hinders a thing from being both container and contents in different ways: just as a genus is contained in its species, and vice versa.10

6 7 8 9 10

Ibid., a. 2, ad 2. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 1, a. 1c. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 28, a. 2, ad 2. Cf. ibid., a. 1, ad 3. Ibid., a. 2, ad 1.

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Against this background, love of God can be better appreciated. An important aspect is that, although our knowledge of God in the present life is always indirect, our love of him, which is initiated by our knowledge of him—at least of what he is not—is direct, reaching beyond our knowledge.11 Loving God is better than knowing him, since knowledge reduces the object to our level. Love of God raises us, to the contrary, above ourselves, while love of lower things reduces us to their level.12 But love of God is more than merely compatible with love of friends and love of self. We love God, seen as being itself, more than anything else, including ourselves. While self-love is the ground of the love of others, love of God is the ground of self-love. One loves the whole more than a part. If attacked, we raise our arm in order to protect our head.13 Divine being is the universal good, and not just a good individual. For that reason, it must be loved more than anything else without being an alternative. (Love of others cannot detract from love of God, or vice versa.) For Aquinas, this is natural, and he notes that, if I loved myself more than God, then charity would be destructive.14 Thomas even maintains, with his customary radicality, that, if God were not really good for human beings, we would have no reason at all to love him.15 Love Is Not the Fulfillment of the Desire for Union with Another Person It is a common conviction that love is the fulfillment of the desire for union with the beloved. One often imagines that two persons in love are halves that find one another and unite, as though each were born for the other and looking for the other. However, the contrary position, which has been thought through by Thomas Aquinas, seems to me to be true. His position is that the union of love is not the fulfillment of the longing for union, but rather brings about a deepening of this desire. For him, the union of love takes place not as the end of longing, but in the longing itself [unio affectus, or unio affectiva]; one could translate affectus with ‘heart.’ The best known defender of the former position is Erich Fromm in his well-known book The Art of Loving.16 On the one hand, Fromm understands love as an “active penetration of the other person, in which my desire to know is stilled by union.”17 According to 2.1

11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 10, a. 11, ad 6. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 108, a. 6, ad 3. Cf. ibid., i-i, q. 109, a. 3c. Cf. ibid., i, q. 60, a. 5c. Cf. ibid., ii-ii, q. 26, a. 13, ad 3. Originally published in 1956, republished in 1974 by Harper & Row. Ibid., 25.

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him, it is even a kind of fulfilling knowledge: “I know […] by experience of union not by any knowledge our thought can give. […] The only way of full knowledge lies in the act of love: this act transcends thought, it transcends words. It is the daring plunge into the experience of union.”18 It is the equivalent of happiness. According to Aquinas, on the other hand, love does not attain this goal, but rather conveys an ideal of union. Human love awakens a vision of fulfilling union that has the effect of making love as it factually occurs unfulfilling. Happiness is the fulfillment of love, but it is not love itself. In itself, love consists of a striving. The idea that love lies in doing is certainly a misunderstanding. Doing can be the result of love, but is not its essence. Love obviously does not cease when one is unable to do anything for the beloved. Love may be the best motivation for praxis, but it is not itself a form of praxis. The good Samaritan became the neighbor of the man suffering not by helping him; rather, he did something after becoming his neighbor through the compassion that he held for him when he saw him. A mother does not cease to love her children when they are in school and she can do nothing for them. In fact, helping can be a vice if, for example, it is done for the sake of ambition or opportunism. Aquinas has explained his insight well: Since pity is grief for another’s distress, […] from the very fact that a person takes pity on anyone, it follows that another’s distress grieves him. And since sorrow or grief is about one’s own ills, one grieves or sorrows for another’s distress, in so far as one looks upon another’s distress as one’s own.19 It is perhaps somewhat subtle, but it is important to realize that neither the striving nor the affect is the essence of love. Rather, to be precise, the essence lies in the union with the striving. It lies deeper than benevolence, which is the willing of good. Like helping, benevolence follows upon love. It is a manifestation of love. Hence, Thomas criticizes Aristotle’s definition of love as benevolence: “The Philosopher, by thus defining ‘to love,’” Thomas explains, “does not describe it fully, but mentions only that part of its definition in which the act of love is chiefly manifested.”20

18 19 20

Ibid., 26. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii-ii, q. 30, a. 2c. Ibid., q. 27, a. 2, ad 1. “To love is indeed an act of the will tending to the good, but it adds a certain union with the beloved, which union is not denoted by goodwill” (ibid, ad 2).

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Thomas puts it succinctly: “The affective union […] precedes the movement of desire.”21 The desire, in turn, strives for another kind of union with the beloved. In conclusion, love in its essence is an ontological becoming, a becoming in the affect, whereas knowledge is a becoming in the intellect. The presence of the beloved in the lover is an impression by a kind of complacency: “The beloved is contained in the lover insofar as he is impressed on the lover’s heart [impressum in affectu] by a kind of complacency [per quandam complacentiam].”22 The presence is reciprocal. “And, conversely, the lover is also truly contained in the beloved insofar as the lover pursues in a certain manner what is intimate in the beloved.”23 This is not the opposite of knowledge. Whereas knowledge divides the knower from the known, love is based on unity. It unites the known and the knower after they have become separated through knowledge. “The apprehension of the reason precedes the movement of love. Consequently, just as the reason divides, so does the movement of love penetrate into the beloved.”24 Nevertheless, love does not attain a perfect union. A further trait of the essence of love between friends, of the desire for the company of one another, is that this desire does not succeed in completely attaining fulfillment. This is primarily owing to reflective consciousness. It is reflection that renders love unavoidably unfulfillable in the present human condition. Since reflection differentiates between the being and the forma of the object, or in other words, between its act of existence and what it is, the more love becomes self-conscious, the greater the cleft between desire and its fulfillment. Observing oneself, even when it means observing oneself being happy, implies a hiatus: I am united as both the observer and the observed, but not completely. Self-reflection has a paradoxical effect on human love, for it is, on the one hand, an indispensable prerequisite for fulfilling happiness and, on the other hand, an ineluctable deterrent. It is fundamental that, for human beings, happiness must be conscious if it is to be happiness at all. There is nothing, it may be presumed, that we value more highly than consciousness; without it, we are aware of nothing. Human love is specifically conscious love. It is precisely I or we who love. As a rule, the spirit enhances the sensual. Self-reflection always has some reality as its content, and it apprehends the content as real as well as

21 Ibid., i–ii, q. 25, a. 2c. 22 Ibid., q. 28, a. 2, ad 1. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., ad 2.

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possible. It sees, in other words, the contingency of being. In fact, this is precisely the mode in which human reflection grasps being. To appreciate the role of divine being in human love, it is essential to realize that what is loved first of all is the existence of the beloved, its participation in divine being. If God were an individual being, this would be impossible. This insight goes back to Aristotle, who argued that what we desire most in regard to ourselves is the apprehension of our existence. Since a friend is a second self, what we desire most for him or her is existence.25 Self-reflection is identical to an apprehension of the act of existence, whether in the concrete world or in consciousness. This involves an ironic paradox: self-reflection is responsible for both self-possession and self-alienation. Self-consciousness means observing oneself—that is, heightened being—but this reveals a break between oneself as subject and as object. The word ‘I’ includes this duality ­between observer and observed. When I reflect on myself, there is a certain self-alienation involved. Human living in reality is characterized by an asymptotic cleft. A sentence like ‘I love you’ is too complex for what one is trying to communicate; it has too many elements. Like all kinds of knowledge, self-­ knowledge includes a hiatus between knower and known. Love in the concrete world retains, therefore, a moment of disappointment. One wants to be perfectly one with the beloved but is unable to. We think of happiness as complete oneness with the beloved and require that this oneness be fully conscious. Union without being aware of it cannot fulfill human nature. Ecstasy is often conceived of as total self-forgetfulness and, nonetheless, as immediate presence to the other. But precisely this is ruled out by our nature. We can in principle be one with something else without self-awareness, but this state would not be happiness. This inevitable longing represents an appeal to divine being. Only therein does the duality of being and its knowability reach identity. “Now the aspect 25

Aristotle’s explanation: “As then lovers find their greatest delight in seeing those they love, and prefer the gratification of the sense of sight to that of all the other senses, that sense being the chief seat and source of love, so likewise for friends (may we not say?) the society of each other is the most desirable thing there is. For (i) friendship is essentially a partnership. And (ii) a man stands in the same relation to a friend as to himself; but the consciousness of his own existence is a good; so also therefore is the consciousness of his friend’s existence. And (iii) whatever pursuit it is that constitutes existence for a man or that makes his life worth living, he desires to share that pursuit with his friends. Hence some friends drink or dice together, others practise athletic sports and hunt, or study philosophy, in each other’s company; each sort spending their time together in the occupation that they love best of everything in life; for wishing to live in their friends’ society, they pursue and take part with them in these occupations as best they can” (Nicomachean Ethics, 9.12. 1171b29–1172a3; cf. 9.9. 1170b10–19).

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under which our neighbor is to be loved,” Thomas wisely teaches, “is God, since what we ought to love in our neighbor is that he may be in God [ut in deo sit].”26 In God alone are essence and existence united as one. Aquinas emphasizes “this sublime truth,”27 which lies at the foundation of all that has existence, including love. In God, love can fully attain what it is striving for. God is the beginning and the end. That there is a relationship between one’s understanding of love and theism can be seen in Fromm’s position. His definition of love corresponds to his theology, which he calls his “non-theism.” “The problem of knowing man,” he maintains, “is parallel to the religious problem of knowing God.”28 He has clearly apprehended the relationship: The basis for our need to love lies in the experience of separateness and the resulting need to overcome the anxiety of separateness by the experience of union. The religious form of love, that which is called the love of God, is, psychologically speaking, not different. It springs from the need to overcome separateness and to achieve union.29 The conclusion is obvious: “To love God […] would mean, then, to long for the attainment of the full capacity to love, for the realization of that which ‘God’ stands for in oneself.”30 But, for the atheist, there is no God. Hence, it is meaningful that the experience of love awakens a vision in us that renders us incapable of unabridged fulfillment in concrete life. The union that love demands can be found only in God, who, as being itself, is perfect oneness. This gives us the right to final hope. And it represents a wonderful strongpoint of Christianity that hope is seen as belonging to the essential structure of human existence; it is not just an adjunct in disappointing situations. Faith may be as strong as you like, but it will not eliminate hope until death, when faith itself will also be overcome. We dream now of finding someone, or something, with which we can be completely united. In our world, the dream remains a dream—but it is not in vain.

26 27

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii-ii, q. 25, a. 1c. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, i, c. 22. Aquinas considers this to be the divine Revelation to Moses. 28 Fromm, The Art of Loving, 26–27. 29 Ibid., 53. 30 Ibid., 60.

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3 Doing Love in the Christian sense is, as has been said, primarily a kind of becoming of the beloved; only secondarily does it consist in helping. Without acknowledgment of being itself, this would not be understandable. In fact, it can even be argued from the undeniable existence of becoming that there must be being itself without anything that has it, for becoming occurs only under the influence of being. Obviously, love does not cease when the doing ceases. Love is present and moves one to action. The love of becoming is the force behind doing. And when the doing is successful, then pleasure or joy arises in love itself, the affect. But love itself lies at a deeper level than feelings. Obviously, no one would claim that a mother no longer loves her children when she is doing nothing for them actively. Charity, the specific Christian form of love, which is one of the so-called theological virtues, is often understood in the sense of doing. But why is charity then for many people offending? In such cases, it is a form of love that neglects the participation of the lover in the object of one’s love. The person ­being helped is more like material for the exercise of charity. We can read it in Aristotle: “Parents love their children as being a part of themselves. […] Parents, then, love their children as themselves (for their issue are by virtue of their separate existence a sort of other selves).”31 The idea also occurs in the Bible: “Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself” (Eph 5, 28). Benedict xvi has appreciated well why charity can be offending. He emphasizes the inadequacy of doing alone, of charity as praxis: Practical activity will always be insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love nourished by an encounter with Christ. My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them: if my gift is not to prove a source of humiliation, I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self; I must be personally present in my gift.32 The charitable action must arise out of “a heart that sees.”33 Weizsäcker speaks of an affective apprehension. 31 Aristoteles, Nikomachean Ethics, 8.12. 32 Benedict xvi, Deus caritas est, n. 34. 33 Ibid., n. 31b.

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The treatment of the parable of the good Samaritan (Lk 10, 25–37) gives a good indication of how difficult it is for our age to understand Christian love. We live under the conviction of the primacy of praxis over ‘theory.’ And this prejudice motivates us to see in Christian love a form of praxis, rather than of becoming. What it comes down to is that we value changing the world more highly than experiencing the world. In the parable of the good Samaritan, a question is posed concerning what ‘neighbor’ means, or as the lawyer who has turned to Jesus puts it, “Who is my neighbor?” (Lk 10, 29). There is a tendency to want to see the suffering traveler as the neighbor, but actually Jesus turns the question around and draws attention to the Samaritan. It is the Samaritan who has become the neighbor, indicating that love consists of more than helping. Exegetes who often maintain that Jesus wanted to say that everyone who needs help is the neighbor do not respect the text. Hans Küng, for example, interprets the parable as teaching that “neighbor is everyone who needs me.”34 A person in need is obviously susceptible to a change and presents a state that I can improve, and thereby practice my selfless love. The exegete K.H. Rengstorf states what it is supposed to mean to be a neighbor: “To whom am I neighbor?, that is, who is dependent upon me to accord him full selfless love?”35 But there is no mention in the text of love being selfless. Instead, the story tells us how it was the Samaritan who became the neighbor. The text certainly does not say: “By helping I become his neighbor.”36 Although several translations ignore it, the verb that Jesus uses is not a verb of praxis, but rather ‘to become.’ His question is, “Who has become neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” Now it can be asked in what way that person has become the neighbor. Before he does anything at all for the sufferer, the Samaritan has experienced an act of becoming. This happens when he sees the sufferer and is moved by compassion for him. The sufferer becomes a second self, as it were. The two other travelers have also seen him, but they pass by, whereas the Samaritan “saw him and was moved by compassion.” He let his heart be moved by the other; it went out to him. It is perhaps no coincidence that the verb here is not found outside of Judaic-Christian literature. In the New Testament, it mostly signifies the divineness of Jesus’ behavior. 34 Küng, On Being a Christian, 258: “It is impossible to work out in advance who my neighbor will be. This is the meaning of the story of the man fallen among thieves: my neighbor is anyone who needs me here and now.” 35 Rengstorf, Das Neue Testament Deutsch. Das Evangelium nach Lukas, 1.141. 36 Leitheiser/Pesch, Handbuch zur katholischen Schulbibel, 2.304.

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The movement in the encounter does not move from the Samaritan to the sufferer, but just the opposite: the sufferer moves the Samaritan’s heart. One can say that love is more passive than active; it is an experience. As a reaction to this, the Samaritan begins to move in order to help the other. The Samaritan acts externally, but internally he is himself acted upon. He has the ability to see reality affectively with his heart. As Umberto Eco has perceptively expressed it in The Name of the Rose: (260) “The most that one can do is to look more closely.” Benedict xvi makes the right analysis when he writes that charity workers, in addition to their professional training, need “a formation of the heart” that “opens their spirits to others.”37 Another way of expressing this is to say that love of neighbor is more than morality. 4 Self-Love Self-love is not the opposite of love of neighbor. To the contrary, as Thomas realizes, it is the basis for love of neighbor. Whoever does not love self, cannot love another. Love in the Christian sense is not a self-sacrifice. Even our love for God is a form of self-love. According to Aquinas: “As we are induced to love God, we are induced to desire him, by which we especially love ourselves and wish for ourselves the highest good. But in the precept of loving neighbor, it is said, love your neighbor as yourself. In this is included the love of self.”38 Love of God is the cause of love of neighbor and love of self, and as such, is present in them. Similarly, the love of neighbor and self are present in God. Normally, the love of God is more intense than the other kinds of love. 5 Friendship Friends, to repeat, want to be with one another. But is it better to do something for the friend, rather than simply be in his or her presence? Martha and her sister Maria (Lk 10) are the classical personifications of this alternative, and the modern reader is probably consternated by Jesus’ preference for Maria. A distinction is mandatory. Is it a lesser friendship when friends do without the pleasure of being in each other’s presence and, rather, part in order to do things for each other? In fact, this is a higher form of friendship than is the case when 37 Benedict xvi, Deus caritas est, n. 31a. 38 Thomas Aquinas, De virtutibus, q. 2, a. 7, ad 10. Cf. ibid., a. 3, ad 4.

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friends, for the enjoyment of companionship, refuse to part. The higher form values a friend more than the pleasure of company. However, if a friend likes simply to depart, then this is a weaker form of friendship.39 6

Love of Enemies

Revelation does not provide us with an extensive interpretation of love of enemies. We must have recourse to our own attempts to understand what this teaching could mean—at least a possible meaning. Love of enemy is, of course, not identical with Christian love, nor is it the apex of Christian love. What could be claimed, however, is that it is the best touchstone of the authenticity of Christian love. In the love of enemies, it can become clear whether the other forms of our love are really Christian. If I love my friends but not my enemies, then I can conclude that my love for my friends is not specifically Christian. Love of enemies has the particularity that Christian love occurs in it unmixed with other forms; it is, so to speak, the purest kind of Christian love—which does not mean the best. Love of enemies may be the most difficult kind of love, but that is not a reason to consider it to be the highest form. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes carefully in his usual well-balanced manner: It is better to love an enemy than to love only a friend, because this shows more perfect charity […]. But if we consider these two absolutely, it is better to love a friend than an enemy; it is also better to love God than a friend. For the difficulty which is found in loving an enemy does not constitute the reason for meriting, except insofar as perfect charity is demonstrated by it, which overcomes the difficulty. Thus, if there would be such a perfect charity as to take away all difficulty, to this extent it would be more meritorious.40 Love of enemy does not consist in making a friend out of one’s enemy. ­Although this would certainly be desirable, it would cease to be love of enemy, and Jesus himself gives no occasion for such an interpretation of his command. Realistically considered, we should hate the enemy as enemy. Thomas maintains that we must hate the fact that our enemy hates us. One cannot love evil. Love of enemy can mean only that we somehow see him in a relationship 39 40

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De virtutibus, q. 2. Ibid., a. 8, ad 17.

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to God.41 In other words, in order to love our enemy, we must see our enemy with a certain kind of abstraction directed particularly to his or her act of existence or possession of creaturely being. If we can see nothing lovable in our enemy, he or she can always be seen in reference to divine being. In other words, in order to love him, we must see him with a certain kind of abstraction, directed namely to his act of existence, that is, to his possession of the being of a creature. In other words, if we can see nothing lovable in him, he can always be seen in his reference to divine being. Thomas—perhaps the only theologian who has ever expressed such thoughts—has arrived at the following profound appreciation: Although there can be something purely good, there exists nothing that is purely evil. Evil always exists in something good. The motivation is also good. For him, in short, all the causes of evil are good. To see these dimensions, a learning process is necessary. We must see our enemy as a revelation of God’s being. To this end, the realization that every striving for something good is a striving for God might be helpful. Furthermore, one’s simply being an enemy cannot be the reason for loving that person. This would be immoral, as Thomas states: “For, just as it is good to love a friend insofar as he is a friend, so it is evil to love an enemy because he is an enemy. But it is good to love an enemy insofar as he pertains to God.”42 Jesus is not teaching a perversion. As Thomas emphasizes: “It must be said that to love an enemy as enemy is difficult, even impossible. But to love an enemy because of some greater love is easy. That is why the love of God makes easy that which seems to be impossible in itself.”43 One can love only what is lovable in the enemy, and this is, in any case and at the very least, the presence of God in him or her. The enemy is loved by God and must be loved by us for God’s sake. Christian love is not naive and arbitrary. “When we say that good is what all desire, it is not to be understood that every kind of good thing is desired by all; but that whatever is desired has the nature of good [rationem boni habet]. And when it is said, ‘None is good but God alone,’ this is to be understood of essential goodness.”44 Thus, divine being proves to be the explanation and justification for love of enemy. “The more we love God the better our love is.”45 And God loves everything insofar as it has existence.46 41 Cf. ibid., ad 6. 42 Ibid., ad 11. 43 Ibid., ad 13. 44 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 6, a. 2, ad 2. 45 Ibid., ii-ii, q. 27, a. 6c. 46 Cf. ibid., i, q. 20, a. 2c.

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God is loved implicitly in everything that is loved. He is necessarily the first thing that we love. Love of God is the primary cause of the secondary causes that belong to our love. The logic is clear: A secondary agent acts only by the efficacy of the first agent existing in it; similarly a secondary end is sought only by reason of the worth of the principal end existing in it inasmuch as it is subordinated to the principal end or has its likeness. Accordingly, because God is the last end, he is sought in every end, just as, because he is the first efficient cause, he acts in every agent. But this is what tending to God implicitly, means. For the efficacy of the first cause is in the second as the principles of reasoning are in the conclusions.47 Hence, it can be said that “the end of all human actions and affections is the love of God, whereby principally we attain to our last end.”48 Therefore, every love is always at least implicitly love of God. “All goods are in God as in a first principle. In this way, it is one thing to love God and every other good.”49 A final aspect that can be mentioned regards hate. It should be emphasized that hate is not the opposite of love. Actually, hate is indirectly a form of love. Thomas does not hesitate to draw the logical conclusion: Only thanks to love can hate take place at all. “Love must needs precede hatred; and nothing is hated, save through being contrary to a suitable thing which is loved. And hence it is that every hatred is caused by love.”50 Hate arises because of love of the contrary of what is hated. Presuming what has just been said about love of enemy, it follows that, if I hate my enemy, then that means ultimately that I prefer something in the world to God.51 If one sees love in its various forms in the light of divine being, important aspects become visible. 47 48 49 50 51

Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 22, a. 2c. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii-ii, q. 27, a. 6c. Thomas Aquinas, De virtutibus, q. 2, a. 7, ad 3. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 29, a. 2. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De virtutibus, q. 2, a. 8c.

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God and Violence If one appreciates what it means that God is being itself, then the popular reproach that monotheism causes conflict, violence, and war dissolves. Analogically, a universal notion cannot cause conflict between its particulars. The notion of color, for example, cannot be the cause of a conflict between red and green (although it can form the background that enables the conflict). Something concrete may be red but not green, or green and not red. For example, one person may claim that the traffic light is green and another that it is red. This is a conflict, but it is not caused by their being colors. In actuality, it is the fact that both are colors that makes the conflict possible—and, at the same time, makes a solution possible. In other words, we are dealing here with two different levels. Divine reality does not exist on the same level as concrete realities, whether material or cognitional. In divine being, there is not only the coincidence of opposites but also the coincidence of contradictions.1 All possible conflicts are thereby subsumed under absolute and eternal peace. This is the context in which the theological question of violence in our world must be posed. A theological question can be answered only from a theological perspective. A science like sociology, lacking access to this perspective, will necessarily reduce everything to sociological aspects; it may have the Church, which is something concrete, in view, rather than religion. 1

Truth and Violence

An important pivotal point in the reproach against monotheism is the idea of truth. Usually, it is argued that religions make truth claims—in particular, as the opponents often express it, absolute truths—and that this leads to conflicts between religions. In this narrative, one who presumes possession of the truth becomes fanatical and intolerant. Possessing truth causes dogmatism. The solution proposed is based on an abdication of truth under the presupposition that peace is decisive. Nothing disrupts peace, so they argue, more than truth. “Speaking of truth,” as Heinz von Foerster states, “has catastrophic 1 Cf., for example, Nicolaus Cusanus, De visione dei, c. 9, n. 37 (7–8).

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consequences and destroys the unity of humanity.”2 “If the notion of truth were not to occur at all, we would presumably all be able to live in peace with one another.”3 The philosopher Herbert Schnädelbach describes what he calls “Christianity’s gruesome criminal history,” to be explained “not by the atrocities of individual Christians but constitutional Christianity itself as an ideology, tradition, and institution weighs on our civilization as a curse, extending to the catastrophes of the twentieth century.”4 This theory is also defended adamantly by the sociologist Ulrich Beck.5 The Egyptologist Jan Assmann is regarded as the source of this ‘monotheism thesis.’ The most radical defender of the thesis to my knowledge is Beck. He appeals explicitly to Assmann, who coined the phrase “Mosaic distinction,”6 meaning the distinction between true and false in the religions, separating God from all that is not God. Beck interprets this distinction as the claim for absolute truth in particular revelation. Obviously, the confrontation in this presumed claim dooms religion to a refutation from the outset. Assmann defines religious violence as being based on the distinction between truth and falsehood and resulting in violence against pagans, unbelievers, and heretics, who have dissociated themselves from the revealed truth and are therefore regarded as enemies of God.7 He maintains that monotheistic religions are intrinsically violent, whereas polytheistic religions are intrinsically peaceful.8 He writes: Whenever the idea of truth is conceived of as something both absolute and scripturally revealed, that is, ‘given,’ the intolerance inherent in monotheism is irreducible. The concepts of the ‘absolute’ and the ‘given’ are mutually exclusive. Anything ‘absolute’ is categorically transcendent and hidden, and anything ‘given’ is categorically relative and open to transformation.9

2 Foerster and Pörksen, Wahrheit ist die Erfindung eines Lügners, 30; quoted in: Franzen, Wahr­ heitsnimbus, 213 (emphasis in original). 3 Ibid., 32. 4 Schnädelbach, “Der Fluch des Christentums. Die sieben Geburtsfehler einer alt gewordenen Weltreligion. Eine kulturelle Bilanz nach zweitausend Jahren.” 5 Cf. Beck, A God of One’s Own, 85. 6 Assmann, Moses der Ägypter, 273. 7 Cf. Assmann, Of God and Gods, 144. 8 Cf. Assmann, “Monotheismus und Gewalt.” 9 Assmann, Of God and Gods, 139 (my translation).

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It is not simply a matter, then, of individual believers who become violent. Rather, it is said to lie inherently in the very nature of these religions. Violence in the world has its origin, according to him, in the monotheistic religions. ­Especially distinctive is that this violence takes place in the name of God—­ undoubtedly an exceedingly strong motivation. Ignoring the role of reason in religions like Christianity, Assmann argues that revelation is the basis for intolerance, since revelation is a given, and therefore, according to him, inaccessible to reason on the part of nonbelievers. In other words, revelation is cut off from reason. According to Beck, the first historical instance of religious violence is recorded in Exodus 32. There Moses drastically punishes a great number of Israelites for worshiping the golden calf. Beck describes what it means in a monotheistic religion to hold to a false religion. “In the context of the Sinai Covenant religious violence occurs for the first time,” Assmann affirms.10 Religious violence like this is possible only on the basis of the distinction between true and false, between faithfulness and faithlessness (that is, sin). Assmann names David Hume in the eighteenth century as the forerunner of the monotheism thesis.11 Remarkably, Hume’s thesis hardly differs from Assmann’s and Beck’s, indicating how old the objection to religion is: As that system [theism] supposes one sole deity, the perfection of reason and goodness, it should, if justly prosecuted, banish everything frivolous, unreasonable, or inhuman from religious worship, and set before men the most illustrious example, as well as the most commanding motives of justice and benevolence. These mighty advantages are not indeed overbalanced (for that is not possible), but somewhat diminished, by inconveniences, which arise from the vices and prejudices of mankind. While one sole object of devotion is acknowledged, the worship of other deities is regarded as absurd and impious. Nay, this unity of object seems naturally to require the unity of faith and ceremonies, and furnishes designing men with a pretense for representing their adversaries as profane, and the objects of divine as well as human vengeance. For as each sect is positive that its own faith and worship are entirely acceptable to the deity, and as no one can conceive that the same being should be pleased with different and opposite rites and principles, the several sects fall naturally 10 Assmann, “Monotheismus und Gewalt.” 11 Assmann, Of God and Gods, 109: “One harbors the suspicion that David Hume might have been right after all when he postulated a connection between monotheism and violence in Chapter 9 of The Natural History of Religion (1757).”

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into animosity, and mutually discharge on each other that sacred zeal and rancour, the most furious and implacable of all human passions. […] The intolerance of almost all religions which have maintained the unity of God is as remarkable as the contrary principle of polytheists.12 The Mosaic distinction is “the idea of an exclusive and emphatic Truth that sets God apart from everything that is not God, and that sets religion apart from what comes to be shunned as superstition, paganism, or heresy”13 (this, it can be undoubtedly objected, is certainly not applicable to Christianity.) In short: “This idea finds its clearest expression not in the phrase ‘God is one!’ but ‘no other gods!’”14 “The problem,” for Assmann, “is not monotheism in the sense of the worship of one God alone, but rather the idea of a revelation as a single written codified truth, which is exclusive, given to one nation alone, to one group alone, and is at the same time supposed to be of universal validity for all mankind.”15 The distinction between true and false, according to him, “means the distinction between God and world.”16 Assmann presumes that the discrepancy between monotheism and polytheism comes down, in the final analysis, to the discrepancy between scriptures (revelations codified in writing) and nature (viewed here, as he asserts, in a religious sense). A traditional Christian axiom says that grace presupposes nature. Christianity, for one, undoubtedly absolutizes biblical revelation. However, the hermeneutics involved does not necessarily imply a hindrance for the interpreter’s reason. At least in regard to Christianity, Assmann’s distinction makes no sense. To be sure, in Christianity, there are defenders of a univocal literal reading of Scripture. But another substantial tradition understands the role of Scripture in a way that makes Assmann’s analysis groundless. This hermeneutics, which is apparently unknown to him, is the best way to respond to his criticism. 2

The Interpretation of Scripture in Accordance with Reason

According to this tradition, the understanding of a text is derived from two sources: the text itself and the reader’s own reason. At the end of the Middle 12 Hume, The Natural History of Religion, Ch. 9. 13 Assmann, Of God and Gods, 3. 14 Ibid. 15 Assmann, “Monotheismus und Gewalt.” 16 Assmann, Of God and Gods, 125.

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Ages, Melchor Cano recapitulated the established position with his teaching that theology has two sources [loci]: the Bible and the book of nature.17 The metaphor of the two books written by God is common throughout the Middle Ages and is presupposed by Galileo Galilei in his defense of his own Catholic orthodoxy. Reason, which reads the book of nature, is regarded in its own right as a source of divine revelation. There being no other source of truth than God, Thomas Aquinas can say that philosophers have received truth through God’s revelation [Deo illis revelante],18 thus annulling Assmann’s distinction. An analysis of revelation thus leads to the necessity of introducing reason in order to solve the dilemma. Especially in the thirteenth century, the quaestio­ nes form further developed, the Scholastic method of starting with contradictions that provoke doubt before treating a question, initiated by Peter Abelard. Reason is granted a decisive role in finding and establishing truths, and revelation is treated as a text. The term ‘authority’ comes to mean not a person or a quality of an author, but rather his or her text.19 Hence, truth is the juncture uniting revelation with reality. Medieval Scholastics harmonized revelation and reason with one another without the need of any compromises, affirming both unconditionally. In the ninth century, John Scotus Eriugena formulated the conviction categor­ ically: “An authority cannot really contradict reason, and reason cannot really contradict an authority.”20 Any apparent contradiction, therefore, must be a misunderstanding. In his authoritative work Academic Freedom in the Age of the College, Richard Hofstadter states: “The striking antagonism between religion and science that we find in early modern times was not so characteristic of the Middle Ages.”21 For the Scholastic theologians, the theological meaning of an authoritative text had in view that which is relevant to reality, not what the human author intended. This is a method that is quite foreign to modern exegesis. But it frees reason from foreign restrictions. Thomas is representative for Scholastic theology when he refers to a tradition going back to St. Augustine in order to explain how scriptural texts are to be interpreted. On the one hand, he acknowledges the infallibility of Scripture; 17 Cf. Cano, De locis theologicis, i, c. 2. 18 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii-ii, q. 167, a. 1, ad 3. 19 Cf. Chenu, Toward Understanding, 138–173. 20 Eriugena, De divinis naturis, 1.66. “Nil enim aliud videtur mihi esse vera auctoritas, nisi rationis virtute reperta veritas” (idem, Perphyseon, i, 69; 198, 7). 21 Hofstadter, Academic Freedom, 13.

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on the other hand, he maintains that interpretations of Scripture can be false (just as Galilei did22): In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is to maintain the truth of Scripture unwaveringly. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it, if it be proved with certainty to be false; lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.23 In interpreting a revelation text, it is not, as has been remarked, a matter of finding out what the human author meant. Instead, three things must be observed: first, it may not be presumed that the text has one single meaning; second, the interpretation must be true in its own right; and third, the interpretation must be adaptable to the wording of the text. According to this hermeneutics, the literal sense of Scripture should not be confused with a figurative sense. Medieval hermeneutics distinguished different meanings, usually four. The moral meaning and the so-called allegorical meanings, for example, were two of these. But it is imperative to realize that the literal sense itself embraces a plurality of meanings—a fact usually overlooked. What makes this possible is that God, who is absolute truth, is viewed as the author of the text. Taking account of divine being makes it possible to relativize individual truth in the light of truth itself, since divine being grounds the distinction between truth and truths and views concrete truths as concretizations of and participations in absolute truth, which is a dimension of absolute being. As Aquinas clearly states: Since the literal sense is that which the author intends, and since the ­author of Holy Scripture is God, who by one act comprehends all things by his intellect, it is not unfitting, as Augustine says, if, even according to the literal sense, one word in Holy Scripture should have several senses.24

22 23 24

Cf. Galilei, Letter to Benedetto Castelli, in: Opere, 5.282. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 68, a. 1c. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 4, a. 1c. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 1, a. 10. Cf. De potentia, q. 4, a. 1c.

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Evidently, then, under this condition, the assertion of contradictions between truths and a conflict between truth and revelation is groundless. By bringing God into the picture, reason, ironically, becomes autonomous. In the eyes of Thomas, every meaning that embodies a truth in itself and does not stand in literal contradiction to the text comprises a literal meaning intended by God: “Every truth which, respecting the letter of the text [salva litterae circumstantia], can be adapted [aptari] to divine Scripture is its meaning.”25 The consequence of this hermeneutics is just the opposite of what Assmann asserts, making a contradiction between the conviction of the reader and the biblical text practically impossible: “This pertains to the dignity of divine Scripture that under one letter many meanings are contained,” Thomas states. “And thus it harmonizes with the diverse thoughts of different individuals, so that each one is amazed to find in divine Scripture the truth which he has thought in his own mind”26—an idea that is unthinkable for most modern theologians. Truth cannot be separate from God: “No matter who says it,” says Thomas, “every truth comes from the Holy Spirit.”27 Meister Eckhart recapitulates the medieval teaching: Since therefore the literal meaning is the meaning intended by the author of the text and the author of Sacred Scripture is God, every meaning that is true is a literal meaning. For it is a fact that every particular truth stems from Truth itself, is included in it, is derived from it, and is intended by it.28 This should suffice to refute Beck’s presumption. The existence of divine being relativizes concrete truths, removing the intolerance that Beck presumes in them. In the light of God’s being, individual truths are revealed to be sublimated into a transcendent unity. Because truth itself is absolutized, individual truths are relativized, but without being less true. The primary object of Christian faith is truth itself. Dogmatic truths lose nothing by this; they are deepened and heightened. It could be noted, finally, that the Catholic Church has a teaching office. This means that Holy Scripture is not enough; it does not have, so to speak, the last

25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 109, a. 1, ad 1. 28 Meister Eckhart, Liber parabolarum Genesis, n. 2.

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word. In addition to the ecclesiastical teaching office, an interpretation using reason is expected. Accordingly, the meaning of codified revelation is quite open, the condition being that the reader have in mind what he considers to be a truth. As Thomas expresses it, the interpreter should not force such an interpretation on Scripture as to exclude any other interpretations that are actually or possibly true: since it is part of the dignity of Holy Scripture that under the one literal sense many others are contained. It is thus that the sacred text not only adapts itself to man’s various intelligence, so that each one marvels to find his thoughts expressed in the words of Holy Scripture; but also is all the more easily defended against unbelievers in that when one finds his own interpretation of Scripture to be false he can fall back upon some other.29 3

A Refutation of Beck’s Rejection of Religion

Thus, it is quite unnecessary to propose as a solution to the envisaged conflict between truths that one relinquish the claim to truth, as Assmann, appealing to Lessing’s Nathan the Wise, maintains. To the contrary, it is the adherence to divine truth in the abstract form of divine being that opens the possibility of a plurality of truths and frees individual truths from absoluteness. In fact, Christianity would dissolve itself if it were to dissociate itself from truth. Critics like Beck and Assmann show no awareness of this. Moreover, there is no sense in calling a religion like Christianity an antireligion, as Assmann does. “All monotheistic religions,” he writes, “are antireligions. From their point of view there is no natural or evolutionary way that leads from the error of idolatry to the truth of monotheism. This truth can only come from outside, through revelation.”30 In view of what recent popes have emphasized concerning reason and truth,31 one must conclude that this could not be farther from the truth. Beck’s objection to Christianity is much more aggressive than Assmann’s. For Beck, religion is downright dangerous. His thesis is that truth must be replaced by peace. Truth is, for him, a threat against peace. The consequences of his view can hardly be overestimated. “The extent to which truth can be 29 Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 4, a. 1c. 30 Assmann, Moses der Ägypter, 24. 31 It suffices to cite the encyclicals of Pope John Paul ii, Veritatis splendor and Ratio et fides.

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r­ eplaced by peace is a question that will decide the continued existence of the human race,” he maintains.32 One must be aware, by the way, that Beck’s approach is very common today. His solution consists in a kind of interreligious tolerance, “in which love of neighbor does not mean—as he presumes Christians believe—rancorous hostility.” What he means by his solution is a “tolerance the goal of which is not truth but peace.”33 Beck presumes that different religions set up different claims to truth that contradict one another and reciprocally call one another into question. This is what he refers to as “the One truth” and claims that it threatens the continuing existence of humankind—an appraisal that is nothing less than atrocious. He paints a radical picture of the intolerance of religion: Where social distinctions exist, religion establishes one absolute criterion: faith—all other distinctions seem insubstantial in comparison. The New Testament asserts: “We are all equal in the sight of God.” This equality, this elimination of the boundaries between people, groups, societies, and cultures, is the social foundation of the (Christian) religions. The consequence is that just as distinctions between the political and the social are obliterated, so too, and with the same absoluteness, a new fundamental distinction and hierarchy is introduced into the world—the ­distinction between believers and nonbelievers. ‘Non-believers,’ according to the logic of this duality, are denied the status of human beings. Religion always contains (more or less latent) the demonization of the religious other.34 (It is characteristic of Beck’s method that the above quotation attributed to the New Testament is not documented. In reality it does not occur in the New Testament at all.) Beck is certainly not diffident: “Religion could be the invention of the devil. With one tongue one preaches love of neighbor and with the other hate and 32 Beck, A God of One’s Own, 165–166. 33 Ibid., 3. 34 Ibid. “The existence or non-existence of humanity depends on a ruinous game in which all existence hinges on the individual decision in favour of belief, all non-existence on the decision not to believe. Whoever declares him- or herself in favor of belief will be saved. Whoever neither will not nor cannot believe will be damned—in this world and the next. […] In this way, the absolute nature of the one-and-only monotheistic God creates an entire world of ‘others’ who have to be combated. Brutes and subhumans of every type” (ibid., 54).

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rancorous hostility.”35 He even goes so far as to assert that religion denies human dignity to unbelievers.36 According to his interpretation, in the eyes of the believers, nonbelievers are nonhumans or subhumans.37 Beck does not spare Pope Benedict xvi: Battling against the ‘dictatorship of relativism,’ he [Benedict xvi] defends the Catholic hierarchy of truth with a kind of card-game logic in which faith trumps reason. Christian faith trumps all other types of faith (especially Islam). Roman-Catholic faith is the ace that trumps the faith of all fellow Christians. And the Pope is the supreme trump in the truth gazette of right-thinking Catholics. He of course has no wish to give offence with this hierarchy of truth. But he either cannot see, or prefers not to see, that with this strategy peace is replaced by truth in this highly sensitive, indeed vulnerable relation between religions, and is damaged in consequence.38 Beck presumes that polytheism, to the contrary, lacking a claim to truth, would be devoid of conflict. Without truth, Christianity, for one, would be eliminated. Beck believes every religion should have its own god and, there being no claim to the true god, tolerance would be well-grounded. He speaks of a “religious mélange principle,” which gives recognition to “the human principle of a subjective polytheism.”39 This implies, for him, the civilizing of religion. Beck does not abandon the thesis of the Enlightenment according to which religion will gradually disappear on its own, but he does find that the Enlightenment is the key to the problem: The Enlightenment has freed man from God and assisted him to autonomy in all areas. Religious faith is atavistic, a product of a bad conscience. The European looks down upon those who are still, or anew, religious with contempt. The image of the modern, enlightened European includes his having overcome the pre-modern superstition.40 The highly respected political philosopher John Rawls makes a similar claim: 35 Beck, Gott ist gefährlich, 12. 36 Cf. ibid. 37 Cf. Beck, Der eigene Gott, 77. 38 Beck, A God of One’s Own, 173. 39 Beck, Der eigene Gott, 86. 40 Ibid., 34f.

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The third respect in which citizens are viewed as free is that they are viewed as capable of taking responsibility for their ends. That is, they can adjust their ends so that those ends can be pursued by the means they can reasonably expect to acquire in return for what they can reasonably expect to contribute.41 4

Assmann’s Self-Correction

Assmann has responded to misunderstandings of his position and explained more precisely what he means. In 2013 he wrote that, if some readers have understood that he means that “monotheism is inherently violent and that it has introduced violence in a polytheistic world that was peaceful beforehand, then I want to retract this nonsense very clearly.”42 It is important—he clarifies—to realize that violence is not inherent in the distinction between true and false in religion in the sense of a necessary consequence. Rather, it is just a potential implication and a possibility that could turn into reality under certain historical circumstances, especially in situations involving fear and uncertainty.43 By ‘inherent,’ he means not a necessity that must logically come about sooner or later, but rather an implication in the nature of monotheism that presents a possibility of violence. It is the ‘emphatic notion of truth,’ with the presumed incompatibility with other religions, that is the cause of this tendency. It is potential violence. Violence—always understood as propensity and not as consequence— is inherent not in the idea of the One God but in the exclusion of ­other gods, not in the idea of truth but in the persecution of untruth. There is no logical necessity for the distinction between true and untrue to turn violent. The implication turns real only if the distinction between truth and untruth or ‘us’ and ‘them’ is interpreted in terms of friend and foe.44

41 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 33f. 42 Assmann, “Monotheismus und Gewalt.” 43 Assmann, Of God and Gods, 125. 44 Ibid., 110–111.

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Assmann even comes to the defense of religion, asserting its unique importance: “To the contrary, religion appears to be the only means that has been given to man to curtail violence—social and political—and to resist it.”45 As examples of absolute truths, Assmann cites human rights as propagated by the Enlightenment. But universal truths, I would object, are not identical with absolute truths. Assman refers to Islam, with its equally universalist perspective, as possessing what he calls “exclusive universalism” for the reason that “the Truth (with a capital T) whose universal validity it is promoting does not allow for—excludes—compromise.”46 According to Thomas Aquinas, who is an acknowledged authority in Catholic thought, revealed truths are relativized in the light of absolute truth.47 He sees the individual truths of faith, the dogmas, as the ‘material’48 of truth. Obviously this distinction renders Assmann’s distinction obsolete. The assumption of absolute truth is, of course, very deceptive. When one thinks about it, it is difficult to define what this might be. Human beings are incapable of absolute truth. Actually, if there is such a thing, then it can be only in God, or better, be God himself. In a unique example, Thomas Aquinas clarifies the situation unequivocally: “It must be said that, although there are many participated truths, there is, nevertheless, only one absolute truth, which is by its essence the truth, namely, divine being itself, and through this truth all true propositions exist.”49 Assmann even speaks of absolute truth in the plural form, which, according to him, religions possess and claim to be the only beatifying thing.50 But this is not the way Christianity speaks. Christianity does not

45

46 47 48 49 50

Assmann, “Monotheismus und Gewalt.” “This is the road that should be taken. Monotheism itself pushes us to go beyond the logic of exclusivity and the language of violence. Those who believe in revelation must realize that the latter has put humankind on a new path toward truth but not in the possession of ‘the’ truth. The truth of any concrete religion will always remain relative not in relation to any other concrete religion—which would end up by reducing both truth and religion to banality—but in relation to absolute Truth, which is the transcendent and necessarily hidden goal of every religion” (Assmann, Of God and Gods, 126). Ibid., 57. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii-ii, q. 2, a. 6c: “Explicatio credendorum fit per revelationem divinam.” Cf. ibid., q. 5, a. 1c: “In obiectum fidei est aliquid quasi formale, scilicet veritas prima super omnem naturalem cognitionem creaturae existens: et aliquid materiale, sicut id cui assentimus inhaerendo primae veritati.” Thomas Aquinas, Super Iohannem, c. 1, lect. 1. Cf. Assmann, Religio duplex, 23.

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know of more than one absolute truth, whether in its own creed or in different religions. 5

The Strenuous Virtue of Tolerance

Radical tolerance would seem in fact to be possible only in the context of an adherence to absolute truth. For, otherwise, it is not possible to relativize every individual truth. Misunderstanding Christianity, Assmann pleads for: that transcendental point beyond these distinctions in relation to which true tolerance—that is, recognizing relativity without resorting to ­banality—becomes possible. God is different not only from ‘gods’ but also from any representation that any concrete religion can produce. It is this absolute divine difference that precludes any intolerant insistence on the exclusive possession of truth.51 But Christians, it must be repeated, certainly do not consider themselves to be in possession of truth; rather, truth itself is the object of faith, not of knowledge. Christians believe in the absolute truth, but not in an absolute truth, which is the absolutizing of an individual truth. Christians should be the last to succumb to the temptation of absolutizing a particular truth, since they identify absolute truth with God himself. Belief in truth is tantamount to an instinct. We are free not to think about it, but we are not free to reject it. It goes without saying that believing in truth does not mean that we grasp, or possess, truth. Aquinas explicitly underlines that truth is believed, but as such, not seen [ut non visum].52 “Truth itself is the object of faith insofar as it is not seen,” he asserts.53 He distinguishes clearly between absolute truth and individual, participated truth. It is consistent, then, when Thomas wisely teaches that God is not the object of religion but its goal.54 We do not have God; we strive toward him. Knowledge is not the essential characteristic of our present life, but rather love, although supported by faith.

51 Assmann, Of God and Gods, 142. 52 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, ii-ii, q. 1, a. 1. 53 Ibid., q. 4, a. 1. Cf. ibid., q. 1, a. 6, ad 2: “ut sit non visum.” 54 Cf. ibid., i–ii, q. 81, a. 6, ad 2.

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If we realize this, then Beck’s thesis that the claim of absolute truth kills a discussion with others makes no sense. As he writes: “Truth that is valid once and for all—whether it is scientific or from religious sources and demands— promotes inhumanness in all human relations.”55 This would be comparable to saying that turning on a light in a dark room hampers our distinguishing the colors. Obviously, Beck is unacquainted with the crucial difference between absolute truth and individual truths. The solution to conflicts regarding truth is not the relinquishment or weakening of truth, but the virtue of toleration. This is, to be sure, not easy; it requires more than a decision, more than insight. As a moral virtue, it requires long-term and repeated effort. In a certain sense, it is against our natural instinct; we must work to attain it. A person is not tolerant by nature; a person becomes tolerant—in the best case, through faith in being itself as absolute truth. Tolerance requires a self-conquest. It should be motivated by a love for truth, but it also demands seeing levels of truth and accordingly saying simultaneously yes and no. But this does not involve an idealistic ambivalence or indifference. Tolerance says no to an opinion or an act of a person, but yes to the person. One does not reject or relativize truth, but rather, in the light of divine truth, sees that one truth is more important than another. The awareness of divine truth enables us to compare individual truths with one another. For example, tolerance respects the truthfulness of the other while rejecting what the other asserts as true. The person’s dignity embodies a higher value than his or her opinion or act. Tolerance values the particular truth that one sees contradicted by the other but, nevertheless, has a positive stance toward that other. The tolerant individual subsumes a falsehood into a higher truth, thus tolerating the falsehood, permitting a truth to be denied without denying truth itself. Without the truth of divine being, this is inconceivable. Tolerance, therefore, is not simply an openness, indecisiveness, or indifference. It may appear so, but in reality, it is none of them. Nor is it cowardliness or conformism. The presupposition is that one has not found the ‘absolute’ truth. As a Christian, in any case, one seeks the truth, loves it, and believes in it, but one does not possess it. No Christian could imagine that he or she possesses truth itself, which the Christian knows to be identical with God. In the light of this, one has an openness—that is, a backdrop or overview— that allows particular truths to be compared with one another and the 55 Beck, Der eigene Gott, 172f.

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a­ ssessment to be reached that one is more valuable than another. I can value the other’s searching for truth as higher than the truth that he or she denies, seeing that the person represents a higher form of reality than his or her opinion or action. Tolerance involves both a complexity and an identity. There is no split in the person. One level is subsumed into a higher level. Although he or she says no to an opinion, and thus seems to neglect his or her own opinion of truth, this is integrated into the larger affirmation. One and the same person says both, aware of both the denial of truth and his or her own acceptance of it, and reflects upon this. Tolerance is in no case a weakening of truth; it rela­ tivizes truths only in the sense of seeing that one is more important than ­another. And it relativizes one’s own truth convictions, especially the desire to see the other agree with one on a particular concrete truth. It can be said that, in themselves, abstracted from truth itself, truths are intolerant. Without the inner conflict in the tolerant person, there could be no tolerance. The ­motivation—and justification—is the adherence to ultimate truth. It is the adherence to God, the absolute truth, being itself. In front of this backdrop can be seen a hierarchy of truths, thus relativizing individual truths. 6

The Inversion of the Absolutizing of the Peace Ideal

Probably everything that is important can be an occasion for conflict. If it is a matter of justice or freedom or eros, we are not prepared to water them down because they can be an occasion for violence. Even peace as a goal can cause violence. Ultimate peace is often cited as the reason for preliminarily fighting a war. Fundamentally, it can be said that the absolutizing of anything whatever in this world leads to a disproportionate devaluation of other things. Sooner or later, the absolutizing of a value will revenge itself. The only truly ultimate goals that we can have are truth and goodness. For Beck, however, truth implies intolerance. Whoever holds truth for the highest goal, he asserts, “condemns, damns everyone who refuses to submit to this ‘truth.’”56 In the seventeenth century, Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), who lived during the Thirty Years War, reflects that “there are times when peace is just and times when it is unjust.” “Is it not clear,” he asks, “that just as it is a crime to disturb peace when truth rules, it is also a crime to keep peace when truth is being destroyed?”57 56 Ibid., 67. 57 Pascal, Pascal’s Pensees, 141; Fragment 494 (according to Louis Lafuma’s numeration).

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Referring to the relationship between the soul and body, Weizsäcker has conceived an illuminating metaphor for the relationship between peace and truth. He calls peace “the body of truth.”58 Havel shows a radical appreciation for the danger of absolutizing peace. He speaks of the seductive error that “carries so many honest and good people away and is called the ‘fight for peace.’”59 He sees the absolutizing of peace as a “bait” for well-meaning individuals.60 His criticism of the peace movement and its inherent ambivalence goes deep. He claims that a peace that is founded on the conviction that survival is something absolute, the highest value, more valuable than every other ideal, is in reality the fastest path to war. “The absence of heroes who know for what they die,” he maintains, “is the first step to the heap of corpses of those who are slaughtered like animals.”61 He goes so far to assert that “a life that is not prepared to sacrifice itself for its own meaning is not worth being lived.”62 If survival were the absolute, then nothing would be worth sacrificing life. “Without the horizon of the highest sacrifice, every sacrifice loses its meaning. Or: Nothing more is worthwhile. Nothing has meaning. […] That is the philosophy of the utter negation of human existence.”63 The political value of peace thus ­becomes an anthropological factor, affecting the essence of the human being. This is an example of the general principle that even a good moral value becomes evil if it is abstracted from its place in the hierarchy of values. 7

Absolute Truth as the Foundation of Tolerance

Truths cannot contradict one another. If there appears to be a conflict, then one can be confident that at least one conviction is false. What is then called for may be tolerance. Concrete truths have in themselves, as I have said, a natural tendency to be intolerant. What is seen as true wants to be seen as such by others. We can let many questions remain undecided or regard them as a matter of subjective taste, but truths by their nature want to be objective—presumably a ­tautology—and this implies that other thinkers should be able to see them. Tolerance, then, presupposes a kind of self-conquest. Otherwise, the virtue of 58 Cf. Weizsäcker, Garten, 40. 59 Cf. Havel, Am Anfang, 104. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 105. Cf. ibid., 143. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 105f.

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tolerance would be impossible. A person who is indifferent is unable to be tolerant. It is not only that concrete truths cannot contradict one another. A conflict between individual truths and truth itself is also impossible Regardless of prevalent prejudices to the contrary, the origin of the ideal of tolerance is not to be found in the Enlightenment. It originates in Christianity, in which its history begins with Augustine of Hippo and continues through the Middle Ages. Augustine cites 1 Cor 13, 7, where, in the translation he used, it is said that “charity tolerates [tolerat] all things.” Augustine speaks of peace-making tolerance [tolerantia pacifica].64 Thus, tolerance is an effect of love. To summarize, tolerance comes about by a twofold apprehension. In the light of absolute truth, one is able to compare individual truths and realize that one is more important than the other. A position that defends a falsehood can be tolerated by reflecting that the person holding it may, at any rate, be seeking truth, or by giving greater weight to the truth of the person’s human dignity than to the untruth of his or her opinion. When the two are compared against a standard of truth higher than either, seeking truth is a higher value than finding it; human dignity is a higher value than opinions. Thus, we tolerate falsehood by an act of subsumption into higher truth. In this way, even Beck’s intolerance can be tolerated, as well as rejected. 64

Cf. Augustine, Epistula 44, 11 (csel 34, 2; 119).

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Chapter 13

The Incarnation of Divine Being Jesus Christ is treated in Christian thought under many aspects. I restrict myself here to just one, the Incarnation. The dogma states that Jesus Christ is true God and true human. This becomes a problem for thinking when one realizes that this is one and the same person, having both the divine and a human nature, which consists of body and soul. God became human. Being itself becomes a being. What does this mean? What is the essential difference between the Incarnation and the creation of any human being? 1

The Contradiction of Dogmas

The problem becomes especially acute if we bear in mind the classic dogma of the unchangeability of God. We then have a contradiction between two ­dogmas—a not uncommon dilemma for faith teaching, but one that would normally not be expected. A contradiction may in reality be a paradox. Sometimes faith provokes and challenges reason, thus offering us a further possibility to reflect a little more on divine being. Unlike the redemption, the Incarnation is not directly a teaching on human beings. Indirectly, conclusions relevant for us can, of course, be drawn from it, such as that our own eternal union with God in the form of the vision of God, which is a lesser kind of union than the Incarnation, is possible. The Incarnation is a greater mystery than the redemption. By nature, we strive for redemption, but not for the Incarnation. By nature, we would not even imagine the latter. As far as we can ascertain, it is a precondition for redemption, but not a necessary one. Aquinas maintains that the Incarnation “lifts up man’s hope to happiness.”1 Thomas offers the following explanation: Since the perfect happiness of man consists in the enjoyment of God, it was requisite for man’s heart to be disposed to desire this enjoyment. But 1 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iv, c. 54: “By the fact of God having willed to unite human nature to Himself in unity of person, it is plainly shown to men that man can be intellectually united with God and see Him with an immediate vision. It was therefore very fitting for God to assume human nature, thereby to lift up man’s hope to happiness. Hence since the Incarnation men have begun to aspire more after happiness.”

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the desire of enjoying anything springs from the love of it. Therefore it was requisite for man, making his way to perfect happiness, to be induced to love God. Now nothing induces us to love anyone so much as the experience of his love for us. Nor could God’s love for man have been more effectually demonstrated to man than by God’s willing to be united with man in unity of person: for this is precisely the property of love, to unite the lover with the beloved.2 It could also be concluded that the Incarnation keeps us from despairing and shows what human dignity is: namely, the capability of being something that God himself can become. In any case, it still remains that we are confronted with a contradiction between dogmas. Often such contradictions can be resolved, but in this case, it is possible that no explanation can be found. For, as Thomas asserts: “Indeed, among divine works, this most especially exceeds reason: for nothing can be thought of which is more marvelous than this divine accomplishment: that the true God, the Son of God, should become true man.”3 Be that as it may, our efforts to meet this challenge can lead us to a better appreciation of reality. In any case, it is certainly not the place for compromises. There is the divine person who has the divine nature without compromises and a complete human nature, consisting of both body and soul. Taking divine being into consideration, the dilemma, the contradiction, becomes even greater. It is probably unsolvable. But the attempt to solve it might bring us to a better appreciation of divine being. Thomas’ position is that it is not possible for us to give an adequate explanation, but at least it must be possible to show that the teaching is not irrational and to refute rejections of it.4 2 Becoming What does ‘becoming’ mean in respect to the Incarnation? Becoming is a characteristic of creatures, and is hence a phenomenon that would seem to be restricted to the temporal world. In creatures, it represents change, but looked at in the light of divine being the fact is that being able to change is a weakness, implying that something or someone is progressing toward a kind of completeness not yet attained. Once the completeness has been reached, there can be no more becoming in respect to it. But this restriction is, to be sure, not a 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., c. 27. 4 Cf. ibid., c. 41, n. 9.

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d­ eficiency. Hence, it would be a misunderstanding to imagine that God lacks active life because he does not change. Actually, there is nothing positive in life that does not exist in God’s being. Therefore, whereas God lacks the capability of becoming, Jesus can become—that is faith teaching. On this basis, it is possible to predicate becoming of God. This rather confusing possibility is traditional and is called the ‘communication of properties’ [communicatio idiomatum]. Since the person involved is one and the same, having two different natures, what belongs to one nature can be predicated of the other. For example, since Jesus died, it can be said that God died. Thomas Aquinas explains the traditional teaching: Thus each and every part of the human nature of the Son of God can be called God, and whatever any part of his human nature does or suffers can be attributed to the only-begotten Word of God. Thus we fittingly say that not just his soul and body are the Son of God, but also his eyes and hands, and that the Son of God sees bodily with the sight of his eyes and hears by the hearing of his ears; the same applies to the activities proper to the other parts of his soul or body.5 Thomas suggests the following comparison: It is like saying that the same man sees and hears, but not according to the same power; he sees with his eyes and hears with his ears. Likewise the same apple is seen and smelt, in the first case by its color, in the second by its smell. For this reason we can say that the seeing person hears and the hearing person sees, and that what is seen is smelt and what is smelt is seen. Similarly we can say that God is born of the virgin, because of his human nature, and that man is eternal, because of the divine nature.6 It is a matter of distinguishing points of view, and thus holding the teaching of Scripture upright, ‘saving’ it, as Thomas expresses it: According to the tradition of the Catholic faith we must say that in Christ there is a perfect divine nature and a perfect human nature, constituted by a rational soul and human flesh; and that these two natures are united in Christ not by indwelling only, nor in an accidental mode, as a man is 5 Thomas Aquinas, De rationibus fidei, c. 6. 6 Ibid.

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united to his garments, nor in a personal relation and property only, but in one hypostasis and one supposit. Only in this way can we save [salvari] what the Scriptures hand on about the Incarnation. Since, then, sacred Scripture without distinction attributes the things of God to that man, and the things of that man to God (as is plain from the foregoing). He of whom each class is said must be one and the same. But opposites cannot be said truly of the same thing in the same way: the divine and human things said of Christ are, of course, in opposition, suffering and incapable of suffering, for example, or dead and immortal, and the remainder of this kind; therefore, it is necessarily in different ways that the divine and the human are predicated of Christ.7 In this way, one arrives at paradoxical statements without incurring contradictions. One can say, for example, that Christ is divine and human, or that he suffered and cannot suffer, or is both dead and immortal. The aspects under which such statements are made remain different, while the person, which is the pivotal point of the predication, remains one and the same. Similarly, if one accepts the faith teaching that the difference in God pertains to persons, and not to the divine nature, there being three persons but only one nature, then it follows that one does not say that the first or third person must also become human, since the Incarnation is by definition a question of a divine person becoming human, and not of the divine nature.8 Like Thomas, Karl Rahner has taken the paradox of the contradicting dogmas seriously and has worked out a more precise formulation of the problem of God’s becoming a human. In the following way, he candidly expresses the main presupposition: [Christians] profess that God is the immutable One who is in an absolute sense, that is, in the sense of pure act, and who in blissful security and in the self-sufficiency of infinite reality always possesses what he is from eternity to eternity in absolute and in a certain sense unmoved, ‘serene’ fullness. He does not have to become it first or acquire it first.9 What can it mean, then, that God becomes human, in view of the fact that he is already the infinite fullness of being? Rahner does not deny the contradiction, but accepts it as a challenge for theology. His efforts are directed not 7 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iv, c. 39. 8 Cf. ibid. 9 Rahner, Foundations, 219 (emphasis in original).

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t­oward a solution, but toward a more adequate formulation of the teaching. What can be said, then, is the following: On the one hand, God does not change in himself; on the other hand, he himself changes in something else: We may not regard this process by which one changes in something else as a contradiction to God’s immutability, nor allow this changing in something else to be reduced to asserting a change of something else. […] The mystery of the Incarnation must be in God himself, and precisely in the fact that, although he is immutable in and of himself, he himself can become something in another.10 Rahner considers this possibility to be “the height of his perfection.”11 Therefore, the Incarnation and all that takes place in the life of Jesus is God’s own history. An analogy can be drawn to music: Through the existence, say, of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, ‘music’ becomes richer. The relationship is admittedly abstruse. We can say that Socrates becomes a composer, but not vice versa, that a composer becomes Socrates. Socrates is a man, and a man is Socrates, but the man is not Socrates. Rahner argues: He can become insofar as, in establishing the other which comes from him, he himself becomes what has come from him, without having to become in his own and original self. Insofar as in his abiding and infinite fullness he empties himself, the other comes to be as God’s very own reality.12 Thus, all becoming in the temporal world exists in divine being. In short, the divine becoming does not lie absolutely outside of God. The adequate formulation would be: “He who is not subject to change in himself can himself be subject to change in something else.”13 Rahner arrives at this conclusion: “It still remains true that the Logos became man, that the history of the becoming of this human reality became his own history, that our time became the time of the eternal One, that our death ­became the death of the immortal God himself.”14

10 Ibid., 221 (emphasis in original). 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid., 222. 13 Ibid., 220 (emphasis in original). 14 Ibid. (emphasis in original).

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Treating God as Concrete

It must be in the divine person that the union takes place. But the person is not changed by it. Neither the Son nor God increases in being. What is new is the nature taken on by the divine person. Christ is, therefore, not a new person. In the final result, reality itself is not increased. But this does not imply that nothing happens. We certainly would not say that the birth of a child is nothing because God is not increased by it. Analogically, the notion ‘dog’ in the dictionary is not changed when a new dog is born. We are dealing with two perspectives, not just with two ontological regions. Becoming is a phenomenon belonging to temporal reality. Moreover, something in concrete reality can become something in conscious reality; for example, a chair can become the object of a thought. Vice versa, something in consciousness can become something in concrete reality; for example, the carpenter can have an idea of a chair and then make it. Nevertheless, we do not say that a universal notion becomes a concrete case; ‘chair,’ for example, does not become this concrete chair. Nor do we say that something concrete becomes an abstract notion. This chair can become a chair, but not the chair. When we speak of God’s becoming, we are using a category of temporal reality and predicating it inappropriately of God. It is similar to anthropomorphism: it is not completely illegitimate, but it does involve a confusion of terms. Be that as it may, it can be said that the Son of God has both the divine and a human nature, the one from eternity and the other assumed from a point of time.15 To come to terms with the paradox of the Incarnation, it seems one must approach it on the basis of perspectives. Looked at from the perspective of temporal being, there is the becoming of Jesus. Looked at from the perspective of divine being, nothing new really happens. If we bring both perspectives together, we can thus say that, in the perspective of the first reality, God becomes human. Although it may be anthropomorphic, this is our human way of articulating the truth of the dogma. It may not advance our knowledge very far, but at least it does offer our reason something thinkable. The analogy that is helpful here is that of the act of knowledge. As has already been observed, creatures exist in the creator, and therefore, the process of becoming itself must exist in God. Viewed from the divine perspective, the relation of God’s Incarnation appears like a cognitional relation, while from the human perspective, it appears like a real relation. The object of knowledge becomes an element in consciousness without the object itself being changed. 15

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, De rationibus fidei, c. 6.

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Nevertheless, the object now has the new attribute of being known. Taken in this sense, there is a change in the reality of the object. 4

The Hand Analogy

To pursue this approach a bit further, we can adopt Aquinas’ suggestion that what in our world is most similar to the Incarnation is the relationship between the soul and the body.16 The Athanasian Creed presents the comparison as a component of faith teaching: “As the reasoning soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Christ.” One must distinguish between two basic kinds of union of soul and body. On the one hand, the body is the matter of the act of the soul. In a certain sense, the body is the incarnation of the soul. Thus, a human soul possesses, for example, hands. They belong to the soul’s completion as an individual person. It is an ontological relationship: the hands really belong to him or her. On the other hand, the body is an instrument of the soul. In this sense, the hand can be used by the soul as an instrument, say, for grasping things. It is I who grasp something using my hand. The instruments of the soul can also be further distinguished into two kinds: extrinsic and intrinsic. Whereas the hand belongs intrinsically to the soul, the pen, say, which I hold in order to write, is an extrinsic instrument, which can be used by other persons, since it does not belong to me exclusively. I wrote with the pen and I wrote with my hand, but I am the only one who can write with my hand. The Incarnation cannot be compared to the union of soul and body in the sense of the union of the soul with matter, since the matter and the form properly establish the nature of a species. Such a comparison would mean that the Incarnation would make a new kind of being out of God. God would not become human, but rather a God-human, as it were, distinct from God and human. But it is possible to compare the Incarnation to the union of the soul with an instrument. In this case, however, it must be an intrinsic instrument. In an extrinsic sense, nothing prevents God from using other human beings as instruments, whereas the Incarnation is a unique kind of union. When other human beings are instruments of God, they retain their own proper actions; for example, teaching God’s revelation and doing good are acts that belongs properly 16

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iv, c. 41.

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to the human being. In the case of the Incarnation, some of the things that Jesus did, such as forgiving sins, belong properly to God. Hence, the only comparison that could apply is that of an intrinsic ins­ trument that is proper to the soul. The hand is a good example of this.17 A hand is organically united with one person and belongs exclusively to this one person. As an instrument of God, a person need not be himself or herself divine. In other words, Christ can have a truly human nature, which is like the relation of the hand to a human person. Christ is united to a divine person and not to the divine nature, just as hands do not belong necessarily and unconditionally to the human essence. Of course, this is not an explanation of the nature of the Incarnation. The Incarnation is not thereby proven; it remains a mystery. But at least it receives an articulation for and by reason. The dilemma is consequently not a contradiction, which reason would be compelled to reject. To this extent, we have gained an increased appreciation of what divine being involves. If nothing more, then at least something rational has been said to support faith [ad aedificationem fidei].18 17 18

Cf. ibid. Cf. ibid.

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Divine Being’s Unknowability God’s unknowability grounds the ultimate unknowability of the universe and ensures that it is not overlooked. Friedrich Schlegel has expressed the ultimate relevance of this teaching: “The inner contentedness depends on a point that is left in darkness but supports and holds the whole, and it would momentarily loose this power if one wanted to dissolve it in reason. Truly, you would be frightened if the entire world, as you demand, became understandable.”1 The thesis of God’s unknowability may both be true and, nevertheless, not exclude simple piety. However, there should not exist a direct contradiction between these two aspects. The intellect seeks truth. In the case of a conflict between the intellect and a feeling, truth has the best chance of being right. Besides, the intellect represents the basis of religion, since only the intellect is able to transcend the world and point to God. Feelings, for example, cannot be directed to God if they contradict truth. Religion, of course, is not identical with theology, nor is theology the mature enlightened form of religion. Myth and science are not mutually exclusionary, and no less are spirituality and intellectuality. Human nature being what it is, an individual is incapable of living a life of pure theology. The abstract demands the concrete. The lover is naive who sees no need to repeat declarations of love for the beloved because it has already been proclaimed once. A cookbook is normally not intended for merely theoretical use. The philosopher studying the heavens should beware of falling into a cistern. The question of God’s knowability is an intellectual question and should not be overestimated. Nevertheless, it has its validity, although one should not imagine that it is enough for normal religious life. Piety can be full of images and convictions that may be foreign to the intellect as long as they do not stand in outright contradiction to it. It is not incompatible if a philosopher prays using prayers from childhood. It is not a contradiction if one prays to God for help and imagines that he reacts, even though one knows that God is unchangeable. If I have a relationship to someone, I cannot help imagining that the person has a corresponding relationship to me, even when reason rejects this idea. In religious life, metaphors are basically legitimate and hardly avoidable. 1 Schlegel, “Über die Unverständlichkeit,” 369 (my translation).

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It is quite appropriate when Thomas Aquinas claims that images and symbols of God that are more dissimilar to him are to be preferred over those that possess greater similarity. At the beginning of his treatment of theology in the Summa theologiae, Thomas defends this principle. He refers to Denis the Areopagite, who wrote: “We cannot be enlightened by the divine rays except they be hidden within the covering of many sacred veils.”2 Accordingly, it is advisable to predicate qualities of God that clearly cannot be taken literally, since it is more fitting to communicate divine things in the figures of vile bodies than in those of noble bodies. Thomas explains that, with this method, men’s minds are the better preserved from error. For then it is clear that these things are not literal descriptions of divine truths, which might have been open to doubt had they been expressed under the figure of nobler bodies, especially for those who could think of nothing nobler than bodies.3 According to the traditional Christian conviction, life after death consists in a union with God, and so whoever speaks in this life about life after death in an understandable manner misses the point. What is related to God cannot be fully understandable. Univocality is a guarantee that one is speaking either about created reality or about nothing. Eschatology—speaking or thinking about the beyond—requires language that is neither univocal nor equivocal; it requires the ‘dissimilar similarity’ and the ‘similar dissimilarity’ of analogical terms. Symbols are employed, but they are employed self-critically; that is, their falsehood is deliberate. For our present state, Thomas holds that negative knowledge is more appropriate in itself, since our present knowledge of God refers to what he is not rather than to what he is. Hence, he argues, “similitudes drawn from things furthest away from God form within us a truer estimate that God is above whatsoever we may say or think of him.”4 The thesis of this chapter is that we are able to gain positive—albeit ­inadequate—knowledge of realities of the world, but not of divine reality. Divine reality, however, does not lie simply beyond knowability. It cannot be reduced to knowability, for it must transcend knowability. Rather, its knowability is too knowable for our powers. Normally we can know concrete things and

2 Denis the Areopagite, De caelesti hierarchia, c. 1. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 1, a. 9c. 3 Ibid., ad 3. 4 Ibid.

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a­ bstractions (actually, our way of knowing the concrete is through abstraction). God as being itself is the ultimate ground of all knowledge. Being itself is neither concrete nor abstract, or rather, it transcends both while subsuming them into itself. Knowledge is a union of an object with consciousness. The third reality can, of course, be united to human consciousness in different ways: as its creator, as the goal of desire, as the beloved. But if God were to unite himself to consciousness in the manner of an object of knowledge, he would not appear as a content of knowledge, or consciousness would be annihilated. Otherweise, the union of God with human consciousness would mean that he becomes a creature. It is as though light were united with the eyes but without any colored objects; nothing would be seen, since light itself cannot be seen as a color. We do not speak of seeing light, and analogously, we cannot speak of experiencing God. The act of being cannot be grasped by us in itself. We know it only as accompanying something that has being and participates in being. When we see a color, we are implicitly seeing light. When we see a being, we are implicitly seeing the being of being itself. Whatever occurs as a content of thought must be adaptable or reducible to something having existence. It must consist of a whatness and thatness, of a possibility and reality. One can become aware that there is a reality without possibility, but it cannot be squeezed into consciousness. Nor can one conceive sentences about it, since sentences, like the concrete, have the twofold structure of possibility and actuality. It would have to be, so to speak, a simple sentence, without the separation into subject and predicate, but including both. Expressed in another way: We can know that divine reality exists, but not what it is. It cannot be a content of consciousness in itself, but only indirectly, just as we know whether light is present in a room if we see something colored. 1 Revelation But does not biblical revelation reveal to us something about God? An unequivocal and unconditional advocate of a negative answer is Karl Barth. In regard to the teaching on divine unknowability, I know no other theologian who emphasizes this aspect of revelation as decisively as Barth. His point is that what God reveals about himself is precisely his unknowability. Through faith, we learn of the inadequacy of our reason—the same truth, in my opinion, that reason itself can reach by its own critical analysis. On this point, revelation does not supersede natural reason. Since Barth’s position is

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the antipode of the position defended in this book, it is worthwhile letting him express it extensively in his own words. For Barth, the teaching on the divine unknowability is a truth of pure revelation. In this matter, he considers reason irrelevant. It is a faith statement: “The hiddenness of God is the content of a statement of faith.”5 Surely no one has purified the exclusively theological aspect more than Barth. For him, the divine unknowability is revelation unadulterated by reason. To believe in God, I need to know nothing about him. In Barth’s own words: We have already said that it is in faith itself that we are forced to dispossess ourselves of any capacity for viewing and conceiving God. It is in faith, and therefore in the fulfilment of the knowledge of God, and therefore in the real viewing and real conceiving of God, that we can understand the fact that we know, view, and conceive God, not as a work of our nature, not as a performance on the basis of our own capacity, but only as a miraculous work of the divine good pleasure, so that, knowing God, we necessarily know His hiddenness. But we must now continue that it is only in faith, only in the fulfilment of the knowledge of God which is real because it is grounded in God’s revelation, that we conceive God’s hiddenness.6 Barth could not be more categorical: “[It is] simply the great positions of the biblical attestation and of the Church’s confession of the being and activity of God, which move us to assert God’s hiddenness. It is God alone, and God’s ­revelation and faith in it, which will drive and compel us to this avowal.”7 Hence, our knowledge of God has its starting point, for Barth, with divine revelation. In a secondary sense, the divine unknowability implies the incapacity of human knowledge, but our incapacity is in no way the basis for our knowledge of his unknowability. The knowledge derives, to repeat, completely from God: For all this in itself and as such (whether it is or not, and whatever it may be) is the product of human reason in spite of and in its supposed inapprehensibility. It is not, therefore, identical with God and is in no way a constituent part of the divine hiddenness. […] For God—the living God who encounters us in Jesus Christ—is not such a one as can be 5 Barth, Church Dogmatics, ii.1:183. 6 CD., ii.1:183–184. 7 CD., ii.1:184.

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a­ ppropriated by us in our own capacity. He is the One who will appropriate us, and in so doing permit and command and therefore adapt us to appropriate Him as well. […] All our efforts to apprehend Him by ourselves shipwreck on this. He is always the One who will first and foremost apprehend and possess us. It is only on the basis of this, and in the area marked out by it, that there can and should be our own apprehension of God.8 This revelation is a gift, implying that “the confession of God’s hiddenness is the confession of God’s revelation as the beginning of our cognisance of God. […] The emphasis in the confession of God’s hiddenness is not primarily that of humility but first and decisively that of gratitude.”9 Our knowledge of God’s inapprehensibility is, in fact, the decisive knowledge of God: “The assertion of the hiddenness of God is not, therefore, to be understood as one of despairing resignation, but actually as the terminus a quo of our real knowledge of God, as the fundamental and decisive determination, not of our ignorance, but of our cognisance of God.”10 With this knowledge through faith, real knowledge of God begins: God’s hiddenness is not the content of a last word of human self-­ knowledge; it is not the object of a last performance of human capacity; it is the first word of the knowledge of God instituted by God Himself, which as such cannot be transposed into self-knowledge, or into the statement of a general theory of knowledge. When we say that God is hidden, we are not speaking of ourselves, but, taught by God’s revelation alone, of God. The hiddenness of God is the content of a statement of faith.11 Barth’s position is superlatively clear. It is a theology that excludes philosophy, that excludes reason, without excluding God. In my opinion, he is pleading for theological sentences: sentences that stem from revelation, but sentences that are, in my opinion, devoid of meaning because they have no connection to reality. He presents a Christian radicalism that is overly Christian, and hence unchristian. But he cannot escape philosophy. He claims that his only source is revelation, but in fact, he expresses this in his own sentences. They stem from his 8 CD., ii.1:188. 9 CD., ii.1:192. 10 CD. 11 CD., ii.1:183.

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own thought. His biblical quotations are in German. Thus, to hear revelation, he interposes German. His theological positivism cuts theology off from experience and reality. Barth rejects traditional philosophical approaches, like “the inapprehensibility of the infinite, the absolute, that which exists in and of itself, etc.”12 But it is obviously impossible to avoid notions, including philoso­ phical notions, if one wants to express the teaching of faith in a way that it is not just the repetition of faith language. To make himself understood, Barth, like everyone else, must presuppose notions from normal language, as well as from philosophy. Without further explanation, he uses, in fact, notions like knowledge, knowability, real, hiddenness, and so on. A radical revelation positivism of this kind is unrealizable. It is very common among theologians to presume that the argument for the unknowability of God is not conclusive. The claim is made, for example, that it is philosophical, and hence cannot put restrictions on theology. Although reason fails to reach God, divine revelation can go beyond reason and grant us some knowledge of God himself. Therefore, many theologians are convinced that revelation supersedes the thesis of the divine unknowability. This is an understandable misconception. For, if something is revealed to us, we must be able to hear it. God cannot reveal to us what we cannot somehow integrate into our thought. Rahner begins his philosophy of religion with the axiom “God can only reveal what man can hear.”13 Thomas Aquinas also asserts that divine revelation must be adapted to human capacity.14 Reason is not only a source of knowledge; it sets down the horizon within which knowledge becomes knowledge. We cannot believe what we cannot know, for we would have no idea of what we believe. God may be absolutely free to reveal what he wants to reveal, but our openness to hear it is limited: Our knowledge is restricted to beings, to realities that have being. 2 Nominalism In the late Middle Ages, a similar position was developed in the approach that is called nominalism, of which the most prominent representative is William of Ockham (1280–1349). According to him, only individuals are real; universal notions have no reality. Ockham held that no universal is a substance existing outside of the mind. 12 CD., ii.1:188. 13 Rahner, Hearer of the Word, 93. 14 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i–ii, q. 101, a. 2, ad 1.

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Objects call forth sense-impressions in us, which are transmuted by the active intellect into mental images. These images are thus a product of the intellect, not species that somehow flow from the object into the intellect. That is, he argued that universals have no existence outside of the mind; universals are just names we use to refer to groups of individuals and the properties of individuals. Realists claim, to the contrary, that not only are there individual objects and our concepts of those objects; there also exist universals. Ockham thought that this was one too many pluralities. We do not need universals to explain anything. To nominalists and realists, there exist Socrates the individual and our concept of Socrates. To the realist there also exist such realities as the humanity of Socrates, the animality of Socrates, and so on. That is, every quality that may be attributed to Socrates has a corresponding ‘reality,’ a ‘universal’ or eidos, as Plato called them. Ockham might be said to have been skeptical of this realm of plurality called the realm of universals. This makes theology problematic. William’s solution is to define theology as a language. It is a language with sentences about God, using suitable predications, but these do not attain God himself. God is reduced willy-nilly to a mental reality. Science has to do, he maintains, only with propositions, not with things as such, since the object of science is not what is but what is known. And how do we arrive at theological statements? Not by analyzing experiences of reality. All we know about God, William teaches, we know from supernatural revelation. The foundation of all theology, therefore, is faith. Consequently, theology is not a science, because no science can rest on faith. With Ockham, we can see the beginning of the historical process of separating faith and reason, theology and philosophy, as for example Barth did. Ockham logically rejected proofs of God’s existence and of the immortality of the soul. For him, there exists no doubt regarding faith, but faith has been emptied of reason, and in my opinion, it is obviously only a matter of time until faith, too, is rejected. And with the loss of faith comes the loss of God. The requirement set down in nominalism for a concept to be predicable of God is not that it be true, but merely that it be “proper to God,” such that it can stand for God. We find a succinct explication of this hermeneutics in his programmatic teaching at the beginning of Ockham’s commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard: I say that neither the divine essence nor the divine quiddity nor anything intrinsic to God, nor anything that is really God can be known in itself by us. […] Secondly, I say that the divine essence or the divine quiddity can be known by us in a concept proper to it. […] What we know immediately are concepts which are not God really, but which we nevertheless use in

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place of God in propositions. […] Although the act of understanding attains immediately nothing other than a concept, which is not God, nevertheless, since the concept is proper to God and whatever can be predicated of God is really predicated of that concept, although not for itself but for God, God is said to be known in that concept. […] Because we are not able to know God in Himself, we use in His place a concept proper to Him.15 Concepts serve vicariously in God’s place. According to this theology, we do not even know of God’s unknowability. He is neither a reality nor real in any sense. According to this poistion, divine reality is, for us, nothing. As I see it, the Catholic axiom that grace presumes nature and perfects nature is fundamental. Accordingly, it is impossible to separate revelation from nature. Christians believe in a God without essence. They do not know what he is, but they do know that they do not know. This paradox of both reason and faith provokes reflection. His infinity is not the cause of God’s unknowability. This is often given as the explanation for his incomprehensibility, for example, by Nicolaus Cusanus. But to the contrary, the divine infinity actually implies that God is maximally knowable. The sun cannot be looked at because it is too bright. We can know creatures, which are participations in reality itself. For us, whatever has being is in principle knowable, but not what is being, although it is always presupposed. In other words, our knowledge of a thing’s essence is limited to the concrete and the abstract. 3

The Reality of Divine Being

The difference between a reality and the reality is decisive in this question. We can know realities, or to put it the other way round, what we know are realities. But we cannot grasp reality itself. Nonetheless, it is present to us. In Latin, this distinction can be more clearly articulated. One can distinguish between actus and actualitas. Whereas actus, or act, is an Aristotelian term, the word actualitas, meaning actuality or act-ness, originates in medieval theological Latin and was used specifically to speak of God. Act is known by us 15

William of Ockham, In I Sententiarum, dist. 3, q. 2 (Opera theologica, vol. ii, p. 402,17–22; 413,10–12; 409,19–23.1–7).

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through a kind of abstraction. We see something concrete as something ‘grown together.’ Through abstraction, we can distinguish between what is concrete and that it is concrete. The ‘what’ is res in Latin. The ‘that’ is the act, the act of being, making a res into a reality (an ens). A res plus the act of being is an ens. The abstraction of the ‘that’ is not the kind of abstraction that arrives at a notion or a definition. Rather, it is a reflection and apprehension of the concrete precisely as actually concrete. This is, however, not knowledge of God. Rather, it is an act of wonder, albeit directed toward God. To speak of God, one must first realize a further mental act. There are, of course, many concrete acts: a tree, a horse, a star, and so on endlessly have their own acts. If we then realize that, with all their differences, they are all modes of being, then we have reached an idea of actuality that is universal. To refer to this act of all individual acts, the term actualitas was coined. It is the actuality of being, the actuality that characterizes God. This is neither concrete nor abstract nor a concrete act; it is not so much an act as it is the act-ness of all acts, such as the being of dogs, of running, of living, and so on. It is, so to speak, a meta-act. Divine reality is not simply reducible to the highest reality; God is not simply the ens supremum. It is helpful here to make use of the Aristotelian distinction between possibility and actuality, whereby ‘actuality’ is, in this case, a translation of actus. The concrete consists of a possibility and its actuality. My dog is possible and actual. A unicorn is a possibility but not actual. In our world, we know of nothing that is actual without its also being possible. The notion of the unicorn is itself, as a notion, a real thought, which is in itself, of course, a possible thought. The apprehension of actuality is similar to an abstraction, but also different. It corresponds to the apprehension that underlies a declarative sentence. Subject and predicate are abstract notions, but the relationship between them is not one of the abstract and concrete. That they exist together, or do not, involves a different kind of apprehension. The relationship of an adjective to the substantive is different from the relationship of a predicate to a subject. It embraces abstract notions but is not the pinnacle of a pyramid of abstractions, since it is of another kind. For something to become an object of knowledge, it must be capable of being divided in itself. Human knowledge is an instrument for working on reality by dividing, such that true and false become possible. This apprehension of the act of existence, on the other hand, is the presupposition for knowledge and truth. What truth consists of is, in fact, precisely this apprehension. Abstract notions cannot be true or false. The act of reflection must accompany the apprehension. “For the concurrence of two elements, apprehension and judgment about the thing apprehended, is necessary for

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knowledge.”16 Here also lies the difference between consciousness and reflecting self-consciousness. Self-consciousness occurs precisely as the apprehension of the act of existence. Thus, human experience always retains the twofold structure that characterizes realities. For this reason, an experience of God himself is unthinkable.17 The idea of God’s unknowability is not just a marginal remark or cautious modesty. It is fundamental and comprehensive. Actually, it is the last thing we can say about God. Thomas Aquinas calls it “the last and most perfect of our knowledge in this life.”18 Further: “That is the last of human knowledge about God that one knows that he does not know God.”19 “We are said to have reached the end of human knowledge,” he writes, “when we know God as the unknown.”20 Thomas interprets Denis the Areopagite’s phrase “we are united with God as the Unknown” in this sense, which he calls sublime: “Indeed, this is the situation, for, while we know of God what he is not, what he is remains quite unknown. Hence, to manifest his ignorance of this sublime knowledge, it is said of Moses that ‘he went to the dark cloud wherein God was’ (Exod 20, 21).”21 This clear distinction makes it possible for Thomas to differentiate between the docta ignorantia and every other kind of knowledge of God. For example, he does not have to appeal to the inadequacy of human knowledge in order to be able to affirm simultaneously our docta ignorantia and our positive knowledge about God. The divine unknowability is not limited to some degree of our knowledge; it is distinct and univocal that we can know absolutely nothing about what God is. All of our positive knowledge is restricted to knowing what God is not. It should be noted that this position should not be confused with negative theology. Actually, it is the grounding of the via negativa. We cannot know what God is, but we can know what he is not. All of our positive thoughts about what God is actually pertain to what he is not. In other words, he always transcends what we know. To understand this teaching better, it is helpful to use an old distinction of Christian theology: the distinction between what God is and that he is. His unknowability pertains to what he is. But we do have the possibility of realizing that he is. According to Thomas Aquinas, what is reached by proofs of the 16 17 18 19 20 21

Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 10, a. 8. Cf. Hoye, Gotteserfahrung? Klärung eines Grundbegriffs der gegenwärtigen Theologie. “Ultimum et perfectissimum nostrae cognitionis in hac vita” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 49). Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 7, a. 5, ad 14. Thomas Aquinas, In Boethii De trinitate, q. 1, a. 2, ad 1. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 49.

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existence of God is not God, and not his existence, but a sentence: the sentence ‘God is.’22 This corresponds with the apprehension that grounds sentences and truths, the apprehension of the existence of the subject and predicate together (or the denial thereof). Thomas rejects the idea that we know enough about God’s essence to ask at least whether he exists. This is the error of the ontological proof, which begins with a (however vague) notion of God and argues to his existence. This is just the opposite of Thomas’ approach. The divine unknowability is therefore not simply a lack of knowledge. It is positive, but of a unique kind. It is not just inadequate knowledge, consisting of compromises. It transcends knowledge as we normally know it. For this ­reason, it can be denied; God is always qualitatively more. Moreover, mystical experience does not present an exception. Denis the Areopagite famously stated that, through mystical theology, we are united with God as the unknown, and Aquinas interprets this in the sense that we may know what God is not.23 This negative knowledge is enough to ground our faith in God. You could say that it is a real, grounded transcendence. Nor do supernatural revelation and faith effect the situation. As John Wippel summarizes: Even when elevated by such supernatural gifts, the human intellect remains incapable of achieving knowledge of the divine essence. In other words, neither faith nor the infused gifts of the Holy Spirit will give us knowledge of the divine essence or quiddity in this life. Hence we cannot overcome this difficulty simply by falling back on religious faith, or by taking refuge in a theology which presupposes faith.24 When seeking knowledge of God, reason is indispensable and its final culmination consists, on the one hand, in the insight into divine unknowability and on the other hand, in the realization of its existence. 22 Cf. ibid., i, c. 12, n. 7; Summa theologiae, i, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2. 23 See p. 138, footnote 21. 24 Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas, 219–220. Cf. ibid., 220–221.

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The Trinity Sometimes theology generates its own problems. If this occurs, then they must be theologically solvable, even if this involves tedious work. The theology of the Trinity has produced some problems of this nature. My impression is that, if one starts to reflect rationally on the Trinity, contradictions and aporias arise unavoidably. The fact is that dogmas can give rise to misunderstandings on the teaching on God. The teaching on God’s inapprehensibility is given definitive accentuation through the teaching on the Trinity, seeing that the Trinity is traditionally acknowledged to be an absolute mystery. It is not reason, moreover, that comes to this conclusion, but ironically, revelation itself, which defines the Trinity a priori as absolutely incomprehensible. The imperative task of a theologian consists then in sustaining intellectually this absolute inapprehensibility. In other words, precisely the unknowability of the Trinity must be theologically reflected. Approaching the question from the viewpoint of being would presumably be the best way to accomplish this, but if God is understood as the highest being in the reality that we know, then it is not easy to appreciate this absolute mystery as mystery. Furthermore, it can be remarked that believing that God is one and three does not alone yield mystery. It is a simple contradiction, clear enough for our reason to appreciate its unthinkableness. I would not call this a mystery, since it is an excessive demand simply lying beyond reason and does not challenge reason with a provocation. The second challenge for the theologian is to demonstrate that all attempts to find explanatory theories of the Trinity are inadequate. As a defender of faith, a theologian should be obliged to show that every proposed explanation finally fails. There cannot be an absolute mystery that is at the same time partially understandable. For today’s theology, this must be disappointing, since the dominating view among Christians today is to render God as approachable as possible. Granted, it seems much easier to live in a religion that has an existential and appealing approach to God. God reveals himself in different forms: creator, savior, comforter, lawgiver, and counselor. One speaks often of experiencing God concretely, sometimes including even God as triune. The wellknown rejections of this view are the accusation that Christians believe in three gods or cultivate an extremely mythological religion. Be that as it may, it is certainly anything but pleasant to make God less approachable, as the teaching on the Trinity seems in fact to do.

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Karl Rahner’s Solution

The most influential teaching on the Trinity in Catholic theology of recent decades is presumably that of Rahner. His approach, which has become programmatic, makes the Trinity become a reality in the concrete life of the faithful. Being an essential break with tradition, his position must be confronted. Rahner’s basic thesis is an identification of the Trinity in the godhead and the Trinity in salvation history: “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity,” he states categorically, “and the ‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity.”1 In other words, the Trinity as revealed in concrete salvation history is not mere mythology, but represents the Trinity in itself. Accordingly, the immanent Trinity truly reveals itself in the economic Trinity. That is to say that Rahner pleads against “a Trinity which is absolutely locked within itself—one which is not, in its reality, open to anything distinct from it; one, further, from which we are excluded, of which we happen to know something only through a strange paradox.”2 Since, on the one hand, it has become practically an unquestioned presupposition in contemporary theology and, on the other hand, it is my opinion that the identification of the economic Trinity with the immanent Trinity is false, an extensive treatment of the question here is warranted. Moreover, the thesis that I want to defend is that the economic Trinity may reveal something about God, but not about the individual persons of the immanent Trinity. Rahner’s original argumentation is based on a teaching of Thomas Aquinas to which he gives his own interpretation. He writes: If we apply the classic ontology and theology of the beatific vision to the undeniable intuition of the divine persons as such, we cannot logically reject this thesis for the vision nor for justifying grace as the ontological substratum and formal beginning of the immediate intuition of God. An immediate intuition of the divine persons, not mediated by a created ‘impressed species’ but only by the ontological reality of the intuited object in itself (which gives itself in a real quasi-formal causality to the intuiting subject as the ontological condition of the possibility of the formal knowledge) means necessarily an ontological relation of the intuiting subject to each one of the intuited persons as such in their real particularity.3 1 Rahner, The Trinity, 22. 2 Ibid., 18. 3 Ibid., 34, fn. 31.

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Since I intend to criticize Rahner’s position, it is mandatory to present it sufficiently in his own words. Rahner extends this teaching to include grace in the present life and emphasizes—without further justification—the individuality involved, meaning the specific qualities of each divine person: The thesis which we presuppose here as true states not some scholastic subtlety, but simply this: each one of the three divine persons communicates himself to man in gratuitous grace in his own personal particularity and diversity. This trinitarian communication is the ontological ground of man’s life of grace and eventually of the direct vision of the divine persons in eternity.4 Rahner must admit that this is not a conclusion that was explicitly drawn in the Middle Ages, although he finds it logical: “Medieval theology may not have given enough thought to this consideration, although it lies altogether in the line of its theological approach to the vision.”5 (In my opinion, it is no accident that medieval theology neglected to do this.) Rahner also expresses his scepsis in regard to the classic dogmatic definition of eternal life by Pope Benedict xii, which makes no mention of the Trinity: “In the famous constitution of Benedict xii on the beatific vision (DS 1000 ff.) there is no mention of the Trinity at all. We hear only of the ‘divine essence,’ and to this essence there is attributed the most intimate personal function of showing itself.”6 Finally, Rahner emphasizes that it is really the immanent Trinity that is being communicated in the individuality of the three persons, arguing that the persons themselves do not differ from their mode of communication: God relates to us in a threefold manner, and this threefold, free, and gratuitous relation to us is not merely a copy or an analogy of the inner Trinity, but this Trinity itself, albeit as freely and gratuitously communicated. That which is communicated is precisely the triune personal God, and likewise the communication bestowed upon the creature in gratuitous grace can, if occurring in freedom, occur only in the intra-divine manner of the two communications of the divine essence by the faith to the Son and the Spirit. Any other kind of communication would be unable to communicate that which is here communicated, the divine persons,

4 Ibid., 34–35. 5 Ibid., 34, fn. 31. 6 Ibid., 13, fn. 8. Rahner asks, “Can this be explained totally by the immediate context alone?”

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since these persons do not differ from their own way of communicating themselves.7 In comparison, traditional theology has limited the trinitarian communication to something taking place within the godhead. The justification for Rahner’s surprising claim, and indeed for his whole approach, hinges on the idea of ‘formal causality,’ which implies a direct union with God, with the implication, for Rahner, that this involves the three persons in their individuality: Here is the absolute mystery revealed to us only by Christ: God’s self-­ communication is truly a self-communication. He does not merely indirectly give his creature some share of himself by creating and giving us created and finite realities through his omnipotent efficient causality. In a quasi-formal causality he really and in the strictest sense of the word bestows himself.8 In short: “The ‘threefoldness’ of God’s relation to us in Christ’s order of grace is already the reality of God as it is in itself: a three-personal one.”9 Rahner concludes that such self-communication on God’s part lets us ­experience—Rahner explicitly uses the word ‘experience,’ which has a more existential connotation than ‘knowledge’—the three persons in our own reality: Man understands himself only when he has realized that he is the one to whom God communicates himself. Thus we may say that the mystery of the Trinity is the last mystery of our own reality, and that it is experienced precisely in this reality. This does not imply, of course, that we might, from this experience, by mere individual reflexion, conceptually objectivate the mystery. In line with this idea we might point out here that the incomprehensible, primordial, and forever mysterious unity of trans­ cendence through history and of history into transcendence holds its ­ultimate depths and most profound roots in the Trinity, in which the ­Father is the incomprehensible origin and the original unity, the ‘Word’ his utterance into history, the ‘Spirit’ the opening up of history into the

7 Ibid., 36–37 (emphasis in original). 8 Ibid., 36 (emphasis in original). 9 Ibid., 38.

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i­ mmediacy of its fatherly origin and end. And precisely this Trinity of salvation history, as it reveals itself to us by deed, is the ‘immanent’ Trinity.10 If one grants this argumentation (which I do not), then the question arises as to the relevance of the traditional teaching on the appropriations, which maintained that our knowledge about the individual divine persons consists of no more than a manner of speaking; real knowledge about the Trinity in itself is not thereby given. The method of ‘appropriations’ consists in attributing certain names, qualities, or operations to one of the persons in preference to the others. Essentially, the qualities and names thus appropriated belong in equal measure to all the persons, for each is God, and therefore being itself, and therefore encompasses all of them; yet we speak of some of these characteristics or names as though they belonged to one person rather than to another. In reality, all attributes are common to each of the persons. Therefore, in the Trinity in salvation history, we do not see the triune persons in themselves individually. What Rahner’s position seems to come down to, then, is the replacement of the traditional teaching on appropriations. Without citing examples, he nevertheless does not doubt that there are appropriated statements in the teaching on the Trinity. It seems that Rahner rejects the applicability of appropriations when it is a matter of formal causality: “Not-appropriated relations of a single person are possible when we have to do, not with an efficient causality, but with a quasiformal self-communication of God, which implies that each divine person possesses its own proper relation to some created reality.”11 In other words, in the dimension of creation, which Rahner restricts to efficient causality, appropriations are not possible, but in the dimension of formal causality, real knowledge of the individual divine person is possible. No further qualification is mentioned, making one wonder whether Rahner believes that there are no appropriations at all in the Trinity of salvation history. This surely cannot be the case, but no criteria for determining individual instances are mentioned by him. In any case, he gives us no examples of appropriations. Is the idea of appropriations supposed to be no longer relevant? Are we not to allow for at least some appropriations? Is everything in the economic Trinity a revelation of the divine persons, or are there restrictions to this? From his interpretation of the divine formal causality in the eternal heavenly vision, Rahner concludes that the salvation-economical Trinity reveals real differences characterizing the immanent Trinity. He does not attempt, as 10 11

Ibid., 46–47. Ibid., 77. Rahner does not explain why this is so.

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far as I can see, to determine which aspects of the economical Trinity reflect the transcendent Trinity. But certainly not everything in Scripture can convey valid knowledge of the inner Trinity. 2

A Critique of Rahner’s Position

The decisive error in Rahner’s interpretation of Thomas, in my opinion, is his presumption that the cause of being is an efficient cause. He then misinterprets the original teaching of Thomas by understanding the term forma as though it meant some kind of content of experience or knowledge in the beatific vision. In fact, there is no basis for his claim that “according to Thomas in the direct beatific vision the essence of God himself represents the species (impressa) in the created spirit.”12 Rahner makes the distinction between the efficient causality of divine being and the formal causality of grace. His position is formulated more precisely in his Spirit in the World: That such a view ought not to be considered to lie necessarily outside Thomistic thought follows just from the fact that according to Thomas the ontological presence of God as the Absolute Being suffices in knowledge for the vision of God (presupposing the light of glory), so that the absolute being of God Himself is the impressed intelligible species for its immediate apprehension.13 But the actual teaching of Thomas is in reality quite different. What Thomas meant was not that “God’s being itself takes the place of the created species of the finite spirit.”14 First of all, God is regarded by Thomas as truth itself, not a truth, and precisely for this reason he can be united to consciousness (see p. 38 above). He is truth itself because he is being itself, and not a being. It is essential to view the situation as a question of being. No other approach can be adequate. As Aquinas explains: For, since the perfection of the intellect is what is true, in the order of intelligible objects, that object which is a purely formal intelligible will be truth itself. And this characteristic applies only to God, for, since the true is consequent on being, that alone is its own truth which is its own being. 12 Rahner, Schriften, 1:355 (my translation). 13 Rahner, Spirit in the World, 87. 14 Rahner, Schriften, 1:356 (my translation).

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But this is proper to God only […]. So, other intelligible subsistents do not exist as pure forms in the order of intelligible beings, but as possessors of a form in some subject. In fact, each of them is a true thing but not truth, just as each is a being but not the very act of being. So, it is manifest that the divine essence may be related to the created intellect as an intelligible species by which it understands, but this does not apply to the essence of any other separate substance. Yet, it cannot be the form of another thing in its natural being, for the result of this would be that, once joined to another thing, it would make up one nature. This could not be, since the divine essence is in itself perfect in its own nature. But an intelligible species, united with an intellect, does not make up a nature; rather, it perfects the intellect for the act of understanding, and this is not incompatible with the perfection of the divine essence.15 This dimension is different from normal knowledge. In other cases, knowledge can be compared to reading meanings and truths in a book. However, God is not a truth, but truth itself. More importantly, the book metaphor would be formal causality: meaning exists within the world. But Thomas denies that this rationality in the world is the basis of our knowledge; conspicuously, he never uses the book metaphor. It is rather the act of being as it occurs in the world that is grasped by our consciousness. In accordance with this, God can be united to a human consciousness because his essence is his being, not because he is truth. “The divine essence, however, has this exclusive characteristic, that our intellect can be united to it without the medium of any likeness. The reason is that the divine essence itself is its own existence or esse, which is true of no other form.”16 Divine being requires no intermediary in order to be united with human consciousness. It actualizes consciousness directly. It is united to consciousness, not as a content (a forma), but as the actualizer of consciousness: The divine essence is being itself [ipsum esse]. Hence as other intelligible forms which are not their own existence are united to the intellect by means of some entity, whereby the intellect itself is informed, and made in act; so the divine essence is united to the created intellect, as the object actually understood [ut intellectum in actu], making the intellect in act by and of itself [per seipsam faciens intellectum in actu].17 15 16 17

Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 51, n. 4. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium theologiae, ii, c. 9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 12, a. 2, ad 3.

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This is unique for God as being itself and can happen with nothing else that becomes an object of consciousness, for if anything else were to be united in its being with a consciousness, it would be subsumed purely and simply into this consciousness and become an accident of it. Through their essence—their ‘whatness’—is the manner in which beings normally enter consciousness. God must be clearly distinguished from pantheism. It should be noted that divine being is not identical with being in general. God embraces all beings as their cause, and in this sense, he is universal being, that is, as the cause of all beings. In himself, however, he is more than this. Aquinas explains the distinction: The divine essence is not something universal in being, for it is distinct from other things, but only in causing, since that which exists through itself [per se] is the cause of whatever is not through itself. Thus, being existing through itself is the cause of all being that is received in something else. And in this way the divine essence is the knowable [intelligibile] determining consciousness.18 If it has now been shown convincingly that we have no knowledge in eternal life of the individual divine persons of the immanent Trinity, then it follows that the theologian in this matter has two principle tasks, a negative and a positive one. He must show that teachings that deny the Trinity must be erroneous and that teachings that propose to know something about the immanent Trinity are invalid as well. This demands deeper reflection. God’s presence in eternal life is more than his presence in human being as creator; it is a presence in human consciousness. How is this possible? Or, better, what does it mean? A helpful beacon for the following thoughts is the enigmatic but precise scriptural verse that states that we shall see the light itself by God’s light (Ps 36, 9). Here, we have one and the same light as that which makes the seeing possible and that which is thereby ‘seen.’ What appears to be an impossibility provokes some thought. God’s presence in consciousness is analogous to the visibility of light. That which makes seeing possible is simultaneously that which is seen. Expressed in Scholastic terminology, what is called medium sub quo is also the medium quod. God’s contact with consciousness is comparable to the contact of light with the eye. In a manner of speaking, light is seen when a color is seen. The Scholastic term, well-known to Rahner, for the contact point of anything known in human consciousness is forma intelligibilis. For the present 18

Thomas Aquinas, Quodlibet vii, q. 1, a. 1, ad 1.

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question, it is crucial to examine this exactly. Two kinds of formae must be distinguished: forma taken in an ontological sense and in an epistemological one. In the ontological sense, it is that which makes something be what it is, so to speak, the ‘whatness’ of something. Essence (or quiddity), as distinguished from existence, is a forma. Examples would be whiteness, ‘dogness,’ and circularity. Conversely, the mode in which what is known is present in consciousness is the epistemological mode—for example, thoughts, notions, experi­ ences, and apprehensions. In some way (this does not have to be more closely described), the whatness of the object coincides with the whatness in consciousness; this can be called ‘objectivity.’ Expressed differently: the presence of an object in consciousness is the whatness of the object. The whatness of things, however, is not the basis of our grasping their whatness. Rather, the whatness is the result of the grasping of their being; whatness is precisely the manner in which we grasp realities. Thomas’ approach to our question consists in saying that the divine essence determines human consciousness in the way in which an ontological forma determines a reality. Thomas speaks here of the forma intelligibilis, but he means it—nota bene—in the ontological sense. This distinction is cardinal. When he says that God is somehow like a forma intelligibilis in the vision, he does not mean that God is a content of consciousness, but rather that he is related to consciousness like an ontological form, actualizing consciousness. The manner in which we are usually acquainted with the ontological form is in a relationship to matter. In the present case, it is not matter that takes on the forma, but consciousness. Thus, the divine influence consists in bestowing being on consciousness, but not epistemological content. Another Scholastic term, used also by Rahner, for the contact point between human consciousness and an object is species impressa. The adjectives impressa and expressa show that one is dealing with form in the epistemological sense, signifying a content of thought. To express it precisely, the species impressa is the whatness, the forma, of an object just as it begins to emerge into consciousness and before it is actually known. Once it is explicitly known, it is referred to as a species expressa; we would call it today a ‘thought’ or a ‘notion.’ It can also be described as the object of knowledge precisely as known. When I see a tree, what is in my mind is the species of the tree. I really do see the tree, but immaterially, not with the kind of being that the tree itself has, but nonetheless, its real ‘whatness.’ We experience or know concrete realities by assimilating them into the light of consciousness as far as possible. This means that we attain their forma but not their being itself. A better way of expressing it would be to say that we attain their being as forma. The forma is the knowability of the object. What is referred to as the forma intelligibilis is also called the

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species.19 This is any content of consciousness, not the act of knowing but rather what is known, the object, the content, the forma. Accordingly, when it comes to the question of human consciousness and God in eternal life, then the point of contact is called the forma intelligibilis. In the context of eternal life, it is anything but easy to understand what is meant by this, although the difficulty is not due to its complexity. Immediately after his death, a controversy began on the interpretation of what Thomas Aquinas meant by his teaching,20 and it still goes on today.21 The question is whether Thomas meant that God is united to the human being as a species, or rather as a species expressa, the (erroneous) presumption being that these are the only alternatives. An influential participant in the controversy is Rahner. For him, it is not simply ‘hairsplitting.’ For him, his interpretation of this teaching is the crucial point in his whole theology, although in his later writings, this remains merely implicitly presumed. What seems to be a minor question concerning a highly hypothetical aspect of the afterlife is nevertheless a decisive foundation of his whole theology. Rahner is convinced that, in its ontology of the beatific vision, medieval theology developed very clearly the doctrine that the vision can only come about by a self-­ communication of the divine essence, strictly as such, to the creature, and that this self-communication of God by means of a type of formal causality is the ontological presupposition for the proximity and immediacy which the visio beatifica implies, as a conscious process.22 Rahner understands Aquinas’ teaching to mean that God is to play the role of the species intelligibilis, that God becomes a content of human consciousness; God himself is seen. Rahner speaks quite clearly of a “supernatural formal object,” taken as the object of knowledge. He views the essential difference between the natural and the supernatural then as the difference between efficient and formal causality. Based on the teaching on the species in the beatific vision, he declares that the supernatural is grounded on formal causality, whereas the natural is a matter of efficient causality. In other words, God’s causality with regard to creation is efficient in Rahner’s eyes; he makes the world like a craftsman. In the supernatural sphere, God’s causality effects human 19 20 21 22

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 53. Cf. Hoye, “Gotteserkenntnis,” 282–284. Cf., for example, recently Berger, Thomismus, 367. Rahner, “The Concept of Mystery,” 66 (emphasis in original).

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consciousness, and this in the manner of an object of this consciousness. As Rahner expresses it: All strictly supernatural realities that we know of (the hypostatic union, visio beatifica and supernatural grace) have in common that in each of them a relationship of God’s to a creature is expressed that is not one of an efficient causality (of a positing-outside-of-the-cause), which, therefore, must fall under the relationship of a formal causality (a subsuminginto-the-ground [forma]).23 The far-reaching consequences of this thesis on the whole of Rahner’s theology is impressive, although it has generally gone unappreciated. The influence can be seen in the following quotation, which leaves nothing open to doubt: This distinction between efficient and quasi-formal causality in God is the clear basis of the essential and radical distinction between the natural and the supernatural. And this is not difficult to understand … Supernatural reality and reality brought about by a divine self-communication of quasi-formal, not efficient type, are identical concepts.24 On the basis of this idea, Rahner comes to his pioneering teaching on the Trinity, especially in respect of the distinction between the ‘economic’ and ‘immanent’ Trinity.25 Although he never mentions species intelligibilis impressa, to say nothing of expressa, Aquinas does say that God is like a forma intelligibilis, but not in the sense that he really assumes the role of a species intelligibilis or actually replaces it. Rather, according to his own explanation, God is comparable to a forma intelligibilis because the divine causality in the beatific vision is analogous [secundum proportionalitatem] to the influence of the forma; God is like a form [ut forma], or a quasi-form [quasi forma intellectus] of the mind.26 But, contrary to Rahner’s reading, the quasi forma is not an indication of the extraordinary kind of object of knowledge, what Rahner calls “transcendental.” In this context, the word forma does not refer to the epistemological term, but 23 Rahner, Theological Investigations, 1:329. 24 Rahner, “ Concept,” 66. Without Revelation this formal causality would be unknown to us; cf. idem, Theological Investigations, I:330. 25 Cf. Rahner, “Der dreifaltige Gott,” 336–337, n. 31; 338, n. 34; idem, “Der Begriff des Geheimnisses,” 94–97. 26 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, In iv Sententiarum, dist. 49, q. 2, a. 1, ad 8.

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rather to the principle of being (in the correlation forma-materia), as Thomas explicitly asserts in several places. In his Commentary on the Sentences, he explains unequivocally that calling it a forma means comparing it to a forma intelligibilis: “It should not be understood,” he states clearly, “as though the divine essence were a real forma of our mind.”27 Nor is God compared to a form “because a true one arises out of the divine essence and our mind.” The reason for the analogy lies rather in the fact that “the relationship of the divine essence to our mind is like the relationship of the form to matter.”28 Form is to be taken, therefore, in the ontological sense, but applied to consciousness, which is, of course, also a reality. It does not determine what consciousness concretely knows, but rather that consciousness takes place. It actualizes consciousness. In the Disputed Question on Truth, we find a more mature presentation of Thomas’s standpoint: It is not necessary that the divine essence become the forma of the mind itself, but that it relate to it as a forma; as one being in act arises out of a forma, which is a part of the reality, and matter, so one in knowing—­ although in a different way—is made out of the divine essence and the mind, while the mind is knowing and the divine essence is known through itself.29 The “different way” is crucial. If God really were a forma of consciousness, then he would be included within the horizon of human consciousness—an absurd idea. To be sure, Thomas upholds the faith teaching that the divine essence is seen. However, he differentiates in the following manner: The form by which an intellect sees God when it sees him through his essence is the divine essence itself. From this, however, it follows, not that the essence is that form which is a part of a thing in its existence, but only that in the act of knowing it has a relation similar to that of a form which is a part of a thing in its existence.30 The similarity with God, which is the goal of every creature, does not derive from the content, but rather from the mode of knowing. Understood in this 27 28 29 30

Ibid., sol. Ibid. Cf. Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 51; De veritate, q. 8, a. 1, ad 6. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 8, a. 1c. Ibid., ad 5.

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way, the divine essence is at one and the same time the object of the vision and that whereby it is seen.31 God nevertheless unites himself immediately with human consciousness. It is not a matter of some representation of God, a theophany. Thomas emphasizes that the forma by which God’s essence is seen is the divine essence itself, but this does not mean that God is a species (i. e., a content) of consciousness taken in a strict sense. Consciousness is rather being compared to matter, which is rendered a reality by the ontological forma. But, to repeat, God is not literally an ontological forma; his causality is only analogous to one. Aquinas’ explanation of this unique situation is undoubtedly somewhat complicated. While he acknowledges that the infinite and the finite cannot be related to one another, he does not admit that this implies that we can have no knowledge at all relating to God. It is enough to assert, as he puts it, a relationship similar to a relationship [proportionalitas quae est similitudo proportionum].32 In this sense, he claims that there is not a relation between God and humans in consciousness, but rather a “relationship” [proportionalitatem tantum].33 Furthermore, Thomas justifies his calling God a forma of the vision in the following manner: Whenever in a receiver two things are received of which one is more perfect than the other, the relationship of the more perfect to the less perfect is like the relationship of the form to that which can be perfected by it […]. And, therefore, since the created intellect, which exists in a created substance, is more imperfect than the divine essence existing in it, the divine essence is compared to that intellect in a certain way as a form.34 Texts like these, it must be pointed out, have been overlooked in studies of Thomas. Thomas argues that consciousness, the visio, is the act by which humankind most resembles God, and resembling God is the goal of every being. Furthermore, the ultimate goal of consciousness is seeing God, which is also the way God knows everything.35 The resemblance to God consists in the mode of 31

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 51; In iv Sententiarum, dist. 49, q. 2, a. 1c. 32 Cf. ibid., ad 6. 33 Cf. ibid. 34 Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 8, a. 1c. Cf. In iv Sententiarum, dist. 49, q. 2, a. 1, sol. 35 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 25; De veritate, q. 8, a. 1c.

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e­ xistence (i. e., consciousness) and the object [quod videtur] of this mode, as well as the causality [quo videtur] of it.36 Experience does not come about on the basis of re-thinking the thoughts of God, but on the basis of the being of the object. Consciousness comes in contact with being, and what occurs is knowledge—not the other way around. What is the alternative? What distinguishes the divine persons must be as negligible as possible, since we are dealing with absolute mystery. In a certain sense, this is just the opposite of Rahner’s position, which strives to make the Trinity as real and approachable as possible. Rahner’s expression ‘distinct manner of subsisting’ may be better than the term ‘person,’ which it is meant to replace, but it still includes some specific content, such that each person differs really from the others. Moreover, it is even supposed that the individual divine persons can be experienced in this life. The most promising alternative approach seems to be the traditional teaching on relations, presupposing divine being. 3

The Trinitarian Relations

If each of the three persons must be identical with God, having nothing that the others do not have, for otherwise they would not be God, then the question arises as to the basis of their distinctions? Or better, what is the best that we can say about them? For this purpose, the idea of “relations” seems to be the least inappropriate. The advantage of relations as a starting point lies in the fact that they possess a minimal amount of being, thus requiring as little difference between the three persons as possible. What, then, do the relations that determine the three divine persons consist of? To meet the requirements of the teaching of faith, besides representing a minimal amount of being, they must fulfill at least two conditions. First, they must occur within the godhead. Secondly, there must be no more and no less than three. Up until Rahner’s new conception, the importance of the category of ­relation in trinitarian theology was essential. For him, however, the teaching on the relations has the following purpose: “This appeal wishes only to show negatively and defensively that the basic difficulty—how two things which are identical with a third are not identical with each other—cannot, in the present

36

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iii, c. 51; In iv Sententiarum, dist. 49, q. 2, a. 1c.

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case, be shown to be insuperable.”37 Hence, for him, the purpose is negative. As he expresses it: These three as distinct are constituted only by their relatedness to one another, so that the axiom which asserts the identity of the essence and the distinction of the three may also be formulated (as Anselm was the first to do and as done by the Council of Florence) as follows: in God everything is one except where there is relative opposition (DS 1330).38 But this cannot really be true. The relations would suffice to distinguish the persons, but then each would possess a quality that the others lack, which is impossible, since each is absolute being. Precisely Aquinas’s reason for appealing to relations is Rahner’s reason for rejecting this approach. “To the extent that relations are understood to be the most unreal of realities,” Rahner writes, “they are less well suited to help us understand a Trinity which is most real.”39 Although they may not advance our understanding, in my opinion, they do suffice to answer a possible objection. As has been said, Rahner prefers the expression ‘distinct manner of subsisting’ over the traditional term ‘person.’ In my eyes, the term ‘person’ has the advantage of being undefined in faith teaching. It is more open than ‘subsisting,’ but it is also very susceptible to misunderstandings. Certainly it is at least not ‘person’ in our modern conception, which considers a person to be a center of consciousness and activity. Rahner explains his preference for the expression ‘manner of subsisting’ as follows: We must (once more) start from our basic axiom. The one self-communication of the one God occurs in three different manners of given-ness, in which the one God is given concretely for us in himself, and not vicariously by other realities through their transcendental relation to God. God is the concrete God in each one of these manners of given-ness—which, of course, refer to each other relatively, without modalistically coinciding. If we translate this in terms of ‘immanent’ Trinity, we may say: the one God subsists in three distinct manners of subsisting. ‘Distinct manner of subsisting’ would then be the explanatory concept, not for person, which refers to that which subsists as distinct, but for the ‘personality’ 37 Rahner, The Trinity, 69 (emphasis in original). 38 Ibid., 72–73 (emphasis in original). 39 Ibid., 103.

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which makes God’s concrete reality, as it meets us in different ways, into precisely this one who meets us thus. […] The single ‘person’ in God would then be: God as existing and meeting us in this determined distinct manner of subsisting.40 Basically, the following distinction can be made: We suppose that, when God freely steps outside of himself in self-­ communication (not merely through creation, positing other realities which are not himself), it is and must be the Son who appears historically in the flesh as Man. And it is and must be the Spirit who brings about the acceptance by the world (as creation) in faith, hope and love of the self-communication.41 But, if one appreciates what divine being is, then it makes no sense to speak of God’s stepping outside of himself. God is not reducible to a member of reality. What is needed is a position that can stand up to the most rigorous critique. The reader who is not interested in this question can skip over the rest of this chapter without detriment to the other questions treated in this book. Classic theology has made use of the idea of relations for this purpose. Granted, this negative approach may offer very little toward an understanding of God, but that is not its purpose. Its purpose is rather to argue against misunderstandings. The difference between the three persons must be as devoid of being as possible. And this must be made intellectually plausible. But new problems arise in pursuing this. It could be argued that the principle of individuality in the Trinity consists in a relation. But a relation normally is something that the subject has. How can the relations, then, not result in each person being not identical with God? To avoid this as much as possible, the notion of relation must be more precisely analyzed. Relations consist of (1) something absolute [ad se] and (2) a reference to something else [ad aliud]. It is possible that the subject and the reference can be distinguished. In the case of the defined persons, it is the reference that is the basis of the individualization of the persons, but it is not the presence of the relation in the subject. The reference, being external, does not enter into the composition with God’s ­essence, as Aquinas argues:

40 41

Ibid., 109–110 (emphasis in original). Ibid., 86 (emphasis in original).

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Relationship is not predicated of God according to its proper and formal meaning, that is to say, in so far as its proper meaning denotes comparison to that in which relation is inherent, but only as denoting regard to another [ad aliquid]. […] Relation is not to be predicated of God as regards the mode of inherence in himself in the strict meaning of relation; but rather by way of reference to another [ad aliud].42 Nevertheless, if the idea of relation is more closely examined, it seems that it does not suffice to serve as the basis for a distinction between the divine persons, since the basis for the relation must be something independent of the persons. We know of two kinds of relations: real relations and relations that exist only in thought. If I see something, then, in my consciousness, I have become my apprehension, but the object, which is really an object, is not changed by this at all. The change takes place only in the subject. I can distinguish objects without having an influence upon them. I can realize, for example, that what I saw an hour ago is different from what I now see. This leads to a dilemma. If the relation distinguishing the divine persons existed merely in thought, then it would not suffice to distinguish them really. If it were real and consisted of the divine essence, then, again, this would not suffice, since all three possess the divine essence. Then it would have to be something that is not the divine essence, and then, once again, the Son would consist of more than the divine essence. Finally, every relative depends on its correlative. And this dependence would mean that the person is not truly God. Moreover, since each person is called ‘God,’ there is no room for two gods. If we say that Socrates is a man and Plato is a man, we cannot say that they are one man. They are one in their humanity, but not in their individuality. Nor are human and donkey one because of the fact that they both are animals. This is a logical error. The qualifications of the divine persons would also seem to eliminate the possibility of each being truly God. Generating and being generated are ­opposites and seem to exclude one another—a father and a son cannot be identical. Relations in God are different from relations in us, where they are accidents. But God has no accidents, since everything in him is identical with his essence. “All perfections of all beings are in God, not in any composition, but in the unity of a simple essence, for the diversity of perfections which a created thing 42

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 28, a. 1, ad 1.

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acquires by many forms is God’s in His one and simple essence.”43 Consequently, the divine relations do not result in differences between the persons. What for us are accidents are, in God, his essence. For God, however, not having accidents does not constitute some sort of lack. The contents of accidents are sublated into his essence, bringing the difference between accidents and substance to unity without loss. Hence, insofar as a relation has being, it cannot be distinguished from the divine essence. But the aspect of the reference to something else [ad aliud] must not be included. As Thomas writes: Now whatever has an accidental existence in creatures, when considered as transferred to God, has a substantial existence; for there is no accident in God; since all in him is His essence. So, in so far as relation has an accidental existence in creatures, relation really existing in God has the existence of the divine essence in no way distinct therefrom. But in so far as relation implies respect to something else, no respect to the essence is signified, but rather to the other, to which it has the relation.44 As applied to the Trinity, the ad aliud of the relations is abstracted from the real relation. Thomas points out that, taken in this sense, the divine relations do not belong to the divine essence, but rather to the other to whom they are related.45 4

The Nonbeing of Relations

The being of the relations is the being of the one God. The plurality, called persons, does not mean that there are three gods, for the relations have no other being than the divine essence, while the ad aliud aspect, which is determinative, has practically no being. In the case of human beings, this would not be possible, since the essence of humanity is not one and the same with the individual. Several men may have the human essence, but none of them are that essence. In other words, humanity does not exist; humanity is not an individual human.46 In God, this cannot be, for in divine reality, all is one, including the being of the relations. 43 44 45 46

Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iv, c. 14, n. 8. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 28, a. 2c. Cf. ibid. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iv, c. 14.

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Trinitarian relations depend on aspects, on references that are without b­ eing: “From the fact, then, that one puts a relation in God it does not follow that there is in him some dependent being, but only that there is in him some aspect in which aspect the essence of relation [ratio relationis] consists.”47 What is essential is that relations in the Trinity are not full of meaning; rather, “the distinction of the divine persons is minimal.”48 Precisely in revealing as little as possible lies their significance. The rationality of the appeal to relations suffices to avoid mythology, and no more than this is required. The nonbeing of the ad aliud of relations suffices to avoid tritheism. Let us now examine these three relations more closely. 5

The Individuality of the Persons

Since the persons are identical with the divine essence, as has been said, what comprises the person must be as ontologically negligible as possible, but without being simply nothing or a mere product of thought. The ontological grounding of the person must take place within the godhead. Since the most internal action that we know of is consciousness, in which thinking and loving take place, we must take it as a starting point. The weakest ontological characteristic that we know, albeit not completely devoid of being, is relation. If I am small compared with Peter and big compared with Paul, these are relations having ontological meaning. I am hardly changed myself by such relations; I do not become bigger or smaller. Nevertheless, the relations exist and belong to me. 6

The Inner Emanation

Faith, as distinguished from reason, teaches that God is one and three, and that the Son emanates from the Father, but without being separate from the Father, and that the Spirit emanates from the Father and Son without being separate from them. In other words, the Father, Son, and Spirit are distinguished from one another—without presuming any definition of the notion of person—and yet are one God, having one and the same essence and being. With this teaching, faith presents human reason with an extraordinary challenge. This is a situation, in any case, that does not occur in the world we know. 47 Ibid. 48 Ibid.

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If one thinks about it, it would seem that three persons and one God is an impossibility. Divine reality, having no parts and including all things, is helpful to understand it. The generation of the Son is best treated first. We know of no generation that results in something new and does not involve change. Whenever a change takes place in our world, that which is changed goes from potency to act, for change is analyzed as ‘the act of the potential as such.’ This would imply, in regard to God, that the Son cannot himself be God, since he is not eternal and, furthermore, includes in himself potency. But God is pure actuality; potency is meaningless in his case. This is an essential specific of divine reality. It can be reflected further that, in accordance with our normal experience, whatever is generated usually receives its nature from its generator. The child receives human nature from its parents. This would mean that the Son receives his nature from the Father, as is the case with normal generation. But a child does not receive a part of the human nature of the parents. It has the same nature but is a separate individual. If the generation of the Son were like this, then it would mean two Gods—or no God. Or, if he received only part of the divine nature, then God would be divisible. Or, if the whole nature were transferred from the Father to the Son, then the Father would cease to be God. Nor can the divine nature be increased such that it would, so to speak, overflow into the Son. In conclusion, the Son would be neither a true son nor truly divine. The problem is how to distinguish the Son from the Father if both are God. It would seem that the Son cannot be truly God himself. But, according to faith teaching, this denial is excluded. What then individuates the persons? What distinguishes the divine persons must be something other than the divine essence. Being common to all three, the divine essence cannot serve the purpose of being the distinguishing principle. This other would then have to have the divine essence. But ‘having’ means that it cannot be God, since the third reality has no potentiality and having implies the possibility of not having. Otherwise, each person would be a composite, and hence not God. 7

The Generation of the Son

It is clear that the differentiating principle of the Trinity must be both within the divine essence and not something real that one person has and the others do not have. How can different emanations be explained without presupp­os­ ing something in one person that is not in the others—or at least, what

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e­ xplanation would exhibit the least ontological content? In any case, the basis for the distinction must lie within the godhead. Now, we know of different kinds of emanation in things, and the degrees of immanence in things differ. The highest degree of immanence takes place in consciousness. Taking this view as a point of departure, a hierarchy can be disclosed. Inanimate bodies have the lowest place in this hierarchy. For them to emanate something, they must be acted upon by some external cause. For one thing to emanate, for example, a flame, it must be ignited by something else. A higher level can be found in plants, which are living beings, for they produce seeds and fruit from an inner power. But the power is not completely internal, since plants get their potency from water, through their roots, and the sun. The seeds or fruits then produce new plants, which are separate from the original plant. Thus, it is an emanation that originates to a certain extent from within, but what finally emanates is external. Animals enjoy a higher form of life than plants in the sense that they perform emanations that remain within themselves. An external object initiates sensible apprehension. The nerves react and send the message on to the brain. Then it moves to consciousness, and there an apprehension occurs. At the beginning of this process, the emanation comes from without, but it ends within the animal. The beginning and end of each step are not identical; no sensitive power ever reflects on itself. Hence, in this case, the emanation process always consists of two elements. A still higher form of emanation is that which occurs in consciousness insofar as it reflects upon itself, having itself as the object of its knowledge. Here the two elements are one—at least to a certain degree, for human self-­reflection itself is never a perfect self-reflection. We require some object of knowledge in order to reflect on ourselves. While I see something, for example, I am concomitantly aware of myself as the one seeing. Hence, even self-reflection is open to degrees. It is thinkable that a higher degree would imply that the selfreflection takes place without any intermediary, some object of knowledge that is the occasion for the reflection. This would be a perfect self-reflection. Whereas human self-reflection is a reflection that takes place in consciousness, divine reflection is a reflection of being. In divine reality, it is the divine essence itself that comes to reflection. Human self-reflection is not the human being itself; our self-reflection is not a human being, while God’s self-reflection must be God. One could call it ontological self-reflection, whereas human selfreflection is merely epistemological. In the case of humans, what is understood is neither our being nor the object, the knowledge of which gives occasion for our self-reflection, for the tree

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we are looking at is not in our thought. In our thought, we do see the tree in the intention of our thought—what is called ‘truth.’ It is one thing to understand the tree and another to understand our apprehension of the tree. The thought in us is not our own consciousness. The act of being that we are concerned with is the being of the intention, and the act of being of the intention is nothing other than its being known. Being known is not the being of consciousness; it is rather an accident of consciousness. The being of consciousness, in other words, encompasses more than the act of understanding. In ‘I’ there is a comparable relationship between subject and object: I am both the observer and the observed. That is the whole idea of the ‘I.’ But, in the ‘I,’ they are one. Thus, we can distinguish two aspects and speak of the subjective ‘I’ and the objective ‘I.’ Another example: One house may be small in comparison with a larger one and large in comparison with a smaller one. Thus, one and the same house is large and small. In God, however, being and understanding are identical. In him, all three are one: his consciousness, the intention, and the thing understood. These observations provide us to a certain degree with a basis for conceiving divine generation, which grounds the Son. The only feasible approach for us is to take self-consciousness as our starting point and use our knowledge of ourselves as an analogy in order to say something meaningful about the emanation of the Son. Whatever is understood exists in the understanding insofar as it is understood. For example, when I see a tree, the apprehension of the tree is in me. When we reflect on our own consciousness, then this reflection, of course, is also in our consciousness. It is in itself, not only as identified with itself by its essence (which seems trivial) but also as grasped by itself in the act of reflecting. Consequently, in the case of God, he must be in himself as the thing understood in him who understands. In traditional theology the term ‘word’ is used for this presence. God’s Word is, as it were, God understood, just as the tree in my understanding is the tree understood, the notion understood [intentio intellecta]. As Thomas states: Since in God being and understanding are identical, the intention understood in him is his very intellect. And because understanding in him is the thing understood (for by understanding himself he understands all other things), it follows that in God, because he understands himself, the intellect, the thing understood, and the intention understood are all identical.49 49

Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iv, c. 11.

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Since God does not change but is eternally actually existent, his Word must have always been in him. His Word, therefore, is coeternal with him and does not arise in time, as is the case with us. Hence, the first verse of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word.” To summarize, the being of the divine Word is identical with the divine intellect and this is God himself. In divine being, all is one, such that, in God, the act of thinking is God himself. The Word is an act of thinking. Hence, the Word is the divine being and divine essence. This is different from the human way of thinking. When our consciousness understands itself, the act of understanding is not identical with consciousness itself. Consciousness is one thing and its act another, although they are not separated. Consciousness is in potency to understanding before the actual act of understanding takes place. The conscious notion is a being that is different from the being of consciousness itself. It is being-understood. In human beings, the act of self-consciousness is not the human being, as it is in God’s case. Our notion of ourselves through self-­ reflection really refers to us, but only inadequately. It is certainly not identical with our being. One cannot truly say that the human word is human purely and simply—I am not my self-consciousness. But it can be said that what we understand is a word. In the case of the Word of God, the Word is not just a thought, but something really and substantially existing in its own right. It is not just divine; it is itself God himself. It is one with God both in species and in number, so to speak. Hence, it is unthinkable that there be more than one God. In our concrete world, several individuals can have the same nature without losing their identity. Here the essence of something differs from its act of being. That is actually what concreteness comes down to. One cannot say of a human that he or she is his or her own being, but in God, this manner of speaking is appropriate. Nor can it be said that a person is his or her essence, that is, his or her own humanity. But this too is the case in God. Although in God everything is one, it can nevertheless be said that his subsistence, his essence, and his being are included in him. He is subsistent in the sense that he is not in something else. He is essence in the sense that he is what he is. He is in act insofar as the act of being is his. Therefore, it can be said that, in God, there must be included what is meant by the subject that is perceiving, by the act of perceiving, and by the intention of what is being perceived, the Word. Furthermore, in regard to the Word (that is, the interior intention), one knows that it emerges from the one knowing in the conformity with his way of knowing, since the Word is the product of this knowing. The interior Word, the object of the perception, is conceived and formed in the divine consciousness. Thus, the Word proceeds from God in his very act of perceiving, and so the

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Word is related to God, who is perceiving, as to him from whom it is, this being the essence of the idea of a word. From this it can be concluded that there exists a distinction of relation among the one perceiving, the act of perceiving, and what is perceived (the Word), although all three are in their essence one. The Word has a relationship to its source. That explains why it is not quite adequate to say, ‘God was the Word,’ since this would eliminate all distinction. The expression ‘This was in the beginning with God’ upholds the possibility of a relation. In Colossians (1, 15) we read that the Word of God is “the image of the invisible God.” This can be interpreted in a way that conforms to what has just been said. By comparison, in human knowledge, we experience two kinds of relations between exemplars and images. When the carpenter has an idea of the thing to be made, this idea is the exemplar and the product that arises thanks to it is the image of it. Conversely, when I see a tree, the tree is the exemplar and what is in my seeing is the image. This can be applied to God. A word interiorly conceived grasps the thing perceived in the sense of a kind of essence or similarity of the thing. In such cases, the likeness of one thing existing in another is either an exemplar, if it is the origin of the thing perceived, or an image of it, if the other is the origin. With this in mind, the role of the divine Word can be better understood, for it is both exemplar and image. God perceives both himself and other things. His knowledge is the exemplar of whatever he perceives of the other things. It is the image of God himself, and out of this divine consciousness emerges the Word. The image of God that is perceived in the Word must perceive the essence of God, and not just some characteristic, as is the case with the senses. The intellect, to the contrary, grasps the essence of its object. The notion of image can be easily misunderstood when it is applied to knowledge. When I see a tree, I have an image of the tree in my perception, but not the tree itself. Even when I perceive the essence of something, and not just accidental characteristics, the object is present as an image but, of course, not in its own being. When we are dealing with images of persons in an ontological sense (rather than in an epistemological sense), then the image can be called the son of the father, for the son also possesses human nature in an ontological sense. It is, so to speak, an ontological image. For this reason, the Word of God is not just an image, but can justly be called the Son. As a result, one can speak, as the teaching of faith expresses it, of a kind of generation within God. This requires a further detailed analysis. In the case of human generation, the procession of a son from a father is natural, since both have the same nature. Accordingly, in God, this must also hold, seeing that the

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Word of God is called the Son. We can draw a comparison to our way of conceiving a word. Some things we know by nature, like the principle of noncontradiction. Other things can arise only as a result of reasoning, and hence are not present naturally in our intellect. In God, however, whatever God knows he knows by nature, his knowledge being identical with his nature and his being. So, when God knows himself, this Word proceeds from himself. Furthermore, since the Word of God is the divine likeness and identical with the divine knowing, this generation results in a likeness to God, from whom the generation takes place with an identity of nature. This is exactly what takes place in the generation of living things, for what is generated comes from the generator as its likeness and has the same nature. Consequently, one can speak of generation in God in a really true sense. Therefore, the Son of God is not generated by the will of God; the generation is not the result of a decision, but instead arises out of the divine nature. Moreover, one may legitimately speak of the Word in God as being conceived by God, since it remains in God.50 In God’s case, the conceived Word has all the perfection of the generated Word and need not be first born and separate from the generator. Without there being a delivery, it is complete and independent of God speaking the Word. (All that distinguishes them is relation.) Therefore, in regard to the generation of the divine Word, the conception and the delivery are identical. In regard to the divine Word, however, there is no development such as there is in the case of corporeal things, as in the course of a pregnancy. The conception of the Word is at one and the same time the birth of the Word. It is comparable to illumination: whatever is illuminated, at the initial time of being illuminated, is illuminated. When a conscious word arises, there is, moreover, no development and no change. It at once both is conceived and exists, at once born and distinct. In God, we have the same simultaneous situation, which is even more pronounced by the fact that both the Word and the Father exist eternally, without change. Simultaneously, the Word is conceived, brought forth, and is nonetheless independent, existing in its own right. These reflections on the Word remain, to be sure, hypothetical. We can do no better than form conjectures on the basis of what is known to us about our own consciousness. As Thomas Aquinas, in sum, acknowledges: “Reason cannot prove this adequately, but it can form a kind of conjecture by analogy to what takes place in us.”51

50 51

Cf. ibid. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 8, a. 1, ad 12.

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This suffices in order to avoid the implication, on the one hand, that there are three gods and, on the other hand, that the three persons are not somehow a real threesome. 8

The Inner Emanation of the Third Person (the Holy Spirit)

It is possible for thinking about the interior life of God to stop at this point. It is not reason that continues thinking on its own, but reason provoked by faith teaching, for faith teaches that there are three persons in God. The challenge for reason, then, is to conceive of a third person in some way—at least to the extent that such a concept can be defended against rejections of the teaching. Furthermore, the question must also be answered of why there can be no more than three persons. Consciousness, as we know it, has two movements: it receives objects and it moves out toward objects. This is not the differentiation in salvation history according to which the Father is characterized by creation, the Son by the life of Jesus, and the Holy Spirit by the following period of the Church. In our experience of consciousness we can distinguish between the intellect and the will, the will being the inclination that arises out of knowledge. It can be said that the will is that aspect of the intellect that consists of a striving or inclination. We know of no kind of consciousness that does not contain a striving. Nor do we know of a further act of consciousness above and beyond knowing and willing. In every consciousness, there is striving for the end of the person and for the good. Love summarizes the acts of the will. The desire for something arises from our love of it. If we acquire what we love, then joy arises in the will, but if we fail to get it, sadness arises. Hate arises when we are confronted with things that keep us from the beloved. Then hate against them can arise. These are all aspects of love (I have treated them in my book on virtues.52) Love implies that what is in the intellect of the one loving is also in that person’s will. These are two essentially different kinds of presence, so to speak, passive and active. In contrast to our experience of our own will, God’s will must be identical with God himself. We have a will, but we cannot say that we are our will. As the essence of God, his being, is identical with his intellect, so too is his being identical with his will. Therefore, God’s intellect and will are the same reality. It can 52

Cf. Hoye, Tugenden.

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be further concluded that there must be love in God. Indeed, he himself is his love. Furthermore, what God loves is in principle himself, his own goodness (which includes all things). Again, therefore, there is a unity in God. God himself is both the lover and his beloved, and he himself is his will. “Necessarily, therefore, does the love by which God is in the divine will as a beloved in a lover proceed both from the Word of God and from the God whose Word he is.”53 Moreover, God’s act of will—that is, his loving—is his being, just as his will is identical with his being. Thus, God’s being in his will is essential, and not accidental, as in our case. In other words, his loving of himself coincides with his own essence. It follows then that the divine love proceeds both from the divine Word and from the God whose Word it is. The intellectual word takes place and represents an object. Without the Word, God would not be known. But it is not the Word alone that is loved. Since this kind of proceeding is not a generation (which characterizes the Son), the proceeding by which something comes to exist in the will is not productive; the beloved is not begotten. To the contrary, the beloved is the goal to which the will tends; it is not like a parent. Consequently, the third person cannot be called a son. The term ‘spirit’ is more appropriate, being a kind of spiration that moves the lover toward the beloved. The impulse of a living thing from within belongs to spirit. Since the spirit in this case is divine, it can be called a ‘holy spirit,’ as faith in fact does. To be sure, this explanation is admittedly not fully adequate. The ad aliud is, so to speak, not being, but still it is something. What does the revelation of the Trinity tell us about life? What is its practical relevance? From the precise analysis that it demands, we can, to a certain degree, learn something about ourselves and our conscious life, but above all, it accentuates the fact that God is incomprehensible, that life and the world remain ultimately a mystery. Revelation is not the alleviation of the incomprehensibility; to the contrary, it underscores it. The primary effect of the trinitarian revelation lies in the emphasis on the absolute mysteriousness of God— and ultimately of reality. In the final resort, God is not the content of religion, states Thomas Aquinas poignantly, but the end of religion.54 And the primary purpose of trinitarian theology lies not in rendering God existentially close to us. 53 54

Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, iv, c. 11. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i-ii, q. 81, a. 6, ad 2.

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Life before death is a preparation for life after death. In our present life, we are engaged in the world; and in this, the preparation for eternal life consists. Eternal life in God comes, so to speak, after death. We do not have a direct conscious relation to God now. Love of God does not compete with love of neighbor. Rather, one leads ultimately to the other.

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Chapter 16

Divine Being as the Ground of Laughter Laughter is an intriguing phenomenon, but not easy to analyze. How can the ability to laugh at the humorous be explained? Why do human beings seem to be the only creatures that find the comical something to laugh about? What does laughter have to do with religion? 1

Standing above the Concrete Situation

In order to laugh at the humorous, one must somehow stand above the situation. Laughing requires a sense of freedom. How do we stand above the situation of which we ourselves are a part? We do not have to be on top of the whole universe. By somehow appreciating the act of being, we already stand above the incongruous situation. The ­situation— including all that belongs to it, the positive as well as the negative—­appears, then, as a mode of being, integrating the incongruity and the congruity, which otherwise may appear disparate. There are, of course, degrees of the humorous, ranging from slapstick to irony and other kinds of linguistic humor, which are not accessible to everyone. Even tragedies can be laughable—at least small tragedies. A person slips on a banana peel and falls down, and we laugh spontaneously, but if we see that serious injury has resulted, our laughing ceases. But is it possible to stand above serious tragedies? Health is an aspect that we human beings do not transcend so easily. Can one laugh about sickness? To a certain degree, some are able to do it. One might find the situation comical when a solemn speaker suddenly is attacked by a case of hiccups. Not that we think that hiccups are good. Nonetheless, if they are subsumed into a somewhat higher benevolence, we see the human—the very human—situation, simultaneously both its sublimity and its frailty. Parents laugh at their small children, for example, when they are learning to walk, but not if their helplessness is due to a physical disability. I might laugh at a solemn speaker who suddenly had an attack of hiccups, but not in the case of a heart attack. Hiccups stand in opposition to the dignity of the speaker, but when we laugh at it, the injury is reconciled with the dignity.

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Laughter is different from tolerance, for it encounters the negative in a different way than tolerance does. While tolerance endures the negative in order to give acknowledgement to a higher value, laughter harmonizes the negative and the positive. It subsumes incongruity into a more extensive congruity, and does so in a benevolence that embraces both. In contrast to laughter, the virtue of tolerance is not enjoyable. We like to laugh, and we like people who laugh. A common way of making oneself likeable is to laugh a lot. According to Helmut Plessner, it is constitutive for the comical that it consist in a “contradiction that is nevertheless seen as a unity and wants to be accepted.”1 How does laughter unite a contradiction? Normally, uniting a contradiction is accomplished by rising to a higher level of abstraction. For example, red is not green but both come together in the notion ‘color.’ That animals of the same species kill one another is bad for the individual loser, but it may be good for the species as a whole. Even body and spirit can be united if we take the viewpoint of the act of being; both body and spirit belong to human being. Indeed, all contradictions can be finally reconciled if we see them as modes of being. In this way, colors and sounds and dogs can all be united. Laughing frees us for a moment from the normal restraint of some of our impulses and inclinations. The negative is not affirmed for its own sake, but is integrated into the comprehensive affirmation of the whole. At least to a certain degree, suffering is included.2 In retrospect, even past pains can appear humorous. For a brief time, laughter realizes a final comprehensive harmonizing. One is able to laugh at oneself, and even at own’s own religion—at least for a moment. As G.K. Chesterton’s famous aphorism wisely asserts: “The test of a good religion is whether you can joke about it.” Within himself or herself, a person embodies a contradiction that comprises the basis of morality. He or she is able to view the contradiction in his or her person as a unity, as if from the outside, and thus can act autonomously, seeing self as one factor of the considerations among several. Laughter includes an ambivalence between sympathy and distance from the humorous. The comical realizes “the painless contradiction.”3 Laughter implies an all-embracing sympathy with realities and the way they are. Rahner has expressed this unexpected aspect without timidity:

1 Plessner, Lachen und Weinen, 111 (my translation). 2 Cf. Moody, Lachen und Leiden, 133. 3 Bühler, “Warum braucht das Pathetische den Humor?” 170.

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We are thinking here of that redeeming laughter that springs from a childlike and serene heart. It can exist only in one who is not a ‘heathen,’ but who like Christ (Heb 4, 15; cf. 1 Pt 3, 8) has thorough love for all and each, the free, detached ‘sympathy’ that can accept and see everything as it is: the great greatly, the small smally, the serious seriously, the laughable with a laugh. Because all these exist, because there are great and small, high and low, sublime and ridiculous, serious and comical, because God wills these to exist—that is why this should be recognized, that is why the comical and the ridiculous should be laughed at. But the only one who can do this is the person who does not adapt everything to himself, the one who is free from self, and who like Christ can ‘sympathize’ with everything; the one who possesses that mysterious sympathy with each and everything, and before whom each can get a chance to have its say.4 It has been said that laughter is, in particular, a reference to salvation in the Christian sense. Peter Berger calls it “a promise of salvation.”5 And the theologian Helmut Thielicke makes the same claim: “It seems to me that humor is nothing less than the anticipation, a first modest share in what the eschaton will bring as fulfillment.”6 For him, “the essence of humor” consists in “the laughter of the overcoming of the world.”7 It relativizes the world and, at the same time, indicates its final significance.8 Romano Guardini has also expressed the idea that eternal salvation might be the ground of laughter.9 2

Laughter Frees us from the Realities of the World

Laughter breaks through the normal world, but without abandoning it. Whoever laughs feels a compulsion to express affirmation of a higher, more real reality. We are forced to leap to a perspective that sees realities of normal life in an ultimate context. Laughter brings new knowledge, to be sure, not very strong but luminous. It is a spontaneous insight. We stand outside of the world 4 Rahner, “Mardi Gras Tuesday.” 5 Berger, Erlösendes Lachen, xi (my translation). 6 Thielicke, Das Lachen der Heiligen und Narren, 76 (my translation). 7 Ibid., 73 (my translation). 8 Cf. ibid., 94. 9 Cf. Guardini, Freiheit—Gnade—Schicksal, 186–187.

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and outside of ourselves as in eternity.10 We are lighter and freed from normal life, including ourselves. “In laughter we are made free and light in an incomprehensible way.”11 Berger compares it with “an island that pushes itself into the ocean of everyday life.”12 Both religion and the comic spirit “intimate what the universe is, that it involves a basic coherence overreaching passing incoherences, an order superseding disorder, an enveloping cosmos beyond the semblances of chaotic detail.”13 What gives us the capacity to transcend the comical situation and laugh? It would seem to arise through a kind of participation in divine being, or at least in its perspective. Whether we refer to the whole world or to a concrete comical situation would then seem to make no difference. It is the same insight to see the concrete as real and the whole world as real. The act of being, of which one is aware, is the same in both cases. 3 All-Embracing and Ultimate Benevolence For Dante, laughing is even an eschatological phenomenon. In his depiction of heaven in the Divine Comedy, laughter is essential. Through the beauty of her laughter, Beatrice (etymology: she who makes happy) raises Dante up by degrees from his earthly perspective to heavenly perspectives. At the commencement of his own ascent, before entering the first heavenly sphere, Dante receives the ability to look directly at the noonday sun without being blinded. But this is just the beginning. There are nine celestial spheres and each one involves a new deeper capacity to see and to be happy. Thanks to her overview, Beatrice can laugh, like the encouraging laughter of parents at the first attempts of their toddler to walk. Through the power of her beauty, in particular the beauty of her laughter, Beatrice gradually teaches and empowers Dante to be increasingly happy. When he finally reaches the seventh heaven, Dante looks back and is able to see the whole universe. He laughs.14 Arriving at a still higher perspective, which also encompasses the negative, he sees “a laughing of the universe [un riso de l’universo].”15 Seen as a whole, the universe proves to be an overreaching 10 Cf. Swabey, Comic Laughter, 241. 11 Richert, Kleine Geistesgeschichte des Lachens, 155. 12 Berger, Erlösendes Lachen, 242 (my translation). 13 Swabey, Comic Laughter, 241. 14 Cf. Paradiso, canto xxii, 126–135. 15 Ibid., canto xxvii, 4.

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c­ ongruity embracing the incongruous. This is a sublime theological insight, perhaps attainable only in an eschatology. Dante has developed a unique eschatology. An eschatology of laughter! In Italian, laughter [riso] rhymes with paradise [paradiso]. In the Paradiso, the rhyme occurs nine times. In the Vita nuova, nine is a symbol for Beatrice16 and occurs often. Three being the root of nine, Beatrice stands in close contact with God, who is three and one. Before the Divine Comedy, the word laughter seldom occurs, whereas it occurs seventy times in the Comedy: either in the sense of laughter or smiling or in speaking about these.17 Dante must acquire at each stage a new ability to be happy. By gazing at Beatrice’s beauty, he gradually gains new power to see reality. At first he is unable to see at all, but then he learns to see and is able to look at Beatrice’s smile. She says to him: “Open your eyes and look at all my splendor; you have seen things that empower you to sustain the light of my smile.”18 The power of Beatrice’s laughter becomes clear when Dante at one point notices that she is not laughing. She explains to him that, since he does not yet have the power to bear this degree of happiness, if she were to laugh too soon, he would be totally annihilated like a tree hit by a lightning bolt.19 So ­powerful—and dangerous—is her beauty. So rapid is their ascent that Dante concentrates only on the increased loveliness of Beatrice, which grows ever more radiant as they mount from heavenly sphere to sphere. But beauty is ambivalent. The temptation is to stop advancing and to think that her beauty is itself the heavenly happiness: “In her eyes / Was lighted such a smile, / I thought that mine / Had div’d unto the bottom of my grace / And of my bliss in Paradise.”20 But Beatrice warns him explicitly against this: “Vanquishing me with a beam / Of her soft smile, she spake: Turn thee, and list. / These eyes are not thy only Paradise.”21 Beauty is perhaps the strongest temptation. At the end of his ascent, he sees Beatrice seated before God; she smiles at him and then turns her head toward God.

16 17 18 19 20 21

Cf. Föcking, “Qui habitat in caelis,” 77–96, 92. Cf. ibid., 87. Paradiso, canto xxiii, 46–48. Cf. ibid., canto xxi, 1–13. Ibid., canto xv, 34–36. Ibid., canto xviii, 21–23.

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Laughter seems to be an eschatological phenomenon. It is an anticipation of heavenly happiness. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus promises: “Blessed are you who weep now, you shall laugh!” (Lk 6, 21). 4

Laughter: a Realization of Religion?

If one has reached the perspective of divine being, so to speak, the heavenly perspective, then it can be understood why one can laugh over the comical, for it is a reenactment of God’s own creating affirmation of reality. When we laugh at the comical, we submit ourselves in a certain sense to God. Laughter is not a proof of God’s existence, but it does imply a reference to God, although more like a vision or an awareness, something other than an understanding or comprehension. It is a reference to the Sacred. Thielicke calls it “a symbolic, a highly fragmentary anticipation of this overcoming of the world.”22 It is comparable to the theological virtue of faith, which holds fast to God without apprehending him. The sociologist Berger calls it a “signal of ­transcendence—or if one prefers, a short, sudden glimpse of him who is playing that cosmic hide-and-seek game with us.”23 Berger calls it “a manifestation of a sacramental universe.”24 It is relevant that laughter over the comical is accompanied by benevolence. Of course, the laughter of derision is anything but benevolent. The comical is subsumed into a blanketing positive confirmation. The incongruence in the comical, its contradictoriness, is brought to harmony. The positive affirmation overrides the negative component without extricating it. “The mood it excites is genial, compassionate, and inclusive,” writes Swabey.25 It is no wonder that we like laughing individuals. Laughter seems then to have something to do with religion. But how can a little comical happening have religious significance? I think that this can be explained if one keeps being in mind. The incoherence and the coherence can be seen together if one regards them as acts of being. Since the same divine being is the creator of concrete individuals as well as the whole, laughing at a concrete situation has religious relevance respecting the whole.

22 Thielicke, Das Lachen der Heiligen und Narren, 62–63. 23 Berger, Erlösendes Lachen, 253 (my translation). 24 Ibid. 25 Swabey, Comic Laughter, 93.

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A good proof of God’s existence does not start with the world and ask, for example, about its cause. It starts with something in the world. In order to think about creation, we do not have to have the universe in mind. Any concrete reality is enough. Since the being that I can see in the concrete reality is not separate from being itself, I can speak of the universe. The question of whether God has created everything is not the same question as that of whether God exists. When he treats the question of whether everything is made by God, Thomas is much farther on in the Summa than when he treats the proofs of God’s existence.26 This offers us an explanation for the observation that laughter is specifically human, for only humans have an awareness of the act of being. To laugh, one must stand above the situation, and religion stands above everything, including itself. In fact, it is considered a sign of a good religion that its believers can laugh even at it. Søren Kierkegaard has said that “humor is the incognito of religiosity.”27 He adds the observation that humor resembles religion in that it includes the negative. Swabey writes: Humor has this close kinship with the religious outlook, not simply because it achieves (like irony) a transcendental standpoint, but because it includes awareness of what Kierkegaard calls human guilt—of man’s responsibility yet inadequacy to measure up to the absolute Idea—so that in consequence suffering is of the very nature of his existence.28 Suffering is, so to speak, for a brief moment in a fleeting apprehension reconciled with the whole. According to Rahner,29 the mystery of eternity lies hidden in every instance of everyday laughter, deeply but really. Common everyday laughter shows that 26

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 44, a. 1; Summa contra Gentiles, ii, c. 15; De ­potentia, q. 3, a. 5. 27 Kierkegaard, Abschließende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift zu den philosophischen Brocken, 2:138 (my translation from German). 28 Swabey, Comic Laughter, 94. “Sometimes, indeed, seeing the point of a joke has been compared to a religious insight, as similar to a small-scale conversion, in other words to a providential gift or glimpse of ultimates, in which the sudden illumination of the joke claims us for its own. But in neither case, we should point out, does the unexpectedness of the event preclude preliminary effort; for usually the lover of the comic has to fit himself through training for a wider, acuter sensitivity to it, no less than the religious man in a higher sense has to prepare himself through discipline for the moment of revelation. Despite the gulf between the two, in both we should claim there is an ontological insight” (ibid., 163). 29 Cf. Rahner, “Vom Lachen und Weinen des Christen,” 13–14.

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a person accepts reality, even including the powerful and eternal assent of the blessed in heaven who express their amen to everything that God brought about and let happen. Laughter is a prevision of the eternal praise at the end of time, when they will laugh who had to weep here. Our laughter embodies praise of God, Rahner argues, “because it is the promise of laughter that is promised to us as victory in the judgment.”30 5

Does God Laugh?

Does God laugh? Of course, we do not know, but one can well imagine it, since laughing is a sign of happiness.31 The divine covenant with Israel, which was founded in Isaac (Gn 17, 19), gives us a further indication. There exists a tradition in Christian thought that interprets the Hebrew name Isaac as ‘God laughs’ or ‘God smiles’ or ‘God laughed’ or ‘may God laugh.’ Isaac’s conception also involves laughter. His mother, Sara, along with Abraham, laughs at God when she hears that she is to conceive a child in her old age. The discrepancy between her age and the promise of a child is, in her eyes, comical. The contrast between the reality and the possibility makes her laugh. Interestingly, God does not reprimand her for her faithlessness. Rahner does not hesitate to affirm that God laughs. His forthright explanation is certainly unusual and worth thinking about: Laugh! For this laughter is an acknowledgement that you are a human being, an acknowledgment of God. For how else is a person to acknowledge God except through admitting in her life and by means of her life that she herself is not God but a creature, that her times—a time to weep and a time to laugh, and the one is not the other. A praising of God is what laughter is, because it lets a human being be human. […] But we want to laugh and we are not ashamed to laugh. For it is a manifestation of the love of all things in God. Laughter is a praise of God, because it lets a human being be a loving person. God laughs. He laughs the laughter of the carefree, the confident, the unthreatened. He laughs the laughter of divine superiority over all the horrible confusion of universal history that is full of blood and torture and insanity and baseness. God laughs. Our God laughs; he laughs deliberately; one might almost say that he laughs gloatingly over misfortunes and is aloof from it all. He laughs 30 31

Rahner, “Mardi Gras Tuesday.” Cf. Richert, Kleine Geistesgeschichte des Lachens, 63.

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s­ ympathetically and knowingly, almost as if he were enjoying the tearful drama of this earth (he can do this, for he himself wept with the earth, and he, crushed even to death and abandoned by God, felt the shock of terror). He laughs, says Scripture, and thus it tells us that an image and a reflection of the triumphant, glorious God of history and of eternity still shines in the final laugh that somewhere springs out from a good heart, bright as silver and pure, over some stupidity of this world. Laughter is praise of God because it is a gentle echo of God’s laughter, of the laughter that pronounces judgment on all history. […] Our laughter should praise God. It should praise him because it acknowledges that we are human. It should praise him because it acknowledges that we are people who love. It should praise him because it is a reflection and image of the laughter of God himself. It should praise him because it is the promise of laughter that is promised to us as victory in the judgment. God gave us laughter; we should admit this and—laugh.32 God’s laughter justifies our own laughter. If one had no appreciation of religion, then one could believe that the concrete world is more real than the fleeting world of the transcendent, but in fact, it is just the opposite. The hard everyday world of facts is the less real world. While laughing, we feel more at home, so to speak. 32

Rahner, “Mardi Gras Tuesday.”

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Chapter 17

The Question of the Existence of Divine Being The question of whether divine being really exists may seem to be either tautological or a natural and meaningful question, but it is actually supremely paradoxical—and it is essential that it be appreciated as such. Is it meaningful to ask whether being is real, whether it really exists? Or is it simply a product of our imagination, remaining, consequently, within the bounds of the human reality? On the one hand, it can be said that the existence of divine being is self-evident—that is, self-evident in itself— if one apprehends what it is, but not, nonetheless, for us. This is the problem with the so-called ontological proof of God’s existence, which deduces from the notion of God that he must exist, that is, that existence is already implied in the ­notion (which undoubtedly exists). This might be true if we really had a notion of God. On the other hand, one must realize that the existence of divine being is an oxymoron: being and existence correspond only partially. To say that divine being exists is like saying running runs or being is. In a certain sense, it is true, and in another sense, incongruous. The phenomenon of existence belongs to created realities. There it makes sense to say that consciousness or the concrete world exists. But not that a reality exists. If existence is predicated of divine being, then it must be an analogous notion, more inappropriate than appropriate, more false than true. In the fifteenth century, Nicolaus Cusanus expressed the paradoxicality appropriately. In a fictional dialogue between a pagan and a Christian, the pagan asks: Can He be named? Christian: What can be named is small. That whose greatness cannot be conceived remains ineffable. Pagan: But is He ineffable? Christian: He is not ineffable, though He is beyond all things effable; for He is the Cause of all nameable things. How is it, then, that He Himself, who gives to others a name, is without a name? Pagan: So He is both effable and ineffable. Christian: Not that either. For God is not the foundation of contradiction but is Simplicity, which is prior to every foundation. Hence, we are also not to say that He is both effable and ineffable. Pagan: What, then, will you say of Him?

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Christian: That it is neither the case that He is named or is not named nor the case that He both is named and is not named. Rather, whatever can be said disjunctively or conjunctively, whether consistently or contra­ dictorily, does not befit Him (because of the excellence of His infinity), so that He is the one Beginning, which is prior to every thought formable of it. Pagan: So, then, being would not befit God. Christian: Your statement is correct. Pagan: Therefore, He is nothing. Christian: It is not the case that He is nothing or that He is not nothing; nor is He both nothing and not nothing. Rather, He is the Source and Origin of all the beginnings of being and of not-being. Pagan: God is the Source of the beginnings of being and of not-being? Christian: No. Pagan: But you just said this. Christian: When I said it, I spoke the truth; and I am speaking the truth now, when I deny it. For if there are any beginnings of being and of notbeing, God precedes them. However, not-being does not have a beginning of its not-being, but has only a beginning of its being. For not-being needs a beginning in order to be. In this way, then, He is the Beginning of notbeing, because without Him there would not be not-being.1 Being itself is neither existence nor thinkable. We can know of God’s existence, but we do not know his being. The essential error involved in the ontological proof of God’s existence is the presumption that we know at least a little about what we mean by the idea of God and that this knowledge suffices in order to conclude to God’s existence. Thomas Aquinas, being of the opinion that we know nothing about what God is and rejecting the ontological argument, wisely claimed that we must refer to proofs of his existence precisely because we do not know what he is. We have, therefore, no notion of God; more than the awareness of his existence cannot be reached by us. We remain in the world but can be aware of transcendence in the world beyond the world. We know of different kinds of transcendence. There are forms of transcendence that are implicitly a heritage of Christianity. Examples would be the ideas of responsibility and the value, or dignity, of an erroneous conscience. Other forms of transcendence are given in the nature of human consciousness. In every sentence, there is a realization of transcendence, for as 1 Nicolaus Cusanus, De deo abscondito, n. 10–11.

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will be shown (see p. 200), the verb is the reality of a possibility given in the subject. In normal matters, we can become conscious of a transcendence under the aspect of reality. Under other aspects, the transcendence can be no more than a universal notion. Universal notions do in fact enjoy a quality of infinity. But God is not merely the highest notion that we have. Moreover, a proof of his existence is not, as is often thought, the application of the principle of causality, for both causes and effects are modes of reality. Hence, reality embraces both and transcends them. A valid proof of the existence of God is a matter of directing attention to that which we actually, though not explicitly, already know. The proof is an exercise in focusing attention on the given. If I see various colors in the world around me, I can form abstract notions of red, green, and so on. And, even more abstract ones, like the notion ‘color.’ But I can also realize that physical light is present, although it is invisible. However, when I am aware of light as a reality, this is quite different from a universal notion. Whereas I can say what is meant by ‘light’ and ‘red,’ this is irrelevant when it comes to reality. One cannot say what reality is. All that can be known by us is that it is, that it exists. God is not reducible to the intelligent designer of the universe. Even if we apply natural laws as far as possible, we will never reach him. Even if God is understood as the cause of the universe, we are not yet dealing with reality itself. God is not the intelligence behind the universe. God does not have intentions, for intentions presuppose a separation between the present and the future. An intention exists in the present and is directed to the future. But, in divine eternity, the future is present, so to speak. Hence, God is not adequately characterized as the cause of himself [causa sui]. This is a modern concept of God. Nor is he the Good. According to Aquinas, the name ‘good’ is the principal name of God in so far as he is a cause, but not absolutely; for being considered absolutely precedes the idea of cause.2 This is a crucial insight. 1

Wonder about Becoming

Then how do I reach an awareness of divine being? How do I reach an awareness of being at all? How do I reach an awareness of the concrete? These are 2 “Being considered absolutely comes before the idea of cause” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 13, a. 9, ad 2).

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necessary steps for responding to the question of this chapter. The concrete is our natural human way of reaching being. Without a consideration of the nature of concreteness, we can never become aware of divine being. It takes a certain amount of reflective consciousness to recognize the difference between the concrete and consciousness. This does not come automatically. At first, a child cannot distinguish between ‘you’ and ‘me,’ between the objective and subjective, the known and knower. What is more: the ability to observe abstractly does not end here. Our apprehension of the concrete is not infallible. Probably we normally apprehend whether we are dealing with objective reality or conscious reality simply habitually. By carrying through some analyses at some time or other, we learn to appreciate the difference. We then develop practical methods of distinguishing. Some example may be clarifying. If I wake up and remember that I just saw a beautiful unicorn, then I conclude preliminarily that the unicorn was not concrete, but only an element of my consciousness, a thought. In other cases, I am sometimes unsure. If I see a black dog in front of me, I may touch it, thus appealing to a second sense. If vision and touch substantiate one another, then I conclude that the dog is not just a figure of my imagination, but a concrete reality. I can also examine how the sense functions. If I have a feeling of a dog’s warmth, I can examine how my feeling comes about. I touch it with my hand and know that, through the nerves, signals are sent to my brain. This is an indirect method for concluding to the concrete. Be that as it may, there is always room for mistakes, but that is not essential in order to become basically aware of concreteness itself. 2

The Concrete

A further step is the realization of what concreteness implies. The etymology of the word is, of course, not a conclusive argument, but it does provide an indication. Etymologically, the word ‘concrete’ comes from ‘growing together.’ It is possible to interpret this in the sense of a constriction, meaning that the concrete is a constriction of the abstract. For example, red is a universal notion and a red thing is a constriction of the universal notion to one particular case. This is the meaning that is implied in the question, for example, ‘What do you mean concretely?’ Nicolaus Cusanus, to name one, understood the term in this sense. It is a Platonic view. In other words, it is a view that appreciates formal causality, but does not recognize the act of existence itself, which is implied in the concrete. The concrete is always a synthesis of two aspects. One can be

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i­nfinitely multitudinous; the other is always existence. Thus, we have, as it were, a general notion that includes the existence of dogs, trees, thoughts, and whatever. Existence always encompasses universally the different modes of existence. The idea of existence enables us to speak meaningfully of the world. What ‘grows together’ in the concrete is not like two parts joined together to make a whole. The relationship is more subtle. It is not like adding attributes to a substance, for example: This dog is black and big and friendly and hungry. Existence is not an attribute. The whatness and the existence do not lie, so to speak, next to one another, as though one is attached to the other. Rather, the concrete is a whole that is viewed by us under two aspects. The duality stems from us, the viewers. The first apprehension reaches the whatness; on second reflexion, we apprehend the act of existence. The relationship is based on the difference between possibility and actuality. The whatness we see represents the possibility of the existing thing. The existence is the actualization of the whatness and includes it in itself. In the actuality, we apprehend the whatness. Whatness is our human reduction of the actual reality to something we can understand; it is the adaptation to human understanding. It is the concrete assimilated into the reality of consciousness. Thus, the concrete is the act of existence reduced to a reality, and the whatness is the concrete reduced to a thought. The concrete is embedded in the act of existence. The whatness emerges, so to speak, into the all-encompassing act of existence. The actuality embraces all that is concrete. It is more than the concrete realities; it is actuality before it becomes concrete. In other words, it is actuality without whatness, without being squeezed into the form of a whatness. In this, we have at least an awareness of the reality of divine being. As Thomas likes to say, concrete realities have being. They participate in being, which transcends them, being without whatness. In this way, every reflecting human being has an awareness of it. It is almost like an instinct. One cannot say that it ‘exists,’ but not because it does not exist. Its existence cannot be directly grasped by us because it is not concrete. But it is more than concrete, not less. Therefore, to say that it exists is inadequate, since a category is being used that belongs to the concrete. But if one has to answer with either yes or no, then the answer must be yes. When we experience things empirically, we are aware that, in the normal case, we have gotten in touch with a reality. I can deceive myself, but normally, when I see, I see something. My experience has objects. That is what we call ‘truth.’ But on the other hand, we are also aware that we do not possess the object in consciousness, since it is in itself in its own reality. For example, I really do see the objective dog, but the dog itself in its wholeness, with its flesh and bones, is not in my consciousness. The difference is what distinguishes the concrete from the abstract. Fundamentally, the abstract is the way the ­concrete

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is present in consciousness; the dog without flesh and bones, or better, flesh and bones abstractly. The concrete is a kind of emergence. In the case of becoming, this is easier to apprehend. It is not simply a replacement, as though another thing stands where something else was standing beforehand. Instead, one and the same thing changes without becoming something else. The original reality takes on another mode of being. In the case of the concrete, ‘being’ means coming to be, coming into being. This comprises a reference to the actuality of being itself. The awareness of becoming implies, in an especially well-known sense, an awareness of reality, regardless of the kind of becoming. If the change is viewed as a change of the mode of reality, then we have a basis for religion. This means seeing something simultaneously as possible and as real. The black dog may be real, but it must not necessarily be real. It is a possibility that has become real. Spatial movement is a kind of becoming that is easier to appreciate. The dog is standing at point x now and at point y in a minute from now. While standing at x, it both is real and also has the possibility of standing at y. When it reaches y, then standing at x is a possibility. In each situation, there exists simultaneously possibility and actuality. This dual structure is characteristic of everything in our concrete world. The same structure occurs in conscious realities. Thoughts arise, change, and develop. But this kind of twofold apprehension is not like the apprehension of a universal notion in the concrete. Seeing the red automobile is also a seeing of an automobile. Obviously, ‘reality’ and ‘possibility’ are not related as a universal notion and a concrete case. All universal notions indicate ‘what’ something is, whereas the apprehension of reality has to do with ‘whether’ something is. This distinction opens the possibility of a deeper appreciation of reality. It is important that it cannot be subsumed under causality, as Aquinas has observed: Above the kind of cause which acts only by moving and changing there must exist that cause which is the first principle of being, and this […] is God. Thus, God does not act only by moving and changing. On the other hand, every agent which cannot bring things into being except from preexisting matter, acts only by moving and changing.3 In sum, what then is involved in the concrete, or better, in what we know as concrete? 3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, ii, c. 16. William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

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We tend to emphasize the fact of existence. For us, the concrete has more reality than the abstract. What is it that makes the difference? Why do we call what has reality a reality? The question of whether something is real would seem to be not so important. Its ‘whatness’ is its content. The synthesis of the concrete is quite different from the synthesis of attributes. For Leibniz, this is the meaning of the notion of the concrete: a group of predicates that is able to exist. But to say that an automobile is red, fast, big, and so on is different from saying that it is real. A complex notion is still not something concrete. No description of the predicates of something is enough. The predication of adjectives to a substance can never attain reality. A real fivedollar bill can buy more than an imagined hundred-dollar bill. Aside from the question of whether something exists, every other question is the question of what something is. The experience of the concrete consists then of a twofold apprehension. The apprehension of the act of existing is the act that is self-consciousness. It could be called a co-apprehension, since it accompanies the normal apprehension of the whatness. But, to repeat, it is not the co-apprehension of the universal in the concrete. It is the accompanying awareness of the existing self. I am seeing something. We are able to reflect further on this, so that I have an apprehension of my apprehension. Then this comes as a second step, but it is not the co-apprehension. Self-consciousness is not a succeeding act in the brain. It occurs simultaneously with the act of consciousness. In our notion of ‘I,’ the co-apprehension is included. The word ‘I’ is astonishing. It is not the apprehension of ‘me.’ It implies a simultaneity. ‘I’ includes ‘I’ and ‘me.’ There is no intrinsic limit to the number of steps that self-reflection can make. It is enlightening that, at each step, we use the same word ‘I.’ It is the same I. When I see the tree, I am aware that I am the one who is seeing the tree, as well as observing the whole matter and writing about it. One would not necessarily expect that the same word would be used for each of these reflections. Instead, one could easily expect to find a list of words for the self at different levels. The same holds true, so to speak, on the quasi-horizontal level. Whether it is a matter of my seeing, feeling, hearing, tasting, and so on, we always use the word ‘I.’ Moreover, it is the same ‘I’ when I speak of my emotions or thoughts or of my consciousness. Why do we not use a variety of words for the subject of such a variety of actions? Actually, it is because this is not so much a variety as it seems. Self-reflection is not a subject apprehending an object. The ‘me’ in the ‘I’ is not different from the ‘I.’ Levels of reflection (I know that I know that I am seeing the tree) do not represent different apprehensions. It is not the apprehension of another ­apprehension—although this is also possible under certain circumstances. William J. Hoye - 978-90-04-41399-3

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There is an essential difference between saying, ‘yesterday I saw a dog,’ and ‘I am now seeing a dog.’ Self-reflexion, as in the latter case, is a kind of a repeated co-apprehension. Reflection, in the strict sense, does not consist in a succession of apprehensions, as in the former case. The apprehension of the tree is the same act as the apprehension of myself seeing the tree; the self-reflexion occurs in my seeing the tree. Furthermore, at all levels—and this is important—we have the apprehension of the act of existence. The apprehension of the act of existence is, in all cases, the apprehension of the same thing: the act of existence. In other words, it is always being that is being differently appreciated, together with different things. For this reason, in my examples, it is always ‘I,’ the same ‘I.’ Two ‘­opposed’ things occur in one; ‘me,’ the object, is present in ‘I,’ the subject. 3 Truth The apprehension of the concrete is our original apprehension of truth. Truth consists accordingly of a double apprehension: something is apprehended along with its existence. This comes to expression in the way in which truths are articulated in language. Notions, as distinguished from sentences, are definable, but they are not true. Truth is a combination. We say that something is such and such. Nietzsche may have appreciated the theological relevance of a grammatical structure like this when he wrote, “I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar.”4 If I say that this dog is white, then I am asserting the existence of ‘white’ ‘in’ this dog. The connection is based on existence. When I say, pleonastically, that my poodle is a dog, then I am not asserting something added to ‘poodle.’ When we predicate something of a notion, then, here again, we imply that this predication exists in the notion. The concrete is in this case the thought, the existing thought containing some content. The structure of a statement consists of possibility and actuality, as has been said. The subject represents possibilities and the predicate asserts the actuality of a possibility. Thus, being is present in everyday human life. If we do not presuppose being, we are unable to form sentences, for sentences are a unity, a single idea uniting possibility and actuality. 4 Nietzsche, “Reason in Philosophy,” n. 5, in: Twilight of the Idols.

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If there were no God, then we would be unable to pose the question about his existence. Indeed, no questions at all could be posed, for God is the condition of the possibility of truth and there is not much sense in posing a question about reality that does not involve truth. When we speak of the ‘truth of things,’ this can mean that the things exists in God, or, if you want, in God’s thought. Nevertheless (in contradiction to a widespread interpretation of Thomas), in the things themselves, their truth is not the grounds of their being known; it is instead their being that suffices to make our knowledge of them possible. As far as their essence is concerned, the realities of the world do not require that they be created by God. What they are does not presuppose their creator. The scientist can study nature without needing to have recourse to God. In this sense, nature is independent of the divine causality: “The first cause that is God does not enter into the essence of creatures.”5 However, if we take account of the being of realities, then we do indeed find a reference to divine being. The being of creatures is not an apprehension of God, but it is a pointer to God. Being in the concrete, which is apprehended as given, presupposes being itself. According to Thomas: “Although the first cause that is God does not enter into the essence of creatures, yet being which is in creatures cannot be understood except as derived from the divine being: even as a proper effect cannot be understood save as produced by its proper cause.”6 Similarly in the Summa: Though the relation to its cause is not part of the definition of a thing caused, still it follows, as a consequence, on what belongs to its essence; because from the fact that a thing has being by participation, it follows that it is caused. Hence such a being cannot be without being caused, just as man cannot be without having the faculty of laughing. But, since to be caused does not enter into the essence of being as such, therefore is it possible for us to find a being uncaused.7 This reference is also evident in the way that we grasp truths. The expression of a truth, which is a sentence, is structured in the same way as the concrete. The verb expresses the reality of a possibility contained in the subject, as the 5 Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 3, a. 5, ad 1. 6 Ibid. 7 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 44, a. 1, ad 1. “Now there is a being that is its own being: and this follows from the fact that there must needs be a being that is pure act and wherein there is no composition. Hence from that one being all other beings that are not their own being, but have being by participation, must needs proceed” (ibid, a. 1c).

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­ hatness of something concrete represents the possibility that has received w being. When it comes to truth, a sentence—that is, a predication, and not a complex noun—is what one must expect. In the phenomenon of a sentence, the transcendent pointing to God is included, but not as truth itself, but rather as being. We know that both concrete things and abstract thoughts are realities. The tree that I am looking at is a reality, and my seeing of the tree and the content of this vision are realities. Obviously, then, since we use the same word ‘reality’ for both, although they are certainly not identical, we know ‘reality’ in some way distinct from concrete things and from thoughts. The term ‘reality’ is the same and, nevertheless, different; it is an analogous term. When applied to the apprehended and the apprehension, it is an analogous term. While such realities share in reality, divine reality does not. It is the all-encompassing reality itself, subsuming into itself all possibilities, and thus being the ground of all other realities. The idea of divine being does not tell us what God is; it tells us what the world is, first of all and last of all: creation. Expressed differently: living consciously in the world of realities takes on the form of wonder, which represents an emancipation from the world of the concrete.

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Chapter 18

How Can We Speak about God? Human Language is not made for speaking about God, having developed out of the realities of the concrete and abstract. There is no natural theological language. In order for language, which is made for speaking about the world, to refer to God, it must be manipulated and, in a certain way, distorted. The question of how we can speak about God is not restricted to philoso­ phers or intellectuals; it is posed not only by the most abstract theology but also by a catechism.1 By regarding God as being itself, the question can be fruit­ fully faced. The elementary mode of being that we encounter is the world of concrete objects. It is immediately accessible through the senses. Its specific quality is concreteness. Without exception, everything we can think of in the universe is characterized by concreteness, meaning that it is comprised of a union of pos­ sibility and actuality, in most cases a union of matter and form, to use the tra­ ditional Aristotelian categories. Whatever exists concretely does not exist by necessity; it is a possibility that actually possesses existence, but not by neces­ sity. As has been remarked, the possibility can be called the ‘whatness,’ or ‘form.’ Without losing any of its essential characteristics, it can be conceived without reference to its existence; a dictionary normally proceeds in this way. This distinction arises out of our ability to see concrete reality abstractly. With­ out abstraction, we would know nothing about concreteness. The world of ab­ stractions comprises a somewhat different mode of being than the world of the concrete. It is a world of its own, a microcosm, distinct from the concrete world, called the macrocosm. Both concrete and abstract realities consist of elements, or beings (whether the objects of thought or thoughts themselves), whereas divine reality is per­ fectly one, since it includes its ‘elements’ in an absolute unity. It is comprised of the oneness of fulfillment, excluding nothing. The reality of the empirical world and that of consciousness include one another. Thoughts are also concrete realities independent of their content, which is abstract. Their elements have characteristics that concrete reality does not possess. Abstractions are, for example, universal notions. A univer­ sal notion is characterized by a kind of infiniteness, at least in the negative sense of an inexhaustible openness. It can never be filled out by individuals. 1 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 39.

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My ­notion ‘dog,’ for example, can include an endless number of concrete dogs. Strictly speaking, not all elements of consciousness can be really pinpointed to particulars. A notion like ‘George Washington’ belongs to a unique individual, but it can be applied to other individuals in a negative sense. To see that ‘Abra­ ham Lincoln’ is not ‘George Washington,’ I must view the former under the notion of the latter and see that they do not correspond. Matter, which is also something individual, can be thought, but the thought is not in itself material. In this case, ‘matter’ is an abstract notion. Abstractions are forms of the con­ crete; they are the way in which the concrete occurs in consciousness. The different realities overlap one another. On the one hand, abstractions represent a mode of the presence of the concrete. On the other hand, abstrac­ tions are themselves realities. Thoughts as such are realities no matter what their content is. Divine reality includes both concrete and abstract reality. It is being itself. And all other things, without exception, are modes of being. By seeing things as beings, we gain an awareness of the all-encompassing being itself. For a universal notion to become real in the sense of the concrete, it must be concretized; it must become a particular individual. ‘Dog’ must become a dog. This means no more and no less than that it receives existence. Universal no­ tions have the reality of consciousness, but not the reality of the concrete world. The concrete is particular, whereas the abstract is general. Dogs always exist as singulars, whereas ‘dog’ is something general. I can drink out of a glass, but not out of the ‘glass.’ ‘Concrete’ and ‘abstract’ seem to leave no room for a third alternative. They are, nevertheless, susceptible to intellectual manipulation. Although we do not have direct access to divine being through experience, we do have the ability to become aware of it through reflection on the other two. Just the fact that we can see both modes as realities indicates our awareness of a third kind: reality itself, in which they participate and which includes both. But it is itself neither particular nor universal. A glass exists, in other words, in three kinds of reality: in the concrete world, in thought and in divine reality. In concrete reality, it is complex, consisting of its ‘whatness’ joined with existence; in thought, it is simple, but lacking the existence of the concrete mode; in divine reality, it is complete, having the existence of the concrete but without the duality of the concrete. Here its reality is not joined to its whatness but subsumes the what­ ness into itself. For all existing attributes are modes of being real. Existence is not an additional attribute next to the others or vis-à-vis the others; it is the actuality of the others. What a dollar is, consists in one hundred cents no mat­ ter whether the dollar is real or imaginary.

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Divine being has the characteristic that it is not a ‘something,’ that is, not a substance. It is actuality itself and not something actualized, not something existent, but existence itself. It is like a kind of energy, analogous to the way light is related to colors. It is surely no coincidence that the word ‘energy’ in Greek is energeia (translated into Latin as actus). God’s being is not a substan­ tive, but rather more like a verb (esse, not ens or entitas). It happens. 1 Pantheism? It should be clear that this teaching is not pantheistic. Nevertheless, the ques­ tion arises spontaneously. At some time, a mature theology can be expected to arrive at the point at which the question logically occurs of whether it is pan­ theistic. Then an explanation must be given, and it should serve to advance theological thought. If divine being means anything at all, then the problem of pantheism is easily solved, pantheism being the teaching that God is identical with the world, either as concrete or abstract. It is not comprised of elements, and it is not some kind of collection. God is universal, but he is not a set. He consists simply of the actuality of existence; it is not something that is actual­ ized, but actualization itself. It encompasses everything as the existential cause, as light encompasses all the colors that it makes visible. Nevertheless, the world is not separated from God, its creator. Actuality without any what­ ness does not occur in the universe. It is always the actuality of something. He is the universal causality, not the universal substance, as the classic paradig­ matic teaching of Benedict de Spinoza maintained (an excerpt of his text can be found in the appendix, p. 202.) If God is in some way understood as existing at a higher level than the world (e. g., as the cause of the world), then he cannot be identical with the collection of elements in the world, and hence pantheism is excluded. Actually, it is not an acute threat for Christian thought. A greater threat today is the idea that God is a vis-à-vis to us. 2

God Is Not a Vis-à-Vis

It is crucial to realize that God does not stand vis-à-vis others. “Whoever searches for something else outside of God or next to him or even with him is not thinking correctly about God,”2 writes Meister Eckhart (1260–1328), in 2 Meister Eckhart, Lateinische Werke, ii, 328, 7f.

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agreement with a classic tradition. Nevertheless, this error is certainly preva­ lent and, admittedly, almost unavoidable. Although we have a natural inclina­ tion to think this way and it is not without legitimation, it remains a decisive mistake. When we imagine God as someone standing vis-à-vis, watching us, helping us, and so on, it will prove disastrous if one forgets that this is merely anthropomorphism. God is everywhere and includes everything within his be­ ing; he is “all in all” (1 Cor 15, 28). He is not a reality, but reality itself. To forget this is fatal for a theology. Nicolaus Cusanus has articulated the situation extensively and appropri­ ately. In his inimitable language, he refers to God as, amongst other names, the not-other [non-aliud] and the coincidence of opposites [coincidentia oppositorum]. For example, he writes: Fullness befits what is one. Thus, oneness—which is also being—­ coincides with Maximality. But if such oneness is altogether free from all relation and contraction, obviously nothing is opposed to it, since it is Absolute Maximality. Thus, the Maximum is the Absolute One which is all things. And all things are in the Maximum (for it is the Maximum); and since nothing is opposed to it, the Minimum likewise coincides with it, and hence the Maximum is also in all things. […] Therefore, opposing features belong only to those things which can be comparatively greater and lesser; they befit these things in different ways; [but they do] not at all [befit] the absolutely Maximum, since it is beyond all opposition. Therefore, because the absolutely Maximum is absolutely and actually all things which can be (and is so free of all opposition that the Minimum coincides with it), it is beyond both all affirmation and all negation. And it is not, as well as is, all that which is conceived to be; and it is, as well as is not, all that which is conceived not to be. But it is a given thing in such way that it is all things; and it is all things in such way that it is no thing; and it is maximally a given thing in such way that it is it minimally. For example, to say “God, who is Absolute Maximality, is light” is [to say] no other than “God is maximally light in such way that He is minimally light.” For Absolute Maximality could not be actually all pos­ sible things unless it were infinite and were the boundary of all things and were unable to be bounded by any of these things.3 It should be emphasized, that, when speaking of God, the comparative is more appropriate than the superlative. When Cusanus calls God the greatest 3 Nicolaus Cusanus, De docta ignorantia, i, c. 2, n. 5 and n. 12.

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[­maximum], he defines this on the basis of the comparative. According to him, the comparative transcends the superlative. The superlative stands at a final apex, in a line with others. He also explicitly calls God the “more” [melius].4 Calling attention to the aspect of the difference between God and the world, Karl Rahner has stressed that “the difference between God and the world is of such a nature that God establishes and is the difference of the world from him­ self, and for this reason he establishes the closest unity precisely in the differentiation.”5 The difference between God and the world is thus identical with God himself. This is certainly not like the difference occurring between concrete beings. 3

The Languages of Religion

To be sure, there are different kinds of languages used in religion. They range from philosophy and poetry to superstition. None is necessarily illegitimate. Anthropomorphism is, to a certain extent, practically unavoidable. One could even venture to say that—looked at practically—in a religion with many be­ lievers, superstition has to be expected. It is a sign of a human religion involv­ ing many individuals. A religion without some superstition among its mem­ bers is not a human religion. Nonetheless, Aquinas restricts himself to reason, although being quite aware that reason is unable to cope with every question. For example, choosing one’s marriage partner solely by reason is comical. Moreover, a pious person can undoubtedly be a better human being than a theologian. But when reason is able to treat a question, then it is the most se­ cure way to truth. Metaphors and feelings can only presume truth; they cannot really establish it responsibly. Even the Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 39), where one would not nec­ essarily expect it, relies on reason in order to present the teaching of faith. The far-reaching effect of reason even extends beyond religion: “In defending the ability of human reason to know God, the Church is expressing her confi­ dence in the possibility of speaking about him to all men and with all men, and therefore of dialogue with other religions, with philosophy and science, as well as with unbelievers and atheists.” So, reason is not just a prerogative of philo­ sophically inclined minds. It is relevant at every level. It grounds the possibility

4 Nicolaus Cusanus, Sermo xx, n. 6, 4–8; cf. Hoye, Die mystische Theologie des Nicolaus Cusanus, 176. 5 Rahner, Foundations, 62.

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of piety communicating with science and atheism. That a catechism asserts a common ground with atheism is not trivial. The Catechism (n. 40) goes further and declares explicitly that the state­ ments of the Catholic faith presuppose creatures as their point of departure, having no other source. “Since our knowledge of God is limited, our language about him is equally so. We can name God only by taking creatures as our start­ ing point, and in accordance with our limited human ways of knowing and thinking.” The adverb ‘only’ may be surprising. Rahner gives the following explanation: All creatures bear a certain resemblance to God, most especially man, created in the image and likeness of God. The manifold perfections of creatures—their truth, their goodness, their beauty all reflect the infinite perfection of God. Consequently we can name God by taking his crea­ tures’ perfections as our starting point, ‘for from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.’6 Revelation is no exception; it can be articulated only under the same c­ ondit­ions. If God wants to speak to us, he must use a language that we understand. Strictly speaking, God is the sole subject of religion. No one emphasized this more than the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Philosophy has no other object but God and so is essentially rational the­ ology and, as the servant of truth, a continual divine service. Owing to this sameness of content the three realms of absolute spirit differ only in the forms in which they bring home to consciousness their object, the Absolute. […] For religion is the universal sphere in which the one con­ crete totality comes home to the consciousness of man as his own es­ sence and as the essence of nature. […] The object of religion as well as of philosophy is eternal truth in its objectivity, God and nothing but God, and the explication of God.7

6 Rahner, Foundations, 41. 7 Hegel, “Aesthetics,” vol. 1, Part i: “The Idea of Artistic Beauty, Or The Ideal.” “Philosophy is not a wisdom of the world, but is knowledge of what is not of the world—it is not knowledge which concerns external mass, or empirical existence and life, but is knowledge of that which is eternal, of what God is, and what flows out of His nature. […] Philosophy, therefore, only unfolds itself when it unfolds religion, and in unfolding itself it unfolds religion” (ibid.).

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Hegel even goes so far as to claim: “Thus religion and philosophy come to be one. Philosophy is itself, in fact, worship; it is religion.”8 He concludes: Philosophy is thus identical with religion. […] What they have in com­ mon is, that they are religion; what distinguishes them from each other is merely the kind and manner of religion we find in each. It is in the pecu­ liar way in which they both occupy themselves with God that the distinc­ tion comes out. […] It has the same content as religion.9 Thomas Aquinas expresses a similar teaching. For him, the object of theology is God and other things in relationship to God. In other words, theology views everything under the perspective of God. “In sacred science, all things are treated of under the aspect of God [sub ratione dei]: either because they are God Himself or because they refer to God as their beginning and end.”10 Of course, this does not mean that theology is a universal science, subsum­ ing all other sciences under itself. Its universality lies in its perspective, in its way of looking at reality. Physics, for example, has an essentially different perspective. A further approach to divine being is possible: that it in some way tran­ scends concrete and abstract reality. Thomas explains: In God the abstract and the concrete do not differ in reality, since in God there is neither accident nor matter: they differ only in their manner of signification, inasmuch as we understand divinity [divinitas] as consti­ tuting God [deus] and God as having divinity: the same applies to pater­ nity and the father, for though they are really the same thing, they differ in their mode of signification.11 In both cases, the third term ‘reality’ is quite appropriate and unproblematic. If one could eliminate, or sublimate, the abstract and concrete, what would re­ main would be pure reality. But how is that to be conceived? It would seem to be indicative that we can speak of realities both in regard to the contents of consciousness and in regard to the concrete realities of the universe. Obvious­ ly, we have then some kind of awareness of reality as transcending the abstract and concrete but applicable to both in spite of their differences. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 1, a. 7c. 11 Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 8, a. 3, ad 10.

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Being reality itself, divine reality is, so to speak, the creator of the other two. So, we have the reality of the objects of consciousness, the reality of conscious­ ness, and the reality of the creator of both. These three modes of reality do not lie next to one another, but rather contain one another reciprocally. Of course, in consciousness, we can think of things that do not exist in the concrete world. Consciousness is open without end. The divine reality includes everything. It leaves nothing out, while abstraction leaves out the act of existence. 4

Divine Attributes

How can attributes be predicated of God in a responsible and rational man­ ner? Thomas makes distinctions in his treatment of this question that are ex­ tremely subtle. (The reader should feel free to skip over this section.) First of all, God’s incomprehensibility must be maintained. What our minds can grasp are concrete things and abstractions, but not actuality in itself, although we are able to be aware of it. We can grasp things that have actuality, realities that are a composition of a whatness and existence. But, regarding divine real­ ity, we can know only that it is; we can have no more than the awareness of its actuality. This is not just abstract metaphysics, but rather belongs to the level of a catechism. One might be surprised to see that, here, the Catechism of the Catholic Church adopts the teaching of Thomas Aquinas explicitly as its own: Admittedly, in speaking about God like this, our language is using human modes of expression; nevertheless it really does attain to God himself, though unable to express him in his infinite simplicity. Likewise, we must recall that “between Creator and creature no similitude can be expressed without implying an even greater dissimilitude”;12 and that “concerning God, we cannot grasp what he is, but only what he is not, and how other beings stand in relation to him.”13 In the previous chapter, I attempted to demonstrate this position, which stands in a long theological tradition. But here my question is how is it possible for resemblances of God to occur in creatures? How can the finite resemble the infinite?

12 13

Lateran Council iv (DS 806). Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 43. The quotation of Thomas is from his Summa contra gentiles, i, c. 30.

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The resemblance to God in creatures is inherent. It is not a matter of faith. Nor is it like the craftsman who has an idea in thought and then produces it in matter. It is more like the carpenter’s sawing. The sawing is a real action. It is then immediate that sawing saws; sawing, so to speak, causes sawing. Mediat­ ing through action, the carpenter saws. Obviously, then, there is a resemblance between the sawing and its effect. The effect is not separate from the cause, as when the carpenter causes a product. It is rather an aspect of the causing. An­ other example would be the dance caused by dancers; it is not a product lying outside of the dancers. Granted, this is difficult to express. Normally, the cau­ sality with which we are familiar, the causality of temporal realities, involves a separation. And, yet, the fact remains that, as Thomas Aquinas writes: “It be­ longs to the nature of an action that the agent does something similar to itself, since everything acts according to the way in which it is in act.”14 In this sense, the immediacy of cause and effect is evident. Be that as it may, there exists in creatures a similitude to their creator. Ex­ pressed in another way, the realities in our world are real. They are not reality itself, but they, nonetheless, actualize reality. In spite of the closeness, the similitude also ineluctably involves dissimili­ tude. The caused has a different mode of being from its cause. For this reason, the similarity is not a strict identity. That the dissimilarity is greater than the similarity has been recognized as a dogma since the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. All realities are both theophanies and veils. Everything in our world is ambivalent. It can both support religion and distract from it. The world both embodies God and is, at the same time, a distraction from him. This paradoxical possibility is characteristic of the concrete. The qualities of concrete things exist, so to speak, somewhere outside of themselves. In other words, they have their qualities, but this is ontologically different from the way such qualities exist in God. We grasp these qualities only abstractly, filtered through our thought. That is our way. Originally our contact with them is in concrete, composite realities. We do not experience them as independent and subsisting by themselves. Only in thought do they gain a kind of independence. Concrete things are relatively independent. We are accustomed to see inde­ pendent realities as concrete. The qualities that human thought abstracts are seen by us as factors, as that whereby something is, but not as independently subsisting in themselves, unless we are radical realists. Although the divine attributes all have their origin in our concrete world, their meaning is more valid when applied to the creator. For example, we dis­ cover a quality like beauty in the world and apply it to God in a deeper sense. 14

Ibid., c. 29.

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It is not the quality itself that makes the difference, but the two different modes of being. God is not concrete. To see him as concrete is appropriate only in a metaphorical sense. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (n. 43), as we have seen, lays this down as fundamental. The different modes of existing have the consequence that the manner of signification is different, although related. In other words, it is a matter of anal­ ogy. One method for expressing this is to use the abstract substantive form of a notion for God and the adjectival for creatures. For example, a creature may be good, whereas God is goodness. Nonetheless, since abstractions do not have the being that concrete things have, of course, they too are inadequate. To ap­ ply to God, the abstract notion must be thought of as having the being that concrete things have. Hence, both concrete and abstract attributes can be predicated of God. How can we strain language to the point at which it can at least somehow point towards God? First of all, if God were fully different from everything else, it would be im­ possible to say anything meaningful about him. Our concepts would be re­ stricted to creatures. But as actuality itself, he encompasses all that can be known. Whatever we can know about realities consists in modes of reality. Ab­ straction is a certain way of grasping a reality without exhausting it. Everything in a real object of consciousness is real. Thus, all knowledge is knowledge of aspects of reality. In the process of abstraction, thought contributes universal­ ity to what it abstracts. To repeat, as opposed to a concrete dog, ‘dog’ is bound­ less, including all possible dogs. That our language must be manipulated in order to speak of God is the con­ viction not only of enlightened reason, but also of enlightened faith, expressed even in a catechism: God transcends all creatures. We must therefore continually purify our language of everything in it that is limited, image-bound or imperfect, if we are not to confuse our image of God—‘the inexpressible, the incom­ prehensible, the invisible, the ungraspable’—with our human represen­ tations. Our human words always fall short of the mystery of God.15 How is this to be done? There are different kinds of attributes affirmed of God. The most important rule—easily neglected—is that attributes that are affirmed both of God and of something else are never univocal. For example, ‘good’ or ‘just’ do not have 15

Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 42.

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identical meanings when predicated of a human being and when predicated of God. God is not good and not just in the sense in which we know such qualities in human beings, in which they have the mode of something participated. The ultimate cause of all that is real cannot participate in anything, it being that in which everything else participates. Creatures are particular and concrete, while God is universal and quasi-abstract. The essential difference lies, to repeat, in the mode of being. The figure in the mind of the sculptor is not univocally the same as that in the marble, since the latter has two different kinds of being. A quality in something concrete is not identical with the same quality in the abstract. One way of articulating the difference is to form an abstraction of the ­quality, and saying, for example, that God is goodness itself and justice itself instead of calling him good and just. Or it can be said that, whereas human ­beings may have the qualities of goodness and justice, God is these qualities. Creatures love, whereas God is love itself. Of course, it is strenuous to keep this always in mind. Who is really able to feel the inappropriateness of saying that God loves us or that God is merciful? It can also be formulated by distinguish­ ing between a participated quality and the same quality in its essence. For ex­ ample, God is by essence just; he is justness. All other just individuals have justice as an accident; they are not justice itself. This comparison is a help, but it cannot be taken literally. We can say that, in divine reality, universal notions exist as realities. We combine the two kinds of reality with which we are acquainted. When we see concrete realities abstract­ ly, we do not attend to their real existence. Now we try to assert real existence of the abstraction, for example, justice or goodness itself really existing and not just having the existence of thought. Although this represents a linguistic improvement, it cannot really be the manner in which God exists. Be that as it may, these kinds of attributes that are derived from creatures are not meaningless. They are neither univocal nor necessarily equivocal. In a certain sense, they succeed in speaking about God. It is not just words that are being used; otherwise, this way of speaking would be devoid of meaning. To the contrary, the fact is that much of what is commonly said about God con­ sists in nothing more than words, having no specific meaning that would be distinguishable for God. Faith, unfortunately, often encourages word games devoid of content. An imperative consideration in dealing with language about God is the idea of analogy. God is not totally different from the world, since everything in the world derives from him through creation. Our adequate speaking consists of not only words, but concepts, concepts that are neither univocal nor equivocal. They are traditionally called analogous.

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The basis for analogous notions is the causal relationship of God to crea­ tures. Although our knowledge of God consists in what God is not, neverthe­ less, our valid attributes are more than just negations. Negative theology is not simply empty. When we say that God loves, we mean something positive. And were we to say that God is not good, then this could have the meaning that he is the cause of goodness and therefore more than good. In other words, he is not limited to ‘good’ in the normal sense. But this is, nonetheless, not equivocation. Equivocation presupposes uni­ vocity. But univocity is not the point of departure here. Analogy lies deeper. Univocal notions depend fundamentally on an analogical notion: being. Both univocation and equivocation are abstracted out of this analogical notion. From Thomas Aquinas,16 Rahner has adopted this insight and expresses it clearly:17 We may not understand the word ‘analogy’ as a hybrid between univoca­ tion and equivocation. […] Analogy, therefore, has nothing to do with the notion of a secondary, inexact middle position between clear concepts and those which designate two completely different things with the same phonetic sound. […] The analogous statement signifies what is most ba­ sic and original in our knowledge. Consequently, however familiar equiv­ ocal and univocal statements are to us from our scientific knowledge and from our everyday dealings with the realities of experience, they are defi­ cient modes of that original relationship in which we are related to the term of our transcendence. And this original relationship is what we are calling analogy.18 If one asks why being is an analogous notion, then the explanation is that we ourselves consist of analogous being, floating, so to speak, between divine real­ ity, on the one hand, and the first and second realities, on the other hand. As Rahner explains: We ourselves, as we can put it, exist analogously in and through our being grounded in this holy mystery which always surpasses us. But it always constitutes us by surpassing us and by pointing us towards the concrete,

16 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, i, q. 13, a. 5, ad 1. 17 Cf. Rahner, Spirit in the World, 163. 18 Rahner, Foundations, 72–73.

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individual, categorical realities which confront us within the realm of our experience.19 What occurs in the effect must somehow be present in the cause, albeit not in exactly the same manner. The table made by the carpenter existed beforehand in thought, but only ideally. The idea of the table now exists in matter. Redness causes the tomato to be red, but redness itself is not red in the same sense; it is more than red, being the cause of red things being red. This kind of analogous term consists in two elements, connected as cause and effect. Other kinds of analogies exist, such as analogies based on a third element, the tertium comparationis, like comparing apples and automobiles on the basis of red. In the case of God, this would imply that this third element exists previous to God, which is impossible. ‘Justice,’ for example, can be the basis for comparing one human individual and another and then calling both just, but not for calling God and a human being just. There is another kind of analogy: the analogy consisting of four elements. For example, the relation between an arm and a human person is analogous to the relationship between a wing and a bird. Here again, there can be no com­ mon ground between God and creatures that lies independently of them. Negative attributes must also have an analogical meaning if they are to be validly negated of God. If, for example, we say that God is immaterial, then the meaning must be derived from our knowledge of immateriality in the world. What is being denied must have a meaning related to this. Of course, it is not appropriate to use attributes that include a meaning that distinguishes them from God. We do not say, for example, that God is ugly or poisonous. Such things are denials of real qualities. It makes no sense, then, to predicate them of God. It is the presupposed real qualities that may be predi­ cated of God. It must also be mentioned that the application of analogical predication extends to metaphors. Here the creature is regarded not so much as a creature of God, but rather simply in its creatureliness. In this sense, one would not say that God has abstract qualities like the strength and sovereignty of a lion, but rather that he is a lion. Care must be taken not to overlook the fact that a meta­ phor is being used. In any case, calling God a lion is not as problematic as call­ ing him light, for in the former case, it is more obvious that a metaphor is being

19

Ibid., 73.

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used. When a metaphor is unusually lofty, it is easier to forget that it is only a metaphor. Calling God a father would be an example of this. In the case of metaphors for God that have less similarity with him, it is easier to realize that, of God, we know only what he is not. They make it clearer that God lies beyond our knowledge. The oft-quoted expression “dissimilar similarity,” which was coined by Denis the Areopagite20 one and a half millen­ nia ago, expresses it well. In the twelfth century, Hugh of St. Victor commented on the phrase: “Every figure shows the truth more clearly the more openly it shows through its dissimilar similitude that it is a figure, and not the truth. In this the dissimilar similitudes lead our soul to truth, insofar as they do not per­ mit it to remain in similitude alone.”21 Another special group of divine attributes are those that are asserted exclu­ sively of God. Examples are ‘the highest being,’ ‘the first mover,’ ‘the first cause,’ and such. Attributes like these do not really possess content. Moreover, they have the disadvantage that God is put in the series of creatures, albeit at the pinnacle. The idea of the first mover, for example, can be easily misunderstood as though God were the first member of a chain of causes. God is not the first cause in that sense. Divine reality is not simply the apex of all realities, but rather encompasses and transcends them. The fact that we refer not just notions (as has been thus far treated) but also sentences to God presents another situation. To point to God, we use more than names; we also use sentences. For example, God is triune and one; God is truth. In the sentences that we form about God, there lies another kind of dual­ ity. Since sentences consist of at least two notions, subject and predicate, it would seem then that they are by their very nature unable to point to God, since he is absolutely simple. But, in fact, contrary to the first appearance, sen­ tences are, in their essence, also simple. They express a single idea, although they are composed of more than one word. The words of a sentence are a form of the articulation of the single idea. Actually, the sentence occurs before the words in it; these are extrapolations. A sentence can be called a complex no­ tion. Subject and predicate form a unity that consists of possibility and actual­ ity. The predicate is the actualization of a possibility contained in the subject. The thought within the sentence, which consists of a diversity of words, is simple, and it is the thought that is referred to God.

20 21

Denis the Areopagite, De caelesti hierarchia, c. 2. “By the divine ray we can be enlightened only insofar as it is hidden by all-various holy veils” (ibid., c. 1). Hugh of St. Victor, Commentary on the Celestial Hierarchy, 978B–C.

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In the previous chapters, I have attempted to speak meaningfully about God. To appreciate God’s uniqueness, I have, at the same time, emphasized the paradoxicality of divine being. The confusion that possibly arises from this is both unavoidable and hopefully stimulating. Without confusion, to be sure, there can no thinking about God.

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Appendix

Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, Proposition XIV and XV

Besides God no substance can be granted or conceived. Proof.—As God is a being absolutely infinite, of whom no attribute that expresses the essence of substance can be denied (by Def. vi), and he necessarily exists (by Prop. xi); if any substance besides God were granted, it would have to be explained by some attribute of God, and thus two substances with the same attribute would exist, which (by Prop. v) is absurd; therefore, besides God no substance can be granted, or, consequently, be conceived. If it could be conceived, it would necessarily have to be conceived as existent; but this (by the first part of this proof) is absurd. Therefore, besides God no substance can be granted or conceived. Q.E.D. Corollary I.—Clearly, therefore: 1. God is one, that is (by Def. vi) only one substance can be granted in the universe, and that substance is absolutely infinite […]. Corollary II.—It follows: 2. That extension and thought are either attributes of God or (by Axiom i) accidents (affectiones) of the attributes of God. Proposition XV. Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived. Proof.—Besides God, no substance is granted or can be conceived (by Prop. xiv), that is (by Def. iii) nothing which is in itself and is conceived through itself. But modes (by Def. v) can neither be, nor be conceived without substance; wherefore they can only be in the divine nature, and can only through it be conceived. But substances and modes form the sum total of existence (by Axiom i), therefore, without God nothing can be, or be conceived. Q.E.D. […] All things, I repeat, are in God, and all things which come to pass, come to pass solely through the laws of the infinite nature of God, and follow (as I will shortly show) from the necessity of his essence.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���� | doi:10.1163/9789004413993_020

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Index Abelard, Peter 108 Abraham 175 ad aliud 156, 157, 166 Aeschylus 80, 203 Alanus ab Insulis/Alain de Lille 203 Alighieri, Dante 89, 171, 172 Anselm of Canterbury 13 Aristotle 19, 55–57, 59, 91, 96, 98 Assmann, Jan 105–107, 111, 114–116 Augustine of Hippo 18, 34, 63, 68, 82, 83, 91, 108, 109, 120 authority 108 Barth, Karl 131–134 Beatrice 171, 172 Beck, Ulrich 4, 105, 106, 110–114, 117 becoming 122–126 being beings 2 existence 2 intensive 8 three kinds 1 Benedict XII 142 Benedict XVI 16, 39, 89, 98, 100 Berger, David 149 Berger, Klaus 86, 87 Berger, Peter L. 170, 173 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Torquatus Severinus 18, 50, 75, 76, 82 Borges, Jorge Luis 15 Calvin, John 65 Cano, Melchor 108 change 6–7 Chenu, Marie-Dominique 108 Chesterton, Gilbert Kieth 169 concrete 180–184 conscience 25–28 authority 26 Enlightenment 26 erroneous 26–28 Job 27 continual creation 6

creation a relationship of dependence 9 causality of creatures 10 change 6–7 continual 6 efficient causality 8 free choice 9 succession 7 creator 2, 6–14 Crick, Francis 54 Cullmann, Oscar 16 Dante, see Alighieri, Dante Davies, Brian 1 Denzinger, Heinrich Joseph Dominik 206 Dionysius the Areopagite 130, 138, 200 dissimilar similarity 130 Dostojewskij, Fyodor Mikhailovich 27, 78 Eckhart, Meister 12, 13, 54, 110, 189 Eco, Umberto 100 economic Trinity 141 entia 6 Eriugena, see Johannes Scottus Eriugena esse ipsum 1 eternity 2, 15–18 existence of divine being 177–186 of God 5 Fichte, Gottfried W. 45 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 26 Foerster, Heinz von 105 Fonvizin, Natal’ja D. 27 form 53 two kinds 148 forma intelligibilis 147–153 Frankl, Viktor 77–79 Franzen, Winfried 105 freedom of the will 3, 40–51 reason 43 spontaneity 45 friendship 101 Fromm, Erich 68, 93, 94

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212 Galilei, Galileo 39, 109 Gewissen und Gottesgesetz 25 God a being 1 a person 3 all in all 190 as happiness 31–36 as love 3–4, 89–103 as truth 37–39 concrete 126–127 essence and existence 146 existence 5, 177–186 form of beatific vision 152 good 19–30 ground of free will 48–51 language 187–201 attributes 194–200 person 86–88 relations 10 speaking about 187–201 suffering 66–85 the ground of laughter 168–176 the truth of things 38–39 theodicy 67–85 truth 35, 110 unknowability 129–139 violence 4, 104–120 good 2, 19–30 grace presupposes and fulfills nature 33 Guardini, Romano 170 Hamlet 88 hand analogy 127–128 happiness 2, 31–36 conscious 36 hate 23 Havel, Václav 23, 24, 51, 119 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 192 Hofstadter, Richard 108 Hoye, William J. 35, 149, 165, 191 Hugh of St. Victor 200 Hume, David 106, 107 immance of creatures in God 11–14 immanent Trinity 141 Incarnation 4, 121–128 intelligent designer 3

Index intelligible species 146 ipsum esse per se subsistens 1 ipsum esse 1, 6 John Damascene 60 John of the Cross 75 John Paul II 111 John Scotus Eriugena 108 Kafka, Franz 82, 85 Kant, Immanuel 26, 45, 70 Kierkegaard, Søren 174 language about God 5, 187–201 Lao-tse 81 laughter 5, 168–176 Dante 171–173 God 175–176 Karl Rahner 169–170, 174–176 liberation from the world 170–171 religion 173–175 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 70, 71 Leitheiser, Ludwig 99 lethargy 24 Lewis, C. S. 68 love 3 complacency 95 friendship 101 God as love 89–103 kinds of union 91–97 objects accusative 91 dative 91 of enemies 101–103 of neighbor 4, 22, 90–97 self-love 100 Maidl, Lydia 61, 62, 64 medium quod 147 medium sub quo 147 monotheism thesis 106 Moody, Raymond A. 169 morality state law 29–30 Mosaic distinction 105, 107 Müller, Martin 203 Nicolaus Cusanus 11, 12, 17, 72, 104, 136, 177, 178, 180, 190, 191

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213

Index Nietzsche, Friedrich 184 Nikolaus von Kues, see Nicolaus Cusanus Nominalism 134–136 ontological proof 4 pantheism 189, 202 Pascal, Blaise 118 Paul 26, 81 peace 23–24, 118–119 truth 119 Pesch, Christian 99 Plato 37 Plessner, Helmut 169 Pörksen, Bernhard 105 possibility 137 God 1 prayer 3, 60–85 against divine will 3 predestination 62–66 providence 60–66, 85 quasi-formal causality in beatific vision 150 Rahner, Karl 5, 47, 48, 87, 88, 124–126, 134, 141–150, 153–155, 170, 174–176, 191, 192, 198 Ratzinger, Joseph, see Benedict XVI Rawls, John 114 relations 10 in thought 156 nonbeing 157–158 real 10, 156 Rengstorf, Karl Heinrich 99 revelation and reason 108 intolerance 106, 107 truths 48 Richert, Friedemann 171, 175 Rilke, Rainer Maria 76 Samaritan 99–100 Sara 175 Schlegel, Friedrich 129 Schnädelbach, Herbert 105 Scripture interpretation 107 literal meaning 111 truth 110

self-consciousness 85 self-love 100 sempiternitas 15 senses of Scripture 110 Shakespeare, William 88 similar dissimilarity 130 sin 20, 22 Socrates 125 soul 3, 54 being 57–59 human 55–59 Spaemann, Robert 21 speaking about God 5, 187–201 species 149 species expressa 148, 149 species impressa 149 species intelligibilis impressa 150 Spinoza, Benedict de 189, 202 Stump, Eleonore 60, 66, 73 suffering 66–85 self-consciousness 85 Swabey, Marie C. 171, 173, 174 theodicy 67–85 Job 67, 72 Thielicke, Helmut 170, 173 tolerance 116–118 truth 119–120 Trinity 4–5, 140–167 appropriations 144 emanation 158–159 emanation of Holy Spirit  165–166 generation of Son 159–165 Karl Rahner 141–147 relations 153–158 truth 2–3, 37–39, 184–186 God 110 peace 119 the truth 2 tolerance 119–120 truth itself 35, 110 violence 104–107 truth of things 38–39 unity human 3, 52–59 unknowability revelation 131–134

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214 violence 4, 104–120 truth 104–107 Weil, Simone 81, 85 Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich von 75, 84, 98, 119 Wilde, Oscar 74, 80 William of Auvergne 31

Index William of Ockham 134 wonder about being 179–180 Wordsworth, William 74 Wright, Nicholas Thomas 73

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