What Are We Being Distracted From? (Question 4: Reality - God as a Being or The Be-ing?)

What Are We Distracted From? This is the great question of our age, because we know we are being distracted. We can break down that question into six parts, six First Questions. The entirety of the Answers differentiates and elevates the Catholic faith and way-of-life.

Here are the three First Questions, and the one Answer that distinguishes the Abrahamic religions from all the others:

1)  Reality: What one most true, significant, and authentic entity(ies) do humans encounter in existing?

• Answer: The Noumenal – The reality is the separate ideal or perfect or eternal behind the appearances and the substrates.
• This contrasts with the sensed reality and the impersonal substrate reality characterizing Modernism and Eastern religions.

2)  Purpose: What one function impels the universe, God, and/or humans within Reality to the most good and beautiful?

• Answer: The Creative – The driver is the act of creating, or being a creator, often out of nothing.
• This contrasts with Eastern religions' cyclical/unchanging and pantheistic drivers.

3)  Perspective: What one point-of-view provides the knowledge about the true Reality and the most good Purpose?

• Answer: The Revelatory – Truths show-through and transcend the individual and the unbiased, inhuman observer.
• This contrasts with the subjective and objective point-of-view of Modernism.

In the Reality, Purpose, and Perspective posts, we derived these first three indisputable Answers distinguishing Catholicism and the Abrahamic religions in Questions 1, 2, and 3, respectively.

Now we discuss First Question #4: Reality: God as a being or The Be-ing. Or, is the fundamental difference between God and humans in degree, or in kind? 

This Question is more ambiguous in its dividing lines. Within Christianity. Although we clearly elevate above non-Christian religions, the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism will remain a matter of emphasis, not necessarily dogma. This murkiness is aided by the disagreement on the Answers within both. We also find murkiness because we rarely think about this question. This can be expected, since we live in a Modernist culture that trains us daily to avoid it. 

Hans Boersma describes the history and implication of the Answer in his book Heavenly Participation (2011)¹. Here are five examples:

Before the 1300s, helped by Aquinas, nearly all Christians believed the Holy Trinity was almost inexplicable, only conceptualized incompletely using metaphors, art, and icons.

• (1) “Thus did Christian theologians explain that the being of creation (as well as its truth, goodness, and beauty) was similar or analogous – and thus not identical – to the being (and truth, goodness, and beauty) of the Creator.” (p. 70)
• (2)  “The form of human beings, Thomas declares, only very distantly resembles God’s own form, ‘not that is, so as to participate in the likeness of [God’s] form according to the same specific or generic formality, but only according to some sort of analogy.’ (Summa Theologica, q. 5, a.3)” (p. 74)

The history of this momentous change in thinking after Aquinas in the 1200s is cloudy. Boersma traces this concept, “univocity,” to John Duns Scotus, a Franciscan friar who lived in the late 1200s and early 1300s. He describes the implications:

• (3) “If it is true that we can apply ‘being’ to God and creatures in the same way, then ‘being’ forms an overarching category in which God and creatures both share… No longer did earthly objects… receive their reality… of their being from God’s own being. Rather, earthly objects possessed their own being. No longer was there a mysterious reality hiding within what could be observed by the senses. The full reality of created objects could be seen, heard, touched, smelled, and tasted. The loss of analogy meant the loss of sacramentality.” (p. 75)

Thus, the nature of God is pulled down to the level of merely another being. Indeed, the very love of God can be degraded to a human-like love. To us, creation can lose its awe, mystery, and need for our gratitude. The mechanistic universe is not far behind.

• (4) “[U]nivocity means a reduction of God. God is subordinated to a higher concept, namely, that of being… God is simply one of many beings – all understood in the same univocal sense of being. Thomas’s Platonic proclivities had ensured that, for him, God does not simply belong to a different category (or genus) of being than creatures do, but rather that he far transcends every category of being.”(p. 75)

Here, Boersma summarizes the great difference in thinking. In fact, by definition, the Holy Trinity Itself can become secondary to an abstract being.

• (5) “The Platonist-Christian [Augustinian] emphasis on the created order sacramentally participating in God’s being, and thus depending for its existence entirely on God’s own life, makes way for a separation between the created order and the fullness of God’s being. No longer are truth, goodness, and beauty given with the reality of the divine Word. [See Reality]  Instead, these universals claim independence from what had once been their christological anchor in the heavenly places. Slowly but surely, the infinite mystery of God will recede from the horizon before this concrete, comprehensible, and malleable concept of being.” (p. 76)

 Understanding God as fundamentally separate from humans and other beings is an essential Catholic concept. But we often slip back into comprehending God as another higher form of human, like the “smiling Jesus.” This thinking is not altogether bad, and acceptable. As analogy.

 The danger is holding little to no understanding of the Holy Trinity as Perfect and Eternal and All-Powerful. That more accurate understanding holds the key to humility and knowledge of God’s infinite love for us mere creatures. Otherwise, God’s love can become human-like, subject to withholding and conditions. In actuality, God’s love for us is perfect and whole. God’s love is only denied us when we ourselves reject it by sin through our free will.

 In short, the more God becomes “just another” being on the human level, the more Modernism and other heresies and errors thrive:

• Dualism (and Manicheism): Dualism explains its theology in terms of good and evil, in a perpetual battle for primacy. In this religion, the universe is a great war between these two equal, ambiguous foes. Neither exists eternally; neither creates the other. This Reality often devolves into blaming one’s free choices and actions on evil spirits, or even worshipping the evil side.
  • According to Hilaire Belloc in The Great Heresies,² “The Manichean was so overwhelmed by the experience or prospect of suffering and by the appalling fact that his nature was subject to mortality, that he took refuge in the denying the omnipotent goodness of a Creator… The Manichean recognized an evil god as well as a good god.”
• Gnosticism, Puritanism: These are related to Dualism above. Here, humans, in their need for simplifying Dualism, side with the non-physical world as the good, and the physical world as the evil. In fact, sometimes this good is available only to an elite few. Physical things and our evil, bodily human nature appear to cause human suffering and death. For this reason, Puritan-style Protestantism makes that side intrinsically evil, although Christ can cover over the physical evil.
• Sola Scriptura: Although Catholics certainly uphold the Bible as Truth inspired by the Holy Spirit and written by saints, the inability of humans to know the infinite mystery of the Holy Trinity requires the help of Tradition and the Magisterium to interpret, translate, and memorialize Scripture. The more a person holds the Protestant doctrine of literal translation of the Bible and the Bible as the only medium of doctrine (Sola Scriptura), the more they sink into human-inspired error.

So, here’s the Catholic Answer to Fourth Question: Is the difference between God and humans in degree, or in kind?

• Answer: In kind. The infinitely perfect, eternal, and omniscient Holy Trinity is known as, and defined as, neither entirely identical to, nor entirely different from, humans, but It is similar or analogous.

In summary, understanding the mystery of the Holy Trinity as perfect, overshadowing the concept of God-as-a-being, is the key to realizing the Holy Trinity’s magnificence and love, and leads to our humility. It is key to avoiding Modernist traps and heresies.

In the next post, we’ll answer Question 5 to help elevate Christianity over other Abrahamic religions and other ways-of-life.

To further reveal our Reality-by-Analogy, Tradition guides us, as follows: 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1995) ³

48 We really can name God, starting from the manifold perfections of his creatures, which are likenesses of the infinitely perfect God, even if our limited language cannot exhaust the mystery.

230 Even when he reveals himself, God remains a mystery beyond words: "If you understood him, it would not be God" (St. Augustine).

285 Since the beginning the Christian faith has been challenged by responses to the question of origins that differ from its own. Ancient religions and cultures produced many myths concerning origins…

• [O]thers have affirmed the existence of two eternal principles, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, locked, in permanent conflict (Dualism, Manichaeism).
• According to some of these conceptions, the world (at least the physical world) is evil, the product of a fall, and is thus to be rejected or left behind (Gnosticism).

108 [T]he Christian faith is not a "religion of the book". Christianity is the religion of the "Word" of God, "a word which is not a written and mute word, but the Word which is incarnate and living". If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, "open (our) minds to understand the Scriptures."

137 Interpretation of the inspired Scripture must be attentive above all to what God wants to reveal through the sacred authors for our salvation. What comes from the Spirit is not fully ‘understood except by the Spirit's action' (Origen).

St. Thomas Aquinas ⁴

Therefore I say that this proposition, "God exists," of itself is self-evident, for the predicate is the same as the subject, because God is His own existence… Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident to us; but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their nature---namely, by effects. (Summa Theologica I, q.2, a.1) 

I answer that, It is impossible for any created intellect to see the essence of God by its own natural power. For knowledge is regulated according as the thing known is in the knower. But the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower… It follows therefore that to know self-subsistent being is natural to the divine intellect alone; and this is beyond the natural power of any created intellect; for no creature is its own existence, for as much as its existence is participated. Therefore the created intellect cannot see the essence of God, unless God by His grace unites Himself to the created intellect, as an object made intelligible to it. (Summa Theologica I, q.12, a.4)

I answer that, Univocal predication is impossible between God and creatures… [A]ll perfections existing in creatures divided and multiplied, pre-exist in God unitedly. Thus when any term expressing perfection is applied to a creature, it signifies that perfection distinct in idea from other perfections; as, for instance, by the term "wise" applied to man, we signify some perfection distinct from a man's essence, and distinct from his power and existence, and from all similar things; whereas when we apply to it God, we do not mean to signify anything distinct from His essence, or power, or existence. Thus also this term "wise" applied to man in some degree circumscribes and comprehends the thing signified; whereas this is not the case when it is applied to God; but it leaves the thing signified as incomprehended, and as exceeding the signification of the name. Hence it is evident that this term "wise" is not applied in the same way to God and to man. The same rule applies to other terms. Hence no name is predicated univocally of God and of creatures… "The invisible things of God are clearly seen being understood by the things that are made" (Rm. 1:20). Therefore it must be said that these names are said of God and creatures in an analogous sense, i.e., according to proportion. Now names are thus used in two ways: either according as many things are proportionate to one… And in this way some things are said of God and creatures analogically, and not in a purely equivocal nor in a purely univocal sense. (Summa Theologica I, q.13, a.5)

Sources

1. Hans Boersma, Heavenly Participation: The Weaving of a Sacramental Tapestry, 2011, Eerdsman.
2. Hilaire Belloc, The Great Heresies, 1938, Cavalier Books.
3. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1995, Doubleday
4. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.), [Online] Available from: http://www.documenta-catholica.eu/d_1225-1274-%20Thomas%20Aquinas%20-%20Summa%20Theologiae%20-%20Prima%20Pars%20-%20EN.pdf [Original 1265-1274]