Divo Barsotti
Yesterday it was said that hope lies between faith and charity; faith is the foundation, while charity is the goal. Faith is the beginning, charity the end – and the end of our journey.
Faith is the knowledge of God through the revelation he makes of himself to us. We know that through our intelligence we can come, albeit with difficulty, to know that there is a first principle on which all things depend. There is a primary cause for the existence of this universe, which does not have in itself the reason for its being. But we do not know nor will we ever be able to know with our reason what God is. God is inaccessible to our reason, he is incomprehensible to our intellect. God must reveal himself so that we can know him; he must open the mystery of his intimate life and of his being to us, poor men, who otherwise would always remain in perfect ignorance of what God is.
Nonetheless, we must also understand that God in himself always remains inaccessible and incomprehensible for every creature. No created intelligence could ever exhaust the knowledge of God. Only God knows God. Not even Jesus Christ in his human nature, even though he is God, can know God as he knows himself. It would be monstrous, but it would also be absurd, that a created intelligence, and Jesus Christ as man possesses a created intelligence, could have the very knowledge that God has of himself. Of course Jesus Christ as God, that is, in his divine nature, knows God as God, but as man he cannot have a total knowledge of God. We know God to the extent that he makes himself known. The revelation of God is the revelation of the God of economy, of a God, that is, who communicates himself to human intelligence and in the measure in which he makes himself known, he gives himself, he communicates himself, he gives himself to us.
In fact, what does it mean for man to know God through revelation? You mean knowing God as your end. God makes himself known to the extent that he gives himself and to the extent that he gives himself he becomes the very end of man. Knowing God through revelation is not like learning math or physics. Knowledge of the sciences leaves man as he is; it gives him notions, but does not transform his being.
On the other hand, this is not the case with the knowledge of God, because this is not a purely abstract knowledge, much less a purely gratuitous knowledge. It is a knowledge that transforms man, because through this knowledge God places himself before man as his end and, therefore, man tends to that God who has revealed himself to him. Thus faith comes to be the source of hope. If faith were only the abstract knowledge of an impersonal divinity, it would be knowledge like that of mathematics. But it is not so. For this reason, even the texts of Christian dogmatics can often do a disservice. If theology is not a practical science, as the great theologians say, that is, if it does not move the soul to the possession of God, it becomes a sterile and empty science. And then we can talk about God in a frivolous, superficial manner without our spirit feeling in the least committed to tending to him and desiring him.
But God’s revelation is not so; he reveals himself as he gives himself, as he arouses in us a lively desire to possess him even more. Revelation is progressive and therefore as God reveals himself, the desire to tend towards him grows in you and to the extent that the capacity to accept him grows in you, to the same extent God’s revelation becomes even more luminous, more alive.
(From “Che Dio vi parli,” Chorabooks 2016, translated by Aurelio Porfiri)
(Photo: Pexels at Pixabay)
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