| |
 Chapter 1 : 7-15
The Revelation of God's wisdom
CHAPTER I
THE
REVELATION
OF GOD'S WISDOM
Jesus,
revealer of the Father
7. Underlying all the Church's
thinking is the awareness that she is the bearer of a
message which has its origin in God himself (cf. 2 Cor
4:1-2). The knowledge which the Church offers to man has
its origin not in any speculation of her own, however
sublime, but in the word of God which she has received in
faith (cf. 1 Th 2:13). At the origin of our life of faith
there is an encounter, unique in kind, which discloses a
mystery hidden for long ages (cf. 1 Cor 2:7; Rom
16:25-26) but which is now revealed: “In his
goodness and wisdom, God chose to reveal himself and to
make known to us the hidden purpose of his will (cf. Eph
1:9), by which, through Christ, the Word made flesh, man
has access to the Father in the Holy Spirit and comes to
share in the divine nature”.(5) This initiative is
utterly gratuitous, moving from God to men and women in
order to bring them to salvation. As the source of love,
God desires to make himself known; and the knowledge
which the human being has of God perfects all that the
human mind can know of the meaning of life.
8. Restating almost to the
letter the teaching of the First Vatican Council's
Constitution Dei Filius, and taking into account the
principles set out by the Council of Trent, the Second
Vatican Council's Constitution Dei Verbum pursued the
age-old journey of understanding faith, reflecting on
Revelation in the light of the teaching of Scripture and
of the entire Patristic tradition. At the First Vatican
Council, the Fathers had stressed the supernatural
character of God's Revelation. On the basis of mistaken
and very widespread assertions, the rationalist critique
of the time attacked faith and denied the possibility of
any knowledge which was not the fruit of reason's natural
capacities. This obliged the Council to reaffirm
emphatically that there exists a knowledge which is
peculiar to faith, surpassing the knowledge proper to
human reason, which nevertheless by its nature can
discover the Creator. This knowledge expresses a truth
based upon the very fact of God who reveals himself, a
truth which is most certain, since God neither deceives
nor wishes to deceive.(6)
9. The First Vatican Council
teaches, then, that the truth attained by philosophy and
the truth of Revelation are neither identical nor
mutually exclusive: “There exists a twofold order of
knowledge, distinct not only as regards their source, but
also as regards their object. With regard to the source,
because we know in one by natural reason, in the other by
divine faith. With regard to the object, because besides
those things which natural reason can attain, there are
proposed for our belief mysteries hidden in God which,
unless they are divinely revealed, cannot be
known”.(7) Based upon God's testimony and enjoying
the supernatural assistance of grace, faith is of an
order other than philosophical knowledge which depends
upon sense perception and experience and which advances
by the light of the intellect alone. Philosophy and the
sciences function within the order of natural reason;
while faith, enlightened and guided by the Spirit,
recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness
of grace and truth” (cf. Jn 1:14) which God has
willed to reveal in history and definitively through his
Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 5:31-32).
10. Contemplating Jesus as
revealer, the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council
stressed the salvific character of God's Revelation in
history, describing it in these terms: “In this
Revelation, the invisible God (cf. Col 1:15; 1 Tim 1:17),
out of the abundance of his love speaks to men and women
as friends (cf. Ex 33:11; Jn 15:14-15) and lives among
them (cf. Bar 3:38), so that he may invite and take them
into communion with himself. This plan of Revelation is
realized by deeds and words having an inner unity: the
deeds wrought by God in the history of salvation manifest
and confirm the teaching and realities signified by the
words, while the words proclaim the deeds and clarify the
mystery contained in them. By this Revelation, then, the
deepest truth about God and human salvation is made clear
to us in Christ, who is the mediator and at the same time
the fullness of all Revelation”.(8)
11. God's Revelation is
therefore immersed in time and history. Jesus Christ took
flesh in the “fullness of time” (Gal 4:4); and
two thousand years later, I feel bound to restate
forcefully that “in Christianity time has a
fundamental importance”.(9) It is within time that
the whole work of creation and salvation comes to light;
and it emerges clearly above all that, with the
Incarnation of the Son of God, our life is even now a
foretaste of the fulfilment of time which is to come (cf.
Heb 1:2).
The truth about himself and his
life which God has entrusted to humanity is immersed
therefore in time and history; and it was declared once
and for all in the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth. The
Constitution Dei Verbum puts it eloquently: “After
speaking in many places and varied ways through the
prophets, God 'last of all in these days has spoken to us
by his Son' (Heb 1:1-2). For he sent his Son, the eternal
Word who enlightens all people, so that he might dwell
among them and tell them the innermost realities about
God (cf. Jn 1:1-18). Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh,
sent as 'a human being to human beings', 'speaks the
words of God' (Jn 3:34), and completes the work of
salvation which his Father gave him to do (cf. Jn 5:36;
17:4). To see Jesus is to see his Father (Jn 14:9). For
this reason, Jesus perfected Revelation by fulfilling it
through his whole work of making himself present and
manifesting himself: through his words and deeds, his
signs and wonders, but especially though his death and
glorious Resurrection from the dead and finally his
sending of the Spirit of truth”.(10)
For the People of God,
therefore, history becomes a path to be followed to the
end, so that by the unceasing action of the Holy Spirit
(cf. Jn 16:13) the contents of revealed truth may find
their full expression. This is the teaching of the
Constitution Dei Verbum when it states that “as the
centuries succeed one another, the Church constantly
progresses towards the fullness of divine truth, until
the words of God reach their complete fulfilment in
her”.(11)
12. History therefore becomes
the arena where we see what God does for humanity. God
comes to us in the things we know best and can verify
most easily, the things of our everyday life, apart from
which we cannot understand ourselves.
In the Incarnation of the Son of
God we see forged the enduring and definitive synthesis
which the human mind of itself could not even have
imagined: the Eternal enters time, the Whole lies hidden
in the part, God takes on a human face. The truth
communicated in Christ's Revelation is therefore no
longer confined to a particular place or culture, but is
offered to every man and woman who would welcome it as
the word which is the absolutely valid source of meaning
for human life. Now, in Christ, all have access to the
Father, since by his Death and Resurrection Christ has
bestowed the divine life which the first Adam had refused
(cf. Rom 5:12-15). Through this Revelation, men and women
are offered the ultimate truth about their own life and
about the goal of history. As the Constitution Gaudium et
Spes puts it, “only in the mystery of the incarnate
Word does the mystery of man take on light”.(12)
Seen in any other terms, the mystery of personal
existence remains an insoluble riddle. Where might the
human being seek the answer to dramatic questions such as
pain, the suffering of the innocent and death, if not in
the light streaming from the mystery of Christ's Passion,
Death and Resurrection?
Reason before the mystery
13. It should nonetheless be
kept in mind that Revelation remains charged with
mystery. It is true that Jesus, with his entire life,
revealed the countenance of the Father, for he came to
teach the secret things of God.(13) But our vision of the
face of God is always fragmentary and impaired by the
limits of our understanding. Faith alone makes it
possible to penetrate the mystery in a way that allows us
to understand it coherently.
The Council teaches that
“the obedience of faith must be given to God who
reveals himself”.(14) This brief but dense statement
points to a fundamental truth of Christianity. Faith is
said first to be an obedient response to God. This
implies that God be acknowledged in his divinity,
transcendence and supreme freedom. By the authority of
his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known
is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.
By faith, men and women give their assent to this divine
testimony. This means that they acknowledge fully and
integrally the truth of what is revealed because it is
God himself who is the guarantor of that truth. They can
make no claim upon this truth which comes to them as gift
and which, set within the context of interpersonal
communication, urges reason to be open to it and to
embrace its profound meaning. This is why the Church has
always considered the act of entrusting oneself to God to
be a moment of fundamental decision which engages the
whole person. In that act, the intellect and the will
display their spiritual nature, enabling the subject to
act in a way which realizes personal freedom to the
full.(15) It is not just that freedom is part of the act
of faith: it is absolutely required. Indeed, it is faith
that allows individuals to give consummate expression to
their own freedom. Put differently, freedom is not
realized in decisions made against God. For how could it
be an exercise of true freedom to refuse to be open to
the very reality which
enables our self-realization? Men and women can
accomplish no more important act in their lives than the
act of faith; it is here that freedom reaches the
certainty of truth and chooses to live in that truth.
To assist reason in its effort
to understand the mystery there are the signs which
Revelation itself presents. These serve to lead the
search for truth to new depths, enabling the mind in its
autonomous exploration to penetrate within the mystery by
use of reason's own methods, of which it is rightly
jealous. Yet these signs also urge reason to look beyond
their status as signs in order to grasp the deeper
meaning which they bear. They contain a hidden truth to
which the mind is drawn and which it cannot ignore
without destroying the very signs which it is given.
In a sense, then, we return to
the sacramental character of Revelation and especially to
the sign of the Eucharist, in which the indissoluble
unity between the signifier and signified makes it
possible to grasp the depths of the mystery. In the
Eucharist, Christ is truly present and alive, working
through his Spirit; yet, as Saint Thomas said so well,
“what you neither see nor grasp, faith confirms for
you, leaving nature far behind; a sign it is that now
appears, hiding in mystery realities sublime”.(16)
He is echoed by the philosopher Pascal: “Just as
Jesus Christ went unrecognized among men, so does his
truth appear without external difference among common
modes of thought. So too does the Eucharist remain among
common bread”.(17)
In short, the knowledge proper
to faith does not destroy the mystery; it only reveals it
the more, showing how necessary it is for people's lives:
Christ the Lord “in revealing the mystery of the
Father and his love fully reveals man to himself and
makes clear his supreme calling”,(18) which is to
share in the divine mystery of the life of the
Trinity.(19)
14. From the teaching of the two
Vatican Councils there also emerges a genuinely novel
consideration for philosophical learning. Revelation has
set within history a point of reference which cannot be
ignored if the mystery of human life is to be known. Yet
this knowledge refers back constantly to the mystery of
God which the human mind cannot exhaust but can only
receive and embrace in faith. Between these two poles,
reason has its own specific field in which it can enquire
and understand, restricted only by its finiteness before
the infinite mystery of God.
Revelation therefore introduces
into our history a universal and ultimate truth which
stirs the human mind to ceaseless effort; indeed, it
impels reason continually to extend the range of its
knowledge until it senses that it has done all in its
power, leaving no stone unturned. To assist our
reflection on this point we have one of the most fruitful
and important minds in human history, a point of
reference for both philosophy and theology: Saint Anselm.
In his Proslogion, the Archbishop of Canterbury puts it
this way: “Thinking of this problem frequently and
intently, at times it seemed I was ready to grasp what I
was seeking; at other times it eluded my thought
completely, until finally, despairing of being able to
find it, I wanted to abandon the search for something
which was impossible to find. I wanted to rid myself of
that thought because, by filling my mind, it distracted
me from
other problems from which I could gain some profit; but
it would then present itself with ever greater
insistence... Woe is me, one of the poor children of Eve,
far from God, what did I set out to do and what have I
accomplished? What was I aiming for and how far have I
got? What did I aspire to and what did I long for?... O
Lord, you are not only that than which nothing greater
can be conceived (non solum es quo maius cogitari
nequit), but you are greater than all that can be
conceived (quiddam maius quam cogitari possit)... If you
were not such, something greater than you could be
thought, but this is impossible”.(20)
15. The truth of Christian
Revelation, found in Jesus of Nazareth, enables all men
and women to embrace the “mystery” of their own
life. As absolute truth, it summons human beings to be
open to the transcendent, whilst respecting both their
autonomy as creatures and their freedom. At this point
the relationship between freedom and truth is complete,
and we understand the full meaning of the Lord's words:
“You will know the truth, and the truth will make
you free” (Jn 8:32).
Christian Revelation is the true
lodestar of men and women as they strive to make their
way amid the pressures of an immanentist habit of mind
and the constrictions of a technocratic logic. It is the
ultimate possibility offered by God for the human being
to know in all its fullness the seminal plan of love
which began with creation. To those wishing to know the
truth, if they can look beyond themselves and their own
concerns, there is given the possibility of taking full
and harmonious possession of their lives, precisely by
following the path of truth. Here the words of the Book
of Deuteronomy are pertinent: “This
commandment which I command you is not too hard for you,
neither is it far off. It is not in heaven that you
should say, 'Who will go up for us to heaven, and bring
it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it
beyond the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over
the sea for us, and bring it to us, that we may hear and
do it?' But the word is very near you; it is in your
mouth and in your heart, that you can do it”
(30:11-14). This text finds an echo in the famous dictum
of the holy philosopher and theologian Augustine:
“Do not wander far and wide but return into
yourself. Deep within man there dwells the truth”
(Noli foras ire, in te ipsum redi. In interiore homine
habitat veritas).(21)
These considerations prompt a
first conclusion: the truth made known to us by
Revelation is neither the product nor the consummation of
an argument devised by human reason. It appears instead
as something gratuitous, which itself stirs thought and
seeks acceptance as an expression of love. This revealed
truth is set within our history as an anticipation of
that ultimate and definitive vision of God which is
reserved for those who believe in him and seek him with a
sincere heart. The ultimate purpose of personal
existence, then, is the theme of philosophy and theology
alike. For all their difference of method and content,
both disciplines point to that “path of life”
(Ps 16:11) which, as faith tells us, leads in the end to
the full and lasting joy of the contemplation of the
Triune God.
|