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The fact that
we need a plurality of divine names is one sign of the imperfect
way we know God. Of course any creature has many names as
well, but apart from his proper name, these dub him from some
perfection he shares in, participates in. But of God we not
only say that He is just, but that He is justice, and so with
wise and wisdom, good and goodness, and the other affirmative
names. For such names do affirm things of God; they tell us
something true about Him.
Negative theology
is much in vogue at the present, sometimes taking its cue
from St. Thomas's remark that in the end we know what God
is not rather than what he is. Is this tantamount to the statement
that we know nothing of God? Hardly. It refers to our way
of knowing Him, which is inadequate and imperfect but, for
all that, knowledge of Him. The perfections attributed to
God are found first in creatures, but such created perfections
truly indicate their causal source. Omne agens agit sibi
simile. It would be odd to suggest that the whole
purpose of our having a mind is ultimately thwarted, if only
in this life.
Students of Thomas
will find a fine feast of a book in Thierry-Dominique Humbrecht's
Théologie négative et noms divins chez saint Thomas d'Aquin
(Paris: Vrin, 2006). It would be too much, or too little,
to say of this magnificent book that it turns on the truism
that any negation presupposes an affirmation. We do well to
acknowledge the vastly imperfect way in which we know God,
but it seems a species of false humility - and perhaps a want
of pietas - to say that the one who revealed himself
in Jesus as well as in the world around us is wholly unknown
to us.
Kierkegaard's
Johannes Climacus held that the human mind desires its own
downfall, seeking an object it cannot think, the absolute
unknown. It seems better to say that the human mind seeks
an object that will completely assuage its desire, Truth itself.
Meanwhile our knowledge of God, however imperfect, is indeed
knowledge of Him. Call it a learned ignorance, an imperfect
knowledge, but let us not let the negative mode obscure the
fact that in knowing that God is wise, for example, we know
something real of Him. Nor let us think of Him as a coincidentia
oppositorum, as if He were a bundle of incompatible attributes.
Hence the magnificent quasi-proper name of God: Ipsum Esse
Subsistens.
Ralph McInerny |
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