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This essay was originally published in Thovght, and then
edited and reprinted in Anthony O. Simon (ed.), Philosopher
at Work. We thank both Anthony Simon and the editors of
Thovght for granting us permission to republish it in our
Thomas International website.
The intelligence of faith is the
rational science of the secrets of
God, and it will live eternally
when faith itself shall have come
to an end.
THE RATIONALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
CHRISTIAN FAITH HOLDS that the destiny of man is not altogether
natural. It highly values moral virtues and all the perfections
that human nature strives to achieve, such as true knowledge,
mastery over the physical world, the perception and creation of
beauty, peace of soul and cooperation among persons. But in the
Christian vision of destiny greater goods, which lie beyond the
range of man's natural possibilities, are actually accessible to
him. Between human nature and these supernatural perfections the
relation is such that the ultimate meaning of the goods of
nature, the most decisive reason of their desirability, the
principle which ultimately determines in what amount they should
be desired and under what conditions they should be given up,
their ultimate vindication and their supreme rule, are not found
in nature but beyond it.
The supernatural character of human destiny marks, in all its
phases, the mysterious history of mankind in its relation to
God. Man was created in a state which involved, besides perfect
integrity of nature, supernatural and preternatural privileges.
His reason was steadily obedient to divine command and his
appetite to reason; moreover, he was spared the hardships
inherent in his natural condition: the
irksomeness of labor, the pains of childbirth, exposure to
disease and, above all, the inevitability of death. Yet, he was
not confirmed in sanctity. The possibility of sin was not
altogether excluded. In spite of perfect awareness, man chose to
sin and lost the privileges of his original innocence. These
privileges were deeply grafted in his nature and could not be
torn off, by sin, without nature itself undergoing damage. The
fallen man is wounded. Over and above the contingencies to which
his nature is subject, he suffers from disturbances which render
exceedingly precarious the maintenance of a rational order in
the operations of his excellent faculties. If denied any
supernatural assistance, a rational animal imperfect health
would still be a rather poor thing: his would be a law of slow
progress through trials and errors, with a high ratio of
failure. The wounds left by the sin make everything worse. Man
has come to depend on supernatural help even within the realm of
his natural accomplishment.
But the fall was followed by a promise of recovery. The Second
Person of the Divine Trinity became man, and through suffering
and death redeemed the human race. The Holy Spirit was sent to
the Church founded by Christ. The Word of truth remained among
us. The flow of grace would never cease. The wounds of the
original sin can be healed, not by any natural process but by
supernatural participation in divine life. In a world of
frailty, of universal suffering and of sin, eternal life has
begun. No matter how painful to nature, death is defeated, for
it can neither terminate nor interrupt the life of supernatural
union with God.
How are all these truths known to us? Not by demonstration, but
by revelation. Christian faith is primarily concerned with the
secrets of God. The word "mystery," in the context of faith,
assumes a meaning with no precedent in the rational
sciences‑‑although these often deal with questions that can be
termed mysteries with propriety. A mystery of faith is a truth
naturally accessible to the divine intellect and to no other
intellect. For creatures, the only possible access to such
truths is revelation, i.e., disclosure by God himself."... And
no one knows the Son except the Father, nor does anyone know the
Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son chooses to reveal
him" (Matt. 11:27). Indeed, faith covers many truths which,
considered in themselves, have no character of secrecy (e.g.,
"Isaac was the son of Abraham"). But it is by reason of their
connection with mysteries that all such truths belong to faith.
Moreover, there is an order among mysterious truths: the mystery
of the Divine Trinity comes first. And from all this it can be
gathered that the most direct way to a central insight on
whatever may be termed the rationality of the Christian Faith is
an inquiry into the part played by the reason in our approach to
the divine Trinity.
The ambitions of Christian philosophers have sometimes seemed to
try to force into the domain of metaphysics some parts or
aspects of the revealed mysteries. There have been, in
particular, attempts at demonstrating the distinction of three
persons within the unity of the divine essence. To ascertain the
meaning of these enterprises, let us consider the principle by
which the boundaries of metaphysics are ultimately determined.
The most diverse schools of thought, from ardent metaphysicians
to agnostics, hold that the field of our demonstrations is
measured by the basic proportion of our under‑standing to what
it knows primarily. Aquinas and his school, on this issue, are
strict followers of Aristotle: the only objects that the human
understanding attains directly are the natures of the things
present in sense experience. The privilege of these natures does
not mean that they alone can be subjects of demonstration; it
means that any other things knowable to the human mind are
known, if at all, through physical and observable things. A
science of metaphysics, i.e., a science of the world above
sensible nature, is not excluded thereby, but it cannot extend
beyond those aspects of the metaphysical world to which the mind
is led by the analysis of nature. So far as the knowledge of God
is concerned, this is a very severe restriction. Apart from
revelation, God remains thoroughly unknown to us except for the
attributes that things observable succeed in manifesting.
Inasmuch as we observe, in the physical world, the existence of
metaphysical features which, by intelligible necessity, cannot
exist without being caused by a Being in which we recognize what
the word "God" signifies, we know that God exists. The
experience of change leads to God as first mover, that of
essential sub‑ordinations in efficient causality to the first
efficient cause, that of contingency to the necessary being,
that of degrees in absolute perfections to the unparticipated
perfection, and the experience of finality to an intellect
identical with its action.
The demonstration of God's existence is complete when we have
understood that in the bearer of these predicates there is
identity between essence and existence.
Of the divine nature, what can we know? A first method is
unqualifiedly negative. Since no term expressing imperfection in
any degree can be predicated of God, we remove from Him, against
the suggestions of anthropomorphic imagination, all predicates
that involve imperfection. To know that God is not living after
the fashion of an organism, that He is not sentient, that He is
not a body, that He is not changing, that there is in Him no
composition of substance and accident, that there is not in Him
any composition what so ever, is to know things of great
significance about the divine nature. True, it ought to be said
that whatever perfection is contained in biological life, in
sensation, in corporeity, in change and in any such ways of
being, is most certainly possessed by God, but in another and
higher form. And thus we are led to these absolute or unmixed
perfections which can be predicated of God with propriety.
Although every perfection found in the world of our experience
is actually restricted, some observable perfections do not
imply, by essence and intelligible necessity, any restriction or
imperfection. Being, truth, unity, goodness, intelligence, love,
freedom, are examples of absolute perfections. "Good" is
properly predicated of a good man and of God. Clearly, the human
and the divine ways of being good are not identical. "Good" has
different meanings according as it is predicated of God or of
man. These meanings are at an infinite distance from each other;
yet they are not unrelated. I know that "good" is infinitely
more properly predicated of God than of the best of men. In the
divine way of being good goodness is infinitely more of a
goodness than in the human way of the same perfection. However,
the divine way of being good and universally the divine way of
absolute perfections remain totally unknown to us. A negation
terminates our inquiry into the divine nature. The method of
analogy, which makes for positive predications about God, is
caught between two negations, the first of which is relative to
mixed perfections -e.g., biological life, sensation, etc.‑ and
the second to the divine mode of the absolute perfections.
All the positive results of the way of analogy would be
deceptive if they were not straightened out by final negations.
Ultimately, we know what God is not rather than what He is, and
the notion of learned ignorance, often used in the description
of mystical knowledge, applies also properly to the metaphysics
of God.
How are these metaphysical procedures related to the knowledge
of the divine mysteries? Indeed, whenever we ask whether certain
predicates‑‑say, "one," "good," "loving"‑‑can be asserted of God
in a proper sense, the only source of our answer is the causal
analysis which constitutes the demonstration of God's existence.
Again, this analysis properly leads to the bearer of predicates
in correspondence with the metaphysical features of observable
reality. If I want to know whether a certain predicate, say,
"loving," pertains to God formally, the only method allowed by
the basic relation of the intellect to its primary object
consists in seeing whether such a predicate as "loving" can be
deductively connected with the notion of a subject which is
first mover, first efficient cause, necessary being, first being
and intellect in ultimate actuality. Where such deductive
connection is lacking, no conclusion can be attained. The ways
that lead the human mind to a natural and rational knowledge of
God are causal inferences. From diverse angles, they all
manifest God as first cause of the observable world. Now, this
name "first cause" pertains to the unity of the divine essence,
not to the trinity of the divine persons. Indeed the principle
of proportion which imposes such restrictions upon the
metaphysical abilities of the human mind imposes basically
similar restrictions upon the metaphysical abilities of any
created or creatable intellect. A created intellect cannot be
naturally related to God by direct proportion. The divine being
is not the direct and primary object of any intellect, save the
intellect of God Himself. No matter how high in the hierarchy of
spiritual creatures, a created intellect has for its primary
object a created being, and the only way for it to know God is
to reach Him as term of a causal inference grounded in the
metaphysical characteristics of creatures. Then God is attained
in essential, not in personal predicates. The trinity of the
divine persons remains unknown.
Granted that it is impossible to demonstrate the reality of a
mystery, is it possible, at least, to establish its possibility?
Granted that the fact of the Trinity is knowable only by
revelation, is it possible to show that the revealed dogma
involves no contradiction? In God, there is no discrepancy
between noncontradiction and unqualified possibility, neither is
there in Him any discrepancy between possibility and actuality.
God is actually all that He is possibly: such is the meaning of
divine necessity. If the possibility of the fact were
demonstrated, its actuality would be made obviously the same
demonstration. The essential obstacles by reason of which it is
impossible to demonstrate that there are three persons in God
also make it impossible to demonstrate that there can be a
trinity of divine persons. No metaphysical genius will ever
positively show that there is nothing contradictory about the
proposition that there are three persons in God. No
demonstration will ever positively show that this proposition is
not absurd. Such things cannot be demonstrated. Like the divine
modalities of the divine perfections they cannot be disclosed
clearly except in a vision. Again, the metaphysician ends his
discourse by denying himself all knowledge of things which can
be known only from the standpoint of the Deity. All his
knowledge of God, no matter how valuable, proceeds from the
standpoint of entity; all he knows is being and its causes,
secondary and First. The so‑called natural theology is but a
chapter of ontology, the chapter conversant with the first cause
of being. Supernatural mysteries belong to the universe of the
Deity: like the divine mode of the absolute perfections, they
are placed beyond the ultimate negations uttered by metaphysics,
beyond the last word of its learned ignorance. In faith, with
all its obscurity, and its dependence upon authority and free
choice, we recognize the essence of transrational knowledge.
There is in the general theory of authority a contrast which
throws much light on knowledge by faith. In the world of action,
the functions of authority are either essential or
substitutional. Authority exercises essential functions when the
very nature of social relations is what makes it necessary; but
when it is made necessary by a mere decency, its function is
substitutional. In matters of knowledge the function of
authority is always substitutional, never essential.
Just as the judgment and will of the father substitute for the
immature powers of the child in the pursuit of the child's own
happiness, so, in the approach to theoretical truth authority
plays by substitution a part which properly belongs to the
object. Considered in its essence, the determination of the
theoretical assent is neither a matter of authority nor a matter
of liberty: it is a matter of objectivity. This is one of the
reasons why the unrenewable facts of history pertain to
theoretical life in a merely oblique and qualified way. Except
for the persons who happened to be present when and where the
unrenewable event occurred, the only way to know it is
dependence upon the authority of witnesses.
The authority of the mere witness is but veracity made
recognizable by signs. Such authority does not imply in any way
the power to give orders. There is, however, a particular kind
of witness in whom authority in the sense of recognizable
veracity is associated with authority in the sense of power to
command. The teacher is an ambiguous personage: on the one hand
he is a witness whom society holds reliable, on the other hand
he is a leader in charge of managing externals in the life of
learning. Teachers are commonly treated with suspicion: indeed,
by reason of their two‑sided character, they are exposed to
particularly vicious temptations. As witness, a teacher has but
to say the truth and produce convincing evidences of his
veracity. As administrative agent, he has the power of issuing
orders and a right to be obeyed. The temptation is great to use
this power and this right to strengthen the evidences of his
veracity. Correspondingly, the submissive student may like to be
told what to think just as he is told what readings he should do
and what questions he should answer. The authority of the
witness concerns assent to truth and involves no command; the
authority of an administrator involves a command but it does not
concern assent to truth. Generally speaking, man owes obedience
to man with regard to external acts alone, and God alone has a
right to his obedience with regard to internal acts.
Acknowledging truth is an act characterized by supreme
interiority. The only witness whose authority involves a right
to be obeyed is the divine witness, the only teacher who speaks
with authority (Matt. 7:29), i.e., who causes an obligation to
believe his words, is the Word of God. This divine privilege is
partaken of by the Church without becoming in any sense a human
privilege. For it is by reason of her divine origin and
inspiration, not by reason of anything human in her, that the
Church obliges minds to believe in a testimony which is one with
that of the divine Word.
The unique privilege of the divine teacher does not affect in
anyway or degree the substitutional character of authority in
matters of theoretical assent. A truth adhered to by reason of
divine testimony is possessed of a certainty surpassing that of
any natural knowledge: yet the assent to such a truth is not
determined by the object alone, and this constitutes, in spite
of certainty and sublimity, a radical imperfection. The assent
of faith is altogether provisional, and animated by a dynamism
relative to another mode of revelation, where assent is
determined by the object alone, and where neither authority nor
liberty have any part to play. Many difficulties commonly held
insuperable would be removed if it were better realized that
teaching authority, even in the case of the divine teacher,
remains substitutional and provisional. A relation to vision is
included in the definition of faith: "Now faith is the substance
of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that are not
seen" (Heb. 11-1).
The notion of transrationality, already used in the description
of the mysteries, now assumes a new meaning and a new
significance. Faith tends, by its innermost dynamism, toward the
clarity of a knowledge which is transrational not only inasmuch
as it transcends the powers of reason, but also inasmuch as it
surpasses, by an infinite qualitative distance, the clarity that
reasoning is able to procure. The intuitive apprehension of
divine truth may be described as the term of a progress whose
initial phase is rational knowledge. When a proposition which
for some time has been held true on account of observable
regularities alone comes to be rationally understood, the
difference is that the necessity of its truth has become an
object of understanding. A middle term makes it clear that the
subject considered would both be and not be what it is if it did
not possess the property predicated of it in the demonstrated
conclusion. All the greatness of the rational process consists
in its ability to show that the law of identity is at work in a
case devoid of immediate obviousness. The discursiveness of the
rational process, inasmuch as it excludes the perfection of
immediacy, is a limitation on what constitutes the worth of
rationality. This can be summed up by saying that there is in
rationality a value which tends toward freedom from all the
restrictions proper to the discursive methods of reason. The
promised vision, to which faith is relative, is a revelation by
way of intuition; there does not remain in it any element of
discourse; neither does it use any sign or created idea. The
features which distinguish rational knowledge have disappeared,
but the perfection clumsily procured by the procedures of our
reason ultimately triumphs in a divine state of things. For the
beatific vision consists in seeing God as He is.
After having described the transrational clarity to which faith
aspires, let us now consider the operations which precede and
prepare the act of faith. To the question whether faith can be
rationally established, let it be answered that truth is one
thing and credibility an entirely different thing. The truth of
faith is known transrationally in the beatific vision, but so
long as there is no vision, it is held in darkness, on authority
and by a choice which is free without being in any sense
arbitrary. There is no such thing as a rational establishment of
the truth of faith. What can be established rationally is the
credibility of faith propositions. Reason can show that
believing is a sound, honest, virtuous action, that it is, for
sure, the action expected of a man determined to seek the right
and to avoid the wrong. But between showing that a proposition
is believable and ought to be believed and showing that it is
true, there is a world of difference. Inasmuch as rational work
shows that faith propositions are believable, we may speak of
the rationality of faith: but this expression, in such a
context, designates merely the reasonableness of supernatural
belief.
The dynamism of faith comprises two tendencies toward clarity.
The first is an eagerness to attain, beyond the natural horror
of death, the state of vision. The other is an endeavor to
obtain, within the necessary obscurity of faith, all possible
intelligence of revelation. In definite conditions of
orderliness, the second tendency gives birth to theology.
Against the widespread theory which confusedly describes
theology as an application of philosophic forms to revealed
data, let it be recalled that faith is the principal cause of
theological knowledge. According to the words of Aquinas,
theology is a discipline where the role of first principles is
played by propositions of faith. In rational science the
principles anterior to demonstration, the axioms from which
demonstration flows, are propositions possessed of immediate
evidence. But the axioms of theology are known by faith. Faith
is to theology what natural understanding is to rational
science. All that is genuine in theology draws its life from
faith, and if a theologian falls into infidelity, what is left
in his mind is but corpse. The role of philosophic and other
rational disciplines in theology is instrumental, which does not
mean that it is unimportant. Such expressions as light, clarity,
clarification, explanation, demonstration, understanding,
manifestation, intelligence, penetration and rationalization are
commonly used in the description of the theological work: all
are legitimate provided it is well understood that the states,
qualities and achievements which they designate take place
within faith and its obscurity, but all would be misleading if
they suggested that, as a result of ingenuity in the handling of
his rational instruments, the theologian succeeds in
emancipating his science from the obscurity of faith. No
instrument can procure a perfection -e.g., freedom from
obscurity -excluded by the very nature of the principal cause.
Let us now consider the various procedures used by theology in
its endeavor to bring about the understanding of faith.
(1) First comes the orderly collecting of revealed truths,
through the study of Holy Scripture and Tradition. This
"positive" or "historical" function of theology uses all
resources made available by history, yet is not reducible to a
piece of historical research; inasmuch as it is exercised under
the teaching authority of the Church it is, as certainly as any
other theological function, a work of faith carried out through
natural instruments.
(2) Then theology effects the conceptual analysis of revealed
truth. Prior to theological work, revealed truths are expressed
in the confused concepts of common sense and of Christian sense;
it is up to theology to express the same truths with a greater
degree of appropriateness and precision. The transition from the
more confused to the more distinct, independently of any fresh
discovery of truth, is a progress in quality and intensity; it
is, in the most proper sense, a progress in intelligence.
As examples of concepts elaborated on by theology let us
mention: created being and uncreated being; divine wisdom,
uncreated love, providence, predestination; nature, person and
relation; grace, free choice, merit, sin; infused virtue, faith,
hope, charity; sacrament; transubstantiation; beatitude and
pain.
(3) Another function of theology is to defend revealed truths
against objections. Sometimes the problem is to make it clear
that the truth under attack is actually contained in the
treasury of revelation. In other cases the objection pretends to
find contradiction in a matter of faith; then the theologian
endeavors to show that the argument designed to evidence
contradiction is devoid of necessitating power, even though it
may well enjoy some verisimilitude. As recalled in the
foregoing, it is altogether impossible to demonstrate that a
mysterious proposition -e.g., "there are three persons in the
unity of the divine essence" ‑is noncontradictory. What is it,
then, that the theologian does when he argues against those who
argue that such a proposition is absurd? He does not positively
establish its freedom from contradiction. He just shows that the
alleged contradiction is not demonstratively established. By
demonstrating that no one has succeeded in demonstrating that a
certain proposition of faith is contradictory, the theologian
attains new degrees of profundity and precision in the
intelligence of this proposition.
(4) In theology as well as in any other domain of thought, it is
good to achieve the imperfect condition of probable knowledge
when demonstrative certainty is out of the question. Theologians
call "arguments of convenience" the nondemonstrative proofs
which manifest an agreement between a mystery and a rational
truth. Let, for instance, the mystery of the generation of the
Word be considered in relation to the diffusiveness of itself
which is the metaphysical law of the good. This law expresses a
tendency, the tendency of the good to communicate itself. When a
statement is considered in relation to a tendency, it may either
agree with it, or prove indifferent to it, or contrast with it.
Faith propositions concerning the generation of the Word
certainly do not contrast with the metaphysical law of the good;
neither are they indifferent to it; they definitely agree with
the tendency of the good to communicate itself and to achieve
greater abundance and intimacy in communication on the loftier
levels of existence. To remark that a mysterious proposition
places itself along the line of a rational law is to throw
rational light upon a mystery; the familiarity of the intellect
with the mysterious truth is thereby increased. But the laws of
the good, such as they are knowable to us, do not demand, by
intelligible necessity, that there be generation of a divine
person by another. The argument of convenience falls short of
certainty by an infinite distance.
(5) Theology uses discourse, in merely explicative fashion, to
manifest the implications of revealed truth. The proposition of
St. John "and the Word was made flesh" and the proposition "the
Word, consubstantial to the Father, was made man" express the
same truth; but as a result of the unfolding effected by
theology, this truth is expressed more explicitly and more
intelligibly in the latter proposition than in the former.
(6) Theology uses discourse properly so called, i.e.,
inferential discourse, to deduce, from two revealed truths, a
third truth which is itself revealed. Thus, from the
propositions "Jesus is truly God" and "Jesus is truly man" it is
possible to infer that there are in Jesus two free wills: but
this truth is also revealed in Jesus' own words "Yet not as I
will, but as thou wiliest" (Matt. 26:39). Prior to the work of
theology, this truth is known only by faith; as a result of
theological reasoning it is also known in and through its cause,
i.e., rationally, though within faith.
(7) Theology uses inferential discourse to deduce, from two
revealed truths, a third truth not revealed in itself, but only
in the other two. Inasmuch as its premises are revealed, this
truth is more than a theological conclusion: it admits of being
defined as a dogma.
(8) Finally, theology uses inferential discourse to deduce, from
one revealed and one rational premise, a third proposition which
properly deserves the name of theological conclusion. The truth
expressed by such a conclusion, no matter how certain, is not
revealed in an unqualified sense; it does not pertain to faith,
but only to theology.
There is a sharp division between the first seven functions of
theology and the last. In its eighth function theology reaches
propositions that are its own, theological conclusions;
elsewhere its work is entirely dedicated to propositions which,
on a variety of grounds, belong to revelation. It is relevant to
ask whether the main duty of theology is to deduce propositions
that belong to it properly, or to manifest the meaning of
propositions more sublime than its own. The answer is not
dubious. Theology being the intelligence of faith, what pertains
more directly to faith is of greater concern to theology that
what pertains more properly to theology itself.
If the relation of theology to faith is what we said, is it
still possible to consider theology as a science? In every order
of research we hold that a proposition which does not admit of
analysis into self‑evident principles remains foreign to science
properly so called, even though it may belong to a discipline
whose core is constituted by propositions in strict connection
with immediately evident truth. But all parts of theology, its
core of certainty as well as the areas where probability alone
can be attained, depend upon and proceed from the inevident
propositions of faith. No doubt, the confused notion of theology
as an application of philosophic forms to the data of revelation
springs from the ambition to achieve, in some way or other, a
science of religious subjects. If the rational components of
theology are held merely instrumental, if the principles of
theology, by reason of their being believed, are purely and
simply devoid of obviousness, it seems that theology is not a
science. Now, in a treatment of "the rationality of the
Christian faith," the scientific nature of theology is an issue
of crucial significance.
The answer lies in the consideration that faith is a provisional
substitute for vision. The obscurity inherent in any belief
would deprive theology of all scientific character if the divine
mysteries were to remain everlastingly unseen; but the Teacher
on whose authority faith propositions are believed promised His
disciples the vision of these mysteries. We find ourselves in a
position similar to that of students who cannot yet understand
some difficult principles. Assuming that their teacher is
dependable, the wise thing to do is to take his word, to accept
the principles on belief and to go ahead: understanding will
come later. What is the nature of the rational work done by
science students on the basis of principles that they
provisionally believe? Is this work scientific or not? To answer
this question, it suffices to compare the case of science
students with that of students in a nonscientific field, say,
history. Young historians have to trust their teachers; but they
know very well that when they no longer need teachers they will
have to trust someone else: except for the small ratio of facts
which can be established by physical evidence, history is a
matter of belief. Young scientists, on the contrary, during the
phase of dependence upon a teacher, are eagerly awaiting the
time when they will be able to master the principles and do
without witnesses; their work is scientific in substance and
tends toward the state of science. Such is the condition of
theology in the present life: its substance and its essential
inclination are scientific. Yet theology falls short of the
scientific state until its principles are apprehended clearly,
in other words, until revelation by way of vision replaces
revelation by way of faith. "The theology acquired in this life
endures in Heaven and is rendered evident there. By intrinsic
inclination, theology is radically striving toward evidence and
continuity with ... the blessed science. It is by accident that
in this life theology uses faith as supplying and supposing
principles known with evidence in a higher science" (John of St.
Thomas).
The dynamism of faith is relative to perfections which cannot be
fully achieved so long as the infirmities essential to faith
continue to prevail. One of these perfections is clarity; the
other is presence. Inasmuch as it is longing for clarity, faith
tends to disappear into vision; inasmuch as it is longing for
presence, faith tends to disappear into experience, which is
knowledge by way of touch. Distance, as well as obscurity, is
inseparable from faith, and in a very proper sense faith must
die, by the death of man, for its offspring to be born. Yet, in
another sense, it is possible to attain, within faith and its
eagerness, some sort of clarity and some sort of presence. Here
lies the paradox which inevitably occasions puzzlement and
confusion regarding the nature of theology and that of mystical
experience. Theology is a system of clarity entirely contained
in a system marked by obscurity; it is a work of rationality
within the power of belief. Mystical experience is a knowledge
by way of touch, an undergoing or suffering of things divine
within an act of belief which implies infinite distance. Such
distance cannot be suppressed un less the being of God assumes
the role of idea and effects directly the determination of the
human intellect. When the beatific vision sup‑presses all
distance, mystical experience does not cease; rather, it is
exalted and changed into itself. Likewise, when the principles
of theology are apprehended in divine clarity, theology is given
its first opportunity to realize the requirements of its
essence. Faith has come to an end, but the intelligence of faith
lives eternally as rational science of the divine mysteries;
this is perhaps the most significant thing that can be said
about the rationality of the Christian faith.
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