THE NATURE OF GOD, AND WHETHER BLESSED BENEDICT SAW THE BEATIFIC VISION

-

Introduction
Across ages, times and Generation, man trying to put into words his little knowledge of God has adopted a lot of attributes used to describe the person or nature of God. Some of this attributes has been passed down from one generation to the next and some cuts across a lot of religion, tradition, and culture. There is no doubt that man has some knowledge of the nature of God, but the question is, can man fully grasp the nature of God? Can the sensible human cognition access the essence of God? is it possible for God to be seen by the sense of sight, or by any other sense, or faculty of the sensitive power. With the above questions, we shall briefly discuss in details, whether the Blessed Benedict saw the divine essence in the vision in which he saw the whole world. To achieve this, we shall first of all have a little knowledge of the nature of man, the nature of God, vision, how the divine essence is seen and the beings that can see it, and finally, whether Blessed Benedict saw the divine essence in the vision in which he saw the whole world. We shall use Aquinas as our primary consult.
The Nature of Man
            A human being according to Aquinas is composed of a material body and a spiritual body called the soul. The soul he defined as the first principle of life of those things which live. [1] Humans are finite beings since they are subject to change. A human being is equally material being in virtue of materiality. he possess numerous individuality accidents such as height, weight, skin pigmentation, bones etc. According to Aquinas, none of these accidental traits are in his humanity, for he could lose these traits, acquire others, and remain a human being. 

The Nature of God                                                  
According to Aquinas, the divine essence, that is what God is in himself– is beyond human conception, and the human intellect cannot comprehend it.  Hence, he does not presume to say explicitly what God is.  Instead, he investigates divine nature by determining what God is not.  This he did by denying those properties that are conceptually at odds with what is already concluded by means of the five ways.[2] Thus, he teaches that God is simple, most perfect, infinite, immutable and one.[3]
He further stated that God is pure actuality and ultimately a simple being. A self-subsisting first mover that is uncreated and is not subject to any change. ”[4].  He equally added that God is not a body, thus he cannot be a composite of material parts.[5]  

Visions
According to Saint Teresa of Avila, prioress and founder of the reformed Carmelites, she mentioned that there are two kinds of vision that can be received by the human intellect: one kind is of corporeal substances and is called imaginary vision; the other, is of incorporeal or separated substances and called intellectual vision.[6] Aquinas responds to this by saying that man's mind is rapt by God to the contemplation of divine truth in the following ways. First by imaginary visions, so that he contemplates it through certain imaginary pictures- and Secondly by intellectual vision, so that he contemplates it in its essence.[7]
Who Can See The Divine Essence And How Is The Divine Essence Seen
Thomas Aquinas held that only the blessed in heaven alongside the angels can and do see the divine essence. But, how does one make sense of the Scriptural passages that speak of God dwelling in unapproachable light;[8] Do these passages not seem to show that the blessed may not be seeing the divine essence itself? Aquinas answers that they do see the divine essence, and it is in this seeing that their blessedness consist.[9]

Whether Blessed Benedict saw the Divine Essence in his Vision.
According to the Quaestiones Quodlibetales, (miscellaneous Questions) Gregory in the dialogorum 2  is of the view that the Blessed Benedict saw the divine essence, he argues that all creation becomes insignificant for a soul that sees the creator, for to see God is to see the divine essence. He adds that the Blessed Benedict saw the whole world in the divine light and there is no other light or radiance of God than God himself, and as the scripture says in the book of Exodus 33:20, “no man will see me and live.” He therefore concluded  that the Blessed Benedict saw God through the divine essence.
Aquinas stated on the contrary with reference to the book of John 1:18, which states that No man has seen God at any time. He further explained it that no one living in mortal flesh can see God’s essence.  He held that it is impossible for a human mind united to a body to see God’s essence unless the person is entirely dead to this mortal life or is so separated from his senses that he does not know whether he is in or outside his body. With the above he stated that, for the fact that the Blessed Benedict while remaining in the same vision, summoned another person to see what he is seeing, it simply means that the Blessed Benedict is very much alive and not entirely dead to this mortal life, he is fully aware of his environment and therefore is not separated from his sense. Thomas concluded that the Blessed Benedict did not actually see the divine essence in the vision in which he saw the whole world.
According to Gregory's observation as stated in the “miscellaneous question” that all creation become insignificant for a soul that sees the Creator."[10] This observation of Gregory simply implies that a person could see the divine essence; and if anyone could, then, Blessed Benedict did see it. Aquinas contests this line of argument stating that when Gregory speaks of all creation being insignificant in proportion to the Creator, it does not immediately mean that one could see the Creator's essence. However, he agrees to the fact that Blessed Benedict could have seen something more than people ordinarily see. But this something more could never be the divine essence.
It was said that the Blessed benedict saw the whole world in the divine light, and the divine light is God himself, therefore he saw the divine essence. Aquinas rebuts this line of argument noting that the divine light sometimes refers to God and some other times, it refers to light derived from the divine light, wherefore, it is said in Psalm 36:9 "In your light we shall see the light." Aquinas says that the light through which Blessed Benedict saw the whole world is such light of a derived nature. Therefore, he did not see the divine essence.           
Gregory Nazianzen is equally of the view that man cannot see the divine essence, this is clearly seen in his in his Theological Oration #28, where he stated that man does not have the capacity to behold the essence of God, he states, and I quote:
What happened to me, friends and initiates and fellow lovers of the truth? I was running to comprehend God, and so I went up into the mountain and came through the cloud and entered away from matter and material things, and as far as I could I withdrew within myself. Then when I looked up, I barely saw the back parts of God; and in this I was sheltered by the rock, the Word that was made flesh for us (Ex 33.22–23; Jn 1.14; 1 Cor 10.4). When I looked a little closer I saw, not the first and pure nature which is known to itself—to the Trinity, I mean—and that part of it that abides within the first veil and is hidden by the cherubim (Ex 26.31–33; 36.35–36); but only that part of it that is posterior and comes down to us. This is, as far as I know, God’s majesty that is manifested among the creatures that he has produced and governs—or as holy David calls it, God’s ‘‘glory’’ (Ps 8.2). For these are the back parts of God, which he leaves behind as tokens of himself, like the shady reflections of the sun in the water, which show the sun to our weak eyes because we cannot look at the sun itself; for by its unmixed light it defeats our perception.[11]
From the above, we can clearly see that Gregory Nanzianzen is of the view that man cannot behold God.

Conclusion
Based on the view of Aquinas and Gregory, it is evident that man is incapable of beholding the divine essence, with that, we can therefore conclude that the Blessed Benedict, must have seen something, maybe extraordinary, but did not actually see the divine essence in the vision in which he saw the whole world.

Reference
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican
Province. Indiana: Christian Classics, 1948.

Quaestiones Quodlibetales 1 and 2 translated by Sandra Edwards
http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/QDquodlib.htm#1-1 Accessed on 3/12/16

Beeley, Christopher A. Gregory of Nazianzus: On the Trinity and the Knowledge of God. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Grabmann, M. Introduction to the Theological Summa of St. Thomas. St. Louis: Herder, 1983.

St. Teresa of Avila. The Interior Castle or The Mansions. Stanbrook: Tan Books and Publishers, 1997.
The New Community Bible.





[1] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 75, a. 1.

[2] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3.
[3] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae  I, q. 3, a. 1.
[4] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 4, a. 2.
[5] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 3, a. 7.
[6] Cf. St. Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle or The Mansions (Stanbrook: Tan Books and Publishers, 1997), pp. 141, 193, 200.
[7] Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q. 175, a. 3.

[8] 1 Timothy 6:15-16
[9] Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I, q.12, a.1
[10] Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Quodlibetales 1 and 2 translated by Sandra Edwards http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/QDquodlib.htm#1-1  accessed on 13/11/15
[11] Christopher A. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus: On the Trinity and the Knowledge of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), p.90

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

SUMMARY OF PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS, ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE.

-
SUMMARY OF PROVIDENTISSIMUS DEUS, ENCYCLICAL LETTER OF POPE LEO XIII ON THE STUDY OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE.      God has elevated man, freed him of guilt and ruin, restored him to his initial dignity and has made known to him the mystery of his divinity.      He revealed himself through the inspiration of the holyspirit to man. This supernatural revelation, the church believe, is contained in both written tradition and written books which is called sacred and canonical. God himself is the author of the sacred book, he composed the book; the words of the book are his words.      Priests are encouraged to read this sacred book, meditate over it, ponder on it and explain it to the people. The apostolic office also enjoins them to help in making this sacred book reach the Christians and also to defend it against the attack of the heretics.      The holy spirit himself testifies that all the scripture i...
Read more

summary and appraisal of chapters one, two and three of the book The African Origin of Greek Philosophy: An Exercise in Afrocentrism, by Innocent C. Onyewuenyi.

-
Introduction Can Africans philosophize? Is there such a thing as African philosophy? What contribution has Africans made on the world’s civilization and on the discipline of philosophy? These and a plethora of questions are seeking answers in today’s modern world. Africa is being conceived by the world as savages, primitive, her people as those that reside in the Dark Continent who are intellectually inferior. Thus, Africans have not contributed anything to the discipline of philosophy. Hence, this work by Innocent Onyewuenyi aims at answering these questions and at reinstating the truth that philosophy has its origin in the Egyptian Mystery System. In view of this, it is our aim in this paper to summarize and appraise chapters one, two and three of the book The African Origin of Greek Philosophy: An Exercise in Afrocentrism, by Innocent C. Onyewuenyi. To achieve this, we shall begin with a summary of the three chapters followed by an appraisal. Furthermore, we shall present ...
Read more

THE LAST THREE WAYS TO PROVES GOD'S EXISTENCE BY THOMAS AQUINAS

-
THE LAST THREE WAYS TO PROVES GOD'S EXISTENCE BY THOMAS AQUINAS FROM POSSIBILITY AND NECESSITY ITS ARGUEMENT In nature, we find things that are possible to be and not to be, that come from being and go out of being as contingent beings. Imagine every being is a contingent being, for each contingent being, there come a time it is not in existence, which makes it impossible for these to always be in existence. There could have been a time when nothing existed. At that time there would have been nothing to bring the currently existing contingent beings into existence. So therefore, nothing would be in existence now. We have reached a common sense result from assuming that every being is a contingent being. It implies that not every being is a contingent being, some being exists of its own necessity, and does not receive its existence from another being but rather causes them. This people term it as Supreme Being, God. ARGUMENT FROM DESIGN       ...
Read more