Catholic Apologetics
LIFE AFTER DEATH
The search for happiness
At the beginning and at the end of our life, there's God as the first Origin and final End.
By the omnipotence of His love, God is giving our life both its beginning and its highest perfection.
However, there's an important distinction between the way He gave us life by creation and the character of the final completion, with which, as our final End, He's willing to crown our life.
Indeed, God's act of creation called us to existence, but we had no share in it. As Pascal said, we were embarked on board ship without being able to prevent or cancel the engagement.
As contrasted with this, the completion of our life can't be brought about without our personal cooperation.
In fact, now that we are finding ourselves on board and the anchor has been weighed, we ourselves are the pilots of our boats of life, and each boat has an own cargo and an own destination.
Where shall we cast anchor?
There where God wills it, and duty is leading us. Because it's only the sense of duty that makes a good boatswain, and a good boatswain is worth his salt.
If someone wilfully smashes his life boat against the rocks by a wrong manoeuvre, he forever obstructs the chance to safely land in the harbour where a happy home is waiting for him.
He forgets his duty and is in the highest degree guilty of recklessness, which is a sin indeed. He fails to appreciate his great responsibility to both the precious cargo and God who sent him and is
awaiting his arrival full of love and joy. He is sailing with closed eyes. He doesn't think. And a man should keep his eyes open. He should think. Especially about the very important problems of
the origins and the object of his life:
"L'homme est visiblement fait pour penser; c'est toute sa dignité et tout son mérite; et tout son devoir est de penser comme il faut. Or l'ordre de la pensée est de commencer par soi,
et par son auteur et sa fin." (Pascal)
There's a relation between, on the one side, a feeling of responsibility with respect to the highest object of our life and, on the other, the conviction that the creation of man is an act of divine love.
Nobody can love what he doesn't know. But whoever completely knows good, can't fail to love it. Although love can bear some arbitrariness and we can't measure the degree of love by the degree of insight,
for we can love the whole because of one single feature, yet love does presuppose some knowledge of the good that is consciously pursued, acquired or enjoyed.
Good people, who know their duty and acquit themselves of it, know what they want and realise what it is they're trying to attain or evade in the ideal of their love.
This holds for love before all, which is aiming at the highest good, the good of highest completion of life.
Not all people know where true happiness is to be found. But all people who do know it will love truth rather than illusion, as long as they didn't entirely abandon in themselves man to animal. This holds
even though truth often suffers violation, not by hate but by love that may temporarily think illusion is true.
In general, we may say man is the more ardently striving after the full and eternal good of his happiness as he has better got to know his Creator.
It's not a matter of chance that the greatest thinkers, who found their strength in quiet reflection and not in troubled pathos, were mostly noble people and convinced confessors of faith in God Almighty,
from Whom everything starts and to Whom everything belongs, whilst the dumb adorer of the own I, the low bon-vivant and the unbalanced man of crisis only felt the urge to go to great pains to justify
their behaviour by conceitedly mocking at the highest values of human life.
Henri Bergson will always fascinate people because of his sincere quest of truth and his persuasive defence of it.
He wasn't a Christian, but nevertheless he acquired faith in God's eternal love. "C'est seulement par les forces de son génie et obéissant aux leçons de l'expérience
qu'il a trouvé le Dieu qu'il ne connaissait pas encore" (Jacques Chevalier). When Bergson finally found the one and only God, who created everything out of love, he knew at once the answer to the
tormenting question of life, which is born anew with each birth of a human baby:
"La création apparaîtra comme une entreprise de Dieu pour créer des créateurs, pour s'adjoindre des
êtres dignes de son amour."
But an unbalanced and atheistic - that is: sickly - mind like Friedrich Nietzsche's, who struggled all his life long with the obsessive idea of a degenerating mankind
that is entirely left to itself, couldn't propose to mankind a higher object than the rather narrowminded ideal of an eugenic selection, "die Erzeugung ihrer höchsten Exemplaren". In his
Zarathustra he had declared the 'old God' was dead. Whoever maintains so foolish a standpoint, can't see the true value of a man's life, nor any view on happiness that's entirely worthy of a human
being. Therefore, the question Nietzsche poses to the seekers of happiness is both understandable and superficial:
"Ist denn das ein Ziel des Menschen würdig? - Damit habt ihr ja den Blick noch nicht einmal über den Horizont des Tieres hinaus geworfen! - "
Of course, a man of crisis like Nietzsche is rare.
Where pretension is prevailing and the natural contact between the essential needs of the mind and spoken word is apparently ruined, we can hardly call the attitude to life normal and confident. Nietzsche
got the drudges at his side, because he himself was a drudge, not because he knew a solution for their problems. His wild mind was craving for a truth he couldn't find himself, like so many other minds.
Because he thought he could find it in the delusion of an impossible Uebermensch, his philosophical reflections got a queer character. But, although Nietzsche's opinions about the sense of human life were
queer indeed, yet the voice of nature could sometimes be heard through all pretension. It may have been the weakest moments of Nietzsche as a philosopher, when as a man he forsook his pretension for a while
and betrayed himself in the foolish outpourings of a trunkenes Lied:
"- Die Welt ist tief, und tiefer als der Tag gedacht. Tief ist ihr Weh -, Lust - tiefer noch als Herzeleid: Weh spricht: Vergeh! Doch
alle Lust will Ewigkeit - will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!"
Despite of himself, Nietzsche wasn't able to evade the enchantment of an unperishable peace. He wanted it, but couldn't, because there's nothing so
human as the homesickness for a happy eternity.
All people are concerned with the final destination of life. Nobody can be indifferent as to the question whether their many strong efforts will
eventually find a perfect and permanent award or not. Earthly life offers a riches of manifold joys, but they don't satisfy. A dejected view on the farthest future is able to thoroughly spoil every
earthly joy. Man can gladly make a hundred sacrifices, but love for the imperishable happiness is too great to sacrifice.
All philosophers worthy of that name knew this. Representatives of multifarious schools of thought declared as their honest conviction what Nietzsche let out in an unthinking moment, so to speak.
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Plotinus, Augustinus, Boethius, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Pascal, Rousseau, Kant, Schopenhauer, they all sung in their own personal tone of the great question of
life, which is for each man the strongest stimulus to hope and joy of life, zest for work and tolerance. They experienced within themselves and in other people the smarting nostalgia that controls all lives
and every conscious desire.
The poets didn't fail to give tangible expression to the most human of all strivings, either.
Dante says it's a dream he hopes will once become reality:
The insufficiency of earthly life
Can man be perfectly happy during life on earth?
Who would venture to pretend this?
The old man who knows life and perhaps has enjoyed all its enchantments?
But life, even careless life, always brings with it many worries for the future.
The child? It's joyful, full of life and optimistic. It is expecting all joys of life. However, hopeful
expectation is demanding an answer. It doesn't give an answer itself.
The idealist who thinks life is a bed of roses? But it's foolish to carry idealism to extremes and to think all imagination is
reality!
We need not gloom like Job, who was helpless and at the mercy of most cruel loneliness and shame, and complained: "Man, born of a woman, is living a short life full of misery". But we are
convinced earthly life is too short for eternal happiness and all is not gold that glitters.
What people call a careless life, is very rare, not to say impossible.
The opinion of Rousseau, who says that in an average human life the excess of spiritual sufferings and bodily pain is outweighing the little bit of joy and making it almost invisible, is rather valid indeed.
Accidents and diseases of all kinds are very common. Even the best physicians become sooner or later victims themselves.
Murders and plunderings that are crying to Heaven, fears and torments that
thirst for revenge and call down a spirit of war over mankind, they all reveal man has traits of an animal, a wolf. People who are subject to these crimes and other people who have pity on the victims and
want to undo their painful fate and war sufferings at any cost, are lacking necessary power and strength to lay the foundations for a peace that will not be the prelude to a new war.
How manifold and big are the wrongs people do to each other in the smaller circle of common family life and social life!
Poverty and unemployment can purify people, but in their degenerate forms they are a travesty of human justice. They kill body and mind. Sexual passions can make the image of God a monstrous being that
doesn't even resemble a beast. Anger and envy make often deep wounds. Defamation and denial of daily bread hurt a man it what he needs and appreciates the most. The unrest of a fearing heart and the remorse of
a sinful conscience can make man abhor earthly life.
The optimists think it could be otherwise.
We can for the greater part agree with them.
However, if fate is turning against someone, he isn't
always able to conjure refractory powers down. Illness and accidents keep playing with human lives, in spite of all attempts to ward them off. And evil people keep their free will, in spite of our better
intentions.
It's senseless and useless to consider the world a disconsolate vale of tears, in which everything is cold and dreary and there's no ray of sunlight.
But it's also unwise and reckless
to entertain illusions about it.
If somebody takes the world for more cruel than it is, life is more difficult for him than necessary. But if somebody takes the world for more beautiful than it is,
he may become guilty of overestimating the chances of himself and fellow people. He's misleading himself and will sooner or later lose all optimism, because disappointment can rebuke and embitter people.
Boethius said: "From sheer ignorance, people get lost on a side way and suffer misery".
The biggest problem philosophers have to face is the problem of man's insufficiency.
The best and most thrilling pages of philosophical literature are those in which the endless and constant struggle is
desribed that's being enacted everyday in everybody's life: between the pursuit of a transient ideal and the power to attain it. The ideal is always one step ahead, so to speak. We've hardly attained
some goal when another one comes in sight. Man can scarcely give rein to his interest and love for a result he attained when he abandons it to a new ideal that's promising richer content. This way,
man is jumping from one object to strive after to another. He always imagines the next joy must be supreme, but is never satisfied, because the joy turns out to be halfbred, partial and passing.
Nothing can enchant him forever. And, because a separate partial good can't satisfy him, he seeks satisfaction in abundance.
Does he have succes?
We have to read the books about the consolation of
philosophy by Boethius, or the apologetical Summa of Saint Thomas Aquinas, or the Pensées of Pascal, to know how deep and comprehensive the question of man's insufficiency is.
All people are longing for happiness. But it's a happiness that is entirely satisfying forever which they are longing for. Not a fake happiness that's confined by time and space.
Where do people
seek happiness? Everywhere. Except where they can really find it.
Human mind invents a dream of happiness. But it's only a dream. And if he seizes the dream and clings to it, he will
sooner or later sober down.
We seek happiness in thousands of trifles that turn out to be worthless upon further consideration.
We seek it in riches, in the flavour of food, in sexuality. We search
for it in objectivity, strength of will, science, art. We think it is in worldly power, dignity, fame and honour.
All these goods are desirable to some extent. But when we attain them, our mind isn't
satisfied. They evoke new strivings again and again. However, these turn out to be as fallible as the ones they pushed aside.
In the final end, all efforts man does are useless, because there's always something left to desire. Whenever he attains some new ideal, new horizonts and troubles are looming up. Inquietude increases,
zest for life visibly decreases, but the infinite urge for happiness continues to exist unabatedly. Man is too great for the half-baked happiness this world and life can offer. If he is obsessed by earthly
goods and takes appearance for reality, he wanders from the only way that can lead to true happiness. Boethius said:
"There's no doubt these tracks to happiness are wrong. They can't lead anybody to
the object they feign to deliver. Do you want to collect much money? You have to take it from them who need it. Do you want to shine in dignity? To acquire it, you have to beg for it. Do you want to
attain power? You have to take the risk your subjects will set traps for you. You want people honour you? You will still come across many troubles that will worry you. You want to lead a sensual life?
But who doesn't feel contempt and distaste for a slave of his miserable and fragile body?"
There's a striking climax in the aspirations of a man, as there's also a gradual development in the organised
striving of lower beings in our cosmos.
Matter has only a preparatory role in the rise of the cosmos to highest possible perfection. It's aspiring to a form of being, and in a form of being it's
aspiring to life. Life lays an inner organisation in the things, and it gives them a certain degree of independence. But a living being isn't an object of itself at all. It's only a rude sketch that's
asking for a finish. It seeks this finish in the independent vitality of a human person.
However, there's no reason to canonize human person as highest possible being. For man is never perfectly
himself, either. On the contrary, he seeks himself outside himself. Indeed, where is the happy person who's bearing in himself everything he needs? In all he undertakes, he needs something else.
Because of his greater desires, he needs even more help than all beings he can rule.
The first and most elementary function of man is the one by which he works on matter. But matter is no match for him. It can't capacitate his mind, nor satisfy his love. At last, he dislikes it. Man works on
himself. By practice of art, science and virtue, he builds his own personality. However, he never can finish this without help. He needs his fellow people. He chooses friends to develop his noblest
forces as much as possible by the stimulus of mutual sympathy. But a friendship that's only obeying the law of self-interest can't hold out. Therefore, man seeks a companion in everything. He shifts
his personal interests to the broader ideal of an "égoisme à deux". He builds an own home. In vain. The intensity of personal striving and the dissatisfaction about seeming success gain
ground rapidly. The marriage of a man and a woman develops into the broader circle of a family with many kids.
Does such a family bring every kind of happiness?
We might think so, because
human love does find its highest natural crown in it. Yet, marriage, too, turns out to be a mere stage. The family can't stay confined within its narrow circle; it seeks a broader living space and
begins dispersing.
Apparently, man isn't content with anything, not even with the highest things. (I don't mean a man who only thinks of the superficial joys of what's mere sensuous.)
To find more possibilities to perfect himself, he gradually leaves his original standpoint, which was egoistic indeed. He engages in the wellbeing of the community, he fights for his fatherland, and
tries to make himself subservient to all mankind. He commits himself to a moral task and submits to an ethical ideal. He surrenders to superstition. He carves a little idol from wood. He adores the sun.
In the practice of religious life, he tries to rise above himself and his natural surroundings.
Why? What for? What does he want? Apparently, it's difficult to understand the true sense of life.
The dandy and the rake can't give life a really deeper sense. A dandy's life is show, a rake's is debauchery. However, under all hollow phrases and attitudinizing poses that have to give their behaviour
an appearance of right, both are hiding a deliberate fear for reflection. They're consciously content with the minimum.
For poets, the primary questions of life are often bearing the character of an
enigma nobody can solve. For philosophers, the highest ideal of life is feebly shining in a vague surmise.
However, all people, both the good and the bad, the enjoyers and the despisers of life, the
poets and the thinkers, they all are carrying with them a burning question of life. It's the primary problem we often don't have an appropriate concept or right name for. It's our natural longing for perfect
happiness, the irresistible natural urge to the full blooming of our human forces of life.
But where is the answer?
The mystery of death
In order to apparently make a definitive end of all illusions about the endless possibilities of life, there's always the premature, grim, pitiless murderer of people that comes at an unguarded and
unhoped-for hour: Death.
Epicure is credited with the opinion man has nothing to do with death. According to him, as long as man's existing, death isn't there yet, and as soon as death is present,
man isn't there any more.
In so far as this reasoning doesn't suffer from the weak logics of sly selfdeceit, it has all characteristics of a powerless conjuration. But it isn't able to safeguard
anybody against the menacing hour of dying. Because nobody can ever lose his life, except when death's come to take it, and death can't rule people without first settling down among them.
Which meaning does death have for man?
Does it take away all chances of an infallible and lasting happiness in life? Does it cut short his thread of life forever?
If this were true, death would really be the great offence the Diesseitsmensch is taking him for.
Rudolf Eucken understood the absurdity of such an offence and rejected it as impossible:
"Denn erscheint das Leben seinem geistigen Gehalte nach nicht nur beim Einzelnen, sondern auch beim Ganzen der Menschheit als durch und durch unfertig, als der blosze Beginn des Weges, und besteht keinerlei
Hoffnung, dasz der nächste Daseinskreis sich je in ein Reich der Vernunft verwandle, wachsen vielmehr mit den Fortschritten auch die Verwicklungen, so musz die ganze Bewegung zur Geistigkeit sinnlos
werden, wenn solcher Stand den letzten Abschlusz bringen soll, wenn die Entwicklung geistigen Lebens nicht irgend darüber hinausreicht und auch den Einzelnen an solcher Fortdauer teilnehmen läszt."
It would be easy for us to compose within the scope of modern philosophical literature a rich anthology from numerous touching articles about the untamable power of a "Sehnsucht nach Unendlichkeit" and of
a "désir de l'être", by which man is continously rising, often in spite of himself, to a site beyond of eartly life that isn't imaginary at all.
However, can such explanations about our longing for eternity, be they ever so meritorious, bring something new after all that our greatest medieval thinker already wrote about it? Aren't they only
imperfect copies of the splendid argumentation Saint Thomas gives to prove the immortality of man's soul: that man's natural longing for eternal existence can't be idle?
The conviction, innate in man, that death isn't the end of it all, incites him to prudence and alertness, and makes him down when he is holding back as to his highest vocation.
The shortsighted who can't imagine a higher and more perfect life than in a paradise on earth, forced a fallacy upon themselves. They imagine they can be content with seeming happiness. But the joys a
righteous community, willing to make sacrifices, can offer an individual person, can only be relative. They depend on the goodwill of fellow citizens and can't escape the halfheartedness of things
partial and passing.
We can't deny many peope advocate such a conviction. However, this view isn't natural, but forced.
The consciousness of primitive people, however, is natural indeed. They surround the corpse of a deceased kinsman with a sacred respect, and know no solemner ceremonial than their protracted and digressive
death cult. The funeral rites and death songs of uncivilised peoples are showing they consider death a transition from one life to another: the threshold between present and hereafter.
The elementary opinion at the base of some written documents of the oldest religions in the world, like the Gilgamesh epic of old Babylon, the Death Book of old Egypt and the Bundehes of old Persia,
are also quite natural, in spite of absurd excrescences. The atmosphere from which the gods of immortality like Tammuz, Osiris and Adonis entered into communication with people, is quite natural, too.
And so is the primary conviction on which Orphism, New-Platonism and Stoa based their doctrines about the immortality of man's soul.
Man wants life, not death.
He despises death and puts up a stubborn resistance against it, using all his strength. Human life is one continuous struggle against total downfall.
Léon Brunschvicg and Xavier Bichat defined
life as "l'ensemble des forces qui résistent à la mort". This definition may be called incomplete and false for several reasons, but, nevertheless, it excellently emphasizes what every man
is primarily expecting of life: it has to be everlasting and immortal.
Death isn't entirely dead.
Homo duplex - man is in a sense double. He carries in himself a composition of both spiritual and
corporeal, that is both immortal and changeable, characteristics. With respect to his animal life, he is subject to the biological law of corporeal downfall and death. He is born out of his mother, he goes
through all distinct phases of a gradual development (if he is lucky enough), and after some decennia he fades away to become a decrepit and exhausted old man, who can't expect anything from life any more, and
already faces death with a certain meekness.
But with respect to his spirit, he is predestined to eternal life. His soul can't perish or spoil, because it's essentially incorporeal and it naturally
longs for eternal existence. It can stop giving essence and existence to the living body, because it is the principle of form of this body, but it can't stop being itself.
Man's organic life comes sooner or later to an end. The body perishes and becomes "dust and ash" again. But the soul stays!
{{For materialists and pantheists, death has a completely different meaning than for
them who acknowledge man is both spiritual and corporeal.
According to materialists, there's only one substance: matter, and only one efficacy: mechanical motion. So they deny man has a spirit
that can independently work, and say death has the character of a total downfall of the individual person, because the particles of matter that were somehow coherent dissolve into the
former incoherent multitude of atoms.
Pantheists, too, know only one substance: the All-Spirit. Spinoza thought "there can be no substance outside God". He advised us to await death in rest and resignation, because, after all, our personality
isn't real, so we can't lose anything when it disappears.
The pantheistic and materialistic explanations of the mystery of death can't appeal to us. For, whereas the latter can't give death a sense because it doesn't acknowledge life, the former begins with
declaring man's personality isn't real to explain it can't die.}
New horizonts
Death is the hopeful beginning of human life rather than the mirthless end.
It is the beginning of a completely new neverending condition, in which the soul knows it's free from all earthly worries, and can move much more freely in its thoughts and strivings, because matter and
disturbing influences don't hamper it as they did during life on earth, when it was the form of essence of a human body and had to use corporeal senses for revealing some truth and experiencing some beauty and
good.
Is there perhaps room for perfect happiness in this new life that is more spiritualized?
There has to be.
For mortal life on earth is too unstable and short for full happiness. And it's
inconceivable that the happiness we are longing for can't exist somewhere at some time. Man's longing for happiness is not an arbitrary and conditional striving. It's natural in the full sense of the word.
And a natural longing can't be senseless.
{The philosophical principle "a natural longing can't be idle" demands some explanation, because it finds a place in almost all idealistic views on the
world, whilst they bring it in most cases without any proof.
It's striking how easily famous philosophers of our time, like Henri Bergson and Rudolph Eucken, who are representing very distinct
schools, use the principle of natural suitableness without rendering a sufficient proof. Is the principle so evident it needs no explanation?
Aristotle already knew the law of finality in nature, and gave an experimental-inductive explanation for it. "Nature doesn't do anything senseless", he says, and, thus, he wants to indicate that the thing
of nature has in it everything through which it's answering its finality. It will infallibly reach its object if nothing obstructs it. According to him, anything that obstructs it is accidental: some
cause from outside, which as a spoil-sport and an exception obstructs the natural crowning of the natural longing.
Saint Thomas Aquinas thought much deeper about the principle of finality. He took it
over from the Philosopher, sometimes in a literal quotation, but mostly in a changed formulation: "a natural longing can't be idle". So he largely broadened the sense of the principle.
By 'natural longing', he understands the blind and innate natural striving of any creature, including man, that God gave each creature because of His infinite wisdom. As to man, natural longing is
distinct from conscious strivings of his will, which are based on consideration. It is lying at the base of conscious striving, as a dynamical ordering directed at the only possible perfection of man.
If we consider natural longing in its outward manifestation, that is to say: in the actual strivings it regularly evokes, then there are three ways how the striving thing may be hampered: firstly by immediate
intervention of God's will, because God can freely dispose of each creature, secondly by an independent initiative of man, who can give the natural striving of many a thing an original turn, finally by
accident, which we might call an arbitrary and mostly fatal influence on a given natural striving that finds is cause in a collision between several natural strivings.
If we consider natural longing in itself, as an essential bent and ordering, then we can't say anything can hamper it, in so far as we restrict ourselves to the things of nature that normally
developed. The thing of nature must have a sense and a meaning, because God almighty in his wisdom called it to existence as summus Artifex - greatest artist. Whenever a thing of nature isn't
corrupted by the bad influence of human initiative or accident, it must answer its finality given by God. It has everything in it by which it's directed at its object, and it will reach its object in the
strivings it regularly evokes, unless hampering factors act from outside.
The topic of natural longing occurs in contemporary philosophy under distinct names, especially in the Catholic quarter. It's called, among other names, Naturtrieb, Seinsordnung, désir de l'être, or
tendance ontologique.
A new name is volonté voulante, to distinguish it from 'volontés voulues', which are radically based on the volonté voulante, but can arbitrarily choose own ways and, thus,
lead man astray.
We think that this is in conformity with the opinion of Saint Thomas, who sees in human freedom a possibilty of disorder, but considers natural striving always well regulated.
He explains that this is because we can't call nature as such faulty without offending Him who called nature to existence. Man can't but respect nature. But he can wish more than what's attainable. He can wish
things that take away his chance to reach his one and only true goal.
Dante wrote: "The striving of nature is always free of error. But our will isn't."}
However, what can highest possible happiness consist of?
We can't call earthly goods all desirable, be they ever so numerous and multifarious. They don't appease natural longing, but evoke new acts of
striving again and again, which become more exacting after each miscalculation.
Can human mind in life hereafter be content with joys that apparently weren't sufficient at all in our present life?
Saint Thomas considers this presupposition so naive he doesn't think it's worth discussing.
When he pays attention to the possibilities of a future happiness after corporeal death, he knows that in the situation of a spritualized man the highest and noblest joys can't be corporeal, nor even
spiritual if matter has to cooperate or participate directly. It must be a joy of the soul as a spiritual substance: a happiness of man as a reasonable creature.
Not immortality alone, not a condition of rest in which man has forgotten his own existence, and not an arbitrary activity, but highest activity of man as a man must form the final ideal of human striving
that can't be transcended. Just as we see man rise above all lower beings by the nobleness of his intellectual soul, even in the present situation when he's still searching for his happiness and the lower beings
are striving, too, after their highest perfection, so he will rise above the beings of a lower order when his reasonable nature and their lower natures will be perfect.
Saint Thomas saw this clearly and he said:
"God is the first Mover and the first Cause. The object He aims at with His activity is no other than His own goodness ... Therefore, all actions and
motions of all creatures must be directed to God's goodness, not in order to bring it about or to add to it, but to acquire it in their own way: that is, by participating in its likeness in some degree.
Now created beings attain through their activity their likeness to God in distinct ways, as they also represent it in distinct ways according to their essences. Indeed, each thing is active in the way it
is. So, as it is given to all creatures to represent God's goodness in so far as they are, so it's also given to all to attain the likeness to God through their activity by preserving their essence
and communicating it to something else. For each creature is, first of all, striving to maintain himself in actual existence, in so far as this is possible; thus, it's striving in its own way after the
likeness to God's Eternity. Over and above that, each creature is trying, again in its own way, to communicate the actual essence it possesses to something else; thus, it's striving after the likeness to God's
causality. However, above all further created things, the reasonable creature is in an exceptional way striving after the likeness to God, as its perfectness is also exceeding all further creatures."
It's not difficult to guess in which characteristic way reasonable creature is striving after the likeness to its divine Maker, because it's clear which feature raises it above all further created things.
It's reason that makes man the king of creation. And by his natural longing for broader and deeper knowledge man is "in his own way" trying to approach God's perfectness as close as possible.
{We have to understand the expression "all creatures are naturally striving after highest possible participation in God's good".
Pantheism teaches that God is active in nature not only as an external cause but als as an internal cause, so that God as the own formal object of natural longing is determining the character of the
being that's striving.
Scholasticism, however, is rightly refusing each confusion between the infinite Essence of God and the finite essence of creation. It teaches on a firm base that the object of
a natural longing must necessarily stay within the range of things created. This holds both for creatures in general, which are all striving for God's goodness, as the part is directed to the goodness of the whole,
and for man in special, because the natural regulation of senseless beings explains the natural longing in reasonable creatures.
Only God's will can have God's infinite goodness as its very own object. A reasonable creature can only be finite. The object of his intellectual striving is an infinite good, but not an actual infinite good, but
a potential infinite good. Therefore, man doesn't naturally strive for God as his formal object, but for God as his completely transcendental Archetype, whom he wants to resemble as much as possible, in
so far as this is possible for a finite nature.}
"All people are naturally striving for knowledge". With these words, Aristotle begins his first book about Metaphysics.
The Philosopher experienced both with himself and with others, that human interest is never so universal, constant and irresistible as when it's concerning the essence of things: what is the very
own character of a thing, where they come from and what they're aiming at. Man wants to know, often in spite of himself. He wants to understand, to gain insight in the essential characteristics of the
beings he meets, and, thus, enrich the most human feature he has, and to develop it as much as possible.
Like Aristotle, Saint Thomas knows that the strongest natural inclination of a reasonable creature
must be intellectual, because his intellect is the feature by which he can best resemble God. Thomas defends the primacy of the intellect with a soberness of judgment and reasoning that's almost
astonishing, even when it's about the most fundamental of all human strivings. This intellectual attitude allows him to see far beyond the limits of death and to infallibly deduce that human longing can
only subside to rest by immediately beholding God's Essence.
Man wants to know everything.
He may direct his will at knowledge of a hundred separate things, he may be skilled in all sciences, but as long as he is still conscious there remains something he doesn't know, he can't be satisfied
and the stimulus of his curiousness remains active.
When we say that half knowledge isn't sufficient for a man, that's real enough. For imperfect knowledge of perfect essence is only a weak foretaste
of a happiness we don't possess while we do suspect it must exist. And perfect knowledge of an imperfect being is a mere contradiction, because things imperfect are essentially pointing at the perfect
essence of which it is a faulty reflection and in which it finds its final explanation. If man as a reasonable being wants to resemble God as clearly as possible, his intellect will have to be completed
by knowledge of all things he may potentially know.
We may call people wise because their theoretical knowledge of a thousand things worth knowing exceeds mediocrity, but when they are shortsightedly expecting too much in this mortal life, they really
aren't as wise as the practical simplehearted who don't know more than that they are insufficient. The latter say we can't seize our highest ideal on earth, but perhaps we can find it hereafter.
After all, man's mind is immortal, and if we are free from things earthly and surrender to God, we shall be happy.
However, surrendering to God is presupposing intellectual knowledge of God.
How can man know everything in life hereafter if he doesn't even know the Cause of all things?
But arbitrary knowledge of the first Cause can't completely satisfy us. We are mistaken if we imagine we can be completely happy by knowing God in his created reflections or in ourselves who are like
Him. Such knowledge is restricted to the things God made. But something that's made can't equal its maker.
Our natural longing for knowledge is such that when we know some consequence we want to know its cause, as we want to fathom a thing we know some features of. So since we want to know God as the first
Cause of everything and aren't indifferent about his Essence, our natural longing will not rest before we enjoy the sight of God's Essence.
When Saint Thomas draws a practical conclusion after his explanations about the character and the scope of our natural longing, we can only call it coercive:
"Since a natural longing can't be senseless - and it would be so if reasonable beings couldn't attain knowledge of God's Substance - , we are forced to admit our intellect must be able to see God's
Essence."
Higher light?
It's an undeniable truth everybody can experience in his own life that human intellect is posing demands he can't meet. Moreover, all people who dare to think and to
reflect upon the meaning of life are convinced the almost endless striving and tiresome longing for full truth and happiness can't be senseless.
Philosophy doesn't give its opinion upon the factual fulfilment of this natural longing, as apposed to many other longings. It can't give an opinion, because seeing God is a privilege only God's own
intellect has an essential right to, and it radically surpasses human forces. Beatific beholding is something supernatural. In our context, this means it's not within reach of natural human demands nor
forces.
No created and finite image can completely represent God in his infinite Substance, which is essentially distinct from each created nature. Full knowledge of God's Essence, which must be
intuitive and without image, is therefore unattainable for the created and finite intellect of man, which in its natural activity needs created and finite images. As Thomas Aquinas says: "Human
intellect is by nature only accessible to these forms of essence the active force of our intellect can make understandable".
If something belongs to God and no created intellect has a right to it, then man can't claim such a right, not even by referring to his natural helplessness. He can hope for it; he can ask for it;
he can to some extent even prepare for it. But there's no right. And, because there's no right, there's no duty, either, and hence no certainty. Therefore, man could forever be content with highest
possible perfection within the range of his nature, if God should will so, because man's intellect should be subservient to the free decisions of God's will.
There's another question philosophy can't answer.
We may easily talk of a supernatural happiness no eye ever saw and no ear ever heard, which nature doesn't demand and no created force can reach,
but which must still be possible as a natural striving of man. But there's a difficulty our natural curiousness is asking an answer for, which seems to get no answer at all: how shall this miracle of
supernatural happiness ever come about?
Philosophers can't answer this. They may only stammer a modest conjecture. Isn't it obvious that God in his goodness will show us
how He is giving us this inconceivable happiness of beatifying contemplation through this contemplation itself?
We shouldn't over-estimate the power of reason. It can only give actual knowledge of objects that are within
reach of sensory perception or are at least so closely related to our domain of direct experience that we can deduce them via causality. But things supernatural belong to God as "le Transcendent en soi",
Who is exceeding creation in every respect. They don't belong to God as a transcendent external Cause in so far as He is revealing himself in created nature. By His external activity we can of course know God as a
cause, the beginning and end of all creation, but God's Essence stays hidden for natural reason without further revelation.
However, although we don't know how we can ever intuitively behold God's Essence without any images, we do know that we can, because from the finality of our created nature, which we may call
a finite expression of God's intentions, God is as clearly visible at the end of our life as at the beginning. And we can't conceive that this natural striving in man will in the end
turn out to have been directed at something impossible.
It may surprise us that philosophy does prove, using the principle of natural finality, that human mind is immortal, whilst it doesn't prove that
human spirit will attain the blessing of beatific contemplation.
Is there so much elasticity in the the philosophical principle that says a natural longing can't be idle? Or is something faulty in
the application of this principle? The answer isn't as difficult as it seems at first sight.
The principle of finality is absolute in so far as it is pointing at the natural aptitude in the striving thing
to reach the object aimed at, but it poses a restriction as to whether it shall factually reach its object or not. The Philosopher already included this restriction in the declaration of the principle,
based on empirical perceptions, when he said the thing of nature does have the aptitude to reach its object but will only reach it when everything outside is cooperating.
With regard to this restriction, there is some difference between our natural longing for immortality and our natural longing for immediately beholding God. Because human spirit will not 'of itself' attain
the highest perfection of its being, as it does attain 'of itself' eternal life.
To give the soul factual immortality, a never-ending life, we don't ask our Creator for more, so to speak, than that He respect the initiative which He Himself created in it, and which is sufficiently
evident from its natural activity. To say it even more clearly: human soul is by nature immortal, and in order to let it live forever, God has to do nothing more than to maintain the
existence of the soul according to the potentiality He gave it Himself.
But with regard to the high favour of beatific contemplation, things are essentially different. There, a new free initiative has to bring actual fulfilment. We reason ex suppositione divinae ordinis,
supposing God gives man supernatural means to attain beatific contemplation. It's the initiative of grace, by which God is helping man, and which elevates man to a height his natural forces can't
attain at. God gives our nature this grace as an inner reinforcement of its potentiality, but it's a free gift and nothing demands it and in creation there's no explanation for it: "elle n'est pas
tirée de ces facultés mêmes, mais d'un pur et libre don, incommensurable avec elles et avec tout l'ordre créé".
Thus, in this restriction we have to make because of God's freedom, there's lying the possibility of an actual frustration of our natural striving. And of course, our own dumb and guilty wilfulness, too,
may frustrate our natural longing for a beatific beholding of God.
We'd better consciously prepare for receiving God's help, as much as possible. However, we can't force God to give help. We can't even find on our own strength the conditions that are necessary to receive
the favour of God's grace.
But we can make room for God to meet us.
We have to do that, because God has a right to it, and ... we can't lose anything with it, but win everything.
Because our soul doesn't die a natural death. It will continue to find its vocation and honour in serving its Creator. And because servitude is different from slavery, and sacrificial love is
distinct from involuntary martyrdom, the soul will become richer by its good deeds, even though she can't ever claim supernatural sanctification as its reward or its heritage.
There's no disaster that can undo its good deeds.
Indeed, death that tries to level everything and doesn't distinguish between corporeal properties, taking all passions from a hothead and all
possessions from a rich man, doesn't manage to rob the soul from its marks of honour. The merits it acquired in earthly life, keep their value in the farthest future. For it's the immortal soul that
acquires merits, not the body, even though the soul needs the body to become meritorious. Death may gnaw at the body, but not at the soul.
Therefore, we can't think of a mistake that's more fatal than the error of the life-weary who behave as if all light and hope were gone.
Therefore the most sensible attitude is joyfulness. Indeed, the
joyful take the world as it is, and for the rest they expect everything from God. They enlarge the horizonts of their minds, and pose against the secrets of a future they don't know the certainty of
God's unfathomable love, which predestined their soul for eternal life and will be able to reward every good deed with a surplus of goodness and happiness.
Man should consciously ask for the best and hope for the highest to develop his thoughts and deeds in a responsible way through active expectation.
Inside himself, he's carrying the high duty to honour his Lord
and God by serving Him in a spirit of truth.
After a lot of searching and trying, it could still turn out to be too difficult to acquire a pure understanding of the voice of nature that's unfolding the
laws of religious conviction and practice of life. Then it's evident we could resort to God in a submissive but hopeful prayer for Light and Force: "Speak, my Lord, your servant is listening!".
Je voudrais m'en tenir à l'antique sagesse ...
Je ne puis; malgré moi l'Infini me tourmente ...
Qu'est-ce donc que ce monde et qu'y venons nous faire;
Si, pour qu'on vive en paix, il faut voiler les cieux,
Passer comme un troupeau les yeux fixés à terre,
Et renier le reste, est-ce donc être heureux?
Non, c'est cesser d'être homme et dégrader son âme ...
Une immense espérance a traversé la terre;
Malgré nous vers le ciel il faut lever les yeux! ...
Pour que Dieu nous réponde, adressons-nous à Lui.
(A. de Musset, "l'Espoir en Dieu")