If only, indeed, it were possible to 'see' the One (which is also the Good and the Beautiful), all of the desires of the heart would be brought to rest.
Whatever is desired, we have learned
, is desired under the description of 'good.'[1] Finite goods fail to satisfy us completely because we have a natural desire, a natural longing for infinite good. Only God, seen 'face to face,' can satisfy our natural longing for infinite good (because He alone is the infinite and subsistent Good). True and perfect happiness only can be found in the 'face to face vision' of God.
[2]
'But how shall we find the way? What method can we devise? How can one see the ‘inconceivable beauty’ which stays within the holy sanctuary and does not come out where the profane may see it?'
[3]
Spoken another way, how are we to approach a God 'who…inhabiteth light inaccessible, whom no man hath seen, nor can see'?
[4]
Plotinus was too much of an optimist. He thought that we could attain to a vision of God by intense intellectual effort, contemplation and an ascetic life-style. The later Neoplatonists were not nearly as optimistic: they turned to theurgy (literally “working the gods”; pagan “religious” ritual magic involving statues and the like).
[5] St. Augustine, I think, accurately describes the sad plight in which the later Neoplatonists found themselves:
'Whom could I find to reconcile me to you [the Lord]? Should I have approached the angels? What kind of prayer? What kind of rites? Many who were striving to return to you and were not able of themselves have, I am told, tried this and have fallen into a longing for curious visions and deserved to be deceived. Being exalted, they sought you in their pride of learning, and they thrust themselves forward rather than beating their breasts. And so by a likeness of heart, they drew to themselves the princes of the air, their conspirators and companions in pride, by whom they were deceived by the power of magic. Thus they sought a mediator by whom they might be cleansed, but there was none.'
[6]
Only God, then, seen 'face to face,'
[7] can make us truly happy. The creature, however, cannot 'storm heaven,' so to speak, and see God by his own efforts.
[8] That utterly lies outside of his own power. God is infinite, and in His subsistent unity and being (
esse) ('being' here understood in the Thomistic sense), He utterly transcends all creatures. Only God can make us happy, and we are utterly incapable of 'seeing' Him by our own natural efforts. [Note, of course, that even if human nature were 'perfect,' so to speak, in its own order, it would still be utterly incapable of seeing the infinite God. How much worse is our plight in fact, given the fact that humanity has fallen through original sin, and given that its natural powers have been obscured, disordered and darkened because of the Fall of our first parents, and given that 'all have sinned,'
[9] and so deserve, not the sight of God, but everlasting punishment?]
[10]
The metaphysician, of course, can be sure that it must at least be possible to see God face to face. His innate desire for happiness and his natural desire to know causes attest to that. He also knows, however, that the possibility of such a vision utterly escapes the natural resources of the rational or intellectual creature. He cannot, by his own power, ascend to God. He must echo, then, the
cri de coeur (cry of the heart) of the Prophet Isaiah, crying 'out of the depths'
[11] to God:
'That thou wouldst rend the heavens, and wouldst come down…'
[12]
[1] Common scholastic maxim; St. Thomas Aquinas repeats it.
[2] St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 3, a. 8.
[3] Plotinus,
Enneads I.6.8.1-4.
[4] 1 Timothy 6:16.
[5] R.T. Wallis makes a note of this in
Neoplatonism.
[6] St. Augustine,
Confessions 10.42.67; I am quoting from the Barnes & Nobles edition, translated by Albert C. Outler).
[7] 1 Corinthains 13:12.
[8] St. Thomas Aquinas, ST I, q. 12, a. 4.
[9] Romans 3:23
[10] Romans 6:23; Matthew 25:41.
[11] Psalms 129:1 in the Vulgate and Douay Rheims; Psalms 130:1 in other editions.
[12] Isaiah 64:1.
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