Sharpening our natural knowledge of God
Our knowledge of God can either be natural or supernatural. The former simply relies on our reason and human capacity to know. The latter is the fruit of faith, of grace, of God’s mercy.
While there is distinction between the two, we have to understand that we need to have both of them working organically. While our natural power to know God would already give us a certain knowledge of God, we have to understand that, due to our human condition that is weakened by sin, we are in great need of the divine gift of faith which God himself gives generously.
We should avoid falling into the extremes of rationalism, where we use reason alone in our relationship with God, and of fideism, where we use what we call as faith alone. Reason and faith should go together.
This faith does not replace our natural powers to know God. In fact, it requires the full play of our natural powers. What it does is to purify, deepen and elevate our natural capacity to know God to the supernatural order.
We have to understand that our faith could go to waste if our natural powers to know God fail to do their part. That is why we have to realize that we need to develop our natural capacity to know God as much as possible.
We should see to it that these natural powers to know God are not obstructed and entangled in some earthly values alone, but should go all the way to acknowledge God’s presence and love everywhere.
This is where much of our problem in this area spring. We fail to make our natural powers to know God to go all the way. And so we fall into many inconsistencies in our Christian life.
How does this natural knowledge of God work? And how should we develop it?
“The person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs of the existence of God” not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of converging and convincing arguments which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These ‘ways’ of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.” (Catechism 31)
What we have to do to develop our natural knowledge of God is to pursue to the last consequences the logic of these natural approaches of knowing God. The problem, as I mentioned earlier, is that we tend to get contented at a certain point of the development process and refuse to go any further.
We easily get contented with merely worldly values, like practicability, ingenuity, profitability, etc., and refuse to acknowledge the God who is behind all these values. As a consequence, we make our own agenda and detach ourselves from the providence of God in which we play a vital role.
While it’s true that there is a certain autonomy we enjoy in our earthly affairs, that autonomy is never meant to be a complete disregard or separation from the ways of God’s providence. If anything at all, that autonomy should stir even more our desire to seek God.
Seeking God should be a wholistic effort that involves all our faculties. It should not just be an intellectual exercise without the feelings, or vice-versa, a matter of pure feelings without the use of the intelligence.
Christ himself said so: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Mt 6,33)
Seeking God, whether having the physical world or the human person as points of departure, should be a wholistic effort that involves all our faculties. It should not just be an intellectual exercise without the feelings, or vice-versa, a matter of pure feelings without the use of the intelligence.
Christ himself said so: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Mt 6,33) And, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, and with all our mind.” (Lk 10,27)
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