The Writings of Charles De Koninck: Volume 2

THIS IS A HARD SAYING

T I  H S MN  DeKoninck-08 5/13/09 3:55 PM Page 391 DeKoninck-08 5/13/09 3:55 PM Page 392 Abscondes eos in abscondito faciei tuae. —Psalm  I A contemporary author who has many readers and is of great influence recently wrote that he could not understand how some of the most intelligent people of his acquaintance could still believe the most afflicting foolishness they are taught by the Catholic Church.We will not be so simplistic as to reject out of hand this invective. The Good Lord has told us “it pleased God by the foolishness of our preaching to save those who believe.”And that“the doctrine of the cross is foolishness to those who perish.” “But the foolish things of the world God has chosen to put to shame the strong.” “But the sensual man does not perceive the things that are of the Spirit of God, for it is foolishness to him and he cannot understand.”1 Some philosophers have thought that the relation of properly divine truth to natural truth can be compared to a series converging at its limit. But this comparison tends to confuse the incomparable otherness of the two truths. Properly divine truth so far exceeds natural truth that nothing of the latter can give any presentiment of the former. Indeed it is written that “the things God has prepared for those who love Him have not entered into the heart of man.”2 Others have held that divine truths are so different that natural reason can teach the contrary of the faith. Against this extreme we say, with St. Thomas, that if it is absolutely impossible for natural reason to arrive at knowledge of truths which are of pure divine faith, it is equally impossible for reason to call them impossible. If natural reason can determinately know that there are truths that it cannot conceive, it cannot say determinately what those truths are. If, for example, reason cannot say that the Trinity is impossible , it cannot say determinately that it is possible. We cannot call possible that whose impossibility we cannot see. That is the limit point of philosophical knowledge.  DeKoninck-08 5/13/09 3:55 PM Page 393 Let us not then seek to weaken the force of the Apostle’s words.A bad understanding of the doctrine of analogy could destroy its profound meaning. If natural theology knows God sub ratione entis, it in no way attains Him as part of the subject of metaphysics—it knows Him only as the absolutely extrinsic principle of its subject. It cannot know this principle in terms of what it properly is, that is, in that which constitutes it in its very otherness. If God were contained within the limits of that being which makes up the subject of metaphysics, faith would only serve to reinforce in a way the ratio entis and convert it into the ratio deitatis. Or again, the latter would only make us know distinctly what the former makes known to us confusedly. Knowledge of God according to His deity would then be at least in the direct line of philosophical wisdom, it would be like a limit toward which a series converges. That is why the wisdom of this world becomes pure foolishness as soon as it wants to judge properly divine wisdom. On the contrary, judged by the wisdom of the world, divine wisdom itself becomes, according to the strong saying of the Apostle, folly. Philosophical wisdom, applying itself to things which are of pure divine faith, can only lead to error. It is in that sense that the words of Denis the Areopagite “all human knowledge is error in comparison to divine knowledge,” are perfectly formal and not simple hyperbole . Philosophy can aid theology under the title of ancilla. Philosophical truth can influence a theological conclusion only in virtue of its being lifted up by the sapiential judgment of theology.St.Thomas says that sacred science makes use of the sciences not out of defect or insufficiency, but because of the weakness of our minds which, moving from things known by natural reason, can be more easily led by the hand to things which are above reason and the object of this sacred science. The truths to which we must adhere by faith are so far above man purely as man, they are of an otherness so...