He dealt with this critic of doctrine with a simple comparison. God is to doctrine what the ocean is to a map. If all one wants to do is go for a quick swim it is arguable that a map might not be necessary. However, if one wants to get somewhere, to dive in the ocean and just begin to swim could be dangerous. He suggests it is similar with God.

Christianity is about more than an experience of God. It is about being saved from certain peril and spending ourselves for one another so that all of us together might arrive at a destination prepared for us from the foundation of the world. Accordingly, the Christian life requires us to steep ourselves in sacred doctrine and to apply our whole intelligence to the saving truth proposed to us by the Church. To this end and through the centuries, Christians have devoted their lives and fortunes to learning, arguing about and trying to live the language of the Sacred Scriptures.

Is it necessary to take up a scientific investigation of the Holy Bible? Yesterday in my post on De Doctrina Christiana Saint Augustine provided us a glimpse of his vision of theology by addressing the objections of those who cannot understand or apply his teaching. In his vision, theology looks out upon the wonders of what God has done just like astronomy looks up into the heavens. Whether his students understand what he teaches or whether they can apply it does not diminish his investigation of the truth anymore than someone with bad eyesight diminishes the beauty of the stars or the joy of star gazing. In today’s post, we will consider the position of those who object to a disciplined approach to contemplating Divine Revelation because of their direct experience of God in prayer.

Saint Augustine is aware that in addition to those who do not understand or else are unable to apply what he teaches, others might criticize his teaching on the basis that they have mystical knowledge of God’s Word and therefore do not need his scientific rules to know what the Scriptures are saying. St. Augustine does not discount this important form of knowing, but he does argue that this kind of knowing is not sufficient for the demands of divine revelation. Mystical knowledge is not sufficient to persuade others. To help others understand the reason for the hope we have inside we need to present what we believe in a manner which appeals to what can be known in reality itself. Mystical knowledge is super-conceptual and can not be conveyed from one created person to another. It is rather a knowledge received from God in a supernatural manner. Yet the Word of God has not chosen to reveal himself spiritually to each soul by grace individually alone. Instead, God respects our humanity.

Our humanity is not only spiritual but also material, historical, particular and concrete. God bases his invisible mission in the life of the soul on his visible mission in the history of the world. Foreshadowed by the Law and the Prophets, the Word of God expressed himself in human speech and performed tangible signs for the salvation not so much of isolated individuals but of a heavenly community, a divine family. Although He could have saved us in isolation from each other, the Word made flesh has bound us together through the preaching of the Church.

Sacred Doctrine is what the Church proposes for our belief as saving truth, the truth we need to know for our salvation. When we believe what the Church proposes, we open our hearts to encountering Christ who draws us deeper and deeper into a communion with one another in his new humanity, a humanity He refashioned by his death and resurrection. Through this humanity, we convey the wonders of what God has done by applying all the powers of our intelligence to what He has revealed.  Although the subject matter is incomparably beautiful, great effort and suffering is called for in distinguishing, comparing and finding the connections between what God has revealed to us and what we can naturally know about ourselves and the world.  

This intensely human engagement with the Word of God disclosed in the Sacred Scriptures is the task of Christian theology.  In this effort, we learn a kind of wisdom by which we are able build up each other’s faith not only by repeating biblical sayings to each other but also with our own words.  Here, theological wisdom is at the service of mystical wisdom, the loving knowledge which increases in us as we cling to God by love and prayer.  With both theological wisdom and the wisdom that comes from prayer, our thoughts become so baptized in sacred doctrine we find ourselves thinking with the mind of Christ and more fully living a transformed life – that is, a life completely offered to God.  

To refer back to C.S. Lewis’s comparison, one wisdom is the kind we get from looking at the map and the other from catching the waves. For those who want to avoid danger and get somewhere, both kinds of wisdom are necessary. In theological wisdom, we learn to understand the language of the Sacred Scriptures so that something beautiful of what God conveys to the soul through its life of prayer can be shared from mouth to mouth. In this way, through our life together in the Church the saving truth resounds not only in one’s own hidden depths but also from the rooftops for the salvation of the world. This is why St. Augustine believes Christians must study the Holy Bible in a disciplined way.

As a student of spiritual theology, the Commission’s perspective “theological contemplation” (see #61) is especially interesting. Contemplation of the Word of God is presented as an effort which brings all the powers of reason to bear on the effort to behold the wonder of what God has revealed of Himself in the world for our sake. Divine revelation flows from and leads to the Cross where the Word made flesh lays bear the fullness of what God has to say to each of us. Theological contemplation consists in making human intelligence and affectivity completely vulnerable to this paschal mystery.

Contemplation means “to behold,” “to see,” “to gaze upon.” Those who contemplate behold the wonder of what is. In this wonder filled gaze, the heart opens to all that is beautiful and good. In this kind of knowing, truth and love are co-existence: the mind loves the good sees and sees the truth it loves. This wisdom is possible because we are in the image of God – God who beholds that that is good and loves it into existence including all of humanity to whom He has disclosed Himself definitively in the Word made flesh.

The natural wonder of all that His hands have made is so beautiful that some devote their whole lives to beholding the beauty of creation even if they do not acknowledge it as created: philosophers, physicists, mathematicians, and almost every other kind of scientist in various degrees and according to their distinct methods. Our naturally endowed capacity for wonder frail though it is nonetheless truly opens to the vast splendor of the things that are.

There is another kind of contemplation, theological contemplation, which requires God’s help.  This kind of study is no easy undertaking.  Nor is it something someone can safely take up as an isolated individual. Great things in life require great effort, and the most difficult understakings draws us together in support of one another.  While either an urgent plight or a sense of adventure might move someone to take up a great work, theological contemplation involves both the plight of humanity and the noble calling with which each human being is endowed. 

In theology, God draws us to Himself and draws us together with one another so that we might know the truth in a saving way.  Holy Spirit has been sent to the Church so that we might together support one another in this difficult task.  Even with divine assistance and the Church, this kind of study is the most difficult of all human endeavors because what God has revealed far exceeds our frail natural powers to fully comprehend. That is why there is so much strong disagreement and even vital mistakes that are made in the effort to attain this Christian wisdom.

In theological contemplation, God helps all our efforts to understand his incomprehensible love so that we are able to see difficult to discern connections between the truths of the faith not only among themselves but also in relation to what is known by the natural power of reason. God who created our natural powers of reason aids our natural effort to understand what He has done, constantly purifying our gaze and endowing us with ever more penetrating insights. Even after two thousand years, we have barely begun to understand all that Christ has revealed to us.   His riches are inexhaustible! Yet, in addition to his generous cooperation with our efforts to understand Him, He can also raise our natural powers of wonder to participate in his very life. Here, theological contemplation, when radically rooted in the Word of God, glimpses for a moment a light not of this world, a hope that infuses with divine love, an eternal love which makes all things new.  Such is the inheritance of the saints before the Throne of the Lamb.

In theological contemplation where the Word of God is sought in the words of the Bible, where study of the sacred page is imbued with promptings of the Holy Spirit, where prayerful reflection on the tradition handed on to us vigilantly prepares to give an account for the hope we have in Christ; this kind of wisdom brings to humanity an anticipation of the splendor God has yearned to share from before the foundation of the world. The Commission proposes that this effort truly contributes to humanity a certain “supernatural Christian wisdom” of which there are two distinct but related forms, theological and mystical:

This supernatural Christian wisdom, which transcends the purely human wisdom of philosophy, takes two forms which sustain one another but should not be confused: theological wisdom and mystical wisdom. 

Theological wisdom is the work of reason enlightened by faith. It is therefore an acquired wisdom, though it supposes of course the gift of faith. It offers a unified explanation of reality in light of the highest truths of revelation, and it enlightens everything from the foundational mystery of the Trinity, considered both in itself and in its action in creation and in history. In this regard, Vatican I said: ‘Reason illuminated by faith, when it seeks zealously, piously and soberly, attains with the help of God some understanding of the mysteries, and a most fruitful understanding, both by analogy with those things which it knows naturally, and also from the connection of the mysteries among themselves and with the final end of man’.The intellectual contemplation which results from the rational labour of the theologian is thus truly a wisdom.

Mystical wisdom or ‘the knowledge of the saints’ is a gift of the Holy Spirit which comes from union with God in love. Love, in fact, creates an affective connaturality between the human being and God, who allows spiritual persons to know and even suffer things divine (pati divina), actually experiencing them in their lives. This is a non-conceptual knowledge, often expressed in poetry. It leads to contemplation and personal union with God in peace and silence. (Theology Today, #91, bold and italics added)