The Constant Temptation: On Man's Pursuit of False Gods

The Constant Temptation: On Man's Pursuit of False Gods | Fr. James V. Schall, S. J. | July 26, 2011 | Ignatius Insight

"This is a constant temptation on the journey of faith to avoid the divine mystery by constructing a comprehensible god who corresponds with one's own plans, one's own projects."
-- Pope Benedict XVI, Audience, June 1, 2011.

The notion of a "comprehensible god" is an intriguing one: to only admit a god we can understand. The Catholic view of God is not that we can know nothing about God, but that what we know is remarkably less than what is to be known. The mystery of the Christian God is not how little we know of Him but how much more there is to know—even when we know a lot, including what He has revealed to us. We are not skeptics, but we are careful. We consider the question of whether God has revealed anything of Himself to us over and above what we might know by our own reasonings. We find that a rather considerable amount of what God is and is like has been made known to us. Yet, we must put this knowledge in place and proper order. The relatively little that we do know of God, as Aristotle said, is worth all our efforts.

God did not reveal everything we need to know about everything. He expected us to figure out many things by ourselves. Indeed, what in addition, beyond our own reflections, was made known to us was designed for our own good. We were told things about God that were helpful to reach Him. The reaching of God was itself the purpose of our creation and subsequent redemption; it was the purpose of the Resurrection and the gift of eternal life.

Aquinas stated we were given a more clear idea of God's inner being with divine revelation. Beyond what we could figure out by ourselves, we were provided with further insight into what was right and wrong in our lives. We were told of the relation of our thoughts to our actions. And we were explicitly told of further rewards and punishments so that we could grasp the importance of our own lives and what we do with them. None of what were told about God coerced us or removed our freedom to reject Him. But it did give us reasons why it might well be God who was addressing Himself to us.

As Benedict XVI tells us, however, whatever God indicates about Himself, either in reason or revelation, we have an abiding or constant temptation to "avoid" it. We can ignore what we know of God in reason and revelation. We give excuses. We think that revelation is unimportant or insignificant. We can get along without it. We don't need God to be good. We can set up our own good. Yet, we cannot leave it at that. We cannot just live on a negative theory of our own making. We must find something more to our liking.

We want a "comprehensible god." We want a God who does not make us think too much or who does not ask us to do much. It has often been remarked that the Christian God is too "complicated." He requires too much thought of us. The Muslim god is much simpler: four or five basic rules and acts do it for everybody; God as Trinity and Incarnate is specifically rejected. And yet, as we see from Christianity's earliest days, it is precisely in thinking about the Trinity and the Incarnation that we learn most about ourselves and our world. Indeed, thinking of them, paradoxically, enables us to philosophize better. It makes us suspect reason and revelation have the same origin.

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