Who Was God Loving before He Created Us?

            One of my favorite questions to ask my students (and I borrowed this from one of my graduate school professors) is related to the claim that God is a community. I give my students this claim and question: “If we assume God is Love and if Love has both a Lover and a Beloved, then who was God Loving before He created us?” The question is a bit loaded. My sharper students remind me that we cannot use temporal vocabulary like “before” when we talk about God. I put my head in my hands and revise the question: “Since God exists independent of us, and if God is Love, then who does God Love and who Loves God independent of us?” Technically, it is a better question, although a bit complicated. Usually it is the same students who caught the temporal problem with the former question who can actually answer. They were really just showing off before. “God must be Loving Himself and God must be Loved by Himself,” they respond. I ask the class in return, “So God just Loves Himself? What does this say about God? What can we conclude about God based on this?” Occasionally I have to lead students to some of the deeper logical conclusions, but most of the time I get responses like: “God must be really into Himself” or “God really likes Himself.” They are not wrong, but they are not completely right. “But is this type of self-Love consistent with Agape as self-gift or humility, like we have discussed before?” St. John and the Church Fathers interpreted Agape in Scripture as a kind of Love that asks for nothing in return. That is, it is a Love that is not self-interested or egotistical. It is “self-donation” or submission of Will for the sake of the Truth of self and the other. It is the opposite of what we see in the Fall of Adam and Eve. It requires a distinct individual to acquiesce their Will, and their ego, out of concern for the Other. In order for God to be Love, as St. John wrote, then God must possess at least two distinct identities within God’s self. There must be an identity that is Love and another that is Beloved. This is, at least, how St. Augustine describes the persons in the Trinity. God is Lover and Beloved in two distinct persons (or more). My students can at least leave my class with a little bit of this theological language and understanding of the Trinity. It gets complicated when we talk about the third person of the Trinity and how this is not some form of polytheism.

The Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St. Nicholas in Galway, Co. Galway, Ireland (photo P. Smith).

Who is the Other? The Trinity

Who is the Other?

           Originally I taught this section of the course with the questions: “Who are You?” Of course, this would mean I would spend a day and a half explaining that when I ask “who are you?” we are not asking who are you, the students in my classroom, as if the entire unit focuses on people not myself, Patrick Smith. I changed the language about a week or so into the unit. The previous unit focused on who the self is; this unit discusses who the other is. That is, who is everyone other than the self?

Made in the Image and Likeness of a Triune God, Again?

            It is important to recall concepts from the chapter on Christian Anthropology regarding the nature of God and the nature of self. If God is community in the Trinity and if we are made in the image and likeness of God, then we are also made to be in relationship, at least, with God. This chapter explore how it is not enough to be in a personal relationship with God; we must also be in a personal relationship with “the Other”, that is, with other human persons, and we discuss how that relationship, if it is to reflect the relationship God has within the Trinity, it must be characteristically self-giving and humble.

Trinitarian Abbey in Adare, Co. Limerick, Ireland. The Trinity remains the central mystery of Catholic Christianity. The image and likeness of God, we believe, is a relationship so perfect in Love that it is one God. If we are made in this same image and likeness, then we certainly need relationship with self, other, nature, and God. (photo P. Smith).

            God is Love, according to St. John, and that means that God Loves perfectly and is Loved perfectly. The “perfectly” stems from the transcendent nature of God. The capacity with which God Loves and is Loved is not limited; it is a telos at which His rational creation, humanity, should aim. But if God’s Agape is what we say it is, God must have an object of His perfect Love and God must have one who Loves Him perfectly. Since only God can be perfect and Love perfectly, this suggests a community within what we call God, the Trinity.

Anagogical Truth

It is important in Catholic theology and Scriptural Study to read Sacred Scripture narratively and analogically as these are ways we can comprehend Scripture, to an extent. Again, referring to the potential of material epistemology to know Truth and to point to deeper Truth, understanding the narrative and analogical Truths is essential in that they suggest deeper Truths. The term used to refer to Truths that are more Transcendent and therefore beyond human comprehension is anagogical Truth. While anagogical Truth cannot be directly observed or comprehended, by observing narrative and analogical Truths and by noting trends or themes that exist on both the narrative and analogical level, one can surmise Truths that exist on a Transcendent level. In this way, Catholic theology understands Sacred Scripture to present narrative and analogical Truths in terms of material epistemology as a means for pointing the human intellect toward transcendent Truths. These transcendent Truths, beyond observable knowledge, can only be fully comprehended by phronesis or an encounter, in this case, with the God presented in Sacred Scripture.

St. Colman's Catholic Church in Claremorris, Co. Mayo, Ireland. Even in the small towns in Ireland, like Claremorris (population 4800), the Catholic Churches were built to "point to" the grandeur of God, must the same way narrative and analogical Truths are meant to "point to" anagogical Truths.

In considering the materialist world and material epistemology, the observable world presents narrative and analogical Truths. It is by these Truths that one can be directed toward greater Truths which can only be comprehended by an acquiescent encounter with the divine. “Remember when we talked about psychology and sociology and philosophy and how they all seem to suggest the importance of relationship?” I ask my students sarcastically. We have been studying this stuff for several days. “We saw through those material or episteme-driven sciences the theme or idea of relationship as being important. We do not know exactly how important or how it looks outside of the Pit, but we can tell that it is important. This is an anagogical Truth: humans are meant to be in relationship with each other”.

The concept that one can begin to encounter God through the material world, and by that encounter begin to know the Truth of One’s Authentic self, is called Sacramentality. If creation is the result of an over-surplus of divine Love expressed between the persons of the Trinity, then it is within the boundaries of creation that one can encounter the Truth that is the source of that Creation. Sacramentality is, essentially, observing the created worlds’ narrative and analogical Truths with a lens that looks toward anagogical Truth. With this lens, the created world remains essential in the pursuit of one’s Authentic Self in as much as one continues to look beyond the limitations of human intellect in the pursuit of Truth.

Narrative and Analogical Truths

          Christian Theology is heavily rooted in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. To be clear, Catholic Scriptural Scholarship is not simply reading and believing what is written in the Bible. Catholic Scriptural Scholarship involves a much more nuanced understanding of the literary traditions which form the scriptures. Indeed, Catholic theology does claim Sacred Scripture to proclaim Truth, but this sense of Truth differs from perhaps what one refers to as fundamentalist reading of Scripture, which claims that what is written in Scripture is “fact” and Truth. Catholic scholarship tends to not assume all things in the Bible to be historical or empirical fact. Catholic Scriptural Scholarship looks at Sacred Scripture as possessing Narrative Truths, Analogical Truths, and Anagogical Truths. This can be thought of in terms of literary studies, that is, in terms of a regular story one might read. As one reads a story, the text can be read on a literal or a narrative level. The story has certain details that are true in context of the story itself. For example, in the Genesis Creation Story, if one reads it literally or narratively, there are characters, a setting, a conflict, dialogue, and a resolution. These are the literal facts of the story, and, as such, one can say these details are Narratively True, the same way the literal details of a story (fiction or non-fiction) are True in the margins of the text. These details, because they can be written and read by the human intellect, remain, in essence, materialist in their epistemological Truth. The details in Sacred Scripture, therefore, are essential in that they suggest or point to deeper Truths. The concept of Narrative Truth reveals to the scholar that the materialist details of the world are more than just accident in that they contain in them hints or signs of more complex and ever objective Truths. My students should remember this lesson from when we first talked about Genesis.

The Cathedral of Our Lady Assumed into Heaven and St. Nicholas in Galway, Co. Galway, Ireland. While some of the stories in Scripture cannot be taken simply for their face value, their narrative Truth, the Resurrection remains a central fact of Christian belief. If the Resurrection never happened, then Christianity has no meaning. (photo P. Smith)

Within the context of the human intellect, Sacred Scripture also reveals to the reader analogical Truths. That is, the narrative Truths of Sacred Scripture can be interpreted, within the capacity of the human intellect, to mean something deeper that is not expressly mentioned in the text, itself. For example, the narrative details of the Genesis story tell the reader that God creates humanity, invites humanity into communion with Him, sets expectations for that community, punishes humanity for not meeting those expectations, and continues to Love humanity despite the transgression of those expectations. These narrative Truths can be considered analogically as guidelines for familial and social structures. Though it is not expressly indicated in Genesis, an analogical reading of the text reveals a primer for social contract and a just society. This interpretation, among many others, is apparent when one reads Sacred Scripture analogically. Because analogical Truth can be comprehended by human intellect, it remains a material Truth. My students usually get this. If they had a good poetry teacher at any point in their life or if they ever read the lyrics to most any popular song, they get the idea of metaphor or analogy. It’s the next level of reading, the anagogical level, that is harder to understand.