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“The Wisdom of the Teaching of Christ as a Sign of the Truth of the Christian Religion”

 

by Rev. Sebastian Walshe, O.Praem. (’94)
Professor of Philosophy, Abbey of St. Michael
St. Thomas Day Lecture
���ϲ�����, California
January 28, 2025

 

During sophomore year, while reading the City of God, I was struck for the first time by the fact that the Scriptures had one Author.  From Genesis to Revelation, as St. Augustine showed, every book of the Bible made the opposition between the city of man and the City of God a central theme.  So either there was some secret society of Scripture writers who passed on this program to succeeding generations for 1500 years, or God was the Author of all of Sacred Scripture.

I had a similar experience as a seminarian as I read St. Thomas’ Commendation and Division of Sacred Scripture, where he lays out the purpose of each book of the Bible, Old and New Testaments, and shows how each book fits into the whole.  Not only was there a common theme running through all of Scripture, but there was a unified whole in which each book played an essential part.  At first it seems hard to believe that so many books written by so many different human authors in such diverse historical circumstances, could also contribute to an intelligible whole with a clear unity; but as I examined each book in detail, sure enough, St. Thomas had accurately portrayed the purpose of each book.  It was an order St. Thomas discovered in Sacred Scripture, not an order he imposed upon it.

Tonight, I hope to give you something of the same experience regarding the ordering and unifying effect that Christian revelation has on philosophy.  In other words, I hope to show inductively by way of several examples, how Christian revelation makes what can be known by reason alone, more reasonable. And, insofar as truth harmonizes with truth, I hope in this way to manifest the truth of the Christian religion.

The Motives of Credibility

Some things can be known by reason but not by faith, such as the fact that there are only five regular solids.  Some things can be known by both faith and reason, such as the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the fact that murder is wrong.  Finally, some things can be known by faith alone, and not by reason, such as the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist.  Although the truths in the last category are not demonstrable, nevertheless, there may be certain signs or probable arguments that can be given to incline the will to accept these truths.  These signs and probable arguments are often called the “motives of credibility”.  For example, the fulfillment of a prophecy or a host miraculously changing into flesh have been motives which have helped believers to give assent to certain teachings of Christian revelation.

But there is another kind of motive of credibility which I intend to investigate this evening, and it is implied in the words of Blessed Pius IX in his encyclical Qui Pluribus.  Speaking of the events of the life of Christ, the holy pontiff stated:

Surely, all these events shine with such divine wisdom and power, that anyone who considers them will easily understand that the Christian faith is the work of God.

We can trace back an effect to a divine cause in many ways.  In fact, as the five ways show, every reality directly knowable by us is traced ultimately back to a divine cause.  But in this case we are looking for effects that are properly divine in such a way that they do not have a natural cause as well.  Thus, God alone can perform miracles which exceed the power of nature, such as the resurrection of the dead, for this is proper to divine power; and God alone can know and reveal future contingent events, for this is a proper and immediate effect of divine knowledge.  But as Pope Pius IX points out, there is also a wisdom which is proper to God and the manifestation of that wisdom in Christian revelation is itself evidence that Christian revelation must have its origin from God.

In the remainder of this talk, I will first lay out some marks by which divine wisdom can be distinguished from human teaching.  Second, I will give examples how Christian revelation satisfies the marks which one would expect from a divine wisdom.

Characteristics of Divine Wisdom

So what would be the marks of a teaching which is a proper effect of divine wisdom?  It is perhaps easier to see what marks would rule out some teaching from being the proper effect of divine wisdom.  So let’s begin with a via negativa.

Divine wisdom would not:

1. Contradict itself: No one is considered wise who contradicts himself.  Self-contradiction is a sign of ignorance, not wisdom, as Plato often manifests in his Dialogues.
2. Contradict what can be demonstrated by reason: Truth does not contradict truth.  Moreover, the order knowable by reason is founded upon creation which proceeds from God, so that a contradiction between reason and revelation would amount to the same thing as God contradicting himself.
3. Concern itself with trivial matters which are merely curiosities: Wisdom is about the highest principles and causes, and therefore, it would not primarily be about trivial matters.  Thus, one would not expect divine revelation to reveal how many kinds of chocolate there are, nor to contain recipes for all of them.
4. Encourage behavior which makes men more like animals than like God: Divine wisdom would have not only speculative, but also practical elements, and these elements would ennoble men to be more like God, not debase them to be less like men.  Thus, any religion that promises sensual pleasures as the greatest goods to its adherents is unworthy of God.
5. Be a simple restatement of what anyone could know by reason alone: If a teaching or religion simply restated facts like the Pythagorean Theorem, all of which are knowable from reason’s own natural powers, then there would be no reason to suspect that such teaching has its origin in God rather than in the human mind.

If some teaching were to exhibit one or more of these defects, it would not be divine wisdom.  Nevertheless, freedom from these defects does not necessarily indicate that some teaching has its origin in divine wisdom.  For evidence of that, certain positive indications should be present.

To approach divine wisdom in a more positive way, we should investigate the definition of wisdom, and then determine what it means to say that some wisdom is divine or superior to human wisdom.

Let’s start with a nominal definition: Wisdom is the best kind of knowledge.  What makes one knowledge better than another?  Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with a series of comparisons between different kinds of knowledge.  His conclusion is that one knowledge is better than another to the extent that it gives the cause and reason why something is so.  And if two kinds of knowledge both give the cause, the more ultimate the cause given, the better the knowledge.  Thus, the best kind of knowledge is a knowledge of the ultimate principles and causes.  Moreover, since the good or end is the cause which makes the other causes to act as causes, wisdom is most of all about the ultimate final cause. 

When a knowledge is about a higher cause, this knowledge extends to more things.  Just as the knowledge of political science extends to more things than the knowledge of warfare.  As a result, we ought to expect that divine wisdom would extend to more things than human wisdom, and consider those things under a more universal formality.

In addition, a knowledge of prior causes will be able to unify what is divided in a lower science. For example, intellectual knowledge unites what is divided in sense knowledge.  Moreover, because a more universal cause extends to more effects, those things which seem to be accidentally related to lower causes and sciences should be found to belong per se to the higher causes and sciences.  St. Thomas mentions these two aspects in his commentary on Book VI of the Metaphysics:

To the degree that some cause is higher, so much does its causality extend to more things.  For a higher cause has its own proper higher effect, which is more common and found in more.  This is clear in the arts: for example, the political art which is above the military, extends itself to the community of the entire state, while the military art only extends to those who are members of the military.  But the order which is in the effects from some cause only extend as far as the causality of that cause.  For every per se cause has determined effects which it produces in a certain order.  Therefore, it is manifest that when effects are related to some lower cause they seem to have no order, but rather seem to coincide accidentally to each other.  But when they are referred to a higher common cause, an order is found there, and they are not accidentally conjoined, but are produced together by one per se cause.

For example, the blossoming of this or that plant, if referred to the particular power of blossoming which is in each of them appears to have no order.  Indeed, it seems to be accidental that this plant blossoms at the same time that that plant blossoms.  The reason for this that that the power of blossoming in this plant only extends to itself, and not to the blossoming of another plant.  Thus, while it causes this first plant to blossom, it does not cause it to blossom at the same time as a second plant.  But if the effect of blossoming be referred to the power of a heavenly body, which is a common cause, then the simultaneous blossoming of both plants is found not to be accidental, but to be ordained by some first cause which ordains that both plants are simultaneously moved to blossom.[1]

Therefore, we should expect that a divine wisdom should extend itself to a more universal scope of being, as well as explain why effects which, according to human wisdom, seem to be unrelated or accidentally connected, should be per se united.

Another attribute of a higher knowledge is that it is able to resolve difficulties a lower knowledge is incapable of resolving.  For example, the natural philosopher, when faced with the objections of Parmenides that motion is impossible, simply waves his hand and smiles.  But the Metaphysician can distinguish the various senses of being and resolve the objections of Parmenides.  Or again, the natural philosopher knows that nature acts for an end, but the metaphysician knows why: namely, because nature is the work of a mind.  Therefore, we should expect that a wisdom higher than human wisdom should resolve difficulties human wisdom perceives but cannot resolve.

Finally, because wisdom is most of all about the final cause, one should expect that divine wisdom should provide a higher finality for the things in the created order than the purposes human wisdom perceives.  Thus, for example, the natural philosopher in studying living things, knows that they are striving to successfully reproduce, while the metaphysician knows that this is the attempt of living things to strive to participate in the eternal nature of the divine.  Aristotle opens this window to higher causes in Book II, chapter 4 of the De Anima:

For the most natural of the operations of such living beings as are mature, and not defective nor spontaneously generated, is to produce others like themselves: an animal an animal, and a plant a plant.  To this extent do they participate as far as they are able, in the imperishable and the divine.  For this all things seek after, doing all that they do by nature for the sake of this…since then, they cannot share by a continuous being in the divine and everlasting (since nothing corruptible remains forever numerically one and the same), each shares in this as far as it is able…[2]

So also, we should expect that a divine wisdom will shed light upon the higher goods to which created things are ordained.

With these attributes of wisdom in mind, we can formulate five positive characteristics we ought to find in divine wisdom as opposed to merely human wisdom.  Divine wisdom would:

1. Propose prior principles and causes beyond what reason can see and about which reason wonders
2. Propose a more universal perspective on being than reason can do
3. Resolve difficulties philosophy sees but for which it has no resolution.  Yet such resolutions would often be made in surprising and unexpected ways.
4. Unite diverse realities which philosophy fails to unite.
5. propose further finalities, that is, greater goods, for the things reason knows.

With these characteristics in hand, we can now proceed to inductively verify whether the teachings of Christ satisfy these conditions.  If so, we will have reason to believe that the wisdom of His teaching is a certain sign of the truth of the Christian religion.

The first characteristic of divine wisdom is that it should propose prior principles and causes beyond what reason can see and about which reason wonders.

This is exactly what we find in Christian revelation: not only is the governing role of the angels prominent in Christian revelation, but also the interior intentions of God are made known, and even more remarkably, the natural interior life of God is made known through the revelation of the Trinitarian processions.  We even learn that the procession of creatures from God is modeled upon the interior procession of the divine Persons.  We will return to this when considering the further finality of things which Christian revelation proposes.

The second characteristic of divine wisdom is that it should propose a more universal perspective on being than reason can.

In First Philosophy, God is considered not as the proper subject of the science, but rather as the principle of the subject of the science.  But in Christian revelation, God is the proper subject of the science.  Thus, everything in Christian Theology is referred to God, and under the aspect of his divinity.  This constitutes a more universal perspective inasmuch as the being of God is less contracted than the being of creatures.

Again, in First Philosophy, the existence of created separated substances can be demonstrated, but their number and relationships can only be conjectured based upon their proper effects in matter.  Thus Aristotle arrives at a modest number of separated substances based upon the movements of the observable heavenly bodies.  Yet, reason also sees that separated substances would not principally be concerned with producing effects in matter.  Moreover, the perfection of the universe seems to consist more in intellectual beings than in material ones.  Christian revelation surpasses reason by revealing the practically innumerable multitude of separated substance, as well as their relationships in view of their primary activity of contemplating the triune God.

The third characteristic of divine wisdom is that it should resolve difficulties philosophy sees but for which it has no resolution.  Here we find abundant examples of often surprising resolutions to difficulties Philosophy sees but cannot solve.

In the part of Natural Philosophy dedicated to the soul, reason discovers that the human soul is able to exist apart from the body.  Yet reason also sees that for a form to exist apart from its proper matter is to exist in a violent (non-natural) state.  Reason also sees no natural cause capable of reuniting a human soul to its own body.  Therefore, a problem arises: a natural being will exist in a state contrary to nature forever.  While this is not impossible, nevertheless, it is unique in nature, and poses a problem concerning the intention of nature regarding the human form.[3]  Christian revelation resolves this problem through the doctrine of the resurrection of the body.

A related difficulty arises regarding the knowledge of the human soul after death.  Reason sees that the human soul will exist forever apart from the body, yet will have no natural means of exercising its knowledge apart from the body.  Thus, the human soul would be much like someone asleep forever.  So once again, it seems that the human soul somehow exists in vain: possessing habitual knowledge with no natural way to exercise it.  Christian revelation solves this problem by positing that higher substances will provide the means by which a human soul can exercise its knowledge even while existing apart from the body.

In Ethics, reason sees that man has a natural desire to be perfectly happy.  Perfect happiness for an intellectual being requires that the essence of the first cause be known.  Thus, St. Thomas argues:

There is in man a natural desire for knowing the cause once someone becomes aware of an effect.  And from this, admiration arises in men.  If, therefore, the intellect of a rational creature were not able to attain to the first cause of things, a natural desire would remain unfulfilled.[4]

No one is happy who has unfulfilled natural desires.  Moreover, perfect happiness also requires that this condition last forever, since man has a desire for everlasting life (happiness with a time limit is not happiness).  But reason also sees that this happiness is not possible to man by means of his own natural principles: both because from the principles of his nature he can only know God imperfectly in this life and because this life is short and it is not certain what kind of knowledge man can have after the soul is separated from the body.  Christian revelation resolves this problem through the doctrine of the beatific vision: namely, that God gives to men the power of seeing his divine essence.

In Ethics, reason sees that the passions ought to be naturally subject to reason due to the unity of the human person and the powers of human nature.  But experience shows that the passions often fight against reason to the great detriment of human nature, and that even when trained after a lifetime of effort, the passions still remain inclined to disobey.  The Christian religion gives the reason for this disordered condition through the doctrine of original sin: namely, that as a punishment for disobeying God our first parents and their descendants lost the original justice by which the passions were made obedient to reason.

In First Philosophy, it seems that it is impossible for separated substances to be evil, as Aristotle argues in Metaphysics IX, since the more actual a being is, the less defectable from goodness it is:

In those things which exist from the very beginning, and are eternal, there is neither evil, nor any wrong, nor corruption…[5]

Yet human experience over the centuries shows that there are malicious spirits of exceeding evil.  Christian revelation resolves this difficulty by revealing that the angels underwent a test concerning the divinity which they were incapable of judging.  For only in relation to divine truth could the angels stand in a relationship of potency and therefore defectability.

Again, it is apparent that there is in love a tendency towards union between lover and beloved.  At the sensible level, this union is accomplished by physical contact.  But at the rational level, this union is brought about through friendship in which each friend somehow lives within the other by way of knowledge and love.  We call this sharing of life communion.  But there seems to be an inherent problem with love: the higher and more intense the love, the more it tends toward perfect union.  Yet, if that union were to be perfect, there would no longer be two different persons, and so the love would cease.  It seems as if love desires something which would result in its own destruction.  The mystery of the Trinity resolves this problem by showing that there can be substantial union while there remains a real distinction of Persons in God.  Thus, love in its highest form achieves its desire.

Finally, in First Philosophy, reason sees that the higher a good, the more communicable it is to others.  For the good, as such, is diffusive of itself.  This means that the greater goods are common goods, and thus the greatest of all goods should be most of all a common good.  But since the greatest good is perfectly simple and one, it seems that it cannot diffuse itself to others, except according to a very imperfect participation.  Hence, it seems from First Philosophy that the greatest good is per se a common good because of its eminent diffusibility, which nevertheless happens to be possessed by only one.  Yet it seems less perfect to be a common good only in ability, and not in act.  Christian revelation solves this difficulty because it reveals that the good of the divine nature (identical to its happiness) is shared among three Persons within the Trinity, and is communicated to rational creatures under its own proper formality as the divine essence and happiness in the beatific vision.  Moreover, even the divine nature is fully communicated to a creature by way of the hypostatic union.

The fourth characteristic of divine wisdom is that it should unite diverse realities which philosophy fails to unite.  There exist certain oppositions which philosophy sees, but which remain somehow in opposition, not fully brought into a satisfying unity.  Christian revelation unites these oppositions in a satisfactory way.

In Ethics, reason sees that in order for man to be perfectly virtuous (which is a precondition and means for perfect happiness), he must have a perfect moral example to follow.  Plato, seeing that the measure of the imperfect is the perfect, therefore saw that if man was to become morally perfect, he would have to follow the divine example.[6]  But God cannot be seen nor followed as an example.  Aristotle, seeing that the measure is homogenous with the measured, reasoned that man should follow the example of another man.[7]  But man who can be seen and followed is not perfect (and thus should not be followed).  The Christian religion solves this problem through the doctrine of the Incarnation since God becomes perfect man so that He can be both seen and followed.

When treating of the Category of toward another or relation, Aristotle notes that the nature of that which is relative in its very being is being toward another, not being in another.  That is, there is nothing in the very notion of relation that demands that it exist in another.  This means that there is nothing impossible about a relation subsisting on its own and not in another, just as it is not impossible for a substance to exist without matter.  This is odd from the perspective of Philosophy, since every relation happens to exist in another just as other accidents do.  Christian revelation explains this by revealing that the divine Persons are indeed subsisting relations.

The fifth characteristic of divine wisdom was that it should provide a further finality, some greater good, to which things are ordained than Philosophy sees.  We find exactly this phenomenon in Christian revelation in relation to truths known by Philosophy.  I will provide three examples.

Marriage can be defined as a lifelong communion between one man and one woman established by their free consent for the sake of the generation and education of children.  This is the definition of natural marriage, common to all men, regardless of religion.  But Christian revelation provides a further specification of what marriage is, a sacramental marriage, and this specification is made precisely in the further finality given in its definition: for the sake of signifying the union of the divine and the human.

In First Philosophy, it is established that there are two first meanings of substance.  After distinguishing and ordering six meanings of substance in Metaphysics 5.8, Aristotle reduces these six to two senses of substance: the upokemonon (ultimate subject) and the ousia (i.e., the essence or what it is).  This is strange, considering all the other entries in book 5 reduce the distinct senses of terms back to a single sense.  Why are there two original senses of substance?  One reason for this is the two-fold kind of knowledge the human soul has: sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge.  We sense substance as an ultimate subject by way of the internal sense called the cogitative power, while the understand substance as a what it is by way of the intellect.  Moreover, both together remedy the defects of each separately: for if we had only universal knowledge of substance, we would know essences in abstraction from real things; while if we had only sense knowledge of substance, we would know real individual substances, but in the same way as animals, without knowing what they are.  So even by reason alone, we can see how this distinction in the meanings of substance is brought together in unity: they are both for the sake of knowing real substances in a complete way.

But Christian revelation proposes a more perfect finality for this diversity: for they help make the very distinctions which are the foundations for the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation.  The dogma of the Trinity requires us to state that there are three Persons in one God, and in order for this to make sense, we need to rely upon two distinct meanings of substance.  For God is a substance, but so are each of the Persons: each Person is a substance in the sense of an ultimate subject, while the divine nature is a substance in the sense of a what it is.  Similarly, with respect to the Incarnation, we profess two natures in one Person, and this relies upon the same distinction in meanings of substance: the one Person is the one ultimate subject, while the two natures are the two essences, the divinity and the humanity.  In brief, we can say that the ultimate reason why there are two fundamental senses of substance is theological: so that mankind might understand the mysteries of the Faith in a better way.

In First Philosophy, reason sees that the ultimate wisdom is achieved by understanding all things in light of the first and most universal cause.  But this first cause is the ultimate good (final cause).  Thus, the ultimate reason explaining all things is the good at which God aims, which is nothing other than the divine happiness.  And the happiness of an intellectual being is found in the activity of contemplating the noblest truth, which is nothing other than God’s act of contemplating Himself.  Aristotle expressly states that this is the limit of reason’s search when he wonders what this happiness is like (Met. 12.7): “If, then, God is always in that good state in which we sometimes are, this compels our wonder; and if in a better, this compels it yet more.  And God is in a better state.”^[8]  Wonder comes about when one desires to know the cause of something great, but is unable to do so.  And so Aristotle is implying that he has reached the limit of explanation here: he cannot seek a further cause, but must simply wonder at this divine attribute.^[9]  These considerations manifest why it is that St. Thomas treated the divine beatitude last of all among the divine attributes investigable by reason,[10] as if arriving at the limit of natural knowledge the human mind can have about God.

When treating the divine beatitude, St. Thomas begins with a definition: “Beatitude is the perfect good of an intellectual nature.”^[11]  Therefore, divine beatitude is the perfect good of God.  Since the intellectual operation of an intellectual being is its good and perfection, this perfect good of God is the immanent activity of the divine understanding which has God himself as its object.  Hence, St. Thomas concludes that the divine “beatitude is found in an act of [his] intellect.”^[12]

Compare this to what St. Thomas says in the very next question of the Summa (q.27) about the first of the processions found in God.  Having taken from divine revelation the principle that there is procession in God, St. Thomas goes on to determine what kind of procession it is.  After excluding all processions which imply change or defect in God, St. Thomas considers the procession which is an act of the intellect which, while remaining in the intellect, proceeds to something in it, namely to the concept of the thing understood.  In us this concept is an intelligible, interior word.  Hence, St. Thomas concludes that the procession in God is to be taken “according to an intelligible emanation which remains in him, just as [the emanation] of an intelligible word from the one speaking.”^[13]

It is clear that the notion of the divine beatitude is very close to the notion of this intelligible procession: both are immanent acts of the divine understanding in which the object understood is God himself.  Indeed, they are so alike that it is difficult to see their difference.  One way to see the distinction between these two acts of the divine understanding is to recognize that the divine beatitude names this act precisely as the perfection and end of the one performing it, while this act is called a procession insofar as it is an activity from an origin.  However, there seems to be a more fundamental distinction between them: the notion of procession also involves a term which is really distinct from the origin of the procession, for every real procession is from an origin to a term which is really distinct from that origin.^[14]  When this procession is an intelligible procession, the term of the procession is called a word or concept.  Thus, the notion of procession in God adds a further notion not found in the concept of divine beatitude, namely the formation of a word: a concept really distinct from the conceiver.^[15]  The existence of such a really distinct word in God is something that can only be known from revelation.

In other words, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is nothing other than a more perfect account of God’s happiness, an account which penetrates beyond this limit of reason’s search by manifesting that God, in forming a concept of himself, in his very act of beatitude, generates a really distinct divine Person, and from both proceeds another divine Person by way of love.

Aristotle expressed his wonder when he came to understand the divine beatitude.  Yet there was no further account which he could offer in explaining this supreme joy of God: he was at the end of reason’s journey.  Through faith St. Thomas was able to begin this journey anew where Aristotle left off: he began to plumb more deeply into the mystery of the divine happiness through an understanding of the mystery of the Trinitarian life of God.  If this argument is correct, Trinitarian Theology is an extended reflection upon the happiness of God.  It is as if St. Thomas, in contemplating the mystery of the Trinity, has merely responded to the Lord’s command: “enter into the joy of your Master.”^[16]  And so, the relationship between the divine beatitude and the mystery of the Trinity is not accidental, but part of that wisdom which “reaches from end to end mightily and orders all things sweetly.”^[17]

Conclusion

So those are but a few examples which incline us to believe that the teaching of Jesus Christ is not the teaching of a mere man, but the teaching of God made man.  As examples, they do not bring certitude to our faith: that is the work of God in us.  But they do confirm our faith, much in the same way that remarkable coincidences confirm our trust in God’s providence working in our lives.  Doubtless, there will be many other instances which are even better illustrations of the point I am attempting to make in this short lecture.  Nevertheless, it is still profitable to glimpse, even imperfectly, that higher wisdom which is the delight of man in this life and his beatitude in the life to come.

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