FROM SENSE PERCEPTION TO BEING

AND TO THE DIVINE

Sense Perception and One's Body

Sense perception, it would seem, should be spoken of only in the plural, for by it at any one moment my attention is diffused among many percepts. By them I grasp a number of pieces or partial factors, whether visible or tangible, audible or of smell, or of taste--and of muscular or visceral kind. Furthermore, even if in the process of receiving them, I seize and organize them, they remain a given that existed before I did. Hence, my information remains always posterior to their reality, and I can never dominate their multiplicity.

Nevertheless, as can be seen by the very fact that they manifest themselves to me in this manner, they constitute a world which differs from me much as would a spectacle that unfolds before me or a visual or non-visual drama of which I become a witness and even, in a sense, an accomplice. This world possesses a number of special characteristics.

1. The first is that the pieces or fragments perceived are only parts and do not of themselves suffice to constitute a whole or a world. In each perception there arises the conviction that what has been perceived is only a part of a whole which has not yet been perceived. The notion of extended reality as that which has "parts outside of parts" is verified not only within the boundaries of what has been perceived but extends beyond that series of given factors to a potentially unlimited field of things that are yet to be perceived. Consequently, the diversity of the sensible world is unified in space and time only imperfectly and in diverse manners. Reality thus presents not only a clear and defined image, but has an obscure and undefined side corresponding to my ignorance and to the limitations of my efforts.

2. The second characteristic of the sensible world is that it intrudes upon me to make me a part of it. The sign of this intrusion is my body, because this is an object of sense perception. My body appears to me in a paradox that is constitutive of perception, being simultaneously the instrument and part of the object of perception.¹ Because my body is a part of that object, and hence of the spectacle and the reality of the everyday world, I am a part of that world. Thus, to the degree that I am able to perceive, I am a part of the world because the common characteristic of objects is to be one part outside of another and related to a whole. And if I am a part of a whole, I am contained by that whole but am not that whole itself.

3. However, the parts are not simply juxtaposed; the very opposition by which they attain their individuality shows that they interact causally. Considering only the relations of absence or presence between two objects, A and B, four combinations are possible: A-B, not-A-B, A-not-B, and not A-not B. On the basis of the most simple forms of causal relations between these two elements, the causal relations can be defined as the fact that the presence or absence of one is the source of presence or absence for that or for the other term. This allows for sixteen possibilities (from A comes A or not-A, or B or not-B, etc. . .). The pattern becomes more complex if the possibility of a dual causality is introduced (from A proceds AB or not-AB, etc. . .), or to a still greater degree if one inverses the order of the couples (from A proceeds BA or not-BA, etc. . .). It is unnecessary here to develop this pattern of causality which already manifests a progressive complexity even when only two terms are used. However, it is already apparent that this pattern becomes a formalism by which one can conceive the individual and collective development of elements perceived. What should be noted here is that the world of perception is one of causally organized parts, and that as regards my bodily nature, I am a constituent part of that world.

4. In what sense am I part of this world and how am I to understand it? The immediate impression given by perception is that my body is a central and privileged part of the world in relation to which all the rest is organized or at least perceivable and comprehensible. As Pradines notes, the "senses of participation" (such as coenesthesia) suggest this more on an affective basis, while the "sense of distance" (such as sight) suggest it more on a cognitive basis. Vision especially, with its variation in the size of images depends upon their distance, shows the almost magic variability of the elements in the panorama related to one's body. More exactly, because we are able to extend or retract our limbs, this variability is related to a point from which we start and which continually falls back as we wish to seize it completely, since the eye does not see itself.

However, the understanding of the perceptive pattern can be reversed so that my body loses its central importance and is engulfed by the world. In fact, the basis for this inversion was laid in the previous perceptivety centering upon the body. That perspective could never be absolute. On the contrary, its relativity was manifest both by the continual motion of the parts of the non-corporeal world and by the continual recession of my body considered as the center when I wished to consider that center itself and place it entirety within the perceptive network. However, if the inversion of the body-centered view is indicated within that perceptive itself, it is realized there neither in sensation nor in imagination, that is, in neither the clear nor the obscure aspects of extended reality. Rather, it is realized in intellection by which we remove ourselves from constituting the center and interrelating the various elements so that they form the objective world as an ordered relationship between things.

Nevertheless, the world which is seen as engulfing me as just one point among many never completely succeeds in so doing, and this for two reasons. First of all because the world remains incomplete and enigmatic; it remains incapable of being formulated in laws which exhaustively express its cosmic elements. The cosmos remains open; it escapes the limitations of the objective factors discovered concerning it. Second, the paradox mentioned above is never able to be eliminated. My body, which is a part of the perceived or perceivable pattern, remains an instrument of the act which I perceive. What is more, it takes refuge in my subjectivity at the moment at which it would be about to evaporate into objectivity.

The above vacillation between the two interpretations of the network of perception is a strange one. Having begun in search of a circle with a center, I found an ellipse with two entrances. I can direct my attention by preference to one, but cannot make the other disappear. What makes this duality very special is that if I choose to relate everything to my body, I remain on the level of sense perception, whereas if I choose to relate all to an autonomous world of reciprocally related objects, I move to the intelligible level where the real becomes the result of a system of theoretical requirements. What is most disconcerting about this duality is that, though the two entrances of the ellipse are on different levels, they depend upon each other: sense perception contains the seeds of intelligence, and the intelligible world cannot indefinitely remain a pattern of theoretical exigencies. From time to time and indirectly it must be experimentally verified.

The Being of the World and the Divine

Certainly by beginning from sense perception, the world I discover can be affirmed to be real. Nevertheless, I cannot claim that it is complete in the strong sense of the term, though at first sight I would have spoken of it in this manner. There seems to be a radical insufficiency to the world in view of which it is not feasible to choose the world as a base on which to build immediately a proof for the existence of God. The indetermination of the world is too ambiguous to provide a sure foundation for the work of theology. At least as a mediating link, there is need for the idea of being. Though the world is not a whole, it is a reality. Even though I do not know whether it is substance or accident, contingent or necessary, and though I am not able to follow the path of being in itself to its end, the world follows this path far enough to enable me to say it exists. What is more, its form of being is sufficiently determined to enable me to ask if it implies a God.

This investigation of being-in-the-world or of the world-in-being requires a prior elucidation of the nature of being. If being were the existent or existent of the world, it is possible that these pieces would not be self-sufficient, but it would not be evident that this insufficiency required a God. However, being is not an existent or group of existents; rather it is the first and last relation of each existent with itself and with other existents. This relation is not arbitrarily applied from without; it is indispensable to every existent in order that the existent's distinctive reality be defined and be able to situate itself in the world. This relation is dynamic and constitutive, but because it transposes the existent or existents into itself, it remains anonymous and is constituted by this very act. Being, which traces out the world in all its senses and at all its levels, manifests itself in the beings of the world without their knowing it, like a language which does not come from its words but which conditions all their relations. By this very fact it is uniquely present at the root of all.

Can this Porphyrian being and universal mediator, without which existents--however dense they might be--would fall into nothing, be called God? If we abstracted from the person as much as possible, as we have until now, it would not be possible to say that the being on which the world rests is that act of the Being par excellence which is God. However, we can discern in this being a prefiguring of God, that is a divine. But it is necessary to justify this assertion.

1. One cannot say that being in the world, which to us appears as the being of the world, is the act of God. The reason for this is that we have no means of deciding directly whether or not the insufficiency of things which exist in the world requires a transcendent cause. Nor is it possible to say whether the idea of cause, such as was defined above, limits itself to meaning that one that one being is the determining condition for the presence or absence of another being. In brief, we cannot say whether causality extends above, within, or between beings. Beginning from things that exist in the world, one can merely pose this question.

2. Nevertheless, we can perceive in things existing in the world a divine or a prefiguring of God because being, of whatever sort, immediately reveals an intelligible order. The world has a fundamental harmony accompanied by power and wisdom, as is manifested in its presence in every existent, in its unlimited power of relating things, and in the very fact that, while penetrating all existents, it is able to express, transpose, and unite them, without appearing as anything separate or in its own right. Being insensible to evil, which neither touches the divine nor is touched by Him, the divine plans and orders all things; therefore it is always pure in that which is impure, the permanent beauty of the cosmos, giving the way which opens new ways and rewards those who follow them. The divine is nature both as giving birth to what is new and is itself unfolding, not by creation but in an endlessly reversible cycle.

True, some call this principle of harmony God; it is the divine of which philosophers speak. Others, however, refer to it as divine and still consider themselves atheists because they consider God to be more like a divine of which philosophers speak. I shall call it the precursor or prefigurement of God, for it is the most that one can achieve when he begins from sense perception with the ontological reflection based upon it. Using the ordinary meaning of second causes, one cannot consider the precursor to be the absolute source or goal of things that exist. That notion does not even arise out of the insufficiency of being, but is found within them at their very foundation. Whatever they may be, by the very fact that they are, the source is present as their breath, in their very atmosphere. Neither made like an inanimate thing or engendered as are living things, the divine is co-extensive with everything that is and with every living thing that is born. Although it can be called one, it is at the root of all multiplicity as the unspoken face in all faces, itself remaining unchanged throughout all the changes it makes possible. If one says that it is here, it can equally well be said to be there and to be between here and there; and if it is immutable in its nature, it is infinitely mobile in its presence. Thus, while retaining its own identity, the divine is the source of the identity of all others. These, however, do not become the divine, which divine is, rather, their basic identity with themselves and their relations with other beings. It is the Reason (Logos) of Nature, the supple mediator of the world, the first approximation of God, and the God before person.

FROM PERSON TO GOD

Once I realize that I am not a part of the world of sense perception everything changes. From the fact that not all was reducible to the objectivising process which constituted the consciousness of my body within the pattern of this world, it was already clear that the world could not be a universe in the proper sense of that term. That universe lacked the subject which perceives it but which it itself cannot include.²

The feeling of existing in the world also is immediately transformed. Though this existence is still manifested by awareness of the body, there is no longer that strangeness by which one speaks of the body in the third person and which allows us to share images with the world. The new relation is manifested by that intimateness by which my body is me and I am that body. Nevertheless, this type of integration of the body with subjectivity is not the whole of subjectivity but only one particular act or mode. Subjectivity is not fully achieved unless it is personal, and it becomes fully extra-personal only by going beyond the corporeal feeling it includes and beyond the world of perception by which it is represented.

Here the thought process (cogito) is not limited to the mathematical model, but is a unique reality implying a location, a structure, and a history.³

I do not maintain that the proof of the existence of God becomes evident from the moment one recognizes this uniqueness of persons. However, I certainly would say that the proof which I am going to present not make any sense without a prior recognition of this principle. I would even add that I would not consider valid any proof that is separated from this principle.

Person and Nature⁴

The first stage of the reflection which leads toward a philosophical belief in God is God by an awareness that my reality and yours, as untouched, unique, and unlimited openings upon being, are out of any proportion to the resources of nature. By definition, a personal center escapes the limitations, the similarities, and the contrasts which accompany beings on the levels of biology or animal psychology. The person judges the world and is capable of indefinite growth in his own identity. Even in hating himself, he cannot denounce himself. This alliance of a unique destiny and an unlimited openness is, without doubt, only a wish in us, but the orientation toward this goal rules out from the beginning g any absolute break between appearance and reality in me. In this sense, from the beginning we are what we are to become, and this by an act which radically surpasses anything in the sensible world. Certainly we live in this world and make it exist in our bodily and psychic functions, but the principle which specifies these is not limited to them; it is that unique reality that we are by the very fact that we have being. For us sensible factors can only be aids or obstacles, not causes or goals.

A similar line of reasoning can be established concerning interpersonal relations. Even if men are destined to a total intercommunication, they do not create it, but receive it as a promise or as a task. The immense influence that men exert one upon the other can be real only if they have already been given their respective beings. Evidently, it is not procreation which explains this being, for that is only its context and occasion. That is why at times we can depersonalize ourselves so well when with others, and come closer to ourselves in solitude. The very idea of interpersonal relations is not ours; we receive and utilize it, whether for good or evil. The degree of our presence to others depends on us, but the presence itself is a gift which surpasses us and which, thus, always retains something undefinable that cannot be converted into concepts or analyzed into its particular characteristics.

Person and God

The second stage of the reflection that leads to God consists in recognizing that we do not understand or explain ourselves if there is no god who is closer to us than we are to ourselves. For the moment, I will use but a small 'g' or, if you wish, the term "daimon".

There is a strong temptation to protest that this is only a type of project image or auxiliary construct, rather than a being which makes me be for and by myself. But a projected image does not precede the being of a thing, whereas our appreciation of ourselves implies a source that is not simply derived as a shadow. We are aware of being immediately and perpetually dominated by the norm which imposes our phenomenal character and which we ratify by the very fact of affirming ourselves in the first act of our existence. In the same manner, an auxiliary construct made by us would only furnish a support, whereas the God of personal awareness is not a support produced by us, even when we ratify him. Our `God' is antecedent to us. He surpasses us independently of ourselves or even when we violently opposed him, without ever ceasing either to affirm him or to be affirmed by him. The theme (the divine) is given; our existence is only a series of variations or responses unequal to themselves and amongst themselves. Whether faithful or not, even in the protests or the negligence of infidelity, they will be incapable of negating the theme since, in a word, they are slaves to their very identity.

Finally, neither a projected image nor an auxiliary structure can be a cause, whereas it is precisely a reality in the order of cause that experience manifests. I know that I am wanted, and I know this not in the repressive manner of a false belief resulting from a pathological projection, but in a sense that is both more radical and inevitable and more discreet and rational. Reflection certifies the initial experience which obliged me to recognize in myself someone other than myself, and it is only in this interior realization that I grasp the causality in its entirety. Elsewhere, I perceive causality only in its superficial forms of interpersonal action or of natural phenomena. It is only in my being that I learn what it is to be totally produced, to be the living existence us of an infallible grace which wishes me to be free and on which even my revolt depends. Undeniably, my daimon places me in existence at each moment, but it situates me in a position that is open to both defeat and to progress. It divides me between an ideal and a factual self, and strangely interlaces the functions of the two. I perceive that I am the cause of my actions and of their adequacy or deficiency in relation to me; but this is not the most profound revelation of causality that I possess. The most profound revelation I have of causality is that of being a unique effect and of being dominated by a cause which absolutely envelops and specifies me.

The experience of the causality which I exercise is not the same as that of causality which makes me capable of exercising it. The latter is accessible to me only by looking, as it were, behind and above, since I cannot cause in the same way as the cause of my being, that is, by creating a thing in its totality. No doubt the being that is engendered is not by that very fact inferior to the one who engenders it, for there can be as much dignity in receiving as in giving. Thus, it is therefore not because I am wanted that I am inferior to the cause of my, but because I cannot respond equally or be the total source of any being.

Must one say that this cause or daimon is personal? I cannot reduce it to myself, even though I am rooted in it and identify myself with its creative will. Nevertheless, I must refer to it as a `thou', though in a sense which surpasses all worldly analogy, for it is the only thou which constantly understands me and is continuous with all my acts and states. It would be contradictory to assimilate it to an impersonal principle since it is eminently what I am. In fact, it would be more probable to fear that in realizing myself completely I might dissolve my person into his, except that this new fear is overcome by the fact that his action is to make me to be. Furthermore, the elementary and worldly forms of causality already manifest a curve through the realm of the living and their levels of psyches towards a manner of influencing whereby the cause is conscious of itself and of the other. In human relations, personal consciousness is in no way definitively diminished by the fecundity of its operations, but is even increased by the slightest influence it exercises upon other consciousnesses. It would be strange for the convergence of act and of person suddenly to disappear at the summit after having been progressively affirmed at each degree leading up to it, for this would be to collapse abruptly at the very origin of human beings within whom person is realized most distinctly and without assignable limits.

God and gods

The third stage of our road toward God consists in asking ourselves if the Daimon is different for each consciousness or if it is the same for all: is my god (with a small `g') God (with a capital `G') shall refrain from ridiculing polytheism which, at the level at which we place ourselves, is a profound and elegant hypothesis and accounts so well for the plurality of nature and of humanity. However, it does so too easily and disregards at least two things. On the one hand, in all of our encounters there is another presence of God as an undivided unity appearing in the midst of our meetings while remaining perceptible in those states in which union is lacking. In short, the respective gods of each of our persons are the faces of the same God and we cannot hypostatize each of its reflections in our mirrors. On the other hand, to safeguard each aspect of the divine in its uniqueness, polytheism bypasses the problem of the (uncreated) uniqueness of all uniquenesses (personal identities) and is condemned to substituting for it either a general idea or a world soul. Thus we are led back to that earlier notion of a divine which is manifestly inadequate to the legitimate and inevitable requirements for God which have become manifest at this point in our itinerary.

God is not only personal because he creates our persons; he is so by the intimate nature of his divinity and in a unique manner, without adding himself as an additional or even first link to the series of persons we form among men. He is suprapersonal, not infra-personal. His perfect immanence and our obvious weakness make the relationship we have with him unequal. Nevertheless, there is always a reciprocal relation between Him and us. The life of spirit, when it develops itself, shows that that relationship never tends to lessen. Thus, on that point, philosophical reflection confirms the testimony of religious invocation.

Is it possible to go further and to see something of the intimate life of God? Certainly, for God cannot give being to a person without. In a certain manner, giving himself as well. We have considered Him as the uncreated uniqueness of created uniqueness, but nothing excludes the possibility of a plurality of supra-personal centers in God.

Contrary to a frequently held thesis in the history of philosophy, we have been led to conclude that the person is not personal because he has limits, but that he is personal because he is an end or goal in himself. Thus the `other' is--for this person--not a limit, but a source of this very finality (or goal orientation). If it is true that the not-I is not necessary to the I to which it is associated in our experience, it is nevertheless impossible to identify and conceive the I without a thou. If God is suprapersonal, how could there be a kind of `I' eternally alone? In that case He could be saved from this solitude only by our creation and there would thus be two gods: the one impersonal, before creation, and, as it were, during creation; the personal, after creation, and dependent upon it. Even if the created persons were eternal, they would not make God as source personal.

In fact, our reflection has led us in an altogether different direction. We have established neither that there could be a change in God's nature, nor that divinity has only a surface personality. Duality enters not through God, but through ourselves. From God comes unity, and it is he who rescues us from being simply discontinuous phenomena. It does not seem possible to admit that we are co-eternal and necessary to God in a way which suffices to give him a thou equal to his own divine eminence. Thus, we can recognize him to be fully personal, as our reflection demands, only if he is multi-personal by an intimate disposition of his being. Only this hypothesis, before which philosophy falls silent, corresponds to the analyses and the thrust of philosophy.

INTUITION OF THE GIVER

Reflection overcomes poor relations and re-establishes contact between their elements; it proceeds from an intuition which it purifies and by which, once purified, it is replaced. In a similar way, the philosophical road to God ends with a religious experience, just as it usually starts out with one. As we are neither in the darkness, nor in the noonday sun, the ascetic and aesthetic must alternate on all levels of our existence. What is universally valid in a proof of God does not come from the generality possessed by species and genera, but from the fact that God is in each of us by the presence in each personal consciousness of a unique and supreme Being that reason seeks to verify and express. This presence, which at first is obscure to reflection, progressively disengages itself by means of a sacred contemplation when we consent to take off our shoes, as it were, in order to enter the sanctuary of our soul.

Personal Past

Many men are certain of the existence of God for motives related to their own intimate life. They believe in divine Providence because they see its operation in their life and perceive it at some turning point in their past that is known to them alone. Such a claim would be debatable if it were based on simple and profane advantages. However, it becomes much more respectable and even peremptory when the person who is testifying is capable of the kind of spiritual verification which results, not from frightened egoism, but from the desire to conform to an interior objectivity. I believe in God not because my neighbor was killed in an accident while I was spared: this raw fact can prove nothing but the absurdity of events. I believe in God because I see a will in the course of events, because I know that at certain moments I was gently but firmly led by Him where I did not want to go. There is no automatic union of God with the happiness or with the tragedy of this world; but there is a way in which God breaks in upon us and transforms events by the meaning with which he suffuses them. He acts sometimes as the conqueror who imposes himself upon our restive will and sometimes as a friend who summons forth our highest responses. When I look back over my past years, this is how I meet God. It is easy to dispute the value of such a conviction, and an individual alone with his love is always disarmed. Nonetheless, this conviction can be justified by replacing the immediate impression in its context and submitting it to a criticism which, though of a strictly private order, is nonetheless valid. One might not violate an axiom of logic by denying that such encounters possess the value evidence of the action of God, but in so doing one is aware of a lack of sensitivity. To go to God one must reason, but he must also reach out for all indications.

God as Present

It is not only reflection upon one's own past which makes one aware of the presence of God's action. This awareness can also arise from the intimations of the present and from the way in which they point toward the future. For man God is a guide; he is the Being which is eternally before (and leading) the world. He is the supreme final cause (or goal) and no doubt he is most commonly recognized as the sole adequate goal of a personal and even a cosmic order. Only he can sustain the spirit and enthusiasm he inspires, for only he can give us the strength and the means to go all the way to him, without falling back into ourselves or even lower than ourselves.

Such a God speaks to us by offering himself while we search for him and try to decipher his message in all that happens. Nevertheless, he remains at a distance while we grope for him, being more sensitive to his radiance than to himself. On one hand, the order of our relations with Him is free, as are those of a grown-up child with his Father. But, on the other hand, this noble religion is weak in its foundation, for it implies a kind of exile. The grown-up child addresses himself to a Father who is distant and this remoteness is due not only to the limitations of sensibility, which I understand here not as gross physical emotion but in its most refined significance beyond prosaic pleasures and sorrows. The distance from God is due also to the limitations of thought, which must always be transcending darkness, hesitating between two possibilities, and confronting the ambivalence of its condition and the equivocation of its reflection.

Mystical Presence

Could there be a still more sublime intuition of God, a mystical relation to Him, or an appreciation not only of his gifts but of the presence of God himself?

At first the one who comes from God is not aware of his source but of himself; he is absorbed in what he senses and in his own action and forgets the person (the Thou) which is his cause. Though this pattern of ingratitude is formed constantly throughout our career as human beings, there remains a marginal consciousness of being caused, which constitutes an invitation to metaphysical analysis and a certain perception of Being. However, this mystical illumination does not depend upon a long and technical metaphysical analysis. If one accepts grace, that is, if one responds to divine initiative, the reflexive method of the metaphysician normally should continue into a mystical illumination and arrive at the final phase of the human-divine relationship.

This final phase is still unclear. It would seem that the more penetrating the effect of the divine, the more likely one is to forget its source.

But this is true only in the first phase of the activity of an awakening personal consciousness. The supernatural presence of God is revealed with the greatest immediacy especially in the intuition of what theologians call actual grace, that is, in the initial indications of God's friendship and its transformation of our nature, as well as in the very fruitful contacts with God through the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Thus, in many ways the whole of man is most intimately united with the Divine Being. Here, the gift is the very self of the Giver, who, in turn, is the fullness of love itself. In this way the interpersonal relation overcomes ungrateful nature, for there is no longer a separation between the gift and He who gives it.

To approach God mystically, one must not depend upon one's own works, the ego poietikon, but on God who is their source. For the mystic, the negation of self consists in his overcoming the usual natural ingratitude and relating himself personally to his source. In so doing his actions are purified, the essence of his soul is divinised, and in his essential being rather than merely in his peripheral powers his deviations and deficiencies are corrected. The ego is simultaneously affirmed in its own right and seen in relation to God so that, not God exists because I conceive him (cogito ergo Deus est), but I conceive of God conceiving of me (cogito Deum me cogitantem). In this way my existence is seen in a clearer light so that, without ceasing to be itself, it does cease being ungrateful to its source. At this point for the mystic the end becomes the beginning, he no longer searches for the support of his being, and, though mediation remains, distance disappears. His basic consciousness is open to the presence of God. If he could maintain himself in this heavenly state, he would come to appreciate everything and everyone, for his essence would adhere to that of God, and the whole limited pattern of his knowledge as well as of his operations would be transformed; his psychic trend would be reversed, that is, no more falling away upon its separate self but ever moving godwards.

In order to retain this intuition in its entirety while on earth, one must not attempt its total expression: what is essential is never said. To this idea, which in certain respects summarizes Plotinus' notion of hierarchical emanation, one might add another that is not accepted by Plotinus, but which is the law of the Cross and related to the Incarnation: by accepting in love its condition, the inferior order which comes from and expresses God paradoxically becomes capable of infinity and, so to speak, becomes God.

In this way there also takes place that interpersonal communion of created persons desired by God. Everything happens as if God had wanted to hide himself as much as possible. So that we could love him freely, he

hides our strongest bond to him so that we can discover it; he even proposes to us the being which he imposes upon us so that we can impose the being that he proposes. He might even invite mankind, which has risen to the idea of God in its philosophy, to give birth to God himself in its history.

THE RECOVERY OF THE DIVINE IN GOD

Returning now to our point of departure, it was noted there that the divine to which man has access through the sensible world manifested itself in terms of beings as the source of their harmony. On the basis of the traditional equivalence between being and transcendental values, being was synonymous to the true, the good, and the beautiful, though none of these notions on that level led to a personal God. This does not imply that God cannot be spoken of in terms of those values, but to do so demands that they be approached in a new manner.

Values in a Non-personal and a Personal Context

First of all, and hypothetically, these transcendentals would have to be considered on a metaphysical and a personal level. They would no longer be characteristics of nature alone but of personal subjects as such, that is, of existents who do not belong merely to the sensible world. The transcendentals did not prevent the beings in that world from fighting, tearing each other apart, decomposing, or dying. In that realm indifference regarding what happened to beings was the rule, tempered by a merely mathematical harmony which allowed for the most tragic developments and exchanges. The tragedy did not blemish this harmony because it did not contradict it.

However, values which directly concern persons acquire new content and status. They both determine and are determined, and this is done both in and by a consciousness. Their dynamism does not consist simply in being interiorly or exteriorly transmitted, but in giving rise to ideas within a free person who must respond either by ratifying or by rejecting them. In effect, it is characteristic of a person to appropriate the being he receives.⁵ The extension and the intensity of these values increase as they begin to suffuse the relations of persons with themselves and with others, for persons are centered who no longer open only to things outside themselves as do things that are mere parts of a larger whole. Each one virtually includes all else and escapes reduction to the status of a mere part in at least one essential point. In each, the coincidence of knowledge and reality in the one primitive act makes them responsible for their being, so that they create anew the relations into which they enter and thus become their values.⁶

Personal Values and the Manifestation of Cod

In the transcendental system as developed in terms of the personal, the primacy of the existent with regard to being is clearer than it was in the development in terms of the sensible world. Values now become the trustees of a message which emanates from the supreme existent, that is, from God. Through all the axiological stages which reflect the actions of human beings, through even the negations of value which hinder this act even while related to it, there remains invincibly manifest the relation of God to his creatures, that is, the being of God and the cortége of transcendental values, which is the hidden presence of the supreme Existent. In this sense, value is the anonymous communicability of God, identical to Him inasmuch as it originated with Him, but different from Him insofar as it is the mediating act of his presence to things other than himself.

As attributes of the divine, value is communicated to others according to their capacity to receive it. As the capacity of the sensible world for God was poor, the reflection of God in the divine, present in this world, could then only be as poor. However, the divine capacity of human persons for God is quite different being both boundless in its past realization and infinite in its promise for the future. Value fills the gap between the thinking thought and the thought, between the willing will and the willed will, just as it steeps persons in their vocation to perfect interrelationship. The divine attributes which we perceive in the anonymous multitude of values can also seek to return in their entirety to God himself who draws every being and the whole being back unto Himself: for the face of God, as the fulfillment of hope, is to be revealed to all existents.⁷

Atheism and Personal Values

In the present state in which the person is incarnate, Power and Glory, Truth and Justice, and all the other ultimate values remain providentially ambiguous. If they are sincere, atheists always set one ultimate value as absolute or unconditional, it is only Truth. But they cannot reduce the values to being mere determinations of natural being without denying their absolute character and, in so doing, contradicting their own position, for to consider a value as absolute is to recognize that it mysteriously goes beyond its explicit determination. To subordinate oneself unconditionally to a value, to be ready, for example, to sacrifice everything rather than betray truth or justice, is to restore to that value the character of being a divine attribute. More than that, it is affirmation of faith in a living synthesis of the attributes, the substitution of the idol by a glimpse of God, a passage from the divine to God.

This transition is especially remarkable when the value under consideration is interpersonal love, because this love unites Being and the existent in a privileged manner. Charity is the most synthetic in the series of values. It not only dominates and dialectically unifies the entire kingdom of anonymous values, it bridges the gap between the anonymous and the personal orders. It bridges even that between the forms of impersonal (which must not be confused with the anonymous) and personal realities (whose anonymity is either an expressive form or a mundane phase). Love opens a passage between ideas and things, on the one hand, and all consciousness on the other. However disheartening might have been the original experience of evil, love is the only hope of recovery. As love, God is that point at which the existent opens fully onto being in the personal act par excellence which is eternally simple and can adopt us for eternity.

If value is the veil of the divine attribute and if the passage from the attribute to God is possible, atheism has a positive content inasmuch as it adopts, without knowing it, a theistic perspective. It does this, first, by conforming itself to the unavoidable condition which obliges the believer to see God in the prism of the various attributes. By stressing one of these attributes (which might be at times neglected by the believer), atheists draw one's attention in such a direction that one is preserved from narrow-mindedness or habit. Thus there is a distinctive advantage to--not a confused theology of "the death of God"--but the traditional theology of the "hidden God." What is more, this verifies the thesis of many, from St. Anselm to Maurice Blondel, that to think is to think God and, consequently, that there are no real atheists, but only idolaters. So concludes I the philosophical analysis it is carried to the very completion of its term.

The unbeliever will perhaps be unhappy to be given this gift by the believer and will ask to be left alone. But the believer could well answer by pointing out that even in its name a-theist expresses a reference to God, and that the affirmation of God is thus prior to its negation. In reality, neither adversary can leave the other alone, for, whether they like it or not, they are indispensable to each other. Destined to meet in human society, they are found together in the heart and mind of each man.

FINAL REMARKS ON THE ARGUMENT OF CAUSALITY

The road to God which we have followed was that of the final cause (or goal). There are possible misinterpretations on the subject.

1. We have not used the notion of cause as it is used ordinarily in the natural sciences, that is, as one phenomenon which is a condition determining another phenomenon (as in the following example: given the position and the speed of a body in motion at moment T-⁰, what will be that position and that speed at moment T-¹).

2. Nor have we used a principle of causality which we would have first had to describe and justify with its sometimes massive presuppositions and corollaries (as, for example, the affirmation that the effect cannot be superior or equal to its cause, which is only an axiom and of merely limited scope). Our reading of the metaphysical facts shows that the sensible world does not account for the first appearance or the continuation in existence of the person; the interaction of inter-human powers indicates an analogous helplessness; and finally human egos are seen to depend not upon a purely formal and transcendental Ego, but from a divine Thou which gives them their reality and obliges them to affirm it themselves. In this entire progression, we have done nothing more than reflexively analyze experience, locate the different ontological, and determine their natures.

3. In the personal order causality explains the origin of consciousnesses, of which a partial source is found in interpersonal communication and whose total source is found in divine creation. The cause--efficient and final together--does not abandon the effect, nor can the effect be completely cut off from this cause. Rather than the effects being able to be detached from the cause, they are like rays continuous with the cause. The breaks in this continuity are only apparent and its obliteration is only superficial. What is more, the rays are coextensive with the persons they unite and whose images they retain as they manifest them either directly or indirectly. Whether the consciousness begins in a sequence in which one contributes to another or whether it is found in the creation of a person by God, the consciousnesses tend to become synchronized so that their reciprocal action is rendered immortal. In this sense, to recognize God is to allow oneself to be immortalized by Him and to desire that, if He consents, the response of the creature might even give birth to Him.

1. This approach to the problem of one's body is by way of perception, but it is related to an operational approach. For a less schematic study of this see the stimulating reflections by A.M. Tymieniecka "Den Wendepunkt der Phonomenologie entgenen", Philosophische Rundschau, XIV (1967) 182-208.

2. One might object that I grasp myself and other persons as persons only by means of the vehicle of sense perception. Though this might be disputed, I will not do so here. I admit without hesitation that, because the human person is incarnate, In order to grasp him one must proceed by way of something non-personal in the sensible order. Nevertheless, I maintain that this detour does not substantially modify the uniqueness of the person and of his intuition. For example, even if the thought (cogito) arises from sense knowledge, it immediately discards the alienation which characterized sensible reality. The physical nature in which we are emerged threatens us with explosion at every instant and a affords only the precarious shelter of a mortal life. In descending towards death however, we think and will in a light which is entirely different from nature. By imposing upon us a new type of reflection, based upon on my openness to myself and upon the consequences which flow from this. The very axis of the world is reversed.

3. All of life and of philosophy depends on this uniqueness which we must personally discover and which requires that we treat ourselves as the very object of our thought processes. We are quite conscious of this. When, for example, we love in another his very self rather than simply certain of the particular characteristics he possesses, everything suddenly becomes very serious. Both the other person and we ourselves immediately know this, though we may refuse to admit the consequences which would take us much further than we think.

4. The following pages are drawn from my Conscience et Logos (Paris: Editions de l'Epi, 1961 J, pp. 128-38-38) by permission of the publisher.

5. To express this new order of things, it would be advisable to use a different vocabulary depending on whether it is a question of worldly being or of personal being: the first is a connection received in the existent or the existent that it concerns, the second is a relation that is both received and basically willed by the person or persons.

6. Being personal and interpersonal, they can no longer remain in the world of sense images without shattering it because of its violent contrast with their own exigencies. It is not that persons cannot work in terms of the sensible world even if they feel out of their element there, or that they cannot concentrate on the realm of nature, since the radical univocity of being allows them to enter everything. But the comparison of persons to nature manifests their difference from nature and the comparative poverty, in ontological terms, of the latter. The perpetual threat of bodily death manifests rather than compromising the originality of the person, for it shows that consciousness has no adequate rest home in a world that is for it neither sufficiently broad nor permanent.

7. From the ontological point of view, it would be necessary to expatiate on the following items: 1) The nature of the primordial connection or relation of each existent with itself and with the other existents. 2) The metaphysical status of being with regard to the uncreated Existent and the created existents. 3) The metaphysical status of being with regard to the surrounding ultimate values. 4) The bond of being with the Logos as mediator. 5) The way which being can be conceived as an aspect of the "we". This aspect begins in the reflection upon sensible data since this reflection cannot be severed from the personal order in which it must be explicitly acknowledged to lie, achieving Itself In God. 6) Lastly, condition of existents.