138. God’s presence in ordinary knowledge
138. GOD’S PRESENCE IN ORDINARY KNOWLEDGE
We usually look for things out in the world, and therefore we tend to look for God there too. And we do find Him, or His fingerprints, everywhere: in nature’s beauty and design, in history, in the events of our lives. But when we look within, when we look at our very act of looking-at, or thinking-about, these things, can we find God there too? Is God the First Cause and Unmoved Mover of human reason as well as the First Cause of all the things discovered by our reason?
. . . [A]ll movements, both corporeal and spiritual, are reduced to the simple First Mover, Who is God. And hence no matter how perfect a corporeal or spiritual nature is supposed to be, it cannot proceed to its act unless it be moved by God. . . . Hence we must say that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine help that the intellect may be moved by God to its act. But he does not need a new light added to his natural light in order to know the truth in all things, but only in some that surpass his natural knowledge.
. . . [T]he natural light bestowed upon the soul is God’s enlightenment whereby we are enlightened to see what pertains to natural knowledge . . . We always need God’s help for every thought, inasmuch as He moves the understanding to act (I-II,109,1).
Reason, or Mind, or Thought is not made of matter (though its normal instrument, the brain, is). It has no shape, color, geometrical form, size, or mass. It does not take up space, as matter does. But Reason, or Mind, or Thought in us is just as temporal, just as much in time, as matter is. It takes time to think, just as it takes time to walk. God alone is timeless, eternal.
We can find the eternal God as the First Cause of our reason or intelligence just as we can find Him as the first cause of the material universe. St. Thomas uses the same metaphysical principles in this argument for God’s existence that he uses in his famous “five ways”, his cosmological arguments, or arguments from features of the material cosmos. These principles are:
(1) the principle that only a being in act (a being that is actual rather than only potential) can actualize a potentiality in a being that is in potency. Only water can wet, only fire can kindle, only light can lighten;
(2) the fact that our thinking is in fact constantly changed (“reduced”) from potency to act—i.e., we grow from not-knowing something to knowing that something;
(3) and therefore there must be a being that is already actually all the things we are potentially: knowledgeable, wise, intelligent, good.
The practical and personal consequences of this abstract theoretical argument are immense, and usually forgotten: whenever we come to know or understand anything whatsoever, God is at work in us. God is the Big Bang Maker of thought just as much as He is the Big Bang Maker of matter. And in the present, not just in the past. And therefore we can find God in, and thank God for, our mental energy just as much as our physical energy.
Every single thing we ever think about has one thing in common: our thinking. Therefore in every single act of thinking God is present, even in false thoughts. Obviously the falsehood is not from Him, but the thought-energy is.
That is why thought, like matter, is holy. For some reason, we rarely think of that. Perhaps we’re so busy thinking about external things that we forget that we’re thinking. Our thoughts about the universe are no more independent of God than the universe is. And we ought to be no less aware of Him there, and no less thankful for His graces and inspirations there, than anywhere else. Where did that bright idea come from? we wonder. From Him. “All truth is God’s truth” (Arthur Holmes). Just as all material things are gifts from God, so are all thoughts and inspirations in the soul. Only one kind of light (Gen 1:3) is made of material photons. He is the source of both kinds.