38. Love vs. knowledge
38. LOVE VS. KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge and love, intellect and will, truth and goodness, are the two things that raise us above the animals, the two powers of the soul that image God the best. Which is the greatest of these?
. . . we find that the will is sometimes higher than the intellect from the fact that the object of the will occurs in something higher than . . . the object of the intellect . . . For. . . the action of the intellect consists in this—that the idea of the thing understood is in the one who understands; while the act of the will consists in this—that the will is inclined to the thing itself as existing in itself . . . When, therefore, the thing in which there is good is nobler than the soul . . . the will is higher than the intellect. But when the thing which is good is less noble than the soul, then . . . the intellect is higher than the will. Wherefore the love of God is better than the knowledge of God, but on the contrary the knowledge of corporeal things is better than the love thereof (I,82,3).
Knowledge is greater than love regarding everything less than ourselves, because knowledge makes the thing known more like the knower: it makes material things spiritual, makes them into ideas, makes them into things known, things in our mind. By knowing a thing we raise it up to our own level, so to speak. The star or tree or dog cannot enter our mind physically, only spiritually, as our idea of it. We give it a second life, so to speak, by knowing it. It is mortal but we are immortal, so we make its memory in us immortal. And even during its mortal life, the dog or the tree that we know has the privilege of being a part of our lives, entering into human relationships and human meanings. This is a remote image or analogy of how we enter into God’s own life by divine grace. We humanize the world; God divinizes us.
But since knowledge makes the thing known more like the knower, therefore when we know God we drag Him down to our level, just as we raise physical things up to our level when we know them. We can only know God in human terms, which are radically inadequate.
But love is greater than knowledge regarding what is greater than ourselves, because whereas knowledge makes the thing known more like the soul that knows it (knowing it “spiritualizes” it), love does the opposite: it makes the soul that loves more like the thing loved. The more you love a good or evil person, the more good or evil you become. The more you love God, the more you become like God.
This is why we can love God more than we can know Him. We can reach out in love to the whole God, the independently real God, God as He is in Himself; but we can know only those few aspects of God that we can comprehend, we can know only the God that can fit into our human mind somehow, we can know God only as He makes Himself appear to us.
That’s the point of C. S. Lewis’ poem “On a Theme from Nicholas of Cusa”:
“When soul and body feed, one sees / Their differing physiologies. / Firmness of apple, fluted shape / Of celery, or tight-skinned grape / I grind and mangle when I eat, / Then in dark, salt, internal heat, / Annihilate their natures by / The very act that makes them I. / But when the soul partakes of good / Or truth, which are her savoury food, / By some far subtler chemistry / It is not they that change, but she, / Who feels them enter with the state / Of conquerors her opened gate, / Or, mirror-like, digests their ray / By turning luminous as they.”