5. The (a) reality and (b) inadequacy of our innate knowledge of God
5. THE (a) REALITY AND (b) INADEQUACY OF OUR INNATE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
Even if we need divine revelation to know more about God, and to know Him better, as St. Thomas explained in point #1, don’t we already know there is a God by innate common sense? Isn’t it part of human nature to believe in some God or other? All cultures in history have religion. Isn’t the gospel like a seed planted in a soil (human nature) that is already fertilized from within?
Yes:
(a) To know that God exists in a general and confused way is implanted in human nature, inasmuch as God is man’s beatitude (ultimate good, perfection and happiness). For man naturally desires happiness, and what is naturally desired by man must be naturally known by him.
(b) This, however, is not to know absolutely (explicitly, clearly) that God exists; just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching even though it is Peter who is approaching. For there are many who imagine that man’s perfect good, which is happiness, consists in riches, and others in pleasures, and others in something else (I,2,1).
Everyone has some God, some ultimate end, some summum bonum (“greatest good”). In this sense there are no simply non-religious human beings. An atheist too has a god: it is usually himself or his own pleasures, comforts, or joys.
If this were not so—if we did not innately seek beatitude—then the gospel, the revelation of the true God as our true beatitude, would not even be understandable or desirable; just as the offer of real, nourishing food would not be either understandable or desirable to an entity like a robot without hunger and without a digestive system.
Therefore, when talking with “non-religious” people, do not accept their false belief that there are two kinds of people: “religious people” and “non-religious people”. Don’t talk to the false mask they wear; talk to the real hunger within. It is always there.
As St. Augustine famously said, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and [therefore] our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.” There are no exceptions to that.
Once someone recognizes and admits this vague yet sharp hunger in themselves, this “lover’s quarrel with the world”, this desire for a truer, deeper, more real happiness than we have in this world, for this “something more” that we cannot define yet cannot avoid yearning for because it is suggested in all the deepest joys in this world (human love, sex, music, sunsets, babies, storms, mountains, waves, poetry)—once this is admitted, the most direct and effective road for evangelism opens up: the evangelism of the heart. St. Thomas is the all-time master of the head, but he begins and ends in the heart. He enables your philosophy and your prayer to be one.