82. Listening to reason is listening to God
82. LISTENING TO REASON IS LISTENING TO GOD
Should I listen to reason or to God?
Although the eternal law is unknown to us . . . as it is in the Divine Mind, nevertheless it becomes known to us somewhat . . . by natural reason, which is derived therefrom as its proper image (I-II,19,4).
. . . it is from the eternal law, which is the Divine Reason, that human reason is the rule of the human will, from which the human will derives its goodness. Hence it is written (Ps. 4:6-7): Many say: Who showeth us good things? The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us; as though to say: “The light of our reason is able to show us good things and guide our will in so far as it is the light of (i.e., derived from) Thy countenance.” It is therefore evident that the goodness of the human reason depends on the eternal law. . . (I-II,19,4).
. . . [T]o scorn the dictate of reason is to scorn the commandment of God (I-II,19,5).
Asking whether you should listen to God or to reason is like asking whether you should listen to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony or to the recording you have of it. It’s like asking whether the earth is lit up by the sun or by sunlight. It’s like asking whether you should obey your commanding officer or his commands. The natural law of reason is a participation in the eternal law of God (I-II,91,2). That means more than “an image of” or “an effect of”. It means real sharing, real presence. That is why to disobey reason is to disobey God. Reason is His voice, His interior prophet, in our souls. We call that prophet conscience. (St. Thomas used two terms for it: “synderesis” was the awareness of its reality and truth and authority and rules, and “conscience” was the application of it. We use “conscience” for both.) Conscience is essentially the power of reason to know good and evil. It also gives us feelings of obligation (before an act) and of guilt (after an act), but it is reason before it is feeling.
If there is any one thing in St. Thomas that will probably surprise, and shock, and turn off, and be misunderstood by, the typically modern mind, whether Christian or agnostic or atheist or new-age-secular-humanist-relativist-subjectivist-whatever, it is how often and how highly he speaks of “reason”. “Reason” means for him not “argument” or “logic” or “being like Mr. Spock” or “being like a computer”. “Reason” means being like a human being. It means everything distinctively human. It means awareness, understanding, consciousness. It means alpha waves (awareness), not just beta waves and theta waves (perturbations). Perhaps the best single image for what “reason” means is light. Thus a mystic “seer” is doing something supremely rational in mystical experience.
Reason is sacred because it is an essential part of the image of God in us. That image changes everything in us, as light changes every color in the world it lights up. We share many things with the sub-rational animals: animal instincts, desires, feelings, sex, bodies, eating, communication; but we don’t merely add another level by reason; we raise all those things up to another level by reason.
Even our bodies and their sexuality is a dimension of the image of God in us, according to Genesis 1:31. (See John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” on this.)
Animal eating becomes an act of community and charity. Sharing a meal is sacramental. The German language even has two different words for animal eating and human eating: fressen and essen.
The higher animals have feelings—that’s why they make good pets and why it’s evil to be cruel to them—but when feelings enter the domain of reason, in us, they participate in moral good and evil. Human compassion—the feeling as well as the act—is a moral good, a virtue or a participation in virtue; while doggy compassion, lovable and innocent as it is, is just a pre-moral good, an instinct.
Animals communicate by sounds, we communicate by words. Communication, like everything else, changes when the light of reason shines on it. This is because the light of reason is “the light of Thy countenance, O Lord . . . shining upon us” (Ps 4:6).