88. Loving God more than knowing God
88. LOVING GOD MORE THAN KNOWING GOD
It seems that we can love only what we know, and the more we know, the more we can love. But we can know God very little. Therefore we can love God only very little. But this conclusion seems wrong. Can’t our love exceed our knowledge?
(1) . . . knowledge is the cause of love. . . . [G]ood . . . can be loved only if known. . .
(2) But some things are loved more than they are known. . . . [A] thing . . . can be loved perfectly even without being perfectly known. . . . thus in this life God can be loved in Himself but cannot be known in Himself (I-II,27,2).
Love stretches the lover out into the beloved, conforms the lover to the beloved, transforms the lover into something more like the beloved. Knowledge, on the other hand, in a way does the opposite. Although knowing the truth means conforming our ideas to the reality known rather than vice versa, yet the mode of knowing is determined by the nature of the knower. When we know something greater than ourselves, we can know it only in our terms, we can only drag it down to our level, so to speak. Thus we can only know God by human analogies, and not as He is in Himself, just as a dog can know us only by doggy analogies and in doggy categories. When we know a dog, we know it in a human way, a way superior to the way in which the dog can know itself. We can know a dog scientifically and philosophically, but a dog cannot know itself scientifically or philosophically. So when we know something less than ourselves, we raise it up to our level of comprehension, while when we know something more than ourselves, we drag it down to our level of comprehension.
It would seem, then, that our limited knowledge of God would limit our love of Him. Yet this is not so. There is a severe limit to our knowledge of God but no limit to our love of Him. Our knowledge of God runs up against a wall, but our love of Him does not. It can expand infinitely.
This is true in Heaven as well as on earth. We will never know God adequately; we will always experience our own limitations in knowing. Yet our love can expand infinitely, both in this world and in Heaven.
Love can exceed understanding on lower levels of the cosmic hierarchy too. A dog can love us more than it knows us. Its affection can exceed its comprehension. And among human beings this is also true: a simpleton can love us more than a genius does, even though he cannot know us as well as the genius can.
To know why this is so—how this principle works, psychologically and ontologically—is less important than to use it. One way to use it is always to be dissatisfied with our love of God, for we can always love God more. Christ blesses this dissatisfaction: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” (For “righteousness” is ultimately love.) Even in Heaven there will be a delightful dissatisfaction, for we will be filled forever by more and more love of the infinitely lovable God. For “all who seek, find”, and we will always seek to love God more, and therefore we will always find that we will continually grow in our capacity to love Him more in Heaven. That is why Heaven will never get boring, even though it will never end.