Day Five: Revelation, Tradition, and Scripture, Part Two

At the core of all education is really just repetition until new knowledge sticks in the brain. Repetition, I tell students, is the point of every note they take, every project they do, every quiz they fail, and every homework they finish two minutes before it is due. I carefully scaffold my courses so my students encounter essential knowledge at least five times before they take a test on it. The last tier of repetition before I help them create a study guide is the daily review.

I go over what they most recently studied the day before. The transcendence of God must be at the forefront of my students’ minds when we discuss Truth and what we can know about God. I ask them to finish the following sentences, just to remind them what they took notes on the day before.

•       We cannot figure out the full Truth of God because God is……..

The answer is “transcendent”.

•       We can use logic and reason to begin to develop……….for God’s existence.

The answer is “proofs”.

I finish the review with a claim that will be at the heart of the first objective of the day:

•       But these proofs are not perfect; more is needed. How do you think we can “know” God exists and Loves us?

Usually I hear a few responses. Usually my students are sharp enough to understand, based on the Bellwork and this question, that to “know” God must require more than simply studying. There are serious philosophical and epistemological concepts that need to be understood before we can really “know” God.

I start the lesson. Humans lack the intellect to “know” transcendent Truths. We can use logic and reason to begin to “prove” that God exists, but logic and reason cannot describe the fullness of God’s Truth and Love for us. So how can we know that which is beyond our understanding? The simple answer is Revelation. Revelation is how God, in His infinite Love for us, becomes humble and “unveils” Himself to us. He reveals Himself to us because we cannot discover Him on our own. The History of God’s Revelation to us (Salvation History) is a story of how He increasingly makes Himself vulnerable to us so we can choose to enter into relationship with Him…or not.

            There are some technical philosophical terms that I can use here, but because many of my students are new to Catholic theology, I prefer to hold off on some of the finer Aristotelean concepts regarding knowledge. It is usually enough to just introduce my students to the concept that if we believe in transcendence or transcendent knowledge, then we, as humans, are not capable of knowing everything. We rely on one who is outside of our material and temporal limitations to assist us in knowing these transcendent Truths. The Pit Analogy helps here.

            I come back to this over and over again, but it is worth noting here. The Pit Analogy demonstrates that all the transcendent Truths of God, and Love, and Authentic Self are outside of the Pit. We, for reasons we discuss in later units on sin, are in a Pit and we cannot even “see” those Truths. We are limited to the confines of the Pit, and we cannot even climb out on our own. Revelation or Grace comes to us in the form of “Ropes” thrown down to us. If we grab on to these ropes, and tie them around our waists, and allow God to pull us up, then we can begin to understand those Transcendent Truths. Already, you might be guessing what some of those Ropes are and already you probably realize that Jesus is the single most important Rope for us to grab on to, but I hold off at this point in class. I want my students to start developing a way of thinking about God as one who desires for us to be out of that Pit and will do what He can to help us. Of course, in the next blog, I will describe more clearly how Scripture and Tradition, in Catholic Theology, are forms of those “Ropes”.

(Spring Break is good times for blogging, painting the living room, and napping...I did two of these things)