Grace & Peace!
I side with Origen on questions like this. Insofar as I allow grace to work in me to conform me to Christ, God sees Christ. Insofar as I prevent, through sin, the work of grace in me, God sees nothing at all. To the extent to which God sees nothing at all in me, I cannot properly be said to be or to exist.
My goal is not that God see me when he looks at me (what am I?), my goal is to conform myself to Christ so that God (and others!) see Christ.
This brings up a number of issues which are not always (I think) adequately dealt with in popular Christianity–the nature of the individual “I”. It is thought that Judaism understood who you are to be what you willed, while the Greeks understood who you are to be what you knew. I think Christianity adopted both views (reflected in the the formula of “three powers of the soul”: intellect, will, and memory), but with a greater accent on willing as the seat of personhood. But on the other hand, much Christian writing has been devoted to the idea that we are what God knows us to be–being and knowledge, or being and knowability seem to be the same thing, or at least related (Aquinas wrote that because only actual things can be known God as pure act is supremely knowable). But what in me is knowable? Is there anything that can belong exclusively to “me” that I can call my own, that I did not receive from God? Only my sin. But certainly sin as understood by the fathers (as an absence of the good and by extension as an absence of the Real) cannot be seen–only its effects through the diminishing of the good can be seen. Is it possible, then, that what I believe to be “me” is, in fact, a diminishment of what I actually am? Perhaps this is related to Paul’s dichotomy between the old and new man, the body of death, and the body of incorruptibility. What I really am, therefore, must be found in Christ. Anything else must be delusion!
Something to consider, though, is that Christian theology affirms that union with God in the Beatific Vision (theosis, for here to see is to know is to participate in) is not an extinction of the individual but a participation in the life of God such that the individual is fully illuminated by the Light of God. What, then, in me, survives this union to allow me to participate in it? Anything I can call my own?
Is it my creaturely nature which has been fashioned to bear and receive the Divine? Certainly this must survive–if I cease to be a creature, I cease to be me and therefore cease to be!
It has been noted (somewhere) that human nature, because it was made to bear and receive God, has in it this natural trajectory towards God which, though interrupted and marred by original sin, is nonetheless present waiting to be uncovered through Baptism. The inherent trajectory of our nature, then, is to receive God–sin has altered this trajectory such that it seeks to receive anything other than God, and we confuse the “anything other” with what we are, who we are. Moreover, we confuse our personal will with this misdirected inclination.
Through Baptism, however, our original trajectory is recovered, and through grace, we are able to will freely and to put our personal will in the employ of God’s will. In this way, we become both naturally and personally windows of divine grace.
And because we, like God, are both substance/nature and person, the nature which Christ divinizes through his work must accompany a personhood divinized by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. This must be what survives in the Beatific Vision–our personal wills conformed to God’s and our human nature also conformed to God.
I suppose, after all this, my own question would be–what becomes of my memory and my intellect? Surely the intellect would be filled only with the contemplation of God. But would I remember what I was before God re-generated me through grace? And if I did not, would I still be me?
So many questions!
Under the Mercy,
Mark
Deo Gratias!
Thank you for an excellent suggestion.
