Christianity and Self-Love

I would like to respond to a concern that some people have regarding the Christian worldview.  Let me first try to articulate the concern:

Christianity is harmful to a healthy, positive self-image and self-esteem.  It tells us that God is everything and that we are nothing.  We are mere worms in comparison to God.  It tells us that we are all fallen sinners, that God is angry with us and always judging us, that we are so bad we deserve to go to hell for all eternity.  It tells us we are never good enough, that we can never be enough ourselves.  This attitude leads to an unhealthy, negative self-image that harms mental health and keeps people from seeing their true value.  It leads them to despair and depression.  It leads them to see themselves as ugly, as deserving of all the bad things that happen to them.  This hinders people from having the self-love that gives them what they need to be the best they can be.  It causes them to be endlessly introspective and self-doubting, and to feel endlessly and hopelessly defeated.  People with this attitude will be miserable with self-loathing, fearful, and inclined to accept abusive situations, believing they deserve what they get.  What we need instead is to be told that we are enough, that we do have what it takes, that we are doing great, that we are beautiful and valuable and worthy, that we don't have to put up with bad situations in our life because we deserve better.  We need to love ourselves and relax, feeling confident, freed from our neuroses of self-doubt, so we can live our life to the fullest and make the world a better place.

Going along with this, Christianity teaches people to be ashamed of central aspects of their humanity.  It encourages a sense of shame with regard to the body and human sexuality, for example.  It encourages people to see their physicality and their sexuality as shameful, harmful things that must be guarded against, that make them bad people.  Instead, we need to encourage body-positivity and sex-positivity.  We need people to feel, not shame, but pride for their bodies and for their feelings and their nature as human beings.

I want to respond to this concern with a two-pronged response.  I want to acknowledge, first of all, that there is a good deal of legitimacy and validity in the concern.  There is a true need to emphasize a positive attitude towards the self and towards human nature.  And it is true that Christianity has often been presented in a way that harms this positivity and encourages self-loathing, a constant sense of shame, and neurotic attitudes towards self, body, sexuality, etc.  But then I want to go on to claim that Christianity, rightly understood, actually promotes a very positive view of the self, and yet it also teaches that these truths about "positivity" need to be balanced with other truths about humanity and the human condition that rightly encourage within us a proper humility, a recognition of our creaturely finitude, our need for grace, etc.  Christianity, taught in a balanced and full-orbed way, captures both of these sides of the human condition in a way that tells us the full truth about ourselves and gives us the tools we need to understand who we are so we can live most effectively.

Humility and Affirmation

In the Christian view of human nature, both the "positivity" and the "humility" strands run through everything.

There is one God, one Supreme Being, who is the fullness and source of all reality.  God is the Creator of the finite universe.  There is a fundamental dichotomy at the heart of reality - there is the Creator, and there are creatures.  We human beings are creatures.  God is infinite being - unbounded, all-encompassing.  He is infinitely superior in being to all creatures.  Creatures are nothing in comparison to him.  A good way to get at this is to look at the difference between the divine and the creaturely point of view.  God's point of view is all-encompassing.  He sees all in one view.  His conscious experience includes reality as a whole.  Because of this, his consciousness transcends space and time.  On the other hand, as finite beings, our view and experience constitute a mere infinitesimal point in a universe that extends out from us with potential infinity in all directions of space and time.  We see/experience only from one limited vantage point among an infinite number of other possible vantage points.  We are bound within space and time.  God's consciousness and experience constitute the true, ultimate reality, while ours is nothing but an infinitesimal sliver of reality - and our sliver is derived from his fullness.  God is thus the center of reality, and we are infinitely far from it.

Tbis is a realization, of course, that leads to deep humility.  What Christianity teaches here has been recognized by many human philosophies and religions to varying degrees.  One great example is Buddhism.  The enlightenment of the Buddha came precisely when he recognized that it is an illusion to think of this world, or even of our own selves, as if they are a true, ultimate, substantial reality.  Buddhism goes so far as to view the world as an illusion.  "There is no self" is one of the key ideas of Buddhist philosophy.  As a Christian, I recognize that Buddhism is perceiving the very same thing that I perceive - the utter distance between ultimate, substantial reality and this comparative nothingness we tend to think of as reality.  (Christianity does not tend to refer to the world as an illusion, because, despite its finitude, it does exist in its own sphere - something I think Buddhism would not deny, though they would put it in other terms - but we agree with the truth that this language is pointing to - that, compared to Ultimate Reality, this world is nothing, and to treat it as ultimately substantial is to seek fullness in nothingness and therefore to be utterly miserable.)  Hinduism is another religion that recognizes these realities, as do all religions and philosophies, at least to a degree, that hold to a supreme state of reality beyond this one.

It is here that I would bring into the picture the Christian view of humanity as "fallen".  According to the Christian worldview, our first parents, who were created in a right relationship with God, turned away from that relationship in an effort to declare independence.  They wanted to be their own ultimate principle instead of trusting in God to fill that role.  But God is the fullness and source of all being, goodness, life, power, wisdom, knowledge, and happiness.  To declare independence from God, then, is to plunge oneself into a condition of emptiness, evil, death, weakness, foolishness, ignorance, and misery.  This is what our first parents brought upon themselves, and this condition has been passed on to the whole human race.  We are not blamed for what our first parents did, but we inherit the consequences - cut off from the life of God and experiencing the condition of alienation from him.  This is what Christians mean by speaking of humanity as being in a "fallen" state.  But we should not think that there is any injustice done to us in this situation.  We would have done the same thing had we been in the situation of our first parents, for we, like them, have nothing in our nature that, without God's special gift to us of his own divine life, would keep us from falling away from God.  We fall together as a human race because we all share the same fundamental nature and condition.  The final conclusion of the narrative begun by the Fall is the condition Christians call "hell".  Hell is nothing other than complete alienation from God and all that that entails.  That is the destiny of all of us, and justly and naturally so, unless God chooses to give to us something we cannot deserve - the gift of his divine life.  And that is the gospel - that God has come into the world in Jesus Christ and united himself to our fallen human nature, absorbing our weaknesses, sins, death, and misery, so that he can share with us the power, goodness, and ultimate blessedness and happiness of his divine life.  From him, and not from ourselves, we receive all that we need.

According to Christianity, this is who we really are.  We may react positively or negatively to this account of things.  But I think the first question should not be whether we find this view of things attractive or repulsive, but whether or not it is actually true.  Reality is reality whether we like it or not, and we have a duty to accept it as such.  That is yet another thing true humility teaches us.  Now, I believe that the Christian worldview is ultimately one of supreme beauty once we see it fully for what it is; but if we are used to thinking more highly of ourselves than we ought, it can seem very bitter at first.  It is like the sabra fruit of Israel - prickly and off-putting on the outside, sweet and delightful on the inside.

Now, having addressed the humility required of us as creatures, let's address the other side of the equation - the side of "positivity."

We are creatures of God.  All that we are is derived from God.  And God is the fullness of all that is good, beautiful, and valuable.  Therefore we, too, in our intrinsic nature, are good, beautiful, and valuable, and we should see ourselves as such.  Yes, unlike God, our being comes to us from without.  We cannot be enough on our own.  But we are not on our own.  We are never on our own.  To the extent that we exist, we are like God.  We reflect the divine beauty.  Love of God entails love of creatures and love of ourselves - for our existence is a participation in God's.  In a sense, I can say that I am nothing and God is everything, and this is a central and crucial truth.  And yet, at the same time, I can say that because God is everything, I am something too, and that is also a central and crucial truth.

Yes, I am nothing without God.  But God has created me, and so I am not nothing.  Yes, without God's grace in Christ, I am a sinner bound for hell.  But I am not without God's grace in Christ.  He has come into the world to give grace to us all.  "Grace" is nothing other than the gift of the divine life.  So what we are given through the redemption of Christ is the gift of sharing truly in the beauty and glory of that life.  This is true even in this current life we live, and it will be infinitely more true when we grow up into the fullness of our redemption and come to partake fully in the glory of God.  This is our destiny.  No, it is not something we have of ourselves apart from God.  But we are not apart from God.  In God, we are legitimate heirs of infinite glory and beauty.  This, also, is who we truly are, and we should see ourselves accordingly.  (We do have free will.  If we choose to reject the divine life offered to us, we are still valued and loved beings participating in God's life, but we will have cut ourselves off from the eternal fruition of this reality and sentenced ourselves to lose it all in the end.  But if we receive what God offers us, we will grow up fully into the glorious identity God has planned for us.)  In the words of C.S. Lewis:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which,if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory [HarperOne, 2001], 45-46).

We must recognize that we are creatures and not God - but having recognized that, we should value ourselves as icons of the divine.  We should have great and humble self-love, positivity, and self-esteem.  If we recognize who we really are, we should know that we are enough, by the gift and grace of God.  And we should bask and delight in our beauty and value and in the beauty and value of all our fellow creatures.

A More Balanced Christian View

OK, so having laid this foundation, let's tie up some loose ends.  There are better and worse ways of living out Christianity, just as there are better and worse ways of living out any religion or philosophy.  And Christians haven't always lived and taught in ways that have encouraged the best that Christianity can be.  Let's address some of these areas.

Shame - We should not have an attitude towards ourselves centrally characterized by shame.  Yet there are things it is proper to be ashamed of.  When we fail to live in love towards God, our neighbors, or ourselves, that is something we should not view positively.  And yet these failures don't characterize us.  We are not perfect, but if, by God's grace, we are choosing to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be, even if there are areas where we are not that great at it yet, then our lives are characterized fundamentally not by shame but by beauty.  If we are trying to be good people in this world, that is something we should be proud of!  Sure, it is a gift of grace.  We could not do it on our own.  But that doesn't make it any less ours.  Christianity, rightly applied, encourages a kind of paradoxical "humble pride."  We do not see ourselves as superior to everyone else or as existing independently.  And yet, recognizing our limits and our dependence on God and others, we see the beauty of what God is making out of our lives and we are proud to be that sort of person!  Catholic theology has always emphasized (against those who would advocate an overly pessimistic view of human nature and goodness) that while our merits are pure grace, yet they are, at the same time, our merits.  With God's help, we are not shameful but beautiful beings.  Our sins, failures, mistakes, and weaknesses are things we struggle with, but they do not fundamentally define us.  It is true that Christians have sometimes failed to keep this balance.  But Christianity, properly defined, teaches us to do so.

Scrupulosity - It is true that many Christians live a life full of what Catholics call "scrupulosity" - a neurotic, obsessive focus on fearing to do the wrong thing, feeling guilty, feeling ashamed, wondering if we are in a right relationship with God or if God is angry with us, feeling useless, ugly, and defeated.  There is a sense in which Christianity, as such, can even be "blamed" for this tendency.  Christianity teaches us to take goodness very seriously, and whenever we take something seriously some of us are going to be prone to excessive introspection, obsessive doubt, a sense of shame and despair for failures, etc.  I would say that this is one of many examples of a case where a true and good thing naturally brings along with it unique, specific dangers.  (For another example, notice that conflicts and wars happen because people care about things.  A society full of completely apathetic people who value nothing would never fight, but would that be a good thing?  It is better to care and therefore to have to take extra precaution to control our immoderate tendency towards conflict.)  But Christianity does not truly recommend this excessive scrupulosity.  In fact, the Catholic tradition warns us away from it, giving it a label ("scrupulosity") and addressing it explicitly as a problem for our spiritual lives.  God is not following us around, looking for minor infractions so that he can zap us!  Remember, as God's creatures, we bear his image and divine beauty.  He loves and delights in us.  He wants to give us good gifts and make us happy, and to help us in every way.  He is looking out for our good.  As I said earlier, we do have free will, and we can fundamentally reject him and turn away from him and persist in this to the end of our lives.  But if we do so, we have to do it "against the wind," as it were, of all of God's pleadings, warnings, encouragements, helps, graces, and opportunities to turn around.  And if we do choose, fundamentally, to pursue the path of goodness, that is what matters in the end.  Sure, we are not perfect, but our imperfections do not characterize us.  God does not look on us with shame and disgust, but with love and delight.  If we don't do something perfectly, if we mess something up - well, we recognize the fact, acknowledge it, ask for forgiveness if necessary, try to fix our mistakes, and move on.  We do not, we should not, continue to dwell on our mistakes.  This is something many Catholics find delightful about the Sacrament of Confession.  If you've committed a sin, you don't go into despair and fear.  You go to Confession, admit your mistake, receive forgiveness, and leave it behind.  All God asks of us is that we pursue goodness.  Sure, that takes effort and diligence.  But obsessiveness does not further our goal but rather hinders it, for it stops us from seeing clearly and objectively.  Rather, we should approach our pursuit of goodness and efforts towards personal growth and improvement with common sense.  Don't be lazy and apathetic about doing the right thing, but don't be neurotic and obsessive either.  (And, of course, if you struggle with neurosis, or scrupulosity, or any other such thing, don't obsess about that either!  It's not something to feel shame over.  These things are a part of our human condition in this life.  We do the best we can in our own particular circumstances.  None of us, in this life, have arrived at our destination.  We're on the journey, struggling with our own peculiar trials and difficulties.  There's nothing wrong with that - it's the way it should be.  We should give ourselves a break, and make sure to give each other a break as well!)

I addressed the problem of scrupulosity in an earlier article, and I'd like to copy here some of what I said there:

As Aristotle famously pointed out, a lot of times error and vice are found in the extremes, and virtue is found in the mean between the extremes.  One set of extremes that is often a pitfall for those seeking to live a holy life involves, one the one hand, laziness and carelessness with regard to sin and bad habits, and, on the other hand, an excessive fear, obsession, or even paranoia about these things.  Those inclined towards the former extreme need to be reminded that sin is a serious matter.  The fundamental nature of sin is opposition to God and the moral law, and this attitude is the essence of all wickedness and the fount of all misery (because God is the Supreme Good).  We need to take God with the utmost seriousness, and therefore sin needs to be our mortal enemy.  This is why the Bible is always telling us to "fear" God--that is, to have a proper recognition of the gravity of who God is and to fear being against him as the greatest of all calamities.  To be righteous is to love God above all things, so our ultimate goal in life should be to please him and enjoy him perfectly and eliminate all sin and all tendencies to wickedness in our life.  The more virtuous a person becomes, the less such a person will come to tolerate even venial sin, for the clearer our vision is of the greatness and beauty of God, the more repulsive all sin will seem to us.  This should be the chief aim of our entire life.

But the other extreme--obsessive fear and obsession about sin--can also be a serious problem, especially for those particularly inclined towards it.  Such people need to be reminded that what really matters is the fundamental choice of our life--are we choosing God as our chief good, or are we ejecting him out of that place in order to put something else there?  Is God the one we choose above all else?  This is not a matter of feelings or the strength of feelings, but of the will.  What do we choose to put supreme value on?  If we choose to follow God as our chief goal, and we orient our lives towards seeking him as our greatest value and ultimate end, then we can be sure that we are in a right relationship with him, a state of grace, and everything will come out fundamentally right in the end.  The only thing that can put us out of the reach of God's salvation is mortal sin--and mortal sin doesn't mean all sin; it doesn't even mean all serious sin (objectively speaking).  Mortal sin involves a deliberate, fully-informed, fully-aware, intentional choice to adopt an attitude or pursue a course of action which involves rejecting God as our supreme value and end in life, choosing instead to break from him fundamentally and go our own way.  Mortal sin is defined by being incompatible with "charity"--that is, with supreme love to God as the choice of our will.  Mortal sin is not the ways in which we regularly slip up and act inconsistently with our chief goal, the bad habits we have that tend to draw us into foolish and sinful actions, the difficulties we face in developing virtuous habits, how many times we tend to slide back into sinful tendencies, etc.  These are all natural and ordinary parts of life in a state of grace as we pursue holiness in this fallen world.  When we understand this, it will help us to relax a bit, to let go of obsessive fear.  We will remember that "there is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear: because fear has torment. He that fears is not made perfect in love" (1 John 4:18).  To "fear" God in the biblical sense is not to be obsessively afraid of him, but to recognize his supreme value and importance and therefore to take holiness with the utmost seriousness.  If we love God, and trust God, we need not live in obsessive fear, but can rest confidently in the help of his grace as we grow in holiness.  If we fall into sin from time to time, well, that is to be expected of fallen creatures struggling to be holy.  The Council of Trent actually condemns as false doctrine the idea that people can avoid all sins throughout their entire life.  "If any one saith . . . that he is able, during his whole life, to avoid all sins, even those that are venial,-except by a special privilege from God, as the Church holds in regard of the Blessed Virgin; let him be anathema" (Sixth Session, Canon 23).  When we sin, we don't need to dwell on it.  We can learn what we need to learn from it, get back up, repent, go to confession if appropriate, and then move on--like a gymnast who doesn't fall into despair every time she falls onto the mat, but just keeps getting back up and resuming her practice.  (In fact, overly obsessing about sin often has the effect of making it worse rather than better.  There's hardly a better way to ensure that something will have a strong presence in one's mind than to continually be worrying about how strong a presence it has.)

Another practical tip to make our path to holiness smoother is to recognize the difference between concupiscence and sin.  Concupiscence is the Catholic theological term for our fallen, disordered desires that have a tendency to lead us into sin.  But concupiscence, while it tends towards sin, is not itself personal sin.  Acts of sin involve the consent of the will.  Insofar as our desires happen to us without such consent, they are not sin.  So stop feeling guilty for having such desires.  You can't just banish them away with some strong act of the will.  We will all struggle against concupiscence throughout our entire lives, for that struggle is the pathway to holiness.  Holiness isn't only about avoiding sinful acts of will; it is also about developing virtuous habits and unlearning vicious (that is, un-virtuous) ones.  We are trying to learn not only to avoid individual sinful acts of will in particular cases, but also to develop habits such that we will become more and more naturally inclined towards virtuous attitudes and actions in general and away from vicious or sinful ones.  So even when you are avoiding particular acts of sin, you will still have plenty to work on in terms of building habits of virtue.  Don't be paranoid about that, but just go forward, like the gymnast I mentioned in the previous paragraph.  Keep practicing.  Don't worry if you mess up, or you haven't got a particular skill down yet very well.  Just keep going forward.  You'll keep getting better (but don't get paranoid about your rate of progress!).  You won't get fully where you want to be until after this life, though, so don't be impatient.  Be diligent, but also be tolerant of yourself and where you are.

Just briefly, before moving on, I want to mention for the sake of non-Christian readers that, in the Catholic view, being in a right relationship with God is not a matter of passing a theology exam.  It is about the fundamental orientation of our will towards the Supreme Good.  A person can have proper theology but be, in spirit, very far from God and even against him, while another person might have very bad (from the Catholic point of view) theology and yet, in spirit, in terms of the orientation of the will, that person might be very close to God and in a right relationship with him.  This is not to say that correct doctrine is not important.  It is just to say that there is a complex interplay in our lives between the intellectual, volitional, emotional, and spiritual components of our souls.  God is the Supreme Good, but the Catholic Church recognizes (see, for example, Lumen Gentium #16) that people are in different places in terms of how well (from a Catholic point of view) they consciously realize or can articulate this reality.  It is the orientation of the will towards the Good, as that is understood with greater or lesser clarity, that is of central importance in terms of a person's moral character.

The Body and Sex

Now let's look a bit at the Christian view of the body and sex.

Body Positivity - Remember, we are creatures of God.  Our bodies come from God as well.  Therefore they are intrinsically good.  They are to be celebrated and delighted in!  We should not be ashamed of our bodies.  We can recognize their weaknesses and oddities in an affectionate way (we remember St. Francis, who called his body "Brother Ass"), but we should acknowledge the body's intrinsic goodness and beauty.  And that means all bodies.  Our culture tends to put forward such unrealistic standards of beauty, and so many people are ashamed of their bodies because they don't match up with these standards.  But it's all fake.  Real human bodies come in lots of shapes and sizes.  They all have their unique beauty.  Just as each of us should celebrate the uniqueness of our individual personalities (quirkiness and all!), so each of us should celebrate the uniqueness of our individual bodies.

In some circles, body positivity is expressed in an openness to public nudity.  The Christian virtue of modesty is sometimes characterized as a kind of shameful embarrassment we are supposed to feel towards our bodies, and that is why we are supposed to keep them covered up.  And it must be said that, particularly in some circles, Christians have sometimes twisted modesty into this kind of attitude of shame.  But this is not what Christianity, properly understood, truly points us to.  Modesty is about recognizing and valuing the dignity of a human person as a human person.  The body is not to be treated as an object for another's use or personal pleasure, detached from respect for the entire person.  Before the Fall, humanity is portrayed in Scripture as naked.  This is because, in that unfallen condition, when the grace of God was still ruling human attitudes and behavior, the human body could be expressed in all its beauty without being reduced to an impersonal object (objectified).  After the Fall, the parts of the body most prone to abuse and objectification should ordinarily be covered as an expression of respect for the dignity of the body and for the safeguarding of that dignity - just as a person's private thoughts should ordinarily not be expressed entirely without any guard, as that also tends to lead to abuse and objectification.  The body is so worthy of value and respect that it should not be promiscuously exposed without guard in a fallen world.  That is the moral reason for clothing - not because the body is shameful, but actually quite the opposite!  There are particular circumstances, however, where nudity can be appropriate - when there is a situation established where the body can be seen with a proper understanding of its dignity as part of a person who deserves our respect as a person.  In marriage, for example, assuming the marriage relationship is healthy, there is a mutual giving and sharing of selves in a uniquely deep and profound way, and that involves the sharing of bodies.  That sharing is recognized as the gift of something of great dignity and value and is received in that attitude, and the body is not divorced from the person and made an object for another person's personal use or pleasure.  There is a special relationship of trust established there.  Another context would be the arts, when they are governed by proper values - where the body is appreciated in an artistic fashion and there is a recognition of its dignity and value and its context as part of a whole person, where objectification is absent by agreed consent and understanding.  In the Catholic view, then, nudity is normally avoided but occasionally allowed, not because the body is shameful, but precisely because it is recognized as something that deserves special protection and respect.

Sex Positivity - Some people believe that the Christian view of sex is that it is a bad thing, or at least a shameful and negative thing, and that is why there are so many sexual taboos in Christian teaching.  But, as with the body, the truth is very different.  However, it is true that many Christians have indeed twisted Christian teaching into this kind of overly-negative attitude, and that has done a lot of harm.  As with the body, sex is part of God's creation from the beginning and is essentially good.  In the Catholic view, sex was created by God for the enjoyment and bonding of spouses and for the procreation of children.

Everything I said above about scrupulosity applies here in particular.  It is true that Christians, at some times and places in history, have tended to promote or model a kind of morbid, overly introspective and obsessive, and fearful attitude towards sex.  Sex is a powerful thing.  It is easy for human beings to become enslaved to sexual desires or to fall into immoderate and overly-indulgent sexual habits.  Aware of this, Christians have often approached sex with great wariness, warning of the dangers that accompany sex.  As I said above, when people take something very seriously or are acutely aware of its dangers, an inevitable side effect is that some, at least, will tend to fall into an overly scrupulous attitude.  Such an imbalanced attitude has definitely been a real issue at various times and places in Christian history.  And yet the Church has never fundamentally lost sight of the essential goodness of sex.  She even recognizes marriage (with its ordinarily essential component of sexuality) as one of the seven sacraments - a high status that is pretty hard to beat!  A well-adjusted Christian moral approach, true to a balanced appreciation of the whole of the Christian worldview, opposes scrupulosity in sexual matters as much as it does in any other matter.  As in all things, so in sex:  We must guard against the extreme of over-indulgence and moral laziness on the one hand, and the extreme of obsessive fear and "puritanism" (in the worst sense, unfair to historic Puritans by the way!) on the other.

For example, I mentioned above that Catholic moral teaching cautions against a promiscuous public nudity that does not adequately guard the precious gift of the human body.  OK, there is a value here that needs to be protected, from the Catholic view.  We do well to challenge forms of "naturism" that would make public nudity a near-universal and unguarded norm.  However, we do not need to go to the other extreme of being obsessive or fearful about nudity.  Obsessive fear of something is not only an imbalanced attitude in itself, but it actually tends to strengthen the very thing it is fearful of!  There's hardly a better way to ensure that something will have a strong presence in one's mind than to continually be worrying about how strong a presence it has.  We need to avoid a kind of over-mystification of the nude human body that is a result of an obsessive attitude towards nudity and sex.  There is a kind of "taboo" mentality we can fall into.  We need to remember that, in a sense, nudity is really not a big deal!  What I mean is that we all know what the human body looks like.  Why, then, put so much mystique into seeing it like it's some astonishing or fearful thing?  Why do we need to be so obsessively fearful of being naked?  Why do we need to feel like we've been polluted or damaged somehow if we should see nudity?  Making such a big deal out of nudity actually tends to inflame immoderate desire  We all know that there is hardly anything more appealing to our human nature than something that has been forbidden to us and that has been placed in the special category of "taboo" and "off limits."  Pandora just had to open her box.  If we are going to follow Christian moral teaching more holistically, we need a more balanced attitude.  The human body is not some mysterious and forbidden object.  Experiencing nudity is not, in itself, a big deal.  Modesty in clothing is not the upholding of a "taboo" but merely a practice that is born of an attempt to protect something that is of great dignity and value that we don't want to be treated less respectfully than it deserves to be treated.  The naturist movement and the body-positivity movement have done a great service in challenging the "taboo" approach to nudity and encouraging a more healthy and less neurotic acceptance of our physical nature.

We can say the same thing about sex.  It should not be approached as if we are in the realm of some mysterious and forbidden taboo subject.  It should be approached with openness and realism and accepted as a normal part of human life.  It does have to be protected, because it exists for a particular purpose and belongs in a particular context and should not be taken out of that context.  In the Catholic view, sex is for spousal enjoyment and bonding and for procreation.  If it's used outside of that context, it's misused (though see here for some further nuances).  So we need to preserve the ethical use of sex, but there is no need for this to lead us to an obsessive attitude towards it.  Again, the more "sexually liberal" components of our modern society deserve our gratitude for challenging the unhealthy neuroticism about sex that, unfortunately, has been common in a lot of "conservative" and Christian circles in recent times.

Another concern/objection some people will have which I should deal with while we're on the subject is that there is an inherent problem with the actual Catholic teaching with regard to sex, even interpreted in the best and most balanced way possible, because it still forbids sex outside of the marriage of a man and a woman.  The concern is that this is contrary to basic human nature which is "designed" to allow sex to happen in a broader context.  Since the Christian position is out of accord with human nature, it naturally leads to frustration, guilt, despair, and mental health issues.  This is a big topic, and I can't do it justice in this brief context.  I will say two things, though, for now:

1. The first question we have to ask when we come across any idea, whether we like it or not, is Is this idea really true or not?  Just because something is very hard for us, contrary to our deep desires, and leads to all sorts of practical problems, that doesn't in itself necessarily prove that it is not real.  Reality has no obligation to make things easy for us, and, as we all know, it all too often cashes in on that lack of obligation.  In the Christian view, we live in a fallen world and are in a fallen state.  Instead of being the harmonious and peaceful world God made in the beginning, the world is now chaotic and divided.  Everything is at odds with everything else.  Unfortunately, it is often the case that ethics is in conflict with the tendencies of human nature.  That's why ethics is notoriously hard.  We are all often called to do very difficult and painful things.  Some of us are called to extreme forms of this - like being ethically bound to stand up for justice even to the point of enduring the physical or psychological torture of persecutors.  Some are called to be martyrs.  In this fallen state of the world, our desires are often at odds (and deeply and seriously so) with the values we should seek and how we should live.  This is a very unfortunate state of affairs, but does that prove it is not the actual state of affairs?  Personally, I find the evidence for the truth of Catholic Christianity compelling, and that gives me a reason to embrace Catholic moral teaching.  As much as I empathize with those who feel the weight of difficulty Catholic moral teaching can bring sometimes - and as much as I myself often feel that burden personally in various ways - I do not find in this a convincing argument against the truth of the Catholic worldview.  So I must follow where I think the evidence leads, as we all must.

2. Sometimes, we simply can't do it.  There are those who break down - physically, mentally, emotionally - under the weight of what happens to them in life, whether that comes to them unavoidably or through their own choice to do the right thing.  This is not a failure; it is simply a reality.  We are only expected to do the best we can.  But, oftentimes, we find that we are more resilient than we previously thought.  People can find ways to survive and even thrive under seriously adverse circumstances and while pursuing extremely difficult and painful courses of action.  Perhaps sometimes we paint certain conditions as impossible when they are not always so.  Once we accept reality and decide to learn how to live within it, sometimes - sometimes - we find that things are brighter than we thought they could be.  Sometimes there are compensations for our pain that we didn't anticipate.  This also is something important to bear in mind.

As I mentioned earlier, Christianity can sometimes be like the sabra fruit.  It can be very, very prickly on the outside, but it is full of great sweetness on the inside.  Following Christian morality can be very hard.  But it also brings with it much reward in this life.  And, at the end of our lives, when we finish the race, Christianity tells us that we shall reap a fruit that is beautiful, glorious, and satisfying beyond our wildest ability to imagine.  If we follow the Good, we will reap it in full in the end.  We will find God, the fullness and source of all Being and all Good, and in him all creaturely goods fulfilled and summed up and embraced.  Once again, I find myself wanting to quote C.S. Lewis:

Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity [New York: Touchstone, 1996], 190-191).

There is that fundamental paradox again.  Because of who we are and who God is, the only way to truly find and affirm ourselves is to give up our lives conceived of as our own apart from God, to give ourselves wholly to God, and to find ourselves restored and grounded in him.  But at any rate, this topic moves us into fundamental questions about the nature of reality and therefore goes beyond the scope of what can be done in this article.  However, whether we agree with Christian sexual morality or not - understood in its best form - we can at least distinguish it from the obsessive, scrupulous, fearful attitude that has often been associated with it but which is actually contrary to its best practice.

For more on the topics of sex and the human body, I will refer you to Pope St. John Paul II's famous Theology of the Body, which sums up modern Catholic moral teaching in these areas to a great degree.  You can read a (very) long summary of John Paul's teaching here (it's summarizing a very long collection of lectures given over a series of five years by the Pope).  Despairing of finding a reasonably short summary of the teaching, I once again took up exploring the potentialities of AI (ChatGPT) and asked it to summarize the Pope's teaching overall and in a few specific areas.  I think it did a pretty good job, though it didn't capture every aspect or every nuance.  You can read those (much shorter) summaries here.  And here is an article I wrote up on this subject a couple of years ago.  You can also read more from the Catechism of the Catholic Church on this topic here.

Conclusion

In conclusion, then, Christian morality, rightly understood and in its best form, promotes a nuanced view of the self and of human nature.  It critiques both those who would idolize the self and those who would denigrate it.  It challenges those who believe we are good enough by ourselves without God's grace and also those who would say we are not good enough even with God's grace.  It warns us against licentiousness and moral laziness, but also cautions us against excessive scrupulosity.  It promotes a positive and celebratory view of the human body and sex but also reminds us to be wary of how both of these can be abused without proper protections and safeguards.

Will There Be Diversity in our Experience of the Essence of God in the Beatific Vision?

By virtue of our apostolic authority, we define the following: According to the general disposition of God, the souls of all the saints . . . and other faithful who died after receiving Christ's holy Baptism (provided they were not in need of purification when they died, . . . or, if they then did need or will need some purification, when they have been purified after death, . . .) already before they take up their bodies again and before the general judgment - and this since the Ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into heaven - have been, are and will be in heaven, in the heavenly Kingdom and celestial paradise with Christ, joined to the company of the holy angels. Since the Passion and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, these souls have seen and do see the divine essence with an intuitive vision, and even face to face, without the mediation of any creature.

~ Catechism of the Catholic Church #1023, quoting Benedictus Deus by Pope Benedict XII (1336)

"It [The Council of Florence] has likewise defined . . . that the souls of those, who after the reception of baptism have incurred no stain of sin at all, and also those, who after the contraction of the stain of sin whether in their bodies, or when released from the same bodies, as we have said before, are purged, are immediately received into heaven, and see clearly the one and triune God Himself just as He is, yet according to the diversity of merits, one more perfectly than another."

~ The Ecumenical Council of Florence (from the Bull "Laetentur coeli," July 6, 1439) (Henry Denzinger, The Sources of Catholic Dogma, tr. Roy J. Deferrari [Fitzwilliam, NH: Loreto Publications, 2002], a translation of "the thirtieth edition of Enchiridion Symbolorum by Henry Denzinger, revised by Karl Rahner, S.J., published in 1954, by Herder & Co., Freiburg", p. 219-220, #693)

The Beatific Vision

In 1336, Pope Benedict XII defined, as an official teaching of the Catholic Church, that the saved and purified after death and throughout eternity will actually see or experience God's own actual essence.  In defining and articulating this teaching of divine revelation, Pope Benedict XII made a very bold move.  God is infinitely above us.  His essence transcends all space and time, and all limitation.  That's why we can't perceive God's essence here and now.  We are limited creatures, and our perceptions are always limited.  Our vision and our ideas are always limited and partial, infinitely inferior to the divine essence.  It is infinitely above creaturely capacity to truly, directly, see or experience God in his actual essence.  Yet, since God is the one Supreme Good, and in the end there can be no lasting good outside of him, we must in the end either be brought to actually know God himself or be forever miserable, lacking the only thing that can satisfy the desire of rational beings.  There is no such thing as definitive, substantial happiness outside of God.  Therefore, although it was such a bold move, the Holy Spirit guided the Apostolic See of St. Peter to define for the people of God the truth that the Beatific Vision, in which is our full eternal happiness, consists in our direct experience of the essence of God.

But this affirmation raises difficult and complex questions about how this could be possible.  Again, God is infinitely above us as creatures.  How could it ever be possible for a mere creature to attain to the height of truly knowing the infinite God?  The glorious answer is that, in salvation, we are adopted as children of God and actually come to share in his divine life.  The theologians of the Church from the earliest times have therefore described our salvation as our divinization.  

The Word became flesh to make us "partakers of the divine nature": "For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God." "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God." "The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods." (CCC #460, footnotes removed)

Not only is this doctrine consonant with and indeed demanded by reason, it is woven throughout the Scriptures.  Our salvation makes us children of God, "heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ" (Romans 8:17), "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Peter 1:4).  Although now we see "as in a glass darkly," yet in the end, when our salvation is complete, we shall see "face to face," and although for now we know in part, then we shall know even as we ourselves are known (1 Corinthians 13:12).  "Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2).  "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him" (1 Corinthians 2:9).

Now none of this means, of course, that we will ever cease to be creatures, or that we will become God, so that we will be ourselves worthy of worship.  Our union with Christ makes us sharers of the divine life, but only by grace.  God enjoys his own divine life, the life and love of the Blessed Trinity, by nature, as belonging properly to himself.  We participate in that divine life only as a free, undeserved gift of grace, as creatures lifted by God's free gift infinitely beyond what we could ever deserve or achieve by our own merits or nature.  We will indeed enjoy the divine life, but always only as creatures lifted to that joy by a sheer, undeserved gift of grace.

The Indivisible Unity of the Experience of the Beatific Vision

But this is still a very deep and complex subject theologically.  What will it be like for a creature to directly experience the divine essence?  Of course, we can't imagine it subjectively until we are actually brought into the experience of it.  Although we can understand the idea of it, the actual envisioning of it in an experiential sense is beyond our abilities in this life.  But even looking at the subject intellectually and philosophically, lots of questions are raised as to what it means for a creature to experience the divine essence.  I would like to discuss a couple of these questions throughout the rest of this post.  The two questions are related:  1. Can a creature be brought by grace to directly experience the divine essence without being brought to know everything there is to know?  2. Are there any differences in the experience of different human individuals brought to experience the Beatific Vision, seeing that they are all brought to experience the very same divine essence and that that essence is not complex but simple (indivisible, without parts)?

Both of these questions relate to the doctrine of divine simplicity.  In Catholic teaching (and according to reason), God is a simple being.  He is not complex.  He is not made up of parts or pieces.  Therefore, it would seem, to experience God's essence must be an all-or-nothing affair.  One cannot experience only a part of God's essence, for God's essence does not have parts.  If one sees God, one sees all of God.  One either sees God or one does not.  There is no in-between, and there are no degrees.  So it would seem that the answer to both questions posed above must be no.  All that exists in reality is rooted in God, flowing from his divine will, either by participation in his being or by divine permission (in the case of limitation or evil).  It is a commonplace in Catholic theology to note that God knows everything that happens in the history of the world without looking outside of himself simply by knowing his own divine essence, for it all logically flows from there.  It would seem to follow, therefore, that if the Beatific Vision involves the direct experience of the essence of God, it must bring with it a complete knowledge of everything in the universe.  And, with regard to question #2, if all the saved are experiencing the same, simple divine essence, their experiences must all be the same.  No one can know God more or less, for, again, one either sees a simple essence or one does not; there can be no degrees or partiality.

It might be argued that, although one cannot see parts of an essence that has no parts, one could see a simple essence with greater or lesser clarity, and this could result in some seeing "more" of that divine essence than others.  To use a space-time analogy, Dave and Joan might both experience a tree, but Dave might see more of the tree than Joan.  One way that might happen is if Dave can see more branches than Joan can.  But another way would be if Joan is not wearing her glasses and so, while seeing the same parts of the tree that Dave does, she sees them less clearly.  Perhaps one person might see the essence of God more clearly than someone else.  But I don't think this clears up the problem, for when two people see an object, one person with greater clarity than another, it is still the case that what this ultimately means is that one person is seeing parts of the object that the other person isn't seeing.  For Dave to see the tree more clearly than Joan is for Dave to see more details in the tree and thus more parts of the tree.  Whereas, perhaps, Joan can see the trunk of the tree, but only as a kind of blurry, vague brown shape, Dave can see a good bit of the texture and details of the bark, etc.  Joan isn't seeing those details, so Dave is seeing parts of the tree that Joan is not seeing.  It's really no different essentially than if Dave could see a particular tree branch that Joan couldn't see.  So I don't see how this difference is going to help in terms of explaining how one person can see the divine essence more than someone else.  The only way that there can be two people experiencing an object where one of them can see parts, or pieces, or aspects of the object that another person can't see is if the object is complex rather than simple, made of distinguishable, truly distinct parts.  But the divine essence is simple.  So it would seem that seeing the essence of God must be an all-or-nothing affair and not one that could admit of degrees.

Another problem with the idea of some people experiencing more of God than others is that God is the Supreme Good.  God himself in his fullness is the source of happiness.  It follows, then, that those who experience less of God experience less of the source of happiness and thus less happiness.  Some people have tried to account for this by comparing it to two cups of different sizes but both full of water.  Both cups are full--that is, both individuals are full of God and thus, presumably, fully happy, even though one person experiences less of God than the other.  But then do we want to say that it is no disadvantage or misfortune at all for a person to experience less of God?  This doesn't make sense, because, again, if God in his fullness is the source of happiness objectively, for all rational creatures, then less of God implies less happiness.  If there is more of God to be had than I am getting, therefore, as a rational being, I should want that.  I should be motivated to get more if I can, which implies some degree of dissatisfaction if I cannot.  Also, if we say that it is no misfortunate or cause of dissatisfaction at all to have less of God, then we are saying it is not better in any way, objectively, to have more of God.  How little of God is enough to fully satisfy a rational being?  How little of God can you get and still have "God"?  This whole line of questioning is, of course, absurd when we are talking about a simple essence, and yet this is what we are in for as soon as we admit of degrees of knowing the essence of God.  Another problem with this line of reasoning is that, I think, most people who would argue it would hold that even the human being who attains to the most clear vision of God is infinitely far from experiencing God with full clarity, or all of God.  That is, they would not say that it is a matter of being almost there, as if Fred just needs, say, a 5-degree increase to experience God fully, George needs a 7-degree increase, etc.  They would say that even the highest achiever in this regard is infinitely distant from knowing God fully and with perfect clarity.  (One of my favorite philosophers, Jonathan Edwards, expressed this by picturing the heavenly state as one where the saved are forever approaching closer and closer to a complete experience of God, gaining more and more of him throughout eternity, and yet always at an infinite distance from attaining that fullness.)  But if this is the case, then even the highest attainer of the vision of God is actually getting only an infinitesimal amount of God or an infinitesimal degree of clarity in their vision of God.  But how is this really any different from saying that he really gets nothing of God at all?  If I only experience creatures and miss the Beatific Vision entirely, I'm getting infinitely less than the fullness of God, so looking at things this way would seem to effectively gut the Beatific Vision essentially, making our experience of the essence of God really no different qualitatively than a person not experiencing it.  If our happiness is in God, this would imply that even the highest attainer of the divine vision must be infinitely miserable.  Heaven has become hell.

To say that we cannot experience the fullness of God because we are creatures, so that there will always be infinitely more of God beyond our capacity to experience, even in the Beatific Vision, is to say that what we do experience will always be only on the level of creaturely capacity and therefore, really, only a creaturely kind of experience.  We will not really experience the divine essence at all, but only whatever of himself he can manifest to a creaturely capacity.  But that's what our experience is like now, before the Beatific Vision, and it is precisely why we are not satisfied and are looking forward to something more in heaven.  God manifests himself in his creation, and we can experience that in many ways, but it always leaves us longing for more, because it is only on a creaturely level.  We want to move beyond that level and be brought to experience God himself in his own essence, which is infinitely beyond creaturely capacity.  If our experience will be limited to creaturely capacity--to time and space--then our experience will never be qualitatively different from what it is now.  We will ever only experience temporal-spatial, limited realities (albeit God manifesting himself in those realities to the level creaturely capacity will allow).  To be invited to experience the essence of God itself so that we can be fully satisfied with that which is infinite and not finite, requires us to be taken up infinitely beyond our creaturely capacities.  That is exactly what the Beatific Vision promises us.  But that promise is gutted by limiting that Vision to only creaturely capacity.

Degrees of Glory

So it would seem, as I said, that experiencing God's essence must be an all-or-nothing affair, not admitting of degrees.  And yet, as you can see from the second quote at the top of this article, the Ecumenical Council of Florence, in 1439, taught as official doctrine that the saints, either right after death or after being purged in purgatory, "are immediately received into heaven, and see clearly the one and triune God Himself just as He is, yet according to the diversity of merits, one more perfectly than another" (emphasis added).  Florence confirms what Pope Benedict XII had earlier defined, but it has added a statement that seems to contradict everything I've been saying in my last few paragraphs.  The Council seems to be affirming that there are degrees of experiencing the Beatific Vision based on the diversity of merits of different individuals.

And this has been a doctrine commonly taught by the theologians of the Church.  St. Thomas Aquinas teaches it in his Summa Theologica:

Of those who see the essence of God, one sees Him more perfectly than another. This, indeed, does not take place as if one had a more perfect similitude of God than another, since that vision will not spring from any similitude; but it will take place because one intellect will have a greater power or faculty to see God than another. The faculty of seeing God, however, does not belong to the created intellect naturally, but is given to it by the light of glory, which establishes the intellect in a kind of "deiformity," as appears from what is said above, in the preceding article.

Hence the intellect which has more of the light of glory will see God the more perfectly; and he will have a fuller participation of the light of glory who has more charity; because where there is the greater charity, there is the more desire; and desire in a certain degree makes the one desiring apt and prepared to receive the object desired. Hence he who possesses the more charity, will see God the more perfectly, and will be the more beatified.  (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, First Part, Question 12, Article 6, from The Summa Theologiæ of St. Thomas Aquinas, Second and Revised Edition, 1920. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Online Edition Copyright © 2017 by Kevin Knight. Embedded links removed, here and in the quotations below.)

But no created intellect can attain to that perfect mode of the knowledge of the Divine intellect whereof it is intrinsically capable. Which thus appears—Everything is knowable according to its actuality. But God, whose being is infinite, as was shown above (Article 7) is infinitely knowable. Now no created intellect can know God infinitely. For the created intellect knows the Divine essence more or less perfectly in proportion as it receives a greater or lesser light of glory. Since therefore the created light of glory received into any created intellect cannot be infinite, it is clearly impossible for any created intellect to know God in an infinite degree. Hence it is impossible that it should comprehend God. (Ibid., Article 7)

St. Thomas has even anticipated my objection to this idea from the doctrine of divine simplicity, and has responded to this objection:

Objection 2. Further, Augustine says (De Vid. Deum, Ep. cxlvii): "That is comprehended which is so seen as a whole, that nothing of it is hidden from the seer." But if God is seen in His essence, He is seen whole, and nothing of Him is hidden from the seer, since God is simple. Therefore whoever sees His essence, comprehends Him.  (Ibid., Article 7)

Reply to Objection 2. God is called incomprehensible not because anything of Him is not seen; but because He is not seen as perfectly as He is capable of being seen; thus when any demonstrable proposition is known by probable reason only, it does not follow that any part of it is unknown, either the subject, or the predicate, or the composition; but that it is not as perfectly known as it is capable of being known. (Ibid., Article 7)

St. Thomas has also answered my other question:  "Can a creature be brought by grace to directly experience the divine essence without being brought to know everything there is to know?"  He answers that those who attain the Beatific Vision do not know everything because, while they experience God's essence, they do not comprehend (that is, experience fully or with perfect clarity) God's essence.  So while all knowledge can indeed, in principle, be seen in the divine essence (and God himself knows all things by knowing his own essence), yet, because we do not fully know God, we do not gain all knowledge from the Beatific Vision:

The created intellect, in seeing the divine essence, does not see in it all that God does or can do. For it is manifest that things are seen in God as they are in Him. But all other things are in God as effects are in the power of their cause. Therefore all things are seen in God as an effect is seen in its cause. Now it is clear that the more perfectly a cause is seen, the more of its effects can be seen in it. For whoever has a lofty understanding, as soon as one demonstrative principle is put before him can gather the knowledge of many conclusions; but this is beyond one of a weaker intellect, for he needs things to be explained to him separately. And so an intellect can know all the effects of a cause and the reasons for those effects in the cause itself, if it comprehends the cause wholly. Now no created intellect can comprehend God wholly, as shown above (Article 7). Therefore no created intellect in seeing God can know all that God does or can do, for this would be to comprehend His power; but of what God does or can do any intellect can know the more, the more perfectly it sees God.  (Ibid., Article 8)

He raises an objection to this, which also touches another of my earlier concerns:

Objection 4. Further, the rational creature naturally desires to know all things. Therefore if in seeing God it does not know all things, its natural desire will not rest satisfied; thus, in seeing God it will not be fully happy; which is incongruous. Therefore he who sees God knows all things.  (Ibid., Article 8)

And his reply:

Reply to Objection 4. The natural desire of the rational creature is to know everything that belongs to the perfection of the intellect, namely, the species and the genera of things and their types, and these everyone who sees the Divine essence will see in God. But to know other singulars, their thoughts and their deeds does not belong to the perfection of the created intellect nor does its natural desire go out to these things; neither, again, does it desire to know things that exist not as yet, but which God can call into being. Yet if God alone were seen, Who is the fount and principle of all being and of all truth, He would so fill the natural desire of knowledge that nothing else would be desired, and the seer would be completely beatified. Hence Augustine says (Confess. v): "Unhappy the man who knoweth all these" (i.e. all creatures) "and knoweth not Thee! but happy whoso knoweth Thee although he know not these. And whoso knoweth both Thee and them is not the happier for them, but for Thee alone."  (Ibid., Article 8)

I confess I am not entirely satisfied with St. Thomas's defenses of the "degrees of glory" point of view or his responses to the objections to it.  I still do not see how he can avoid gutting the simplicity of God.  St. Thomas recognizes the problem here--that seeing God in "parts" would seem to contradict the divine simplicity.  But I don't find his solution--that God has no parts, it's simply a matter of some people seeing him "more clearly" than others--to solve the problem, because, as I argued earlier, to see something with greater or lesser degrees of clarity is really just a subspecies of seeing some but not all parts of a divisible or complex object.

I also find his response to the "people won't be happy if they don't know everything" objection unsatisfying.  His response seems to miss the point, nor do I find it to be true to human psychology.  It is obvious that human beings are full of curiosity.  We are explorers by nature.  We always want to know more and more about reality.  The reason for this is that we were made for God.  Only God is the Supreme Good, and God is the Fullness of Reality, the Supreme Being.  If happiness objectively consists in knowing the Supreme Being who is the Supreme Good, then anything other than that will be fundamentally dissatisfying.  That is why we cannot find final satisfaction in the experience of any creature.  As St. Augustine famously put it, "Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee."  Or, as Pascal put it:

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?

This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

St. Thomas's response to the objection is that it won't matter that we won't know everything because we will know God, and that will be enough.  But, in his view, it seems, we won't know all of God, but only part of him--an infinitesimal part of him, infinitely removed from full comprehension of God.  So how can we be satisfied?  Also, St. Thomas suggests that people don't really care to know the details of everything.  Really?  It seems to me that human nature is just the opposite.  Just imagine a human being who knew almost everything, but they became aware that there was just one thing they didn't know.  Wouldn't that human being find it to forever gnaw at him until he could learn about that one thing?  Again, the reason for this is because we are made to be filled only by the Supreme Being, the Fullness of Reality, in whose essence is seen and known all of reality.

I am very loath to disagree with St. Thomas on anything, since he is the premier theologian of 2,000 years of Catholic Church history.  However, St. Thomas's opinions are not, per se, the official doctrine of the Church.  Yes, the Church has endorsed St. Thomas's overall theological methodology, but not every single thing that St. Thomas taught.  For example, St. Thomas famously rejected the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of Mary and argues against it in the Summa (though, of course, this was centuries before it was a defined and required doctrine--and he did acknowledge Mary's total freedom from actual sin, which had been the universal position of the Church for centuries before him).  He also taught that heretics ought generally to be executed, which went beyond the official position of the Church on this point, even in the Middle Ages.  So, if the evidence drives me to it, I'm willing to argue with St. Thomas on certain points.  I'll come back to this later.  But I have a bigger problem in the Council of Florence, for this was an ecumenical council of the Church and, as such, its teachings are indeed authoritative and binding on the entire Church.

But I'll go further than that.  Not only is the doctrine of the "degrees of glory" binding and official per the Council of Florence, it actually has the support of reason as well, despite all I've said above.  So even if the Council of Florence hadn't taught this, I would be compelled by reason to acknowledge it and fit it into my system.  St. Thomas gets at this reason in what I quoted earlier (from the First Part, Question 12, Article 6, of the Summa):

Hence the intellect which has more of the light of glory will see God the more perfectly; and he will have a fuller participation of the light of glory who has more charity; because where there is the greater charity, there is the more desire; and desire in a certain degree makes the one desiring apt and prepared to receive the object desired. Hence he who possesses the more charity, will see God the more perfectly, and will be the more beatified.

Every one of us, as an individual, is unique.  Our life experiences are unique.  But it's through our life experiences that God prepares us by grace to experience the Beatific Vision.  Our experience of anything is necessarily colored by our perspective, and our perspective is shaped by our beliefs, our values, our memories, our previous experiences, etc.  Two individuals may experience the same present situation, and yet their experience of that situation will be different because of the different life trajectories that have brought them to that point.

Imagine two individuals:  Bob and Sam.  Bob's life has been much more difficult than Sam's in some ways.  He has faced greater challenges in his life than Sam has.  He has had to make a greater number of harder choices.  Both Bob and Sam die in a state of grace, but Bob has had to suffer much more to be faithful to Christ than Sam has.  And his sufferings have strengthened him in virtue in a way that Sam has not experienced.  His awareness and experience of God, accordingly, is overall richer than Sam's is.  (I'm not saying, by the way, that it is always the case that those who suffer more have a greater experience of God.  There is an enormous amount of complexity in such things.  My intent here is simply to give one particular example in order to address the theological issue under consideration.)  Both Bob and Sam eventually die, and they both attain to the Beatific Vision.  Will it not necessarily be the case that Bob's and Sam's experiences of that Vision will be different?  They must be different, because their life trajectories that have led them to that Vision have been so different.  In this case, it so happens that Bob has had a deeper preparation than Sam has for that Vision, and so his experience of the Vision is deeper.  In the language of the Council of Florence, both Bob and Sam "see clearly the one and triune God Himself just as He is, yet according to the diversity of merits, one more perfectly than another."  Or, to use St. Thomas's language, Bob, because of his experiences, his choices, and his deeper virtue and merits, when he reaches God, will have "more of the light of glory [and thus] will see God the more perfectly; and he will have a fuller participation of the light of glory [because he] has more charity; because where there is the greater charity, there is the more desire; and desire in a certain degree makes the one desiring apt and prepared to receive the object desired. Hence he who possesses the more charity, will see God the more perfectly, and will be the more beatified."

And this diversity in our experience of the Beatific Vision is not limited to a comparison of the degree of merit.  Even apart from the question of greater or lesser merit, every individual's life experiences and trajectory are very different, and so each person's experience of the Beatific Vision must be different since that experience will be the culmination of a particular life trajectory different from that experienced by other people.

Reconciling the Simplicity of the Divine Essence with Degrees of Glory: The Communion of Saints

So now comes the big question:  How can reconcile the two things I've been arguing throughout this article?  How can we reconcile, on the one hand, the idea that all those who attain the Beatific Vision will experience the very essence of God, when that essence is absolutely simple and so cannot admit of experience by degree or by parts, and, on the other hand, the idea that it must be so that different individuals will experience the Beatific Vision differently because of their diverse life experiences and trajectories?

I propose that an answer to this question can be found in the fact that, when we get to heaven, we will be unified not only with God but also with each other.  It is not just communion with God that will be perfected in heaven, but the communion of the saints as well.  Because of the communion of saints, we are not on our own as individuals.  It's not just "me and God."  It's "us and God."  We are enriched not only directly by our own personal fellowship with God, but also through the communion of all the saints.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it (#947):

947 "Since all the faithful form one body, the good of each is communicated to the others. . . . We must therefore believe that there exists a communion of goods in the Church. But the most important member is Christ, since he is the head. . . . Therefore, the riches of Christ are communicated to all the members, through the sacraments."⁴⁸⁰ "As this Church is governed by one and the same Spirit, all the goods she has received necessarily become a common fund."⁴⁸¹

This, of, course, has many manifestations and implications in the life of the Church.  It's the basis for the sacramental system, the intercession of the saints, our own prayers for each other on earth and for those who have died, indulgences, etc.  In general, it's a central part of our life as Christians and how God relates to his people.

And I think it has crucial ramifications for our current topic as well.  Think back to Bob and Sam.  When they get to heaven, their different life experience, levels of virtue and merit, etc., will necessarily give them different experiences of the Beatific Vision--at least, when we are considering what they themselves, by themselves, bring to the table.  But Bob and Sam will not only find perfect unity with God in heaven, but with each other as well.  They will share with each other all that they have and be enriched by each other.  Everyone else's life experiences and trajectories will enrich me when we get to heaven, and my experiences will enrich everyone else as well.  This allows us to talk about our experience of the Beatific Vision in two ways.  We can talk about each of our individual, unique experiences of the Beatific Vision that flow from our own peculiar life trajectories.  We can talk about the Beatific Vision from Bob's unique point of view as opposed to Sam's unique point of view.  And when we do that, we will note the differences, the diversity.  But then we must remember that Bob's and Sam's points of view will be enriched by each other's.  Bob's and Sam's experience of God will not be limited only to what they themselves, individually, bring to the table, as if the other person never existed.  Sam's contribution, in our scenario, will be, overall, less than Bob's (though that doesn't mean that Sam's unique perspective will not enrich Bob as well in some ways).  His reward in the Beatific Vision will be less.  But Sam's experience of the Beatific Vision will not be limited to what his individual reward would entail by itself, because his experience will be enriched by Bob's sharing his merits and reward with him.  What Sam may lack because of his own life trajectory, he will share in by grace in the communion of the saints in virtue of Bob's life trajectory.  And therefore, when all the sharing has been taken into account and everyone's individual perspective and experience have been enriched by that sharing, together they will all experience the single, indivisible divine essence which is one and which admits of no diversity.

As an analogy, think of a rainbow.  There are many colors in a rainbow, and yet the white light that makes the rainbow is only one.  All the colors individually are diverse, but when they are united, they become one.  And yet the individual frequencies and wavelengths of the colors remain in the white light.  As this article on study.com puts it, "White light is made up of all the colors and frequencies of the visible light spectrum on the electromagnetic spectrum."  Bob will still be Bob and Sam will still be Sam.  There will always be a fundamental difference between what Sam experiences from himself and what he gains from Bob, and we can always talk about the different perspectives of Bob and Sam (even when, through sharing, they are experiencing something together, still there will be the difference of Bob experiencing it as the fruit of his own life and Sam experiencing it as the fruit of Bob's life), just as we can always say that, while Christ shares his own divine life and Sonship with us, yet it will always be the case that Christ enjoys that divine life as a fruit of his own nature and merits while we will enjoy it only as a gift of grace through Christ.  In both cases, the unity of experience will not cancel out the different trajectories that create the different perspectives that arrive at that unity of experience.  Both sides of the equation will always remain true.  Sam's reward will always be greater, because, although he shares all that he has with Bob, who is enriched by the sharing, yet there is a greater merit and reward when one reaps the fruits of one's own labors (recognizing, of course, that even this is ultimately a gift of grace) than when one shares in the fruits of another's labors.  And yet, through the sharing, both will reap the benefits of each other's experiences and rewards, and will rejoice in the other.  Bob, though his personal reward is less and he has less merit, yet will rejoice fully in not only what he has achieved but what Sam has received and achieved as well, recognizing that God has given to all as he sees fit and his plan is fully and perfectly accomplished.  "God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked. That there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular" (1 Corinthians 12:24-27).

But let's return briefly, before we end, to St. Thomas's claim that we won't know everything because we won't comprehend God.  Is that the case?  In light of what we've seen, I think we can answer this by saying that, considering our own unique points of view rooted in our unique life trajectories, none of us by ourselves will have the complete picture.  However, if we factor in the communion of saints, what each of us as an individual lacks will be complemented by what others share, so that, in the end, we will gain a complete picture together.  I think we have to say this in order to preserve the fundamental unity of the divine essence and the intrinsic all-or-nothing nature of experiencing a simple essence.  To know the divine essence must necessarily involve an experience of the complete picture.  As creatures, of course we cannot comprehend God.  We are at an infinite distance from God.  And yet the whole point of our salvation is that we are raised beyond our creaturely capacities to experience the divine life and essence itself.  We truly get to experience God himself.  However, again, we will still remain creatures.  Even though we will share in God's experience of his own life, yet, considering the distinction of who we are and who God is and the different pathways by which we have arrived at the experience of the divine life (God by eternal nature and we through a temporal process of salvation by grace), we will always be able to speak of different perspectives as we experience the divine life.  There will always be a fundamental distinction between God experiencing his own life as his own life and we glorified creatures experiencing God's life, not as our own intrinsically, but as God's, shared with us freely and graciously.  Thus, for all eternity, we will rely wholly on God's grace and give him all the glory and recognize his infinite distance from us as creatures, even as we partake in the divine nature by grace and see God as he is, face to face, sharing in the Trinitarian life.  I don't know what St. Thomas would say to every point of this, but, again, even if he would disagree with some of it, it is permissible to disagree with him if the evidence calls for it.  But I'm not sure he ever considered the question from this point of view, so it is difficult to know how he would have responded to this line of reasoning.  We'll have to ask him that when we get to heaven!

So, in conclusion, by means of the communion of the saints we can reconcile these two teachings of the Church that appear, on the surface, to be in tension with each other.  We can preserve the unity and simplicity of the divine essence on the one hand, and thus the unity of all of our experiences of the Beatific Vision without creating a situation where we would have only partial experience of the divine essence or multiple, fundamentally different divine essences.  And, on the other hand, we can preserve the true diversity that must exist in the different perspectives of all those who attain to the Beatific Vision due to their different life experiences and trajectories.

Published on the feast of the First Martyrs of the Holy Roman Church.