Friday, February 19, 2021

Matthias J. Scheeben and the Divinization of the Knowledge of the Glorified Believers

 

 

To behold God, we must either be God or participate in the divine nature.

 

Well then, my good Christian, your spiritual eye must also become divine, as it were, and your soul must partake of the divine nature, if you are to see God face to face. The veil which covers your weak eyes must be removed; the light of the Divine Sun must transform your sight, must make it sunlike, that you may boldly gaze at it. And this the Holy Spirit effects in you when, by grace, He makes you partake of the divine nature. St. Paul describes this in beautiful words: “But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.” (2 Cor. 3:18). St. John likewise says: “We shall be like to him [God] because we shall see him as he is.” (1 John 3:2). And the Son of God Himself says to His Father: “the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them; that they may be one, as we also are one.” (John 17:22).

 

In Heaven we shall know God as He knows Himself and as He knows us. “Then I shall know even as I am known,” says the Apostle. (1 Cor. 13:12). But we could not have knowledge like that which is peculiar to the Divine Nature unless we were really made to participate in that nature. And if, on the other hand, we are in reality to partake of the Divine Nature and are really to be deified, that must be verified by our being called to partake of the divine cognition . . . In the Beatific Vision grace makes us share in the divine happiness by raising us up to the immediate enjoyment of the infinite and highest good. As much as the Divine Nature is above ours, so much the divine beatitude must surpass that which is attainable by and suitable to our nature. The animal is not capable of the same enjoyment as man; it can only delight in the things of the senses. Man takes delight in spiritual things, in order, harmony and beauty, especially as these are found in truth and virtue. In like manner, the joy and beatitude of God has an object accessible only to Himself, whose beauty and loveliness eye has not seen, nor ear heard and which has not entered into the heart of man, but is evident only to God Himself, to His own infinitely good, glorious, beautiful being. But while God makes us, through His Holy Spirit, partakers of His Divine Nature, He opens to us also the mystery of His happiness. He calls us to the enjoyment of that happiness and makes us His associates in it. And He possesses Himself by His nature, so He wills to give Himself to us through grace. And as He, by our participation in His nature, places us upon His throne and introduces us into His light, so He wills also to let us feast at His table. By reason of our nature, He might have left us standing at a respectful distance before His door. There we might have admiringly contemplated the greatness of His works, the beauty of His mansion, and this would have been for us a joy and an honor as great as our poor hearts might desire. But He wills to manifest to us His own beauty, in the enjoyment of which He, with the Son and the Holy Spirit, is eternally happy; that beauty which unites in itself the real and possible beauties of His works, with all their wonderful diversity; that beauty which angels desire to behold, one ray of which is sufficient to inebriate all created spirits with joy. (Matthias J. Scheeben, The Glories of Divine Grace: A Fervent Exhortation to All to Preserve and to Grow in Sanctifying Grace [Charlotte, N.C.: TAN Books, 2000], 33, 35-36)

 

For a good book on the Catholic understanding of theosis, see:


David Meconi and Carl E. Olson, eds., Called to Be the Children of God: The Catholic Theology of Human Deification