Catholic Apologetics Online

Choose a topic from Vol 2:

God

Man

Religion

The Religion of the Bible

The Christian Faith

A Definite Christian Faith

The Protestant Reformation

The Truth of Catholicism

The Church and the Bible

The Dogmas of the Church

The Church and Her Moral Teachings

The Church in Her Worship

The Church and Social Welfare

Comparative Study of Non-Catholic Denominations

To and From Rome

Divine revelation

74. You claim that not only is religion necessary to man, but that he needs a revealed religion?

Yes. The world of mysterious reality proper to God is supernatural and inaccessible to us by our own unaided natural powers--a vast ocean of being, as Fr. Sertillanges well remarks, for which we have no boat, and in which all created reality is a kind of lost island on which we live. Revelation by God is necessary if we are to know truths belonging to that mysterious supernatural order of being.

75. The only source of all our knowledge is the visible and tangible universe about us.

The universe is the natural source of natural knowledge. But it is not the source of all knowledge. God Himself, who is distinct from all the natural things He has created, and supernatural in comparison with them, can make known to man in a supernatural way certain information about Himself and His relationships with men which could not be naturally acquired. In short, whilst the created universe is the source of natural knowledge, God Himself is the source of supernatural knowledge. He has stepped in, as it were, and given men information they could never have attained had He not so acted.

76. Even revelation could come only through man's natural powers.

That is true. But we must not confuse the means by which information comes to us, and the nature and source of that information. I could transmit information to you by telephone. But the information given, as the person giving it, would be in a totally different and higher order of being than the merely material and mechanical instrument used to convey it.

77. It would have to be a spiritual experience coining to us through our senses.

That would be necessary were I, on your own level and in the same order of being as yourself, revealing something to you. I would have to speak, and you would have to hear. For all our normal communications of knowledge are through the senses. But God could communicate to the soul, not as united to the body and the senses, but as an intelligence, whatever ideas He may please. He could do this by immediate interior inspiration, without the senses intervening at all. Of course, in reflecting upon these ideas the soul would use the brain, and try to formulate them in words however inadequately, drawing analogies from sense-data. Any knowledge of supernatural reality thus infused by God, whilst infallibly true, would necessarily remain mysterious to us.

NEXT TOPIC »

MORE FROM VOLUME 2

• About the Author
• Introduction
  - Rev. Charles Mortimer Carty
• Preface
  - John Gregory Murray
  Archbishop of Saint Paul
• Forward
  - Dr Leslie Rumble, MSC

Prefer a PRINT version?

Copyright