JPI 837
Knowledge of God in the Fathers
Within Catholic theology, it is generally acknowledged that man with his reason is able to know the existence of God; this, however, does not mean to grasp His inner Essence or to reach the vision of God as He is in Himself. This course will address important questions: While Catholic dogma affirms that man can see God, in what does this ‘vision of God' precisely consist, what is its real object; what are its limits? Does this vision deal only with eschatology, or it is an experience "inchoately" possible for man here and now, even if through the speculum (mirror) of faith? What have "mystery" and "mysticism" meant from the very beginning of the Christian tradition? Does the man desire to see God? Is this vision necessary in order to become a perfect human person? These questions have been at the center of a theological debate during the twentieth century. For different reasons, biblical scholars and dogmatic theologians have often called into question the centrality of "vision" for the Christian understanding of Revelation and Salvation. This centrality, it is argued, is not biblical but is the result of the influence of platonic/Hellenistic mysticism on the Fathers of the Church, who played the largest role in contaminating the "purity" of the Gospel. The biblical vision of salvation, it is claimed, centered more on the listening to God's Word, which engages a dialogue with man within history, than in a "curious" desire of seeing. The goal of the seminar is to show: 1) that the affirmative answers to the questions above have deep roots lying in both the Old and New Testaments of Scripture itself and 2) how the Fathers achieved--more or less successfully--a creative synthesis of the genuine biblical inheritance with the contemplative ideal of Greek tradition. Focus will include study of biblical theophanies, especially of the Exodus; the complex origins of Christian mysticism, paying attention to both the platonic and the biblical understanding of "mystery"; Philo of Alexandria's exegesis of the biblical passages studied, as well as insights drawn from Origen and Gregory of Nyssa.
