Creation is a book proclaiming the Creator

THE METAPHYSICAL CONTENT OF PERCEPTION

“The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1)

The “metaphysical content of perception” is a power-packed phrase I came across in a book by Fulton Sheen, Peace of Soul. Sheen quotes Franz Werfel, who said: “The atheist…betrays his own psychology when he thinks he is unveiling the mystery; and his denial unwittingly becomes the proof of God by confirming, against his own troubled will, the tremendous and vital importance of the metaphysical content of perception” (p.49). I confess I have not read Franz Werfel, but perhaps he is implying that the more one explains life on purely material grounds the more obvious it becomes that he has simply omitted an explanation of its ultimate origin. As Chesterton once observed, mystery is not eliminated by meticulously explaining the processes of life because “nobody can imagine how nothing turned into something.” Dietrich von Hildebrand spoke of “man’s metaphysical problem” on a number of occasions, and the problem here is that man seeks an ultimate explanation for life.

Albert Einstein (commenting on our human perception of the universe) once said: “I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws” (Einstein: His Life and Universe, p. 386).

We are talking here about natural knowledge, what theologians call acquired knowledge, the knowledge gained from sense perception acted upon by human reason (ratiocination). The great Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, states: “The part played by the senses in the perception of beauty is even rendered enormous in us, and well nigh-indispensable…only sense knowledge possesses perfectly in man the intuitiveness required for the perception of the beautiful.” Father Thomas Dubay adds: “Creation is a book proclaiming the Creator. It is a book of beauty that our intellect reads, but through the passageways of our five senses.”

The Church proclaimed infallibly in Vatican Council I that God can be known by the light of human reason. It said: “The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certitude by the natural light of human reason from created things; ‘for the invisible things of him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made’ ” [ Rom 1:20] (Dogmatic Constitution “Dei Filius”).

St. Thomas Aquinas expounds further: “Our natural knowledge begins from sense. Hence our natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by sensible things. But our mind cannot be led by sense so far as to see the essence of God; because the sensible effects of God do not equal the power of God as their cause. Hence from the knowledge of sensible things the whole power of God cannot be known; nor therefore can His essence be seen. But because they are His effects and depend on their cause, we can be led from them so far as to know of God ‘whether He exists,’ and to know of Him what must necessarily belong to Him, as the first cause of all things, exceeding all things caused by Him” (Summa Theologica, First Part, Q 12).

We see, then, that faith in God is intrinsically linked to human reason. “Being Atheist, it is characteristic of the advancing wave that it repudiates the human reason….But the Faith and the use of the intelligence are inextricably bound up. The use of reason is a main part – or rather the foundation – of all inquiry into the highest things” (Hilaire Belloc).

Michael Corey, in discussing the possibility whether our “wondrous universe could have evolved by blind chance” quotes the distinguished University of Montreal psychiatrist Karl Stern as labeling such a view of the universe as “crazy.” He further quotes Stern as saying: “And I do not at all mean crazy in the sense of a slangy invective but rather in the technical meaning of psychotic. Indeed such a view has much in common with certain aspects of schizophrenic thinking” (God and the New Cosmology, p.220). Stern is basically maintaining that it is flat out irrational to believe the universe came about by chance or accident.

The metaphysical content of perception is God. The Bible confirms this: “For all people who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature; and they were unable from the good things that are seen to know the one who exists, nor did they recognize the artisan while paying heed to his works;…If through delight in the beauty of these things people assumed them to be gods, let them know how much better than these is their Lord, for the author of beauty created them. And if people were amazed at their power and working, let them perceive from them how much more powerful is the one who formed them. For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator” (Wisdom 13: 1-5, as edited).

Tom Mulcahy, M.A.

Note: In Catholic theology a distinction is made between natural and supernatural knowledge. The focus of this note has been natural or acquired knowledge.

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THE DEEP CONTEMPLATION OF NATURE

“The beauty of creation reflects the infinite beauty of the Creator and ought to inspire the respect and submission of man’s intellect and will.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 341)

Our five senses are windows that help us see more keenly the influx of God in His creation. Our concern here, first of all, is the alienation and despiritualizaion that takes place when we are separated – however unconsciously – from the beauty and rejuvenating power of God’s playground – the natural world. Our second concern is to learn how to contemplate in a more profound manner this beautiful world of nature created for our enjoyment and fascination.

A very accomplished spiritual writer, Dr. Susan Muto, defines contemplation as being “in the temple of the living God, sensing, believing, and experiencing that we are actually in his presence, that he is in us and we are in him.” Now one such temple of the living God is the natural world he created, where God is present, as theologians say, by His universal presence – that is, by His power, presence and essence. God’s presence in a baptized soul by sanctifying grace is a deeper, far more intimate presence, but in this note we are concentrating on His infallible presence in nature.

A great Catholic theologian, Father Edward Leen, expresses in one of his books just how intimate God’s presence is in nature: “God’s power is put forth in every pulse of organic and inorganic being, in repose and movement, in every slightest change. Since every being and every aspect of being is the effect of God’s creative or conservative action, God’s power and exercise of that power is present to and in everything to the very depths of its reality. Where anything, therefore, is, God must be. God, therefore envelops all reality, since he himself is the source of all that is real….” (The Holy Spirit, p.112, as edited).

Another great Catholic theologian, F.W. Faber, commenting on God’s universal presence, says: “[We can view God] by His unspeakable eminence in power, in wisdom, and in goodness. For we are never really outside of God nor He outside of us. He as it were flows into us….He distinctively permits and actually concurs with every exercise of thinking, loving, or acting. This influx and concourse of God, as theologians style it, ought to give to us all our lives long the sensation of being in an awful sanctuary, where every sight and sound is one of worship. Everything is penetrated with God….” (The Creator and the Creature, pp. 75-76, as edited).

And the great Catholic philosopher, Jacques Maritain, states: “The part played by the senses in the perception of beauty is even rendered enormous in us, and well nigh-indispensable…only sense knowledge possesses perfectly in man the intuitiveness required for the perception of the beautiful.” Father Thomas Dubay adds: “Creation is a book proclaiming the Creator. It is a book of beauty that our intellect reads, but through the passageways of our five senses.” Dubay laments that “if healthy infants begin life with an inquisitive interest in their surroundings and then grow to delight in attractive sights and sounds and experiences, how does existential boredom come about.”

The practice of contemplating nature is therefore of critical importance because it bonds us closer to God, the source of true goodness and happiness. But contemplation is an art, an acquired skill, which teaches us how to simply stop and smell the rose and encounter its created magnificence, wherein, like the poet, we are led to a deep appreciation of beauty and become even immersed in praise: “Glory be to God for dappled things/For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow…./He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:Praise Him” (Gerard Manley Hopkins).

HOW DO I CONTEMPLATE NATURE?

The deep contemplation of nature begins with a deep appreciation of God’s presence in nature (as discussed above). But the actual practice of this contemplation involves the profound application of your senses to the majestic presence of God’s creation, wherein through attention and repose, there is a heightened receptivity between you and the object being contemplated. Dietrich von Hilderbrand states: “Contemplation implies an inward penetration of the object, a communing therewith in awareness of everything it means, as though the object turned its full face to us. Again, contemplation represents a specifically restful attitude, in which we, free from the circumscribing function of acting as agent, actualize our entire being.” Von Hilderbrand adds: “The contemplative attitude – such as the contemplation of an object of great beauty and the pure, restful joy it yields – is free from that dynamic tension towards the future: it implies, not a hastening forward but a dwelling in the present” (Transformation in Christ, Chapter 6).

Contemplation, says Von Hilderbrand, “is ruled entirely by the thematicity of the object as such. The aspect of realization through my action is absent; the object acquires full thematic value.” When we are caught up in the transformative beauty of nature, which one may call an “intense spiritual activity” involving the “fullest actualization of the person,” the depth of this experience is greatly enhanced when we realize that what we are loving – God’s beautiful creation – is capable of returning our love in the Creator himself who is the source of the gifted experience.

It is said of Saint John of the Cross, the Church’s greatest mystical theologian, that he beheld “in creation a trace of the divine beauty, power, and loving wisdom, [so that he] could not easily resist the enchantment of nature.” It is known that he “would take the friars out to the mountains, … so that each might pass the day alone there ‘in solitary prayer’.” At “Segovia he had his favorite grotto, hollowed out by nature, high up on the back bluff overlooking a marvelous stretch of sky, river, and landscape. He grew to love this silent grotto and spent all the time he could spare there” (from The Collected Works of Saint John of the Cross).

There is, says Father Dubay, a profound relationship between beauty and ecstasy. Perhaps it was in the beautiful mountains of Spain that John of the Cross glimpsed in ecstasy what the pure vision of God in Heaven would be like, stating:

“Let us rejoice, O my Beloved, Let us go forth to see ourselves in Your beauty, To the mountain and the hill, Where the pure water flows: Let us enter into the heart of the thicket.

Let us so act, that, by the practice of this love, we may come to see ourselves in Your beauty in everlasting life.” That is: “Let me be so transformed in Your beauty, that, being alike in beauty, we may see ourselves both in Your beauty; having Your beauty, so that, one beholding the other, each may see his own beauty in the other, the beauty of both being Yours only, and mine absorbed in it. And thus I shall see You in Your beauty, and myself in Your beauty, and You shall see me in Your beauty; and I shall see myself in You in Your beauty, and You Yourself in me in Your beauty; so shall I seem to be Yourself in Your beauty, and You myself in Your beauty; my beauty shall be Yours, Yours shall be mine, and I shall be You in it, and You myself in Your own beauty; for Your beauty will be my beauty, and so we shall see, each the other, in Your beauty” (from The Spiritual Canticle).

Tom Mulcahy, M.A.

References: As already mentioned. The quotes from Father Dubay are from his book, The Evidential Power of Beauty, and he is the one who led me to the quote by Saint John of the Cross.

For practical tips on how to contemplate nature, see my post: