Our perfection will consist in – not satiety, but – the perpetual stability of our strainings toward & progressions in Love’s relative perfections
Without both of its poles (of generated opposites), wouldn’t the analogia devolve into the aequivocitas entis?
Trinitologically & cosmotheandrically, without our Christo-logic, wouldn’t the analogical & participatory without the unitive & perichoretic stall in a radical apophasis?
For, aside from what is implicitly dissimilar, quidditatively, the Christo-logic of hypostatic identity otherwise reveals those Who are explicitly similar, unitively — the Trinity & the Totus Christus, i.e. the F, S, HS & us!
As our final end, what we innately desire is to see & know God.
But, do we necessarily innately desire to see God in this and/or that mode, i.e. to know Him in this and/or that formally distinct way of knowing? or to know God in this and/or that proportion, i.e. know Him to this and/or that degree?
What mode or degree of knowing God would constitute attainment or rest one’s desires? Of what might perfection consist for the supremely mutable human person?
If our most essential desire is to know God & that desire can be fulfilled through different ways of knowing, ways that are formally distinct in how it is that we uphold the divine things we hope for … and
if, in all of those ways of knowing, whether mediated or immediate or other qualitative modes yet unknown, there will remain longings, desirings & strainings ahead toward — & loving progressions in — ever more of the good, then
perfection for supremely mutable persons will consist in – not satiety, but – an unfrustrateable perpetual stability of those strainings toward & progressions in relative perfections.
If, as Scotus notes per Richard Cross — “God is no more ineffable than anything else, as literally everything’s ineffable!“ — then, epektasis no less refers to our interpersonal communions with our loved ones than it does to our eternal communing with God.
When Aquinas uses “comprehension” to refer to our eternal beatitude, he uses it in the sense that we will comprehensively behold that, interminably, we remain formally united with the Trinity, Who, themselves, are that otherwise separate substance, Who is united to our intellect as their form.
Thus united to us, the indwelling Presence is both God, our End, Whom we’ll forever increasingly understand, as well as God, the Means, whereby we’re made to thus finitely understand.
Initially, we only partly apprehend or inchoately behold that we’re formally united with the True, Beautiful & Good as the very ground of our value-pursuits of truth, beauty & goodness. I think here of our tacit dimensions, illative sense, connaturality & unrestricted desire.
God is radically knowable precisely because He is supremely unknowable. Epektasis is about being united to & communing with God.
Less can be said, really, than has been asserted traditionally about our unique eschatological experiences, e.g. in terms of operating (loving) in different modes at various levels with specific capacities, wearing different crowns.
Still, with Ratzinger, we “recognize the task of enlarging the vessel of our own life. “
“But … this enlargement is not meant to ensure that in the world to come we have the largest barn possible in which to store our wealth, but rather to be able to distribute all the more to our fellows.”
“In the communion of the body of Christ, possession can only consist in giving, the riches of self-fulfillment in the passing on of gifts.”
“It is sufficient to know that God gives each and every person his fulfillment in a way peculiar to this or that individual, and that in this way each and all receive to the uttermost.”
“Heaven is ‘reward’ in that it is a response to this life-way, this biography, this particular person with his actions and experiences.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology:_Death_and_Eternal_Life
Some Great Quotes
brings about their realization, and that is moral conversion. Finally, among the values discerned by the eye of love is the value of believing the truths taught by the religious tradition, and in such tradition and belief are the seeds of intellectual conversion.”
Theological Aspects of Bernard Lonergan’s “Method in Theology” by Giovanni B. Sala, S.J
“It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that God’s supra–theophanic self–gift destroys rather than perfects the heavenly reality of theophany. Boersma is concerned that a non–theophanic beatific vision undermines the role of the theophanic, and so of Christ. But, as we have seen, Aquinas treats the new creation, and especially the incarnate Christ, as thoroughly theophanic. What knowledge of and through the divine essence provides, which no theophany itself can provide, are the resources for perfect knowledge of this new creation as precisely what it is, namely, the theophanic manifestation of God. It is in light of these supra–theophanic resources that the saint beholds Christ and his Kingdom, truly knows them for what they are, and so gives high praise to God.
While in this life we perceive by faith, not without a measure of indirectness, that God is manifest in his creation, in the next we shall truly know the new creation, and especially the humanity of Christ, precisely as theophanic, that is, by way of an immediate vision that transcends the theophanic and so brings the theophanic not to its ending but to its eternal significance.”
Thomas Aquinas, the Beatific Vision and the Role of Christ: A Reply to Hans Boersma by Simon Francis Gaine
However, when vertical finality is admitted in addition to horizontal finality, one allows for the Lonerganian reply that we have one natural desire fulfilled in a twofold manner: knowledge of God as Creator corresponding to our natural potency, and knowledge of God as Trinity corresponding to our obediential potency. ‘God as Creator’ and ‘God in God’s full Trinitarian life’ are not two materially different objects of knowledge; they are two modally or formally distinct ways of knowing one material object in which one of the formally distinct objects sublates the other. Further, each formal way of knowing the one material object reaches its own sort of ‘rest.’
Lonergan and Rahner on the Natural Desire to See God, Jeremy Blackwood, M.A., Doctoral Student, Marquette University
For Jean Daniélou’s interpretation of epektasis compared to those from the Eastern monastic tradition.
On the Interpretation of the Theory of Perpetual Progress. Taking into Account the Testimony of Eastern Monastic Tradition by Gheorghe Ovidiu Sferlea
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gheorghe-Sferlea
re: reconciling Aquinas’ light of glory & Nyssen’s epektasis, especially re what Aquinas did & did not mean by “comprehension”
Thomas Aquinas on Gregory of Nyssa’s Epektasis: An Impasse or Paradox? By Aaron J Weisel
re: reconciling Aquinas & Nyssen re the beatific vision
Thomas Aquinas, the Beatific Vision and the Role of Christ:
A Reply to Hans Boersma by Simon Francis Gaine
https://ojs.uclouvain.be/index.php/theologica/article/view/16613
I list the above “Catholic” resources from Cardinals Daniélou & Ratzinger & the Rev Dr Simon Gaine OP to provide a reference point for how our Catholic study group approaches some of the tensions between Nyssen & Aquinas. We do so charitably, ie presupposing their reconciliation.
Dear Lord,
Three things I pray;
To see thee more clearly,
Love thee more dearly,
Follow thee more nearly,
Day by day.
Re epektasis & beatific vision, beyond the finite modal distinctions re how we might variously see God, doesn’t knowing the true Essence = to love & follow Him?