Commonplace Book 12/5/18

A quote from this morning's theological read, p. 58, The Light of Christ by Father Thomas Joseph White OP

. . . The traditional Catholic arguments for the existence of God are not geometrical proofs derived from self-evident axioms, but are something more elevated and deal with a subject matter that is more elusive.  They function primarily as intellectual discernments about the nature of reality as we perceive it all the time.  They begin from things around us so as to perceive the necessity of a transcendent origin, God the creator, who remains hidden and hence not immediately subject to the constraints of our "clear and distinct ideas."  That is to say, thinking about God is realistic and philosophical, but it also seeks to acknowledge the numinous character of our existence and the ways that our limited, finite being points toward something transcendent, necessary, and eternal, which is the cause of our existence.  Thinking about God in this sense is difficult for the human mind, not because theology is soft-headed, but simply because the subject matter is so elevated and not intrinsically capturable in the way mathematics or empirical topics are.