Catechism of the Catholic Church Study 27
Desire is distinct from will. While will is the principle of motion in rational creatures, desire is an attraction which has potential to affect the will. I hypothesize that desire has a relationship with happiness and suffering, or positive and negative moral experiences. In general, sensitive creatures avoid suffering and tend toward happiness. Suffering may be defined as the experience when a desire is not fulfilled and contradicted. Happiness is thus the experience when the desire is fulfilled. It seems to me that there is a hierarchy of desires. With the desire for God being the deepest or highest desire in mankind.
As such, the
fulfillment or contradiction of this desire constitutes the greatest happiness
or suffering. Yet this law of desire does not find itself in the necessary
reality but seems to me a product of God’s creative design. For it seems
logically possible for me that a being experiences happiness and suffering
irrespective of desire. So without desire, beings can still move, feel
happiness, suffering, and so on. Yet the desire for God is instilled within man
perhaps to ease him to move towards God. I imagine that if man has no desire
for God, then he has no desire for anything at all. The desire for God is what
drives man to live and reach for anything at all. As man is inherently designed
by God to seek Him and reach Him.
If the hypothesis of
desire is correct, then we now know why hell is the worst of all suffering and
pain, because it is the contradiction of man’s most fundamental desire, thus it
is the contradiction of his very purpose and existence. While it is most
reasonable why heaven, which is union with God would be the greatest of all
happiness. Of course, as written before, it is possible that God is not the
greatest desire of man. Man may desire something else more than he desires God
and thus God will simply be “truth” but not happiness to man.
As such, that the Holy
Church teaches that God is the truth and happiness to man is an article
of the faith, not just something that can be reasoned from necessity. This
desire for God, is not only God’s instrument of justice but is also His
instrument of mercy. For it is through this desire that God calls everyone to
repentance and thus to salvation. Without the desire, or the attraction to God,
how can man ever reach God? The desire for God is thus the way such that man
has a natural capacity for God, otherwise there will never be any motion
towards God or anything at all.
Man’s basic dignity is
based on this purpose of man, communion with God. As such man is a most noble
creature no matter what or who he is. The invitation to converse with God is
addressed to man as soon as he comes into being, that is since he is conceived
in his mother’s womb. Even though as an embryo man has not developed his
intellect, the natural graces of God has existed in his soul. This is because
every person is created by love and for love, the love of God. If man does not
acknowledge this love freely and surrenders himself to the Creator, he cannot
fully live according to the truth. For the truth is that love of God which
creates and sustains man. To reject that love is akin to rejecting one’s own
existence, and the justice of God shall answer that sin.
It is in fact
perfectly reasonable to deduce that God is the Supreme Happiness of all mankind
and in fact any rational creature. This has been elaborated and proven in my canon
of writings. As such, it is important to know that it is not an unattainable
truth that God is the ultimate happiness of creatures. Rather it is in fact the
necessary culmination of natural theology that God is the ultimate happiness,
thus paving the path for divine theology or supernatural theology.
Comments
Post a Comment