{150} (cont’d)

V

What now remains is to clarify the point at which we have arrived, in order to recognize that we have reached God qua God. It is not {151} a question of inference, but an examination of where we are in the intellectual understanding of the way of religation.

By way of religation we have arrived at the determination of my relatively absolute being, of my I, thanks to the power of the real. This power is founded on the constitution of reality itself. Whence it follows that this way is not anthropological or cosmic, but is, at one and the same time, and through elevation the way of reality. Through this way we discover an absolutely absolute reality which, as we have just seen, is the fundament as much of the power of the real as of the very reality of the things in which that power is founded. This fundament is a fundament which is formally constitutive of reality, and therefore of my I. Thus, being formally present in real things, the absolutely absolute reality, i.e., God, has two aspects. First, the aspect according to which by its own nature it is foundational of the power of the real; and second, that aspect which concerns the power of the real as founded in God.

1. The absolutely absolute reality is the fundament of the power of the real. Now, the power of the real is reality as dominant and as ultimate, possibilitating and impelling. Therefore, absolutely absolute reality has at one and the same time and by elevation these three moments. In other words, it is God qua God. Having reached this point, we can well perceive how different it is from the terminus of the cosmic and anthropological ways. It is only God qua God that is the reality which is absolutely ultimate, the fountain of all the possibilities which man has to be able to live, and on which he supports himself in order to be. None of these moments considered in isolation comprises what we all understand by “God”, nor what {152} this term means in the entire history of religions. That is why the Theós of Aristotle is not God properly speaking. One might think then about the famous distinction of Pascal between the God of the philosophers and the God of the religions. He is correct, but only partly correct. First, because we need to be told in what the God of religions consists; and Pascal does not tell us. Second, because the God of religions is the God which one always reaches philosophically as long as philosophy does not buttress itself with Greek notions. The way of religation has philosophically reached an absolutely absolute reality which is an ultimate, possibilitating and impelling reality, that is to say, the God of religions qua God. This requires more detailed examination.

When we say that God is the fundament of the power of the real, “fundament” certainly designates some form of causality, but not one of the four causes of classical metaphysics. By repeated study of the distinctions between these four different types of causes, we tend to think that they exhaust all the possible types of causality. But much more importantly, we loose sight of causality as such. From my point of view, causality is the functionality of the real qua real. Taken in its fullness, this concept of functionality is liberated from the idea of “influence”, and most importantly, leaves open the type of causality which may intervene in each case. “The” reality of the real, as its own physical moment, is founded on the absolutely absolute reality; therefore, a functionality of “the” reality with respect to God exists. But this does not prejudge, even remotely, the type of this functionality. Let us consider it.

A) To say that God is the fundament of the reality of {153} things does not formally imply that God “makes” all things, that He is their efficient cause, or even that He is their creator. Not all the gods of the various religions have that character of creator, but they do not thereby stop being ultimate realities. Yes, the Christian God is creator. But on this point I share the thinking of Duns Scotus, that creation is a truth of faith, but not of reason. The foundational ultimateness of God simply means the following: in real things “the” reality is a physical moment of them. And this moment would not exist unless founded on the presence of God in them, as a formal constituent of their reality. Without God, things would not be real. God is, then, the fundament of the ultimateness of reality and of its power. What kind of fundamentation this may be, is a question which remains open for the time being.

B) God is the fundament which allows reality to be possibilitating to man. All human possibilities are inscribed in reality. Consequently, as fundament of the character of reality, God is not just one more possibility, but the possibility of possibilities. He is the absolute possibility, another kind of fundamentation. That is why man, by the power of the real, finds himself turned towards God as absolute possibilitator: this is God as donor of possibilities. To be sure, just as in the case of ultimateness, this possibilitating character of God remains open to subsequent determinations. Primarily and formally it does not mean omnipotence, providence, or mercy. These are truths of faith, but not of reason. They are truths founded in what formally refers to God in a primary way. In this respect the only thing which primarily fits God qua God is to be absolute possibility. Only by being this, can He be what faith {154} says about Him: merciful, etc. It is the possibility of making the I from God, or to put it better, the possibility of being from God.

C) Finally, God is fundament of reality as the impelling power in the construction of my I; He is the fundament of the forcefulness to be my I. The question remains open as to the type of this forcefulness. Of course, it is not mere physical “force”: God is not the prime mover of my life. Nor is He an obligation; any obligation presupposes the forcefulness to be I. The character of forcefulness is given by the nature of that to which we are forced, viz. to be my I. My I is to be relatively absolute and God is absolutely absolute reality. For this reason man, it has usually been said, is a “small God”. But it is necessary to say in what his “smallness” consists; and this is not generally forthcoming. To my way of thinking, it consists in that his absolute being is acquired and therefore is relative. “Small” means “relative”: man is a relative God. And so, to say that reality is an impelling power means, on the one hand, that the absolute is “in reality” absolutely inexorable, by being now intrinsically supported and founded on the absolutely absolute reality in which God consists. God, in this sense, is the firm support of my being, of my I. The Semites called God a firm rock. This subtle and inexorable unity of the relative and the absolute, present in the absolute of my being, is, in a certain way, a dynamic unity since it is that which impels man to make his own absolute being.

As an absolutely absolute reality, God is the fundament of reality as radical ultimateness, possibility of possibilities, and forcefulness of my realization as absolute being. These are three different ways of {155} fundamentation, and therefore of the functionality of the real with respect to God. They cannot be reduced to any of the four classical causes, and still less, to be juxtaposed among themselves. On the contrary: by being an absolutely absolute reality, God is, at one and the same time and formally, the ultimate, possibilitating and impelling reality. Because of this He is God qua God.

Here we have the foundational character of divine reality. What is the nature of this power of the real insofar as it is founded in God?

2. The power of the real, as we have seen, is founded in God as formally and constitutively present in real things. Which means that in some way the power of the real intrinsically and formally incorporates, as a moment of its own, the power of the absolutely absolute reality, that is, the power of God, or better yet, God as power. How does it do so? Certainly, the power of the real is not formally the power of God, just as a real thing is not formally God. But the power of the real “transports” the power of God, transports God as power: real things are, on that account, the “seat” of God as power. Insofar as it is founded in God, the power of the real is “vehicle” and “seat”. What is this double character?

God (I constantly repeat it) is present in things formally constituting them in their reality; and only because of this, is there in things a power of the real as determinant of my absolute I. Therefore, the mode of presence of God in the power of the real consists in this power being a “manifestation” of the absolutely absolute reality. Furthermore, to be a “vehicle” formally consists in being “manifestation”. The power of the real manifests {156} God as power in things, precisely when determining my absolute being. Also, since the power of the real is founded, as I say, in the reality of God present formally and constitutively in real things, it turns out that what this manifestation manifests is precisely this constituting presence. And this presence, as manifested in the power of the real, is what makes things be the “seat” of God as power. Real things and the power of the real are not God, but they are more than mere “effects” of God. Formally they are what I shall call deity. To be seat is to be deity. Deity is not, indeed, a pseudo-divine vaporous character, but the very reality of things which as power manifests their formal constitution in God. The Greeks used to say that Nature, the Phýsis, is divine, is theíon, because according to them it is immortal and inexhaustible, in other words, always young. This is not admissible today from any point of view. Nonetheless, with this notion the Greeks touched something essential which has not found its proper place in philosophy: the character of things which are neither gods nor divine, but still, have something of this character, viz. they are formally deity. Real things qua real are the deity which manifests God, who is in them formally, constituting them. And because of this character of deity they are the manifestation, the vehicle of God.

Religation is the radical dimension of my substantive reality qua personal, that is, insofar as that reality constructs its I, its being. From this follows that with the experience of this construction one is experiencing the power of the real, and consequently the power of deity (here experience is physical demonstration of reality). Therefore, it is an experience which profiles not only the idea of God, but {157} His absolutely absolute reality insofar as it is manifested under the form of deity. And this experience is the radical experience of the human person insofar as it constructs the figure of its own I.

This experience, as I indicated a few pages earlier, is not only individual, but also historical. History is, in this respect, a vast historical experience of deity, indeed, of real things as the seat and vehicle of God as power. We must not understand this experience as the primary radical form of experience; without personal experience historical experience would not be possible. But historical experience is the one that gives the experience of the deity its ultimate concrete profile. Of course, that experience has continued to adopt concrete forms throughout the history of the world’s religions. This theme will be reserved for other studies. (An allusion was made to it in Appendix 1 dedicated to the power of the real.) And thus, slowly but firmly, history continues to profile the figure of deity. We must add that this figure is not exhausted in the life and the history which has transpired until now.

Let us summarize: God qua God is the absolutely absolute reality as ultimateness, possibilitation and impellence, formally present in real things and constituting their reality. That reality is eo ipso deity and manifestation of God, not in a general and abstract way, but in all the concretion history reveals to us. Such is the reality of God, justified by the way of religation.

As a sort of conclusion to this point, let us emphasize some aspects of what we might call the role of God in life as construction of my I, of my relatively absolute being.


{158}

VI

What I understand by the role of God in the construction of my I is the way the fundamentality of this construction is exercised on the part of God. Strictly speaking, the subject was discussed throughout the earlier part of the book, but once again, it may be useful to explicitly disengage this aspect of the question for detailed examination.

1. Let us return to the conclusion we have reached. Religation religates us to the power of the real, or rather, the power of the real keeps us religated. This is a power that, in one of its aspects, is founded in God, who is formally present in real things, which are, therefore, deity. By virtue of this, that which in religation religates us is God, through the deity of the power of the real. Now, among these real things my own substantive reality is present. In it, consequently, God is also constitutively present. And it is this presence which, in a religating way, determines the construction of my relatively absolute being, of my I. Therefore, the presence of God in my substantive reality is not merely a real presence in itself. If it were just this, God would be but a mere object among others, perhaps the most sublime of all objects, but nothing more; and therefore the most that I could do would be to direct myself to Him. This is not the case. God is not an object, but precisely and formally the terminus of religation. I am not directed, but religated to Him. Therefore, God is not an object; prior to being an object and in order to be able to be one, He is fundament. He is foundational in my destination to be absolute. Here I consider fundamentality only with respect to human life; in subsequent paragraphs I shall refer to the fundamentality of everything real as such. To be fundament is {159} more than to be an object. The object qua object is mere objectum, something which is “in front” of me as that which it is, in and by itself, and therein exhausts its mode of presence. On the other hand, a fundament is a reality which certainly manifests itself to me, not “in front” of me, but “in” my intelligence, not only insofar as what it is in and by itself, but as far as it is fundamenting my entire life. We shall anchor this difference terminologically with the expressions reality-object and reality-fundament. To be fundament is not a relation extrinsically added to the reality-object. That is to say, it is not the case that something is present as an object in and by itself, and that “later”, in addition, it may be something with which I act in my life. No. In the reality-fundament its very way of presence in me is a fundamenting presence; so that fundamentality is an intrinsic moment to the way by which that particular reality is present to me. Therefore, there are not two moments, one of reality-object and another of fundamentality, but only one single type of presence: reality-fundament. This in no way prevents that presence from being a presence of reality in and by itself: in reality-fundament we have present “at one and the same time” reality-fundament and reality-fundament. Indeed, this is the case of the reality of God. God is present to me as reality-fundament. Therefore, my “relation” with Him is not a theoretical “consideration”, but a vital “intimation”. Only the fundament is the terminus of religation. The distinction between reality-object and reality-fundament is absolutely essential. Consequently, God is fundament and only by being so can He become an object for me at any moment. By being fundament, His presence in me is in a certain way dynamic; this is the religating dynamism. It is not a mere real presence, {160} but an unfolding of the self-same religating fundamentality in the constitution of my I itself, i.e., of my life. And this unfolding is precisely what I understand by the function of God in my life.

2. God is formally and constitutionally present in my reality. And since this reality is the one that makes my absolute being, it follows that the presence of God in life, in my I, concerns my whole being in a radical and total way. Because of this, God is not a resource which man needs to accomplish his life or repair its fissures. On the contrary, He is the constituent of my being and, therefore, is the fundament of the plenitude of life in all its being. And I am not talking about the God of Christianity, but of God qua God. The God of Christianity is but the definitive revelation of God qua God. As a consequence of this, Christianity addresses the plenitude of life, primarily and formally, not by the “Christian” (so to speak) nature of its God, but because in Him the nature of God qua God is expressed. And conversely, this idea of the Christian God would be impossible if God as such were not a formal constituent of the plenitude of life. Likewise, God is not primarily that to which man directs himself as “another” world and “another” life, but is precisely that which constitutes this life and this world. The “"other” world is a matter of faith and not of pure reason. That is why, if one wishes to speak about a return to God (we shall deal with atheism in the next Chapter) it is unnecessary to be a prophet in order to say that man will return to God, not to escape from this world and from this life, from others and from himself, but on the contrary to be able to maintain himself in being, to be able to continue being what he will inexorably never cease to be {161} and must be: a relatively absolute I. Therefore, the function of God in life is, above all, a function which addresses itself to the plenitude of life and not to its indigence. God is not primarily a "help” for acting but a “fundament” for being. In this manner, God is fundament of life in a triple way: as Author, God makes me make myself, be myself; as Actor, God is the outline of my life and of my history; as Agent, God makes me act. Consequently, God is the fundament of my freedom, of the outline of my life, and of the carrying out of my own acts.

3. This formal constituting presence of God in the life of man, as plenitude, may seem to diminish the distinction between God and man, because on the one hand, I am real while being so in God, and on the other hand, I am not God but my I. The same occurs in the case of any real thing, as we shall see in the next paragraph; but here I limit myself to man. In actuality, the matter does not have anything to do with tracing out boundaries between God and man, as if here were my I and God were in front of me and outside of me. The “distinction” between man and God does not mean the drawing of a "boundary” which circumscribes two precincts: to distinguish is not to reduce to two juxtaposed and confronted areas, the terrain of God and the terrain of man; it is not “frontier building”. On the contrary, precisely because man is not God, it is God who is making that man not be God, and that this “not-being-God” be a way of being “in” God. With all due metaphysical rigor, this structure is not a limitation, but on the contrary, an implication with a special character: a constituting tension, a tension which I would call theological tension. I have repeatedly pointed out that in man there is always the radical restlessness about his own relatively absolute being. Now we understand why: {162} because human life is a constitutive and constituting theological tension. That my I may be absolute does not mean that in itself it has nothing to do with the real world and with God; on the contrary, it means that it has to do with everything, including God himself, but in an absolute way, that is to say, divinely. That is, I have to deal with God divinely. Therefore, the function of God in life is not only to be its plenitude, but also to be the dynamic tension in the march towards the absolute of my being. This is the reason why, when it is said that man has a spark of the divine, a truth is expressed; but it was necessary to rigorously conceptualize what this “spark” is. It is not a vague similarity of properties, but the constituting tension of my relatively absolute being in the absolutely absolute reality: the constituting tension of my I as something absolute in God. It is an aspect of that which is theological in man.

There are two important consequences:
a) We are dealing with a theological tension constituent of my I. Hence, as I indicated above, it is not God who makes my I; I build my own I. But God is the one who “makes me make” my I, my being. That is the properly dynamic aspect of this tension. God is not mere natura me naturans, but realitas me reificans. Because to make my I is to constitute my reality in the figure of my being, i.e., to make that my reality be realitas in essendo. This making that I may be my I, that I be my relatively absolute being, is essential to the function of God. God is formally quoad nos the absolutely absolute reality which “makes things be” relatively absolute. God makes my human reality build its I in its own life.

b) Since any act, however minuscule and untranscendent it may be by virtue of its content, contributes to the building of my I and my {163} relative absolute being, it becomes clear that any act is formally a taking of a position with respect to God. Because of this, insofar as I am the constructor of my I, no act, however modest in content, is untranscendent: everything has the transcendence of constituting me in God. Man is implanted in the divinity, metaphysically immersed in it, precisely because any action of his is the configuration of his absolute substantive being.

This is the functional structure of God in life: it is fundament (and not object); it is fundament of life’s plenitude (and not of its indigence); and it is so in the form of a dynamic tension (but not of juxtaposition). This functional structure constitutes life, not in a hidden but in a rather open and evident way. Nothing of what has been said, granted the reality of God, goes beyond analysis and intellectual interpretation which if not immediate, is at least evident. What happens is that man may ignore it, or he may give different names to what we have called “God” and “function of God”. But what those names designate is the same reality we have tried to justify. Hence, even though man may ignore it, he will never be able to turn his back on this structure of the construction of his I.

And yet, man may distance himself from it and even submerge it in darkness. Because what man supports only with difficulty is not precisely God, but the absolute character in which his I consists. In the tension towards his absolute being he finds himself invaded by an internal and radical distension, by something like a fatigue of the absolute, a kind of theological fatigue. He would like to rest, to disentangle himself, even if episodically, from the necessity of always having to take a position on the absolute. Then {164} it is easy to reduce God to the category of a mere object one deals with. Eo ipso he has delineated the way to believe he is living without God. But this is merely a distancing of oneself from Him. The fatigue of the absolute, the objectualization of God and the vital distancing from God, are three essentially connected phenomena, each founded on the previous one. It is not the only source of atheism, by any strech of the imagination, but it is a very general occurrence. Only the revitalizing power of religation can inject new vigor to the asthenia of the absolute; only this vigor can disclose the constituting tension of life; and only this tension is able to discover again a God present in the depths of the human spirit and of every reality. This is the culminating point of the way of religation.

And thus we have seen, in the first place, the point of departure and the basis for the discussion of the problem of the reality of God. Afterwards, we have attempted an intellectual justification of this reality. To conclude, let us say something concerning the characteristics of the reality of God. That will contribute to give a last touch of clarity and rigor to this problem.