Entry 0252: Benedict XVI on God as Esse subsistens
In his Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences
on 8 November 2012, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, commented on the value
of analogy for the philosophical, theological, and scientific understanding of
nature. Here are excerpts from the Holy Father’s Address:
“An interdisciplinary approach to complexity shows
that the sciences are not intellectual worlds disconnected from one another and
from reality but rather that they are interconnected and directed to the study
of nature as a unified, intelligible and harmonious reality in its undoubted
complexity.
“Such a vision has fruitful points of contact with
the view of the universe taken by Christian philosophy and theology, with its
notion of participated being, in which each individual creature, possessed of
its proper perfection, also shares in a specific nature and this within an
ordered cosmos originating in God’s creative Word.
“It is precisely this inbuilt ‘logical’ and
‘analogical’ organization of nature that encourages scientific research and
draws the human mind to discover the horizontal co-participation between beings
and the transcendental participation by the First Being.
“It is within this broader context that I would
note how fruitful the use of analogy has proved for philosophy and theology,
not simply as a tool of horizontal analysis of nature’s realities, but also as
a stimulus to creative thinking on a higher transcendental plane.
“Precisely because of the notion of creation,
Christian thought has employed analogy not only for the investigation of
worldly realities, but also as a means of rising from the created order to the
contemplation of its Creator, with due regard for the principle that God’s
transcendence implies that every similarity with his creatures necessarily
entails a greater dissimilarity: whereas the structure of the creature is that
of being a being by participation, that of God is that of being a being by
essence, or Esse subsistens” (Pope Benedict XVI, Address to the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences, Rome, 8 November 2012).