The Philosophical Foundations of Le Royaume
Unreflective certainty... the “divine glance”
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What happens in our model after the “divine glance,” referred to by St. Thérèse in her Oblation to Merciful Love? We equate this phenomenon to the intuitive “unreflective certainty” referred to by Edith Stein. We benefit now by identifying the genres of acts with more specificity. Are we being religious? Spiritual? Philosophical? All three? How do the various classifications fit together in this model? Our movement through the continuum of potency and act toward who we are in the mind of God has grace as its efficient cause. However, the living waters of grace running through our soul, like the natural waters of the earth running through a meadow, flow by various paths. These living waters twist and turn, obeying a mysterious supernatural law just as natural waters are moved seemingly by hidden laws of nature. Grace is one, but the channels are many.
We begin with the “divine glance” itself. The moment of “unreflective certainty” preceding our rational thought fits into a category we would call phenomenological. One of the truly great blessings we received from Edith Stein’s intellectual journey from a Jewish phenomenologist to a Catholic Carmelite nun (and finally as a canonized martyr by her death at Auschwitz) is the reconciliation of Phenomenology with Medieval Scholasticism. As a result, we can integrate the acts of our natural philosophy more seamlessly with our spirituality and religion.
Edith was the student of, and later the caretaker for, Edmund Husserl, the founder of modern Phenomenology. After her conversion to Catholicism, she did not abandon her life’s work; instead, she opened one more mysterious channel of grace by reconciling her Phenomenology with her faith. With her aid, we recognize the “divine glance” as a phenomenological “what” bequeathed to us by God and a gift of intuitive “unreflective certainty.” It is a spark that inflames our faith.
The “what” we receive through the divine glance is the beginning of a resurrected spirituality. Edith Stein defines spirituality as analogous to seeing a mountain emerge on the far horizon. We see, “There is something over there,” and ask, “What is it?” This becomes our primary spiritual question, and the journey toward the mountain to discover all of its manifold beauties and treasures is a phenomenological experience she calls “spirituality.”
The divine glance, resulting in an immediate act of unreflective certainty, reverses the lens of our mental eyeglasses, revealing a new universe of supernatural life. This universe is of the infinite mind of God, and, as we are finite, it can be accessed only through passive cooperation with grace through a continuum of potency to act, to new potency, to new act, and so on to our end. Thus, we see the scientific reality of time and space through our unique lens. Time and space have a purpose, rhythm, and cosmological order. God’s intentionality drives this order on our behalf, who alone determines which forms are actualized and which are left in potency. Here, through our new understanding of the purpose of time and space, we have the intersection of religion, science, academic philosophy, and spirituality. All are integrated into one ontological “being” through the efficient cause of our phenomenological experiences. These experiences “reach down only to draw up” to the reality of who we are in the mind of God.
This explains why the first chapter of Genesis is in our model more than a stage-setting opening act of Scripture; it is the beginning of a most profound “divine glance” that demonstrates this model - “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” This would be surpassed in glory only by the final and ultimate “divine glance,” which would yield infinite living waters of “unreflective certainty.”
And on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalen cometh early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre; and she saw the stone taken away from the sepulchre. (John 20:1)
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