Godly conceptions and their meanings

I was reflecting tonight on a discussion I recall having several years ago with an agnostic aquaintance of mine concerning this question:

If God is infinite, then how is it possible for any human being, finite in nature, to know anything about this concept? Would not any attempt at discovering the infinite be doomed to failure?

My memory is faint, so I will reconstruct the conversation as cleanly as I can remember. My response was a resounding Of course it would be doomed to failure!. Satisfied yet confused, my friend could not accept my easy concession without concluding that he had been trapped. What is then the point? At best, one could live an agnostic existence, never being certain of God's existence or never having a satisfactory conception of the infinite that would have any effect over the tangible routine of daily life. Behold, I am no skilled manipulator of language, so I simply explained my response.

Left to ourselves, it is impossible for us to know about God. But this ignores the idea of divine revelation - the idea that God would reveal to us whatever He would want us to know about Him and how to live in His presence. This revelation was given in the old law and testified to by all Creation, and is brought to its fulfillment by God in the person of Jesus Christ who then established a Church to hand on this His teaching in the form of oral and written Tradition, which is thereby found in Apostolic Tradition and in the Scriptures, respectively. So, by human reason alone, we can come to a knowledge of the Infinite God in observance of His creation, yet God also revealed Himself explicitly for our benefit, as Dei Verbum expresses:

As a sacred synod has affirmed, God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty from created reality by the light of human reason (see Rom. 1:20); but teaches that it is through His revelation that those religious truths which are by their nature accessible to human reason can be known by all men with ease, with solid certitude and with no trace of error, even in this present state of the human race.

Doing it all ourselves also ignores the idea of willful creation - the idea that God would create us with an orientation toward the infinite, manifested by an ever present desire to know more than what we perceive plainly. This concept is much more elusive, but certainly real. Another thing I believe it ignores is divine grace or assistance. That God would not only willfully create us, reveal Himself to us in a way that we can conceive, but would also provide us with grace that further enables us to live according to that revelation and achieve that which He has willed for us - unity with Him. This is the difference between knowing about Him and actually having a relationship with Him.

My friend, somewhat satisfied with the response, further pressed me on the point of revelation.

How can we trust this revelation as coming from God, the Infinite, which is transmitted to us through a book written by human authors and a tradition transmitted by human teachers - human teachers who are sinful and often times perform less than godly acts?

Very good! Ay, there's the rub, I responded. My friend was attempting to catch me. How do we know without relying on ourselves? And we can't rely on ourselves alone. The final issue is then one of authority and faith. Again, left to ourselves, we are caught - but we remember that that is why we are given grace. We need grace to believe because faith is a grace. Again, Dei Verbum expresses this best:

"The obedience of faith" (Rom. 13:26; see 1:5; 2 Cor 10:5-6) "is to be given to God who reveals, an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who reveals," (4) and freely assenting to the truth revealed by Him. To make this act of faith, the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must precede and assist, moving the heart and turning it to God, opening the eyes of the mind and giving "joy and ease to everyone in assenting to the truth and believing it." (5) To bring about an ever deeper understanding of revelation the same Holy Spirit constantly brings faith to completion by His gifts.

Faith enables us to cooperate with God's grace and to understand God's revelation and the authority under which it was given and entrusted to the Church, the authority given by Christ to the Apostles, which is thus communicated to their successors and handed down to us today. That such a teaching authority, entrusted to human sinners, is free of corruption is ensured by the merits of Christ's death and resurrection, and Christ does this because He desires that all the world know of Him.

My friend responded,

I think I understand what you are saying. The agnostic assumes that the initiative belongs to human beings to know the Infinite, which they really cannot do, whereas you are saying that the initiative belongs to God. It starts with God and ends with God, not the other way around. The Infinite God chose to create us, He revealed Himself to us, and He gives us, finite as we are, what we need to know Him infinitely in time.

I explained that it is important to remember that faith is not only the passive reception of a gift from God, but the active free response to God. Some people spend their whole lives fighting against it. But alas, it is a great mystery. Do you desire faith?, I asked. He responded,

Certainly.

The desire to have it is already a sign of its work, and the continuing cooperation with grace is itself a work of grace. As the Catechism articulates,

"The preparation of man for the reception of grace is already a work of grace. This latter is needed to arouse and sustain our collaboration in justification through faith, and in sanctification through charity."

As we cooperate with grace through faith, we are sanctified by grace and created anew to perform acts of charity which nourish faith. Without grace, it is impossible to please God. And that, said I, is only the beginning of an incredible journey into the Great Mystery, the heights and depths of glorious Truth.

With a deep breath, our conversation drifted on to other wondrous ideas.