{68} (cont’d)
B) The accessibility of God1 . Throughout history God has not always been presented as accessible. We should recall the {69} dii otiosi of the primitive religions, without cult, without supplications (except for some exceptional situations). In a certain way, the God of Judaism, by dint of affirming His transcendence, tended to become inaccessible. Still, we pose the question whether God is accessible. I shall expound the accessibility of divine reality using three concepts, each founded upon the preceding.
1) God is the ground of every reality in an absolutely strict and fontanal manner. Not only of the human spirit, but of all things. He is a reality, which constitutes the ground of each and every one of them, because the founding act of God with respect to the world does not consist in having produced the world, and then letting the world run by itself. It consists in the fact that, without identifying Himself with the world, He is still in it, but transcending it in the form of ground. The whole reality of the world is nothing but the terminal moment of the radical act in which God consists as a radically existing reality2. A separation between the world and God is inconceivable. For this reason, when it is said that the ground of reality is a personal ground, we must keep in mind precisely this characteristic of the presence of the transcendent, where the characteristic of person then appears with a purely analogical hue. It is not a question of conceiving God as a kind of great lord or great person who has in his hands the dice-cup of the world He has created. The concept of person is merely analogical. God is a reality, which fully possesses Himself, and therefore has a personal characteristic, but it is never meant that He is a person like any other. The ground wherein God exists in every reality is a {70} live and personal ground. Consequently, His presence in reality is an intellective and volitional presence. The accessibility of God expresses itself above all in the personal characteristic of the divine fontanality3.
2) That God is a personally fontanal reality underlying transcendentally all things in such a way that all of them are nothing but the terminal moment —sit venia verbo— of the very reality of God, does not mean that the real and actual way God is present in all things is always the same. Because, of course, the way depends essentially on the kind of reality to which He is present. Indeed, some things are closed essences and others are open essences. And the type of presence and personal fontanality of the essential reality in which God consists is not the same in the case of closed or open essences. These are two different forms of presence. The type of presence in open essences is different, because man is not only gifted with some particular properties, but by virtue of one of these properties, namely intelligence, he is open to his own reality. And he not only possesses real properties, but is his own reality, it is his. Man is truly a person. Consequently, the way God is present to man is precisely, in a way I have called analogically, the personal characteristic of divine reality. He is present to man in the form of person. This is the second concept, which manifests the accessibility of man to God.
The radical and ultimate presence of divinity in the depths of the human spirit, in the ground of man, is a presence, {71} which can be called a relationship from person to person, it is an interpersonal presence. Certainly, to mention here the concept of relationship appears quite trivial, very external. Because it is not the case (even though it is fashionable to say it) of a “dialog” from I to You. The concept of “You” applied to God is completely analogous, needless to say. What can a man do but to invoke God as a You? But it has to be well understood that this “You” in which God consists is not “another I”. That would be an absolutely intolerable anthropomorphism. However, with this exception noted, it will be necessary to say that it is a question of a connection, of a person to person presence. The ability to be present, the presentiality (Sp. presencialidad), in which the essentially existent reality that God is in the depths of the human spirit consists, is the presence to a personal reality. We can conceive and understand it appropriately and directly because that is what man is. The reality of God in the depths of creation is not only a personal reality, but in the case of man, is a connection or a personal or interpersonal presence.
3) God, as an essentially existent reality, is the fundament of the power of the real. Thus, precisely by being so, and by virtue of the interpersonal connection of presence that exists between man and God, it means that this personal relationship is being expressed through the personal characteristics in which man consists. The personal characteristic in which man consists, and by which he is a person, is his intelligence. That is why the interpersonal presence of God to man is primarily a manifestation to the intelligence of man qua person. Not only is God the personal depth of every reality, and is present to the human person in the form of an interpersonal presence, but in third place, that interpersonal presence has a concrete {72} and radical form, the manifestation. But then, the manifested being is precisely what must be understood as revelation.
Here revelation does not mean any sort of external and solemn dictation, it means purely and simply —and must continue to mean throughout the whole history of religions, including the Christian religion— a manifestation of the reality of God. Therefore, it is not a question of a set of enunciated propositions, confronting which man may perform an act of admission, but it concerns something more. It concerns a manifestation, whose manifesting and manifest characteristic consist in nothing but the real and actual presence of God as personal reality in the depths of every human person. It is that which in a fundamental and grounding way fundaments what we have called the voice of conscience as the power of the real. Revelation is essentially anchored and directed to the voice of conscience. And it is precisely this concept, which really conflates the two previous concepts. The characteristic of personal fontanal presence of God in all of creation, and the interpersonal presence of God with respect to man, are found conflated in their conclusion, which is the manifesting presence. And the manifesting characteristic is not something added accidentally to the first two characteristics. The fact is that the divine reality in the depths of the human spirit could not but have this manifesting characteristic.
This affirms —speaking in very general terms— that, if the real, concrete, and actual presence of God in the depths of the human spirit is manifestation or revelation, then God is always revealed to every man, in all moments of history, and in all the historical forms. In every religion —I shall return to this idea presently— God is always revealed or manifest in one form or another. {73} Nothing in this world is absolutely erroneous. God is manifest in the depths of every man, whether he knows it or not, even in that most vague form, but so clear and perceptible, that the absolute voice of conscience is. God always appears revealed.
And precisely because He is always revealed we have encountered something else beyond what we searched for. We had asked if God is accessible. And we have found that God is acceded, velis nolis, by every man in all the circumstances of history. God is not only accessible, but rather man is a real and actual access to God, to the personal reality, which underlies the ground of the whole world, and most specially the depths of man, in that triple form: personality, interpersonal presence, revealing manifestation. Since this idea of access through manifestation conflates the two previous concepts, I shall take the liberty to refer only to this manifesting characteristic. And I must then say that this manifestation by which God is present in the depths of every man, in all the moments and forms of his history, may present however very profound differences.
a) In the first place, those differences by reason of man himself. The Cro-Magnon man is not the same as a man of our age. A man from the time of Abraham is not the same as a man from the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. There are profound differences because it is a question of the access to God by the concrete man, and not simply an abstract man. And thus, in his intimate and ultimate concretion, man obtains the manifestation of God in different ways, not because God manifests Himself in different forms, but because man contemplates that manifestation in very different ways depending on his personal {74} concretion. Quite different ways and even aberrant ones. That God may reveal Himself in any aberrant form may seem strange, but then we can think about that most typical case, which the religion of Israel presents: How many aberrant forms appear in the religion of Israel from the point of view of Christianity! However, Who will deny that the religion of Israel contained in the Old Testament forms part of the Christian revelation? There is nothing that is an absolute error, even in the most crass form of polytheism. It will be an error to say that there are many gods. But then, perhaps the polytheist has discovered richer facets of God than the one who is not a polytheist. They will have to be integrated, in one way or another into monotheism. Nothing is absolutely false.
b) In the second place, this manifestation of God not only can offer different characteristics, but can offer and does in fact offer an historical characteristic. It is not the case that the manifestation or revelation of God is simply in time, but that it is formally historical insofar as the very manifestation of God. His presence in the depths of the human spirit, and His manifesting presence is not an event by chance, which happens to God, but is precisely the very structure of His fundamental, and founding characteristic of human reality, which is intrinsically and formally historical. What this historicity may be is a complex matter. I have explained many times4 that, to my way of thinking, historicity consists in man continually illuminating as he confronts reality —or reality continually offering the man who is in front of it— a set of possibilities from which {75} man selects some, rejects others, and brings to fruition a series of possibilities. This is what constitutes the formal reason of history qua history. The rest would be the dynamic nature of man, but formally speaking it is not history.
This historicity is in a certain way unitary, but not from the part of men. After all, the idea of a universal history is very recent. It is being developed practically during our own time. Who would have said in the XVI century that history was universal? What did anything happening then in China have to do —except for the few missionaries, which strangely arrived there— with what was happening in Cadiz? However, humanity is unifying itself, is acquiring a unitary characteristic. Yet, the manifestation of God is not necessarily bound to this unitary characteristic of history. There is a historical pluralism, from this point of view. But there is a oneness from the side of God. Because in fact it is He, unique reality, who manifests Himself in the depth of all humanity, regardless of whether this humanity may formally constitute one historical set or not in all the moments of its existence. There is, indeed, a certain unitariness.
Not only this, but precisely the manifestation of God in the depth of every human spirit is capable of becoming in its own time and way one of the factors leading to the historical unification of man. Perhaps it may not be the first and most decisive. One thinks immediately, and properly so, about technology and communications. This is obvious, but there are deeper factors, which have contributed and contribute in no small amount to this unification of the human species. For example, without discriminating against any languages, there is no doubt that the supremacy of the Indo-European languages is now imposing a certain uniformity upon all men, {76} who need to learn relatively few languages to be able to understand each other. Undoubtedly, one of those factors is monotheism. For this reason, the history of that in which the monism of the mónos Theós consists is not depleted in the historical past. It is precisely this mónos Theós, that will have to face a series of questions about its concept, which we must keep in mind in order to continue enriching the idea of what the one unique God is. What the one unique God may be, through the different forms of history is what constitutes, in one way or another, the history of religions. The history of religions is a unitary history, not because religions constitute a historic, unitary, internal dialectic. That is absurd: What does the religion of Confucius have to do with what may have happened in Patagonia thirty centuries ago? Yet, it does so from the point of view of the very manifestation of God, as I shall point out.
c) This manifestation in a multiple, and historical form, naturally constitutes a variety or range of manifesting apprehensions of God within the human spirit. However, to this we must add that, from the side of God Himself, there is another scope of possibilities different from the one we have been considering up to now. Precisely because it is the case of a personal relationship, and of a personal presence of God as essential reality to what human persons are, it does not seem appropriate to affirm that what we have called the manifestation of God has to be necessarily and formally limited to what any creature by reason of being one cannot lack. The human creature is of a personal characteristic, and is inscribed manifestatively within the personal reality of God, which means precisely that God can have manifesting initiatives. With this, revelation, manifestation, without losing their oneness from the side of God, would acquire a different characteristic when viewed from the side of men.
{77} This triple form of fontanal personal reality, interpersonal presence in the depth of the human spirit, and interpersonal presence, which climaxes precisely in its manifesting or revealing characteristic, clearly leaves well established that divine reality is for man a constitutively accessible reality. Furthermore, de facto, inexorably and because of a strict necessity, it is acceded in one form or another. Naturally, this does not mean that all men accede God in the same way. That is what we must study next.
_________________
1 From this point onwards we follow a text of the 1968 seminar. On the problem of the accessibility of divine reality please refer to El hombre y Dios (“Man and God“), op. cit., pp. 185-193.
2 In the 1971 seminar Zubiri no longer speaks of an “essentially or radically existent” reality, but of an “absolutely absolute” reality.
3 Concerning “fontanal transcendence” please refer to El hombre y Dios (“Man and God“), op. cit., pp. 177-178. For His “personal characteristic”, ibid., pp. 168-170.
4 Regarding the historicity of man please refer to the paper by Zubiri on “The Historical Dimension of the Human Being”, Realitas-I, Madrid, 1974, pp. 11-64. About the historicity of reason please refer to Inteligencia y razón (“Intelligence and Reason“), op. cit. pp. 297-316.