Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian English Spanish Portuguese

Question

Dear Father,

I am a young believer very interested in theology, although I tend to study it with a certain superficiality, and this is the question I would ask you: whether Adam and Eve had knowledge of the Holy Trinity at the time of their creation in grace, being in union with God; otherwise, how they could have known Him if they had not sinned.

I thank you for your service to us faithful. I wish you a happy and holy Easter, trying to remember you in my prayers.

Reginaldo

The priest’s answer

Dear Reginaldo,

1. Your question is also posed by St. Thomas when in question 94 of the first part of the Summa Theologiae, in the first article he asks “Whether the first man saw God through His Essence?”.

As you see, St. Thomas does not explicitly speak of the Holy Trinity. But since the divine Essence consists in the communion of the three divine Persons, the question is equivalent.

2. And here is the answer: “The first man did not see God through His Essence if we consider the ordinary state of that life; unless, perhaps, it be said that he saw God in a vision, when ‘God cast a deep sleep upon Adam’ (Gn. 2:21). 

The reason is because, since in the Divine Essence is beatitude itself, the intellect of a man who sees the Divine Essence has the same relation to God as a man has to beatitude. Now it is clear that man cannot willingly be turned away from beatitude, since naturally and necessarily he desires it, and shuns unhappiness. Wherefore no one who sees the Essence of God can willingly turn away from God, which means to sin. Hence all who see God through His Essence are so firmly established in the love of God, that for eternity they can never sin. 

Therefore, as Adam did sin, it is clear that he did not see God through His Essence” (Summa Theologiae I, 94, 1).

3. Therefore, our forefathers in the original state of innocence did not explicitly know the Holy Trinity, in the same way they did not explicitly see God.

4. St. Thomas continues: “Nevertheless he [Adam] knew God with a more perfect knowledge than we do now. Thus in a sense his knowledge was midway between our knowledge in the present state, and the knowledge we shall have in heaven, when we see God through His Essence” (Ib.).

Now the highest knowledge of God that we can have in the present life is that of faith, which is a supernatural light that relates us in a new way to God and enables us to know Him already inside, and not only from the outside.

5. So continues St. Thomas: “To make this clear, we must consider that the vision of God through His Essence is contradistinguished from the vision of God through His creatures. Now the higher the creature is, and the more like it is to God, the more clearly is God seen in it; for instance, a man is seen more clearly through a mirror in which his image is the more clearly expressed. […]

Wherefore the first man was not impeded by exterior things from a clear and steady contemplation of the intelligible effects which he perceived by the radiation of the first truth, whether by a natural or by a gratuitous knowledge [Faith]. Hence Augustine says (Gen. ad lit. xi, 33) that, ‘perhaps God used to speak to the first man as He speaks to the angels; by shedding on his mind a ray of the unchangeable truth, yet without bestowing on him the experience of which the angels are capable in the participation of the Divine Essence.’ Therefore, through these intelligible effects of God, man knew God then more clearly than we know Him now” (Ib.).

6. Therefore, Adam and Eve had a knowledge and, one could say, also a contemplation of the Holy Trinity deeper than what we have.

They saw It radiated in all creatures: as Its imprint in all beings, and as an image imprinted on the human soul.

I bless you, wishing all the best for a more and more involving passion for theology.

Father Angelo