Youcat commented through CCC. Question n. 7 – Part I.

YOUCAT Question n. 7 - Part I. Why did God have to show himself in order for us to be able to know what he is like?

(Youcat answer) Man can know by reason that God exists, but not what God is really like. Yet because God would very much like to be known, he has revealed himself.   

A deepening through CCC

(CCC 50) By natural reason man can know God with certainty, on the basis of his works. But there is another order of knowledge, which man cannot possibly arrive at by his own powers: the order of divine Revelation (Cf. Dei Filius DS 3015). Through an utterly free decision, God has revealed himself and given himself to man. This he does by revealing the mystery, his plan of loving goodness, formed from all eternity in Christ, for the benefit of all men. God has fully revealed this plan by sending us his beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.     

Reflecting and meditating 

(Youcat comment) God did not have to reveal himself to us. But he did it—out of love. Just as in human love one can know something about the beloved person only if he opens his heart to us, so too we know something about God’s inmost thoughts only because the eternal and mysterious God has opened himself to us out of love. From creation on, through the patriarchs and the prophets down to the definitive Revelation in his Son Jesus Christ, God has spoken again and again to mankind. In him he has poured out his heart to us and made his inmost being visible for us.

(CCC Comment)

(CCC 53) The divine plan of Revelation is realized simultaneously "by deeds and words which are intrinsically bound up with each other" (DV 2) and shed light on each another. It involves a specific divine pedagogy: God communicates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by stages the supernatural Revelation that is to culminate in the person and mission of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ. St. Irenaeus of Lyons repeatedly speaks of this divine pedagogy using the image of God and man becoming accustomed to one another: the Word of God dwelt in man and became the Son of man in order to accustom man to perceive God and to accustom God to dwell in man, according to the Father's pleasure (St. Irenaeus, Adv. haeres. 3, 20, 2: PG 7/1, 944; cf. 3, 17, 1; 4, 12, 4; 4, 21, 3).     

(This question: Why did God have to show himself in order for us to be able to know what he is like? is continued)