Sacramental Reality

“You keep in mind this distinction between yourself and [God]: he is your being but you are not his.”
—Privy Counsel, Ch. 1

The author takes pains here in the first chapter to be emphatic that he is not proposing some kind of theological reductionism, that our inner being is the equivalent to the Godhead. He seems very concerned that one might misinterpret this teaching as a kind of pantheism, equating God with the sum of reality.

He uses a very Thomistic kind of rationale for why this is not so, but in his introduction to the book, Father Johnston appeals to Teilhard de Chardin for a more cogent explanation, one that matches up with Huston Smith’s assessment that the Divine Being, while being more than the sum of reality, contains within it the sum of reality. This is a kind of panentheism, recognizing the Divine Essence at the core of all things. But while all phenomena reveal the Divine Essence, they are not its equivalent, and do not possess it or fully contain it. All things thus become sacramental: channels of grace, insight and love. But no such phenomena can be pointed to and of it said, “This is God.”