“O taste and see that the Lord is good,” writes the Psalmist (34:8). The reflective listener might reasonably ask, “What is going on here?” Is this a matter of hysteron-proteron, the literary device in which the logically prior event happens last in sequence, as when Virgil’s Aeneas recounts the warrior Sinon releasing his fellow Danai or Greeks from Trojan Horse and, presumably then, opening the pine bolt (Aeneid, 2. 258-259)? Or is the Psalmist suggesting some version of a blind taste test, in which one does taste and then lifts the blindfold to see? Central here are the two primary means of expressing knowing in the human experience derived from the senses.
To review, there are five senses, or if we are being fancy—and we are—five sensitive powers, namely, sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. Some interesting insights (pun completely intended) into the senses are recorded for us in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, I, q. 78, a. 3. The first insight is that the sensitive powers, that is, senses, are to be distinguished from the sense organs associated with them. The eyes are not the same as sight. The tongue is not the same as taste or touch. The second insight is into the kind of change that the sense organ receives from its object, that is, the thing sensed. St. Thomas’s word for this “change” is “immutatio” which is a perplexing term in that the prefix “im-” here is taken in the adversative or ingressive meaning and not the negative meaning, for example, in the sense of “immutable” meaning “unchangeable.” “Immutatio” for St. Thomas here means the change of a sense organ “against” or “thoroughly into” something by the agency of another. One such change or immutation is natural as when a hot thing is touched. The hand receives the heat of the object according to the nature of a hand with respect to heat. The other kind of immutation is what St. Thomas identifies as a spiritual immutation. For example, the eye that receives the vision of a tree is changed only spiritually according to St. Thomas and not naturally, by the form of the tree being illumined for the sensitive power and, in this way, seen.
More modern optical analysis will scoff at St. Thomas who lived during the 13th Century for his ignorance of the physical stimulation of the retina by the light entering the eye through the pupil. It should be remembered, however, that all anatomic diagrams of the human eye terminate in the optic nerve extending to the brain and the literal phenomenon of sight emerges from this amalgamation of neural sensation. There are few clearer tests to see whether the flame of wonder has been extinguished from a child’s education than his or her reaction to this presentation in biology textbooks around the world. Either 1) the child is oblivious to the shell game presented, that is, material stimulation, material stimulation, a presto, phenomenon of vision; 2) the child wonders at the unexplained causal gap between material cause and immaterial phenomenon; or 3) the child sees the causal gap but ceases to be interested because this is a matter of science and surely there must be some complex explanation that the experts have already made clear in journal articles read by ten other such experts—better not to rock the boat of progress.
St. Thomas, recognized the wonder of this spiritual immutation, in part, because it was imbued into the language of wisdom. The word “wisdom” has something of an interesting pedigree insofar as both Latin and Ancient Greek tended to favor taste as the sense most associated with the act and corresponding virtue. “Wisdom” seems to be divisible into two parts, “wis-” from “video” in Latin and some archaic forms of the root “id” in ancient Greek, both meaning “to see.” The second part “-dom,” is perhaps derived from “domus,” meaning “house” or “household,” and thus by extension “dominion.”
In defining wisdom, St. Thomas diverges in his responses between his two great Summas. In the Summa Theologiae, the wisdom pertaining to sacred doctrine is both to order and judge (See ST, I, a. 1, q. 6, “ordinare et iudicare”). In his Summa Contra Gentiles, a man is called wise who both orders rightly and governs well (See ScG, lib. 1, c. 1, “sapientes dicantur qui res directe ordinant et eas bene gubernant”). The difference can be justified in that God’s wisdom is efficacious, that is, what he judges comes to be. In the case of a man, wisdom is knowing the proper order and governing, as a helmsman or gubernator, the ship of state or one’s household as best as possible given prevailing conditions. Wisdom in this sense evades our control. Calculus and statistical models have now given way to adaptive artificial intelligences in an illusive attempt to know everything about everything and to impose order and dominion. Rather than focus on the ratiocination and practical prudence necessary to achieve wisdom in this life, even theoretically, it will be more advantageous to consider how the ordering of this understanding of wisdom for either God or man is, as with seeing generally, the taking in of many different things of varying depth of field, that is, intimacy respective to the viewer or judge.
The sapiential wisdom tradition, however, takes as its focal sense, the sense of taste. In Latin, the noun “sapientia” is a participial form of the verb “sapor.” We detect a similar root in Greek with the noun “σοφία.” Taste as a sense requires the natural immutation of touch as in the case of heat, but it also assumes an intimacy with its object in that the thing tasted is consumed by the taster and in this way becomes united with it. If the object tasted is noxious such as a poison, the taster is poisoned. If the object tasted is food, the taster is nourished. If the object is good food, the taster is nourished and pleased. If the object tasted is a spiritual good, indeed, the highest spiritual good, that is, God, the taster becomes a partaker in the Divine Life. Insofar as this partaking or participation is perfected, the taster is also a seer through God’s eyes. Through the wonderfully ambiguous expression “the incorporation of God,” which includes the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, receiving Him in the Eucharist, and entering into His Body the Church, now for us the Church Militant, one day, please God, Triumphant, through this incorporation of God, sapientially, we come to know all things and their goodness in God as the Psalmist prescribes.
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