At first, this seemed to me a natural conclusion of being embodied: since we are not pure spirit, we must then cloak all access we have to truth on the spiritual level with the flesh of words... (although, again, cloak gives a connotation that makes it sound like merely an obstruction - but yet access is only possible through the particular nature of words as entities which hide and reveal at the same time.) When angels know, they intuit the truth fully and completely, as far as they are able, without the need for words or discursive reasoning.
And yet, truth is not the only thing that is mediated. The angels, specifically, made me begin to wonder about the mediation of the Good. (Pseudo) Dionysius the Areopagite states in his Celestial Hierarchies that the nine choirs of angels are the medium through which God's grace flows to us - it is not an obstacle, according to Dionysius, but merely the proper medium through which God's grace propagates.
First reaction: what a beautiful thing, that God's goodness is so personal he has so many persons bring it to me, both human persons and angelic persons. I know how clearly I can experience the love of God not only through the created world, but especially through my friendships with certain people, who are unique images of God - I never thought of the angels like this, but it makes sense that I should be able to experience his love in non-embodied people as well.
Second reaction: any finite creature is still only a creature - does this mean we can never have access to God himself?
I don't know the answer to this question. One answer is: God can work how he pleases, so probably, we have access to God both directly and through other people (is this more or less common than the infused knowledge of truth (without concepts) through the Holy Spirit?)
A second answer: Can we ever really experience God himself on this earth, at least until we are saints? God is simple, and so we couldn't have a part of him, and yet infinitely far beyond our ability to take in - it really is a miracle for us to be able to experience GOD in any way (as in any Christian authors, including Jean-Luc Marion: if finite man were to be able to experience God, that thing would not be worthy of being called God, God being by definition outside of our experience). Through the Incarnation God has elevated our nature to a supernature (deification, as the Fathers would say), but due to original sin we do not start in full union with God - this is only possible through grace and hard work as we grow in likeness to him. So perhaps saints, in full union with God, are able to experience him, somehow, on earth.
But for the rest of it, maybe it is the role of the angels to "break down" an "experience" of God somehow so that we can get something of a connection with him... and yet already I've plunged into a kind of crazy cataphatic speech that starts bracketing concepts left and right - first of all, angels are finite creatures, as we are - so how would they be able to experience God, unless through a supernatural miracle? (This might not be so big of a problem: we believe that the good angels are already participating in the beatific vision, right? So perhaps their supernatural knowledge has already been bestowed.) Second, what would it mean to "break down" God, if he is purely simple? How could any piece have any relation to something that is fundamentally without pieces?
Perhaps it is because God's simplicity is a rich simplicity. The Neo-Platonists believed the One was beyond all being, a monad that has no relation to the created order, something we can't attribute anything to - we can't even say the One is One, or it would no longer be purely one, since we would be attributing Sameness to it and now it contains multiple forms within itself (think Plato: a thing is what it is through participating in forms, and for Neo-Platonists, even Sameness is a form that one must participate in). But our God is a Trinity, first of all, and when we say God is simple, we do not mean we can attribute no quality at all to him, like the One, but that we somehow attribute everything to him, fully - God IS goodness, God IS mercy, God IS love... (imagining Heidegger's surly German frown, I feel compelled to add "whatever we mean by IS, of course")
I am sorry to post with such a lack of cohesion - but this problem is something that cannot be grasped so easily, at least not yet - I do not have the proper set of concepts, so must struggle through all these words (and here we have illustrated something about the mediation of truth finding a concept is not just correspondence to an individual "thing" out there, but a framework, or a certain viewpoint).
So once again, the question: the Good - seems to be mediated.
And I don't think this is a consequence of embodiment now: angels, as finite beings, cannot have a full experience of the good in itself either, without the supernatural gift of God.
Also, perhaps the mediation of truth is not a consequence of embodiment either: angels may intuit the truth simply, but Aquinas talks about how the higher angels are able to understand more than the lower angels, and so they constantly teach the lower angels by breaking down these concepts to levels fitted for their understanding (not breaking down temporally, or in discursive reasoning, but simply taking a seraphim-sized concept and cutting out a archangel-sized piece which the archangel will comprehend immediately).
Mediation, then, seems to be simply a result of being finite. Because we are creatures, we cannot have access to the unlimited, the Truth, the Good itself.
(Yes, I alluded to it briefly, but where does the Incarnation come in? Well slow down! I am not only finite and constricted by words, but I am constricted by the two-dimmensional character of discursive reasoning - - haha, as scattered and four-dimmensional as my disorganized thoughts appear above. Perhaps we shall say I am limited by the two-dimensional medium of communication that is writing.)
So, a recap:
PROBLEM: If a concept or essence is simple, how can it be broken down into understanding?
Even moreso, If God is simple, how can anything about him be broken down into understanding?
PROBLEM: If we don't approach God directly, how is that not an obstacle, ultimately, to God's love? If you love someone, you want to be with him directly, you don't feel that his love is magnified if it always coming through messages from other people - that seems less direct.
Next up: Beauty.
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