I labored to give the antepenultimate post as a talk and failed to make the big point - as usual - which lurks under the surface, which I am continually trying to reach, and which I never really say conceptually. The difficulty is to articulate what is the context of all that is being said conceptually.
To wit: The point of the talk was “conscience.” What was driving me was the direct experiential connection between the consciousness of the value “good” and “being” [I hasten to add retrospectively that I am being driven to restudy Germaine Grisez and followers to see if he has not been right all along in eschewingf conceptual metaphysics (that I will allude to below under the rubric of Joseph Pieper) to arrive at "the good" as a self-evident and experiential metaphysic]. By “being,” I am understanding the very large point of Karol Wojtyla of “person.” And by “person,” Wojtyla understands “I” – “Gift.” And so the supreme meaning of “being” is “I” – “Gift.” He is very explicit on this point even magisterially in “Fides et Ratio” #83: “In a special way, the person constitutes a privileged locus for the encounter with being [“actu essendi” in the offical Latin version], and hence with metaphysical enquiry.”
As “I” - “Gift” is the meaning of the Persons in God, Wojtyla then identifies “I” – “Gift” as the meaning of “good.” In “Veritatis Splendor,” as Pope John Paul II, he wrote that only God is good: “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good” (Mt. 19, 17) … Jesus brings the question about morally good action back to its religious foundations, to the acknowledgement of God, who alone is goodness.”[1] God, as three Persons who are “constitutive” relations, is “good.” This means that the meaning of person is the meaning of “good.” But person in the Trinity means “relation,” not “substance,” otherwise God would not be One. Therefore, the meaning of “good” in God is to-be-Person-in-relation.
And if we are images of the divine Persons, concretely the Son, then we are “good” in so far as we are relational as the Son-become-man; i.e. insofar as the divine Person –Jesus Christ - obeyed with His human will “even unto death.”
Also, maximally at work in me, is Wojtyla’s phenomenology of the “I” in the experience of determining self in the free act. That is, I must master, or “subdue” myself (since I am part of material creation even as image of God), to get possession of myself so that I can make the gift of myself (since I can’t give what is not mine, and I am not mine (since I am made of parts) until I make myself mine by “subduction”). Clearly, I as created, as an achieved "I," am a work- in-progress. I am not yet who I really am.
The large point for me is that I achieve an experience of myself in this exercise of freedom that is self-determination that leads to self-possession and therefore to self-governance. What’s even larger is that I have an experience of myself that has no filter -such as sensible perceptions and abstractive concepts - distorting my access to the being of myself.
Even larger is Wojtyla’s whole philosophical opus as showing that the “I” is not “consciousness” but “Being.” Perhaps, his strongest point is his presentation of consciousness as the tool of the mind’s perceiving the self (or “I”) as “being” in potency and in act before and after the act of self-determination. For me, once there can be a perception (that he calls “mirroring” that is not “reflection”) of a “before” as potency and an “after” as act in determining and execution what I am doing as existential act, then, I am dealing not with mere “consciousness” as the protagonist of my acting, but myself as an ontologically hard-wired “Being.” so much for Descartes and modern idealism!
And the kicker is then to realize that my consciousness of “the good” is the very consciousness of myself as “Being,” which then places me outside the whole intellectualist scholastic and neo-scholastic take on ethics and morality, and this particularly when I see that neo-scholasticism is kissing cousin with modern rationalism. It is not idealism, but it is a rationalism. This was the provocative pique of 19th century modernism. They were right in their pique but wrong in their solution. What they lacked was precisely this metaphysic (and the experiential holiness that goes with it, i.e. the experience of self-transcendence). I would say that Vatican II is the modernism of intention set right.
What do I mean? Take the superb presentation of Josef Pieper “Reality and the Good.” It is boiled down to say exactly what he wants it to say. It is hard wired ontologically grounded ethics. The “Thesis” is: “All obligation is based upon being. Reality is the foundation of ethics. The good is that which is in accord with reality. He who wishes to know and to do the good must turn his gaze upon the objective world of being. Not upon his own ‘ideas,’ not upon his ‘conscience,’ not upon ‘values,’ not upon arbitrarily established ‘ideals’ and ‘models.’ He must turn away from his own act and fix his eyes upon reality" (J. Pieper, "Living the Truth,"Ignatius (1989) 111-179.
Obviously, the good is to be grounded in the being-reality that is grasped through the senses and elaborated by the intelligence theoretically. This theoretical knowing becomes practical knowing by the observation by reason that the will desires the being-reality that has been theoretically grasped and calls it “good.” Notice that the knowledge of the value “good” comes from the perception of desire in the will for the being-reality perceived theoretically. The whole of modern philosophy anticipated in the Nominalism of Occam and filtering into Descartes and from there down – especially in Hume and Kant – could never say that a particular existent reality of the external world was “good” because of the radical split that was set up radically by Descartes between thought and thing. Kant was supreme in this. He tried to save absolute values, but since they were not to be found in the contingent reality perceived by the senses, he assigned them to be categories of the mind.
Neo-scholasticism was not immune to this. It is evident in the rationalistic turn in Cajetan that de Lubac has described in his “Surnaturel (1946) and in the English equivalent: “The Mystery of the Supernatural:” “The turning-point in the history of Thomistic thought is marked chiefly by the work of Cajetan (1468-1534).”[2] De Lubac: “And then, in 1957, in the first fascicule of his review Divinitas, Msgr. Antonio Piolanti declared that the great cardinal ‘separates’ the two orders, natural and supernatural, in a way that completely differentiates him from St. Thomas. It is in fact quite clear that in denying intellect any natural desire to see God – whereas St. Thomas said and repeated: Omnis intellectus naturaliter desiderat divinae substantiae visionem’ – Cajetan was in no sense ‘clarifying’ or ‘developing’ Thomist teaching on the matter; far from ‘pushing it to its ultimate conclusion,’ or bringing it to its goal, as has been suggested in a praiseworthy attempt to achieve harmony, he was profoundly altering its whole meaning.”[3] De Lubac’s thesis is put in the mouth of Father S. Dockx, O.P. “Cajetan… deciding that he cannot accept that man, as God’s image, should be ordered to the beatific vision as his end, alters the reasoning’ and even ‘the text of St. Thomas.’ Instead of basing his argument on ‘the nature of man as made in God’s image, he regards that nature simply as ‘elevated by grace.’”[4]
Be that particular form of rationalism as it may, the point is that there is an intellectualism that has dominated the whole philosophic enterprise of the second millennium in the West after the split from the East.
Notice, again the chapter sequence Pieper’s “Reality and the Good:”
“Reality as the Measure of Cognition;” “The Identity of Mind and Reality;” “The Identity of Mind and Reality;” “Knowledge and Truth;” “Objectivity as an Attitude in Knowing.” And then the passage of one and the same intelligence from the theoretical to the practical (as opposed to Kant’s categorical separation of his Critique or Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason): “The Unity of Theoretical and Practical Reason;” This is accounted for by “inclination” in St. Thomas. He said: “All those things to which man has a natural inclination , are naturally apprehended by reason as being good, and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as evil, and objects of avoidance. Wherefore according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law. Because in man there is first of all an inclination to good in accordance with the nature which he has in common with all substances…;”[5] "The Voice of the Primordial Conscience” which is the natural law. The point is that desire is perceived by reason and that toward which it points is the good.
What is revolutionary to me is to cut through all this conceptual jig-saw puzzle and be confronted with the direct experience of the self as the privileged locus for the encounter with “Being” (FR #83) and as it itself is an ontological tendency toward the divine that alone is “good,” I experience a pre-conceptual consciousness of “the good.”
The point that I am making is that the good that I experience is myself as I tend (if I have not damaged the tendency of my persona by turning back on myself and seeking myself) toward the divine and act on that tendency freely. The good that I sense is my very self – but only as imaging Him Who alone is good. The paradox is that I experience my goodness only as I tend and actually do turn away from myself to the Other and others.
This is clearly a phenomenology interpreted by the thomistic metaphysics that offers a profound realism. I suddenly find that the “goods” of Grisez et al. (that I have opposed for years because they had the odor of a Kantian apriorism) may coincide with this ethical phenomenology of the relational person that is found in Wojtyla and then-Joseph Ratzinger. (However, I note that Grisez speaks only about the self-evidence of “goods” with no reference to the will or tendency, etc. In Ratzinger’s mind, the person is tendency as another horizon of being than “substance” that could ground “value” only by the extrinsic incorporation of tendency).
Notice again, the text of Ratzinger that is most illuminating and important: He prefaces his remarks by insisting on changing the ambiguous terminology of synderesis for anamnesis to make clearer that the content of conscience is remembering who we are as imaging the divine Persons (rather than some form of intellectualist principles). “The word anamnesis should be taken to mean exactly that which Paul expressed in the second chapter of his Letter to the Romans: ‘When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness…(r, 14 f).’ The same thought is strikingly amplified in the great monastic rule of Saint Basil. Here we read: ‘The love of God is not founded on a discipline imposed on us from outside, but is constitutively established in us as the capacity and necessity of our rational nature.’ Basil speaks in terms of ‘the spark of divine love which has been hidden in us,’ an expression which was to become important in medieval mysticism. Ion the spirit of Johannine theology Basil knows that love consists in keeping the commandments. For this reason, the spark of love, which has been put into us by the Creator, means this: ‘We have received interiorly beforehand the capacity and disposition for observing all divine commandments…. These are not something imposed from without.’ Referring everything back to its simple core, Augustine adds: ‘We could never judge that one thing is better than another, if a basic understanding of the good had not already been instilled in us.’
“This means that t he first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (both are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man’s being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one, whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears it echo from within. He sees: That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.”[6]
[1] John Paul II, “Veritatis Splendor” #9.
[2] Henri de Lubac “The Mystery of the Supernatural,” Herder and Herder (1967) 8.
[3] Ibid 10.
[4] Ibid 11-12.
[5] S. Th. I-II, 94, 2, ad 2.
[6] J. Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth” (1991), On Conscience The National Catholic Bioethics Center – Ignatius (2007) 31-32.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
The Smallest Act of Love Transcends the Visible Universe
The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth - was voted best picture taken by the Hubble telescope. The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as spectacular as its appearance. It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across.
Broadening Reason and Conscience for the Third Millennium
The Emergence of the Third Millennium
The introduction to an important book published in 1999 began in the following way:
“The millennium is the most momentous calendar event any of us will live through. Yet despite the attention lavished upon it, nothing is more certain that that its true significance will be missed. This misperception is itself evidence of the intellectual fog under which we labor. We are incapable of apprehending the meaning of the most massively obvious events. How can our public celebrations bear any meaningful relation to the knot of time through which we are passing, if we have no credible sense of what is being marked? Are we celebrating a merely empty numerical sum? Or does something of more consequence lie behind that intriguing row of zeros? We know how to celebrate the new year, the new decade, even the new century. But a new millennium? There we are in unfamiliar territory, and the impending arrival is more than a little intimidating. No proximate generation will have such a moment to inaugurate…“This generation is charged with beginning a new age. We have been granted the opening of the third millennium of our history, thereby stamping it with a character that will remain more visible than the imprints of many less strategically placed cohorts. Thus, it is not the celebration that is daunting, but its aftermath… Business as usual reassures us that life will continue pretty much as it has. Little of the apocalyptic excitement we know from the beginning of previous millennia seems to be in the air. Or perhaps it is merely building subterraneously to be unleashed in a volcanic eruption. An eerie calm seems to characterize our lack of preparations. Sooner or later, however, that will be shattered as we are gripped by the stature of the historical shift we are entering. The advent of a new millennium cannot be overlooked forever, and eventually it will take us into its grip. Then our disorientation will be complete. How will we be able to sustain our precarious entry into a new era if we have lost our sense of what the transition means.”[1][1]-
And then came 9/11, and the election of November 4, 2008!!
* * * * * * *
A Beefed-Up Understanding of Being (Person)
Broadening Reason
I
Ratzinger’s Trinitarian Account of Divine Person
To Be =To Be in Relation
To Be =To Be in Relation
“The First Person does not beget the Son in the sense of the act of begetting coming on top of the finished Person; it is the act of begetting, of giving oneself, of streaming forth. It is identical with the act of giving. Only as this act is it person, and therefore it is not the giver but the act of giving… In this idea of relativity in word and love, independent of the concept of substance and not to be classified among the ‘accidents,’ Christian thought discovered the kernel of the concept of person, which describes something other and infinitely more than the mere idea of the ‘individual.’ Therein lies concealed a revolution in man’s view of the world: the undivided sway of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality. It becomes possible to surmount what we call today ‘objectifying thought;’ a new plane of being comes into view.”[2]
II
Jesus Christ as Relation
“Jesus is Christ”
Jesus is His Act
“Christ is a title and yet also already part of the unique name for the man from Nazareth. This fusion of the name with the title, the title with the name, is far from being just another example of history’s forgetfulness. On the contrary, it spotlights the very heart of that process of understanding which faith went through with regard to the figure of Nazareth. For what faith really states is precisely that with Jesus it is not possible to distinguish office and person; with him, this differentiation simply becomes inapplicable. The person is the office, the office is the person. The two are not longer divisible. Here there is no private area reserved for an `I’ which remains in the background behind the deeds and actions and thus at some time or other can be `off duty’ [as "substance" is the ontological support for the "accident," action]; here the `I’ is not separate from the work; the `I’ is the work and the work is the `I’…
“Similarly, as faith understood the position Jesus did not perform a work that could be distinguished from his `I’ and depicted separately. On the contrary, to understand him as the Christ means to be convinced that he has put himself into his word. Here there is no `I’ (as there is with all of us) which utters words; he has identified himself so closely with his word that `I’ and word are indistinguishable: he is word. In the same way, to faith, his work is nothing else than the unreserved way in which he merges himself into this world; he perform himself and gives himself; his work is the giving of himself….
“In other words, faith’s decisive statement about Jesus lies in the indivisible unity of the two words `Jesus Christ,’ a unity which conceals the experience of the identity of existence and mission. In this sense one can certainly speak of a `functional Christology:’ the whole being of Jesus is a function of the `for us,’ but the function too, is – for this very reason – all being….
“As a fitting conclusion one could indeed assert that… The person of Jesus is his teaching, and his teaching is he himself. Christian faith, that is, faith in Jesus as the Christ, is therefore truly `personal faith.’ What this means can really be understood only from this angle. Such faith is not the acceptance of a system but the acceptance of this person who is his word; of the word as person and of the person as word.”[3]
“Similarly, as faith understood the position Jesus did not perform a work that could be distinguished from his `I’ and depicted separately. On the contrary, to understand him as the Christ means to be convinced that he has put himself into his word. Here there is no `I’ (as there is with all of us) which utters words; he has identified himself so closely with his word that `I’ and word are indistinguishable: he is word. In the same way, to faith, his work is nothing else than the unreserved way in which he merges himself into this world; he perform himself and gives himself; his work is the giving of himself….
“In other words, faith’s decisive statement about Jesus lies in the indivisible unity of the two words `Jesus Christ,’ a unity which conceals the experience of the identity of existence and mission. In this sense one can certainly speak of a `functional Christology:’ the whole being of Jesus is a function of the `for us,’ but the function too, is – for this very reason – all being….
“As a fitting conclusion one could indeed assert that… The person of Jesus is his teaching, and his teaching is he himself. Christian faith, that is, faith in Jesus as the Christ, is therefore truly `personal faith.’ What this means can really be understood only from this angle. Such faith is not the acceptance of a system but the acceptance of this person who is his word; of the word as person and of the person as word.”[3]
III
The Meaning of Man, Image of God: To-Be-In-Relation
The anthropology of the Second Vatican Council is derived from Christology. Gaudium et spes #22 reads: “The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light. For Adam, the first man, was a figure of Him Who was to come, namely Christ the Lord. Christ, the final Adam, by the revelation of the mystery of the Father and His love, fully reveals man to man himself and makes his supreme calling clear. It is not surprising, then, that in Hem all the aforementioned truths find their root and attain their crown.
“He Who is the `image of the invisible God’ (Col. 1, 15), is Himself the perfect man."
But Jesus Christ, as divine Person, is pure relation to the Father. The human person has been created in the image and after the likeness of the divine Persons, concretely, of the Son: we have been made “sons in the Son:” “For those whom he has foreknown he has also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son…” (Rom. 8, 29).
The Third Millennium
The Task for Us
Novo Millennio Ineunte:
John Paul II (2001):
STARTING AFRESH FROM CHRIST
29. "I am with you always, to the close of the age" (Mt 28:20). This assurance, dear brothers and sisters, has accompanied the Church for two thousand years, and has now been renewed in our hearts by the celebration of the Jubilee. From it we must gain new impetus in Christian living, making it the force which inspires our journey of faith. Conscious of the Risen Lord's presence among us, we ask ourselves today the same question put to Peter in Jerusalem immediately after his Pentecost speech: "What must we do?" (Acts 2:37).
“We put the question with trusting optimism, but without underestimating the problems we face. We are certainly not seduced by the naive expectation that, faced with the great challenges of our time, we shall find some magic formula. No, we shall not be saved by a formula but by a Person, and the assurance which he gives us: I am with you!
"It is not therefore a matter of inventing a "new programme". The programme already exists: it is the plan found in the Gospel and in the living Tradition, it is the same as ever. Ultimately, it has its centre in Christ himself, who is to be known, loved and imitated, so that in him we may live the life of the Trinity, and with him transform history until its fulfilment in the heavenly Jerusalem. This is a programme which does not change with shifts of times and cultures, even though it takes account of time and culture for the sake of true dialogue and effective communication. This programme for all times is our programme for the Third Millennium.”
Christian Anthropology as Grounding Conscience
Sons in the Son
The most difficult thing to grasp: a being that is intrinsically and constitutively relational. As Conrad Baars quoted in his “I Will Give Them a New Heart”[4] remarked: “It is very difficult for the human mind to sustain the notion of fundamental difference within fundamental equality.”
Me: Think of the differences of the sexes. They are irreducibly different and yet equal (which makes the account against homosexuality so difficult). Such a being is not given in the world of sensible perception as perception. By the very constitution of our senses and abstractive-conceptual power of the mind, we perceive reality as discrete things that stand-in-themselves. We see and conceive relations as accidental (non-substantial) connections between things. Hence, to talk about “pure” relation in itself is imperceptible (but not inconceivable: think of the experience of spousal love). However, it is given to us in the revelation of the Trinity which is One yet constituted by Three Persons. Theologically, this happens only if each Person is pure relation.
Ratzinger’s Account of Conscience
The Two Levels of Conscience: 1) Experience of tendency of our being (awareness of the value “good”); 2) judgment that this, not that, is in accord with it (“good”)
3. Systematic Consequences: The Two Levels of Conscience
A. Anamnesis: non-amnesia (memory)
“After all these ramblings through intellectual history, it is finally time to arrive at some conclusions, that is to formulate a concept of conscience. The medieval tradition was right, I believe, in according two levels to the concept of conscience. These levels, though they can be well distinguished, must be continually referred to each other. It seems to me that many unacceptable theses regarding conscience are the result of neglecting either the difference or the connection between the two. Mainstream scholasticism expressed these two levels in the concepts synderesis and conscientia. The word synderesis (synteresis) came into the medieval tradition of conscience from the stoic doctrine of the microcosm. It remained unclear in its exact meaning and for this reason became a hindrance to a careful development of this essential aspect of the whole question of conscience. I would like, therefore, without entering into philosophical disputes, to replace this problematic word with the much more clearly defined Platonic concept of anamnesis. It is not only linguistically clearer and philosophically deeper and purer, but anamnesis above all also harmonizes with key motifs of biblical thought and the anthropology derived therefrom. The word anamnesis should be taken to mean exactly what Paul expressed in the second chapter of his Letter to the Romans: "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness ..." (2:14 ff.). The same thought is strikingly amplified in the great monastic rule of Saint Basil. Here we read: "The love of God is not founded on a discipline imposed on us from outside, but is constitutively established in us as the capacity and necessity of our rational nature." Basil speaks in terms of "the spark of divine love which has been hidden in us," an expression which was to become important in medieval mysticism. In the spirit of Johannine theology, Basil knows that love consists in keeping the commandments. For this reason, the spark of love which has been put into us by the Creator, means this: "We have received interiorly beforehand the capacity and disposition for observing all divine commandments ... These are not something imposed from without." Referring everything back to its simple core, Augustine adds: "We could never judge that one thing is better than another if a basic understanding of the good had not already been instilled in us."
Therefore: 1) As imaging the divine relation that is the Son, there is a tendency toward the good (“God alone”) and a consciousness that accompanies the inner experience of that tendency. It will not be “a store of retrievable contents” – concepts as principles – but an “inner sense, a capacity to recall” that is my very being as person tending.
2) I then judge: “That’s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.” I seek the divine absolute good. It is not a universal concept that is offered to my will, and my will desires that good necessarily such that the intellect judges that the absolute is “good.” See handout of the steps of the “practical syllogism.”
§§§§§§§§§§
Conscience: Judging According to an Ontological Tendency that Images the Good (Remembers). Conscience is both the remembering and the judging.
“This means that the first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (both are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man's being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears its echo from within. He sees: "That's it! That is what my nature points to and seeks."
"The possibility for, and right to "mission" rest on this anamnesis of the creator which is identical to the ground of our existence. The Gospel may, indeed, must be proclaimed to the pagans because they themselves are yearning for it in the hidden recesses of their souls (cf. Is 42:4). Mission is vindicated then when those addressed recognize in the encounter with the word of the Gospel that this indeed is what they have been waiting for. In this sense, Paul can say: the Gentiles are a law to themselves—not in the sense of modern liberal notions of autonomy which preclude transcendence of the subject, but in the much deeper sense that nothing belongs less to me than I myself. My own I is the site of the profoundest surpassing of self and contact with Him from whom I came and toward Whom I am going. In these sentences, Paul expresses the experience which he had as missionary to the Gentiles and which Israel may have experienced before him in dealings with the "god-fearing." Israel could have experienced among the Gentiles what the ambassadors of Jesus Christ found reconfirmed. Their proclamation answered an expectation. Their proclamation encountered an antecedent basic knowledge of the essential constants of the will of God which came to be written down in the commandments, which can be found in all cultures and which can be all the more clearly elucidated the less an overbearing cultural bias distorts this primordial knowledge. The more man lives in the "fear of the Lord"—consider the story of Cornelius (especially Acts 10:34-35)—the more concretely and clearly effective this anamnesis becomes.
Richard Rohr: "This tendency within the human person needs to be spoken to and answered by the revelation of itself. Every person, especially the young, has this driving imperative for the infinite and absolute. They are “pilgrims of the absolute,” and this absolute must be answered. If not, if they are presented only with what they can see, touch, smell, hear and taste; they are disillusioned and compensate with the pseudo-absolute of “big crowds, loud music, marching armies, totally unrealistic fantasies, fame (or infamy!), money, and popularity. Anything loud, large or socially admired becomes the substitute for the cosmic and the transcendent that they are really ongoing for. Someone needs to tell them that, even if they only half-believe it.” Rohr expatiates: “If there is no contact with greatness, there is an almost cosmic disappointment inside of us, a deep sadness, a capacity for cynical dismissal and sullen coldness, exactly as we see in so many of our young today. The visionary gleam is lost. It is as if they are saying, ‘There are no great people or great patterns. I will not believe in anything. I will not be disappointed again.’ It is called postmodernism, and it is the general assumption of our jaded and uninitiated society.” Importantly, Rohr then sounds the caveat: “But do note that it is not the presence of pain or suffering that destroys the brain; rather it is the lack of larger-than-life people around us. Primal cultures seemed to now that if young people missed being exposed to a greater meaning and greater people during key periods of their lives, especially the last clear opportunity at ages fourteen to seventeen, the result would be disastrous both for the young person and for the society.”[5]
Mentoring must come from outside, from men (for boys) who are truly fathers and who can pass on the inner experience of suffering initiation to become men. This is the foundation of all catechesis and the teaching authority of the Church and Pope. Hence, Ratzinger’s defense of John Henry Newman’s toast first to conscience, and then to the pope.
Practical Consequences of the transition from “nature” to relational person as moral criterion for conscience.
Practical Consequences of the transition from “nature” to relational person as moral criterion for conscience.
1 – The Magisterium teaches that the human person (made in the image of Jesus Christ, the Prototype) is “the primary route that the Church must travel in fulfilling her mission… the way traced out by Christ himself, the way that leads invariably through the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption.
This, and this alone, is the principle which inspires the Church’s social doctrine” (Centesimus Annus #53).
2 – Repeating: Following on the relationality of the Trinitarian Person of Jesus Christ, the human person can only be adequately understood as a relational dynamic: “man, the only earthly being God has willed for itself, finds himself by the sincere gift of himself”(GS #24).
– These two dimensions (finding self by gift of self) appear in the Magisterium[6] as the principle of subsidiarity and the principle of solidarity. “Intimately linked to the foundation, which his man’s dignity, are the principle of solidarity and the principle of subsidiarity. By virtue of the first, man with his brothers is obliged to contribute to the common good of society at al its levels. Hence the Church’s doctrine is opposed to all the forms of social or political individualism.
“By virtue of the second, neither the state nor any society must ever substitute itself for the initiative and responsibility of individuals and of intermediate communities at the level on which they can function, nor must they take away the room necessary for their freedom. Hence the Church’s social doctrine is opposed to all forms of collectivism.”
Hence, “the solution of most of the serious problems related to poverty is to be found in the promotion of a true civilization of work. In a sense, work is the key to the whole social question.”[7] The resolution to the political and economic problems at this 3d millennial junction of a global world and the advent of a “new civilization of love” is the working person, imaging Christ, the worker. The document reads: “The life of Jesus of Nazareth, a real ‘Gospel of work,’ offers us the living example and principle of the radical cultural transformation which is essential for solving the grave problems which must be faced by the age in which we live. He, who, though He was God, became like us in all things, devoted the greater part of His earthly life to manual labor. The culture which our age awaits will be marked by the full recognition of the dignity of human work, which appears in all its nobility and fruitfulness in the light of the mysteries of creation and redemption. Recognized as an expression of the person, work becomes a source of creative meaning and effort.”[8]
Separated from the existential reality of the working person as relational self-gift, both capitalism and socialism become abstract ideologies that become totalitarian and destructive of the human person and a truly human life.
Sexuality: The principle of life that has its source in the Zoe of Trinitarian Life in which we participate through Jesus Christ is self-giving. The relationality of self-gift is always life-producing for the person making the gift as well, obviously, for the receiver of life, be it the child, be it the other through affirmation. The relational principle reads: love- making is always connected to life-giving. To break that relation biologically, psychologically or socially is to impose a culture of death. The prototype of marital love is God’s love for Israel rendered incarnate in the love of Christ, the Bridegroom, for His Bride, the Church. “Husbands love your wives as Christ loves the Church” (Eph. 5, 25).
Homosexuality is an intrinsically disordered inclination because the ontological relation that is the person of the male and is the person of the female in opposing and complementary donation and reception, cannot obtain. It is disordered not because there cannot be children, nor because there cannot be emotional and intentional interpersonal complementarity, but because the ontological structure of the male and the female are constitutively relational in ontological complementarity even when the conjugal union cannot be effected.
* * * * * * * *
An Inadequate Grounding of Conscience
The Greek Notion of Substance that has Obtained Until Vatican II
Ratzinger on “substance” as not constitutively relational
Ratzinger on “substance” as not constitutively relational
1) “In this idea of relativity in word and love [that is the person in God], independent of the concept of substance and not to be classified among the ‘accidents,’ Christian thought discovered the kernel of the concept of person, which describes something other and infinitely more than the mere idea of the ‘individual.’ Let us listen once again to St. Augustine: ‘In God there are no accidents, only substance and relation.’ Therein lies concealed a revolution in man’s view of the world: the undivided sway of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality. It becomes possible to surmount what we call today ‘objectifying thought;’ a new plane of being comes into view”[9] (Josef Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius [1990] 132).
2) More recently, he refers to “person” as a “new philosophical category… a concept that has become for us the fundamental concept of the analogy between God and man, the very center of philosophical thought;”[10] J. Ratzinger, “The New Covenant,” in Many Religions – One Covenant Ignatius (1999) 76-770).
2) More recently, he refers to “person” as a “new philosophical category… a concept that has become for us the fundamental concept of the analogy between God and man, the very center of philosophical thought;”[10] J. Ratzinger, “The New Covenant,” in Many Religions – One Covenant Ignatius (1999) 76-770).
In the light of this, he remarks:
“The meaning of an already existing category, that of ‘relation,’ was fundamentally changed. In the Aristotelian table of categories, relation belongs to the group of accidents that point to substance and are dependent on it; in God, therefore, there are no accidents. Through the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, relatio moves out of the substance-accident framework. Now God himself is described as a Trinitarian set of relations, as relatio subsistens. When we say that man is the image of God, it means that he is a being designed for relationship; it means that, in and through all his relationships, he seeks that relation which is the ground of his existence”[11](Ibid)
3) “I believe that if one follows this struggle in which human reality had to be brought in, as it were, and affirmed for Jesus, one sees what tremendous effort and intellectual transformation lay behind the working out of this concept of person, which was quite foreign in its inner disposition to the Greek and the Latin mind. [In line with this, consider the effort and achievement of the Council of Nicea which named Christ “homoousios” as equal but different from the Father. That is fundamentally “being” as “relation” which explodes the Greek notion of being as “thing-in-itself”]. It is not conceived in substantialist, but… in existential terms… [However] Remaining on the level of the Greek mind, Boethius defined ‘person’ as naturae rationalis individual substantia, as the individual substance of a rational nature. One sees that the concept of person stands entirely on the level of substance. This cannot clarify anything about the Trinity or about Christology; it is an affirmation that remains on the level of the Greek mind which thinks in substantialist terms.”[12](J. Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17 [Fall, 1990] 448).
[1] David Walsh, “The Third Millennium – Reflections on Faith and Reason,” Georgetown Univ. Press (1999) 1-2.
[2] Benedict XVI “Introduction to Christianity” Ignatius (1990) 131-132.
[3] Ibid. 149-151.
[4] Conrad W. Baars, M.D., “I Will Give Them A New Heart,” Pauline Books and Media (2008) 161.
[5] Richard Rohr, “Adam’s Return” Rossraod (2004) 20.
[6] Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation,” SCDF 1986) #73.
[7] Ibid #83.
[8] Ibid #82.
[9] Josef Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (1990) 132.
[10] J. Ratzinger, “The New Covenant,” in Many Religions – One Covenant Ignatius (1999) 76-770).
[11] Ibid.
[12] J. Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17 (Fall, 1990) 448.
[13] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction… op. cit. 132.
[14] “Therein lies concealed a revolution in man’s view of the world: the undivided sway of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality. It becomes possible to surmount what we call today `objectifying thought;’ a new plane of being comes into view;” J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” op. cit. 132.
[15] “In recording the first creation of man, Moses before all others says, `And God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness.’ Then he adds afterwards, `And God made man; in the image of God made he him; male and female made he them, and he blessed them.’ Now the fact that he said `he made him in the image of God’ and was silent about the likeness points to nothing else but this, that man received the honor of God’s image in his first creation, whereas the perfection of God’s likeness was reserved for him at the consummation. The purpose of this was that man should acquire it for himself by his own earnest efforts to imitate God, so that while the possibility of attaining perfection was given to him in the beginning through the honor of the `image,’ he should in the end through the accomplishment of these works obtain for himself the perfect likeness;” Origen, On First Principles 3, 6, 1 (244).
[1] David Walsh, “The Third Millennium – Reflections on Faith and Reason,” Georgetown Univ. Press (1999) 1-2.
[2] Benedict XVI “Introduction to Christianity” Ignatius (1990) 131-132.
[3] Ibid. 149-151.
[4] Conrad W. Baars, M.D., “I Will Give Them A New Heart,” Pauline Books and Media (2008) 161.
[5] Richard Rohr, “Adam’s Return” Rossraod (2004) 20.
[6] Instruction on Christian Freedom and Liberation,” SCDF 1986) #73.
[7] Ibid #83.
[8] Ibid #82.
[9] Josef Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” Ignatius (1990) 132.
[10] J. Ratzinger, “The New Covenant,” in Many Religions – One Covenant Ignatius (1999) 76-770).
[11] Ibid.
[12] J. Ratzinger, “Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology,” Communio 17 (Fall, 1990) 448.
[13] J. Ratzinger, “Introduction… op. cit. 132.
[14] “Therein lies concealed a revolution in man’s view of the world: the undivided sway of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality. It becomes possible to surmount what we call today `objectifying thought;’ a new plane of being comes into view;” J. Ratzinger, “Introduction to Christianity,” op. cit. 132.
[15] “In recording the first creation of man, Moses before all others says, `And God said, Let us make man in our own image and likeness.’ Then he adds afterwards, `And God made man; in the image of God made he him; male and female made he them, and he blessed them.’ Now the fact that he said `he made him in the image of God’ and was silent about the likeness points to nothing else but this, that man received the honor of God’s image in his first creation, whereas the perfection of God’s likeness was reserved for him at the consummation. The purpose of this was that man should acquire it for himself by his own earnest efforts to imitate God, so that while the possibility of attaining perfection was given to him in the beginning through the honor of the `image,’ he should in the end through the accomplishment of these works obtain for himself the perfect likeness;” Origen, On First Principles 3, 6, 1 (244).
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Broaden Reason
“Ought we to accept modernity in full, or in part? Is there a real contribution? Can this modern way of thinking be a contribution, or offer a contribution, or not? And if there is a contribution from the modern, critical way of thinking, in line with the Enlightenment, how can it be reconciled with the great intuitions and the great gifts of the faith”
“Or ought we, in the name of the faith, to reject modernity? You see? There always seems to be this dilemma: either we must reject the whole of the tradition, all the exegesis of the Fathers, relegate it to the library as historically unsustainable, or we must reject modernity.”
His Solution: “And I think that the gift, the light of the faith, must be dominant, but the light of the faith has also the capacity to take into itself the true human limits, and for this reason the struggles over exegesis and the liturgy for me must be inserted into this great, let us call it epochal, struggle over how Christianity, over how the Christian responds to modernity, to the challenge of modernity.”
“And it seems to me, that this was the true intention of the Second Vatican Council, to go beyond an unfruitful and overly narrow apologetic to a true synthesis with the positive elements of modernity, but at the same time, let us say, to transform modernity, to heal it of its illnesses, by means of the light and strength of the faith.
“Because it was the Council Father’s intention to heal and transform modernity, and not simply to succumb to it or merge with it, the interpretations which interpret the Second Vatican Council in the sense of de-sacralization or profanation are erroneous.
“That is, Vatican II must not be interpreted as desiring a rejection of the tradition and an adapting of the Church to modernity and so causing the Church to become empty because it loses the word of faith.
“Augustine, as you know, was a man who, on the one hand, had studied in great depth the great philosophies, the profane literature of the ancient world.
“On the other hand, he was also very critical of the pagan authors, even with regard to Plato, to Virgil, those great authors whom he loved so much.
“He criticized them, and with a penetrating sense, purified them.
“This was his way of using the great pre-Christian culture: purify it, heal it, and in this way, also, healing it, he gave true greatness to this culture. Because in this way, it entered into the fact of the incarnation, no? And became part of the Word’s incarnation.
“But only by means of the difficult process of purification, of transformation, of conversion.
“I would say the word ‘conversion’ is the key word, one of the key words, of St. Augustine, and our culture also has a need for conversions. Without conversion one does not arrive at the Lord. This is true of the individual, and this is true of the culture as well…”[2]
The Proposal
To take the positive contributions of modern thought and purify them with Christian Faith.
The Act of Faith is the Act of Being: Self Gift
Faith as Anthropological Act
Faith as Anthropological Act
Christian Faith: The Experience of Acting Humanly in One’s Whole Self.
This is the center-piece of the entire study: Faith as ontological-anthropological act.
Vatican II: Dei Verbum:
· “Thus, as the centuries go by, the Church is always advancing towards the plenitude of divine truth, until eventually the words of God are fulfilled in her” (Dei Verbum 8). There is, therefore, a development of experience and consciousness in the assimilation of Revelation. Hence, the faith is not reducible to a series of concepts as intellectual snapshots that can be placed in a book. “Faith is a lived knowledge of Christ, a living remembrance of his commandments, and a truth to be lived out. A word, in any event, is not truly received until it passes into action, until it is pout into practice. Faith is a decision involving one’s whole existence. It is an encounter, a dialogue, a communion of love and of life between the believer and Jesus Christ, the Way, and the Truth, and the Life (cf. Jn. 14, 6). It entails an act of trusting abandonment to Christ, which enables us to live as he lived (cf. Gal. 2, 20)…”[3]
· Faith is act of the whole person: “The obedience of faith (Rom. 16, 26; cf. Rom. 1, 5; 2 Cor. 10, 5-6) must be given to God as he reveals himself. By faith man freely commits his entire self to God, making ‘the full submission of his intellect and will to God who reveals’” (Dei Verbum 5).[4]
John Paul II Comments: “Faith, as these words show, is not merely the response of the mind to an abstract truth. Even the statement, true though it is, that this response is dependent on the will does not tell us everything about the nature of faith. ‘The obedience of faith’ is not bound to any particular human faculty but relates to man’s whole `personal structure and spiritual dynamism
“Man’s proper response to God’s revel-revelation consists in self-abandonment to God. This is the true dimension of faith, in which man does not simplyt accept a particular set of propositions, but accepts his own vocation and the sense of his existence. This implies, at least in principle and as an existential premises, that man has the free disposal of himself, since by means of faith he ‘abandons himself wholly to God.’ This dimension of faith is supernatural in the strict sense of the word.”[5]
To complete the above anthropological notion of faith with the Christological notion of “revelation” as developed by Benedict XVI in his habilitation thesis:
To complete the above anthropological notion of faith with the Christological notion of “revelation” as developed by Benedict XVI in his habilitation thesis:
Ratzinger’s Retrieval of the Pristine Meaning of Revelation and Faith:
Benedict understands revelation to the very Person of Christ Himself. Therefore, to “understand” Scripture one must “know” the Person of Christ. And one can “know” the Person of Christ only by experiencing Him in the ontological subjectivity of the self. This is achieved by faith as self-gift.
Josef Ratzinger said: “I had ascertained that in Bonaventure… there was nothing corresponding to our conception of `revelation,’ by which we are normally in the habit of referring to all the revealed contents of the faith: … Here, `revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained thorough my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important fort me at the time of the conciliar discussion on revelation, Scripture, and tradition. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This is turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura…, because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given.”[6]
The “Being” of the Self is Recovered in the Act of Faith
Let us pay attention to another level of experience.
Benedict understands revelation to the very Person of Christ Himself. Therefore, to “understand” Scripture one must “know” the Person of Christ. And one can “know” the Person of Christ only by experiencing Him in the ontological subjectivity of the self. This is achieved by faith as self-gift.
Josef Ratzinger said: “I had ascertained that in Bonaventure… there was nothing corresponding to our conception of `revelation,’ by which we are normally in the habit of referring to all the revealed contents of the faith: … Here, `revelation’ is always a concept denoting an act. The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not to the objectified result of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject is always also a part of the concept of `revelation.’ Where there is no one to perceive `revelation,’ no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed. By definition, revelation requires a someone who apprehends it. These insights, gained thorough my reading of Bonaventure, were later on very important fort me at the time of the conciliar discussion on revelation, Scripture, and tradition. Because, if Bonaventure is right, then revelation precedes Scripture and becomes deposited in Scripture but is not simply identical with it. This is turn means that revelation is always something greater than what is merely written down. And this again means that there can be no such thing as pure sola scriptura…, because an essential element of Scripture is the Church as understanding subject, and with this the fundamental sense of tradition is already given.”[6]
The “Being” of the Self is Recovered in the Act of Faith
Let us pay attention to another level of experience.
1) John Paul II’s announcement of two levels of experience:
“The fact that human knowledge is primarily a sensory knowledge surprises no one. Neither Plato nor Aristotle nor any of the classical philosophers question this. Cognitive realism, both so-called naïve realism and critical realism, agrees that ‘nihil est in intellectu, quod prius non fuerit in sensu’ (‘nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses’). Nevertheless, the limits of these ‘senses’ are not exclusively sensory. We know, in fact, that man not only knows colors, tones, and forms; he also knows objects globally – for example, not only all the parts that comprise the object ‘man’ but also man in himself (yes, man as a person). He knows, therefore, extrasensory truths or, in other words, the transempirical. In addition, it is not possible to affirm that when something is transempirical it ceases to be empirical.
“It is therefore possible to speak from a solid foundation about human experience, moral experience, or religious experience. And if it is possible to speak of such experiences, it is difficult to deny that, in the realm of human experience, one also finds good and evil, truth and beauty, and God. God Himself certainly is not an object of human empiricism; the Sacred Scripture, in its own way, emphasizes this: "No one has ever seen God" (cf. Jn 1:18). If God is a knowable object--as both the Book of Wisdom and the Letter to the Romans teach -- He is such on the basis of man's experience both of the visible world and of his interior world. This is the point of departure for Immanuel Kant's study of ethical experience in which he abandons the old approach found in the writings of the Bible and of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Man recognizes himself as an ethical being, capable of acting according to criteria of good and evil, and not only those of profit and pleasure. He also recognizes himself as a religious being, capable of putting himself in contact with God. Prayer--of which we talked earlier--is in a certain sense the first verification of such a reality…[7]
“And we find ourselves by now very close to Saint Thomas, but the path passes not so much through being and existence as through people and their meeting each other, through the "I" and the "Thou." This is a fundamental dimension of man's existence, which is always a co-existence…[8] Such co-existence is essential to our Judeo-Christian tradition and comes from God’s initiative. This initiative is connected with and leads to creation, and is at the same time – Saint Paul teaches - `the eternal election of man in the Word who is the Son (cf. Eph. 1, 4).”[9]
2) Benedict XVI: a) On the two levels: a) the meeting of Christ and Nathanael: words alone do not suffice to know Jesus as the Christ; one must “come and see.”[10]
2) Benedict XVI: a) On the two levels: a) the meeting of Christ and Nathanael: words alone do not suffice to know Jesus as the Christ; one must “come and see.”[10]
b) Theological epistemology: The two major theses concerning accessing the “I” of Jesus Christ beyond the sensible phenomenon of Jesus of Nazareth:
The Supreme Act of Faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matt. 16, 16).
How to know the Person of Jesus Christ? (when Mt. 11, 27 says that only the Father knows the Son, and only the Son knows the Father): Become “another Christ.”
·
The Supreme Act of Faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matt. 16, 16).
How to know the Person of Jesus Christ? (when Mt. 11, 27 says that only the Father knows the Son, and only the Son knows the Father): Become “another Christ.”
·
“According to the testimony of Holy Scripture, the center of the life and person of Jesus is his constant communication with the Father:” “We see who Jesus is if we see him at prayer. The Christian confession of faith comes from participating in the prayer of Jesus, from being drawn into his prayer and being privileged to behold it; it interprets the experience of Jesus’ prayer, and its interpretation of Jesus is correct because it springs from a sharing in whets is most personal and intimate to him.”[11]
“Since the center of the person of Jesus is prayer, it is essential to participate in his prayer if we are to know and understand him.”
- Like is known by like.
- Since Christ is prayer, one must pray and approach the habitus of prayer in order to be “like” Him (become one being with Him).
- Since we are ontologically made in the image of God, and Jesus is the perfect image of the Father (Col. 1, 15), if we experience ourselves to be “like” Him, we “know” (intellegere: to read from within) Him.
- Since Christ is prayer, one must pray and approach the habitus of prayer in order to be “like” Him (become one being with Him).
- Since we are ontologically made in the image of God, and Jesus is the perfect image of the Father (Col. 1, 15), if we experience ourselves to be “like” Him, we “know” (intellegere: to read from within) Him.
c) Samaritan Woman: The following reveals the mind of Benedict XVI concerning the supreme crisis of the present day, the absence of God; and b) it is vintage Ratzinger in its depth, clarity and simplicity as portrayal of the transition from the objectified “horizon” of “thing” (water) to the “horizon” of “I” as disclosed by the act of sincerity (self-gift). This revealing of God’s presence among us, “I who speak with thee am he,” is compelling. Of incalculable importance is Benedict’s assertion below: “In general, we can reduce what is happening to the formula: one must know oneself as one really is if one is to know God. The real medium, the primordial experience of all experiences, is that man himself is the place in which and through which he experiences God.”
“It [John 4] opens with the meeting of Jesus and the Samaritan woman in the context of a normal, human, everyday experience – the experience of thirst, which is surely one of man’s most primordial experiences. In the course of the conversation, the subject shifts to that thirst that is a thirst for life, and the point is made that one must drink again and again, must come again and again to the source. In this way, the woman is made aware of what in actuality she, like every human being, has always known but to which she has not always adverted: that she thirsts for life itself and that all the assuaging that she seeks and finds cannot slake this living, elemental thirst. The superficial `empirical’ experience has been transcended.
“But what has been revealed is still of this world. It is succeeded, therefore, by one of those conversations on two levels that are so characteristic of John’s technique of recording dialogue, the Johannine `misunderstanding,’ as it is called by the exegetes. From the fact that Jesus and the Samaritan woman, though they use the same words, have in mind two very different levels of meaning and, separated thus by the ambiguity of human speech, are speaking at cross-purposes, there is manifested the lasting incommensurability of faith and human experience however extensive that experience may be. For the woman understands by `water’ that of which the fairy tales speak: the elixir of life by virtue of which man will not die and his thirst for life will be entirely satisfied. She remains in the sphere of bios[7], of the empirical life that is familiar to her, whereas Jesus wants to reveal to her the true life, the Zoë.
“In the next stage, the woman’s full attention has been attracted to the subject of a thirst for life. She no longer asks for something, for water or for any other single thing, but for life, for herself. This explains the apparently totally unmotivated interpolation by Jesus: `Go and call your husband!’ (Jn. 4, 16). It is both intentional and necessary, for her life as a whole, with all its thirst, is the true subject here. As a result, there comes to light the real dilemma, the deep-seated waywardness, of her existence: she is brought face to face with herself. In general, we can reduce what is happening to the formula: one must know oneself as one really is if one is to know God. The real medium, the primordial experience of all experiences, is that man himself is the place in which and through which he experiences God. Admittedly, the circle could also be closed in the opposite direction: it could be said that it is only by first knowing God that one can properly know oneself.
“But what has been revealed is still of this world. It is succeeded, therefore, by one of those conversations on two levels that are so characteristic of John’s technique of recording dialogue, the Johannine `misunderstanding,’ as it is called by the exegetes. From the fact that Jesus and the Samaritan woman, though they use the same words, have in mind two very different levels of meaning and, separated thus by the ambiguity of human speech, are speaking at cross-purposes, there is manifested the lasting incommensurability of faith and human experience however extensive that experience may be. For the woman understands by `water’ that of which the fairy tales speak: the elixir of life by virtue of which man will not die and his thirst for life will be entirely satisfied. She remains in the sphere of bios[7], of the empirical life that is familiar to her, whereas Jesus wants to reveal to her the true life, the Zoë.
“In the next stage, the woman’s full attention has been attracted to the subject of a thirst for life. She no longer asks for something, for water or for any other single thing, but for life, for herself. This explains the apparently totally unmotivated interpolation by Jesus: `Go and call your husband!’ (Jn. 4, 16). It is both intentional and necessary, for her life as a whole, with all its thirst, is the true subject here. As a result, there comes to light the real dilemma, the deep-seated waywardness, of her existence: she is brought face to face with herself. In general, we can reduce what is happening to the formula: one must know oneself as one really is if one is to know God. The real medium, the primordial experience of all experiences, is that man himself is the place in which and through which he experiences God. Admittedly, the circle could also be closed in the opposite direction: it could be said that it is only by first knowing God that one can properly know oneself.
"But we anticipate. As we have said, the woman must come first to the knowledge of herself, to the acknowledgement of herself. For what she makes now is a kind of confession: a confession in which, at last, she reveals herself unsparingly [emphasis mine]. Thus a new transition has occurred – to preserve our earlier terminology, a transition from empirical and experimental to `experiential’ experience, to `existential experience.’ The woman stands face to face with herself. It is not longer a question now of something but of the depths of the I itself and, consequently, of the radical poverty that is man’s I-myself, the place where this I is ultimately revealed behind the superficiality of the something. From this perspective, we might regard the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman as the prototype of catechesis (underline mine) It must lead from the something to the I. Beyond every something it must ensure the involvement of man himself, of this particular man. It must produce self-knowledge, and self-acknowledgment so that the indigence and need of man’s being will be evident.“But let us return to the biblical text! The Samaritan woman has achieved this radical confrontation with her own self. In the moment in which this occurs, the question of all questions arises always and of necessity; the question about oneself becomes a question about God. It is only apparently without motivation but in reality inevitable that the woman should ask now: How do things stand with regard to adoration, that is, with regard to God and my relationship to him? (cf. Jn. 4, 20). The question about foundation and goal makes itself heard. Only at this point does the offering of Jesus’ true gift become possible. (underline mine). For the `gift of God’ is God himself, God precisely as gift – that is, the Holy Spirit (cf. verses 10 and 24). At the beginning of the conversation, there seemed no likelihood that this woman, with her obviously superficial way of life, would have any interest in the Holy Spirit. But once she was led to the depths of her own being [underline mine], the question arose that must always arise if one is to ask the question that barns in one’s soul. Now the woman is aware of the real thirst by which she is driven. Hence she can at last learn what it is for which this thirst thirsts.
“It is the purpose and meaning of all catechesis to lead to this thirst. For one who knows neither that there is a Holy Spirit nor that one can thirst for him, it cannot begin otherwise than with sensory perception. Catechesis must lead to self-knowledge, to the exposing of the I, so that it lets the masks fall and moves out of the realm of something into that of being. Its goal is conversio, that conversion of man that results in his standing face to face with himself. Conversio (`conversion,’ metanoia) is identical with self-knowledge, and self-knowledge is the nucleus of all knowledge. Conversio is the way in which man finds himself and thus knows the question of all questions: How can I worship God? It is the question that means his salvation; it is the raison d’etre of catechesis.”[12]
Enter Wojtyla’s Phenomenological Metaphysics:
The Phenomenology of the Act of Faith Yields “I” as Being
Since faith is an act of metaphysical anthropology, it musts be able to be examined phenomenologically as a real action, concretely, the gift of oneself: the spousal act. As such, if we could describe the internal “experiences” of potency and act, we would be able to reach the “I” as Being since consciousness is not susceptible of yielding such an experience. This is the achievement of the metaphysical phenomenology of Karol Wojtyla.
Wojtyla’s phenomenology of the experience of self-determination:
“The basis for understanding the human being must be sought in experience – in experience that is complete and comprehensive and free of all systematic a priori’s. The point of departure for an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination is the kind of experience of human action that includes the lived experience of moral good and evil as an essential and especially important element; this experience can be separately defined as the experience of morality. These two experiences – the experience of the human being and the experience of morality – can really never be completely separated[13], although we can, in the context of the overall process of reflection, focus more on one or the other. In the case of the former, philosophical reflection will lead us in the direction of anthropology; in the case of the latter, in the direction of ethics.
“The experience of human action refers to the lived experience of the fact `I act.’ This fact is in each instance completely original, unique, and unrepeatable… The lived experience of the fact `I act’ differs from all facts that merely `happen’ in a personal subject. This clear difference between something that `happens’ in the subject and `activity’ or action of the subject allows us, in turn, to identify an element in the comprehensive experience of the human being that decisively distinguishes the activity or action of a person from all that merely happens in the person. I define this element as self-determination.
(…) “`I act’ means `I am the efficient cause’ of my action and of my self-actualization as a subject, which is not the case when something merely `happens’ in me, for then I do not experience the efficacy of my personal self. My sense of efficacy as an acting subject in relation to my activity is intimately connected with a sense of responsibility for that activity…”
“Self determination as a property of human action that comes to light in experience directs the attention of one who analyzes such action to the will. The will is the person’s power of the self-determination….
“When I say that the will is the power of self-determination, I do not have in mind the will all alone, in some sort of methodical isolation intended to disclose the will’s own dynamism. Rather, I necessarily have in mind here the whole person. Self-determination takes place through acts of will, through this central power of the human soul. And yet self-determination is not identical with these acts in any of their forms, since it is a property of the person as such… My analysis, however brief, shows that self-determination is a property of the person, who, as the familiar definition says, is a naturae rationalis individual substantia. This property is realized through the will, which is an accident. Self-determination – or, in other words, freedom – is not limited to the accidental dimension, but belongs to the substantial dimension of the person: it is the person’s freedom, and not just the will’s freedom…”[14]
“I” as Potency and Act: Cause of Action
Wojtyla’s phenomenology of the experience of self-determination:
“The basis for understanding the human being must be sought in experience – in experience that is complete and comprehensive and free of all systematic a priori’s. The point of departure for an analysis of the personal structure of self-determination is the kind of experience of human action that includes the lived experience of moral good and evil as an essential and especially important element; this experience can be separately defined as the experience of morality. These two experiences – the experience of the human being and the experience of morality – can really never be completely separated[13], although we can, in the context of the overall process of reflection, focus more on one or the other. In the case of the former, philosophical reflection will lead us in the direction of anthropology; in the case of the latter, in the direction of ethics.
“The experience of human action refers to the lived experience of the fact `I act.’ This fact is in each instance completely original, unique, and unrepeatable… The lived experience of the fact `I act’ differs from all facts that merely `happen’ in a personal subject. This clear difference between something that `happens’ in the subject and `activity’ or action of the subject allows us, in turn, to identify an element in the comprehensive experience of the human being that decisively distinguishes the activity or action of a person from all that merely happens in the person. I define this element as self-determination.
(…) “`I act’ means `I am the efficient cause’ of my action and of my self-actualization as a subject, which is not the case when something merely `happens’ in me, for then I do not experience the efficacy of my personal self. My sense of efficacy as an acting subject in relation to my activity is intimately connected with a sense of responsibility for that activity…”
“Self determination as a property of human action that comes to light in experience directs the attention of one who analyzes such action to the will. The will is the person’s power of the self-determination….
“When I say that the will is the power of self-determination, I do not have in mind the will all alone, in some sort of methodical isolation intended to disclose the will’s own dynamism. Rather, I necessarily have in mind here the whole person. Self-determination takes place through acts of will, through this central power of the human soul. And yet self-determination is not identical with these acts in any of their forms, since it is a property of the person as such… My analysis, however brief, shows that self-determination is a property of the person, who, as the familiar definition says, is a naturae rationalis individual substantia. This property is realized through the will, which is an accident. Self-determination – or, in other words, freedom – is not limited to the accidental dimension, but belongs to the substantial dimension of the person: it is the person’s freedom, and not just the will’s freedom…”[14]
“I” as Potency and Act: Cause of Action
Since things happen to man, and that he also is the cause of his own action, there is a different dynamic at work. In the one case, he is in potency to be acted on; in the other he is the cause and agent. “Potency… may be define\d as something that is in preparation , is available, and even ready at hand but is not actually fulfilled. The act… is the actualization of potentiality, its fulfillment.
“As is to be seen, the meanings of both concepts are strictly correlated and inhere in the conjugate they form rather than in each of them separately. Their conjugation reveals not only the differentiated, though mutually coincident states of existence, but also the transitions from one to the other. It is these transitions that objectivize the structure of all dynamism inherent in being, in being as such, which constitutes the proper subject of metaphysics, and at the same time in every and any being… We may with justice say that at this point metaphysics appears as the intellectual soil wherein all the domain of knowledge have their roots. Indeed, we do not seem to have as yet any other conceptions and any other language which would adequately render the dynamic essence of change – of all change whatever occurring in any being – apart from those that we have been endowed with by the philosophy of potency and act. By means of this conception we can grasp and describe precisely any dynamism that occurs in any being. It is to them we also have to revert when discussing the dynamism proper to man.”[15]
“Man is thus in a wholly experiential way the cause of his acting. There is between person and action a sensibly experiential, causal relation, which brings the person, that is to say, every concrete human ego, to recognize his action to be the result of his efficacy; in this sense he must accept his actions as his own property and also, primarily because of their moral nature, as the domain of his responsibility. Both the responsibility and the sense of property invest with a special quality the causation itself and the efficacy itself of the acting person.”[16]
We should not here that Newman makes the same affirmation: “The assent which we give to the proposition, as a first principle, that nothing happens without a cause, is derived, in the first instance, from what we know of ourselves; and we argue analogically from what is within us to what is external to us. One of the first experiences of an infant is that of his willing and doing; and as time goes on, one of the first temptations of the boy is to bring home to himself the fact of his sovereign arbitrary power, though it be at the price of waywardness, mischievousness, and disobedience. And when he parents, as antagonists of this willfulness, begin to restrain him, and to bring his mind and conduct into shape, then he has a second series of experiences of cause and effect, and that upon a principle or rule. Thus the notion of causation is one of the first lessons which he learns from experience that experience limiting it to agents possessed of intelligence and will. It is the notion of power combined with a purpose and an end. Physical phenomena, as such, are without sense; and experience teaches us nothing about physical phenomenal as causes.”[17]
In a word, causality as an experience does not come to us through the senses, but in the experience of ourselves as agents of our own free actions. The consciousness of that experience is then extrapolated to the phenomena which we take in through the external senses. David Hume was correct in stating that causality is not senses but experienced in self and then extended outside. In agreement with this, Wojtyla writes: “The students of the problems of causality, on the one hand, and psychologists, on the other, often note that human acting is in fact the only complete experience of what has been called by Aristotle ‘efficient causation.’… Efficacy itself as the relation of cause and effect leads us to the objective order of being and existence and is thus of an existential nature. In this case efficacy is simultaneously an experience. There lies the source of the specific empirical significance of human efficacy related with acting.”[18]
The Absolute
After discovering that the “I” is Being, it is critical to understand that it is the unmediated access to reality as absolute. It is here that we access conscience.
Consider what Benedict said in Brazil in 2007:
“What is real? Are only material goods, social, economic and political problems "reality"? “This was precisely the great error of the dominant tendencies of the last century, a most destructive error, as we can see from the results of both Marxist and capitalist systems. They falsify the notion of reality by detaching it from the foundational and decisive reality which is God. Anyone who excludes God from his horizons falsifies the notion of "reality" and, in consequence, can only end up in blind alleys or with recipes for destruction….
“(W)ho knows God? How can we know him? (…) For a Christian, the nucleus of the reply is simple: only God knows God, only his Son who is God from God, true God, knows him. And he "who is nearest to the Father’s heart has made him known" (John 1:18). Hence the unique and irreplaceable importance of Christ for us, for humanity. If we do not know God in and with Christ, all of reality is transformed into an indecipherable enigma; there is no way, and without a way, there is neither life nor truth.
To see in terms of the absolute, restores meaning to factual and contingent knowing. Consider the enlightenment of Helen Keller as presented and commented on by Walker Percy. She experienced herself as “I” in the act of naming the water (similar to the exegesis of Adam naming the animals done by John Paul II in TOB):
“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that `w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
“We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Someone was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motion of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that `w-a-t-e-r’ meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
I left the well-house eager to learn. Everything had a name, and each name gave birth to a new thought. As we returned to the house every object which I touched seemed to quiver with life. That was because I saw everything with the strange, new sight that had come to me. On entering the door I remembered the doll I had broken. [She had earlier destroyed the doll in a fit of temper.] I felt my way to the dearth and picked up the pieces. I tried vainly to put them together. Then my eyes filled with tears; for I realized what I had done, and for the first time I felt repentance and sorrow.”[19]
Walker Percy comments: “What had happened? Helen had exercised her subjectivity as cause by “throwing” (βαλÎιν) the “likeness” (sym): w-a-t-e-r at the wet flowing object. She had experienced herself as cause, and therefore came to a consciousness of herself as “self.” Percy comments: “before, Helen had behaved like a good responding organism. Afterward, she acted like a rejoicing symbol-mongering human. Before, she was little more than an animal. Afterward, she became wholly human. Within the few minutes of the breakthrough and the several hours of exploiting it Helen had concentrated the months of the naming phase that most children go through somewhere around their second birthday.”[20]
Ratzinger on Conscience:
Conscience: the Experience of Being Human as Image of God:
In Texas in 1988 Ratzinger said: “The first so-called ontological level of the phenomenon conscience consists in the fact that something like an original memory of the good and true (both are identical) has been implanted in us, that there is an inner ontological tendency within man, who is created in the likeness of God, toward the divine. From its origin, man’s being resonates with some things and clashes with others. This anamnesis of the origin, which results from the godlike constitution of our being is not a conceptually articulated knowing, a store of retrievable contents. It is so to speak an inner sense, a capacity to recall, so that the one whom it addresses, if he is not turned in on himself, hears an echo from within. He sees: That‘s it! That is what my nature points to and seeks.
“This anamnesis of the Creator, which is identical with the ground of our existence, is the reason that mission is both possible and justified. The Gospel may and indeed must be proclaimed to the pagans, because this is what they are waiting for, even if they do not know this themselves (see Isa. 42, 4).”[21]
Conclusion: the ultimate ground of all moral action is not “nature” as the result of the epistemology of sensible perception and intellectual abstraction. “Natural Law” is not the law of nature. Natural Law, as understood in the development that has taken place in Vatican II is the “Law of the Person:” “At this point the true meaning of the natural law can be understood: it refers to man’s proper and primordial nature, the ‘nature of the human person,’ which is the person himself in the unity of soul and body, in the unity of his spiritual and biological inclinations and of all the other specific charactertistics necessary for the pursuit of his end” (Veritatis Splendor #50).
[1] Cfi. David Walsh, “The Third Millennium: Reflections on Faith and Reason,” Georgetown University Press (1999)
[2] Robert Moynihan, “Let God’s Light Shine Forth,” Doubleday (2005) 34-36.
[3] John Paul II, “Veritatis Splendor,” #88.
[4] John Paul II, “Sources of Renewal”
[5] Karol Wojtyla, “Sources of Renewal” Harper and Row, 1979) 20.
[6] Ibid. 108-109.
[7] John Paul II, “Crossing the Threshold of Hope,” Knopf (1994) 34
[8] Ibid 36.
[9] Ibid
[10] “Philip told this Nathanael that he had found "him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (Jn 1: 45).… "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (Jn 1: 46). In its own way, this form of protestation is important for us…. Nathanael's reaction suggests another thought to us: in our relationship with Jesus we must not be satisfied with words alone. In his answer, Philip offers Nathanael a meaningful invitation: "Come and see!" (Jn 1: 46). Our knowledge of Jesus needs above all a first-hand experience.” Benedict XVI Sept. 6, 2006.
[11] J. Ratzinger, “Behold the Pierced One,” Ignatius (1986) 15-27.
[12] J. Ratzinger, “Principles of Catholic Theology,” Ignatius (1987)353-355.
[13] The deep reason for this is that the “I” images God Who alone is “good.” To experience one’s being as image is to experience that one is good. This is the supreme triumph of realist ethics over relativism. It has been the centuries long challenge from Hume to the present moment concerning how factual, empirical “is” can be the ground of moral “ought.” The challenge was to explain how one can deduce (since obligation must come from the prius of Cartesian consciousness) “ought” from “is.” The failure to answer that provoked Kant’s so-called “transcendental” philosophy both theoretical and practical to save the absolute. Absent the phenomenology of the experience of the “I” as real Being, there was no escape. Either is was empiricist relativism of self as mere consciousness, or it was the ungrounded apriori categories of Kant. But since they were both mere consciousness, there was no escape from subjectivism and relativism. Wojtyla’s “discovery” of the experience of the “I” changes the entire “thoughtscape” if we understand it. See John Paul II’s VS ##9-11.
[14] Karol Wojtyla, “The Personal Structure of Self-Determination,” Person and Community (1993) 189-190
[15] K. Wojtyla, “The Acting Person,” Reidel (1979) 66.
[16] Ibid 67.
[17] J. H. Newman, “A Grammar of Assent” UNDP (1992) 70.
[18] K. Wojtyla, “The Acting Person,” ibid. 68.
[19] Ibid 34-35.
[20] Ibid 38.
[21] J. Ratzinger, “Conscience and Truth,” Values in a Time of Upheaval Ignatius (2006) 92.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
The Emergence of the Third Millennium
The introduction to an important book published in 1999 began in the following way:
“The millennium is the most momentous calendar event any of us will live through. Yet despite the attention lavished upon it, nothing is more certain that that its true significance will be missed. This misperception is itself evidence of the intellectual fog under which we labor. We are incapable of apprehending the meaning of the most massively obvious events. How can our public celebrations bear any meaningful relation to the knot of time through which we are passing, if we have no credible sense of what is being marked? Are we celebrating a merely empty numerical sum? Or does something of more consequence lie behind that intriguing row of zeros? We know how to celebrate the new year, the new decade, even the new century. But a new millennium? There we are in unfamiliar territory, and the impending arrival is more than a little intimidating. No proximate generation will have such a moment to inaugurate…
“This generation is charged with beginning a new age. We have been granted the opening of the third millennium of our history, thereby stamping it with a character that will remain more visible than the imprints of many less strategically placed cohorts. Thus, it is not the celebration that is daunting, but its aftermath… Business as usual reassures us that life will continue pretty much as it has. Little of the apocalyptic excitement we know from the beginning of previous millennia seems to be in the air. Or perhaps it is merely building subterraneously to be unleashed in a volcanic eruption. An eerie calm seems to characterize our lack of preparations. Sooner or later, however, that will be shattered as we are gripped by the stature of the historical shift we are entering. The advent of a new millennium cannot be overlooked forever, and eventually it will take us into its grip. Then our disorientation will be complete. How will we be able to sustain our precarious entry into a new era if we have lost our sense of what the transition means.”[1]
And then came 9/11, and the election of November 4, 2008!!
[1] David Walsh, “The Thrid Millennium: Reflections on Faith and Reason” Georgetown University Press (1999) 1-2.
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