Reflection on Certainty: #6

Why must you be sure?

Having lavished paragraph on paragraph to do the theme of certainty some degree of justice, I want to take a step back and ask the question: why?

Why must our knowledge be certain?  Why do we guard our storehouses of knowledge to only let in those statements to which no possible objection or counterargument may be raised?  Why does true knowledge only extend to those things which cannot possibly be doubted?

This assumption is common to both modernism and postmodernism; it is the framework in which this debate has been conducted.  But it is an assumption, and over the course of these notes I've begun to realize it is utterly unwarranted.

By definition, only God can be omniscient, and therefore only God can be certain.  We cannot see a painting that is hidden from our eyes; we cannot draw blueprints of a jail when we only see our cell.  On the contrary, we are human.  Our intellects operate on reason, on our capacity for critical judgment.  Only rarely do we grasp truth intuitively, as though we were perceiving an object or sensing a smell.  We analyze, we infer, we evaluate, and we deal with a variety of logical possibilities.  To such minds as ours, uncertainty is natural and inevitable.

Our desire for certainty is fundamentally a desire to transcend our own humanity: to become like God, knowing good and evil.  It's more than a little ironic that the most recent fallacy of the modern mind are precisely the same as the first fallacy, the first sin to which man succumbed.

Why seek what cannot be found?  I don't think even in heaven will we "know" with certainty.  Omniscience is not in our nature.  But the quest for certainty is even beyond futility.  It is an unhealthy obsession, not merely for flattering our sense of pride, but also for distracting us from our sense of self.

We are not pure minds. We are tripartite beings: body, soul, and spirit.  The mind (soul) is meant to guide us, but we are ultimately defined by our choices -- that is, our will (spirit).  Our obsessive focus on certainty distracts us from this fact. It permits us to identify ourselves with our mind and thereby justify our atrophied will.  We want certainty because we are cowards -- we want to be forced into Truth without having to judge for ourselves or face the consequences of our decisions.

God preserve us from such sin.  Let us be content with what resources we have been given, and let us be courageous enough to act on them.

Reflection on Certainty: #5

Are you sure?

Knowledge is regressive.  Every conclusion we reach relies on some prior shared premise.

Is there any piece of knowledge we can point to that is not grounded on prior knowledge?  Is anything truly self-evident?  I'm honestly not sure.  The axioms we often call self-evident, such as the law of non-contradiction, do not in fact seem to be self-demonstrating. They are merely so far above (that is, prior to) other statements that standard deductive proof becomes a practical impossibility. Self-evident axioms are so called not because they are demonstrated, but because they are so foundational to our rationality that rejecting them would be rejecting the very idea of rationality.

In short, the basis for what we call certainty is not our positive knowledge of something, but rather our inability to conceive of its opposite.

As humans, we are rational creatures.  Our minds work in certain ways, and don't work in others.  It is physically impossible to operate outside of those constraints.

This is what I call methodological certainty. We are allowed to feel and express certainty, by this standard, for those ideas without which we would not be able to function.  Methodological certainty concerns the sine qua non of our rational humanity: statements without which we are not. 

For instance, we might be able to deny the law of non-contradiction by our words, but it would not have the force of rational belief.  We could not defy it in action, much less in actual processes of reasoning.  Our minds don't function in that way.  We can conceive of these limits on our mind, but we can no sooner transcend them than we can transcend the intrinsic limitations of our physical bodies.

One danger is that humans are eminently capable of self-deception. We might deny a given statement, and we may even live and reason based on our denial of that, without ever encountering the logical consequences of that idea that would throw other aspects of our worldview in jeopardy.

What principles can we categorize as methodologically certain?

Reflection on Certainty: #4

Are you sure?

In the last note, we dealt with one method – propounded by Rene Descartes – of dealing with the inadequacies of our human condition for grasping ontological certainty.

The second method of acquiring epistemic certainty is rooted in what philosophy considers self-evident principles, statements which might be considered axiomatic to logical thinking.

Let’s begin with the Law of Non-Contradiction. If the statement “A” is true, then the statement “not A” is false. If Socrates is a man, then we can’t say Socrates is not a man.

On closer inspection, this Law can be ultimately reduced to the definition of “word” as a referent: words identify themselves with substances existing in physical or metaphysical reality. This property is illustrated beautifully that that famous speech in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”: “What is in a word? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.”

This referential property is what we mean when we speak of the meaning of words – they may be defined according to the substance by which they are identified. Moreover, the meaning of words is exclusive, for the nature of a thing excludes that which it is not. This is the universal common premise of any argument, a prerequisite to even speaking in coherent sentences.

However, as may be readily seen, the whole exercise of self-evident truth operates on a tautological loop, for here we see a cycle of definitions and meanings that relies entirely on itself to demonstrate its own veracity. The Law of Non-Contradiction can be neither proven nor disproven on its own grounds. Indeed, any proof of that Law must operate prior to our acceptance of it, and therefore needn’t exclude an equally valid disproof.

Confused?  Me too.

In general, the problem with axioms is that they are not intrinsically demonstrable. We do not consider truths to be self-evident in themselves -- it is not in the axiom that we find confirmation, but in its antonym. The thesis is not self-proving. Rather, it is the perceived impossibility of the antithesis which provides the fuller confirmation.

Reflection on Certainty: #3

Are you sure?

I've previous stated that the sensation of psychological certainty is generally unwarranted. This is based on the problem of epistemic certainty -- the limited ability of humans to directly discern any kind of objective truth. This seriously hampers our efforts at ascertaining ontological certainty.

There have been a number of historical attempts at responding to the problem of epistemic certainty. One of the more famous methods was developed by the philosopher Rene Descartes.

Descartes began by asking, in what way is human knowledge limited? He noted that human knowledge is uncertain to the extent that our material senses are finite. Our senses are imperfect and may often mislead. If we could transcend our senses, might we transcend our uncertainty in the same moment?

Descartes posited a method by which objective truths might be ascertained. Conceding for argument’s sake the most extreme of systematic doubts, he closed his eyes and imagined himself in a vacuum, an infinite void, cut off from all physical sensation. In the realm of pure mind, what could be discerned?

Descartes stumbled across a profound fact while his mind scanned the vacuum for truth: namely, he was aware that he was searching.

In the absence of any sensation, in a world of pure thought, Descartes realized that he could think about his own thinking. He could observe his own thought processes. This discovery, and the realization that any observation requires an object to be observed, led him to his first and most famous dictum:

Cogito, ergo sum. "I think, therefore I am."

Absent any sensory experience, Descartes could conclude with absolute certainty that he existed and that he was capable of rational thought.

The problem of epistemic certainty might lead us to believe that nothing can be truly known. Descartes postulated at least one fact that can be known, and used this as his foundation for further inquiry.

Do you think Descartes’ argument in this regard is valid? Does this method enable us to circumvent universal and systematic doubt?

Reflection on Certainty: #2

Are you sure?

Argumentation relies on shared premises to move to novel conclusions. Knowledge is regressive, such that any conclusion relies on the premises that precede it. The question remains, how far back does knowledge regress?

Let’s begin with the concept of ontological certainty, the statement that absolute Truth exists and that there is an objective reality to things, the only difficulty being in ascertaining it.

The problem is twofold.

The thesis of ontological certainty is tautological. In order to state the absolute truth of this ontologically objective realm, you must first assume that such a reality exists and that your truth statement is an expression or reflection of it.

It should be noted that tautological statements are not intrinsically false.  The true statement “all dogs are mammals” is tautological, since “dog” is taxonomically defined as a subset of “mammal” and therefore the sentence reads “a subset of A is A.” The problem is that tautological statements are generally devoid of actual content; they rely on the definitions of words, rather than on the reality of things that those words describe.

Second, the thesis of ontological certainty is in a sense almost self-defeating. Assuming an objective reality exists, there remains great difficulty in perceiving it. Indeed, knowledge of absolute truth is so far from our grasp, that our primary reason for asserting the existence of objective truth is not that we might comprehend it, but that we might be inspired to keep seeking it.

By this view, ontological certainty may be considered an almost utilitarian concept: it keeps us focused on the knowledge being pursued and not on the challenges of the pursuit. If there were no princess in the castle, would the knight ever brave the dragon to save her? Belief in objective reality drives us beyond the epistemic cynicism that might otherwise confound us.

Thus seems the contradiction: the thesis of ontological certainty grounds truth in the reality of things, yet is itself asserted as true because of the utility of believing in it.

Neither of these counterpoints prove objective truth to be objectively false. Indeed, as a Christian and more broadly as an Idealist, a belief in an absolute True, Good, and Beautiful is at the core of my philosophy. But I do not wish to take that belief lightly, and therefore look towards the real philosophical challenges that might hinder us on our way.

Reflection on Certainty: #1

Are you sure?

Several years ago, I remember having a conversation with a graduate student in philosophy on the subject of certainty. We discussed the subject for over an hour, weaving references and tangents and explications through our conversation, always coming up just short of agreement. Then we realized something: the entire conversation had been based on two different definitions of "certainty" -- he of epistemic, and I of psychological, concepts of certainty.

This experience may be why I feel so strongly about defining terms before discussing major ideas or issues. Yet our confusion illustrates one of the cardinal difficulties in this topic. I was so sure during the conversation that we were discussing the same thing, but I was later to discover that sense of certainty to be misplaced -- that is, totally in error.

When we commonly speak of "certainty," we mean a sense of psychological certainty: the subjective sensation that we have grasped an objective truth.

These sensations may be felt with varying degrees of finality or confidence. We might simply be speaking of fulfilled expectations, the psychical satisfaction of being proven right.  "Of course he was cheating on you -- he brought you flowers last week." A stronger certainty may arise when we can think of no refutation at a given moment; stronger still when we can imagine no refutation can exist.  The most extreme cases of psychological certainty occur when an idea is perceived as a truth in which no error can ever be found and against which no inconsistent statement can possibly stand.

Sensations of certainty are almost invariably unwarranted.

Humans are, quite simply, human. Our experiences are finite, our perspectives are limited, and our senses may often be misleading.  Given the frailty of the human condition, how can we speak of being certain of anything? Moreover, given the hubris to which humans are so often subject, how can we take seriously any statement of absolute certainty?

Here lies the cardinal difficulty: given our own humanity, what can humans possibly know?

Reflection on Judgment: #3

To think is to judge.

Any parent can confirm that humans are driven by an innate sense of curiosity. We see a door, we want to open it. We are stumped by a theological mystery, our minds seek resolution.

Sometimes the immediate cause of our curiosity is discontent with our lack of knowledge, rather than a direct desire to acquire more.  Yet even this is reducible to the latter.  Just as vampires are drawn to blood, and preteen girls seem drawn to vampires, humanity as a whole is impelled by a deep-seated desire for answers.

Why are Sudoku puzzles so popular? Perhaps it is partly because they allow us to pride ourselves on our mental dexterity, but that answer isn’t sufficient. We solve puzzles precisely because they are unsolved, because we want to know the correct answer even if that answer will not possibly benefit us.

Certainly, many people flip through their newspapers without even glancing at the Sudoku puzzle. But they are suspending their sense of curiosity, perhaps out of boredom at a repetitive task, or frustration at the lack of forthcoming answers, or prioritization of other tasks more meaningful than logic games.

Yet, to the extent that we care about such things, we are also pursuing answers for such things.  If we are thinking about a thing, we are searching for answers; to stop searching for answers, is to stop thinking.

Our ability to reason is intrinsic to our humanity, and so in that sense is curiosity. To the extent that we think about a thing, we are driven to understand it – which means we must evaluate it and mentally process it.
The whole endeavor of thinking is teleological, directed at something beyond itself. That ultimate aim – that final cause – lies is our thirst for intellectual satisfaction. We yearn for answers; we yearn for the true.

Judgments are the ends, the final cause, of thought.

Reflection on Judgment: #2

To think is to judge.

Humans are constantly processing and evaluating new incoming data in order to construct and expand their epistemic frameworks, their systems of thinking about things. Judgments are the means of thought – that is, judgments are necessary to constructing these frameworks.

These frameworks, in turn, catalyze our processing of that new information. they allows us to instinctively prioritize incoming data streams, sorting out the banalities and allowing us to focus on more meaningful and interesting pieces of information.

While I don’t ascribe to a “tabula rasa” view of human development, epistemic frameworks don’t strike me as the sort of thing that may be passed down by our genetic makeup. Thus, as infants and children, we exert tremendous mental effort in constructing these frameworks for our later us.

The intellectual capacity of children is really quite stunning by this view, for while they generate these frameworks they don’t have the luxury of using them to sort incoming information. They are bombarded by more stimuli than most adults could possibly conceive, and manage not only to process it but also to construct mental frameworks with which to sort and process that stimuli more expeditiously in the future.

Without epistemic frameworks, we would be in the same position as infants: everything would be a novelty, and higher thought would be a practical impossibility.

Judgments are the necessary catalysts of thought.

Reflection on Judgment: #1

To think is to judge.

Every time we perceive an object, every instant we contemplate an idea, our minds must process any and all new information into our existing classifications and ways of thinking. For instance, when I drive on a new road, I add it to the mental map of the area in my head.

Thinking about new information entails evaluating that new information.

There are several aspects of this evaluating process. For instance, to determine the weight we place in our conclusions, we must judge the relative significance of the information itself, the reliability of the source, the quantity of similar evidences, and a host of other factors

Even when we consciously choose to reserve judgment on information or ideas, we continue to make judgments. We judge that the data set we're drawing from lacks sufficient breadth or depth to justify an ultimate (or even penultimate) evaluation. We judge that we can postpone that ultimate evaluation without serious consequences. We must even judge the relative importance and probability of acquiring further information that might help us make that ultimate evaluation, to determine how assiduously we will work at it.

Judgments are the means of thought.

Reflection on Authority: #3

The strongest arguments rely on a multiplicity of shared authorities. St. Thomas Aquinas was the master of this. In his early work, Summa Contra Gentiles, he outlined every argument for Christian faith and doctrine using only those authorities which would be shared by a non-Christian audience -- such as natural science and the Greek philosophers. In his later and more famous Summa Theologica, he expanded his earlier writing and developed a fully systematic theology based on authorities common to a Christian audience -- including Scripture and church tradition.

Authorities allow us to make and judge arguments. However, it should be noted that in order to accept an authority, we must evaluate it first, to determine whether it is reliable, or how to rank the value and reliability of multiple authorities. In other words, the process of accepting an authority is itself a judgment, which must be reached on the conclusion of a separate argumentative process, and must therefore rely on authorities itself.

This illustrates one of the more difficult topics in epistemology: the regressive nature of knowledge. Scientists often like to speak of the progressivity of knowledge: one discovery builds on the foundation of another. Yet even in that we see its corollary: if ideas build on each other, then an idea must have come before it. The reasons we give for one argument, rely on the outcome of another previous argument, and so on.

Epistemology is not self-sufficient. In order to conclude anything, we must first agree on something.

If our common foundation were an authority (an outside source of knowledge), then we would fall into a flat contradiction, for our acceptance of that authority would rely on a prior common understanding that such an authority can be trusted. Only personal experience qualifies as evidence not dependent on others, but not even that will suffice: for that must rely implicitly on the reliability of our own experience. Moreover, personal experiences cannot be held in common, so the point is moot from the start.

The very nature of authority points us to an authority outside itself.

Reflection on Authority: #2

As the previous definition of argumentation should make clear, it is impossible to make an argument without first holding some premise in common. Since most premises are supplied by authority, arguments almost invariably rely on authorities held in common.

Appeals to authority are valid insofar as we consider that authority to be a trustworthy or reliable source of evidence within a particular sphere. Stephen Hawking is a brilliant theoretical physicist and a nearly unimpeachable authority when it comes to his specialized field. In other fields, I do not think him as reliable an authority, as in questions of extraterrestrial life, alien invasion, and the existence of God.

The "appeal to authority fallacy" revolves around the a claim that a particular authority is infallible or beyond criticism in a certain field. Such claims are generally reckless, and unworthy of consideration, except where the claim of authority intrinsically entails such infallibility.

For instance, Scripture claims to convey the words of Christ and of God, transcribed by human agents who were themselves acting under divine inspiration. If these words were anything less than perfectly True, Good, and Beautiful, Scripture would lose its value as an authority. Therefore, the Scriptural claim to infallibility is intrinsic to itself and must be treated separately.

It may be noted that the question of Scriptural infallibility faces the same trichotomy that C.S. Lewis ascribed to the divinity of Christ, the famous "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" argument. Either Scripture is divinely inspired and thereby infallible, or it's a deliberate lie, or it is a simple exercise in authorial delusions of grandeur.

Reflection on Authority: #1

Argumentation is the process of working from shared knowledge or common assumptions, to conclusions that are not shared or held in common.


In argumentation, virtually all of the premises on which we rely are based on authority -- that is, they are supplied by others, not by ourselves. We simply lack the expertise or the experience to know everything of which we speak. I doubt whether we are the ultimate source of even a fraction of our truth claims: only claims of personal experience can suffice.


Even if I were to carry out an entirely independent experiment, I still rely on the education I received from experts in the field to corroborate that I used the proper technique to gather data and reach conclusions; I must trust that others have or will have independently reached the same conclusions and verified my findings; and I must interpret my data and my conclusions in light of the knowledge I share and have received from other scientists.


Human knowledge cannot be objective, for we are fallible humans. Nor, contra Michael Polanyi, is human knowledge an essentially personal activity, though there is an intrinsic human element to all of our intellectual pursuits.


Human knowledge is a fundamentally social endeavor, for all of our efforts to discern truth will rely considerably, if not entirely, on the trust we place in others.



The question of authority -- the extent to which we are comfortable relying on things or persons outside ourselves-- is central to almost every truth claim to which we turn our minds.

Reflections: On the Substance of Ideas

When reading an anthology on the philosophy of Jonathan Edwards, I came across a quote that really stuck in my mind. Perhaps you won't find it nearly as profound as I did, but I felt I ought to share it. It's an excerpt from an essay by Norman Fiering, from the anthology Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience.

This passage is a discussion of Edwards' epistemology, and it begins by listing the 5 primary models of epistemology considered by Edwards and his intellectual forbear, Malebranche (father of occasionalism).

The ideas we have of bodies, our knowledge of the external world, Malebranche argued, can be gained in only one of five ways: [1] the bodies themselves may emit "species" that resemble them, which was the prevailing Scholastic view; [2] the soul of man may have the capacity in some unexplained way to produce ideas of things out of the impressions made upon it by bodies, as though man were himself a God able to create and destroy real beings; [3] our ideas may be created with us from birth, and as needed appear to us with God's aid, which was the Platonic solution; [4] the essence of all things may be perceivable within the mind itself without need of anything outside; [5] or, finally, the soul may be united with God and thus dependent upon God all of its thoughts, which was Malebranche's view.

This is a rather involved passage, so a quick summary. Malebranche assumes, tellingly, that ideas have real substance. The substance of thought is non-physical (obviously?) but no less real than anything else in the spiritual realm. From this basis, the question is how humans are able to rationally absorb the ideas of physical objects, since our sensory perceptions are distinct from our reason.

Some ancient philosophers and medieval Scholastics thought that everything in nature possessed some limited kind of 'soulishness,' and could therefore emit that non-physical substance (like an aroma) to be absorbed by a mind. Their view is often ridiculed--Cicero mocked it by asking, "does the island of Britain emit an image of it that strikes me in the head every time I think of it?"--but it still strikes me as intriguing.

The second option, however, interests me the most. It asserts that, based on our perception of physical substances, humans are able to convert those into non-physical substances. Malebranche dismisses this as idolatrous anthropocentrism, as ludicrous as the statement that all men were gods.

But perhaps that's precisely the point. Man was created in the image of God, and inherited some of His creative capacity. Perhaps we are reflecting His nature when we think, because we are indeed creating real (if immaterial) substances by the fact of our reason. Perhaps the inspiration and fulfillment we find in constructing a work of art or engineering, is same inspiration we find in constructing an edifice of systematic thought. Perhaps our minds preserve the dignity of secondary causation, just as much as our bodies.

What do you think?

Are ideas real, in any sense? Are they, in fact, substances, and if so, what kind? Are they purely physical (neurological), purely spiritual, neither or both?

If ideas are real, how are they formed? By whom are they formed?

If ideas can be formed by humans, is this a mere dispensation or special grace given by God, or an intrinsic capacity of humans that attests to the imago dei and the dignity of our power of secondary causation and creativity?

Contemplations in Theology: #5

What better way to celebrate the passage of time, than a celebration of the Timeless One? So, glory to God and a Happy New Year to you all!

First, a story. On the first day of classes, at my first quarter at SPU, I was asked point-blank by my professor: "Are you an Aristotelian or a Platonist?" Not knowing what the heck this meant, I blathered. It took me another quarter, but by the middle of winter quarter I finally understood the difference. Now, I can answer with confidence: "Both."

The foundational discovery of philosophy has to be the formulation of common nouns. The whole contribution of Plato and Aristotle may be circumscribed by this single phrase. Common nouns are not objects; they do not operate on experience or sensation. Common nouns are categories, and operate in the sphere of abstract reason. Common nouns enable us to move from discrete experiences to common descriptions; it moves us from external to internal; it enables language, communication, action. It is between experience and common nouns that our skills of inductive and deductive reasoning operate.

Plato taught that all reality is a corruption from the Ideal, a derivation from the Form. These are common nouns. Have you ever sat in 'a chair'? No, you've sat in a variety of physical objects that resemble the Form of a chair.

Aristotle disagreed. He asserted that the Forms were not the highest level of reality but were intrinsic to reality, built in to the very nature of things. Physical properties of motion were caused by natural sympathies within the objects themselves--the desire for perfection led to circular motion in the heavens, the desire for rest led to downward motion on earth. Every object was defined by four 'causes,' which encompassed all of its being. These causes are material, formal, efficient, and final. It is the final cause--the purpose or end for which an object was made--that concerns us here.

Ancient polytheistic system had gods for nearly everything: each region had a god, each labor had a god, each occasion had a god, and heaven help you if you didn't do the proper sacrifices. In classical polytheism (after Plato), there was a distinct trend towards order and harmony. The gods were not so arbitrary and ubiquitous; they represented ideals, virtues... in a word, final causes.

My first inspiration for this note is admirably obscure: have you ever considered C.S. Lewis's unusual usage of capitalization? I was reading "Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold" at the time when I first discovered this.

I noticed that C.S. Lewis mostly used capital letters as he ought, for beginnings of sentences and for proper nouns. However, he also used them for certain words throughout the book: "Joy," "Beauty," "Truth," etc. C.S. Lewis was a consummate English professor, but his use of capital letters merely for emphasis seemed incorrect.

Then it struck me, what if Lewis's writing were following correct English usage? What if he capitalized these ideals because he thought they were proper nouns, because they were not merely the words for a category, but the name of an identity and personality?

In Aristotle, common nouns encompass every aspect of being; they provide a comprehensive hermeneutic of the universe; they are foundational to how we think and live. But this is the truth grasped by classical polytheism: categories are not enough.

Behind every common noun, there is a proper noun; behind every ideal, there is an identity; behind every category, a personality. And each of these personalities reflect a characteristic of God.

Philosophically, this is a staggering claim. I believe that the final cause of every objects reflects a quality of God. In other words, every object, every person, every thing we know and experience was created for, and is directed towards, the Person of God. This is straight from Psalm 19: "The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of His hands."

This whole series of ideas came to me on a car trip to Port Townsend. Once we arrived, I walked by myself to the pier and looked around--at the water, at the sky, at the cliffs on the other side of Puget Sound. Every time I looked, a word came into my head; every time I considered the common noun, I realized the personality that lay behind it. There is a phrase that C.S. Lewis used in "That Hideous Strength" that is particular apropos: he writes of entering the very furnace of language, where words are created in the fire of His Presence.

That was my experience. I had entered the furnace where words were born. I encountered them in an almost physical way; I met words, just as I would have met another person. The difference was, these personalities were nonphysical, and they were merely prisms of the True Person, the One Who Is, the Great "I Am."

For the first time in my life, I experienced nature not as merely beautiful but as sublime ("Sublime" = "sub-" "-limis" = "beneath the threshold," as close to the house of God as we may come without entering it bodily). This was the experience that led me to my second note, the "Aesthetics of Reason." The rational and the experiential are not distinct. They overlap, they intersect, they are unified in God.

It is for this reason, more than any other, that I call myself a medievalist, for it is in the medieval model of the universe (the medieval cosmology) that Christianity fully integrated the rational and experiential elements, that it incorporated the insights of Greek philosophy and polytheism. But I leave that for my next note.

May the God of lights give you the joy of His Word,
may the God of love reveal the beauty of His sacrifice,
may the God of strength manifest the power of His name,
may the God of glory instill the majesty and peace of His crown,
may the God of humility teach you the victory of His suffering,
that the God of Gods might dwell with His Creation.

Contemplations in Theology: #2

For all my life, I have struggled with my personal faith. I am a rationalist in almost every respect; my mind operates on words, definitions, and discrete thoughts. I think about God; I certainly believed in God. But I did not "experience" God, in the same way that others did; I could not "feel" the Holy Spirit. My faith was rational, not experiential. I was immensely jealous of those who could experience God's presence--perhaps it was a sin, I know not. My desire to feel God led me to a spiritual crisis about two years ago, and it hurt me to my core. I started to question my faith, because I did not relate to how most Christians (and almost all mature Christians who I respected) experienced God. I was insecure in my faith, and it hurt.

Two summers ago, I was reading some books by C.S. Lewis, and I was struck by a thought, an idea--I'll write about that idea in a future post--that drove me wild with Joy. I use that term deliberately, for I had been reading Lewis's spiritual autobiography, "Surprised by Joy." Lewis had related how, as a young child, he had been visited by this sensation of Joy--notably through the vision of a cold northern landscape--which drove him wild with desire for something. He later identified Joy as the fundamental desire for God. I actually disagree with his definition. Joy is not the sensation, but the thing itself: the sight through the glass darkly, past the veil, in the shadows, of God smiling at me--an obscured glimpse of God finding Joy in me.

The concept of Joy is an important one, for more reasons than this. However, to realize that the Joy I felt was an experience of God... how to describe it? I had felt God's presence! Moreover--and here is the crucial aspect as it relates to my argument in these notes--I had felt God's presence not through prayer, not as a distinctly spiritual experience, but in the context of reason. My thoughts had given me Joy.

This is the phenomenon I call "The Aesthetics of Reason." I believe that the contemplation of a truly sublime and profound idea gives the same visceral aesthetic feeling, as experiencing the beauties of Nature, or standing before the majesty of God. Reason, taken in its highest sense, is an aesthetic experience.

The contemplation of God draws me closer to the presence of God.

Why would this be? How could this be? This argument seems to fly in the face of the rather central concept of philosophy and psychology--the mind-body dualism. Experience operates on the sensations; reason operates on the mind. The one is subjective, the other objective. The one is physical, the other immaterial. How can we equate them? Yet I believe we may.

I believe the God of reason is the same God of faith and experience. I believe the God of lights is also the God of mysteries. I believe the God of John 1 ("In the beginning was the Word...") is the same God of 1 John ("What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands..."). Praise be to Him!

There is one last thing which I wish to mention. This concept of the "aesthetics of reason" was a tremendously encouraging one: it was a Joy and a relief. But it is also tremendously practical. Several weeks ago, I was engaged in discussion with several college friends discussing medieval cosmology--the subject of a future note. The conversation lasted about three hours; the last hour of our discussion was almost solely focused on explaining a particular paradox which arose from our earlier discussion. We tossed around a number of ideas, any of which would explain the paradox. However, these did not satisfy; they merely fit, they were useful. At last we hit upon one that gave us those divine goosebumps, an aesthetic sensation of Joy, the feeling that we had hit upon something at the core of who God is. It was this last one that we decided was 'right'--though there was little logical difference between any of these ideas, the last one manifested the aesthetics of reason.

It sounds almost perverse, but we used aesthetic experiences (necessarily subjective) as proof for an objectively rational construct of Truth. It reminded me of John Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn": "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." Reason is not independent, but is integrated into, our experience of God.

Contemplations in Theology: #1

This was my first "Contemplation in Theology," posted as a Facebook note on November 29, 2008. I will be transferring all of these notes to this blog over the next few weeks; new content will be interspersed between these archived notes. Enjoy!
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Error is persuasive to the extent that it contains elements or grains of truth.

Satan is described as "the father of lies," yet in his attempts to tempt the first humans and the Christ he relied heavily on Truth. He quoted the Bible three times to Christ in the wilderness; he cited a direct command from God (though subtly misquoted) when tempting Eve in the Garden of Eden. His greatest, most potent weapon comes from misconstruing and subtly perverting special revelation.

Augustine asserted that evil has no existence in itself, but is merely a negation of the good. Likewise, error is a negation of truth. But being without substance, error must rely on the remaining vestiges of truth to persuade others. Thus I assert that the more appealing and persuasive errors contain a greater degree of truth.

Can we not see this in philosophy? The revolutionary, dramatic heresies are quickly extinguished, but the subtle errors of philosophy tend to endure with much greater longevity. Moreover, Christian philosophers discovered great truth in the prevalent systems of philosophy that existed before Christ. Was there a more persuasive, more ubiquitous model of pagan philosophy than that produced by Plato and Aristotle in classical Greece? And it was in this model that St. Paul was educated--a Pharisee trained in Jewish law and Hellenistic (Greek) culture. It was the Platonic model that led to St. Augustine confessions, and the Aristotelian model that contributed to St. Thomas Aquinas's systematic theology.

We must look to the most prevalent errors to glean the greatest truths; we must search the deepest coal shafts if we wish to find diamonds. We must first purify these truths by fire, but having done so we need not fear them, for all Truth is God's truth.

I wish to start with the axiomatic, but let's take this argument one step further. Why is it that the single greatest and most prevalent error of the ancient world is uniformly rejected, neglected, and laid aside by modern theology? I am speaking of pagan polytheism. Nearly every primitive culture has some tradition of polytheism; nearly every ancient civilization believed that the world was ruled and controlled by many gods. Where is the truth in that? Yet if my previous argument holds, there must be some truth--for ancient peoples almost instinctively clung to this system.

The truth of polytheism lies in the uncontainable, unexplainable, unendurable multiplicity and complexity of a unified God. It is the same truth recognized by the Christian doctrine of the Trinity--that God is three and God is one--yet amplified to a level nearly unrecognizable to the modern world. Consider this: Genesis states that man was created in the image of God (Latin imago dei). The personality and characteristics of God form the basis for the personality and characteristics of humans--not only taken as a group, but taken individually. All the variety and complexity we find among individual humans is a mere reflection of the variety and complexity of an infinite God.

There is so much more to this argument, but I will save that for later. I will also add a caveat. This line of reasoning has led me to some rather heterodox beliefs, though I understand them supported by Scripture, reason, and past authority. I wished to present the foundation: I believe that the study of Creation and of human error can be a fruitful avenue of inquiry into the nature of God.