The Gradualness of Intellectual Conversion

“Destroy a man’s illusions and you destroy his happiness” – so wrote Hubert van Zeller, a famous monk. It is a statement which makes me wonder. Is the real world so frightful we need illusions to make it bearable? Should one encourage a person in their illusions to make them happier yet? Our Lord’s words appear in a stark contrast: “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free”.

The first thing about van Zeller’s remarks is it would seem to mean, “go gently with your brother”. He has shaped up a world in which he has a place and the construction has been lifelong. About 30 years ago I recall talking to an Indian who had just arrived here. He had letters to English grandees and was sure that somehow they would sort him out. His attitude seemed to me feudal, but it was so much part of him that I suspected he was on his own in this country. Probably he had best make his way to the job centre!

Lonergan writes that we all live in our world since man’s life is being in the world, but it is far from true that we all live the world as it really is.

The Emperor Justinian accepted his wife’s explanation as to why she was naked with her lover. He loved Theodora so much he could think no ill of her. But here the illusion led to murder when Theodora chopped up her housekeeper’s body and dropped it in the Bosporus least she should spill the beans. Adolf Hitler’s “illusions” led to genocide. There comes a point where illusions need to be pointed out but the truth is that in some cases the pointing out will not destroy the illusion. Chesterton writes of a madman in a lunatic asylum who is rejected because he thinks he is Jesus Christ. The fact that he is rejected confirms his case since Christ was rejected.

Perhaps a way of understanding how illusion and truth can mingle in our apprehension of the world is to reflect in dreams, conscious dream and hope. Hope undergirds our activities but since we cannot see the future there is a dreamlike quality about our hopes. To express our dreams can galvanize others, so Martin Luther King’s famous speech set of: “I have a dream”. Ezekiel in exile dreamed about the future Temple. The more immediate the reality the less the power of the dream though. So I don’t think one can dream, about the future of the parish or one’s immediate family – rather plans are looked for. Maybe I am wrong here though, for a senator can dream that his son will be president.

Maybe a dream about the end can affect present conduct with a surreal and even immoral quality. So if you are an MP it is alright not to declare your mortgage is paid off because obviously in terms of wealth you make a mistake paying it off. An egoistic dream has led to egoistic conduct.

So Freud had it that what the id is, the ego is to be. As I understand it, the id is the subconscious source of images and feelings. Some things are censored subconsciously, some things are promoted subconsciously, and so the ego emerges. If one equates the id with dramatic bias, then the ego has much to do with individual bias. The sense of the self as one has a project of one’s existence into the future is thought to take shape interpersonally. The group you belong to helps you see what is possible and what is not. So the self, drawing from the group, easily becomes subject to group bias. There is then the spirit of the age which easily carries on general bias – so “progress” becomes simply technological advance and economic output.

A bias involves some sort of distortion of the truth. So a false philosophy such as pragmatism is likely to escort the biased world. The world we live in begins to tell us how to think so I think one can see that, alongside religious conversion, moral conversion and intellectual conversion can be hard to achieve and indeed pose a lifelong task.

What is intellectual conversion? Lonergan refers to Cardinal Newman and his distinction between notional assent and real assent. Notional assent allows one to give the right answers and pass one’s exams. Real assent changes the world you live in. So a state of religious apathy can lead to lapsation. One has all the answers but somehow they stop meaning anything very important. One does one’s homework rather than coming to church – or perhaps reads the Sunday papers. Lonergan associates real assent with a sort of enlightenment. One realises that one really does personally need help from God.

Intellectual conversion was shown by Aristotle when he said “Dear is Plato, but dearer still is truth”. Plato thought we understood because we had seen the archetypes. Aristotle realised that the world around us was directly intelligible and produced four causes which allowed us to answer “Why?” with “Because”. So you had material, formal, final and efficient causes.

St Augustine found himself having to struggle with heretics but also to grasp more perfectly the mystery of the Trinity. Man’s task was to seek the truth and with God’s help, find it. Close to Plato, he thought finding the truth was a divine illumination. By contrast, Vatican One has a theologian seek the truth diligently, piously, soberly but the mind itself has the criteria to recognise the truth.

St Thomas Aquinas seeks the truth alongside St Augustine but has the proposition that truth gives one access to reality. He refers to ens, to being, and is making the same point as Cardinal Newman. In 1215, the Lateran Council had declared that God made everything visible and invisible out of nothing, so I think Aquinas has God through creation causing existence as another sort of cause. A unicorn is a sort of being – it can be thought about – but it does not have existence.

Scholasticism had set off with questions – one recalls Abelard’s 157 propositions which were contradicted in his “Sic et Nom” but it ended up a matter of true propositions and logical deductions. In fact St John Fisher or Erasmus applied themselves diligently to Greek and Hebrew but Catholic culture as a whole was vulnerable to the Reformation appeal to a return to Scripture. The most learned of Catholics thought it sufficient to write commentaries on St Thomas Aquinas. Aristotle’s “Posterior Analytics” showed how one science was related to another with Metaphysics at the heart.

The natural sciences made their own way forward and Charles II’s establishment of the Royal College in 1660 made natural science a matter of observation or experiment. With the prestige of wonderful discoveries, philosophy became the handmaiden of natural science and lost its hitherto close touch with religion. The task of philosophy seemed to be to explain how scientific knowledge was possible. The spirit of the age moved to Enlightenment and the Church found herself unrecognised, at the edge of a culture where the dynamics appeared to be protestant and enlightened.

This culture lost its way. The certainties vanished. For Riemann, Euclid’s straight line geometry was a special case. For Heisenberg uncertainty and probability became part of the heuristic structure. The “iron law of Economics” dissolved with Lord Keynes in 1936. The Protestant “sola scriptura” which had provided so simple a way to save your soul has hit a revolution in historical studies, so that you cannot really expect to understand what a text means simply by reading it. Catholicism has become part of the shakeup of modern culture. In 1879, Leo XIII’s evangelical “Acteni Patris” had looked to St Thomas Aquinas as a solution to modern philosophical and ideological confusion. The Second Vatican Council though (1961 – 1965) quoted St Thomas Aquinas but once. Thomas died in 1274. He was ignorant of modern science, modern history, modern psychology, and modern philosophy. The Council saw that the Church had to live in this modern or post-modern world.

As an old fashioned Catholic, I find it reassuring that Lonergan is expert in Aquinas. He realises it takes lifelong dedication to be a top notch scientist, historian, philosopher, theologian and he uses the term “differentiation of consciousness” to describe the result of such long term application.

In each area, and also in the area of commonsense, alongside the causes of being there are the causes of knowing. These are different in each field. About each there is probability, certainty, and about some things a degree of certainty one can call infallibility where one is dealing simply with the truth. The realm of science and the realm of history are “moving forward”. Some things are known I think, but many positions are in development.

So with commonsense I may be certain about the winner of the Grand National, but realise my certainty is not utter. In natural science, I may be utterly certain about what needs doing to repair the Hubble Telescope or a leaky heart, but wondering about Einstein’s Special Relativity. In history I may be utterly sure about 1066 as the date of the Norman invasion, but have questions about William’s motivation or how Harold died. In the Christian faith I may be utterly sure about the Trinity or Papal infallibility but yet not sure about how the Holy Father should exercise his authority. In philosophy I may be quite sure about the norms of attentiveness, intelligence, reasonableness, and responsibility, but not clear what to do about knowledge which is so clear. Questions keep life moving and make it interesting.