Myth, Metaphysics, Mystery

Man is equipped with senses and imagination like the higher animals. He is equipped too, with intellect but does not always and everywhere go in for self-appropriation and so distinguish the operations of intellect from those of sense and imagination. Where the operations of intellect are compacted with those of sense and imagination, you get myth

One might distinguish metaphysics and mystery, for in metaphysics and mystery, the mind deals with proportionate being, and in mystery, he deals with transcendent being and also with the possibility or fact of revelation.

Let us deal first with how intellect works upon proportionate being, and can do so in such a way that intellect is appropriated.

When a matter is being successfully studied two things are going on. Knowledge of the object under investigation is increasing, even if one finds things are less certain than one had thought. The reason that knowledge is increasing is that a method is being applied. Without deliberate attention, intelligence and reasonableness applied in a way which is known to be fruitful knowledge, will not develop. The method itself may develop.

While the scientist or scholar must use a method, he is not bound to reflect on it and master it in the way of understanding why it works. Failing such reflection he is likely to explain his results in terms of imaginable entities. So the whole world is made up of tiny billiard balls which push each other around.

This fall back to imaginable entities is the source of myth, whereas if method is appreciated, a certain conclusion, perhaps a probability judgement, has been attained which is merely a correlation. So heat applied causes temperature to rise. Even in this utterance, I am into “cause and effect”.

Cause and effect belongs to our commonsense world of course, and also to Aristotle who thought when we know the cause we know why the effect must be what it is. He thought this applied to mathematics alone.

Myth is not satisfied with understanding one or two things, so everything gets lumped together in “mythopoesis”, so that a single image accounts for everything. I rather wonder whether the big bang theory might be an example of this. So far as I can gather, no one knows the extent of space which is surely relevant if one is imagining everything starting from one point. Mythopoesis stretches forward to the future - a black hole maybe, or a universe in which everything gets further away. Our faith that Christ will come again gets pressured by the power of cosmic myths.

The realisation that this universe which we know has very special design features, leads to the notion of an infinite number of parallel universes. William of Occam had the precept “entia non sunt multiplicanda sine necessitate” – beings are not to be multiplied without reason – and I think Descartes’ systematic doubt was originally intended to deal with such crazy ideas. Is there any reason why design should not be accounted for by a designer?

The world proportionate to man’s mind is known by a method and if method is understood then the importance of judgement answering the question “Is it so?” comes to the fore. “We all complain about our memory. No one complains about his judgement”. In judgement, we, on the basis of sufficient evidence, recognise a truth, and with that recognition man himself is also thereby delimited.

So when La Place, following Newton, argued for a future completely determined by the present, he was excluding the possibility of human freedom changing the future. A completely materialistic world following mathematical laws implies a completely materialistic man for man is part of the world. If matter can be completely controlled then so, too, can man.

To follow La Place is to be under the influence of a mythic view and to rush to judgement without considering the whole issue. So is it irrational to apportion praise and blame? Commonsense and judges in law courts seem to think not. How do we account for the self-judgement of conscience? If it is an illusion, then perhaps everything, including La Place and Newton, are illusions? One needs to consider all the relevant evidence before making one’s judgement.

The judgement one makes is not necessarily imaginable, but it is subject to the law of non-contradiction and needs to be logically coherent. So we live in a world where some things are more or less predetermined by material circumstances and others are predetermined by mental processes. The question is, is this how it is? The question is not, is this all imaginable?

When it comes to human studies or the geisteswissenschaften one might be clear, and so myth will be at a discount. One of the strange propositions about this area is that our judgements emerge from the subconscious. So if you speak to certain historians, the judgement is already made, miracles cannot happen, so if they are reported, the witnesses must be self deceived or even group deceived.

I did come across a case of group deception. Near Great Billing, a whole family met an airman who had been shot down and killed during the war. The parish priest who dealt with the case found there had not been such an event. He had to deal with the situation of a mutually supporting group who were group deceived. St Thomas’s doubt saves the apostolic witness from this accusation.

There can be group deception about airmen, or about miracles, but similarly there can be group deception going on in groups of historians. A person who spouts forth confidently should have asked questions upon how his mind is made up. There is though, a Narcissistic reinforcement to any bias lying in the approval of colleagues. So for some, the Church based on miracles is negligible but the Muslims using force are part of the historical process. For the physicist the myth might be billiard board atoms and for the historian it might be the idea that force and explosions determine significant events. History is full of colour: there is plenty of scope for myth and mythopoesis.

We do not set out with a knowledge of being – we come to know being in the measure that we can affirm something to be true. So Lonergan leads us, echoing Descartes, I think therefore I am, to the self affirmation that we are sensitive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible, that we are knowers who should see to it that we are diligent in the three distinct operations that lead to knowledge, and then diligent in seeing what we should do about what we know.

There is then, a movement from myth to a careful statement on what we have verified. Knowledge of finite being, is stretched beyond its normal potentiality by an excess of intelligibility. Aristotle said that the situation is like an owl dealing with daylight: There is too much brightness. In that brightness though, we are not dealing with myth but with a reality which grants significance to life. Where God meets man, you get mystery. The medieval saw the accidental area of grace where God meets man as of infinitely greater importance than the substantial area of nature. The contemporary today would probably agree that it is love that gives life its overwhelming significance. The late Lonergan describes this area as “affective conversion” and distinguishes family love, civil love and grounding these, Divine love.

Such love maybe granted at any stage of history so mythic consciousness may reach up to express the matter in allegory. Metaphysical consciousness may express the matter in terms of the Supreme Being. The modern might insist that important as orthodoxy is, more important is orthopraxy. Voeglin sees this matter as expressed in myth, prophesy, philosophy and the Gospel, but is suspicious of doctrine for there is a danger here one is not speaking from the heart.

The one moved by love has found what is more important than myth. For Lonergan, doctrine is essential, for Divine love carries a message with it, so to comprehend Voeglin’s point, Lonergan distinguishes between notional and real assent, Newman’s distinction.

By such love, by philosophic attainment, one is freed from myth but we still have a psychic and emotional nature. Fr Lonergan sees devotion to Our Lady as helping us to refine our whole being in an appropriate way as we deal with mysteries which are to be affirmed – The Trinity, the Incarnation – but which are way beyond the power of imagination to adequately express.