First Principles

We all grew up under the influence of Aristotle so the first science is metaphysics and first principles are metaphysical. I recall being much influenced by the proposition “omne ens est bonum”, every being is good, a proposition very acceptable to a Christian, for God made everything out of nothing. I recall wondering a bit about the mosquito. I met a chap who was studying mosquitoes legs. I suppose in the Paradise to come there may be a swampy area where mosquitoes play a key role in the emergence of dragonflies. That there should be strange wild worlds which are not directly to man’s convenience, is somehow a relaxation to the human spirit with its areas of utilitarian convenience.

For Lonergan the first principles are not abstract propositions but concrete human persons in their authenticity which consists of religious, moral and intellectual conversion operating maturely in the areas of commonsense and religion and, in certain cases, operating creatively in an area where consciousness is differentiated, artistically, scientifically, in a scholarly way, in the way of self appropriation.

In looking for religious conversion as a starting point, Lonergan is rather similar to St Bernard who asked whether someone was seeking God when they wanted to be a monk. An earlier Egyptian abbot had a lot of young men who were avoiding military service. He accepted them on the basis that their motivation could be changed.

In our contemporary society many of us are more dragged up than brought up and so religious conversion is perhaps a minor theme in the polyphony and cacophony that makes up our human consciousness, pulled now this way and now that and largely unaware that conscious deliberation and decision has a role to play in shaping the sort of person we will be and the sort of consciousness we will live from.

Religious awareness of some sort, maybe perfunctory, precedes religious conversion. For example, when I had measles I was close to death but I was also aware of being close to God. I would suggest that religious conversion brings together these experiences, so that here there is something we should do something about. A religious tradition may help the wayward way consciousness freely flows to become aware of this most important dimension.

Religious love is, one might say, of the same stuff as family love and love of one’s people. In the sacrament of matrimony, human affection helps to a deeper love at a divine level. If one sees someone stirred by love for a whole people – one thinks of Fr Damien and his lepers, or those who visited the sick but were rewarded because, the Lord said “you did this to Me” – then you see love which comes from God and leads to Him.

We love all sorts of things from popcorn and pop music to ice cream and Georgian architecture maybe, but I think one can contrast such love with the deep loves which give meaning and concern to one’s living. To be without deep love is to have lost a sense of meaning to one’s life. Not in any way to adequately express deep love in at least some way is to feel personally inadequate. It is a feature that love which is deep seeks to express itself in words, symbols, deeds.

Religious conversion is a turning around from a situation where ceremonies and even religious experiences, or experiences of being loved, are taken for granted to a situation where one recognises deep love as giving the central meaning and direction to one’s life. With the idea that life has a direction one gets the idea that some things would be counterproductive, inappropriate and plain wrong. You get the ground for moral conversion.

Lonergan, in Insight, expounds the precepts “be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible” I think one can move from responsibility to action with the further precepts “deliberate, evaluate, decide, act”. It is an important question, where does love, or where does deep love, come in?

Our conscious life is grounded in the psyche which produces images and feelings in an appropriate way or, of course, maybe in an inappropriate way. Sense experience, intelligence, reasonableness, responsibility Lonergan calls “operators”, but the operators only work properly with an appropriate help from the psyche which provides the images needed for insight and the feelings which lead one from one level to another. So a person has a problem, but attends to it because he feels curious and is restless until he shapes up the glimmer of a solution. I think we can see love as the quasi operator emerging with the precept, “be reasonable”, and guiding the process through being responsible, deliberating, evaluating, deciding and acting.

The precept “be reasonable” finds God as the cause of all being and of our own being. I can recall being told how grateful I should be to God for sight and feeling and so forth, but though I could see I should be, and I believed, I did not feel grateful, therefore I suspect my emotional life was with some reason caught up in another direction. Prayer though around the basic position – God has been good and is – might allow the appropriate feelings to emerge. Better souls than mine have experienced dryness in prayer. They endure it seems for a time nothingness. I think what is going on is that the psyche is learning how to deal with the invisible in its affectivity. I always will remember the old gentleman who answered me “I praise Him for the wonder of my being”, when I asked how he was.

Rationality gives us a structure of reality and an affective response. God’s grace is beyond our affective response yet tied up with it. Bishop Grant used to say “When God meets man you get mystery”. Responsibility gives us an overarching goal and measure which our actions should promote: “The kingdom of God”. Deliberation divides up all the issues as they are known, with consequences of this action and that, and also as a factor, likelihood they will be carried through Evaluation has certain well known principles: “Innocent human life may never be directly taken” – “A man who divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery”. Evaluation is also where “the heart has its reasons which reason may not know” (Pascal). This may be to do with marrying Suzie even she has no fortune, or pouring out one’s life as a libation (St Paul). I am suggesting that some of the reasons which reason does not know may be profoundly theological and ecclesiological, such as celibacy. Evaluation presents options of high virtue, modest virtue and of course sin. Traditional moral theology has been to do with the avoidance of certain well know sins and the performance of essential duties. Through deliberation and evaluation, we come to the world as we know it and the positive actions which might belong to us, as well as the negative we should avoid.

There is then decision and performance which may be life-long. I think one is not normally bound to the highest option but to a good one. The difficulty of carrying out a course of action will be facilitated by recalling the process of deliberation, evaluation and decision which went on. We find man in his freedom can be influenced by God to make his life benign, benevolent, fruitful and even redemptive.

Religious conversion results from the gift of God’s grace. Moral conversion makes its way on the basis of religious conversion. Intellectual conversion may make its way on the basis of Religious and Moral Conversion. In the process of life one comes to know things and with religious conversion one comes to believe things which cannot be adequately imagined, like the Blessed Trinity. So with religious and moral conversion one may hope to make one’s way to Heaven, but one’s capacity to argue the case to others and to persuade is limited without intellectual conversion, whereby we become as familiar with the intellect and its knowing, as we are with the eye and its seeing.

We have seen that one mistake is to imagine that all knowing is a matter of animal extroversion (naïve realism) or that the life of the mind does not attain knowledge of reality (idealism). Critical realism notes that as well as understanding there is judgement of what we have understood. Understandings may be imaginary, or the best scientific theory so far; they may have a degree of certainty. Certain sorts of judgements may be infallible. So one may judge infallibly that this particular experience is one’s present experience. The intelligibility grasped in phantasm, is infallible. The sensus fidelium is infallible and a papal judgement under certain conditions is infallible. It is worth noticing I think, that many judgements we make with certainty have a degree of fallibility about them. So I have enough petrol to get home ..… but I did not know about this traffic jam.

For Lonergan the foundational principle for theology or metaphysics is not an abstract statement, but a concrete person, one who is converted religiously, morally and intellectually. Such conversion has ever to struggle with personal backsliding.