On Conjunction and Catholicism

 “Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to" 

JRR Tolkien

Tracey Rowland brings up the Catholic "And" in her book on theology.    The simple conjunction was considered "verdammt" by the Protestant theologian Karl Barth because in his view it added to the "sola" or "only" formulations of faith.    Instead of "faith alone", Catholics have "faith and works"; instead of "Bible alone" they have "Bible and Tradition."

Rowland writes: 

The Catholic proposition has always been able to avoid extremes, extreme alternatives: either God or the world, either God or man, either the Cross or the Resurrection, either the soul or the body. Life is immanent and contains immanent purposes, but we know, too, that the ultimate, transcendental purpose is the one that crowns all existence. Communism and laissez-faire capitalism offered a paradise on earth, in opposition to the authentic heavenly paradise that every Christian aspires to. We make of our lives an attempt to achieve full harmony between things that seem irreconcilable, between the two poles, because we perceive that there is no real contradiction between them. … Instead of thinking about life in terms of oppositions, we have to learn from Christian humanism to live joyfully and harmoniously both sides of the same coin.

This is a big topic, too big to do more than approach in a single blog post.   Right now I just want to consider it from a linguistic/logical perspective.

AND seems to me like the basic conjunction -- what conjunctions as a part of speech are essentially about -- it joins two or more things by a simple, neutral link.   Conjunction actually means the act or state of being joined.  

Unlike other conjunctions like "but" "or" it does not specify the relationship, just declares it.     In that way it could be said to precede basic logical acts like affirmation/denial, upon which the Principle of Non Contradiction is based.   Before you can say something is or is not something else, you have to at least implicitly hold them together -- conjoin them -- in your mind.   

When Catholics use the Both/And or simply "AND" principle, they are not defying the Principle of Non-Contradiction, which says two contradictory things cannot both be said to be true.    Generally they are putting things together that ARE both true but can't really be said to be true without recognition of the other part of the truth.

An essential example is that Jesus Christ is both God AND Man.    By overemphasizing one part at the expense of the other you fall right into heresy.   In some ways that sums up the proceedings of  a dozen or so of the early Church Councils.  GK Chesterton says correctly that this is almost the definition of a heresy, to take a truth and run too far with it.

The rationalism of the modern era generally goes wrong when it draws too sharp distinctions and forgets to reunite them; or when it divides its perceptions from the object of its perceptions, or divorces narratives of reality from the reality it narrates.    

When Leclercq wrote his book on monastic culture, one of the things he seems to be doing, by describing and delineating monastic theology as something separate from scholastic theology, but complementary to it, is reintroducing the AND.    The theology at the time he was writing (late 1950's) tended to subsume all Catholic theology under the heading of scholasticism, even to the point of thinking that monastic learning was a sort of naive proto-scholasticism (or so it looks from reading around the edges of his book -- don't take my word for it until I can come up with some textual support -- I was not even  born then).   

By showing the uniqueness and worth of monastic theology through history, he was inviting an ongoing appreciation for its continued role in Catholic thought.   This has turned out to be rather prophetic, as increasingly, Catholic thinkers are pointing to the monastic, contemplative mode of intellect as an enrichment and balance for the more rationalist forms of scholasticism and post-scholasticism that we see nowadays.  

But basically, this post started as a simple appreciation of that glorious conjunction AND.  Looking around my study area I feel like it sums up the relatedness of absolutely everything; that it evokes not only the Trinity, but everything created that participates in its own way in that Triune life.   It bears the weight of the transcendental, that you can't even deny without affirming by the very act of language.