The Time that is Given Us

“I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone. "

" I should think so — in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!” 

The Hobbit

Yesterday I  read John Henry Newman's Letter to the Duke of Norfolk.    Though written more than a century ago, it is quite relevant in many ways.    It is basically on the implications of the doctrine of papal infallibility, which had then just recently been defined by the Vatican I Council.  

Much of what he writes in this letter is correcting Prime Minister William Gladstone's notions on what the doctrine meant for Catholic citizens of the UK.    Though he did not fully succeed in altering Gladstone's opinions, he did provide a lucid explanation of the authority of the Church through history, the role of the doctrine of infallibility, and the corresponding role of conscience and private judgement in the life of an ordinary Catholic.

This made me start thinking on a track that seems tangential at first, but may not be.

In Love Among the Ruins I talked about how the serious Catholic has to become a bit of a scavenger of space junk, picking up mysterious bits and pieces from different locations and trying to figure out how they fit together.   Really, this applies to all human beings.  You can't read anything online about religion or politics or education or parenting or even what food to eat in a day without coming across vastly different recommendations based on vastly divergent principles.   Pope John Paul II treats this in Fides et Ratio.   ... he calls "implicit philosophy" what Fr Garrigou Lagrange called "le sens commun".  

Although times change and knowledge increases, it is possible to discern a core of philosophical insight within the history of thought as a whole. Consider, for example, the principles of non-contradiction, finality and causality, as well as the concept of the person as a free and intelligent subject, with the capacity to know God, truth and goodness. Consider as well certain fundamental moral norms which are shared by all. These are among the indications that, beyond different schools of thought, there exists a body of knowledge which may be judged a kind of spiritual heritage of humanity. It is as if we had come upon an implicit philosophy, as a result of which all feel that they possess these principles, albeit in a general and unreflective way. Precisely because it is shared in some measure by all, this knowledge should serve as a kind of reference-point for the different philosophical schools. Once reason successfully intuits and formulates the first universal principles of being and correctly draws from them conclusions which are coherent both logically and ethically, then it may be called right reason or, as the ancients called it, orthós logos, recta ratio.

People may deny these tenets that he mentions.   However, they are of the sort that are apparent even in peoples' denials.   In fact, they rest on them even as they critique them.  

Many people also may not have time, or energy to sort things out for themselves to sort out what is true, good and beautiful from what is erroneous and corrupted.   St Thomas Aquinas talks about how certain religious truths can be known by natural reason but that only the wisest can discern them and even then fall into errors.    Therefore faith infuses and completes even the understanding that can be gained by the proper use of reason.    John Paul II writes:

Thomas recognized that nature, philosophy's proper concern, could contribute to the understanding of divine Revelation. Faith therefore has no fear of reason, but seeks it out and has trust in it. Just as grace builds on nature and brings it to fulfilment,45 so faith builds upon and perfects reason. Illumined by faith, reason is set free from the fragility and limitations deriving from the disobedience of sin and finds the strength required to rise to the knowledge of the Triune God. Although he made much of the supernatural character of faith, the Angelic Doctor did not overlook the importance of its reasonableness; indeed he was able to plumb the depths and explain the meaning of this reasonableness. Faith is in a sense an “exercise of thought”; and human reason is neither annulled nor debased in assenting to the contents of faith, which are in any case attained by way of free and informed choice.46

 This is all very general, but I started writing this post to address something much more specific to our current time.  ... that space debris problem.   Apparently it was somewhat of a problem even in Newman's day, but in the 21st century it seems inescapable even for Shire type folks who would prefer to live and die in honest, benevolent simplicity.

Let me take an example now.   Go to your favorite Catholic publication or if you aren't a Catholic, your favorite Christian source.   You could even go to your X feed where you certainly can find a strong opinion on almost anything in the cosmos.    Start reading.   Soon you will come to some sort of assertion.   Notice then:

Is the assertion supported?  That is, is there anything beyond the statement to back it up -- evidence, authority, emotion, all of the above, none of the above?   What kind of evidence or authority is it?  What kind of emotion?

What is the logic of the argument?  As Chesterton points out, even if an argument is inductive or empirical, that doesn't mean it escapes the province of logic.    Sherlock Holmes can study and analyze different types of cigar ash, sure, but he still has to use deduction to figure out what the presence or absence of that specific type of ash actually means in that specific context.

The same is true for emotion.   Emotions are cognitively oriented responses.    They have both an object and a motivating power, as Thomas Aquinas points out.   A sheep fears a wolf because it knows (on an instinct level)  it has a power to hurt it, and the fear motivates it to run.     Sheep stay close to other sheep because their instinct informs them that this means safety.    

Finally, the question of authority.   Authority depends on a kind of reasoning too.    Generally one would trust an authority because the authority is credible -- that is, legitimately placed in some way.    Experts are considered authorities in their particular subject of expertise, but often they are simply laymen like us in fields not related to their learning.    And even in their own areas, truthfulness is important as well as logic and a kind of dispassion.   If we have reason to think they have some other agenda besides the furtherance of understanding, we tend not to trust them.    

Here I want to pause and point out that we are in the territory of the ordinary human being here -- anyone who can read and think -- or hear and think, because a 3 year old can be severely logical.    A 3 year old is already capable both of employing a lot of emotion, and of critiquing the claims of authority.   

Cardinal Newman makes a distinction between human faith and faith that comes from grace.   We all rely on human faith for a surprising amount of what we know.   I don't know as an experienced fact that there is such a place as Argentina.   I've seen pictures.  I've heard from people who claim to live there.   Etc.    There is really no reason why many people throughout history would lie about the existence of Argentina.   It makes perfect sense to believe what I am told about the country.   If I were going to go there, I would want a lot more detailed knowledge than I have now -- on best places to visit, hotels, how to exchange currency, what to expect, etc.   I might run into some contested issues that don't confront me now.   

So it is with almost everything.  But some questions are important for everyone just by nature of being human, even if they had no direct interaction with Argentina or California or Siberia.    Even if people are not specifically curious about these questions, they universally have come to some implicit decision about them.    As John Paul II says:

Who am I? Where have I come from and where am I going? Why is there evil? What is there after this life? ... They are questions which have their common source in the quest for meaning which has always compelled the human heart. In fact, the answer given to these questions decides the direction which people seek to give to their lives.

Because these matter, and are yet difficult to think out on our own, we tend to choose an authority to trust.     So part of sorting out that random reading mentioned above is thinking -- on what authority?

While all sources seem to agree on the real and continued existence of Argentina, sources give different and in fact conflicting answers to these human and universal questions listed by John Paul II.   So some people become impatient with the whole thing and basically focus on what is either experienced personally or believed widely and presumably able to be experienced personally, like Argentina.

The problem is that this focus does not escape the question of meaning, identity, mission in life, etc.   It simply answers it in one way, by ignoring it as much as possible.     In fact, it generally becomes an answer in itself.    I know people who live this out nobly and admirably, with a kind of humble agnosticism; I also know people who essentially live wayward, broken lives because the meaning and purpose that they deserted has now deserted them in turn.

I got a long way away from my random article mentioned above, but it ties back in, because any writing or speech that is trying to convince you to think or act in a certain way will have bits and pieces of answers to these big questions.     Sometimes the answers will be implied, sometimes stated.    

I see I left Newman's Letter as well.    To tie that in, I want to point out that the kind of reading I am recommending can clarify one's own implicit thinking, both negatively and positively.   When Newman wrote out his disagreements with Gladstone, he did not just point out the inadequacies of Gladstone's arguments.   He also described very convincingly his own position and tied it into the Catholic position in a larger sense.   This was a habit he had practiced since his youth and by it he had come from agnosticism to evangelicalism to Anglicanism and finally to the Catholic Church.   This is not to deny the graces that he was given, but just to say that a kind of recititude of reasoning in cooperation with grace made it possible for him to arrive at successively better understandings of truth.