Miniseries for the Mind Part 1! A suspenseful symposium on support!

Since this thing is very long I had the idea of breaking it up into managable sections each dealing with one part of the whole. Here is the intro and first segment I'll post more of it soonish

This post reflects the thoughts and intellectual machinations of a rather lengthy chat me and Bic had on our ride home from Notre Dame. As tends to happen when one reexamines previous work new thoughts have occurred to me and so have been included. Our chat centered around the off mentioned, but perhaps rarely discussed, theoretical notion of support in the Christian life. So here is a systematic approach to support, and it’s role in Christian living.

Support, is a very familiar notion in our life, one that I think most of us grant it is necessary or at the very least helpful in living the Christian life. I think it is also a fairly complex notion that carries many different connotations for different people and places. We all can name types of support, examples of it, and it’s effects, but I think the reason behind it all is far more opaque, which is what we discovered and we got deeper and deeper into discussion. The trouble lies in really nailing down what support does, in terms of actual effect vs in terms of the results it garners. This is not to claim that we have no idea what support is, I’ve granted that we use it quite regularly, as a non-mechanic manages to operate a car with no knowledge of what the engine is doing. This examination is of the sort that looks at the workings of the engine.

We can enumerate two major categories of support, what I will call Substitutive Support and Facilitative Support. Substitutive Support is of the type we generally think of, the classic “how’s your prayer life” sort of support. This type centers around almost entirely the notion of being held accountable by others. It is the kind of support in which you let others into your life in a very intimate manner. You allow yourself to be held accountable by a support group, be it mens/womens group, household, etc. It is an allowing of others help where you fail in your own struggles towards being a better person. Since it is probably the most familar type let's deal with it first.

Substitutive Support

Now I called this type of support substitutive for a very apt reason; because this sort of support acts as a substitute for ones own self-knowledge (deep, I know). If we were to ask why we need to have others hold us accountable, what would be the answer. I think it is really an obvious one. We have others hold us accountable because we cannot do it ourselves. Isn’t being held accountable just having others hold a mirror up to us, reflecting our faults and shortcomings back at us. We do it because the mirror we hold up to ourselves is poor at reflecting. I think the reason for why one would be ill equipped to hold up their own mirror is apparent; it is due to a lack of self-knowledge. Substitutive support fills in for ones lack in self knowledge by surrounding ones self with people that can/are willing to hold up mirrors for you when you cannot.

Practically speaking this type tends to be of the sort found in a defined “support structure” such as weekly smalls groups. It is very systematic and therefore lends itself to formulaic application for a very wide range of people. That is to say that Substitutive support does not differ in practice much from one person to another. In one sense it is the practical advice we get (albeit caters to a very specific domain of spiritual matters) Such as “don’t go there then” or “don’t try and pray when tired.” It is the simple forumalaic nature of this type that allows for the robust support systems we are familiar with. However another consequence is that it doesn’t leave much left in an individual when the structure disappears.

Continueing the analogy of the mirror—if ones has others holding up your mirrors it stands to reason that when these people leave so do the mirrors. Now it is only a practical issue when the support system breaks down. Allow me a quick digression, I think it is this point, intuitively or subconsciously is understood by those in the structure and due to this tend to put a large emphasis keeping people ‘in’ and a afraid of a loss of faith in those who do leave. This may lead to that familiar sense of ‘distrust’ of the outside, and to a certain degree, the individual. Just a thought that occurred to me while writing, and I mean no value judgment on the observation, just that it may be.

Back to the case in point; I think there is something important to be said about the dependant nature of substitutive support. It helpful in many practical ways but this fact can mask the fact that personal growth may not be as advanced as one may think. Substitutive support does not lend itself towards personal growth in the sense that it does not give one much that is not dependant on others. Now while we, as social creatures, will always be in some sense dependant on others that is not to say that our own growth be inextricably tied to others. Ones’ faith should be their own and must exist on its own. In fact a good indication of a lack of personal conviction in faith is can be a quick loss of it outside a support structure.

4/20 + 8: as the haze evaporates...

This is a response to Yoda's 4/20 post. It's actually the second half of my comment on it, but it was just getting too long and involved. So here it is.

Shifting gears a bit: "reason is dependent on the soul in the realm of the Spirit." I am taking this to be a variant formulation of the question of faith and reason, in this case, as it pertains to the "realm of spirit." Presumably that realm is composed of those questions (and they're many derivations) which every attuned human soul asks: God, the soul and immortality--the traditional divisions of metaphysical inquiry. Therefore, the most fundamental theological questions are identical to those posed historically by secular metaphysics.

As people of faith we have unique insight into these questions. However, as with the gift of tongues, if we wish to attain to the heights of metaphysics we must start from humility, i.e., faith followed by reason. I'd like to propose working definitions of two distinct modes of knowing: apprehension by faith and apprehension by reason.

"Something grasped by reason is known through the unaided intellectual power of the human mind. Something known by faith is apprehended by a faculty which, by definition, goes beyond what reason can know. Generally speaking, the active and passive roles in these two dialectical paradigms are reversed. The object of faith, divine Revelation, does something to the believing subject. Rational thought, in contrast, is something done by the subject in order to attain a particular object. "

So faith is something done to us and therefore a gift. A gift we can and must prepare ourselves to receive, but whose reception is nonetheless a matter of divine providence.

The result of faith once given is "a certainty of things unseen." Once again intimacy and love are fundamental to this process. My intimacy and love for God not only prepare my soul for the gift of faith, they are what form in my mind the conviction of the contents of divine Revelation. The extent to which I love God is the extent to which I am capable of the certainty of faith. And As B16 says in his encyclical "Spe Salvi," this faith is not "merely transformative but preformative." It requires that we live differently; that we live in hope which stems from the convictions of faith.

Entonces, the emerging model is, as Yoda proposes, reason informed by faith. This does not curtail or inhibit reason but rather unfetters it. Faith reveals certain truths as known by divine Reason and therefore potentially knowable by human reason. It gives the intellect a new horizon to move toward, thereby widening the plain of philosophical metaphysics. These “natural points of contact” (God, immortality and the soul) justify the philosophical process. Christian theology therefore justifies philosophy as a human striving toward a Revealed end. Theology invests philosophy with this absolute potential that allows for the place of wonder within the philosophical quest; that same wonder which Socrates identifies as the starting point of all philosophy. It thus expands the life of the mind, identifying dimensions and possibilities beyond rational cognition.

The ideal is to build our intellectual project on the dual foundations of faith and reason. A truth held by both faith and reason is more likely to withstand the human inconsistencies involved in faith and the, at times, debilitating cynicism of reason. However, in the mean time we are left with the apparent incongruities and paradoxes of what the soul knows and what the mind can know. And here, I think, is where hope comes in. Do we dare allow ourselves to remain in uncertainty, stuck in that two-sizes-too-small eternity between paradoxes, in the hope that there is an answer that perhaps can only be understood by a continual striving and never arriving? That the inquiry itself and not the answer is the answer?

To quote my favorite saret and spiritual director, Fr. Zosima from the Brother's Karamazov: "We cannot know that God exists. But by living a life of active love we can become convinced of it."

Keep on truckin'

..and read Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis.

Grammatical points:

btw Yoda: it's "naught" not "not" in the third line of your post.

Thoughts on 4/20: Being comfortably numb and speaking in tongues

This is only a piece of what Ive been writting, but I thought it was interesting. I think it can be understood without what came before it. My point here is about the nature of speaking in tongues, the other stuff requires the rest of my work so dont worry about it.

"But Hark! That hope which I speak of begins to show its fruit! Dare I say the questions I fall prone to ask may have no answer? Is it all for not that quarrel within me searching for truths with which I am not equipped to discover? Shall I then put my mind to rest, until the answer within my soul spills out without any question to provoke them? For isn’t it the man moved by the spirit which produces the letter, and not the reverse? To me, this sounds like genuine prayer. Much time has past since I have truly prayed that way; and not in vein! How can I account for such a convicting belief such as my God being with me? If I with such confidence can assert undoubtedly this, how wondrous should it be to equally know Love. What a sublime picture have I painted for myself.
I believe in what I have written. Meditating upon this for quite some time has my resolve been solidified. I have come now to purport an amazing challenge to myself and to other fellow sufferers of reason: great words stem from the soul, and very few words provoke that which is beyond its capacity to convict. Reason is dependant on the soul in the realm of the Spirit. I cannot account for this any other way. And it is with fleeting jealousy do I look at the simple minded who are less frequently tempted to use the language of reason to pierce the soul; for its words are incoherent to the soul and only can come from God. It strikes me plainly to see this. God speaks exclusively to the soul, and the soul provokes reason to account for it, but I find reason then to be quite inferior. One who can live by Love and not explain it is far better off than one who can write books on this phenomenon and scarcely even be touched by it.
This reminds me of praying in tongues. Could it be a completely surrendered reason to the soul which brings that language meant for the soul by God out in this incomprehensible manner? Such an odd occurrence to literally hear the spiritual realm! If so, it is then appropriately called a gift of the Holy Spirit. For I am inclined to think it really is the language of God to ones soul. It may be similar to one who comes across the patterns of 1s and 0s which are meant to be understand only within programs, but which may bring to mind how truly amazing it is to witness this foreign language not meant to be understand by a person but exerts its existence. I will dwell more on this issue. But ultimately, we have found a suitable answer in the most unexpected way!"

A Gift That Kept on Giving

That is, if you think that an enhanced appreciation for beer is a gift in and of itself. I sure do.

This article is the strangest thing I've read in a while. Is it credible?

Thoughts percolating in the electric coffee urn of epistemology

Skeptics argue that because we cannot prove anything beyond all doubt, we cannot be certain of anything; we know nothing (or at least we know very little—the contents of our consciousness). However, most philosophers of epistemology believe that people can and do know many things (they are not lying or mistaken when they say “I know I have hands”) even though they cannot disprove the skeptical arguments. We are left with the idea that we can know things without proving them beyond all doubt. I wonder if we can get at what we actually do mean by knowledge, because of several implications I’ve been considering recently.

Man is communal; his nature is to relate to other persons. His nature is to have faith and trust in dealing with things he cannot prove (you never know for sure what another person is thinking, and you can either trust in their love and in your friendship and have a relationship that is good and fruitful and fulfilling, or you can distrust and slip into the skepticism of the rational logical maniac). Why then do we nonetheless have this hankering to prove everything, when nothing in our experience can be proven?

I believe that what we are seeing here is something akin to Augustine’s restless heart idea or CS Lewis’s ideas that having desires which cannot be fulfilled in this life points to fulfillment somewhere else.

It says in a song “then we shall know, even as we’re known, [that] You are Love Eternal.” I believe that it may be the case that in heaven, at the great Wedding Feast of the Lamb, when we come into full Communion, we shall somehow “know” with certainty beyond doubt—even as God who made us and is in us and maintains our existence knows us—that God is Love and He loves us, though perhaps it’ll be in a way that supersedes or comprehends our intellect. (in the Middle Ages, people talked about having sex as “knowing carnally”; in the context of JPII’s language of the body ideas, this not such an odd way of talking)

And now for something completely different

Mmm, Danish!

He blinked unsteadily as he emerged into the cold light of the blogosphere

In the throes of writing a paper, so I can't be long. I largely agree with Frere Porchrat, but want to offer a bit of a correction. I wouldn't say that love of self precedes love of others, only because I think love of self entails love of others. Love of self, promoting one's own full flourishing, necessarily involves loving others because our full flourishing requires properly ordered relations with those around us. It's more of a symbiotic relationship. When I treat my parents with respect, or extend generosity toward my friend, I am loving myself and another person at the same time.