Looking Through the Wide Lens

We praise and thank God for our being by understanding it and expressing that understanding in praise.

First we have to open our minds.

Our culture is characterized by the absence of a truly rational philosophy. There are many speculative systems that offer a lens through which to view the reality of this world, but none is generally accepted as intellectually inescapable. The current “philosophies” taught are just invented, plausible structures that claim at most to “fit” what we see and experience. Within these systems, “intellectual certitude” is considered an oxymoron. And the general reaction of those few who are exposed to them is, “If one of them works for you, use it! Just don’t say it is true for everybody.”

This is “relativism,” which Josef Ratzinger, the German intellectual who became Pope Benedict XVI, identified as the “central problem for faith today” because it constitutes a “resignation [abdication] before the immensity of the truth.”

Relativism is narrowness. Ratzinger defines it as a “self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable.” The modern rejection of rational philosophy has led us to accept in practice two principles: First, that nothing is rationally or intellectually certain except that which is established scientifically. And second, that  “the only the kind of certainty that can be considered scientific is that resulting from the interplay of mathematical and empirical elements.”^[1]

This means that all we can do “scientifically” — according to the relativists — is take sense data— stuff we can see, touch, feel, weigh and measure — and use mathematical principles to figure out how things work. This lets us predict what results we will get if we make certain changes. But we don’t consider the results “scientifically proven” until we actually see them happen — and can measure them. So our actual certitude is based ultimately on sense-knowledge, what we can see and measure. “Seeing is believing.” Everything else is just “speculation.”

As a result “the human sciences, such as history, psychology, sociology and philosophy [must] attempt to conform themselves to this canon of scientificity.” Anything that does not conform to the rule is declared
anathema and sent to the stake as heretically unscientific or reduced to the ranks of unproven, uncertain opinion. That is relativism.

This restricts the breadth of intellectual activity. “By its very nature this method excludes the question of God [and therefore of any ultimate source, purpose, value or explanation for the universe], making it appear an unscientific or pre-scientific question. Consequently, we are faced with a reduction of the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.” We can realize the “new possibilities open to humanity,” Ratzinger says, “only if… we overcome the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically verifiable, and if we once more disclose its vast horizons.”^[2]

In other words, broaden our minds.

If we do, we can recognize the “breadth” and second “ingredient of being,” which is structure or “form.”

What does it take to “call a spade a spade?” First we have to see that, given its shape and parts, it would “make sense” to say this thing we are looking at was designed for digging. But that is not enough. We also have to judge that someone actually intended it for this. When we call a spade a spade, we are saying someone actually made this thing to be a tool. If no one did, we might use it as a spade, but we don’t say it is one.

To reduce inquiry to usefulness is technology. Technology only studies how things work; it does not ask what they are. To do that is to go “beyond physics” – into metaphysics. The study of being.

Being a ”philosopher” involves our whole self, both intellect and will. We can perceive with our minds that something might be a spade, but we do not really know it is a spade until we call it one. And that is a free choice.

That doesn’t make it less certain. The judgment might be the only rational choice offered, but we
can still refuse to make it. Relativists do, insisting that structure, or “intentional design” is just something our minds “read into” chance conglomerations of matter. That is their free choice. And it is a narrow one. Saint Paul holds them responsible for making it:

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against the wickedness of those who… suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.

Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened.

Claiming to be wise, they became fools (Romans 1:18).

The truth is, we don’t truly “know” a being until we echo God’s creative word, “Let it be,” by re-uttering it in our minds: “It is.” To call a spade a spade we have to put both our intellect and our will on the line by taking the responsibility of judging that it was intentionally formed to be one. Ultimately, knowledge, like creation, is an act of free choice. In it we experience our likeness to God.

Bellarmine draws the practical conclusion:

Humans are the image of God because of their spirit, endowed with reason and freedom. If the image has understanding, it will hope for nothing more than always to gaze at its exemplar and through imitation become as similar to it as it can.

Lift up your mind, my soul, to your exemplar: God, who is infinite beauty. All your perfection lies in imitating him: all your usefulness, honor, joy, rest, and all your good. And his beauty consists in wisdom and holiness.

That spirit is most beautiful whose mind glows with the light of wisdom and whose will is strong wth the fullness of perfect justice. The Scriptures designate both these goods by the name “holiness.” God says, “Be holy, because I, the Lord your God, am holy.” Jesus says, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Leviticus 11:44; Matthew 5:48).

We know the beauty of our own being when we “name” it in an act of free choice. “You formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

We experience that beauty when we live as we were designed to live, beginning with admiration and praise.

---

[1] “Empirical” knowledge is defined in the World English Dictionary (© 1999 Microsoft Corporation), as knowledge “derived from experience, particularly from sensory observation, rather than from the application of logic.” It comes down to what we can see, hear, touch, taste and smell. It is basically the level of knowledge we have in common with the animals. Technology applies logic and mathematics to sense-knowledge, but the results are not considered conclusive until we can verify them with our senses. Ultimately, “what you see is all you get.”

[2] See “Relativism: The Central Problem for Faith Today.” a talk given by Cardinal Ratzinger during a meeting with the presidents of the Doctrinal Commissions of the Bishops’ Conference of Latin America in Guadalajara, Mexico, May, 1996.