Philosophy and the Suspension of Assent
Perhaps I’m overly critical, too suspicious and untrusting of authorities, too head-over-heals for uncertainty or too clouded by doubt. Maybe what I call my religious faith isn’t faith at all, but a comforting opiate, a graceless fall of mine into mythological group-think, or an ancient defense mechanism I use to deal with some suppressed trauma. Or maybe my faith is a little of all of these and yet also my response to a God who reveals. Whatever may be the truth, upon reflection I find myself all too eager to expose my faith and my beliefs to their other, to the possibility that they are not true. God may not be deconstructible, but my faith, coming to me as it does by way of human constructs, and possibly reducible to them, surely is.
My willingness to place my faith in doubt, to treat it as less than certain, has been met with criticism from a number of readers. A Sinner urges me against my “promiscuous” philosophical suspension of assent and towards the light of faith as a guide along the paths of reason. Chris C. tells me that good philosophy cannot undermine authoritative religious teaching. Thales draws my attention to the paralysis that occurs with the continual questioning of those premises that give rise to thought. Agellius warns me that I’m de-supernaturalizing the faith by bracketing the presupposition of its truth.
Am I wrong, then, in the course of philosophical inquiry and the production of a philosophical text, to suspend my assent to the truth claims of my religious faith? My answer is “No.” While not all philosophical thought needs to begin and progress with such a suspension, this suspension of assent is a perfectly legitimate philosophical act.
What do I mean here by the suspension of assent? Answering that may help. By the suspension of assent, I mean the calling into question of a truth claim to which one assents for purposes of investigating its veracity from a philosophical standpoint. It does not mean that one actually ceases to assent while doing the philosophical investigation. It does mean that the investigation does not presuppose the truth of X because one’s religious faith says X is true. The truth of X is precisely what is under investigation. If the investigation and any of its formulated arguments presuppose the truth of X, while the truth or falsehood of X is what’s in question, then the investigation is flawed and the arguments fallacious.
The obvious follow-up question is why. Why suspend assent in the first place? Why question that which one already believes? The short answer is that one could be wrong. One’s religious faith could conceivably be a false faith or not faith at all. Or faith itself may be a fiction. Moreover, the truth claims made by religions, mine included, reach our ears through the proclamations of self-described religious authorities. Questioning and analyzing their proclamations serves as a check against deception, manipulation, and authoritarianism.
Philosophical inquiry and investigation has a limited scope, of course. It can neither prove nor disprove much of what is called revealed truth. However, while the mysteries of faith may reside beyond the reach of philosophy, the formulas that supposedly give expression to these mysteries fall very much with philosophy’s field. The formulations of religious teaching rely on metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic, hermeneutics, and, obviously, language. Much religious teaching touches on other fields of human knowledge, such as history, biology, anthropology, sociology, and geography. In doing so, they open themselves up to investigation by these disciplines. The same is the case with philosophy. And while philosophy may not ascend to the heavens from where comes revealed truth, it can examine revelation itself. One can do a philosophy of religion and revelation.
What happens if my philosophical inquiry, after I’ve suspended assent, concludes in something otherwise than and contrary to what is proclaimed as true by my religion? I see two possibilities: 1) my philosophical investigation contains errors and/or falsehoods, in content and/or in method, or 2) the proclamation made by my religion is false, in part or in total. As a religious believer and a supremely humble guy, my inclination is to assume that my investigation is faulty, invalid or unsound. Indeed, one reason I philosophize for others to see is so that the errors in my thinking can be brought to the surface. However, if I’m willing to go where a sound philosophical investigation leads, and if it could conceivably lead to conclusions contrary to those made with religious authority, then I must be willing to dissent from authoritative religious proclamations. Is this dangerous? Sure, but I think no more so than uncritical trust in self-described religious authorities or self-defined divinely-inspired texts, and maybe much less. After all, people would not convert and assent to my religious faith if they were not first willing to dissent from their current beliefs.
Trackbacks
Comments are closed.
Kyle,
Your argument here is sound, and the most compelling point of it is the historical-descriptive fact that the tenets of the faith have been shaped by philosophy and philosophical methods. However, I do have one serious disagreement with the way you frame the “philosophical” discussion. It strikes me that you give too strong an impression that philosophical thinking is somehow different or special from ordinary thinking. This seems to give philosophy special rights to dissent that are exceptional to “non-philosophical” ways of thinking. I find this to be a mistaken sense of what philosophy is and does. In fact, as I argued a few days ago, the dialectic of dissent/assent is supremely ordinary and so is the kind of questioning you rightly point to here. Sure, I don’t check and see that my Tylenol isn’t *really* rat poison, but, that kind of anxiety is very much a part of ordinary existence.
Now, having said that, I do think that mystical and theological contemplation can glide over the banalities of ordinary philosophical skepticism, but to think of philosophy as somehow something other than what happens in everyday life is a mistake, I think.
I hope this makes sense. It is the foundation of the view I have that what we call ‘dissent’ is simply a way of speaking about what goes on in everyday life—all affiliations (religious or otherwise) use this way of speaking and, in doing so, fall into the same basic category of (following Witt.) family resemblances.
Peace,
Sam
Thanks, Sam, although I’m unsure where I’m granting special rights of dissent to philosophical language exclusively or in differentiation to ordinary language.
Good point, Kyle. A lot of it comes to me by the way you frame the “philosophical act” early on and how you end by treating philosophical inquiry as separated in some way from religion. I may be off, but it seems to me that, to have traction, what is philosophical must follow from what is ordinary in some way.
Does that help?
Sam
Question your views every day! I’m with you.
Thinking about your views makes them stronger, what does it say about your own beliefs if you are terrified to try and objectively examine them.
Alliterative name, there.
Excellent post Kyle and excellent comment Sam. Philosophy and any process of thinking and investigation is psychological in nature. It is a system of beliefs derived from one’s unique genetic history, familial social history, intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships and one’s unique neurobiological response to the aforementioned influences.
Therefore, in my limited human experience,I believe it is critical that we as believers suspend our assent to belief in order to risk losing everything. Paraphrasing a Buddhist monk, “Those who are on the Way will come upon difficulties that challenge their long held convictions. These human being will not seek someone who encourages their old self to survive, rather they will seek someone who encourages them to risk themselves. The more one can risk their annihilation the more chance they have of discovering within them that which is indestructible. That is the spirit of true awakening.”
Keep risking everything Kyle.
Thanks, Ronald. Now if I had disposable income to risk.
Kyle, if you only risked your disposable income then you would not be risking anything, would you?:)
Kyle,
I have been reading these various posts on assent and I find nothing to take exception to. It seems to me that in the end your suspension of assent is a valid approach to answering the timeless questions: what do I believe? Why should I believe it? I have never been satisfied with the reductionist “The Church teaches it, I believe it and that settles it.” This may work for some folks, but it doesn’t work for me, and I cannot see make this a standard to hold others to, since I cannot hold myself to it.
Nor me.
I think two questions easily get mixed up here:
(1) Is suspension of assent a reasonable way for a Catholic to do certain things? (It is, in part because suspension of assent is not the same as any sort of dissent, benign or otherwise, and in part because Catholics, being catholic, have a universe of things to do.)
(2) Is it a particularly natural way of going about most philosophical tasks, including finding out the truth of something? (It is not, which is why even people who insist on it as a method honor it more in the breach, and why no one seriously thought it was a method for discovering anything, even the ancient zetetics, until Descartes.)
I think part of what concerns people is the sense you give of trying to keep your cake and eat it, too: you keep insisting on suspension of assent, which drastically restricts what you could possibly get (not much, except in some domains), while at the same time you keep treating this philosophical approach as if it covered the whole ground. Your mention of formulations of religious teaching is a case in point, I think. Suspension of assent, for instance, is simply useless for the sort of philosophy useful for answering the question, “What is the best way to talk about faith?” because it throws away the essential data from the beginning. But in fact you are right about the valuable potential of philosophy for improving religious formulations; it lies elsewhere, in a realm of philosophy that is in actual dialogue with faith itself — not bullied by it, acting on its own principles, but exploring what is and is not in conformity with faith as lived. That is, it comes from a philosophy that treats faith as living and not as an object pinned on a board like a beetle. That is, in fact, what suspension of assent or bracketing is: treating what you are thinking about as if it were not of intensely vital concern.
Or to put it in historical terms, I see your William Clifford and I raise you William James.
“I see your William Clifford and I raise you William James.”
Bravo! James could be crucial here is we were to jump into what it means to “believe.”
Sam
That is, in fact, what suspension of assent or bracketing is: treating what you are thinking about as if it were not of intensely vital concern.
Traditionally, perhaps, but I would distance myself from this definition in so far as I’m speaking of suspension of assent in these recent posts. My suspension here is of an assent I give to truths of eternal importance. It’s precisely because of my intensely vital concern that these truths are what I believe them to be that I choose to approach them from this particular philosophical standpoint.
Brandon, How does suspension of assent restrict what you get? It seems to me that suspension of assent would open one to more of everything. What interested me is that Kyle felt uncomfortable with suspension of assent. I interpret that as a response of fear. If that is correct or not let me know Kyle. Fear contaminates faith and if suspending belief reveals that fear is an underlying influence in one’s faith then it must be addressed and transformed through the process of knowing oneself more deeply. If we do not address underlying fear then we can unknowingly harm the faith by making it a faith of dogmas and indoctrinating others into the fear based religion that it has been created by this unresolved fear. It is my point that those who reject suspension of belief do so because of the influence of fear and it restricts their deepening discovery of the mystery of God’s Love.
What interested me is that Kyle felt uncomfortable with suspension of assent.
No, I’m quite comfortable with it. And with the criticisms I’ve received for defending it.
Kyle,
Yes, that’s precisely what I mean by you giving the sense of trying to keep your cake and eat it, too.
Ronald,
Suspension of assent as a philosophical method is one with a long history, although treating it as integral to philosophy itself is for the most part relatively new, so we don’t have to speculate on the usual results, having a large quantity of historical evidence. And the usual results are simply skepticism: since differences in overall patterns of assent change assessments of evidence and what one counts as relevant evidence, what suspension of assent does best is give you a sense of what the world is like if what you suspend assent about is either nonexistent or irrelevant — that is, it gives you a good picture of what the world is like if it is not crucial to assent to whatever you are suspending assent about. This is indeed useful for a number of things that you might want to do; for instance, it can help you get a better idea of what you can still share with people who disbelieve what you believe. It is not very good for other things, like understanding what difference assent to something makes (which requires a comparison between assent and suspension of assent, and thus is improved by familiarity with the former), nor has it ever shown itself to be very good at leading to valuable new discoveries on its own, although here and there one can find very occasional exceptions to that.
Your argument seems to me to confuse suspension of assent with openness to truth; the latter doesn’t imply anything in particular about what you assent to and what you don’t. There is reason to think that suspension of assent can in the end deteriorate one’s openness to truth, which has to be fed by at least occasionally latching on to something as true, even if wrong, and suspension of assent can easily lead to weakening of motivations. But, of course, since Kyle isn’t suggesting any sort of global suspension of assent, that wouldn’t be a problem here.
I was interested in your characterization of the role of fear, since in discussions of suspension of assent, it’s usually the opposite of what you say: i.e., it’s usually taken to be clear that suspension of assent is (often) motivated by fear of error, and that the (usual) failing on the opposite side is lack of fear, to the point of rashness. I suppose in the end it would depend a great deal on the particular thing you were assenting to (or not), as well as the usual variation according to individual.
I should add that part of the problem is that suspension of assent is much, much easier said than done, especially where assent has taken root. Assent is natural; suspension of assent necessarily artificial and where we have already assented also goes against any habits of thought we may have developed because of the assent. And it is very easy to delude oneself into thinking that one has thoroughly suspended assent when one has really done nothing more than told oneself, “OK, now I’m suspending assent,” and then told oneself a made-up story about what that gets you.
@Brandon – I sense you’re reading more into my expression “suspension of assent” than I mean to imply, and this reading may be my fault as I’m using a expression contrary to its typical historical usage. Let me try to clarify further.
As a Catholic, I believe the the Church has been given authority by God to proclaim and to interpret the truths of revelation. So, as a Catholic, I’m cool with the premise “If the Church teaches X, then X is true.” I give assent to this premise. However, if for whatever reason I want to investigate the truth of X from a philosophical (or some other non-religious-based) standpoint, I can’t begin with this premise. Indeed, if I’m raising the question of X’s truth, then I’m putting this premise into question as well, even if only for the sake of argument. This is basically what I mean by the suspension of assent.
I trust I make myself obscure.
So, as a Catholic, I’m cool with the premise “If the Church teaches X, then X is true.” I give assent to this premise. However, if for whatever reason I want to investigate the truth of X from a philosophical (or some other non-religious-based) standpoint, I can’t begin with this premise. Indeed, if I’m raising the question of X’s truth, then I’m putting this premise into question as well, even if only for the sake of argument.
This strikes me as basically reasonable, though it seems to me that there are ways of going about it that would be more or less unsettling from the point of view of faithful Catholic readers who might be inclined to worry about you or give you grief.
If your method was along the lines of, “I’m trying to determine whether X is true. If we assume for a moment that it may or may not be, here is the evidence I find for or against it. Here are the things I think we would find to also be true if we take X to be true. All things considered, here is my thinking on X and any modifications or concerns that I think we as Catholics should keep in mind.” I don’t think that people would be worried at all.
If, on the other hand, you tend to simply put out there, “The Church teaches X, however I find the following reasons to doubt X to one extent or another,” people will tend to think that you are arguing against X, even if you emphasize that you’re mostly just exploring the possibility.
I may be provocative to a fault.
It’s part of your Byronic charm…
“It’s part of your Byronic charm…”
Yeah, he has more now that he got rid of that real photo and put up the cartoon character. ;)
Kyle,
You certainly can begin with “If the Church teaches X, then X is true”; you seem to be assuming that you would be question-begging to start this way, but while this is true if you are arguing directly, it is not if you are arguing indirectly (e.g., by drawing out the implications of this starting point and then assessing how those fit other evidence).
In any case, as you’ve stated it here, I do think ‘suspension of assent’ is a pretty misleading way to state it, since it has nothing to do with assent or dissent and just has to do with whether you’ve treated something as an actual premise in the argument. If I have a syllogism,
All loan contracts treating the loan as bearing intrinsic title to interest are unequal exchanges.
All unequal exchanges are prima facie unjust.
Therefore, All loan contracts treating the loan &c. are prima facie unjust.
You’ll notice that not a single premise brings in Church teaching on usury. But making this argument doesn’t mean I’ve suspended assent to any such teaching; it just means that I can make arguments that don’t require others to assent to such teaching first. Perhaps this is really what you mean?
But at several points you have spoken as if you meant that this is something that must apply to the whole of inquiry, which is radically different thing, consisting of far more.
On how people read you (I don’t generally read you this way, but certainly some do) I agree with Darwin’s last paragraph. If we were reading the Summa Theologiae of Kyle Cupp, it seems that a lot of the articles would consist of the videtur and objectiones, and that’s it:
Whether (insert Church doctrine here) is true
It seems not.
For (insert some arguments against here)
OK, that was interesting. Now on to the next question!
Oh snap! Truth be told, I’d be the last person to compose a Summa Theologiae. Or even a Summa of the Summa.
“If the investigation and any of its formulated arguments presuppose the truth of X, while the truth or falsehood of X is what’s in question, then the investigation is flawed and the arguments fallacious.”
Not true. Or, rather, there is a difference between presupposing the truth of something in the premises and designing an investigation to find the path there.
As I said in the last thread about even the natural empirical scientific method now: they don’t commit the logical fallacy of begging the question (ie, having the conclusion implicit in the premises) but they do design their experiment to head in the direction of proving their hypothesis (and, if the results are different than predicted, then they have some explaining to do).
If you just start blind with some axioms and see where they take you, as it were, you could go off in any possible direction and will have to create a whole system. It’s only if you have a specific Truth in mind that you’re setting out to prove that you can have any focus.
Just think back to high school geometry (a most philosophical endeavor). They didn’t say “here are some axioms, prove something!” No, the questions in the textbook were specifically “Prove this theorem.”
You start, as geometer, with a theory and you set out to find a way to prove it. This does NOT invalidate the method or the “philosophy” thereof, as long as you only use valid axioms and valid logic along the way.
Far from being a questionable method, it is frankly the only way a lot of insights are ever going to be found. Do you think anyone would have proven the Four-Color Theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem) “by accident,” just stumbling across it in the course of “No Goal Destination” “philosophy”?? No, it was only proven because it was their very specific intent and end-point to prove it. But having it as an end point allowed them to find the path of proof to it.
And if mathematicians can take certain principles “on faith” and then set out to prove them, and scientists, and geometry students being told to prove a theorem in their textbooks. I see nothing invalid about seeing a light in the distance by Faith and then simply trying to find the right path to get there, knowing that it MUST exist. That doesn’t imply “begging the question” as long as you use only valid axioms and logic along the way.
You may say “that’s theological philosophy, not philosophy” but as I said before, who cares for philosophy at that point then? What good is it? Other than to play your own mental game, who said it has to be blind or with no goal-endpoint in mind? That’s just your own self-created rules, a limitation or stricture you’ve placed arbitrarily on your own methodology.
Not true. Or, rather, there is a difference between presupposing the truth of something in the premises and designing an investigation to find the path there.
I recognize this difference, and I’ve no problem with beginning a philosophical investigation to prove that X is true. I expect philosophy to have a goal, a destination, and focus. I don’t expect it to be arbitrary, especially as any and all philosophical projects will presuppose something.
“I don’t expect it to be arbitrary, especially as any and all philosophical projects will presuppose something.”
Which goes back to what I said in your first post. There you presuppose the terms “power” and “patriarchy.” Terms which are not subjected to dissent. These seem poor presuppositions to accept especially in contrast to the Faith.
They’re accepted for the sake of a limited and focused investigation. One could switch out the presupposed terms and question power and patriarchy presupposing the truth of the faith.
Then what’s wrong with presupposing the Faith?
Nothing, necessarily; but possibly, if, say, one is begging the question.
Sorry Kyle, I misspoke, It is others who criticize your approach who may be fearful.
Dear Kyle,
I think that I agree with you, but I must confess to being much more interested in why your remarks are controversial. You state that one can “suspend” assent to a truth claim “for purposes of investigating its veracity from a philosophical standpoint.” The “philosophical” investigation is unlikely to “prove nor disprove much of what is called revealed truth.” But it just might subject the “formulations of religious teaching” to withering critique.
I wonder if part of the problem is that this “‘philosophical’ investigation” is theologically consequential, but, because it occurs through the “suspension of assent,” seems dangerously free from any degree of ecclesiastical control.
Thus, the philosophical investigator can be likened to the Biblical exegete who can potentially destabilize Catholic truth claims by following the consensus of learned scholars of different religious backgrounds locked in an imaginary divinity school basement. Or the philosophical investigator can seem like the moral theologian who, claiming that Church teaching merely provides intentionality and motivation to norms that are already proposed by reason, suggests that she can potentially review and even maybe refute Church teaching on the basis of an autonomous use of reason. Or, finally, our philosophical investigator seems like the Catholic journalist who suggests that sociological investigations can reveal the “moral experience” of the Catholic people and can thus be used either for or against the hierarchy.
These figures could be “conservative,” but, historically, they do seem like “liberal” Catholics. We can suggest that the moment of “suspension of assent” gave “liberal” Catholics persuasive ways to subject certain views of tradition and authority to critique, because who could question the need for objective uses of historical or ethical or sociological reason? This gave breathing room because the “liberal” Catholic could claim to be eschewing theological arguments and merely developing, say, social-science critiques – he could be devastating without running any risk of condemnation.
But, obviously, more recently, we’ve seen moves by some “conservative” Catholics away from historical criticism, etc, towards more immediately theological forms of exegesis, historical investigation and ethics. In these more immediately theological forms of reason, there is always place for approved Fathers and Church documents, and, presumably, episopcal oversight,
Might your espousal of a “suspension of assent” – which I agree with – seem like a “liberal” Catholic move – the attempt to create a secure space for critique?
Best,
Neil
Might your espousal of a “suspension of assent” – which I agree with – seem like a “liberal” Catholic move – the attempt to create a secure space for critique?
I think that’s probably fair, in the sense of “seeming.” I’m not trying to be liberal or conservative, though I’m all for space to critique.
A sinner writes:
“Just think back to high school geometry (a most philosophical endeavor). They didn’t say “here are some axioms, prove something!” No, the questions in the textbook were specifically “Prove this theorem.”
You start, as geometer, with a theory and you set out to find a way to prove it. This does NOT invalidate the method or the “philosophy” thereof, as long as you only use valid axioms and valid logic along the way.”
This is a very narrow and incomplete understanding of the mathematical enterprise. First, you should not conflate true mathematical research with proving known theorems as an exercise in geometry class. These are in no way the same. Further, there is a school of pedagogy which asks students to do exactly what you reject: give them axioms and tell them to prove things. It is hard and slow, but results in students who know the material much better than students taught by more traditional methods.
Second, as a mathematician, you do not start out with a theory and try to prove it. Much more often, you start out with an open-ended question, which means formulating a conjecture and then determining if it is true or false. Narrowly assuming that the conjecture is true and trying to prove it sometimes works, and sometimes does not. A case in point from my own research: I spent more than decade trying to prove something called the Muckenhoupt-Wheeden conjecture. I was sure it was true and put my effort into proving it. The problem, however, is that it was false. This was shown by a brilliant young graduate student, Maria Carmen-Reguera. She had exactly the same information I had, but chose to suspend assent and ask what a counter-example would look like.
Your example of the four-color theorem in no way invalidates this. The history of this conjecture is quite long, and includes a lot of mathematicians who, though they believed it, chose to suspend belief in order to try to find a counter-example. The process of looking for a counter-example but failing to find one paved the way for the ultimate proof.
The process of looking for a counter-example but failing to find one paved the way for the ultimate proof.
But, of course, looking for and evaluating counterexamples doesn’t require suspending assent, either; it’s something that can be done regardless of assent, dissent, or attempted suspensions of them, just like everything else that actually ends up being a component part of proof or disproof. Likewise, and this is just the flip side, it requires no suspension of disbelief in order to look for the best arguments in favor of what you disbelieve; it just requires enough intellectual integrity to hold yourself to standards of reasoning. As a matter of individual psychology it may sometimes be helpful to the inquiry to suspend assent (but the opposite may also be true), and it will definitely sometimes be helpful if one of the obstacles to good inquiry is the failure to consider seriously what things would look like if the thing believed actually turned out to be wrong or irrelevant. But whether or not mathematicians really suspended their assent, or instead, assenting the whole time, just thought they needed good arguments, doesn’t affect our evaluation of their contribution one way or another.
David,
It would be VERY interesting (to me) for you to write on mathematics and dissent, as they shed light on this issue. Just saying…
Sam
Sam,
Not sure what I could say, but let me chew on it for a bit.
I’m continuing to think about this “suspension of assent” and why it might be perceived as disturbing. Kyle does note that the result of a philosophical investigation, carried out while assent is suspended, might “conclude in something otherwise than and contrary to what is proclaimed as true by [his] religion.” Obviously, this would be problematic, if not traumatic, but let us suggest that this situation is relatively rare, if not unfamiliar.
More likely might be a situation in which, after the philosophical investigation, one could still give assent to a doctrine while believing, as a result of the investigation, that its expression is shrouded in “deception, manipulation, and authoritarianism” and inadequate.
It is convenient to suppose that there are merely two possibilities. One can give assent to a doctrine. Then, the doctrine – inevitably through its expressions – shapes one’s way of life. Or one dissents from the doctrine and that dissent shapes one’s life – one becomes a “dissenter.”
But the situation that I’ve described above, in the second paragraph, leads to a third possibility.
For instance, let’s take women’s ordination and three Catholics.
Catholic A assents to the doctrine and feels that her assent, which is countercultural, must be meaningful. Thus, she accepts the most common defense and elucidation of the doctrine and strives to see gender as ontological, not merely conventional – she looks for evidence of complementarity in her own marital relationship, she begins to reinterpret her life as a feminine “receiving in a giving way” and so on.
Catholic B dissents from the doctrine. The feeling that “they have gotten things badly wrong” means that he begins to see the bishops as concerned only with the appearance of continuity with the past and supposed “tradition,” not with justice at all. The dissent leads to alienation.
Catholic C (the new possibility) assents to the doctrine because there are no clear and convincing reasons not to – and, to be sure, she will give the benefit of the doubt to the Magisterium. However, as a result of her philosophical and historical investigation carried out in the suspension of assent, she finds gender essentialism unconvincing and ungrounded in Scripture, the Church Fathers, or the Scholastics. She also notes that, while Jesus did not choose women to be among the “Twelve,” it is difficult to see how this is normative. But she can accept the idea that the Roman Catholic Church is unable to ordain women because, perhaps, it should not move without the Orthodox, or, perhaps, at this time it would clearly be inexpedient – ordaining women would be misinterpreted as denying any sort of embodied difference or as a wholesale import of “rights” language into the church. (There are other reasons, too – this works cumulatively.) She assents to the doctrine but finds its expression sorely lacking.
Catholic C – neither “orthodox” or “dissenter” (as those terms are usually applies) – is a possibility opened up by the suspension of assent. I think some people would consider this destabilizing …
Neil
Your Catholic C embodies the important difference between a proclaimed truth and the arguments for that truth. So, for example, the proclaimed impossibility of ordaining women priests may be true even if the arguments for that impossibility are lacking. One would expect, however, that better arguments could be formulated.
This is very interesting. What you’re saying – and I think this is absolutely right – is that a Catholic can
1. Give assent to Catholic doctrine
2. Be committed to the rigorous study of the metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, etc, of Catholic teaching
3. Believe that the proclamation of Catholic authorities is quite often contaminated by “deception, manipulation, and authoritarianism,” and, at the very least, requires regular questioning and analysis
This sort of Catholic would combine religious practice and a deep knowledge of the Catholic tradition, with a cold realism about the institutional church and a tragic view of church history. Presumably, she wouldn’t have the fascination with the institutional church, including the melodramatic narratives about the recent history of the institutional church, that we see in most Catholic discourse today.
I think this is very possible: to assent to the essentials of doctrine without believing the “apologetics” explanations are necessarily solid. But the assent to those essentials of doctrine themselves need not be suspended. One can look for better explanations or at flaws in the argument without suspending assent to the doctrine, because the doctrine is not “founded” on these arguments, they are after-the-fact.
Kyle,
It seems to me based on your first posts on this topic, that you brought up the question of a philosophical inquiry into the truths of the Catholic faith because you were wondering whether male bias affected how faith-truths were conveyed. (My apologies if I’m not correct.) Well, I don’t necessarily want to increase your doubt even more, :), but it’s even worse than you think! It’s not mere gender bias, it’s that and a whole lot more!
Consider a faith-truth from the Gospel, like, for example, the Eucharist: we believe it because someone translated that someone wrote that someone said that they heard a man named Jesus say “this is my Body, do this in memory of me.”
Or take a faith-truth from Tradition like the Assumption: we believe it because someone said that someone said that someone said that . . . . (many more links) . . . someone said that someone said that they saw that Mary’s body was no longer on Earth but had been assumed into Heaven.
So practically the entire set of Catholic truths of the faith rests on eyewitness testimony (which a lawyer will tell you is notoriously unreliable) compounded by an enormous game of telephone, all performed by weak people who might have biases, tendencies to lie or exaggerate, etc. Maybe it would have been clearer and less uncertain for God to just give to us a set of words on how to set up our Church, like Moses and the Ten Commandments, or the Book of Mormon, or the Koran — but for some reason, He thought it best to send a person, the Word, instead. (Who then promised that His Spirit would be with His Church forever and presumably keep it from error, but that again, is a promise based on an eyewitness and a game of telephone.)
I also want to repeat what I said in another thread: It’s impossible from a purely philosophical approach to prove or reason to almost all truths of the Catholic faith. So if you want to suspend your assent and come up with a proof for the truth of Church teaching X, you’re not going to be able to do it. On the other hand, the truths of the Catholic faith claim to be “true” and that means they should be completely compatible with logic, philosophical inquiry, and scientific truth. The Church believes this is the case and welcomes any attempt to disprove a truth of the faith, because it thinks that any such attack will be unsuccessful. So have at it!
No worries. My doubts don’t keep me up at night, but maybe that’s a bad thing.
This strikes me as a good example of the sort of philosophy done in the epoch of the death of God. I don’t say that to be controversial, it just seems like a good way to account for why no one seriously considers the possibility that, if “Much religious teaching touches on other fields of human knowledge, such as history, biology, anthropology, sociology, and geography” no one considers the possibility that certain teachings of these fields might be sanctified or rendered holy and sacrosanct by being the necessary instruments by which religion expresses itself. For us, the ratchet only turns one way.
I think I follow you, but could you give an example?
Good post. I consider myself a conservative, orthodox Catholic. However, I enjoy reading the pagan classics, and I guess you could say that I ” suspend my assent” in some way when I read Lucretius or Julius Caesar. I also enjoy reading Santayana, who basically files religious belief under “poetry”. These are other ways of looking at the world, but they don’t seem to threaten my faith in any way. I once had an encounter with a Catholic-basher who (after making the obligatory nasty comment about priests and altar boys) told me, in his crude way, that he rejected all supernaturalism, and that the material world was the only world we live in. My response was that that was a perfectly reasonable view of the world, and indeed it is. He was disappointed with my response, because I think he wanted me to knock the chip off his shoulder.
“However, if I’m willing to go where a sound philosophical investigation leads, and if it could conceivably lead to conclusions contrary to those made with religious authority, then I must be willing to dissent from authoritative religious proclamations.”
“I don’t expect it to be arbitrary, especially as any and all philosophical projects will presuppose something.”
“One could switch out the presupposed terms and question power and patriarchy presupposing the truth of the faith.”
Though it seems from these that if one’s philisophical explorations will always have presuppositions that, in the end, one should abandon one’s faith in those philosophical presuppositions rather than those of the Faith.
It’s not a question of faith in presuppositions, but what presuppositions you begin with and the angle they initiate.
I agree that the presuppositions you begin with will initiate a different angle. My point is that there will always be presuppositions which will be axiomatic, which cannot be proved philosophically even if used philosophically. First principles if you will. Depending on those first principles embraced one will take a different angle. Following those angles will lead you to quite different places.
Ultimately that different place, as you state, could be dwelling in the faith in those first principles of philosophical query which are apart from the Faith. And with that you would feel comfortable. At least that’s how I read those comments I quoted.
My problem there is that one should more easily be willing to cast off those first principles that lead one from the Faith than those which hold one to it.
Kyle wrote: “God may not be deconstructible, but my faith, coming to me as it does by way of human constructs, and possibly reducible to them, surely is.”
I respect your philosophical inquiries, however utilizing post-modernist philosophical technique is not exactly the best way to approach the Catholic faith. Deconstructionism specifically sets out to undermine what it studies. It obscures more than it reveals, because it is impossible to see the painting on the wall that was once there through the dust of the building that has just been demolished.
Personally, I find it more fruitful to employ analytic philosophy to delineate true propositions from false propositions, and utilize what is known to be true to deduce other truths.
Putting aside the accuracy or inaccuracy of your description of deconstruction, I would not recommend a deconstruction-only approach to the faith.
Once one recognizes the divine authority of the Church, which is essentially what it means to be Catholic, then whenever she teaches using her divine authority, in faith and morals, one knows that what she teaches is true. One gives, and must give, religious submission of intellect and will to the Church’s teaching on faith and morals, period. Anything other than this in not the Catholic Faith.
Of course, one doesn’t know just by this assent that he really grasps what this truth means in all its ramifications, in its relation to other truths, for oneself, for others, in regard to moral action, etc., so this is where philosophical detachment and examination is important. But all the while this examination is going on, as a Catholic, one is not morally permitted to remove one’s submission of intellect and will to the truths under examination!
So, the unwillingness to accept a Catholic doctrine as true, with religious submission of intellect and will, only because the Church proclaims it to be so, is simply a sin against or lack of Catholic Faith. No amount of sophisticated argument can make it not so. And it’s not really sophisticated at all to think that childlike obedience of one’s mind to the Church’s mind is unsophisticated. One can and must combine childlike trust and submission with adult intellectual depth and rigor–St. Thomas and Therese of the Child Jesus come to mind.
Once one recognizes the divine authority of the Church, which is essentially what it means to be Catholic, then whenever she teaches using her divine authority, in faith and morals, one knows that what she teaches is true.
What’s the epistemological basis of this recognition?
But all the while this examination is going on, as a Catholic, one is not morally permitted to remove one’s submission of intellect and will to the truths under examination!
What if what’s under examination is the merit or the epistemological basis of the submission?
I said that “once” one recognized and assented to the authority of the Catholic Church to speak with the truth and authority of Christ, then assent to all the truths it teaches to be believed is a given. It doesn’t make any sense to have one without the other. It sounds to me that you haven’t really recognized the authority of the Catholic Church, if you are not automatically believing all she teaches to be believed. If you’re hesitating to believe in revealed dogma, then you’re hesitating to believe that the Church teaches what Christ taught.
As for epistemology. I guess read Newman’s A Grammar of Assent for that.
Jesus said to his disciples that they must eat his body and drink his blood. Peter submitted, even though he couldn’t really get it rationally, saying, “To whom should we go; you have the words of eternal life.” We are to respond like this to Chris speaking through His Church as well.
With that disposition, we can philosophize as we like about what we believe.
Thaddeus, I know nothing about philosophy or theology. With that in mind, what is the interpretation of Mary being the Mother of God? Could there be more than one interpretation?
Fides Quaerens Intellectum:
“While the right order requires that we should believe the deep things of the Christian faith before we undertake to discuss them by reason, it seems careless for us, once we are established in the faith, not to aim at understanding what we believe.” -St. Anselm of Canterbury, “Cur Deus Homo”
What I am talking about is the Fides part of the equation. Once the right disposition is there, then we can speculate all we want about interpretation, implication, practice, etc. But I don’t see Kyle’s description of his disposition being the childlike faith of a St. Terese, a Thomas Aquinas, or a Benedict XVI. It seems more like he’s on the fence with the divine identity of the Catholic Church.
On the other hand, what many “conservative” Catholics think to be their childlike faith sometimes is just childish naivete, ideology, dogmatism, neurosis, and simplistic thinking, and Kyle’s thoughts on this could be helpful to them, if they didn’t have a pretext to reject it tout court for being prima facie an advocating of systematic wavering in the Faith.
Thanks Thaddues. I don’t see Kyle on the fence with the divine identity of the Church. I do see him questioning some of what has been built on the devine identity.
Nobody answered this question when I asked it previously. Maybe it’s a stupid question.
Why isn’t Mary considered the first priest of the Church?
Ronald, I think it is a good question. I think the answer is something like, “because Mary is the Church.”
Oh, I am all for using critical, skeptical, dialectic, even deconstructionist thinking to figure out what is or is not authentic Church teaching. The absence of this kind of intellectual ascesis in our intellectual climate of pervasive propaganda and intellectual seduction is sinfully irresponsible, I think, and can make one end up believing that what the murder-endorsing, war-mongering, poor-producing, social-reign-of-Christ denying neo-con Catholics, on the right, or the murder-endorsing (pro-choice), war-mongering, poor-enabling, personal-reign-of-Christ denying neo-liberal Catholics on the left tell us is Church teaching is actually Church teaching. Like if one doesn’t support the murderous, racist, apartheid, Zionist state of Israel, one will miss out on God’s blessings (right) or miss out on the Enlightened-annointed blessings (left).
I am all for intellectual vigilance and circumspection about what is or is not Church teaching, and about whether one is really believing what the Church teaches in every area of life (this coming from a once-Americanist-neocon)–but when a Church teaching is clearly a Church teaching, and one sees that it is, such as the just wage, the evil of preemptive war and abortion, or the Real Presence, well it’s time for Therese-style childlik submission, not postmodernist hermeneutics of suspicion.
Well said.
If Mary is the Church, does that have implications for women in the Church?
Another very good question. To be honest, I’d like to hear a woman answer this rather than spout off some half-baked analogy myself.
Where are the women?
Sorry, I’m not a woman. But a couple of thoughts:
-I think I missed the premise underlying Ronald’s question “Why isn’t Mary considered the first priest of the Church?” I’m not sure what leads one to ask that question.
-I like the better the notion of the Church being the body of Christ, with that making Mary the mother of Church in more ways than one.
-I think an interesting question is this: “If Mary is the mother of the Church, does that have implications for women in the Church?”
Like Thales, I’m a bit puzzled at the question. In particular, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be considered an insult to the Virgin to claim that she was a priest in the sense that ordination confers priesthood. There’s a tradition in the Church of saying that Mary does indeed have a priestly authority and role (and has some notable names to it, like Olier), but it has also always insisted that this is not priesthood in the holy orders sense, because such priesthood, crucial as it is, has a very narrow and limited ministerial function and receives its value entirely from its work serving more important things. Mary’s gifts are so much more eminent than this that in comparison the work of the ordained priesthood, however important in itself, is very small; one might as well ask why given the fact that the Queen of England in some sense serves and waiters in some sense serve, the Queen of England isn’t considered a member of the waitstaff. So Thales seems right: in order to know what’s going on with the question, we’d need to know why one would even consider Queen of Heaven a waiter — I mean, a priest.
Brandon, It was your logic that demoted her to the position of waiter. The Queen of Heaven is the way to Christ since she brought Christ to us. She, with the Holy Spirit, created a living Eucharist. The Birth can be seen as the first Mass. We petition Mary to go to her Son.
I don’t follow you; I didn’t “demote her to the position of waiter” and this is an absurd interpretation of my point, since it requires attributing to me exactly the opposite of what my words say. I was pointing out what is in fact the fact, that traditionally priestly ministry is sometimes attributed to Mary and it is at the same time insisted that her priestly ministry is of an entirely different kind of ministry than that of the ordained priesthood, in comparison with which ordained priests have merely a subordinate role and are merely servants compared to a Queen. It would have been regarded by people like Father Olier as an insult to Mary to suggest that she was the first priest in a sense that would include ordained priests; to the extent ‘priest’ applies to her she is unique in her priestly ministry — not the first, but the only one of her kind.
Hi Thales. I am not a woman, but I have been mistaken for one in my running shorts. I did not state the premise so you didn’t miss it. My premise is Mary’s relationship with the Holy Spirit appears to me to be like an ordination and she is given the ability and the grace to actually create God into a human being and bring Him into this world for everyone to see and to receive. Her entire life with Christ is the Mass. An implication of this could be seen as a woman and a man co-celebrating the Mass as Mary was intimately experiencing the life of her Son.
I may have misunderstood what you wrote, Brandon. When I saw “waiter” I read sarcasm. What is the implication for women in the Church due to the status given to Mary? Is there more to be understood by the Magisterium as to the relationship between Mary and women?
Sorry again for the late comment, and for any duplication of what others may have said.
Kyle writes, “By the suspension of assent, I mean the calling into question of a truth claim to which one assents for purposes of investigating its veracity from a philosophical standpoint. It does not mean that one actually ceases to assent while doing the philosophical investigation. It does mean that the investigation does not presuppose the truth of X because one’s religious faith says X is true. The truth of X is precisely what is under investigation. If the investigation and any of its formulated arguments presuppose the truth of X, while the truth or falsehood of X is what’s in question, then the investigation is flawed and the arguments fallacious.”
For my part, I have never suggested that you not question what I have called the “basic assumption” (that the Church is what it claims to be, i.e. authorized and empowered to teach and act in Christ’s name). What I question the value of, is trying to evaluate the Church’s teachings apart from the basic assumption. By all means question the entire system, try to determine whether the whole thing rests on a foundation of sand, and if so, knock it down like a house of cards. But I don’t see the point in robbing it of its integrity by denying the basic assumption, and then trying to judge the non-integral pieces using premises totally different from those they are intended to stand on.
I admit unreservedly that without the basic assumption, many aspects of the faith are ridiculous or absurd. The idea that we must spend an hour each Sunday kneeling and genuflecting before a piece of bread, is absurd absent the premise that God has actually commanded us to do so, and revealed that the bread is actually God in the flesh.
Kyle writes, “However, if I’m willing to go where a sound philosophical investigation leads, and if it could conceivably lead to conclusions contrary to those made with religious authority, then I must be willing to dissent from authoritative religious proclamations. Is this dangerous? Sure, but I think no more so than uncritical trust in self-described religious authorities or self-defined divinely-inspired texts, and maybe much less. After all, people would not convert and assent to my religious faith if they were not first willing to dissent from their current beliefs.”
Let me look at this as if someone were trying to convert me from my beliefs to theirs. Let’s say a Mormon, just for the heck of it. I can’t dissent from the Basic Assumption merely because his religion might be true. That would be to treat faith lightly, as if it were a garment that I might choose to wear or not depending on the weather. The fact that others could not convert to Catholicism without first being willing to dissent from their existing beliefs, does not justify being willing to dissent from Catholicism whenever anyone suggests that other religions might be better.
I have no problem with you debating with people of other religions or worldviews, and comparing the relative merits of Catholicism and whatever belief system they subscribe to. And in the course of doing so, you may find that theirs is more cohesive, reasonable, applicable to the real world, etc. What I think is a mistake is to hold your Catholic faith in a more or less constant state of suspension-of-assent.
I think you’re either in a position where you’re researching and truth-seeking; or you believe you’ve found truth and you’re assenting. You seem to want to be in both states at the same time, and I don’t think that’s valid or feasible. Once you have reverted to the “seeking” stage, you have withdrawn assent and are therefore in a state of dissent. Which means basically, you’ve lost faith. (Note that this is not a judgment of you personally, but only an evaluation of what you have said.)
You can’t both have faith in the Church and also not have faith in her, at the same time. There’s no semi-faith. Since it’s a question of placing your eternal destiny in her hands, you can’t do it halfway. You trust someone to fulfill his promise or you don’t. Either you’re willing to place $10,000 in his hands for safekeeping, or you’re not; you hand over the money (or your soul) or you don’t.
Which leads me to the thought (and what follows admittedly is pure speculation, and probably lumping you in with others on VN), that perhaps the problem is this whole idea that the need to save souls is “outdated”? If you have no concern for your eternal soul, even while remaining Catholic (either because you don’t believe a merciful God would send anyone to hell, or because you think the only thing that matters for your eternal destiny is that you are a kind person), then I can understand why it wouldn’t seem all that urgent to make an all-or-nothing decision with regard to your faith.
You can keep one foot in and one foot out, enjoying what it has to offer but being willing to bolt if something better comes along, because there’s nothing to fear from your indecision, since it won’t have any eternal consequences. In other words, you believe that even while Catholic you may withhold faith in the Church, because having faith (or not) makes no practical difference — unlike the decision whether to entrust someone with $10,000 of your money.
Whereas in my view, if you believe the Faith, then you believe that placing your trust in the Church makes all the practical difference in the world. ”Where are we to go? You have the words of eternal life.” I may decide I don’t believe the Faith. But once I decide I do, I’ve decided it is of ultimate consequence, and so I’m either going to hold onto it or let it go, but I’m not going to do either of those halfway.
Aegillus:
Superb comment. Precisely what I have been getting at, but more exhaustively and clearly articulated. Thank you.
Thanks, Dr. K!
You have a lot here worthy of response, Agellius, so I’m going to answer in a separate post. I promise. :-)