Truth: Seeking and Assenting
Agellius chides me for trying to maintain two positions at once:
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 Once you have reverted to the “seeking” stage, you have withdrawn assent and are therefore in a state of dissent.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.
Yes, I want to be in both states at the same time, but even if I didn’t want to be so, I couldn’t be otherwise and remain oriented towards truth. If truth is what I hope it is, then it’s something bigger than I am, grander than my cognition of it, something that overflows whatever conceptions I construct or receive to contain it, something that stretches immeasurably beyond the horizons of my world. Even if I can touch it, I cannot possess it or encapsulate it. Truth as I experience it is on the move, always ahead of me, always elusive of my attempts to pin it down. Yet while I cannot possess it, I can nevertheless perceive it, if imperfectly and from a distance; and because I can perceive it, I can assent to it. Assent, in my book, doesn’t mean standing still, holding truth in my hands: it means acknowledging the reality of that which I pursue.
My relation to truth, at least as I desire it to be, isn’t a halfway extension of the arm or a halfhearted one-leg-in semi-commitment. I’m on the run with a purpose, eyes fixated, ears attuned, moving towards what I hope to be reality, but always suspicious that my eyes and ears may be deceived. I strive to live in accordance with how I understand reality, but then I am also conscious that my understanding may not be what I think it is. There’s a tension here, obviously, but it’s a healthy tension. It’s a tension that concerns matters of life and death, temporality and eternity; but, personally, and probably due to my personality, it’s a tension I rather enjoy. Like a good story. Which, after all, it is.
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I do not see why truth in Catholicism should be any different than truth in science. Both are always, at least to some degree, provisional. The one difference I see between science and Catholicism in this regard is that some statements are held to be infallibly true. However, the meaning of those statements is always open to reinterpretation. Elsewhere, just a few minutes ago, I quoted St. Paul saying, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.” Catholics only decades ago would have insisted that is true in part because they believed there was a first man named Adam who was formed from clay and lived in the Garden of Eden. Nowadays, Catholics will insist it is still true, even though it is no longer believed there was a first man named Adam, and in all probability, or so I think most of us believe, there was not even a first man.
Kyle,
Your description of knowing truth sounds like the attempt to know God while on earth– which makes sense, since God is the Source and Author of all Truth. We won’t know truth or see God with perfect clarity and knowledge until the Beatific Vision in Heaven. (But of course, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to know truth or God in some lesser way here on Earth.)
Yes, I’m not a skeptic. I believe that knowledge is possible and that I even have some.
I agree with you, Kyle. It is possible for a person to assent to the truth, a truth which that person perceives to be true but if that person comes upon factual evidence to the contrary then the truth as the person perceives may change.
No one’s questioning how “large” truth is in relation to yourself. Though this is an ambiguous way of speaking, in a sense I would agree that the Church is a lot “bigger” than I, the Gospel is “bigger” than I. And yes, it “overflows” the words we use to express it. But so what? An actual car is “bigger” than the word “car”; and there is more to a car than I conceive of when I say and understand the word “car”, since I don’t understand all of its inner workings, and therefore the truth expressed by the word “overflows” the word itself and my conception of it. But to say that I therefore must not claim to know what a car is, to the exclusion of other concepts (such as “tricycle”), and must always be open to correction on the issue, at the risk of ceasing to be “oriented towards truth”, is, in my opinion … let’s just say a little too poetic.
The point of saying that a proposition is true, and of therefore assenting to the proposition to the exclusion of contrary propositions, is that insofar as the words express what they express, and do so accurately, then they are worthy of assent. The fact that there may be more to the concept than the words express, is not a bar to assent. Though I don’t know everything about my wife, nevertheless I wholeheartedly assent to the propositions “I know my wife”, “my wife is kind”, and “my wife has brown eyes”, to the exclusion of contrary statements. The fact that there is more to her than I will ever know, does not prevent my assenting to the parts that I do know.
Besides, though you claim not to assent to anything to the exclusion of other things, because to assent in that way is to “stand still”; yet you assent to the idea that “to assent is to stand still”, to the exclusion of contrary statements. Isn’t this inconsistent?
Be that as it may, the point you have not addressed is that to revert to (or remain in) the “seeking” stage is to have withdrawn assent and therefore to lack faith.
I hope it’s clear from what I’ve said before, that this is not a judgment of you personally. I’m just trying to clarify things based on what you’ve said. I think you are not assessing your own situation accurately. I may be wrong, in which case I hope you will correct me, but from what you’ve said so far this is my conclusion.
But to say that I therefore must not claim to know what a car is, to the exclusion of other concepts (such as “tricycle”), and must always be open to correction on the issue, at the risk of ceasing to be “oriented towards truth”, is, in my opinion … let’s just say a little too poetic.
You can claim to know what a car is. So can I. And, furthermore, we can know what a car is. One could also be confused about what a car is.
The fact that there may be more to the concept than the words express, is not a bar to assent.
I agree.
Besides, though you claim not to assent to anything to the exclusion of other things, because to assent in that way is to “stand still”; yet you assent to the idea that “to assent is to stand still”, to the exclusion of contrary statements.
No, I said assent, in my book, is NOT to stand still, but to acknowledge the reality I pursue while on the move.
Be that as it may, the point you have not addressed is that to revert to (or remain in) the “seeking” stage is to have withdrawn assent and therefore to lack faith.
The gist of my post is that I can both seek for and assent to the same reality. I deny that to seek is to withdraw or to withhold assent.
Kyle:
I suspect that some equivocation has been introduced. My statement to which you were responding in this post, said that “you’re either in a position where you’re researching and truth-seeking; or you believe you’ve found truth and you’re assenting”. To which you reply, “I want to be in both states at the same time, but even if I didn’t want to be so, I couldn’t be otherwise and remain oriented towards truth”.
Taking the words as I intended them, your response is nonsensical. Therefore I assume you’re taking them in another sense. So why don’t I clarify my meaning and let you respond again if you choose.
When I said you’re either in a position where you’re researching and truth-seeking, or else believe you’ve found truth and are assenting, I meant “with respect to the same proposition”.
The seeking stage is where you’re trying to discover whether the proposition is true. The assenting stage is where you have discovered the proposition is true. Assenting is the completion of the act of seeking. Once you assent, the seeking is over. Continuing to seek makes no sense once the object sought has been found.
If you insist that you must continue seeking, indefinitely, because there’s always a chance that you’re wrong, then you must perpetually withhold assent. Sometimes that is appropriate. As to the question whether life exists on other planets, that is what I do. There’s nothing wrong with it. Current evidence does not suggest life on other planets, but more evidence could be discovered. Therefore I withhold assent to the proposition “there is no life on other planets”.
But as to the question, “whether the Church is what it claims to be”, the evidence is in. The Church was founded 2,000 years ago. The evidence for its founding has been thoroughly studied and examined. It also has a long track record by which to judge its fruits. Now I may still withhold assent pending my evaluation of the evidence (i.e. seeking), and there’s nothing wrong with that either. But what I can’t do is withhold assent pending evaluation of the evidence, while simultaneously claiming to be assenting.
Further, as I pointed out before, where the Church and the Gospel are concerned, it’s not merely a matter of assent but of faith; put another way, since faith is an *act* of the will, we not only have to decide whether the information it’s true, but also whether to *act* on the information. And you can’t act and not-act at the same time (and in the same respect).
Now putting your faith in the Church and in the Gospel it preaches, means making a decision to trust that it is what it claims to be. And having decided it is what it claims to be, one has no choice but to assent to what it teaches. Withholding assent belies one’s claim to trust: You can’t trust and not-trust at the same time (and in the same respect).
It is possible to assent to the evidence that Christ and the Church are what they claim to be; and on that basis decide to place one’s faith in them; and on that basis decide to assent to their teachings; while at the same time seeking a further and deeper understanding of them. If that’s what you mean, then we have no quarrel. What’s not logically possible is to assent to the evidence that Christ and the Church are what they claim to be, while at the same time continuing to try to discover whether Christ and the Church are what they claim to be. You can’t assent to the truth of a proposition, and seek to discover the truth of the same proposition, at the same time. If you’re doing one, then you’re not doing the other.
If you are claiming to do both simultaneously, then you’re either equivocating, or contradicting yourself, or possibly using the words in senses different from the ones in which I’m using them.
Agellius has spoken the truth here, masterfully. I am afraid that he makes it quite clear that Kyle and the rest of us are called to be just ordinary, run-of-the-mill Catholic believers, assenting without doubt to all the truths the Church teaches. Credo ut intelligam, and fides quarens intellectum. The only other option on the table is plain disbelief, heresy, apostasy, that is. Seeking is just a euphemism for these hard realities.
Sometimes I think the vox-nova people, for all their insights into the evils of rightist neo-conservativism and leftist modernism and atheism, just can’t accept that they are ordinary Catholics like the rest of us. In their attempt to avoid being reactionary and bigoted and insensitive or doltish or whatever, they end up flirting with plain disbelief, dissent, and rebellion against the Church. You can be thoughtful and philosophical and open to what looks like, prima facie, “heresy” (sometimes these are precisely what are the deepest truths) and see through all the idols of American Catholic culture without having to be part of some inner circle. Just be ordinary. Embrace Catholic truth like a dove child, and philosophize like an adult serpent. We’re allowed to have this tension, and it’s healthy, but both sides need to be practiced.
Assent or don’t–but let your yes be yes and your no be no! Anything else is from the devil.
Permit me a question: if I say that I assent to a proposition, am in agreement with it, having concluded the proposition to be true, and yet I remain open to the possibility that my assent may be mistaken, perhaps because the basis of my assent is faulty and fragile, am I really assenting to the proposition?
Kyle writes, “[I]f I say that I assent to a proposition, am in agreement with it, having concluded the proposition to be true, and yet I remain open to the possibility that my assent may be mistaken, perhaps because the basis of my assent is faulty and fragile, am I really assenting to the proposition?”
I think my simple answer would have to be no. But not because you remain open to the possibility that your assent may be mistaken. It’s just a fact that our assent in a given case might possibly be mistaken, since none of us is God. The reason I say no, is because you characterize your “assent” as faulty and fragile.
Cardinal Newman writes that there are three types of propositions: Interrogative, conditional, and categorical. You may ask a question (interrogative); you may draw a conclusion (conditional, since it depends on premisses); or you may make an assertion (categorical). He writes further that these types of propositions correspond to three modes of holding propositions in the mind: Doubt (interrogative), inference (conditional), and assent (categorical). ( http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/chapter1.html )
Applying these three modes to revealed religion, Newman writes that a man is either a skeptic towards religion; a philosopher, having arrived at the conclusion that it is more or less probable based on logical inferences; or a believer, having an unhesitating faith in it.
You may alternate between these states at different times. Also you may infer and assent simultaneously; but you can’t infer and doubt, or assent and doubt, at the same time.
Inference and assent differ in the following ways:
In inferring, you need not necessarily apprehend or “know” the thing inferred. You may conclude that “x is z” based on the premisses, “x is y, and y is z”, without knowing what x or z refer to. But you can’t assent to the proposition “x is z” without knowing what they represent. Thus, inference is a more or less mechanical operation, whereas assent is apprehending the proposition and incorporating it into the mind as a belief.
Newman also writes that belief (which he apparently uses interchangeably with “assent”) operates on concrete things, whereas inference deals with notions and ideas only.
It is possible to come to assent chronologically prior to inference. Thus you may already assent to something, and yet go back and investigate how the thing assented to may be inferred from known premisses. But in this case you are not reverting to the state of questioning or doubt, but are merely embarking on a logical exercise; or possibly trying to help someone else arrive at the state of belief which you possess.
Finally, an assent or belief is capable of leading one to action, whereas a mere inference is not. Or as I said previously: Faith is an act of the will in which one decides to trust that Christ and the Church are what they claim to be. You may infer the notion of a God who loves, or the notion of a God who punishes wickedness and rewards righteousness. But those inferences alone won’t make you act. Whereas assenting to those things can cause you to go to Mass every Sunday even when you *reeeally* don’t feel like it; or give a certain amount of money to support your parish when you would rather save it for a new stereo; or even give up a longstanding intimate relationship because it violates a divine precept. Assent does not *always* cause people to act in accord with the thing assented to, since other things may interfere; but it is *sufficient* to cause them to act, whereas mere inference is not.
In your case, I would not go so far as to say that you do not assent at all. My guess is that you assent at times, but revert to inferring or doubting at other times. Newman writes that “men are to be found of irreflective, impulsive, unsettled, or again of acute minds, who do not know what they believe and what they do not, and who may be by turns sceptics, inquirers, or believers; who doubt, assent, infer, and doubt again, according to the circumstances of the season”. By which I don’t mean to say that you’re a flake, but that you may be a man of “acute mind” who is not sure what you truly believe, and are therefore a skeptic, inquirer and believer at various times.
I wanted to offer this excerpt from Newman which I think is a good illustration of how and why one assents to the Church’s teachings:
If a child asks, “What is Lucern?” and is answered, “Lucern is medicago sativa, of the class Diadelphia and order Decandria;” and henceforth says obediently, “Lucern is medicago sativa, &c.,” he makes no act of assent to the proposition which he enunciates, but speaks like a parrot. But, if he is told, “Lucern is food for cattle,” and is shown cows grazing in a meadow, then, though he never saw lucern, and knows nothing at all about it, besides what he has learned from the predicate, he is in a position to make as genuine an assent to the proposition “Lucern is food for cattle,” on the word of his informant, as if he knew ever so much more about lucern. And as soon as he has got as far as this, he may go further. He now knows enough about lucern, to enable him to apprehend propositions which have lucern for their predicate, should they come before him for assent, as, “That field is sown with lucern,” or “Clover is not lucern.”
Yet there is a way, in which the child can give an indirect assent even to a proposition, in which he understood neither subject nor predicate. He cannot indeed in that case assent to the proposition itself, but he can assent to its truth. He cannot do more than assert that “Lucern is medicago sativa,” but he can assent to the proposition, “That lucern is medicago sativa is true.” For here is a predicate which he sufficiently apprehends, what is inapprehensible in the proposition being confined to the subject. Thus the child’s mother might teach him to repeat a passage of Shakespeare, and when he asked the meaning of a particular line, such as “The quality of mercy is not strained,” or “Virtue itself {16} turns vice, being misapplied,” she might answer him, that he was too young to understand it yet, but that it had a beautiful meaning, as he would one day know: and he, in faith on her word, might give his assent to such a proposition,—not, that is, to the line itself which he had got by heart, and which would be beyond him, but to its being true, beautiful, and good.
Of course I am speaking of assent itself, and its intrinsic conditions, not of the ground or motive of it. Whether there is an obligation upon the child to trust his mother, or whether there are cases where such trust is impossible, are irrelevant questions, and I notice them in order to put them aside. I am examining the act of assent itself, not its preliminaries, and I have specified three directions, which among others the assent may take, viz. assent immediately to a proposition itself, assent to its truth, and assent both to its truth and to the ground of its being true,—”Lucern is food for cattle,”—”That lucern is medicago sativa is true,”—and “My mother’s word, that lucern is medicago sativa, and is food for cattle, is the truth.”
Now in each of these there is one and the same absolute adhesion of the mind to the proposition, on the part of the child; he assents to the apprehensible proposition, and to the truth of the inapprehensible, and to the veracity of his mother in her assertion of the inapprehensible. I say the same absolute adhesion, because unless he did assent without any reserve to the proposition that lucern was food for cattle, or to the accuracy of the botanical name and description of it, he would not be giving an unreserved assent to his mother’s word: yet, though these assents are all unreserved, still they certainly differ in strength, and this is the next point to which I wish to draw attention. It is indeed plain, that, though the child assents to his mother’s veracity, without perhaps being conscious of his own act, nevertheless that particular assent of his has a force and life in it which the other assents have not, insomuch as he apprehends the proposition, which is the subject of it, with greater keenness and energy than belongs to his apprehension of the others. Her veracity and authority is to him no abstract truth or item of general knowledge, but is bound up with that image and love of her person which is part of himself, and makes a direct claim on him for his summary assent to her general teachings.
http://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/chapter2.html
So, do you believe the Church is your mother or not? : )