“What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties. In form and moving, how express and admirable. In action, how like an angel. In apprehension, how like a god!”
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET
Rationalism vs. Mysticism
We all have a sense of what we mean by ‘reason.’ For the rationalist, as for most uses in common parlance, reason is the process of applying logic to draw conclusions from information and observations, thereby deriving a specific set of facts.
For the mystic, as for many philosophers and theologians, reason is not only the application of logic, but also the intuitive mechanism for perceiving abstract qualities and essences, thereby discerning generalized truths.
It turns out that, because paradox presents itself as a ‘catastrophe of reason,’ how we view the human capacity for reason greatly affects how we will approach our struggle with paradox.
For the rationalist, the highest fruition of joy is a thought, the most meaningful movement is the movement of the intellect, and the appetites are best directed toward truth of the natural world. For the mystic, the highest fruition of joy is a feeling, the most meaningful movement is the movement of the heart, and the appetites are best directed toward love.
For the rationalist, struggling with paradox exposes limitations of intellect and teaches humility. For the mystic, struggling with paradox exposes the desire for certainty and teaches the importance of preserving wonder.
Importantly, the dichotomy between where rationalists and mystics start does not need to become a dichotomy of destinations, because the end goal of embracing paradox should be the same.
If we arrogantly use our powers of reason in an attempt to resolve paradox rather than to embrace it, paradox becomes a wedge that divides rather than a glue that unifies. Importantly, confronting paradox is not a competition between two competing truths, in this case one coming from logical reason, science, and the natural world, and the other coming from intuitive reason, faith, and the supernatural world.
We must resist the allure of certainty–of the simple solution; of the single victor–which puts the natural and supernatural at odds, and instead get comfortable with the discomfort of leaving the paradox unresolved. Keeping alive the struggle with paradox is an exercise that prevents us from falling into the trap of false dichotomy trap offered by division.
Undoubting Thomas
Of all thinkers who ever existed, St. Thomas Aquinas perhaps did the most to reconcile the scientific and rationalist view of reason with the religious and mystical view of reason.
“St. Thomas was one of the great liberators of the human intellect. Thomas was a very great man who reconciled religion with reason, who expanded it towards experimental science, who insisted that the senses were the windows of the soul and that the reason had a divine right to feed upon facts, and that it was the business of Faith to digest the strong meat of the toughest and most practical of pagan philosophies.”
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas
The Aquinas methodology is to follow reason as far as it will go. For Aquinas, everything that we can experience in our intellect has first been in the senses, and to this extent he espouses the inclinations of the objectivists, rationalists, and scientists.
Aquinas also holds that the form of a thing is a fact of the thing, and therefore empathizes with the intuitionalists, mystics, and artists. “Every artist knows that the form is not superficial but fundamental; that the form is the foundation.”[1]
Form represents the essential idea of the thing, which is the full realization of the thing. There is no such thing as form over substance because the form is the substance, albeit in generalized form (ahem). Suffice it to say that, in the intellect of Aquinas, the power of reason never encountered an opposing force that couldn’t be resisted nor an impediment that couldn’t be moved.
Reason is a Social Function
In their 2019 book, The Enigma of Reason, cognitive scientists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber propose a new reason for why we reason. The authors argue that the primary function of reasoning is not so much to arrive at truth, but rather to persuade others and ourselves that our beliefs are correct.
They contend that reasoning is a social tool to help humans persuade others, which leaves it subject to biases and limitations that can produce errors.
Mercier and Sperber present evidence that reasoning is a specialized cognitive module developed to facilitate social interaction by allowing humans to make persuasive arguments to others. In this way, reason is used to justify our beliefs to others and to persuade them to adopt our views.
When we are left alone to convince ourselves that we are correct, we are not as inclined to come up with the best arguments or reasons because, frankly, the decision is already made. Reason’s full arsenal is not deployed until we have to justify our beliefs to others, especially to those who hold different views.
Perhaps this social power of reason is why Chesterton said that, “two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one,”[2] and why Christ said, “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”[3]
For Mercier and Sperber, reason is a module of inference whose function is to use reason to draw inferences about reasons, and as such our reasoning processes are recursive. In other words, the process of reasoning is a self-referencing strange loop! (See here for more about strange loops.)
We use reason to evaluate and justify our own reason-based beliefs through social interaction, as well as to evaluate and critique the reasoning of others. When we engage in reasoning, we are not just evaluating the truth or falsity of a claim, but also the validity and soundness of the reasoning used to support that claim.
Socialization can be a positive feedback loop forcing us to use better reasoning in the face of good counter-arguments, or can be a negative feedback loop when we vacuously spew nonsense into an echo chamber.
Inference, Intuition, and Persuasion
In addition to the reasoning module, our brains utilize several other modules of inference. These modules are specialized cognitive mechanisms that allow us to process and evaluate different types of information. Some of these modules include:
- perception, for interpreting sensory information and making inferences about the world based on what we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch;
- social cognition, for understanding the mental states and intentions of others, such as their beliefs, desires, and emotions;
- memory, for encoding, storing, and retrieving information from past experiences;
- emotion, for evaluating the significance of events and stimuli based on how we feel about them; and
- intuition, for making rapid and automatic judgements based on our past experiences and knowledge.
These modules are interconnected and work in concert to influence our beliefs and behavior. By understanding how these modules function on their own and interact with each other, we can gain a better understanding of human cognition and behavior.
In arguing that reason was a social tool for coming up with the best intellectual and logical arguments for convincing others, and not so much a way of making decisions for ourselves, Mercier and Sperber were indeed treading new ground. Other than for the minor fact that St. Thomas Aquinas came up with the idea 750 years earlier.
For Aquinas, a person is ‘persuaded’ of an idea first through emotion, perception, or intuition, whether rational or irrational, and then is ‘convinced’ through logic and intellectual arguments formulated by the function of reason.
Aquinas understood that, while beliefs come to us through various mechanisms, even through divine revelation[4], we should always proceed to examine those beliefs through a rational process and by appealing to reason. Not only are ideas tested and honed through debate and socialization, but so are reasons.
Thus, even when an idea falls in the battle, reason itself is strengthened and thus wins the day. Indeed, as Chesterton commented, “falsehood is never so false as when it is very nearly true.”[5]
Aquinas dealt with his share of controversies, and in all his arguments he treated his opponents with the respect owed to someone who will listen to reason. To further demonstrate respect for his opponent’s ideas, Aquinas would make every attempt to argue on the reasons and statements of his opponents.
Of all the TED Talks on the art of persuasion, imagine the one that St. Thomas could have given!
Whipped Cream and Scripture
Aquinas wasn’t the only one aware of how reason is used to come up with the best arguments to convince others after the fact. Ironically enough, mathematicians, a group not typically characterized by the prowess of their social skills, knew the social function of reason well before Mercier and Sperber.
When it comes to mathematical proofs, reason is used to piece together the best justification of an already, and often intuitively, arrived conclusion. When a proof is finished, it is presented as a series of small, indispensable steps set forth in a logical, irrefutable progression.
But the reasoning so scrupulously and ceremoniously exhibited in a formal proof likely bears little resemblance to the reasoning that originally persuaded the mathematician for whom the theorem was ultimately named.
Particularly for ground-breaking work in mathematics, one had to somehow see the final result as truth in an a priori manner (that is, before formulating the reasoning of the proof), which required intuition. And not just intuition, but intuition beyond reason.
The proof wasn’t in the pudding, so to say, it was the whipped cream on top.
On the other end of the spectrum from mathematical proofs, and yet having surprising parallels, is interpretation of Scripture. In interpreting Scripture, we discover that reason is an indispensable tool for injecting life into faith.
Accepting the truth revealed in Scripture is not contrary to reason, but instead transcends reason’s reach and allows the intellect to rest in mystery. Aquinas saw no contradiction between reason and revelation because nature and Scripture have the same author.
We depend on nature to bring us to faith just like we depend on reason to help us interpret the truth in God’s word. Despite his penchant for deftly navigating the thorniest conundrums, Aquinas believed that deep truths can be studied by starting with the humblest of facts.
Theologians and Scientists and Lawyers, Oh My!
For Aquinas, interpreting Scripture is an act of theology, and theology should follow a science-like methodology characterized by making reasoned and methodical analyses.
His approach, a version of which has since been adopted by legal professionals in interpreting statutory language[6] (perhaps unsurprising understanding that both Aquinas and the legal scholars credit Aristotle), was to utilize levels of abstraction, which Aquinas termed senses, to distinguish different types of meaning.
The methodology starts at the least abstract level, called the literal sense by Aquinas. Here the focus is on determining what the words themselves meant, and then exploring the intent of the words and what purpose they are trying to accomplish.
This often involves studying the text along with the aid of interpretive tools, historical evidence, literary analyses, etymological analyses, and the like. As Pope Pius XII would later describe:
“In the performance of this task let the interpreters bear in mind that their foremost and greatest endeavor should be to discern and define clearly that sense of the biblical words which is called literal.”
Divino Afflante Spiritu, no. 23
Aquinas recognized that, not only is the literal sense not always obvious, but internal conflicts may arise between the meaning of the words and their apparent intent. In these cases, interpreters must avoid insisting on using their own preferred interpretation to the exclusion of other reasonable interpretations, and must be aware that the intention of the divine author may be multifaceted.
It is the nature of dealing with sacred texts that multiple reasonable interpretations exist, even conflicting ones, that are acceptable and should be maintained. In all cases, interpreters should avoid asserting any meaning that would create a falsity in Scripture or that would exclude other interpretations that contain truth and fit the context.
Think about what Aquinas is saying. He is saying that interpretation of Scripture is not an either/or exercise, but must accommodate multiple, and potentially contradictory, explanations.
That sounds an awful lot like embracing paradox.
Upon discerning the literal sense, the interpreter can proceed with investigating the spiritual (or mystical) sense. If the literal sense is the less abstract level concerned with what words signify, then the spiritual sense is more abstract in that it is concerned with what is signified by what the words signify.
Aquinas categorizes the spiritual sense into three areas, namely:
- the allegorical sense (encompassing what points to, or prefigures, Christ, such as the spotless sacrificial lamb of the Passover);
- the moral sense (prescribing how Christians are to conduct their lives, such as the actions of the Apostles); and
- the anagogical sense (pointing to the future, the end times, and the beatific life of Heaven, such as the New Jerusalem).
Because Scripture passages will not always fit into each, or even any, of these categories, care should be taken when using these to discern meaning.
As an example, Aquinas applied his methodology of interpretation to the passage in the creation store of Genesis, ‘Let there be light.’ It goes something like this:
The term ‘light’ can be taken in the literal sense of a source of illumination, like the sun. ‘Light’ can also be understood in the allegorical sense in terms of Christ born to be the light of the world. The passage can also be understood in the anagogical sense as ‘let us be introduced into glory through Christ.’ And in the moral sense, it instructs us to open our intellects to the illumination of the knowledge and wisdom of God.
Interpreters of Scripture who follow the methodology of Aquinas should remain cognizant that the meaning of Scripture is far from self-evident and ultimately must take into account other truths. For example, Scripture’s tendency to rhyme and self-reference means it works together as a whole and must be viewed that way, with care not to take passages out of context.
Interpreters should also be aware that Scripture’s tendency to communicate at multiple levels simultaneously can lead to apparent contradictions. Aquinas warns of errors such as adopting one interpretation to the exclusion of others, as well as being too sympathetic to the natural or too sympathetic to the supernatural.
Over-reliance on ‘settled facts’ that seem to contradict Scripture to thus explain it away are just as deleterious as over-reliance on ‘settled explanations’ of Scripture being applied to the world of facts.
Ackshully, Actuality is Ideal
The ability to reason requires the ability to distinguish good arguments from bad arguments, apt analogies from inapt analogies, and logical truth from logical falsity.
The ability to distinguish depends on the existence of a standard, an ideal, against which the quality being distinguished can be measured. Even when making relative judgements, such as which of two reasons is the better one, it must be in reference to some understanding of the direction of goodness.
How can a change be said to be for the better unless the best exists independently? For an ideal to be useful, it should be fixed and eternal, so that every time a measurement is made to determine goodness, the ultimate standard is the same.
Notice that the ideal should be eternal, in other words non-temporal, or existing outside of time. This is important because a thing that exists in time has what Aristotle called ‘potentiality,’ which is the capacity to change, and not just to change, but to change toward the eternal ideal that exists for that thing.
Aquinas called the eternal ideal ‘actuality,’ which is what potentiality becomes when it is realized. All temporal things exist in a state of potentiality because they are always subject to change, and therefore temporal things are always less than what they were intended to be, which is their actuality.
Full actuality can exist only outside of time. As articulated by Aristotle’s teacher, Plato, temporal things never really are but instead always coming into being.
Thus upshot is that temporal things will remain with defect, whereas eternal things can exist in full actuality. Thus we see the importance of ideals being eternal, otherwise they would necessarily have defects and not be ideal.
Unfolding and Entropy
For Aquinas, change can be thought of as an unfolding. And if something is being unfolded, its potential state must already exist in some form–like an acorn that becomes an oak tree. Everywhere there is potentiality unfolding toward its ideal while never reaching it.
For us, God is both the unfolder and the ideal.
“Things change because they are not complete; but their reality can only be explained as part of something that is complete. It is God.”
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 136
God exists outside of time and space and in full actuality, while we are temporal beings whose potentiality yearns to be unfolded so we can become what we were intended to become. “The defect we see in what is, is simply that it is not all that is. God is more actual even than Man; more actual even than Matter; for God with all His powers at every instant is immortally in action.”[7]
How does this notion of change–the notion that potentiality becomes actuality as God works to unfold us toward our ideal–square up with the notion of entropy?
Entropy is a measure of disorder, or randomness, which tends to always increase in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. In other words, order becomes disorder over time. Entropy forces time to move in one direction, even though the laws of physics work the same backwards and forwards in time.
Have you ever seen a wine glass un-shatter? Even though it is common sense to us that such a thing could not happen, “It is one of the great paradoxes of physics that the principles of mechanics are time-symmetric – they operate identically if run in reverse – and yet disorder increases with time.”[8]
Things become even stranger when considering that the universe in its earliest days was in thermal equilibrium, which is a state of maximum entropy, or maximum disorder.
And yet what came out of that disorder was order: the formation of atomic particles and elements of matter; the separation of matter into stars that clustered into galaxies; the condensing of matter into planets; the appearance of water and other substances; the emergence of life; the appearance of plant and animal species; the diversity of species; and the development of human consciousness, all of which are characterized by an increase of information and order, seemingly contrary to the laws of entropy.
In the temporal existence of the universe, there are (at least) three things going on simultaneously:
- the vast majority of the readily observable physical universe is governed by time-reversible physics;
- entropy’s arrow of time constantly drives order toward disorder; and
- some sort of ‘evolutionary’ force works to add information and increase order against the flow of entropy.
The universe exhibits an orderly design while being subject to the forces of relentless decay as well as continual renewal and creation. Science can observe and describe this but cannot tell us why it is so. That remains a paradox.
What we do know is that the forces of change in the universe have produced a staggering variety of diversity, both in types of things and among things themselves.
For example, while every human being is a unique individual, we all share a common essence that sets us apart from all other creatures. And that common essence that sets us apart includes the ability to reason.
Religion and Reason
Proper application of reason and measuring things in reference to an ideal requires classifying them according to their common essence. How can I know what it means to be a better human if I cannot define what it means to be human?
“The things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any man.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 43
Focusing on differences among humans creates division both by overemphasizing the significance of trivialities and de-emphasizing what would otherwise unite.
There is a tendency to deny that humans fit into a common category in favor of devising group identities, almost to the point where people cease to be individuals and instead become just another member of their identity group.
Chesterton called this tendency ‘chaotic negation’ because it negates the existence of eternal and ordered categories while promoting the chaos of fluid and standardless identification.
“[C]haotic negation especially attracts those who are always complaining of social chaos, and who propose to replace it by the most sweeping social regulations. It is the very men who say nothing can be classified who say that everything must be codified.”
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 140
Ultimately, a lack of fixed standards erodes our ability to reason and to advance the social function of reason because there is no way to distinguish change for the better from change for the worse.
When we understand that, we begin to see, like Aquinas did, that reason and religion are not at odds, but instead work in harmony. Comparing religion and reason, Chesterton noted:
“[T]hey are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved.”
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, p. 30
[1] G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 127
[2] G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
[3] Matthew 18:30 NRSV-CI
[4] “[M]en must receive the highest moral truths in a miraculous manner,” G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 29
[5] G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 72
[6] See, for example, William N. Eskridge, Jr. and Philip P. Frickey, “Statutory Interpretation as Practical Reasoning,” 42 Stan. L. Rev. 321, 1989-1990.
[7] G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 136