Every now and then one finds a phrase, or perhaps a whole sentence, that is so terribly good, so smack on the money, that one wishes one had written it oneself. (Actually, this happens to me all the time. Sometimes I think it is admiration of another writer’s talent and humility at the scope of my own; other times I suspect it of being a species of envy. The observation doesn’t do much good in either case—a virtue observed is apt to become a vice. It’s tempting to go further and say, not quite truly, that the mere act of self-observation can be vicious. But this, as the parentheses show, is a topic for another post.)
Sometimes, however, one finds not merely a sentence or two that strikes the ear and the mind, but a whole essay—even a book. Ronald Knox’s Retreat for Lay People is such a book. I picked it up last month in response to a bit of prodding from my spiritual director. (I really am lazy about the most important things in life—observe, an indirect boast—cf. Bingley v. Darcy—intellectual pride? . . . humility at recognizing pride . . . never-ending spiral . . . Screwtape alert!)
I had read Knox’s Retreat before, but so long ago that most of it was deliciously fresh—though here and there I did come across an idea which I met with a Lewisian “What, you too?”—before realizing that probably I had only “thought of it too” because I had picked it up from Knox during the previous reading. But there was one idea which I am quite sure I did not remember, which I must have simply and shamefully skimmed over the first time round. I am fairly sure I did not remember it because, far from being one of those things that have become a familiar part of my mental wall tapestry, it was something that I had only begun to think about in the past few days—one of those slow-churning semi-intellectual resolutions that usually come out of extended mental frustration or turmoil.
Knox talks about the difference between the worldview of the medieval Christian and that of the modern. “To put it roughly, a Christian of the first seventeen centuries saw the dead heretic as probably in hell, a modern Christian sees the dead heretic as probably in heaven. . . . To convert the heretic, or even the honest unbeliever, is no longer for us the Now-or-never affair it used to be.” Knox concludes with sad, pragmatic honesty, that the modern worldview is a “danger to your faith and mine . . . [not to] our theological faith . . . but [to] the spirit of faith in us. . . . We’re like the poor, wretched Government trying to make people work without appealing to the profit-motive—we’ve got to foster zeal in our own lives without appealing to the hell-motive; we’ve got to want the postman and the girl at the tobacconist’s to become Catholics without the conviction that if they die Protestants they’ll be damned. The sense of urgency which is lost to us, now that we’ve all become so broad-minded, has got to be replaced by a sense of urgency based on some other motive; where are we going to get it from?
“I think we’ve got to ask Almighty God to give us more love, much more love, of his truth for its own sake. Loving the truth isn’t the same thing as arguing about it; when we argue, we are so bent on getting the other person to see our point of view that we hardly mind whether it is true or not; we become advocates. Loving the truth isn’t the same thing as preaching it or writing about it; when we preach it or write about it we are too much concerned with making it clear, with getting it across, to appreciate it in its own nature. Loving the truth isn’t even the same thing as studying it, or meditating on it; when we study it, we are out to master it; when we meditate about it, we are using it as a lever which will help us to get a move on with the business of our own souls. No, we have got to love the truth with a jealous, consuming love that can’t rest satisfied until it has won the allegiance of every sane man and woman on God’s earth. And we don’t, very often, love it like that. We are God’s spoiled children; his truth drops into your lap like a ripe fruit—Open thy mouth wide, he says, and I will fill it. There is a sense, you know, in which the false thinkers of to-day love truth better than Christian do. Their fancied truth is something they have earned by their own labours, and they appreciate it more than we appreciate the real truth which has dropped into our laps.
“The truth of which we are speaking is not a set of abstract propositions, however august. We are to love the truth as it is in Christ; he himself is truth incarnate, and we call upon every human mind to surrender to his service. Every human mind, and our own minds first; but it must be a real intellectual surrender. We are to preach the gospel, not as a mere recipe which we have tried and found useful, not as a mere pattern of living which we have learned to admire, but as truth, which has a right to be told; which would still have to be told, even if no heaven beckoned from above, no hell yawned beneath us. If we really loved the truth, then perhaps it would bite deeper into our minds, become realized and operative, not a mere set of formulas, which we accept with a shrug of the shoulders. And then perhaps we should recapture that spirit of faith, in which the men who went before us moved the world.”
I think this may be a public confession, but if I’m wrong somewhere in this, maybe you’ll enlighten me. I am open to correction.
I perceive Truth as autonomous, not as a personal perception. And so I don’t love it as *mine*, as something I’m eager/reluctant to share. (Even the word of “sharing” implies possession.) Rather, perception, acknowledgement, acceptance is experiential in nature, collectively called “conversion”.
But it exists objectively, not as a personal opinion, still less as a product/service one is more or less willing to give to others, depending on the degree to which we love it.
In the Middle Ages, missionaries went forth to the barbarians from Rome to preach the Gospel to peoples who were ignorant of it, to testify, to pass on *information* to those who didn’t have it, didn’t know about it. And to the extent that people were open to it, they were converted.
That latter part of the process is still what happens: the being open to it–but ignorance of it does not exist now. It’s not (and never was) a human achievement; its success or failure doesn’t depend on us. The action of the Spirit is accepted or rejected. One must allow one’s self to believe. There is no conversion without the will’s assent. No one is converted against their will.
In that sense only, preaching the Gospel is the same as it was in the Middle Ages. In modern times, everyone knows the story; we are not testifying to something no one knows, we are not giving information to anyone ignorant of it.
So–I can’t see Knox’s point that we fail to preach the Gospel because we fail to “love the truth” sufficiently somehow. Conversion of others doesn’t happen as a result of the degree of our love for truth–it doesn’t happen as a result of anything we do at all. The only conversion we affect is our own, and that only by our consent to it. The same is true for other people.
But I may be wrong about this.
Dena,
Thanks for your thoughts, as always!
I don’t know that this is a right-or-wrong question. Knox’s perception of what modern Catholics lack (the zeal of the Middle Ages) and what might replace it (zeal for the truth for its own sake) just matches my own motivations. I suspect that, had I lived in the Middle Ages, I would have worked much harder at converting those around me. I have also observed that the times when I do try to convert someone, it’s not so much because I fear that they may go to hell as because I can’t stand for the truth not to be known. So, briefly, Knox’s psychology/spirituality is similar to mine.
This doesn’t mean that the truth is something subjective: some personal perception, something not autonomous. As Knox points out, this truth requires an intellectual submission on our part. That said, anytime we love something–another person, a favorite room, an animal–or the truth–there is a sense in which we do subjectivize it: we do call it ours. If we really love the thing in question, however, what we mean is that WE belong to IT. “My dog” and “my master” mean almost the exact opposite. “My truth” and “my God”, if we are to say those words, must mean something much closer to “my master”. We proclaim the Master’s truth not because He needs us to, but because He wants us to.
And of course, this proclamation of the truth–however wisely it is done, and however much human natural philosophy plays a part–is the work of the Holy Spirit. Everything we do is ultimately by God’s power; but God likes to work through instruments, and one of the instruments that He uses is human reason, and human preferences–like this human addiction to truth. It may not be THE explanation for why most people convert, but it is a deciding factor in many cases. (It’s worth noting that I know at least one convert personally whose conversion occurred almost purely on intellectual grounds–he loved the truth, and he became convinced that the Catholic Church possessed it.)
I’m afraid this isn’t a very direct reply, but I hope it clears up my thoughts!
One final idea. I don’t think it’s an either/or: EITHER the truth is autonomous, OR it is mine. I was recently reading Benedict XVI’s “Jesus of Nazareth”. Meditating on the words “Hallowed by they name,” Benedict suggests that when God revealed His name to Moses (“I Am Who Am”) He opened Himself to the possibility of having His name abused; similarly Jesus, by coming to us in human flesh, and even more in the Blessed Sacrament, opens Himself to us to be abused. Why does God allow for this possibility? Because He wants to give us the opportunity to love Him on a more personal level. He wants to be close to us, even on the chance that His familiarity may breed our contempt. Is it not a little the same with the truth? We are given it, and so we can become inclined take it for granted (as Knox points out). What Knox is calling for is a recognition of the Truth as Absolute, as Other, as Sovereign; he is also calling for us to fight for that truth as a champion fights for his Lady. (To get both touchy-feely and technical-philosophical about it, the Truth is a “Thou”, not a “you” or an “it”.) Isn’t this (Benedict suggests) the way we must always think of God, and the things of God? He is omnipotent, but He puts His honor in our hands, for us to defend it. Isn’t this also the way one thinks of a lover? The lover is the whole world to the beloved, but by loving puts himself in the beloved’s power.
Sophia,
Beautifully explicated. Thank you.
Your comment: “What Knox is calling for is a recognition of the Truth as Absolute, as Other, as Sovereign…” exactly matches my point.
But as you speak of zeal, (“Knox’s perception of what modern Catholics lack [the zeal of the Middle Ages] and what might replace it [zeal for the truth for its own sake] just matches my own motivations.”) Yes, and you may both be right, though it would be lovely to believe that the motivation for evangelizing was love for the object of it, wouldn’t it? I mean, the conviction that one’s pagan fellow human beings would go to hell if they were not converted, so one would be driven out of love for *them* to preach the Gospel to them. Seems more kin to our Lord’s aim anyway. (In any case, I would fail miserably there–then as now.)
Evangelist Billy Graham said that his preaching never saved a single soul. Right. “The spirit moves where it will….” He was merely a willing, submissive instrument. An instrument is passive. “Be it done unto me according to thy word.” His biography reveals that in his private life, he was a very meek and quiet man, not at all a “zealous” temperament.
But I think (referring to zeal, of any kind) that the theory of the four temperaments–“humors”–had more to it than meets the modern scientific eye. Perhaps Knox was “sanguine”; if so, he would see things measurable by zeal.
Is it not wonderful that differing temperaments so readily perceive the objectivity of Truth–even as their own subjective responses to it may vary? Sometimes I am amazed by that. Looking through a religious art catalog recently, it occurred to me again: primitive wood carvings of Christ, blonde and blue-eyed Christ, black-skin African Christ figures–in whatever form–is always universally recognized AS Christ, by both believers and non-believers. I’ve always suspected that all of humankind is born knowing who he is, recognizing him–and that THAT accounts for the universal mysterious cognition of Truth. That some may reject it does not mean they don’t perceive it. Indeed, they may perceive it more clearly than those who simply “inherit” it. And you are right–we do “take it for granted”.
Thanks for replying–and for the explanation.