RETHINKING THE NEED FOR CONVERSATION IN A GLOBAL AGE
RETHINKING THE NEED FOR CONVERSATION IN A GLOBAL AGE
IDEAS FROM SCOTUS, NEWMAN AND POPE JOHN PAUL II
ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
Edward J. Ondrako, OFMConv.
Ejo2424@
Newman Conference
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Mass.
June 2002
Outline
Introduction
Understanding Oneself: Sich Selbst Verstehen
Scotus: Thisness and Mutuality
Newman: Development and the Obedience of Faith
Newman: Public Opinion and Reason
Scotus, Newman: Tradition and Authority Pope John Paul II
Conclusion
Seven Points on Successful Conversation
Introduction
Ours is a global age, and age of human rights, and age of law suits. The rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer, while the process of globalization is here to stay. In the midst of the most distressing spiral of hatred, violence and terrorism, the Assisi Decalogue for Peace shines as a bright ray of hope for civil minded people to address common problems. Violence and terrorism are incompatible with the authentic spirit of religion, it says clearly. Growth in civility, nobility and humanness comes in proportion to how and why we affirm universal human rights, develop mutuality, and live by moral principles. The fact that the poor are becoming poorer is a sober reminder that poverty prevents persons from achieving their full human potential. Reasonable people can disagree on how to build a more civil, noble 'and humane world, but we be wiling to work at it. Successful conversation depends on not only understanding world history, but knowledge of cross-cultural and transnational values. For Christians, the Gospel is the root and motivation for the church's proclamation of justice and universal brotherhood.
My paper offers a view of "conversation" as a means towards coming to an understanding with another, that is, human understanding rather than theological understanding. There are commonalities in the writings of John Duns Scotus, John Henry Newman and Pope John Paul II that are worth exploring. I am learning what excellence, engagement with tradition and authority, and the place of Mary in their lives means. Authority is linked to tradition in the broadest sense. Both confront and invite a conversation with the past. Humanity can learn from the past without abandoning the present. Understanding comes when we let the wisdom of the past raise questions about the present. It is in this sense that I am positing an active interaction among the three.
A conversation is something in which a person gets engaged. One does not know beforehand what the outcome will be. This is not `subjectivism doubled' as Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), once quipped, (Interview by C. Dutt, trans. R. Palmer, Yale U. Press, 2001, p.59), but an openness to new and better insights. Conversation about the aspirational Assisi Decalogue for Peace (Feb 24, 2002), for example, has a potentially transformative power towards "understanding" for the political and religious communities. Similarly as the aspirational Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 gave rise to new international protocols, Pope John Paul II, and the religious representatives who met in Assisi last January, 2002, gave sound principles for civic and religiously minded individuals to implement covenants, protocols, and community activities. The Assisi Decalogue is blunt: Humanity must chose between love or hatred.
Bl. John Duns Scotus (1266-1308), John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890), and Pope John Paul II, have chosen love and the power of love as an absolute truth. They are consummate defenders of history, of ethics, of the responsible and right use of intellect, freedom, and human understanding of how things ought to be. Such understanding requires freedom to be linked with moral truth. Hence, their life efforts at faith seeking understanding are implicitly comparative. By a few comparisons in their writings, I will show how they meet people in free, open and heartfelt "conversation" in search for truth, vis a vis taking standpoints. Taking a standpoint means, I mean that one is not able to find anything in common. A standpoint keeps one from expanding one's horizons. In other words, it was not a good conversation.
John Duns Scotus was born in Scotland in 1266, became a Franciscan, spent time at Oxford, Cambridge, the University of Paris, and Cologne where he died prematurely in 1308. His discovery of the absolute primacy of Christ and the difference between preservative and liberative redemption, contributed to the definition of the Immaculate Conception in 1854.
John Henry Newman was born in London in 1801, became the University Chaplain at Oxford, a leader of the Tractarian Movement of reform, founded the Catholic University in Ireland during the 1850's and the Oratory with a school at Birmingham. Three years after his death, in 1893, at the University of Pennsylvania, was born the Newman Movement at American Colleges and Universities. Both Scotus and Newman exemplify the balance between a life of spiritual devotion and the art of reasoned discourse in the quest to come to a human way of understanding how God deals with humanity.
Fr. Karol Wojtyla, was born in Poland in 1920, and taught a doctoral seminar on philosophical ethics at the Catholic University of Lublin. The communist authorities approved this `harmless dreamer' as bishop, only to be in irreparable shock in 1978, when the prayerful intellectual assumed global authority. Former President Gorbachev attributes the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991 to his unrelenting insistence on human rights and higher values. His writings treat past traditions with respect, while recognizing their richness as foundations for new horizons.
Like Scotus and Newman, Pope John Paul II has a personalist norm as a key concept for "successful conversation," that is, nothing less than the encounter of two freedoms in love. Personalism fuels their love for truth and quest for human understanding.
The lives and thought of Scotus, the Franciscan, and Newman, the Englishman, are more symmetrical. The Galician born Fr. Wojtyla developed m a more dangerous era of totalitarianism, first Nazi and then Communist, with its characteristic double standard and ruthless. authoritarianism. The leaders arbitrarily severed links with the Catholic past that was seen as nonsense at best. In 1975, for example, after many nations in the Soviet block signed the Helsinki Accord, there was an appearance of freedom and respect for human rights, but only an appearance. Through it all, the young Fr. Wojtyla became preoccupied with the dignity of the person and future of civilization. He studied phenomenology, the writings of Husserl, Heidegger, and Gadamer, et al. Like Scotus and Newman, Fr. Wojtyla set the primacy of personal devotion and the quest for understanding, human and theological, as the ne plus ultra for his life. As a Franciscan, I see this as nothing less than the desire for sanctification of the intellect, the bedrock for human understanding, and their efforts to rehabilitate tradition and authority.
Understanding Oneself: Sich Selbst Verstehen
.Martin Heidegger's (1889 -1976) major contribution to the philosophy of hermeneutics is that one must understanding oneself with one's prejudices and prejudgments as part of the process of understanding. While devoting his life to human understanding through conversation, his pupil, Gadamer, discovered the legitimacy to ones prejudices and prejudgments in the quest for understanding. Like Heidegger, Gadamer insists that understanding has to be applied to oneself. While reading Gadamer, I began to sense the interrelatedness of Scotus, Newman and Pope John Paul II. Their intense personal quest for truth seemed rooted in the broad concept of successful conversation. Conversation is at the very heart of hermeneutics. For Gadamer Bildung, is "the properly human way of developing one's natural'talents and capacities" (Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2002 edition, xii). Bildung is conversation with history, with learning, with culture and with others. Bildung includes the idea of culture, much like the Greek paideia. In sum, the thought of Scotus, Newman and Pope John Paul II exemplifies rigorous study, not idle chatter or superficial analysis. They know that it is not sufficient just to hear one another, but to engage in such a way as to really listen. By such listening, Scotus, Newman and the Holy Father reach self-understanding.
For the past twenty-two years as a Newman Chaplain, my reading of the thought of the Slavic Pope, the Oxford controversialist, and the Franciscan who was "the rarest veined unraveller who most swayed the spirits of Gerard Manley Hopkins to peace" (Hopkins, Duns Scotus Oxford), have helped me to seek self-understanding and to contextualize authority and the Franciscan tradition in the Church. By jettisoning harmful prejudices and prejudgments, and grounding myself in my legitimate prejudices and prejudgments, about the thought of Scotus, Newman and Pope John Paul II, I found new horizons. In the process of understanding, these horizons have a mobility that Gadamer calls the "fusion of horizons."
Scotus: Thisness and Mutuality
When we are confronted by a question, we seek an answer.. We seek understanding. Gadamer teaches that "understanding is not something that takes place at the end of humanistic research about an object, it stands at the beginning and governs the whole process of questioning, step by step" (Dutt, p.50). Moreover, for him, "all understanding is interpretation and that understanding is inextricably bound up with language" (Ibid).
Scotus's Franciscan formation prepared him for scholarly reflection. Scotus learned a threefold mode of doing theology from St.Bonaventure. The first mode is symbolic or the focus on the creeds and sacraments. The second mode is proper with its focus on the use of reason under the influence of the light of faith. The third mode is contemplative or mystical consisting in the knowledge of God which accompanies infused contemplation in this life and is the preparation for the beatific vision in the next life. Scotus's axiom: potuit, decuit, ergo fecit, fits into the second mode, what Franciscans call the proper mode of theology, the use of reason under the influence of the light of faith. The gift of understanding from the Holy Spirit has an affinity here.
By its nature, reason seeks to grasp the intelligibility of any mystery, the potuit, vis a vis its fittingness for our sanctification the decuit, and prepare the way for a clearer definition of what God has done the fecit, (see P D Fehlner, Mary, Queenship Publications, S. Barbara, CA 1997, p. 202). In other words, the Franciscan tradition is that the theologian does not prove what God has done but shows the intelligibility (the potuit), and the fittingness for incorporation into the life of the Church (the decuit) of each mystery, that is, what what God has done (the fecit)and the Church defines. In short, his thinking on the absolute primacy of Christ and his distinction between the liberative and preservative redemption paved the way for the definition and theological interpretation of the Immaculate Conception. It took until 1854 for - the definition of the Immaculate Conception, the "fusion of horizons."
During his lifetime there were many theologians who disagreed with him on the Immaculate Conception. In 1303, Scotus joined eighty some Franciscans who remained loyal to Pope Boniface VIII while seventy other friars sided with King Philip the Fair of France over the issue of taxation. Scotus paid for his loyalty by being exiled. Such loyalty to the Holy See is in accord with-the example of St. Francis and reflects the subtle doctor's broader loyalty to truth.
By emphasizing the centrality of the freedom of God, that God could have created the universe any way he wanted, persons and all of creation, Scotus gives a. vision of reality centered on the value of each individual. God is not arbitrary and unpredictable. Rather every person is.a manifestation of divine love and creativity. Each thing in creation has value because it is willed by God.
Scotus' term is haecceitas (thisness). Haecceitas makes every person and every thing irreplaceable in God's creation. Haecceitas is the ineffable in everyy person and thing. Hence the desire to respect and to understand creation. This desire for truth is linked to the will's most noble and godlike inclination. It is not the will's affection for its own happiness (affectio commodi) but its affection for justice (affectio justitiae). This is Scotus's way of talking about the primacy of love, or respect for the rights of others, giving to creation its due, and living according to the moral law.
The concept of haeceitas helped Scotus to understand the reality of divine love within creation. By emphasizing the ineffable value of each contingent being, he glorified the perfect liberality of God, who created this haec out of an infinite number of possibilities. God is perfectly free with perfect rationality. His is a perfect redemption by a perfect Redeemer in as perfect a world as possible. In such a schema, Mary becomes the perfect redeemed, the perfect fruit of redemption.
In the quest for human understanding, Scotus stresses that individuals help each other to become all that they can be in an interrelated manner. Male and female have reproductive capacity only in and through each other. Humans possess descriptive properties that are largely complementary to each other. One does not lose one's individuality in sharing with any other person, but develops mutuality.
Mary Beth Ingham observes that:
A desire for mutuality with other traditions reveals itself in.his [Scotus's] intellectual honesty and openness to other positions. In fact, his concern for the other side of any discussion is so great, that it often loses the reader in his presentation of his opponent's viewpoint. Many scholars say that Scotus gives a better presentation of the other viewpoint than does the opponent himself. He takes great pains to defend another's position with the best arguments available and he answers these arguments methodically (The Harmony of Goodness, title. xviii xix)
For Scotus, "human freedom within the will carries the weight [he] identifies as love" (Ingham Ibid., xix). His inner balance and peace with outer harmony in communion with others, reaches towards God in friendship and love. The pursuit of one's own good does not automatically lead to the good of the community or, to understanding. In. sum, Scotus's works radiate the primacy of love, freely embraced, in dealing with humanity's common problems.
Newman, Development and the Obedience of Faith
As I read Scotus and what we Franciscans call his `proper' mode of doing theology, i.e., the focus on the use of reason under the influence of the light of faith, I find parallels to Newman's writings regarding human understanding. Heidegger's idea of Sich selbst: Verstehen, to understand oneself in the search for truth through conversation with another, is pervasive in all of Newman's works. Human understanding is linked to theological understanding. Newman's notes or criteria for distinguishing between a true and a false development of doctrine written in 1844, emanated from his personal struggles. By 1869, he found a new horizon in his Grammar of Assent by clarifying the intellectual groundwork in the Essay on Development. For Newman, in religious inquiry one can only speak for himself What satisfies and. convinces me may satisfy and convince another and the movement grows (see GA, 384-385), resulting in a fusion of horizons. Newman's unique and original contribution to the theory of the development of doctrine goes hand in hand with successful conversation.
Newman's seven notes enable him to reply to objections to the development of doctrine, or the development of human understanding. Doctrines are to be examined as part of a whole Christian ethos of history, philosophy, theology and apologetics, . and not dogmas in isolation. Jan H. Walgrave's summary is the most succinct:
There is no corruption if it retains one and the same type, the same principles, the same organization; if its beginnings anticipate its subsequent phases, and if later phenomena protect and subserve its earlier, if it has a power of assimilation and revival, and a vigorous action from first to last
(Walgrave, "Development of Doctrine," New Cath Encycl, 1967 ed.)
After Newman was received into the Catholic Church in 1845 and never completed the Essay. In his search for understanding and truth all his life, he relied on his illative sense, a term he coined in the Grammar, that is intuitions of genius leading to understanding. However, when the requirements of faith were at stake, Newman distrusted the delicate instrument he had created in the Essay. He accepted the need for authority, as complex, subject to abuse, but necessary.
Newman: Public Opinion and Reason
Another example of Newman's skill at human understanding it how he dealt with the public opinion and misgivings as he helped establish a Catholic University in Ireland in the 1850's. He was cautious about the vague and diffusive influence of public opinion. In- seeking understanding, no one would take public opinion lightly, but rather recognize as Newman said that "wholesome as it is as a principle, it has, in common with all things human, great imperfections, and makes many mistakes" (Historical Sketches, 1872, p.3). Who is answerable? Everyone is appealing to everyone else. Newman observed that "public opinion especially acts upon the imagination; it does not convince, but it impresses; it has the force of authority, rather than of reason; and concurrence in it, not as intelligent decision, but a submission or belief' (Ibid, 4).
In short, Newman, the controversialist, always set out to prove his point with sound reasoning. With scientific rigor, he is a respectful listener. Newman wrote:
While I hope I shall gain instruction from criticisms of whatever sort, I do not mean to be put out by them, whether they come from those who know more, or those who know less than myself; -from those who take exacter, broader, more erudite, more sagacious, more philosophical views than my own; or those who have yet to attain such measure of truth and judgment as I myself claim (Ibid).
Like Scotus, Newman could understand the interlockutor._ He had very strong feelings. They served him well in his quest for understanding.
I must not be disturbed at the animadversions of those who have a right to feel superior to me, nor at the complaints of others who think I do not enter intoor satisfy their difficulties. If I am charged with being shallow on the one part, or off hand on the other, if I myself feel that fastidiousness at my own attempts, which grows upon an author as he multiplies his compositions, I shall console myself with the reflection, that life is not long enough to do more than our best, whatever that may be; that they who are ever taking aim, make no hits; that they who never venture, never gain; that to be ever safe, is to be-ever feeble; and that to do some substantial good, is the compensation for much incidental imperfection (Ibid., 5)
This text convinces me that Newman does not just hear, but listens to the other. Scotus, Newman: Tradition and Authority
Gadamer has an evocative view on tradition and authority that goes beyond the scope of this paper. "The idea that authority and tradition are something we can appeal to for validation is a pure misunderstanding. Whoever appeals to authority and tradition will have no authority. Period." He said (Carson Dutt,p. 44). I never found Scotus or Newman falling into such a trap, but they often enough may appear to fall into a trap. Rather, I found Scotus and Newman using tradition and authority to show that understanding is rooted in love and respect for the individual, and not some outside force, so to speak. Tradition, for them, forms a person with prejudgments and prejudices that make the person who he or she is. Only careful study and discernment can show that Scotus and Newman do not contradict themselves in the delicate question of authority and tradition.
For St. Francis of Assisi human understanding was rooted in love, sursumactive (uplifting) love, love filled with desire for perfect love in the Trinity. For Scotus. Father, Son and Spirit will what they love to be loved by others, that is, giving to everyone and everything the love they deserve. Why? All creation is loved perfectly by God. Imitating such love is not for the rewards promised by God. Love and hope for happiness lead humanity toward humaneness and civility.
Newman's love and hope, his prejudgments. and prejudices, show a life of "peaceful trust in slow-paced truth" (US #5). Reason was his protection against "superstition, or credulity, enthusiasm or fanaticism, or bigotry." Right thinking depended on his moral state. His faith "[was] perfected, not by intellectual cultivation, but by obedience" (Ibid). The relationship of hope to love changed depending on where he was at a given moment in his life. In 1845, his hope seemed more timid, but his love gave his faith its direction towards the Roman Church.
In sum, for Scotus and Newman, tradition and authority have an indispensable role in the way human understanding takes place. Like Gadamer, they appealed to right judgment (recta ratio) and not to authority and tradition for validation. Prejudgments or prejudices might or might not be helpful in the quest for human understanding by way of recta ratio. For Scotus and Newman, tradition is not traditionalism, nor authority, authoritarianism. Rather, tradition and authority may help human beings confront their common problems with rationality, human understanding and lead to successful conversation.
Pope John Paul II
By the very global nature of nature of his office, Pope John Paul II has ecclesiastical authority that cries out for successful conversation with everyone. His address to the United Nations on October 5, 1995, is an example.
We must overcome our fear of the future. But we will not be able to overcome it completely unless we do so together. The "answer" to that fear is neither coercion nor repression, or the imposition of one social "model" on the entire world. The answer to the fear which darkens human existence at the end of the twentieth century is the common effort to build a civilization of love, founded on the universal values of peace, solidarity, justice, and liberty. And the "soul" of the civilization of love is the culture of freedom: the freedom of individuals and the freedom of nations, lived in self-giving solidarity and responsibility.
His message to the world is an indefatigable call to humaneness, nobility and civility. In his universally esteemed encyclical, Fides et Ratio (1998), he wrote:
I appeal also to philosophers, and to all teachers of philosophy, asking them to have the courage to recover, in the flow of an enduring valid philosophical tradition, the range of authentic wisdom. and truthmetaphysical truth included which is proper to philosophical inquiry (9106).
Some post modem thinking posits that classical thinking no longer has a place in broadening our horizons. In response, the Holy Father offers more reconstruction than deconstruction of tradition and authority. He is open and respects the rightful autonomy of all disciplines. The Holy Father wrote:
I would want especially to encourage believers working in the philosophical field to illumine the range of human activity by the exercise of a reason which grows more penetrating and assured because of the support it receives from faith (Ibid).
No one questions the magnitude of Pope John Paul It's efforts for human understanding through dialogue with inter-religious groups. On the international scene, he is ever alert to human rights. He brought the collective wisdom of many to carve out the Assisi Decalogue for Peace. There is hope that it will inspire government leaders to political and social action and be an effective tool for global education and religion and world order projects.
He is tireless in promoting harmony and mutuality through understanding for the Church. In his book Ministry, Kenan B. Osborne cites a letter of the Holy Father to Cardinal Ratzinger that shows extraordinary balance (L' OR, Apr 18, 1988, p.2).
There have appeared tendencies which create a certain difficulty in putting the council into practice. One of these tendencies is characterized by a desire for changes which are not always in harmony with the teaching and spirit of Vatican II,. even thought they seek to appeal to the council. These changes claim to express progress, and so this tendency is given the name "progressivism."
The opposite tendency, which is usually called "conservatism" or "integralism", stops at the past itself, without taking into account the correct aspiration toward the future which manifested itself precisely in the work of Vatican II.
While the former tendency seems to recognize the correctness of what is new, the latter sees correctness only in what is "ancient," considering it synonymous with tradition. (K. Osbome, Mahwah, NJ, 1993, p.606).
His gifts for diplomacy are unique. To the Moroccan ambassador he said:
The difficult and.disturbing circumstances of the international situation challenge men of good will to reinforce bonds of trust among themselves and the conviction to, act together in favor of dialogue and peace. Armed conflict has no way out and gives no perspective or hope. Only courageous dialogue, inspired by the will to construct a future that is possible for all the earth's inhabitants, as well as for the communities that live in it, will be able to bring a just and lasting peace. (May 3, 2002, ).)
Seven Points on Successful Conversation
In our global age,, Scotus, Newman and Pope John Paul II have much to teach, not
only about the need, but "how' to engage in successful conversation.
1. Successful conversation has a three-way relation, i.e. two persons coming to an understanding in respect to something such as the Assisi Decalogue for Peace, and its implications for solving the common problems of humanity.
2. To reach an understanding in conversation is not merely successfully putting oneself forward and asserting one's point of view but being transformed into a. communion in which we do not remain what we were.
3. Language is the middle ground where understanding takes place. It is not negotiated in advance but depends on the common willingness of the partners in conversation to be open to something new.
4. Working with a general idea, such as nobility and civility, and different ways of expressing these, partners in conversation come to understand how traditions may resonate with each other.
5. Rational and disciplined study of several major traditions, Eastern and Western, in
different historical and cultural contexts, inevitably leads to better self-understanding
and expands the horizons of the partners in conversation.
6. Successful conversation binds the partners to a new community because they come
under the influence of the truth of the object, such as to chose hatred or love, the
central message to humanity from the Assisi Decalogue for Peace.
7. Successful conversation is on-going as it gives birth to human understanding, a
"fusion of horizons," ever open to others, to God and to subsequent new horizons.
©Rev Dr. Edward J. Ondrako, OFMConv., Newman Conference, Univ of Mass., June 2002
Front the Vatican, February 24, 2002
[Translation of French original by ZENI1] Assisi Decalogue for Peace
1. We commit ourselves to proclaiming our firm conviction that violence and terrorism are incompatible with the authentic Spirit of religion, and, as we condemn every recourse to violence and war in the name of God or religion, we commit ourselves to doing everything possible to eliminate the root causes of terrorism.
2. We commit ourselves to educating people to mutual respect and esteem, in order to help bring about a peaceful and fraternal coexistence between people of different ethnic groups, cultures, and religions.
3. We commit ourselves to fostering the culture of dialogue, so that there will be an increase of understanding and mutual trust between individuals and among peoples, for these are the, premises of authentic peace.
4. We commit ourselves to defending the right of everyone to live a decent life in accordance with their own cultural identity, and to form freely a family of their own.
5. We commit ourselves to frank and patient dialogue, refusing to consider our differences as an insurmountable barrier, but recognizing instead that to encounter the diversity of others can become an opportunity for greater reciprocal understanding.
6. We commit ourselves to forgiving one another for past and present errors and prejudices, and to supporting one another in a common effort both to overcome selfishness and arrogance, hatred and violence, and to learn from the past that peace without justice is no true peace.
7. We commit ourselves to taking the side of the poor and the helpless, to speaking out for those who have no voice and to working effectively to change these situations, out of the conviction that no one can be happy alone.
8.We commit ourselves to taking up the cry of those who refuse to be -resigned to violence and evil, and we desire to make every effort possible to offer the men and women of our time real hope for justice and peace.
9. We commit ourselves to encouraging all efforts to promote friendship between peoples, for we are convinced that, in the absence of solidarity and understanding between peoples, technological progress exposes the word to a growing risk of destruction and death.
10. We commit ourselves to urging the leaders of nations to make every effort to create and consolidate, on the national and international levels, a world of solidarity and peace based on justice.
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