February 4, 2008
Father James Schall on "Spe Salvi"
(Part I)
Jesuit
Scholar Points to Pope's Insights
Into True Hope
By Carrie Gress
WASHINGTON, D.C., JAN. 31, 2008 (Zenit.org).-
Even though the modern world talks
of the hope in terms of progress and
social justice, these concepts are
"inhuman" aberrations of the true
meaning of the theological virtue,
says Father James Schall.
The Jesuit professor of political
philosophy at Georgetown University
is the author of "The
Order of Things," and "Another
Sort of Learning," both
published by Ignatius Press.
In Part 1 of this interview with
ZENIT, Father Schall comments on how
Benedict XVI, in his encyclical "Spe
Salvi," defends the theological
virtue of hope by showing that
without God human fulfillment and
happiness is impossible.
Part 2 of this interview will appear
Friday.
Q: Why do you think that this
consideration of the theological
virtue of hope is particularly
timely?
Father Schall: We might state the
issue briefly, but with some irony,
by saying that in fact the secular
world is itself full of "hope."
However, the intellectual origins or
implications of the ideas it uses
for hope are no longer recognized.
The modern words used instead of
hope are "progress," or "making the
world safe for democracy," "social
justice," or the "scientific"
eradication of suffering and evil.
The theological background for this
"secularization" of hope comes from
Joachim of Flora and Francis Bacon,
among others.
The modern idea of hope always means
dissatisfaction with the present in
the light of some presumed future
that is not only better, but is the
man-made answer to what we mean by
complete happiness.
Even the word "education" has
overtones of hope. Stress on
education as a solution also has a
Socratic background. Socrates
evidently thought that at the origin
of all the human disorder we find
"ignorance." Thus, education, both
general and universal, comes to be
considered a universal "cure" for
the moral disorders manifest in
human nature wherever and whenever
it appears in our experience. If we
can just eliminate "ignorance," it
is "hoped," we will eliminate evil.
This view clearly presupposes that
we know and define properly the
nature of the evil that we seek to
eliminate. Perhaps no ideology is
more stubborn than this educational
one. The fact is that it is not
primarily ignorance that causes
evil. Education as an ideology
always refuses to face the core
problem of evil, its relation to
free will, virtue and grace.
Aristotle was clear that, while
intelligence was indeed a major
factor, there was a recurring
element of "wickedness" in human
nature. The most intelligent and
well-educated were often the ones
closest to the greatest evil. The
classical tractates on tyranny
always presupposed this relationship
of the greatest evil to the greatest
finite intelligence, angelic or
human. Lucifer is one of the most
intelligent of the angels, which is
why he is so dangerous.
Following Augustine and Aquinas, we
understand the place of will, free
will, in our lives. Evil is not
located outside of us. Aristotle had
recognized that virtue and vice are
acquired habits based on repeated
choices. We do not become virtuous
or vicious simply by knowing what
virtue or vice is. We have to "do"
them repeatedly.
Behind this emphasis on will, we
find the doctrine of original sin
with its relation to pride.
My point here is simply this: The
billions of dollars of wealth that
sundry modern states and private
charities pour into education in
order to improve the world are
almost always justified by a version
of hope that essentially maintains
that what causes human ills is lack
of knowledge. Since the whole story
of human disorder includes more than
knowledge, we must recognize that
this modern enthusiasm for
"knowledge alone" betrays utopian
overtones of a this-worldly solution
of ultimate human problems.
The point is not to abandon the
valid aspect of education in our
lives. No religion -- or philosophy
-- is more dedicated to intelligence
than Catholicism. The point is to
put it in proper order. We should
seek and know the truth. But it does
not automatically follow that those
who seek education necessarily
choose to live by the truth.
What this Pope is able to do, in an
almost revolutionary manner, is to
sort out the unrecognized
theological strands of hope that
exist within the secular order.
Modernity's very search for its own
self-sufficiency is charged with
Christian overtones that exist in
the culture, but are not recognized.
One of the results of the loss of
faith, itself a choice, is the sense
of no longer knowing how Christian
themes were implicit in the culture.
Students and faculties today,
including often those in Catholic
institutions, have little notion of
the Christian origins and limits of
their favorite enthusiasms. Ever
since we stopped studying heresies
as heresies, we have often adopted
them in enthusiastic terms whose
origins we no longer recognize.
There is not only ignorance, but a
willed ignorance.
We do not want to know that our most
basic desires are best explained by
a reasoned faith, which we have
uncritically, without examination
and virtue, rejected as untenable.
Q: You have made a connection
between Eric Voegelin's phrase "immanentize
the eschaton" and the encyclical.
What does this phrase mean? How do
what connection do you see?
Father Schall: Eric Voegelin was a
German political philosopher who
came to the United States during the
Nazi period. He had begun a
distinguished academic career in
Germany that he continued at
Louisiana State and Stanford
Universities. His voluminous and
profound writings are published by
the Louisiana State University Press
and the University of Missouri
Press.
After long studies in philosophy,
language, scripture, history and
theology, Voegelin concluded that
the main motivating force behind
modern philosophic movements was
their effort literally to achieve
the transcendent goals found in
classical philosophy and
Christianity, such as heaven,
happiness, but within this world. He
called these efforts at systems
"ideologies." He explained that
their effort was to "immanentize the
eschaton."
Realist philosophy and Christian
theology are not, in this sense,
"ideologies," though this is what
they will often be called in
universities. This is why, from a
Catholic view, the defense of
philosophy and revelation as such is
so important. Their realism is what
distinguishes them from ideologies.
Neither philosophy nor revelation is
merely a projection onto reality of
humanly concocted ideas that have no
further justification other than the
construct in the mind of some
thinker now transformed into
political action.
The word "eschaton" refers to the
last things. We traditionally call
them: death, purgatory, hell, and
heaven. We will quickly notice that
these are the four things to which
Benedict XVI addresses himself in "Spe
Salvi." We are so used to writing
off any serious consideration of
these topics that we can't easily
appreciate the depth of what the
Pope is about. As I often like to
point out, Catholicism is an
intellectual religion. We had better
be prepared to understand why.
I know the expression "immanentize
the eschaton" sounds formidable. It
is something only a German academic
mind could drum up, I suppose. But
it is apt. It has the advantage of
accurately identifying what is going
on in the modern mind as it seeks to
find a human meaning outside of a
realist philosophy to which
revelation is addressed in a
coherent fashion. In other words, it
means that modern thought does not
escape Christianity even when it
tries to do so. What it does is to
strive to relocate it within the
world as a rejection of
Christianity.
The brilliance of the Pope's
encyclical is that he is also a
German philosopher and reads German
philosophy. He knows that the great
German thinkers, upon whom, in fact,
most of modern thought depends,
simply bring back in Christian
ideas, only now in some distorted
form. They try to locate "eternal
life" down the ages. They try to
escape death by projecting ages of
man to 200 years. They try to
imitate paradise by ecological
fantasies of eternal earth.
Q: Can you briefly philosophic
sketch how our contemporary world
has distorted the vision of man? How
does this idea of "progress" fit
into the Pope's analysis?
Father Schall: In the beginning,
modern ideology often proposed a
humanism that was supposedly
independent of revelation. Now,
classical philosophy is independent
of revelation, even though, as the
Pope said in the Regensburg Lecture,
that already in the Old and the New
Testaments we find ideas of
philosophy and revelation that are
directly related to each other, the
principle ones being the notions of
truth, love, being and happiness.
What revelation argues in the face
of modern thought and politics is
that "humanism" has gradually become
more and more "inhuman." Chesterton
often predicted this would happen.
The concepts of the length of human
life in terms of years, of love in
terms of sex, of happiness in terms
of individual creation of its own
ends are aberrations, much like
those found in book five of Plato's
"Republic," which in the name of
justice sought to eliminate the
family and to produce perfect
children by a combination of
genetics and state education.
"Progress" is an idea coming from
post-Enlightenment thought. J.B.
Bury's famous book "The Idea of
Progress" reads like a book on
salvation history. I like your
expression, "How our contemporary
world distorted the vision of man."
The theological virtue of hope, the
subject of this encyclical, is
precisely the virtue that most
directly involves modern philosophy
whose main claim to fame is that it
can in fact produce a better
"humanism." Taking it at its own
word, the Pope systematically shows
that without God it is impossible,
really, to give actual human men and
women any hope for themselves and
their kind.
The Christian doctrine of the
resurrection of the body, something
that has intimations in Aristotle's
notion of friendship, is the only
real doctrine that addresses itself
to the salvation of each individual
in his own particular being, but
within the notion of a community of
love and friends, which is what we
all want. What we hope for in the
Christian sense is precisely that we
see God "face to face." We already
seek to know one another '"face to
face." There is no guarantee that
this condition can ever be realized
outside of the hope that God exists
and has saved us. We must include
our sins and destiny.
The Pope reestablishes the
importance of purgatory as a
sensible position precisely because
he knows, as we do, that few of us
die with absolutely pure souls.
There is nothing irrational about
this much-maligned doctrine that
alone addresses the fact of sins of
the past and their proper atonement.
One almost has to laugh at this
encyclical that boldly takes the
eschatological doctrines -- heaven,
hell, death, purgatory -- and shows
us that they have direct meaning on
our lives and culture. The
encyclical is called "hope" but it
is also "bold." It is bold precisely
because it is intelligent and aware
of the meaning of modern ideologies.
Modern thought is, as was much of
ancient thought after the
Resurrection, an effort to avoid the
truth of revelation. We cannot ever
prevent anyone from rejecting this
truth. Nor do we want to do so. This
is what free will is about. The
truth of God and of his purpose for
man in the world must be chosen as
well as understood.
What "Spe Salvi" does is spell out
in lines too clear to miss the
implications of rejecting the "eschaton"
as it is presented in Christian
faith. It is no doubt true that
these doctrines must be understood
accurately. Much of the heresy in
history arises from a
misunderstanding of what is actually
taught.
This encyclical is a representation
of what is actually taught. This is
why it is so astonishing and
revolutionary in itself.
Our eyes have not seen what our ears
have heard because we do not want to
receive what we are as a gift. We
want to make what we are. And when
we do, we find that we create mostly
monsters. The Pope also sketches the
monsters in this encyclical.
