I wrote my piece contra Mr. Kreeft very quickly, and wish to revisit two thoughts:
First of all, on “truth.” I knew there was something interesting to be said about Kreeft’s contention that it was the “crackpot” colleges – Thomas Aquinas College, Christendom College, et al. – alone which were defined by the pursuit of truth for its own sake. How could he seriously suggest such a thing? Thomas Aquinas College, for example, requires its faculty to take an oath of “religious submission of will and intellect” to the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church, “even if they proclaim those teachings in an act which is not definitive.” When you require your faculty to take an oath of intellectual obedience (to vagueness!) your highest value is not truth but subservience to authority – which is what obedience means.
Because when Kreeft uses the word “truth,” what he means is group conformity. “Pursuit of truth” is therefore anything which enforces this conformity; it could be an oath of obedience; or a dress code; or restrictions on dating; or an expurgated curriculum. Hence when he says that only the “crackpot colleges” practice the “pursuit of truth” this means that “only the crackpot colleges enforce group conformity” of the sort he approves of. Once you understand what he means, his statement makes sense, though it is put in the terms of a cultist. This is indeed, in general, a religious/cult phenomenon, and when a deranged member of almost any religion uses the word “truth,” this is what they mean, and it is wise to be on guard for it. I wrote about it earlier when visiting a Mormon shrine:
My host seemed like a lovely old man, the kind of man you would love to have as a father-in-law, the kind of man who checked the oil in his car every time he filled up the tank, just like it says in the manual. I could see him mentally straining to keep to the script, word for word. When the magic word “true” came up to his lips, it unleashed a canned descent into profession: “And I myself testify that it is true, that Joseph Smith blah blah blah.” I knew this routine from my time on Staten Island, when I was particularly investigating Mormonism. As it so happened I had already embarked on this project when I was in a pizzeria and sure enough, who walked in but two Mormon missionaries. Life does work this way sometimes. I struck up a conversation and soon enough they were visiting my house, giving me all kinds of priceless information and whatever books I wanted. As the time came for them to set the hook and get me to come to Mormon services, they kept saying to me, “Ask in your heart if it’s true.” “I know in my heart that it’s true.” “Your heart will know that it’s true.”
Needless to say this made me ponder what exactly the word “true” meant anyway, especially to them. It certainly did not mean factually accurate or empirically verifiable. The main meaning as far as I could tell was, “Ask in your heart if you want to be one of us.” And this is why religious doctrine is so often considered not as separate bits of information, true or false, but rather an identity. This happens with other bits of information as well, of course; anything deemed controversial can become a matter of identity (Homeric scholars have defined themselves as “Unitarians” or “Separatists” based on their answer to “the Homeric Question,” for instance). Religion, however, seems to promise a deeper experience of identity (the original meaning of which is “sameness”) to counter the human feeling of isolation. In order to do this, at times it seems to erect a barrier of falsehood around itself, which is bizarre and even alarming to any rationalist. But it does seem to have some usefulness; I know when I have explained my religious beliefs to people, they have scoffed at them, saying, “Yes, but everyone believes that. That’s not really a religion.” It’s like trying to form a club of people who like air. It’s too obvious – everyone likes air. You don’t get liberated from your human isolation by agreeing with everyone about something obvious. Indeed the points of agreement may make the feeling of isolation all the worse, by making it feel inexplicable and puny.
Religious barriers to entry make it a condition that the person’s need for an experience of identity is sufficiently powerful; and once inside they ensure that the field of identity is appropriately restricted and intense. There certainly are many varieties of such barriers: it has been remarked that the Jewish mode of praying – swaying back and forth while mumbling, as if crazy – is designed to be offputting; it is certainly distinctive. Christians have functionally made Sunday the Sabbath, and Muslims Friday, though neither group actually claims that the Jews have gotten their days wrong. Celibacy – a particularly lofty barrier to entry – separates “the religious” from other Catholics, and also nearly ensures that the clergy will protect each other and the interests of their order – for there is their identity – and not Catholics more broadly. And almost all have a component of insistence on certain claims which work very well as metaphors and are far more difficult as history.
Every religion which can make no proper claim to universality (“Catholicity”) instead settles on “conformity” as its term for “truth.” In general, when a religious person uses the word, this is likely the intended meaning.
I also thought it was important to at least note why I thought it was worth my time (and anyone else’s) to point out Kreeft’s ignorance. Once we are done with his “we-need-to-restore-the-tradition-we-know-nothing-about” hypocrisy, we come to the fact that almost no one knows about the uti/frui problem in Augustine; so what if Kreeft does not? He does not know Augustine but he presumably knows a lot of other things.
The reason why showing his ignorance is important is because it threatens precisely the coherence of the group conformity Kreeft so prizes. The reason, in the opinion of religious cultists, that it is important to conform to the group is that the group is always right; you are thus preserved from error and anxiety about error. To show such a cultist that error can come from within the group (and from a Doctor of the Church like Augustine, no less!), and truth from outside the group (“every person is an end in himself”), is at the very least an assault on this cultish mentality. Ideally it returns us to an actual commitment to truth: to adopt a universal (“Catholic”) standard which applies to all propositions, ethical and otherwise, and to scrutinize them equally, whether they come from St. Augustine or Nietzsche or St. Thomas or Muhammed or God forbid the Magisterium itself. This is a Catholic pursuit of truth, a universal commitment to seeing reality which is open to all.
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