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| The oldest known portrait of St. Francis. |
An Exploration of the Thought of Fr. Cornelis (Kees) Thönissen.
“A thought theory that never comes to grips with intuition, hallucination, spirituality or dreaming cannot possibly be a serious account of cognition.” —David Gelernter.The entire discipline of spirituality – insofar as one may call it a discipline – is unstable. It is pluriform, fragmented, free-floating, subjective, without firm ground and without accepted categories, lacking cohesion. In a word, it is ramshackle.
However, spirituality is where we must begin, if we desire true religion. All religious dogma, without spirituality, is hollow at best. In Fr. Kees' Roman Catholic tradition, a vital spirituality has been neglected in favour of the laborious effort of straining to God through a metaphysics which St. Thomas Aquinas built on a rediscovered Aristotle. It is an impressive yet static edifice, employing (to most) unfathomable language: being, substance, essence, accidence, and so on.
The existing traditional edifice, on its own, is ill equipped to respond to the most pressing challenge of the Roman Catholic Church, which was identified by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI as the spiritual reform of faith. Here is the classic predicament which both Catholic and Protestant traditions still properly need to resolve: faith remains weak (fundamentalist) without reason, while rationalism is uninspiring and incomplete (Descartes, for instance, or Kant). There is a pressing need for a vital spirituality.
But then, how should one derive a living spirituality from that which is sterile? How should one ground it? And how should one unite it with a theology of truth? How may one even – to be yet more bold – universalise it? Answering the call of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, these questions became Fr. Kees' journey of fifteen years of doctoral research.
Conservatively, four-fifths of our world believes in God. This includes the Christian tradition, which is formed and sustained by faith in a Triune God. Therefore we may begin with the simple assumption of God's existence, as the foundation of faith and spirituality. Given such belief, there are then three radical, foundational statements which follow. They have foundational worth – in fact general application – because they are indispensable spiritual categories:
• Unless we can experience God, He will be distant and powerless, and may as well not exist.These foundational statements, in turn, may be turned into challenging questions about the faith which is the practice of spirituality: in service and in care, in adult formation, seminary training, youth work, catechesis, in worship and in sacraments, and in our personal walk of faith.
• Unless we have the spiritual intuition of God, He remains an unsatisfying idea, and inaccessible. And
• Unless we can have a relationship with God, He does not love us, and is irrelevant to us.
• Is there a real experience of God?With these three foundational categories, we have, further, the example of the saints, which itself is foundational. In Fr. Kees' Roman Catholic tradition (the Order of Capuchin Franciscans), one looks to the example of St. Francis – a man uncontaminated by Medieval theology, yet who uniquely and directly experienced God, mystically intuiting a relational intimacy with Him. Through his spiritual vigour, St. Francis transformed the Roman Catholic Church, and became a significant revolutionary force for change in Medieval times.
• Are we able to receive this through spiritual intuition, so that it is maximally fruitful? And
• Does it bring about a relational change with God, and a form of growth?
Thus spirituality may be grounded, and foregrounded, on the foundations here described. It may further be rehabilitated, which is the point of it after all. However, the details of its outworking are, needless to say, too expansive a subject for a mere introductory post such as this.
: Thönissen C.J. 2005. Foundations for Spirituality: A 'Hermeneutic of Reform' for a Church Facing Crises Inspired by St. Francis of Assisi. Pretoria: UNISA.
( Oh! And one thing that is so simple that I forgot : the science of dreams. How a society who dreams properly could really experience God, an be in relationship with God. )
ReplyDeleteMmmm at the moment all of us are thinking along slightly different lines? Yes?
ReplyDeleteI suspect that vernacular spiritualities (pagan worldviews) had the same problems throughout history being accepted -- they are just too practical.
ReplyDeleteIt's more a tempting hint than anything substantial there? I'm struck by the conjouring with the word 'scientist'... I just came across this 'debunking' exercise, you might enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteThe astronomer I quoted in Paradigm Shift (not well received by the 'world' - yet!) as disputing the existence of Black Holes, (Stephen Crothers) notes two of the conventional scientists who have been spending millions of public money looking for evidence (in the form of gravitational waves’) are scratching their heads and coming up with ad hoc theories to explain their failure to find any. Add to which,
“... [one team of astronomers] recently reported that for some 20 years they had mistaken for cosmic microwave sources the signals from the microwave ovens in their lunchroom. They [had] even named their ‘cosmic’ signals, ‘perytons’:
You couldn’t make it up!
Fr. Kees replies (2) ...
ReplyDeleteTHE FIRST APPROACH AS ANSWER. We can approach this through stretching our minds to face these questions ... but can reason through the mind alone (pg223; pg12118, pg194112 pg531106) reach full metaphysical answers? The Catholic tradition has held that it can. But what kind of reason was it assuming though? It is surely not solely tied to the rationalism above? Or does this ‘reason’ use insight as intuition (and imagination, as Martin and Perig suggest) ‘into’ and ‘behind’ reality? This would be a capacity that is beyond ‘linear reason’ seeking a mere first atomic or chemical ‘cause.’ A ‘new kind’ of reason looks beyond physics – i.e. as per Aristotle, meta-physics as truly metaphysical insight employing metaphysical capacities.
What do we call this capacity or faculty – which ...as ‘beyond reason’... is something (we possess naturally, innately), is somehow, tied back to the ‘Being’ ‘behind’ the universe... tied metaphysically, or through the connection of something spiritual – the religious spirit, Jewish heart, Greek pneuma/mind, Christian soul, or as I call it, spiritual intuition. (See 5.3.1.4 pg 323; 5.2.5 pg301; pg306352). Aha... we’ve now passed further than sticking with the ‘mind alone,’ so that we need to rethink how we are constituted by our anthropological capacities – which are more than just brain and body. If I don’t want to be limited to what mechanically, computationally drives mere brawn, I have to ask what is so special about me? How is everybody connected in deeper meaning?
I call for the Catholic tradition to clearly admit it doesn’t only talk of the above narrow reason, but a broader reason that includes the insightful, spiritual (and imaginative) capacities (spiritual intuition). (See 5.2.6 pg309). In fact the Bonaventurian tradition sophistically holds that any thinking or reasoning is already and at all times upheld by transcendental powers. (See 5.3.1.5 pg327&328; 6.4.5.1 pg484). Another way of saying this is that we are always somehow illuminated (unconsciously – Einstein’s ‘creativity’ included something like this. See 5.2.11 pg313; pg51135). ‘Proud’ (enlightenment) reason thinks we think totally independently... through the power of human intellect alone (St Thomas took up this ‘independent’ line). There’s the debate set out for us! If we are content with rationalism coupled to our brains we fool ourselves into shallowness. Postmodernism sees that neither philosophy nor science alone can save us or our planet. What is ‘the more’ of me and you all about then?