Chapter IV: A Further Reflection

In his book Insight, Lonergan provides a set of exercises to help the reader to attain self-appropriation, which is a process of the subject raising questions and seeking the unknown. In the interior life, the unknown is God's will-for-me. Here, what is at stake involves the subject, apart from the objective pole of God's will. These two poles have no temporal, spatial, or sequential priority in the process of self-appropriation, though ontologically God is absolutely prior as my existence is always contingent to and dependent on God. In this sense, what the self is greatly determines the experience, understanding, judging and commitment to God's will.

The Spiritual Exercises, in fact, provide a context for an appropriation of the self, which is a super-natural existential opening to God, overcoming any dichotomy between natural and supernatural, strictly human and divine, etc. As the Ignatian maxim states, "Have faith in God as if all success depended on you, nothing on God; Set to work, however, as if nothing were to come about through you, and everything through God alone." 48 Taking this dialectic as basis, the ongoing discussion follows the traditional categories, namely, subject and object. The conviction behind is that, unless we have a deeper grasp of and greater courage to face the existential disposition of the subject and the forces surrounding him, the insight into doing God's will cannot be clear and commitment in following it cannot be total.

A. Interior Knowledge and its subject 49

Aristotle defines virtue as "a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which a man of practical wisdom would determine it." 50 Therefore, the characteristic of the subject as virtuous person contributes not a little to deciding the right thing to do, apart from the objective guideline of finding the mean. In analyzing the subjective field of common sense, Lonergan describes patterns of experience, namely, biological, aesthetic, intellectual and dramatic patterns, 51 which greatly decide the experience or focus of the subject. The classic example is that Thales was so intent on the stars that he did not see the well into which he tumbled, while the milkmaid was so indifferent to the stars that she could not overlook the well.

In the context of the Spiritual Exercises, it is important to notice and respect the aura of each individual as Ignatius insists in Annotations 7 and 15. The director is to be aware that he is not going to make the retreatant a carbon copy of himself or pursue his own agenda. Yet, it is healthy to call attention to what is missing. As a matter of fact, any pattern of experience is incomplete or even becomes too selective, leading one to lose sight of the whole picture or greater horizon. Thales' example is clear enough. Jesus boldly points to the rich young man, "There is one thing you lack..."(Mk 10:21) Although the director has no need or even authority to be so instructive as Jesus, he should detect where the blind spots lie and so invite the retreatant to bring them out and talk directly with the Lord. (# 15)

Apart from patterns of experience, Lonergan's description of dramatic bias or scotosis seems to be relevant. In a healthy make-up, everyone desires to know, i.e. to look for insight. However, in reality, most of us can be lovers of darkness, not wanting insight. "To exclude an insight is also to exclude the further questions that would arise from it and the complementary insights that would carry it towards a rounded and balanced viewpoint." 52 Then, the whole self-appropriation becomes unauthentic. Lonergan classifies scotosis into aberration of understanding, repression of censorship, inhibition of affects, and aberration of performance. In the context of the Spiritual Exercises, it is precisely the main task of the first week to discover and tackle these. That is why the first week is so crucial in the whole dynamic. Sin is not simply an item or wrong behaviour which one can correct by will, in the sense of cleansing away some dirt. "In Paul it is sometimes a personified might which has entered the world, but it also dwells in men and makes them slaves. In John in particular sin appears as the ultimate unrighteousness, in which individuals, but above all 'the world', is imprisoned." 53

Therefore, sin is an existential power preventing a person from seeing the light and obtaining the insight. Its first tactic is to create contrary insight, similar to Ignatius' description of the evil spirit which makes the great sinner imagine delights and pleasures of the senses (# 314). This explains why some persons apparently committed to moral errors seem to be serene in their wrongdoing because they fall prey to egoism, which is "an interference of spontaneity with the development of intelligence.... [and] is an incomplete development of intelligence...Its inquiry is reinforced by spontaneous desires and fears; by the same stroke it is retrained from a consideration of any broader field." 54 As Caiphas shows, "you fail to see that it is better for one man to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed."(Jn 11:49)

Meanwhile, sin represses the censorship. Usually, censorship, according to the characteristic of the subject, positively selects and arranges materials that emerge in consciousness in a perspective that gives rise to insight, or negatively leaves other unrelated materials aside. Yet, sin does the contrary, repressing all the possible materials and perspectives that might lead to insight. That is why Ignatius gives advice (##6, 326) that the director should keep an eye on ways in which the retreatant may unconsciously or consciously repress the related and significant images.

Furthermore, sin cultivates an inhibition of affects. Insight comes from imaginative presentation, just like the crown in the water for Archimedes or the falling apple for Newton, not from experience of affects, though both of them might feel the same tension or anxiety of inquiry. In order to prevent any insight from emerging, one just needs to suppress the related images. Affects are suppressed only when linked with unwanted images, so they are usually channelled to another unrelated yet acceptable set of images, and emerge freely and frequently, so that the subject then forgets what is really influencing him. It is common for people to express anger or other negative feelings towards others. Though they recognize that those feelings are inappropriate, mostly in a deeper way they refuse to link this kind of feeling with the original images, especially those of beloved ones or family members. Here, original sin receives its greater import and existential meaning. If we have no shame in dogma to attribute our human misery to some remote ancestors, seeing unwanted images of sinfulness in our family, nation and own cultures grants us ground for suppressing them unconsciously. Here, Jesus surely has great insight, "If any man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children...he cannot be my disciples."(Lk 14:26) While "hating" is a Hebrew emphatic way of expressing a total commitment, 55 the main point is to bring the inordinate attachment into consciousness and focus. Inhibition creates, in fact, some kind of inordinate attachment, since what is suppressed keeps on controlling us without our knowing what or why. We can leave or detach ourselves from only those things which are consciously present to or possessed by us. Otherwise, giving up has no meaning and is beyond our capacity. Only when the original image is liberated can forgiveness, reconciliation, and conversion become possible.

Finally, sin creates an aberration of performance. This scotosis renders us unable to focus on our higher activity, since the energy has dissipated for the sake of repression. It can be detected by our dreams or some fixated body language, like stomach-ache, dizziness, headache, aggressiveness, tiredness, etc. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."(Mt 26:41) This aberration keeps us from reaching the fourth level of consciousness, namely, to commit ourselves to the true values that we uphold and cherish.

In this analysis, scotosis is actually the embodiment of our sinfulness, which should more or less be tackled in the first week. Recognition of its depth and the possibility of healing are, of course, due to God's grace and the openness of the subject itself. However, along with the religious themes to be expounded and the making of one's basic world-view or value-system, it is crucial for the first week that seemingly repressed emotions, affection towards family members and certain physical reactions, be somehow thematized as possible signs of scotosis.

B. Interior Knowledge as Object

God's will never comes out of nowhere. Even the Lord's prerogative entry into one's soul points to a concrete and historical situation where He wants to act through this or that person, as "love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words."(# 230) Salvation history, culminating in the event of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery, has set up this pivotal axis and paradigm once and for all. The divine will is mediated through human situations, though the latter has often been scandalous or sinful. "But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more."(Rom 5:21) In this sense, to look for God's will is to put one's historical context, personal, communal and universal, into perspective where one discerns the signs of the time. "When you see a cloud looming up in the west you say at once that rain is coming, and so it does....You know how to interpret the face of the earth and the sky. How is it you do not know how to interpret the present time? Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?" (Lk 12:54-56)

According to Lonergan, in this heuristic progress, two dialectic principles are working in mutual tension, namely, affectivity and intelligence. Affectivity signifies one's desires, interests, ambitions, communal customs, interests, sub-cultures, and finally universal ideologies; while intelligence signifies one's censorship, practical ideas, communal laws, hierarchy of values, proverbial wisdom and universal moral principles. In short, the former represents the principle of life, "I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full."(Jn 10:10), and the latter the principle of truth, "you will learn the truth and the truth will set you free." (Jn 8:32) These two principles are opposed yet bound together in the historical context: the spontaneity of life has to be guided by truth, "...obey his voice, clinging to him; for in this your life consists..." (Deut 30:20), while the revelation of truth depends on the consummation of life, as Jesus offers Himself in the Paschal Event. (Even the truth of virtue depends on the virtuous person) The balance and synthesis of these two principles lies in love. Since God is love, God's will shines through in the dialectic of these two poles.

Our problematic, of course, always lies in losing balance between the two because of sin. Apart from the corruption of personal scotosis as discussed above, the power of sin creates group bias and general bias which form the structure of sin, and thus confuses and restrains the very person from striking the balance. Group bias creates various kinds of division, antagonism, exploitation, discrimination, etc., which unconsciously constitute an individual's attitude and thus are taken for granted. General bias represents the social situation deteriorating cumulatively, the dynamic of progress is replaced by sluggishness and then by stagnation. "Culture retreats into an ivory power. Religion becomes an inward affair of the heart. Philosophy glitters like a gem with endless facets and no practical purpose." 56 This kind of minor surrender may, even worse, lead to a major one when lower viewpoints prevail, allowing human intelligence to give way to all kinds of social surd and totalitarianism, followed by complete disintegration and decay.

To overcome these biases, one has first of all to recognize their presence. 57 The fact of their being taken for granted in individual souls must be challenged by the rationality of Scriptures, especially the life and teaching of Christ. This is exactly the meaning of the meditation on Two Standards. The call of metanoia from Christ is supposed to be a concrete encounter and confrontation with these biases. Only then can the possibility of a radical election for Christ and with Christ as mission emerge, since the Spiritual Exercises were never designed merely for personal piety. As Ignatius exhorted Francis Xavier before the latter's departure for the East, "Go, and set the world on fire!"

48. Faith And Freedom, 238

49. For the following two sections, Cf. Insight, Ch. VI Common Sense And Its Subject and Ch. VII Common Sense As Object.

50. Cf. Footnote 7.

51. Cf. Insight, 181-190

52. Insight, 191.

53. Piet Schoonenberg, "Sin", Sacramentum Mundi - An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. by Karl Rahner with Cornelius Ernst and Kevin Smyth. (London: Burns & Oates, 1970), Vol. 6, 87-88.

54. Insight, 219-220

55. Jerusalem Bible, Popular Edition, Gospel of Luke, Ch. 14:26, footnote a.

56. Insight, 229.

57. This is what the inner journey of Jonah shows to us. Cf. Footnote 22