The limits of an intellectual faith

A Reflection for Monday of the Sixth Week of Easter

Find today’s readings here.

I am a bit embarrassed to admit that I loved my church history class in high school. In fact, it was probably my favorite class ever at the time, right next to another darling of overly eager Catholic nerds, Latin class. Arius’s unseemly demise, Christological heresies and arcane theological debates, councils and wars, Reformation and Counter-Reformation—these all really gripped me in my early adolescence.

This was in no small part to the credit of my teacher, Mr. Kent, whose teaching style made these topics relevant, interesting and, surprisingly, often very funny to a 14-year-old boy. (Again, poor Arius.) But my fascination reflected a deeper bias of my faith: one that I worry was, and perhaps still is, overly intellectualized and underpracticed.

I love(d) knowing things about Catholicism; using that knowledge to impress my teachers or win the Catholic bee, a parochial school take on a spelling bee, in seventh grade (still mad I didn’t win the diocese-wide one); hoarding dates and facts like the earthly treasures of the rich fool in Luke’s Gospel.

So when I read the above section of today’s Gospel, my mind jumped to the filioque controversy: the insertion of the words “and the son” into the Nicene Creed in the sixth century by Western Christianity, which became a primary cause of the Great Schism between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. A.D. 1054, I thought. Googled to fact-check myself. Still got it.

And there it is. That small dopamine hit of self-satisfaction. Of subconsciously feeling that I am somehow a better Christian, a better Roman Catholic, because I was properly catechized in my Christology and soteriology and [whatever other esoteric term]ology.

It’s generally good to know what you profess to believe, and I derive spiritual joy from intellectually engaging with my faith. But I’m reminded of a quote from Daniel Berrigan, S.J., the uncompromising peace advocate, who once urged his fellow Jesuits: “We will perhaps eventually stop playing our nuanced dance of the mind, whose tune is beautiful and seductive, but for which someone must pay—inevitably someone other than ourselves. We will stop making…the life of the mind a cul-de-sac.” Ouch. Close to home.

The times when I have felt closest to God were not when reading a theology textbook. They are usually fleeting moments of utter serenity, of peace washing over me, of mental quiet. Moments when I feel, not think about, the presence of the Holy Spirit. And when they do come during study, it is not in eureka moments of knowing, but in moments of intellectual humility, of not knowing. Of realizing that my writing, my thinking, my arguments are nothingness in the felt presence of God, much less the embodiment of Christ in others.

The challenge, then—for me, anyway—is to go from thinking to feeling to, most crucially, doing. To escape the “cul-de-sac” and self-satisfaction of the mind. Even as different churches disagree about whether the Holy Spirit proceeds just from the Father or from the Father filioque, Jesus clearly sent the Holy Spirit to his disciples so that they will “testify” to Him, so that they will act.

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