What I
believe.
Part One: How
Far Does “Natural Reason” Take Me?
I love my children, my parents, my family, my friends, the beauty of the
earth and sky, great art, learning, goodness, truth.... Therefore, what follows
ontologically if these loves reach their objects, are fitting responses to the
being of their objects?
I. Love
“I love…” and then I name real beings: persons, nature, beauty, truth.
These are not experienced purely as mere projections or desires but are perceived
as worthy of love. Now, if these loves are not delusions, not illusions or mere
subjective inclinations, but rather fitting responses to the being of their
objects, then the implication is radical: Being is lovable. Being is not
neutral, indifferent, or cold. Being (the Real) includes an order that can
elicit love; i.e., it is intelligible, good, and at least in part, beautiful. If
love is a fitting response to what is, then being is not only knowable (truth)
but also desirable (good) and admirable (beautiful).
This leads to something like
a Platonic or Thomistic ontology:
1)
The
transcendentals of being – truth, goodness, and beauty – are real.
2)
You don't
just love truth, goodness, and beauty in the abstract; you encounter them in
beings.
3)
Therefore,
being itself must somehow possess or manifest them.
4)
Love
discloses being’s depth and fullness.
5)
To love
well is to see truly: the beloved reveals more of what they are through love.
6)
Love is
not merely emotional but epistemological and ontological – a way of grasping
being, perhaps the way of grasping being.
Ultimately, being is personal or at least oriented toward the personal.
This follows as my most profound loves are of persons and their flourishing. If
the deepest reality is capable of being loved and loving in return, then
personal being may be the highest form of being. Therefore: If love is a
fitting response to being, then the nature of being is, at its root, good,
true, beautiful, and worthy of love. Aquinas: bonum est diffusivum sui –
the good diffuses itself. Being, if it is good, seeks to give itself and love
is the human response to that self-gift.
II. Beauty
“I find deeply beautiful the faces of my
children, Early spring flowers, the evening sky in March, the Zitterpappel
trees on the Baltic, many a sunset, an old forest or a grove of trees, much
music and poetry - I could go on and on. So beautiful that I lack the words to
express it and am aware that I can't even feel it or experience it in a way
that is adequate to it.”
What follows?
That expresses wonder, which
is the threshold of metaphysics and prayer. I am not describing aesthetic
sensitivity but the experience of beauty as a kind of excess, something that
overflows my capacity to receive it. Therefore:
1) Beauty reveals itself as inexhaustible.
I am not making it so, That is how I receive or experience it. And when I
try to match it with words, I find language inadequate, partly perhaps because I
lack the poetic or artistic ability to express it, but more fundamentally because
what I encounter exceeds expression. Therefore, that which is truly beautiful carries
a depth of being that draws us beyond ourselves. This is what Plato meant when
he said that beauty awakens the soul to anamnesis – a recollection of
something deeper, eternal.
2) Beauty creates longing.
The longing I feel to see more, to express more, and to be worthy points
not to possession, but to participation. It follows that I am not the measure
of beauty; beauty measures me. Beauty is not a projection of the self, but a
summons beyond the self.
3) Beauty humbles and elevates.
When I say, “I can’t even feel
it in a way that is adequate to it,” I am touching on the paradox: beauty
awakens a desire that is higher than my current state. It shows me the poverty
of my soul and creates a longing in it to grow. Therefore, beauty is formative.
It calls forth attention, reverence, gratitude, transformation.
4) Beauty discloses that being is
not bare existence, but gift.
Each beautiful thing from my
children’s faces, to the Zitterpappel trees, to music, to early spring is,
has being, exists. But more than that, each seems to say, “It is good that I am
and good that you see me.” Therefore, Being is not just what endures or
persists, but what can shine forth, what can give joy, awaken love, draw me
upward. If you encounter beauty not just as pleasure, but as mystery, glory,
and invitation, then you are already standing before what the classical and
Christian traditions recognized as the presence of the divine.
Beauty may be the veil of Being’s deepest truth.
And love and wonder – indeed, silence – may be the most truthful
response of all.
III. Grief
I have grieved over the loss of
people I have loved. Cried. I still grieve. But I have never felt my grief was
as deeply felt as the actual meaning of the beloved person's life and loss. I
have witnessed grief that transcended what I was capable of.
What follows?
Grief, real and painful as it
is, reveals something even more astonishing: the worth of the beloved exceeds
even the sorrow their absence can cause. This is a kind of sacred asymmetry.
The ontological implications of this:
1) The beloved’s meaning exceeds the mourner’s capacity to mourn.
This is not a failure of
feeling; it is a revelation of the depths of being. I want to grieve fully, to
honor the loss adequately but find that no words, no tears, no gestures
suffice. Therefore, a person transcends death, memory, or even love’s attempt
to grieve for them. Their meaning is more than what the mind or heart can
contain. In a way, an inadequate grief is a truer testimony to their worth than
grief that feels complete ever could be as well as a testimony to my limits as
a human being to love fully.
2) Grief shows how much one person can mean.
This is a revelation. Not all
grief is equal, and this not because some people are more emotional than
others, but because some people see more, love more purely. I witnessed grief
that matched more nearly the depth of the one lost – the grief of parents over the
loss of a child – and thus witnessed a human being who was loved in truth. And thus
I witnessed that such love is possible. This is a limit, when such grief pushes
one over into despair.
It follows from this that love
is not merely subjective. Some griefs testify more powerfully to the objective
value of the person lost. And this brings with it a hidden hope: that there
exists a perfect knower, a perfect lover – a divine witness – in whom the full
grief and full joy over every beloved being is held and fulfilled. But nothing
more than hope. Despair, however, is the consequence of the absence of this
hope.
3) Grief points beyond death.
If a person’s worth cannot be
measured even by the sorrow of their passing, then death cannot be experienced
as the final word. You may feel loss but that very loss whispers: “What was
lost was too precious to be gone utterly.” This doesn’t prove anything in the
analytical sense. But it opens the soul to something even more powerful: a
yearning for justice that would match love. A cosmic justice that says: “What
was good will not be undone.” “What was truly loved cannot be meaningless.” I felt
this first at the funeral of my Grandmother. I was an atheist materialist at
the time. Complacently assumed she had passed into the void. But as grief
welled up inside of me, that belief struck me as cold and inhuman, as having no
place in my grief at all. Therefore, being (at least some being) must be
loveable, mournable, worthy of tears and of praise. It must be more than we can
feel. More than death can swallow.
IV. Sin, Remorse
“I
have done deep wrong to others, not willfully or not purely willfully, but
through a failure of love, of virtue. I have suffered remorse, am still haunted
by the people. I have to the extent possible tried to repair the damage - never
fully repairable. In one case I cannot. I have taken the sacrament of
confession. But as with the other experiences, I feel my remorse is superficial
relative to the depths of the wrong and the consequences thereof. I continue to
find joy in life, for instance, though I am not sure I have that right.” What
are the ontological implications?
Here I enter the shadowed side of the same
mystery I have been trying to unfold, i.e. the depth of being, the mystery of
love, the infinite weight of persons. But now, seen from the standpoint not of
beauty or grief alone, but of guilt, of having wounded what is good.
1) I have done real harm.
Not just violated a rule but
harmed someone, a being with intrinsic worth, a being “loved by God” as well as
many people. My heart knows this, even if the intention was clouded, confused,
or even mostly good. “Not purely willfully.” This speaks to the tragic freedom
and frailty of the human will. I failed in love, and that failure had
consequences.
What follows? Persons are
beings whose good is so real, so profound, that it can be wounded – and the
wound endures. And to wound such a being is to rupture a moral order that is
not invented, but real. This implies: The moral structure of the world is
objective. The wound is not simply “in my head.” It corresponds to a reality of
broken communion.
2) My remorse feels inadequate to the harm done. Again, I experience an
asymmetry but now in reverse. The evil done exceeds my capacity to grieve or
repair it. I am not minimizing the wrong. I’m saying that I cannot even feel
the wrong in a way that matches its depth, again partly a limit in me, partly ontological
i.e. I would have to be a saint to feel it in its truth.
Ontological implication: The
moral weight of actions is deeper than our feelings. Evil, like beauty and
love, can exceed the bounds of our consciousness. Guilt, then, is not merely
psychological; it is metaphysical.
3) I have sought forgiveness.
Here’s where the deepest
mystery lies. Despite the wrongs done – despite the eternal consequences – I said:
“I continue to find joy in life... though I am not sure I have that right.” This
is not, I hope, a symptom of denial or callousness. I’ve confessed. I’ve tried
to repair. I live with the memory. And still, joy returns. This is grace, I hope,
and not complacency. I feel it as grace. If that is so, Being is not only
lovable and mournable; it is also capable of forgiving and being forgiven. And
that means: Being is merciful. There is something in reality – or in its source
– that allows for restoration, even when full reparation is impossible. I have
taken the sacrament of confession, which is not merely symbolic but
ontological: a concrete act that assumes the possibility of reconciliation
through grace, the healing of being by a power beyond what justice alone could
accomplish.
4) Is my joy a betrayal? Joy, for me, is not the forgetful happiness of
the shallow, I hope, but something haunted and hallowed by memory, by guilt, by
love. Even if I am shallow, I can hope that some such joy may not be. Ontological
implication: True joy does not deny guilt but hopefully transfigures it. And
this implies that being is not only just, but redeemable. That is: the world is
not just a system of consequences; it is a cosmos in which mercy can be more
real than retribution.
So what consequences follow? Being
must allow for grace, for renewal, for joy on the far side of remorse. If
forgiveness is real, it must be grounded in something deeper than the will or
feeling of the offender. There must be a source of forgiveness more ultimate
than the self and more ultimate than the offended party, especially when they
are unreachable. And this source must be: One who sees all, who knows the
heart, who understands the tangled will, and who loves still. In other words:
God. If there is no God, then the experience I am trying to describe here
remains ungrounded. A shadow or a hope.
V. Forgiveness
"I have also been wronged. I don't think
any of the people who have seriously wronged me have asked for forgiveness. I
would be incapable of withholding forgiveness. I am sure there are limits to
this and I hope they are never tested. Still I forgive in the sense that I
don't hold the wrong against the people, don't let it determine my relationship
with them (unless repeated, in which case the former wrong resurfaces). Perhaps
I am only too conscious of my own fallibility, that I have wronged people,
perhaps more seriously than I have ever been wronged. And you can only find
reasons that don't excuse but do attenuate the evil."
1) I don’t think I have allowed being wrong to define me. I don’t want
to let the wrong fix my identity as a victim or my vision of the person who
wronged me as evil or a wrong-doer – like me they remain a fallible human being.
That means retaining a stance towards
others that affirms they are more than what they do. And I am more than what
has been done to me.
Ontological implication: Personhood
transcends action both in the agent and in the sufferer. The essence of a
person is not exhausted by their sin nor by their suffering. There is a depth
to being that allows one to resist the logic of retaliation or moral finality.
2) We may forgive not because we forget but because we remember truly
and thus justly. Mercy is godly. Mercy may remember but not weaponize memory.
Ontological implication: Memory itself can be healed, not erased. There
is a way of holding the past that is just, but not vengeful, truthful, but not
enslaving.
3) We search for reasons but not to turn them into excuses. It is
dangerous to rationalize evil. But it is important to understand what could
have led to it, not to excuse it but to see it as part of our fallibility i.e.
justly. And to keep the door open to mercy, which we all need. We need to
strive to see the person whole, not just in the fragment of their fault.
Ontological implication: Understanding does not negate judgment. It does
deepen justice by integrating it with compassion. There is a kind of moral
knowing that is not forensic but reconciliatory, a knowing that aims not to
punish, but to rejoin. This is an important feature of human nature.
4) Self-knowledge is the most fertile ground of forgiveness. In my case,
my willingness to forgive flows in part from the knowledge of my own
fallibility, of guilt, grace received, of my own complex history will sin. If
one of us is without sin, let him throw the first stone, but otherwise.... This
has nothing to do with moral relativism. It is part of humility.
Ontological implication: To know oneself truly in light of failure,
grace, and redemption is to be opened to the other’s humanity, even in their
failure. The soul becomes capable of forgiveness not when it denies evil but
when it knows both sin and mercy from the inside. This is an essential aspect
of human reality.
5) Forgiveness is an act of freedom. It is a choice not to live in resentment.
Ontological implication: Forgiveness is not merely psychological coping;
it is a free act that responds to a truth deeper than justice alone. It
presupposes an order of love that is not cancelled by sin. It reveals something
about Being itself. The ground of forgiveness in Being means that Being itself
strives for restoration and not just balance. Being must contain the
possibility of grace if what I disclosed in this section is not an aberration. If
love is the deepest response to being, if grief is the deepest response to its
loss, if remorse is the deepest response to its violation, then forgiveness –
even unasked forgiveness – is testimony to an amazing mystery: that being is
not ultimately governed by strict equivalence, by ledger-books of justice, but
by something more spacious, indeed more divine – Mercy. And that, perhaps, is
why even when no one asks, you should forgive, not to erase the wrong, but to
remain in truth; not to pretend, but to love rightly. Thus we may be most in harmony
with the ground of Being itself.
VI. Doubt and Hope
"Like most
people, I suppose, I experience times of doubt. Leaving the beam of love I live
in as a father, as a member of a family, as one who has loved beauty, it all
seems so improbable. The history of life on earth, including human history,
seems so at odds with everything I have written. Dinosaurs? The logic of eat or
be eaten? Shit? Disease? The history of human evil? My own difficulty staying
in the light? The improbability of the whole Christian myth and the
difficulties of being moved by much of the Bible, apart from a few direct
stories or actions of Jesus. And Jesus, his fate on the cross, just seems to
underscore it. Life after death – talk about wishful thinking! It is not that I
will die – my children will die, my world will die, the earth will end, and
nothing will remain. Whoever is not beset by such doubt, despairing doubt, is
either a blessed simpleton or in a cult. Yet I can stay in this darkness for
long – my children’s need calls me back to the light. I can't live without
hope, no matter how faint."
1) This tension is real. The world is not obviously benevolent, not
ordered for our comfort or even survival. Evolutionary biology, geological
time, genocide, entropy, my own moral weakness – all of it appears to undermine
the possibility of a meaningful cosmos.
Ontological implication: If love and beauty and moral goodness are real and
not just comforting illusions, then they do not arise from the purely natural
order as we see it “objectively” but break into it. They are, in a sense,
apocalyptic, like a leak from another dimension, revealing a deeper truth not
visible in the logic of nature or history alone. This implies that nature, the
cruel side of nature, is not ultimate. Something transcends it. The universe as
we see it outside the beam may be the veil, not the final truth.
2) The experience of doubt itself seems laced with longing. Few can truthfully
say: “There is no meaning, and I’m fine with that.” For me, the inability to
accept that this lightless reality is what I have brought my children into,
like my inability to believe my grandmother was lost to the void. “I can’t stay
in this darkness long. My children call me back to the light.” Is it too much
to hope that the light, too, has reality? This is not just psychological. It’s
ontological longing.
Ontological implication: The human being is structured for hope. Even
despair is haunted by a desire for joy – not a shallow happiness, but something
worthy of joy. And that desire does not go away, even in doubt. In fact, it
intensifies in doubt, as a kind of ache. This is a deep aspect of human nature.
3) We cannot live without hope,
no matter how faint. Why not? Some people do. For me, I don’t choose to hope or
to despair. It is not positive thinking or a willed optimism. It is more like a
spiritual hunger giving rise to a metaphysical orientation toward
transcendence.
Ontological implication: Human nature cannot live as if death and
meaninglessness were final. The soul resists it. Therefore, the human being may
be a creature not merely in the world but for something the world cannot
explain. This ambiguity and openness is part of human nature.
4) The scandal of the cross – The cross does not answer suffering by
denying it. It enters it. It says: “This, too, belongs to being.”
Ontological implication: If being is not absurd, and if love is real,
then the cross is not a refutation of meaning, but its revelation – that love
goes deeper than suffering, deeper even than death. That God, if God exists, is
not the author of comfort but the co-sufferer who redeems from within.
5) In the end, the most philosophical moment is not in the doubt, but in
the return: “My children call me back to the light.” This is not sentiment.
It’s revelation. Children – not ideas, not doctrines – call me back to love, to
life, to presence. Failing children is perhaps the deepest sin.
Ontological implication: The call to meaning, to goodness, to hope does
not come from abstract arguments, but from persons i.e. from reality. That
means being is most deeply personal. And whatever else God is, if there is God,
He must be more like your children’s faces than like an equation or a force.
The full arc of this reflection,
I think, shows what it means to be human:
Capable of love and guilt, beauty and betrayal.
Capable of despair but not able to remain in
it.
Drawn, even in darkness, toward a light it
cannot prove but cannot stop desiring.
And in that longing, perhaps already in contact
with what is most real.
So the ontological implication of honest doubt is not that there is no
meaning, but that meaning is not obvious and may be veiled beneath the very
things that seem to deny it. And that human nature, in its brokenness and hope,
may itself be the evidence of a dimension of the world not yet clearly seen but
yearned for in every act of love.
