Desiring Higher Knowledge
“Nobody knows anything anymore.” I heard this quote said earlier this year while listening to a Catholic Answers Live podcast that had the apologist Trent Horn on as a guest. He is a staff apologist for Catholic Answers who is frequently featured on the show for various themed hours such as “Why Are You an Atheist?” or “Why Aren’t You Christian?” He and the host (at the time) Patrick Coffin, were lamenting at this seemingly obvious truth of the current age. When I heard this quote, I sort of laughed and thought to myself, “isn’t that true.”
Recently I had seen an episode of Bishop Barron’s recent series: Catholicism: The Pivotal Players. This particular episode was on Blessed John Henry Newman, arguably one of the greatest intellectual minds of the last 150 years. Throughout the episode, I was learning how deeply passionate Cardinal Newman was about the liberal arts, particularly philosophy, art, and literature (among many).
During that episode, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own desire to really dive into the liberal arts. I think part of the reason I want to become well versed in these areas is because it seems to me to be a different realm of intelligence and intellect, and also because it was so heavily focused on in the ages past, and seems to be forgotten in the present.
One of the comments that Bishop Barron made during that episode was that Newman recognized that the liberal arts had no restrictions, and that nothing contained them. Much unlike the physical sciences (which are inherently good as they came from God) that are bound within the limits of empirical testing, sectors of the liberal arts seem to have no boundaries, really. Nothing prevents an artist from creating a masterpiece due to the limitless creative imagination. Nothing seemingly prohibits great literature from being written other than the boundaries of known vocabulary within a given language. You get the idea.
What I am getting at is that with the liberal arts and all it encompasses, there is no real ceiling to what can be learned or known. Socrates said, “All I know is that I know nothing.” Sure, this is rather paradoxical, but the point to be grasped is that in the grand scheme of knowledge, all we can ever know will only ever be a mere fraction of what there is to be known. Having said that, this shouldn’t prohibit us from the desire to know all that we can.
Art, philosophy, literature of all kinds, are but a few of the areas where we can get started in learning. What tends to happen with me is that I’ll get a few books from the local library that will usually contain traces of art with a splash of philosophy, and whatever else; areas I hadn’t necessarily expected to come across from a certain book I may have at the time. I think it’s important that we learn what we can from a myriad of subjects e.g. physical sciences, psychology, mathematics, literature, languages, etc… for various reasons.
I find that some of the best discussions that I have had are with people who tend to be well balanced and know information from a plethora of these subject matters; people who can attribute something to virtually anything. These sorts of people tend to add much needed value to conversations and can help open the minds of individuals to avenues that one may not have considered. I think it is for that reason it’s vastly important that we try to dive deeper into knowing as much as we can, so that we may help one another open avenues otherwise not traveled.
An example that I would provide would be in the case of an atheist philosopher who might be your friend. Perhaps this individual gets into a conversation with you on the origins of the universe (hard to imagine a conversation like that, right?) and the two of you hash it out discussing various points and contrasts between one another. This person may bring to light something that you don’t necessarily agree with, but maybe it’s something that has opened up your mind to a new train of thought that you hadn’t considered before. Going down this path could lead to a deeper yearning of understanding on a certain truth, which could then lead to a certain revelation that God will make known to you that you may not have had unless it were for this person who had a completely different background and thought process than yourself. Said individual may have studied something different than yourself, but this has thus attributed to your knowledge. God may use any avenue to reveal truth to you as He wishes.
Perhaps you could use this individual for references on certain reading that could enhance your understanding of certain subjects you’re becoming interested in. I know this has been the case for me when trying to learn more about philosophy, which has then in turn helped deepen my intellectual understanding of God and His Church.
I am at a point in my life and in my faith where I want to know as much as I possibly can. There are various reasons for this: one being that I want to be a defender of the Church that Jesus Christ founded (Matthew 16:18), another to evangelize, and another simply because the more that I learn, the more I know about God and all that He has made available to know. Because God has made this world intelligible to us, He desires us to seek Him through various channels, and the intellectual tradition is certainly one of them.
This ties into the omniscience of God. God is all-knowing- He knows everything. But not necessarily in the same way that we acquire/possess knowledge, as St. Thomas Aquinas would suggest, through our senses. Could it be that the more that we learn, the more we understand of God and His divine perfection?
Why couldn’t that be the case? If God is the grounds for all things, and certainly all things knowable, than why couldn’t it follow that the more we learn, the more we partake in His divine omniscience? I don’t mean to say that we become omniscient, because it is not in God’s will that we do. I mean to say that He longs for us to partake in Him and all of His goodness through the desire to encounter Him through multiple facets, learning being one of them.
Getting back to the quote I had placed at the beginning of the article: “Nobody knows anything anymore.” I believe that this quote is generally referring to knowledge of liberal arts. Our culture appears to know very little in the realm of actual valuable knowledge relating to the transcendent or of the profound questions that have been plaguing mankind since its creation. Questions about our origins, the creation of the universe, why are we here rather than not, etc…
I think one of the reasons that our culture seems void of this deeper knowing is that everything is so instantaneous and we have developed a general intolerance to contemplation of the complexities of the transcendent, which have been sought out in the past using the fine liberal arts.
How we got to this point in our society and culture is a discussion for another time, another article. What we should be cognizant of is that it’s a problem and that we, as Catholic men, should want a higher caliber of understanding of the transcendent the complexities of the universe. Let’s become well versed and well learned of what God provides to us.
We recognize and understand that through learning that what God has made intelligible can lead to Him. I recommend opening our minds to learning more perhaps a little outside of what we’d normally be drawn to. It would be of good use to pray and ask God to reveal Himself when we’re truly trying to discover Him using what he has given to us through intelligibility.
Pax Christi
