There is an old saying, evil is not a problem to be solved, it is a cross to be born.
This is the difference between a problem and a mystery.
The problem of suffering involves trying to eliminate, as far as possible, the suffering of people.
But that doesn’t touch the existential “problem”, which is a mystery. Why do we suffer ? What is its meaning ? And why MUST it have a meaning ? How odd this desperate demand that suffering be answered for…
Andrew Louth, in his essential book on reading scripture to enter into God's presence - Discerning the Mystery - writes the following :
One of the ways in which reason operates is by solving problems. In his confrontation with reality man isolates certain problems and seeks solutions. Mathematics represents this faculty of reason perhaps at its point of most acute development: it is mathematics that has enabled the sciences to pose problems in such a way that they are rendered soluble. Put like that, it may sound very humdrum, but this is far from the case. The solving of problems involves the exercise of imagination in posing the problems in such a way that they suggest ways of solution. Though methods can be developed here, what is much more important is a kind of imaginative insight into the pattern the problem presents. And indeed in the solution itself one looks for order, symmetry, even, one might say, for elegance, and not simply for any sort of answer.
The pure mathematician, the pure problem-solver, does not at all see his task in utilitarian terms, but often rather in aesthetic categories (see, for example, G. H. Hardy’s famous defence of the pure mathematician’s vocation in A Mathematician’s Apology). None the less, the problems are there to be solved, and once solved they are of no further interest, except in so far as they suggest approaches to further problems. The sciences advance by being able to isolate problems that are capable of solution in terms of the position the science has at that time reached. Looking at problems too soon is not the way to advance, and looking at problems too late is either folly, or the menial function of tidying up what is already known in principle anyway. There is a very real notion of advance and progress: problems solved represent knowledge achieved and form the basis for further advance. It seems to me that it is the realization that science is this sort of activity that has led to the success of the sciences: and the notion of advance (with the implication that the past has been left behind) is part and parcel of this notion.
The distinction drawn here between two dimensions of reason, one problem-solving and the other contemplative, is obviously very close to the distinction, traditional in Western philosophy, between discursive and intuitive thought. It is also illuminated by the distinction drawn, for instance by the philosopher Gabriel Marcel, between mystery and problem:
"Distinguish between the Mysterious and the Problematic. A problem is something met with which bars my passage. It is before me in its entirety. A mystery, on the other hand, is something in which I find myself caught up, and whose essence is therefore not to be before me in its entirety. It is as though in this province the distinction between in me and before me loses its meaning.
The Natural. The province of the Natural is the same as the province of the Problematic. We are tempted to turn mystery into problem. The Mysterious and Ontological are identical..."
A problem is a temporary hindrance, and a proper response to it is to attempt to remove it. The mysterious is quite different: it does not so much confront me, as envelop me, draw me into itself; it is not a temporary barrier, but a permanent focus of my attention. They do overlap, though, or at least often appear to do so: for what confronts me as a puzzle, a riddle, may be either a genuine mystery, or simply a problem.
The distinction drawn here between two dimensions of reason, one problem-solving and the other contemplative, is obviously very close to the distinction, traditional in Western philosophy, between discursive and intuitive thought. It is also illuminated by the distinction drawn, for instance by the philosopher Gabriel Marcel, between mystery and problem:
"Distinguish between the Mysterious and the Problematic. A problem is something met with which bars my passage. It is before me in its entirety. A mystery, on the other hand, is something in which I find myself caught up, and whose essence is therefore not to be before me in its entirety. It is as though in this province the distinction between in me and before me loses its meaning.
The Natural. The province of the Natural is the same as the province of the Problematic. We are tempted to turn mystery into problem. The Mysterious and Ontological are identical..."
A problem is a temporary hindrance, and a proper response to it is to attempt to remove it. The mysterious is quite different: it does not so much confront me, as envelop me, draw me into itself; it is not a temporary barrier, but a permanent focus of my attention. They do overlap, though, or at least often appear to do so: for what confronts me as a puzzle, a riddle, may be either a genuine mystery, or simply a problem.
Sometimes we are presented with a problem, the solution of which precipitates us into mystery: one recalls in this context Sir Edwyn Hoskyns’s famous exclamation, ‘Can we bury ourselves in a lexicon and arise in the presence of God?’Marcel speaks of ‘the transition from problem to mystery. There is an ascending scale here; a problem conceals a mystery in so far as it is capable of awakening ontological overtones (the problem of survival for instance).’30 A problem is clarified by an attempt to dispel the darkness of ignorance which it lays bare; we seek to explain it in terms of something more readily understood—it is obscurantist confusion to attempt to understand obscurum per obscurius. With a mystery we often find, in the words of Rückert:
Wie oft geschieht’s, dass ich ein Dunkles mir erkläre Durch etwas andres, das an sich noch dunkler wäre.
(How often it happens that I would explain to myself something obscure By something else, which in itself was yet more obscure.)
For it is not a matter of solving a mystery, but of participating in it. In another passage, Marcel says a little more about his distinction between mystery and problem:
"In fact, it seems very likely that there is this essential difference between a problem and a mystery. A problem is something which I meet, which I find complete before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and its initial validity. A genuine problem is subject to an appropriate technique by the exercise of which it is defined: whereas a mystery, by definition, transcends every conceivable technique. It is, no doubt, always possible (logically and psychologically) to degrade a mystery so as to turn it into a problem. But this is a fundamentally vicious proceeding, whose springs might perhaps be discovered in a kind of corruption of the intelligence."
What Marcel calls the ‘fundamentally vicious proceeding’ of attempting to degrade a mystery into a problem is what is involved in, to use George Steiner’s phrase, the ‘fallacy of imitative form’, which was discussed in the first chapter. For what I am suggesting is that concern for the mysterious is at the heart of the humanities, whereas at the heart of the sciences there is a concern with the problematic. That this is a contrast, and not a dichotomy, is seen in the way in which problem-solving has a place in the humanities—though the most significant kind of problem is one that, in Marcel’s language, ‘conceals a mystery’—and in the complementary way in which some scientists, such as Einstein, have spoken of a deepening sense of awe and wonder awakened in them, an awe and wonder in the presence of the universe, that grows through the advance of the sciences, through the growing success in solving problems. But the contrast remains, and since problem-solving can be successful, whereas contemplation of mystery cannot, there cannot be in the humanities any hope for the sort of success the sciences have known. Nor in theology: and especially not in Christian theology whose central mystery is focused in the birth of a child in a stable, and the death of a man on a cross.
In recent years several theologians have actually returned to the idea that the notion of mystery lies at the heart of Christian theology. Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics sees the mystery of God’s self-revelation as the heart of Christian theology. He speaks of a God who reveals himself as mystery, who makes himself known as the One who is Unknowable: ‘God himself veils Himself and in the very process—which is why we should not dream of intruding into the mystery—unveils himself.
Wie oft geschieht’s, dass ich ein Dunkles mir erkläre Durch etwas andres, das an sich noch dunkler wäre.
(How often it happens that I would explain to myself something obscure By something else, which in itself was yet more obscure.)
For it is not a matter of solving a mystery, but of participating in it. In another passage, Marcel says a little more about his distinction between mystery and problem:
"In fact, it seems very likely that there is this essential difference between a problem and a mystery. A problem is something which I meet, which I find complete before me, but which I can therefore lay siege to and reduce. But a mystery is something in which I am myself involved, and it can therefore only be thought of as a sphere where the distinction between what is in me and what is before me loses its meaning and its initial validity. A genuine problem is subject to an appropriate technique by the exercise of which it is defined: whereas a mystery, by definition, transcends every conceivable technique. It is, no doubt, always possible (logically and psychologically) to degrade a mystery so as to turn it into a problem. But this is a fundamentally vicious proceeding, whose springs might perhaps be discovered in a kind of corruption of the intelligence."
What Marcel calls the ‘fundamentally vicious proceeding’ of attempting to degrade a mystery into a problem is what is involved in, to use George Steiner’s phrase, the ‘fallacy of imitative form’, which was discussed in the first chapter. For what I am suggesting is that concern for the mysterious is at the heart of the humanities, whereas at the heart of the sciences there is a concern with the problematic. That this is a contrast, and not a dichotomy, is seen in the way in which problem-solving has a place in the humanities—though the most significant kind of problem is one that, in Marcel’s language, ‘conceals a mystery’—and in the complementary way in which some scientists, such as Einstein, have spoken of a deepening sense of awe and wonder awakened in them, an awe and wonder in the presence of the universe, that grows through the advance of the sciences, through the growing success in solving problems. But the contrast remains, and since problem-solving can be successful, whereas contemplation of mystery cannot, there cannot be in the humanities any hope for the sort of success the sciences have known. Nor in theology: and especially not in Christian theology whose central mystery is focused in the birth of a child in a stable, and the death of a man on a cross.
In recent years several theologians have actually returned to the idea that the notion of mystery lies at the heart of Christian theology. Karl Barth in his Church Dogmatics sees the mystery of God’s self-revelation as the heart of Christian theology. He speaks of a God who reveals himself as mystery, who makes himself known as the One who is Unknowable: ‘God himself veils Himself and in the very process—which is why we should not dream of intruding into the mystery—unveils himself.
This unveiling through veiling takes place in the Incarnation: so the section of the Church Dogmatics on the Incarnation is called ‘The Mystery of Revelation’. Karl Rahner, too, speaks in very similar terms. Theology is not concerned with the elucidation of mysteries which will eventually be revealed in the beatific vision—mysteries reduced to what one might call eschatological problems. Rather, theology is concerned with the mystery of God, the mystery of the triune God who gives himself to us in love in the Incarnation of the Son. Rahner argues that there are three fundamental mysteries which lie at the heart of Christian theology: the mysteries of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, and of the divinization of man in grace and glory. He concludes his discussion by saying, ‘There are these three mysteries in Christianity, no more and no fewer, and the three mysteries affirm the same thing: that God has imparted himself to us through Jesus Christ in his Spirit as he is in himself, so that the inexpressible nameless mystery which reigns in us and over us should be in itself the immediate blessedness of the spirit which knows, and transforms itself into love.’
The notion that Christian theology is to be seen as concerned with the mystery of God, the trinitarian God who loved us in Christ and calls us to participate in the mystery which he is, suggests to me that the main concern of theology is not so much to elucidate anything, as to prevent us, the Church, from dissolving the mystery that lies at the heart of the faith—dissolving it, or missing it altogether, by failing truly to engage with it. And this is what the heresies have been seen to do, and why they have been condemned: the trinitarian heresies dissolve the divine life, either by reducing it to a monadic consciousness, or by degrading it to the life of the gods; the Christological heresies blur the fact that it is in Christ that this divine life is offered to us—that it is through him and in the Spirit that we know ourselves to be loved by God himself—and do this either by qualifying the fact that God is who Jesus is, or by qualifying the fact that what Jesus is is truly a man; heresies concerning man’s divinization are no less insidious, as they blur the fact that we are truly loved by God in Jesus and are called to respond to that love, and that in thus loving and being loved we are drawn into a real communion with God. But the heart of the matter is sharing in the mystery of love which God is."
The notion that Christian theology is to be seen as concerned with the mystery of God, the trinitarian God who loved us in Christ and calls us to participate in the mystery which he is, suggests to me that the main concern of theology is not so much to elucidate anything, as to prevent us, the Church, from dissolving the mystery that lies at the heart of the faith—dissolving it, or missing it altogether, by failing truly to engage with it. And this is what the heresies have been seen to do, and why they have been condemned: the trinitarian heresies dissolve the divine life, either by reducing it to a monadic consciousness, or by degrading it to the life of the gods; the Christological heresies blur the fact that it is in Christ that this divine life is offered to us—that it is through him and in the Spirit that we know ourselves to be loved by God himself—and do this either by qualifying the fact that God is who Jesus is, or by qualifying the fact that what Jesus is is truly a man; heresies concerning man’s divinization are no less insidious, as they blur the fact that we are truly loved by God in Jesus and are called to respond to that love, and that in thus loving and being loved we are drawn into a real communion with God. But the heart of the matter is sharing in the mystery of love which God is."
No comments:
Post a Comment