human nature. Why should conscious beings, whose questions constantly reveal the fact of an underlying desire to know as an ineradicable aspect of their consciousness, also have such a tendency to repress this desire to know when it seeks self-knowledge?
At least part of the reason for the flight from insight into ourselves lies in the fact that, in addition to having an ineradicable desire to know, we also need acceptance and approval. And it appears at times that we will pay almost any price to be held in high, positive regard by significant others. We will go to the point of denying even to ourselves those aspects of our lives and characters that we suspect might not be approved of by others. And so we will hide these “unacceptable” features not only from them but from ourselves as well. Self-deception occurs when, in trying to fulfill criteria of worth established by our immediate social environment, some part of us simply fails to live up to its standards. Rather than admit the presence in us of an “unsocialized” component, we often deny its presence and pretend that we fit comfortably within the circle drawn by familial, national, academic, ecclesiastical, or other societal conditions of self-esteem. The “unacceptable” side of ourselves does not simply go away, however, and our latent interest in the truth feebly attempts to bring it into explicit recognition. But our need for immediate approval provokes us to take strong internal measures to keep it out of explicit consciousness. Thus, in the context of social conditions of personal value, our pure desire to know comes into conflict with our desire for acceptance when the area of knowledge to be explored is that of the self. This divided condition makes us wonder, then, whether we can find truth at all without first giving up our desire for approval by others.
Are these two desires—the desire for acceptance and the desire for truth—condemned to perpetual mutual combat, or is there not some way in which they can be reconciled? Is there any sense in which the need to be loved can coexist with our need to know the truth?
Some philosophers, both ancient and modern, have despaired of such a union. They tell us that if we honestly follow our desire for the truth, we will ultimately have to admit that reality as such is either hostile or indifferent to us. They point especially to the facts of suffering and death as evidence that, in the final analysis, we are not cared for.52 They admit that we have a powerful longing for affection and love, but they also advise us to reach some compromise between the demand for acceptance and the ultimate opaqueness of “reality” to any such desire. This view may be called “absurdist” since it sees an irrational flaw at the heart of reality, dividing it dualistically into two incommensurable elements: human consciousness, with its desire for acceptance, on the one side, and the universe, with its refusal to satisfy this desire, on the other. The incongruity of these two sides of reality—namely humans and the universe—means that reality as a whole does not make sense. It is absurd.53
One must question, then, whether our deep need for a sense of self-worth can ever be satisfied as long as our sense of reality is an absurdist one. One must also ask, if we truly believe that the universe is, in its depths, unaccepting toward us, can our desire to know ever really emerge as the dominant motivational force in our lives? The absurdist reply is that the hostility of the universe toward us is the very occasion for our exercising an honesty and courage, which gives us an even deeper sense of self-esteem than we could have had in a beneficent universe. Facing the challenge of living without hope requires a heroism which allows us to feel better about ourselves to the extent that we face courageously the insurmountable challenge of an absurd universe. Thus, in order for us to be honest about ourselves, there is no need for an ultimate or transcendent context of love. All we need is to summon up from within ourselves the courage to “face the facts.”
The tragic or absurdist interpretation which holds that our courage comes only from “within” us is a position which promotes itself as the only honest interpretation of the facts of human existence. Its apparent heroism and honesty has made the tragic vision an attractive one, for at least some people, for centuries. On the surface, it seems to be an exemplary instance of following the desire for truth, no matter how much it hurts. At first sight, this “tragic” interpretation appears to avoid self-deception and to face the truth by renouncing the need for love, approval, and acceptance. The self can stand on its own in complete lucidity about its situation in the world without the support of the universe or even of other people.
And yet, on closer examination, the tragic alternative, in its denying the basic dependency and interdependency of all things, is itself also conducive to self-deception. It seems to fall short of complete honesty inasmuch as it fails to acknowledge the necessity of sources of courage beyond the individual’s own heroism. The tragic hero who announces the absurdity of the world stands up courageously against the alleged hostility of society and the universe, which often explains the appeal tragic heroes have to the rebellious tendencies within us. But the absurdist hero is oblivious to the sustenance our courage receives from our environment, and this is where a certain dishonesty begins.
48. Previously published in Haught, What is God?, 92–114. Reprinted with permission.
49. Kierkegaard, Sickness Unto Death, 175.
50. See Lonergan, Insight.
51. Lonergan, “Cognitional Structure,” 221–39.
52. See Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents and Camus, Myth of Sisyphus.
53. For the most explicit formulation of an “absurdist” perspective, see Camus, Myth of Sisyphus.
6: Mystery54
The most important way of responding to the question, “what is God?” is of course to say that, essentially, God is mystery. For many believers, the term “mystery” is resonant with the depth, future, freedom, beauty, and truth to which I have pointed in this book. And undoubtedly, for many such individuals, the term “mystery” is more religiously appropriate than any of the five notions that I have used. Rudolf Otto considered mysterium to be the very essence of the sacred and theological reflection may no more casually abandon use of the term “mystery” than the word “God.”55 The notion of mystery is indispensable to our discourse about the divine.
Therefore, we must come back to this word “mystery” at the end of our obviously unsatisfactory attempts to verbalize the “whatness” of God. To say that God is ultimately mystery is the final word in any proper thinking about the divine. Recourse to the notion of “mystery” is essential in order to accentuate the utter inadequacy of any thoughts we may formulate about God. And it is also necessary to evoke in us a cognitive “feeling” of the inexhaustibility we have pointed to by way of our five metaphors.
None of the five notions I have employed can be substituted for that of mystery. My objective in resorting provisionally to them has been simply to provide several avenues leading up to the idea of mystery as the most appropriate designation for the divine. In the esoteric language of theology, it might be said that my purpose in writing this little book has been to provide a simple “mystagogy,” that is, an “introduction to mystery.”56 We live in an age and culture in which there reigns an “eclipse of mystery.” And the difficulty people have in connecting their experience with the word “God” is, for the most part, a consequence of the lack of a sense of mystery
