by Stephen Tong S.J.
Insight in St. Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises
Introduction
"I am a knower": Lonergan explicitly makes this first judgment in Chapter XI of Insight, which is commonly recognized among scholars 1 to be the most important section of the whole book. As a knower, one operates within the four levels of consciousness, namely, the experiential, intellectual, rational and responsible levels, to receive cognition about the world or oneself so that objective truth and value is attained. The implication of this judgment is that all kinds of knowledge unite in the same operation of knowing where the subject, in the process of self-appropriation, is commonly attentive, intelligent, reasonable and responsible. Lamenting the split of knowledge after Modernity, when the ground of knowledge loses its objective certainty and cannot help but retreat to the subjective boundary so that empiricism or idealism becomes the only solution, Lonergan sets up his project to rebuild the dignity of knowledge which is rooted in being, yet he transforms the traditional and scholastic categories.
As a child of his time, when historical consciousness prevails, Lonergan affirms that what is at stake is no longer the static nature of knowledge as permanent achievement, but the method of ongoing process of discovery where the authenticity, transcendence and metanoia of the subject become central and critical. 2 Therefore, personal but continual conversion is the issue in theological discourse.Against this basic understanding of Lonergan as background, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, if various kinds of knowledge, namely, mathematics, science and common sense as illustrated in Insight, follow the same pattern of knowing, this paper tries to for God. Among various spiritualities and figures in history who set up milestones for us to dialogue demonstrate that the same pattern can also be applied and be valid in our interior searching with God and know God, Ignatius' self-appropriation and legacy in his conversion and Spiritual Exercises is destined to be a significant paradigm in congruent very much with Lonergan's categories on self-discovery. In fact, the assumption may not be too naive that as a Jesuit, Lonergan implicitly receives no little insight from the Spiritual Exercises to arrive his own theory of epistemology and method in theology.
Secondly, this paper represents an attempt at my own self-appropriation of the Spiritual Exercises. It is taken for granted as self-evident is that God, though the absolute Other and totally transcendent, wants to show us his way in concrete historical contexts for our own salvation and happiness as long as we are willing to get rid of our inordinate attachments. In fact, nothing in this life is more important and rewarding for us than finding and knowing God's will. However, what is at stake here is a genuine and deep self-knowledge on the one hand, and a personal, intimate yet solid understanding of the incarnated and historical Jesus on the other.
To fulfil these two purposes, chapter I delineates the basic elements of Lonergan's Insight which are relevant and similar to what Ignatius experienced in his life and later organized into his Spiritual Exercises. Chapter II is a succinct presentation of how Ignatius arrived at his own insight. Chapter III, as the major part of this paper, shows how the Spiritual Exercises fits into the Lonerganian pattern of discovery and knowing as discussed in chapter 1, and represents my own understanding of its focal dynamics and content. Finally, chapter IV, as a further reflection, tries to pin down why the need of conversion for the subject is problematic and crucial in the whole process, and to understand more deeply the incarnated elements of, as well as resistance to, God's will in concrete history. It is important to keep these in view for any director to co-discern with the retreatant for a better and more confident grasp of what is possibly happening in the dynamics of the latter's self-discovery of God's will.
1. Cf. David Tracy, The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan (NY: Herder and Herder, 1970), 133; 关永中, "认知者的自我肯定：郎尼根「洞察」第十一章一至六节释义(上)", 哲学与文化 第20卷 第四期 (93年4月), 375.
2. Cf. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, S.J., Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1972), xi, 104, 131, etc.
Chapter I : An Introduction to Lonergan's insight into insight
A. The Elements of Insight 3
Lonergan's basic tenet is that knowing is self-appropriation, a process of raising the question and searching for the unknown, a task that nobody can replace oneself in doing and which everyone should take great pain to achieve. Only then is it possible for the insight into the unknown to emerge, followed by the construction of a cohesive system of knowledge. Taking Archimedes' discovery as an illustration, Lonergan shows that insight comes first from attention to a definite question, namely, how to check the purity of a crown, which is linked to a certain image, the actual crown. This image becomes a thematic presence and inquiry in his consciousness, and thus creates tension and anxiety. With this disposition as basis, insight suddenly and unexpectedly comes as a result, not of outer circumstances like bathing, but of inner conditions, such as raising questions, inquiring and searching with patience so that the banal image and experience of bathing serves as a spark. What follows is that this insight pivots between the concrete and the abstract, from solving the concrete case to making primitive terms like mass and volume, to laying down definitions such as that of density, and finally to constructing the principles of displacement and of specific gravity; which can then be applied to further individual cases.
Insight will then lead to other insights. Lonergan takes positive integers as an example: the insight into addition tables leads to homogeneous expansion like multiplication, powers, subtraction, division, root, etc. However, when this system of knowledge encounters anomalies which cannot be subsumed into it, then the need of a higher viewpoint will emerge. The higher viewpoint includes new operations and rules. "They will be more symmetrical. They will be more exact. They will be more general." 4 In this sense, algebra represents a higher viewpoint of arithmetic.
What is described above is the progress and development of direct insight, which grasps the point or sees the solution. However, there is also inverse insight, corresponding to a more subtle and critical attitude, which denies the possibility of getting the point or solution, in other words, denies intelligibility. Lonergan uses the notion of the square root of two as an illustration of inverse insight, for it affirms the impossibility of obtaining its corresponding fraction. It is an irrational number. Therefore, the meaning of inverse insight grants us the boundary of asking relevant and right questions.
B. The Heuristic Structure
After explaining what insight is, Lonergan points out how to approach insight, namely, following a heuristic structure. "Heuristic is from the Greek word heurisko, to find. In Greek, the ending -ikon denotes the principle. So a heuristic is a principle of discovering." 5 It is a systematic and cohesive procedure of operation, based on what is known to approach the unknown target so that finally the truth can be grasped. Therefore, a heuristic structure is "that structure of concepts by means of which the inquirer gives a preliminary description of what is to be known, such as will serve to direct his inquiry." 6 In classical science, the heuristic structure is 'the nature of...', followed by classification and correlation. In classification, similars are similarly understood since 'the nature of ...' is the universal, not the particular. However, there are two kinds of correlation. The first is the similarities of things in their relation to us, while the second is in their relation to one another. Therefore, there will be two kinds of classification, followed by two kinds of understanding of 'the nature of ...' Thus, there is the nature of colour in its relation to us, in contrast to the nature of the wavelengths of light in their relation to one another. In this sense, the notions of nature, similarity, classification and correlation become the heuristic structure of classical science.
C. Levels of Consciousness
In the past, what was at stake was the objectivity of truth, which was self-evident as long as the conclusion was logically drawn from premises. A subject is needed to arrive at truth, but he is just supposed not to fail to grasp what is self-evident. Once truth is attained, it is beyond the subject as if it were non-spatial, atemporal, and impersonal. Only falsity can contradict it. No doubt, intentionally truth is independent of the subject, but ontologically it resides only in the subject because the latter, under definite psychological, social and historical conditions, must first go through a laborious process of investigating, coming to understand, marshalling and weighing the evidence in time and space before "the fruit of truth can be plucked and placed in its absolute realm." 7 This laborious process is, in fact, that of the self- transcendence of the subject, who is required to go beyond what he feels, what he imagines, what he thinks, what seems to him, in order to arrive what is so.
This neglect of the subject is also due to the notion of the soul. The human soul seems to be as objective and universal as the soul in plants or animals, no matter whether the person is awake or asleep, a saint or a sinner, lazy or responsible. In other words, the study of the human soul in its essence, potencies, and habits has little to do with the study of human consciousness whose operations are the centre of the subject. The implication of this neglect is an anti-historical immobilism. 8 Human knowledge is no doubt expressed in concepts which, however, are abstract and immobile, standing outside the spatio-temporal world of change. Human understanding, subject to its limited yet expandable horizon, changes in different historical contexts. So, while concepts do not change on their own, still they are changed as the mind changes which forms them. 9
An existential subject is a subject by degrees. It discerns different levels of consciousness. In a dreaming state, we are only potentially a subject without freedom to think or act. However, we become experiential subjects, capable of perceiving and feeling the sensible world when we are awake. When we follow our desire for intelligibility and go on to inquire into our experience by raising relevant questions, to understanding its possible meanings and implications, we arise to the level of an intelligent subject. Then the rational subject sublates the experiential and rational when it desires to check if its understanding is correct, marshals the evidence pro and con and finally judges it to be or not to be. Being able to judge what is true means to reach the virtually unconditioned, i.e. all the necessary conditions for making a judgement are fulfilled. Finally, the rational consciousness is sublated by the responsible one when the latter follows the intention of the good, the question of value, to deliberate, decide and act on what is truly worthwhile. Reaching this level means the objective value is embodied into subject. Therefore, a study of the subject looks into the different operations on these levels and their mutual relationships. 10
Here, Lonergan wants to tell us that, first, knowing is a compound of many operations, not a single uniform property. Objectivity in experiencing the immediate world is attained by sensing and intuition, yet it is not the only mode of knowing. In the mediated world of meaning, objectivity is approached by questioning, which governs the exigencies of human intelligence to investigate and understand, and of human reasonableness to judge in its virtually unconditioned. What is grasped in understanding or judging is not some further datum added on to the data of sense. In fact, it is unlike all data but consists in an intelligible or reasonable unity.
Secondly, apart from being a thinker, the subject is also a doer who deliberates, chooses and acts as a free and responsible agent making of himself. If knowing is for the sake of being, acting is for the sake of value. Value here not simply means particular good but ordering goods for the sake of the truly good. Being and value are both transcendental notions, i.e., their entirety is beyond the reach of the subject, yet they are always present in the activities of knowing and acting and guide the subject towards their greater fullness. Just as we can only have limited knowledge of being by knowing this and that and other beings, the actualization of value can only be found in this or that act of a good person. 11 Therefore, what is finally at stake is the subject who, by the effect of self-transcendence, attains objectivity in his knowing and becomes the principle of goodness in his decisions and actions.
Lonergan insists that this pattern of operations in our consciousness is transcendental and normative, i.e. it is valid for any kind of knowing and not open to revision. 12 In this sense, in order to understand better the insight into interior knowledge in the Spiritual Exercises, it is pertinent to see how Ignatius goes through his own appropriation in the first place, an experience and paradigm which is destined to be pedagogical and inspirational for his spiritual sons and daughters.
3. Cf. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Insight (New York: Philosophy Library, third edition, 1970), 3-25
4. Ibid., 16.
5. Bernard J.F. Lonergan, Understanding and Being (New York & Toronto: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1980), 74.
6. Hugo A. Meynell, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Bernard Lonergan (London & Basingstoke: MacMillan Press, 1976), 173.
7. The Achievement of Bernard Lonergan, 71.
8. Bernard J. F. Lonergan, A Second Collection, ed. by William F.J. Ryan, S.J., and Bernard J. Tyrell, S.J. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd), "The Subject", p.69-86.
9. This difference can be further illuminated by Marcel's categories of problem and mystery. A problem is something like x-1=3: when x is solved, the problem is no longer followed up on or attended to. However, in our mediated world of meaning, love, faith, freedom, etc. belong to the realm of mystery. Mystery carries us to an unending journey of discovering ever deeper and wider truth.
10. Second Collection, 79-81.
11. According to Aristotle, "Virtue...is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which a man of practical wisdom would determine it." (Nicomachean Ethics, II, iii,4; 1150b 5-8) So, there is no definition of virtue without its embodiment in a virtuous person.
12. Cf. Method in Theology, 19.
Chapter II : The Conversion of St. Ignatius
The insight of Ignatius into spiritual exercises came from two major experiences. In 1521, he took the initiative with great courage to lead a group of soldiers to resist the French attack on the fortress of Pamplona, Spain. Unfortunately, he was hit by a cannon ball on the leg. Heavily wounded but treated nicely by the French, he was carried back to his hometown Loyola. During the period of convalescence, the only books he could find to help him kill time were books on the life of Jesus and the lives of the saints. Soon, the images of the saints' heroism and love for Christ, especially those of Saints Francis and Dominic, dawned on him and he began to think of imitating them in all the austerities they performed. This kind of imagination granted him great joy and satisfaction. At other times when he set reading aside, he thought of worldly things and a career through which he desired to win the heart of a royal lady. This also gave him great delight. However, insight arose when he began to notice differences in the two kinds of delight. The afterglow of the worldly joy was dry and unhappy, while that which rose from thoughts of imitating the saints still remained joyful and consoling. This perception of feeling linked to images in experience led him to understand that different spirits were moving him. The former was coming from the devil, and the latter from God. From understanding he then came to the judgment that he needed to reform his life by doing penance for his past sins as the saints had done before him. Finally, when he recovered, he committed himself in a decisive manner to become a pilgrim.
The second important experience happened in Manresa, where he stayed for ten months for prayer and penance after leaving Loyola. At this period, he was deeply troubled by scruples, fearing that he had not entirely confessed his sins to God. He wanted to do away with the scruples by extreme fasting, taking no care of his external looks and spending long hours in prayer, yet without avail. He fell prey to depression and almost came to the point of committing suicide. In this thematic searching for God's help and a knowledge God's will for himself, though making a lot of mistakes, one day insight suddenly poured into his soul, similar to that of Archimedes. "Though he remembered his earlier resolve, still he did not hesitate to decide that he ought to eat meat." 13 Later on the bank of Cardoner, as he sat there the eyes of his understanding were opened and, though he saw no vision, he understood and perceived many things, numerous spiritual things as well as matters touching on faith and learning, and this was with an elucidation so bright that all these things seemed new to him... Now having passed his sixty-second year, if he were to gather all the helps he received from God and everything he knew, and add them together, he does not think they would add up to all that he received on that one occasion. 14
Based on this insight, Ignatius turned to be new man, a spiritual master on mission and for the Church. As is common to the development after insight, Ignatius gradually synthesized what he has appropriated into a general picture and organic whole, namely, the Spiritual Exercises, which lay down a heuristic structure of self-appropriation in finding God's will. Written from his own blood and tears, this book was a gift from heaven, destined to be a milestone in Catholic spirituality.
13. A Pilgrim's Journey - The Autobiography of Ignatius of Loyola, translated by Joseph N. Tylenda. (Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1985), 35. This represents an insight, called election in the first time (#175; Cf. footnote 16).
14. Ibid., 38-39
Chapter III The Insight of St. Ignatius
A. The basic insight
Before any elaboration, Lonergan is mindful to tell us, "When we say that the insight grasps necessity and impossibility, we are saying. If one is saying, one has already gone beyond the insight.... Insight is prior to concepts, even to the ones I use here. I am giving an expression of the insight.... The insight consists in the basis from which I can have those concepts and that expression." 15
In the experience of Manresa, especially on the bank of Cardoner, the fundamental insight Ignatius received was a deep understanding of the relationship between human beings and God in salvation history. This insight, initiated by his various images during continual prayers and questioning, gradually emerged through understanding and judging and finally came to concepts and definitions, which were formed and organized into the text of the First Principle and Foundation 16. Its spirit permeates the whole of the Spiritual Exercises. Its truth may simply be similar to the distinct statements in our catechism, such as "why we are created on earth", or other sources 17, but the realities understood profoundly and savoured interiorly (#2) cannot be compared.
In this relationship, the reality is human creatureliness and responsibility, the goal is freedom and salvation, the attitude is indifference, the guiding principle is means and end, the key words are desire and inordinate attachment. This cluster of concepts forms the so-called primitive terms, as Lonergan tells us, "for every basic insight there is a circle of terms and relations, such that the terms fix the relations, the relations fix the terms, and the insight fixes both." 18 In Ignatius' insight these terms are taken as self-evident in the context of our Christian faith.
B. Definitions
1. Principle and Foundation in the spiritual life (#23).
What Ignatius gets in his insight he has to name, giving it a significant nominal sign which underlies and governs all of his thought, and from which flow conclusions of the greatest importance for the spiritual life. This name, this nominal sign, contains in germ the substance of his expansive world-view on God, the universe, and the role of free human beings in God's plan of salvation and spiritual growth. According to Luis de la Palma, "It is called a principle because in it are contained all the conclusions which are later explained and specifically expounded; and it is called a foundation because it is the support of the whole edifice of the spiritual life." 19
2. Spiritual Exercises (#1).
In this elaboration Ignatius delineates two dimensions. The first is the 'what' or means, namely, various methods of prayer analogous to physical exercises. The second is the 'why', the purpose of these activities, namely, negatively to rid the soul of all its disordered affections, and positively to seek and find God's will for the salvation of one's soul.
Here, we see Ignatius' insight into the importance of self-appropriation in the spiritual life. Different from insight in science or mathematics, which can be passed on or taught to others at will as information without the need of the learners making the same effort as the discoverer, the spiritual truth of Principal and Foundation must be owned by each retreatant individually by going through a process of prayer, mediation and contemplation so that personal inordinate attachments can be confronted and got rid of, and they can finally see God's light shed on their own life.
3. Consolation and Desolation (# 316, 317).
Here, the spirit of the Principle and Foundation sets up a clear reference, namely the relationship with God. If its key words are desire and inordinate attachment, Ignatius elaborates two more 'tangible' terms to understand them. While in consolation the soul is inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord. In desolation one feels separated from one's Master. Expressed through inner motion, consolation brings the soul an increase in faith, hope and love, and dwelling in joy, peace and tranquillity, but desolation moves one towards the opposite, disquiet from various agitations and temptations, listlessness, tepidity and unhappiness, a lack of faith, hope and love.
Noteworthy is it that both consolation and desolation dwell within one's experiential level of consciousness. This is this inner experience which Ignatius wants us to focus on, the raw material for our discernment. In his rules for the discernment of spirits (# 313-336), almost all guidelines are about recognizing the dynamics of consolation and desolation. These definitions are mostly comprised of "feeling" words. Therefore, it is not so much thoughts or determinations which count in the initial sphere of spiritual exercises, no matter how good or great they might be. On the contrary, they might just serve as masks to cover, hide or suppress the significance of personal feelings behind and below where the treasure and genuine encounter with oneself and the Lord dwell. 20 These definitions are connected with the insight in Annotation 6, where the director is told what area he should pay attention to: "when the one giving the Exercises notices that the exercitant is not experiencing any spiritual motions in his or her soul, such as consolation or desolation, or is not being moved one way or another by different spirits, the director should question the retreatant much about the Exercises..."
4. Meditation (# 45).
Ignatius does not give a distinct definition of meditation, but simply takes it as "by using the three powers of the soul" in the context of the first, second, and third sins, followed by the indication of these three powers as memory, understanding, and will (# 50). Clearly, the faculty of memory, in Ignatius' intention, puts us into the experience of past events in history, including those of the angels and first parents, the world and the self. Therefore, experience implies a view as holistic and comprehensive as possible, not just taken from a particular or relativized perspective, since partial experience only leads to incomplete or even biased understanding. Then, understanding belongs to the faculty of intellect, a process of drawing out the meaning of these events in history, especially the meaning related to me. For instance, Ignatius encourages the retreatant to reflect during the first exercise on sin: "For one sin they went to hell; then how often have I deserved hell for my many sins!" (#50) Here, as one commentator suggests, "From the beginning to end, the Ignatian experience is sustained, explained and guided by an intellect solidly rooted in the truths of salvation history. Ignatius cautions the retreat director to expose the "true essentials" of this history as faithfully as possible (#2)." 21
Finally, it belongs to the judgment to reach the truth by the faculty of the will. As the function of our consciousness is not content to remain on the level of understanding, the retreatant conceives in order to judge the salvific truth for himself. According to Lonergan, coming to the level of judgment involves a personal commitment, 22 so the will must be moved to give consent. This movement is linked to the signs of deeper emotions. Here, we see the difference between judgment in scientific truth and religious truth. The former usually does not accompany deeper emotion while the latter always does. Only with this appearance can the judgment become one's own. That is why Annotation 6 emphasizes this aspect so much.
5. Contemplation (#101, 106).
As in the case of meditation, so too in the case of contemplation, Ignatius does not give a distinct definition but simply teaches the retreatant to understand its meaning by following his guidelines and doing the prayer itself. Where meditation uses memory, contemplation utilizes our power of imagination, on the experiential level, to put our presence into the actual events of the Gospels and relive them with Jesus Christ. Then, as in meditation, it belongs to our intellect to understand the meaning of the events, and to our will to judge and move our emotion in relishing them.
6. Four Weeks (# 4)
Here, Ignatius clarifies that each week does not necessarily consist of seven or eight days. Its length greatly depends on the progress, capacity and rhythm of the individual retreatants. However, four weeks provide an inherent and heuristic structure for direction and growth. Its design corresponds to the traditional pattern of spiritual progress from the purgative way, whose focus is on purifying ourselves from past sins or inordinate attachments, then progressing to the illuminative way, which guides us to see the light and truth in Christ, and finally to the unitive way, which means an intimate union with God, the ultimate goal of any spiritual life. If this is so, however, what is the reason for dividing the Spiritual Exercises into four weeks, instead of three, if the basic paradigm is the same? Ignatius has no words on this in his definition, yet this is a question worth probing more deeply in the following reflection.
C. The Heuristic Structure of Interior Knowledge
As discussed above, a heuristic structure is a systematic and cohesive procedure which guides the knower to discover the unknown. In interior knowledge, the guiding target is the will of God for me. This correlation mediates into the dynamic between knowing and loving, between self-knowledge and Christ's life on earth, between the director and the retreatant, between the four weeks, and among the rules of discernment.
1. Knowing and Loving.
Insight represents Lonergan's self-appropriation of the structure of human knowing. 23 By illustrating, for pedagogical purposes, the activity of knowing in classical science, statistical science, and common sense, he demonstrates that there are three levels of human consciousness, namely, empirical, intelligent and rational consciousness. Yet, coming to Method in Theology, Lonergan adds a fourth level, responsible level on which "we are concerned with ourselves, our own operations, our goals, and so deliberate about possible courses of action, evaluate them, decide, and carry out our decisions." 24 This level seems to be a further development and refinement of what Lonergan describes about the third level of consciousness, as mentioned already above, "A third determination of the notion of judgment is that it involves a personal commitment." 25 This personal level makes our knowledge not simply an affirmation of something out there, such as mathematics or science 26, but an engagement of our whole person to participate. This is true especially with reference to our knowledge which is interiority.
However, reaching to this level, the leading thrust is love. Only love can render one capable of committing to a value which one affirms, to be consistent with what one knows, finally not to contradict oneself. Sin, on the contrary, either confuses our knowing, or makes one split between knowing and loving as in the experience of St. Paul in Romans chapter 7. Lonergan put it beautifully: "Faith is the knowledge born of religious love." 27 In other words, love is the condition of possibility of our interior knowledge. This love is the self-communication of God Himself as both the Giver and the Gift itself, so that we are the image of God, the place of indwelling of the blessed Trinity. Therefore, it is no wonder that Ignatius urges the retreatant to ask for God's love or to express one's love (# 5, 12, 13, 104) to God, the pre-requisite of any deeper understanding.
Dialectically, we cannot love what we do not know. Love at first sight is only a myth. Even with love towards God, we have to know who God is, a God communicating Himself in human history, especially in the unique event of Christ incarnated. The whole Exercises are typically Christocentric in guiding the retreatant to make long and profound meditation or contemplation on Christ's historical events for the sake of drawing personal meaning out of them. Following St. Jerome's dictum, "The one who does not know Scripture does not know Christ", Ignatius depends greatly on the revelation of Jesus' life in the Gospels. Moreover, "Ignatius emphasized profound theological study because of an authentic conviction that love must know what is loving and why it is loving. Authentic love presupposes intellectual harmony with the truths of faith. A service rooted in discrete charity cannot be theologically blind." 28 In fact, the assurance of knowing makes the whole process of discernment possible and grounded.
Here there is a dialectic or tension. First, according to Ignatius, discernment is "to some extent" (#313). This implies that we have no guarantee of getting the full picture of God's will, as part of the spiritual tradition emphasizes, "for my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways not your ways ..." (Is 55:8-9) or "God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." (1Cor 1:25). Ignatius had his own experience of this. After his conversion, in many prayers he felt without doubt that God was asking him to go to Jerusalem, to stay there and even to die there. But history tells us finally God had another plan for him. Was he mistaken in the first place? It seems not. Ignatius' insight includes this total freedom of God who wants us to know His will step by step. What is important is that we are faithful and make an effort in this present moment to find His will. No one can definitely capture God's mind, not even the prophets or saints. God is the totally beyond or absolute other who transcends all our limited knowledge and horizons.
On the other hand, the purpose of discernment is exactly to find what God wants me to do in this particular time and space in history. The presupposition is that we can know God's will. Without this basis, our image of God is either that of a watchmaker who does not care or of a puppeteer who controls our life by whims, without needing our responsibility and cooperation. The implication is either atheism or fideism where predestination becomes a natural conclusion, signified in the idea that what is most unreasonable to human beings is more likely to be God's will. Ignatius, clearly, does not suggest this solution, following the Thomistic realist tradition to affirm that being is intelligible.
In a way similar to Lonergan's epistemology, though perhaps not consciously or thematically in his proceeding, Ignatius' pedagogy in the Spiritual Exercises goes through the four levels of human consciousness. Appealing to the memory of worldly and personal sins and to the imagining of Christ's events in history is on the empirical level. Reflecting on them and drawing out meanings occur on the intellectual and rational level. Finally making an election is on the responsible level. According to Ignatius' experience, this process of searching will finally reach to an intimate understanding of God. So, knowing and loving unites.
2. Self-knowledge and Christ's life on earth
Ignatius' interior transformation starts from insight into himself, acquired when he was in convalescence. Lying in bed and reading the books on Christ and the saints, he began to notice the arousal two kinds of pleasant feelings. Then he understood that the feelings of longing for Christ were much deeper than those for a woman. This experience is the point of departure in Ignatian pedagogy.
First, the Spiritual Exercises create a time and space for a person to face himself in depth. As a scientist has to be at pains to find out and confirm the correlation between thing and thing by doing complicated experiments, no less a pilgrim needs to make an effort to discover who he is. Though he was without modern categories in psychology, Ignatius understands clearly that the self is not immediately transparent to one's consciousness because of the influence of sin and evil spirits. My masks prevent not only others, but also myself, from knowing who I am.
Here, Ignatius has a deep sense of history. In the first week, he invites the retreatant to go back into his own background, by the power of memory, and discover the fact of sin in the world and in his very own person, and then to understand how sin has blocked him from recognizing God's presence in his life. The question may arise, how does one know whether this kind of knowledge is not another kind of mask?29 As Pousset wisely points out, "There is a danger that many people making the Spiritual Exercises get no further than representation. With a great deal of good will and fidelity, they fill their imagination with images, words, stories, and yet nothing or almost nothing happens. St. Ignatius was concerned with this problem in the sixth annotation, but he did not dwell on it at great length." 30 It is clear that inner growth is not like a mechanical process which one can control at ease, since the time of transformation remains in God's hand. Yet, being aware of this problem, Ignatius marks out a clear reference in Annotation 6: "When the one giving the Exercises notices that the exercitant is not experiencing any spiritual motions in his or her soul, such as consolation or desolation, or is not being moved one way or another by different spirits, the director should question...." Here, the reference point is feeling.
Secondly, Lonergan sees feelings as responding to values in accord with a scale of preference in an ascending order, namely from vital values, to social, cultural, personal and religious values. Our discernment is exactly to identify these on their proper levels so that "there are in full consciousness feelings so deep and strong, especially when deliberately reinforced, that they channel attention, shape one's horizon, direct one's life" 31 and "to take cognizance of them makes it possible for one to know oneself, to uncover the inattention, obtuseness, silliness, irresponsibility that give rise to the feeling one does not want, and to correct the aberrant attitude." 32 No wonder that, in the Ignatian heuristic structure of the Spiritual Exercises, the high point is, from an anthropocentric perspective, one's own election, i.e., one's judgment of value. Lonergan emphasizes that "the judgment of value, then, is itself a reality in the moral order...By it the subject is constituting himself as proximately capable of moral self-transcendence, of benevolence and beneficence, of true loving." 33
Ignatius states in Annotation 2: "For what fills and satisfies the soul consists, not in knowing much, but in our understanding the realities profoundly and in savouring them interiorly." Therefore, what is at stake is not so much knowledge by representation as the feeling attached to it. As a matter of fact, though Ignatius sanctions the third time for making a sound and good election (#177), namely, a time of tranquillity and having no special inner movement, when one uses one's natural faculties to calculate the pros and cons for one's decision, he still makes it clear that "When that election or decision has been made, the person who has made it ought with great diligence to go to prayer before God our Lord and to offer him that election, that the divine Majesty may be pleased to receive and confirm it, if it is conducive to his greater service and praise."(# 183) But how does one know whether God is pleased to receive and confirm it or not? One must appeal to one's desolation and consolation of the second time (# 176) Therefore, for Ignatius, self-knowledge properly speaking Ignatius is one's own inner and deeper feeling, from which one can detect either one's own inordinate attachment or one's freedom and joy towards God's will.
However, self-knowledge is not some kind of closed system as are some modern systems or movements like New-Age, which claims that, as long as we are liberated, we are like God or are gods. The ideal may be all right, but the whole process is missing. No doubt, being God's image is asserted in Scriptures, but we have to conform ourselves to this image, whose perfect expression is, in the first place, Jesus Christ. Only Jesus is the condition of possibility of one's true liberation. Thus it is not accidental that Ignatius arranges the whole second, third and fourth week as almost wholly Christocentric, guiding the retreatant to get familiar with Christ's life and teaching on earth. Contemporary categories help us much here to understand his insight. The basic structure of the human being is philosophically I-Thou, or theologically the self-communication of God. There is no such thing as "Cogito, Ergo Sum" or pure human nature. If this basic tenet is accepted, there is no genuine self-knowledge without reference to others. 34 However, the dimension of others is always a corrupted or contaminated reality, as meditated on in the first week. Thus the Christ event, both as prototype as well as fulfilment of human destiny, becomes salvific in its actual sense. Jesus' life and mystery on earth is never just a past event congealed in history, but becomes a constant pivot of reference for one to see what one's true self rests upon.
These two dimensions come back to the dynamics of knowing and loving. In knowing Christ more deeply, we come to love him more dearly. In experiencing love and being accepted unconditionally, we can open up to a greater horizon of knowing ourselves and God's will. This is a circular and unending movement in our pilgrimage on earth, according to Ignatius.
3. Director and Retreatant
Comments on his experience in Manresa, Ignatius says: "During this period God was dealing with him in the same way a schoolteacher deals with a child while instructing him." 35 At first glance this seems to imply a simple I-God relationship, without the involvement of a third person. However, in his presentation of the Spiritual Exercises, the presence of a director is simply taken for granted, without the need of any justification.
In fact, Ignatius himself treasured very much the role and need of a director in his own spiritual journey because a lack of knowledge on spiritual matters made him suffer a lot, fast too much and even come to the point of thinking of committing suicide under the spell of scruples. By experience he also discovered that instruction from the director is helpful, "The confessor ordered him to break off his fast and though he was still feeling strong, he nevertheless obeyed his confessor, and that day as well as the following day he found that he was free of his scruples." 36
As the Exercises are basically designed for beginners in the spiritual life, the presence of a director for the retreatant is presupposed.Yet, Ignatius is very much aware that the whole Exercises are mainly a self-appropriation process engaging the retreatant with his Lord, rather than a course from the director on catechism or spiritual exhortation, no matter how meaningful these may be on some other occasion. Though not as scrupulous as St. John of the Cross, 37 Ignatius sets up clear boundary and advice for the director, whose main task is a faithful companionship in the ups and downs of the retreatant. From Annotation 6 to 15, the director is advised to inquire into the retreatant's experience during prayer; to be patient, kind and gentle towards the retreatant; to explain the rules of discernment according to the retreatant's progress and need; to keep the retreatant living in the present moment and free from worrying about what will come next; to encourage the retreatant to be faithful in prayer even in desolation; to warn the retreatant not to make hasty promises to God during consolation; and not to impose any personal preference and suggestion for a particular state of life, but to let God work directly on the retreatant. In summary, all these guidelines ask the director to be indifferent and pedagogical, implicitly setting up a good example of the Principle and Foundation for the retreatant to imitate. In other words, if the director shows a clear attachment to his own ideas, feelings and wishes for the retreatant, the latter will unconsciously follow this way of proceeding, either blindly adopting the director's prejudice or stubbornly sticking to his own inordinate attachment and spiritual freedom will not emerge.
In parallel manner, Ignatius is mindful of the attitude and disposition of the retreatant towards the director, though the Spiritual Exercises is mainly the former's process of self-appropriation. The basic tenet behind this is that, as a novice in spiritual matters, any retreatant may easily fall prey to self-deception or the tricks of the evil spirits, as affirmed by Ignatius' own experience of scruples and depression. Even an advanced pilgrim is still open to deception by Satan pretending to be an angel of light, "who brings good and holy thoughts attractive to such an upright soul and then strives little by little to get his own way, by enticing the soul over to his own hidden deceits and evil intentions." (# 332) Therefore, the retreatant is advised to examine the whole train of thoughts, if they "end up in something evil or diverting or in something less good than what the soul was originally proposing to do... all this is a clear sign that this is coming from the evil spirit..." (#333).
Undoubtedly, the instruction is clear; but Ignatius foresees implicitly that this is not easily carried out. Therefore, all these principles are not given to the retreatant for a self reading, but are left to the director to explain. Moreover, "the enemy acts like a false lover,... wants his words and solicitations to remain secret....But when the person reveals them to his or her good confessor or some spiritual person who understands the enemy's deceits and malice, he is grievously disappointed."(# 326) That is why Ignatius exhorts in Annotation 5 that the retreatant should enter the exercises with a great spirit and generosity, implying also a great openness and freedom towards the director in one's inner journey, apart from aiming at a lofty desire and ideal for God. In fact, following the structure of I-Thou, one comes to understand oneself through the presence of others. Concerning other responsibilities, Ignatius reminds the retreatant about being faithful in doing the Exercises, more rather than less, especially in time of desolation (#12). The retreatant is to be content in the present moment and not to be agitated or curious to know what is to be done next (# 11). This filial trust is a pre-requisite disposition to let oneself go and then conform oneself to God's will.
4. The Four Weeks
Ignatius structures the Spiritual Exercises in congruency with the traditional understanding of the spiritual life as a progress through the purgative way, the illuminative way, and finally the unitive way (#10). His originality seems to lie in anthropocentrically setting a personal election as the thematic goal, lying between the second and third weeks, signified as the high point of the whole Exercises, while the thrust is totally Christocentric, coming from an intimate understanding and love of Christ.
The first two weeks is the preparation for this election, whose condition of possibility is a heart purged of inordinate attachments and filled with a willingness to follow Christ wholeheartedly. Implicitly following the transcendental structure of human consciousness as discovered by Lonergan, Ignatius sees no benefit in one's spiritual life if the soul, guided by love, does not come to actualize a definite stand and commitment towards God and the world. Starting from personal experience, the interior life cannot be satisfied simply by understanding or so-called illumination, no matter how lofty it is. Even in the first week, Ignatius does not accidentally put the question to the retreatant who may still be troubled by personal inordinate attachments, namely, "What have I done for Christ? What am I doing for Christ? What ought I to do for Christ?" (#53) Therefore the soul should not stop being reasonable in searching for what is true and real, or being responsible in committing to what is truly good. This desire for deliberation and action echoes through the Spiritual Exercises, in the contemplation of the kingdom of Jesus Christ (# 96), the two standards (# 146), the three classes of persons (# 153-155), the three degrees of humility (#165-167), and finally the contemplation to attain love (# 233-237). The key word is "labour", while the conviction is "love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words."(# 230)
A question may then arise, namely, if the election is already the fulfilment of the process of our consciousness, why do the Spiritual Exercises not end here, but continue to structure the whole Paschal mystery in the third and fourth week? First, election means one's creating oneself in a definite manner by deliberating on and choosing the genuinely good and the distinctively better. It represents an experience of moral conversion to higher values. "Then is the time for the exercise of vertical freedom, and then moral conversion consists in opting for the truly good, even for value against satisfaction when value and satisfaction conflict."38 However, cooperative grace signified by moral conversion presupposes the pre-eminence of operative grace, which is religious conversion, that "other-worldly falling in love" which is total and permanent self-surrender without conditions, qualifications, reservations."39 In this sense, the moral stage must yield to the religious one as fulfilment. Otherwise, as Kierkegaard suggests, one easily falls prey to pride and arrogance as the self-righteous Pharisees did, an insight already so adequately expounded by Paul: "If I give away all that I possess, piece by piece, and if I even let them take my body to burn it, but am without love, it will do me no good whatever" (1Cor 13:3), Therefore, religious conversion provides "a new basis for all valuing and all doing good. In no way are fruits of intellectual or moral conversion negated or diminished. On the contrary, all human pursuit of the true and the good is included within and furthered by a cosmic context and purpose and, as well, there now accrues to man the power of love to enable him to accept the suffering involved in undoing the effects of decline."40 In this sense, the whole dynamic of the third and fourth weeks is to put this pre-supposition and immediacy of operative grace into a thematic and conscious reflection so that our election is affirmed in love, while we receive the necessary strength to bear the cross as Christ did and open up to the hope of resurrection and glory which Christ experienced.Secondly, through the first week one acquires reformation of oneself, through the second week conformation to Christ, while the election begins the confirmation in Christ as choosing those things which Christ chose. But we will not succeed or be faithful in our election unless we are transformed into Christ. Lonergan tells us: "It is not merely a self-mediation in which we develop, but it is a self-mediation through another. One is becoming oneself, not just by experiences, insights, judgments, by choices, decisions, conversion, not just freely and deliberately, not just deeply and strongly, but as one who is carried along." 41
The one who carries us along is Christ, whose image and example the Father destined for us to conform to and transform into. Therefore, it is a self-mediation through Christ and by Christ. In a deeper reflection, perfection through suffering is no longer an abstract principle as the human lot but becomes an event of mutual self-mediation. "Christ chose and decided to perfect himself in the manner in which he did because of us...the way of the cross is the way in which fallen nature acquires its perfection...; by his own autonomous choices, he was thinking of us and thinking of what we needed to be able to attain our own self-mediation." 42 In this sense, the third and fourth weeks become necessary to achieve a union with Christ, as the unitive way aims at. This union does not just mean making oneself Christ-like. It means letting Christ become man in reference to us and especially to myself in the very Paschal mystery, His and mine. "I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me."(Gal 2:20)
5. Rules for discernment - direct and inverse insight
It is quite true to say that the Principle and Foundation and the rules for discernment are the heart of Ignatius' insight. Concerning the latter, Rahner affirms: "We should even like to risk the assertion that they (the rules) are actually the first and so far the only detailed attempts at such a systematic method."43 Every insight will sooner or later develop into a system, providing certain boundaries and rules. As in the study of Scripture, textual criticism, literary criticism, form criticism and redaction criticism signify both way as well as boundary, beyond which scholarship is not recognized as proper. Similarly, the positivist approach in modern human sciences only tackle value-free statements so that moral or metaphysical statements are not and cannot be treated. Of course, whether the validity of these insights is grounded or not is not our interest here. The basic tenet is that insight follows this dynamic, as Lonergan points out.
As direct insight, the rules for discernment mainly provide guidelines for understanding desolation and consolation, in relation to the good and evil spirits. There is no attempt here to explain the details of each rule, on which many distinguished writers have already contributed a lot. Yet two suppositions are worth noticing in order to grasp these rules in a better way.
First, Ignatius seems to affirm the possibility of an original and deep experience of God, which serves as a prototype and is beyond doubt. This is mentioned as the first time of doing the election (#175) and as consolation without a preceding cause (# 330). The characteristic of this experience is that "it is the prerogative of the Creator alone to enter the soul, depart from it, and cause a motion in it which draws the whole person into the love of His Divine Majesty." (# 330) However, in a 30-day retreat context, "without a preceding cause" cannot mean that consolation is totally without our preparation, effect or expectation, since we are told to ask the Lord for what we want and desire in the second prelude to meditation (##48, 55, 65) and the third prelude to contemplation (##91, 104, and to spend time doing them (#4, 12). Consolation is rather that which is out of proportion to 'what I want and desire', or beyond our conceptual object, a phrase used by Karl Rahner, so that one enters entirely into God's love. "This experience allows the person to judge an experience not only by its fruit, but also by its origin." 44 This standpoint might be arguable, yet Ignatius shows no suspicion about it. What he is cautious about is the after-thought of this experience. (# 333)
The original and deep experience of God mentioned as the first time of doing the election (#175) and as consolation without a preceding cause (# 330) serves as a prototype because other and thinner consolation or desolation take their reference from it, since it is a relationship with God without doubt, like a perfect glass to show the true face of other experiences. In fact, even Jesus asked the apostles to go back Galilee to witness his resurrection (Mk 16:7, Mt 28:7). Does Galilee not signify the undoubted experience of God's calling and love? If that is so important for the interior life, it should not be a rare phenomenon... "An experience of the CSCP (consolation with preceding cause) of varying purity and intensity is certainly to be expected as the normal crowning of the CCCP (consolation with cause) which the exercitant frequently receives during the exercises." 45 Therefore, it is the common effort of the director and retreatant to recognize its happening and presence.
Secondly, discernment deals mainly with "the various motions which are caused in the soul" (# 313). By "motions" is meant desolation and consolation. As discussed earlier, they include mostly feeling words. It is, thus, the feelings which we discern and not the thoughts. "The feelings are crucial: They are the raw material of our experiences of God. But they must be judged, rationally evaluated to distinguish the weeds from the wheat." 46 However, before understanding or judging, the recognition of true feelings is already an important task. Sometimes our true feelings can be masked or moralized into something we wish to be: I should be joyful, or grateful, etc. rather than I actually am joyful or grateful. Or we tend to hide our true feelings from ourselves or the director for various reasons, like the tactics of the false lover (# 326). Here, the words of Jesus are valid: "The truth will make you free."(Jn 8:32)
In fact, it is part of the task in the first week to discover all the historical, cultural and human factors which has been blocking our true self, especially our feelings, from emerging. No doubt, feelings can be treacherous or deceitful. That is where discernment comes in. The convalescent Ignatius had to measure his happiness in searching for the worldly career against the happiness inherent in the heroism of saints like Francis and Dominic. Only then did he discover the latter to be the truer and deeper joy. Later, the Cardoner experience became Ignatius' reference axis for discernment: "After Cardoner, Ignatius easily discerned true from false consolations, as exemplified by his rejection of the serpent-form vision because of diminished colour, his distaste for Erasmus because of diminished fervour, and his decision to reject consolations which prevented him from sleeping." 47 In this sense, the consolation without a preceding cause is the crucial criterion for discernment. In the same line, our fundamental option towards God is also an important criterion. God hardly calls into question one's fundamental commitment, unless it is wrongly made in the first place (# 172).
Let us now turn to inverse insight. It is famous that Ignatius lays down rules for thinking, judging, and feeling with the Church. Though not explicitly mentioned among the individual rules, (##353 to 370), the basic motive seems to be to answer the question whether genuine consolation from God can lead us to go against the authority, doctrines or religious practices in the Catholic Church. Ignatius may be said either to give a definite "no" or perhaps to point out that this is a wrong question, since God cannot contradict Himself by showing a different revelation to the Church and individuals. From this assertion, such consolation cannot be true.
15. Understanding and Being, 46-47
16. The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, A Translation and Commentary by George E. Ganss, S.J. (St. Louis: the Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992), #23. References to the text of the Spiritual Exercises are indicated by #. ##1-20 are commonly called Annotations.
17. Cf. Ibid., 211, where Ganss points out that Erasmus' Handbook of the Christian Soldier expresses certain ideas similar to those of Ignatius.
18. Insight, 12
19. The Spiritual Exercises, 149
20. This will be elaborated more in the later part. Cf. Thomas H. Green, Weeds Among the Wheat (Makati: St. Paul Publications, 1984), 98-99.
21. Harvey D. Egan, S.J., The Spiritual Exercises and the Ignatian Mystical Horizon (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1976), 69.
22. Cf. Insight, 272.
23. Cf. Insight, xix-xxiii.
24. Method in Theology, 9.
25. Insight, 272
26. This is not to deny that finally they also involve our commitment, e.g., if we judge something poisonous, we won't take it. But in the process the ideal is only the relationship between thing and thing.
27. Method in Theology, 115
28. Ignatian Mystical Horizon, 70
29. It is clear in the case of Jonah. He fled from God's call, and then was saved by God after three days in the whale. Then he complied with God's will and proclaimed the message to people in Nineveh. But only at the end is his deeper rebellious attitude unmasked. He has actually not been at peace with God.
30. Edouard Pousset, S.J., Life in Faith and Freedom (St. Louis: The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1980), 61-62. The meaning of representation is covered in pages 57-63
31. Method in Theology, 32
32. Ibid., 33
33. Ibid., 37
34. Study affirms that without the positive caring and affirmation of others, a person cannot know his worth as a true image of God. Therefore, the presence of others is not only accidental, but also substantial.
35. A Pilgrim's Journey, 36.
36. Ibid., 34.
37. In The Living Flame, John indicates three blind guides who can cause the soul to go into the dark night. While he dedicates only three paragraphs to the devil and two to the soul itself, he devotes many pages to the danger of entrusting oneself to a director whose only goal is to form carbon copies of himself. Cf. Thomas H. Green, S.J., Drinking From a Dry Well (Makati: St. Paul Publications, 1991), 33.
38. Method in Theology, 240
39. Ibid., 240
40. Ibid., 242
41. Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 6, ed. By Robert C. Croken, Frederick E. Crowe, and Robert M. Doran. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), "The Mediation of Christ in Prayer", 180.
42. Ibid., 181.
43. Ignatian Mystical Horizon, 132
44. Ibid., 15
45. Ibid.,56
46. Weeds Among the Wheat, 99
47. Ignatian Mystical Horizon, 138
Chapter IV: A Further Reflection
In his book Insight, Lonergan provides a set of exercises to help the reader to attain self-appropriation, which is a process of the subject raising questions and seeking the unknown. In the interior life, the unknown is God's will-for-me. Here, what is at stake involves the subject, apart from the objective pole of God's will. These two poles have no temporal, spatial, or sequential priority in the process of self-appropriation, though ontologically God is absolutely prior as my existence is always contingent to and dependent on God. In this sense, what the self is greatly determines the experience, understanding, judging and commitment to God's will.
The Spiritual Exercises, in fact, provide a context for an appropriation of the self, which is a super-natural existential opening to God, overcoming any dichotomy between natural and supernatural, strictly human and divine, etc. As the Ignatian maxim states, "Have faith in God as if all success depended on you, nothing on God; Set to work, however, as if nothing were to come about through you, and everything through God alone." 48 Taking this dialectic as basis, the ongoing discussion follows the traditional categories, namely, subject and object. The conviction behind is that, unless we have a deeper grasp of and greater courage to face the existential disposition of the subject and the forces surrounding him, the insight into doing God's will cannot be clear and commitment in following it cannot be total.
A. Interior Knowledge and its subject 49
Aristotle defines virtue as "a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which a man of practical wisdom would determine it." 50 Therefore, the characteristic of the subject as virtuous person contributes not a little to deciding the right thing to do, apart from the objective guideline of finding the mean. In analyzing the subjective field of common sense, Lonergan describes patterns of experience, namely, biological, aesthetic, intellectual and dramatic patterns, 51 which greatly decide the experience or focus of the subject. The classic example is that Thales was so intent on the stars that he did not see the well into which he tumbled, while the milkmaid was so indifferent to the stars that she could not overlook the well.
In the context of the Spiritual Exercises, it is important to notice and respect the aura of each individual as Ignatius insists in Annotations 7 and 15. The director is to be aware that he is not going to make the retreatant a carbon copy of himself or pursue his own agenda. Yet, it is healthy to call attention to what is missing. As a matter of fact, any pattern of experience is incomplete or even becomes too selective, leading one to lose sight of the whole picture or greater horizon. Thales' example is clear enough. Jesus boldly points to the rich young man, "There is one thing you lack..."(Mk 10:21) Although the director has no need or even authority to be so instructive as Jesus, he should detect where the blind spots lie and so invite the retreatant to bring them out and talk directly with the Lord. (# 15)
Apart from patterns of experience, Lonergan's description of dramatic bias or scotosis seems to be relevant. In a healthy make-up, everyone desires to know, i.e. to look for insight. However, in reality, most of us can be lovers of darkness, not wanting insight. "To exclude an insight is also to exclude the further questions that would arise from it and the complementary insights that would carry it towards a rounded and balanced viewpoint." 52 Then, the whole self-appropriation becomes unauthentic. Lonergan classifies scotosis into aberration of understanding, repression of censorship, inhibition of affects, and aberration of performance. In the context of the Spiritual Exercises, it is precisely the main task of the first week to discover and tackle these. That is why the first week is so crucial in the whole dynamic. Sin is not simply an item or wrong behaviour which one can correct by will, in the sense of cleansing away some dirt. "In Paul it is sometimes a personified might which has entered the world, but it also dwells in men and makes them slaves. In John in particular sin appears as the ultimate unrighteousness, in which individuals, but above all 'the world', is imprisoned." 53
Therefore, sin is an existential power preventing a person from seeing the light and obtaining the insight. Its first tactic is to create contrary insight, similar to Ignatius' description of the evil spirit which makes the great sinner imagine delights and pleasures of the senses (# 314). This explains why some persons apparently committed to moral errors seem to be serene in their wrongdoing because they fall prey to egoism, which is "an interference of spontaneity with the development of intelligence.... [and] is an incomplete development of intelligence...Its inquiry is reinforced by spontaneous desires and fears; by the same stroke it is retrained from a consideration of any broader field." 54 As Caiphas shows, "you fail to see that it is better for one man to die for the people, than for the whole nation to be destroyed."(Jn 11:49)
Meanwhile, sin represses the censorship. Usually, censorship, according to the characteristic of the subject, positively selects and arranges materials that emerge in consciousness in a perspective that gives rise to insight, or negatively leaves other unrelated materials aside. Yet, sin does the contrary, repressing all the possible materials and perspectives that might lead to insight. That is why Ignatius gives advice (##6, 326) that the director should keep an eye on ways in which the retreatant may unconsciously or consciously repress the related and significant images.
Furthermore, sin cultivates an inhibition of affects. Insight comes from imaginative presentation, just like the crown in the water for Archimedes or the falling apple for Newton, not from experience of affects, though both of them might feel the same tension or anxiety of inquiry. In order to prevent any insight from emerging, one just needs to suppress the related images. Affects are suppressed only when linked with unwanted images, so they are usually channelled to another unrelated yet acceptable set of images, and emerge freely and frequently, so that the subject then forgets what is really influencing him. It is common for people to express anger or other negative feelings towards others. Though they recognize that those feelings are inappropriate, mostly in a deeper way they refuse to link this kind of feeling with the original images, especially those of beloved ones or family members. Here, original sin receives its greater import and existential meaning. If we have no shame in dogma to attribute our human misery to some remote ancestors, seeing unwanted images of sinfulness in our family, nation and own cultures grants us ground for suppressing them unconsciously. Here, Jesus surely has great insight, "If any man comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children...he cannot be my disciples."(Lk 14:26) While "hating" is a Hebrew emphatic way of expressing a total commitment, 55 the main point is to bring the inordinate attachment into consciousness and focus. Inhibition creates, in fact, some kind of inordinate attachment, since what is suppressed keeps on controlling us without our knowing what or why. We can leave or detach ourselves from only those things which are consciously present to or possessed by us. Otherwise, giving up has no meaning and is beyond our capacity. Only when the original image is liberated can forgiveness, reconciliation, and conversion become possible.
Finally, sin creates an aberration of performance. This scotosis renders us unable to focus on our higher activity, since the energy has dissipated for the sake of repression. It can be detected by our dreams or some fixated body language, like stomach-ache, dizziness, headache, aggressiveness, tiredness, etc. "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."(Mt 26:41) This aberration keeps us from reaching the fourth level of consciousness, namely, to commit ourselves to the true values that we uphold and cherish.
In this analysis, scotosis is actually the embodiment of our sinfulness, which should more or less be tackled in the first week. Recognition of its depth and the possibility of healing are, of course, due to God's grace and the openness of the subject itself. However, along with the religious themes to be expounded and the making of one's basic world-view or value-system, it is crucial for the first week that seemingly repressed emotions, affection towards family members and certain physical reactions, be somehow thematized as possible signs of scotosis.
B. Interior Knowledge as Object
God's will never comes out of nowhere. Even the Lord's prerogative entry into one's soul points to a concrete and historical situation where He wants to act through this or that person, as "love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words."(# 230) Salvation history, culminating in the event of the Incarnation and the Paschal Mystery, has set up this pivotal axis and paradigm once and for all. The divine will is mediated through human situations, though the latter has often been scandalous or sinful. "But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more."(Rom 5:21) In this sense, to look for God's will is to put one's historical context, personal, communal and universal, into perspective where one discerns the signs of the time. "When you see a cloud looming up in the west you say at once that rain is coming, and so it does....You know how to interpret the face of the earth and the sky. How is it you do not know how to interpret the present time? Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?" (Lk 12:54-56)
According to Lonergan, in this heuristic progress, two dialectic principles are working in mutual tension, namely, affectivity and intelligence. Affectivity signifies one's desires, interests, ambitions, communal customs, interests, sub-cultures, and finally universal ideologies; while intelligence signifies one's censorship, practical ideas, communal laws, hierarchy of values, proverbial wisdom and universal moral principles. In short, the former represents the principle of life, "I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full."(Jn 10:10), and the latter the principle of truth, "you will learn the truth and the truth will set you free." (Jn 8:32) These two principles are opposed yet bound together in the historical context: the spontaneity of life has to be guided by truth, "...obey his voice, clinging to him; for in this your life consists..." (Deut 30:20), while the revelation of truth depends on the consummation of life, as Jesus offers Himself in the Paschal Event. (Even the truth of virtue depends on the virtuous person) The balance and synthesis of these two principles lies in love. Since God is love, God's will shines through in the dialectic of these two poles.
Our problematic, of course, always lies in losing balance between the two because of sin. Apart from the corruption of personal scotosis as discussed above, the power of sin creates group bias and general bias which form the structure of sin, and thus confuses and restrains the very person from striking the balance. Group bias creates various kinds of division, antagonism, exploitation, discrimination, etc., which unconsciously constitute an individual's attitude and thus are taken for granted. General bias represents the social situation deteriorating cumulatively, the dynamic of progress is replaced by sluggishness and then by stagnation. "Culture retreats into an ivory power. Religion becomes an inward affair of the heart. Philosophy glitters like a gem with endless facets and no practical purpose." 56 This kind of minor surrender may, even worse, lead to a major one when lower viewpoints prevail, allowing human intelligence to give way to all kinds of social surd and totalitarianism, followed by complete disintegration and decay.
To overcome these biases, one has first of all to recognize their presence. 57 The fact of their being taken for granted in individual souls must be challenged by the rationality of Scriptures, especially the life and teaching of Christ. This is exactly the meaning of the meditation on Two Standards. The call of metanoia from Christ is supposed to be a concrete encounter and confrontation with these biases. Only then can the possibility of a radical election for Christ and with Christ as mission emerge, since the Spiritual Exercises were never designed merely for personal piety. As Ignatius exhorted Francis Xavier before the latter's departure for the East, "Go, and set the world on fire!"
48. Faith And Freedom, 238
49. For the following two sections, Cf. Insight, Ch. VI Common Sense And Its Subject and Ch. VII Common Sense As Object.
50. Cf. Footnote 7.
51. Cf. Insight, 181-190
52. Insight, 191.
53. Piet Schoonenberg, "Sin", Sacramentum Mundi - An Encyclopedia of Theology, ed. by Karl Rahner with Cornelius Ernst and Kevin Smyth. (London: Burns & Oates, 1970), Vol. 6, 87-88.
54. Insight, 219-220
55. Jerusalem Bible, Popular Edition, Gospel of Luke, Ch. 14:26, footnote a.
56. Insight, 229.
57. This is what the inner journey of Jonah shows to us. Cf. Footnote 22
Conclusion
After Insight, Lonergan named his next book as Method in Theology, instead of Method of Theology. His idea is clear that there is but one transcendental method operating through the human spirit's four levels of consciousness to approach the being of all beings by our unlimited drive of questioning and knowing. 58 In this sense, theology belongs to part of this most worthy enterprise of being human. Following the master's conviction, I name this paper "Insight in Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises".
There is another Lonerganian reason, though somewhat more implicit. His project shows insight to be adequate with being, then insight understands itself, and finally the primary insight is equal to the notion of God. 59 Therefore, every insight participates in God, comes from God and returns to God. This understanding matches very much what Ignatius' inner journey and his Spiritual Exercises aim for, culminating in the contemplation to attain love.
Since Plato's metaphor of the cave, searching for truth has been signified as a journey, a process of running out from darkness to the light. However, though every human being desires to know, this process is not automatic or mechanical because various contrast forces have corrupted our drive for truth, just as the people in the cave were originally fettered by chains while the darkness and shadows seem to dominate. Therefore, it is an uphill battle to liberate oneself from them. In Christian anthropology, this darkness is our personal, communal and universal, sinfulness and inordinate attachments, which block us from seeing God's will, the light itself. The foregoing chapter IV tries to bring this reality into a thematic and deeper understanding.
Ignatius called himself a pilgrim, signifying an inner journey and struggle within to free himself from sin and become free for God. Yet it is God who initiates the whole process and guides Ignatius to follow the whole heuristic structure, as illustrated above, and so to discover his divine will. Therefore, gratitude is the distinctive Ignatian disposition and characteristic. In the last few months, I myself began the intellectual journey to struggle with what the insight of Lonergan is up to, in the context of my spiritual journey as a son of St. Ignatius. With deep gratitude, coming to the closing line of this little paper, I share very much the sentiment of T.S. Eliot in his beautiful lines:
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Four Quartets
Little Gidding, V
58. Cf. Method in Theology, Ch. I, 3-25.
59. Cf. Insight, Ch. XIX, 657-669.