Luigi Giussani, The Religious Sense, tr. J. Zucchi. Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queens University
Press, 1997.
From time to time Catholic and Protestant scholars, from both the theological and
philosophical fields, have returned to the question of the nature of religion with new
proposals for understanding its basic human essence.
The Religious Sense, the first of three projected volumes by the scholar,
Monsignor Luigi Giussani, will no doubt be considered a classic attempt at its exposition
from a Catholic theological perspective. The
book offers a distillation of many years of research, teaching and thought on the question
of the nature of religion. As such it is
nothing short of a full affirmation of the coinherence and coexistence of reason and
religion in somewhat neo-Thomistic terms.
By “religious sense,” Giussani means that which lies at the very essence
and root of human rationality and consciousness. It
is that aspect of the human individual which affords Christianity with a reasonable
basis, as an instance of the revelation of God as mystery. To properly understand and establish the validity
of this “religious sense,” three premises need to be put forward and assumed. The first is that of realism, that is, the
urgent necessity not to give a more important role to a scheme already in our minds, but
rather to cultivate an “intuitive, passionate, insistent ability to observe the real
event, the fact.” The criterion of this method must emerge from “the inherent
structure of the human being, the structure at the origin of the person” [p. 7]. This criterion is an objective one “with
which nature thrusts man [sic] into a
universal comparison, endowing him [sic] with
that nucleus of original needs, with that elementary experience which mothers in the same
way provide to their children” [p. 10].
The first premise points naturally to a second, namely that of reasonableness,
or “the mode of action that expresses and realizes reason, the capacity to become
aware of reality” [p. 12]. Reasonableness
is part of the universal human experience and points back to realism. Reality, arrived at through reason, has to come
about in a reasonable way. Life together, (convivenza),
leads us to universal intuitions about an “other” beyond our capacity to
reason it. “In this sense, the question
of moral certainty is the main problem of life as existence, but, through it, also of life
as civilization and culture” [p. 14].
This means a third proposition must be assumed.
If reality is known through a method of reasonableness imposed on the knowing
subject by its relationship to the object, then morality will necessarily have an impact
on the dynamic of knowing. This, says
Giussani, is the epistemological problem. Reason
is inseparable from the unity of the “I” and as such cannot be seen as some
mechanism separated off from the knowing “I”.
Reason is bound to feeling and is indeed “conditioned” by it. The reality of life, in all its reasonableness,
necessarily imposes certain preconceptions of that reality.
The point is to recognize this and strive for “an attitude with which we
reflect upon our freedom and use its energy in a way that is true to its purpose” [p.
32]. Of course Giussani does not go on to
describe what he thinks this “purpose” to be, nor how one can arrive at the
knowledge of it, except to say that it is life lived from a reasonable perspective.
Giussani now comes to a crucial
summary and conclusion upon which the rest of his book rests. Reality, reasonableness and morality all lead us
to the inexorable conclusion that humanity is, in fact, “moved solely by love and
affection. It is primarily the love of
ourselves as destiny, the affection for our own destiny, that convinces us to
undertake this work, (of knowing through ascesis), to become habitually detached from our
own opinions and our own imaginations . . . so that all of our cognitive energy will be
focused upon a search for the truth of the object, no matter what it should be” [p.
34]. It is the supreme emotion (feeling) that
drives us toward truth. The starting point
is, not surprisingly, the self, the acting I. It
is the place of freedom which manipulates the content of the past (tradition) thereby
allowing for responsible creativity for the future. Within
this space and time the human comes into a knowledge of itself, as soul and body, as an
irreducible duality in unity. It is an
experience of the present in light of the past without reduction.
What then is the nature of this religious sense?
It is a product of the spiritual aspect of humanity and lies within us at the level
of utmost questions. “It
coincides with the radical engagement of the self with life, an involvement which
exemplifies itself in these questions” [p. 55].
Such questions can be illustrated from all quarters of our experience and call for
a totalizing answer. The fact that the answer
to such questions eludes us points itself to the “hypothesis of God.” Only the
affirmation of the mystery, “as a reality existing beyond our capacity to fathom
entirely, “corresponds to the human persons own original structure” [p. 57]. The need for a totalizing answer is the religious
sense which reason brings to bear on our experience.
Giussani spends the next three chapters outlining how attempts to empty, or reduce
the question of ultimacy lead to severe and unreasonable positions. Not only does the reduction and denial of the
questions of ultimate concern strip the human person of his/her originality, it is
followed by a “concomitant loss of meaning” which carries grave consequences. Only love can counter such attempts through the
affirmation of the human being’s capacity for freedom which is “an irreducible
capacity for perfection, for attaining happiness - for meeting the other, God” [p.
93]. The reason why humans abandoned
themselves to such positions is because of the “domination of preconceptions”
and the “tyranny of prejudice”. Appeals
to ideology on rational grounds lead to determination and manipulation which reduces the
religious sense and thus marginalizes the human so much so that it leads to censuring and
denying as the “culmination of his [sic] questioning.” In fact, reason, when it feels
“compelled” to seek out other principals of reality, is itself “a
constraint implied in experience, a factor of experience itself” [p. 100]. The question is raised willy nilly!
In fact, ultimate questions arise with our attraction to the other. The religious sense is the affirmation and
development of this attraction. The cosmos ,
as providential reality, points to this religious sense in terms of our dependence on a
transcendent other. This is, as with
Schleiermacher, an intuition of a mysterious presence which “endows the
instant” in which the “I” is given substance. This “I” carries with it a consciousness
of good and evil that I derive out of my experience with the world. The world then is a word, a Logos “which
sends you further, calls you on to another, beyond itself, further up.” That is, by analogy,
one is drawn towards a meaning beyond itself [p. 110].
This analogy is protested within me and issues in the sign which attempts to
see and touch it. The you, over
against the I, is the supreme, inexhaustible sign, evident but not demonstrable,
that “fulfills me more than any experience of possession, domination, or
assimilation” [p. 116]. This is openness
and freedom to be the self. It constitutes
this very self. The self is openness to the
mysterious you which I am. The world is the
parable which interprets this openness. It
is the playing field where this freedom is exercised.
It both veils and unveils in that it points to this other but in terms which make
the other evident yet unknowable. It is this
that accords the human with a religious sense. It
is precisely here that Giussani’s sympathies are finally, and fully revealed. Quoting St. Thomas Aquinas he calls for a
necessary revelation in order to “render this salvation more universal and more
certain” [Sum Th. 1, q 1.1].
The last chapter then raises the hypothesis of revelation and the conditions for
its acceptability. Our nature as creatures of
need, combined with reason, intuits an answer to our fundamental questions in terms of a
mysterious other. This is reasons pinnacle
and vertigo. We are dependent upon this
unreachable, unknowable mystery. This is our
religious sense. Against this we are pushed
back, in fear and terror, into reflection on an expanse.
Subsequently, we tend to identify one or other aspect(s) of this experience with
the absolute as a means and way of redemption. Appeals
are made to a word from the divine other that comes out of this experience. Revelation is the entry of the divine into history
through mundane human experience, as in the case of Christianity. This hypothesis is first of all possible because
the God who constitutes this mystery is free to act in this way. It is, secondly, a convenient hypothesis in that
it corresponds to human need. It is
convenience in the sense that God has accommodated God’s self to this human need. As God acts, he makes human action (or reaction),
possible and significant.
Such an hypothesis, however, must respect two criteria. This word must be comprehensible to humanity and
it must, so to speak, intensify the mystery in proportion to its comprehensibility. It does not merely aim at the satisfaction of
human understanding, it must “deepen” it. Thus,
to replace the word “mystery” with the word “Father” in relation to
God renders an extremely comprehensible term which at the same time identifies God’s
uniqueness and intensifies the mystery. The
religious sense prepares us for such a revelation but revelation intensifies the depth of
this religious sense.
Reflections
To say the least, Giussani’s appeal to the religious sense constitutes a tour-de-force
justification of the basic religious essence of the human individual which will demand the
attention of detractors from his position. He
has succeeded in offering a tight, cohesive argument which is not only intellectually
challenging but both well illustrated and very readable.
It is also innovative in its descriptions of such concepts as reason,
reasonableness, intuition and feeling, providing new ways of understanding concepts which
have fueled philosophical and theological debate for centuries. Certainly, he may not necessarily provide
definitive, ultimate or even provisional solutions to these problems, but he does offer a
fresh approach. This book is a must read for
any theologian, philosopher, or for that matter, social theorist. It will no doubt claim its place as a classic
treatment of the subject, at least in Catholic circles.
It should certainly gain the attention of those Protestant theologians
engaged in dialogue with Catholics. For this
reviewer, however, some crucial questions remain. Is
the somewhat appended appeal to revelation at the close of the book indicative of a
certain attitude toward the various roles allotted to reason and revelation as the appeal
to Thomas Aquinas [p. 140] would seem to indicate? Given
the human existential propensity to interpret the religious sense, and the world as its
sign, in a negative direction, can we really say that the religious sense has any value at
all in terms of a preparation for revelation? Would
not the proposed revelation itself fall under this criticism? Has Giussani adequately taken into account the
post-modern critique of the power of signification so that the post modern reader would be
able to lay aside his/her concerns about the ability of the sign to refer to anything of sign-ify-cance?
Dr. Archie J. Spencer is pastor at Port Colborne Baptist Church. He recently completed his ThD at the Toronto School of Theology. His thesis on Karl Barth’s early anthropology is due to appear in print shortly.