Intellectualism and spiritual experience

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Is intellectualism like a false god when taken to the extreme? Is this why there are so many atheists in the sciences?

What is the relationship between intellectualism and spiritual experience? My experiences suggest it is negative. At the very least I think there is a qualitative difference between intellectualism and spiritual experiences (intellectualism has its own rewards). Are the folks here on the philosophy forum at risk of decreasing their spirituality?

I can’t help but think of lowly monks and hermits, many of whom sought the desert as a means of escaping the hustle and intellectualism in an academic life, experience an extra special spirituality!
 
"That thou mayest have pleasure in everything, seek pleasure in nothing. That thou mayest know everything, seek to know nothing. That thou mayest possess all things, seek to possess nothing."

This seems to reject the intellect but its author is one of the greatest mystics of the Catholic Church, St John of the Cross, who wrote short poems about his spiritual journey towards God. He then realised the need to explain the meaning of the Dark Night of the Soul and the Living Flame of Love with a detailed analysis which is far longer than the poems. Otherwise he could not have helped others in their life of prayer and contemplation:1. One dark night,
fired with love’s urgent longings
  • ah, the sheer grace! -
    I went out unseen,
    my house being now all stilled.
    Code: 
        2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
  • ah, the sheer grace! -
    in darkness and concealment,
    my house being now all stilled.
    Code: 
        3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.
Code: 
      4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
  • him I knew so well -
    there in a place where no one appeared.
    Code: 
        5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.
Code: 
      6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.
Code: 
      7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.
Code: 
      8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares
forgotten among the lilies.

jesus-passion.com/DarkNightSoul.htm
  1. O living flame of love
    That tenderly wounds my soul
    In its deepest center! Since
    Now you are not oppressive,
    Now consummate! if it be your will:
    Tear through the veil of this sweet encounter!
  2. O sweet cautery,
    O delightful wound!
    O gentle hand! O delicate touch
    That tastes of eternal life
    And pays every debt!
    In killing you changed death to life.
  3. O lamps of fire!
    in whose splendors
    The deep caverns of feeling,
    Once obscure and blind,
    Now give forth, so rarely, so exquisitely,
    Both warmth and light to their Beloved.
  4. How gently and lovingly
    You wake in my heart,
    Where in secret you dwell alone;
    And in your sweet breathing,
    Filled with good and glory,
    How tenderly You swell my heart with love.
jesus-passion.com/LivingFlameLove.htm

On the above website there are other Christian classics which show how the intellect and spiritual experience are inextricably linked.
 
On 6 December, 1273, he laid aside his pen and would write no more. That day he experienced an unusually long ecstasy during Mass; what was revealed to him we can only surmise from his reply to Father Reginald, who urged him to continue his writings:

“I can do no more. Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value.”
-Saint Thomas Aquinas
 
Robert_Sock said:
On 6 December, 1273, he laid aside his pen and would write no more. That day he experienced an unusually long ecstasy during Mass; what was revealed to him we can only surmise from his reply to Father Reginald, who urged him to continue his writings:

“I can do no more. Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value.”
-Saint Thomas Aquinas
Click to expand...
“appears” is the key word! When we consider how his lifetime’s work has inspired and enlightened so many people he was mistaken. Understandably because he was overcome by the thought that no matter how much we do we can never do enough for God!
 
There’s nothing incompatible between the exercise of the intellect and spirituality, provided we are willing to approach such exercise in humility and gratitude to the Giver of the gift of knowledge.
 
odile53 said:
There’s nothing incompatible between the exercise of the intellect and spirituality, provided we are willing to approach such exercise in humility and gratitude to the Giver of the gift of knowledge.
Click to expand...
Precisely, Odile! Otherwise there is no point in giving us an intellect… 🙂
 
Many great saints have been very intellectual! I think the reason some intelligent people abandon Christ or God is that the society and educational system steer them that way, both in development of pride and in the materials they use and how information is given oit.
 
Robert_Sock said:
Is intellectualism like a false god when taken to the extreme? Is this why there are so many atheists in the sciences?

What is the relationship between intellectualism and spiritual experience? My experiences suggest it is negative. At the very least I think there is a qualitative difference between intellectualism and spiritual experiences (intellectualism has its own rewards). Are the folks here on the philosophy forum at risk of decreasing their spirituality?

I can’t help but think of lowly monks and hermits, many of whom sought the desert as a means of escaping the hustle and intellectualism in an academic life, experience an extra special spirituality!
Click to expand...
I think one of the problems modern Christians face is that when we talk of intellectualism or spiritual experiences, we have very powerful role models in both directions. We can point to Albert Einstein in one direction, and St. John of the Cross in the other. Yet the great majority of us are never going to reach the heights in either, either because we don’t have the ability, the time, the means, the money or the training. To be a mystic like St. John of the Cross then one needs a lot of “desert time”, free of other responsibilities. To be a genius like Einstein, one needs both the gifts and the time to spend our entire lives on purely intellectual questions.

So we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Which way should we expend our efforts - an intellectual foray into theology, creationism vs. evolution, dogmatics? Or should we seek the interior life, with limited time and a lot of outside pressures to contend with?

As someone who realises that I ought to do far more meditation than I do (in the Christian sense), I also suspect that if I did, God might give me some “intellectual answers” anyway, since He is the fount of all knowledge.

In the meantime however we are caught in this dialectic confrontation between the demands of spirituality and intellectual development. It is one thing to have an intellectual belief that God is Three Persons - it is another thing to know that is the truth. That can only come by some sort of spiritual experience.
 
+Christianity . . . as taught by our Holy Mother Church . . . is by no means a “religion” of human reason alone . . . at the beginning of Fides et ratio . . .

IOANNES PAULUS PP. II
FIDES ET RATIO
To the Bishops
of the Catholic Church
on the relationship
between Faith and Reason
1998.09.14
:compcoff: Link: vatican.va/edocs/ENG0216/_INDEX.HTM

is recorded a blessing from our highly esteemed Holy Father . . . Pope John Paul the Great . . . which brings into focus . . . **human reason ** . . . and its significance in . . . participating with . . . God . . . in the salvific nature of the Holy Gift of Christian Faith . . .

“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of TRUTH; and God has placed in the human ❤️ heart a desire to know the TRUTH—in a word, to know HIMSELF—so that, by knowing and loving ❤️ God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).”
​

Continuing on in Fides et ratio, Chapter 1, Section #9 . . .

"…Based upon God’s testimony and enjoying the supernatural assistance of grace,
  • FAITH is of an order
    other than
  • PHILOSOPHICAL knowledge which depends upon sense perception and experience and which advances by the light of the intellect alone. **
  • **PHILOSOPHY****and the sciences function within the order of natural reason;
while
  • FAITH, enlightened and guided by the Spirit, recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness of grace and truth” (cf. Jn 1:14) which God has willed to reveal in history and definitively through his Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 5:31-32)."
:compcoff: Link: vatican.va/edocs/ENG0216/__P1.HTM

:bible1:
"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,
saith the Lord."Isaiah 55:8

. . . all for Jesus+
. . . thank You Sweet Spirit of our Holy God+
. . . thank You Holy Mother Church+
. . . thank you blessed Pope John Paul II+​
 
Great answers so far. 👍

I think that there needs to be a recognition that different people have different gifts and are drawn toward different expressions of faith and spiritality. Where one is highly intellectual by their nature, others are more mystical. Where one thrives and learns best in logical, intiellectual discource, another learns best in solitude. This is why the Church embraces the many forms.

My personal belief is that the mystical-spiritual expeerience is the much more pure and direct path to God, but also the more difficult and even dangerous without good spiritual direction. Anyone who has read the writings of the great mystics of the Church can attest to the difficulties and dangers that these saints and Doctors of the Church write of and warn us about.
Intellectualism can be better for most since it is something of a more rational and ordered method. However it is hampered by the limitations of language and understanding between peoples.

If there is a danger in one or the other, I believe it comes from a person not recognizing their particular gifts and tendancies and becomes too distracted and/or confused by one or the other. I know in my own case, I tend to be drawn toward the mystical, yet I become distracted by the intellectual-apologetic aspects of sharing the faith.
The other danger is when a person or group tries to promote one form by denegrating the other(s). This is a sin of pride.

Each is important and even critical to the advancement of the Gospel, for each reaches out to particular groups of people who are seeking God and have questions.

Intellectualism has the advantage of being able to meet such people as scientists, mathemeticians and others with similar, highly ordered and logical modes of thinking.
Mysticism has the advantage of reaching out to those who are drawn more inwardly and toward experience of the heart.

Just my 2c

Peace
James
 
No one’s been so intelligent as to stop their own aging process.

Or, as the Scripture says, even able to change one single hair.

And no matter what science determines (or believes that they have determined) they will forever collectively remain, billions of years behind the creation of our galaxy and Our Creator.

P.S. The person who first theorized the Big Bang, was a Catholic priest. Intelligence and spirituality are compatible.
 
I agree that there is some intellectualism in every mystic and some form of spiritual experience in every intellectual. However, I still maintain there are profound qualitative differences between the two!
 
Robert_Sock said:
I agree that there is some intellectualism in every mystic and some form of spiritual experience in every intellectual. However, I still maintain there are profound qualitative differences between the two!
Click to expand...
Agree but those qualitative differences will vary from person to person. God made us each unique.

Peace
James
 
Robert_Sock said:
On 6 December, 1273, he laid aside his pen and would write no more. That day he experienced an unusually long ecstasy during Mass; what was revealed to him we can only surmise from his reply to Father Reginald, who urged him to continue his writings:

“I can do no more. Such secrets have been revealed to me that all I have written now appears to be of little value.”
-Saint Thomas Aquinas
Click to expand...
*…vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? … What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already, in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who come after.

ECCLESIASTES, Versus 1:2-3, 9-11 using the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition Bible
*
In my meditations, this is akin to what Saint Thomas Aquinas saw in his vision!
 
I would say that the hyper-intellectualism that is proposed in many colleges and universities in this country can become for some a false god.

In the sense that the proposal is “all things can be explained through intellectual pursuits complete devoid of God and based upon the foundation of ‘God does not exist’” then yes, absolutely, intellectualism can cause people to depart from God.

Intellectualism in the true sense, using our intellect to understand God and His creation, can never become a false god. BUT, as Aquinas taught, an error in the beginning is an error indeed…

FSC
 
Robert_Sock said:
*…vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? … What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has been already, in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who come after.

ECCLESIASTES, Versus 1:2-3, 9-11 using the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition Bible
*
In my meditations, this is akin to what Saint Thomas Aquinas saw in his vision!
Click to expand...
For the record, this is how I understand St. Thomas’ statement that all his works are of little value (didnt he say leaves of grass?):

The David is arguably the most incredible work of sculpture ever created. The epitome of human creativity in stone. The Mona Lisa is arguably the greatest painting ever created. And yet either of these are as nothing when compared to the truth of the individual subject of the work. David was greater in all ways than the sculpture which was made of him. Mona Lisa (or whatever her name really was) was greater in all ways than the painting which was made of her.

In this light I see that when St. Thomas says his works are of little worth what he is saying is that all of his theological musings and explanations, as great and wonderful as they are, can only show a tiny image of the vastness, the immensity, the unfathomably Glory of God. His intellectualism (to bring it full circle) allowed him to understand a small portion of who and what God is, but when confronted with the truth of God he understood how everything in his great body of works could only begin to describe God. It is the equivalent of spelling the word “IT” then being confronted with the entire “A tale of two cities” and realizing how very small your contribution was.
 
Ah, yes. Oir society highly values intellectual pursuits and we have a lot of push in that direction, but it is not built on a foindation of humility and the idea of learning more about God’s creation; it is built instead initially on a sort of generalized pride (“Man can do all things”) which becomes a particular pride in ourselves as we develop our skills.
Bob_Crowley said:
I think one of the problems modern Christians face is that when we talk of intellectualism or spiritual experiences, we have very powerful role models in both directions. We can point to Albert Einstein in one direction, and St. John of the Cross in the other. Yet the great majority of us are never going to reach the heights in either, either because we don’t have the ability, the time, the means, the money or the training. To be a mystic like St. John of the Cross then one needs a lot of “desert time”, free of other responsibilities. To be a genius like Einstein, one needs both the gifts and the time to spend our entire lives on purely intellectual questions.

So we’re caught between a rock and a hard place. Which way should we expend our efforts - an intellectual foray into theology, creationism vs. evolution, dogmatics? Or should we seek the interior life, with limited time and a lot of outside pressures to contend with?

As someone who realises that I ought to do far more meditation than I do (in the Christian sense), I also suspect that if I did, God might give me some “intellectual answers” anyway, since He is the fount of all knowledge.

In the meantime however we are caught in this dialectic confrontation between the demands of spirituality and intellectual development. It is one thing to have an intellectual belief that God is Three Persons - it is another thing to know that is the truth. That can only come by some sort of spiritual experience.
Click to expand...
 
St_Francis said:
Ah, yes. Oir society highly values intellectual pursuits and we have a lot of push in that direction, but it is not built on a foindation of humility and the idea of learning more about God’s creation; it is built instead initially on a sort of generalized pride (“Man can do all things”) which becomes a particular pride in ourselves as we develop our skills.
Click to expand...
This is a great insight into the secular world. It does indeed move people away from God. And yes, the pride in intellectualism is the greatest of the seven deadly sins. We rely on ourselves instead of God.
 
Robert_Sock said:
Is intellectualism like a false god when taken to the extreme? Is this why there are so many atheists in the sciences?

What is the relationship between intellectualism and spiritual experience? My experiences suggest it is negative. At the very least I think there is a qualitative difference between intellectualism and spiritual experiences (intellectualism has its own rewards). Are the folks here on the philosophy forum at risk of decreasing their spirituality?

I can’t help but think of lowly monks and hermits, many of whom sought the desert as a means of escaping the hustle and intellectualism in an academic life, experience an extra special spirituality!
Click to expand...
I think Thomas Aquinas would disagree,

lonergan.org/?cat=31&paged=3
 
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