Too much belief, and too little. Unamuno, Life 4.19
Unamuno
sees Catholicism attempting to strike a balance between irrational
longing for life (mystical union with deity) and rational limitation
of our desire (sober calculation that indicates our mortality). On
the one hand, too much belief yields wild and dangerous fantasies, as
people pursue desires with abandon. On the other hand, too much
reason destroys hope, giving people no fantasy, no illusions, no
desire, and so in time no life except that of a trapped animal barely
existing. Theology exists to express and defend the value of
believing just enough—neither
too much (as mystics & gnostics do), nor too little (as
rationalists). In the final paragraph of this section, Unamuno
suggests that what really matters is not what we profess or even
think, but what we do. True Catholicism, he insinuates, might be
better taken as ethics (rituals, behavior, actions, life) than as
values (beliefs, confessions, dogma).
Y
es que el catolicismo oscila entre la mística, que es experiencia
íntima del Dios vivo en Cristo, experiencia intrasmisible, y cuyo
peligro es, por otra parte, absorber en Dios la propia personalidad,
lo cual no salva nuestro anhelo vital, y entre el racionalismo a que
combate (Véase Weizsäcker, obra citada); oscila entre ciencia
religionizada y religión cientificada. El entusiasmo apocalíptico
fué cambiando poco a poco en misticismo neoplatónico, a que la
teología hizo arredrar. Temíase los excesos de la fantasía, que
suplantaba a la fe creando extravagancias gnósticas. Pero hubo que
firmar un cierto pacto con el gnosticismo y con el racionalismo otro;
ni la fantasía ni la razón se dejaban vencer del todo. Y así se
hizo la dogmática católica un sistema de contradicciones, mejor o
peor concordadas. La Trinidad fué un cierto pacto entre el
monoteísmo y el politeísmo, y pactaron la humanidad y la divinidad
en Cristo, la naturaleza y la gracia, ésta y el libre albedrío,
éste con la presciencia divina, etc. Y es que acaso, como dice
Hermann (loco
citato), «en cuanto se desarrolla un pensamiento
religioso en sus consecuencias lógicas, entra en conflicto con otros
que pertenecen igualmente a la vida de la religión». Que es lo que
le da al catolicismo su profunda dialéctica vital. Pero ¿a qué
costa?
A
costa, preciso es decirlo, de oprimir las necesidades mentales de los
creyentes en uso de razón adulta. Exígeseles que crean o todo o
nada, que acepten la entera totalidad de la dogmática, o que se
pierda todo mérito si se rechaza la mínima parte de ella. Y así
resulta lo que el gran predicador unitariano Channing decía,
y es que tenemos en
Francia y España multitudes que han pasado de rechazar el papismo al
absoluto ateísmo, porque «el hecho es que las doctrinas falsas y
absurdas, cuando son expuestas, tienen natural tendencia a engendrar
escepticismo en los que sin reflexión las reciben, y no hay quienes
estén más prontos a creer demasiado poco que aquellos que empezaron
por creer demasiado (believing
too much)»
(«Objections
to unitarian Christianity considered»,
1816, en
The
complete works of William Ellery Channing, D. D.,
London,
1884).
Aquí está, en efecto, el terrible peligro, en creer demasiado.
¡Aunque no!, el terrible peligro está en otra parte, y es en querer
creer con la razón y no con la vida.
Catholicism
oscillates between mysticism, an intimate and intransmissible
experience of the deity alive in Christ, and rationalism, the enemy
of faith. Mysticism carries a danger potent enough to make the church
fortify herself with poisonous reason: it threatens to absorb the
individual into God, smothering our desire for life beyond any hope
of personal salvation. So the church is always becoming either a
science of worship, when she ascends to perilous mystic heights, or a
worship of science, when she uses deadly reason to come down
without losing her mind. The apocalyptic fervor of the
early church ripened over time into Neoplatonic mysticism, which
rationalizing theology checked and walked back, fearing the excessive
flights of mystic fantasy that overran and outgrew her primitive
faith, creating gnostic monstrosities. But she had to make her peace
with gnosticism, and another peace with rationalism. Neither fantasy
nor reason was allowed to conquer all her realm. And so Catholic
dogma became a system of contradictions, more or less successfully
reconciled. The Trinity was one of these: an agreement between
monotheism and polytheism. Humanity and divinity were reconciled in
the person of Christ. Nature and grace made up as well, the former
bringing free will while the latter contributed divine foreknowledge.
And so on, with results well summed in the saying of Hermann: "The
more any particular religious thought is developed, in terms of its
logical consequences, the more it enters into conflict with other
thoughts which belong just as much to the life of the religion."
This conflict is what gives Catholicism its deep and vital dialectic.
But at what cost?
The
cost, it must be said, was compromising the essential ability of
believers to exercise mature powers of reason. They were required to
choose between believing everything or nothing—forced
to accept the totality of church dogma or lose all merit by rejecting
even the least part of it. The result is what the great Unitarian
preacher Channing has observed, that France and Spain contain
multitudes whose rejection of the pope has led them to total atheism,
as "false and absurd doctrines, when they be exposed, carry the
natural tendency to foster skepticism in those who receive them
uncritically, and there are none more disposed to believe too little
than they who begin by believing too much."
Here is the great danger, indeed: believing too much. But no! The
truly great danger lies elsewhere, in the desire to believe with our
reason, and not with our lives.