Intellectual Sloth

The most serious noetic effects of sin have to do with our knowledge of God. Were it not for sin and its effects, God’s presence and glory would be as obvious and uncontroversial to us all as the presence of other minds, physical objects, and the past. Like any cognitive process, however, the sensus divinatus (inherent sense of the divine) can malfunction; as a result of sin, it has been damaged. Our original knowledge of God and his glory is muffled and impaired; it has been replaced (by virtue of sin) by stupidity, dullness, blindness, inability to perceive God or to perceive him in his handiwork. Our knowledge of his character and his love toward us can be smothered: it can be transformed into a resentful thought that God is to be feared and mistrusted; we may see him as indifferent or even malignant.

In the traditional taxonomy of the seven deadly sins, this is sloth. Sloth is not simple laziness, like the inclination to lie down and watch television rather than go out and get the exercise you need; it is, instead, a kind of spiritual deadness, blindness, imperceptiveness, acedia, torpor, a failure to be aware of God’s presence, love, requirements.

– Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (2000), p.214-215

Christians often talk about sin. By this we can mean two things. The first is referring to the act of sinning, usually meaning morally reprehensible actions. The second is a more dark, elusive and mysterious use of the word, which refers to the brokeness and frailty of human nature and the world in which we live. The above remark is illustrative of how deep Christians believe the effects of sin (in the second sense) are felt.

Know Thyself

 

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1938)

 

Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.

– Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)

 

Humanity never achieves a clear knowledge of itself unless it has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating Him to scrutinize itself.

– John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (1560)

Taken together, these three quotes paint a rich picture of the importance and the challenge of self-knowledge. Kant suggests that having a correct and detailed knowledge of yourself is necessary for living well, but warns that gaining such knowledge is often the outcome of prolonged and painful periods of introspection. Periods in which we may come face to face with a realistic image of ourself that grieves us, disappoints us, or demands much of us. 

Wittgenstein adds that such knowledge is elusive and hard to come by. It is hidden behind a misleading web of images that we construct about ourselves, and in order to grasp it we need to stop lying to ourselves. It is as though we know that coming face to face with ourselves very well may cause us pain like Kant suggests, and so our minds grab readily onto deceit to avoid this pain. 

Calvin suggests that the most important way in which can free ourselves from such deceit is by ensuring that we do not engage in introspection without first considering our being and place compared with God, and indeed not before contemplating God alone. If we do this, Calvin envisions us coming to terms with our smallness, our finitude, our limits and our weaknesses which we try to keep from ourselves. Without contemplating God, there is little hope of our escaping the deceit Wittgenstein suggests is our default position.

What I love about these three quotes taken together is the similarity between Kant and Calvin in emphasising the ethical direction of self-knowledge, and the sober warning from Wittgenstein. Do you think these quotes establish the importance of introspection and frame it in the right way? Is a right knowledge of oneself necessary for living well, and so something we ought to be chasing after?