The Primacy of the Intellect
one
The Primary Power of the Human Soul is the Intellect
a. Man is classically defined not as a feeling creature, nor even as a free creature – but first of all as an intelligent, rational creature.
b. What makes us the kind of living creature we are is our intellect, which is the faculty of the soul that is directed to knowing the truth.
c. It’s only the intellect that makes it possible for us to be moral at all.
i. We don’t expect elephants or sharks or houseflies to behave morally – because they aren’t rational.
ii. So it’s the intellect that’s the foundation for everything else. It’s our capacity to know the truth the grounds our capacity to be good.
1. Which means if we’re lazy about knowing the truth, then really we won’t ever be able to fulfill any other fundamental aspect of our humanity.
two
Truth and the Will
a. Our Lord tells us that the truth will set us free.
i. And, of course, that’s true.
ii. We aren’t free to choose among different options if we don’t know what our options are.
1. We aren’t free to do math if we haven’t learned math; we aren’t free to write if we don’t know how to write.
2. More importantly, we’re not free to love if we’ve never thought about what it actually means to love; we aren’t free to follow Christ if we’ve never been told about Christ or taught what He expects of us.
b. Plato reports Socrates as saying that the unexamined life is not worth living – and the Scriptures tell us that there is no one God loves except the one who dwells with Wisdom (Wisdom 7:28).
i. To live without the proper use of the intellect is like entering an archery tournament with your eyes closed.
1. You can’t aim your arrow without the clear vision of the eyes, and you can’t aim your life without the clear vision of your intellect.
2. So are you disciplining your intellect to be able to cultivate the wisdom, the insight into truth, that should be directing your life?
three
Truth and the Passions
a. An intellectual failure to understand truth will result in a misdirected will – you won’t know what you should choose
i. But it will also result in a misdirected emotional life – you won’t know what you should feel.
1. Take an easy particular example: if an adult raises his hand to give a kid a high five, and the kid isn’t familiar with that gesture, and misunderstands it to mean the adult is about to hit him, he’ll feel fear instead of pleasure
b. So too, if you don’t understand that this world is a good place, and that you are good, and that Your Heavenly Father is good.
i. If you misunderstand the world to be a threatening, indifferent place – where no one cares about you and you have to compete just to survive as long as possible before you inevitably die and the earth closes over your casket and that’s it
1. If your intellect has formed that kind of false vision of reality, then you’re probably not going to feel too good about life.
a. Which is a real shame. Because the truth about life is really delightful.
i. But you have to know that truth to experience that delight.
four
The Pleasure of the Intellect: Knowing the Truth
a. Thomas Aquinas wrote that the greatest of all pleasures is knowing the truth.
i. You might be skeptical of that claim, but when you think about it actually seems like, even in our day, St. Thomas is proven to be right.
b. What do people spend all their leisure time online doing?
i. Blogs, social media posts, TED talks, news-news-news
1. More than dramas, more than movies, more than fiction – more than even pornography – most of us spend our time reading up on the scoop – learning the facts – trying to understand.
ii. Now granted, the kind of understanding we’re pursuing, the kind of truth we’re indulging in, is usually pretty low-grade
1. Celebrity gossip, trolling friends on social media, news that makes us scared and angry.
c. But the point is, when we don’t have anything else to do, we’re most likely to explore some source of information. We want to know. We like to know. We enjoy finding out the truth.
i. So the pursuit of truth doesn’t have to just be an obligation (which it is!). It can also become the greatest pleasure in your life.
five
Christ as the Truth
a. Jesus Christ called Himself the Way, the Truth and the Life.
i. As the Catechism says, “In Jesus Christ, the whole of God’s truth has been made manifest.” (#2466).
1. When you know the truth about Jesus, you know the overarching truth about the world which was made by Him, the human race, which was redeemed by Him, and the final destiny of all things, when He will come in glory to set everything right.
b. He is the Truth that empowers our will to choose rightly
i. By His example, by His teaching, and by His grace, He is the one who enables us to do what is right.
c. He is the Truth that shows how we should feel
i. What we should hope for, what we should fear, what we should enjoy and what we should be sad about.
d. And lastly, He is the Truth whom it is our supreme delight to know.
i. We said that the greatest delight in human life comes from knowing the truth. But certainly a competitor of that delight is the delight one has in the personal relationship with true friend.
ii. And now you don’t have to choose between truth and friendship – because Jesus is the Truth, and Jesus is a Person
1. He is the Friend who Reveals Everything.
iii. He is the fulfillment of our intellect, will and passions – and the supreme delight of our eternity.
iv. So set your intellect to know Him, to know everything about Him – and everything else will be added unto you.