Deception Pits Truth Against The Truth, Goodness Against The Good

Nothing guides us into error more readily than some partial truth taken out of the fullness of the truth, even as nothing guides us into sin more readily than when some relative, lesser good is inordinately grasped and seized upon as the fullness of the good. The truth is hid by the brilliant light established around the partial truth, even as the full and proper good is obscured by the dazzling glory of the lesser good. By using some aspect of the truth which is readily agreed upon by society, and combining it with some aspect of the good which society also agrees with, demagogues are able to direct people away from proper truth and goodness. In this fashion, we find truth and goodness, though coming to us in defective forms, turned into the tools by which truth and goodness are overturned.  All we have to do is see the reaction of a demagogue when questioned. They will point to the truth they possess, and say anyone who denies them and their vision must deny the truth, even as they will point to the good which they promote and say if anyone is unwilling to follow them in their moral pursuits, such disagreement can only come from opposition of the good itself. For who can deny such truth they proclaim, and who can deny the good they seek?[1]

When we encounter someone proclaiming something which is obviously erroneous or evil, we are more than likely to see through their rhetoric. Deception rarely begins with extreme positions for this very reason. Deception comes out of, and uses, elements of truth and goodness which it exploits to divert our attention away from the error being proclaimed. To be sure, the more deception is accepted and is treated as truth, the further deception will take us away from the fullness of the truth, but again, all deception plays with and tries to present itself as the truth, using as much of the truth as it can. In Christian doctrine, heresy is the promotion of some exaggerated element of the truth which leads to the rejection of some other elements of the truth; in this way, heresy uses the truth in its favor, even as it misleads those who believe it. We can see how this principle works in action by examining classical Christological heresies.

Arians rightfully saw the personal distinction between Father and Son, but confused the distinction, turning it into an essential or substantial differentiation of the Father from the Son. With this simple twist, the Father became the creator of the Son, while the Son was declared to be first and greatest creature made by the Father. Arians consistently proclaimed and pointed to the distinctions between the Father and the Son, and said anyone who would dare disagree with them were disagreeing with such distinctions as they demonstrated could be found in Scripture. They forced their misunderstanding of what personal relations mean into their interpretations. And yet, because they could and did use what is true, the relative differentiation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, they could charge their opponents of rejecting the truth. They would keep the focus on a readily agreed upon and understood truth as the tool which they used (or rather, abused) in order to render an erroneous conclusion about the nature of God. That is, they used elements of the truth to make their case, ignoring, however, anything in Scripture and reason which would suggest the unity of the Father and Son in the Godhead, anything that is which would suggest their picture was not comprehensive enough to proclaim the truth.

Nestorians and Monophysites both accepted the divinity of the Logos, God the Son, but they misunderstood the incarnation in their own unique ways. Nestorians believed a secondary human person was employed by the Divine Son. They suggested that the Logos dwelt “inside” the man Jesus Christ, almost as if the Logos used the human person of Jesus as a willing vessel for its activities. Nestorians were right in pointing out two different natures (divine and human) being involved with Jesus Christ, but their position was not one of incarnation, that is, their declaration ended up denying the Divine Son assumed human nature. Rather, their position is anti-incarnational and docetical; the human person, Jesus, was put on by the Logos like a piece of clothing, making it external and not one with him. They were right in taking interest in the humanity of Jesus Christ, in showing his human character, his human conditioning, and as far as that goes, what they said was well and good. Indeed, such observations were necessary complements to traditional theology, where his humanity, while accepted, was not properly examined and left out of serious theological discussion. But when such truth became over-emphasized, when they did not understand how that human life was united with the Divine Logos, when they could not believe it was one and the same subject being talked about when discussing the Logos and Jesus Christ, their interest in the humanity of Jesus became exaggerated and that led to a rejection the hypostatic union. The Monophysites, recognizing the divinity of the person of Jesus, over-emphasized that divinity, pointed to it in all their discussion, making the humanity of Christ vanish. This can be seen in the way Monophysite theologians explained the incarnation by suggesting that the humanity of Jesus was absorbed by the divinity similar to the way a grain of salt is absorbed by the ocean: it entirely vanished, making it more than superfluous, raising the question of what the point of the incarnation was all about if the humanity, once taken on, would disappear all so quickly. Again, with the Monophysites, we can see an element of the truth was proclaimed, the divinity of the person of Jesus, but it was used to subvert the fullness of truth by neglecting what the assumption of humanity implied for the Logos. Anyone who questioned or denied their interpretation would be made to look as if they denied the truth that “Jesus is God,” a truth which they knew had been proclaimed dogmatically and so had to be accepted for orthodoxy. What the Monophysites failed to do is take the fullness of the truth of the incarnation seriously, ignoring the complement to the divinity of Jesus in his humanity, a humanity which, thanks to the hypostatic union, was one with the divine Logos and would exist with him forever. They took and held a particular truth and used it to squash the fullness of truth, relying upon the simplicity of their position as being more comprehensible to the ordinary person as a means of convincing them.

And such is the way all heresy goes, the truth is reduced to some common, easily accepted and understood concept rather than accepting and engaging the greater, transcendent mystery which is found in the fullness of the truth, because for finite minds, the infinite truth must always remain a mystery, and anything else, anything which tries to simplify the paradox of infinite truth into a simple proposition, will gut the truth of its proper content. Those who promise the fullness of truth coming to us in a way which we can comprehend will already show themselves to be closed to the fullness of the truth and ready to lead us astray.

Similarly, as the truth is united with the good, so we find simplified presentations of the good to likewise end up being anything but good. Even something which is known to be good can be used against the good itself. This is especially true when we desire some good, but for the wrong reasons, and seek it in the wrong ways (while most know the ends do not justify the means, we must also realize that the ends do not justify bad intentions, either). This is true, not only in moral questions we face in our day to day life, but also, and more importantly, in our relationship with the good in our spiritual formation. We find a great example of this in the works of St. Teresa of Avila, where she sought to help and direct a woman who desired a particular good, frequent communion, but for all the wrong reasons, making the reception of communion itself harmful to her.[2] This woman appeared to be a very holy woman according to many who saw her, and all she did, was believed by them to be good. She received daily communion, going from church to church, but had no proper spiritual direction to make sure she was doing so for the good of her soul. She took communion, thinking it was a right, and a need, so much so, she would be angry if a priest told her she should abstain from communion for one reason or another. St Teresa recorded that when that woman got so sick, and she was dying, she asked for a priest come to her for daily mass. When he thought she might not be spiritually prepared for communion and told her to abstain, he was severely lambasted by her on the day she died. That priest, so scandalized by the incident, he told Teresa what had happened. In her reflection on the incident, Teresa saw the inspiration of the devil behind the woman’s desires, that they were not entirely good and pure, and this could be seen in the way she was unwilling to obey the recommendations given to her for her own spiritual good the spiritual directors she went to for advice. She was too self-willed, and so the reception of communion was for her, a promotion of that self-will instead of the aid to charity and love which it should have been.

St Teresa wrote of this example to indicate how we can improperly take communion for selfish reasons, that self-love could merge with such a good act to lead a soul astray. She even admitted that she suffered some of the same self-love in herself and had to learn obedience in order to make sure she did not improperly partake of communion:

Our self-love, too, can get mixed in with these experiences. It has happened to me sometimes that when I saw others receiving Communion just after I had received myself (to the point that the sacred species must have been still intact), I would desire not to have received so as to receive again. Since this happened to me so many times, I came afterward to notice (for at the time it didn’t seem to me there was anything to give careful attention to) how the desire came more from wanting my own satisfaction than from love of God.[3]

St Teresa further explained how the emotional, sensual impact of receiving communion was involved with her inappropriate desire: she had already received communion, the graces offered from them were still with her, God was still within her soul. She ignored what God was doing and wanted the external, sensual delight. If self-will, therefore, could and did lead her away from the proper reception of communion, ignoring what God was doing for her, then others, too, can easily be swayed to such self-love, and use it to confuse them to take communion inappropriately. Thus, we find what is good, even what is of the greatest good, can be used to reinforce what is evil, and to make sure no spiritual development occurs.  Spiritual direction and obedience to that direction is necessary more than frequent communion. Evil can and even uses a love for God as a means to turn the soul around:

Believe me, it is clear that a love of God (I do not mean that it really is love but that in our opinion it is) that so stirs the passions that one ends up offending the Lord, or so alters the peace of the enamoured soul that no attention is paid to reason, is in fact self-seeking. And the devil will be on the alert to afflict us when he thinks he can do us more harm, as he did to this woman. [4]

Evil is devious. It will lead souls astray by any means necessary, especially by co-opting what is good and using it for its own defective end. Communion, which is one of the greatest gifts God gives us, can be abused by us when we do not properly reverence God and follow through with the spiritual life God would have us have as a result of our communion. It has an important role in our spiritual life, because it is our spiritual food; through it, we are given the grace needed to engage day to day life, however, if we do not cooperate with grace and follow through with the way God would have us engage it, then it can be used for our spiritual harm. The fault is not with God, because God has set up the structure and guidance necessary for us to receive properly; the fault is ours, because we do not take God seriously. We do not take pride, and with it, all the sins which flow from it seriously, so we ignore how they warp our engagement with grace. We are called to take up the cross and die to the self, but pride tells us to take the self off the cross and to lift it up to the world as a thing to be glorified as it is. Self-glorification leads to perdition, and partaking of communion is one of many ways we can try to glorify ourselves in the eyes of others. And likewise, not just with communion, but any false sense of piety which is used to receive adulation, reinforces he pride which harms our soul.

From what has been said about communion, it should be obvious that there are many objective goods which could be done so to help our souls as we progress along the path of life, that could become subjective evils by the way we embrace them. If we try to elevate ourselves by some doing some apparent good, while the good could be achieved, the evil within the act, the evil intention behind the act, will work for our own spiritual destruction. Good could be done to help others, good which could encourage others to follow with the good and find their way to God, and still have those who do the good subjectively embrace evil. It is easy to use an objective good which has been accomplished to ignore any subjective questions behind the act. If I give food to the poor, though they might find faith in God through such an action, I might be doing it just to look good in front of others, to get their praises, to elevate myself in worldly affairs because of such adulation. In such a circumstance, my heart would be with the good I believe I get out of my actions, setting myself up in the pride which obliterates my relationship with God. This, after all, was a criticism Jesus gave to some of the Pharisees of his day: they were so concerned about looking holy, they ignored holiness itself:

And the Lord said to him, “Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of extortion and wickedness. You fools! Did not he who made the outside make the inside also? But give for alms those things which are within; and behold, everything is clean for you.

“But woe to you Pharisees! for you tithe mint and rue and every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others.

“Woe to you Pharisees! for you love the best seat in the synagogues and salutations in the market places.

“Woe to you! for you are like graves which are not seen, and men walk over them without knowing it.” (Luke 11:39 – 44)

Jesus, we see, admonished the Pharisees by showing what objective good they have achieved was spiritually nothing. It was not a denial of the limited good that they had done, but it was a demonstration that such good was not enough, that, when compared to the good itself, was not really good at all. They propped themselves up by some external activity, but they did not allow the grace of the good itself penetrate them and transform them to be the holy people they pretended to be. They appeared to do good but all those appearances were done to be seen by others: like tombstones, they were monuments of their spiritual rot. Jesus was not denying their achievements. Certainly they did a lot of objective good, and people benefited from it. But the Pharisees themselves did not. They knew love for themselves, not the love for God which would have been able to make their achievements holy. We must be cautious in judging things by mere externals, especially when dealing with spiritual realities.

We can see all kinds of good accomplished by people who have been spiritually led astray. The fact we can see and talk about such good can show us good is being accomplished by them, but, such good only goes so far. The depth of the investigation must go beyond externals, if we do not want to be distracted and led astray. We can always justify evil through the accomplishment of some good which comes from it; the good could be quite good, but just as the ends never justify the means, the good accomplished is not proof that it was the good which should have been accomplished. When it is evil which is using the good for its end, we find it is only a portion of the good which was followed, used to distract us from what is unattended, trying to make us ignore the fullness of the good by the partial good which we can and do see.

And so we must end, realizing the fullness of truth and goodness is not to be found in mere external appearances of each, but in the mysterious union of  some element of truth with its fullness, of some element of the good with its fullness; if we are not to be deceived, we must look for and follow the core of truth and goodness, less we will find ourselves easily swayed by the next demagogue which comes forward proclaiming what we want to hear while they lead us away from the truth and goodness we need, not only for a just society, but for the happiness we seek here and in eternity.

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[1] This is what we see constantly in the political scene. If you disagree with some proposed solution to a problem, you are told you support the problem itself. Let is look at a few examples. If you do not believe being “tough on all crime” is the solution for each and every crime, you are told you support and believe in criminal activity. If you do not believe in unregulated capitalism, you are accused of being a socialist and that you must therefore deny free trade. If you do not believe in abortion, you are told you deny freedom to women. Finally, if you do not believe the current immigration policy is just and fair, you end up being told that you deny the right of nations to control and regulate their borders. In all circumstances, what is being claimed as a result of a certain denial is not the necessary consequence of such a denial, but political demagogues, with their simplification of truth and goodness, will try to make it appear as such.

[2] For this story, see St Teresa of Avila, “The Book of Her Foundations” in The Collected Works of St Teresa of Avila. Volume Three. trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D. and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1985), 131-2.

[3] ibid., 131.

[4] ibid., 132-3.

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