We've Gotten Reason and Mystery Reversed

Christianity makes you think harder than logic

Driving my dogs around this weekend, I heard an old episode of Fr. Benedict Groeschel on EWTN radio. Something he said has occupied my mind every free moment since. “Reason,” he said, “must be subject to mystery.”

Reason must be subject to mystery.

—Fr. Benedict Groeschel

Dwell on that for a moment.

As I listened, I expected him to end the sentence with “faith.” That would have made sense. But “mystery?” What could that possibly mean?

I could have listened to the rest of the show and heard Fr. Groeschel unpack it, but why do that when I can ponder the idea myself. This is the kind of idea that a mind can get lost in.

First, I just rolled the idea over in my mind. “Subject reason to mystery.” What does it it mean to “subject” one thing to another thing?

If you search “subject as verb” on the internet, you get a long list of articles about subject-verb agreement. No help.

So you think about analogies. What else have heard or read that uses “subject” as a verb?

There’s the obvious one. “The victim was subjected to hours of torture.” (I’ll let a psychologist figure out why my mind went to torture.) It’s a good example of “subject” as a verb.

In highfalutin academic circles (which I try to avoid), you might here “subject” used the way Fr. Groeschel used it. “We must subject the statement to scrutiny.” From this we understand that “subject,” in this context, is akin to “submit,” as in “submit to testing.”

We can approximate Fr. Groeschel’s statement as “We must submit reason to mystery.” I prefer this construction because I’m more familiar with the idea of submitting something than subjecting something. So let’s work with the new construct.

Which brings us to “reason.” We can presume that Fr. Groeschel used “reason” as a gerund, as in the sense of “Age of Reason.” Now, “Age of Reason” might refer to one of two things:

1. It could be the age at which a person is capable of reason and, therefore, accountable for his own actions.

2. It could also refer to the historical Age of Reason—the Enlightenment.

The latter meaning is more fun to think about, so we’ll go with that. “Reason” in this sense means “to form conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises.” In the Age of Reason, people became somewhat scientific. They took nothing on faith. They “subjected” long-held beliefs to scientific scrutiny. (Most of that “science” was a spurious as today’s science, but they thought they were being very scientific—or reasoned—nonetheless)

Let’s further presume that Fr. Groeschel meant that we must submit to mystery the practice of forming conclusions from facts.

(Bear with me. We’re getting to the good stuff!)

So, what might the good, late Father have meant by “mystery?”

It’s unlikely Fr. Groeschel was speaking of a kind of drama. Rather, he was talking about theological mysteries. And, to prepare our minds for what comes next, let’s look to the Catholic Encyclopedia.¹ (Sorry for the long quote, here, but this is really important to understand.)

Here’s the short definition of mystery (all bold added):

This term signifies in general that which is unknowable, or valuable knowledge that is kept secret. In pagan antiquity the word mystery was used to designate certain esoteric doctrines, such as Pythagoreanism, or certain ceremonies that were performed in private or whose meaning was known only to the initiated, e.g., the Eleusinian rites, Phallic worship. In the language of the early Christians the mysteries were those religious teachings that were carefully guarded from the knowledge of the profane.²

This gives us a good definition of mystery: that which is unknowable or kept secret.

Then, we start getting closer to theological mystery:

In conformity with the usage of the inspired writers of the New Testament, theologians give the name mystery to revealed truths that surpass the powers of natural reason.

Did you catch that? There’s “reason” again. Save that thought.

Mystery, therefore, in its strict theological sense is not synonymous with the incomprehensible, since all that we know is incomprehensible, i.e., not adequately comprehensible as to its inner being; nor with the unknowable, since many things merely natural are accidentally unknowable, on account of their inaccessibility, e.g., things that are future, remote, or hidden. In its strict sense a mystery is a supernatural truth, one that of its very nature lies above the finite intelligence.³

In other words, mystery is that which we are aware but cannot comprehend because our human brains are incapable of fully understanding it. Let’s dig deeper, because mystery is the spice of life.⁴

Theologians distinguish two classes of supernatural mysteries: the absolute (or theological) and the relative. An absolute mystery is a truthwhose existence or possibility could not be discovered by a creature, and whose essence (inner substantial being) can be expressed by the finite mind only in terms of analogy, e.g., the Trinity. A relative mystery is a truth whose innermost nature alone (e.g., many of the Divine attributes), or whose existence alone (e.g., the positive ceremonial precepts of the Old Law), exceeds the natural knowing power of the creature.⁵

Okay, this is a lot to think about, but don’t think about it now. Let’s just presume that Fr. Groeschel was talking about both absolute and relative mysteries.

If we rewrite his sentence using something like the definitions of the words he used in the way we presume he meant to use them, we get something like:

"We must submit our fact-based conclusions to truths whose existence could not be discovered by creatures because of our finite ability to form conclusions from facts.”

In other words, we must subordinate the finite to the infinite.

Now, can you see why his statement is so powerful? It’s the inversion of what we’ve been taught for 400 years. Schools—even Catholic schools—teach us that we must subject our faith to reason. We must subject Mystery to reason. But Groeschel is saying the opposite. He’s saying we must subject reason to mystery.

To submit mystery to reason is to make the finite greater than the infinite. But logic dictates that the finite must be inferior to the infinite because the infinite includes the finite and more. Infinitely more.

In other words, reason, as we think of it is, demands we submit reason to mystery. If you were taught differently, like I was, you were taught wrong. You should demand your tuition money back.

“Subject reason to mystery” does not mean “don’t do science.” Nor does it mean ignore facts and believe anything. Rather, it says that scientific conclusions (which is a misnomer to begin with) must be tested againts mystery.

Why does this statement so fascinate me? Because the inverted way we’ve been taught to think is the cause of all of the problems of modernity. Everything the modern world struggles with results from trying to make reason the master of mystery. Our modern minds HATE mystery. We want ANSWERS. We want weights and measures and precision. When we meet a mystery, we replace it with an algorithm and, voilà, no mystery!

But what have we heard so often in the last two years? Two statements, often delivered by the same person in the same paragraph, that sound perfectly reasonable to the modern mind.

1. “Trust the science.”

2. “The science changed.”

If science changes, then how can it be the superior of Mystery, which doesn’t change? And why should we trust it?

Theological mysteries do not change, because theological mysteries are infinite. It is impossible for the infinite to change because it already encompasses all and manifests all simultaneously. Infinity is truth. And the Truth is Jesus Christ, God and man. Creator and Creature. Wholly finite and wholly infinite.

The Age of Reason, when some egomaniacs in Europe decided they, creatures, would not submit to mystery, gave Freemasonry, the Reign of Terror, Hitler, Stalin, and Dr. Fauci. By inverting the logical order—infinite < finite—we perverted everything.

While you and I cannot make the world reject the lessons of the Age of Reason and go back to the proper ordering, we can learn to live a rightly ordered life by thinking in a rightly ordered way. We don’t have to reject science—we have to subject it to the Eternal Mystery—God is infinite and created us out of love. God became finite by becoming man. He subjected Himself to humanity’s finite understanding, suffering torture and death on the cross, only to retain His infinity in the Resurrection of His glorified body. In so doing, He freed us from the confines of the finite and gave us a path to infinity—if we choose to follow it.

The Age of Reason chose a different, wide path built with reason and science. As for me, I’m turning back to the narrow one.

1. McHugh, J. (1911). Mystery. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved October 24, 2022 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10662a.htm

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. You might object, saying, “Bill, variety is the spice of life!” Variety has always been a mystery to me.

5. McHugh, J. (1911). Mystery. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved October 24, 2022 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10662a.htm