The Key to the Door Out of the Iron Cage of the Secularist Mentality

It is for real freedom, and not the false freedom of modern secular liberalism, that Christ has set us free. (Gal. 5:1)

The key to the "door of faith" out of the "iron cage" of seculariism is reason.  But not just any kind of reason.  Modern reason--erroneously constrained by a mathematico-empirical chain--cannot think about God.  It is, as Pope Benedict XVI noted in his Regensburg Lecture, "deaf to the divine."  Pope Benedict XVI insists that this "modern self-limitation of reason," a "reduction of the radius of . . . reason," has to be questioned.  Recovery of what we might call greater reason is the key which, if used, invites us to the threshold of the "door of faith," and invites us to unlock that door and take a step across the threshold into freedom by the "obedience of faith."  (Rom. 1:5; 16:26)  This is the way out of the "iron cage."

CORPUS CHRISTI, TX (Catholic Online) - In my prior article, "Living in the Iron Cage of Secularist Mentality," I wrote about the "iron cage" of a modernity which pressures us to live fully secularized lives in the civil and political realms, to live in these public realms as if God did not exist. 

In the "iron cage," everything is rationalized: only science, technology, statistics, and the invisible hand of the market seem to count.  All this empirical reality is regulated by an overweening scientific and political bureaucracy which rejects the natural law, and whose regnant ethos is one of utilitarianism, the marketplace, and slippery, meaningless "rights." 

Add up benefits of abortion, subtract costs of abortion; if the sum's positive it's good.  Everything is up for sale, even the remains of dead fetuses can be marketed to make anti-wrinkle cream.  Rights have no basis in nature; they are merely ways of expressing what we like; they are boo-hurrah rights.

There are no absolutes in the "iron cage" except that there are no absolutes, and there is no Absolute One whose voice--whether in Nature or Revelation--must be heeded. 

Modern secular liberalism no longer believes in the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," and so at heart it is deeply against the better angels of American traditions.  If modern secular liberalism did believe in the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," then the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" would be part of public discourse, part of our institutions, and part of our laws.  And they plainly are not.

If we believed in the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," our culture would be different, our media would be different, our civil society would be different, our families would be different, our social and political discourse would be different, and our laws would be different.  And not only different, but better.

Using doublespeak, the secular liberal regime under which we live puts all of us--including Christians--in this social, cultural, and political "iron cage" suggesting that within it we will all be more free and more equal, and things will be better.  In reality, however, this political legerdemain robs us of our greater freedom to live lives in full conformity with the truths of reason and the truths of faith.  In reality, we live much worse.

Moreover, in the end we are all equally unfree, just like prisoners are equal in their unfreedom.

Thankfully, there is a way out of the "iron cage," and it is the "door of faith."  (Acts 14:27)  It is this image--faith as a door or portal out of a cage--that is at the heart of Pope Benedict XVI's apostolic letter Porta fidei, which indicated the intent to celebrate a "Year of Faith."

But before we can talk about the "door of faith"--something we will do in the next article--we have to talk about the key to the "door of faith."

The key to the "door of faith" is reason.  But not just any kind of reason.

The reason that is the key to the door of faith is not the empirical reason of Descartes and the Enlightenment--the ratio and scientia--of the "iron cage."  That's the kind of reason that landed us there to begin with.

Modern reason--erroneously constrained by a mathematico-empirical chain--cannot think about God.  It is, as Pope Benedict XVI noted in his Regensburg Lecture, "deaf to the divine."  Pope Benedict XVI insists that this "modern self-limitation of reason," a "reduction of the radius of . . . reason," has to be questioned.

To get to the "key of reason" that allows us access to the "door of faith," human reason must be freed from the modern shackles that restrict it.  As part of our effort to escape the "iron cage," there must be a "broadening our concept of reason and its application."  We have to have the "courage to engage the whole breadth of reason," and reject the "denial of its grandeur," as Benedict XVI stated in his Regensburg Lecture.

We have to recover what we might call greater reason.  The rejection of this greater reason is the result of what Benedict XVI in his Regensburg Lecture called the "dehellenization of Christianity."  The restrictions placed on this greater reason are part of what landed us in the "iron cage."  So it follows that recovery of this greater reason is the key to the portal that will lead us out of it.

What modern reason has to do is open up and accept as givens "the rational structure of matter and the correspondence between our spirit and the prevailing rational structures of nature as a given."  Once freed from the restrictions placed upon it by moderns, we come to see that human reason is greater, can comprehend more, than moderns recognize.

The Church has great confidence in this greater reason.  As Benedict XVI explained in his Regensburg Lecture, "the Church has always insisted that between God and us, between his eternal Creator Spirit and our created reason there exists a real analogy." 

In other words, there is an analogy--the analogy of being--between God and his creation, and human reason has access to this analogy, and so has some access to God, both that He is, and what He is.

It is true that created reason goes only so far--it cannot comprehend God.  As St. Augustine said in one of his sermons, if you comprehend it, it is not God . . . . To comprehend him is entirely impossible." 

Pope Benedict XVI agrees with St. Augustine, and in his Regensburg Lecture cites to the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 which stated that the unlikeness between God and what our reason tells us about God remains infinitely greater than its likeness.

Yet--and here's the critical point--though our reasoned thoughts about God are infinitely more unlike God than like God, the infinite unlikeness between God and our thoughts of Him does not extend "to the point of abolishing analogy and its likeness" says the Pope.

What Benedict XVI means by that is that our created reason is not so weak that it has utterly no capacity to know God at all.  Though we cannot comprehend God with our reason, we are not doomed to be entirely ignorant of God.  As St. Augustine puts it in the same sermon where he insists reason cannot comprehend God, we are still able to "touch some part of God through one's mind," to attain a bit of truth about God by reason, something which is a "great blessing."

So what's needed to get out of the "iron cage" is not just reason, but a greater reason, such as that found in the metaphysical philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, what Benedict XVI in his Regensburg Lecture called the "Greek inquiry," which as Aristotle noted is engendered by wonder.

This greater reason--what the medieval philosophers called intellectus or contemplation--though rejected by the moderns, is found in raw form in common sense and in polished form in what is called the perennial philosophy.  This greater reason is what St. Paul refers to when he states in his epistle to the Romans: "For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made."  (Rom. 1:20)

This greater reason "bears within itself a demand for 'what is perennial valid and lasting.'  This demand constitutes a permanent summons, indelibly written into the human heart, to set out to find the One whom we would not be seeking had he not already set out to meet us."  Porta fidei, 10.

That is why this greater reason must be set free, because if it is freed it will seek God.

The desire for God is writ in our hearts which seem willy nilly to hanker after God, the Absolute Good.  Our hearts are restless, St. Augustine famously said in his Confessions, until they find rest in God.  Even before one is given the gift of faith, this greater reason allows some guidance to those "sincerely searching for the ultimate meaning and definitive truth of their lives and of the world."  Porta fidei, 10.

The beginning of the way out of the "iron cage" of modernity is to find the key of greater reason, since this sort of greater reason "is an authentic 'preamble' to the faith, because it guides people onto the path that leads to the mystery of God."  Porta fidei, 10.

This sort of greater reason is the key which, if used, invites us to the threshold of the "door of faith," and invites us to unlock that door and take a step across the threshold into freedom by the "obedience of faith."  (Rom. 1:5; 16:26)  This act of faith is an internal act of graced assent to the truths that God has revealed because God has revealed them.  It is these truths which the Church has with great care handed down in the Scriptures and in Tradition.  That will be the subject of our next article.

Using the "key of reason," the clave rationis, to access the "door of faith," the porta fidei, we will find the means out of this "iron cage,"  the cavea ferri.  We will be able to say to the prison's doors the words of the Psalmist:

Lift up your heads, o ye gates;
And be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors:
And the King of Glory shall enter in.

And as the iron cage door swings open, we shall know the truth of what is and what is good, and the truth of what is and what is good shall set us free.  (John 8:32)  We shall then be out of the "iron cage" and the false freedom of modern secular liberalism.

It is for real freedom, and not the false freedom of modern secular liberalism, that Christ has set us free.  (Gal. 5:1)

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Andrew M. Greenwell is an attorney licensed to practice law in Texas, practicing in Corpus Christi, Texas.  He is married with three children.  He maintains a blog entirely devoted to the natural law called Lex Christianorum.  You can contact Andrew at agreenwell@harris-greenwell.com.

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