A few years ago, I was making a holy hour of adoration in front of the blessed sacrament. (That’s Catholic speak for I was praying in front of the Host that we believe is the body of Christ.) I was contemplating a troublesome question. Can’t remember exactly what I was thinking about, but whatever it was an answer came to me. But then I was left wondering, “Where did that answer come from?” It occurred to me that there may be no realization without revelation; i.e., we can’t realize anything unless it is revealed to us by something outside of us—The Holy Spirit?
I had been teaching an Argument class at the local community college for a while and I was pondering on the Logos, Pathos, and Ethos elements of persuasion. My understanding is that logos is basically logic and reason. We all know that you can make a perfectly logical argument, but that doesn’t mean your listener will agree with you.
One reason they won’t agree is because of pathos—Passion. They just don’t like the conclusion that is made from your perfectly logical, tidy argument. Maybe it causes them discomfort; it might require them to lose something, whether that loss be a lifestyle or just an argument. Or, maybe, we all just have different taste in opinions the way we have different tastes in food. (Of course it can’t be said that one who has a strong taste for junk food is better than the one who has a taste for carrots and broccoli, if such a person exists.)
It shouldn’t be the case that we allow emotions to override logic, but it is. If an argument is sound (deductively) or at least nearly 99.9% confident (inductively) we should be fine with it. We should be happy that we found “the truth.” We should delight in truth. However, we are seldom happy with it. Truth is often pesky and pernicious; it makes us uncomfortable or requires something uncomfortable from us. Truth can be rather distasteful, like broccoli. And so, we allow emotions to cloud the argument and push the logic away; e.g., we eat a donut instead of celery.
How similar this must be to the Holy Trinity. Perhaps we could think of the trinity in this way: God the father as Love (pathos–think of the jealous God of the old Testament), God the son as logic (logos—”In the beginning was the Word [logos] and the word was with God…through him all things were made”), and God the Holy Spirit as communion (ethos—in argument, if you appeal to ethos when you relate to someone and get their trust).
I need to explain the third piece, communion, better. That’s the realization I came to in adoration. We have logic and we have emotions to persuade us to believe something. But they are insufficient. One of them always—or often—seems to win out over the other. There needs to be a third part of the spiritual life. And that third part is what I can only think to call “communion.”
As humans, we need communion with God in order to make right use of our reason and emotions. If we have only logic and refuse any emotional response to the argument, it would be like Jesus pushing aside God the father. If we act only out of love despite what reason tells us, it would be as if God the Father were ignoring Jesus.
Why do we do that then? Why do we often focus on one or the other, logic or passion? Perhaps it’s because we don’t allow the Holy Spirit to interpret for them. The 16th century definition of Wit was the ability to hold two opposite ideas in the mind without judging or dismissing one of them. There often seems to be conflict between emotions and reason, and I propose that only one thing can keep them married, communion.
I like to think of the Trinity as analogous to perpetual energy. The three parts of the Holy Trinity share and never hold back anything from the other. Therefore, there is no diminishment or reduction of power. Isaiah 55:11: “I send it [the word, Logos] out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.” God says do. Jesus does. That command returns back to the father having worked its purpose and producing fruit for the will of God which the Holy Spirit uses to converse with us.
Communion with God is the thing that balances logic and emotion. And that is what we lost in the garden, communion. Let us return to communion and in doing so, balance reason with emotion.
Come Holy Spirit,
fill the hearts of your faithful
and kindle in them the fire of your love.
Send forth your Spirit
and they shall be created.
And You shall renew the face of the earth.
RL Martin 