Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [127]
Compulsive intellectual or spiritual independence diminishes freedom
If this independence complex—taken in its general and material sense—is a bad enough thing, a similar attitude in regard to one’s intellectual or spiritual possessions is even more to be warned against. It is utterly unreasonable to shy at the idea of receiving any intellectual help or guidance from others, to insist on working out one’s ideas all by oneself and to remain uninfluenced throughout.
Certainly, again, we do well to endeavor to keep our minds shut to all illegitimate influences—the suasions of suggestion, the techniques aimed at producing an impression, etc.—but nothing could be falser than to extend this wholesome caution into resenting the intellectual help of others communicating genuine new values to us, and lifting us to a higher level, as an encroachment upon our spiritual independence.
The desire to elaborate one’s outlook all by oneself is a typical offspring of pride, and entirely at variance with the mind’s true attention to its object. For if we are really concentrated, as we should be, on the purpose (the only justified one as far as our intellectual pursuits are concerned) of enriching our vision of the values and of widening our access to the truth, we shall care little about whether we achieve this through our own forces or with the help of strangers—a question of no objective relevancy at all.
But, generally speaking, the true Christian is aware of the great extent to which he is dependent on the help of others and sees in this inescapable dependence—which is as necessary for the nourishment of a spontaneous inner life as the servile, illegitimate kind of dependence is detrimental to it—a realization of community in which he has every reason to delight.
He is aware of the heritage he receives through tradition, of all that he owes to the Liturgy and the great Doctors of the Church whose words they hand down to him. Animated by his zealous wish to be transformed in Christ, he will joyously grasp the helping hands of all those who have advanced nearer to God than he has, He desires to learn from others; nor does the consciousness of having acquired a knowledge alone, without the cooperation of anyone, fill him with particular satisfaction. For he seeks after nothing but a closer union with Christ, and is wholly unconcerned about the part played by his own forces in securing that aim.
Public opinion may limit freedom
Separate consideration, again, must be given to that form of essential unfreedom which consists in our dependence on public opinion. The views currently professed beyond the limits of a particular milieu, in the public sphere as a whole—the ideas which, at a given time, permeate the entire intellectual medium of a nation, or even of a wider zone of culture—often influence to a high degree the mental cast of such persons even as can by no means be called weaklings. Many people adopt opinions of this kind as a matter of self-evidence without probing into the question of their truth; without, indeed, confronting them with the basic principles they themselves hold. They come to share those views simply because they cannot resist the dynamism of the dominant atmosphere of their age.
In branding this as a form of illegitimate suasion, we are anxious to avoid a possible misconception. We do not mean to deny that public opinion may also act as a vehicle for men’s contact with true values, thus paving the way for their genuine and spontaneous experience of such values or value-realities as would otherwise have remained inaccessible to them.
The Christian who has received the gratuitous gift of absolute truth must beware of all illegitimate and imperceptible influences. He must not let anything pass before he has confronted it with God and His holy truth; nothing that is out of accord with the doctrine of the holy Church must