Religious Truth in the Light of Bi-Logic

The history of the relationship between Christian theology and the relatively new science — or art — of psychoanalysis is a sad tale of mutual misunderstanding. This paper aims to suggest one line of thought through which mutual illumination might take place — an illumination that, for theology, may overcome some of the problems it suffers in an age dominated by scientific and empirical thinking. I shall distinguish a number of different levels of religious discourse each of which has its appropriate criteria of truth and I shall suggest that it is a confusion of these levels that makes religious speech often appear at odds with the knowledge and wisdom of our era. The tools I shall use for this distinguishing of levels are the psychoanalytic theories of Ignacio Matte Blanco.

, a Chilean, was trained as an analyst in London, was later a main founder of the Chilean Psychoanalytical Society and, later still, a member of the Italian Society and a teacher in the Postgraduate School of the Catholic University in Rome. His psychoanalytic theories were heavily influenced by his philosophical and mathematical interests and are to be found primarily in two major works, The Unconscious as Infinite Sets (Blanco, 1975) and Thinking, Feeling and Being (Blanco, 1988).

My own involvement in Matte Blanco's theories needs some explanation because I am a priest of the Church of England with no psychoanalytic training. However, my first field of study was mathematics and for that reason I was asked to join a group in London to study his first book. The group, now known as the London Bi-logic Group (and affiliated to an international network with many members in the United States), was called together primarily by two London psychoanalysts Eric Rayner and Gerald Wooster. Matte Blanco himself occasionally attended. It included analysts, both Freudian and Jungian, and therapists of various kinds, as might be expected, but also some interested in mathematics, law, economics and linguistics.