Last Friday (8/2) Saint Benedict Hall hosted a back-to-school gathering for parents and tutors. We had a pre-session gathering for new parents; uniform distribution; a welcome address from the headmaster; evening prayer; dinner; fellowship; a going-over of policies and “nuts and bolts” stuff.
During dinner I, in my capacity as Dean and Chaplain, gave a brief talk on “Appetite and Education.” What follows is drawn from those notes.
After Solomon becomes king he is visited by the Lord at Gibeon. There the Lord speaks to Solomon saying, “Ask what I shall give you.” (1 Kings 3:5)
To this invitation Solomon replies, famously:
“Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil…” (1 Kings 3:9)
What does this mean, an “understanding mind”? And what about “discerning between good and evil” —what’s that? Well, it means a lot of things, actually. There are many, many different threads of meaning that we could trace here. But what I want to focus on is this idea of a “wisdom.” What does it mean to have what the scriptures call a discerning heart?
In film or television we often caricature “wisdom” by associating it with mystics, wizards; with wisened old crones who trace pentagrams with their fingers pointed to the stars, or scholars hovering over their libraries while beakers of glowing liquid boil in the background. And while I love most of the stories that contain these figures, these depictions do not quite capture the biblical idea. For “wisdom” or “a discerning heart” means more than mere fact-gathering, or esoteric knowledge —though it may appear like that at some moments.
We no longer quite have a word for it available to us in contemporary English to call it by name. I therefore want to use a Latin term, as a handy tool for naming: what the bible is often talking about when the Bible talks about “discernment” can be captured in the Latin phrase sensus aestimavitus —the sense or faculty of reckoning and evaluating from a deep or “gut” level. Let me give an example:
A stainless steel sculpture of a balloon animal rabbit measuring 41 in x 19 in x 12 in made as one of three identical sculptures in 1986 by the “artist” Jeff Koons sold in 2019 for 91 million dollars (adjusted for inflation brings the total to109 million in today’s dollar), making this piece the 2nd most expensive piece of art sold by a living artist. That is an unfathomable amount of money —especially to be spent on something like this. We can put it into some perspective with the knowledge that Van Gogh’s “Vase with Flowers” sold in 1987 for 39.7 million, which adjusted for inflation is 106.4 million.
To put it plainly: you could be the owner of the single original copy of Van Gogh’s “Vase with Flowers” and decide to sell it for a million dollars more than it is currently priced at, and still not have enough money to purchase one of three identical copies of “Rabbit” —which by the way was not actually made by Koons, but was designed by him on a computer, then given to the high-level workers in his private factory studio and made serially.
You don’t have to be an art critic (as a matter of fact its probably better if you weren’t one) to have the rumble of a modest question within you, a question that is difficult to put words to but which arises nonetheless: “What? That, that can’t be right…” Something in us protests, but we are left without recourse for justification because pop-culture, writ large, has departed from reality and has shaped appetites and our desires and our vision of artistic value and the basis of what we call beautiful in such a way that to speak against such expenditures is to become an outcast.
The problem lies deep within the sensus aestimavitus —that reckoning system that works quietly all the time within us, below the surface of our intellect informing our desires and appetites. It’s not merely “instinct” because there is a learned, often habituated, and reflective aspect to it. The act of “considering” doesn’t occur in those things which are “instincts” but I can consider which of the two good-looking race horses I’d like to purchase. Sensus aestimavitus names the convictions, impulses, discriminating measurements, unspoken things I unthinkingly pick-up on.
It is also different from mere “preferences” or “tastes.” While our culture believes the falsehood that “preferences” and “values” are synonymous, the truth is that there is a big difference between value and preference. We know this because in our own lives we can have preferences for some things even while we acknowledge the superiority of other things. For instance…
I may prefer some art to others (e.g. the textiles of William Morris over the paintings of Caravaggio) while recognizing that not all art is equal (and that Caravaggio’s Incredulity of St. Thomas is better, objectively, than Morris’ textiles).
Or, I may prefer dry south American reds over other kinds of wine while acknowledging that the Derthona Colli Tortonesi 2021 by Borgogno is a far superior wine than my beloved $7 Kirkland 2023 Costco Malbec.
Or, for sports folks, I may root for, which is to say have a taste or a preference for, the Detroit Pistons, while acknowledging that, on a whole, the Golden State Warriors are better –at least currently.
So if sensus aestimavitus is neither “instinct” nor “preference.” It is the whole faculty of the person that weighs, discerns, and measures. It helps us “estimate.” It’s what I remember about summers working for my father’s construction company. I go to go with him on a lot of estimates. I remember watching him walk the house, tapping here, checking under there, etc. I remember being amazed at how he was able to arrive at a solid estimate. I remember being surprised also, later on the project timeline, at how perfect his estimates were (and hearing him praised by his boss for knowing just the right price between competitivity and feasibility). I remember asking “Dad how do you know?” and having him shrug and explain that he’d been building and renovating houses since he was in high school and that those decades had cultivated in him the ability to judge profitability, liability, desirability, what’s most likely broken, probable timelines, fiduciary concerns, etc. —sometimes with the slimmest of explicit information.
Back to Solomon.
Sensus aestimavitus does not merely impact our artistic or hobby appetites, it impacts everything. It is the value-setting capacity of the soul. The broken (if I may say so) value system which pays an outrageous price for Jeff Koons “art” is the same value system that weighs-in on other decisions too: legal, medical, fiscal, sexual, ecclesial, ethical, educational, etc. The sensus aestimavitus is the thing in us that renders an evaluation about how things are and how things should be. And what the Bible calls a “discerning heart” is a rightly ordered, correctly formed, virtuously shaped, sensus aestimavitus.
We dwell in a culture in which the collective sensus aestimavitus has been dis-ordered and mis-shaped and bent. One could think of a lot of moral parallels to the money we spend on a stainless steel rabbit; parallels where the same lack of discernment in artistic value is evident in other costly decisions (e.g. educational policies or domestic policies).
There is a profound need, as their always is, for people like Joseph over whom Pharaoh declares: “God has showed you these things and there is not someone like you who is wise and discerning” (Gen. 41:39). Our prayer should be that of Solomon, that God, who is rich in mercy, would grant us discernment, wisdom, insight —a rightly-ordered sensus aestimavitus— that we might be able to distinguish good from evil and grow into maturity (Heb. 5:14).