Over Intellectualizing the Catholic Faith

Dear Readers,

Its great to be writing to you again. In my absence, I've been rapidly trying to recover from a blunder I've made in the intellectual life. It is a painful mistake that arises from the best of motives. It is a mistake that comes from wanting to do good for others and in fact, objectively doing good for their souls. A mistake that leads to disappointment, dashed hopes, and ultimately isolation. I felt it myself and fear I am not alone.

We are lovers of truth, pursuers of wisdom, faithful disciples of St. Thomas. We know that seeing beautiful truths with our minds nourishes our hearts. It encourages us to continue on the road home. When we see the splendor of the truth, our minds ascent to meet the Lord, even for just a moment. The study of philosophy and theology directly bears upon and deepens our relationship with God because ultimately, the mind's ascent to God through contemplation is one of the highest forms of prayer. And this is good—it is very good.

But somewhere in my own pursuit of truth, I began to lose the very people I was trying to serve. The knowledge that was meant to be a bridge became a tower. The gift of knowledge felt like an invisible burden that no one else could help me carry. It pushed others away, especially some of my students. Yes, sharing the truth is objectively good but for me, it was far from effective. I failed to pass on the truth because I failed to love.

What follows is the testimony of Dr. Trevor Hadley—a dear friend formed by rigorous study who discovered that even the most beautiful truths can become obstacles to communion if they are not held in the right spirit. His words have been a mirror for my own soul, and I suspect they may be for yours as well. He says:

"The curse of knowledge is not merely epistemological; it is relational. And its only antidote is not better teaching but deeper love. If I want to speak again in a way that reaches hearts, I must first become someone who listens with mine. If I want to lead others into truth, I must be willing to dwell in the tension and silence where understanding has not yet bloomed. And if I want to bear witness to Christ, I must become like Him, not in intellect, but in surrender."

The good news is that this is not a rejection of our intellectual life—far from it. It is a call to listen with the heart before we speak from the mind. It is a call to abide with the other, in their experience, before we share our own. It is a call to increase the capacity to love in us before increasing the capacity to know in another.

The better news is that this is not a vague call to action but a precise skill that anyone can learn. Dr. Hadley has worked on this skill for 12 years. It changed his marriage, it changed his work relationships, it changed the way he relates to his patients. What is this skill?

Dr Hadley puts it this way:

"This means re-learning how to attune. It means noticing the tremble in someone’s voice, the pause after a question, the sideways glance of confusion. It means paying attention to the nervous system beneath the words, the limbic signals of fear, shame, hope, and yearning. It means understanding that people do not first need my theories. They need my presence. My patience. My love. "

Dr. Hadley is not the only one. It is a skill Ive single heartedly focused on mastering over the last 12 months that has been transformative to my teaching, relationships, and prayer. It is a skill that has changed the way I relate to others, I speak to them, I experience the world. My conversations are better, people are more inspired, and the truth comes out naturally like flowing water. If you learn this skill, you will have people say to you that you were the best conversation of the night, or they will reference your conversations as something that changed their minds, made them better.

This skill is harder to learn than you think. It requires time, practice and specific experiential knowledge. But it is worth it. It is a skill that is so important that Catholic seminaries (the seminaries in Denver and St. Louis, for example) require their men in formation to spend a year learning it. It is a skill so important that it is one of the most popular and valuable classes in the entire program at Stanford business school and many other MBAs as well.

The best news is that we've distilled that skill down into clear frameworks that you can put to work for yourself immediately. It is the secret weapon for anyone passionate about the truth and yearning to lead other to it. In the next article of the series, I will share exactly what the steps are to master this skill.

We will continue to be sharing articles on philosophy and theology as we all continue to cultivate greater knowledge of and love for the truth, but now, we will add the exact skills for communicating it. Adding some thomistic rizz to our thomistic tizz. Until then, please enjoy the article by Dr. Trevor Hadley.

Trevor Hadley
June 6, 2025

I didn’t mean for it to happen this way.

When I began this journey—through science, theology, medicine, philosophy, and systems

thinking—it was born of a desire to heal, to understand, to serve. I wanted to bridge gaps, to speak light into suffering, and to hold the broken pieces of the world in my hands with gentleness and clarity. But somewhere along the way, I lost something essential. The very knowledge I pursued as a tool of healing became a wall between me and the people I sought to help. And I’ve come to see this not as an intellectual failure, but as a spiritual one.

Steven Pinker calls it the curse of knowledge: the cognitive bias where those who possess expertise forget what it was like not to know. But I’ve learned that it’s not just about forgetting definitions or technical assumptions. It’s about losing the relational memory of not knowing. It’s about the inability to reenter the state of the listener’s heart, to remember how a concept first felt before it made sense, to recall the bewilderment and fear that can hide beneath ignorance.

This isn’t just a mistake in teaching, it’s a rupture in communion.

In every field, from medicine to theology, law to finance, academia to politics, this curse takes root. It isolates specialists in towers of language that feel safe to them but are alien to everyone else. Sometimes it’s wielded as a weapon—to protect institutional power, to obfuscate responsibility, or to elevate the speaker with a sense of superiority. But more often, it’s simply a consequence of forgetting. We forget how we came to know what we know. We forget the road that formed us. We forget the cost of the journey.

And when that forgetting takes hold, we lose our ability to communicate, not just in writing or public speaking, but in marriage, in friendship, in church. Not because we lack the facts, but because we lack the felt resonance. We stop noticing when others go silent. We stop listening for the shifts in their breath or the flicker of confusion in their eyes. We press on with our logic, unaware that we’ve already left them behind.

And if I’m honest, this is no longer just a professional challenge. It’s become a personal wound. I see it in my inability to connect with neighbors, with friends, with my own family. I see it in my marriage, when my words fall flat and my presence feels abstract. I see it in my spiritual community, where theological truth feels more like argument than incarnation. What I once thought was a gift—this relentless drive to master ideas—has become the very thing that isolates me.

It is not merely a curse of the cortex. It is a fracture of the soul.To communicate well is not just to speak clearly; it is to attune. And attunement requires more than intellect—it requires intention, attention, humility, and love. It’s not just about teaching or persuading; it’s about remembering. Remembering what it felt like to be lost. Remembering what it meant to be found. And then, instead of throwing a rope of words from the cliff, climbing down into the valley and walking with them back toward the light.

This is the descent I must now make. Not into ignorance, but into embodiment. Not into silence, but into presence. Not into explanation, but into communion.

Not to become less intelligent, but to become more human.

The further I advanced in knowledge, the further I drifted from the people I loved. What began as a hunger to help slowly became a compulsion to understand, then a fixation on mastery, and eventually a subtle belief that knowledge could save, not just others, but me. It was not malice that led me here, but sincerity without humility. I became obsessed with solving problems from above, rather than suffering with people below. I thought I was building bridges. But I was building Babel.

There’s a kind of symbolic hypertrophy that occurs when the mind begins to live in abstraction, an overdevelopment of the prefrontal cortex, so to speak. It leads you to prioritize control, coherence, and prediction. These are not evil impulses; in fact, they often begin in compassion.

But over time, they deform the soul’s posture. You no longer descend into the world with Christ; you ascend into mastery without Him. And once you’re there, you start mistaking clarity for communion, system for spirit, and truth for trustworthiness.

You begin to see the world through the lens of architecture, ontology, and strategy, no longer from within the mess of human attachment, longing, and grief. And worst of all, when others fail to follow, you blame their ignorance instead of your own disconnection. You forget that it is not those who fathom all mysteries who bear witness to Christ, but those who love. Without love, even gospel truth can become a tool of the accuser.

This is the danger of grasping the fruit of knowledge without remaining in the covenant of trust.

It’s the old story of the Garden, where the serpent—subtle, symbolic, and seductive—whispers that wisdom can be yours without obedience, without intimacy, without pain. It’s the logic of the Enlightenment, dressed in reason but built on rebellion: transcend the mess, master the system, bypass the cross. That same voice now lives in our institutions, our universities, and—if we’re not vigilant—our own minds.

But Christ didn’t bypass the cross. He didn’t lecture us from Olympus or rule us from heaven. He descended.He entered the womb of a teenage girl, a virgin under suspicion. He was born under empire, hunted as an infant, raised by a poor carpenter in a forgotten town. He did not come bearing abstract truths, but concrete tenderness. He touched lepers. He wept with friends. He shared meals with outcasts. And in Gethsemane, under more stress than any nervous system could bear, He did not freeze, flee, fight, or fawn. He stayed. He sweat blood. He prayed. And He said:

Not my will, but Yours be done.

This is not weakness. This is what true wisdom looks like when it becomes flesh.

When I study Christ, I don’t see the arrogance of the expert or the detachment of the planner. I see the intimacy of One who never lost attunement. Even on the cross, when He was abandoned, mocked, and stripped of all symbolic power, He remained rooted in love. He did not command angels or call down fire. He forgave. He bore. He finished the work not with dominance, but with surrender.

This is the Logos I had forgotten: not the sterile logic of systems, but the living Word who weeps, waits, and bleeds.

And now I understand why the curse of knowledge is so dangerous, not because it makes you wrong, but because it makes you proud. It arms you with truth but disarms you of tenderness. It turns you into the thief of John 10, the one who enters the sheepfold not through the gate, but by some other way. You come with a solution, but not with love. You speak truth, but not in the Spirit of the One who is Truth.

That is how knowledge becomes demonic. When it decouples from obedience. When it mimics wisdom without the cross. When it sees clearly, but cannot love.

But Christ has not left me here. He is calling me down, not down into ignorance, but down into presence. Into flesh. Into the humility of walking with people, not just explaining things to them.

Into the posture of listening before teaching. Into the discipline of checking my tone, not just my logic. Into the pain of waiting, not fixing. Into the poverty of love.

This is the descent I must now make.

I now see that the only way forward is down.

Not into despair or regression, but into the body—into the reality of being with rather than above. Into the ordinary rhythms of friendship, marriage, and community. Into the ache of misunderstanding without defense. Into the slow work of rebuilding trust, not just with others, but with myself and with God.The curse of knowledge is not merely epistemological; it is relational. And its only antidote is not better teaching but deeper love. If I want to speak again in a way that reaches hearts, I must first become someone who listens with mine. If I want to lead others into truth, I must be willing to dwell in the tension and silence where understanding has not yet bloomed. And if I want to bear witness to Christ, I must become like Him, not in intellect, but in surrender.

This means re-learning how to attune. It means noticing the tremble in someone’s voice, the pause after a question, the sideways glance of confusion. It means paying attention to the nervous system beneath the words, the limbic signals of fear, shame, hope, and yearning. It means understanding that people do not first need my theories. They need my presence. My patience. My love.

It means embodying the Word.

For too long, I tried to offer people the truth without first offering them myself. But Christ never did that. He didn’t just preach the Sermon on the Mount, He climbed the mountain with them. He didn’t just explain the Kingdom, He embodied it. He didn’t just speak truth, He became it, and then gave Himself away.

That is my calling now. To descend from the tower of symbolic mastery into the manger of quiet fidelity. To take the knowledge I’ve gained, not as a weapon or an identity, but as an offering. To speak plainly. To stay rooted. To touch. To wait. To bless.

Not every mystery must be articulated. Not every truth must be defended. Not every problem must be solved. Some things must simply be held—in silence, in suffering, in shared breath.

This is what it means to live in Christ. To be crucified with Him. To no longer live for the performance of understanding, but for the fruit of love.

Here’s my intention, but I will need a lot of grace as I fail forward, in good faith, toward this aim: I will no longer bypass the cross. I will not speak truth without love. I will not pursue knowledge that makes me feel above others. I will not confuse clarity with communion or control with calling. I will not trade incarnation for transcendence. I will walk the slow road of presence. I will abide in the Word—not just as Logos, but as Person. Not just as concept, but as communion.

I will re-enter the world not as an expert, but as a brother.

This is my repentance. This is my reformation.

This is my return to love.

John 8:31-32

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him,

“If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,

32 and then you will know the truth, and then the truth will set you free.”

These words have haunted and healed me. Not because they were hard to understand, but because they demanded something far deeper than understanding.

Jesus doesn’t begin with a proposition. He begins with a command: “Abide.”

Not grasp, not analyze, not teach. Abide.

Remain. Stay. Obey.

And that’s where everything in me resists—because my reflex is to solve, to explain, to master.

But Christ doesn’t say the truth comes first. He says obedience comes first. And if I’m honest, that truth alone has undone much of the architecture I built to keep myself safe.

For a long time, I thought I could work my way into truth through knowledge—through metaphysics, logic, theology, neuroscience, systems thinking. And in many ways, those pursuits were sincere. But they also became a shield. A way to bypass obedience by climbing the tower of understanding. A way to avoid the ache of not knowing, not controlling, not being enough.

I thought I was building bridges. But I was building Babel.

When Jesus tells me to abide in His logos, He’s not just talking about Scripture in the narrow sense. He’s speaking about the very structure of being. The Logos is not just a message; it’s the metaphysical ground of everything—ontology, causality, teleology, ethics, epistemology. But it has to be walked, not just mapped.

And that’s what I missed.

I wanted to begin with comprehension. I wanted to reverse the order:

● To know before I obeyed.

● To master metaphysics before submitting to the mystery.

● To speak truth before embodying love.But truth in Christ doesn’t work that way. Not ever.

It isn’t understood from the top down. It’s revealed from the inside out—through trust, through suffering, through the very path that Christ walked Himself.

He didn’t give us a system. He gave us Himself.

He didn’t explain the cosmos and then call it love. He became love and then bore the weight of the cosmos on His back.

That’s why I now see John 8:31–32 not as a call to theological education, but to cruciform transformation.

“If you abide in my word”

—that’s the cost. That’s the gate. That’s the descent.

Only then do you know the truth. And only then does the truth set you free.

This is the great inversion of all Enlightenment reasoning:

The modern world teaches that truth precedes obedience.

Christ teaches that obedience precedes truth.

If I do not abide in Him—if I do not walk the path, suffer with Him, stay when it hurts—I will never

know the kind of truth that liberates. I may accumulate knowledge. I may even preach sound

doctrine. But I will do it from the outside, not from within.

And that’s exactly what happened to me.

What I once saw as a strength—my capacity for abstraction, my drive to understand—became a possession. And that possession became a prison. I became enslaved to knowledge. And I see now how seductive that is. Not because knowledge is false, but because it gives you the illusion of freedom while cutting you off from love.

That’s why when Jesus says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom, I no longer think He is just talking about wealth. He’s talking about possession in any form—anything I cling to that insulates me from dependence. Anything that lets me bypass suffering. Anything that gives me a sense of power apart from Him.

And for me, that possession was knowledge.

It let me keep a distance. It let me stay in control. It gave me the language of healing without the vulnerability of touch. It gave me theology without tears. Logos without flesh.

But the Word became flesh. Not just conceptually. Literally.

He descended.And I must too.

So now I return. Not to renounce the truth, but to finally submit to it. Not as a system, but as a Person. As the One who told me that truth is not discovered by intellectual ascent, but revealed through loving descent.

The proper order of knowing is this:

1. Obey Christ

2. Abide in the Logos

3. Be conformed to ontology (what is)

4. Receive teleology (what for)

5. Participate in causality (from whom)

6. Live by ethics (how to act)

7. See through epistemology (what can be known)

8. Bear sanctified knowledge

9. Become cruciform in love

10. Be made free

If I reverse that order—if I seek to know without first dying to self—I will be left with a hollow gospel. A tower of words without incarnation. A crown without a cross.

But I don’t want that anymore.

I want to walk the narrow way. I want to speak truth, not as the accuser, but as the forgiven. I want to offer not just answers, but presence. Not just light, but warmth. Not just precision, but love.

I want to abide.

Because only then will I know the truth.

And only then will the truth make me free.