Logic in Theology
"God
is dead.” The famous proclamation by Friedrich Nietzsche in his 1882 book, The Gay Science, characterizes the
growing secularism and modernism that occurred in western culture in the 19th
Century. Influential thinkers such as Marx, Freud, Voltaire, and Nietzsche
challenged the religious foundation of European Culture. This challenge led to
an identity crisis that still exists today in the West - are we religious or
secular? The book, Reason and the Reasons
of Faith is a Catholic response to the challenges posed by modernism; it
argues that there is the use of reason in faith. Reason is fused with theology
in modern, free-thinking Western society, for both their benefit.
The
nature of Modernity inclines toward the separation of Church and State and the
rise of Capitalism and Democracy.
Heading into the 19th Century, Europe was full of
mercantillist monarchies with close relations to the Church. At the dawn of the
20th Century, democracy and capitalism reigned in one form or
another and had separated Church and State. It truly was the paradigm shift in
the western world view.
Challenging
questions came up that the Church had never faced before. Since the Cosmos is
so impossibly massive, how can any god care about something as small and
infinitesimal as the earth? The
increasing amount of scientific knowledge negated the need for religion to
explain things. If religion did not provide these answers, what good does it
do? Marx believed religion negated the individual freedoms of people and
oppressed them. Is religion's best purpose, as Durkheim put it, a social
mechanism that keeps people together? These perplexing questions rattled
people’s faith in these turbulent times.
The
Church was slow to acknowledge this shift. Pope St. Pius X was the first to
recognize and respond to modernity in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis. Both Pope Pius X and his predecessor,
Pope Leo XIII relied heavily on the writing of St. Thomas Aquinas, a theology
known as Thomism. Thomism as we will see is the one of the Church’s main tools
in the argument against modernity in the Catholic Faith. One major
philosophical question this theology tackles is the nature of human beings.
Logic
and human will were written extensively on by Thomas Aquinas. He had critics
later on, notably by Luther, on the nature of human will. Aquinas believed that
the mind and the soul were separate, with them controlling the intellect and
the will respectively. This is referred to as duality. Aquinas believed that
the duality of humans provided for free will and the knowledge of right and
wrong. Therefore, humans possess their own individual natures - good men are
predisposed to do good things and become closer to perfection, and perfection
is God as defined by Aquinas. Bad men or less “good” men often chose to do evil
(actions contrary to God’s will.)
Luther,
on the other hand, believed in a system that is much more black and white.
According to him, our wills are captive so we have no capacity to choose to do
anything freely. Good actions are done by men because they are willed by God
and anything less than that is below God’s grace. This is explained because our
souls are “innately evil,” therefore good deeds can only be done by the Grace
of God.
The
difference between Luther and Aquinas, though, is that Aquinas believed it was
possible to do good things without them being perfect - he would say the person
was getting closer to perfection (God).
Thomism,
in its remarkable use of plain logic, has been able to withstand modern science
that otherwise would thwart the rationality of religion. Modern thought has
presented many major questions for religions to answer, answers that the modern
Church has wrestled with for decades. For example, Darwin’s work in The Origin of Species, and The Descent of Man, was one of the most
challenging theories the Church has ever had to face. To counter it, the Church
had to change the way it interpreted scripture.
The
best way to summarize the Church’s response to the rising tide of reason is the
Papal Encyclical Fides et Ratio. In
it, Pope John Paul II explains the apparent rift between faith and logic; he
writes that they are complementary to one another. A lack of reason in theology
turns spirituality and religion into nothing more than superstition and magic
so to speak. On the other hand, reason without religion creates an atmosphere
of nihilism and skepticism which undermines the very work done by scientific
reason.
However,
in certain ways the Church does deny the evidence in this encyclical when it
comes to evolution. A passage from the same encyclical explains the Church’s
first position on this most controversial of topics.
“Hence all faithful
Christians are forbidden to defend as the legitimate conclusions of science
those opinions which are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith,
particularly if they have been condemned by the Church; and furthermore they
are absolutely bound to hold them to be errors which wear the deceptive
appearance of truth."
The
official Church position on evolution developed over the next century after
this proclamation. Eventually, the Church came to the conclusion that Evolution
and Church Dogma were in harmony as long as the believer acknowledges that
evolution was a designed occurrence and that human beings are “Special
Creations,” in that they have their own souls. This position is a major
theological difference from how fundamentalist Christians have responded to
evolution, namely denial.
The encyclical also
strongly supports the freedom of humans to think freely in their own personal
philosophies. It realizes that people are self-conscious. The idea or essence
of a self-aware, rational human being is referred to by Aquinas as esse. It is God’s will that the idea of
humans have been created. This is true for all of creation. This is how God
shows his presence in all of his creation.
Simply put, the
fact that entities exist and not just the idea of the entity glorifies God.
This idea of esse can be extended to esse
commune, or the “plurality of beings.”
This is the idea that God is the one who has joined the “idea of being,”
and the “act of being.” As put by Adrian Walker, “God himself is the unity of
being and love.” The idea of loving is manifested in this Being - and in all
three of His individual parts - its plurality.
Aquinas summarizes
his theory of esse in a metaphor of
sunlight. Esse is the light that
shines through all of creation. Although we do not see the light itself, we
perceive the colors that it allows us to see. This light comes from the sun
just as esse projects itself from
God. As long as esse ‘shines,’ things
continue to be. The essence of sentient, rational beings is manifested in the Human beings,
beings created by God.
Since human’s have this unique ability to
rationalize because they are self-aware creatures, people own the ability to
theorize on the nature of creation. Since creation is revealed to us in
scripture, we have the ability to theorize and create Dogma, according to the
Catholic Church. This Dogma gives us elements in the Canon that are not
specifically found in Scripture. Protestants do not generally use philosophy
while practicing theology and rely on scripture alone.
Catholic
Theologians, however, assert that philosophy is necessary in the pursuit of
good theology. As Martin Bieler puts it, “Theology needs philosophy in order to
listen to creation’s own language, and philosophy needs to know theology in
order to know the One who is the origin and aim of creation.”
Bieler is able to
sum up the reciprocity of these two fields very well with that statement.
Philosophy connects us to the world that God himself created and helps humanity
understand it in its grand schemes. Therefore Religion needs it to put its
teachings to the test in the real world. Philosophy needs religion to give
itself meaning and give an origin to everything that it originally set out to
understand.
The rationalization
of religion - even in these modern times - relies heavily on the writings of
Aquinas, justly labeled a “Doctor of the Church.” His writings give humanity
answers to why there is something instead of nothing. Reason is used in faith
to give faith a reason to exist in society. Religion still serves as a function
in society because science does not provide us all answers to all questions.
Science may explain the things that exist, but only theology can provide us a
reason why they exist. So, contrary to Nietzsche’s bold claim, God is still
very much alive in our secularized culture.
Copyright 2013
