Reason in Faith

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 19^th 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 19^th Century, Europe was full of mercantillist monarchies with close relations to the Church. At the dawn of the 20^th 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