The Necessity of Belief and the Two Roads to God: Vatican I on Revelation

Orientation #

He says “I think we kind of looked at chapter one” of Vatican I’s treatise and now turns to chapter 2 on revelation; earlier remarks on “the rule of two or three”, the roads of knowledge, and antonomasia are recalled as things “we talked about before”. The verified-source list reports a 10-minute match with Summa Contra Gentiles IV ch. 2, but the transcript itself names only the beginning of the Contra Gentiles and the Summa’s opening questions; follow the transcript. The previous class treated chapter 1 of Dei Filius and previewed this move to revelation and faith; the next continues chapters 2–3 and the definition of faith.

The class, in order #

1. Belief necessary even for the human learner (“the utility or the usefulness of believing”) #

Point: before revealed faith, belief is needed in “merely human terms”.

• Augustine’s little treatises on the usefulness of believing (Thomas repeats some of it): unless you believe this man and woman are your parents, you will not give them the honour due.
• Three ways belief is necessary in human teaching:
  1. The road. Someone asks him to show the Pythagorean theorem; it is Euclid I.47, but you must go through 46 theorems plus definitions, postulates, axioms first. He will not plough through them unless he believes that is the road; he does not know it is the road until he has gone down it. Asking directions (“go down two blocks and turn right”): you believe, you follow, and on arrival belief gives way to knowledge; trying roads at random “you wouldn’t get that far in this life”. Aristotle calls philosophy a methodos, knowledge “over a road”: you believe the teacher until you reach the end, then knowledge replaces belief.
  2. Fundamental things. A good teacher stresses what will open doors later, but the student cannot yet see why. His own story: as a freshman at the College of St Thomas, his mentor (name unclear in recording; “Kasurik” in the transcript) asked “Where’s your Greek?” — “other things I’d rather take: that’s not a reason.” He was docile, took Greek, and only later saw the doors it opened (Plato, Aristotle, the New Testament). “You had to believe him; that was important.”
  3. Things above the mind. Reading Aristotle or Thomas, you do not understand everything at first; on rereading you understand the old things better and begin to see new ones. This requires belief that the author is wise, or you would not persist. Comparison: his brothers brought home Mozart’s Magic Flute; he “didn’t really hear anything”, but the more he listened the more he heard, agreeing with Wagner that Mozart is above all masters in all the arts. Contrast: you could think about Hegel again and again and never understand; he wrote obscurely to be admired for obscurity.
• Aside: Mozart heard on the car radio, since driving “doesn’t use up much mental energy”.

2. The higher the science, the more belief (“mathematics is named from the learner”) #

Distinction: mathematics vs. sacra doctrina, by their names.

• Mathematics comes from mathesis, “learn”: the things most easily and fully learnable by us (not the only learnable things); named from the learner, where the student is closest to self-sufficient and belief is required least, or for the least time.
• Sacra doctrina (Thomas; Augustine’s De doctrina christiana), “holy teaching”, is named from the doctor, the teacher, where you are most dependent on the teacher.
• So a spectrum: toward theology, more dependence on the teacher and belief for a longer time; toward geometry, less. “You can’t just lump everything.”

3. Beginning well; two kinds of beginnings (“The beginning is half of all”) #

Point: nothing is more necessary in philosophy (and theology) than to begin well.

• Plato and Aristotle quote the Greek proverb “the beginning is half of all”; Socrates says it is more than half, since everything else depends on it. Road comparison: a little mistake at the beginning is a great one at the end.
• Division of beginnings: some in the will (wonder, a natural desire to know the cause, is the beginning of philosophy on the side of desire), some in reason. In reason, two groups:
  • beginnings about things: change is between opposites (Heraclitus; Socrates in the Phaedo; Aristotle, Natural Hearing I); more fundamentally the axioms — the whole is more than the part, the same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time in the same way;
  • beginnings about our knowledge of things: the roads spoken of before — the natural road from sense into reason, the common road of reasoned-out knowledge studied in logic, the private road of each reasoned-out knowledge.
• “That’s kind of the fundamental distinction” of beginnings.

4. Chapter 1 vs. chapters 2–4 of Dei Filius (“beginnings about the things, and the beginnings about the knowledge”) #

Point: the treatise divides one against three by this distinction (a student suggests: God is the thing, the rest is knowledge of it).

• Chapter 1 is “a kind of creed”, specialised for contemporary problems. Vatican I’s earlier profession of faith is the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed with Tridentine additions on the sacraments. Creeds (Apostles’, Nicene, Athanasian, Fourth Lateran, Paul VI’s Credo of the People of God) contain beginnings about things: the articles of faith. Thomas (exposition of St Paul’s epistles) says a man who does not yet know the articles is not ready to begin.
• Anecdotes: a colleague saying strange things — “Do you accept the Nicene Creed?” “No.” “That clarifies things”; a new theology hire asked “Are you orthodox?”, i.e. the same question, “Yes” — “fine then.”
• Ways of dividing the creed: by Father, Son, Holy Spirit; or (Athanasian, Fourth Lateran, Thomas’s Adoro te devote) by the humanity and divinity of Christ (“on the cross the divinity was hidden… here the humanity as well”). Chapter 1 divides into three: God in himself, God as Maker, God as End and Provident One.
• Chapters 2–4 (revelation, faith, faith and reason) are beginnings about our knowledge of these things.
• Philosophical parallel: Euclid’s definitions, postulates and axioms before theorem 1 are beginnings about things; he gives no beginnings about our knowledge. Aristotle and Boethius do: geometry defines without sensible matter and motion, natural philosophy with them; geometry goes from cause to effect, natural philosophy usually from effect to cause; geometry is wholly universal, natural philosophy true “for the most part” (man born with two hands; the occasional baby without a hand, or with six fingers). Mathematics is “very proportioned to us”; natural philosophy and wisdom much harder.
• Second parallel: Aristotle’s proemium to the Nicomachean Ethics on how the teacher ought to proceed and how the student ought to receive — chapter 2 (revelation) is on the side of the teacher, God; chapter 3 (faith) on our side, how we receive; since faith is in reason, chapter 4 treats faith and reason.

5. The rule of two or three (“you have to divide into two or three”) #

Point: to understand any division into more than three, distinguish it into two or three and subdivide, or crisscross two such divisions.

• Ten Commandments: three and seven (the tablets), the seven subdivided again.
• Ten categories: substance and nine accidents; or Thomas’s usual three, subdividing one into three and six, the six into one and five, the five into two and three.
• Seven parts of philosophy: looking philosophy and practical philosophy (the two chief kinds) plus logic; practical into ethics, domestics, politics; looking (as in the sixth book of Wisdom) into natural philosophy, mathematics, wisdom.
• Seven sacraments: five for the good of the individual vs. matrimony and orders for the good of others/the multitude; the five into three that go together (baptism, confirmation, eucharist) and two repairing ones (penance, last anointing).
• Student: Aristotle’s four types of quality — an exception? He: yes, “the rule for the most part”; and in the fifth book of Wisdom Aristotle “kind of withdraws” from that fourfold division.

6. The word “revelation” and its two senses (“the veil, unveil”) #

Point: revelation means drawing back a veil, but the revelation here is not complete.

• Distinction: the revelation corresponding to faith (we do not yet fully see) vs. the revelation when we see God as he is, face to face (beatific vision; John’s “as he is”, Paul’s “face to face”). Thomas’s Adoro te: “Jesu quem velatum nunc aspicio”. There is no second faith for the second revelation; faith is succeeded by seeing. “Two senses of revelation, but not two faiths.”
• Hebrews’ definition of faith, “the substance of things hoped for”: a foundation of what you are going to see.
• Teresa of Avila appearing to a nun after death: “we’re not in two different situations; we’re both praising God — I face to face, you behind the veil.” Continuity of contemplative life into the next: Mary “hath chosen the better part, and it shall not be taken away”; Thomas says the practical life ends with this life, the contemplative continues, more perfectly.

7. The two roads to knowledge of God (“the distinction of two roads leading to a knowledge of God”) #

Point: chapter 2 first distinguishes the natural and supernatural roads, as Thomas does at the beginning of the Contra Gentiles; his own headings (non-bold) are his division, not the text’s.

• Natural road: “the same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things” (looking back to ch. 1 and to SCG books 1–3: God himself, Creator, end and providence), “the Alpha and Omega” (Apocalypse), “can be known with certainty from created things by the natural power of human reason”. Thomas, Summa q. 2: three articles — against those who say God’s existence is obvious, against those who say it cannot be proved; the truth is between. Shakespeare’s Falstaff: reports that say more or less than “the modest truth” are villainous. Many in Catholic colleges now hold the other extreme, that it can’t be proved.
  • Difficulty of the proofs: De Koninck’s course on the five ways (not original with Thomas); each student examined a modern philosopher or Thomist on one proof, and every one had failed to understand it; his own paper on Descartes, who misunderstood both major and minor premise. De Koninck: “I think I can demonstrate the existence of God, but I would not be so presumptuous as to say so”, and believed more from what his mother taught him. Freshman naivety: given the proofs, “I can go out and convince the whole world.” It is an article of faith that God can be proved with certitude from created things; that does not make it easy.
  • Biblical statement: Romans 1:20.
• Supernatural road: “pleasing to his wisdom and goodness to reveal himself and the eternal laws of his will… by another and that a supernatural way” (super = above); goodness “taking account of our weakness”; the reasons come in part two.
  • “The apostle” = Paul: only Peter and Paul are called apostles simply, by antonomasia (Thomas); John Paul II called them the princes of the apostles; Thomas says “the apostle” as he says “the philosopher”. Biblical statement: Hebrews 1:1-2, “in many and various ways God spoke of old… in these last days by his Son”.

8. Two reasons revelation is necessary; four senses of “necessary” (“necessary, absolutely”) #

Point: revelation is necessary for things reason can know, but “absolutely” necessary only because of a supernatural end.

• First reason (council, following Thomas): thanks to revelation, things about God not beyond reason can be known “by everyone, without difficulty, with firm certitude, with no intermingling of error”. Thomas’s reasons: very few are intelligent enough; of those, most are taken up with the necessities of life; those with ability and time would spend most of life getting there, with mistakes on the way — yet a man must know these things to direct his whole life. Aristotle’s proemium to Wisdom: the mind is enslaved to the needs of body and house (“and car”). Thomas, Summa I q. 1 a. 1 (whether besides philosophy another teaching is necessary) and more fully in the Contra Gentiles.
• Aristotle, fifth book of Wisdom, chapter on the necessary, attached to the chapters on cause: four senses tied to kinds of cause —
  1. from intrinsic causes: two is necessarily half of four, “due to what two is”;
  2. from the mover: Katrina’s wind and waves, you had to move because they could not be resisted (student asks for review: a mover so powerful it cannot be resisted — a rope thrown round you);
  3. from the end, that without which the end cannot be attained at all: breathing, eating, to live;
  4. from the end, that without which it cannot be attained well: logic for philosophy (men philosophised before logic was found, the last part worked out, but with mistakes); Thomas’s horse for a journey; a car; a college education (“to live well, whatever this society considers living well”); Mozart, “necessary to hear well”; French: a meal without wine is like a day without sunshine — yet sunshine is not absolutely necessary for a day, it can be cloudy.
• Applied: revelation is necessary for naturally knowable things in sense 4 — belief is needed even there, given the weakness of the human mind. Second reason, “absolutely necessary” (sense 3): God directed man to a supernatural end, “a sharing in the good things of God that utterly surpasses the understanding of the human mind”; 1 Corinthians 2:9, “eye has not seen…”. Heraclitus, “the things that can be seen and heard and learned are what I prize the most”, has only natural knowledge; these things have not been seen, heard or conceived.
• Aside: Aristotle on wisdom, every other knowledge is more necessary but none is better. Daily usage mixes the senses: “money is necessary to live” — a student: “that’s why I’m in poverty”; Robinson Crusoe lived without money on his island.

His words #

• utility / usefulness of believing — Augustine’s treatises, repeated by Thomas
• methodos — Aristotle’s name for philosophy, “knowledge over a road”
• docility — his taking Greek on his mentor’s insistence
• mathesis — “learn”; mathematics as “the things that can be learned”, named from the learner
• sacra doctrina — “holy teaching”, named from the doctor/teacher
• rule of two or three — divisions beyond three must be resolved into two or three, subdivided or crisscrossed
• beginning is half of all — Greek proverb; Socrates: more than half
• beginnings about the things / about our knowledge of things — his two groups of beginnings in reason; wonder the beginning in the will
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; Wisdom, fifth/sixth book [ed.: Metaphysics V, VI]; looking philosophy [ed.: speculative/theoretical]; domestics [ed.: economics]
• for the most part — natural philosophy’s truths, and the rule of two or three itself
• revelation — un-veiling; two senses, to faith and to face-to-face vision
• Jesu quem velatum nunc aspicio — Adoro te devote
• substance of things hoped for — Hebrews’ definition of faith, “foundation of the things you’re going to see”
• the apostle — Paul by antonomasia; princes of the apostles (John Paul II)
• necessary, absolutely — that without which the end cannot be attained at all, vs. necessary to attain it well

Texts #

Read in class:

• Vatican I, Dei Filius, ch. 2 (on revelation): the two roads; “necessary, absolutely”
• Romans 1:20; Hebrews 1:1-2; 1 Corinthians 2:9 (as quoted by the council)
• Aquinas, Adoro te devote (lines on divinity/humanity; “velatum nunc aspicio”)

Mentioned:

• Augustine, on the utility of believing; De doctrina christiana
• Euclid, Elements I.47 and the 46 before it
• Plato, Phaedo; Aristotle, Natural Hearing I; Nicomachean Ethics proemium; Wisdom proemium, book V (chapter on the necessary; on quality), book VI; Categories (quality)
• Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles beginning and books I–III; Summa Theologiae I q. 1 a. 1, q. 2; exposition of Paul’s epistles; on Martha and Mary
• Creeds: Apostles’, Nicene-Constantinopolitan, Athanasian, Fourth Lateran, Trent additions, Paul VI’s Credo of the People of God
• Apocalypse (“Alpha and Omega”); Hebrews (definition of faith); Shakespeare (Falstaff on “the modest truth”); Wagner on Mozart; Teresa of Avila; Heraclitus

His questions #

• Is it necessary for the learner to believe, in human terms? Yes, in three ways: you believe the road, the teacher’s emphasis on fundamentals, and the wisdom of an author above your mind.
• Will he know that that is the road to the Pythagorean theorem until he’s gone through the first 46? No; belief gives way to knowledge only at the end of the road.
• What made you persist thinking about something until you understood it? Belief that the author (or composer) was wise, or great.
• Nothing is more necessary in philosophy than what? To begin well.
• What’s the distinction between the first chapter and chapters two, three and four? Beginnings about the things (a creed) vs. beginnings about our knowledge of them.
• Is that division into four kinds of quality an exception? Yes; the rule holds for the most part.
• What does the word revelation mean? Unveiling — with two senses, but not two faiths.
• Is logic necessary to philosophize? Necessary to philosophize well, not as breathing and eating are necessary.
• Is sunshine absolutely necessary for there to be a day? No — it can be cloudy; wine is necessary for the meal to be well.