Dei Filius IV: How Reason Serves the Mysteries of Faith, Why Faith and Reason Cannot Contradict, and Why Theology Judges Philosophy

Orientation #

He begins “the second part here”: the role of reason in considering the mysteries of faith, continuing the reading of Vatican I’s constitution (prev. lecture). He closes: “we begin the Summa next time”, first meeting January 5. The text-matching system finds the handout “The Matter and Order of Wisdom”, pp. 11–30, read from in this episode (probably the passage on wisdom distinguishing itself from lower knowledge), and DHB vol. III pp. 460–479. The previous class covered Vatican I on faith, its necessity and credibility, and opened chapter four on the twofold order of knowledge.

The class, in order #

1. Three adverbs and three ways reason helps (“persistently, right? Piously, right, and soberly”) #

Point: reason, seeking the mysteries persistently, piously and soberly, gains by God’s gift some most fruitful understanding, in two or three ways.

• “notice the three words”: persistently, piously, soberly. Soberly = moderately, not trying to exceed your own powers, not trying to understand more than is possible. Thomas always quotes Hilary: he proceeds forward though he knows he will never arrive; pursuing the infinite, never arriving, always gaining more.
• Augustine on the Trinity: no mystery harder to know, none more dangerous to err in, none more fruitful to discover something in.
• The ways: (a) by analogy from what reason knows naturally (analogy = a likeness of ratios); (b) from the connection of the mysteries with one another; (c) with the final end of man. “Two or three ways”, the second divided into two.

2. Analogy from nature: the Word and the Spirit (“in the beginning was the word”) #

Point: an example of (a), the procession of the Word by analogy with our own thinking.

1. When I imagine, an image proceeds in my imagination; when I think of something, a thought proceeds from my thinking.
2. God knows himself by his understanding, so a thought of himself proceeds from his understanding.
3. His understanding is his very existence (learned earlier in theology), so this thought is also God: “the Word was towards God, the Word was God.”

• Likewise, when reason knows itself and has a thought of itself (Shakespeare’s definition of reason, urging us to use it), you begin to love reason: the Holy Spirit, proceeding from this.

3. Connection of mystery with mystery and with man’s end (“the word of God is like the art of God”) #

Point: examples of (b) and (c).

• Art: if I make something by an art and it breaks, I fix it by the same art. The Word is the art of God whereby he makes everything (John’s prologue); when man, the thing made, is broken, it is appropriate that the Word fix it, so the Word rather than Father or Spirit became man.
• Final end: to see God face to face; logos also means reason, so the Son, who proceeds by way of knowledge, is appropriately the one who leads us.
• “A better example”: Nestorius saying Mary should be called mother of Christ, not of God. She is not mother of the Word according to the divine nature but according to the human nature; yet because the same person has both natures she is truly mother of God. To deny it is in a sense to deny the incarnation: two mysteries connected, and to deny one is to deny the other. (Lutherans/Protestants are offended because they think of “mother of the divinity”.)
• Mediator: connected with his being God and man, since he has something in common with both and so is in between.
• End of man as knowing and loving God: both Son and Spirit are sent; the Son enlightens, and kindling charity is appropriated to the Spirit (“Come, Holy Spirit… kindle in them the fire of thy love”) because he proceeds by way of love.

4. What analogy is: likeness of ratios (“God is to us as a shepherd”) #

Point: analogy is not sameness but a likeness of ratios, present even in Scripture’s metaphors.

• “The Lord is my shepherd”: God : us :: shepherd : flock.
• Thomas on Psalm 8, taken of Christ ruling over us: sheep and oxen are those in the fold; beasts, fish and birds are those outside, sorted by John’s “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life”: beasts = sins of the flesh; fish = lust of the eyes (maritime commerce); birds = pride (Shakespeare plays on falcons fighting to go above the rest).
• Comparing one believed mystery with another is “kind of a different thing” from analogy: looking at the mysteries by themselves.

5. How reason cannot be used; no true contradiction (“we walk by faith and not by sight”) #

Point: reason never penetrates the mysteries as it does its proper objects (the Pythagorean theorem); even revealed and believed they stay under the veil of faith, in obscurity: “mysteries of faith”, “in a mirror, darkly”.

• No real disagreement between faith and reason. Renaissance “two truths” man (Pomponazzi? he hesitates; later than Thomas, got it from the Arabians, some Mohammedan teachers held it).
• Two reasons in the text: (1) the same God gives the light of reason and reveals and infuses faith, so they harmonise; (2) what reason really knows (the whole is more than a part) is true, what God who can neither deceive nor be deceived reveals is true, and truth cannot oppose truth. Truth: saying what is is and what is not is not; falsehood the reverse; contradictories can’t both be true. A very serious mistake, still made today.

6. Apparent contradictions and their cause (“sometimes the part is more than the whole”) #

Point: it should not be striking that faith and reason can seem to contradict, since reasonable things and even the obvious can be made to seem contradictory.

• Anaxagoras (DK 12): the ruler must be separate from the ruled (the judge impartial, not a part); and the mind is self-ruling (as a logician he gives evidence the mind rules itself). Both reasonable, apparently contradictory.
• His sophism: the whole is more than the part; animal is only part of man (animal with reason); animal includes dog, cat, horse…; so the part is more than the whole. Confuses composed whole (animal a composing part of the definition of man) with universal whole (said of more than any one part is).
• Zeno: can’t get out the door; Achilles and the turtle. Heisenberg on contradictory experiments in quantum theory; contradictory medical reports in the paper.
• The text’s diagnosis: such specious contradiction comes from dogmas not understood according to the mind of the Church, or unsound views mistaken for conclusions of reason.

7. Three corollaries (“wear the deceptive appearance of truth”) #

Point: the three defined consequences.

1. Every assertion contrary to enlightened faith is totally false.
2. The Church, with the deposit of faith, has the right and duty to condemn what wrongly passes for knowledge, “philosophy and empty deceit”.
3. The faithful may not defend as conclusions of science opinions contrary to faith, especially if condemned, and must hold them as errors with the appearance of truth.

• Thomas on his deathbed submitted all his writings to the Church; many theologians lack that humility (Jesuits, sometimes Dominicans, before the congregation). De Koninck: don’t love your opinions like your children; don’t identify them with yourself; at least recognise them as opinions.

8. Mutual help of faith and reason (“right reason establishes the foundations of the faith”) #

Point: reason aids faith in two ways; faith aids reason.

• Reason: (1) knows the preambula, what is presupposed to faith; (2) illuminated by faith develops the science of divine things, by the analogy and connections above. Example: the Spirit proceeds from the Son and not the reverse, understood by the analogy that the good must be known before it is loved, so love proceeds from knowledge, as the one proceeding by love proceeds from the one proceeding by knowledge.
• Faith delivers reason from errors, protects it, furnishes many kinds of knowledge (even the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, are interesting to think about). Reason is weak; the disagreement of thinkers is a sign most are mistaken, especially about the most important things: a very great need.
• Break.

9. The Church and the human sciences; wisdom distinguishes itself from the lower (“belongs to the higher knowledge”) #

Point: the Church promotes the sciences (universities began in the Middle Ages with the Church), lets each use its own principles and method, but guards against their exceeding their limits and intruding on faith (Hegel’s philosophy judging the faith). His principle, “shown inductively”: it belongs to the higher knowledge, that with more the character of wisdom, to distinguish itself from the lower and show their order.

• Reason vs. senses/imagination: only reason sees the distinction; senses cannot (“the wise ape”).
• Natural philosophy vs. mathematics: natural philosophy, in Natural Hearing bk 2, judges how far mathematics is useful to it. Natural philosophy vs. wisdom: only in bk 6 of the Metaphysics.
• Plato: political philosophy vs. political rhetoric; the statesman judges when to persuade and when to force (rhetoric and the military art his two tools).
• Philosophy vs. fiction: philosophy. Theology vs. philosophy: theology (Thomas shows this in Summa q. 1).
• Consequence: modern philosophy revolted from theology, so can no longer distinguish or order them; tries to make philosophy a substitute for theology and to judge it (Feuerbach’s Essence of Christianity; Hegel putting philosophy above theology) — “a real bind”.
• Words/statements vs. mathematical equations: words can say what a word or equation is; no equation says what an equation is (a knowledge that doesn’t know itself). Metaphor vs. proper speech: you can’t say what a metaphor or figure of speech is metaphorically, only exemplify; definition is proper speech.
• So he always objected to “philosophy of religion”: philosophy cannot distinguish itself from theology.
• Why the Greeks could judge the poets’ religion: it was based on imagination (Xenophanes: horses would make horse-gods, Ethiopians black snub-nosed gods, Greeks blond; Zeus upset by domestic conflict, the Trojan War), and imagination is judged by reason; Aristotle in the proemium to wisdom corrects the envious gods: God cannot be envious. Moderns, to put Christian theology below philosophy, must make it something of the imagination, so misunderstand it, downplay the motives of credibility. Thomas in q. 1 will distinguish Scripture’s metaphors from the poet’s.
• From Plato (philosophy is becoming like God) and Aristotle (God alone or most of all is wise): a share in God’s wisdom would be wisdom in a higher sense than what reason alone gets; Christian theology, based on faith, is such a share, while the poets’ gods were less than philosophy.

10. Vincent of Lérins, the canons, and unchanging sense (“God has no parts”) #

Point: reason must never change the original sense of the dogmas.

• Vincent of Lérins quoted: faith is a divine deposit, not a philosophical discovery to be perfected; the sense once declared is never to be abandoned under pretext of deeper understanding; understanding may grow, but in the same doctrine, sense and understanding.
• Canons: anathema to (1) deny true mysteries, saying all dogmas can be demonstrated by trained reason; (2) hold human studies so free their assertions stand even against revelation and cannot be forbidden; (3) say advancing knowledge may assign the dogmas a sense different from the Church’s.
• Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei (referred to earlier): dogmas are expressed in universal, necessary thoughts, so not tied to an age. Example: “God has no parts” uses whole and part, a thought tied to universal, common experience, so intelligible in the fourth century AD and the twentieth alike.
• Connected truth: we know more what God is not than what he is, and it is more useful to negate the general than the particular: “no parts” separates God from water, the word “cat”, anything with parts; “no two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen” only from water.
• Closing exhortation read: all, especially teachers, to ward off these errors; not enough to avoid heresy, also the errors that approach it, banned in other decrees. Aside: read through Denzinger to be “all set”; some editions go by subject instead of chronologically.
• Next: the Summa, January 5 (Thursday after New Year).

His words #

• soberly; moderately, not exceeding your own powers.
• analogy; a likeness of ratios, not something exactly the same.
• the art of God; the Word whereby he makes everything.
• composed whole vs. universal whole; the definition is a composed whole; the universal is said of more than one part is.
• specious contradiction; apparent, not real.
• preambula to the faith; things reason knows by itself, presupposed to faith [ed.: preambula fidei].
• Natural Hearing [ed.: Physics]; “the sixth book of wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics VI]; “proemium to wisdom” [ed.: Metaphysics I].
• the character of wisdom; what the higher knowledge has more of, and what entitles it to distinguish itself from the lower.
• the wise ape; man, because he has reason.
• philosophy of religion; the misnamed attempt of philosophy to distinguish religion/theology from itself.
• universal necessary thoughts; Paul VI’s phrase for how dogmas are expressed; thoughts tied to common experience.
• negate the general; more useful than negating the particular in saying what God is not.

Texts #

Read in class

• Vatican I, constitution on faith, chapter on faith and reason with its three canons and closing exhortation (Dei Filius ch. 4, inferred), read from Denzinger, including the Vincent of Lérins quotation.
• John 1:1 (“In the beginning was the Word”).
• Psalm 8, with Thomas’s exposition; 1 John 2:16 (lust of the eyes, of the flesh, pride of life).
• 2 Cor. 5:7 (“we walk by faith and not by sight”) and 1 Cor. 13:12 (“in a mirror, darkly”) (inferred loci). Mentioned
• Augustine on the Trinity; Hilary as quoted by Thomas; Shakespeare’s definition of reason; Shakespeare on falcons.
• Anaxagoras, Diels-Kranz fragment 12; Zeno’s paradoxes; Heisenberg on quantum theory.
• Aristotle, Physics II; Metaphysics VI; proemium of Metaphysics (envy of the gods).
• Plato’s dialogues (political philosophy vs. rhetoric; becoming like God); Xenophanes on the gods.
• Hegel; Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity; Pomponazzi (uncertain) and the Arabians on two truths.
• De Koninck on opinions; Thomas’s deathbed submission; Summa q. 1 (next time).
• Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei.

His questions #

• What would “soberly” mean here? Moderately, not trying to exceed your own powers.
• What kind of likeness is an analogy? A likeness of ratios.
• Is there a connection between Mary being mother of God and the same person being God and man? An intimate one; to deny the one is to deny the incarnation.
• Can one truth contradict another truth? No; they can’t both be true, since truth says what is is and falsehood the reverse.
• To whom does the distinction between reason and the senses belong? To reason; the senses cannot distinguish themselves from it.
• To whom does the distinction between mathematics and natural philosophy belong? To natural philosophy, which has more the character of wisdom.
• Which has more the character of wisdom, revealed theology or philosophy? Theology, so the distinction between the two belongs to theology.
• Can you write an equation that says what an equation is? Say metaphorically what a metaphor is? No; you can only say it in words, by definition.
• Is the thought of whole and part ever going to change? No; it belongs to universal, necessary experience, so “God has no parts” is understood in every age.