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On Nature and Grace: the Role of Reason in the Life of Faith

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On Nature and Grace: the Role of Reason in the Life of Faith On Nature and Grace: The Role of Reason in the Life of Faith Peter Kalkavage St. John's College, Annapolis Theology on Tap Harry Browne's 2 July 2013 "Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made." Romans 1:20 My goal this evening is to praise reason-that is, speculative reason-in the context of Christian faith. Speculative here refers to reason that seeks the truth for its own sake. Many voices inspired my effort: Clement of Alexandria, who extolled the wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers; Anselm, who spoke of faith seeking understanding; Augustine, whose path to God incorporated the philosophic eros for deathless truth; Bonaventure, who coined the remarkable phrase and title, itinerarium mentis in Deum, the mind's journey into God; and Dante, for whom the hallmark of heaven is the perfection of the mind. A more recently composed inspiration has been John Paul's great encyclical Fides et ratio ("Faith and Reason"). The hero of my reflections is Aquinas. As a young student, Thomas was unresponsive and seemed dull. But Albert the Great said something about him that turned out to be prophetic: "We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world." Aquinas is regularly in need of being rediscovered. I say this because he is a logically rigorous author, whom some readers find dry and uninspiring. Admittedly, his writing lacks the emotional power of Augustine's Confessions, the rhetorical energy of Anselm's Proslogion, and the inspired poetic flights of Dante. Aquinas does not tell stories. He argues and makes distinctions. He is what most people associate with the term "scholastic." And yet there are in the Summa, as I hope to show, great beauties that cannot be found in other works of theology. Aquinas is the greatest Christian theologian of nature and the natural. Nature for him is not the sensuous, immediately given nature that St. Francis loved, nature as the world of trees and birds, of the sun and moon. I am sure Thomas loved these things too, but nature for him is something else. It is the realm of the universal and particular, cause and effect, matter and form, essence and existence. It is the nature of Aristotle. This is nature as the intelligible order of things that reveals itself to philosophic reason unaided by grace. But Christianity also goes beyond Aristotle. Nature in Christian thought is the creation of a loving God. We may therefore say that the world for Thomas does not merely have but is blessed with intelligibility,just as man is blessed with reason. Nature's beauty is not confined to the senses but extends to the mind. Shall we say that we experience traces of God in a beautiful sunset or mountain range, or in stunning works of art and music, and not in the rational order of things, the order that God infused into matter? Such an admission would be absurd, indeed blasphemous, since God is the source of the natural order. Reason, as the power of studying and beholding this order, is inherently good. We should therefore be able to glimpse something of the mind of God in things like the amazing structure and workings of our bodies and the mathematical order of the universe. If Aquinas were alive today, he would surely continue his inquiry into nature, unimpeded by any fear that such studies would undermine his faith. He would 2 devote himself to quantum physics, relativity, genetics, and evolution-theories that call his beloved Aristotle into question. He would persist in believing that reason is inherently good and that all truths lead to God. The Summa Theologica is a very big book with a vast range of topics. These include the function and extent of reason in matters of faith, the existence and essence of God, the order of creation, our passions, virtues, and vices, angels and demons, the sacraments, the Trinity, laws human and divine, the resurrection of soul and body, prayer, vows, and the vision of God reserved for the blessed. In spite of its difficulty, it is a good book for casual browsing. Open it to any page at random and you will find something interesting and instructive. The book is filled with arguments, but it is also a treasure house of memorable sentences. I have selected one of these as the focus of my talk. The sentence is about the great theme of Nature and Grace, and has always been my favorite in the entire Summa: "Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity ."1 The sentence occurs in Part I of the Summa, Question 1, The Nature and Extent of Sacred Doctrine, Article 8, Whether Sacred Doctrine Is a Matter of Argument? Not surprisingly, Thomas's answer to this question is a resounding "yes." Before we examine the sentence in detail, let me describe the overall manner in which Aquinas approaches a theological problem. As you know, the Summa consists of so-called "questions," that is, topics that are to be investigated. Each questions is divided into "articles." Every article begins with a well-defined question that invites a "yes" or "no" answer. In the case of Article 8, as we have seen, the question is: Whether sacred 1 Quotations from the Summa Theologica are from the translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Christian Classics, Westminster MD: 1981. 3 doctrine is a matter of argument? Then Thomas proceeds to a numbered set of so-called "objections." These usually but not always argue for positions that Thomas eventually refutes. Then comes a turning point signalled by the dramatic On the contrary. This section responds to the objections taken as a whole and cites Scripture or the Church Fathers. Thomas then moves to a longer, more discursive section introduced by the words I answer that. It mixes arguments from Scripture with arguments based on natural reason, very often on the writings of Aristotle. The article comes full circle with the enumerated Replies to the Objections. These are often the most revealing part of a given article, since here Thomas exposes the error peculiar to each objection. Thomas's way of structuring his argument is pedagogically effective. In addition to addressing the theological problem at hand, the argument, in its carefully devised form, habituates the learner to thinking in an orderly and logical way. The method also reminds us that the tenets of Christian faith are often anything but clear and self-evident. There are reasonable differences of opinion and potential confusions that require careful analysis, sound judgment, and a judicious reading of Scripture. In addition, Thomas's methodical discernment alerts the reader to the possibility of being deceived by false opinions that have the outward lustre of piety and right-mindedness. In this way, the Summa, especially in the Replies to the Objections, teaches us how to discern and expose that most dangerous of intellectual animals-the half-truth. Consider, for example, the first objection in our article: "It seems this doctrine is not a matter of argument. For Ambrose says: 'Put arguments aside where faith is sought."' How can anyone disagree with this view, which seems obvious, or dispute the authority of St. Augustine's great teacher? Were it not for Thomas's discerning response, 4 or something like it, a devout Christian might think: "Yes, that's right. One shouldn't use arguments from human reason in matters of faith but stick to revelation, since it is the direct word of God." But as Thomas goes on to show, the objection assumes, wrongly, that the use of argument in sacred doctrine is an attempt to prove the truth of faith by means of natural reason, which would undermine faith by making natural reason supreme. That is not reason's function in theology, as Aquinas explains in the I answer that: "As other sciences do not argue in proof of their principles, but argue from their principles to demonstrate other truths in these sciences: so this doctrine does not argue in proof of its principles, which are the articles of faith, but from them it goes on to prove something else, as the Apostle [Paul] from the resurrection of Christ argues in proof of the general resurrection (1 Cor. 15) ." Thomas's argument proceeds not from the danger of undermining faith but from the general form of science. Anyone who thought that theology was the attempt to provide rational demonstrations of faith would only demonstrate his ignorance of what a science is. Sciences cannot argue unless they have something to argue from, something that is ultimately incapable of proof. These are called first principles. In the case of theology, as Thomas explains, first principles do not come from natural reason but from revelation. To be sure, this limits the power of reason, which can neither prove its first principles nor in this case intellectually intuit them. But it also opens up a huge arena in which reason is free, indeed obliged, to search out the logical connections between one article of faith and another. One cannot argue rationally for either the resurrection of Christ or the general resurrection of all human beings, for both are matters of faith. But one can argue, as Paul does, that the one resurrection is the ground of the other. 5 An important assumption underlying this approach is that revealed truth is logically self-consistent.
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