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Wisdom in the Process of Humanizing Culture. Some Thomistic Insights

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Wisdom in the Process of Humanizing Culture. Some Thomistic Insights WISDOM IN THE PROCESS OF HUMANIZING CULTURE. SOME THOMISTIC INSIGHTS Piotr Roszak Nicolaus Copernicus University UDK: 2-18:008]27-732.3 II Vatikanski Toruń, Poland 2:2736TOM [email protected] https://doi.org/10.34075/cs.55.4.10 Pregledni znanstveni rad Rad zaprimljen 06/2020. Abstract In the light of Vatican II, the Christian contribution to contempo- rary culture can be characterized by the sapiential approach. Having determined the main obstacle or traps of the current cultural situation, as reported by B. Welte in terms of “unwesen”, this paper proposes the recovery of wisdom as the ultimate horizon of human activities. This approach can be developed in three ways, according to Aquinas’ characteristics of wisdom: enlargement of perspectives, ordering of the big picture and tasting which consists in restoring the distorted taste of things. Finally, possible conclusions for the Christian presen- ce in the world are proposed. Keywords: Thomas Aquinas, Wisdom, Culture, Providence, Metaphysics 1. INTRODUCTION In 2016, in the homily in Santa Marta Pope Francis said that faith transforms in culture only when it is a culture of encounter.1 The Pope’s call can be interpreted as an encouragement for Chri- stians that they should not abandon their concern for culture. Faith expresses itself in a form of culture and is not able to grow in cer- tain cultures, particularly those which are shaped by materialism. If faith does not fall within such cultural coordinates, then it must either give up or transform culture, because it cannot be practi- ced on a copy-paste basis, without taking into account the “cultu- 1 Pope Francis, Morning Meditation in the Chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, For a culture of encounter Tuesday, 13 September 2016, http://www.vati- can.va/content/francesco/en/cotidie/2016/documents/papa-francesco-coti- die_20160913_for-a-culture-of-encounter.html [access: 27.02.2020]. 919 Piotr Roszak, Wisdom in the Process of Humanizing Culture. Some Thomistic ... ral cloth” that the faith always has.2 The history of ancient cultures with which Christianity interacted confirms this point: the authen- tic elements of these cultures have remained assimilated, and the rest is permeated with a new spirit of the Gospel.3 It is worth indi- cating that the Christian encounter with Greek metaphysics, which was not a simple absorption of the ancient philosophical wisdom (its vocabulary), a certain infusion of the Gospel into cultural tem- plates, but a broadening of the possibilities of metaphysics itself.4 Therefore, culture is not something already given in its finished form, but it is in fieri.5 For Christians, this implies an attitude of shaping it, not evaluating it from outside or constructing counter- -proposals (if we do not accept it for some reasons). The spirit of the Second Vatican Council goes precisely in opposite direction: it is an invitation to exercise an inclusive role. Somehow, this can be seen as related to our Christian calling for imitation of Christ who stands at the door and knocks (Rev 3:20): it is a desire to be a guest, to be accepted, because we possess a unique gift that we would like to share with other people. This is a starting point of our reflection on how Christians shape cultures of the place where they live. The aim of this paper, inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas, con- sists in showing the possible Christian contribution to contempo- rary culture based on the necessity of wisdom in order to avoid the experience of “non-essence” (unwesen), which characterized the con- temporary cultural phenomena. This term introduced by Bernhard Welte describes numerous phenomena that are exposed to a slow shifting of interest from what is significant to what is marginal.6 This occurs when the central truth is displaced by the truths loca- ted on the peripheries. 2 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium no. 117. 3 Joseph Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, Ignatius, San Francisco, 2004. See also Paul O’Callaghan, Cultural challenges to faith: a reflection on the dynamics of modernity, Church, Communication and Culture 1 (2017), 25-40. 4 Matthew Levering, God and Greek Philosophy in Contemporary Biblical Scholarship, Journal of Theological Interpretation 2 (2010), 169–186. See also: Piotr Roszak, Language, Metaphysics and the Bible. The Philosophical Background of Aquinas’s exegesis of Sacred Scripture, European Journal of Science and Theology 5(2018), 123-135; Piotr Roszak, Jörgen Vijgen (eds), Towards A Biblical Thomism. Thomas Aquinas and the Renewal of Biblical Theology, Eunsa, Pamplona, 2018. 5 See Enrique Alarcón, Naturaleza y cultura en santo Tomás de Aquino, Revista Española de Teología 3(2019), 397-405. 6 Berndard Welte, Filozofia religii, Znak, Kraków, 1996, 241. 920 Crkva u svijetu 55 (2020) 4, 919-929 2. WISDOM AND CULTURE: WHAT MIGHT THE CHRISTIAN CONTRIBUTION BE? As Alister McGrath observes, the current discussion about the origin and nature of human culture is influenced by Darwinism, see- ing it as a cumulative progress based on natural selection.7 However, there is an agreement that human culture manifests itself by the fact that we are capable of rebellion against a genetic tyranny, like no other species.8 Culture remains a school of freedom, shaping the world of human goals. It is freedom that is not an absolute category (“nominalistic”9), comprehended as an unlimited choice: it does not matter if it is good choice or bad one, but the pursuit of good and human development. If freedom is auto-determination, to be causa sui, we are free when we dominate our acts and not act upon other realities. In this sense, the freedom is related to act per se, what was associated with term perseitas. This second (“thomistic”) con- cept means that we are not less free because we have something to eat and drink (we have no choice), but «how» we do this left for us to decide. To be free consists in following the true good and be able to auto-determination.10 Asking for hospitality in contemporary culture, Christians bring evangelic wisdom to this world. It is not simply the intellectual eru- dition, but the knowledge of reality through its ultimate causes (per 7 In this sense, it is worthy to remind following Benno van den Toren, Original Sin and the Coevolution of Nature and Culture, in: S. P. Rosenberg et all (eds), Finding Ourselves after Darwin, Baker Academic, Grand Rapids 2018, p. 178- 179: „The fact that we share 98.6 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees does not mean that we are no different from apes, any more than the fact the computer chips are made of silicon means that they are no different from desert sand. We may share much of our biological nature with apes, but our unique identity is formed by being advanced cultural beings”. See also Javier Novo, Evolución. Para creyentes y otros escépticos, Rialp, Madrid, 2018, p. 111-115, where he indicated the origin of humanity can be related to symbolic language 300.000 years ago. This does not change the fact, as he notes, that human race appeared in the world without noise, quietly. And as God loves every child from the beginning of his existence, before he reaches rationality, so God loved mankind from the beginning in his evolutionary path. 8 Alister McGrath, The Order of Things: Explorations in Scientific Theology, Blackwell, Oxford, 2006, p. 133. 9 This distinction was developed by Servis-Theodore Pinckaers in his Sources of Christian Ethics, CUA Press, Washington, 1995. 10 Bartosz Adamski, Wolność w Chrystusie: aktualność nauczania św. Tomasza z Akwinu o wolności chrześcijańskiej na podstawie piątego rozdziału Super Epistolam B. Pauli ad Galatas Lectura, Biblica et Patristica Thoruniensia 3(2015), 15-25. 921 Piotr Roszak, Wisdom in the Process of Humanizing Culture. Some Thomistic ... ultimas causas).11 This wisdom is possible to acquire in twofold way: the first one is described as per modum cognitionis or perfectum usum rationis12 that indicates the human effort to understand rea- lity through causes, dependencies among beings.13 Getting to know the world better from the perspective of its end, the ultimate rea- sons, man becomes wise. It’s a way of building education based on a culture of explaining “why” things happen this way and not only “how”.14 The second was per inclinationem or connaturalitatem and it includes the affective manner of knowing things which is possi- ble when one stays with wise man, because the proximity of nature (and more when occurs the union, which is the consequence of love) make possible the access to the knowledge of things.15 There are three consequences for the culture itself, which illu- strate the possible fields/areas of cooperation between Christians and any forms of culture. It is particularly important in contempo- rary culture, which in R. Sala’s description has five phrases: anti- Platonic (related to F. Nietzsche), anti-ideological (not for one science that would have the ambition to describe everything), anti-Aristote- lian (not for purposefulness nature), anti-Augustinian (not for sacri- fice of oneself, but rather self-realization), anti-Roman (loss of trust 11 Enrique Martinez, Fe y contemplación en santo Tomás de Aquino, Revista española de teología, 1(2013),81-95. See also a brilliant thomistic reflection on the processuality of Divine Wisdom in its communication to the creatures: S.-T. Bonino, The Incomprehensible Wisdom of God in the Expositio super Iob, in: Reading Job with Thomas Aquinas, ed. M. Levering, P. Roszak, J. Vijgen, CUA Press, Washington, 2020, 93-126. 12 See André Hayen, San Tommaso d’Aquino e la vita della Chiesa oggi, Jaca Book, Milano, 1967, who claimed that these two expressions are not identical.
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