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The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in Thomas Aquinas University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2004 The econcr iliation of faith and reason in Thomas Aquinas. Creighton J. Rosental University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Rosental, Creighton J., "The er conciliation of faith and reason in Thomas Aquinas." (2004). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2377. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2377 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE RECONCILIATION OF FAITH AND REASON IN THOMAS AQUINAS A Dissertation Presented by CREIGHTON J. ROSENTAL Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2004 Philosophy © Copyright by Creighton J. Rosental 2004 All Rights Reserved THE RECONCILIATION OF FAITH AND REASON IN THOMAS AQUINAS A Dissertation Presented by CREIGHTON J. ROSENTAL Approved as to style and content by: Gareth B. Matthews, Chair Vere C. Chappell, Member diillip Bricker, Department Head department of Philosophy ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first and foremost like to thank Gary Matthews for his knowledgeable advice and support. He helped through every stage of this project, from seedling to oak. I would also like to thank Eileen O’Neill, Vere Chappell and Bob Sleigh. They provided me not only with the skills and knowledge to work in the history of philosophy, but provided ideal exemplars of quality of work that inspired and motivated me. A number of people were very helpful in the course of my writing this dissertation. Eileen really got me started when she chaired my exam on the eternity of the world. Without her advice and guidance there would be no dissertation. Scott MacDonald was extremely helpful in my coming to understand Aquinas's account of taith. If he hadn't agreed to work with me and have me visit for a year at Cornell. 1 don t believe this project would ever have developed beyond the embryonic stage. Susan Brower- Tolland and Bemd Goehring also provided very useful comments on the material on faith. Parts of chapter 2 and much of chapter 4 were presented at several Cornell Summer Medieval Colloquia - I would like to thank those conference attendees tor their always useful and insightful comments and questions. In particular, I want to thank Jim Wetzel, whose comments (particularly on chapter 2) were invaluable, and Bob Pasnau whose research suggestions were very helpful for chapters 1 and 5. I would also like to thank Uri Leibowitz for helpful comments on chapter 4 and Casey Perin for comments on chapter 3. Finally, I’d like to thank Kyle Fischer for her support as my “dissertation manager.” IV ABSTRACT THE RECONCILIATION OF FAITH AND REASON IN THOMAS AQUINAS MAY 2004 CREIGHTON J. ROSENTAL, B.S., HARVEY MUDD COLLEGE M.A., CLAREMONT GRADUATE UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Gareth B. Matthews Thomas Aquinas has long been understood to have reconciled faith and reason. Typically, he is understood as having provided justification for faith by means of proof, particularly, that the Five Ways prove the existence of God. Under this interpretation, laith becomes a species ot justified belief, and the justification for faith rests upon the success of the Five Ways (or, alternatively, on the success of other justificatory evidence). In this dissertation, I argue that Aquinas’s account of faith is not one of justified belief, it at least as is understood in contemporary philosophy. Instead. I argue, faith has its own basis for epistemic “reasonableness” - a reasonableness that does not derive from ordinary evidence nor proof. Rather than requiring evidence accessible to the natural light of reason. Aquinas holds that faith has its own soil of “evidence” - that which results from the light of faith. Aquinas “Aristotelianizes” faith and argues that faith has the Aristotelian epistemic virtue of certitude, and in so doing reconciles faith and Aristotelian reason, at least as Aristotle was understood by Medieval philosophers. This reconciliation resolves important tensions between Aristotelian science and Christian doctrine. Further, I examine three contemporary accounts of what counts as v an epistemically "responsible" belief (namely, justified belief. practical rationality and warrant) and argue that under Aquinas's account, faith should be counted as rational. and in an important, though modified sense, as justified. vi 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . ABSTRACT ABBREVIATIONS ************** X CHAPTERS 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM OF FAITH AND REASON 1 LI. The problem of faith and reason 1 1 .2. Epistemological approaches to solving the problem of faith and reason 12 1.2.1. Being epistemically = responsible having rational justification .... 1 1 .2.2. Being epistemically responsible = being practically rational 16 1 .2.3. Being epistemically responsible = having warrant 19 1.3. Goals and outline of this dissertation 21 2. AQUINAS’S ACOUNT OF REASON 29 2. 1 . Reason in Aquinas 29 2.2. The account of ideal scientia in the Posterior Analytics 39 2.2.1 The certitude criterion 41 2.2.2. The perfection criterion 45 2.2.3. Perfect scientia - summary 48 2.3. Other varieties of scientia in the Posterior Analytics 49 2.3.1. Scientia obtained by weakening the certitude criterion 49 2.3.2. Scientia obtained by weakening the perfection criterion 51 2.3.3. A different notion of scientia 52 2.4. The epistemology of reason and scientia 55 2.4. 1 . Demonstration: reasoning that produces scientia 57 2.4.2. How do we know that we have perfect sciential 61 vii 2.4.2. 1 . Failure of certitude 63 2. 4. 2. 2. Failure of perfect apprehension of the truth 65 2.5. Conclusions 3.1. 3. AQUINAS’S ACCOUNT OF FAITH The movement of reason revisited 3.1.1. Faith, scientia opinion , compared and contrasted 82 3.1.2. Faith as belief g4 3. 1.2.1. Aquinas’s account of belief 88 3. 1.2. 2. Beliefand the will 90 3. 1.2. 3. The will and assent 93 3.1 .2.4. Assent and certitude 97 3.1.3. Faith as habit and virtue 102 3.2. Issues related to Aquinas's account of faith 106 3.2.1. Lifeless faith - faith without charity 106 3.2.2. Faith of the demons 108 3.3. The epistemology of faith 112 3.4. Conclusions 1 19 4. INTERACTION OF FAITH AND REASON 135 4.1. Limitations of reason in divine matters 136 4.2. Limitations of reason in the matter of the creation of the world 138 4.3. Why the duration of the world cannot be demonstrated 142 4.3.1. The argument from faith 142 4.3.2. The argument from a consideration of creatures 144 4.3.3. The argument from a consideration of God 146 4.3.4. Another type of demonstration of the duration of the world 148 4.4. The role of scientia in divine matters 1 59 4.4.1. Reason and scientia of the divine: the Five Ways 161 4.4.2. The existence of God as part of faith 165 4.4.3. The puzzle of the duration of the world resolved 173 4.5. Probable reasoning about divine matters 175 viii 5. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: AQUINAS’S RECONCILIATION OF FAITH AND REASON ]87 5.1. An Aristotelian epistemology jg 7 5.2. An Aristotelianized j faith 90 5.3. Limitations of reason 5.4. Faith and reason are compatible 195 5.5. Objections and replies 204 5.5.1. Christian responses to Aquinas’s account of reason 204 5.5.2. Philosophical problems with Aquinas’ solution 212 5.6. Concluding remarks 224 BIBLIOGRAPHY IX 1 3 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE PROBLEM OF FAITH AND REASON 1.1. The problem of faith and reason I hat there might be some sort of "problem ot faith and reason is perhaps easier to recognize than it is — to formulate certainly there is some sort ot tension between the two, even if it is only superficial. Part of the difficulty in explicating the nature of this tension resides in the fact that opinions about what constitutes faith and what constitutes reason have changed over the last 2,000 years, and the tension has been observed for nearly as long as there has been Christian faith. Is the tension between faith and reason st nd in th the 2 century the same as in the 2 or the 1 ? A further difficulty is that what counts as an acceptable solution has also changed, and such changes are not completely explicable in terms of changing accounts of faith and/or reason. For instance, some contemporary philosophers or theologians (e.g., contemporary creation science advocates) may hold that the beliefs of faith are “rational” because they meet the standards of modem science; however, to Medieval theologians who had very different standards for “science” such a solution would be unacceptable. Even though there is no uniform account of faith amongst religious believers, we shall try to limit the scope of the problem of faith and reason by constraining our consideration of faith to Christian faith (even though there is also much disagreement among Christians about the nature of faith). And though it seems that nearly every theological or philosophical text that surveys accounts of faith has its own metric for categorizing accounts, we shall further limit the scope of the problem by following John Hick in observing that there are fundamentally two types of Christian faith: the first, from the Latin fiducia, is a trusting and confident attitude towards God, the second, from fides, is identified with a cognitive act or state in which one is said to know God or have knowledge 1 about Him.
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