(Part 2 of the essay I’m working on)
In my first post, I argued that, for Christians, theology must retain its title as Queen of the sciences. A courtroom, of course, is no place for theology. A first and basic problem with courtroom apologetics, therefore, is the relation of theology to other kinds of argument. In the history of Christian thought, this problem has been discussed as the relation between faith and philosophy. The mainstream of the Christian tradition has always held that philosophy cannot substitute for or rival faith. Faith either eliminates philosophy or provides the ground for philosophy. In either case, faith takes priority.
The great Swiss theologian Karl Barth recognized this priority. His indictment of philosophy was unrelenting:
No matter how philosophers may or may not reach an understanding on these matters, they will do so as philosophers and not as theologians. That is, they will not do so out of any responsible regard for the theme of theology. Hence theology cannot learn anything from them and ought not to do so, unless it is ready to let them intrude a philosophical theme instead of its own, as has always happened when it has accepted material instruction from any philosophy.[1]
Because of his theology of the immanence of the Word, Barth rejected apologetic efforts in general: “the world,” he said, “cannot evolve into agreement with God’s Word on its own initiative nor can the Church achieve this by its work in and on the world.”[2] “The Church is the Church,” Barth said, “as it believes and proclaims that prior to all secular developments and prior to all its own work the decisive word has in fact been spoken already regarding both itself and the world. The world no longer exists in isolation or neutrality vis-à-vis revelation, the Bible, and proclamation.”[3]
Barth was surely right about the priority of theology over philosophy. His insistence on this priority is a tonic for the rationalism inherent in “courtroom” apologetics. But did Barth miss the realization that philosophy – reason – is itself properly a product of theology?
Pope John Paul II’s 1998 Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio offers a helpful comparison to Barth’s apparent blanket dismissal of philosophy. This encyclical stands as one of the finest discussions of faith and reason in recent Christian literature.
In his introductory discussion of the relation between theology and philosophy, John Paul II states that all knowledge, whether derived from philosophy or faith, depends first on God, who makes knowledge possible by grace. “Underlying all the Church’s thinking,” John Paul II said, “is the awareness that she is the bearer of a message which has its origin in God himself (cf. 2 Cor 4:1-2).” [4] The Church did not receive this message through its own power or abilities, nor was the message communicated through abstract intellectual means. Rather, John Paul II said, it stems from a personal encounter with God in Christ:
At the origin of our life of faith there is an encounter, unique in kind, which discloses a mystery hidden for long ages (cf. 1 Cor 2:7; Rom 16:25-26) but which is now revealed: “In his goodness and wisdom, God chose to reveal himself and to make known to us the hidden purpose of his will (cf. Eph 1:9), by which, through Christ, the Word made flesh, man has access to the Father in the Holy Spirit and comes to share in the divine nature”.[5]
Further, God’s self-revelation in Christ was entirely a free act of grace: “[t]is initiative is utterly gratuitous, moving from God to men and women in order to bring them to salvation. As the source of love, God desires to make himself known; and the knowledge which the human being has of God perfects all that the human mind can know of the meaning of life.”[6]
Therefore there is no question, as Barth feared, of philosophy superseding faith. There is no sharp division, in Fides et Ratio, between “nature” and “grace”: all that pertains to “nature,” to God’s creative design, is also the gift of “grace,” of God’s ecstatic, self-giving love. Nevertheless, for John Paul II, “nature” involves empirical realities that are susceptible to human knowledge through a form of reasoning appropriate to the object. “Philosophy” therefore possesses an inherent integrity, structure, and grammar. “The truth attained by philosophy and the truth of Revelation,” John Paul II said, “are neither identical nor mutually exclusive”:
There exists a twofold order of knowledge, distinct not only as regards their source, but also as regards their object…. Based upon God’s testimony and enjoying the supernatural assistance of grace, faith is of an order other than philosophical knowledge which depends upon sense perception and experience and which advances by the light of the intellect alone. Philosophy and the sciences function within the order of natural reason; while faith, enlightened and guided by the Spirit, recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness of grace and truth” (cf. Jn 1:14) which God has willed to reveal in history and definitively through his Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 5:31-32).[7]
Contrary to Barth, then, John Paul II sees a positive role for “philosophy” as a complement to “faith.” Indeed, for John Paul II, “natural reason,” apart from revelation, is capable of showing that there is a God who created the universe – a notion Barth rejected. Whether one sides with Barth or John Paul II on the question of “philosophy” and the role of “natural reason,” however, these great Christian thinkers hold one thing in common with the historic Christian tradition: they recognize that the final ground of truth resides in God Himself and not in merely human structures of reason or speech. For John Paul II, it is finally our faith in God’s creative goodness that establishes confidence in the capacities of “natural reason” to comprehend creation, and it is our faith in God’s transcendence that establishes the proper bounds of reason.
We confess in the Creed that we “believe in God, the Father almighty, maker of Heaven and Earth.” This means there is nothing apart from God that is not God’s creation. With this confession, there is no sense in which we as Christians could proclaim anything, provide any reasons, or offer any public apologia, without first acknowledging the Triune God revealed in Christ. Any effort to offer a Christian apologia that does not operate within the framework of a confession of the Triune God revealed in Christ before proceeding to offer reasons for that confession is a corruption of Christian theology that finally is a kind of a-theism. In my next post, I’ll begin to unpack this relationship between God, theology, proclamation, reason, and apologia.
Further Reading:
Andrew Davidson, ed., Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition (Baker Academic 2012).
Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio, September 14, 1998.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1.3 §5.