In my first post in this series on \u201ccourtroom\u201d apologetics, I mentioned an order of truth:\u00a0 God, theology, proclamation, reason, and apologia<\/i>.\u00a0 In this post, I\u2019ll explore that order in more detail.\u00a0 We\u2019ll return to the courtroom in the next post.\u00a0 For now, let\u2019s dig deeper into our theological and philosophical soil.<\/p>\n
The ordering of the categories of theology, proclamation, reason and apologia<\/i> suggests that these categories are not analytically distinct, but in fact participate in each other.\u00a0 There is no apologia<\/i> without theology.\u00a0 Indeed, properly understood, apologia is a form of public<\/b> theology<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Apologetic arguments therefore do not prepare the ground for theology, as though there is a neutral form of reason prior to theology.\u00a0 Rather, apologetic arguments are (or ought to be) a category<\/i> of theology, which seeks to represent (re-present) the truths of Christian theology in public, beyond and in concert with Church proclamation, in ways that cohere with the reason Christian theology already proclaims is embedded in the human soul and in all of creation.<\/p>\n
Notice the subsidiary role of our theology, proclamation, reason and apologia <\/i>to the reality of the Triune God and the Gospel.\u00a0 We may do a very good job of proclaiming the Gospel and describing its reason, or we may do a poor job.\u00a0 Either way, the job is never complete because the Gospel is a dynamic, unfolding reality that flows from the relational life of the Triune God.\u00a0 The full implications of the proclamation that \u201cGod was in the world in Christ Jesus reconciling all things to Himself\u201d (2 Cor. 5:19) remain to be seen and can never be fully explained.\u00a0 The character of our proclamation is bold and certain insofar as its core is the living Triune God, yet it is careful and provisional insofar as it embodies the limits of human thought and human speech about God.<\/p>\n
Another comparison between Karl Barth and John Paul II is helpful here.\u00a0 Barth, consistent with his understanding of revelation and philosophy, resisted any systematic definition of God:<\/p>\n
The equation of God\u2019s Word and God\u2019s Son makes it radically impossible to say anything doctrinaire in understanding the Word of God.\u00a0 In this equation, and in it alone, a real and effective barrier is set up against what is made of proclamation according to the Roman Catholic view and of Holy Scripture according to the later form of older Protestantism, namely, a fixed sum of revealed propositions which can be systematized like the sections of a corpus of law.\u00a0 The only system in Holy Scripture and proclamation is revelation, i.e., Jesus Christ.[1]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But Barth \u2013 who, after all, over the course of thirty-five years wrote a Church Dogmatics comprised of about six million words of dense text \u2013 did not mean we can say nothing truthful about God.\u00a0 After resisting what he understood as the Catholic and Scholastic Reformation\u2019s too-neat methods of systematization, Barth emphasized the importance of words and speech:<\/p>\n
Now the converse is also true, of course, namely that God\u2019s Son is God\u2019s Word.\u00a0 Thus God does reveal Himself in statements, through the medium of speech, and indeed of human speech.\u00a0 His word is always this or that word spoken by the prophets and apostles and proclaimed in the Church.\u00a0 The personal character of God\u2019s Word is not, then, to be played off against its verbal or spiritual character.\u00a0 It is not at all true that this second aspect under which we must understand it implies its irrationality and thus cancels out the first aspect under which we must understand it.[2]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Barth\u2019s concern throughout his discussion of the Word in Volume I of the Church Dogmatics is to preserve the freedom and integrity of theology against Enlightenment rationalism.\u00a0 Barth was particularly concerned with the way rationalism gave rise to nineteenth century liberal demythologizing Protestant thought.\u00a0 Barth also resisted how rationalism underwrote both Protestant fundamentalism and the Scholastic Thomism of much Catholic nineteenth century Catholic thought.<\/p>\n
John Paul II also recognized the limits of human understanding in Fides et Ratio<\/i>.\u00a0 Having asserted that all human beings are capable of exercising reason to learn about things within the order of natural reason, John Paul II offered a cautionary note:<\/p>\n
It should nonetheless be kept in mind that Revelation remains charged with mystery. It is true that Jesus, with his entire life, revealed the countenance of the Father, for he came to teach the secret things of God.\u00a0 But our vision of the face of God is always fragmentary and impaired by the limits of our understanding.\u00a0 Faith alone makes it possible to penetrate the mystery in a way that allows us to understand it coherently.[3]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Certainly John Paul II assigned a higher value to reason and philosophy than Barth.\u00a0 Nevertheless, for John Paul II as well as for Barth, the task of \u201cfaith seeking understanding\u201d is never complete.\u00a0 We can never know, or say, all there is to know and say about God, and we can never come to a \u201ccoherent\u201d understanding of God without faith.<\/p>\n
Both Barth and John Paul II recognized these limits because they were steeped in the scriptures and the Church Fathers.\u00a0 The recognition of human limitations was a key theme for the Church Fathers and for the great Medieval Scholastics such as Thomas Aquinas.\u00a0 The Fathers understood that limits of human thought and speech in relation to God meant that theology always proceeds by way of analogy or negation.\u00a0 St. Augustine, one of the Church\u2019s great synthesizers of faith and reason, once said \u201cIf you understood him, it would not be God.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Augustine was not suggesting we can know nothing of God.\u00a0 Augustine clearly held that God reveals Himself in both the book of nature and the book of scripture.\u00a0 But Augustine was making emphatically clear that we can never understand God in the sense of having God neatly figured out and contained.\u00a0 The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes this beautifully:\u00a0 \u201cEven when he reveals himself, God remains a mystery beyond words.\u201d[5]<\/a><\/p>\n
Our human limitations mean that we are simply incapable<\/i> of speaking directly about God.\u00a0 Our propositions never <\/i>correspond directly to God in esse <\/i>because God, by definition, is wholly other than us mere creatures.\u00a0 Yet we can speak faithfully of God by analogy, and we can say what God is not<\/i> by negation.<\/p>\n
Consider again the first line of the Apostle\u2019s Creed:\u00a0 \u201cI believe in God, the Father<\/i> almighty\u2026..\u201d\u00a0 Our term \u201cFather\u201d does not apply directly to God.\u00a0 Every other \u201cfather\u201d we know of is finite, fallible, flesh-and-blood.\u00a0 Every other \u201cfather\u201d we know of became a \u201cfather\u201d by a sexual act with a woman, or in relatively rare circumstances, by the use of reproductive technologies uniting sperm and egg cells, or by force of law (legal adoption).\u00a0 None of these characteristics could apply to God as \u201cFather.\u201d\u00a0 Even the case of adoption, a metaphor often used in scripture, is only an analogy:\u00a0 there is no law above God Himself that could determine the conditions for our adoption by God.\u00a0 Nevertheless, there are things about the term \u201cFather\u201d \u2013 generativity, compassion, direction, care \u2013 that communicate in human concepts who God declares and shows Himself to be.\u00a0 These are analogical categories that scripture and the Church have given us as a good way of speaking, which provides confidence and certainty concerning their propriety.\u00a0 Yet we must never confuse the analogy with God in esse<\/i>, in His essence, which transcends all created things.<\/p>\n
The analogical speech in the first line of the Creed also suggests a way of apophatic<\/i>, or negative speech about God.\u00a0 If we say God is the \u201cFather almighty,\u201d we can clearly identify things God is not<\/i>, such as finite, fallible, or flesh-and-blood.\u00a0 Yet, again, we must never confuse the ability to negate certain kinds of speech about God with the ability to capture or define God in esse<\/i>.\u00a0 A god who is susceptible to captivity by human speech and reason would not be the God of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures \u2013 indeed, such a thing would be merely a human idea and not a god at all.<\/p>\n
Since theology must always proceed only by analogy and negation, and since all apologetics is public theology, it follows that a Christian apologia<\/i> cannot finally accept any supposedly neutral ground rules for philosophy apart from theology.\u00a0 A strong foundationalist epistemology is an un-Christian epistemology.<\/p>\n
Analytic philosophy and logical-grammatical rules, to be sure, can represent important tools for apologia<\/i>. \u00a0If the creation bears the Divine logos<\/i>, there is inherent in it a beauty and order that is to some degree susceptible to logical-grammatical analysis.\u00a0 Even Barth employed the rules of grammar and logic in his fideistic-sounding Dogmatics.\u00a0\u00a0 And Christian theology tells us \u2013 by way of analogy and negation, of course — that God in His simplicity and perfections does not contradict Himself.\u00a0 To use John Paul II\u2019s framework, various forms of philosophy, including analytic philosophy, can achieve knowledge appropriate to the subject of philosophy, but this does not mean philosophy stands independent of \u201cfaith.\u201d<\/p>\n
Therefore, we rightly expect Christian reason to exhibit principles of non-contradiction, correspondence, coherence, and symmetry.\u00a0 Where our apologia<\/i> confronts un-reason, we rightly refer to these principles.\u00a0 But if Christian theology is the truth of the universe, we must recognize the limits of our words and our thoughts, and we must never confuse human attempts at explanation with God Himself.\u00a0 God is the three-in-one, who created the world from love and became incarnate in Christ to redeem the world.\u00a0 He is not, finally, an equation of formal logic.<\/p>\n
In my next post, I\u2019ll explore the notion of \u201contotheology\u201d \u2013 the perverse idea that God can be studied just as anything in nature can be studied.\u00a0 We will begin to see that courtroom apologetics are a form of ontotheology that reduces God to the sort of object suitable for adjudication under the limited rationality of the courthouse.<\/p>\n
Further Reading<\/span>:<\/p>\n
Andrew Davidson, ed., Imaginative Apologetics:\u00a0 Theology, Philosophy, and the Catholic Tradition<\/a> (Baker Academic 2012).<\/p>\n
Pope John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio<\/i><\/a>, September 14, 1998.<\/p>\n
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I.1.3 \u00a75<\/a> (\u201cThe Nature of the Word of God\u201d).<\/p>\n
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\n\n[1]<\/a> CD I.1.\u00a75.2.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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