Doubt as the Way to Certainty
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Doubt as the Way
to Certainty
he centuries following the death of Augustine are often
- spoken of as the Dark Ages. They were a time when, outwardly at least, events were dominated by the newly established
barbarian kingdoms. But throughout this period the influence
of Christianity was permeating society, above all through the
work of the Benedictine monastic communities. In contrast to
the eastern half of the old empire, where the Greek inheritance
was most powerful, in Western Christendom the Latin tradition
had the greatest influence. Greek thought, insofar as it was
present, was mainly in its Platonic form.
Meanwhile, Aristotelian philosophy had found a new home. Western Christians often forget that, in the earliest centuries of the church, some of its greatest advances took place in the region which Europeans call the Middle East and which Indians call West Asia. Here the language of Christian literature was not Greek but Syriac. The "Church of the East," with its great center at Edessa, became a point from which Christianity radiated to places as far as Persia, Afghanistan, India, and China. The Christians of the "Church of the East" had already translated Aristotle into Syriac when the great explosion of Arab power, inspired by the message of Islam, overwhelmed the Christian civilization of the region. These "Nestorian" Christians eventually became the teachers of their Arab overlords; in due course, Aristotle was translated into Arabic, and Islamic theology took Aristotelian rationalism into its heart. While Western Europe was still coming out of its Dark Ages, Islam had become a very rich culture, much more advanced in the arts of civilization than Western Christendom. It was especially in Spain in the eleventh and twelfth centuries that there was much mutual contact between theologians of Islamic, Jewish and Christian traditions, and it was here that Aristotle was translated into Latin. Above all, it was the translation into Latin of the writings of the great Muslim theologians, such as Avicenna (980-1032) and Averroes (1126- 1198), that brought into the thinking of Western Christendom a new kind of rationalism that challenged the traditional ways of thought.
How was the challenge to be met? The popularity in the University of Paris of Averroes' teachings led the Pope in 1263 to reimpose an earlier ban on the teaching of Aristotle, but "The Philosopher," as Aristotle was often called, could not be silenced. Already in 1257 St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-74) had begun his Summa contra Gentiles, and it was Thomas who was to achieve a synthesis of the new learning with the old biblical tradition, a synthesis which was to shape the thinking of Western Christendom to this day.
Averroism was making deep inroads into Christian thought. It made a sharp distinction between faith and reason and taught a doctrine of "double truth" which allowed the believer to hold doctrines that a philosopher had to deny. In attacking this false teaching, Thomas accepted a distinction between things that can be known by reason alone (such as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul) and things that could be known only by faith through divine revelation, such as the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity. Thomas argued against Averroes, however, that where divine revelation contradicts the findings of philosophy, the latter are untrue, or can be shown to be unnecessary. Theology was therefore a higher discipline than philosophy. But reason and faith had been pried apart, and the Thomistic tradition, which was to shape the thought of Western Christendom for many centuries, did not always follow the careful distinctions made by Thomas. In particular, it became common to regard philosophy as the necessary prolegomena to theology; the findings of theology had to be validated by philosophy Three consequences of this are important for the present discussion.
1. The Thomist scheme puts asunder what Augustine had held together, and as a result of this, knowledge is separated from faith. There is a kind of knowledge for which one does not have to depend on faith, and there is another kind which is only available by the exercise of faith. It does not need to be pointed out that this dichotomy has run deep in our culture to this day. Certain knowledge is one thing; faith is something else. In Locke's famous definition, belief is "a persuasion which falls short of knowledge." Certainty is a matter of knowledge, not of faith. Faith is what we have to fall back on when certain knowledge is not to be had. Here one can see the origins of that split which runs right through contemporary Western thought, the split which gives rise to what C. P Snow called "The Two Cultures" and which runs through every university campus separating the buildings devoted to science from those devoted to other pursuits.
2. The second consequence of this move is to create a cleavage between two conceptions of God. The God whose existence is demonstrable by the methods of philosophical argument is not easily recognizable as the God who encounters us in the Bible. He is certainly not the Trinity of Christian faith. It is almost impossible to conceive that this God could become incarnate in a particular human being. One is faced with a dilemma: Which is the real God? Is the God of the philosophers the real God, and thus the God who encounters us in the biblical story perhaps a primitive anthropomorphic misunderstanding, appropriate to an early stage in human development but to be left behind in a more developed society? Or is the true and living God the one who meets us in the Bible, the one who meets us in the person of Jesus Christ? If this is the case, is the God of the philosophers a construct of the human mind, a work not of men's hands but of their minds, an idol? It is obvious that this dilemma has remained at the heart of Christian thinking in the "developed" world to this day.
3. The third consequence of the Thomist synthesis is perhaps the most far-reaching of all. If philosophy has to be called in to underpin that knowledge of God which (it is claimed) comes by revelation; if, in other words, the religious experience of those apprenticed to the tradition which has its foundation in the biblical narrative is not in itself a sufficient ground for certainty, so that other, more reliable grounds are to be sought; it follows that those other grounds must be completely reliable. The philosophical proofs for the existence of God must be invulnerable. But they are not. The centuries following St. Thomas saw the increasing influence of classical thought at the time of the Renaissance and - above all - the shaking of old and (apparently) secure foundations by the findings of the new science as developed by Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler. All of this added to the weight of skepticism. If seemingly age-old certainties were now called into question, where could certainty be found? That the sun rose in the east and went down in the west had seemed, since the dawn of human consciousness, one of the most certain facts of human experience. But in the centuries following St. Thomas and up to today, we have been asked to believe that this is not so, but that it is the earth which moves - despite the fact that it seems as solid as ever.
By the beginning of the seventeenth century, skepticism was dominant in the intellectual life of Western Europe. Accord ing to Michael Buckley (At the Origins of Modern Atheism, 1987), the question asked throughout France was, Is there any escape from skepticism? This was not primarily a matter of belief in God but of whether or not any reliable knowledge whatsoever was possible. Indeed, this kind of skepticism could go along with a certain kind of theism, for the abstractly omnipotent "God" of natural theology was above the jurisdiction of human logic. But outright atheism was "knocking at the door." It was in this intellectual atmosphere that a famous debate took place at a Paris conference in November 1628. At this conference, a learned philosopher undertook to show that skepticism could be overcome by recognizing the force of probability and that probability, in turn, could be accepted as a sufficient basis for knowledge. At this meeting was a young philosopher named Rene Descartes. The enthusiasm with which the audience acclaimed this defense of probability roused his ire, and he intervened, proceeding to demonstrate that on the basis of probability he could prove truth to he falsehood and falsehood to be truth. Philosophy could not be content with probability, and by Descartes's method, certain knowledge was within reach.
Also present at the conference was the Cardinal Pierre de Berulle (1575-1629), who was deeply impressed by Descartes's intervention. The subject of the discussion at the conference was not the existence of God but the possibility of escaping from skepticism. The cardinal was concerned about the threat of atheism. The upshot of his conversation with Descartes was that Descartes received from the cardinal a commission to deploy his philosophical method to prove, beyond doubt, the existence of God. In this commission two goals were put together: the defeat of skepticism and the defeat of atheism. "Never," remarks Buckley, ,,were two adversaries more fatally merged into one" (Origins, p. 72).
Descartes's method involved an initial alliance with the skeptics. He would clear the ground of everything, that is, every thing that was not certain, everything that was a matter of faith but not a matter of knowledge. Having cleared the ground of unreliable materials he would lay a foundation "which was selfjustifying and self-authenticating, principles so intuitive that they admitted no denial and were even sustained by the exercise of doubt" (Origins, p. 72). He affirmed that the knowledge of God and of the soul was the business of philosophy, not of theology. Natural reason alone can provide certain knowledge. As is well known, Descartes found the self-justifying intuition on which to build the new edifice of certain knowledge in his own existence as a thinking subject. Thus even skepticism is made to serve the cause of knowledge, for one's skepticism is evidence of one's existence as a thinking (and doubting) subject. From this indubitable starting point, Descartes set out to build the structure of knowledge by processes of reasoning which had the clarity and indubitability of mathematics. A mathematical equation, once it is understood, cannot be doubted. Mathematics was, in fact, to become the of all the varied branches of scientific knowledge which were to develop as the method of Descartes came to be applied in all fields of inquiry. (It is perhaps worth mentioning here that this is another vital point at which the development of Western European thought has been determined by a contribution from the house of Islam, for one cannot imagine modern mathematics ever developing if the old Roman numerals had not been replaced by the Arabic ones.)
One can see that Descartes was building his new structure of indubitable knowledge on the foundation of skepticism, the skepticism that was the dominant intellectual climate of his time. He was thus reversing the method of Augustine. Doubt, not faith, was to be the path to knowledge. By relentless skepticism, the famous "critical principles," every claim to truth was to be put through the critical sieve in which only the indubitable would be retained. This was the body of knowledge. The rest was belief, faith, or at most probability.
This method of Descartes would dominate the development of thought in Europe for three centuries, and no one can question the magnitude of what has been achieved by its employment. We are now living, however, in a period when Descartes's method is widely criticized and abandoned. Before looking at the way in which this disillusionment has occurred, it is useful to draw attention to three major consequences of Descartes's move. In the first place, it strongly reinforced the dualism of mind and matter which had been such a debilitating feature of the classical worldview. By isolating the thinking mind as though it existed apart from its embodiment in a whole person and thus apart from the whole human and cosmic history to which that person belongs, Descartes opened a huge gap between the world of thought and the world of material things and historical happenings. In his method, the gap was bridged by means of a multi-step argument: from the doubting and therefore fallible human mind one argues the existence of a perfect mind which knows no doubt or fallibility; the existence of this perfect mind ("God") assures us that our senses will not be allowed to deceive us and that we can therefore know that the material world exists. But this complex argument does not overcome the dualism that has been a mark of European thought in the past three centuries: the mental (or spiritual) and the material are two separate worlds.
The second consequence, related to the first but worthy of separate mention, is the divorce between the objective and the subjective poles in human knowing and the consequent polarization between objectivity and subjectivity. This has led, in turn, to a popular image of science as a realm of objective facts which are quite sanitized of any elements of subjectivity, with the corollary that all other claims to knowledge - for instance, claims in the realms of art, literature, poetry, and religion - are merely subjective. The best scientists in all times, and recent scientific work in particular, have totally repudiated this image, but it was used by men like Huxley in the nineteenth century to propagate the myth that science had replaced religion as the centerpiece of modern civilization. This myth is still powerful today.
The third effect of the Cartesian program has been to reinforce the dichotomy, already referred to, between theory and practice. Things would have been different if Descartes had taken as his starting point "I act, therefore I am," or "I love, therefore I am." But Descartes wanted absolute certainty. One could be mistaken about acting and loving. But thinking, even if it is wrong thinking, necessarily presupposes a thinker. His own existence as a thinker gave Descartes the indubitable certainty that he required. By isolating the thinking mind, detaching it from the world of acting and loving, Descartes reintroduced this classical dichotomy. Thinking out the principles is one thing; putting them into practice is another step. The results of this are such as to justify the protest of those who want to reverse the order and put practice before theory. But this is no solution. It only means that we act on assumptions which we have not examined.
Despite its immense effects on the subsequent history of Europe, the Cartesian program has run into difficulties. The fundamental reason can be stated simply: the centerpiece of Descartes's method is the critical principle. Every truth claim must be open to criticism. Doubt is to be applied to all beliefs, however ancient and venerable, and only those that prove to be indubitable can be accepted. One may distinguish three forms in which doubt can be expressed.
1. If you make the assertion "I believe P," I may say "I doubt P because I believe Q, R, and T," which are incompatible with P In other words, my doubt rests upon a faith commitment. It is, of course, possible to doubt Q, R, and T but, once again, only on the basis of other beliefs which I do not doubt, at least not at the moment of doubting Q, R, and T. This form of doubt, therefore, presupposes faith.
2. 1 may say, "I doubt P because you have not proved it." This implies that there are criteria of proof by which P could be either proved or disproved. But the existence of these criteria is also open to doubt. I cannot offer this form of agnostic doubt unless I offer it on the basis of a set of beliefs (about the validity of these criteria) which - for the moment - I do not doubt.
3. There is also, of course, total skepticism, doubting that it is possible to make any truth claims at all. This total skepticism is indeed a possibility, as illustrated in the Europe of the seventeenth century and in the Europe of today. What is to be said about this? Quite simply, it is an intellectual pose and not a genuine belief. So long as we continue to live we continually act on the assumption that certain things are true and others not. To live we must eat, and to eat we must. believe that the food set before us will nourish and not poison us. The only logical implication of total skepticism would be suicide. This logical conclusion is rarely (but, alas, sometimes) drawn by individuals. But if total skepticism becomes the intellectual fashion of a whole society, then that society is quite certainly on the road to its demise.
By the mercy of God, human beings are often saved from their intellectual follies, and so European society has not yet perished. But the method of Descartes has cast a deep shadow of skepticism over the subsequent history of European thought, even in the midst of the superb technical achievements it has made possible. At the most obvious level it has created a prejudice in favor of doubt over faith. The phrases "blind faith" and "honest doubt" have become the most common of currency. Both faith and doubt can be honest or blind, but one does not hear of "blind doubt" or of "honest faith." Yet the fashion of thought which gives priority to doubt over faith in the whole adventure of knowing is absurd. Both faith and doubt are necessary elements in this adventure. One does not learn anything except by believing something, and - conversely - if one doubts everything one learns nothing. On the other hand, believing every thing uncritically is the road to disaster. The faculty of doubt is essential. But as I have argued, rational doubt always rests on faith and not vice versa. The relation between the two cannot be reversed. Knowing always begins with the opening of our minds and our senses to the great reality which is around us and which sustains us, and it always depends on this from beginning to end. The capacity to doubt, to question what seems obvious, is a necessary element in our effort to know reality as it is, but its role is derivative and secondary. Rational doubt depends on faith; rational faith does not depend on doubt.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was perhaps the greatest thinker in the centuries following Descartes. In his most influential work, Critique of Pure Reason, he demonstrated the limits of reason, arguing that our reason alone cannot reach beyond the appearance of things (the phenomena) to the ultimate reality which lies, so to speak, behind them (the noumenon). In his two succeeding works, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment, Kant sought to show how our moral experience and our aesthetic experience can lead us beyond the boundary that defines the limits of reason. He showed how our moral experience requires us to acknowledge the reality of God, of judgment, and of immortality.
Kant's was one of the most powerful minds ever engaged in wrestling with these issues, and the popular interpretations of his thinking have, almost inevitably, oversimplified his conclusions. Because the first of the three Critiques has received the greatest attention, its negative conclusion that the existence of God is beyond the reach of human reason - has been among his most powerful legacies. That "ultimate reality is unknowable" has become almost a self-evident truth for "modern" people, who do not notice the self-contradictory character of this assertion: how does one know that something is unknowable? Kant's positive affirmations about the being of God rested primarily on the sense of the absolute character of the moral law. But the development of "modernity" since the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on reason as the only path to reliable knowledge, has weakened this sense of a moral absolute. Kant was the product of a devout Christian home where the commandments of God were the basis of the moral law His argument from the fact of moral obligation to the existence of God, however, has not been followed in succeeding generations. Rather, the reasoning has been that since there is no God, there is no moral law. Kant was seeking to establish room for faith in a society threatened by skeptical rationalism. Sadly, the positive thrust of his reasoning was lost in the popular understanding of his work.
It was Friederich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who, at the end of the nineteenth century, drew with inescapable clarity the necessary conclusion of the method of Descartes. For the reason already given, the critical principle must necessarily destroy itself. Rational criticism rests on beliefs which are, for the moment, held acritically. But these beliefs are themselves liable to critical questioning. If the critical principle is exalted to the supreme place in the enterprise of knowing, then the possibility of knowing anything is destroyed. "True" and "false," "right" and "wrong" - these are now words which have no objective reference. They are simply expressions of the will. The will to power is the real driving force of history. The "eternal truths of reason" so beloved during the Age of Reason are in fact nothing of the kind; they are the products of particular historical developments and of particular exercises of the will to power. The twentieth century has learned this lesson. Claims to speak meaningfully about right and wrong are discounted. Instead, one speaks of "values." These "values" are a matter of personal choice. They express what the person who holds them wishes to see enacted. They are precisely expressions of the will (albeit in a less brutal form than that suggested by Nietzsche).
The age which accepted the method of Descartes for the attainment of reliable truth referred to itself as the Age of Reason. It believed that by faithfulness to these methods one would attain to certainty and to reliable truth, in contrast to the traditional beliefs based on alleged revelation, which rested their claims on faith rather than on reason. In the last decades of this century, the intellectual leadership of Europe has begun to turn its back on modernity. We are in the age of postmodernity The mark of this is a suspicion of all claims to universal truth. Such claims have to be deconstructed. The "metanarratives" told by societies to validate their claims to global power are to be rejected. There are no privileged cultures and no privileged histories. All human cultures are equally entitled to respect. There are only different "regimes of truth" (Michel Foucault) which succeed one another. Each one suppresses the claims of the previous one to know truth and imposes its own rule. There are no overarching criteria by which these regimes can be judged. The ultimate factor in history, as Nietzsche saw it, is the will to power. Violence is the fundamental element of human life and history.
The modern age began with the daring program of Descartes, a program encouraged by a cardinal of the church and designed to banish skepticism once and for all by establishing the method by which indubitable certainty could be obtained. Neither faith nor probability would suffice. Certainty was possible, and we ought to be content with nothing less. It is deeply ironic that this method has led us directly into the profound skepticism of the postmodern world. The greatest product of the modern age is the work of science, a work which has transformed the human situation and continues to do so. Yet there is now a profound skepticism about science itself. It is recognized as a unique avenue to power (and the greater part of scientific work is now directed towards the achievement of power - military, industrial, and commercial), but it is not perceived as a pathway to wisdom. Modern science has placed in human hands the power to do things that were previously unimaginable. Technology, the development of ever more sophis ticated means for achieving any end we choose, dominates modern and modernized societies. But there is a growing perception that science and technology are no substitute for wisdom - for the power to discern what ends are in accordance with the truth and the power to judge rightly between alternative ends.
If it is true that the author and sustainer of all that exists is the God who has made himself known to us in Jesus Christ, then it is a simple truth that "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." In spite of the role that the Supreme Being plays in Descartes's method, it did not take long for the critical principle to remove God from the realm of certain knowledge. Whatever his intentions, Descartes bequeathed to Europe a confidence that certain knowledge could be achieved without reference to God. The often quoted words of the astronomer Laplace, when questioned by Napoleon about the omission of God from his systematic worldview, truly express a point of view that dominated European thought until very recently: "I had no need of that hypothesis." That confidence has largely evaporated. The popularity of talk about spirituality and the growing influence of the complex of ideas expressed in the New Age movement, as well as the new eagerness to turn to the writings of Asian religion in search of wisdom, are all symptoms of this change. The idea that wisdom comes from the East is having a new lease on life.
But it the biblical story is true, the kind of certainty proper to a human being will be one which rests on the fidelity of God, not upon the competence of the human knower. It will be a kind of certainty which is inseparable from gratitude and trust.