Praeambula Fidei
Praeambula Fidei28
In light of all that we have seen thus far in Thomas’s principium cognoscendi, it will be instructive for us to highlight a significant debate on the scientific structure of his epistemology.
We have already noted that, in one sense, Thomas’s view is akin to a foundationalist structure, with a significant and important metaphysical codicil. Foundationalism (as well as coherentism, etc.) deals with the propositional structure of our knowledge. It argues that our beliefs are either propositions that are common, intuitive, and immediate, or propositions that are inferred from immediate propositions.
In the context of this debate among Thomists, however, what is in question has to do, we could say, with the principial structure of Thomas’s epistemological proposals. The question is whether Thomas sees his philosophy as grounding theology, or theology as grounding his philosophy. In the main, the debate is between those promoting a “new” approach to Thomas and those who are intent on reclaiming and reasserting the traditional (including the traditional Roman Catholic) approach to Thomas. The traditional Roman and Thomistic view, in place for seven hundred years or so, has affirmed that purely philosophical “preambles of the faith” are set forth in Thomas as necessary in order properly to assess the knowledge of God.29
Over the past sixty or so years, a new approach to Thomas has gained a significant and influential following. The new approach argues that Thomas’s philosophical theology is foundationally theological, and not in any significant or principial way philosophical. In this new approach, one of Thomas’s most prolific and influential interpreters, Cardinal Cajetan (1469–1534), is said to have been deeply and seriously mistaken in his reading of Thomas. Furthermore, the new view wants to drive a wider wedge between Thomas and Aristotle, given that the latter could not have had recourse, as Thomas did, to biblical revelation.
In his thorough and convincing argument against this new approach to Thomas, Ralph McInerny works through, in sometimes excruciating detail, the reasons and the responsible agents involved in reinterpreting Thomas’s work. Leaving few stones unturned, McInerny exposes the errors of Étienne Gilson, Henri de Lubac, Marie-Dominique Chenu, and others, all of whom, in various ways, denigrate the central notion of purely philosophical “preambles of the faith” in Thomas’s thinking.
McInerny’s concern is that the traditional theology of the Roman Catholic church (as the proper interpreter of Aquinas) and Thomas himself contradict what the new view seeks to maintain. During the second half of the twentieth century, McInerny says, truths that were clearly set forth by Thomas have been obscured:30
Flawed understandings of the nature of Christian philosophy, a tendency to disparage the natural [i.e., philosophical] in favor of the supernatural [i.e., theological], the suggestion that the philosophy of St. Thomas is to be found only in his theological works, and cannot be separated from them . . . had the effect of weakening the notion of praeambula fidei.31
Partly at issue in the debate among Thomists is the relationship of philosophy to theology. The traditional Roman and Thomist view has been that philosophy enjoys an autonomy from theology, as it takes its place outside the realm of theology. Though philosophy is unable to grasp some of the deepest truths of theology, it can, in and of itself, grasp much truth about God and his character. The textual focus of the debate, therefore, is on the first part of the Summa Theologica.32
According to the new view, as espoused, for example, by Gilson, the only way to properly understand Thomas’s view of “being” (esse) is in the context of revelation, specifically within the context of Exodus 3:14 (which Thomas quotes in ST, 1.q. 2a.3.s.c.).33 It is this view of being, according to Gilson and others, that Cajetan confused, and thus led astray centuries of Thomistic adherents.
But McInerny’s concern is that if being is only understood properly via revelational categories, then there is no room for that which Thomas and Thomists have taught for centuries, that is, that philosophy is a particular and autonomous science. All that is available for a Gilsonian Thomist is a specifically Christian philosophy.
This, argues McInerny, only serves to suppress or misconstrue Thomas’s clear teachings on the foundation for theology. With the new view, biblical revelation permeates the whole of Thomas’s system. There is, then, no room in the inn for the traditional notion of natural reason in Thomas. In the new view, “natural reason” is what it is only because of a prior grace. McInerny thinks that the new view virtually destroys any place for philosophy as its own discipline.
But Thomas doesn’t indicate any necessity for prior grace. He says, for example:
The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles [non sunt articuli fidei, sed praeambula ad articulos]; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected.34
Here we see in Thomas the supposition of a “pure nature,” and no idea that nature presupposes grace.
In one sense, this debate is peculiarly Romanist. It has to do with the proper place of philosophy within Roman Catholic theology. Our interest here, however, is twofold: (1) The traditional Thomist/Roman view has its roots in Thomas’s affirmation of “pure nature” or “natural reason,” entailing as it does the lack of the self-evidence of God’s existence, as the foundation for his entire system.35 (2) Due to the first point, the discipline of apologetics is rooted in the principium of human reason, which of itself, according to Thomas, is able to produce, by way of demonstration, a true theology.
We will discuss the matter of apologetics in a bit more detail in chapter 3. In anticipation of that, however, it is noteworthy that Thomas, while affirming that philosophy is a handmaiden to theology, nevertheless sees true theology as dependent on the truth that is gained via philosophy. Speaking of the science of theology, Thomas says:
This science can in a sense depend upon the philosophical sciences, not as though it stood in need of them, but only in order to make its teaching clearer. For it accepts its principles not from other sciences; but immediately from God, by revelation. Therefore it does not depend upon other sciences as upon the higher, but makes use of them as of the lesser, and as handmaidens. . . .36 That it thus uses them is not due to its own defect or insufficiency, but to the defect of our intelligence, which is more easily led by what is known through natural reason (from which proceed the other sciences), to that which is above reason, such as are the teachings of this science. . . . Since therefore grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity. Hence the Apostle says: Bringing into captivity every understanding unto the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). Hence sacred doctrine makes use also of the authority of philosophers in those questions in which they were able to know the truth by natural reason, as Paul quotes a saying of Aratus: As some also of your own poets said: For we are also His offspring (Acts 17:28). Nevertheless, sacred doctrine makes use of these authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof. . . .37 Hence there is no reason why those things which may be learned from philosophical science, so far as they can be known by natural reason, may not also be taught us by another science so far as they fall within revelation. Hence theology included in sacred doctrine differs in kind from that theology which is part of philosophy.38
An affirmation of the purely philosophical praeambula fidei allows for a reading of Thomas in which natural reason takes its proper place. If, as the new view would have it, Thomas’s notion of being is strictly revelational, such that it can only be understood within the context of Exodus 3:14, then natural reason, and the self-evidence of God’s existence, have no proper place to lay their heads.
It appears, then, that with respect to Thomas’s principium cognoscendi, his realism is predominant. That realism affirms, first, the propositional structure of foundationalism, with certain important metaphysical qualifiers, and the scientific structure of theology’s dependence on natural reason, that is, the science of philosophy. Those of the faithful who are not privy to philosophical discussions are nevertheless beholden to the “natural” acquisition of knowledge by way of immediate and mediate propositions.39 Those who are involved in philosophical discussions recognize it as the foundation for that which is believed according to biblical revelation.
So far we have described Thomas’s foundation of knowledge. There is much more that can be said, but it is necessary for us now to move on to our critique.