There’s a principle that runs through the Catholic intellectual tradition that simply states: grace builds upon nature. Yes, I mean in one way the natural, outdoor world of trees, rocks, and rivers, but by nature I also mean the essences of things, and in this case, especially, the nature of man as a body-soul composite—from this composite pours forth reason as a gift exclusive to man (beasts don’t have it, at least in the same sense, while the angels don’t need to reason to anything, i.e., they apparently know all that they will ever know). While such a view is explicit in the Catholic worldview, many non-Catholics surely hold it implicitly. There are still many who likely disagree with it—thinking, no, our fallen human nature deceives us because of the senses. But what does this have to do with the relationship between philosophy and theology? Between reason and faith? Or, in more precise terms, what does reason have to do with salvation and our knowledge of God? I would argue that if you believe that man is essentially a rational creature (in a non-exclusive sense, meaning he could also simultaneously be a social, artistic, or manufacturing creature), and that grace builds upon nature, then the role of reason in salvation is not only proper, but an essential component of the “good fight” and “race” of faith (2 Tim 4:7).
Before I dive in, it's important to remember that when I speak of the essential role of reason, I don’t mean that reason must prove the faith is true, at least not on some sort of calculative level, or that there’s a certain standard or reason-quota everyone must reach. Rather, I mean it as presupposing faith, believing that the faith is true and not anti-rational, but supra-rational, that is, above and beyond reason but not opposed to it. Furthermore, while it is clear from common human experience that each person varies in rational capacity, the goal is not to build up a quota of rationality that meets a sort of salvation standard. St. Thomas Aquinas writes, “the thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. Hence the knowledge of every knower is ruled according to its own nature” (Summa Theologiae, 1, Q.12, A. 4). In other words, we receive truth according to our mode of being or the capacity of our reason. Again, it is not more important that we have a certain amount of truth, but that we have the truth (which is something unquantifiable) to the extent that each of us is capable of receiving it. If truth were water, for example, it’s not about how much water you are able to fill your mind with, but how clean the water is that fills it. Or as St. Bonaventure would say it, we cannot savor God “unless the mirror of the mind is cleansed and polished” (Prologue, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum).
Our acceptance of Christ opens us to the way of perfection, and if reason is one of the greatest gifts given to man to reflect the image of God, then reason too is perfected in faith. As St. Thomas Aquinas writes "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" (Summa Theologica, 1, Q.1, A.8, Response to Objection 2). Not only, then, does grace build upon nature, but it perfects it. Furthermore, the comparison Aquinas draws between reason and faith (as will to charity) is deeply compelling. The comparison illustrates the service of reason to something greater than itself, but it also illustrates that we ultimately will the good that is love, and through this process our will is perfected.1 So, too, with reason and faith—our acceptance of faith may be beyond the perfect grasp of our reason, but through reason’s service to faith, reason itself is perfected and endowed with true wisdom.
Yet, dare I say that faith, too, needs reason—not again that we might “prove” God or come to fully understand him, but that our faith might not be misled. But don’t just take my word for it. Pope Benedict XVI writes in Caritas in Veritate (“charity in truth”):
“Reason always stands in need of being purified by faith: this also holds true for political reason, which must not consider itself omnipotent. For its part, religion always needs to be purified by reason in order to show its authentically human face. Any breach in this dialogue comes only at an enormous price to human development.”
Without faith, reason becomes a neurotic hunt for truth as something to be captured and controlled, or it dies in the cold desert of radical skepticism and nihilism, this latter scenario being the inevitable and ultimate end of faithless reason; without reason, faith can indeed become an opioid for the masses and the gospel a weapon for the conniving and the clever.
Both instances—reason without faith, and faith without reason—bring to my mind a foil for each case. In the first case, I’ve always thought of Friedrich Nietzsche as a good foil: brilliant and sophisticated, a philologist, and a prosaic genius. His faith was dead and so was God. As far as I can tell, he knew the Bible well, perhaps even better than your average bible-thumping Baptist preacher, yet again his faith was dead. Despite his love of language and his deep knowledge of history, when Nietzsche read the Scriptures the booming voice of the Church Father St. Anselm failed to reach his ears, or perhaps his heart, as he cried “Credo ut intelligam”—that is, in short, I believe in order that I may understand. Nietzsche sought to make faith subservient to reason, and God’s will subservient to his own. He would not serve.
In the second case, the example that comes to mind is David Koresh, the infamous cult leader involved in the Waco massacre. Sure, it’s a rather hyperbolic example, but an example nonetheless. True faith may still be misled by false interpretation. I’ve already alluded to St. Paul in Timothy 4:7, but earlier in that same chapter Paul states, “the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings.” In this passage, Paul is speaking of those who have made the act of faith. False reasoning, or the lack of reason, thus jeopardizes the way of faith and can lead us to false presumptions that undermine our faith. Bad philosophy leads to bad theology; bad theology leads to false doctrine: false doctrine leads to the jeopardy of true faith.
I don’t bring these foils to mind with the presumption that either is damned or saved—the mercy of God being one of the clearest cases of supra-rationality—but we can see from both cases that theology was distorted by either a false philosophy or a lack of philosophy. In the words of French theologian Jean Danielou, written in his work The Scandal of Truth, “It is one thing to be blind [Koresh], and another to deny the existence of the light [Nietzsche].” In a sense, are not both cases simply the same difference, i.e., both are a case of blindness? It seems to me like a horseshoe theory scenario. Yes, we must have faith, and it is only through faith—inclusive of things which must necessarily follow, such as works, should we not die immediately after the act of faith—that we will understand, but it must also be a faith that seeks understanding. A faith that enters into every aspect of our life and seeks to charge and fulfill the talents and gifts within us.
It is indeed a tightrope that we walk as Christians when it comes to reason in the faith journey, for intellectual pride—one of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life—is always waiting to infect our minds and hearts with its slow, icy cancer or seduce us with its siren songs to be dashed upon the rocks of hubris. Again, reason stands in need of being purified by faith, which is the sure wellspring of intellectual humility—”let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God” (1 Cor 3:18-19). Additionally, I recently came across a striking and beautiful quote from Pope Francis addressed to the Pontifical Gregorian Academy in Rome:
“Philosophy and theology permit one to acquire the convictions that structure and strengthen the intelligence and illuminate the will ... but this is fruitful only if it is done with an open mind and on one’s knees. With an open mind and on one’s knees. The theologian who is satisfied with his complete and conclusive thought is mediocre. The good theologian and philosopher has an open, that is, an incomplete, thought, always open to the maius of God and of the truth, always in development, according to the law that St. Vincent of Lerins describes as follows… [a thought that] is consolidated over the years, expands over time, deepens with age.”
In Pope Francis’ words, one can almost hear the voice of John Henry Newman and his developmental notion of doctrine. The “maius” of God that the Pope refers to here means, in other words, an invitation—as opposed to a command—from God to act or choose something (if I’m not mistaken, we get the word “may” from the word maius, a Latin word). The fact that we will never know the fulness of truth intellectually should not be an obstacle to seeking truth, but is, on the contrary, an invitation from God to enter joyfully into the mystery of his creation, of his being, of his wonder—wonder, the beginning of philosophy (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 982 b, 12 ff.).
This, then, is reason purified by faith: a reason that presupposes faith, not one that seeks to completely understand by its own measure, or to hunt it down, or to control it, but a reason that moves with faith in a reciprocating dance of ongoing love, humility, growth, and adventure. The wind of faith may blow, but the sails, those philosophical conceptions we hold, may be too tattered and torn for the ship to move in the right direction, or even move at all. Likewise, you may have the finest sailboat imaginable but no wind to move you across the wild ocean of belief.
To conclude, I would like to invite you to meditate on this statement: you are a philosopher, whether you like it not. The question, then, is not whether you are a philosopher or not, but whether you will be a good philosopher or not. Further, where is the line between ‘believing in order to understand’ and having ‘faith that seeks understanding’? Perhaps it’s not so much a line as it is lines around a playing field. Where do you set your lines? As Pope St. John Paul II writes in his encyclical Fides et Ratio, “All men and women…are in some sense philosophers and have their own philosophical conceptions with which they direct their lives” (Chapter III, paragraph 30). What, then, are the conceptions you hold and by which you receive the truth of human experience, the facets of knowledge, and the gospel of Christ?
Into the mystery of the Word,
James
“Exactness of thought requires the acknowledgment of the various levels even when the thinker has not reached them all. Giving testimony to the truth consists in judging one's self, and not in justifying one's self. It may be that I cannot fulfil myself on each of the levels. But it is one thing to be blind, and another to deny the existence of the light. And that is why it is possible to be at once sincere and true. "I have jumped man," Rilke had the courage to say, in his vertiginous passage from animal to angel. But that was not denying man. I do not know God, the thinker has the right to say. But this does not mean: There is no God. And perhaps this is precisely what intelligence consists in—not being imprisoned in experience, but being able to judge experience in the name of truth.”
~ Jean Danielou, The Scandal of Truth
Aquinas posited the view that the will was a rational or “intellectual” appetite and was a part of the soul as opposed to something separate from or greater than the soul (see Summa Theologiae, Part 1, Questions 78, 80, & 82).
You are spot-on describing Nietzsche. I haven't delved into his writing --my philosophical reading is limited to catchy aphorisms that can fit on mugs and magnets. However, my professor shared a quote of his that has shaped my spiritual walk. Nietzsche writes in "Beyond Good and Evil" that "the essential thing 'in heaven and earth' is that there should be a long obedience in the same direction; that thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living."
1 Corinthians 9 compares living out our faith to Olympic athletes racing to victory. As someone who is far from being an Olympic sprinter, Nietzsche's quote convicts me to keep plodding along in my journey of faith, to rise up after I fall down, and rely on the God of endurance and encouragement to help push me across the finish line. Maybe one day I'll be an athlete reaching for a crown --but for now, I'm girding myself for "a long obedience in the same direction."