In the previous posting in this series we asked how, in the
Catholic Church, an institution that declares its claims are based on both
faith and reason, and that it has never changed a single fundamental teaching,
the rejection of reason and change for the sake of change apparently became the
first principle of faith for so many people?
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| The Catholic Church a Champion of Reason (Chesterton) |
Perhaps the most baffling aspect of this shift away from
reason and common sense, is that some of its strongest supporters are drawn
from people who believe they are following the teachings or principles of G.K.
Chesterton, “the Apostle of Common Sense.”
Instead
of applying their intellects to the evidence of their senses and abstracting
the essence, they start with where they want to go, and force the evidence (or,
in extreme cases, manufacture it) to fit the premise, i.e., they first draw the
graph and then plot the points. This is
an example of what Feynman called “Cargo Cult Science.”
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| Ronald Knox of the Common Sense Trio |
Keeping in mind that Ronald Knox, the third member of the
“Common Sense Trio,” used the terms “enthusiasm” and “ultrasupernaturalism”
interchangeably, there was full concurrence on this point. As he said of those who broke the unity of
the Catholic Church by substituting their own “inner light” for the common
sense doctrine taught by that institution,
“More generally characteristic
of ultrasupernaturalism is a distrust of our human thought-processes. In matters of abstract theology, the
discipline of the intellect is replaced by a blind act of faith. In matters of practical deliberation, some
sentiment of inner conviction, or some external ‘sign’ indicative of the Divine
will, claims priority over all considerations of common prudence.” (Knox, Enthusiasm,
op. cit., 585.)
How did this come about in a Church that bases its social
teachings solidly on the Aristotelian-Thomist understanding of the natural
law? To answer that, we need to take a
look at what happened to our understanding of the natural law between the
events chronicled by G.K. Chesterton in The
Dumb Ox, and the “enthusiastic” philosophy of William of Occam that, in
part, was used by the Fraticelli to justify what Chesterton described as the
invention of an entirely new religion.
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| "Angelic" doesn't mean "wimpy". |
We’ve mentioned the philosophy of John Duns Scotus, “the
Subtle Doctor,” a few times in this blog series. We’ve juxtaposed his philosophy with that of
Thomas Aquinas, “the Angelic Doctor,” but always noting that it was William of
Occam’s distortions of the philosophy of Duns Scotus, not actually that of Duns
Scotus, that was the problem.
That does not mean that the Subtle Doctor gets off scot
free, however (sorry). His philosophy
contained principles that, while not strictly speaking heterodox, were easily
distorted by those who came after — as was the case with Occam.
Principally this was in the field of ethics, at least as it
pertains to our subject, specifically the view of the basis of the natural law. As can be seen in this discussion, the
understanding changed radically from Aquinas, to Scotus, to Occam . . . and
that of Occam prevails today, even by people who claim to be Thomists, which
can change the whole idea of what we accept as “truth.”
Thomas Aquinas
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| Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor |
Truth for Aquinas is an absolute, although it can be applied
in an almost infinite number of ways as long as the underlying truth is not
violated. As Chesterton said,
“St. Thomas was willing to allow
the one truth to be approached by two paths, precisely because he was sure
there was only one truth. Because the
Faith was the one truth, nothing discovered in nature could ultimately
contradict the Faith. Because the Faith
was the one truth, nothing really deduced from the Faith could ultimately
contradict the facts.” (Chesterton, The Dumb Ox, op. cit., 93.)
Thus, the natural law is an absolute truth because it is
based on God’s Nature, which (as God is a Perfect Being) is unchanging and
unchangeable.
The natural law is reflected in the nature of human beings,
God’s special creation. Human nature is
analogous to God’s Nature in that, where God is infinitely perfect, human
beings are infinitely perfectible. It is
important to note that this refers to the nature of each human being, not to
that of “humanity,” as “humanity” is an abstraction, and God does not abstract.
Thus, God being perfect, and therefore not subject to
change, the natural law “written in the hearts of all men” is not subject to
change. Further, since God is
all-knowing as well as perfect, He knows all things perfectly, including His
own Nature, and thus His Nature is “self-realized” in His Intellect.
Consequently, because human nature is analogous to God’s
Nature, human beings can also know their own nature (and, by analogy, God’s
Nature), and thus the natural law, although in a manner not perfect, but
perfectible, by the force and light of human reason alone. God’s Will, however, is an expression or
application of His complete self-knowledge which human beings accept on faith
as equally true, and which cannot contradict the truths reached by reason, even
though it cannot be known perfectly by human beings.
John Duns Scotus
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| John Duns Scotus, the Subtle Doctor |
Duns Scotus’s philosophy holds a middle position between the
natural law stance of Aquinas, and the positivism/moral relativism of Occam. With respect to the natural law, however, Scotus
confused the means with the end.
Where Aquinas insisted that the demands of justice must be
met before justice could be completed or perfected by charity, and thereby
reach the proper end of existence (being with God in heaven), Scotus declared
that charity is the means to attain the proper end of existence. This confused the natural law and the
temporal virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice, with the
supernatural law and the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
For Aquinas, the capacity for the temporal virtues is
inherent in each human being, while the capacity for the theological virtues is
infused. This means that in heaven
prudence, temperance, fortitude, and justice remain but are perfected and
completed by charity, but of the theological virtues only charity remains. For Scotus, however, as a result of the
confusion between the natural and the supernatural, only charity remains of all
the virtues, temporal or theological.
Thus, for Scotus, given that charity is all that remains, it
is only by having charity that human beings acquire and develop the temporal
virtues, which are then fulfilled and completed by charity. What saves Scotus’s philosophy from dissolving
in contradiction, however, is his insistence that both the Will and the
Intellect are absolutes, and must therefore necessarily be in agreement. Charity cannot replace justice, although
charity is a necessary precondition to justice, instead of the other way
around, as in Thomism. (Now you know why
Scotus is called “the Subtle Doctor.”)
Human beings must, of course (according to Scotus) give primacy
to God’s Will over what human reason tells us about God’s Nature, but there can
still be no contradiction or conflict between the two, as both are absolutes. Where Aquinas’s summation of the natural law
is that good is to be done and evil avoided, however, Scotus’s was that God’s
Will is to be done, thereby avoiding evil.
For Scotus, then, the “First Table” of the Ten Commandments (that
which is due from man to God) is absolute with respect to God and man, but the
“Second Table” (that which is due between men) is absolute between God and
man, but relative between man and man if God so wills. Consequently, the Second Table of the Law of
Moses is subject to change if it is God’s Will . . . understood in a way that
does not contradict reason, of course.
William of Occam
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| William of Occam, excommunicated for disobedience, 1328. |
Unfortunately, William of Occam neglected to integrate the
first principle of reason, the law of (non) contradiction, into his philosophy,
thereby separating himself from Scotus. For
Occam, everything depends on God’s Will and is based completely on faith, with charity (love) the only law . . . which justified (at least in his eyes) Occam's hysterical rage against the pope and papal authority.
Even God’s existence is uncertain, because it
cannot be proven by reason that God exists; God’s existence is probable, but
not certain. Since Aquinas held that it
is possible to prove that God exists by inductive reasoning, the First Vatican
Council anathematized Occam's position, maintaining that God’s existence and the
natural law can be known by reason
alone; God's existence is certain knowledge, not probable opinion.
Occam’s line of reasoning changed what it means for
something to be true, and effectively abolished the natural law. Since what one accepts as God’s Will without
reference to God’s Nature determines what is true in Occam's system, and charity is the only law
(a corruption of Scotus’s reliance on charity instead of justice to implement
the natural law), the Intellect (and thus human reason) becomes irrelevant.
As Hugo Grotius logically concluded,
“What we have been saying would
have a degree of validity even if we should concede that which cannot be
conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, or that the affairs of men are of no concern to Him.” (Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis Libri Tres, Proloegomena, II, translated by
Francis W. Kelsey, et al., The Classics of International Law, edited by J. B. Scott,
Oxford-London, 1925. Cf. Pascendi Dominici Gregis, §§ 6, 14, 39.)
This makes a twisted kind of sense. If you don’t know that God exists, you can’t
base any absolute concept of right
and wrong on His probable
Nature. Consequently, truth becomes
whatever someone believes to be true and is strong enough to get others to
accept, whether or not it contradicts reason.
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| Enthusiasm in America |
Distorting Scotus’s reliance on charity as the means to
acquire and develop the temporal virtues, Occam’s theories effectively
eliminate the temporal virtues and replace them with charity . . . at which
point we begin to appreciate Knox’s definition of enthusiasm — which he also
called “ultrasuperanturalism” — as an excess of charity that causes disunity. In this way faith, hope, and charity all
became self-justifying, without any reference outside of the one with faith,
hope, and charity: pure moral relativism.
This, then, was the situation Knox addressed in Enthusiasm, possibly not realizing that
barely a decade after his death in 1957, the phenomenon he appeared to think
was in abeyance would flood through the Church and the world in what seemed
to be a tsunami of unstoppable force.