In Defense Of Theology: How Reason Leads To Faith
In this video, we discuss the transition from reason to faith and why that path is intellectually sound, that is, it is a transition that is based on reason and in accord with reason. Once we follow reason until we reach the level of faith, we open the door to all of the areas of theological study.
Our knowledge begins with sense experience. We start to learn about the world through our eyes, ears and so on. But it does not stop there. To say, all knowledge is nothing more than sense experience does not do justice to everything we know like knowledge from memory, moral knowledge, and most importantly intellectual knowledge.
As Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas argued, in addition to sense experience we are able to know the natures of things. Our minds have the ability to mentally set aside all of the particular aspects of things and know the kind of thing it is or what is called the “common nature” of the thing we are talking about.
For example, we initially learn about triangles through our sense experience, but the mind is able to know the nature of a triangle which covers all triangles, past present future, as well as both real and possible. Without this ability, we couldn’t do geometry.
In the same way, without this ability, we couldn’t know much of anything, even science itself relies on the human ability to intellectually grasp the nature of things.
And since we can know the natures of things, we can also know the nature of being itself.
In other words, we can know the properties of being and fundamental laws of being that apply to everything that exists. Things like the principle of non-contradiction – a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time or in the same way. Or principles like “every being is itself” or “every being is either one or many” and so on.
We can also know other principles of being like the principle of causality, “whatever begins to exist has a cause” or the principle of sufficient reason, “every being has a reason for its existence, either in itself or in another”.
And it’s from these sorts of metaphysical principles – principles that apply to all beings – that we can begin to formulate arguments for the existence of God as say a First Cause of all being.
This gives us a natural knowledge of God, and so the human ability to know these self-evident principles of being is the intellectual bridge from our knowledge of the natural, to the knowledge of the supernatural.
So our minds can know, by their own natural power, that God exists. And now we can ask the question; is it not probable that this God who created us might want to tell us more things about Himself and our purpose in life?
Shouldn’t we expect more?
Well, we look in the world and see if we find any such special revelation. We find the teachings of Christ, His claims to be God, He seems very wise and not lying or crazy, moreover He performs a series of miracles and fulfilling of prophecy to prove His claims. Finally we can know, through the study of history, that it is reasonable to think He performed His ultimate miracle, His resurrection from the dead.
We can also see in history the rapid spread of His religion, in spite of the powerful attempts by governments to stomp it out.
We can see what His ideas have done for the world like e.g. the abolition of slavery, raising the status of the family, human rights, etc., and we see that Christ had God’s message.
Then when we compare Christianity with other religions, we can see that only Christianity has any comparable sort of intellectual merit or claim on us.
Hence, we can know that Christ is God’s legate or representative.
Next, we come to the study of De Ecclesia (The Church), for if Christ had a revelation to whom did He give it to? A priori it is rational that He would establish some living magisterium to preserve and teach His doctrine.
Then we can prove, a posteriori, from both history and Scripture that Christ established the Church.
But if the Church is the living teacher of Christ’s doctrine, from what sources does the Church get that doctrine?
This leads to the study of De Fontibus Revelationis (The sources of revelation) where we find that the sources are Scripture and Tradition.
Here is where we transition from reason to faith.
Here is where we find how reason (apologetica) leads to the study of faith (De Fide).
How are we to receive and assimilate that message? Not only the revealed truths but the dogmas defined by the Church? Faith is the act by which I accept revelation. So reason leads us to faith (the act of accepting God’s revelation) and faith opens the door to all of the areas of theology.
And what revelation says about God’s nature, existence and attributes we also found in philosophy when we learned about the One God (De Deo Uno.)
The Trinity, De Trinitate, follows, expounding on the internal operations of God.
Next we look at the opera Dei ad extra (God’s external works), and we come to God As Creator Of Nature And The Supernatural, De Deo Creante Et Elevante. We see that creatures can be of three kinds; purely material, purely spiritual (angels) or both material and spiritual (humans). This leads to De Deo Redemptor et Verbo Incarnato (God as Redeemer and God as the Incarnate Word; aka Christology)
We see that the fruits of the Redemption are graces. We come to study the Theology of Grace De Gratia.
But how is grace given to us? And this leads to the Theology of The Sacraments, De Sacramentis.
Next, we turn to the working of grace in the soul. The life of God is given to our souls with what results?
These things we consider in De Novissimis – (Eschatology – the last things of man. Where we discuss De Caelo (Heaven – where man receives grace), De Purgatatio (Purgatory – where man partly refuses grace) and De Inferno (Hell – where man loses grace completely).
