-by Dr. Benedict Nguyen, M.T.S., J.D./J.C.L., D.Min (ABD)
“Let’s do some distinguishing here. It’s very interesting the great Aristotle says when we are defining things, we are really distinguishing things. We really want to see how things are distinguished from other things. What makes it itself? So let’s distinguish a little bit here. Philosophy and the term we use called “sciences”. Philosophy, coming again from two Greek words, philos, sophas, lover of wisdom, or love of wisdom. Philos, love, and sophos or sophia, wisdom. In philosophy, we study the truths based on natural revelation, studying true bits of information based on what is naturally revealed. Now what do we mean by “naturally revealed?”
In our Catholic tradition, we believe that there are two ways that God makes Himself known. The first way is through what we call the “book of nature”, what God has created. We see this immediately in Romans 1 when St. Paul says ever since the beginning of time, they know the Creator by the things that He has created (-cf Rm 1:20), I paraphrase. That means that natural things that are created, how God puts the world out, that’s part of reality; those things that are in relation to Him, such as the sunrise, such as the science, such as our reason, our philosophy, our logic. All these things that are naturally created by God, we pursue those, so that we know God exists, that He is there, and that we know about God. Not that He’s not love, that He’s all-powerful, almighty. Yes, I will say the incarnation of these things as well. These things are natural revelation, things that we see in the world. The Psalms tell us the heavens declare the glory of God (-cf Ps 19:1). The glory, the nature of God, part of his word, part of his nature, we discern from the things that are around us.
The source of philosophy, what we would call science, is natural revelation, what God has created. Reason alone can bring us to that. Reason has a certain methodology. The methodology of each reason is logic, logical principles. The Greeks understood that, even without divine revelation, even without Jesus Christ, they were able to understand if this then this then this, the syllogism. These things that we work out logically in our brains, these things came from reason alone. That’s the methodology. In empiricism, or what we would call in the modern world scientific method, by testing something and getting results, and retesting and doing it again, that methodology that we find in “science” is a way of pursuing God.
One of the worst and most tragic things that I think that has happened particularly to modern education is that we compartmentalize these things as if they were not related. So your religion department, your theological department is compartmentalized from your science department, compartmentalized from your English and history department, compartmentalize from the physical education. All of these things are compartmentalized. The way we Catholic Christians would look at it is that we would say, “No, these are one subject. The subject is God.” We are going to do it in all these different ways. In the science class, in this biology class, we seek God in seeing how organisms function. In this astronomy class, we seek God by seeing how stars and these things live out their function. In our history class, we seek God by seeing his hand through the events of human history. And our theology class – we’ll get to that in a little bit – we seek God in a different way. Reason alone in natural revelation, in philosophy is the methodology, but that methodology still it is the pursuit of truth, still is the pursuit of goodness, still is the pursuit of beauty, the transcendentals, and yes, that is the pursuit of God; philosophy, the sciences, based on what God has revealed. The book of nature, the book that God has laid out for us to read, and to decipher, and to understand, and to seek to understand that on reason alone man coming to a knowledge of God.
The world is wonderful. Science is wonderful. Philosophy is wonderful. Why? Because we’re trying to figure out God. We’re trying to pursue God in the things that He has made. Paul certainly understood this in Romans 1:20. That’s why the natural law of tradition comes in and says, “Well, wait a minute. If there are things in our nature, certain meanings and certain things that we understand about God, it must also be built in nature certain ways to act in response to that.” So just like we would respond to Jesus’ teaching, just like we would respond to what we would call supernatural revelation, we also respond to natural revelation in the way things are put together.
An example: My tongue was designed for various purposes. From the nature of the tongue, we know that it is meant to convey truth. When I use my tongue not to convey truth, we fail at honoring nature by doing what God has created is supposed to be meant for. That’s why we call it a lie. That’s why we call it a sin, because it goes against nature. It goes against natural revelation. It goes against what God has revealed to us to be so, so that we can pursue Him.
For example: natural revelation would be understanding that God is all-powerful using reason alone. Aristotle came to the conclusion that not only does God exist – even if he didn’t call Him God, as we know God, but he knew that a supreme being must exist, and that supreme being must also be almighty because of the nature. There’s certainly philosophical proof of that. That would be a natural revelation. There would be no way that Aristotle could fully grasp that God is a Trinity from reason alone. Certainly we have reasonable explanations, but at the end of the day those explanations can only reflect that God is a Trinity, and not prove that God is a Trinity. I certainly think the philosophical reason to show that it doesn’t go against reason, but that God is a Trinity is simply a fact that is revealed to us, hence we call these things mysteries. Not that they contradict reason, but that they go beyond reason. Now those who are not Christians, when they hear something like “beyond reason”, they think it’s a copout for us. It certainly isn’t. If something went against reason that would be a cop out for us. That would be us trying to say, “No, I know that this isn’t reasonable. I know this isn’t true, but we’re just going to except it anyway.” That is not the faith. That is not Christian. That’s not Catholicism. That is not God.
Contradictions do not exist in our faith. Things that go beyond reason certainly do, and they happen all the time. I’ll give you an example. A person who was very atheist at the time was talking to me. He said, “I can’t except your notion of mystery.” We were talking about this very thing. I said, “I can’t except contradiction either, but mysteries of my faith aren’t contradictions.” I said, “You know what? You accept mysteries as well. There are things that go beyond reason that you accept.” He said, “Can you give me an example?” And I said, “Yes. The number system.”
Who was ever counted the end of the number system? But yet we accept the number system. It is a mystery. It doesn’t contradict reason. It’s perfectly logical that numbers go on and on and on and on. But certainly it would contradict reason if we had two ones, or two twos, or whatever. But that a number system – a number line goes on and on – that’s perfectly logical, but beyond reason. Can we prove that numbers never end? The answer is there’s no mathematician that can prove numbers never end. Because of that, we still accept that numbers are infinite. It would be silly for a mathematician, an atheist mathematician, to say, “No, I don’t accept the infinity of numbers because I can’t prove it. I can’t prove that numbers never end, so therefore I don’t accept that.” Nobody would say that. All mathematicians accept that numbers never end, but yet they can’t prove it. It goes beyond reason; it goes beyond the scientific methodology. Supernatural revelation is when God comes and He reveals to us things that go beyond our reason, things that we would not have come up with, or that we would have so much trouble coming up with, we would have never gotten there.
That God is a Trinity, that Jesus Christ, the 33-year-old Jewish man who walked on the earth 2000 years ago was both a man, fully man and fully God, goes beyond our understanding. That God is full of justice and full of mercy at the same time goes beyond reason. Not against it, but beyond it. That all the truths of our faith are contained in the person of Jesus Christ. All of these mysteries of our faith, the mystery of eschatology, the mystery of Jesus Christ, the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of the Holy Spirit. These are mysteries. These are beautiful mysteries. In the Catholic tradition, mysterium, in the Greek, it’s translated as sacramentum, as well. The sacraments, for us, are mysteries. Not contradictions, but mysteries that go beyond reasons that were revealed to us. As a matter of fact, in the eastern churches, both Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches, they refer to the sacraments as the divine mysteries. Understanding that these things go beyond reason and not against them.
Theology takes both natural revelation and supernatural revelation. Both the things that have been created, and the things that have been revealed to us. Reason plus faith, Fides et Ratio. We accept natural revelation through reason and empiricism, scientific discovery, rational explanation, philosophy. Theology takes all that, presumes all that, and it’s top of that as well, the faith aspect. Faith here is not blind. Faith here is not shrugging our shoulders and saying, “Oh, well.” Faith here is accepting something based on the authority of someone else. Whereas the natural revelation, we accept the truth based on our scientific methodology, our proof, our reasoning it out. Faith, supernatural revelation, is accepted based on the authority of someone else. Now, at first that sounds like a copout. “Oh, it’s not reasonable.” Well, no, it is reasonable; it just goes beyond our reason. When it goes beyond our reason, we have to ask why, and the why is because we rely on the authority of someone else. That’s faith. Faith is not just throwing up your shoulders and accepting something that is untrue. Faith is accepting something as true because the person who has revealed it to us, the person who has said to us, “this is so,” they are credible.
I’ll give you an example. I have never seen China. I have never done an experiment to prove that China is there. I accept that China is there based on the credibility of the people who make movies, of people who make maps, of people who make books and photography/topography and things like that. I accept that it’s true. I have never done a scientific experiment to make sure that China is there. The only way I can do that is to actually go there. That would be natural revelation. That would be logic and empiricism. If I got on the plane and went to China. If, on the other hand, my teacher told me, “Yeah, there’s a place called China.” And I see photography, I see all these things, and I don’t doubt that these are fake; I believe that China is there. It’s pretty well established that China is there because these are credible sources.
What if that credible source was Jesus Christ – the God-man? What if that credible source was God, Himself? That supernatural revelation that has been revealed to us is credible then because God must be based on logic, all good, all-powerful, cannot deceive nor be deceived. If that’s the case, then what we have, the revelation that we have of God, is credible. So it goes back again to Jesus Christ and His revelation, if He’s crazy, He’s not credible – “aut Deus, aut malus homo”. If He’s a liar, He’s not credible. But if He is the Lord, He is credible. This revelation must be taken then because His credibility is there. So St. Anselm, in the High Middle Ages, in the 1200’s defined theology as “faith seeking understanding” – “fides quarens intellectum”. Faith accepting things on somebody else’s authority, but then now we’re driving that, and going after that to see the reasons for it. That is theology. Philosophy, natural revelation, reason and empiricism, and that theology taking all of that, not going against that, not going instead of that, assuming all of that, adding to it the credibility of Jesus Christ, the credibility of God, we accept on His credibility. Now that thing, that truth that we have accepted on that, we start to work out. That working out is theology. It’s the science of theology.”
Until the mid-19th century, what we call “science” today, was known as “natural philosophy”.
Love,
Matthew