The Limits of Reason in Christian Apologetics

Thomas Aquinas has been revered-quite literally sanctified and sainted-in canonical western, Christian thought for hundreds of years. Aquinas's esteemed status is owed to his voluminous contributions to Christian theology, which consider on several (ultimately, competitive) intellectual levels arguments for God and for the Christian faith, aimed at several audiences. While revelation plays an integral role in the maintenance of Christian and church dogma, Aquinas is quite notable for an attempted synthesis of classical, rational thought with appeals to divine knowledge, divine guidance, and other deference to the supernatural. It is the dichotomy of rational and revealed knowledge which Aquinas posits that perhaps ultimately would leave the church on the defensive several centuries later when the pretensions of divine authority would be called into question.

Aquinas, unlike many less educated, less learned, and more zealous coreligionists, could not take for granted as a universal principle for anyone of any epistemology that God exists and that this is self-evident. He could make no such claims either for God's authority or any aspect of His being. And so the Quinquae viae of the Summa Theologiae (successor to Summa contra Gentiles) attempts to present logical proofs for the very existence of God.

Implicit in such reasoning, though the particulars of Summa Theologiea were primarily focused toward a Catholic audience, is that those of the Christian realm would accept these truths a priori. The infidels, the heretics, exhausted though an apologist's patience must be, are to be persuaded by rational argument to accept certain underlying truths without recourse to divine appeals, which have no pull for those without divine knowledge.

How could this be? If one wishes to understand how reasoned approach applies most relevantly to the infidels for Aquinas, the prologue to Summa contra Gentiles may be consulted. Aquinas argues that "some of them, as Mohammedans and Pagans, do not agree with us in recognising the authority of any scripture, available for their conviction, as we can argue against the Jews from the Old Testament, and against heretics from the New."¹

Muslims and pagans may not consult scripture, whose authority they are predisposed to inveigh. The Christians and the Jews can be persuaded on the basis of their existing predilections. So what a modern reader may understand as the accepted means to acquire knowledge is castigated as imperfect and fallible. Unguided reason, unaided reason, human reason, "natural reason" is a late and exceptional recourse, and "often," according to Aquinas, "at a loss."²

This is not to suggest that Aquinas does not utilize an approach of natural reason to explain, among other things, the creation of all beings and their end. Books I through III of Summa contra Gentiles could be seen as differing rationalistic approaches to an understanding of God. This stands in great contrast to Book IV, which excludes human reason from properly explaining certain aspects of theology.

These are not minor topics by any means. The relevance of Jesus Christ himself and various church traditions are said to be impossible to adduce support for by any means than particular revelations. Rationalism is held as weak and insufficient for comprehension of the resurrection, for the sacraments, for incarnation, for the trinity concept, all essential tenets of the Christian faith as it existed.

In this manner, Aquinas constructed an untenable façade whose structure could not be expected to hold indefinitely, nor did it. Can some realms of knowledge not be understood by means of revelation even to complement human knowledge? One agonizes over why this is not the case, why our fallible human reason has progressively come to an entirely different understanding than the conceits of great philosophers of old. Yet not only did revelation fail to anticipate this knowledge, it often stands flatly in contradiction with how scripture would relay it.

Blame can not lay entirely at the feet of Aquinas for the various repressions to come against those heretics who proposed natural explanations of the universe's mechanics that stood in contrast to the received wisdom of the church. To do so would be analogous to blaming Aristotle's flawed cosmology for the repression of Galileo thousands of years later. Those theologians are autonomous actors and should be treated as such. But proper contextualization in the mode of St. Aquinas can demonstrate that this was one of their only logical recourses. If the most sacred of truths is that which is guided by God then what can be said of knowledge received from natural reason that stands in contradiction to revelation? It must be errant, firstly, and possibly demonically-inspired.

Propagation would also have the effect of undermining the authority not only of scripture but the word of the church itself. With the Enlightenment came the reality that men may recognize the same friction in matters of the divine and of the humane and side firmly with the latter. This is in fact what happened-though not for all, as the preceding church schism of the Reformation begat originalist and scripturalist movements which would reject open inquiry in any form whatever, believing scripture to be the final word on human knowledge. Though such movements would come to moderate themselves in time, the tension between these claims continues to present day disputes on the content of classrooms.

And so not only are the epistemological claims of monotheism openly criticized, but bit by bit so have been the previously sacrosanct tenets of dogma. The resurrection and the trinity are exposed to natural reason in all its presumptuousness and with the ridicule it can entail. This ridicule was perhaps one of Aquinas's greatest concerns in determining the inapplicability of human reason to particular matters of the divine. Natural reason for not be a recourse to explain such things and does not explain why Christians believe in them (faith). But if natural reason is esteemed in principle (and above faith) then there is no reason to exclude particular revelations. And so they may in fact be exposed, be criticized, be ridiculed, be discarded.

Perhaps Aquinas could not fully anticipate to what extent this would be true, even if he seems to do so in some measure. Surely he would stand aghast at how the discourse of reason has superseded the discourse of revelation in all contemporary affairs, very often including those of the divine. But in his writings there is an implicit and explicit recognition that reason and faith or revelation occupy distinctive realms of knowledge that may complement each other but should not be confused.

Great credit must go to Aquinas at least for acknowledging the rational tradition and granting it legitimacy if in a limited capacity or ultimately subordinated to other authorities. This is an improvement over castigating all pre-Christian knowledge as tainted by wicked paganism and stamping out its influence. In this manner, Aquinas stood in an honorable tradition which attempted to reconcile and synthesize faith and reason. But in so doing it may be seen as ultimately bolstering the latter at the expense of the former.

¹ An Annotated Translation of the Summa Contra Gentiles of Saint Thomas Aquinas by Joseph Rickaby, (London: Burns and Oates, 1905).

² Ibid.