Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics

Chapter 25

Chapter 25 COMMUNION WITH THE TRADITION: FOR THE BELIEVER WHO IS A PHILOSOPHER Introduction Recently I heard of a bishop who, seeking advice on the abortion issue, consulted some academics in a Catholic institute of higher education in his diocese. He consulted the members of the Department of Theology. He did not, as far as I know, consult those in the Department of Philosophy . As it happens, the people best informed in the Theology Department regarding the details of opinion and debate surrounding abortion had, as it seems to me, little to recommend them as metaphysicians. Abortion, on the other hand, is an issue that stirs such emotions as tend to bring into question the very principles of ethical science. And it is the metaphysician who is supposed to judge and defend the principles of the sciences. Had the bishop knocked at the door of the Philosophy Department, he would have found it (in this particular case) peopled by believing Christians who have sought to meditate on their faith as itself calling for or encouraging ‘‘a philosophical approach.’’ He would have found believers who have put metaphysics at the service of faith. And he would have found people with a keen interest in, and something to say about, the issue of abortion. All of the above concerns only one incident in one diocese, but I take it as an occasion to raise a question about the validity of our ‘‘departmental’’ divisions. Doubtless, there is a distinction to be made between philosophy and theology, but how much has it to do with present-day departmentalization ? Do ‘‘departments’’ have a mesmerizing effect on us? Should we   Wisdom, Law, and Virtue speak of the ‘‘myth’’ of the department? Is there a need for ‘‘demythologizing ’’ here? Let us refer, still by way of introduction, to another (though not, I say, unrelated) question. In its ‘‘Chronicle of Philosophy,’’ the Revue thomiste recently noted several books debating the desirability of employing ontology in Christian theology. Some people tell us it is necessary ‘‘to loosen the connection between God and being or, at least, between the thinking of the believer and traditional ontology.’’1 Others insist on the need for ontology in theology: ‘‘It is at the heart of Christian wisdom that the ontological question must once more take its place, first at the level of specifically metaphysical reflection, and, as a result, at the center of the understanding of the Faith.’’2 In the present essay, I wish to encourage what I would call a ‘‘fidelity’’ to ontology, or to metaphysics as a doctrine of being, in the continuing effort to approach the Catholic faith through understanding. First, I will recall St. Thomas Aquinas’s doctrine concerning the nature of ‘‘the sacred teaching’’ (sacra doctrina); second, I will ask what is meant by the ‘‘philosophical sciences’’ that the sacred teaching may put to use; third, I will recall a teaching of Plato concerning the human mind and its knowledge of being; and last, I will lay emphasis on a neglected doctrine of St. Thomas, namely, the differences of personal aptitude and personal historical destiny, as that doctrine applies to the history of Christian education. The Sacred Teaching The first question of the Summa theologiae (ST) of St. Thomas, on ‘‘the sacred teaching,’’ begins by presenting that teaching as something other than ‘‘the philosophical disciplines.’’ It is an instruction about divine things by means of divine revelation. It is possessed by faith. It includes all the knowledge of God that pertains to the eternal destiny of the human being, that is, both those truths about God that entirely surpass the human mind’s natural investigative power and those truths about God that man can discover using his natural power, though only with great difficulty.3 The sacred teaching thus embraces in a unique and sublime unity of scientific vision all the things about which the philosophical sciences treat, to the extent that what those sciences treat has any relevance to the supernatural beatitude that God has planned for the human being.4 Communion with the Tradition  The philosophical sciences have their own character, and their own range and extent of investigation, such that what might interest the philosopher regarding a given topic might take him into areas that the sacred teaching finds no reason to consider.5 Still, the very things the philosopher considers , to the extent they are relevant to...