Philosophy as Handmaid of Theology: Biblical Exegesis in the Service of Scholarship

PHILOSOPHY AS HANDMAID OF THEOLOGY: BIBLICAL EXEGESIS IN THE SERVICE OF SCHOLARSHIP By MALCOLM DE MOWBRAY "One can only grant the theological faculty the arrogant claim that the philosophical faculty is its maidservant (leaving aside the question of whether the latter bears the torch before, or carries the train after her mistress ) on the condition that she is not banished or gagged." Thus wrote Immanuel Kant, paraphrasing Peter Damián, in his Der Streit der Fakultäten of 1798, shortly after being freed from a ban on writing about religion.' Kant argued that the role of the philosophy faculty in universities was to lay down the truth for the use of the more practically orientated higher faculties , including that of theology. It could only perform this function if it was totally free. Whether Kant's interpretation of the idea of philosophy as maidservant of theology was a product of his anger or reflected what the theologians of his own time were saying is not at present clear. What is clear from the above passage, however, is that Kant considered the role of servant as compatible with freedom. Unlike Kant, many more recent scholars do not. The origin of modern European philosophy is frequently described precisely in terms of its liberation from a supposed state of servitude with regard to theology . Such a liberation is seen as a radical change and has been placed in both the thirteenth and the seventeenth centuries, according to the interests and preconceptions of the historian concerned.2 That philosophy was not "free" before the chosen period is simply established by reference to the 1 "Auch kann man allenfalls der theologischen Fakultät den stolzen Anspruch, daß die philosophische ihrer Magd sei, einräumen (wobei doch noch immer die Frage bleibt: ob diese ihrer gnädigen Frau die Fackel vorträgt oder die Schleppe nachträgt), wenn man sie nur nicht verjagt, oder ihr den Mund zubindet" (Immanuel Kant, Der Streit der Fakultäten, ed. Klaus Reich [Hamburg, 1959], 21). Much of the research for this article was made possible by an appointment as research assistant to Prof. Jonathan Israel of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. I am particularly grateful to Glen Bowersock and Giles Constable for not only tolerating, but positively encouraging, my trespasses into their periods. 2 For a thirteenth-century liberation, see, e.g., Etienne Gilson, Études de philosophie médiévale (Strasbourg, 1921), 1-124, which is still influential and which does at least discuss the meaning of the phrase and its true origins. For the seventeenth century, see most recently Jonathan I. Israel, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650-1750 (Oxford, 2001), 10-11, where philosophy's position as handmaiden is opposed to libertas philosophica or libertas philosophandi. Libertas philosophica referred, of course, to freedom from the tyranny of a philosophical sect. ? TRADITIO well-known formula Philosophia ancilla theologiae, attributed, if at all, to Peter Damián.3 The idea of philosophy as the servant of religious wisdom or theology had, in fact, a very long history before and after Peter Damián, the largest part of which occurred before it was reduced to the formula in which it is now most often encountered.1 The present study is an attempt at elucidating the meanings of this idea through an examination of its use by some of the more important writers from the first century to the seventeenth, when, as I shall argue, it was given the meaning it holds today. This survey is not intended to be exhaustive but rather to go more deeply into the contexts of the various occurrences of the idea among selected authors, the latter having been chosen because they used it in interesting ways or added new meaning to it.5 It will be seen that the original and principal meaning of the concept of philosophy as a servant of theology was that philosophy had a part to play in the development of a rational Christianity and that it was mainly used to combat those who wished to reject all secular knowledge. The Greek Tradition From early in the history of the Christian Church, it is possible to discern three distinct...