Reason and Faith Revisited: The Aquinas Lecture, 1971 by Francis H. Parker

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS 163 Phillips, like Tillich, sees no disastrous inconsistency between the " Closed Circle " or " Internal Criticism Only " approach to philosophy of religion and the " Being an Insider I'm Free to criticize Any Superstitions like Personal Immortality or Divine Individuality" approach to theology. Nor does Phiilips realise that the Wittgensteinian "Family Resemblance" approach to polymorphous concepts becomes unmanageable as an analytical method if too much intransitivity is allowed to the relation of similarity and there are too many relata so related. Realizing this and making good comparative use of many centuries' work on analogical predication would be a way of taking what is permanently valuable in Wittgenstein seriously for purposes of philosophy of religion. Phillips seems blind to this. There is much else to query in Phillips's method. When comes the implied crosscultural , cross-philosophical objectivity of his criticism of his rivals when his method is supposed so radically to isolate different sets of criteria for rationality as being internal to different approaches to the world? Here is a source of much rank inconsistency and possibly of some pure nonsense. "I'm safe in my Circle but you're not safe in yours!": this is the slogan between the lines, the theme song chanted implicitly throughout thirteen arrogant essays by various square-circular rabbits popping out from supposedly magic Wittensteinian, Kierkegaardian, and "Up-to-Date" Christian hats. Caveat emptor! But those who like provocation might especially enjoy "Faith, Scepticism and Religious Understanding,"" From World to God?," "Religious Beliefs and Philosophical Enquiry,"" Religious Beliefs and Language -Gamas," and the New Welsh Voluntarist Manifesto "God and Ought." University of Guelph Ontario, Canada JOHN KING-FARLOW Reason and Faith Revisited: The Aquinas Lecture, 1971. By FRANCIS H. PARKER. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1971. Pp. 45. $2.50. Professor Parker tells us in the :first paragraph of this stimulating Aquinas Lecture " that a complete return to the age of Aquinas is today impossible, at least for me. Much as I prize, even envy, St. Thomas' synthesis, too much water has gone over the falls of modernity for us to be able to return it all to its original reservoir." (p. 2) Although Parker does not spell this out clearly enough, one of his most crucial disagreements with Aquinas about Reason and Faith concerns the demonstrative cogency of the Five Ways. St. Thomas thought that from certain obvious contingent truths 164 BOOK REVIEWS known by sense-experience, as well as from obviously certain necessary truths known by the human intellect, one can demonstrate God's existence. On the matter of obvious contingent truths Aquinas seems mercifully closer than Parker to Aristotle's general trust in the senses. (For the Stagirite and the Angelic Doctor our trust in the senses' general reliability is not a matter that requires prolonged philosophical agonizing) . It is also significant that Aquinas seems similarly closer to those modern AngloSaxon and Continental Philosophers who query the intelligibility of concepts (or ' concepts ') of a human experience that have no logical ties with concepts of the shared human world. Parker belongs considerably to the hyper-cautious epistemological tradition of Descartes, Hume, and Russell and of their sceptical ancestors. (Parker appeals to his Harvard mentor C. I. Lewis's' doubt '-answering but deeply' doubt '-recognizing pragmatism at pages 21-22). Parker's epistemological prolegomena to his programme for reconciling Faith and Reason (pp. 4 fl'.) are studded with nco-Cartesian sounding expressions like " immediate experience " and " a first order belief that seems to be a record of immediate experience," " a second order belief that seems to follow from some other accepted belief." (Parker's very way of talking about second order beliefs' merely seeming to follow similarly begs certain questions against Aquinas on necessary truths.) We suspect that if Aquinas's and Aristotle's spirits were to visit Parker, they would refer him to vital queries about the intelligibility of much nco-Cartesian philosophical usage of" immediately perceive,"" directly observe,"" seems," " appears," and " experience," queries raised in such contemporary works as J. L. Austin's Sense and Sensibilia, (Oxford: 1962; 14 fl'., 135 fl'., etc.) , Peter Achinstein's Concepts of Science (Baltimore: 1968; 172 fl'.), and L. Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: 1953...