Why Revelation Gives Shelter to Metaphysics

Abstract

Why Revelation Gives Shelter to Metaphysics1 Guy Mansini O.S.B. Metaphysics in the traditional style is not much cultivated today in the lands in which it originated and once flourished. In 1998, Pope John Paul II noted this fact in Fides et Ratio. Speaking even of Catholic institutions, he says that Scholasticism and philosophy itself are held in "less respect," but connects this to a broader contemporary fact, to wit: "There is a lack of trust in reason displayed to a large extent by modern philosophy itself," he says, "so that it abandons the metaphysical search for man's ultimate questions in order to concentrate on particular and local issues, sometimes merely formal ones."2 John Paul also noted the fact that philosophy in the ancient high sense must remain, must survive for the sake of theology itself, as a discipline praeambulatory to theology. This is how he puts it, speaking of fundamental theology: With its specific character as a discipline charged with giving an account of faith (cf. 1 Pet 3:15), the concern of fundamental theology will be to justify and expound the relationship between faith and philosophical thought. Recalling the teaching of Saint Paul (cf. Rom 1:19–20), the First Vatican Council pointed to the existence of truths which are naturally, and thus philosophically, knowable; and an acceptance of God's Revelation necessarily presupposes knowledge of these truths. … Consider, for example, the natural knowledge [End Page 1089] of God, the possibility of distinguishing divine Revelation from other phenomena or the recognition of its credibility, the capacity of human language to speak in a true and meaningful way even of things which transcend all human experience. From all these truths, the mind is led to acknowledge the existence of a truly propaedeutic path to faith.3 "An acceptance of God's Revelation necessarily presupposes knowledge of these truths," truths about God known by the natural light. Why is it necessary? That is a first question. Showing this necessity has become more important since the Enlightenment, moreover, not only because of the role natural theology plays in apologetics, but also because it distinguishes Catholic theology from Protestant thought where it is under the influence of Emmanuel Kant and Karl Barth. But there is also John Paul's observation that metaphysics in the traditional style no longer flourishes as once it did. If the Church is the only place where metaphysics is cultivated in the old way, why is that so? It is not that human nature has changed. It is not that we are less capable of the wonder Aristotle evokes at the beginning of the Metaphysics. Showing why metaphysics survives only in the Church serves to highlight not just the different ways Catholics and moderns think about being, but the different ways they think about man, too. And this is important for understanding how we fit—or rather how we do not fit—into the modern world. So, philosophy must survive for the sake of theology—that is a first thesis; we must see why it is so. But then, if it must survive for theology, and so in that sense is "in" theology or is its forecourt as a preliminary discipline, why is that the only place it survives today? That is a second thing that needs an explanation. And these are the answers this essay aims at establishing: metaphysics, and the highest part of it, a robust (i.e., successful) natural theology, must be possible if we are reasonably and so responsibly to assert the fact of revelation, the fact that God speaks to us. If God speaks, we must be able to show he exists. We must be able to show he exists if we are reasonably and responsibly to say that he has spoken. But then second, only if God does speak are we called on—not simply logically but also morally or "existentially"—to show he exists. Only if he speaks must we be able rationally to [End Page 1090] show by the natural light that he exists—that is the first issue. But also, if he does not speak, or if we believe he does not speak, there...