Tractatus de divina traditione et Scriptura

1. It is one thing to speak of the relation and subordination of reason to faith, and another to speak of the use and subordination of the sciences in the explication of the doctrine of faith, or in sacred theology. Of the former we have said enough throughout this whole treatise. «We could not believe, unless we had rational souls.» For reason itself, or the soul insofar as it is rational, elevated and strengthened by grace, believes the revealed truths on account of the authority of God revealing. Hence with explicit faith, which is virtue and divine faith, no one can believe without knowing these three things: a) the infallible veracity of God; b) the fact of divine revelation; c) what the revealed truths are, and thereby what the sense of the truth to be believed is. For some analogical and at least confused knowledge of the sense of the word of God is necessarily required for explicit faith; for it is not the sound of the words, but the sense, that is proposed to be believed¹. But for faith and its firmness to be as it ought, supernatural namely and proportioned both to the end and to the formal object, an elevation of will and intellect by grace is necessary. The use of reason therefore precedes (actual) faith, and conducts man to it with the aid of revelation and grace (Propos. 3. of the Sacred Congreg. of the Index, 1855.).

Now indeed this knowledge of these things, as much as is needed for the simple faith by which men become Christians, in the economy instituted by Christ does not of itself presuppose or demand a natural cultivation of the mind through the human sciences. For as the apostolic preaching is not «in the persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the showing of the spirit and of power» (δυνάμεως); so too «faith is not in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God» 1. Cor. II. 4. 5. (Confer above ch. V. §. II.).

Yet that threefold knowledge which already accompanies faith itself and is included in explicit faith, can and for the explication and defence of revelation itself ought to be cultivated in the Church of God into a more distinct and ampler science of faith, which is sacred theology (see Tract. on God, Prolegomen. §§. II. III.). This science, both according to its formal object and according to its material object, supposes faith and rests wholly upon it, since it considers all truths insofar as they have been revealed to us by God or are connected with revealed truths, nor except under this aspect is it science in the proper name and sacred theology (Tract. on God l. c. §. I.). But as faith itself (actual) cannot be without the use of reason and without that threefold knowledge of which we have spoken, partly preamble and partly fundamental; so the human mind, for cultivating sacred science, needs the aid of manifold natural and rational sciences (cf. on Tradit. th. XXV. n. II.). Revealed doctrine, therefore, or, as St. Thomas is wont to speak, sacred doctrine, can be regarded in three ways: objectively and in the aspect of revealed truth; insofar as it is believed by faith; insofar as faith seeks understanding. If it be regarded in the first and second way, the aid of the natural sciences is not required; in the third way it is required. For although revealed truths in themselves are most intelligible, to us they are not intelligible except according to our mode. This is what St. Thomas says 1. q. 1. a. 5. ad. 2. «This science can receive something from the philosophical disciplines, not as though it stood in need of them of necessity, but for the fuller manifestation of the things handed down in this science. For it does not receive its principles from other sciences, but immediately from God by revelation. And therefore it does not receive from other sciences as from superiors, but uses them as inferiors and handmaids; as architectonic arts use those that minister, and the civil art the military. And this very fact that it so uses them is not on account of its own defect or insufficiency (regarded objectively), but on account of the defect of our intellect, which from the things known through natural reason, from which the other sciences proceed, is more easily led by the hand into the things that are above reason, which are handed down in this science» ². But these things need some ampler explication, that what the bearing and subordination of the natural and rational sciences to theology is may be more distinctly understood.

2. The scope unto which other sciences come into use in sacred theology is not that truths under that formal aspect, insofar as they are demonstrated by reason and by natural resources in other sciences, be assumed and held as the proper object of theology. In this way theology would be subordinated to other sciences; or rather, from its very formal object, it would be philosophy, and not theology of faith. The scope toward which through other sciences theology tends, faith being supposed, is «the fuller manifestation of the things handed down in sacred doctrine;» and so it is not the intellect that seeks faith, which is presupposed in its supernatural certainty and firmness; but faith that seeks understanding.

a) That «fuller manifestation» can be considered in the knowledge of the fact of revelation, and consequently of the motives of credibility in the whole history of supernatural providence and of the revelations of God; and likewise in the knowledge of the way in which the revealed word of God has come down to us and is perpetually preserved untainted (in Scripture and Tradition through the ministry of the divinely instituted Church); and consequently in the knowledge of the foundations, sources, and rules of faith, from the scientific demonstration of all of which apologetic theology is constituted.

b) The «fuller manifestation» is to be regarded through the intellection and demonstration of what truths, whether theoretical or practical, and in what manner they are contained in the word of God, as it is preserved in Scripture and Tradition and proposed by the Church. This science of what and in what manner is contained in the word of God is dogmatic (and moral) theology, which is wont to be called positive.

c) Further, the «fuller manifestation» of the dogmas according to their inward reason (as much as the intellect enlightened by faith can know through a mirror and in an enigma), is perfected through speculative theology. For the intellect enlightened by faith can know even superrational things analogically through rational notions, or (as St. Thomas speaks) according to likeness, what they are; can discern their mutual nexus, the consequence of one truth from another, the agreement of one with another, and some congruity with rational truths themselves. «Reason, led by the hand through faith, grows in this, that it more fully comprehends the believable things themselves; and then it in some way understands, whence it is said Is. VII. 9. according to another reading (LXX): unless you shall have believed, you shall not understand» S. Th. prolog. ad ll. sentent. q. 1. a. 3. sol. 3.

d) With all these finally coheres, and in them is included, polemic theology for the defence of revealed doctrine against contrary errors, whether they turn upon the very sources of doctrine through perversion of the foundations of faith, or upon the several dogmas through false interpretation of the word of God, or upon the true understanding of the same through abuse of philosophy.

Now that for rightly discharging all these things an aid drawn from almost all the natural and rational sciences is not only opportune but within certain limits wholly necessary, is evident of itself. Criticism, philology, hermeneutics, the historical sciences, but most of all sound philosophy, come into use almost everywhere³; though if in those former ones a defect of his own science can in some measure be supplied to the theologian by the mental eyes of other learned men, in philosophy it cannot.

3. Since the truths to be believed are not drawn from these rational sciences, but are manifested immediately by God; while the sciences stand as aids and instruments toward some more distinct intelligence of those same truths, therefore theology «does not receive from other sciences as from superiors, but uses them as inferiors and handmaids»⁴. The subordination of the sciences under faith, in their application to theology, must be regarded in two ways, finally as of means to a higher end, and formally in the aspect of a science directed by faith as by a norm.

a) As among all beings there is subordination according to the lower or higher end to which each is directed from its nature; so also in the order of cognition among sciences which have an object in some way common, there is a certain hierarchy and subjection of one to another, according as they have a lower or higher immediate end. From this principle St. Thomas thus declares what we say of the subordination of the sciences to the theology of faith. «All who have rightly judged have placed the end of human life in the contemplation of God. But the contemplation of God is twofold, one through creatures, which is imperfect (because it proceeds from effects not proportioned to the knowledge of the cause as it is in itself), in which contemplation the philosopher (Ethic. X. 9.) placed contemplative happiness, which yet is the happiness of the way; and to this is ordered the whole of philosophical cognition, which proceeds from the reasons of creatures. There is another contemplation of God, by which He is seen immediately through His essence; and this is perfect, which shall be in the fatherland, and is possible to man according to the supposition of faith. Hence it behooves that the things which are unto the end be proportioned to the end, inasmuch as man is led by the hand unto that contemplation (in the fatherland) in the state of the way through a cognition taken not from creatures, but immediately inspired from the divine light (objectively through revelation, subjectively through supernatural faith), and this is the doctrine of theology. From this we can have two conclusions: one is, that this science (of faith) commands all other sciences as principal; the other is, that it uses in its service all other sciences as vassals⁵; as is plain in all ordered arts, the end of one of which is under the end of another, as the end of the pigmentary art, which is the confection of medicines, ordered to the end of medicine, which is health; whence the physician commands the pigment-maker, and uses the pigments made by him unto his own end. So since the end of the whole of philosophy is below the end of theology and ordered to it, theology ought to command all other sciences (cf. §. I. of this chapter), and to use the things handed down in them» ⁶ S. Th. in 1. sent. prolog. a. 1.

b) In the inquiry and science of theology, as has been said (n. 2.), faith and its supernatural firmness is supposed as foundation, and consequently there is also supposed the supernatural knowledge already included in faith itself, both namely of God revealing or of the existence of divine revelation, and of the sense of the revealed truths, in which they are proposed by the Catholic Church. This knowledge before all scientific inquiry has the same supernatural certainty and firmness as faith itself, with which it is implicated. As therefore in the natural and rational sciences there goes before the knowledge of principles and of certain truths, which through the subsequent science can indeed be understood more distinctly and unfolded more amply, but can never be shaken, but rather are the norm of the whole subsequent science, so much so that it rests upon them, and whatever is adverse to them cannot be true; in altogether like manner faith and the knowledge of truths included in it precedes theological science, and those very truths apprehended and believed by faith with supernatural firmness are principles on which the whole science of theology rests and by which as norms it is ruled ⁷. «This science receives its principles immediately from God through revelation.» Hence the things treated in other sciences are not principles and norms to which the truths of faith are to be accommodated; but they are assumed as an aid unto apprehending those truths, in the sense in which they are proposed by the Church, more distinctly with our intellect and defending them more copiously. For that reason that very sense of the dogmas apprehended and believed by faith shines before, in the application of the things assumed from other sciences unto theology, as a «guiding star,» so that unto the intelligence and proof of that sense they be accommodated, and where need is, be polished or even corrected according to it (cf. on Tradit. th. XXV. n. III.).

As therefore the intellect «with the aid of revelation and grace conducts unto faith» (Propos. of the Sacred Congreg. of the Index 1840. 1855); so faith seeks understanding. By this consecration, as it were, of reason through revelation, of science through faith, sacred doctrine or theology is ruled and sustained, which the holy Fathers and Catholic doctors have commended both by words and much more by their example, and have illustrated unto the great fruit of the Church with so many monuments of faith and wisdom. In what way this understanding is to be sought, St. Augustine most prudently admonishes in the whole of letter 120. to Consentius, which can be called a treatise on the relation of faith and theological science. «Far be it that we believe for this reason, lest we receive or seek reason; since we could not even believe, unless we had rational⁸ Clem. Alex. Strom. VII. p. 732. cf. p. 757. «Faithful wisdom, and wise faith is by a certain divine mutual consequence» πιστὴ τοίνυν ἡ γνῶσις, γνωστὴ δὲ ἡ πίστις θείᾳ τινὶ ἀκολουθίᾳ τε καὶ ἀντακολουθίᾳ γίνεται. Id. Strom. II. p. 365. cf. Anonym. in Ps. 115. n. 1. (among the Works of St. Basil T. I. p. 471.). «Although unless he understand something, no one can believe in God (see above ch. III. §. I.), yet by the very faith by which he believes, he is healed, that he may understand ampler things. For there are some things (foreknown and presupposed before faith), which unless we understand, we do not believe; and there are some things, which unless we believe, we do not understand.... Unless there were some things which we cannot understand, unless we first believe, the prophet would not say: unless you shall have believed, you shall not understand (Is. VII. 9. LXX.). Our intellect therefore profits unto understanding the things it believes, and faith profits unto believing the things it understands; and that these same things be understood more and more, the mind profits in the intellect itself. But this is not done by its own as though natural powers, but with God helping and granting» August. in Ps. 118. serm. 18. n. 3. souls. That therefore in certain things pertaining to salutary doctrine which by reason we are not yet able to perceive, but shall sometime be able, faith go before reason, whereby the heart be cleansed, that it may receive and bear the light of great reason, this indeed is of reason. And therefore it was reasonably said through the prophet: unless you shall have believed, you shall not understand (Is. VII. 9. LXX.). But if now a believer ask for a reason, that what he believes he may understand, his capacity is to be regarded, that according to it, with reason rendered, he take of his faith as much understanding as he can; greater, if he receive more, less, if less; provided that until he arrive unto the fullness of knowledge and perfection (in the beatific vision), he recede not from the way of faith... Now therefore if we are believers, we have arrived unto the way of faith, which if we shall not have left, we shall without doubting arrive not only unto so great an understanding of incorporeal and unchangeable things as in this life cannot be received by all, but even unto the summit of contemplation, which the Apostle calls face to face... These things I have said, that I may exhort your faith unto the love of understanding, unto which true reason leads, and for which faith prepares the mind» August. l. c. n. 3-6. Of this same subjection of reason to the first truth revealing and revealed, of science to faith, St. Anselm speaks, embracing much in few words. «I attempt not, Lord, to penetrate Thy height, since I in no wise compare my intellect to it; but I desire in some measure to understand Thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I seek not to understand, that I may believe; but I believe, that I may understand; for this too I believe, that unless I shall have believed, I shall not understand» Anselm. Proslog. c. 1. In this way the sacred Vatican Council ch. 4. of the Constit. on Faith, on which this whole exposition of ours rests, desires and commends in the words of Vincent of Lerins (Common. n. 28.) to the sons of the Church, that «there grow and much and vehemently progress, both of each and of all, both of one man and of the whole Church, in the gradations of ages and centuries, understanding, science, wisdom; but in its own kind only, in the same dogma namely, in the same sense, and in the same judgment.»