Intellectus Quaerens Fidem
Eamon Duffy, Professor of the History of Christianity in the University of Cambridge, is well-known to Commonweal readers. In the July 8th issue of The Tablet he has an elegant and pointed review of a new book by the eminent English philosopher, Sir Anthony Kenny, What I Believe.
Though trained in scholastic philosophy prior to Vatican II and ordained a priest, Kenny “now rejects religious faith and proclaims himself an agnostic.” However, he continues to find important intellectual resources in Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.
As Duffy remarks:
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, for someone with this intellectual pedigree, many of his deepest convictions on truth, morals, and the proper ordering of society will resonate with Catholics: if not quite an anonymous Christian, Kenny reads at times like an honorary Dominican.
One salient example of this is Kenny’s rejection of the legitimacy of suicide and of “assisted dying.” Indeed, he expresses the hope that he himself will not be tempted in this, to the point of praying “that if I do I will be given the strength to resist it.”
Here is Duffy’s reflection:
It is good to know that Kenny still sometimes prays, and it would be impertinent to scrutinise that impulse too closely. Yet so rational a man must surely ask himself what sort of a being must that God be who can even be imagined as hearing the prayers of humanity at the end of its tether, and who might respond with strength against temptation. For prayer to have any meaning, the pray-er must surely, if only momentarily, abandon the enigmatic blank of agnosticism, and reach out towards the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jesus. And such a God, holy and ardent for love as the great montheisms have conceived him, can hardly be satisfied with the civilised indifference to his being which Sir Anthony thinks the “default position for rational humanity.”
It seems in the line quoted by Duffy that Sir Anthony peeked a bit deeper into his operating system and found the default setting different from what he thought it was. I like the reversal of faith and understanding, apt in this case and many more I would suppose!
Is agnosticism “a blank”?
Doesn’t agnosticism–as opposed to atheism–cover an awfully wide range of of people? From those who wish they could believe but find the evidence of God’s existence somewhat thin, to those who doubt God exists but accept the inability of human beings to prove it one way or another?
Don’t believers sometimes veer into at least temporary agnosticism?
I think the “line” between belief and unbelief can be somewhat fuzzy and slip-slidey.
No one is allowed to judge anyone else. So if Kenny follows his conscience he will be in good stead.
As I see it there is a world of difference between philosophy and faith. We know that the so-called five proofs are not really proofs. So it is not necessarily objectionable to reject the proofs.
Faith is a most precious gift, the lack of which makes Kenny’s life empty indeed.
Indeed, God cannot be satisfied with such meanderings.
We can only pray that Kenny will make it back to the abundant life again.
My wife and I were much taken with author Mary Gordon’s discussion with Bill Moyers on Faith and Reason. Noteworty was her remark that, as a Catholic, she was much more at home with her agnostic and atheistic friends. Seems they offered more honest criticism of the two danger bulwarks she perceives in today’s world: fundamentalism and consumerism.
Gordon stated she was unclear what tied these two dangers together. One possible notion is the individualism that grows apace among us. Hence, the import as has been suggested in other threads here of a faith marked by the deepest communio.
As Ms. Kaveany noted in an earlier thread, the JPII apologetic approach won’t get it done here. The mind’s desire for faith is primarily fueled by witness, not “proofs.”
George Santayana has been described as a “Catholic atheist.” An additional category of “Catholic agnostic” might be useful for such as Kenny.
Members of either group are sometimes surprisingly orthodox in their moral views and often critical of the seemingly wayward path of modern Catholics.
“As Ms. Kaveany noted in an earlier thread, the JPII apologetic approach won’t get it done here. The mind’s desire for faith is primarily fueled by witness, not ‘proofs.’”
All the more reason to rejoice at Benedict’s selection! To this end see John McGreevy’s post Habermas & Ratzinger.I
Not everyone finds the same approach convincing or even appealing. Personally I find Thomas’s argumentative strategy–which is not quite the same as the five proofs–as it has been interpreted by Herbert McCabe quite convincing. I am not sure why his friend Anthony Kenny does not, but I intend to read his book. In another recent work, as described in the Oxford U.P. listings, Kenny argues Thomas’s “account of being…suffers from systematic cofusion”. This is worth looking into.
Some questions on the interesting responses to this post, which make me realize how much my roots are still in that old agnostic/Unitarian camp I was raised in:
Bill notes that faith is a gift. If it is a gift, then there must be a giver (God) and a willing receiver (us). But if we are willing receivers and God chooses to NOT to give, can we be saved by acting faithfully? Might Kenny’s prayers be seen as his openness to the gift?
Patrick notes that some atheists and agnostics are highly moral. Growing up, I was taught that conventional morality was essential for two reasons: First, society cannot operate except at the most basic level without moral virtues. Second, you can’t let the Christians take the moral high ground. Has this been Patrick’s experience?
Robert reports that Mary Gordon says she can talk more comfortably about faith with agnostics and atheists. Yes, many agnostics and atheists enjoy talking about religion. But many atheists are also as doctrinaire as Christian fundamentalists I have known, and as exclusive. A former atheist colleague was constantly urging people not to read anything by Marquez, Allende or any other authors in the magical realism genre because it pandered to superstition. I could have pointed out that my Baptist sister-in-law felt the exact same way about Harry Potter, and was trying to get it off the shelves of her local library.
Apologetics, as Cathlneen has pointed out by way of Robert, don’t work. My guess is that apologists are preaching to themselves, or, at most, the choir. Most atheists and agnostics are good arguers and quite familiar with Scripture. God, at best, is simply irrelevant. Several of my relatives have pointed out that God (if there is a God) is awfully unpredictable, so what’s the point of trying to understand the reasoning behind it? Best to just try to get along, and end by doing more good than harm.
Most atheists and agnostics of my acquaintance love to sing hymns.
Jean
God is not predictable. Any entity that is predictable you can be sure is not God. The French Assyriologist and former Dominican (another one!) Jean Botero said somewhere that he had no need of a god he could understand. I remember reading that and saying yes.
Sounds like Augustine’s comment: “Si comprehendis, non est Deus”–If you understand him, it’s not God.” This was quoted by Benedict XVI in his encyclical.
In response to Jean, I would contend that Christianity deserves whatever moral high ground it still may command and is far superior to post-Christian and exclusively humanist views.
But I also believe societies can be moral without being highly religious. Japan is sometimes cited as an example. And of course there are multitudes of highly moral individuals who are atheists or agnostics.
Nevertheless religion does seem to offer unique contributions to the moral life that are unavailable elsewhere. I’ve found one of the best articulations of that position in the work of the social scientist James Q. Wilson. Here’s an excerpt from one of his articles:
‘Religion’s chief contribution to morality is to enable people to transform their lives…A profound act of faith does not necessarily make us better, it only makes us more knowledgeable. We come to know God and through Him to know ourselves. And what we learn about ourselves is I suspect, quite unsettling. We are weak, greedy, impassioned, ill-tempered, and contradictory; we can barely be good any of the time, much less most of the time…religion far from putting doubts and anxieties to rest, tends to intensify them. The people for whom a religious experience heightens doubts and sharpens anxieties are people who are leading wasted or immoral lives. Religion does not solve their problems; it heightens them to the point that people finally feel they ought to do something about them. It creates as opportunity for personal transformation.”
That is a view that’s hard to find outside religious precincts. To be fair to Anthony Kenny, I believe he calls himself a “reverent agnostic” and despite his agnosticism has argued that religious experience can best be expressed in poetic language, so there may be more to his position than I’m aware of. Again I’m reminded of Santayana. Supposedly he was buried in unblessed ground in a Catholic cemetery, another unusual accommodation of unbelief and belief.
My mother, an agnostic, recently asked how I would define prayer and she talked a bit about how and why she “prays,” though she doesn’t like that word (too religious).
So thanks for the comments, all. I find this thread fascinating, so will continue to follow it.
I wish Duffy had been more “impertinent” and explored Kenny’s impetus to prayer.
There have been some interesting comments posted about the “unintelligibility” of God. As a student, I find this notion completely at odds with the philosophical understanding that I was taught about God. Indeed, the very notion that we (as bloggers on this site) can talk about God meaningfully suggests that there is a level of intelligibility (and thus, to a lesser extent, predictability) in that Being in the sky. This does not lessen the ultimate mystery of God’s total Being, but I think we all suppose that intelligibility in our conversations about God. We need not, I think, render God totally “other.”
Professor Imbelli, would you care to offer a more rigorous theological perspective?
Since I said that God was unpredictable, let me elaborate a little. I meant that no one can predict what God will do. If it were possible to make a prediction, then God would be subject to some law and the one who predicts could infer from knowledge of that law what God would do. That is how we make predictions about natural objects, more or less successfully. It is easier to guide a space vehicle that to predict the weather. But God is subject to no law or necessity of any kind. At the same time, I should, have added, God is entirely reliable and trustworthy. Hence the possibility of faith.
I follow the line about God’s intelligibility that says that we cannot know what God is in a positive way. We can know that God has complete and perfect knowledge of himself and everything else, but our way of knowing is not the way of knowing of God. Between our knowledge and God’s knowledge there is only some analogy, i.e., the term knower as applied to God and us is not univocal nor yet equivocal but analogous. This, at least as I understand it, is the Thomist view. St. Thomas says that we cannot know what God is but only what he is not. In the sense that we can know what God is not, we can have some sort of understanding of God, but traditionally one says that we cannot comprehend God, as Augustine says, because that word implies a grasp, a firm taking hold, of which we are not capable.
I think the Scotist view is somewhat different, but I will let any Scotist among us speak for her/himself.
Thank you for your reply.
I’m not sure that your I understand your reply, however – I guess this means I’m making your elaborate yet again. :O
Your statement, “But God is subject to no law or necessity of any kind. At the same time, I should, have added, God is entirely reliable and trustworthy…” is the one that confused me. After all, if one is reliable, doesn’t that being have to follow some rules (“laws” or “necessity”)? One such “law” might be existence. Another might be goodness. In the second case, If God is “totally unpredictable” does that mean that God commits evil acts (i.e. should we doubt the “predictability” of God’s goodness)? I doubt you would want to say yes to that. If you do, then we have arrived at an impasse, since I think it’s absurd for God to be evil (or partially evil). If you don’t, then how do you measure certain characteristics (such as God’s existence, goodness) against your standard of the ultimate unintelligibility of God?
Thanks to all for their insights.
I’m joining the conversation from Buffalo, NY,
where I had the joy of celebrating the wedding of a former student.
A few random thoughts:
I think we need to keep the tension between “affirmative” language of God (what the tradition calls the “kataphatic”) and “negative” language” (the “apophatic”). I believe this is what St. Thomas tries to accomplish in his view of “analogy.”
I know the technical literature on “analogy” is vast, and some question the validity of “analogical” language about God. But without some such appeal to analogy, we seem confined to sheer silence.
I remember a phrase of Louis Dupre to the effect that, if we can say nothing about God, we can say nothing to God — and that is the end of religion.
That is why I was intrigued by Duffy’s reference to “prayer.” I think this is faith’s primordial practice, and any necessary “theologizing,” must proceed from this, if theology is to be truly “fides quaerens intellectum,” and not merely a detached intellectual investigation of “religion.”
Finally, I suspect this latter is why a number of graduate students find von Balthasar so enriching. His is a “praying theology.”
I hope these random thoughts makes some sense.
Your statement, “But God is subject to no law or necessity of any kind. At the same time, I should, have added, God is entirely reliable and trustworthy…” is the one that confused me. After all, if one is reliable, doesn’t that being have to follow some rules (“laws” or “necessity”)?
A small child may trust a parent without thinking precisely of a set of standards by which to judge the parent. In fact the child may not be in a position to judge the parent. So do we stand to God, except of course that a parent may fail, but God will not. There is no standard by which God may be judged.
One such “law” might be existence.
Existence is not a standard.
Another might be goodness.
God’s goodness is God.
In the second case, If God is “totally unpredictable” does that mean that God commits evil acts (i.e. should we doubt the “predictability” of God’s goodness)?
We are not in a position to judge God as to good or evil or anything else. But since God is totally good we can have complete confidence in God.
I doubt you would want to say yes to that. If you do, then we have arrived at an impasse, since I think it’s absurd for God to be evil (or partially evil). If you don’t, then how do you measure certain characteristics (such as God’s existence, goodness) against your standard of the ultimate unintelligibility of God?
Existence is not a chracteristic. God is his own goodness, i.e., there is no difference between God and the goodness of God.
God is totally intelligible but only to himself. Our limited intellects by their natural powers have a very limited understanding of God. It is as if we were blinded by the great light of God’s intelligibility. Of course this is only a metaphor.
I’m not very good at being Catholic, so I’m chary of getting into this conversation except to ask questions.
Here’s one that keeps occurring to me, and I’d be interested in how other respond:
While I accept that the Holy Spirit is leading the Church, I also accept that those humans entrusted with Church teaching aren’t perfect.
Sorry, I meant to edit the above but I got posted instead. Here’s what I meant to say:
I’m not very good at being Catholic, so I’m chary of getting into this conversation except to ask questions.
Here’s one that keeps occurring to me, and I’d be interested in how other respond:
While I accept that the Holy Spirit is leading the Church, I also accept that those humans entrusted with Church teaching aren’t perfect.
Doesn’t that leave room for some Church teaching to be imperfect? Doesn’t the Church nod to that by having declared only one or two teachings infallible?
And if so, why does the Church impose “meek obedience” to the Catechism, as if there were no room for imperfection?
Jean—You raise a good question. And I just wanted to say that if you have found the Catechism wanting, you are certainly not alone. Here is an interesting website that includes links that explore some of the many problems theologians and scripture scholars had with the early draft of it submitted to the Bishops ( for a very quick response in terms of annotation or amendment) before it was completed.
Some of the material referenced here appeared in Commonweal at the time.
http://woodstock.georgetown.edu/church_studies/reese/cat-li2.htm
Jean,
I think that John Noonan makes a convincing case in A Church that Can and Cannot Change that in the area of morality what can fairy be described as Church teaching has changed. A problem with the Catechism, as someone who knows more than I do about it has said, is that it does not distinguish teaching that might be called absolutely settled from teaching that is not. It is worth noting that the reactions of experts to the Catechism were not entirely favorable. My wife has a useful website detailing this and I am about to ask her to post the URL.
Obviously , we Gannons are on the same wavelength, though working in adjacent offices!