Some Call it Mythology (Part 2)

The classical Christian worldview

Prior to the 1500s, the Western world, e.g., Christendom, inherited from her philosophical forebears a view of reality based upon a transcendent and objective metaphysic and consequent objective, normative ethic. The Christian tradition is often viewed as a synthesis of classical philosophy (Greek and Roman) and Israelite/ Jewish theology. Arguably, however, St. Paul states quite clearly (Acts 17; Romans 1-2) that God has made himself known to all people and cultures. We call this “natural revelation.” In the Hebrew Bible, the Psalmist makes a similar claim,

The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world (Psalm 19, RSV).

German phenomenologist Edith Stein observes, “Whoever seeks the truth is seeking God, whether consciously or unconsciously” or in the words attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo, “All truth is God’s truth.”

Metaphysics - The Transcendent Trinity

The Hebrew monotheistic and ethical tradition was unique in the ancient world and their answer to pagan religions was equally unique: one Deity created the world ex nihilo and everything in it (Genesis 1:1). This Deity revealed himself to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and others and gave them an ethical code on the crest of Mt. Sinai of which, according to Moses, all nations would be envious (cf. Deut. 4:6-8). Out of this roughly 2000 year-old narrative, and generations of prophetic longings, arise the dawn of John the Baptizer and the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth (ca. 4 BC).

The Christian movement answered the pagan search for meaning beyond the stars and revealed the God who brought the children of Israel out of the house of Pharaoh by their baptism in the Red Sea (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1-2). The Christian narrative reveals that this God has come to us personally in the man Jesus Christ (John 1:18), revealing the Mystery of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (cf. Colossians 2:9; John 14:9: Hebrews 1:1-4) and answering the problems/ tensions in pagan philosophy when he says he is “the way [metaphysics] the truth [epistemology] and the life [axiology]” (John 14:6). The definitive answer to the “what” of Aristotle’s metaphysic is a “who,” that is, a person, whose identity is canonized in the Creed of Nicaea (325 AD).

Ethics - The Way of Wisdom

In the Hebrew Bible, the Patriarch Job uttered, “The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding” (Job 28.28, RSV). King David understood the “fear of the Lord” as something taught to children (Psalm 34.11). What is good and evil (righteous or wicked) stems from a concrete source: the Torah (“law,” “instruction”). Torah as originally understood is the covenant God gave through Moses to the Israelites on Mount Sinai. The covenant marks the parameters for maintaining their presence in the Land that God promised to Abraham (Genesis 12). David summarizes the covenant by saying, “What man is there who desires life, and covets many days, that he may enjoy good? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” (Psalm 34.12-14, RSV).

What defines evil and good are not abstract relativities, but specifics, i.e., principles found in the Torah. Later, David connects the fear of the Lord with the “beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111.10). The editor of the Proverbs says similar things and adds that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (Proverbs 1.7); moreover, he associates “the fear of the Lord” with wisdom, as a way of life that avoids evil. This evil is defined by breaking God’s commands (cf. 1 John 3.4). Those commands outline or protect the “Blessed Life.” Consequently, habitual breaking of God’s commands defines the unhappy and short life (cf. Psalm 1, 19; cf. 1 Timothy 1.8). Micah the Prophet summarizes the Torah when he says, “He has showed you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6.8, RSV). This standard of morality is based upon God’s Person and nature as he has revealed his divine will in the canon of Sacred Scripture.

Rabbi Hillel, the grandfather of Gamaliel I (rabbi to Paul the Apostle, cf. Acts 5.34; 22.3) taught in the Mishnah, “What is hateful to you, do not to your neighbor [sic]: that is the whole Torah, while the rest is the commentary thereof; go and learn it” (Shabbath 31a). When asked which mitzvah (command) is the greatest, Jesus of Nazareth connects the love of God demonstrably to love of neighbor; the abstract is seen in specific acts of charity. He replies (Mark 12:29-31, RSV):

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind [Deut. 6.4f] and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself [Lev. 19.18].’ There is no other commandment greater than these (cf. Matt. 19.19; 22.39; Luke 10.27).

This same conventional wisdom is found in Paul’s letters (Gal. 5.14; Rom. 13.9) and the Letter of James (2.8).

It would be centuries of debate, growth and development of doctrine as the infant Church, resting on the foundation of Apostles and Prophets (Ephesians 4), grew and matured into a visible institution, which spread throughout the known world of the Roman Empire. After nearly 1000 years of councils and difficult organization, perhaps no greater mind arose to successfully articulate the Christian answer to philosophy than Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274 AD).

St. Thomas Aquinas

He was the architect of the Western Christian philosophical tradition. In agreement with Aristotle, he said the law of non-contradiction is discernible by the senses and from the perspective of naked philosophy, has its origin in being. In Questiones Disputatae de Veritate (Q1), he quotes Augustine, “‘The true is that which is.’ But that which is, is simply being. The true, therefore, means exactly the same as being.” In de Veritate, Aquinas notes, “Things in the same state are the same. But the true and being are in the same state. Therefore, they are the same. For Aristotle wrote: ‘The state of a thing in its act of existence is the same as its state in truth.’ Therefore, the true and being are entirely the same” (para. 5).

Aristotle’s weakness is his inability to ground his epistemology in ontology. He observes that non-contradiction is at work in human reasoning and connects it with being; it is the first principle and assumption that being “is.” In other words, Aristotle is correct in his observation but oblivious to its origin, for he rejects the pantheon of deities as superstition.

However, Aquinas accepted on authority from Sacred Revelation that beatitudo, that is, the uninterrupted, perpetual, felicitous vision of God is the goal of all things human; indeed, it is philosophy’s summum bonum. The foundation of all things, particularly those axioms Aristotle assumed a priori, Aquinas understood to have their origin in God. However, philosophy cannot say this. Neither Plato nor Aristotle could say this. Aquinas notes by practical reason, that while philosophy is a dumb idol on the ultimate question of Being, “. . . the only ultimate end and beatitudo (fulfillment) for human beings is living in a completely reasonable, morally excellent (virtuosus) way.”

Hence, the law of non-contradiction serves as a rational means by which human beings live what Socrates called the “best possible life.” The irrational life therefore is the immoral life. Fennis (2011) summarizes Aquinas’ view of the functional association between morality and reason, from the perspective of practical reason or what has become in common parlance, “natural law,” which is a function of natural theology:

The ultimate end of human life is felicitas or beatitudo… So the main concern of law [including the natural (moral) law] must be with directing towards beatitudo. Again, since every part stands to the whole as incomplete stands to complete, and individual human beings are each parts of a complete community, law's appropriate concern is necessarily with directing towards common felicitas . . . that is, to common good. (ST I-II q. 90 a. 2.). The ‘complete community’ mentioned here is the political community, with its laws, but the proposition implicitly refers also to the community of all rational creatures, to whose common good morality (the moral law) directs us (para. 16).

For the Greeks and emergent Christian civilization, the law of non-contradiction was self-evident as much as the truth of being. This prevalent explanation of the world (called “pre-modernity”) was in innocence or malice put into question by the dawn of the Renaissance and consequent “Enlightenment.”

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Finnis, J. (2011, Fall). Aquinas' moral, political, and legal philosophy, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Edward N. Zalta (ed.).