jh suggested that I should take a look at Aquinas, which I will admit is not prominent on the Lutheran syllabus.
For those of you who, like me, haven't tried to tackle the Summa, let me describe its organizational structure as being somewhat reminiscent of Wittgenstein's Tractatus.
Here's an early snippet, which illustrates the structure, where I ran into a roadblock:
[I.1.2] Whether sacred doctrine is a science?
Objection 1: It seems that sacred doctrine is not a science. For every science proceeds from self-evident principles. But sacred doctrine proceeds from articles of faith which are not self-evident, since their truth is not admitted by all: “For all men have not faith” (2 Thess. 3:2). Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science.
Objection 2: Further, no science deals with individual facts. But this sacred science treats of individual facts, such as the deeds of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and such like. Therefore sacred doctrine is not a science.
On the contrary, Augustine says (De Trin. xiv, 1) “to this science alone belongs that whereby saving faith is begotten, nourished, protected and strengthened.” But this can be said of no science except sacred doctrine. Therefore sacred doctrine is a science.
I answer that, Sacred doctrine is a science. We must bear in mind that there are two kinds of sciences. There are some which proceed from a principle known by the natural light of intelligence, such as arithmetic and geometry and the like. There are some which proceed from principles known by the light of a higher science: thus the science of perspective proceeds from principles established by geometry, and music from principles established by arithmetic. So it is that sacred doctrine is a science because it proceeds from principles established by the light of a higher science, namely, the science of God and the blessed. Hence, just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God.
Reply to Objection 1: The principles of any science are either in themselves self-evident, or reducible to the conclusions of a higher science; and such, as we have said, are the principles of sacred doctrine.
Reply to Objection 2: Individual facts are treated of in sacred doctrine, not because it is concerned with them principally, but they are introduced rather both as examples to be followed in our lives (as in moral sciences) and in order to establish the authority of those men through whom the divine revelation, on which this sacred scripture or doctrine is based, has come down to us.
So here's the problem, as I see it. Aquinas argues that sacred doctrine is a science by moving the “articles of faith which are not self-evident” and “individual facts” of sacred doctrine to the “science of God and the blessed.” But simply naming the reservoir for these exceptional stipulations “the science of God and the blessed” does not make it a science, this must be argued. And indeed, any attempt to argue it runs into the same difficulty that Aquinas tried to evade by introducing it in the first place, as these exceptional stipulations are not any more self-evident or any less individual facts within this “higher science” than they were before.
And it seems to me that even though the proposition that Aquinas wants to establish must fall, there should be no difficulty in defining sacred doctrine as the application of reason to a well-defined collection of individual facts and articles of faith, e.g., individual facts as established by scripture, and articles of faith as established by the ecumenical councils. In modern nomenclature, this would make sacred doctrine an applied science as opposed to a pure science.
Thoughts?
Peace
4 comments:
cogito ergo fallibilis
by the second book of the summa thomas has established that theologians are a curious lot simply becaue there is no objective basis for their study in fact the theologian must begin with the premise god cannot be known...yet then it behooves one who prays to try to understand god
it is hard for people to understand that metaphysical principles were as readily at hand in the mind of the scholastics as is doubt in our day...guys like thomas were at home with the religious imagination and the wealth of scriptural and doctrinal writings that existed in the 13th century
he is using the classical seperation of aristotle of the physical and the metaphysical...but then there exists in all of thomas' commentary the given understanding of metaphysical principles which are almost obsolete today....thomas would probably consider darwin a good scientist of the physica but one poorly schooled in metaphysical discourse
and therefore almost negligible...when compared with the writers like avicessan averoess maimonides and st bonaventure
there weren't that many texts around for scholarly perusal (a fraction of what exists today)and a thorough knowledge of the bible meant a great deal there were only a few people around who could boast that...even so the intellectual heritage ranging from persia to spain was pretty rich
it was occams razor that senselessly attempted to simplify a very subtle beautiful intricate system of profound insight
i'll never fogive occam
i'd like to punch him in the snooker
it does me or anyone little good to try to recount the metaphysical riches of thomas
for he is of the mind
but of course everyman speculates on the notion of god and there is a body of knowledge from a variety of traditions directing itself to that fact...the reality of god's existence is largely by consensus as far as human understanding is allowed...men had been arguing and positing intellectual and physical and historical experiences for 1500 yrs that thomas was aware of and maybe more....peoples faith rooted in the realities of real life bear witness to the working of god...and the literary revelations those things remembered and written down have as much or more veracity than any science...particularly at the time of thomas when a certain advanced alchemy ruled the day and farmers knew much more than the supposed docents of learning halls
sacred doctrine requires great mental skill it must not comport only with logic but with reality as it is lived and understood by everyone
there are serious issues to be considered
to flippantly cast them off as applied science like some sort of robotic efficiency modem is to miss the point of the opening proposals of the summa completely...but at least you tried...and i appreciate that
in the world of physical science there is no purity there is only drudgery repetition charting numbers hypothesis money for programs and a few paltry dribbling answers which are noticed by very few people if any at all...nobody lives their lives by the dictates of science or if they do they live in a cube of electricity...most people live their lives trying to get things right between loved ones and god and self...almost eveyone has the intuition that this is a very big task...i mean it's a labyrinth with chaos theory as a practical basis
but we think of god and we think of mystery and we live lives of real drama where our ties of family and friends force us to find a deeper meaning for it all al the time and the science of theology has mapped out many ways for us to do that but do that we will for we are god savages
j
jh --
I'm traveling this week, so updates and replies are going to be slow.
Let me chew on this for a while.
Peace
it was occams razor that senselessly attempted to simplify a very subtle beautiful intricate system of profound insight
Perhaps, but Ockham isn't (yet) relevant to the question that I have here.
sacred doctrine requires great mental skill it must not comport only with logic but with reality as it is lived and understood by everyone
This was my point, contra Aquinas. His argument seems to be this -- I say "seems," because the I'm still trying to align his terminology with ours, and in particular what he means be "science" -- that sacred doctrine is a product of pure reason (at least, thats what the structure of his argument suggests). But the argument itself involves a logical flaw, and a fairly glaring one.
Please understand here that I'm not trying to beat up on Aquinas -- he was working within an Aristotelian logical framework that is not sufficiently expressive to carry out the kind of argument that he's trying to make here. Indeed, you need bits of Dedekind and Peano, and arguably even bits of Hilbert, Tarski, and Gödel,to have a fully adequate framework.
The thing is, I have the advantage of knowing their work, even it Aquinas didn't.
there are serious issues to be considered
to flippantly cast them off as applied science
I wasn't trying to be flippant, but rather accurate and serious. I'm certainly willing to consider other terms, but my point is simply this -- by "science," Aquinas seems to mean "knowledge gained by pure reason." It is not an insult to sacred doctrine to observe that it does not satisfy this definition.
in the world of physical science there is no purity there is only drudgery
I take it that you don't know any actual scientists. My experience of them is very different. This isn't to say that there isn't some drudgery -- every occupation has bits of drudgery -- just that drudgery doesn't dominate. What dominates is intuition, creativity, and joy.
oh they dress it up to look like joy but it's just mucking about in white coats is all...and getting paid for tedium and minor detail...all science of today is negligible we could do without it...the only really good scientists are those who are really serious about cleaning up the planet the rest are charlatans...all the scientists should meditate on that...just how very inessential they are
the notion for thomas is not so much one of purity but a "higher science" -- it was the greek consensus that all knoweldge was derived from something higher some greater way of seeing the world...the music metaphor is significant...just the idea of tuning guitar i rely on a science that was worked out centuries ago and to which i rarely give a thought...thus i rely on the human passed down from generation to generation knowledge especially the narrative and the legal tradition of judaism and the development of christian doctrine...to say somehow that the sciences we live by today at least those which inform our awareness through the commercialisaton of science are somehow essential to sustaining our awareness is ludicrous....i've said time and again that the scientists must be the janitors of intellectual life they are important people grime and shit collects all over the place if the janitors don't do their jobs but they certainly shouldn't assume to do the work of the poets or the ministers of the corporal acts of mercy...and only rarely should they be teachers...if a person wants to be a scientists they should do it as sort of a lonesome journey toward understanding adn not presume to have a job because of it they should be brahmins cast out to the streets to beg and not gusssied up and put in ivory towers...no we have that all screwed up....the scientists should be street beggars and janitors
there's a whole serious body of knowledge that will remain forever esoteric simply because some minds are not at all disposed to know these things but they are important matters and everyone has access to them and they have to remain clear and well thought out and relevant and insistent and new
augustine states the recognition of the need for divine science sacred doctrine
it's a very difficult and intellectually challenging matter but it needs consant attention and constant underztanding
every generation must begin anew the discoveries of old
pure reason does not mean the body of insight and knowledge handed down through the schools of philosophy and the synagogues...pure reason would imply a rarified state of prayer of constant mystical insight of the pure beholding of the glory of god which we believe came at the end of aquinas' life...or perhaps the practice of theoretical mathematics might be pure reason
but thomas is saying there is an inheritance and for his system of thought to have validity it must resonate with the already existing body of knowledge that is agreed upon by all men of knowledge and women too i suppose
the pattern you encounter in the first questions of the summa establishes the pattern used throughout in some ways it is a pattern unique to thomas although it was developed out of the socratic method and used first amongst the dominicans...it is a way of articulating the existing thoughts about any one issue and then logically agreeing or disagreeing with the pretext through the use not of pure logic but of immediate referencing of other texts relating to the most coherent argument....always with a window of openness to further argument
metaphysics is higher science
if people don't care about it
it really doesn't matter
to anyone except people interested in serious metaphysical discourse
and skateboarding or skiing or surfing or lounging or rock and roll
j
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