I've posted HERE on how secular reason turns out to be only irrational nihilism, Alex deagon HERE sums up John Milbank's scandalous, but true, claim that only theology saves metaphysics, and therefore reason :
Milbank argues that “to reason truly one must be already illumined by God, while revelation itself is but a higher measure of such illumination . . .”
Thus, it is knowledge through faith and personal trust in the divine through poetic communion of the visible which simultaneously recognises God and rescues reason by providing access to the necessary, or transcendent infinite invisible.
...only reason framed in theology can achieve truth, and such provides the context for a more detailed examination of what is meant by the term ‘truth’.
....truth is never interpretively exhausted since the love is never finished, and is ultimately revealed in the Incarnation and sacrifice of Christ.
Truth must be a gift from truth itself, which one must love and have faith in, and is ontologically fundamental, principally personal, and a contingent gift. Therefore truth, for Christianity, is not correspondence (in the sense of mirroring between a proposition in the mind and the facts of reality), but participation of the beautiful in the graciously revealed beauty of God. The measure of truth is likeness to the form of divine beauty of which our soul has some recollection, and which has given or declared itself in a self-authenticating way rather than having been discerned in the mind.
Importantly, the human mind does not mirror or correspond to reality, but knowledge is true if divinely illumined by the logos. Therefore, no positive reality can be false in terms of a mistake or noncorrespondence, but only false as deficient presence or being.
...it is not simply a mirroring or reflection of reality in propositions (‘true to the facts’), but there is an analogy between the way things are materially and the way things are in our minds.
Conversely, theological coherence refers to the ultimate truth of the being of things in terms of their supreme intelligibility in the divine mind, and therefore in this sense coherence is intrinsically connected to Thomist correspondence.
Milbank and Pickstock ultimately conclude that:
What all this suggests is that correspondence in Aquinas’s [sic] theory of knowledge means something far more nuanced than a mere mirroring of reality in thought... there is an intrinsic analogy between the mind’s intrinsic drive towards truth, and the way things manifest themselves, which is their mode of being true... if there can be correspondence of thought to beings, this is only because... both beings and minds correspond to the divine being and intellect.
...persuasion is apparently not that one is persuaded of truth by open intersubjective discourse, but rather one is persuaded through faith (pistis, literally ‘persuasion’) based on an unmerited revelation (aletheia, literally ‘truth’) of the divine word (logos, referring to Christ) . In other words, it is the revelation of the divine word that persuades, or produces faith.
In particular, as the glory of Christ is revealed to the mind, the mind is persuaded, which is the same as saying the mind appropriates this revelation by peaceful persuasion or rhetoric, rather than the violent coercion of secular reason. As the mind is transformed by faith, it participates in the glory of Christ by imitating Christ and then loves one’s neighbour as a reflection of the Trinitarian relations.
In this sense, the truth of Christianity is that the divine mind of the Trinity in its perfect love and peace as revealed in Christ recovers reason and corresponds to the created order through participation in the Trinitarian relations resulting from faith, the persuasion of the mind by the glorious truth of what has been graciously revealed. Hence, the concrete virtue of loving one’s neighbour seeks its notion of what it means to have truly human character in a place beyond or above what is human, rather than in or beneath.
Ultimately then, it is this necessary transcendence in human relations which challenges the secular and opens the space for faith.
For as Milbank argues, scholars have historically found it difficult to simultaneously point to the universally valid and objective and to the customary particulars which instantiate it... a solution is only really possible in terms of a tradition like Christianity, which starkly links particular to universal by conceiving its relationship to transcendence (truth) in a rhetorical fashion (faith).
...theological reason, if it is true to itself, contends that all other disciplines which claim to be about objects, regardless of whether those objects are related to God, are really about nothing at all.
In this sense atheism appears to be more difficult and mystical than theology. By contrast, theology understands itself as studying objects which are absolutely real, in that they take their source in original, indefeasible actuality of being.
Pure (or secular) reason is supposedly able to resolve the four fundamental Kantian antinomies: beginning/no beginning, freedom/causality, ultimate constituent parts/no such parts, and necessary being/contingent being. However, following Kant, since these cannot be conceptualised by the understanding, any transcending of the antinomies becomes a pure act of faith, not a necessity of reason.
For as Milbank argues, scholars have historically found it difficult to simultaneously point to the universally valid and objective and to the customary particulars which instantiate it... a solution is only really possible in terms of a tradition like Christianity, which starkly links particular to universal by conceiving its relationship to transcendence (truth) in a rhetorical fashion (faith).
...theological reason, if it is true to itself, contends that all other disciplines which claim to be about objects, regardless of whether those objects are related to God, are really about nothing at all.
In this sense atheism appears to be more difficult and mystical than theology. By contrast, theology understands itself as studying objects which are absolutely real, in that they take their source in original, indefeasible actuality of being.
Consequently, only theology alone can remain with the question of truth. For theology, truth is an adequation or correspondence of knowledge with the real, since the one entirely real reality, God, is himself both infinitely real and infinitely knowing. As real he is also manifest and self-aware, or truthful. To express a truth then means to correspond in our being to God (to a degree) via an awareness of aspects of the creation to whose lesser reality we also correspond, since creation is sustained by God and has its being in God. From this theological perspective alone it makes sense to say that knowing corresponds to being, even if this cannot be validated. Hence a claim to know truly or to know at all amounts to a faith and participation in that which is the origin of all things and the depth of all things: the divine God.
It follows that unless secular disciplines are explicitly ordered to Christian theology, they are objectively and demonstrably null and void, altogether lacking in truth, which to have any meaning must consist of correspondence between knowledge and the real in the fashion described.
A Christian perspective saves the human bias toward reason, for reason in the framework of virtue and difference is consistent with the infinite through participation in the divine virtue and leaves no residue of chaos through allowing difference. In other words, rationalism is linked to the biblical mythos alone, and to save reason in this fashion requires the supplementation of reason by faith, including faith in infinite reason.
According to Aquinas, all human rationality is participation in the divine reason, and therefore all knowledge requires faith. The light of revelation strengthens our grasp of natural principles, and consequently theology mediates knowledge in all other disciplines.
The only transcendental, self-identical reality is an empty will or force which returns as the arbitrary and chaotic different. Thus, to save reason, one must derive it from an entity which lies beyond Being and beyond mere difference.76 This entity is the Trinitarian God of Christian theology, which is simultaneously Being as the divine and difference in the divine persons, peace in unity and diversity, and the reconciliation of virtue and difference.
...consequently, though reason is directed towards truth, it is not in the crude sense of secular reason discovering the nature of physical reality and systemising it to a set of propositions. Instead, the process is inverted and theologised, with truth revealing itself through the Incarnation of Christ, reconciling reason with faith and recovering it. This revelation is subsequently apprehended and participated in by faith.
It follows that unless secular disciplines are explicitly ordered to Christian theology, they are objectively and demonstrably null and void, altogether lacking in truth, which to have any meaning must consist of correspondence between knowledge and the real in the fashion described.
A Christian perspective saves the human bias toward reason, for reason in the framework of virtue and difference is consistent with the infinite through participation in the divine virtue and leaves no residue of chaos through allowing difference. In other words, rationalism is linked to the biblical mythos alone, and to save reason in this fashion requires the supplementation of reason by faith, including faith in infinite reason.
According to Aquinas, all human rationality is participation in the divine reason, and therefore all knowledge requires faith. The light of revelation strengthens our grasp of natural principles, and consequently theology mediates knowledge in all other disciplines.
The only transcendental, self-identical reality is an empty will or force which returns as the arbitrary and chaotic different. Thus, to save reason, one must derive it from an entity which lies beyond Being and beyond mere difference.76 This entity is the Trinitarian God of Christian theology, which is simultaneously Being as the divine and difference in the divine persons, peace in unity and diversity, and the reconciliation of virtue and difference.
...consequently, though reason is directed towards truth, it is not in the crude sense of secular reason discovering the nature of physical reality and systemising it to a set of propositions. Instead, the process is inverted and theologised, with truth revealing itself through the Incarnation of Christ, reconciling reason with faith and recovering it. This revelation is subsequently apprehended and participated in by faith.
Pure (or secular) reason is supposedly able to resolve the four fundamental Kantian antinomies: beginning/no beginning, freedom/causality, ultimate constituent parts/no such parts, and necessary being/contingent being. However, following Kant, since these cannot be conceptualised by the understanding, any transcending of the antinomies becomes a pure act of faith, not a necessity of reason.
Indeed, it is only through the Trinity and Incarnational paradox of Christ (or specifically Christian faith) that these antinomies can be transcended. For as we have already seen in the Trinity, difference and sameness, or ultimate constituent parts/no such parts, is transcended. In addition, Incarnational paradox transcends beginning/no beginning (for Christ is both temporal man and eternal God), freedom/causality (for Christ’s incarnation was necessary as a matter of fulfilling Scripture, and free as an act of love), and necessary/contingent being (for Christ is a necessary being as God, and a contingent being as a man). So with Christian faith comes the transcending of the antinomies, and with that the recovery of reason – for the eternal/becoming distinction in Christ is universal and is what makes reason possible.
Hence, the meeting of the temporal and the eternal in Christ leads to the recovery of reason, for reason is recovered in the betweenness or paradox of (incarnational) being, where finite belonging to the infinite is the order of things, where time meets eternity, absence meets presence, and immanence meets transcendence.80 In other words, reason is united to faith at the paradoxical interface of the universal (reason) and the particular (faith), which is the event of Christ, for this allows the reconciliation of virtue and difference. On this point of elaborating a reason from the Incarnation, only the qualification of reason by myth and poetry ensures that reason will not degenerate into pure abstraction.
The Bible, especially the New Testament, resists the advance to pure abstraction by reinvoking the poetic, yet in a nonpagan way which seeks a positive relationship to the properly vague abstraction of nondogmatic reason (for example, the wisdom literature and New Testament engagement with Greek philosophy).
The balance is proclaimed paradoxically in the idea that reason itself (logos) becomes Incarnate, which means the rational is fully and only accessible by the indirectness of a poetic discourse concerning this event.
Reason thus is more realistically rational as disclosing a rational though mysterious universe.
Again, this is because the discourse of poetry in Christian theology promotes the recognition of difference through subjectivity and particularity, and the creative difference of the Trinity, in contrast to the stifling and universalising nature of secular reason.
Thus, secular reason is ultimately blind faith and leads to an ontology of violence, while reason united to faith in Christian theology is unique in allowing true reason to flourish through the reconciliation of virtue and difference, producing an ontology of peace.
Fundamentally, even this very notion of a revelation/reason duality, far from being an authentic Christian legacy, itself results only from the rise of a questionably secular mode of knowledge. Indeed, if the truth of nature lies in its supernatural ordination, then reason is true only to the extent that it seeks or declares the theoretical and practical acknowledgement of this ordination, which is made possible again by the divine incarnation. Hence there can be no reason/revelation duality – true reason anticipates revelation, while revelation simply is of true reason which must ceaselessly arrive, as an event, such that what Christ shows supremely is the world as really world, as the creation of God.
It may be further observed that faith is actually a presupposition of reason, which implies that the notion and system of ‘secular reason’ is self-referentially absurd. For if there are no absolute foundations based in faith then argument between different positions is precluded and pragmatically absurd.
....beyond the level of formal logic there is no single ‘reason’ without presuppositions, there are only many different, complexly overlapping traditions of reason.
...faith – a trust in the transcendent God that involves being persuaded by the divine word beyond the scope of secular reason. It is a trust in specifically disclosive sacramental processes of mediation between the universal and the particular, mind and reality, the intellect and the senses.91 Thus, in the final analysis, faith in the Triune God is a recognition of and trust in the transcendental/ontological possibility of participation in the infinite/divine.92
Milbank further argues that any sharp separation of reason and faith is dangerous, because it implies that faith at its core is non-rational and beyond the reach of argument, while simultaneously implying that reason cannot impact on issues of substantive preference. But in reality, reason and faith are always intertwined in a beneficial way. Reason has to make certain assumptions and trust or have faith in the reasonableness of reality. Faith has to continuously think through the coherence of its own intuitions in a process that often modifies these intuitions."
Hence, the meeting of the temporal and the eternal in Christ leads to the recovery of reason, for reason is recovered in the betweenness or paradox of (incarnational) being, where finite belonging to the infinite is the order of things, where time meets eternity, absence meets presence, and immanence meets transcendence.80 In other words, reason is united to faith at the paradoxical interface of the universal (reason) and the particular (faith), which is the event of Christ, for this allows the reconciliation of virtue and difference. On this point of elaborating a reason from the Incarnation, only the qualification of reason by myth and poetry ensures that reason will not degenerate into pure abstraction.
The Bible, especially the New Testament, resists the advance to pure abstraction by reinvoking the poetic, yet in a nonpagan way which seeks a positive relationship to the properly vague abstraction of nondogmatic reason (for example, the wisdom literature and New Testament engagement with Greek philosophy).
The balance is proclaimed paradoxically in the idea that reason itself (logos) becomes Incarnate, which means the rational is fully and only accessible by the indirectness of a poetic discourse concerning this event.
Reason thus is more realistically rational as disclosing a rational though mysterious universe.
Again, this is because the discourse of poetry in Christian theology promotes the recognition of difference through subjectivity and particularity, and the creative difference of the Trinity, in contrast to the stifling and universalising nature of secular reason.
Thus, secular reason is ultimately blind faith and leads to an ontology of violence, while reason united to faith in Christian theology is unique in allowing true reason to flourish through the reconciliation of virtue and difference, producing an ontology of peace.
Fundamentally, even this very notion of a revelation/reason duality, far from being an authentic Christian legacy, itself results only from the rise of a questionably secular mode of knowledge. Indeed, if the truth of nature lies in its supernatural ordination, then reason is true only to the extent that it seeks or declares the theoretical and practical acknowledgement of this ordination, which is made possible again by the divine incarnation. Hence there can be no reason/revelation duality – true reason anticipates revelation, while revelation simply is of true reason which must ceaselessly arrive, as an event, such that what Christ shows supremely is the world as really world, as the creation of God.
It may be further observed that faith is actually a presupposition of reason, which implies that the notion and system of ‘secular reason’ is self-referentially absurd. For if there are no absolute foundations based in faith then argument between different positions is precluded and pragmatically absurd.
....beyond the level of formal logic there is no single ‘reason’ without presuppositions, there are only many different, complexly overlapping traditions of reason.
...faith – a trust in the transcendent God that involves being persuaded by the divine word beyond the scope of secular reason. It is a trust in specifically disclosive sacramental processes of mediation between the universal and the particular, mind and reality, the intellect and the senses.91 Thus, in the final analysis, faith in the Triune God is a recognition of and trust in the transcendental/ontological possibility of participation in the infinite/divine.92
Milbank further argues that any sharp separation of reason and faith is dangerous, because it implies that faith at its core is non-rational and beyond the reach of argument, while simultaneously implying that reason cannot impact on issues of substantive preference. But in reality, reason and faith are always intertwined in a beneficial way. Reason has to make certain assumptions and trust or have faith in the reasonableness of reality. Faith has to continuously think through the coherence of its own intuitions in a process that often modifies these intuitions."
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