Catholicism and Intelligence

James V. Schall, Catholicism and Intelligence, Emmaus Road, 2017, ISBN 9781945125287, 165.

Catholicism and Intelligence by Fr. James V. Schall is a collection of essays that shows the relationship between Catholicism and intelligence. Some might even think there is not a relationship between Catholicism and intelligence. Schall would argue otherwise. Schall is a modern-day Chesterton who speaks truth to the heart. He agrees with St. Thomas Aquinas that the "greatest service we can offer our neighbor is to know the truth, to speak the truth" (xvii). This book is based on two premises: "First, what is peculiar or distinct about Catholicism is this: what the faith holds is intrinsically intelligible even if not always understood by given persons. And second, intelligence has its own structure or form that is rooted in the principle of non-contradiction--'Nothing can be and not be at the same time in the same way.' 'Intelligences' or understandings that maintain that everything is true even if contradictory cannot stand" (xviii). Schall emphasizes in all his books the truth of what is. He has claimed many times in his writings that Catholicism is a religion of intelligence. It respects the truth and what we can know by our mind. It believes faith and intelligence are compatible with each other. If you like other Schall books, you will like this one.

Schall says that "the essence of all ideology is that, at some point in explication, it does not conform to the way things are" (64). It is through intelligence that we make sense of the world. In chapter one, Schall asks the question, Why do I exist? This is an important question that needs to be asked by everyone. He criticizes Descartes idea that we have to go through a tortuous exercise to prove that we exist. Schall states, "That each of us exists and know that he exists need not be proved from something more clear. Nothing is clear" (2). One can always rely on the fact that Schall will speak sense. From Descartes, Schall goes on to discuss many issues. In answering the question why we exist, the reader needs to consider the fact "that a universe, with actual rational beings in it, has a source" (12). Schall believes that we exist to "participate in eternal life, that is in the inner life of God as it is made known to us" (14). There are some things we cannot know without revelation. It takes both reason and revelation to know why we exist.

Chesterton believes that what Chesterton saw 100 years ago has come True. He notes, "Catholicism almost alone defends reason that is based on the integrity of the mind related to what is" (50). To deny revelation is to "make us less capable of knowing and see what is. It takes both revelation and reason to know what is. It is wrong to think either is sufficient by itself. Schall states, "Of these curious things that we cannot figure out by ourselves, revelation sheds light on our minds" (58).

In his essay, "On What Replaces Christianity," Schall thinks the central idea is that "man can save himself." He needs no other Savior. Nothing is wrong with him that he cannot fix by himself. In addition, he does not have a "transcendent destiny." Life in this world is all that exists. Schall argues, "Without a theory or reality in which each human being has a transcendent origin and destiny, the whole record of mankind on this planet seems to mean nothing ..."(74).

Another good essay is "On the Openness to the Whole of Reality." Philosophy was meant to be open to all that is. "Knowledge is not to be reduced to what could be established by this or that method" (81). This is what is called reductionism. Reality is much bigger than our methods for acquiring truth. Every method is limited. Aquinas argued, "nothing we come across in reality, including revelation, can be excluded from our consideration on the grounds that the truth of what is does not arise from human reason alone" (81). Revelation is not closed, but open to reason. Revelation, actually, speaks to reason. Schall notes, "Revelation was itself addressed to reason. Through reason, revelation is addressed to the whole man. Thus, revelation was not conceived to be irrational. In seeking to understand the meaning of revelation, reason in fact became more, not less, reasonable" (85). There are other excellent essays contained in this book. Fr. Schall once again gives us much to chew on.

Authenticity as Self-Transcendence

Authenticity As Self-Transcendence: The Enduring Insights of Bernard Lonergan

By Michael H. McCarthy, Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame, 2015, 435 pp., ISBN 978-0-268-03537-2, $49.00.

This is the author's version of a work that was submitted/accepted for publication in the following source:

Catholic Library World  86 (4) June 2016

Bernard Lonergan is considered one of the leading thinkers of the twentieth century. He is little known, however, except in certain circles. McCarthy, professor emeritus of philosophy at Vassar College, studied his work, Insight, as a doctoral student in the 1960s and continued to study him as a professor of philosophy. McCarthy thinks the ideas of Lonergan effectively addresses the cultural crisis of modern times. McCarthy notes, “Despite our highly specialized knowledge of human nature and history, we are no longer confident, as a society and culture, that our most important factual and evaluative judgments are objectively true” (ix). Lonergan spent his life studying this cultural crises and the tradition of philosophical and theological Christianity to provide answers to this crisis. Longergan shows how to “meet the cultural challenges of the modern age while remaining faithful” (xi) to the Christian tradition.

            Authenticity as Transcendence is divided into four chapters.Chapter one orients the reader to Lonergan’s project and how the appropriation of both the old and new can provide direction for solving the cultural crisis of our time. Chapter two describes Lonergan’s philosophical anthropology and how it can address the problems created by influential thinkers: Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Darwin, Neitzche, and others. Lonergan analyzed human subjectivity to show how authenticity as self-transcendence could be defended. In chapter three he shows how modern secularism developed comparing the ideas of Charles Taylor with Bernard Lonergan, In the last chapter he analyzes the discoveries of Lonergan to address the modern predicament.

Authenticity is a good introduction to the “enduring insights” of Bernard Lonergan. Even a reader unfamiliar with Lonergan will come away from the book with a general knowledge of the important ideas of Lonergan and the modern cultural crisis. Hopefully, the book will make Lonergan more widely known.

How to Become Educated

How to Become Educated by Mortimer Adler, July 1979.

I caught Mortimer Adler's vision on becoming an educated early on in my college career. I have continued to pursue that vision for the last thirty years. I recently read a lecture Adler gave right before his seventy-seventh birthday. In this speech, he tells us how we can become an educated human being.

Young people seldom ask what is required to become educated. Adler believes this is a question people tend to ask in the later years. I began to ask this question while I was a college student. Adler believes we can only become educated in our later years. In our schooling, we can acquire the tools to become educated, but it does not occur in the schooling for young people.

Adler asserted that he did not regard himself as educated till he was in his fifties. He says that he was not educated even when he received his Ph.D. I remember another article I read by Adler stated that college graduation is just the beginning of learning. Most of what we learn in school we will not remember; but if we acquired the skills of the liberal arts--"the skills of reading and writing, of talking and listening, of asking questions and seeking answers to them, of defending what I thought was true and arguing against what I thought was false"--we can go on learning the rest of our lives and during the later years of our life we will become an educated human being. In addition, our schooling should have introduced us to the world of learning.

Most important, our schooling schooling should open up books to us. It should introduce us to the great authors, books, and ideas. The books need to be over our heads if we are going to grow intellectually. We will not really understand them while in school, but later on as we read them again and again, the light will come on. The skills of learning we acquired in our schooling we need to improve by continual use.

Adler states that the understanding he has acquired over the years came "slowly with the years and with the accumulation of challenging experiences that demanded reflective thought." Most of it came from his thinking and learning, by himself or through reading books, through the conversations he had with others about books, and through travel. He discovered that the process to become educated is a life-long process.

Adler gives some recommendations on becoming educated.
First, he provides a list of books that should be reread many times: The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides; some of the shorter dialogues by Plato (Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Protagoras, Symposium); Aristotle's Ethics and Politics; Plutarch's Lives; Augustine's Confessions; Dante's Divine Comedy; Montaigne's Essays; Four Shakespeare plays (Hamlet, Lear, Macbeth, and Othello); Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government; Swift's Gulliver Travels; John Stuart Mill's essay on Liberty, his essay on Representative Government; The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay; and Tolstoy's War and Peace.

His second recommendation is not to read these books once, but many times. He suggest to read actively with pencil in hand. You need to have a conversation with the author, marking the text as needed. In addition, you need to read them and discuss them with others.

He gives a brief list of ideas that need to be understood: Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Liberty, Equality, Justice, Law, Constitution, Government, Democracy, Man, God, Nature, World, Love, Virtue, and Happiness.

If we persistently pursue these recommendations, we will one day be an educated human being.

Religious Belief and Reason Part 6

5.7 The Rational Stance

            Clark asserts, “Because of the possibility of error, those who accept belief in God as basic belief should nonetheless be concerned with evidence for and against belief in God.”[1] Classical foundationalism is wrong to think that we can have absolute certainty in this life. It does not seem to be a valid aim in the search for truth. Reformed epistemologists think we should trust our cognitive capacities to grasp truth. We should assume our beliefs are innocent until proven guilty. However, we do get things wrong. Our cognitive faculties are finite and the whole person is affected by original sin. There must be a way to evaluate if our beliefs are correct or not. Following Thomas Reid, Reformed epistemologists believe that you should “trust the beliefs produced by your cognitive faculties in the appropriate circumstances, unless you have good reason to reject them.”[2]

            It seems true that our cognitive faculties “seem less reliable in matters of fundamental human concern such as the nature of morality, the nature of persons, social and political thought, and belief in God.”[3] These things are closer to us and our views play a greater role in our interpretations. Believing that the goal of rationality is truth, Reformed epistemologists must do two things to make the attainment of truth more probable. First, they should seek “supporting evidence for immediately produced beliefs of fundamental human concern.”[4] This will give them more confidence about the trustworthiness of their beliefs. This does not mean that basic beliefs are irrational without supporting evidence, but it does seem to improve the epistemic status of beliefs when they are supported with supporting evidence. This seems to make Reformed epistemology similar to the “Augustinian view of faith and reason: fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding).”[5] Second, they should be willing to consider opposing beliefs or “contrary evidence to root out false beliefs.”[6] Since it is possible to be wrong about their beliefs, they should be open to correction by contrary evidence. Clark thinks Reformed epistemologists should take the following position: “Trust the deliverances of reason, seek supporting evidence, and be open to contrary evidence.”[7]

            Reformed epistemologists think that belief in God does not require arguments or supporting evidence to be considered rational. But because of the problem of error, they should seek supporting evidence to add additional support for their beliefs.

5.8 Objections to Reformed Epistemology

Clark states that Reformed epistemology “has been rejected for three primary reasons.”[8] First, some philosophers reject the idea that we have a sensus divinitatus “and so reject the parity argument.”[9] Second, some philosophers think that Reformed epistemology “is too latitudinarian, permitting the rational acceptability of virtually any belief.”[10] Gary Cutter claims that the argument for the sensus divinitatus could be used to defend the belief in the Great Pumpkin. Third, Reformed epistemology has been rejected because it is considered “as a form of fideism.”[11] Fideism is the idea that belief in God “should be held in the absence of or even in opposition to reason.”[12] Clark thinks that Reformed epistemology is not a form of fideism because “it goes to great lengths to show that belief in God is rational.”[13] Forrest states that one difference between fideism and Reformed epistemology is that Reformed epistemology “requires defense against known objections, such as the Argument from Evil;[14] in contrast, fideism “dismiss such objections as either irrelevant or, worse, intellectual temptations.”[15] However, if fideism is defined as the belief in the existence of God without argument or supporting evidence, then it would be considered a “kind of fideism.”[16]

6 Conclusion

Is religious belief rational? Do religious believers need evidence for their belief in God to count as rational? Classical Foundationalists have argued that religious belief needs evidence to be considered rational. There have been three responses to this argument. First, there is the argument that there is plenty of evidence that supports the rationality of religious belief. Second, there are believers that argue that reason has nothing to do with faith. “I believe because it is absurd.” Third, Reformed epistemologists challenge the criteria of classical foundationalism to be considered rational. It is irresponsible to argue that reason has nothing to do with faith. A proper response would be natural theology or Reformed epistemology or a combination of the two. It might be useful to look at these three responses in more detail.

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[1] Ibid., 14.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 14.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 15.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Forrest, “The Epistemology of Religion,” 11.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

Religious Belief and Reason Part 5

5.6 Religious Experience

            Although Plantinga argues that to believe in God does not require propositional evidence or arguments to be considered rational, this does not mean that he thinks “that belief in God is not groundless.”[1] This is an important point because when Plantinga states that religious belief does not require evidence he is speaking of propositional evidence. This does not discount non-propositional evidence. Plantinga thinks that belief in God is grounded in “characteristic religious experiences such as beholding the divine majesty on the top of a mountain or the divine creativity when noticing the articulate beauty of the flower.”[2] C. Stephen Evans content that traditional theistic arguments-- “cosmic wonder,” “purposive order,” “moral obligation,” “human dignity,” and “joy”--can serve as signs that ground religious belief.[3] Other religious experiences mentioned by Plantinga “involve a sense of guilt (and forgiveness), despair, the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit, or direct contact with the divine (mysticism).”[4] Garcia states that Thomas Aquinas thought that “all human knowledge comes through experience, and that we do not experience God directly but only by way of his effects.”[5]Some believers describe personal religious experiences with “sensory metaphors: they claim to see, hear or be touched by God.”[6] Garcia thinks of Plantinga’s grounds “as a type of evidence and to hold that those who come to believe in God on the basis of such experiences are not in fact holding that belief as a basic belief but as a derived belief.”[7] In addition, she thinks it is difficult “to specify which triggering conditions will lead to belief in God’s existence.”[8]

            People who believe based on religious experience do not contend that their belief in God is “based on an argument (any more than belief in other persons is based on an argument).”[9] They think they have encountered God directly either through seeing or hearing and find themselves believing in God because of this experience. “Religious experience is typically taken as self-authenticating.”[10] Reformed epistemologists like Wolterstorff have been influenced by the thought of Thomas Reid and his moderate epistemology. They believe that “one might simply take it that one has a cognitive faculty that can be trusted when it produces belief in God when induced by the appropriate experiences.”[11] Richard Swinburne thinks we should trust what someone tells us unless we have good reason to doubt it. In other words, innocent until proven guilty. Evidentialist objectors seem to assume that a belief is guilty of falsehood unless proven innocent. So it seems we should trust someone’s testimony of religious experience unless we have good reason to doubt it. In addition, it seems those who do not have a religious experience can believe in God on the basis of the experience of others.[12]

            Although some philosophers do not accept religious experience as validating belief in God, Reformed epistemologists think religious experience grounds religious belief.[13] Since humans are more than mind or intelligence it seems valid to trust religious experience to ground religious belief. Is this what Pascal is asserting when he says that the heart knows some things that the mind does not. The philosophers who reject religious experience for grounding religious belief do so because they “deny that one can reliably infer from the experience that the source or cause of that experience was God.”[14] This seems like the rejection of traditional proofs because they do not give us the Biblical God; instead they give us a thin slice of God. This does not seem a valid argument. William Alston believes that perceptual beliefs face a similar problem. Yet we still trust our perceptual beliefs. Alston asserts, “if religious experiences and the beliefs they produce relevantly resemble perceptual experiences and the beliefs they produce, then we should not hold beliefs based upon religious experience to be suspect either.”[15]

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[1] Ibid., 12.

[2] Ibid.

[3] C. Stephen Evans, Why Christian Faith Still Makes Sense: A Response to Contemporary Challenges (Grand Rapids:Mi, 2015), 39-57.

[4] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 12; Forrest, “The Epistemology of Religion,” 10.

[5] Garcia, “Natural Theology,” 118.

[6] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 12.

[7] Garcia, “Natural Theology,” 118.

[8] Ibid., 120.

[9] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 12.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.; Forrest, “The Epistemology of Religion,” 10.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.; Forrest, “The Epistemology of Religion,” 10.

[14] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 13.

[15] Ibid., 13.

Religious Belief and Reason Part 4

5.5 Reformed Epistemology

Reformed Protestant thinkers, Alvin Plantinga, Nicholas Wolterstorff and William Alston reject the evidentialist demand for evidence because they consider belief in the existence of God as basic. Their epistemology is known as Reformed Epistemology. They argue that belief in God can be considered rational without arguments or evidence. Evans states that Plantinga accepts a form of foundationalism.[1] Plantinga argued in a paper that beliefs “are warranted without Enlightenment-approved evidence provided they are (a) grounded, and (b) defended against known objections. Such beliefs may then themselves be used as evidence for other beliefs.”[2] They argue that the evidentialist’ demand for evidence “cannot be met in a large number of cases with the cognitive equipment that we have.”[3] We cannot prove everything. Some things must be accepted as basic. Clark asserts, “No one has ever been able to offer proofs for the existence of other persons, inductive beliefs (e.g., that the sun will rise in the future), or the reality of the past.”[4] Reformed epistemologists believe that belief of God “can be among our basic beliefs.”[5] If this is true, “then natural theology that consists of arguments for God’s existence will not be necessary for reasonable belief in God.”[6] However, this does not mean Reformed epistemologists will reject giving arguments for God. Evans says that when the Reformed epistemologist argue that belief in God “can be reasonable without evidence, he is using the term evidence to mean propositional evidence.”[7] Propositional evidence appeals to a proposition which can be true or false. Clark thinks that theism does not require propositional evidence to be considered rational.[8]

Second, Plantinga argues that classical foundationalism is “self-referentially inconsistent.” It fails its own test. “Is it rational, given its own conditions, to accept classical foundationalism. Classical foundationalism is not self-evident; “upon understanding it many people believe it is false.”[9] If it can be understood and rejected, then it is not self-evident. Classical Foundationalism is not evident to the senses because “one doesn’t see, taste, smell, touch or hear it.”[10] Even if one accepts classical foundationalism, they could be in error; therefore, it cannot be incorrigible. If classical foundationalism is neither self-evident, evident to the senses or incorrigible, can it be “inferred from propositions” that are self-evident, evident to the senses or incorrigible? It seems not. Therefore, classical foundationalism is irrational by its own standard.

Clark states that there are “at least” two reasons why belief in the existence of God can be considered rational even without evidence or arguments. The first is a “parity” argument. Clark asserts, “We must, by our nature, accept the deliverances of our cognitive faculties, including those that produce beliefs in the external world, other persons, that the future will be like the past, the reality of the past, and what other people tell us--just to name a few. For the sake of parity, we should trust the deliverances of the faculty that produces in us the belief in the divine (what Plantinga following John Calvin, calls the sensus divinitatus, the sense of the divine).[11] Some philosophers reject the idea that we have a sensus divinitatis “and so they reject the parity argument.”[12] Thomas Sullivan notes, “Unless grounds are cognitive grounds, unless grounds supply reason with information, having grounds says nothing about the rationality of one’s beliefs. If, however, grounds are cognitively grasped data, they would be the very stuff most people call evidence.”[13] The second reason is that believing in God “is more like belief in a person than belief in a scientific hypothesis.”[14] Relationships between people “demand trust, commitment, and faith.”[15] If believing in God is similar to believing in other persons, then trusting in God would be similar to trusting other people. Trusting in people is different from believing in an abstract concept. William James makes this argument in “The Will to Believe.”          

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[1] Evans, Why the Christian Faith, 15.

[2] Forrest, “The Epistemology of Religion,” 10.

[3] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 9.

[4] Ibid., 9.

[5] Evans, Why the Christian Faith, 16.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Clark, Return to Reason, 97.

[9] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 9.

[10] Ibid., 10.

[11] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 11; Laura L. Garcia, “Natural Theology and the Reformed Objection,” in Christian Perspectives on Religious Knowledge edited by C. Stephen Evans and Merold Westphal (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1993), 114.

[12] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 11.

[13] Thomas Sullivan, “Adequate Evidence,” quoted in Laura Garcia, “Natural Theology and the Reformed Objection,” 118.

[14] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 11.

[15] Ibid.

Religious Belief and Reason Part 3

5.3 The Reasonableness of Belief in God

            There are typically two responses theists take in responding to evidentialist objections to belief in God. The first “strategy” is to argue against the claim that there is not sufficient evidence to support the belief in the existence of God. The second “strategy” is to argue against the claim that to be rational the theist must provide sufficient evidence to support his belief.

5.4 Theistic Evidentialism

            The claim that there is not sufficient evidence “for the existence of God” has been rejected by major thinkers; Aristotle, Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, John Locke, and others. Thomas Aquinas’ Five Ways were some of his arguments intended to prove the existence of God. Aquinas tried to use evidence that was acceptable to all rational people and using that evidence to prove the existence of God. This attempt to prove the existence of God through the natural order detected by reason is called natural theology. Clark contends that the “contention and legacy of the Enlightenment is that classical theology is an abysmal failure.”[1] Is this really true? If it is such a failure, why does it continue to be practiced? Some theists today continue to argue that there is sufficient evidence to support the existence of God. They dispute the idea that theistic arguments were killed by Hume and Kant. So, these theists accept the evidentialist demand for evidence “by offering arguments that support the existence of God.”[2] If these arguments fail, would it make belief in the existence of God irrational? J. L. Mackie, an able defender of atheism, suggest that “theism requires evidential support in order” to be considered rational:

            If it is agreed that the central assertions of theism are literally meaningful,

               it must also be admitted that they are not directly verifiable. It follows that

               any rational consideration of whether they are true or not will involve

               Arguments. . . . it [whether or not God exists] must be examined either by

               Deductive reasoning or, if that yields no decision, by arguments to the best

               explanation; for in such a context nothing else can have any coherent

bearing on the issue.[3]

“Thinkers in the Enlightenment tradition” believes that every belief must be critiqued by reason, “and by reason they mean supporting beliefs with propositional evidence or arguments.” [4]Clark states, “Very few philosophical positions (and this is an understatement) enjoy the kind of evidential support that classical foundationalism demands of belief in God; yet most of these are treated as rational. No philosophical position--belief in other minds, belief in the external world, the correspondence theory of truth or Quine’s indeterminacy of translation thesis--is properly based on beliefs that are self-evident, evident to the senses, or incorrigible.”[5] What philosophical beliefs actually meet the test? Why is the belief in the existence of God held to a higher standard than other beliefs? “Some suggest that this demand is simply arbitrary at best or intellectually imperialist at worst.”[6] Clark contends that the “Enlightenment conception of rationality and its estimations of the rationality of religious belief are as mistaken as they are influential.”[7] J. L. Mackie thinks that there is not “sufficient evidence to favor theism over naturalism,”[8] so it should be rejected.

What about our moral beliefs? Are these beliefs self-evident, evident to the senses, or incorrigible. No, they do not pass the evidentialist test. Some argue that morals are mere projections of values held by individuals, but are grounded in nothing but will. What if you hold a moral belief that is rejected by the intelligentsia today? Would you be irrational? Clark states that moral beliefs “are not well-justified on the basis of argument or evidence in the classical foundationalist sense (or probably in any sense of ‘well-justified’). So, if a majority of the educational elite “reject” your moral beliefs, this does not make them irrational.

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[1] Ibid.

[2] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 7.

[3] J. L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 4-6.

[4] Clark, Return to Reason, 5.

[5] Clark, “Religious Epistemology,” 8.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Clark, Return to Reason, 5.

[8] Ibid., 6.