From the point of view of non-Christian philosophers and thinkers, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the greatest insult to the human intellect ever devised. St. Augustine, however, thinks otherwise and demonstrates how a Christian doctrine can be used to further philosophy. Below are various reflections/thoughts that I am working through (that is, these contemplations are very much “in progress” and “unfinished”) in relation to philosophy and theology, faith and reason, what is rationality, what (metaphysically) is and what role does the principle of contradiction play in relation to Christian faith etc.? I would love to hear from both theologians (Catholic, Protestant and Eastern Orthodox) and philosophers (continental and analytic) and anyone else who would fruitfully further the conversation. [My apologies for the length of this post].
According to one of my professors (who is also a Catholic priest [CP]* and is quite knowledgeable of St. Thomas and the medieval tradition), for Augustine, Scripture can occasion a kind of reflection that stands on its own philosophically. For example, in De Trinitate, Augustine wants to address the issue of how we understand the Trinity as three and One such that it is not contradictory. Augustine espouses the traditional, orthodox view of the Trinity—we have three fully co-divine persons who are one in being. However, because the unbeleiving philosophers regularly point out that this doctrine seems to violate the principle of non-contradiction, Augustine wants to show that this is not the case and thus must “turn inward” and come up with a philosophical argument that is independent of Scripture (yet no doubt finds its source in Scripture). Considering what Scripture says about these things, Augustine concludes that there is no physical analogy for the Trinity, yet Scripture also does state that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God. Since this is not speaking of any physical similarity, Augustine considers how our minds might be a reflection of this non-contradicatory Triunity and thus in this way we are God’s image and likeness. Here CP emphasizes that by turning to our own minds, we can reason and arrive at something that will enable us to understand how God could be Triunity and not violate the unity, simplicity and incorporeity of God. As CP explains, the occasion is Scripture, but the reflection is purely philosophical. Augustine makes no appeal to Scripture, rather he focuses his own mental actsto try and understand his mind, and this will be a crucial contribution to the philosophic world. Turning to his own mind, Augustine then attempts to understand it, and gives substance to the notion of personality. Recall, for example, Plato and Aristotle—for them, there is only one mind, and we are joined to it through the passive imagination. Augustine says that this is not true to human experience because I know that 2+2 =4 and so do you—the fact that we both know it doesn’t prove that there is only one mind, but that there are multiple minds that know the same one truth. As there are many eyes that can see one and the same color, so many minds see the same truth. Augustine says, I am aware that I know—not some agent or material intellect above and outside of me. This is an incorrigible experience—I experience it to be the case, and it is indubitable. So I have my own mind and own personality—(St. Augustine gives the first real formulation of the notion of personality, that is, that each of us is our own persona). “Persona” translates the Greek prosopon means “to sound through” (recall the Greek masks that the actors used). Because intellect is our own individual intellect (and not one Mind), we experience ourselves as knowing things and as making free choices. Augustine takes these facts and tries to understand the human personality—it is no longer a “mask” that you “sound through,” rather, human personality is the core of your personal identity. Augustine then says he an incorrigible experience that he cannot deny, viz., that he experiences himself just as you experience yourself as having three things: memory, intellect, will. St. Augustine then inquires as to the relationship between these three. My intellect produces a mental word that I may vocalize and write down in different languages. Because I understand what things are—e.g., a dog, cat etc.—I have the power to produce this internal word, “cat,” “dog,” which can be externalized in languages. Hence, my intellect understands different things and I cannot deny that. It is also true that I know that I have learned what it is to be a cat, dog etc. I remember doing this. I have stored in my memory the things I have learned. We all know things and store them in our memory. What you know with your mind, you remember in your memory. What is in your mind as knowledge is in you also as memory, viz., that which you recall. So I remember what I know. Then Augustine turns to consider the will. I can will to remember what I know. E.g., I can will to remember where I placed my keys. Augustine’s point it that everything that is in the memory, I can know, and I can will (e.g., will to remember it, to learn it). Everything in the mind, I can remember and will. I not only remember what I know and know what I remember, but I can will it (to love it or hate it) and love to recall what I know, or will to know what I remember. Concretely this means that everything that I remember is in my mind/intellect/understanding and is an object of love or lack of love in my will—the desire to call up what I know. Everything in my intellect that I know is in my memory and is also in my will. This means that these are one and the same ideas—the memory completely contains the intellect and the will. The intellect knows what the will loves. The intellect contains what the memory retains and what the will chooses. The will completely contains what the memory remembers and what the intellect knows. [Are you dizzy yet?] Accordingly, each completely contains the other two, and this is possible with an immaterial faculty, not with a physical faculty—the three are one and the one are three. Thus, from his refelction on Scripture, where we read that the Father contains the Son and Spirit, and the Son the Father and Spirit, and the Spirit the Father and Son, Augustine is inspired and then rationally reflects on an analogous situation in the human person (will, intellect, memory—as all containing each aspect and yet one mind). Moreover, according to Augustine, the Holy Spirit is like the will, the Son is like the intellect, and the Father like the memory. The three are one and simple, not separate. Thus, we have a way to speak of the Trinity such that it is neither contradictory, nor an insult to the human intelligence that it is alleged to be by the philosophers. In sum, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was the occasion for Augustine to philosophize and to penetrate his own mind and will—his own personality and to try and understand it.
Augustine developed for the first time in the Western tradition the notion of the personality. In Book X of De Trinitate after going through many Scriptural texts, Augustine attempts understand the human person and as a result of his findings, a philosophical change takes place in the tradition (his discovery goes beyond both Plato’s tripartite soul and Aristotle’s potential and agent intellect and his teaching that the soul is the act of body). With Augustine we have a new anthropology and psychology because he was not afraid to face the philosophical questions and was willing to do so using divine revelation as his “source” or “inspiration.” This will have tremendous impact both philosophically and theologically. The philosophic impact of discovering the memory, intellect and will eventually becomes connected with the dignity of the human person. Before this, how could you talk about human dignity? According to the account given by the philosophers, there are only a few wise individuals (i.e., of course the philosophers) and the many are as CP puts it, “calculating cattle.” Augustine undercuts this distinction and says that we are all persons. Here Augustine is again reflecting on and inspired by St. Paul’s thoughts in Galatians 3—there is no longer any Jew or Greek, nor male and female etc,—i.e., these distinctions are relativized. Everyone (because he/she is a person whether wise or unwise) is a person made in the image of God and thus manifests his/her own memory, intellect, and will that can be realized on the basis of (merely rationally) reflecting on the human mind. According to CP, the “source” or “inspiration” of Augustine’s notion of the human person is indeed dependent on divine revelation, however, the argument is not. Hence, Christian revelation was the occasion of philosophic questions and insight, yet it is not dependent upon it. From Augustine’s point of view, if human personality is implicit in Christian revelation, then we can utilize revelation as a “source” that inspires philosophic reflection, but which nonetheless stands independent from the thing that occasions it.
Clearly for Augustine, faith and philosophy are not totally separated, as CP notes, revelation is the “source” or “occasion” for his philosophizing.
(Questions: Is this account satisfactory? If so, why? If not, why?).
Turning briefly to St. Thomas Aquinas, we continue our “conversation.” According to St. Thomas, there are certain truths asserted by faith and also known by reason (philosophical, demonstrative reason). Moreover, Aquinas says that the knowledge that God is the Creator, creation ex nihilo, and that God providentially knows and directs all things—all three of these claims are not only professed by faith but may be known philosophically (i.e., either demonstrably or probably). Regarding the truths of salvation, Thomas says that these truths surpass the grasp of reason—(e.g., the Trinity, the Incarnation, things of grace, the resurrection of the dead etc.—here we go beyond the abilities of reason and cannot demonstrate these philosophically. However, we can show that none of these doctrines contradict what reason knows for itself. In other words, they are reasonable, but reason doesn’t know that they are true—you must have an act of faith to get there. Thomas claims that an act of (credible) faith is reasonable—we can’t show that it is true, but that it is probably true. As we’ve noted, many cite the Trinity as a contradiction—but Augustine has shown that it is not—it doesn’t go against the (beloved) principle of non-contradiction. Just as was the case for Augustine, so too for St. Thomas, no doctrine of faith can be irrational—certain doctrines are of course supra-rational, these we call the “mysteries” of the faith. According to St.Thomas, the God who authors revelation cannot contradict himself—revelation must be rational.
In differentiation from his predecessors, St. Thomas will offer a new solution to the problematic relationship between revelation/faith and philosophy. E.g., Aquinas criticizes both Maimonides and Bonaventure because the synthesis that they make based on subordination (of revelation to philosophy) confuses what should be keep distinct and changes the one into the other. As CP points out, just as Christ’s human nature is not to be confused or separated, the same should be the case with philosophy and theology. Thus, because we don’t fully separate the two, we can and should say that one “influences” (can inspire be the source of) the other. Thomas’ solution (as CP notes) allows philosophy to operate according to its own principles—no revelation may enter as this would be to beg the question. No Scriptural datum enters into a proper philosophical analysis. Philosophy remains philosophy and revelation remains revelation and the two are not to be confused or divided. They are radically distinct modes of knowledge—they may not be confused with each other nor changed into each other.
Questions: How exactly is “rational” defined here? It that which is rational only that which obeys the principle of non-contradiction? According to St. Thomas’ methodology, we can’t appeal to Scripture to adjudicate what is and what is not rational because that would be begging the question, correct? So what relation does the PNC have to God? What is its metaphysical status? It is created by God to reflect God or does God too have to “bow” down to the PNC? If we can have “mysteries” of the faith that are supra-rational, will it not be the case that these mysteries appear as paradoxical to us, though they are not contradictory in themselves – i.e., they are intelligible to God? Perhaps given our finitude, we will never fully comprehend these mysteries and if that is the case, are we not in error to say that God must always be circumscribed by the PNC? Shouldn’t we take into consideration the “spiritual state” of those who use the PNC? E.g., as we have seen many non-believing philosophers use the PNC to attempt to disprove Christianity? How do we judge who is using the PNC “properly” if we can’t appeal to Scripture?
* The “substance” of this post is based on a few recent lectures given by CP.
