New horizons in Catholic philosophical theology: Fides et ratio and the changed status of Thomism

Heythrop Journal - Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology

Volumn 47, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 26-37

  Ernst, Harold E ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME   (United States)

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EID: 61149524635     PISSN: 00181196     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2265.2006.00277.x     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. Cyril O'Regan, 'Ambiguity and Undecidability in Fides et Ratio', International Journal of Systematic Theology 2 (2000), p. 325.
2. In Tertio millennio adveniente 18 John Paul points to just this sort of dynamic in the course of ecclesial teaching: 'In the history of the Church, the "old" and the "new" are always closely interwoven. The "new" grows out of the "old", and the "old" finds a fuller expression in the "new"'.
3. Francis J. Selman, 'The Recovery of Metaphysics', New Blackfriars 81 (2000), pp. 387-88.
4. This reading, while it supports the inner logic of John Paul's own encyclical by detailing a progressive opening to philosophical pluralism, is of course distinct from the historically-complex account offered by Gerald A. McCool in From Unity to Pluralism: The Internal Evolution of Thomism (New York: Fordham University, 1989).
5. Again, John Paul offers a streamlined interpretation relevant to the advancement of his own line of argument. For a detailed consideration of the historical situation surrounding the issuance of Humani generis, see Gustave Weigel, 'The Historical Background of the Encyclical Humani generis', Theological Studies, 12 (1951), pp. 208-30.
6. Thomas Guarino points out that the validity of this justification turns on how one conceives of revelation, and that a conception granting greater weight to historicity and subjectivity would require a very different kind of philosophy. See 'Fides et ratio: Theology and Contemporary Pluralism', Theological Studies 62 (2001), pp. 698-700.
7. Avery Dulles, 'Reason, Philosophy, and the Grounding of Faith: A Reflection on Fides et Ratio', International Philosophical Quarterly 40 (2000), p. 488.
8. O'Regan suggests that this ambiguity in the encyclical should be regarded as a benefit rather than a flaw, because it is representative of an exercise in catholicity.
9. This is not to suggest that I think that the endorsement of philosophical pluralism in Fides et ratio was imprudent or wrongheaded, of course, but merely to point out that the shift in magisterial teaching which effected that possibility raises potential complications of its own.
10. As indicated above, the Pope regards the three criteria as 'indispensable' because each is somehow necessitated by the nature of revelation itself. But he then undercuts that assertion somewhat by providing this supplementary justification for the third criterion: 'If I insist so strongly on the metaphysical element, it is because I am convinced that it is the path to be taken in order to move beyond the crisis pervading large sectors of philosophy at the moment, and thus to correct certain mistaken modes of behaviour now widespread in our society' (FR 83). Thus there is some ambiguity as to whether the criteria prescribed are universally and generically indispensable, or merely the necessary remedy for what the Pope diagnoses as the current intellectual malaise.
11. Nicholas Lash comes near to indicating this assessment when he wonders whether the three criteria do not suggest 'a high degree of historical specificity'. See '"Visio Unica et Ordinata Scientiae"?' in Laurence Paul Hemming and Susan Frank Parsons (eds.), Restoring Faith in Reason (London: SCM, 2002), p. 231.
12. As an aside, it is illuminating to consider to what extent pre-Vatican II neo-Scholastic theology suffered from a lack of critical philosophical self-examination, as for example from its undisclosed reliance on rationalist perspectives utterly foreign to Thomas' thought, a lack stemming precisely from this enshrinement of Thomism as an exclusive norm. When only one philosophical approach is permitted in theology, the resulting reduction of critical attention to the adequacy of that philosophy allows for its eventual degradation, and so may have a deleterious effect on the quality of the associated theology.
13. A version of this paper was delivered at the June 2004 convention of the College Theology Society held at The Catholic University of America, Washington, D.C. I am grateful to members of the audience there for their questions and observations.