From the Desk of the President
President Thomas E. Dillon
(Winter 2000 Newsletter)
[Index
of Past Articles by President Dillon]
In December, I was invited to appear again on EWTN's "Mother
Angelica - Live!" this time to discuss Pope John Paul
II's recent encyclical, Fides et Ratio ("Faith and Reason").
This was a great opportunity, not only because the program
reaches more than 100 million people world-wide, but also
because of the subject-matter itself - the relationship between
faith and reason as expounded by this great pope, whose powerful
and wide-ranging mind does not shrink from tackling the greatest
problems confronting modern man.
It was especially exciting for me because Thomas Aquinas
College's mission is precisely to educate according to this
Catholic vision of the true unity of faith and reason.
While the Holy Father addresses his encyclical to his brother
bishops, he also addresses it to philosophers, theologians,
scientists, and "everyone else as well." He has
two goals. First, he wants to explain more fully the role
of philosophy in the Church and how it should support theology,
thus restoring philosophy to its former dignity.
This serves his second and ultimate goal, which is to bring
all men to Christ. The Holy Father is foremost a pastor and
teacher. He sees philosophy as the way to draw men to the
great truth that the Church holds. He thus endeavors to show
us that the answers to life's persistent questions, the questions
raised and grappled with by philosophers through the ages,
are found in Christ.
In addressing his encyclical "to everyone," he
takes care to explain how philosophy differs from theology.
Philosophy, he says, starts by way of our senses, from the
things we know by experience. Through it we can come to know
and articulate real truths about man, about the world, about
justice and virtue. These truths are the possession of all
men, not just believers. But theology, he notes, starts from
something given in faith, something revealed by God only to
some.
Theology makes use of philosophy to understand things given
in faith. For example, we know through faith that there are
three persons in one God, something we could never know except
by God's revelation to us. By faith, we accept this as true.
But the theologian, using the insights gained in philosophy
about number, person, substance, relation and even the nature
of the Creator, helps us to understand what the revelation
concerning the Trinity means.
Grace does not destroy nature; it elevates and perfects nature.
Similarly, theology does not destroy what we know naturally
by our reason; it elevates and perfects reason. Philosophy
and theology are both finally ordered to God. Philosophy is
ultimately about the transcendent because it aims to understand
all that is and the first cause of all that is, which is God.
Accordingly, philosophy and theology work hand-in-hand to
reach the truth about God.
This is why the Holy Father's desired restoration of philosophy
is so critically important today. Philosophy has run aground
in the 20th century, turning in on itself and away from the
truth which is all around us in nature. The result is a world
that is not open to Christ, a world not of happiness and truth,
but of darkness and misery. This disintegration into doubt
is especially notable in universities, indeed even in some
Catholic ones. The Pope calls for a rebirth of true philosophy
to counter this despair and degradation and elevate mankind
to a higher plane.
This degradation has its roots in errors in philosophy. If
our philosophy is flawed, it will lead to flaws in our understanding
of revelation, and may even go so far as to weaken faith in
that revelation. It is man's nature to seek to understand;
when that seeking is frustrated, the result is often doubt.
This is especially true in the realm of morality. Precisely
because there has been a failure to grasp natural law, for
example, in the areas of sexual morality, many have come to
doubt the Church's authority, and even the plainest statements
of Revelation, regarding moral truths.
The Holy Father encourages a return to sound philosophy as
the way out of these errors. Like so many of his predecessors,
he directs us to the doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas, the universal
Doctor of the Church, as the eminent example of the happy
unity of faith and reason. Far from allowing any opposition
between the truths known by reason and those revealed in faith,
St. Thomas insists that there is one truth which comes from
the one God and achieves a seemingly superhuman grasp of the
truths of the Faith, a comprehension which earned him the
title of Doctor Angelicus, the Angelic Teacher.
The Holy Father directs us not only to St. Thomas' doctrine,
but to his method. Willing to embrace the truth from any source,
in his Summa, St. Thomas drew from Moses Maimonides (a Jew),
Avicenna (a Moslem), Cicero (a Roman), and Plato and Aristotle
(Greeks), in addition to the Church Fathers (Greek and Latin),
like Chrysostom and Augustine. St. Thomas took the lessons
learned from all and applied what he learned in his pursuit
of a more perfect understanding of the Christian faith.
Fittingly, the Holy Father closes his encyclical with a reflection
on Mary, the Seat of Wisdom. He draws an analogy to illustrate
philosophy's profound relation to theology: as Mary gave us
Christ, the Word of God, because she was open to God's call,
so too can philosophy bring forth the Word of God by being
open to God's call, that is, to His truth found both in nature
and in Revelation.
The Holy Father assures us that if we are willing to stand
up for Christ, everything else will fall into place, in our
world as well as in our world view. For him, that is our duty,
not just in our culture generally, but in higher education
especially.
Our College was founded on this very notion. Our entire mission
is to educate under the light of faith and under the special
guidance and patronage of St. Thomas. As he taught, we pursue
all truth with the awareness that its source and goal is the
One Truth. Through the right relation of faith and reason,
our students come to know Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth,
and the Life. May we all respond generously to the Pope's
summons to follow St. Thomas, and as we do so, may we also
imitate St. Thomas' humility, charity, and devotion, which
enabled him to proclaim the deep truths of God with a clarity
which resounds through the centuries.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2000
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