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My topic is discipleship and the way in which discipleship defines our whole intellectual effort at the College. Let me start with this observation: a Christian is a man who follows Christ. He is a disciple or learner from Christ. That is not, however, the limit of his discipleship because Christ himself appointed His Apostles as our teachers as well. He said to the Apostles, “He who hears you hears me.” So our discipleship to Christ extends to discipleship to the Apostles and their successors. But it does not stop there either because the Church itself has a living, authoritative Magisterium. We follow that as we follow the Apostles. And there is likewise a further discipleship involved, because there are the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, and the successors of the Apostles have recommended them to us as our teachers and our guides, men such as St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. John Damascene, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and all the great Fathers and Doctors of the Church. We take them as our masters as well. So we have what one might call a triple discipleship, first to Christ Himself who is God made Man, then to the Apostles and their successors, and thirdly to those teachers whom the Apostles have designated as reliable guides for us. At the College, this is where we start. This is not peculiar to Catholic education. All learning requires some kind of trust and faith; one has to believe that at least he is getting good direction from his teachers. One does not necessarily believe everything his teachers say, but he at least believes that they will direct his mind rightly in the study of what he wants to know. When St. Thomas says, then, that it is necessary for the learner to believe, that is not just true of the Christian, it is true of any learner who is dealing with anything that is difficult to understand. What is not always known is that in point of fact one does trust, without even being aware of the fact that he does. This direction by another is in some ways the most crucial part of discipleship. The learner does not know the order in which he should proceed. It is like when I try to cook something, I look at the recipe, and it tells me the order in which the various steps should be done. I must add the water to the cornstarch, not the cornstarch to the water; if I do not do it in the right order, the whole thing comes to naught. So one has to do things in a certain order or he will not reach the goal he is aiming for. That is even more true in the intellectual life: there is
an order one must follow in order to learn these difficult
things; without that order, one will not get there. Of course,
one cannot know that order to start out with; one has to trust.
Similarly we spend almost a whole year studying Aristotle’s Physics, his general treatment of the nature of things. Why do we do that? Because we think that there he addresses the most fundamental general questions about nature—those questions that have to be resolved properly or none of our further thinking about nature will be well done. The consequence of not having resolved these general questions well is illustrated in some of the authors we read in other parts of the curriculum. In the junior year, we read Galileo’s Two New Sciences, which is on terrestrial mechanics. The treatment of natural acceleration in that book is seriously compromised by Galileo’s general misunderstandings of motion, time, continuity, and infinity. He does not have a good general understanding of nature. Thus, although he is brilliant in discovery, he is very poor in judgment. We have this same concern for order in the study of theology. We study St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae, which is for St. Thomas the beginning of the scientific study of the faith. We spend a long time on the first part of this work because it is the best possible treatment of that subject, the finest beginning in the science of theology that has ever been written. At the College, we do not think that all thinkers are created equal. We think that some are masters, and some are not. Therefore, to read Aristotle is one thing, to read Descartes is something else; both of them should be read, but not for the same reasons. Similarly, not all mathematicians are created equal; some are better than others. Particularly when it comes to doing the fundamental things well, some are better than others. That is the understanding on which the school proceeds. For us, the most important thing is to make the right beginning. We have to do certain basic things very well, as well as can be done with young persons who do not have any previous experience in the intellectual life. This means we have to make them as we are, disciples of the greatest masters. We have to say to them, ‘I know it is a hard book, it is a lot of work, and it is old, and the translation might leave something to be desired, but this is where you make a good beginning. If you learn these things well, then you will be able to think well about the later questions that come up as well. If you do not make this beginning properly, then what you do later will always be flawed. In some cases fatally flawed.’ Of course much the same thing is even truer in theology, where unless one makes the beginning of sacred doctrine rightly, then, later on very bad things happen. Philosophy is the handmaiden of theology. One cannot develop the truths that come out of our faith, without a good understanding of the natural world, a good foundation in philosophy. If that foundation is bad, then the theological doctrines will never be rightly learned. That is the reason why we couple Aristotle with St. Thomas the way that we do, because as St. Thomas himself says, Aristotle is ‘The Philosopher.’ To do theology well, therefore, means in practical terms being a disciple of Aristotle. So the college, then, is really defined by discipleship to those two masters.
-- Qtrly Newsletter, Winter 2006 |
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