Natural theology, a glorious failure. Unamuno, Life 4.17
Unamuno
views Catholic philosophy, i.e. medieval scholastic theology and its
rational approach to religious doctrine, as a glorious failure, a
doomed attempt to reconcile vital faith with mortal doubt. Reason
must impose limits that faith cannot abide. The church's special
approach to reason tries to tame this contradiction, to make space
within the mortal realm of reason for faith in immortality.
Y
así se fraguó la teología escolástica, y saliendo de ella su
criada, la ancilla theologiae,
la filosofía escolástica también, y esta criada salió respondona.
La escolástica, magnífica catedral con todos los problemas de
mecánica arquitectónica resueltos por los siglos, pero catedral de
adobes, llevó poco a poco a eso que llaman teología natural, y no
es sino cristianismo despotencializado. Buscóse apoyar hasta donde
fuese posible racionalmente los dogmas; mostrar por lo menos que si
bien sobre-racionales, no eran contra-racionales, y se les ha puesto
un basamento filosófico de filosofía
aristotélico-neoplatónica-estoica del siglo XIII; que tal es el
tomismo, recomendado por León XIII. Y ya no se trata de hacer
aceptar el dogma, sino su interpretación filosófica medieval y
tomista. No basta creer que al tomar la hostia consagrada se toma el
cuerpo y sangre de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo; hay que pasar por todo
eso de la transustanciación, y la sustancia separada de los
accidentes, rompiendo con toda la concepción racional moderna de la
sustancialidad.
Pero
para eso está la fe implícita, la fe del carbonero, la de los que,
como Santa Teresa (Vida,
capítulo XXV, 2), no quieren aprovecharse de teología. «Eso no me
lo preguntéis a mí que soy ignorante; doctores tiene la Santa Madre
Iglesia que os sabrán responder», como se nos hizo aprender en el
catecismo. Que para eso, entre otras cosas, se instituyó el
sacerdocio, para que la Iglesia docente fuese la depositaria,
depósito más que río,
reservoir
instead of river,
como dijo Brooks, de los secretos teológicos. «La labor del Niceno
—dice Harnack (Dogmengeschichte,
II, 1, cap. VII, 3)— fué un triunfo del sacerdocio sobre la fe del
pueblo cristiano. Ya la doctrina del Logos se había hecho
ininteligible para los no teólogos. Con la erección de la fórmula
nicenocapadocia como confesión fundamental de la Iglesia, se hizo
completamente imposible a los legos católicos el adquirir un
conocimiento íntimo de la fe cristiana según la norma de la
doctrina eclesiástica. Y arraigóse cada vez más la idea de que el
cristianismo era la revelación de lo ininteligible». Y así es en
verdad.
And
so scholastic theology was forged, to reconcile faith to reason, and
from the womb of theology sprang her obstreperous child and
handmaiden, scholastic philosophy. Mother and daughter together laid
the bricks of the entire scholastic edifice, a magnificent cathedral
despite all the architectural defects that it accumulated over the
centuries, and the pinnacle of its achievement was a thing called
natural theology, which is simply Christianity emptied of all
its power. The goal of natural theology was to uphold dogma with
reason as much as possible. To show at the very least that if church
doctrine was beyond reason, nevertheless it did not contradict
reason: to this end, it was given a foundation in the philosophy of
the thirteenth century, an eclectic philosophy assembled from
Aristotle, the heirs of Plotinus (†), and the Stoics. This is the
philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, endorsed by pope Leo XIII (‡). No
longer is it enough to believe that receiving the blessed host means
receiving the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We must go
through the rigmarole of transubstantiation, handling substance that
is separate from all accident, breaking with every rational modern
notion of substantiality.
But
all this work is unnecessary: before scholasticism, there is blind
faith, the faith of working folk who, like the holy Teresa (Life
25.2), have no desire to
partake of theology. "Do not ask me about such things, for I am
ignorant; the holy mother church has doctors who will know how to
answer you"—as the catechism taught us to say. For this
reason, indeed, the priesthood was instituted: that the church might
become a vessel for containing and concealing theological secrets—"a
reservoir instead of a river," as Brooks has it. "The work
of Nicaea," says Harnack (History of Dogma 2.1,
chap. 8.3), "was a triumph of priesthood over the faith of the
Christian people. Already the doctrine of the Word had become
unintelligible for those unversed in theology. When the Nicene and
Cappadocian creeds (*)
became the fundamental confession of the church, it became entirely
impossible for Catholic laypersons to acquire an intimate knowledge
of Christian faith, as defined by church doctrine. And the idea that
Christianity is a revelation of the unintelligible became ever
stronger." That is what really happened.
---
(†)
Plato left a memory, in oral teachings as well as writings,
that many received and
altered to suit their taste.
Among their number were some
philosophers who came much
later than the master,
and spent time far from Athens, though they might visit occasionally:
Ammonius Saccas (third century CE) in Egypt
(Alexandria), and his student
Plotinus (c. 204-270), who instructed Porphyry of Tyre (c. 234-305)
in Rome. The Syrian Iamblichus (c. 245-325) studied with Porphyry
and gave teachings that Hypatia of Alexandria (c. 350-415) rejected,
preferring those of Plotinus.
Modern scholars have referred to the doctrines produced among this
crowd and their tradition as Neoplatonism,
distinct from the middle Platonism found
in philosophers like
Antiochus of Ascalon (c.
125-68 BCE),
who studied with
Philo of Larissa (159-83 BCE)
and instructed the Roman
Cicero, and from the original Platonism
of the Academy that the master
himself founded (destroyed in
86 BCE by Sulla, after being deserted by Philo of Larissa in 88: he
went to Rome to escape the machinations of the first Roman war
against Mithridates).
(‡)
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was born the son of a local lord in the
Italian town of Aquino, in Lazio (ancient Latium). He began his
studies as a child at the abbey of Monte Cassino, moving thence to
the university founded by emperor Frederick II in Naples. There he
determined to become a Dominican, a decision his family attempted in
vain to forestall. After studying abroad in Paris, with a detour to
Cologne, he returned to Italy, where he served as general preacher in
Naples, conventual lector at Orvieto, and finally papal theologian in
Rome, where he also taught students in the convent of Santa Sabina.
During this period, he wrote many treatises and began work on his
most famous: the Summa Theologiae that reconciles Catholic
faith with contemporary philosophy to produce natural theology. He
worked on this treatise for years, taking it with him on another
stint to Paris, and thence back to Naples, where the Dominicans
wanted him to found another university. He died en route to the
second council of Lyon, to which pope Gregory X had summoned him to
present some writings against heresy in the Greek orthodox church,
with which the Roman Catholics were looking to reconcile. Vincenzo
Gioacchino Raffaele Luigi Pecci became pope Leo XIII in 1878, and did
much to revive and promulgate the doctrine of Aquinas, mandating that
priests study him and commissioning new critical editions of his
works.
(*)
The first council of Nicaea (325 CE) produced a creed that identified
Christ as having the same substance as God the Father, being begotten
and not made. The second ecumenical council of Constantinople (381
CE) modified this creed slightly, following the doctrine of the
Cappadocian fathers: Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea (330-379);
Gregory of Nyssa, bishop there and Basil's brother (c. 335-395); and
Gregory Nazianzus (329-389), their friend and fellow bishop who
resigned as patriarch of Constantinople during the course of the
second ecumenical council.