Reason vs. Belief

All due credit and thanks to Saint Thomas Aquinas for the actual thinking. I offer this gift to me from a tiny corner of The Summa Theologica. My meager part here is no more than a vulgar and inadequate translation of a good English translation to a more vulgar English, in words even I can hope to more easily grasp. By this means, I hope to commit some small part of St. Thomas' wisdom to memory. There will be a test.

There are two parts to the truth about God. The first, within reach of a man's understanding and reason, and the second, beyond the reach of reason. So, it is appropriate that both means are given to man in order for him to believe at all. The first is required so that it does not seem useless for God to have given man His supernatural inspiration to believe.

If this truth was left solely as an intellectual exercise, three awkward consequences follow:

1) Few men would possess the knowledge of God at all. There are three reasons most men are not likely to ever discover the truth.

1. Some, if not most, are intellectually incapable of reaching the degree of intelligence or education that would eventually lead them to the knowledge of God through reason.
   
2. Others can not pursue this knowledge of truth due to the necessities of day to day life, even if they want to.
   
3. Others still, will not achieve this knowledge of truth because they are too lazy to do the work such a lofty goal would require.
   

All philosophy, whether or not its author admits, or knows it consciously, is directed toward the knowledge of God, regardless of the description used of its object. As a result of this, specifically seeking knowledge of God is the last part of philosophy to be learned or attempted. One will only arrive at this end point (God) at the expense of a great deal of laborious study, and probably only then, if willing to learn that this is the actual, if unacknowledged goal. There are very few men who are willing to do that much work to gain that understanding, even though the appetite for the knowledge is naturally there in man.

2) Even those who would eventually discover this truth would barely reach it, even after a great deal of time spent honestly in search of it. There are several reasons for this:

1. This truth is so profound that the human intellect is capable of grasping it by one's own inquiry only after long and arduous training.
   
2. Then, there is a huge amount of knowledge required even to approach, let alone to grasp the depth and meaning of the available sources.
   
3. Finally, in youth, a person is far more likely to be swayed by passion than intellect, and the youthful mind is unlikely to be in a suitable state to gain this kind of knowledge. One becomes wise in traquility and when one is at rest, which is hardly the normal state of a young person.
   

The result is that if the only way to know God were through reason, the human race would remain completely ignorant of God. Then, knowledge of God, which makes men perfect and good, would be possessed only by a few, and these few would require a lot of time to reach it.

3) Men are prone to falseness in reasoning, partly due to weak intellect regarding judgment, and partly to scattered thinking and mixed images and imaginings. The result is that many would remain ignorant of, or at least doubt the evidences and demonstrations they have already seen. This is particularly true, since the sources they are likely to find, even from those reputed to be wise, are often at odds with one another, and mingled with with something that is false, or worse, arrived at through the use of assertions not in evidence that, far from being demonstrated and proven true, are at best a merely probable argument without proof or demonstration. That is why absolute certitude and pure truth concerning God can only be arrived at by way of faith.

It's by God's mercy then, that we have been told to believe by faith, even truths that are possible to investigate and arrive at by reason. As a result, of God's mercy and wisdom that all manner of men, as described above, are easily able to share in the knowledge of God without uncertainty and error.

Ephesians 4: 17-24

So this I say, and affirm together with the Lord, that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk, in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart; and they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught in Him, just as truth is in Jesus, that, in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

However true the last statement before the scripture may be, or may have been when written in the 13th century, I think it terribly sad that the state of "denominational pseudo-religion" in modern times is so sadly, and so sadly often and variously, inanely in error and disagreement.

In the end, there IS only one Truth. It can only be the result of the imposition of faulty teaching, and the proneness of misinformed, and uninformed, or uneducated people to accept, unexamined, the errant and misleading doctrines devised by others who are only slightly better informed, (not to mention wrongheaded, greedy, power-mad, and vainly motivated) than they themselves, simply because these people manage to "sound about right." It's not only ignorant and lazy on the part of everyday believers, it plays into the hands of the enemy. We owe ourselves, and our Lord, a better effort.

To misquote Fox Mulder, "The truth is In here, I WANT to believe. " (But I refuse to believe just any idiot somebody I don't know, put in charge of a "church".)

These thoughts were given to me in my recent, prayerful investigations, as a loud reminder that even though I am willing to devote inordinate amounts of time and energy to my own study, and even if I do finally decide to undertake formal religious studies or a divinity degree, no matter how deeply I delve into theology, doctrine, and apologetics, in the end, my goal is simple. I am reminded that I am, after all, 54 years old, not twenty and unmarried without children and responsibility. My goal is only this; and I can only hope by grace and mercy, to know God, and to learn to serve and love Him well, for the remainder of my days. This loving reminder from my Lord is that this will come, not by my ability to harness my meager intellect, nor by time, reason, and education alone, but in the end, only fully, by faith. I have so far to go, even so.

God bless and keep you,

James