Lubac wants to reorder the structure between Christianity and philosophy, not only to protect Christianity, so to speak, but also to see philosophy as something more than the technological principle he thought it had become in its attempt to rationalize the unrationalizable. In other words, philosophy begins not (only) with the rational, and thereby proceeds in some mechanistic fashion to rationalize everything else, to bend all to its will. Not only should it not do this, but it does not in fact. Rather, all philosophy begins “by being more or less orphic, or Christian, or Buddhist, or the like…” and is then “open[ed] by its essence to Christianity”… “philosophy itself must by a necessity of law be finally Christian.” True philosophy, then, gives itself up in order to gain its true nature as opened to the absolute truth. How is it in philosophy’s nature for this to happen? “To rationalize, as we have seen, is [philosophy’s] proper task. But to rationalize, depending on the vantage point from which we view things, means to criticize and reject, as much as to welcome and integrate.”1 Rationalizing, “turn[ing] a belief into a rational truth” is not simply the parring away of irrational elements as if one could take such a superior stance. Rather, as Lubac points out, the “proof” of the belief is not independent of the belief itself. The emphasis upon the organic relationship between the two will suggest that the philosophy is “being nourished” by while handling the belief, “basic principles which, despite their truth guaranteed by God himself, will always lend themselves in a certain way to rational critique”.2
Lubac continues: as philosophy is handling and grappling with the Christian revelation, constantly being transformed by it, “impregnating” it, there is other aspect of Revelation, the form of Revelation as philosophy’s telos, “of its formally supernatural character and of the truths that participate in this character, inasmuch as they participate in it: of the mysteries.”3 The mystery differentiates from the content of philosophy by virtue of its supernatural character as revelation. It is therefore not a matter of summing up the mystery as philosophy does with the content because the supernatural qua “supra-philosophical” will determine, so to speak, what will be lasting among the philosophical truths. However, the two, the content and the form, are not to significantly separable - “The ‘Christian event’ was not only an extraordinary fermentation of beliefs … it was truly a supernatural revelation .. from the moment it entered into contact with philosophy, it would never let go.”4
Nevertheless, it then becomes a question of how to separate the two for philosophy. What exactly is faith giving to philosophy? What is philosophy getting from faith that it can rationalize? What can it not rationalize? Gilson tries to answer this by delineating between “natural truths” and “Mystery”. Lubac immediately criticizes this prescription: once philosophy has a corpus of “natural truths” it’s well and good to recognize this pattern; but upon what grounds shall philosophy authorize this delineation? History can’t approve it, “For history, in the technical sense of the word, is not capable by itself of discerning the supreme reality which conveys the deeds and the ideas grasped in time and space.”5 Similarly, reason alone can not distinguish between the two prior to receiving them as knowledge. Indeed, to discern which was and which was not, philosophy would have to first rationalize both elements, an act equivalent to “rationalization of dogma.” Lubac, here, says that philosophy will have to suffice with the acknowledgment “that there is a division and that one of the two parts will never be among its spoils,” but to do this philosophy “must itself renounce, once and for all, the ambition of rationalizing everything,”6 accepting its role as a “philosophy of insufficiency.” But, to answer the earlier question, how to distinguish between Mystery and reason, Lubac intends “to look for another more comprehensive meaning of Christian philosophy.”7
Hi Dan,
I’ve listed this series on my blog under a recent post entitled,
“Recommended recent blog posts” (or something like that).
Cheers,
Cynthia
Cynthia, as always, thanks for mentioning our humble little project on your blog. You’re too kind!
Re-reading this now, after just reading a review of an anthology by a Peircean pragmatist, Lubac does seem to certain common takes on how belief and ‘justification’ are connected. Namely, that belief does not require justification for itself; on this Peircean scheme, justification only comes into play when we wish to change a belief we have. A belief is understood as a ‘certainty’ (what is called ‘infallible’ in this context), that in a given circumstance is maximally certain, but not incorrigible (i.e. it is not unchangeable). Circumstance/context will shape the intensity of certainty, in one context we might loudly proclaim X, but in another context we may not proclaim X as loudly b/c of the different context. In other words, context-shaped belief is ‘relative belief’ and incorrigible belief is ‘absolute belief’. I generally tend to think of ‘the gospel’ as something like the latter for a Christian, and metaphysical explications of the gospel as the former. I don’t think these are strictly identical, b/c I do think that proclamation of the gospel may use certain explications, but such a distinction is viable to my mind b/c there are levels of details of explication which the latter discusses and the former does not.
In any case, this is all good food for thought.
I recall a certain Professor, referring to Gilson, say that you could conceive the work of philosophy or theology as ‘content-based’ or ‘agent-based’. The former would seem to isolate the content of belief, w/o immediate regard for who is doing the rationlizing of the content, e.g. you could have a Methodist, an Roman Catholic, etc. all doing research on the Trinity; or you could think of the work as ‘agent-based’ and so include the passions, biases of the one doing the work in the very formal content itself. The Prof. indicated that Gilson opted for the latter, and this Prof. for the former. It seems that the ‘content based’ acct. allows for a certain lowest common denominator approach to the work, i.e. willingness to do the work as rigorously as possible, and the latter may also appeal to a lowest common denominator, e.g. personal satisfaction in doing the work. They are similar, though I think distinct. You could cast the former as ‘analytical’ and the latter as ‘continental’, though I don’t think this is necessarily the case. What I would be worried about is the ‘agent-based’ approach might overlook certain possibilities in the work b/c of a certain context (e.g. personal piety toward God) giving a certain high intensity of certainty. I think overlooking such possibilities might overlook possibilities for other enablements for the personal piety toward God (e.g. one’s love of God).
An example, I might dare to put forward is one where e.g. Duns Scotus’s work is a positive metaphysical explication for the believer, rather than one to be avoided. The ‘Aquinas translation regime’ is a context which to my mind elicits certain people’s ‘incorrigibility’ of belief, rather than just ‘infallibility’ of belief (i.e. certainty).
Scott, don’t jump too hastily to conclusions about Lubac’s commitments in epistemology, as so far he has mostly been summarizing Blondel (within the context of the Maritain/Gilson conversation). That said, I would also want to stay away from the anglo-analytic vocab of justification here as it’s not a term Blondel-Lubac employ - here or anywhere else for Lubac, if I’m not mistaken. I think you’d have to develop a stronger connection between epistemic justification as employed by Peirce and “faith” as Lubac articulates it, which as a member of the “New Theology” is strongly influenced by, among others, Patristic theology as read in a catholic and continental light.