John Paul II to Aristotle and Back Again

A Christian Philosophy of Life

Swafford

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781498203555
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Have you ever struggled to explain the basics of a Christian worldview, particularly as it concerns God's existence and his relation to the natural order, the basics of morality, even sexual ethics? Utilizing the thought of the late Pope John Paul II and the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, Dr. Andrew Swafford has done just this. This book explains the philosophical underpinnings of a Christian worldview--in a way that is accessible to the general reader--discussing God's existence, faith and reason, a tour through a virtue-ethics which leads to authentic happiness (and discussing the seven deadly sins along the way), as well as John Paul II's teaching on the "language" of the body and the meaning of the human vocation to make a gift of one's self. The reader will come away with a deep understanding of the philosophical foundations for the Christian life.

1

God and the Natural Order

For the Christian, faith and reason are two ways of knowing, two ways of accessing different dimensions of reality—“two wings” upon which the human spirit soars to truth, in John Paul II’s memorable expression.1 For some thinkers, faith and reason are seen as unfriendly partners in dialogue—if one is up, the other is down, and vice versa. But this is not the case for the classical Catholic synthesis, a synthesis which sees a true marriage established in God’s providence between “Jerusalem” and “Athens,” between faith and reason. In the classical Catholic synthesis, the higher “nature” goes (the realm of natural reason, our human pursuit of the natural good), the higher “grace” soars (i.e., the realm accessible only by faith and by divine initiative and disclosure).2 Indeed, the cathedrals of faith are not built on the sands of a tepid and timid reason, but just the opposite. The boldness of faith and the boldness of reason stand together.3

The Natural Order as the Embodiment of Divine Wisdom

This confidence in natural reason and this appreciation for the beauty and goodness of the natural order stems from the conviction that God is the author of both the orders of nature and of grace. In a real sense, the order of nature is the embodiment of divine wisdom. For this reason, the scientist who studies the laws of nature can be seen as quite literally retracing God’s thoughts after him: the reason is because the order of nature first existed in the Mind of the Creator, and was thence “thought” into existence—much as an architect first draws up a blueprint for a building in his mind, and perhaps on paper, which is only later embodied in brick and mortar.4 When the building is constructed, one can rightly view the building as the embodiment of an idea—the embodiment of what first existed in the architect’s mind. Likewise, the created order of nature is the embodiment of an idea that first existed in the divine mind,5 a view expressed here in the Catechism of the Catholic Church this way: “The things of the world and the things of faith derive from the same God. The humble and persevering investigator of the secrets of nature is being led, as it were, by the hand of God in spite of himself, for it is God, the conserver of all things, who made them what they are.”6

This, of course, does not in any way imply that the scientist must be consciously aware of the divine origin of the order of nature in order to do science; but it is to say that from the context of creation (and belief in a Creator), the natural order represents at one level the wisdom and providence of the Creator, resulting in a greater (not lesser) Christian appreciation for the order of nature. Too often, Christians see God’s wisdom and will at work only in the supernatural, a perspective occasionally at work in discussions regarding Intelligent Design and evolution—since such a dichotomy appears to suggest that what is caused by nature cannot also be caused by God, that the two are in a zero-sum game of competition in which one is the winner and the other necessarily the loser. Such a competitive view of God and nature is absolutely not the classical Catholic philosophical conception.7

In contrast, the perspective advocated here does not in any way neglect the supernatural, but insists on the relevance of the order of nature—an order which does in fact express the wisdom of divine providence. In other words, we can say that, ordinarily, God works through the medium of the natural order; sometimes, he works directly—we call those occasions “miracles.”8 But the point to stress is this: when “nature” does something, this does not mean that God is uninvolved. As Creator, God gives to creation the gift of existence and is the cause of its most fundamental order; his causality at this most basic level means that he does not compete with the natural order, but rather he gives nature its ability to be a cause at all in the first place.

As an analogy, which bears the fruit—the tree or the branch? Well, both—the tree gives the branch its ability to bear the fruit in the first place; the branch does something real, but it is in a deeper way dependent upon the tree. In a similar way, God is radically other than the universe; he is not a great big creature in competition with other creatures; rather, God is the cause of the very being (or existence) of creatures at their most fundamental level—he causes their being and gives them their distinctive nature, giving them the capacity to be what they are and do what they do, as real causes, and expressing in their own unique way a glimpse of divine wisdom, and even showing forth some perfection which pre-exists in the Creator. Metaphysically, not only is creation good, but each and every aspect of creation exhibits some intelligible reality—some perfection—that pre-exists in God.9

God and the Foundations of Science

In fact, it was this Christian metaphysical vision of reality that helped pave the way for the rise of modern science—which was birthed in the heart of late medieval Christian culture.10 Consider some of the following Christian presuppositions that greatly abetted the rise of science: (1) belief in a rational creator, which naturally leads to the assumption of a stable and predictable order of nature, with its own proper and discoverable laws; (2) belief that creation is good (if matter and creation were considered intrinsically evil, then one would not be likely to show much interest in science);11 (3) belief in the radical distinction between the creature and the Creator—that is, no pantheism (if one believed that creation were “divine,” or that random “gods” were controlling various aspects of the phenomena of nature, then one likely would not be inclined to pursue what we know as science); and (4) belief that our minds can understand something about the created order; in light of the belief that we are made in the “image and likeness of God” (Gen 1:26), this conviction makes good sense.12

As to third point, in a real way, biblical Christian faith “de-mythologizes” the natural order,13 showing, for example, the sun to be a mere “creature” and not a deity; the Christian view of creation demystifies the created order, showing that much of natural phenomena is just that—natural phenomena, and not the realm of multifarious and competing gods.

Some of these ideas lie behind what has come to be known as the “Regensburg Address” by Pope Emeritus Benedict, given in September of 2006.14 In that lecture, Benedict suggested that the very practice of science raises a question that goes beyond science; what he meant was that the very practice of science assumes what theologians and philosophers refer to as the “intelligibility” of the natural order; that is, the “understandability” of the universe. In other words, for science to operate, one has to assume a real order embedded in the universe, which can then be investigated and discovered and understood further by the practice of science.15 Even if we don’t know the cause of some phenomena, we reasonably assume that some rational causal explanation exists in principle, and that’s why we make our investigation into nature in the first place, in order to uncover what that explanation is. But if we had assumed that nature were chaotic and not rational, then we would never have bothered to search for rational causes at all in the first place.

The Emeritus Pope’s point, then, is this: what makes sense of this tenacious assumption of the orderliness of the natural order which is so critical to all of science? Why should non-rational material entities function according to mathematical laws? Why are there laws of nature at all in the first place? Benedict’s implicit point is that such an assumption of the intelligibility of nature makes a good bit of sense in light of our belief in a Creator; but it’s...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: God and the Natural Order
• Chapter 2: Faith, Reason, and Christian Philosophy
• Chapter 3: Moral Foundations in the Natural Order—Aristotle’s Treatment in General
• Chapter 4: From Nature to Virtue—Specific Aristotelian Applications
• Chapter 5: Christian Appropriation of the Virtue Tradition and the Seven Deadly Sins
• Chapter 6: My Story From Football to Faith
• Chapter 7: The “Personal Order” in John Paul II
• Chapter 8: The Personal and Natural Orders in Synthesis in John Paul II
• Conclusion: Retracing Our Steps and Moving Forward
• Works Cited