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Why is the affirmation that there are real objective
metaphysical ideas so important as a basis for understanding the theology of
the Catholic Church?
In order to discuss this question
it is important to bring up who contributed to the rejection of real
metaphysical ideas. There is first Rene Descartes who rejected the lack of
certainty in sense experience. His beliefs on what existed divorced all spiritual
knowledge from physical and objective experience. The origin of bad physics was
Descartes. David Hume held a quite opposite philosophy and that was the
rejection of any real knowledge beyond sense experience, going so far as to
reject causality completely. According to Hume, God was an emotional
projection, and no metaphysics is possible with his philosophy. Jean Jacques
Rousseau led Romanticism in which the full use of feeling alone to discover
truth was the only possible means of attaining real knowledge clearly no
metaphysics here. Finally there is Immanuel Kant who is the link between
rationalism and romanticism, and is still an influence today. Previously, truth
was when the concept in the mind conforms to the objective thing outside the
mind. With Kant this was reversed in which truth become the conformity of
things in the mind. This philosophy divorced metaphysics and an objective God.
Pope Benedict XVI addressed this
problem, referring to it as a “dictatorship of relativism”. The problem with
the world not having an objective metaphysics in their philosophy is that
secularism and dualism become dominant schools of thought. How can one maintain
there are absolute truths in religion if the whole idea of absolute truth is
denied or considered absurd in reason? If one does not think one can arrive at
real metaphysical truths through the senses (something denied by
Descartes, Hume and Kant) how can one maintain there are such truths in
theology without absurdity?
The Catholic Church embraces the
teachings of Thomas Aquinas which is based on Aristotle. In this, knowledge is
always based on sense knowledge. Through the power of intellect the specific
qualities are able to be filtered out of the object at hand. Man can separate
the accidentals and then understand the nature of things. This is a
metaphysical idea. With this comes the need for abstraction, which Aristotle
and Aquinas embraced and developed. Abstraction refers to the mental separation
of things not always separated in reality. Most important to this is the separation
of the idea in the mind from the details taken in sense experience. Thus, in
man, as opposed to the angels, all knowledge begins in the experience of the
five senses and through abstraction from singular things arrives at definition.
This is how knowledge is properly gained; a means at odds with the world. Without
this how can one study a spiritual God, and if one cannot arrive at objective
ideas of a spiritual God, how will skepticism be dealt with?
This is the problem of knowledge,
the epistemological problem, and the Catholic must be concerned. This Catholic
theologian cannot be an ancient materialist, or a platonic spiritualist. If we cannot truth the certainty and
objectivity of knowledge of the natural world, how can we truth the same in
revelation or the spiritual world. The Church professes objective knowledge for
physics, and this we the Church also confirms that with revelation that there
is an objective metaphysics. Otherwise we end up with the desire for God being
a need that begins in the subject (person), rather than the need for God (and
grace) perfecting and completing man’s nature.
Pope Leo XIII addressed this
problem, recommending the return to the Aquinas and Aristotle on the study of
epistemology. “We exhort you, venerable brethren, in all earnestness to restore
the golden wisdom of St. Thomas, and spread it far and wide for the defense and
beauty of the Catholic faith, for the good of society, and for the advantage of
all the sciences”.[1] A
realistic and objective metaphysics based on abstraction in Aristotle, advanced
by Thomas Aquinas is the only way to overcome this.
In Catholic theology, what we know
starts with the senses and by the power of the spiritual intellect we can know
things of spiritual nature – metaphysical things and natures. Through the
knowledge gained by the senses, our intellect can discover by the power of
reason these metaphysical ideas.
This week’s mass reading contained
a verse that the Catholic theologian must consider in this subject: “For in him
were created all things in heaven and one earth, visible and invisible” (Col
1:16). For the Catholic theologian, with this philosophy we are able to
understand the Eucharist and its accidents; the Eucharist has accidents but it
is not its accidents which are its nature. Just as well, we are able to
understand God and his nature; God and his nature are one.
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