Why Do Priests Need Philosophy?

When he (Aquinas) was not sitting, reading a book, he walked round and round the cloister, and walked fast and even furiously, a very characteristic action of men who fight their battles in the mind. (G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas.) ¹

Here we are touching on what is the most important difference … between Christianity on the one hand, and Islam as well as Judaism on the other. For Christianity, the sacred doctrine is revealed theology; for the Jew and the Muslim, the sacred doctrine is, at least primarily, the legal interpretation of the Divine Law. The sacred doctrine in the latter sense has to say the least, much less to do with philosophy than the sacred doctrine in the former sense. It is ultimately for this reason that the status of philosophy was, as a matter of principle, much more precarious in Judaism and in Islam than in Christianity: in Christianity, philosophy became an integral part of the officially recognized and even required training of the student of the sacred doctrine. (Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing.) ²

Over the years, I have been invited to speak at a number of seminaries—to St. Charles in Philadelphia, to Notre Dame in New Orleans, to the seminary in Bridgeport, to St. Patrick’s in Menlo Park, and I once taught at the Gregorian University in Rome. Looking back on my own studies, I have often considered the three years we spent in philosophical studies at Mt. St. Michael’s in Spokane to be the most interesting and formative ones of my many years of clerical and academic studies. In recent years, I have heard a number of professors in Catholic colleges tell me, though this is by no means universal, that much more real faith and theology exist in the philosophy department than in the theology or religious studies departments of their school. An army chaplain also told me recently that a Catholic chaplain has an advantage over the protestant chaplain who relies on scripture alone to explain everything. Very often the problem is one of reason and good sense, one that is more amenable to reason than to faith, as such. It belongs to Catholicism to respect both reason and revelation as if they belonged together, which they do.

Here I want to talk about philosophical studies for the priesthood. I take as my models Msgr. John Whipple and Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, both diocesan priests in the school of philosophy at the Catholic University of America, both good priests and fine scholars. But first I would like to recall the lecture that I gave at the Bridgeport seminary several years ago. It was later published as an appendix to my book, The Life of the Mind. The lecture was called “Reading for Clerics.” In 2011, at the Theological College at the Catholic University of America, I gave a talk, entitled “Liberal Education and the Priesthood.” It was later published in the Homiletic & Pastoral Review.³

In both of these lectures, I wanted to point out something that I learned in a most graphic way from C. S. Lewis’ book, An Experiment in Criticism.⁴ The philosophic enterprise begins, I suppose, when we first take seriously the admonition of the Delphic Oracle. Socrates often quoted it, namely, that we should “know ourselves.” To “know ourselves” also means taking up Socrates’ other famous admonition, in the Apology, that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” But let us suppose that we, in fact, do know and examine ourselves, clearly no mean feat, as it is so easy to deceive ourselves about ourselves. Even with a good insight into ourselves, we still would not know much, even if we were Aquinas who seemed to know just about everything. We all remember that shortly before St. Thomas died, he stopped writing. He looked at all that he had written and realized that, compared to God, all he knew was “but straw,” as he quaintly put it.

We could go two ways with this incident from Aquinas. We could decide that it was not worth the effort if, after a lifetime of study, we knew very little even about our specialties, let alone about ourselves and others. Or, as is much the better way, we could be delighted in knowing what we did learn, however minimal it might be, compared to everything out there available to be known. The first antiphon for Evening Prayer on Ash Wednesday reads: “Lord, how wonderful is your wisdom, so far beyond my understanding.” If the Lord’s wisdom were restricted to “my understanding,” we would all be in deep trouble. And yet, the Lord’s wisdom is “wonderful”—that is, filled with things to be wondered about—and we are to seek its depths. Yves Simon once wisely said that the only way we can be ourselves is if we are not someone else.⁵ Yet, we are not deprived of the reality and excellences of other things because we, each of us, have the power of knowing. What is not ourselves becomes ours in a knowing way. Our remarkable singularity does not, in principle, deprive us of all else that is.

But what was Lewis’ point? We are used to the idea that, if someone gives us a definition of, say, laughter, we will not really know what it is unless we ourselves have already laughed at something. The definition follows the experienced reality, it does not constitute it. The dictionary definition of laughter itself “ain’t funny,” to quote the once famous Molly McGee.

Charlie Brown is dubiously looking at a happily smiling Lucy and Linus. They are holding hands. Lucy tells Charlie: “We’re brother and sister and we love each other.” In the next scene, to the smiling brother and sister, Charlie, ignoring the Christians who claim to love one another, snaps at them: “You’re hypocrites, that’s what you are. Do you really think that you can fool Santa Claus this way?” As Linus begins happily to walk away, the logical Lucy responds in words that recall both the Fall of man and Cicero’s essay, “On Old Age”: “Why not?” she replies. “We’re a couple of sharp kids, and he’s (Santa) just an old man.” In the final scene, Charlie is bowing his head in pain against a tree. He speaks agonizing words that recall Christ’s lament over Jerusalem: “I weep for our generation.” ⁶

We can point to what laughter is, but we have difficulty laughing at its definition. Likewise, we can “know ourselves,” “examine our lives,” and still know very little. Lewis pointed out that it is not enough to live a human life if we only know one life, namely our own. We need to be familiar with many lives. The most immediate way to do this is through family, neighbors, and acquaintances. But even here, we may not know someone else very intimately or deeply. The reason for literature, hence for reading and for a liberal education, is so that we can, as it were, live more lives than our own. The human race, spread over many eons and places, many different cultural and religious settings, can often best be known through literature and poetry.

A priest, in the normal course of a busy life, will meet many different people, in different situations of virtue and sin, in good times and in bad, as the marriage vows tell us. He is expected to know something of the human condition in its particularity, in its goodness, but also in its depravities. The case for time to read, the case of a liberal education for a priest, seems both necessary for his work and, perhaps, even more, for his leisure,

In his book, In the Beginning, Joseph Ratzinger wrote: “At the very beginning and foundation of all being, there is a creating Intelligence. The universe is not the product of darkness and unreason. It comes from intelligence, freedom, and from the beauty that is identical with love.” ⁷ We cannot but be startled when we hear that the foundation of “all being” is found in a “creating Intelligence.” If the origin of the world lies in Intelligence, and not chaos, we can expect that knowing what the world is, and ourselves in it, will turn out to be an adventure, a recognition of clues that reveal to us gradually what this Intelligence is about. One thing leads to another. Our minds, in fact, as Aristotle put it, are made precisely to know all that is. If we wonder why we are unsettled, even when we know many things, it is simply because we do not yet know all that can be known. Our unsettlement, as it were, is intended. Sooner or later, it dawns upon us that the Intelligence that we find, in knowing what is, also seems to be personal. As Chesterton put it someplace, if there is a story, there must be a “storyteller.”

We are used to hearing that science and revelation do not correspond. We are assured that all good scientists are atheists. However, often it is his presupposed atheism that interferes with a scientist’s understanding his own science. If we do not want something to be true, our minds will usually warn us not to go in a certain direction, even when there is evidence that we should. What is discovered is always of something that is already there in being. The only thing new is not the world being examined, but the more or less correct explanation of what is there. Less often recognized, but still with much credibility, we find that many scientists do have a sense of an original Intelligence. No book brings this issue out in the open more clearly than Robert Spitzer’s New Cosmological Proofs for the Existence of God. ⁸ Spitzer points out that science, by its very methodology, cannot “prove” the existence of God. But it can tell us something of the origins and nature of the very cosmos in which we dwell.

If we look at the age and relative size of the universe, it seems to have some specific beginning of space and time, some 13 or 14 billion years ago. Not only that, but a certain order appears to be found by which we can understand this universe. Indeed, we might say that the universe not only exists, but also needs to be understood by something other than the original Intelligence. Certain constants seem to indicate even that the cosmos existed so that the rational creature might exist somewhere in it. Had not certain principles and events taken place when they did, human life would not have been possible. If anything, science seems to support the idea of a creation that itself presupposes an Intelligence outside of the cosmos itself as the source of its internal order. If we add to this understanding certain theological reflections about Creation, we can suggest that what came first in creation was not the cosmos, then rational beings. The first thought in the Creator’s intention was rather of rational beings that could participate in his inner life and know the created cosmos. In this sense, the only race that ever existed was our human race itself, but itself elevated to a destiny that was beyond its own given nature.

Speaking recently to the Congregation of Christian Education, Pope Francis made the following incisive remark. In their schools and universities, Catholics, besides respecting other views and positions, must also affirm what they themselves hold. “But they are equally called to offer all (not just Catholics) the Christian message—respecting fully the freedom of all and the proper methods of each specific scholastic environment—namely, that Jesus Christ is the meaning of life, of the cosmos, and of history.” ⁹ We can see at work here the Catholic assumption that biology, cosmology, and historical studies converge into one origin and destiny. The notions of creation and redemption are part of the same discourse that philosophers engage in.

The universe thus exists as an arena, as it were, wherein the rational creature, now elevated to a supernatural end, could, each individually, decide whether or not he would accept God’s invitation to live his inner life. This choice constitutes the real drama found in the life of all existing persons.

What, we might ask, has this cosmological reflection to do with the subject of this article—why do priests need philosophy? Quite a bit, actually. In today’s world, what is called “science” will often be given as the foundation of disbelief. Philosophy has long been said to be necessary to faith in a “negative” way. That is, we cannot know positively by our own rational powers what God is, but we can know what he is not. The fact is that “reasons” are given that are said to “prove” that God does not exist, or that he cannot be known, or that he has no care for us. These reasons were already found in Plato’s Laws.

Christianity recognized the importance of philosophy as the recurring source of objections to its truth. Christianity has always known that philosophical arguments require philosophical answers. Even the complete agnostic or skeptic gives us reasons why he is right. Benedict XVI was wise in his Regensburg Lecture to point out that the Apostles were first sent not to the bastions of other religions, but to Greece, to Athens, the home of that philosophy that is not just an expression of Greek culture, but an expression of what mind is itself. ¹⁰

In Fides et Ratio, John Paul II was rather annoyed when he spoke of philosophy’s role in the education of clerics and the priesthood. “In the years after the Second Vatican Council, many Catholic faculties were in some way impoverished by a diminished sense of the importance of the study not just of Scholastic philosophy, but, more generally, of the study of philosophy itself. I cannot fail to note, with surprise and displeasure, that this lack of interest in the study of philosophy is shared by not a few theologians” (#61). That was about as blunt a statement that we ever hear from the papacy until, perhaps, Pope Francis’ admonitions on clerics who are stuck in their bureaucratic offices. What John Paul II clearly implied is that, without philosophy, one cannot be a good theologian. Why?

Theology is the discipline that occurs when we seek to explain more clearly, why, what we find in the books and tradition of revelation, is not incoherent. And while, as Pope Francis has also reiterated in Evangelii Gaudium that the Church has no official philosophy, since that is not its purpose, it does recognize that many philosophies make even the idea of revelation impossible. This is why we can speak of a philosophia perennis, one that is based in reason and knows that it is. Peter Kreeft has shown in his fine little book, The Philosophy of Jesus, that Christ’s words and worldview can be explained on no other basis but that of the realism of what is. ¹¹

In Msgr. Robert Sokolowski’s book, Christian Faith & Human Understanding, we find a remarkable chapter, entitled “Philosophy in the Seminary Curriculum.” It is simply a critical chapter for every seminarian, even if, or I would say, especially if, his seminary does not do a good job with philosophy. It has been one of my vocations in life to take young men and women to books that they, perhaps, never heard of, but books which directly and clearly teach the truth. This, along with Sokolowski’s God of Faith and Reason, is one of those books. ¹² Contrary to what many think, Sokolowski holds that, besides original sources, there is much to be said for good text with the thesis and response method of learning philosophy when we are young. Plato had wisely warned us about learning philosophy too soon. He was not wrong to suggest that we will not really come to an awareness of the whole until we are older, but that is no excuse for not learning what we can when we can.

A very good way to present Christian things is to contrast them with natural things: to develop some human good, some human truth that people know from their own experience, then to show how the Christian truth both confirms that truth and goes beyond it. The Christian sense of God, for example, is best conveyed to people by developing for them the human sense of ultimate meaning in the world, and then showing how Christian revelation transcends it, and fulfills the meaning even while speaking about a God who transcends the world. ¹³

This observation is not unlike the comment of the military chaplain whom I cited previously about the need of normal common sense.

What is important to recognize is that the New Testament is not a complete disclosure of what human life is about. It is not like the Muslim Sharia or the Old Law. Revelation, as such, deals primarily with those few things that we need to know to save our souls and receive the gift of eternal life. Many of the things that might merit damnation for us can be figured out by our reason. In this regard, I would argue that the whole current struggle in the public order over the family, marriage, homosexuality, fetal experimentation, and euthanasia are but, indirectly, issues of revelation. If revelation has anything to say about them, it is merely to reaffirm and solidify what we should be able to figure out by ourselves. This is why it is correct to say that, in many ways, Catholicism, as Chesterton already suspected in 1905 at the end of his book, Heretics, would not have to defend revelation. Paradoxically, it would rather have to be the primary defender of reason in the world. ¹⁴

In the beginning of these remarks, I cited two passages, one from Chesterton on Aquinas and one from Leo Strauss on why Catholicism requires philosophy of its seminarians. Chesterton sees Aquinas as a man whose inner life is alive with controversy. It is in active struggle and combat, to use military terms. The ultimate battles are first in the mind. The strife we see on the streets or on television presupposes, for its ultimate intelligibility, an understanding of the reasons given for it. Usually, these will be issues long perplexing one human mind or another. As I like to say, all wars and disorders begin in the hearts and minds of the dons, academic and clerical. If they are not worked out in the mind, they will later be worked out in the streets.

Joseph Pieper, in conclusion, in his remarkable book, In Defense of Philosophy, wrote that “(Plato and Aristotle’s) relentlessly probing minds were totally engaged in an attempt to bring into view and to define the ultimate nature of human virtue, of Eros, of reality in general. Their inquiry was directed by no other concern than the search for the answers to these questions—by those answers ever so vulnerable and fragmentary, and above all, no matter what quarter they came from.” ¹⁵

When Strauss noted that the Catholic seminarian studied philosophy as necessary for divine doctrine, he touched on the major issue that divided Jews, Muslims, and modern philosophy from Christian thought. This issue is whether philosophy is open to the whole in such a way that it can comprehend, without contradiction, that revelation is a question of divine reason addressed to human reason, or whether philosophy must exclude all reference to transcendence and, thereby, deny its own nature of being open to the whole.

One of the great wonders and excitements of the Catholic priesthood, I think, is precisely its being aware of the “battles of the mind.” The Church requires that its seminarians, as Strauss said, study philosophy. Without it, as John Paul II intimated, they will understand neither theology nor the literature that gives us insight into the multiplicity of particular human lives not our own. To be a seminarian, at its best, means to be “totally engaged” in bringing into view “the ultimate meaning of human virtue, of Eros, and of reality in general.”