How God helped get Catholic philosophy started

The following is Part XI in a series defending the claims of the Catholic Church. Read Part I here; Part II here; Part III here; Part IV here; Part V here; Part VI here; and Part VII here; Part VIII here; Part IX here; and Part X here. 

(LifeSiteNews) — In the most recent installment of this series, we saw that the fundamental origin of philosophy lies in human nature itself. “All men,” as Aristotle said, “desire to know.”  

In an earlier article we saw that philosophy can be defined as “the science of all things naturally knowable to man’s unaided powers, in so far as these things are studied in their deepest causes and reasons.”  

Philosophy is a body of knowledge which has been built up over time as man has used his rational powers to reach an ever deeper understanding of the world around him. The development of philosophy can be traced from its earliest stages up to the present day.  

However, before we begin to trace this development, it is necessary to note that there is a second root of philosophy. Some philosophical truths have been revealed to man by God.   

Later in this series we will demonstrate that God is capable of revealing truths to mankind, and that he has in fact done so. Here in this sub-series, in which we are briefly tracing the history of scholastic philosophy, I will assume what will later be proved, namely, that God has spoken to mankind. 

God can reveal truths that can also be discovered by human reason  

In the opening pages of his Summa Theologica, St. Thomas Aquinas writes: 

It was necessary for man’s salvation that there should be a knowledge revealed by God besides philosophical science built up by human reason. 

Firstly, indeed, because man is directed to God, as to an end that surpasses the grasp of his reason: “The eye hath not seen, O God, besides Thee, what things Thou hast prepared for them that wait for Thee” (Isaiah 64:4). But the end must first be known by men who are to direct their thoughts and actions to the end. Hence it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation.  

Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that man should be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors.   

Whereas man’s whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that the salvation of men might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they should be taught divine truths by divine revelation. It was therefore necessary that besides philosophical science built up by reason, there should be a sacred science learned through revelation.^[1]

We learn from this passage that are two kinds of truths that God reveals to us: 

1. Truths beyond the grasp of human reason. These include the mysteries of the Holy Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Redemption.
2. Truths which man’s reason could discover without revelation. These include the immortality of the soul, the precepts of the natural law, and divine attributes such as the simplicity of God. Even though we could discover these truths by reason alone, God also reveals them to us because of their importance for the salvation of our souls. 

This means that some of the truths revealed by God are proper objects of the science of philosophy, as well as being first principles of the science of sacred theology. 

For example, a human being can know that God is absolutely simple both through rational argument, and through the divine revelation given to mankind and proposed to us by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.   

On the other hand, human reason could never reach the knowledge of God as Trinity. This can only be known by divine revelation.    

There have been three revelations: 

1. The primitive revelation 
2. The Mosaic revelation 
3. The Christian revelation. 

It is the first two revelations that concern us in this article, because of their influence on the earliest attempts at philosophy. The full and final revelation in Christ will be discussed later in the series.  

The primitive revelation   

When we look out across the world, we see that many cultures and peoples, spread far across the globe, have very similar myths and legends. For example, these are some ideas that recur across many disparate cultures and religions: 

• the world emerged from a watery void or chaos 
• mankind was made out of the earth  
• man was made to serve God  
• some catastrophe happened at the beginning of human history which caused mankind to go wrong 
• mankind is sinful and needs to repent, or be purified 
• mankind needs to find a way back to God/paradise 
• sacrifice needs to be offered to the divine power 
• there was a universal flood, from which only one man survived with his family 
• human souls continue to exist after the death of the body 
• after death there is some form of judgment or afterlife. 

These ideas are not absolutely universal, that is, they don’t persist in every religion or culture, but they are extremely widespread, which suggests a common origin. 

Commenting on these similarities amongst early cultures, Monsignor Paul Glenn writes: 

There is ample evidence in the history of human thought that all men, from the earliest times, have had some common store of knowledge to draw upon. The ancients, despite wide variations in their cultures, had many notions in common.^[2] 

In his book On Divine Revelation, the Dominican theologian Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange includes the following, drawn from the book of Genesis, as among the doctrines contained in the primitive revelation:  

1. God is One, the Creator of heaven and earth, and the Lord of all things. 
2. All things that God has made were good from the beginning. 
3. God is the Provident Ruler of all things, the Supreme Lawgiver, a judge who rewards the just and punishes the wicked.  
4. Man was made in the image and likeness of God and therefore was endowed with a spiritual and immortal soul.
5. Man’s soul was established at the beginning in a state higher than his present fallen state.
6. Man was endowed with dominion over all created things. 
7. Man was made capable of good and evil so that he may find his end in being united to God through charity and freely willed obedience. 
8. Marriage was instituted by God himself as a sacred contract of man and woman in an indissoluble bond. 
9. The first man transgressed God’s command and through sin fell from his first dignity into the misery of separation from God, along with all of his descendants. 
10. God gave man opportunity for repentance and promised his liberation.^[3] 

Garrigou-Lagrange also notes the following as precepts of the primitive religion: 

The first is that God is to be adored, loved, feared, and shown gratitude, and his commands must be followed (Gen. 2:16; 3:13; etc.). Already at the time of Abel, sacrifices were offered to God (Gen 4:3–4), and Abraham was commanded to perform circumcision as a sign of the covenant between God and the Chosen People (Gen 17).^[4]  

The primitive revelation reflects God’s loving care for mankind. The book of Genesis tells us how He cared for Adam and Eve after the fall:  

And the Lord God made for Adam and his wife, garments of skins, and clothed them. (Gen 3:21) 

As God provided for man’s physical nature, by clothing the body, he also cared for man’s intellectual nature, by instructing his mind.   

Glenn writes:  

Christians find [the existence of a primitive revelation] consonant with their belief that God instructed our first parents; that He spoke with them familiarly; that he doubtlessly gave them information about their material origins even as He imparted knowledge of the creation and inbreathing of their spiritual souls which gave them their perfected being as images of God.  

This primitive revelation of man’s nature, dignity, duty, and destiny, together with the earliest and most striking experiences of the human race, must have been a matter of common discussion. All of these facts must have been narrated again and again by the human voice as the story was handed on from generation to generation. In a word, the primitive revelation and the first great experiences of mankind must have been perpetuated through early times by human tradition.^[5] 

This belief in a primitive revelation, handed down by human tradition, should not be confused with the heresy of traditionalism, which we have previously discussed (here and here).  

The error of the traditionalists was that they believed that we could only know of the existence of God because of the primitive revelation, and they denied the ability of human reason to know of God’s existence from the things which have been made. 

As this human tradition was handed on from generation to generation it was necessarily corrupted and altered, and no culture or civilization kept it intact. Nonetheless, it can be considered as one of the roots of human philosophical knowledge.  

The Mosaic Revelation   

Due to the corruption of the primitive revelation and religion, God revealed himself again, this time to one chosen people.   

Garrigou-Lagrange writes: 

Since the primitive religion was gradually corrupted, leading to the appearance of various superstitions and forms of idolatry, in order to ensure that true religion might remain at least somewhere, God specially elected Abraham’s family and the people of Israel as the guardian of revelation. Thence was the Mosaic religion born, as a kind of renewal of the primitive religion and a preparation for Christian revelation.^[6]

Many of the truths of the primitive revelation were deepened and made clearer. God reveals His name – “I am who am” (Ex 3:4) – and clearly excludes all idolatry and superstition – “You will have no foreign gods before me” (Ex 20:3).^[7]

Many of the characteristics of God are made clearly manifest, He is the Creator and Governor of the universe, the Lord of all things (Deut 4:35–39), eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, present to all men (Deut 15:1–19; 29:45; 32:1–43), most holy, zealous for his law (Exod 20:5; 34:14) but “merciful and gracious, patient and of much compassion, and true” (Exod 34:6–7), and “He doth judgment to the fatherless and the widow” (Deut 10:18).^[8]

Man’s fundamental moral duties were made clearer in the Ten Commandments and in other moral precepts, including two that Our Lord would later identify as the greatest commandments.  

The “first and greatest commandment” according to Christ is one found in the book of Deuteronomy: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole strength” (Deut 6:5). And the second is from the book of Leviticus: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” (Lev 19:18).^[9]  

The Mosaic revelation, as well as the later inspired scriptures of the Old Testament, contain both mysteries beyond man’s natural power to know, and also truths that can be known by human reason.   

The Old Testament contains many different kinds of writings, including history, poetry and philosophy. Texts of the Old Testament treat a variety of areas of philosophy, including natural theology, psychology and, perhaps above all, ethics.   

These inspired writings have had great influence on the development of philosophy. 

Conclusion  

The fundamental origin of philosophy lies in human nature itself. Man naturally desires knowledge. However, at the beginning of time God revealed certain truths to mankind, which man could also have discovered through the use of his reason. 

These truths were handed down by human tradition. This human tradition is also a source of man’s philosophical knowledge. After a number of centuries, during which time the primitive revelation became corrupted, God gave a new revelation to His chosen people. The Mosaic revelation, and the inspired books of the Old Testament, have greatly influenced the development of philosophy.