Christian Convictions (McInerny #2)

    Ralph McInerny is out to prove the validity of natural theology (duh). But when he says he is already a believer, doesn’t this disqualify him from natural theology (coming to know God via reason)? What does it mean to be both a philosopher who uses reason and a believer who uses faith, in the specific context of thinking about natural theology?

*Antecedent Convictions*

    As I stated, McInerny is a Catholic, and comes to the question of the existence of God with an antecedent conviction—like we all do. He states, “I take up my task in the firm pre-philosophical conviction, thanks to my Christian faith, that it can be done…everyone comes to every inquiry with antecedent convictions.” We approach every problem with a certain set of attentions—we pay attention to certain things and ignore others based on, well, something in us that has been established either genetically or environmentally. I think this has to do with Kierkegaard’s urging us to recognize our finitude, the space we are in, the space over which we have no control. I have brown hair and ADHD—I can’t control this. I grew up with a certain set of beliefs—I also can’t control this. I grew up in a moderately Catholic household, and voila, I am moderately Catholic. It is not why I am moderately Catholic, but certainly does not fail to contribute to my being so. McInerny asserts that “all philosophers have acquired a lengthy personal history before they even begin the study of philosophy”—a history comprising what he elsewhere calls ‘pre-philosophy.’ He is appealing to the complicated rather than the simple: “everyone thinks out of a very complicated personal background, one that affects what questions he entertains, the expectations he has of possible answers, and doubtless causes him to give short shrift to lines of thought which disturb those antecedents.” This may all seem like a non-issue: yes, people have personal background. So what. You’re supposed to look past them to find the truth. However, as McInerny claims, the modern turn in philosophy has led to lazy nihilism and a relativism that cuts down both atheistic thought and faithful thought by attempting, among other endeavors, to overturn antecedent convictions. Everyone has antecedent convictions, “not only believers.” In the end, “if having antecedent beliefs disqualified one from philosophy, there could be no philosophers.”
    But if everyone has antecedent convictions…uh-oh…how is philosophy not then just the “formation of reasons for what we already hold to be true”? Is this not “chaotic relativism”? (I’m actually not sure what he means by that phrase.) McInerny’s stance is that the opinions formed based on, or in, antecedent convictions, are in fact appraisable by criteria that “float free” from those various pre-philosophical opinions. He dives into this later.

*Advantage of Christian Philosophy*

    The advantage of Christian philosophy, McInerny states, and the reason the Christian philosopher is at a “tremendous advantage” in philosophizing, is that his antecedent attitude is not based on hearsay, tribal lore, or even on a respected thinker, but on the “Word of God…what God has revealed to be true and has the sanction of God himself.” And that’s it.
    I think this is a compelling view. It answers the nagging question, ‘ok, so if you go far enough back, there needs to be a first antecedent conviction, a conviction that doesn’t have, well, an antecedent—one that forms the convictions of the future. Where did this come from?” Well, this first ‘conviction’ could be thought to be the Word of God, the divine Word, and everything in that Word. This is among the reasons why I think the Book of Genesis is the most important book in the Bible.
    I also think this view is flawed. It’s a little too quick and dirty. It still rests on the authority of the recorders and reporters of God’s Word. We have no idea what God said—we just know what these writers wrote. Most of us have never even read the parts in the Bible when God reveals himself. I mean, most of us tend to ignore the Bible or not take it seriously as a great work of literature. (one of the reasons the Bible is compelling to me as literature is the claim it makes: it claims to be the Law, the Word of God, even though God didn’t write it. I would still find this claim interesting even if he supposedly did.)


*Faith and Reason (Raisons?)*

    At the end of his first lecture, McInerny makes some well-put statements about faith and reason (and it’s good to have some of the things I’ve read about faith and reason verified). He says, “faith is compatible with reason and is its fulfillment, though a fulfillment reason could not achieve on its own. But what reason can achieve is presupposed by faith.” There is a paradox-like structure somewhere there: something weird, at least. But he’s right, and he’ll explain it further in a later lecture—reason is the preamble to faith, but needs faith in order to achieve full faith, which didn’t ever really need reason, because it had everything in it in the first place that reason has now ‘achieved’…yet reason is still something to be verily defended. That is just too weird and poetic for me to pass up, at least for now. So, in terms of a very initial defense of natural theology, what are we left with? “And as believers we know some knowledge of God is possible on the basis of reason alone. That is the role of natural theology.” Reason can sneak through some knowledge of God…reason, of course, performing in the music hall of faith.
    So there’s the first lecture, sort of. The other nine are easier to write about, because they actually deal with things that are more complicated. If something is simple, I think, “Ok, I better get this right, for my own understanding as well.”
Well, two more blog posts for this! And no, I would not choose to drink from the everlasting spring.