I couldn’t help it: I read a book that wasn’t on my reading list. I just felt like reading this one—Characters In Search of Their Author: The Gifford Lectures by Ralph McInerny. I knew of McInerny from reading and writing a paper on his translation of Aquinas’ On There Being Only One Intellect and his introduction and essays in the back of the book. He has some very interesting things to say about truth, writing in an inviting way using true-to-life metaphors. The following is not a metaphor he uses, but one of my professor’s.
Imagine you’re playing a game with Billy: timing how long it takes to walk from one end of Ascension Hall to the other (what fun!). You’re up first. It takes you 2 min. 30 seconds. Then, Billy: it takes him 2 min. 30 seconds. You meet up outside Ascension. You realize that you have the same time as Billy. But Billy says, “That’s not true.” Billy is right: why?
While I set it up as a kind of riddle, the above ‘story’ is a fast and dirty semi-argument against Nietzsche. Basically, the answer is this: the two times, 2 min. 30 seconds, aren’t the same, because one time is my time, another, his. This is about truth: my professor states that what he perceives as Nietzsche’s relativism and disruption of objective truth is ridiculous because at the end of the day, we have to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It comes down to you, the whole you, which includes your body as well as soul. There are truths to be found in the world, and you find them. Another example: a golfer. When he swings, it is not proper to say that his ulna connected to his distal radioulnar joint connected to his wrist through the radial nerve swings. We say that he swings; this golfer swings. You do truths, too.
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| A green volume |
Ralph McInerny thinks this kind of thing, and his Gifford lectures are a really clear and cogent, and often exciting, summing-up of his main views on philosophy and natural theology. Natural theology is the topic of all the Gifford lectures. Sir Gifford, whoever he was, wanted lecturers to discuss topics related to ‘knowledge of God.’ McInerny takes ‘natural theology’ to mean “the philosophical discipline which proves that God exists and that he has certain attributes…natural because it makes use of our natural powers unaided by any supernatural revelation”. Basically, natural theology is proving God exists with certain attributes using only your natural reason, instead of just accepting by faith that God exists because, well, He said so, and here is His revelation. McInerny points out that his understanding of natural theology is a non-idiosyncratic one. The fact that he points this out means that he is, of course, talking to philosophers, who like to parse and take apart words and phrases. They’ll catch him on his ‘I take natural theology to mean…’ and claim that his argument fails because of a misunderstanding of terms. What we can take away from this, reading his lectures 12 years later, is that he is speaking to people with reasonably cultivated educations in philosophy who like to analyze things. You need to have read some philosophy to jive with some of his terms and the way he speaks. This is why I don’t recommend this book to anyone who hasn’t been introduced to philosophy of religion and some general academic philosophy.
McInerny is out to clear the way for natural theology to be a viable way of thinking about God and the world. This isn’t to say that he is some preacher trying to make you believe in God. He is a philosopher. But this is not to say that he isn’t a believing philosopher, a “content and grateful” Catholic. This is key. In his first lecture, he discusses antecedent convictions and argues that they are extremely useful in philosophy. In the next two, he talks about the modern turn in philosophy, the move towards nihilism and relativism in truth claims, and atheism as not being the default position in philosophy (although it is the dominant one now, he claims). McInerny’s lecture series is philosophy, not church in between two covers. But…not necessarily. How these seemingly diametrically opposed worlds intersect (pure philosophy and reason versus religious faith and coming to the question of God’s existence already knowing that he does exist) and if they should intersect at all, is the discussion McInerny is after (and he presents in an exciting way. Maybe because he talks about Kierkegaard and Nietzsche even though he’s a Thomas Aquinas scholar. Philosophy of religion, exciting? Oh my God!)So I’m going to talk about the ten lectures in my next three blog posts. Ok?
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