20 Answers: Faith & Reason (20 Answers Series from Catholic Answers Book 36) by Christopher Kaczor

Author:Christopher Kaczor [Kaczor, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catholic Answers Press
Published: 2020-01-08T06:00:00+00:00

12. Why would God reveal a truth to us that we could, in principle, know through reason?

We read in the Catechism that “Our holy mother, the Church, holds and teaches that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason.” Without this capacity, man would not be able to welcome God’s revelation. Man has this capacity because he is created “in the image of God” (36). This teaching is found also in the First Vatican Council, in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae, and in many other places.

But if our reason can know that God exists, and know other truths about God, why would he reveal his existence to us, as well as these other truths? The Catechism answers, “In the historical conditions in which he finds himself, however, man experiences many difficulties in coming to know God by the light of reason alone” (37). For example, not everyone has the intelligence to truly comprehend the philosophical arguments of Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz or Plantinga. For most of human history, most people could not read at all. But God’s revelation is for everyone, literate and nonliterate alike.

Moreover, for much of human history, almost all human beings were struggling simply to stay alive. Until the last few centuries, almost all human beings were generally poor and lacking in sufficient food and basic necessities. In such dire situations, most people had to spent most of their time working from dawn to dusk simply to go on living. Obviously, such dire conditions would make it hard, if not impossible, for most people to curl up at night with their copy of Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae or Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy. By contrast, God’s revelation is not just for the rich, who have the leisure time for study of the greatest questions in life, but for everyone.

Even for those with sufficient education and wealth, problems still remain. As the Catechism notes:

There are many obstacles which prevent reason from the effective and fruitful use of this inborn faculty. For the truths that concern the relations between God and man wholly transcend the visible order of things, and, if they are translated into human action and influence it, they call for self-surrender and abnegation. The human mind, in its turn, is hampered in the attaining of such truths, not only by the impact of the senses and the imagination, but also by disordered appetites which are the consequences of original sin. So it happens that men in such matters easily persuade themselves that what they would not like to be true is false or at least doubtful (37).

The philosopher Thomas Nagel exemplifies the way in which motivated thinking can happen:

I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief.

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