Essay About Saint Thomas Aquinas And John Duns Scotus

Reason and Faith for Saint Thomas Aquinas and Blessed John Duns Scotus
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REASON AND FAITH FOR SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS AND BLESSED JOHN DUNS SCOTUS
(I) The problem
The question of faith and reason is thought in many cases to be a problem
of consistency among the dictates of reason and those of faith and is
formulated in terms of the reliability of the many ways of justifying true
belief. Thus the qualm `Which is more reliable? may change into a doubt
and eventually it is asked whether faith justifies knowledge:
Another type of claim to knowledge is faith.
The same difficulty that plagued the claims to
knowledge by intuition and revelation occurs
here Thus sense experience and reasoning, not
faith, are the basis for the claim of reliability
… Indeed, it seems too obvious to mention that
when people appeal solely to faith as a way of
knowing, they do so because there is no
evidence that what they say is true … 1
The above explanation taken from the finale of a section discussing the
sources of knowledge in a somehow outdated textbook of philosophical
analysis written in our century is not in essence very far removed from
the debates which had taken place among medieval philosophers after the
twelve hundreds. The former may be more straigtforward in rejecting faith
as knowledge. But the latter too must have comprised strong arguments
against the reliability of faith. Scotus formulates several of these
arguments, which reject the reliability of faith after a cursory
examination, in the first question of the Prologus to the Ordinatio.2 In
the course of ScotusЩ evaluation of the controversy for and against the
reliability of faith not only do we discover the familiar qualms about
faith in comparison to sense-experience and the employment of reason, but
also we learn about the two distinct manners in which Thomas Aquinas and
John Duns Scotus were teaching in favor of faith.
The first question of Scotus prologue to the Ordinatio develops the issue
of faith from various perspectives. There are two questions which concern
us. The first question is about the reliability of faith in the eyes of
Scotus and Thomas. The other question is about the difference, if any,
between their thoughts on faith and reason. As to the first question, it
is quite clear that both doctors proclaim the reliability of faith. As to
the second question, the answer is that there are differences between the
two teachings.
Scotus states that there can not be conclusive arguments in philosophy pro
the reliability of faith; all that can be done is to use persuasive
arguments from faith and at the same time to keep making the effort of
showing with strictly philosophical reasoning that the arguments of the
philosophers for the reliability of the intellect, the senses or some
other source is not as foolproof as one would like to have them. (n. 12,
nn. 66-71).
Aquinas on the one hand holds that faith is reliable, but on the other
hand he maintains an Aristotelian theory of knowledge. All knowledge is
derived from the senses. The human intellect can not operate without
phantasms or sensory data. And yet, the human intellect is not dependent
on a corporeal organ for its proper operations and the human soul is
incorruptible. There is one human soul for each human person and that soul
is the form or act of the human body. It is the business of the intellect
to know natures and essences in their common or absoluteley considered
natures. But still, a knowledge both of itself and of particular things is
possible for the human intellect. The final cause for mankind is salvation
and felicity in beholding God. It will be presented below that Aquinas
leaves an allowance for philosophers who interpret Aristotelian philosophy
as a philosophy devoid of sympathy for faith. He suggests that the end of
man may also be known solely in philosophy without recourse to faith.
(II) The views of the two doctors
In the critical edition of the Ordinatio St. Thomas is cited by the
editors in the footnotes to the text. In the controversy between the
philosophers and the theologians, philosophers put forward three important
arguments. Philosophers uphold the perfection of nature. Theologians
recognize the necessity of divine grace and perfection. The Saint is
mentioned in relation to the second argument of the philosophers in
connection with Aristotle who divides the speculative sciences into
mathematics, physics and metaphysics.