Faith, Reason, and Eternal Happiness

The author looks at what he sees as a misinterpretation of the Angelic Doctor's teachings on Faith and the Beatific Vision in a recent book on faith and reason.

From The Imaginative Conservative

By Michael De Sapio

In a previous essay I presented some reactions to Theology: Mythos or Logos? by John Médaille and Thomas Storck, a book rich in reflections on the relationship between faith and reason. I find that there is more to say about one particular topic broached by the authors.

One of the themes of the argument is the relative weight or importance given to reason or to faith in the history of Western thought. We all accept St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, as a master of applying rational analysis to Christian faith. The Catholic tradition since Aquinas has enshrined him as very nearly the church’s principal theologian. Not all are in agreement with this priority, however; John Médaille, for one, questions it. In fact, he accuses Aquinas of “posing a quarrel” between faith and reason, a separation that has had baleful consequences in Western culture. This claim will seem puzzling and eccentric to those of us who are accustomed to thinking of Aquinas as the man who united reason and faith. Mr. Médaille’s quarrel with Aquinas centers on the Angelic Doctor’s teaching about final happiness, known as the Beatific Vision. The particular discussion that concerns us here is found in the Summa, Part II, Part I, Question 67.

In Mr. Médaille’s view, Aquinas relegates faith to a subordinate role in life; it is merely a stopgap until we are able to see God face to face—which Mr. Médaille identifies with reason or science (in the radical sense of this word as scientia, knowledge).

Put simply, the theological problem is this: Will faith remain in heaven?

Aquinas sees the problem this way: Scripture seems to imply that faith, while a great virtue, implies within itself an imperfection. Thus St. Paul says that in this life we walk “by faith and not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:6-7) and defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen” (Hebrews 11:1). Our final vision of God will be the fulfillment of this desire. Heavenly bliss is the perfection and fulfillment of faith. Therefore, a person cannot at the same time both have faith (believe) and see God face to face; it is a logical contradiction.

Insofar as faith is a striving after something, when this something is found faith would cease. When God has been attained, faith has reached its goal. Mr. Médaille would like a scheme in which the Beatific Vision is seen as the “infinite deepening” of faith. But after all, we don’t worship faith; we worship God. So unless we are to content ourselves with perpetual seeking, faith must necessarily yield to the object of the knowledge which it seeks.

And this, I suppose, is what bothers Mr. Médaille; Aquinas seems to be saying that seeing is superior to believing, and that faith as such will disappear once we reach the state of heavenly bliss. Faith will no longer be necessary.

Compare it to the case of hope, as Aquinas also does. Few people would object to the idea that hope will disappear in heaven, since there we will have attained everything we could possibly hope for in this life. But faith somehow is different. We view it as more eternal (if one can use such a paradoxical phrase) and cherishable for its own sake. We shudder instinctively at the idea that faith will be shed like a garment.

There is, however, more than meets the eye in Aquinas’ text. In the first place, Aquinas makes it clear that the Beatific Vision is not a phase of human reason but in fact far surpasses both reason and faith. This is underlined when he specifies that we will not see God “with the eyes of the body” but with a higher spiritual sort of vision. This is a reasonable claim to make since God is not an object of sense, and in Aquinas’ view human intellection proceeds from sense perception.

But Aquinas is still not ready to close the book on this question. In Article 5 he considers further whether there is any element of faith that may remain in heaven. He looks sympathetically on those who want to include faith in heaven, and he concludes that faith will remain “generically” there:

Some have held that hope is taken away entirely: but that faith is taken away in part, viz. as to its obscurity, and remains in part, viz. as to the substance of its knowledge. And if this be understood to mean that it remains the same, not identically but generically, it is absolutely true; since faith is of the same genus, viz. knowledge, as the beatific vision.

Thus, Aquinas concedes that some aspect of faith remains. For faith is in fact a form of knowledge, and the Beatific Vision will be the summit and consummation of all knowledge. But faith will not remain exactly the same; it will be transformed. What Aquinas seems to be saying is that faith as a practiced virtue will no longer exist in heaven, but that faith considered as knowledge will remain.

This goes to a distinction Aquinas had previously made between the formal element and the material element in a virtue. The formal element consists in the inclination or appetite connected with the virtue, while the material element consists in the ways we carry out the virtue in everyday living. Of course, the latter cannot remain in heaven. But the formal element can and will. It will, in fact, be perfected in reason and immune to any distortion. Thus, the problem that troubles Mr. Médaille appears not to be a problem if we examine the text more closely.

As for myself, I’m not fond of sweeping historical interpretations, judgments, and denunciations. I enjoy a more objective, modest analysis of history, one that sees developments within the context of the times and seeks the individual’s intentions. I do not think we are served by large and drastic claims that, for example, Thomas Aquinas (or any other individual) is responsible for the decline of thought, morals, beauty, or what you will. Making any person responsible for later developments he knew nothing about is a mistake and something we must guard against—as is the closely related error of reading later developments back into an earlier period.

As to the Summa, I consider it, taken in doses, to be a delightful book. There is nothing quite like it, for it shows in a fantastical way that the articles of faith can be made the subject of detailed and masterly analysis. We should be happy that Aquinas did what he did for the history of thought and civilization. He was the right man for the times, having benefited from the rediscovery of a particular body of ancient philosophy (Aristotle’s) and seeing possibilities for its application to the philosophical and theological questions of a Christian era.

There is, then, a danger in drawing broad cultural and historical conclusions from a reading of a text. One must look at it in relation to a whole, seeking to understand what the author meant to express in the circumstances in which he was placed. Aquinas certainly didn’t prioritize science, in our modern sense of the term, over faith, and he gave faith its proper place in the final state of beatitude to which we aspire.