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T.J. WalsheApologeticsChapter 2

Continuity of Apologetic Teaching

Chapter II.—Continuity of Apologetic Teaching

In the present chapter, for the sake of brevity, the external extrinsic motives will be indicated by the letter A, the external intrinsic by B, and the internal motives by C.

I.—Prophets of the Old Testament proved their Divine mission in three ways:

A. Miracles and prophecy:

B. Excellence of their religious teaching.

II.—Christ and the Apostles.

(1) Christ.

A. (a) Miracles. Matt. xi. 4; Mark ii. 10.

(b) Prophecy. John v. 39; Luke xxiv. 25.

B. Matt. v., vi., vii.; John vii. 46.

C. John xiv. 27. Luke xxiv. 32.

(2) The Apostles.

A. St. Peter: Acts ii. 22-24; iii. 14-16.

St. Paul: 1 Cor. xv. 4-8.

SS. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John argue from miracles and prophecies fulfilled.

B. 2 Cor. iii. 2. The Apostle claims that the Christian life of the faithful is a sign which confirms the doctrine taught.

C. Testimony of the Spirit. Rom. viii. 9-16.

Fruits of the Spirit. Gal. v. 22-23.

Peace of God. Phillip. iv. 7.

III.—Fathers of the Church.

(1) Apostolic Fathers.

St. Clement. Epistle. A.D. c. 96.

St. Barnabas. Epistle. A.D. c. 100.

St. Ignatius of Antioch. Seven Epistles. A.D. c. 110.

St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna. Epistle. A.D. c. 110.

Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis (Phrygia). A.D. c. 130.

A. All these Fathers appeal to miracles and especially to the fulfilment of prophecy in defence of the Christian Faith. They stress the fulfilment of prophecy as being more effective in winning Jewish converts.

(2) Second Century. The Apologists.

St. Justin (100-165 A.D.) wrote two “Apologies” and the “Dialogue” with Trypho.

Tertullian wrote his Apologetic c. 200 A.D.

St. Irenæus wrote against the Gnostics c. 180 A.D.

A.B. These Apologists, recording calumnious charges made against the Faith, confute them by arguments drawn from the purity of the lives of Christians. The appeal of Tertullian (Apologeticum c. 1) to the internal motive drawn from the “testimony of a soul naturally Christian” is well known. The Apologists appeal also to miracles and the fulfilment of prophecy, and to the moral miracle of the world’s conversion. (Cf. S. Justin I., Apologia n. 32; Dialogue n. 69. S. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, “Adversus Hæreses” c. 180 A.D., especially Book IV.)

(3) Third Century.

A.B. Clement of Alexandria who wrote about 200 A.D. in his Cohortatio ad Græcos and in his Pædagogus contrasts the fullness and purity of the truth which Christ taught with the turpitude, superstition, and impiety of paganism. In his Stromata (Book VI. c 15) he appeals to miracles, to the fulfilment of prophecy and to the wonderful diffusion of the Christian Faith.

A.B. Origen (185-253 A.D. Contra Celsum, Book I. c. 2) appeals especially to the miracle of the Resurrection, but he also makes use of intrinsic criteria.

(4) Fourth and Fifth Centuries.

A.B. Lactantius (+ 325 Institutiones Divinæ), Eusebius of Cæsarea (Demonstratio Evangelica), St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386 A.D.), St. John Chrysostom (347-407 A.D.)—all appeal to the probative force of miracles and prophecy.

A.B.C. St. Augustine (354-430 A.D.) especially in three works, De Vera Religione, De Utilitate Credendi and De Civitate Dei, appeals to arguments external and internal in proof of the divinity of the Christian Faith. The “City of God” might be described as a commentary on the words of the Vatican Council: “The life of the Church is a great and perpetual motive of credibility, and affords irrefragable proof of its Divine message.”

IV.—Scholastic writers.

(1) The Thirteenth Century.

Avicenna in the East and Averroës in the West, Arabian philosophers, who professed Mahometanism, interpreted Aristotle against the Christian Faith.

A. Fr. Raymund Martin, O.P., in his Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Judæos wrote against them, and proved the truth of Christianity from the fulfilment of prophecy.

A.B.C. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) in his Summa Contra Gentiles (Book I. c. 6) appeals to:

Elsewhere he appeals to internal criteria:

A. Richard of St. Victor writes (de Trinitate lib. i, c. 2): “Lord, if there is error, by Thee are we deceived; Thy doctrines are confirmed by so many signs and wonders and of such a nature that only by Thee can they be done.”

(2) The Fourteenth Century.

There is no notable Apologetic. Ockam and Nominalists unduly minimise the powers of reason, and prepare the way for the fideism of Luther.

(3) The Fifteenth Century.

A.B. Savonarola in his Triumph of the Cross written (1497) shortly before his death appeals to motives extrinsic and intrinsic.

B. Marsilius Ficinus, who became so infatuated with the reviving study of Greek that he addressed his congregation sometimes as “Beloved in Plato,” maintained in his De religione christiana et fidei pietate that Plato was in a sense a precursor of Our Lord. He appeals chiefly to the intrinsic motives. On the other hand Ludovicus Vivès

A.B. appeals to criteria extrinsic and intrinsic.

V.—Apologetic Method from the Reformation period to the appearance of the Kantian philosophy.

1° Adversaries of the Christian Faith.

The origin and spread of Rationalism was due to the use of private judgment in religious speculation. Hence the origin of Socinians whose heirs are present-day Unitarians. If there be no authoritative exponent of doctrine, it is clear that the sequel will be “quot homines, tot sententiæ.” Rationalism almost immediately exhibited two forms—Philosophical and Biblical. Philosophical rationalism underwent a subdivision into spiritualistic and empirical schools.

Philosophical Rationalism (Spiritualistic School).

The deists Voltaire and Rousseau and the pantheist Spinoza are justly placed in this category. Voltaire openly ridiculed Holy Scripture, and J. J. Rousseau rejected miracles, prophecy, and all supernatural truths. And yet in the third of the Lettres de la Montagne Rousseau admits the possibility of miracles, whilst in Emile (Book IV. Profession de la foi du vicaire savoyard) there is a well-known laudatory and oft-quoted passage on Christ and the Gospels.

Spinoza denied a real distinction between God and the world. In his Ethica and Tractatus theologico-politicus the truth of Scripture is declared to be merely allegorical and symbolic.

Wolf, “professor of the human race,” acknowledged the existence of God, but rejected all supernatural truth which could not be proved by intrinsic arguments from the idea of God and morality.

Philosophical Rationalism (Empirical School).

Hobbes and Hume, being sensists, denied the validity and necessity of the first principles of reason. In the English Men of Letters series, the life of Hume has been written by the late Professor Huxley, who devotes the main portion of the work to the defence of Hume’s philosophy. Amongst other tenets of Hume, Huxley defends the well-known argument against miracles—an argument which will receive due consideration later in this book. In France, Diderot, d’Alembert and the Encyclopedists denied even the truths of Natural Religion, and many became materialists.

Philosophical Rationalism (Biblical School).

The authority of Old and New Testaments was called in question. In England Bolingbroke and Shaftesbury, and in Germany Lessing and Reimarus pursued the destructive criticism associated with the name of Spinoza. The reader will remember that Spinoza’s teaching emphasised the immanence of the Deity in His creation, but failed to realise the complementary truth that God is withal transcendent.

2° Protestant Apologists.

(1) Some Protestant Apologists employ both external and internal criteria:

Duplessy-Mornay: De La Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne (1579-1581).

Hugo Grotius: De veritate religionis christianæ (1627).

Lardner (1684-1768): Credibility of the Gospel History.

Paley (1743-1805): Horæ Paulinæ; Evidences of Christianity.

Leibnitz (1646-1716): Systema theologicum.

(2) Most Protestant Apologists appeal to internal motives.

Locke (1632-1704): Reasonableness of Christianity; Essay concerning Human Understanding.

Clarke (1675-1729): Being and attributes of God.

Butler (1692-1752): Analogy.

Internal motives are more suitable for private judgment and subjectivism, and agree better with the subjective theory of justification, and with the Lutheran notion of predestination implied in the famous dictum: “pecca fortiter, crede fortius.”

It is interesting to follow the phases of Protestant opinion in regard to Faith:

(a) The early Protestants having rejected the authority of the Church put forward Scripture alone as the rule of Faith. They maintained that the guidance of the Holy Spirit is given to each one for the interpretation of the Sacred Writings. Hence the subjectivity and variety of their belief. Faith was identified with religious experience and developed into pietism—a corruption of genuine piety.

(b) Moreover Protestants profess a personal faith, more properly called confidence, whereby they are assured that their sins have been forgiven through the merits of Christ. This is the faith which, according to Protestant teaching, justifies without works.

(c) Luther’s adoption of Nominalism and the empiricism of Ockam made doubtful the rational grounds supporting the truths of Natural Religion, e.g., the existence of God, etc. According to Ockam all truths which transcend experience are accepted on faith—hence fideism.

(d) The Reformers claimed, as did Baius and Jansenius later, that elevation of our nature to association with God was due to the original gift of integrity, and therefore should not be called supernatural. Hence revealed mysteries respond, not only to human aspirations, but to human needs. Note the contrast of protestant and pelagian errors. In Pelagianism error arose from exaggeration of the power of human faculties; in Protestantism, error is due to the exaggeration of human needs. Pelagians denied original sin; Lutherans maintained the corruption of human nature through original sin.

3° Catholic Apologists.

A.B.C. 1. Bossuet in the second part of his work, Discours sur l’histoire universelle (1681) makes use of all criteria as S. Augustine does in his Civitas Dei.

A. 2. Huet in Demonstratio evangelica (1679) stresses the argument drawn from prophecy. He is not sufficiently critical.

A.B.C. 3. Pascal in Les Pensées shews the divine origin of Christianity from external and internal criteria. Sometimes the tendency of his thought is Jansenistic.

A.B.C. 4. Concina O.P. directs his attack against all forms of unbelief. (Della religione revelata contra gli athei, deisti, materialisti, indifferentisti.) Also Bergier, Gotti, S. Alphonsus, Cardinal Gerdil, etc.

VI.—Apologetic Method from publication of the Kantian philosophy onwards.

1° Adversaries of the Christian Faith.

(a) Philosophical Rationalism appears now under idealistic empirical forms.

Idealists. Kant attempted to reconcile the empiricism of Hume with the spiritualism of Wolf. He teaches the subjective necessity of first principles of speculative and practical reason (Categories), but denies the possibility of speculative knowledge of the existence of God, of human liberty, and of the immortality of the soul. He accepts these truths by a sort of moral faith as postulates of practical reason (Categorical Imperative). All supernatural truths he rejects, retaining only truths of Natural Religion.

Pantheists. Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were pantheists. Hegel declares that there is nothing superior to human nature—in fact, human nature is “God in the making”!

Eclectics. In France, Cousin, Jouffroy, and Jules Simon were deists.

Empiricists and Positivists. Comte, Littré, Taine, Stuart Mill and Spencer, limit human knowledge to “states of consciousness” and “laws of experience.”

The Kantian theory of faith and morality now claims attention:

1.—Speculative reason cannot attain certitude of the ontological (i.e., objective) value of first principles. The principle of causality, for example, is only subjectively necessary (i.e., a principle synthetic a priori). Hence speculative reason cannot prove the existence of God, immortality of the soul, freedom of the will, binding force of moral obligation.

2.—Practical reason recognises the binding force of moral obligation as an internal rational fact. The first principle of practical reason (“do as you would wish all men to do”) has not an objective foundation, but is merely a “formal law subjectively necessary.” To recognise an obligation from an objective source would involve the servitude of the will.

3.—Moral faith cannot exist without freedom of will, immortality of the soul, and existence of God.

Therefore (1) since man cannot fulfil moral obligation without freedom, we “morally” ought to admit the existence of free-will although speculatively unproveable.

(2) The perfection required by the Categorical Imperative can be obtained only by an infinite series of approximations. Hence the necessity of a future life.

(3) Inasmuch as a man who follows out in all things the obligation of the moral law deserves happiness, and as stable happiness is not found on earth, hence “morally” the existence of God the rewarder ought to be admitted.

The certitude of these truths is subjectively and practically sufficient, because subjectively deduced from the Categorical Imperative, but the certitude is objectively and theoretically insufficient. Kant substituted the Categorical Imperative for the protestant supposed guidance through “instinct of the Holy Spirit.”

(b) Biblical Rationalism.

Biblical rationalism of the Nineteenth Century appeared in a twofold form:

(1) Mythicism. De Wette (+ 1849) and Strauss (+ 1874) regarded the historical events of both Testaments as comparable to the mythical legends of Romulus and Remus. De Wette attacked the Old Testament, and Strauss, in his Leben Jesu, judged the character and works of Christ as fables due to an idealising tendency on the part of the human imagination.

(2) Evolutionary criticism of Baur (+ 1860) leader of the Tübingen School. Adopting Hegelian philosophy, he reduced Christianity to a synthesis of two opposite systems—Petrinism favouring Jews and Paulinism favouring Gentiles. Baur regarded the fourth Gospel (falsely, in his opinion, attributed to St. John), as the synthesis of the two systems. To this school belong Ewald (+ 1875), Hitzig (+ 1875), Knobel (+ 1863), E. Reuss (+ 1891) and Wellhausen.

2° Protestant and Semi-Rationalist Apologists.

(1) Protestant Apologists.

C. (a) Conservative writers who desire to safeguard Supernatural Revelation: Tholuck, Delitzsch, Baumstark, Ebrard, defend the authenticity of the Gospels and other books of the New Testament. They appeal chiefly to internal criteria.

C. (b) Liberal writers appeal exclusively to internal criteria. Influenced by the teaching of Kant and Hegel, they reject the supernatural character of Revelation.

Schleiermacher (1767-1834) asserts that God may not be distinct from the universe. It is sufficient if we recognise the Infinite in some way. Revelation is only a new idea of the Infinite, e.g., conception of God the Father. Christ’s claim to divinity was due to His greater consciousness of the Infinite.

A. Ritschl (1822-1889) relegates the Inspiration of Scripture to the judgment of the religious sense. The truth of Scripture statements is shewn by the approbation of the religious sense. Christ is the Son of God because specially conscious of His union with God. Miracles are extraordinary events, and witnesses of Divine benevolence. Hence one and the same fact may be natural from the standpoint of Science, and supernatural from the standpoint of Faith.

A. Sabatier (+ 1901) in Les Religions d’Autorité et la Religion de l’Esprit wrote in the same strain.

(2) Semi-Rationalists.

Some Catholic theologians, e.g., Hermes, Günther, Frohschammer, though they do not deny Supernatural Revelation, wrote under the influence of Kantian and Hegelian philosophy, and maintained that in Divine Revelation all mysteries, even those of the Trinity and Incarnation, may be proved by human reason. The foundation of Hermes’ philosophy is the Kantian insufficiency of speculative reason and the autonomy of practical reason. He goes on to assert that a Catholic may regard the truths of Faith as doubtful until he discovers a scientific proof of those truths. The formal motive of Faith is not the authority of God, but its practical need.

Catholic Traditionalists. Bautain and Bonnetty on the other hand minimised the power of natural reason to such an extent that, in their view, reason could not prove the existence of God, the spirituality and consequently immortality of the soul, or freedom of the will. Such are the errors of Fideism and Traditionalism. True Catholic teaching holds the golden mean between writers who err “per excessum” and those who err “per defectum”; “in medio tutissimus ibis.”

3° Catholic Apologists.

(a) Theologians who use primarily external criteria reinforced by internal. Frayssinous, Lacordaire, Hettinger, Perrone, Zigliara, Tanquerey, etc.

B. (1) They appeal to external-intrinsic criteria to shew the excellence of Christian teaching. They appeal also to the wonderful life of the Church “irrefragable testimony of its divine mission.”

A. (2) They appeal to external-extrinsic criteria. Nicolas, Brugère, Frayssinous, Hettinger, etc.

C. (3) They appeal to internal criteria.

Chateaubriand: (Le Génie du Christianisme, 1802).

Lamennais: (Essais sur l’Indifférence en Matière de Religion, 1817.)

Lacordaire: (Conférences).

Bougaud: (Le Christianisme et les temps présents, 8 ed., 1901).

Card. Deschamps: (Entretiens sur la Démonstration Catholique, 1861).

Card. Newman (who stresses the argument based on the dictates of conscience).

(b) Philosopher-Apologists.

C.B. Some Philosopher-Apologists judge that the most effective method of convincing unbelievers is by an apologetic which appeals to internal and later external-intrinsic criteria. In their opinion the

A. use of external-extrinsic criteria comes later. (Ollé-Laprune, Fonsegrive and Brunetière).

(c) Blondel and Laberthonnière, who look upon Apologetics not as belonging to Fundamental Theology, but to the philosophy of religion. These writers propose to develop a new Apologetic which, they hold, will be more efficacious in controversy with Agnostics, and with those who regard the “immanent” to be the sole valid method in sacred science. The double foundation of the method is (1) the principle that “speculative reason cannot defend its own ontological (i.e., objective) value except in accord with the practical needs of human action.” By action, speculative thought becomes an objective reality. Hence the definition of truth is no longer the time-honoured one: “equation between the mind and the object perceived,” but “equation between the mind and life.” (2) The second foundation is the assertion that religious truth, even though supernatural, cannot be imposed from an external source. Man must assent to no teaching except such as is required for the perfect development of his faculties. Hence religious truth, even supernatural, must be recognised as an inward need for the perfect evolution of our action.

This theory of Blondel differs from Immanentism. According to the Immanentists religion comes from an immanent source—the religious sense. Blondel does not deny the supernatural character of Revelation, but maintains that it is intrinsically needed by our nature. Supernatural religion exceeds the powers but not the needs of nature. Blondel’s apologetic may be fairly described as Semi-Immanentism.

Before proceeding to note how the advocates of this new Apologetic regard criteria external and internal, the reader will distinguish between (i), the doctrine of “immanence,” i.e., God’s intimate presence in His creation of which the complementary truth is God’s transcendence—acknowledged teaching of Catholic philosophy, and (ii), the doctrine of “immanence” in apologetics which accepts the internal religious sense as the only valid criterion of religious truth—one of the fundamental tenets of Modernism.

In regard to the criteria, these new Apologists maintain the following views:

(1) Criteria external-extrinsic. Speculative reason apart from the exigencies of human action cannot establish objective reality. Hence miracles as such have no probative force. They have a symbolic value for minds disposed to recognise a divine element in nature. Thus the probative force of miracles is subordinated to internal criteria.

(2) The criterion external-intrinsic, i.e., the wonderful life of the Church, has only a symbolic value in manifesting the presence of Divine action in the world and especially in the Church. The Church is proved thereby to be only a superior form of religious evolution, but not supernaturally founded by God Himself.

(3) Internal criteria. Blondel and his followers much exaggerate their force. They acknowledge that supernatural religion is not due to human nature. Nevertheless, supernatural revelation is sought for, nay, asked for by human nature in order to secure the perfect evolution of our faculties. We cannot reach the Infinite Being without His aid, hence the need of the Supernatural. In Christianity and Catholicism alone are the aids to be found. Thus the divine origin of Catholicism is made practically certain through experience aided by Divine grace.

Criticism of the New Apologetic

1.—It is founded on Semi-Agnosticism, viz., untrustworthiness of speculative reason.

2.—It is founded also on an aspect of the doctrine of immanence. If Catholic Faith is demanded by our nature, that Faith is not supernatural. In truth the Supernatural is above not only the powers but the exigencies of human nature. These Apologists fail to see that it is natural happiness arising from the natural knowledge and love of God that our nature strives to attain.

3.—The formal motive of Faith consists in the authority of God who reveals, and not in religious experience.