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The Need for Philosophy in Theology Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Fergus Kerr OP
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The text of a paper presented at the Upholland Theological Consultation, 25—27 April 1984, the gathering which founded the Catholic Theological Association of Great Britain.

With all the welcome emphasis, since Vatican II, on biblical studies, patristic ressourcement, the historical approach, the ecumenical dimension, pastoral and missionary relevance, and so on, there is still a need, in Catholic theology, for philosophy: that is the thesis to be ventilated here

With the tradition we have inherited, constructive theology is something that people have a right to expect from the Catholic community. There can be no constructive theology—because there can be no constructive thought on any matter of human concern—without a measure of philosophical reflection. Certainly, if theologians work in the belief that they are doing without philosophy, they will simply be the prisoners of whatever philosophy was dominant thirty years earlier—or 350 years earlier. For it is with Descartes that Catholic theologians have not yet settled their account. A great deal of theology today displays the marks of a certain Cartesianism. That is why some of it is so popular. The philosophy which it was the main purpose of pre-Vatican II theology to exclude has never really been expelled. We failed to keep Cartesianism out of our system because we did not realize how deeply rooted inside the system it had been all along.

It is worth going into this here because it indicates one of the ways in which a more self-critical (and therefore more self-confident) Catholic theology might connect with some of the deepest arguments in Anglo-American philosophy today.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 65 , Issue 768 , June 1984 , pp. 248 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 “Cartesianism” is, admittedly, a blanket term, not to say a boo word: I mean the conception of the mind according to which thoughts are essentially private to the person who is having them—what we might call the mentalist-individualistic conception of knowledge (MICK for short).

2 Hume’s Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, final paragraph.

3 Reprinted in G.E.M. Anscombe: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, 1981, Chapter 13.

4 In fact von Wright pays tribute to Charles Taylor’s The Explanation of Behaviour, which appeared in 1964.

5 Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind, Chapter 2.

6 The book to consult might be Trinity and Temporality, by John J. O’Donnell SJ, 19 8 3

7 Reprinted in G.E.M. Anscombe: Ethics, Religion and Politics, 1981, Chapter 4.

8 Ethics, Religion and Politics, Chapter 6.

9 Acta Apostolicae Sedis, LXXI, 31 August 1979; frequently reprinted in various languages.

10 Peter Geach: God and the Soul, 1969, Chapter 2.

11 See, for more detail, my article “Kung’s Case for God”, in New Blackfriars, May 1984.

12 Ewiges Leben?, Munich 1982; ET London & New York 1984.

13 London, 1977.

14 In The Times Literary Supplement, 16 July 1982, page 774, reviewing the Woodfield volume mentioned below.

15 See John Searle, reviewing the Hofstadter-Dennett volume, in The New York Review of Books, 29 April 1982.

16 Karol Wojtyla’s book, The Acting Person, published in Polish in 1969 and in the definitive English version in 1979, is, of course, quite explicitly anti-Cartesian in its epistemology from the first page of the preface.

17 See the article by M.D. Chenu, “Vérité évangélique et Métaphysique Wolftenne à Vatican II”, in Rev. Sc. Ph. Th. 57 (1973)