Restoring Epistemology to Its Proper Place as the Handmaiden of Metaphysics and Revelation

Since her earliest days of reflecting philosophically on the content of the faith, the Catholic Church has held that the human mind, as a reflection of the divine Logos, whom she comes to know to be the Second person of the Trinity, is able even by natural means to grasp basic truths concerning ultimate reality. This includes knowledge of an eternal, omniscient, and omnipotent Creator, the immortality of the soul, and precepts of basic morality (natural law) —points the Catechism describes as “preambles to the faith” (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, par. 31-35). These truths all relate to what philosophy calls metaphysics, or the study of “being.” These are more basic than observable physical reality, though the study of physical reality (as in the natural sciences) necessarily understands these to be true for its study to even be possible.

For example, we understand that something enables a material thing to remain the thing it is (what Aristotle calls “form”), even as its other physical features are able to change (what Aristotle terms “accidents”). We further understand that the various “forms” of different kinds of things account for their different ways of operating in relation to one another, thereby enabling us to detect patterns of interaction (e.g., “laws of nature”), helpful for predicting future cause-and-effect outcomes. This likewise requires that we have rational thought, or mind, that can surpass the finite number of physical observations to come to a general, or universal, understanding of the “natures” and “operations” of things.

As Socrates realizes in the dialogue of the Phaedo, one could not come to “scientific” knowledge of unchanging truths about things if: 1) there was not an underlying set of truths determining the necessary and changing features of these things that itself did not change, and 2) if our mind, which comes to know these truths, was itself simply a product changing physical processes. This points to a mind, or rational soul, that is non-material in its being, even as it is aware of physical things, detects patterns, and forms true judgments about them. Eventually, the insight that there must be immaterial reality for any “fixed” truths to be known prompts the ultimate insight of metaphysics, which is that the foundation of all other reality is God, Who is a mind that is infinite, eternal, upon Whom all other being and truth depends, while His existence depends upon only Himself.

While metaphysics was considered to be the highest order of natural knowledge, the questions of what we can know about the fundamental principles of reality, of what knowledge is, and how we come to knowledge, encompass the closely related discipline of epistemology. Importantly, the philosopher, as the lover of wisdom, does not at first question whether knowledge of “the real” is possible. Rather, he accepts this as given in his ordinary experience of the world, even as he reflects further on what more can be known, and by what natural capacities he may attain such understanding. Nevertheless, in metaphysics, one comes to realize that though the existence of a transcendent (and thus super-natural) and infinite source of all other existence (God) is certain, as is the reality of an immaterial rational soul by which these things can be known (and which can further be shown to be immortal, in that knowledge of unchanging truth requires the mind, per Socrates, to operate beyond the limits of physically changing processes), our knowledge of God is nevertheless not direct, or personal. As supernatural, He transcends direct apprehension by our senses and is entirely different from anything else we know.

Thus, we are confronted by the fact that the source of all that is known cannot be known directly and intimately by our own capacities, as we know other things. On the other hand, we also know that God is able to elevate our minds beyond their ordinary capacity, to make Himself known to us in a most profound and personal way through the gift of grace, which He must offer, as well as enable us to be able to accept it. This indicates that even above the knowledge of metaphysics is knowledge of God’s supernatural being, shared through divine revelation.

Because God, as the source of all truth, offers to us special knowledge of Himself through supernatural faith, this knowledge is even more sure than the ordinary certainty we attain through sense data, or even the rational principles of mathematics and logic. At the same time, because both revelation and nature come from God, genuine knowledge gained through either of these sources cannot contradict truth that is obtained from the other. Just as the principle of contradiction that “A cannot equal non A,” is a basic truth of logic, God cannot be the source of both truth and un-truth. That said, metaphysics readily points to the reality of the supernatural and the possibility that the transcendent source of all truth can provide us with supernatural knowledge of Himself. This includes the fact that He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Son becoming man while yet being God, born of a virgin, who suffers, dies, and resurrects that we may have eternal life in Him through the sacramental gifts He offers, beginning in baptism, and being nourished by His very own body, blood, soul, and divinity in the Holy Eucharist.

What the above shows is that philosophy, as the love of wisdom, culminates in our falling in love with Him Who first loved us, to the point of becoming one of us, that we may experience an eternal communion with Him (and one another) in a way that excels what is merely humanly possible. And yet, as the ages advanced, the love of knowledge as an encounter with Love Himself, where each gain in knowledge was conjoined with humility in realizing the absolute dependence upon God for both the knower and what is known in their very existence, coupled with an ever-increasing awe at the divine mystery of what remains unknown to us, was gradually replaced with exhortation of knowledge as a means (in the words of Francis Bacon) to power over the material world, to re-structure it according to our will and purposes. Consequently, natural knowledge was characterized as understanding the universal form and nature of things ordered toward an outcome (final cause) that was ultimately a participation in the activity of divine ordering itself, consummating in metaphysical demonstration of God’s existence and attributes.

Over time, however, “knowledge” was taken to refer mainly to those empirically observable and/or mathematically describable properties of purposeless mass, motion, and shape, as observed in the material realm. For a period, acceptance in the rational demonstration of God’s existence remained. However, it came to be increasingly embraced not primarily as an end in itself, but as a means to conceptually securing the reliability of scientific study, the establishment of common morality, or a foundation for political and economic rights—that is to say, a necessary instrument for the advancement of human endeavors. Increasingly, the understanding of metaphysics as knowledge of what was most real was dismissed as idle speculation at best, and superstitious obstruction to scientific progress at worst. In this environment, the notion that immaterial being could be known, in failing to meet the requirements of empirical observation of mathematical description, could not help but eventually stimulate skepticism.

The outcome of all this was that matters once taken to be certain through demonstrations of ordinary human reason and experience—that is, the preambles of faith—now come to be regarded themselves as matters of “faith” in a misused sense. Rather than a supernatural gift from the God who reveals Himself to us in love, faith is now presumed to be human-originated belief, lacking real evidence, and therefore to be explained away as a product of psychological, sociological, or evolutionary forces, extending not only to even generic belief in God, but even to the mind itself.

Accordingly, the abandonment of metaphysics has resulted in man being without a rational openness to the supernatural. Claims to knowledge about such things facilitate reactions ranging from tribalistic, fideistic endorsement by misguided religious devotees, to tolerant puzzlement among indifferent onlookers, to hostile resistance among “freethinkers.” There is in this already the perception of an apparent “blind leap” from the world of “knowable scientific truth” to unknowable subjective belief. Given this, these reactions are further amplified when what was traditionally properly understood to be the content of faith—i.e., knowledge of the Trinity, the incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ, the fact of death as a consequence of sin, and the overcoming of death through the efficacy of the sacraments—is invoked. Rather than increased specificity in belief indicating greater access to truth, marrying the intellect to the heart, it comes to be regarded (as noted before) as a magnification of irrational forces that stifle intellectual curiosity at best, and oppressively stultify supposed scientific and cultural progress at worst.

Nevertheless, this displacement of metaphysics by epistemology erases the possibility of the union of the mind with the order of nature through the act of understanding, and replaces it with a resignation that true knowledge is impossible. In so doing, we are reduced to a desperate effort to temporarily control and delay the inevitable outcome of ephemeral processes; namely, physical dissolution and death.

We may, then, conclude by asking, what does the Church have to say in response to this loss of metaphysics and resulting misuse of epistemology? Perhaps she can invite people to realize that the futility of the current quest to overcome death is an impetus to realize that rather than the grim reality of death serving as evidence against God and soul, our desperation is an indicator that something is amiss in the current order of things. Our desire to avoid death does not give rise to faith as a false hope born out of psychological and cultural delusion. Rather, it is evidence that we were originally made to love, and therefore know, God and the world He made. In a reversal of those mystics who sought to better know God by striving to “unknow” what they thought they knew of Him by natural means, perhaps the void of current age can stir us to move past the spirit of unknowing (supposedly knowing that nothing can be known), to an awareness that God has preserved within us, even in our fallen sinful state, a natural, rational capacity to know the reality of both the soul and author of our soul.

In so doing, restoring our awareness of immaterial being and ultimately God as transcendent source of all that is real, may spark a desire to be reconciled to the Father of all being, Who reveals that we can be saved by repentance and receiving the full likeness of His Son, that we may bodily attain, through grace, the height of knowledge in beholding, in a way that surpasses all human understanding, the eternal glory of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.