Is There Unity Between Religion and Philosophy?

How do we acquire knowledge about these deepest of questions? People who accept the Judeo-Christian worldview will accept the validity of both faith and reason as sources of knowledge and paths to truth. These two factors interweave and penetrate each other constantly, and the degree of importance or validity that one assigns to one or the other will determine where one falls in a particular spectrum.

There are enduring questions that occur to thoughtful people, relating to why we are here, where we are going, and the meaning of existence. Some of these questions are such as will occur to those who are starting from the standpoint of religious belief. Why does God require us to go through the long hard process of carrying the cross, of molding and pruning our soul day by day with the help of divine grace? Why did not Christ simply take sin away, instead of taking sin upon himself? Why are truth revealed and understanding gained gradually instead of all at once, in a flash? Why does God require from us (as well as demonstrating himself) humility and self-abasement as preconditions for attaining beatitude?

These are questions that pertain to the religious structure of reality. They are questions that belong to areas of inquiry known as theology and philosophy.

How do we acquire knowledge about these deepest of questions? People who accept the Judeo-Christian worldview will accept the validity of both faith and reason as sources of knowledge and paths to truth. These two factors, faith and reason, interweave and penetrate each other constantly, and the degree of importance or validity that one assigns to one or the other will determine where one falls in a particular spectrum. The Catholic tradition, with which I identify, maintains the two in a pretty even balance, albeit with a generous helping of reason—perhaps more than other creeds would allow. But the emphasis on the complementarity of reason and faith is surely one of the hallmarks, and I would say glories, of this tradition.

Just as faith and reason interpenetrate each other, so do the intellectual disciplines of religious thought (theology) and philosophy. This is only natural, and it is wrongheaded to think they can ever be completely separate. Theology borrows from philosophy methods, outlooks, and concerns. Philosophy is, or should be, open to the questions of God and faith. There is sufficient overlap between the two disciplines to invite some reflection about the nature and limits of each.

Religion is the whole field of belief, practice, and activity relating to one’s relationship to a higher spiritual order. Theology is the reasoned reflection on the articles of religious belief.

Philosophy, it would seem, exists somewhere off to the side of religion. Bertrand Russell, an atheist, characterized philosophy as a middle ground between theology and science, sharing concerns and methods with each. Like theology, philosophy is concerned with the ultimate questions, with meaning and purpose; but like science, its tools are those of rational inquiry.

Philosophy is based on reason alone; nevertheless, because philosophy takes the whole world of being as its area of interest—and that is a wide field indeed—it can examine and reflect upon faith too. Philosophy is defined by the search for wisdom, while theology is defined as the search for God and all that follows from his existence. Since knowing God is obviously involved in wisdom, one might say that theology is from one point of view contained within philosophy. In another sense, philosophy is contained within theology since the subject of the latter is God himself, the source and ground of all being. Since God is wisdom itself, he precedes and is the source of all things that philosophy can possibly discover.

But there’s more to this, when we remember that the concept of “wisdom” is itself deeply involved in theology and religious thought as well as philosophy. We remember that the biblical writers spoke of the Divine Logos or eternal reason, expressed in his providential ordering of the world and supremely in the person and mission of Christ.

We are used to yoking together the terms “philosophy” and “theology,” two disciplines that have to do with the “big questions,” but less often perhaps do we reflect on their history or precise relationship. Philosophy grew up in ancient Greece among thinkers who simply reflected upon the world around them—without any distinction between speculation about the physical world, about the soul, about love, or any other phenomenon. Philosophical speculations about God (Theos) gave rise to a new term, theology, used by Plato and Aristotle and subsequently taken up by Christianity as the name for its activity of expounding on its creed. At the same time, philosophy continued to matter in the Christian world, because the classical culture was powerful and its influence did not cease after the gentile world accepted the gospel.

Thus, theology—discourse about God—was historically born out of philosophy—the search for wisdom. The two are indissolubly related.

That religion has embraced philosophy as such is, I suppose, evident from such a fact as that candidates for the Catholic priesthood take several years of philosophy instruction in seminary. From pretty close to its beginning, Christianity has made use of philosophy as an aid and support.

There exists a trio of terms describing various types of reflection on matters of faith: “philosophy of religion,” “religious philosophy,” and finally “theology.” Let us take a look at these terms.

When we seek wisdom and understanding about religion as a datum or phenomenon, including the nature and meaning of religion, beliefs and practices, taking a stance as an objective observer—not necessarily defending or explicating specific contents of faith—it seems to me that we are practicing the philosophy of religion.

Religious philosophy is a philosophy that is religiously inflected; religious understandings may inform its arguments, or it may examine the existence of God or other contents of faith philosophically. It remains philosophy, using reason as its basis; it does not have recourse to revelation to form its arguments, and in this it differs from theology. Perhaps its aim may be to demonstrate that the contents of faith are reasonable. I have a particular liking for religious philosophy as defined here.

Theology is a systematic body of thought and reflection on religious doctrine, carried out by one who believes; in contrast to religious philosophy, its starting point is revelation, to which it applies reasoned analysis. I am sure, though, that philosophy plain and simple will often make itself felt as a theologian seeks an understanding of revelation. The boundaries between these three types of thought are far from rigid.

I hope my attempts at definitions of various shades of religious thought will strike some readers as having some truth and validity.

Looking at the history of thought we can see that some thinkers can be classified as general or pure philosophers, some as religious philosophers, and some as theologians. The boundaries are again far from strict. St. Thomas Aquinas was a theologian who employed philosophy in support of theological truths. Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham, was a religious philosopher. Kierkegaard was a religious philosopher and at times a theologian. Descartes, Locke, and countless others whom you will meet in philosophy courses were pure philosophers whose speculations, inevitably, touched on questions of God and religious and metaphysical truth. Plato and Aristotle were pre-Christian philosophers whose thought about metaphysics touched the fringes of the Christian idea of God.

Faith or belief is a natural response to reality as we perceive it. In sensing the mystery of the cosmos, it is natural to respond with an attitude of belief—or perhaps wonder at the start—in something higher than what we see. The great old thinkers of Western civilization, almost without exception, came to a conviction in the existence of a God. And examining that cosmic fact through the use of reason is a part of philosophizing. When we do so within the framework of religious revelation, the result is theology.

A few words about my own complex relationship with philosophy. As a university student I found the subject alternately fascinating and intimidating, attractive and repellent. In part this was because, while grappling with hard philosophical texts, I had trouble getting a grasp of what precisely philosophy was about. Its ground and subject matter seemed to be constantly shifting under my feet. There was a list of topics that philosophy was supposed to treat (ethics, metaphysics, aesthetics, and so on), but it seemed to me that there was no warning what was coming next. One minute I was absorbing beautiful speculations about Happiness and the Good and how to obtain them; then, abruptly, the scene shifted and I was reading half-crazed theories about the Ideal State and impenetrable discussions of super-abstract matters like the problem of the One and the Many. Lucidity alternated with lunacy, or so it seemed to me at the time. Dry-as-dust discussions about how our minds perceive things (or “substances”) bored me to distraction, and so I naturally gravitated toward theology and religious philosophy, especially what was known in my university course offerings as the philosophy of God.

In addition to the somewhat amorphous character of philosophy as it appeared to me, another problem was that I didn’t—and still don’t—feel a great deal of affinity with the classical world, which was after all the foundation of philosophy as we know it. I feel most at home in the world of Christian thought and meaning and in the ages of faith. I was vexed by the fact that it was never crystal clear what precise relationship philosophy bore toward religion, the common beliefs I shared with countless others and which formed part of my worldview and daily practice. Anyone surveying philosophers will realize that some of their doctrines agree with or harmonize with religious orthodoxy, and others do not. With time it dawned on me that part of the reason philosophy was taught at my university was to engage with a variety of ideas, whether or not they were all equally true or valid. Philosophy itself taught one to judge among them and assess their merits; this was itself part of the philosophic process.

Yet this was not wholly satisfying. At heart I wanted philosophy to be more like the world of art or music, predicated on enjoyment and the enlargement of appreciation. Instead, it was a piecemeal affair, a menu of topics and thinkers served to me, a large part of which was unsatisfying and which I felt like sending back. It seemed to me there was an unresolved tension between philosophy and religion. I mentioned that Bertrand Russell located philosophy in a twilight zone between science and theology. This indeterminate nature of philosophy I found mildly irritating. In his popular History of Western Philosophy, Russell criticizes and finds serious fault with just about every philosopher he treats (with the curious exception of Plotinus). Why study philosophy at all if most of it is as shoddy as some philosophical commentators make it out to be? I have often asked myself this sort of question.

Some philosophers, I found, had good ideas but the most turgid ways of discussing them. I tend therefore, when I gravitate toward philosophy, to choose those philosophers who actually knew how to write. What I have finally concluded regarding philosophers is that you may take them as they come. You can feel free to construct your own philosophical hit parade, which may differ from the one that academia prescribes.

Later I started to gain a more just appreciation of philosophy as the broad search for truth, beyond the various particularities (or peculiarities) one must absorb for an exam.

Theology is, no less than philosophy, a search for knowledge and wisdom. Theology, philosophy, science all are part of the general search for truth. Nothing could be more obtuse than to call religion, as atheists have done, “comforting fairy tales.” What religion gives us is reality pure and simple. It offers us a complete vision of the real, including both joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. Those who are philosophically inclined may delve into the reasons behind religious claims and doctrines; others may simply accept them in faith and trust. In any case, we have confidence that in the coherence of the universe, faith and reason hang together, and we go forward boldly in search of all truths.

The word “theology” tends to hit our ears with an authoritarian air, a dour and magisterial tone. But if we remember that theology is in its root sense “discourse or about God,” it emerges as an inquiry no less than philosophy. The two disciplines—you might even call them sister disciplines—can symbiotically influence, mutually benefit, and enrich each other. In fact, they have done so throughout history. Given that philosophy by its nature not accountable to religious doctrine, faith and philosophy are bound come into conflict at times. But the tension between the two forms of inquiry can be a creative tension, a dialogue with checks and balances performed.

In answer to the question posed in the title of the essay, I would say that there can be unity between religion and philosophy, if we approach both of them in the right way, and that this unity is one level of expression of the fruitful relationship of reason and faith. Speaking from of personal preference, I find that philosophy in and of itself is a little on the thin side; it needs fleshing out, it needs to be given a face. Perhaps theology can help.

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The featured image is “Farewell of Consul Boetius to his family” (1826) by Jean-Victor Schnetz, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.