Folia Theologica 17. (2006)
Hugh Barbour: Salvare Apparentia
312 H. BARBOUR "First there is cosmic time, the rhythm of the course of the stars, which is reflected for us in the phenomenon of day and night and in the passage of the years, and from which comes the units that our clocks measure. Here again, for us earthlings, two different systems are available for measuring time: lunar time and solar time. The fact that both of these in turn have to be thought of in terms of the manifold cycles of the cosmos, in terms of a system in motion without any fixed point of reference, in terms, to be precise, of a relativistic system, points to the limits of our horizon and to the sort of geocentric perspective on our world that will necessariy always be a part of our understanding, no matter how much our horizons expand." V The Corpus of the Article Is this serious? Is it possible—or even necessary as these authorities assert—to maintain an ancient geocentric cosmological perspective and still engage in a Christian philosophical reflection which is intellectually responsible, still capable of generating genuine philosophical and theological science? To answer—and here is the Respondeo dicendum—we must go to St. Thomas who will show himself to us as having been fully and serenely aware of the problematic we are addressing. St. Thomas is always aware, and formalissime and explicitly conscious of the fact that no demonstrative arguments can be taken from natural knowledge to prove strictly revealed truths, that is, the Trinity and the Incarnation and its consectaries the Sacraments and the Resurrection. All the arguments taken from natural realities are to "save the appearances" of the mystery, to show its non-contradictory nature in the face of a reason which is overwhelmed by the light of a knowledge utterly beyond its ken, and yet still must express the mystery in the divinely inspired yet human language taken from natural things found in the Sacred Scriptures. Let us hear what Aquinas has to say in the Prima Pars, question 32, entitled Utrum Trinitas divinarum personarum possit per rationem naturalem cognosci, in the response to the second objection:
