Folia Theologica 17. (2006)
Hugh Barbour: Salvare Apparentia
318 H. BARBOUR In rebus sensibilibus etiam ipsae differentiae essentiales nobis ignotae sunt; unde significantur per differentias accidentales quae ex essentialibus oriuntur, sicut causa significatur per suum effectum, sicut bipes ponitur differentia hominis. Accidentia autem propria substantiarum immaterialium nobis ignota sunt, unde differentiae earum nec per se nec per accidentales differentias nobis significari possunt. Here is the wealth of human knowledge: it can grasp the essences of things. Here is its poverty: it can grasp these essences only by knowing the effects which stand as signs of their presence. This is very far from a naïve confidence in science, and teaches us that in a certain sense all human attempts to define and know consist in "saving the appearances." It is this awareness, of the perfect and comprehensively valid nature of knowledge which is nonetheless not exhaustive, nor certain under every aspect, which places St. Thomas far away from the banality and despair which sadly characterize so much of what passes for Christian philosophical and theological science in modern and contemporary times. A contrast between the passages on the nature of theological argument from the two Summae given above and the following passage from Karl Rahner's Foundations of Christian Faith is poignantly telling on this point: ... Even the scientific expert in theology can be competent in only one or the other of these disciplines at most. But he cannot be competent in all of the disciplines which per se would be necessary on a higher and second or further level of reflection if he had to confront his theology in an explicit and scientifically adequate way with all the questions and tasks of these disciplines... Such an attempt to proceed on a first level of reflection and in this way make the whole of Christianity thematic to some extent and to show its legitimacy can be labeled "pre-scientific" But anyone who does this must be asked whether anybody today can reflect on the totality of his existence in any other way thatn this "pre-scientific" way. We would have to ask him whether it is very sensible to take a ",scientific" attitude in an undertaking of this kind in view of the fact that no single individual can any longer master all of today's sciences. The Thomist is justified in pointing out here that such affirmations link theology much more closely to a particular and historically conditioned philosophical perspective than any of the schools
