Folia Theologica 17. (2006)

Hugh Barbour: Salvare Apparentia

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H. BARBOUR

physical causes "beyond nature," God and the separated substances, are inseparably linked to this model. The new post-Copernican cosmology, and all the more, contemporary post-Newtonian physics have rendered this doctrine utterly obsolete.

Now if this model is obsolete, it cannot make current claims to provide a philosophical ancilla theologiae for the exposition of revealed truth, since its probative value has been irreparably undermined. The analogies underlying the theology of the Summa theologiae have been found to be naïve, if brilliant attempts to "save the appearances" of the universe from the perspective of the unaided human eye looking out from the surface of the earth. Thus a new philosophical perspective must be found to fulfill the need for a credible intellectus fidei.

Modern Christian philosophy from Malebranche to Maréchal, from Christian Wolff to those whom your compatriot the great Hungarian Benedictine Stanley Jaki calls, with justifiable malice, the "Aquikantians" tells the story of the various attempts to accomplish the Herculean-Augean task of providing a new handmaid for the Queen of Sciences.

IV The Sed Contra from Authority

But now come the sed contra from John Paul II, from Vladimir Lossky, and—surprise—Joseph Ratzinger.

First sed contra: John Paul II, as supreme doctor of the Christian world has recommended as models of the interface between philosophy and theology, their circular and mutual influence and enrichment, the work of Florensky and Lossky. What do these men say of the post-copernican crisis of Christian philosophy arid theology? Hear now the passage which so struck me in my youth from Vladimir Lossky's The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. In the chapter five, entitled Created Being he writes—I will quote at length—:

"In the face of the vision of the universe which the human race has gained since the period of the renaissance, in which the earth is represented as an atom lost in infinite space amid innumerable other worlds, there is no need for theology to change anything whatever in the narrative of Genesis; any more than it is its business to be concerned over the question of the sal-