Folia Theologica 20. (2009)
Barbour Hugh: The Cosmology of Catholic Worship: Pre-Socratic Sacraments? A Consideration by a disciple of St. Thomas Qauinas
20 BARBOUR, Hugh Responsio ad Obiectiones Now we proceed to the resolution of the objections. First of all, I will comment on a common thread found in the intellectual atmosphere of the loci of all three objections. Before I do so I would like to reiterate that the perspective of our objectors is certainly intentionally orthodox. It is very important to point out that since the Christian faith is not essentially linked to any philosophical system on account of its being revealed and accepted on the authority of God revealing, and not on human reasoning, we do not intend to accuse speculatively inadequate expositions of Christian truth of dogmatic error, but only to point out how badly served this revelation is when Christian thinkers do not avail themselves of the philosophical apparatus canonized by the great tradition. We Thomists, or better, we disciples of St Thomas, more than anyone else are consoled by the fact that the revelation of truth we profess in the baptismal creed is not bound to any, even the most perfect rational systems, since were it to be so we would be doomed to discouragement at the present and at many past epochs of theology, as it is, we are merely disedified from time to time at the neglect of riches so readily available. The story of the common thread in our objectors is a long story which I must present in brief résumé. Wearied by the bleak perspective of late medieval nominalism, the courageous minds of the post- Copernican world were eager to make profit from the vision of the cosmos afforded by the heliocentric system which had been vindicated. The old science had been discredited and so a new metaphysic based on new principles was sought. The Cartesian perspective eliminated everything from the natural world but quantity and thought, Leibniz attempted a new form of the old hylomorphism, but one which was equally and more deeply mathematical, the materialistic monism of Spinoza, the a priori categories and metaphysical moralizing of Kant, the likewise monistic dialectic of Hegel and his followers on the left and the right, the super-heroic tragic fideism of Kierkegaard, the orientalizing pessimism of Schopenhauer, the poetic restorationism of the Romantics, the fierce voluntaristic aestheticism of Nietzsche, the psychologism of Freud and Jung, the painstaking consideration of the essences of experiences of the Phenomenologists, the cultural and political projects of the Positivists. None of these modern systems brings new insights not considered by the Pre-Socratics and Sophists before
