FOS COMMISSION: JOHN TAYLOR 10

In the year 2010, the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal William Levada, authored a little-known letter entitled “The Urgency of a New Apologetic for the Church in the 21st Century.”[1] 

Authored in response to the meteoric rise of New Atheism Levada’s letter offers three key observations on what a new Christian Apologetics, for the 21st Century, could and should look like. These observations can be condensed and outlined as follows: 

1. Christian Apologetics must recover the relationship between Faith and Reason. 

2. Christian Apologetics must engage the world in three different forms: Beauty, Rational Argument and Worship.

3. Christian Apologetics must be humane and respectful.[2]

While I greatly admire Cardinal Levada’s efforts to articulate a renewed apologetics in response to the growing unbelief in God, at the same time, I cannot help but wonder whether his approach is the best strategy for dealing with this situation.

Without any doubt, Levada is right that a new Christian apologetics must engage the world through beauty, rational argument, worship and respect. With that aspect of his response, I have no difficulty. Instead, my difficulty with Levada’s response lies principally with his first point: namely, that it is a lack of compatibility between faith and reason which is preventing certain people from believing in God.[3] 

As defined classically “reason” refers to syllogistic argumentation.[4] What this means is that reason primarily deals with facts and infers step-by-step to assent, that is infers step-by-step to the agreement of a conclusion. For example, the syllogism that: All As are Bs. C is A. Therefore, C is B, is an instance of good reasoning as it follows a step-by-step inference rule to reach a verdict.[5]

Now, the counterpart and complement to reason, possessed by all but acknowledged by a stalwart few, is a mental faculty known traditionally as “the intellect”. Unlike reasoning, which proceeds syllogistically, an act of intellection grasps the truth by way of direct perception. So, for example, I may perceive that 2 + 2 = 4 without engaging in any syllogistic argumentation or providing a formal proof of this matter. Nevertheless, an assent to a proposition by way of the intellect can also be reached through a “cumulation of probabilities”.[6] For Newman this cumulation is known as an “informal inference”[7], and while an “informal inference” can strictly speaking be considered a syllogism, the faculty which takes us from a cumulation of probabilities to a rigid assent can only be an act of direct perception emanating from the intellect. [8] Newman calls this act “the illative sense”.[9] We shall return to this crucial concept of Newman’s in a short moment.

Getting back to the question of God’s existence, today, the facts that should point people towards God, and ground all the classic arguments for His existence, remain substantially the same as in yesteryear. In other words, the universe is still contingent, still contains design, and is still intelligible to the human mind! Perhaps, the only difference between the past and today is that these facts are now usually couched in the language of formal science and abstract mathematics. Although, as we have seen, the contemporary scientific presentation of these facts can at times be wildly inaccurate as well as completely misinterpreted!

With that being said, given the essential constancy of the facts about the cosmos, the question remains as to why God’s existence is so much more controversial today than in the past. Why, if God is such an obvious fact is He so difficult for today’s sceptics to see? 

As with any question of such complexity, the answer is composed of many moving parts and difficult to pinpoint with precision. For not only is this unbelief rooted in intellectual misunderstandings, but it also finds its origins in worldly distortions.

Nevertheless, for my money, the main intellectual roadblock thwarting people from believing in God is that people’s capacity to perceive God through the natural world with their intellect has been greatly diminished—perhaps even—totally incapacitated.

In other words, the fundamental problem is not so much that people can no longer construct a syllogistic argument for God’s existence, but that they have lost the ability to perceive Him in the first place. It is this prior failure of perception that renders the traditional arguments for God’s existence ineffective, or even irrelevant, to so many. For these arguments can seem rather like being presented with a proof that 2 + 2 = 4 without first having any intuitive grasp of the truth that the proof seeks to establish.

So, contra Levada, what we face is not so much a crisis of faith and reason as a crisis of faith and the intellect itself!

Now intriguingly, the very idea driving this crisis is precisely the one we have sought to challenge throughout this series by drawing on the work of Wolfgang Smith. Namely, the utterly implausible notion that we inhabit a lifeless cosmos in which everything that is true, meaningful, or beautiful can ultimately be reduced to “atoms and void.” In contemporary metaphysics, this position is known as reductive materialism, and it incapacitates the intellect in two fundamental ways.

First, by undermining our ability to trust the intellect itself. For if the world is truly nothing more than atoms in motion, how can we trust the intellect to apprehend anything beyond the merely syllogistic? Second, by effectively exorcising from the cosmos those realities that the intellect encounters precisely because they are irreducible. These include such realities as beauty, encountered through colours and sounds, as well as the irreducible wholeness within scientific theories.

However, there is an antidote to this, and it is rooted in both Cardinal Newman’s Illative Sense and Wolfgang Smith’s metaphysics (which in turn supports the latter). As will become apparent, when these two bodies of thought are brought together, they offer precisely the kind of New Apologetics that Cardinal Levada was searching for—but this time grounded firmly in the intellect.

We will now explore, in general terms, how this new approach to apologetics might work. 

In general Cardinal Newman’s Illative Sense underpinned by Wolfgang Smith’s metaphysics can help form a new apologetics for the Church by restoring trust in the often unconscious processes that lead people to believe in God.

As Newman himself acknowledges it is through the “cumulation of probabilities, independent of each other, arising out of the nature and circumstances of the particular case which is under review; probabilities too fine to avail separately, too subtle and circuitous to be convertible into syllogisms, too numerous and various for such conversion, even were they convertible”[10] that people come to embrace unsensed truths such as the existence of God. 

Put differently, the mind does not arrive at assent through a rational calculation in which it consciously weighs and aggregates probabilities. But, instead, sifts through these probabilities and arrives at assent according to a supra-rational mode of judgment. (What Newman calls the Illative Sense.)

For example, an individual might assent to the proposition that “ghosts exist” through a unique blend of personal experiences and pondering accumulating evidence that challenges scientific materialism. Considered purely as a rational calculation of probabilities, perhaps through Bayes’ theorem, this evidence might not yield a sufficiently high probability to warrant belief in the aforesaid proposition. However, for the individual, these probabilities may signify something deeper. Since, the unique colouration between their personal experiences and the limitations of scientific inquiry could disclose something that cannot be fully articulated in propositional or syllogistic terms but which, nevertheless, prompts assent to the relevant proposition.

Now when it comes to God, in practice, “the probabilities” that sway people to believe in His existence are not materialistic but more so immaterial. 

From my experience it seems people are less convinced that God exists by hearing some arcane fact about the design of the atom or the cell[11] but more so by encountering the transcendent or ineffable. Perhaps it is through natural beauty, wholeness, music, or the grandeur of Church architecture that the soul is “lifted up” and becomes more receptive to believe in God. 

In Newman’s terms these encounters with the transcendent function as “probabilities” which sway people to believe in God. However, what seems to prevent people, perhaps subconsciously, from embracing these probabilities that mark the transcendent is again the lie of materialism. For time and time again, we are told that any such experiences must be ignored because, in truth, they are nothing more than atoms jiggling about. We cannot, in other words, trust the transcendent or any non-syllogistic conclusions that we draw from it.

Nevertheless, it is precisely at this juncture that Wolfgang Smith’s metaphysics comes to save the day! By restoring trust in both the transcendent and the irreducible mode of discerning it, e.g. Cardinal Newman’s Illative Sense, Smith’s work naturally facilitates belief in the existence of God.

Let us see how!

As we have seen, from the beginning of this series, Wolfgang Smith’s metaphysics helps to convincingly resolve some of the most difficult problems in the metaphysics of science: from the measurement problem[12] to the binding problem.[13] In doing so Smith introduces, or lends credibility, to all of the transcendent notions relevant to guiding people to believe in God. For example, natural beauty automatically gets reintroduced into the cosmos through his resolution of the measurement problem. And non-reductive modes of knowing, such as the illative sense, get reintroduced through Smith’s resolution of the binding problem.

In a single masterstroke, Smith appears to have furnished a compelling account of how people come to believe in God. Transcendent experiences, and the illative sense through which we apprehend their significance, can no longer be so easily dismissed. For these are not merely vestiges of a supposedly primitive worldview but, rather, as Smith’s analysis suggests, they are integral elements to resolving several outstanding problems in modern science, lending them a newfound intellectual credibility. As a result, the atheist can no longer afford to ignore them.

In addition to supporting the illative sense and the transcendentals, it acts upon, Smith has also introduced what might be termed a “new grammar” for the illative sense and in turn a “new grammar” for the new apologetic.

As Cardinal Newman writes the illative sense acts upon “wholes”.[14] First by reaching as John Hick says “convictions as a thinking, feeling, and willing unity”.[15] This statement is further backed up by Newman himself who recounts that in converting to Catholicism “he was moved as a whole man to this conclusion, rather than by the persuasion of paper logic”.[16] 

Second, by acting on the “on the whole mass of converging probabilities”.[17]  Assent, therefore, is not reached through a mechanical calculation of independent probabilities, as might be achieved by an application of Bayes’ theorem. But rather by noticing irreducible interconnections between these properties and patterns “too fine” that inexpressibly point towards a conclusion. 

At face value this wholeness which Newman references bears a remarkable resemblance to the irreducible wholeness central to Smith’s own work. 

Therefore, in talking about a New Apologetic, it could prove remarkably useful to do so in Smithian terms. Perhaps framing matters in terms of how man as an IW moves towards God and through encountering irreducible wholeness in nature. Of course, such terminology may prove exotic to the lay person, but from an academic and metaphysical standpoint could be extraordinarily useful!

Bibliography:

Berard, Bruno. (2018). Unmasking AI. https://philos-sophia.org/unmasking-ai/?srsltid=AU7gw4UK0ur0UisxDKJJmEQEdWHcRyRxatIoxRsD4t-yhFni93N9CqK- 

Hick, John (1988). Faith and knowledge (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.

Levada, William. (2010) ‘The urgency of a new apologetics for the Church in the 21st century’, The Holy See, 29 April. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20100429_levada-new-apologetics_en.html  

Newman, John Henry (1895). Apologia pro vita sua: Being a history of his religious opinions (New ed.). Longmans, Green.

Newman, John Henry. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Longmans, Green, and Co., 1903. Newman Reader, National Institute for Newman Studies, https://www.newmanreader.org/works/grammar/index.html 

Smith. Wolfgang. (2023). Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology. [PSQ] Second Edition. Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation. 

Smith, Wolfgang. (2005). The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key (TQE). Edition 3 Hillsdale, N.Y.: Sophia Perennis.

[1] See Levada, 2010

[2]See Levada, 2010

[3] As Levada writes on the New Apologetic: “I hope I can take for granted that it will have its scientific basis in a renewed fundamental theology, where faith and reason, credibility and truth, are explored as necessary foundations of the Catholic Christian faith.” (See, Levada, 2010)

[4] Berard, 2018, Unmasking AI

[5] Berard, 2018, Unmasking AI

[6] Newman, Grammar of Assent, P.288

[7] Newman, Grammar of Assent, P.288

[8] For example, I may assent to the conclusion that there is a President of the United States. I may have never met the President but all the probabilities suggest that there is, so my Illative Sense assents to that conclusion

[9] Newman, Grammar of Assent, P.343

[10] Newman, Grammar of Assent, P.288

[11] This is not to say that design in the material can have no impact in swaying people towards God. But rather that it is not the most convincing piece of evidence for some, at least

[12] See Smith, TQE, Chapter 3

[13] See Smith, PSQ, Part III Chapter 3

[14] Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1865), Part VI

[15] Hick, Faith and Knowledge, P.71 

[16] Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1865), Part VI

[17] Newman, Grammar of Assent, P.288