Are the 12 Condemned Propositions of 1924 Still Relevant? – Part 2

This is part two of a three-part series on the twelve condemned propositions of December 1924.

For Part 1 see here.

Proposition 5: Truth Is Defined by a Conformity with Life

In the immediate background of this condemned proposition was an argument about how to define truth. The traditional Scholastic definition from St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) said that truth is a conformity between what is in the mind, and what exists in reality (adaequatio rei et intellectus). Maurice Blondel (d. 1949) said that truth is a conformity between what is in the mind and what is in people’s lives (adaequatio realis mentis et vitae).

Aquinas’ definition insists on the objectivity of truth. A claim is true if and only if what is in the mind matches objective reality. The Vatican (and Roman theologians) read the claim that truth is a conformity between minds and lives as a claim that truth is a matter of subjectivity. (See Garrigou-Lagrange, Reality: A Synthesis of Thomist Thought, Chap. 57.) They read it as the claim that “nothing is ever settled or fixed,” because a claim is true only to the extent that people subjectively feel that it (currently) fits into their lives.

The problem of subjectivity is an old theological problem. Session 4 of the Council of Trent (1546) had rejected the right of people to (subjectively) determine the meaning of Scripture for themselves. In 1870 Vatican I reconfirmed the words of Trent, when it stated:

We renew that decree and declare… that in matters of faith and morals… that meaning of scripture must be held… which holy mother church… holds. (Dei Filius 2.8)

Writing in 1899, Pope Leo XIII explicitly rejected subjectivism, when he stated:

We renew our condemnation of those teachings of philosophy which…. lead… to universal skepticism… thus sacrificing to a radical subjectivism all… certainties… It is to be deeply regretted that this doctrinal skepticism, of foreign importation and Protestant origin, should have been received with so much favor. (Depuis Le Jour 15)

Subjectivism has continued to be a problem throughout the twentieth century. So, writing in 1998, Pope John Paul II explicitly reconfirmed Aquinas’ objective definition of truth. He said that:

Philosophy… [must] verify the human capacity to know the truth, to come to a knowledge which can reach objective truth by means of that adaequatio rei et intellectus to which the Scholastic Doctors referred. (Fides et Ratio 82)

Proposition 6: Arguments for God or Religion Have No Objective Validity

In the background of this condemned proposition are the issues raised by Immanuel Kant’s (d. 1804) antinomies, and the skepticism of his transcendental idealism. Kant claimed that humans could not know objective reality and so traditional arguments about the nature and existence of God could not be effective.

As Kant’s attacks focused upon what humans could know about objective reality, one response to them was to develop philosophical methodologies of immanence, which focused upon what humans could know in their subjectivity. This approach can be seen in the philosophy of Henri Bergson (d. 1941) and Maurice Blondel (d. 1949), as well as in the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl (d. 1938).

The problem with those kinds of (subjective) approaches is that they risked reducing philosophical and theological claims about objective reality to subjective psychological states. And if objective religious truths are just (changeable) subjective states, then how can the Church be right to teach that there are immutable creeds and dogmas?

In 1870 Vatican I had touched upon these issues, when it insisted on the validity of objective (external) arguments for God, while also rejecting an alternative appeal to subjective (internal) religious experiences. The Council said:

If anyone says that divine revelation cannot be made credible by external signs… and that men and women ought to be moved to faith only by each one’s internal experience or private inspiration: let him be anathema. (Dei Filius Canons 3.3)

It is essentially these same issues which were being reinforced in 1924, in the condemned proposition above.

Despite the Vatican’s rejection of certain types of appeals to subjectivity, theological interest in subjectivity continued in the transcendental Thomism(s) of Karl Rahner (d. 1984) and Bernard Lonergan (d. 1984).

At the same time, concerns about the risks of appeals to subjectivity also continued. So, in 1951 Pope Pius XII made a speech on The Proofs for the Existence of God, which explicitly defended the role of objective reasoning. The issue also recurred at Vatican II, in 1965, where the Council explicitly reiterated the importance of (objective) proofs for the existence of God. Repeating the teaching of Vatican I, the Council said:

As a sacred synod has affirmed, God, the beginning and end of all things, can be known with certainty from created reality by the light of human reason. (Dei Verbum 6)

And the issue was still topical enough in 1998 for Pope John Paul II to return to it. He stated:

By discoursing on the data provided by the senses, reason can reach the cause [and]…origin of all perceptible reality. (Fides et Ratio 22)

Proposition 7: Truth Presupposes God

In the background of this condemned proposition is a version of Ontologism. Loosely linked to ideas in the thinking of St. Augustine (d. 430), the Ontologism developed by Vincenzo Gioberti (d. 1852) and Antonio Rosmini (d. 1855) argued that the human mind had a direct and immediate intuition of God. That meant that each time people used their minds to think about anything at all, they had a kind of background awareness of the existence of God. Denying the existence of God was therefore a form of dishonesty.

This philosophical approach was attractive to many theologians in the nineteenth century. However, as it encouraged people to look within their own minds to find the truth (about God), this approach tended to slip into versions of rationalism. It ended up looking distinctly similar to the view that Pope Pius IX condemned in 1864, which he stated as claiming that:

All the truths of religion proceed from… human reason; hence reason is the ultimate standard… of all truths. (Syllabus of Errors 4)

Another set of problems raised by Ontologism was that it directed people to look into their subjectivity, and their inner consciousness to find God and Revelation. In the early years of the twentieth century the Vatican was defending the objectivity of religion against aspects of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s (d. 1834) liberal Protestant interpretation of religion, which viewed religion as a matter of subjectivity and consciousness. This led the Vatican to condemn the following propositions in 1907:

Revelation could be nothing else than the consciousness man acquired. (Lamentabili 20)

Modern Catholicism can be reconciled with true science only if it is transformed into a… broad and liberal Protestantism. (Lamentabili 65)

One of the core issues in the condemnations of 1924 is the problem of subjectivity. We can see that issue in the background of previous propositions 4, 5, 6 and it is also present as an underlying feature in this proposition 7.

By the mid-twentieth century Ontologism had largely died out in mainstream Catholic theology. When Pope John Paul II referred to it in his 1998 encyclical, it was just to note it in passing, as an example of a view which had been previously rejected by the Church (Fides et Ratio 52).

Although Ontologism itself is no longer a mainstream viewpoint in modern philosophy, faint echoes can be seen in modern views about Presuppositionalism and Reformed Epistemology. Both those philosophies differ to Ontologism, however they nevertheless share a fundamental assumption that the existence of God is in some way “obvious” and does not need to be separately argued for.

Proposition 8: The Human Need for God Makes Arguments Irrelevant

This condemned proposition is arguing for a version of what has come to be known as Psychologism. That is the view that (subjective) human psychological needs explain why people commit to Christianity, and so (objective) arguments for God are essentially irrelevant.

Versions of that view can be found in the writings of Ludwig Feuerbach (d. 1872), Karl Marx (d. 1883) and Friedrich Nietzsche (d. 1900).

The problem with Psychologism is that while it may indeed explain why some people (subjectively) follow Christianity, it nevertheless completely side steps the fundamental question of whether Christianity’s claims are (objectively) true. In taking that approach, Psychologism effectively views Christianity as if it merely has a utilitarian role to play in meeting people’s subjective needs.

One of the implications of that view is that if the primary role of religion is utilitarian, then the Church should be willing to constantly change dogmas and creeds in order to meet the changing subjective needs of people.

In 1907 the Vatican identified that kind of utilitarian model of religion as a facet of Modernism. Pope Pius X said:

The modernist apologists… endeavor… to persuade their non-believer that… in the very depths of his nature… lie hidden the need… for… Catholicism. (Pascendi 37)

Part of the reason for the Vatican’s rejection of a “needs”-based model of religion, is that it can imply a disastrous ethical model of religion. If religion need only be “useful” then that can lead to an “end justifies the means” mentality, where deceitful doctrines could be acceptable if they made religion more “useful.” Thus, one of the Modernist tenets which the Vatican condemned in 1907 was the claim that:

The Evangelists recorded, not so much things that are true, as things which, even though false, they judged to be more profitable for their readers. (Lamentabili 14)

The issues of Psychologism have continued to be discussed throughout the twentieth century. They typically occur in Philosophy of Religion discussions as atheistic arguments to explain away religion.

When John Paul II reflected on these kinds of issues in 1998, he effectively dismissed them as a fundamental misunderstanding of what religion was about. He thought that Psychologism misconstrued religion as existing merely to meet subjective human needs, instead of recognizing that religion raises objective questions about a reality which is independent of human subjectivity. He said:

Theology… presupposes… a philosophy of the human being… which has objective truth as its foundation. (Fides et Ratio 66)

The inspired authors intended to formulate true statements, capable, that is, of expressing objective reality. (Fides et Ratio 82)

Proposition 9: An ‘Extrinsicist’ Apologetics Is Weak and Childish

One of the key words in this condemned proposition is the word “extrinsic.” Blondel used that word in his 1904 booklet on History and Dogma to describe the traditional Scholastic proofs for God’s existence, as they argued from the objective external world which was extrinsic to a subjective human consciousness.

In the background of this condemned proposition is also a controversy about whether Higher Criticism (or “the historical-critical method”) has shown that the Bible is not historically accurate. That position was argued by Adolf von Harnack (d. 1930) and it appeared in the writings of Modernists such as Alfred Loisy (d. 1940).

The implications of Harnack’s viewpoint were very serious for theology. The Church claimed that Biblical miracles (such as the Resurrection) provided “extrinsic” objective historical evidence, which proved the truth of Jesus’ claims. This is because no human can resurrect a dead body, so the Resurrection must have been a work of God, which thus confirmed divine approval for Jesus’ teachings.

If the Bible could no longer be trusted as a reliable source of evidence, then that meant that arguments based on Biblical miracles could be criticized (in the words of the proposition above) as “weak and childish.”

The question of the historical reliability of the Bible has been a theological issue ever since the rise of scholarly Biblical studies in the nineteenth century. In 1907 the Vatican condemned the following proposition which denied the historicity of John’s Gospel:

John claims for himself the quality of witness concerning Christ. In reality, however, he is only a distinguished witness of the Christian life… at the close of the first century. (Lamentabili 18)

The issues were still being raised in 1924, when this condemned proposition 9 was published. They were still a live issue in 1965 when Vatican II met, and so the Council directly commented, stating:

The four Gospels… whose historical character the Church unhesitatingly asserts, faithfully hand on what Jesus Christ… really did and taught…They… [tell] us the honest truth about Jesus. (Dei Verbum 19)

The historicity of the Gospels continues to be an issue in contemporary theology. We can see this in Pope Benedict XVI’s 2011 book, Jesus of Nazareth, which accepted that some information in the Gospels may have been ordered and arranged to suit the needs of the first-century Christian community, but it also insisted strongly that that does not mean that the Gospels are not recording genuine historical facts.

To be continued in:

Are the 12 Condemned Propositions of 1924 Still Relevant? – Part 3