Like most faculty in my department, I am tasked with teaching (on a rotational basis) an introductory undergraduate course called “Faith, Reason, and Culture.” This course can be approached in different ways, depending on the interests and strengths of the professor. Typically, I begin by focusing on the rise of modern atheism. I do so partly as a way of confounding expectations, partly as a way of confronting the so-called “elephant in the room,” namely, that many students are not even sure if God exists, much less whether or not Christian revelation is meaningful or true. So, first, we discuss Schopenhauer, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, followed by prominent contemporary atheists such as Richard Dawkins. Then, after an analysis of where the “death of God” leaves theology in general and Christianity in particular, we turn to the discipline of “natural” or “philosophical” theology. The goal here is to explore the claim of the First Vatican Council (1869-70): “God…can be known with certainty in the light of human reason.” This statement entails asking three fundamental metaphysical questions:
Why is there something rather than nothing?
What is really real?
What makes God, God?
These puzzling and surprisingly subtle questions have long been taken for granted in the Western intellectual tradition. As David Bentley Hart writes in the excellent The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (2013):
The beginning of all philosophy, according to both Plato and Aristotle, lies in the experience of wonder. One might go further and say that the beginning of all serious thought—all reflection upon the world that is not merely calculative or appetitive—begins in a moment of unsettling or delighted surprise. … It is the sudden awareness that no mere fact can possibly be an adequate explanation of the mystery in which one finds oneself immersed at every moment.
And yet, a recent exchange with a student brought home the possibility that we are being conditioned to ignore these ineluctable mysteries. When asked whether the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” had given pause for thought, this student replied: “Why would it? It’s not like it can be answered.” I thought this was an honest response, albeit one that also betrays an immersion in the world of technology—of achieving practical results—rather than in “the mystery in which one finds oneself at every moment.” As both atheism and religious disaffiliation continue to grow in American and Western life, a deep irony has come into view. Despite the efforts of figures such as Nietzsche, atheism has not proven more rationally or emotionally persuasive than theism. It’s just harder and harder for many to understand why theism matters at all.
From The Discovery of God (Sur les chemins de Dieu, 1956) by Henri de Lubac: “One cannot sever the mind’s relation to the Absolute…without destroying the mind itself. … Unless we are to close the door to all philosophy worthy of the name, we cannot refuse to acknowledge that ‘basic experience’—the presence of nonconceptual being to consciousness which is common to the philosopher and to all human beings.”
Reading the exchange with the student and the response "it can't be answered" ... reminded me of the wonderful passage in "Philosophical Fragments" where SK/JC talks about "the passion that wills its own downfall" in attempting to think a paradox which seems unthinkable. The passion there ... that's the unsettling surprise and wonder, in Aristotle and Plato too, isn't it? I haven't read the DBH book but lots of people recommend Hart. (I'm skeptical but I have to be open to persuasion on that)
Love the David Bentley Hart quote. It Is “wonder” that helps me have legitimate discussions with my kids, who all wonder and doubt theism. The get that nothimg can explain the mystery of what we have today.