Sermons from the Latins/Sermon 26
Low Sunday.
Rationalism.
"Jesus said to him: Be not faithless, but believing. Thomas answered: My Lord and my God" — John xx. 27, 28.
SYNOPSIS.
Ex. : I. Salutary doubt. II. Rationalism. III. Based on pride.
I. Truth : 1. According to rationalists. 2. According to Catholics. 3. Three stages.
II. Unreasonable: 1. Truth infinite. 2. Revelation possible and a fact. 3. Necessary.
III. Even natural truths: 1. Difficult 2. Danger of error. 3. Romans.
Per.: Practice of 1. Catholics. 2. Rationalists. 3. Inconsistency.
SERMON.
Brethren, the Apostle, Thomas, was the first sceptic or rationalist of Christian times. " Oh, happy doubt," exclaimed St. Gregory, " which removed all doubt and placed the fact of Our Lord's Resurrection beyond dispute." Would that one might say as much for later-day rationalism, whose effect invariably is indifference and infidelity. The doubting Thomas is one of the strongest pillars of the Christian Church; the modern rationalist is religion's most dangerous enemy. The rationalist in his pride of intellect rejects and ridicules the supernatural, while Thomas uses Nature to lift him up to God, saying: " Lord, I believe; Lord, help with evidence my unbelief." As Judas by despair was lost and Peter saved by penance, so the modern rationalist's ruin is his pride, and Thomas's salvation his humility, whereby he falls, not faithless but believing, at the Saviour's feet and cries: " My Lord and my God."
Brethren, strictly speaking, rationalists are those who deny the existence of revealable or revealed truths. But more widely and just as truly the name may be applied to all those who, while admitting revelation, reject from the word of God whatever, in their private judgment, is inconsistent with human reason. Thus, not only downright unbelievers, but all Protestants and in general all non-Catholics are rationalists. They deify reason, claiming there is no truth necessary for man to know which reason will not teach him, so that they take natural rather than supernatural science as their way to the truth and life everlasting. Catholics on the other hand hold that since God is truth, truth, like God, must be infinite; and it is only by following the truth that a soul can come to God. Now, on its way to truth and God, the soul passes through three stages, the state of nature, of grace, and of glory; through three antechambers before arriving at the Holy of holies. Now, each of these states has truths proper to itself, and the darkness which hides these truths from view is dense in the first state, denser in the second, and densest in the third. But God does not leave the soul in darkness. He gives her a light for her guidance proportioned to the darkness to be dispelled. In the first, the state of nature, He gives the light of reason to know natural truths; in the second, He gives her the still stronger light of grace to know supernatural truths and natural truths impervious to reason; and in the third, as St. John says, " The glory of God enlighteneth it and the Lamb is the lamp thereof." It is, therefore, only a few of the more natural and plainer truths that man can know by the feeble light of reason. With reason alone we can light only the tiny vestibule of the temple of truth, while the vast edifice beyond is shrouded in darkness. Hence, besides reason, we Catholics claim the necessity of another light, the light of the grace of faith in the revelations of God handed down to us in Holy Writ and the traditions of holy Church. Thus, we receive the Bible because it is the word of God, and we admit the truths taught us by the Church because Christ commissioned her to teach all nations all truth for all time under His infallible guidance, and whether we understand them or not we still accept them with childlike faith, remembering Our Lord's words: " He that believeth shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be condemned."
Brethren, such is the doctrine of the rationalist, such the Catholic doctrine. Now, I propose to show you that rationalism is irrational, unreasonable. Does our rationalist deny the existence of truths too deep for his reason to fathom? He cannot but admit it. He knows that God exists, that He is a being of infinite intelligence, and that the knowing power of every intellect has a proportionate knowableness in its proper object. The truth of God, then, is infinite. But our little rationalist knows all truth. His mind, therefore, is infinite and equal to God's, for otherwise he could no more know infinite truth than he could hold the ocean in the hollow of his hand. Or, if he modestly disclaims mental infinity but still maintains his power of knowing all truth, then he denies the infinity of truth and of God's intellect, and with it the very existence of God. To hold that truth is finite, therefore, is to hold that man is as infinite as God, or God as finite as man, which, in either case, is to deny that God exists at all. In the presence of such a conclusion, the rationalist will, I think, readily admit that in the infinite realm of truths there are, at least, some few his reason does not and never can know. This fact is all the more apparent, since there are hundreds of natural truths under our very eyes which we cannot explain. Who knows the nature of electricity? All the scientists who ever lived cannot trace to its source the power whereby I move my finger. Why, Aristotle, the light of Pagandom and the greatest mind the world has ever seen, declared that his reason in the presence of the all-true was as the eye of an owl directed at the midday sun.
Well, yes, hidden truths do exist, says our rationalist, but they could never be revealed. Why not, pray? Is it because God cannot reveal the truths of His mind? Man, if he have knowledge, can impart it to others. Cannot God do as much— He that came into the world to give testimony of the truth? Of what truth? Not of truths already known, certainly, but of hidden truths. To whom? To man, of course, and hence man must have been capable of receiving the truths revealed. He might not have been able to understand those truths, but he was able to realize their existence, their importance, and their consequences. For, remember that whereas we weigh human testimony by the consistency of the facts, we judge divine testimony by the authority of the witness, and the witness of whom I speak was infallible. So, it was possible for God to reveal those truths and for man to receive them. But did such revelation in fact take place? Beyond the shadow of a doubt, as every leaf of the Bible attests. It is vouched for in the inspired books of the Old Testament, which are the history of man and his intercourse with God from the beginning down to the Augustan Era. In three ways has God at times made known hidden truths to man: first, through his senses, as when angels in human form appeared to and conversed with Abraham, Jacob, and Gedeon; second, through his imagination, as when Pharao in the kine and ears of corn, seven fat and fair and seven lean and blighted, foresaw the seven years of plenty and of famine, or when Nabuchodonosor in his vision of the statue learned the ultimate triumph of the Church; and third, through his intellect, as in the case of Moses to whom God spoke (Num. xii.) not in vision or dream, but mouth to mouth. This last was that third heaven to which St. Paul was caught up in ecstasy. Christ had communicated with him through his senses on the road to Damascus; through his imagination amid the 'horrors of the shipwreck; and finally through his intellect when, whether in the body or out of the body, he knew not, he was caught up into paradise and heard secret words which it is not granted man to utter. Paul had sat, indeed, at the feet of Gamaliel, but what was that to the depths of the infused knowledge of God? Again, the fact of revelation is attested by the comparatively recent writers of the New Testament, by the Fathers of the Church,, and even by Pagan authors. It is because the Scriptures are the revealed word of God that we find in them the frequent recurrence of such expressions as: " The Lord spoke to Moses, saying:" or: "The word of the Lord came to me, saying: " or: "The revelation of Jesus Christ to His servant John," etc. St. Paul (Gal. i. 11) asserts the fact of revelation, saying emphatically: " I give you to understand, Brethren, that the Gospel which was preached by me is not according to man, for neither did I receive it of man, nor did I learn it; but by the revelation of God," and St. Peter indicates in a few words the primary author of all the books of both Testaments, saying: " Prophecy came not by the will of man at any time; but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost." On the other hand, the greatest geniuses of Pagan times, Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Cicero, etc., after long years of study and research succeeded only in involving themselves in inextricable doubts and difficulties concerning such fundamental verities as the existence of God and the immortality of the soul; so that the phenomenon of a Christian world in peaceful possession of these first principles of truth and morality, together with all they imply and entail, can be explained only on the hypothesis of a divine revelation having been made. Yet the nineteenth-century rationalist will deny the Bible to be the word of God; will deny that tradition holds revealed truth; will stand up before all the sublime geniuses that from the beginning have bowed their reason before revelation and tell them they were either fools or hypocrites! That is rationalism. Is it rational — is it reasonable?
But not only was the revelation of these truths possible; it was necessary also. For the truths of which we speak are vital truths, appertaining to the dearest interests of mankind — so that, ignorant of them, man could never hope to properly know, love and serve God here or be happy with Him hereafter. For these truths concern the existence and the natures of God and of man, their respective rights and obligations — God's dominion over man and man's duties to God, his neighbor, and himself. Now, many of these truths are entirely above and beyond reason, because they are entirely above and beyond Nature, to the study of which reason is confined. For how could reason find out that God is a spirit to be adored in spirit and in truth? How prove He is, at once, one and three? That the temporal Christ was the eternal God — that mortal man has an immortal soul — that bread, seemingly, is the living body of Christ — that an external sign is the source of inward grace? And yet rationalism holds that reason, though blind to all these necessary truths, is still self-sufficient. Is it rational — is it reasonable?
"But," says our rationalist, " reason could master, at least, some of these truths, such as the existence of God, the necessity of divine worship, the fact of an hereafter," etc. Still, we say, it was necessary for God to reveal even these, else see what would happen. Every child on attaining the use of reason would be bound, under pain of mortal sin, to begin the independent study of these extremely difficult truths; and whether mentally qualified or not, whether his parents could afford the expense or not, he would be obliged to study and study for years and years until he had thoroughly mastered them. Is such a life consistent with youthful levity? Where would be the time for secular education? Would not God be a tyrant to command such impossibilities? Again, even supposing all could afford to spend the best years of their lives in acquiring the knowledge of God and of natural religion, with what certainty would they cling to the knowledge acquired; with what zeal reduce it to practice? If reason errs, as it does, in simple matters, how much more liable is it to err in these loftier truths! And because these truths are hard, therefore, does reason sometimes lead me to one conclusion and my neighbor to another directly opposite. Now I am bound to accept the conclusions of reason — but which, my own or my neighbor's? Here, then, we would be, after all our years of study, as much in darkness and doubt as at the beginning. Nor is this all mere fiction — it is fact. Take, for example, the Roman Empire of long ago. The Romans had no revelation, and see where reason led them. They had as many gods as they had vices, while the virtues were as little known as was the unknown God. Their gods were criminals, worshipped with crime — Venus, with adultery; Apollo, with theft; and Jupiter, with the sacrifice of human victims. Mothers inhumanly slaughtered their babes. Among the young, murder and rape were daily occurrences. Wives were but slavish prostitutes, and the very best of the men were so bad, that, did they live to-day, they would be considered fit subjects for the gallows. These are some of the conclusions of rationalism. Are they rational — are they reasonable?
Brethren, we are all pilgrims in the desert of life, journeying onward to eternity; and revelation is to us a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, guiding us to the promised land. It is the star leading us to the Christ. Hence, we believe every truth of the Bible, every truth Christ taught, every truth taught by His Church — not because we understand them, but because we know they are the teachings of a God who can neither deceive nor be deceived. And when in doubt about any vital truth, ill-content with the judgment of fallible reason, we seek the decision of our infallible Church. Nor is this an insult to our reason. For to admit an ever so incomprehensible truth on the word of an infallible witness is itself an act of reason — to deny it would be unreasonable. The light of reason is perfected by the light of faith as is the candle by the electric light — and faith is perfected by glory as is the electric light by the noonday sun. Rationalists and Protestants, on the other hand, rejecting, or subjecting revelation to reason, are like a mariner on the high seas who should throw overboard his only reliable compass. Ah! no wonder that in dogmas they have woefully gone astray! No wonder that in morals they are daily coming nearer the ancient Greeks and Romans! Why, they have not even the merit of consistency. They pay to reason an unreasonable worship. They are rationalists and Protestants by ancestral prejudice. While clinging to the doctrine of private interpretation, they flood the world with scriptural tracts. Brethren, in the presence of revealed truth be ever ready to exclaim: " Yea, I believe; Lord, help my unbelief." Imitate not the doubting but the believing Thomas, and confess your Lord and your God, knowing that blessed is he that hath not seen and hath believed. Thus you may hope to see God by the light of reason and faith here, and by the light of glory hereafter. " For he that believeth shall be saved but he that believeth not shall be condemned."