Faith and Reason: A Comparative Analysis of Abū al-Muʿīn al-Nasafī and Thomas Aquinas on Intellect, Assent, and Free Will (original) (raw)
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Faith and Reason: A Comparative Analysis of Abū l-Muʿīn al-Nasafī and Thomas Aquinas on Intellect, Assent, and Free Will, 2023
This paper aims to explore the complex relationship between intellect, knowledge, and free will in the context of religious faith, īmān or fides. The paper focuses on the perspectives of two prominent theologians, Abū l-Muʿīn al-Nasafī (d. 508/1115) and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), from the Middle Ages. The study begins its investigation by looking into the aforementioned theologians’ ideas and interpretations related to the nature of religious faith. It then explores the specific roles assigned by al-Nasafī and Aquinas to intellect, assent, and free will in the act of faith. The article’s final section presents a comparative analysis of their perspectives, highlighting the similarities, differences, and potential tensions between their positions. The findings of this study suggest that Aquinas’ argument, which asserts that grounding faith in knowledge or evidence undermines human free will, may have certain problematic aspects. According to him, one necessarily assents to the proposition at hand if there is conclusive evidence. However, as for al-Nasafī, it appears that one can rely on evidence and exercise his/her free will in the act of faith if religious assent, taṣdīq or agnitio, is understood in a dual sense.
darulfunun ilahiyat
The purpose of this paper is to reveal the prevailing Christian interpretation of religious faith during the medieval period, using Augustine’s and Aquinas’ corpora as primary sources. This study is distinct in that it explores the reasoning behind why an act of faith by a Christian is regarded as morally praiseworthy. To this end, the paper begins with a preliminary investigation into the nature of faith as understood by these two thinkers. Following that, the question of whether reason should precede or follow faith will be scrutinised in a theoretical sense. The study will also explore the impact on human free will of God’s intervention in the act of faith, and whether faith can be considered an act of man or of God. The study will also consider whether it is possible to reconcile these perspectives or avoid conflicts between them. The findings of this study show that, according to the Christian interpretation, conclusive reasons cannot be used to justify religious faith, as they undermine or eliminate human free will. If evidence were to exist, it would no longer be a matter of free choice for an individual to believe but rather a matter of necessity. For faith to be considered morally praiseworthy, it must be caused by one’s own free will, not by conclusive evidence.
Lessons from Aquinas: A Resolution of the Problem of Faith and Reason. By Creighton Rosental
International Philosophical Quarterly, 2013
Among the many questions discussed by analytic philosophers few loom larger than that of the conditions that any belief must meet in order to be considered rational and justified. This question becomes especially acute in matters of religious belief Creighton Rosental joins a growing number of analytic thinkers who look to Thomas Aquinas for guidance on this matter. He finds, however, that many of these thinkers misunderstand Aquinas. Some say that Thomas justifies faith on the basis of evidence, such as proofs for the existence of God; others hold that Thomas roots faith in the will precisely because faith lacks evidence. Rosental proposes a different model: Aquinas's faith is basic and foundational, neither possessing nor needing evidence. Such a faith is rational and justified because, by divine grace, it possesses certitude. In the first chapter Rosental sets forth the terms, questions, and parameters of his discussion. His concem is not with the truth or falsity of Thomas's Christian beliefs ("truth compatibilism") but with the very rationality or irrationality of anyone believing them in the first place ("epistemic compatibilism"). Such a discussion of Thomas's beliefs, however, is complicated by the fact that he never explicitly addresses the issue of faith's epistemic compatibility with reason. Still, Rosental thinks that Thomas's account of faith and reason implicitly contains an answer to this question. Rosental articulates his account of Thomas's teaching on reason in the second chapter. In reasoning the mind draws from premises conclusions that are either necessary or contingent propositions. Such conclusions are either scientia (true and perfect knowledge demonstrated through causes) or opinion, which cannot be claimed to be such knowledge. The most crucial difference between scientia and opinion is the certitude that the conclusion cannot be otherwise in the former and its absence in the latter. This especially is the case when scientia is the result of a demonstration propter quid from cause to effect, but it also holds true for a demonstration quia from effect to cause. In both cases certitude renders such propositions epistemically responsible, just as its absence leaves opinion epistemically unjustified. In his third chapter Rosental turns to Thomas's account of Christian belief Rosental highlights Thomas's "Aristotelianized" teaching that faith is an epistemic state situated between scientia and opinion. Those with faith possess certitude in common with the former but, with the latter, they realize the complete absence of intelligible necessity in the proposition to which they assent. How can believers possess certitude about that which they cannot know? In one of the book's high water marks Rosental analyzes the "steps" involved in making the assent of faith. The intellect understands that what is proposed, though unseen, is good and so the will desires it; the will, primed by grace and charity, chooses it; this moves the intellect, illumined by the light of faith, to give firm and certain assent to it. Thus, though the mind does not see the truth of that to which it assents, it does "faith-see" that it is good to assent to the propositions revealed by God through His prophets. Faith-seeing, in short, is an act of the will and the intellect; certitude in this case comes solely from grace. "Veracity arguments," then, for the existence of God or for miracles confirming a prophet's preaching, play no role in the assent of faith. They reduce faith to opinion or demonstrations quia; demons, not Christians, believe on such bases. Still, Aquinas's account of faith is so stringent-loving God, moral reform, and belief in Church teachings-that perhaps few possess it.
Wisdom, Faith, and Reason in Aquinas
I shall first sketch briefly the epochal, indeed, millennial, challenge of Fides et Ratio. In a second section the important achievements of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas in mediating faith and reason through wisdom will be presented in order to show how we are to move, as the Holy Father says we must in the opening quotation, from phenomenon to foundations. Finally, the need for this wisdom at the dawn of the new millennium will be explored as contemporary cultures struggle with the dehumanizing nihilism, pragmatism, and historicism analyzed in the encyclical.
Conference draft of the article: "Intellectual Elitism and the Need for Faith in Maimonides and Aquinas," forthcoming: Anuario Filosófico, Vol. 48, no. 1, "Aquinas and the Abrahamic Traditions" (2015). Copyright © 2013-15 Francisco J. Romero Carrasquillo. All rights reserved. Abstract: In his Commentary on Boethius' De Trinitate 3.1, Aquinas cites Maimonides as giving five reasons for why faith is necessary for mankind. Yet when one turns to The Guide for the Perplexed 1.34, one immediately sees that Maimonides is actually giving five reasons for why the study of metaphysics, which he considers to be the ultimate path to human perfection, must be restricted to the learned and must be hidden from the unlearned masses. Interpreters tend to see Aquinas as therefore misappropriating Maimonides' thought, or in the words of one scholar, as "standing Maimonides on his head": his use of Maimonides is seen as a reversal (albeit a "benign reversal") of Maimonides' own thought. In this paper, however, I place Maimonides' text on the five reasons for concealing metaphysics within the context of his rational mysticism and compare it to Aquinas' own Christian mystical thought in an attempt to show that in his own mind Aquinas is not misquoting, reversing, or doing violence to Maimonides' text; rather, Aquinas is completing Maimonides' natural, rational mysticism with what he understands to be the supernatural perfection of the theological virtue of faith.
Law, Reason, Truth: Three Paradigmatic Problems Concerning Faith
By the second half of the eleventh century, in the Christian West, the theological doctrine of St. Anslem sought to re-establish the place of reason within the domain of faith. Anselm arrived at a possible re-enactment of this relation under the condition regulated by the principle fides quaerens intellectum -faith seeking reason. This paper is an attempt to explore not only the possible implications of this principle but to understand the internal logic which constitutes it and holds it together. It is the contention of this paper that this regulative principle (fides quaerens intellectum) could complete such a process of logically constituting itself through a violent forcing of thought which gathered and maintained within itself an anomy. This internal paradox produced a logical excess which at one hand threatened constantly to expose a crisis, inhabiting the very centre of the theological system it sought to build, but on the other hand it also became the very ground on which such a system constituted itself. To that extent this paper would try to understand the metaphysical forcing of this moment of crisis back into the theological system it sought to express and normalize at the same time.
Faith, reason, and charity in Thomas Aquinas's thought
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 2016
Aquinas’s thought is often considered an exemplary balance between Christian faith and natural reason. However, it is not always sufficiently clear what such balance consists of. With respect to the relation between philosophical topics and the Christian faith, various scholars have advanced perspectives that, although supported by Aquinas’s texts, contrast one another. Some maintain that Aquinas elaborated his philosophical view without being under the influence of faith. Others believe that the Christian faith constitutes an indispensable component of Aquinas’s view; at least when Aquinas focused on those statements that, though maintainable by mere reason, belong to the Christian revelation. In this essay I intend to show that the aforementioned perspectives can be reconciled on the basis of Aquinas’s concept of faith. If we do not limit ourselves to considering faith as the assent to the revealed truth, but also look at what leads the believer to assent—i.e., charity that unites the believer with God and is gratuitously conceded by God himself—then the relation between faith and reason appears to be twofold. On the one hand, the truths of faith cannot participate in the rational inquiry, because according to Aquinas faith lacks the evidence searched for by natural reason. On the other hand, since Aquinas holds that faith is the assent to the revelation due to the love for God that is granted by God himself, the believer will take faith as more certain than intellect and science, and the truths of faith will constitute the orientation and criterion of her/his rational investigation. The truths shall constitute orientation because the believer aims to confirm by reason what she/he already believes. They will also be criterion, because in case of a contradiction between rational arguments and revealed truths, reason must be considered mistaken and the rational investigation must start anew from the beginning.
St. Thomas Aquinas on Faith and Reason
St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa theologiae explained the relationship between faith and reason. His work in the Summa as well as in the Summa contra gentiles laid the groundwork for Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI to further expand this understanding in Fides et ratio and the Resenberg Address. This paper addresses how St. Thomas Aquinas influenced these and many other writers when dealing with synthesizing faith and reason for today's modern culture.