"Lean not upon thy own prudence": David Tracy On Faith And Theology (original) (raw)

All men desire to know the causes of things and seek to understand the ground for what they do not fully grasp in their knowledge. And yet, due to the limitations and weakness of our finite corporeal nature, no one is capable all alone to know the deepest causes and foundations of reality without relying in some way upon the help and guidance of other men. And so, all must rely to some extent upon others so as to gather the information and knowledge necessary for a fullness of life. Not being present in all times or places and not grasping all possible conclusions in our knowledge, we must rely upon the testimony of others for what is beyond our comprehension. This is what it means to believe and, in the context of religion, that in which one believes is called “revelation.” Faith, then, is “a believing response to God’s revealing word” which is based on a “prior act of revelation on God’s part.” Without such revelation, faith would have no basis and no object. Thus, “revelation is seen as foundational to the religious life of the individual, to the mission of the Church, and to the method of theology.” And it is by an act of supernatural faith in God’s revelation that the Christian achieves a true fullness of life and ultimate consummation in the life to come. In contrast to this supernatural view of revelation lies the thesis of David Tracy who sees the truly “‘authentic’ person” not as one who achieves fullness in the life to come through faith in God’s revealing word, but as one who is committed above all else to the full affirmation of the ultimate significance of our lives in this world. Such a fundamental commitment can be described as a faith, i.e., as a basic orientation or attitude which determines one’s cognitive beliefs and one’s individual ethical actions. The most basic expression of such faith, moreover, is probably best described as the faith of secularity: that fundamental attitude which affirms the ultimate significance and final worth of our lives, our thoughts, and actions, here and now, in nature and in history.” The belief, then, and faith of the theologian is limited to the temporal secular realm for Tracy while for Dulles and the first Vatican council, it is a supernatural virtue whereby we believe in the things that God reveals, not because it accords with natural reason, “but because of the authority of God himself who reveals them.” For Tracy, however, faith excludes the supernatural, and thus is something that can be shared by both secularists and Christians: "The modern theologian . . . finds that his basic faith, his fundamental attitude towards reality, is the same faith shared implicitly or explicitly by his secular contemporaries. No more than they, can he allow belief in a ‘supernatural’ realm of ultimate significance or in a supernatural God who seems, in the end, indifferent to the ultimate significance of our actions." Faith, then, for Tracy, is a fundamentally natural phenomenon, committed as it is to finding man’s ultimate purpose and meaning in this life, here and now. So, even though the theologian might have faith in God, that faith is only one that is in complete accordance with what can be known through nature and common experience. My purpose in this paper is to lay out the consequences of Tracy’s understanding of faith, and in particular how it affects his position on the nature and method of theology. Since Dulles is one of the more critical reviewers of Tracy’s work, I have found it helpful to include him in the conversation and to use him as a foil in contrast to the views of the professor from Chicago.8 In my exposition I will first look at Tracy’s views on the sources of theology, then, how this affects his understanding of the nature and method of theology, and finally I will examine what he sees is the relation of theology to the Church and modern science.