The image of an acorn and an oak tree is often invoked to describe the growth of the Church from its humble beginnings to today. The image is meant to convey the unity of the Church separated by nearly two millennia, but it is also helpful because it transmits a second, often overlooked aspect. To grow from acorn to oak, the tree needs not only water, but must grow within the soil it is planted by assimilating the various nutrients found in the ground. Watered by the Spirit, the Church too grew out of the soil of not just the Jewish faith, but also the Hellenic culture in which it was planted. Not only were the Jewish people chosen to bring us the Messiah, but the Roman Empire was the chosen soil from which the Church would grow. And it would grow by assimilating the nutrients found within that culture, most especially its reliance on Greek philosophy.
St. Justin Martyr was the first to recognize this. Born a generation after the destruction of Jerusalem at the turn of the second century, Justin was a pagan living in Samaria. Despite his beginnings, God had placed a great desire in Justin’s heart for wisdom. He was the precursor to St. Augustine. He sought out masters in every school of philosophy in his day—Stoics, Paripatetics (Aristotelians), Pythagoreans, and Platonists—but it was not until he met an old man while walking on the beach one day that he found Truth. This man taught Justin about “the Word made flesh” and “straightway a flame was kindled in [his] soul; and a love of the prophets, and of those men who are friends of Christ, possessed me; and whilst revolving his words in [his] mind, [he] found this philosophy alone to be safe and profitable. Thus, and for this reason, [he was] a philosopher” (Dialogue with Trypho, 8).
The love of wisdom is what made him cling to the “true philosophy” and to open a school of philosophy in Rome. But it was God’s Providential love for mankind that placed the philosopher saint in an age of philosopher kings. Rome put the brakes on its decline when two philosopher emperors came to power—Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius. God hit the accelerator on the spread of the Church by inspiring Justin to write two apologies for the faith, one to each of the emperors. Far from apologizing for the Faith, St. Justin was showing how sorry the lover of wisdom would be to dismiss the Faith without trying it against reason.
St. Justin and the Logos
In was in his Second Apology that St. Justin left his most lasting contribution to the Church. He laid the cornerstone upon which the edifice of Faith and Reason could be constructed. And that cornerstone was Christ, Logos Incarnate. He told the Emperor that,
“[o]ur teachings appear to be greater than every human teaching by the entire rational principle having become Jesus Christ who appeared for our salvation, in body, reason (logos), and soul. Whatever things were well spoken by philosophers and legislators, they did so by participating in the Logos either by discovery or theory. But since they did not know the Logos completely who is Christ, they often said contradictory things.”
Second Apology, 10
The Greeks believed that the logos was the principle of reason that governed and ordered the universe. Christians professed the same thing, but rather than seeing it as some abstract principle, the Logos was God who took flesh in Jesus Christ. St. Justin was merely echoing what he had heard in the Prologue of St. John’s Gospel. “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and the Logos was God” (Jn 1:1). But St. Justin took it a step further and said that all of the truths found outside of direct revelation were merely participations in the Logos. For truth cannot contradict Truth. Clement of Alexandria, a generation later, would speak of the prophetic power of philosophy that “was given to the Greeks directly and primarily, till the Lord should call the Greeks. For this was a schoolmaster to bring ‘the Hellenic mind,’ as the law, the Hebrews, ‘to Christ.’ Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the way for him who is perfected in Christ” (Stromata, I, V).
When we speak of the edifice of Faith and Reason we immediately fast forward to our own days where the two appear to be in constant conflict. But we need to linger a little longer in the early days in order to see the contemporary conflict correctly. In the designs of divine Providence everything always happens right on time. The time was right for St. Justin because the Church as it moved away from Jerusalem towards Athens would need to be able to explain the Faith in terms readily understood. The time was right because the Church would need a language to defend the interpretation of Revelation from the coming onslaught of heretics. Finally, the time was right because philosophy needed to be purified and elevated to assume its proper role as God’s prophet.
We speak so much of faith and reason, but what made what St. Justin said so profound is the fact that he shows faith in reason. If it is through the Logos that all things are made, then “there is nothing which God the Maker of all has not provided, disposed, ordained by reason—nothing which he has not willed should be handled and understood by reason” (Tertullian, On Repentance, 1). What the Early Church discovered is not only that there is an observable order to the universe, but that human reason, as a participation in the Logos, is a reliable instrument for observing the universe. Prior to this time either the world was governed by capricious gods or else there was a pantheistic “personalization” of nature that left each thing under its own control. In either regard, without faith, human reason remained handcuffed.
Once Christianity corrected Greek metaphysics, then physics could emerge. It is only within the Christian conception of the Universe and of mankind that anything remotely resembling science and technology can emerge. That is why it is absurd to attempt to put faith and reason in conflict with each other. Their marriage is based on a inherent complementarity. Any attempt to tear asunder what God has joined will end up destroying both.
The Enemies of Faith and Reason
Nevertheless, there are two schools in the modern world that have granted an imprimatur on their bill of divorce—the Enlightenment and Protestantism.
The Enlightenment is rooted in an absolute exaltation of human reason. Without anything to purify it however faith in reason is lost. Unable to bear the weight, we speak of Progress without reference to what it is we are progressing towards. Progress without an endpoint, an endpoint given by Faith, is just aimless wandering. Reason yields its crown to feeling and a real Dark Ages is sure to emerge.
On the opposite extreme is the fideism that is marked by Protestantism. Martin Luther hated philosophy, especially Scholastic philosophy. But because every man has a philosophy whether they know it or not, he was a nominalist. The world is just a collection of individual things without any real relation to each other. Creation has nothing to tell us about God and faith and sola scriptura are the only means by which we know God. Of course, there are no ways to understand, explain or defend the content of faith so that all that really matters is the sincerity of what you believe and not what you actually believe. You can believe anything as long as it is somewhere in the Bible. Faith ultimately is destroyed.
It is not a coincidence that both these schools of thought have a common enemy, the Catholic Church. We should not be surprised then that the Catholic Church is the lone defender of not only the true Faith, the same Faith that St. Justin Martyr earned his moniker defending, but also human reason. And just as she stubbornly upholds Our Lord’s admonition about divorce between a man and woman, so does she keep Faith and Reason wedded.