Copyright © Colin Hamer 1968, 2000
The way in which Professor Flew2 moves towards the question of G-d is more congenial to the Catholic than perhaps the approach of Barthian theology. The First Vatican Council inclines the believer to fall in with the idea that for the commitment of faith to be in any way reasonable, there ought to be some reason or other for embarking on this venture, and for launching out in one direction rather than another.
1. This is the text of a paper read to the Priests' Philosophical Group on Friday, 5 January 1968. It was first published in the Downside Review, vol. 86, no. 283, April 1968, pp. 121-31.
2. A. Flew, G-d and Philosophy (London: Hutchinson 1966, pp. 208).
But, unfortunately, as it seems to me, Flew feels that one cannot be in a suitable position to satisfactorily determine the question of the existence or non-existence of G-d in either a positive or a negative sense, unless one has first taken pains to draw up a list of the defining characteristics of the supposed individual that one is raising a question about. For it is held to be impossible to provide any acceptable answer to the question as to whether there exists a member of the class of beings characterized as X-ish, unless one has some prior notion of what it would mean for a thing to be X-ish. It appears that in logic, at any rate, existence cannot precede essence.
Now since it is, surely, right to say that, for the Christian, G-d is first and foremost apprehended as Absolute Mystery, who infinitely transcends all possibility of man's ever defining him, it appears to follow that G-d and Philosophy fails to meet the issues at stake between Christian Theism and Atheism. The author may be in a position to exclude the existence of some of his own specified candidate-wearers of the three-letter class-label ‘G-d’ as used in Flew's language-game, for example, by bringing to light irreconcilable contradictions between certain of the alleged G-d's conflicting attributes. But confronted with the challenge of G-d who dwells in light inaccessible it is hard to see how the author can move beyond agnosticism. On his own stated terms, Flew can neither affirm nor deny the inscrutable divine being in whom Christians pin their hopes.
However, and this is a well-worn path, total agnosticism, total scepticism is not a possible human option. Professor Flew would no doubt agree that to lay claim to total ignorance would be a self-contradictory performance. It is no secret that it is quite impossible ever to construct a solid system of logical reasoning which has logic for its whole foundation. Yet, as far as I know, Flew neither doubts the existence of his own writings, nor feels uncertain about the reality of his friends.
Certainly we can go along with the author in holding that one should have reasons for believing. But just as logic cannot prove the reasonableness of the principle of non-contradiction, neither have we any cause to expect it to establish the general reasonableness of man's being human. John Wilson, in a companion volume to G-d and Philosophy, bases his case in the end on the human performance of asking a question. If logic is not the key even to logical behaviour, why ask of it an account of the general possibility of rational performance?
Hume called reason the slave of the passions. Flew thinks that “no desire or motives are, as such, either rational or irrational. Irrationality (and rationality) come in only when, for instance, people insist on employing as means methods which they have reason to know must frustrate their ends; or when they pretend that they do not have to make choices between objectives which are in fact incompatible; or when - much less commonly - they try to pursue aims which are logically impossible” (p. 116).
Isn't a certain a priori dimension within rationality indicated by the fact that there are different kinds of nonsense?3
3. T. Mac Pherson has drawn attention to the fact that “ 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogoves: And the mome raths outgrabe” (= “It was evening, and the smooth active badgers were scratching boring holes in the hillside; all unhappy were the parrots; and the grave turtles squeaked out.”), “This book is red and green all over”, “All only every but”, and “Socrates is numerous” are each nonsensical for a different reason. Cf. A. Flew and A. MacIntyre, editors, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (London: SCM Press 1955, p. 135). This point seems valid, and indicates that “nonsensical” means “nonsensical because…”, “nonsensical for a reason”.
Performance is rational when it is intentional in its structure. And all intentional behaviour is self-transcending - questioning, for instance, is always questioning-towards-an-answering. Surely, then, one cannot regard the material universe as the playground for the projection or bodying-forth of the intentions of rational beings in their striving for self-expression, without at the same time implicitly acknowledging, whether one advert to it or not, that the world or field of activity open to man cannot assign any limit to the dynamic of his intention. Rather, the world, which may give often enough the answer that satisfies the content of man's question, none the less provides only the launching-site in which man's performance of self-questioning and his self-transcending intention becomes more keenly and more richly aware of its own orientation towards the wholly other. To develop this line of argument would, perhaps, be out of place in the context of the present discussion, though I would like to see its possibilities explored with reference to Wilson's book on Equality.
Logically order need not be order by design. But purpose is order with a meaning. The argument from design is not a third-person, armchair, detached commentary about the origin of the external harmony of the visible world. It is to be construed as an attempt to formulate man's sense of personal involvement in a total dynamic process hurling him forward and preventing his ever being satisfied with his own projects. This is why Christianity is not an ideology. The Christian transcends the present situation and reaches out to further horizons, not because he thinks that somewhere ahead lies the perfect situation, Utopia, or Paradise regained - but rather, conscious that the Kingdom of G-d, and better the Reign of G-d, lies within, that situations necessarily limit the possibilities of communication of the values they bring to expression, he moves forward to greater heights of detachment from all particular situations; he is not motivated by any commitment to a chosen situation.
Professor Flew's position is that when one broaches the question of G-d, “the presumption, defeasible of course by adverse argument, must be that all qualities observed in things are qualities belonging by natural right to those things themselves; and hence that whatever characteristics we think ourselves able to discern in the universe as a whole are the underivative characteristics of the universe itself. This is, for [him], atheism” (p.69). His terminal atheism is, therefore, the argued explicitation of an initially implicit and defeasible presumption which is thus transformed into an object of belief. “It is”, he says, with regard to this terminal atheism, “wrong to think that a believer believes more, and is hence necessarily somehow a more positive person, than a disbeliever. Both believe exactly the same amount: where they differ is in the sense of their beliefs” (p.29). If Flew's atheism is the conclusion of a rational argument, why does he call it a belief, rather than an item of knowledge? I think Flew would claim to know, though not infallibly, that the proposition “there is no X such that X is divine” is true, but that his real assent to the atheistic-humanist onlook is an existential commitment, an atheist act of faith. In any case it is false to claim, as one may be tempted to, that atheism is the presupposition of the author's argument, and not a conclusion from it. Real atheism is not a logically necessary conclusion of the argument, but it is, in some sense, a conclusion all the same.
When he is dealing with the “limiting question”, “Why should anything exist at all?” Professor Flew lays it down that “we have no natural right to explanation… nor again are we from the beginning entitled to be sure that all things… must be as they should be” (p.99). “Even supposing that every singular fact is … explicable, still there must always remain some wider regularity which cannot in principle be explained” (p.100). “The Strathonician does not lament that at the end of every explanatory road there lie, as there must, just facts which are more ultimate” (p.101).
It can be seen from this that Flew's atheism is regarded by him as an assent to a fact, that, for him, it is the facts that are to be explained, and that it is facts which afford the explanation. For the author, as for Wittgenstein, perhaps one can say that “the world divides into facts” (Tractatus 1.2); “the world is the totality of facts, not of things” (ibid. 1.1). If this is so, the author's atheism, considered as a notional assent to the conclusion of a rational argument, and in abstraction from the accompanying free and real assent to atheism as a self-involving onlook, amounts to little more than the assertion that if all the particular facts have been sorted out and arranged, and if all the derived facts have been satisfactorily related to a primary fact or set of primary facts, then there is no need to introduce an extra fact, viz. G-d, to fill in the gaps in the picture, or to make apparently primary facts derivable. This is fair enough.
But while the propositions of Theist and Atheist alike are about facts, they presuppose, at some point, objects. “Objects can only be named. Signs are their representatives. I can only speak about them: I cannot put them into words. Propositions can only say how things are, not what they are” (Tractatus 3.221). This is not the place for even a modest exegesis of Wittgenstein's text, but it may be useful to draw attention at least to the essential, intrinsic complexity of any statable fact, and likewise to the inescapable presupposition of any affirmative or negative statement about objects, viz. the subsumibility of objects into facts. At first sight this seems to imply merely that objects are potentially matters of fact, or potentially elements in fact, or that, on another interpretation, they are somehow the formal constituents of facts. In either case it follows that, in fact, objects can enter into the world of fact as components in states of affairs. And this means that there must be facts, that facts exist. In other words, if objects can enter into the world of fact, then it is necessarily a fact that they can do so. And this means that (a) it is a hypothetically necessary fact that objects can enter into the world of fact, and (b) it is necessarily the case that if objects can enter into the world of fact then it is necessarily a fact that they can do so. But the fact (b) cannot be purely logical, since the category of the purely logical can only be defined by contrasting it with what is other than purely logical. One feels that there is here some sort of an opening towards G-d, and that Wittgenstein may have had some inkling of it. “The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is at it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists - and if it did, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did, it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world” (ibid. 6.41). “There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical” (ibid. 6.522).
Put in a nutshell the argument is this: The world divides into particular, statable, complex, contingent facts. Such facts presuppose objects in potency towards them, or, on another interpretation, as their informing principle. Either view implies the mysterious, non-statable exisistence of a necessary, simple, trans-objective fact as the presupposition of the possibility of objects as matters or forms of fact, of particular facts themselves, and of their affirmation or negation. Hence all statements of Atheism, even when as personal utterances they express a commitment to the Atheistic onlook, or rather to some Atheistic onlook or other, will be, when considered with respect to their notional content, implicit admissions of Theism, if by Theism is meant any affirmation of G-d as absolute Mystery, as Christians in fact hold and believe. In this connection it is interesting to note a passage towards the end of God and Philosophy: “Just what would have to happen, or not happen, or to have happened, or not to have happened, to entitle us to say that - in your sense of the word - ‘There is no G-d’?… The most obvious possible falsification would have been if nothing whatever had existed at all. But if that is all that theism is denying, then we are all theists now” (pp. 171-72), and, we may add, integral atheism is impossible, even though there is a certain atheism in every heart, since the alleged falsification mentioned would be merely the absence of any verification at all.
The discussion so far may serve to lend force to another difficulty raised by the author. This is the question of “how, if at all, the positive terms of a human language could significantly be employed to characterize G-d”. He feels that “it is surely essential that there should be at least some definite and positive statements which are literally true, if the whole enterprise is to be capable of getting off the ground at all” (pp. 36-37). There is, surely, a sense in which this is true. But, as Donald Evans convincingly shows (The Logic of Self-Involvement, London: SCM Press 1963), there is no reason to suppose that the definite and positive statements which are literally true are, as such, directly statements about G-d. Observables, natural phenomena, historical events, people, the regularity and beauty of the stars “make it plausible, though not obviously necessary, to look on them as G-d's pledge and self-expression, and to look on G-d as a self-involving ‘speaker’ and a self-revealing ‘artist’,” in other words, they “provide a minimal basis for the particular biblical onlook” Christians have (p.227). As I. M. Crombie puts it: “When we speak about G-d, the words we use are intended in their ordinary sense… although we do not suppose that in their ordinary interpretation they can be strictly true of him… We speak of G-d in parable” (A. Flew and A. MacIntyre, editors, New Essays in Philosophical Theology, London: SCM Press 1955, p.122). “We do not know to what to refer our parables; we know merely that we are to refer them out of experience, and out of it in which direction… Because our concern with G-d is religious and not speculative… because our need is, not to know what G-d is like, but to enter into relation with him, the authorized images [of him as our Father, King, Friend, etc.] serve our purpose. They belong to a type of discourse - parable - with which we are familiar, and therefore they have communication value, although in a sense they lack descriptive value” (p. 124). “In talking we remain within the parable, and so our statements communicate; we do not know how the parable applies, but we believe that it does apply, and that we shall one day see how” (p.127).
The author of G-d and Philosophy raises some questions which are hardly new: How is it consistent to that G-d is the infinitely powerful Creator, and he possesses a will which his creatures can, and regularly do, disobey? How is it credible that claims that there is an infinitely powerful, wise and good Creator cannot be immediately dismissed with a sharp reference to the evils of the world? (p.41). There is no doubt at all that the problems of coordinating G-d's action with man's free choice, and of reconciling G-d's power and goodness with the fact of evil have given rise to much controversy. But not much time need be given to the solution of the easier questions: How is it consistent to say that…? How is it credible to claim that…? These statements and claims become credible and the question of their formal consistency doesn't even arise if we remember that language about G-d is talk in parable, through a glass darkly. The language of St. John's Apocalypse is an extreme case, and a clear instance of what I have in mind. No doubt Flew would also require some answer here to the larger problems of free will and evil, as distinct from the linguistic problems involved. But once linguistic hurdles are surmounted, our tradition is already extremely rich on these very matters, and I will not air them here. But as Catholics we do not “concede that [our] G-d creates some creatures intending to subject them to eternal torments, of whatever sort” (p. 57), even if we believe that Hell exists (cf. T. McDermott, Hell, in New Blackfriars, vol. XLVIII, no. 600, pp. 186-97). Professor Flew thinks that to be consistent we ought to concede this, but while the theoretical justification of the refusal to make this concession is complex, it is neither inconsistent nor novel.
I turn now to the argument from causality. In the course of his discussion Flew says: “The qualification efficient to characterize causes has been deliberately dropped, as well it may be. It serves only to distinguish what is normally now simply a cause from the objects of three other sorts of inquiry classed together by Aristotle under a Greek word usually, not always happily, rendered cause” (p.68). To accept that word “only” would prejudice the whole issue. “Hume finds three necessary and sufficient conditions for applying the category of causality: (1) the cause and its effect are closely related in time, (2) the cause precedes the effect, and (3) the cause has in the past been regularly followed by the effect” (E. A. Burtt, In Search of Philosophic Understanding, London: Allen & Unwin 1967, p.240). But for Aristotle the efficient cause is “that from which the immediate origination of movement or a state of rest comes” (Physics 194b), and the causal relation is typified in situations such as that of the artist producing a work of art, situations in which “not a single one of Hume's conditions is present” (Burtt, op. cit., p.240). Hume made implicit use of various causal notions and theories, but the value of successful prediction is central to his notion of causality and to subsequent science, while for Aquinas causality is not, as such, in the category of Time, and to say that G-d is all-determining is not, therefore, for Aquinas, to say that he is pre-determining, even if Hume and Flew feel that it should be.
But we have to tread warily: Van Steenberghen thinks the principle of causality, although not absolutely primitive, cannot be denied without self-contradiction. But Horgan allows that the principle in its absolutely universal sense cannot be the premise in the proof for G-d, since it is equivalent to the conclusion. To go beyond this point leads to the argument based on the paradox of man's freedom being morally bound. Here instead of a notional conclusion, we are offered the personal apprehension of the divine reality in conscience, and this in a way generally available, practically relevant, and theologically attractive.
Commenting on Newman's argument from conscience, Flew claims it is preposterous to summon a Christian upbringing to serve, albeit indirectly, as the validation of its own assumptions (p.111). But what is the lesson of the Apologia, the Grammar of Assent, the Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine? There is a slow progress from denunciation and rejection through toleration, doubt, suspicion, conjecture, surmise, opinion and belief to a certitude born of the assemblage of concurring and convergent probabilities, following upon investigation and proof, accompanied by a specific sense of intellectual satisfaction and repose, permanent despite its difficulties and imprecision: “when assent is most intense, inference may be least distinct”. Reason and conscience discipline imagination, and assent depends upon the harmonious interaction of all the faculties. That Newman summoned a Christian upbringing to serve as a validation of its own assumptions may appear credible to Professor Flew, but the charge can hardly be taken seriously.
The argument from conscience is substantially valid. Whether one adverts to it or not, the personal act of accepting responsibility for a judgment involves an element of commitment to a G-d who transcends and sustains the universe, a realm of values which surpasses and gives life to all ideologies, a measuring up to a communion in love that tears one out of all institutional complacency or indifference. The critique of judgment is the point of departure for the encounter with the beyond of G-d in the midst of life.
Today G-d is dead in many hearts, and it is no longer possible even to imagine that all thinking persons share common purposes and common values. Yet basic attitudes cannot be a matter for indifference, cannot be merely a matter of psychological or sociological convenience. Paul says that people are without excuse if they fail to recognise and acknowledge G-d's glory as revealed in the work of creation. It is pointless to object that a particular individual does not freely choose a given standpoint, since to be incapable of reaction against unfavourable psycho-sociological pressures results from insufficient development of the capacity for love, and this can be gradually strengthened and enlarged by sincerity in doing good.
In concrete situations such that any response seen intellectually is somehow in contradiction to what is reasonable a person can only involve him- or herself by risking a total self-commitment after reading the signs of the times. A partial engagement effects nothing. Such is our situation in the presence of the invading, tragic, yet joyful violence of the divine mystery. G-d does not so much solve our problems, as ask new questions. G-d transcends all categorical distinctions, and so is not an object in any given world, at any level of experience, or within any horizon. This mystery can only be approached supra-objectively in the totally personal and completely meaningful loving surrender of all one is. Whatever be the world they contemplate, atheists are right to note that it does not contain G-d. Christians cannot rest in, though they make use of institutional structures, and they welcome this reminder that G-d is not bound. Hence the call of the divine mystery does not stultify human intelligence, nor humiliate it. It is a summons to man to cast his slough, to refuse to be caught in the groove of either primitive, classical, renassiance, or scientific cultural patterns, and to grow instead to be content to be simply and fully man. Man's fidelity must be only to the absolute, albeit necessarily to the absolute mediated in the contingent, and so apprehended in contempative contuition. Suffering remains an obstacle to belief, but the event of Calvary explodes the idea of the survival of the fittest. And the impossibility of proving that G-d is really the key to everything is not the result of logical snags, but because in this life we don't and can't see the full picture.
Why is there being rather than nothing? Austin says that “a definite sense attaches to the assertion that something is real, a real such-and-such, only in the light of a specific way in which it might be, or might have been, not real… This, of course, is why the attempt to find a characteristic common to all things that are or could be called ‘real’ is doomed to failure; the function of ‘real’ is not to contribute positively to the characterization of anything, but to exclude possible ways of being not real - and these ways are both numerous for particular kinds of things, and liable to be quite different for things of different kinds. It is this identity of general function combined with immense diversity in specific applications which gives to the word ‘real’, the, at first sight, baffling feature of having neither one single ‘meaning’, nor yet ambiguity, a number of different meanings” (Sense and Sensibilia, pp. 70-71). To affirm the reality of G-d is to choose mystery, whose intelligibility is the minimal one quoad nos, viz. that it is not self-contradictory, and to reject absurdity. Reason can save itself from unreason only by positing something beyond reason as the very condition of rationality. Existentialists think “G-d exists” a self-destructive affirmation denying the contingency of the world; logico-analysts may think G-d-talk devoid of meaning since the concept of “existence” is restricted to a spatio-temporal reference-frame; but the being which is not a predicate and which is co-predicated with all predicates is, following Daly, not empirically definable, and its sense must lie beyond experience (cf. Philosophical Studies, 9, 1959, pp. 90-137).
G-d and Philosophy, though a well argued book, fails to advance any new difficulties against theism. The theist's reply has a certain complexity, but not every subtle doctrine is false. Since the roots of human life and action lie, as Gorgias saw, in darkness, it is pointless to await unambiguity.
GIULIO GIRARDI was born in Cairo forty years ago. He has lived in Italy since he was thirteen, but French is his mother tongue. For the last sixteen years he has been introducing future Salesian priests to metaphysics. He also lectures on the history of atheism, and is a consultor to the Secretariat for Non-Believers, of which Fr Vincent Miano, S.D.B., Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy of within the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome, is the secretary. This Secretariat was the last to be set up of three Roman bodies giving expressions to the Church's desire for dialogue in the spirit of the Vatican II Council, and the presidency belongs to Cardinal Kœnig, Archbishop of Vienna.
With the approval of his superiors Fr Girardi has taken part in various international meetings of Marxist and Christian intellectuals. In Le Monde for 23 December 1965 Roger Garaudy, Director of the Paris Centre for Marxist Studies, wrote that it was “under the personal influence of Pope Paul VI who had no hesitation in recognizing the purifying value of atheism, and with the collaboration of experts like Fr Girardi, who has written some of the most penetrating and understanding pages about Marxism, that the spirit of dialogue prevailed [in the Council] over the spirit of anathema”.
Another Marxist intellectual, Lucio Lombardi-Radice, a member of the Federal Committee of the Italian Communist Party, writes:
- Fr Girardi, can you tell us how your interest in philosophy led you to concentrate on the problem of atheism, and how that ties in with your Salesian vocation?
- Yes, I am both a Salesian and a philosopher. I believe that my philosophical research must be my way of corresponding with my priestly and Salesian vocation. That is why I thought I ought to dedicate myself to those questions which are most alive, and most central in the modern world… Right from the start, my preoccupation has been to rethink the traditional problems against the background of the modern world, above all in order to try and overcome the cleavage which there used to be, and which there still is between traditional culture, philosophy, and theology, and the questions men are vitally concerned about in our day. And while carrying out my researches, I have come to realize that atheism isn't just one particular segment of the problems of philosophy and theology. Rather, it is a point of view, a way of looking at things which allows one to see the whole complex of problems facing the modern world in their most radical form.
- Do you think atheism will have any influence in depth on the present and the future state of the world?
- Atheism has become a phenomenon of the masses. Many thinks its progress is irresistible, though one can dispute this. What is certain, is that it is not merely a denial of G-d, but rather an answer to important human questions, an overall attitude towards human existence and human history. Atheism is found at all levels of personal and social culture and life. And at each level it is offered as a radical challenge to Christianity, as a personal and also as a historic alternative. One can foresee a notable atheist presence wherever the problems which have given rise to atheism in the West occupy the minds of men. I am thinking of industrialization, liberation movements, campaigns for freedom of thought and public speech, etc.
- What is the value of this global criticism of, and challenge to, religion?
- The inclination to indulge in apologetics might lead the believer to reject it out of hand. But a more objective analysis obliges one to refrain from over precipitate action, and to have the courage to love the truth wherever it is to be found. The Council has provided an example of this kind of honesty. The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World emphasizes the responsibility of believers for the rise of atheism. To the extent that Christianity is inauthentic, the atheist claim is valid. And speaking historically Christianity has always been inauthentic in some respect.
- But when it comes to the point, doesn't atheism attack the most genuine part of the Christian message?
- Certainly, atheism pinpoints the transcendent aspect of the Christian message. And the transcendence of Christianity finds expression in the fact that, humanly speaking, the Christian ideal is incapable of realization. Christians can strive towards it indefatigably, but they realize that, in this life, they will never attain their objective. In this way atheism is only bringing into the open difficulties which are integral to Christianity itself.
- Does this mean that atheism makes the Church instigate more careful research?
- Yes, and this both at the level of thought, and at that of pastoral and pedagogical method, etc. An overall challenge calls for an overall response, a fresh synthesis of truths and values that remains faithful to authentic Christian tradition. This is a historic fact without precedent, and the Council has stressed its imporance. Today the Church takes her stand not just as the house of truth, but as the home of inquiry. The Christian is aware of carrying into the world great, definitive certainties, but this doesn't prevent his seeing the obscurities in which they are involved, and the problems to which they give rise.
- Won't lots of Christians run the risk of being confused by this questioning attitude?
- Today the Christian has no option but to live his faith in the context of atheism. Today being a Christian means making a personal choice. It is no longer a legacy one can enjoy unchallenged. Atheism is not just an objective phenomenon to be studied calmly. It is an inner restlessness in Christians just as much as in other people. Each one has to decide his own destiny and that of his generation.
- Fr Girardi, in the light of what you have just said, let me ask you if you have ever experienced this interior restlessness?
- I'm glad to answer this question. No, thank G-d, my faith has not suffered any crisis. But while studying atheism, I came to understand that the problems the atheists set themselves, are our problems… And I can say they are my problems. I have always thought them serious problems, and that one must take them seriously.
- So in a certain way you are trying in your works to bring to light what atheism has to offer us?
- Exactly. This is the only way to answer it. One must begin by listening, begin by accepting everything it has to offer. And then one will have the right to say in what respects its way of approaching problems seems incomplete.
- This seems rather a novel approach. In the past people spoke of conquest.
- The aim is still to reveal Jesus Christ. But by paying attention to the other's values. Dialogue is a new attitude characteristic of the renewal in the Church's attitude towards non-Catholics. It was perhaps a little hard to adopt this approach even with atheists. But the step is logical enough. It isn't a new strategy the Church is adopting, because she has become aware that the others no longer work! It is a fresh way of seeing her mission, her attitude towards others.
- A new way of understanding man and his problems?
- Yes. And this new approach has a whole range of applications, of which, quite correctly, dialogue with atheism can be considered the most striking result. The one that calls for most courage. But I believe we must have this courage, and need it urgently, if we are to make contact with a large sector of mankind.
- You are a consultor to the Secretariat for Non-Believers which exists to promote this dialogue. But before passing on to that, could you tell us how you yourself came to be introduced to dialogue with atheists?
- It is a fairly typical case of the movement of culture towards life. First I studied the problem in my room, without having met any atheists, except a few members of my own family. But I have always studied within the context of living. I wanted my studies to have some effect on my life as a priest, on my students and, as far as possible, on the world in which I live. I felt that my fundamental vocation was not to be a philosopher, but to be a priest. If my philosophical research has not been an integral part of my priestly vocation, it would not have had much interest for me.
- And your first contacts with Marxist intellectuals?
- They came afterwards, and quite naturally. There were reactions to my published writings: Marxists found that what I had to say fitted in with their own way of looking at Marxism, from the inside. Since that time our contacts have become regular. A few of us meet every two weeks to talk over some prearranged theme.
- Can you say something about the Encyclopedia of Atheism you are preparing?
- Our Faculty of Philosophy had undertaken this work before the Council. The first of the four volumes has just been published. [Italian edition: G. Girardi, editor, L'Ateismo Contemporaneo, I. L'Ateismo nella vita e nella cultura contemporanea, Società Editrice Internazionale (Torino, 1967), pp. xxiv+776, 10,000 lire. The other volumes are: II. L'Ateismo nella Filosofia Contemporanea, Correnti e Pensatori (March 1968); III. L'Ateismo nella Filosofia Contemporanea, I Grandi Problemi (October 1968); IV. Il Cristianesimo di Fronte all'Ateismo (March 1969). The first volume has been praised by Cardinal Kœnig, Henri De Lubac, Hervè Carrier, Paolo Vicentin, etc.]
- In Italian?
- In five or six languages. The French edition appears under the auspices of the seminary of the Mission de France, and under the personal responsibility of Jean-François Six.
- Is is a collective work?
- Necessarily so. In order to cover the various aspects of atheism in contemporary life and the researches it is stimulating within the Church, we have sought the help of about a hundred contributors.
- Can you mention some of them?
- Very well, if you like, a bit at random among the French writers: Frs Congar, Daniélou, Calvez, Jolif, Liégé, Chenu, Dr Chauchard, Georges Hourdin, Frs Loew, Voillaume, Wenger, Beirnært, Duquoc… The preface is by Fr de Lubac. Of the rest, I will mention at least Karl Rahner, Mgr Möller…
- Is the point of view of non-Catholics represented?
- Yes, and also that of the main non-Christian religions.
- Can you tell us something about the Secretariat for non-Believers?
- The Secretariat is getting under way. Fr Miano is establishing contact with groups in different countries. In the first place it is a question of making the Catholic world alive to the problems raised by atheism, of encouraging research in all areas in order to arrive at a more perfect understanding of this phenomenon. Naturally, on this basis it is then a matter of helping the entire Church to rethink its way of life and its activity in function of this world of which atheism helps us to become responsibly aware.
- May I ask you whether a Roman Secretariat does not run the risk of becoming one day an organism of control, even of censorship, rather than for the promotion of dialogue. This is a question it is hard not to ask.
- That is certainly not the atmosphere here. We are aware that if that ever happened, the Secretariat would lose the confidence of atheists and of progressive Catholics. Just as the Secretariat for non-Catholics can only serve a useful function as long as it enjoys the confidence of our brothers and sisters in other Christian Churches and of Catholic Ecumenists. By means of the Secretariat for Non-Believers, atheists must realize that there will be no going back on the spirit of the Council, that the Church is open to development, that Catholics can listen to others, that one can open a sincere dialogue with them. In the Secretariat we are trying to give expression to a new attitude of the Church. And this makes many transformations possible, and even necessary.
- In any case, for many lay people, rubbing shoulders with non-believers every day, dialogue is already a reality.
- Yes. This is one factor making dialogue a must even for those who don't see the full value of it. It is part and parcel of the world we live in. Even those who can't understnd what a treasure it is, must see that it is a necessity. But dialogue isn't something to put up with.
- But isn't it very risky? The Council speaks of prudence, and in his preface to your book Marxism and Christianity Cardinal Kœnig writes that “too many amateurs range themselves round conference tables for dialogue without the indispensable preparation”. [G. Girardi, Marxismo e Christianesimo, Cittadella Editrice (Assisi, 1966) pp. 239, preface by Cardinal Kœnig, English translation: Marxism and Christianity, Logos Books, Gill & Son (Dublin, 1968), 18s. Cf. the review article by the present translator in New Blackfriars (December 1967), pp. 133-9.]
- Prudence, yes. The Council says so, but this is to characterize the way of conducting the dialogue, not in order to exclude it. Obviously one must take into account the variety of historic situations and of the forms of atheism being considered. One must distinguish carefully the various levels of dialogue, particularly the political and doctrinal levels. One must follow with loyalty the directives of competent ecclesiastical authority, and this, in its turn, will be constantly inspired by the directives of the Council. To take part in dialogue is not to abdicate. To seek out a point of agreement is not, in any way, to lose sight of the originality of one's own message.
- Finally, how does dialogue, with a deep respect for the other's way of seeing things, allow one to reveal Christ to non-believers?
- There is a way of proclaiming Christ which is peculiar to dialogue. I am referring to witness. The partners to the dialogue, by attempting to undersand each other better, by deepening their appreciation of the values they share, come to grips with the ideals which inspire them to try and make these values a reality. And so the Christian, by laying bare the ultimate reasons for his way of living and dying, puts the other in contact with Christ.
- On condition that the faith of the Christian is really an integral part of his life?
- The Council commits each Christian to make this personal synthesis of religious and secular values. It is the inability of too many Christians to be fully fledged citizens of this world that provokes atheist criticism. And one has to admit that Christians are not always without blame.
- What is the source of the trouble?
- Without doubt it is the lack of a genuine lay spirituality. Christian civilization has been, broadly speaking, a clerical civilization.
- We are speaking of the laity. But here you are forming priests first of all. What is your view of this formation of future Salesian priests?
- They must be priests of the Council, able to give evidence of a real understanding of the problems of today, to put themselves in the other person's shoes, to penetrate into worlds which are not their world. The Council has given us a new picture of the priest based on the mission to which he is, above all, consecrated by his ordination.
- And, according to you, what will be the picture of the post-Conciliar Salesian priest, as regards his relationship to the world?
- The Salesian is occupied in a special way with the formation of the young. Therefore, he ought to be even more able to visualize not the world of today, but that of tomorrow. His activity should carry the stamp of a certain prophetic spirit. The need is to form a personality capable of constant renewal, and equipped with some degree of cultural independence that allows one to grasp the problems of the day in depth, to read the signs of the times aright. A gift for entering into other people's feelings. But above all, certainly, a very solid intellectual formation. In this University we are trying to give the students this sort of formation.
- From this point of view, do you think it is already necessary to bring them into contact with the “other side”?
- It is certainly very useful, even if not indispensable, provided these contacts are really typical ones. But here the important thing is that the whole intellectual life, the whole approach to the lectures and seminars really has this pastoral orientation. They must study, and they must live their religious life in the plural number, that is with their eyes ever open to the thoughts of the men, women and children to whom they must consecrate themselves. Totally dedicated to Christ and totally dedicated to their fellow men, this is how they will be really priests.
[This article was originally published in New Blackfriars (vol. 49, no. 571, December 1967). The world has since changed. For a broad survey of the contemporary situation in Philosophy at that time cf. M. F. Sciacca, editor, Les Grands Courants de la Pensée Mondiale Contemporaine, vols. I-II: Panoramas Nationaux; III-IV: Les Tendances Principales; V-VI: Portraits (Milan: Marzorati 1958-64). Although in one sense whatever is in print is out of date, published sources can be immensely helpful. We cannot make sense of human behaviour simply by relating it to our primary reflexes of keeping our balance, swallowing our food, and mating. Some persons find dialogue so congenial that they even appear addicted to it, while many quite well educated people find it necessary to ration their own direct participation in this particular form of social activity in order both to safeguard their own emotional stability and to avoid intellectual indigestion. If dialogue ever persuades us that life and events can be interpreted aright in the life of some particular scheme of things, and that we can plan ahead accordingly, we are most certainly deceiving ourselves, since we can never hope adequately to relate our speech to its context - the endlessly surprising circumstances which modify its implications. Natural law knows no straitjacket, and G-d is not bound. Every statement proves a Delphic Oracle. To read the signs of the times is not easy. G-d shakes to pieces the idols of human conceit: all blueprints for living, all recipes for holiness, all ideological optimism He grinds to powder. Moreover, dialogue is progressively eroded by noise - cf. The Earl of Halsbury in The Human Agent (Macmillan 1968, p.121); G. Girardi, “Les facteurs extra-intellectuels de la connaissance humaine” in Revue Philosophique de Louvain (62, 1964, pp. 299-346. 477-500) and “Pour une définition de l'athéisme” in Salesianum (25,1963,47-74).]
As a result of an educational system no longer the prerogative of the clergy, a multiplication of fields of study, a great diffusion of culture, improved communications, and more rapid social transformations, we live in an age in which women and men are more ready to criticize and to challenge standards hitherto accepted. Individual persons, political institutions, schools of artistic style, humanist ethical movements, racial and national groups, women's and youth organizations, economic blocs - all are more conscious of their differentiation within a highly complex society and demand that their freedom and autonomy be recognized, refusing to be dictated to by religious leaders or state authority.
The accelerated pace of change in modern life, the movement of population to the towns, their lack of social roots or stability, overt and subconscious advertising, heavy work, group pressure, mechanical and psychological noise, the shock to routine thinking consequent upon emigration deprive human beings of the solitude and peace needed for constructive thinking, while technological advance make women and men seem less in need of G-d's help for their daily bread, and so more ready to pick holes in traditional religion, amidst the heightened fascination and lure of the world.
The present religious choice is not simply between Catholicism and Protestantism, nor between Christianity and Natural Religion. It is a choice for or against G-d. Open, popular, organized and widespread, atheism is no longer hidden and exceptional, but, buttressed by polity and culture, constitutes the world's most urgent problem. The missionary activity of the Church is compelled to revolve, at least in part, around the solution of the perennial, objecive, human problems of which atheism is symptomatic, and to a keener appreciation of which the sympathetic study of atheism, and a just appreciation of the positive values it promotes, is undoubtedly conducive.
What an atheist denies flows logically and psychologically from something else she or he affirms, and affirms for the sake of some positive value he finds in it. Atheism is essentially a rejection neither of theism nor of travesties of theism, but is a complex positive doctrine, of which Marxism is still in some places the most common contemporary variety.
The desire to help others in our shared quest for G-d inspires all Fr Girardi's philosophical writings and leads him to desire genuine dialogue with atheists. The adjective is called for. Fr Girardi does not believe in unilateral dialogue.
Some take the view that error cannot enrich truth, that although one can love, one may not esteem persons who are in the wrong - the most one can do is to make terminological concessions in order to help convert one's adversary, naturally for his own good. Dialogue is a modern form of teaching.
On the other hand, the Salesian professor does not go all along with those who say that atheism merely denies a non-existent travesty of G-d such as poor preaching depicted, that all atheists are good and sincere while believers are selfish and hypocritical, that in the concrete atheists are right while believers are wrong.
His position is that truth is to be welcomed wherever it is to be found, that it is both absolute and historical, and that its communication is at once a theoretical and a psychological problem.
His book Marxismo e Cristianesimo, translated as Marxism and Christianity, seeks to show that genuine dialogue with Marxist atheism is doctrinally and ethically possible, but he makes no pronouncement as to its political and sociological feasibility in any conclusive way. He identifies the conditions for sincere dialogue as genuine freedom, equality, mutual esteem and benevolence. And even then dialogue can have risks and limitations.
Social, economic and political factors render a Christian-Marxist dialogue difficult and urgent. For Marxism is more than speculation. Its scientific structure and its status as a philosophy of practice insert it into the climate of modern thought, with its heightened critical awareness, fuller realization of the ineluctibility of evil, and increased urgency in the striving after human values. Marxist atheism means selfless dedication to a cause, consecrated sister- or brotherhood with an élite, mature assumption of responsibility for the shaping of history, belief in the value of human freedom.
To present Marxist-Leninism as the cold application of a bundle of highly questionable metaphysical principles is not only to misrepresent Marxism, but to forget that Leninism itself hinges upon acceptance of a pragmatic criterion of truth.
By Marxist practice is meant the proletariat's efficacious, concrete action in transforming Nature and society by labour, technology, production, political, military, party-political and revolutionary activity. Whatever contributes to successful practice is true and good; whatever opposes this is bad and false.
The practical aims of Marxism constitute not only its psychological and sociological appeal, but also its logical fulcrum. Marxism exists only in the context of action, and it cannot be understood outside of that context. It differs from straightforward Pragmatism by its insistence that truth is not relative, but absolute. Moreover, while success in practice is taken as a criterion of truth, the success of practice is judged by the further criterion of its cohesion with the general run of historical and scientific experience, and of its power to promote the ethical and economic freedom of the human person, which is really the key to the whole system.
The Marxist believes in the value of human freedom, not arbitrarily, but basing himself, albeit invalidly, on an axiological intuition distinct although inseparable from the historical experience which mediates it. Then, believing in men and women and in a certain ideal direction for the course of their history, he postulates the ontological vision of reality which is presupposed by the assumption that this ideal can be realized: somewhat as some Christians argue from the fact of moral conscience to the existence of G-d. The Marxist then proceeds to a critical examination of the actual course of history, and thence to the elaboration of a methodology for the effective liberation of human beings and for the overcoming of all forms of alienation, including that of subscribing to any merely speculative materialism, such as that of Hegel and Feuerbach.
In From Anathema to Dialogue the distinguished Marxist Roger Garaudy, who defines Marxist humanism as the methodology of historical initiative for the realization of the total person, makes his diagnosis of the situation. Against the background of the threat of total extinction by atomic warfare, human living is, by and large, motivated either by Marxism or theism. Despite some uneasiness, resistance and anger, Catholics now tend to favour dialogue with Marxism.
The demythologization of Christianity and the elaboration of a Teilhardian theology which fully recognizes the value of work and of human effort, of scientific research as well as technical invention, suggest that the apocalyptic tradition of primitive Christianity, which emphasises the Incarnate G-d's triumph over sin, is gaining ground over the Constantinian stress on sin and justification by submission to the rule of law. Judging from a purely historical and sociological point of view, religion has been and is an opium of the people. Nevertheless, Christianity has been the occasion for the introduction into human history of a keener awareness of the human values of subjectivity and transcendence. If Christians and Marxists now measure up to the real situation, they will discover a common desire to work creatively for integral human development, and will welcome dialogue, cooperation and rivalry to their mutual enrichment.
For Fr Girardi the basic issue here is whether or not Marxism really recognizes each individual person as of value in her- or himself, or attributes value to him only as a function of the part he has in the shaping of history, which alone is acknowledged to be of value in itself. Marxism does not so recognize personal values as long as it regards anthropology only as a special case of its philosophy of Nature, the laws of history as just some among the laws of Nature, of Dialectical Materialism.
Marxism in any interpretation must consider the human being to be constituted a person by her or his relations to the whole of reality in a dynamic way, but, notwithstanding this, Marx himself attributed a certain autonomy and originality to the human, precisely because the relation between humankind and Nature is a dialectical one. The Stalinist presentation of Marxism wholly in terms of a dialectic intrinsic to Nature does not conform to the views of the younger Marx, for whom dialectical materialism was of only secondary importance.
Aware of this, Marxists today can, like Marx as a young man, concentrate once more on the problems of individual liberation, life and death - while, of course, never forgetting the human person's essentially social nature. Human relativity vis-à-vis the historical process no longer, therefore, need suppress each one's personal autonomy in the order of being and value, but in the last analysis the Communist movement will only be acknowledged to make sense in so far as it contributes to a practical and effective human solution of human personal problems.
The Communist movement differs from other societies for mutual help in that it seeks not merely the good of its members, but of all. At the same time it is recognized that while the advent of the stateless, classless society will make personal freedom a practical possibility, each one will have to secure it by his own personal action. Marxism, having cleared heaven of mythology, is now at work exploding the myth of heaven on Earth. For Marxists do recognize that in the new humanity not all problems will be solved, not every alienation overcome. History advances dialectically ever closer to the ideal humanity, but never arrives at it.
Fr J.-B. Metz has asked whether the realization of the total man will give the final answer to human questions, or whether this developed man will be still more a questioner, more capable still of an ever-expanding future. According to Garaudy Marxism is interested in the meaning of human living and human dying:
Hence:
In 1965 M. Reding expressed the view that Marxism is not essentially atheistic, although Marx personally certainly was an atheist. Girardi considers Marxism can be developed in such a way as to overcome atheism, and yet remain true to itself. The main obstacles to such a development are the tendency of Marxism to be an all-embracing world-view that leaves no room for anything else, and the resistance to any acknowledgment of humankind's total and radical dependence on G-d, the author and preserver of human freedom.
Marxism can be tolerant on condition of deepening its concept of practicality, and acknowledging with Garaudy and Schaff - as against Stalin and Il'icev - personalist values which are autonomous vis-à-vis the success of the Communist Party.
Vatican Council II, in officially disowning the concept of Church membership as institutional commitment, abandoned positions which many theologians had for centuries considered essential to the Gospel message, and which for centuries guided the action of the Church in the world. Catholicism, moreover, now recognises more explicitly than in the past not only the validity of economic values but also their basic importance in individual and social life, and hence their large part in the determination of the laws of history. It joins Marxism in denouncing the economic and consequently further extended alienation of so many, and criticizes capitalism and liberalism in so far as they caused such evil.
Christians are, therefore, committed to the battle for the liberation of the proletariat by work and social action. By work and social action the Christian transforms Nature and gives it unity centred on the human person. Any past or present alliance between Altar and Throne represents a betrayal of the Christian spirit, and Christians are coming to realize this more clearly. Human beings each have a right to economic liberty. Marxism is not wrong to stress the importance of economic conditions for historical progress, but it is mistaken in neglecting the operation of other factors, and in interpreting economic laws too rigidly.
How do social-economic laws explain a baby's ego-centricism? Is the Russian-Chinese conflict an example of class war? Does money do away with an inferiority complex? Cannot technological advance reduce individuals to the condition of cogs in a machine, instead of liberating them?
Individualism is an approach to life common enough among Christians, but it is a betrayal of true Christianity which is a vocation to communion in love. Like Marxism, Christianity holds that the individual considered in abstraction from his social involvement is de iure non-existent. True, the Christian community spreads beyond the confines of Earth, but only after first embracing Eath with loving care at its many different levels, yet always without losing sight of the central place occupied by personal values.
Hence, in the political order both Marxists and Christians are becoming increasingly aware that the dynamism of love tends towards effective democracy with its attendant hazards, rather than to oligarchy. But Marxist practice is only in accord with these aspirations to a limited degree and in a few places, while Vatican Council II, notwithstanding strong opposition, made its Declaration of Religious Freedom. Only in a climate of real liberty will Marxism be able to test its claims to historical validity, and vindicate its pledge to consider all persons as ends in themselves, and not means to the attainment of institutional goals.
Personal love can only be universal if it is distinterested. The trust supposed by mutual love and by sisterly and fraternal dialogue likewise presupposes common acceptance of certain absolute values. Fr Girardi considers that only absolute values provide a sufficient justification for human togetherness. Despite its humanist inspiration, Marixm is anti-human; it subordinates the community to the party machine. Communist governments seek to impose Communism on all members of the Community, somewhat as in the past some Catholic thinkers used to favour a State's being officially and confessionally Catholic.
To say this is not to suppose there are no longer any obstacles to effective religious freedom in Cyprus, Ireland, Spain - or, for that matter, Russia. Neither is it to forget that for Garaudy “the coming of socialism must not result in making atheism a State religion.” [New Blackfriars, vol. 47, no. 556, September 1996, p.630.]
In the economic field there is no vast difference between the Catholic thesis that the right to private property is limited by the social function of wealth, which can make nationalization necessary, and the Marxist doctrine that the means of production are the property of the community as a whole, subject to other arrangements being suggested by the changing conditions of time and place.
As regards the family, while Christianity demands it be related to the wider national, ecclesial and general human communities, it also insists on the need to allow conjugal love to develop according to its own laws, and with respect for personal values, and not to make the family an instrument of the State or the Party. At the same time, Christianity admits some degree of State intervention in family affairs in view of the common good, for example, with regard to the education of the young.
At all events, to reduce interpersonal communication to a political and economic relationship would be to alienate human beings from many spheres of profoundly personal values; love is not between the objectively labelled bread-winners and Church-goers, but between unique centres of subjectivity. The more an individual is open to interpersonal relations in depth, however, the greater that person's awareness of human solitude, of each one's human need of G-d's love. Christianity teaches that G-d communicates this love to us not in isolation as separate individuals but to persons who are members of a community.
The Church is a juridical and hierarchical community but, much more so, it is communion in life and love, and this not only psychologically or morally, but ontologically and transcendently: all time being caught up into eternity, as history advances towards the perfection of the People of G-d. Our shared purpose on Earth is to build up a human community of temporal and eternal love centred in Christ Jesus.
Marxism needs the Infinite and feels the lack of it; Christianity not only promises it, but makes it present. As Garaudy has expressed it: “For a Christian, transcendence is the act of G-d who comes towards him and summons him. For a Marxist, it is a dimension of human activity which goes out beyond itself towards its far-off being” (p.80).
It is not possible to do justice here to the problem of what Rahner has called the “Absolute Future”. Catholics may agree cheerfully with Marixsts that there is no providential blueprint for the future. Human history is designed as it develops like a work of art, and not sketched out beforehand like the end-product of a technique. History is our joint cooperation with G-d in the work of our own creation.
But what lies ahead? For Rahner it is G-d, for Garaudy it is a human future. But if one can speak of an absolute human future that measures up not as a particular situated answer commensurate with some particular human question, but as an adequate, dynamic, answering response to humankind's questioning urge, why should this not be G-d, whose Eternal Self-Disclosure will put our questioning hearts to rest, and set no limits to the questions we may thus have answered?
From Anathema to Dialogue is a well written and well produced book which, despite its rather high price, deserves to be read with attention by every Catholic and Marxist wishing to arrive at a deeper understanding of both positions. Marxism and Christianity (Dublin: Gill & Son) is less historical, being a theoretical work aiming to bring to light the basic themes in terms of which a Christian-Marxist doctrinal dialogue is possible, the similarities and differences in lines of development this dialogue encounters, and the consequences of these facts for anyone who desires today to reflect philosophically upon experience and as a Christian. This work is, therefore, speculative without being an academic exercise, and is, like Garaudy's, committed to a confrontation with the grave problems posed by human existence and history.
- Shalom & Welcome! - 
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