Hi Lonnie,

Thanks for the question.

You said:

• Why is the Catholic Church so comfortable with philosophy and theology?

Because that's our nature; it's been that way for centuries. The Church's mission is to spread the saving Gospel of Jesus Christ to everyone around the world. The word Catholic besides meaning universal also means one everywhere or a faith according to its totality.

In spreading the Gospel, the evangelist has to be ready to explain who Jesus Christ is and what the purpose of His life was from His Incarnation in the womb of Our Blessed Mother to His Glorious Resurrection and Ascension into Heaven.

The Church teaches from the Catechism: CCC 479 — 483:

The problem:

We are mere finite humans who are called to explain the stuff I just mentioned from the Catechism to those who have not heard about Him. I use the word the stuff not in a disrespectful manner but as a way of referring to theological issues like:

• becoming incarnate without losing His divine nature
• two wills in One Person
• two natures in One Person, or
• the Incarnation

that many have a hard time grasping.

For any human to try to explain the full nature of God is a heavy task, but this what the Apostles, the Church, and succeeding generations of Catholic Christians are called to do.

• The word philosophy (philosophia, from philein, to love, and sophia, wisdom) means the love of wisdom.
• The word theology means the study of God.

Theology comes first; but in order to explain it we use philosophical concepts.

I've heard others in the Church state:

Philosophy are the handles to theology.

Now some visitors who are reading this answer may say,

That's what I don't like about the Catholic Church, you guys make it too confusing. All you have to do is love Jesus!

My reply is:

Amen brother, preach it!!

• Why?

Because not everyone is called to be a philosopher or theologian. At the baptismal font, the priest won't ask you for your theology or philosophy degree. Many of the Church's philosophical concepts go way over my head and it doesn't take much to go over my head. Just ask my colleagues : )

We are called to love Our Lord, but to love Him, we must obey His Commandments and teachings, both in Scripture and those that have been passed down to us by
Oral Tradition. St. Paul talks about the obedience of faith in Romans 1:1-6 but because issues of faith deal with issues beyond our limited reason we call upon philosophy and theology to work out the hard stuff the best we can, then call upon proper evangelization and apologetic skills to simplify the complex divine issues so we can explain it to others.

Like I have said in the past, our lives consist of an array of people with different:

• educational backgrounds (both secular and religious)
• culture backgrounds
• family backgrounds
• emotional backgrounds
• aptitudes, and
• maturity levels.

Although Our Lord may not be calling everyone to be a philosopher or theologian, it's important for the faithful and non-Christians to understand the usefulness and purpose of these vocations.

You said:
The Catholic Church to me is a thinking Church!

Exactly! and history, going back to the Early Church Fathers. The Early Church Councils confirm this.

I say Early Church Councils because many of the current heresies we have today were resolved in the Early Church councils from 100 A.D. to about 500 A.D.

Now some who is reading this posting, may be saying privately,

Yeah, but I'm not that smart. I'm not much of a thinker.

One of the great things about being a Catholic is, the big time Saints of the Church have already figured a lot of the confusing stuff out. All you have to do is:

• believe
• obey, and
• if something puzzles you, don't be shy, just ask a Catholic friend or us!

One of our mottoes at AskACatholic.com is:

The only dumb question is the one not asked!

Thanks for e-mailing.

Mike

Hi Lonnie,

Like my colleague Mike, I would say that it's that way, because it has been so from the beginning.

Christianity was at first a Jewish religion. They didn't even think non-Jews could be saved. Read the case of Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10. Then it started spreading to the Gentiles, chief among whom were the Greeks (See Acts 14:1, 17:4, 17:12, 18:4, 19:10, 19:17, 20:21). I don't want to say only Greeks were the first Gentile converts but they played a major role, so much so that Greek became somewhat synonymous with Gentile. Greeks had a strong tradition in philosophy, which is why there were so many intellectuals hanging around Athens (Acts 17:16-34).

Even the first chapter of John is steeped in the language of Greek philosophy (e.g. the concept of Logos which Greek philosophers had discussed at length for centuries before Jesus).  The real question is not why the Catholic Church is comfortable with theology and philosophy but why some Protestant traditions are so uncomfortable with them.

• After all, who can oppose love of wisdom and study of God?

In fact, in some Protestant traditions, (you do not say which one you come from), there is an explicit opposition to reason, which in some quarters is branded a whore.  This is a heresy called Fideism — faith pitted against reason.  Other traditions, in an attempt to make the faith accessible to everyone and simplified to the Bible alone, have rejected deeper study and made the faith simplistic.

I think a lot of this is rooted in the different approaches that different traditions take. 

In Catholicism, as in Orthodoxy and Anglicanism, the faith is based on Scripture and Tradition as interpreted and articulated by those who have gone before them.  Consider a secular discipline like medicine.  Let's say, arbitrarily, it started with Hippocrates, with doctors and others over the centuries adding more and more to the body of knowledge and refining what we know.  One person builds on the edifice that others before him have constructed.  Over the years, the edifice grows and grows and grows and becomes more and more complete. 

This is how Catholicism works:  Theologians build on 2,000 years of tradition and they do so with a common mind under the direction of a single authority. 

Many Protestant traditions, however, because of their belief in Scripture alone and their inherent suspicion of authority, do not believe in building on what others have done.  It is up to each person to start from scratch and build their own theology.  Few people build on the work of another.  Those that do, often work at cross-purposes; there is no direction to what they are building.  Thus it appears that no thought has gone into the edifice(s).  It may, not so much, be that no thought has gone into them, but the thought has been diffused over many smaller edifices instead of one large one, and the thought is disorganized and undirected so as to be less effective.

Here's another factor:  Catholic philosophy is deeply rooted in pagan Greek philosophy.  A lot of Protestants are suspicious of anything pagan.  While, in general, we do not want to mix paganism with Christianity, from the earliest time, Christians saw what the ancient Greek philosophers believed as a kind of foretaste of the Gospel.  I can't remember exactly how they put it but they were so bold as to consider them to be Christians before Christ.  Thus, Greek philosophy, which because it is pagan is anathema to many Protestants, is the foundation of Catholic philosophy.

There are a lot of reasons why Catholicism places an emphasis on theology and philosophy that Protestantism does not.  We have always built on what others have done in a coherent, organized fashion. We don't believe in Scripture alone, we believe in using reason together with faith, and we've always seen Greek philosophy as a forerunner of Christianity.

Hope this helps.

Eric