Theology Needs Philosophy brings together essays by leading
theologians and philosophers on the fundamental importance of human
reason and philosophy for Catholic theology and human cultures
generally. This edited collection studies the contributions of reason,
with its acquired wisdom, science, and scholarship, in five sections.
Those sections are: (1) the inevitable presence and service of
philosophy in theology; (2) the metaphysics of creation, nature, and the
natural knowledge of God; (3) the history of Logos as reason in the
fathers, in St. Thomas Aquinas, and Medieval Biblical commentaries; (4)
the role of reason in Trinitarian theology, Christology, and Mariology;
and finally (5) reason in the theology of Aquinas.
The general
reader, as well as students and faculty, will be introduced to a
constant, but sometimes neglected, element of Catholic intellectual
traditions. Pope Francis follows Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II in
emphasizing the light of faith in his first encyclical
Lumen Fidei,
showing how human reason is healed and elevated by faith. Not to act
according to reason is contrary to the nature of God, as Pope Benedict's
Regensburg Lecture reminded the world. An abandonment of Catholic
faith, and its incorporation of the ancient discoveries of reason, has
led to a darkening of reason in secularist modernity. The light of
reason is from the Word (Logos) who is God (John 1:9), calling everyone
to live attentive to the cultivation of reason. Modern popes have
therefore called for a recovery of reason since faith in Jesus Christ
heals and intensifies the light of reason so fundamental to the
God-given dignity of every human being.
