Re-Evaluation of my Philosophical Commitments

Over the years I have absorbed a great deal of material on apologetics and philosophy to such an extent that it almost shipwrecked my faith. It wasn't that I never should have studied philosophy, but that I never should have attempted to do so on my own without the guidance of the Catholic Church. I admit that even in my best attempts I have failed greatly to properly navigate the minefield of philosophy in a manner that was healthy and would contribute to my knowledge of God. The following is an examination of ideas which I have held that have caused great harm to my Christian faith.

I once wrote the following:

“Everyone has a worldview. A worldview is built upon the foundation of presuppositions. A presupposition is a proposition which is assumed to be true to save from an infinite regress of proofs.

Since within a syllogism, the conclusion is only as certain as its premises, and since at the most basic level all of our worldviews contain a measure of assumption, due to the nature of presuppositions, we can not be absolutely certain that our worldview is a flawless representation of reality, although we maybe reasonably certain to a lesser or greater degree that the construct approximates objective reality.

In general, as adults, those who have reached the age of abstract thought, there is a reciprocal relationship between objective reality, what a thing is in and of itself apart from a perceiving mind, and the constructs which we have formed, either implicitly or explicitly, within the mind. A worldview is the construct through which we have come to interpret our reality, yet it is continually informed and confronted by objective reality. In other words, our worldview is the lens through which we interpret reality. Whereas all that which enters the mind, which first existed in the senses certainly leave an impression of itself upon the mind, these impressions are also filtered through intellectual constructs, hence the reciprocal relationship between the interpreter and that which is being interpreted.”

The following is my critique:

First, I do recognize that there are elements in this text that are true but there is an admixture of error therein.

Second, I do not know precisely where all of these ideas come from but I am aware of at least three sources that have led me in this direction.

1) James Sire’s The Universe Next Door.

A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions (assumptions which may be true, partially true or entirely false) which we hold (consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently) about the basic constitution of reality, and that provides the foundation on which we live and move and have our being. i

2) Earl Barrett’s A Christian Perspective of Knowing. This text was published by Beacon Hill Press, which is a publishing company of The Church of the Nazarene.

Every branch of knowledge has is presuppositions, a priori statements or first principles which as ultimate are impossible of theoretical proof, and yet which, regarded as self-evident and necessary, are not only above all necessity of proof but are also basic to all proof, saving from infinite regress in proof.ii

3) I also believe Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason, which I once pulled off the shelves in the library at Nazarene Bible College, influenced me under the categories of the phenomena and noumena. That whether the thing in the mind correlates to the thing itself was in question. As I wrote concerning that our worldviews can not be a “flawless representation of reality, although we may be reasonably certain to a lesser or greater degree that the construct approximates objective reality.”

Third, whether I properly understood precisely what was being said in the above texts I developed it into an assumption that no one could be absolutely certain concerning ultimate reality. This placed everything I knew under a continuous skepticism, always drawing into question whether what I thought was really true or not. This was not only confusing and erroneous but very corrosive to my faith.

Additionally, whether I admitted it or not I maintained that it was impossible to demonstrate the existence of God unless one presupposes that God exists, that is, that the arguments for the existence of God were only convincing to those who already held the conclusion. I practically functioned as a presuppositionalist, in that evidence and arguments are only developed after the fact in an attempt to justify the theological assumptions already made. This caused a crisis of faith over and over because I never had a real and true rational basis for my Christian faith. Sire was correct in assessing the various building blocks of how a person comes to view the world, but I wrongly applied Barrett to mean that all worldviews are reducible to a proposition held to save from an infinite regress of proofs, as if, no one could really know for sure about anything, so we just started with an idea and if it seemed to create a consistent worldview then perhaps it was reliable.

I firmly believe that Aristotle will be the cure to this confusion. I had effectively created a post-modern construct which serves relativism and indifferentism. I ran into these errors because I was continuously confronted by different philosophies while never really having or being taught a philosophy which was deemed by the Church to be helpful. Even after taking Philosophy for Theologians I never really abandoned this line of reasoning, but I firmly believe that this re-evaluation was the result of revisiting the material taught in the course.

In this regard, I have been arrogant to my own demise and I ask anyone who may have been influenced by me in this manner to please forgive me my ignorance. I firmly commit myself to the study of Aristotle and firmly believe that the Church's use of his philosophy will guide me. At this time I am enrolled in a Faith and Revelation course that is deeply entrenched in the philosophy of Aristotle and the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas to help remedy this error.



i Sire, James. The Universe Next Door, 17.

iiBarrett, Earl. A Christian Perspective of Knowing, 15.