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Christian Faith & Human Understanding: Studies on the Eucharist, Trinity, and the Human Person

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Msgr. Sokolowski's latest book, and he has written many, brings together a number of previously written articles, duly edited, on a variety of subjects from speculative theology to the understanding of every day conduct. They are all brought together by a brilliantly written introduction which, in itself, is worth the price of the book. Especially helpful to this reader, as a Roman Catholic, are his profound insights into the mysteries of the Eucharist and the Holy Trinity. Although reading these, and the other essays in the book, requires thoughtful attention, I highly recommend this collection to all those seeking a deeper knowledge of their Christian Faith in the light of Human reason.

In the "Introduction" to his collection of essays, Christian Faith and Human Understanding, Professor Sokolowski identifies the subjects and themes that serve to unify each of his book's four sections (pp. 4-5). In this review, I want to highlight an underlying theme that serves to unify the whole book, namely, the theme of distinctions.

There are many ways of approaching Sokolowski's handling of the theme of distinctions. I choose to approach it by way of three distinctions he makes and an account he gives of making distinctions. Because the account makes clear why distinctions are absolutely necessary, I begin with it.

Following Aristotle, Sokolowski explains: "If we wish to say anything at all we must implicitly make a distinction; we must not only posit some sort of sense but also exclude some other sense. Any positive determination involves a marking off from something else. The negation that is involved in a distinction is required as a condition for bringing forward anything positive as a theme for discourse" (p. 65). Sokolowski devotes his whole book to making distinctions of this positive kind; moreover, they derive their positive character from a distinction he makes on the first page of his book. For purposes of identification, I propose to call Sokolowski's opening distinction his first distinction; and, for the same reason, I propose to call the distinction I discuss next, Sokolowski's second distinction.

In his first distinction, Sokolowski distinguishes between what human reason is not, or at least not essentially, and what essentially is. Thus he writes: "Human reason is not just the power to move from one proposition to another; it is not just the ability to argue, infer, and compute. More fundamentally, it is the capacity to let things come to light, to let the intelligibility of things show up for ourselves and others" (p.11). In making this distinction, Sokolowski is doing what he talks about, when (on page 65) he talks about distinctions as necessarily involving a negative and a positive. That is, he is negating (but not discarding) a set of things (i.e. "arguing, inferring, and computing") as failing to define what reason essentially is; and he is also bringing forward a single thing (the uniquely human rational activity of bringing "the intelligibility of things to light)" as a positive "theme for discourse."

Sokolowski second distinction occurs on the penultimate page of his book, where he distinguishes between thinking and speaking "analytically, thoughtfully, and philosophically"; and thinking and speaking "only rhetorically" (p 309). The preceding distinction may be given a specific application by citing the third of Sokolowski's three distinctions.

In his third distinction, Sokolowski distinguishes between "philosophy and other forms of thinking." "All the others," Sokolowski writes, "are partial." That is, all the others mark off a field or area of inguiry for themselves; and within that field or area, they claim sovereignty. "Philosophy, however," Sokolowski concludes, "is the `specialty' that knows no borders (p. 11). In other words, whereas all other forms of human thought and speech undertake to study some part of the whole of things, philosophy alone, at least in Sokolowski's account of it, undertakes to study the whole.

Now, putting together all three of Sokolowski's distinctions leads, I think, to this conclusion. So long as the practitioners in a partial field or area of inquiry continue to think and speak specifically about the things that fall within their specific area of competence, they may be said to think and speak "analytically, thoughtfully" and possibly truthfully as well. (Not even they would say that everything they say is true.) However, as soon as they undertake to generalize the truths they have learned within their particular field or area into truths about the whole, they begin to think and speak "only rhetorically." A host of examples might be cited in support of the preceding statement. I choose to cite only one.

Suppose the thing to be studied is human mind; and suppose as well that human mind's new students define themselves as new, precisely by rejecting everything that has been said about human mind prior to their coming into the world, even including the notion that such a thing as "human mind" exists. Whatever these new students of human mind now insist "human mind" is, their insistence necessarily precedes their investigations of it. But, as it does, so their investigations can only end by confirming what they, in the first place, assumed human mind to be. Hence, when the new students of human mind set up to oppose all the notions of it that preceded their own new one, the best that can be said of them is that the are thinking and speaking "only rhetorically." That is, they are using the (possible) truths of their partial science as available means of persuasion, with a view toward persuading everybody who will listen that everything that has been said about human mind prior to them is absolutely false, and that what they now say about it, at least in respect of what it essentially is, is absolutely true.

I want to close this review by pointing out what I hope its effect will be. My hope is that by making evident the theme of distinctions Sokolowski's book houses, but to which he nowhere explicitly adverts, I will have opened up for his readers a way of reading his book that might not otherwise have occurred to them. For, as I see it, Sokolowski's book can be read, not just as a collection of essays, or even as four blocks of essays grouped round four distinct subjects or themes. It can also be read as a system of distinctions, each one tending toward the same end: the end of bringing to light the intelligibility of things as diverse as Christian faith, human understanding, the human person, natural law, the doctor/patient relation, and the best sort of political order for human beings.