Tradition and Reason: Two Uses of Reason, Critical and Contemplative

Abstract: Reason, as it is proper to the task of theology, has two uses: critical and contemplative. This twofold appropriation of reason sets the stage for this article, a stage occupied in turn by Newman and by Aquinas. The critical function of theological work is expressed via the 1877 preface which Newman wrote for his Lectures on the Prophetic Office of the Church. The critical office of theology is vital not only to the practice of theology itself but to the liturgical and spiritual life of the church, and to the exercise of church leadership if that leadership is not to descend into tyranny. For the theologian, reason is not antithetical to contemplation; rather, contemplation includes a form of reasoning. Theology is ‘a schooling in the discipline of contemplating the self‐revealing God’, a discipline of ‘metaphysical ascesis’ which compels both intellectual conversion and moral practice. Such an ascesis was practised well by Aquinas, and Kerr reflects on the Summa Theologiae as ‘a training in a form of metaphysical reasoning’, being schooled in the knowledge of God which strips away our ‘idolatorous inclinations’.