Hate Mail - I'd Contrast Kung's Discourse Against Russell's Polemics Any Day But I Know Which Approach Wins Over The Lazy And Superficial

Before going on with the series I started on Easter . . . 

In Unit F, chapter II, section 1. of Kung's Does God Exist, Hans Kung goes through a passage from one of the most popular of Bertrand Russell's books - which is typical of his anti-religious polemics - Why I Am Not A Christian, it is as good an example of the contrast between even that, for English language atheist polemics, high market example and the approach of the high end of mainstream theology. I'll give you the beginning and a few of the highlights of Kung's treatment because it goes on for many pages whereas atheists, English language sones, especially, don't make such in depth investigations. 

Beginning on page 509 in the edition of the English language translation I have,  Kung starts with a quote from Russell:

"To come to this question of the existence of God, it is a large and serious  matter I should have to keep you here until Kingdom Come, so that you will have to excuse me if I deal with it in a somewhat summary fashion."  

So "large and serious" that Russell signals his intention of not dealing with it.  This is Bertrand Russell trying to get himself off the hook before he even starts, which, for someone of his reputation as an intellectual, should discredit him, not excuse him.  It is the kind of pragmatic assertion of such vague modesty of intent that is so often found in popular polemics, especially, in my experience, when the polemicist is a self-declared rationalist, "freethinker" (which, of course no materialist can really be) and, typically, an atheist. 

Kung continues:

We certainly cannot deal with it as briefly as Bertrand Russel does in this lecture, but we must first hear a little more of what he says:  "You know, of course, that the Catholic Church has laid it down as a dogma that the exitence of God can be proved by the unaided reason.  That is a somewhat curious dogma, but it is one of their dogmas.  They had to introduce it because at one time the Freethinkers were in the habit of saying that there were such and such arguments which mere reason might urge against the existence of God, but of course they knew as a matter of faith that God did exist.  The arguments and the reasons were set out at great length, and the Catholic Church felt that they must stop it.  Therefore they laid it down that the existence of God can be proved by the unaided reason, and they had to set up what they considered were arguments to prove it."  Russell himself thought that these arguments did not prove it, ad this was a decisive reason why he would not become a Christian. But what is the dogma about which Russell speaks here so vaguely?  

Kung then goes on, not till "Kingdom Come" but for fifteen deeply informative, well cited and referenced pages, first on the actual declaration from the First Vatican Council which Russell distorts for his entirely more vulgar polemical method which declares it will not deal with issues he raises in depth - certainly in order to keep the attention of Russell's middle-brow audience who are interested in attacks, not ideas, least of all what is credible or even true.   He gives it, verbatim 

Basically, certainty comes from reason, to whcih of course the certaity of faith must be added.  This is the position quite clearly adopted by the First Vatican Council in 1870. "If anyone says that the one true God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from created things, h is to be condemned."  How did the Council come to produce such a harsh theological position?

And after that he goes into a full history of  why the First Vatican Council (which he criticizes,  in process, as largely a failure which didn't adopt any of the proposed reforms but did adopt such things that Kung so notably rejected, as a Catholic priest, including papal infallibility) adopted that language, the various movements in earlier 18-19th century theology, both would-be rationalist and fideist it was a reaction against, the actual meaning of the statement in context - which didn't mean what Russell characterized it as being. 

Against Russell it must be pointed out that Vatican I asserts not that every human being actually knows God but that knowledge of God is possible in principle for every human being.   Neither does it assert that God's existence can be proved, but only that it can be known from created things.  Nor, finally, does it assert that even natural knowledge of God is acquired in fact without God's grace;  only that natural knowledge of God comes about without divine revelation.  Does this seem a ingenious solution to the problem of reason and faith"  Is it bad or a fair compromise?  

I don't know if Kung meant to use language that could fairly be used to characterize Bertrand Russell's polemical writing and speaking in which wit and cleverness (what passes as "ingenious" in mid-brow discourse) but I certainly notice that you could turn Russell's statement back on him on that basis. 

After that Kung gives a Catholic critique of it, noting the enormous damage that it did within the Catholic church, before noting that the most intellectually rigorous criticism of it didn't come from a Catholic or a  materialist-rationalist-atheist but the great Protestant theologian Karl Barth, then the reaction to Barth and then a recapitulation in which Kung - who is an authoritative voice in matters concering Karl Barth's thinking (Barth, himself, endorsed Kung's understanding of his work) notes that BARTH, HIMSELF made a substantial criticism of his earlier position.  

It took others working within the fields of logic and mathematics to come up with the same kind of criticism of the academic work of Bertrand Russell.   In just dealing with this one accusation against Kung and his intellectual honesty, it would seem to me that the same reservations that Russell makes polemically against the claim that you could come to faith in God through unaided reason are not entirely unlike his attempt to explain mathematics through pure logic.  I wonder if anyone ever put that to him for consideration and if the ever abbreviating Bertrand Russell ever said anything about that. 

Update:  I should certainly have noted that Barth's criticism of it was a first rate intellectual criticism but that it was far more importantly a criticism that couldn't have been more timely and important for the moral and political consequences of the ideas he rejected.