What the Church Means by 'Faith'; What Eric Voegelin Meant by 'Faith'

In a familiar passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” They answered: “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” Then Jesus asked: “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The faith of Peter implicit in his declaration, which Christ recognized as revealed to Peter by the Father, is the faith of the Church, which Christ founded on Peter by virtue of his answer. It is a faith “by hearing,” as in “hearing the Gospel,” passed down from the disciples through all the generations to the present through the Church. It is the only faith possible, this side of Christian mysticism, for those who did not know Christ when He walked the earth, that He was Who He said He was, who Peter understood Him to be. We might imagine the question “But who do you say that I am?” put to Eric Voegelin. Would his answer be: “You are the differentiation of soteriological truth?”; “You are what Paul will behold in his ‘Vision of the Resurrected’”?; or something else? These sorts of answers would not have gotten Voegelin promoted to first Pope. Voegelin, who hated to be labeled, spoke of himself, perhaps with tongue in cheek, as a “pre-Nicene Christian.” The Council of Nicea rejected Arianism, the doctrine that Christ was the Son of God in the sense that He was created by God the Father, and therefore subordinate to the Father, in favor of a Christology holding that the Father and Christ were consubstantial, the first two Persons of the Trinity. Did Voegelin view Jesus as just a man who came to the full realization that he was God’s son in the sense in which we all are in some sense God’s sons, thereby emphasizing Christ’s humanity at the expense of what the Church considers to be His divinity as well? Voegelin’s Christology, and his approach to Christianity generally, is notoriously controversial, and much has been written on it. In particular, Voegelin rejected the concept of "natural reason" as it appears in the theology of the Church as definitive of the distinction between the natural and the supernatural. On the other hand, Voegelin did have a concept of faith that was central to his work. His concept of faith was not limited to Christianity, and can be found independent of it. It is not the faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, passed on “by hearing” through the mediation of the Church, although Voegelin may have accepted that faith as well. It is rather faith “by experience,” specifically the experience of tension toward transcendence which, Voegelin would say, constitutes the meaning of human existence. Voegelin found faith in this sense expressed not only in Christianity, but in Greek philosophy, and whenever and wherever a sufficient degree of “differentiation” had been achieved in human history. Voegelin would say that the “tension” in “tension toward transcendence” can also be rendered as the Christian theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity. Two related questions appear: Was Voegelin open to the “faith” of the Church, and does the Church recognize “faith” in the Voegelinian sense? The paper explores these concepts and issues by comparing Voegelin on faith with Thomas Aquinas, the paradigmatic "orthodox" Christian theologian-philosopher.