"The most general way of contrasting philosophy -- and the theology in which it terminates -- with supernatural theology is as follows. The starting points or principles of philosophy are unarguable truths that everyone naturally knows. Philosophy presupposes the naturally and commonly known truths and its arguments will be persuasive to the degree that they build upon such truths."

"Supernatural theology differs from theology in this: that its starting points or principles are not what everybody naturally knows. Rather, its starting points are the mysteries of the faith, what is taken to be true not because it is understood but because God has told us it is true. The theology based on faith is a science which seeks to understand, or approximate understanding, of what has been revealed. But is it reasonable to believe to be true what we cannot in this life understand, truths such as the trinity of persons in God, the union of human and divine nature in Christ, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharists, etc.?"

"Something Thomas draws attention to again and again is that not everything God has revealed is beyond our ken. That revelation in the broad sense includes those truths about God that philosophers can know to be true -- that God is one, that there cannot be more than one God, that God is the cause of all else. Thomas calls this the Preambles of Faith. These make up a small, largely implicit subset of what has been revealed. And they are important because they provide the basis for an argument that it is reasonable to accept the mysteries of the faith, those truths we cannot understand."

"If some of the things that have been revealed are knowable -- the preambles of faith -- then it is reasonable to accept the mysteries of faith as true. This is an argument for the reasonableness of belief, not of the truth of the mysteries.

This makes it clear that the goal of philosophy is to know those truths which the theologian calls preambles of faith."

The full study materials for this lecture can be found at catholicthinkers.org