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Maimonides, Aquinas and Gersonides on Providence and evil

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

David Burrell
David Burrell
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame, Indiana
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Extract

God's knowledge of individuals becomes an issue only in the face of a Pantokrator, and it remains an issue in each of the monotheistic religions familiar to us. If one seldom finds it raised in more recent times, that can only represent collective prudent counsel, for the history of each tradition records, one after another, the shipwrecks of those who essayed it, as well as bitter aftermaths in their respective religious communities. The more bitter, I believe, as certain stages of this inquiry lead one to dilemmas so harsh that atheism alone could offer plausible rest to the spirit.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 1984 , pp. 335 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1984

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References

page 336 note 1 Maimonides, Moses, The Guide for the Perplexed (New York: Dover, 1956)Google Scholar, Aquinas, Thomas, Expositio super job ad Litteram (Romae: Ad Sanctae Sabinae, 1965)Google Scholar, Gerson, Levi ben, Commentary of the Book of Job, trans. Larson, A. L. (New York: Bloack, 1946)Google Scholar. I shall employ the Friedlander translation of Maimonides, unless the more recent and literal rendering of Schlome Pines (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963) be indicated.

page 337 note 1 Here Gersonides acknowledges his lineage despite his critical stance towards the earlier philosopher.

page 339 note 1 Samuelson, Norbert Max, ed., Gersonides on God's Knowledge (Wars of the Lord III) (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1977), pp. 130–9Google Scholar; also Samuelson, , ‘The problem of future contingents in medieval Jewish philosophy’, in Studies in Medieval Culture VI and VII (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 1976), pp. 71 82, esp. 79–80.Google Scholar

page 340 note 1 The background for this axiom can be found in Gilson's, Etienne classical article: ‘Pourquoi St. Thomas a critiqué St. Augustin’, Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du moyen age (Paris: Vrin, 1926–1927).Google Scholar

page 341 note 1 Cf. Samuelson, , Gersonides, 301 n. 620Google Scholar, citing from Ibn-Rushd's Kitab fasl al-Magal.

page 342 note 1 Ibid. 303–6 n. 621.

page 342 note 2 Ibid. 232 n. 346; also Samuelson, , ‘Gersonides’ account of God's knowledge of particulars', Journal of the History of Philosophy X (1972), 399–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 342 note 3 Gerson, Levi ben, Les Guerres du Seigneur, Livres III et IV, trans. Touati, Charles (Le Haye: Mouton, 1968), Pp. 133–5, 149–50.Google Scholar

page 343 note 1 For Ibn-Sina see Gardet, Louis, ‘Les notes d'Avicenne sur “La théologie d'Aristote”’, Révue Thomte (1951), pp. 346–406Google Scholar; for Aquinas see inter alia my Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven: Yale, 1963), ch. 6.

page 343 note 2 Madkour, Ibrahim, La Place d'al-Farabi dans l'école philosophique musulmane (Paris: Librairie d'Amérique et d'Ouest, 1934), p. 14.Google Scholar

page 344 note 1 Samuelson, , art. cit.Google Scholar

page 344 note 2 Pieper, Josef, ‘The philosophical act’. In Leisure the Basis of Culture (New York, Pantheon, 1952), p. 89.Google Scholar

page 344 note 3 I have turned his statement about to make the point more dramatically – cf. de Veritate 2.12.

page 345 note 1 The five features are: ‘first, that his knowledge is one, and yet embraces many different kinds of objects. Secondly, it is applied to things not in existence. Thirdly, it comprehends the infinite. Fourthly, it remains unchanged, though it comprises knowledge of changeable things…; Fifthly, according to the teaching of our Law, God's knowledge of one of two eventualities does not determine it, however certain that knowledge may be of the occurrence of the one eventuality’ (3.20).

page 347 note 1 My translation of eius intuitus fertur super omnia ab aeterne, grout sunt in sua presentialitate. Thomas Gornall, S.J. emphasizes the visual metaphor: ‘because he eternally surveys all things as they are in their presence to him’. Summa Theologise, vol. 4: Knowledge in God (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), p. 49.Google Scholar

page 347 note 2 Cf. Sum. Theol. 1.14.13; de Ver. 2.12. This image is introduced in de Malo: ‘potent accepi conveniens similitude ex ordine locali’ (16.7).

page 347 note 3 Cf. Samuelson, , art. cit.Google Scholar

page 347 note 4 Hintikka, Jaake, ‘Cogito ergo sum: inference or performance’, Philosophical Review LXXI (1962), 3–32Google Scholar; Aristotle, , On Interpretation, 9 (19a23).Google Scholar

page 348 note 1 Lonergan, Bernard J. F., Insight (London: Longmans, 1957), ch. 8, ‘Things’.Google Scholar

page 348 note 2 Guide 3.20; de Ventate 2.12.

page 348 note 3 The words are Aquinas', in Sum. Theol. 1.8.1.2, but the source is Augustine, in Confessions Bk. 7, chs. 15, 20.

page 349 note 1 As Thomas Gornall (p. 347 n. I) notes: ‘It is always ultimately in terms of eternity that St Thomas explains God's knowledge of the creature's free acts. What is known in eternity is known not as past or future but in God's presence, with the hypothetical necessity which belongs to what is actual and present. Nor does St Thomas treat the question of God's knowledge of the free acts of possible but not actual creatures’ (xxiii). On the latter question, I would agree with Kenny's, Anthony critique in The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), p. 71Google Scholar; though I am presenting here a position at variance with his regarding the coherence of speaking of God's knowing something ‘in eternity’.

page 349 note 2 This image is also employed by Ross, James in Philosophical Theology (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969), pp. 250–72Google Scholar, though he insists he is not drawing an analogy but illustrating a metaphysical principle (268). Yet since his use of this ‘principle’ invariably turns on counter-examples which rely uniquely on the author–character analogy, one must wonder what other access he has to the principle – perhaps one of ‘intellectual emanation’!

page 350 note 1 One may now understand why Wolf cart Pannenberg, who cannot escape invoking the limit-notion of ‘universal history’, must always use the complementary ‘proleptic’ to characterize things as we know them.

page 351 note 1 Cf. my Exercises in Religious Understanding (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1974, chs 4 (Kierkegaard) and 5 (Jung).