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Apophaticism in Thomas Aquinas: a re-reformulation and recommendation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2007

Kevin Hector
Kevin Hector*
Affiliation:
Swift Hall, University of Chicago Divinity School, 1025 E. 58th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USAkhector@uchicago.edu
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Abstract

Apophaticism has become quite fashionable, for political as well as philosophical reasons: political, because apophaticism opens up space between God and oppressive God-talk; and philosophical, because apophaticism provides theological warrant for embracing our Kantian limits. A correlate fashion has been to broaden our sense of who belongs to the ‘apophatic tradition’ – and Thomas Aquinas has been one of the favourite candidates for such reconsideration. Contrary to this trend, I argue that apophaticism is not a ‘rule’ for Thomas – far from it. Apophaticism is, ironically, one of the steps in Thomas's strategy to assemble the conceptual resources necessary for making positive statements about God. That strategy, in brief, consists of five moves: first, Thomas provisionally defines ‘God’ as the sufficient cause of certain effects ascribed to God; second, using the via negativa to rule out whatever is incompatible with a ‘God’ so specified, he argues that God-in-Godself can be identified with ‘God’; third, Thomas identifies ‘being’ as the common term between God and creatures (which is licit because, Thomas claims, being is not a genus); fourth, he argues that all beings tend toward their perfection, and that God is this perfection; and fifth, he concludes that this tendency-toward-God funds the making of meaningful, positive statements about God-in-Godself.

Type
Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , November 2007 , pp. 377 - 393
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2007

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References

1 For examples of this approach, see Gordon, Kaufman, An Essay on Theological Method, 3rdedn (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1995)Google Scholar; and In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993); Rebecca, Chopp, The Power to Speak: Feminism, Language, God (New York: Crossroad, 1991)Google Scholar; and Sallie, McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982)Google Scholar; and Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987).

2 In addition to Kaufman, Chopp, and McFague, see Kant's First Critique and Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, Ayer's, A. J. Language, Truth, and Logic, 2ndedn (New York: Dover Books, 1946)Google Scholar, and Preller's Divine Science and the Science of God: A Reformulation of Thomas Aquinas (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967) – of which more anon.

3 Not that there's anything wrong with Whig history, of course. Robert Brandom makes a good case that the ability to tell such histories is a critical element of rationality; see his Tales of the Mighty Dead: Historical Essays in the Metaphysics of Intentionality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 13–17, 107–18.

4 In addition to Preller see, for instance, David, Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986); Victor, White, God the Unknown (New York: Harper, 1956)Google Scholar; Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York: Random House, 1956); Kaufman, In the Beginning . . . Creativity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), pp. 22–3; McFague, Metaphorical Theology, pp. 124ff.; Brian, Davies, ‘Aquinas on What God is Not’, in Davies, Brian (ed.), Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 227–42Google Scholar; John, Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, 2ndedn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989, 2004)Google Scholar. Not everyone reads Thomas's apophaticism as a rule, however; see, for example, Gregory P. Rocca's superb study, Speaking the Incomprehensible God: Thomas Aquinas on the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004); in addition, Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. G. B. Phelan (New York: Scribner, 1959); Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003). Each of these studies sees apophaticism as an element in Thomas's theology, rather than a rule – but none advances an argument similar to the one offered here.

5 Not surprisingly, Preller's book is presently in vogue too. See, for instance, the critical discussion in Stout, Jeffrey and MacSwain, Robert (eds), Grammar and Grace: Reformulations of Aquinas and Wittgenstein (London: SCM Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

6 Preller, Divine Science and the Science of God, p. 5.

7 Ibid., p. 10.

8 Ibid., p. 271.

9 Ibid., p. 28. On the same page, Preller asserts that ‘Aquinas stands firmly in the tradition of Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and their later heir, Nicholas of Cusa’.

10 Ibid., p. 28.

11 Eugene Rogers similarly denies that Thomas was engaged in natural theology; see his Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995 – a book dedicated, by the way, to Victor Preller). There is a sense in which I agree with this denial, insofar as ‘natural theology’ refers to the adoption of a second starting-point for theology, alongside revelation. As I see it, Thomas is engaged in faith seeking understanding, not apologetics, and in this sense I agree that he is not engaged in (what Karl Barth understood as) ‘natural theology’. For present purposes, we need simply note that we can reject one trend – the ‘Apophatic Thomas’ trend – without rejecting the other – the ‘Thomas isn't a Natural Theologian’ trend. While Preller uses the former to establish the latter, the latter can be established on other grounds.

12 Attention is here paid to the Summa Theologiae alone, for good reason: if the following argument is correct, then Thomas's use of apophaticism (as well as ‘proofs’ and the analogia entis) can only be properly understood within the context of the particular argument that Thomas is developing. A thematic approach would accordingly have to follow upon strict attention to the strategy employed in each of the individual texts.

13 All parenthetic references are to Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. Roman numerals indicate the part, followed by Arabic numerals for the question and article – hence ‘I.12.4’ refers to the fourth article of the twelfth question of the first part. Within these references, I will indicate objections (‘obj’.) and replies to objections (‘ad’) by number, and sed contra by ‘s.c.’ The body of Thomas's response will be cited without further specification; thus, ‘I.12.4’ refers to the body of that article. Translations are those of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1948).

14 At Preller's suggestion, I prefer ‘mental images’ to ‘phantasms’.

15 It is not difficult to see why Preller reads Thomas as a sort of ‘proto-Kantian’ – or, what is nearly the same thing, a proto-Sellarsian. I agree, in fact, with Preller's reading of Thomas's epistemology – my disagreement lies in the conclusions that Preller draws from this reading. It is worth noting that I am also agreeing with Preller's implicit rejection of experience as ‘Given’ (in Sellars's sense) - and agreeing that Thomas can legitimately be brought to bear on this rejection. For Sellars on ‘The Myth of the Given’, see Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1956, 1997). I am, again, disagreeing only with Preller's insistence that this entails an ‘Apophatic Rule’.

16 The trinitarian shape of this vision underlies Thomas's claim that faith is ‘the first beginning of things to be hoped for’ (II.II.4.1), in that we are united to the Word (who ‘proposes’ belief to us) and the Spirit (who ‘moves us inwardly’ to cling to this proposal). In faith, then, the unity which terminates in beatific vision is already begun. On this, see II.II.6.1.

17 The literature is vast. For useful surveys, see Fergus Kerr's ‘Ways of Reading the Five Ways’ in After Aquinas: Versions of Thomism (London: Blackwell Publishing, 2002); and John F. Wippel, ‘The Five Ways’, Thomas Aquinas: Contemporary Philosophical Perspectives (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 159–225. Three popular interpretations emerge in the literature: those who think that Thomas is trying to ‘prove’ God's existence and that he succeeds in doing so, those who think that Thomas is trying to ‘prove’ God's existence and fails to do so, and those who think that Thomas is not trying to ‘prove’ God's existence. I suppose my interpretation fits into the third category, though I differ from my category-mates in claiming that Thomas uses the Five Ways to get a concept of ‘God’ up and running. Again, the point of such ‘proofs’ is that we can use them to define a concept without knowing the essence of that which we are defining.

18 Note that each proof ends with the phrase, ‘and this everyone understands to be God’. This fits with my claim that Thomas is using the proofs as a way of specifying the content of an unknown placeholder, which is why I repeat the phrase five times – along with Thomas.

19 This reading, like Preller's, does not take the Ways as ‘proofs’ of God's existence; like Preller, I do not read Thomas as engaging in ‘natural theology’, if by that we mean the adoption of a second starting-point over against revelation. Thomas clearly denies this: ‘sacred doctrine makes use of these [philosophical] authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical scriptures as the incontrovertible proof’ (I.1.8, ad 2). Unlike Preller, however, my reading does not depend upon the claim that Thomas offers the proofs only to show the deficiency of all our references to God.

20 Note the role played by the analogia entis: ‘being’ is indeed a common term between God and creatures, but because ‘being’ is not a predicate, it does not warrant an anthropological starting-point for theological statements. Rather, Thomas deploys the analogia entis precisely as a way of affirming the meaningfulness of the Gospel's claims about God. It functions, in other words, not as natural theology, but as a way of making sense of our belief that our talk about God is really about God. Thomas is engaged in ‘faith seeking understanding’, not natural theology.

21 It is worth noting that Karl Barth's approach to these matters is almost identical to Thomas's; see, for instance, Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. II, The Doctrine of God, part 1.

22 The debate over ‘Thomas's doctrine of analogy’ has been in full swing for hundreds of years, of course, and shows no signs of slowing. Entry into this debate would require a much, much longer essay; for present purposes, I simply need to demonstrate that Thomas's use of analogy in the Summa neither follows from nor requires an ‘apophatic rule’.

23 Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), p. 19.

24 If this argument sounds circular, that's because it is: if we are engaged in ‘faith seeking understanding’, we will always be assuming our arguments’ conclusions in order to demonstrate those conclusions. This is sound theological method, so long as one remembers what one is up to.