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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Thomas Aquinas argued that, while revelation alone can supply knowledge of the divine nature, unaided human reason can infer the divine existence from the world's existence. His proofs of God's existence are, in principle, extensions and elaborations of the patristic natural theologies. The Fathers believed that Neoplatonic and Hellenistic speculations about the eternal One, the arche of the cosmos, constituted a ‘natural’ knowledge of God the Father and his creation. God's selfrevelation in the incarnation was placed in the context of this natural theology. Augustine's version of natural theology both summed up the patristic achievement for the West and laid the foundation for Western medieval exploration of the natural knowledge of God. Like Augustine, Thomas believed one could reason naturally from the sensible world to God's existence; unlike him, Thomas reasoned with Aristotle and not Plato. Thomas' ordering of the natural and revealed knowledge of God repeats, then, the patristic sequence: first one proves that God is the first Cause of the world, and then one reasons from revelation about God's redemptive and reconciling relation to the world.
page 113 note 1 Summa Theologiae, (ST) I, 2, 2. Summa contra Gentiles, (Gen) 5.
page 113 note 2 ST, I, 2, 2 & 3. Gen. 8–13.
page 113 note 3 cf. Harnack's, History of Dogma, Vol. IIGoogle Scholar, chapter iv, ‘The Apologists’, for a superb characterisation. While Harnack is dated in certain important respects, his work remains historically definitive. Christian theology did become Hellenised in a way very like his description of it. His theological evaluation of that Hellenisation is quite another matter and his discussion must be read with his theological position in mind. But qua a historical study, it remains excellent.
page 115 note 1 Even Gilson recognises the problem this presents. In defence he argues that Thomas, ‘aims simply at establishing that in the universe as actually given, movement, as actually given, would be unintelligible without a first Mover communicating it to all things’. The Philosophy of St. Thomas (Cambridge, 1924), p. 56Google Scholar. Of course the world may not be intelligible. Or its apparent intelligibility may result from the mental process of ordering perceptions intelligibly.
page 115 note 2 Hume and Kant gave, of course, the most influential formulations of this critique.
page 115 note 3 The patristic natural theologies—in contrast to the Thomist—are invalidated for Christian theology because, among other reasons, they imply the divinity or apotheosis of the soul. Cf. III (b) below.
page 117 note 1 cf. Armstrong's, A. H.Later.Greek and Earh Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar; Wallis', Neoplatonism (1972)Google Scholar; Jonas', The Gnostic Religion (Boston, 1963)Google Scholar; and Merlan's, PhilipFrom Platonism to Neoplatonism (The Hague, 1953).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 119 note 1 The City of God (N.Y. 1950), Bk. 8, chapter 6, pp. 250–252.Google Scholar
page 120 note 1 Cochrane, Charles Norris, Christianity and Classical Culture (N.Y., 1957), p. 244.Google Scholar
page 120 note 2 Gilson, Etienne, God and Philosophy (Yale, 1941), pp. 48–49Google Scholar. In the citation from the City of God above, Augustine prefaces the section quoted by the remark that the Platonists ‘have seen’ it to be true.
page 121 note 1 Wallis, op. cit., pp. 57–79.
page 121 note 2 On the so-called platonic trinities, see the old, but excellent treatment by Morgan, Caesar, An Investigation of the Trinity of Plato and Philo Judaeus (Cambridge, 1853)Google Scholar. Although Morgan's purpose is rather different, in the course of his argument he establishes, definitely I think, the radical discontinuity between the Church's trinitarian dogma and platonising speculations about the one God, his word, and the World Soul.
page 121 note 3 Harnack, op. cit., p. 228.
page 122 note 1 ibid., pp. 204–5.
page 122 note 2 Of course Augustine insisted that love, planted in the heart by the Spirit, was also necessary to redirect the will to God. But this proved only too easily assimilable to the platonic notion of eros.
page 122 note 2 cf. de trinitate, in, e.g. Book ix, chapter 4, entitled “The image of the trinity in the Mind of Man who knows himself and loves Himself”, and others.
page 122 note 4 ibid., Book xv.
page 123 note 1 Gilson, , God and Philosophy, pp. 55fGoogle Scholar; cf. IV (b)(1) below for the platonic logic of this argument. See also Pagis', A. C. superb study St. Thomas and the Problem of the Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Toronto, 1934)Google Scholar, esp. chapter 2, for a discussion of how the Augustinian tradition concluded that the soul was a simple substance. Although Fagis does not consider the matter, such a definition is tantamount to apotheosis in a platonic context.
page 124 note 1 Lovejoy, Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being (N.Y. 1960), p. 48.Google Scholar
page 125 note 1 That Thomas identified this as a revealed truth, given to Moses on Sinai, may indicate that Thomas was perhaps more aware of the fides that underlay his proofs than is generally thought, cf. ST 1, 2, 3.
page 125 note 2 ‘The ontological ground of the analogy between God and other beings is the relation of efficient causality of these beings to God.’ Mondin, Battista, The Principle of Analogy in Protestant and Catholic Thought (The Hague, 1963), p. 34. cf. also p. 109.Google Scholar
page 125 note 3 ST 2, 4, 3: ‘And this is how things receiving existence from God resemble him; for precisely as things possessing existence they resemble the primary and universal source of all existence.’ Since ‘it is … God's very nature to exist’. (ST 1, 3, 4), the existence of all things will resemble His existence.
page 126 note 1 ST 1, 2, 3.
page 126 note 2 ST 1, 8, 1.
page 126 note 3 Gilson, , God and Philosophy, pp. 63–73.Google Scholar
page 127 note 1 Mascall, E. L., Existence and Analogy (Archon, 1967), p. 122Google Scholar. cf. also the excellent discussions in Gilson's The Philosophy of St. Thomas, chapter x, ‘The Powers of the Soul’, and chapter xi, ‘Intellect and Rational Knowledge’, as well as Copleston's A History of Philosophy, volume II, part 2, chapter 33, ‘St. Thomas Aquinas—iii: Principles of Created Being’.
page 129 note 1 ‘[T]he relation of the world to God established by creation is the single positive basis of the analogy between the world and Him.’ Anderson, James F., The Bond of Being (Binghamton, 1949), p. 309.Google Scholar
page 131 note 1 This is to be understood to mean, of course, that creation, redemption, and reconciliation are, respectively, appropriated to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, while the whole Trinity acts through each.