Natural Theology

The Metaphysics of God

James F. Anderson

• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839745188
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

In this book my sole aim is to present clearly and succinctly for students some central arguments and truths about God in so far as He is known to us in the light of reason. This pedagogical purpose dictates a great deal of compression, lest the student be lost in a labyrinth of dialectical and historical discussion, however important that may be in itself. But compression need not mean oversimplification. It does mean condensing, abridging, epitomizing. This has been done deliberately, in the interest of the student.

PART ONE—The Existence of God

CHAPTER I—Prolegomena

Sec. 1. Pre-Philosophical Knowledge of God

Of all the myriad thoughts that have preoccupied men through the ages there is one that stands out above all others: the idea of God. Is it by accident that the history of man’s life and culture is in large part the history of this idea? Can the existence of such a universal phenomenon be a matter of chance?

Is it not clear, on the contrary, that a thing regularly recurrent can be explained only in the light of some causal constancy? Wherein does the intelligibility of such a thing consist if not in its being the effect of a principle providing an essential orientation?

Now this principle obviously is something within man himself—part and parcel of his humanity. This principle is nothing other than the natural bent of man’s mind toward that which ultimately is.

Here we face a most remarkable fact: the presence throughout human history of ideas and questions and concerns about God. These indeed do not prove that He really exists; but they do prove that the human mind has an inborn proclivity toward this kind of thinking. Again, if one asks why that is so, one will find the basic reason in the nature of the God-thinking subject: man, an animal endowed with intellectuality. For man is a theologizing animal just because he is a rational animal.

Consider what it means to have an intellect. It means possessing a power for knowing in some way whatever in any way is. Nothing lies wholly outside its range; the simply unknowable simply is not. An intellect—even the lowly human one—has of its very nature an infinite scope or field of operation; it is essentially the “faculty of being;” it is essentially open to all that is.{2}

Let us reflect for a moment upon this intellective faculty that is naturally endowed with the capacity for knowing universal being. Note the comparison with our faculty of vision: just as sight includes within its scope all that is colored, so intellect extends to all that is. Its “adequate” object is literally what it is by nature equal to, namely, universal being. Whatever is is of itself intelligible; whatever is is a possible object of knowledge just because and in so far as it is.

We have noted the presence in the human mind of a natural aptitude for some consideration of ultimate common or universal being and of the cause of being, God, who is being in the ultimate sense. And He is knowable as such a cause. But of this we must distinguish two levels: the one pre-philosophical, non-reflexive, instinctive, so to speak; the other formally philosophical, reflexive, logically elaborated. These two ways of thinking of God are necessarily present because the relation between them is like the relation of “matter” to “form.” The instinctive, natural knowledge of God constitutes the matter for the reflexive, logically elaborated knowledge of Him. Since form is in no case elicited from or put into matter without the matter’s being present, it is clear that a certain pre-philosophical knowledge of God is the indispensable matter out of which some formally philosophical knowledge of Him may be developed. How can something be actualized if there is no potential—no “matter”—to start with?

Precisely what is this “pre-philosophical” knowledge of God? As was said, the human intellect is a power made for knowing what is, i.e., for knowing being. But if God is pure Being, then the human intellect is made for knowing God. In that case, knowledge of God would be literally natural to the human intellect.

On this point St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) is in agreement with all the great Christian doctors from Tertullian to Anselm, on down to the present. Allow me to sketch some highlights of the history of this doctrine of the “natural” knowledge of God.

Among the early Christian Apologists, we find a strong insistence that a spontaneous knowledge of God is common to all men, including pagans. Tertullian (160-240), for example, says expressly that a certain knowledge of God is a primordial endowment of man’s soul.{3} And in a celebrated text he exclaims: “O testimony of the soul, which is by natural instinct Christian.”{4} The soul is naturally Christian, he goes on to say, even though it is bound in the prison house of the body, even though it is ensnared by untrue opinions, victimized by false learning; indeed it remains naturally Christian even though weakened by lust and concupiscence and chained to false gods. For when the soul revives, Tertullian continues, when it awakens as from intoxication or sleep or some sickness and enjoys health again, then it utters the unique name of God, because it is He alone who is, properly speaking, the one, true Being.

There is likewise the witness of the ancient Church Fathers. St. Irenaeus (c. 126-c. 193/211), for instance, asks rhetorically{5} how it could be possible for any creatures to be ignorant of God, seeing that they all exist in Him and from Him and are all contained by Him. Irenaeus explains that God, though invisible by reason of His eminence, could never be unknown to men because of the manifestations of His providence; the divine rule clearly extends to all things. And that is why “the natural reason with which we are endowed moves us to know that there is one God, the Lord of all things.”{6}

In similar vein, Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-c. 202/215) explains{7} that in all men there are certain “seeds of divinity” by virtue of which they are impelled to think God as first cause and ruler of all things.

St. Cyprian (c. 200-258), too, puts this same point very forcefully: people in general naturally acknowledge the existence of God. Why, he asks, is this so? He replies that the reason is precisely because it is God Himself who is the author and source of man’s mind and soul. And he declares in a striking passage that it is the very height of transgression for men to be unwilling to recognize Him whom they cannot possibly ignore.{8}

And then there is the telling remark of St. Jerome (c. 340-420): the knowledge of God is naturally present in all men because it is impossible for anyone to be born without Christ, even as it is impossible not to have in oneself the seeds of wisdom and of justice and of the other virtues.{9}

But among the early Church Fathers we find in St. Augustine (354-430) the most powerful witness to this truth. To cite but one sharp text among many others, there is Augustine’s statement, in his splendid commentary on St. John’s Gospel{10}, that God could not possibly be hidden altogether from any creature having the use of reason because He is, quite apart from any revelation whatever, naturally known to all men as the author of the world.

Passing on to the great medieval thinkers, we find (amidst innumerable significant divergencies) a remarkable unanimity on this matter of a “natural” knowledge of God. Their explanations varied, and varied widely; their factual assertion on this point remained the same. Let me cite a few examples.

St. John Damascene (c. 700-c. 765) laid it down that “the knowledge of God’s existence is naturally placed (inserta) in us all by God Himself.”{11} And some three hundred years later we find St. Anselm (1033-1109) drawing a conclusion which he considered to be ultimately and necessarily implied by this “naturalness” of man’s knowledge of God’s existence, namely, that His nonexistence is truly unthinkable.{12}

Among the scholastics of the High Middle Ages there developed a large body of doctrine concerning the naturalness and spontaneity of such knowledge, along with various explanations of its obscure and conceptually indistinct character. Alexander of Hales (c. 1186-1245), for example, taught this doctrine,{13} as did the teacher of Thomas Aquinas, St. Albert the Great (1206-1280);{14} so too did Thomas’ contemporary St. Bonaventure (1221-1274);{15} and the subtle Doctor, Duns Scotus (1266-1308), even went so far as to say that “in knowing any being whatever, and in knowing it as it is, God Himself is being conceived, albeit most indistinctly.”{16}

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) agrees with all the great Christian doctors on the fact of man’s having some “natural” knowledge of God.{17} In the admission of this fact, however, he sees a real difficulty. For if, as St. John Damascene said, the knowledge of God’s existence is naturally implanted in us all, does this not mean that such knowledge is not acquired, but innate? And if it is really innate, then is it not self-evident?{18} In that case would we not be driven to St. Anselm’s conclusion that God’s nonexistence is unthinkable? The fact of formal atheism, however, makes that conclusion untenable!

St. Thomas’ solution is this: God’s existence is in itself self-evident because His essence is His existence. And this is, to his mind, the true meaning of Anselm’s insistence upon the inconceivability of God’s not being. Aquinas adds, however, that God’s existence is not self-evident to us, who do not see His essence, although the knowledge of His existence is said to be innate in us inasmuch as it is possible for us to come to know, through principles which are innate in us, that God exists.{19}

What are these “natural principles” which enable us to apprehend God’s existence? The first of them is the intellect itself—a faculty natively apt for knowing, somehow, whatever is.{20} It is sufficient to consider here only this one primary natural innate principle. What is called the habit of first principles, whereby the basic axioms or presuppositions of all thought are known, especially the principle of noncontradiction, is another such principle. But we need not be concerned with it presently.

No doubt a general and indeterminate knowledge of God’s existence is for that reason “innate” in us.{21} No doubt, too, that the first and final reason for this is that God Himself is alone man’s “beatitude,” man’s fulfillment, man’s ultimate good. Man naturally desires this Good; he cannot not desire it, even though he seek it in the wrong things. But whatever a man naturally desires is naturally known by him; desire of an object presupposes some knowledge of it. St. Thomas nevertheless makes it clear that such a natural and, so to speak, instinctive knowledge of God’s existence is not equivalent to knowing absolutely that God exists, just as to know that someone is approaching is not the same as to know that Peter is approaching, even though it is Peter who is approaching.{22}

Indeed, the scholastics generally seem to have admitted that some idea of God naturally arises from the spontaneous activity of our minds. Since this idea expresses God only in function of our most general spiritual tendencies, the knowledge it gives of Him remains obscure and indistinct. This is an authentic, though a pre-philosophical, way of knowing Him, not a conceptually determinate one. It is only subsequently, through philosophical reflection, that God is conceived of distinctly as utterly transcending the world of caused those things which are better known to us, although they are, in themselves, less evident.” being. Man’s vague, indeterminate notion of divinity thus provides the “matter” out of which a properly philosophical conception of God in His unique subsistence can be developed. But note that it is this obscure primordial notion of ...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• Preface
• PART ONE-The Existence of God
• PART TWO-The Nature of God, or: The Manner of His Existence
• Bibliography
• APPENDIX