Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
God
WITH the exception of certain mathematicians and physicists, all the authors of
the great books are represented in this chapter. In sheer quantity of references, as well
as in variety, it is the largest chapter. The reason is obvious.
- More consequences for thought and action follow from the
affirmation or denial of God than from answering any other basic question.
They follow for those who regard the question as answerable only by faith or only
by reason, and even for those who insist upon suspending judgment entirely.
In addition to the primary question of God's existence, there are all the problems
of the divine nature and of the relation of the world and man to the gods or God. The
solutions of these problems cannot help influencing man's conception of the world in which
he lives, the position that he occupies in it, and the life to which he is called.
The whole tenor of human life is certainly affected by whether men regard themselves as
the supreme beings in the universe or acknowledge a superior--a superhuman being whom they
conceive as an object of fear or love, a force to be defied or a Lord to be obeyed. Among
those who acknowledge a divinity, it matters greatly whether the divine is represented
merely by the concept of God--the object of philosophical speculation--or by the living
God whom men worship in all the acts of piety which comprise the rituals of religion.
The most radical differences in man's conception of his own nature follow from the
exclusion of divinity as its source or model on the one hand, and from the various ways in
which man is seen as participating in divinity on the other. Many fundamental themes and
issues are therefore common to this chapter and to the chapter on MAN.
SOME OF THE TOPICS IN this chapter are primarily philosophical. They belong to
the subject matter of rational speculation or poetic imagination in all the great
epochs of our culture, regardless of differences in religious belief. Other topics,
however, are peculiarly restricted to matters of faith or religion. With respect to such
matters, dogmatic differences, or differences in articles of faith, must be explicitly
recognized.
The materials here assembled must therefore, in some instances, be divided
according to their origin from pagan or from Jewish and Christian sources. Though no great
books from the Mohammedan tradition are included in this set, the fact that Gibbon
discusses the Moslem faith and compares its teachings with those of Judaism and
Christianity explains the inclusion of Mohammedanism in one group of topics. That is the
group which deals with the doctrines common to these three religions, as distinguished
from the tenets on which Judaism and Christianity differ dogmatically. The existence of
certain common beliefs in the western tradition enables us to begin, as it seems advisable
to do, with the conception of God that is shared by the living religions of western
culture today.
In our civilization, what is denied by an atheist who says there is no God? Not idols or
images which men may seek to placate. Not philosophical constructions or mythological
figures. Certainly not the universe itself, either as an infinite and everlasting whole,
or as finite and temporal, but equally mysterious in its ultimate incomprehensibility to
the human mind. In our civilization, the atheist denies the existence of a supernatural
being, the object of religious belief and worship among Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans.
He denies the single, personal God Who created the world out of nothing, Who transcends
this created universe and sustains it by His immanent power, Who has made laws for the
government of all things and cares for each particular by His providence, and Who created
man in His own image, revealed Himself and His will to men, and metes out eternal rewards
and punishments to the children of Adam, whom He also helps by His grace.
In this religious conception of God, one term must be saved from misinterpretation. The
word "personal" should not be read with anthropomorphic imagery, though its
meaning does entitle man as well as God to be called a person rather than a thing.
"Although the term person is not found applied to God in Scripture, either in the Old
or New Testament," Aquinas writes, "nevertheless what the term signifies is
found to be affirmed of God in many places of Scripture; as that He is the supreme
self-subsisting being, and the most perfectly intelligent being."
Boethius had defined a person as "an individual substance of a rational nature,"
or, as Locke later said, "a thinking intelligent being." In applying the term
person to God, in the meaning which Boethius had given it, Aquinas comments on the
difference in its meaning when it is applied to men. God can be said to have a rational
nature, he writes, only "if reason be taken to mean, not discursive thought, but, in
a general sense, an intelligent nature . . . God cannot be called an individual" in
the sense in which physical things are, but only in the sense of uniqueness.
"Substance can be applied to God (only) in the sense of signifying self-subsistence."
Aquinas does not conclude from this that "person" is said improperly of God, but
rather that when God is called "personal" the meaning is applied "in a more
excellent way," for God does not possess, God is, an intelligence.
We shall use this idea of a personal God, the reality of which the contemporary atheist
denies; in order to distinguish divergent conceptions in other doctrines. Then we shall
examine more closely what is involved in this idea itself.
IN THE WESTERN tradition, the various pagan religions--reflected especially in the poems
and histories of Greek and Roman antiquity--were all polytheistic. The number of their
gods, Montaigne estimates, "amounts to six-and-thirty thousand." Augustine
offers one explanation of why there were so many. "The ancients," he writes,
"being deceived either by their own conjectures or by demons, suppose that many gods
must be invited to take an interest in human affairs, and assigned to each a separate
function and a separate department -- to one the body, to another the soul; and in the
body itself, to one the head, to another the neck, and each of the other members to one of
the gods; and in like manner, in the soul, to a god the natural capacity was assigned, to
other education, to another anger, to another lust; and so the various affairs of life
were signed--cattle to one, corn to another, wine another, oil to another, the woods to
another, money to another, navigation to another, and victories to another, marriages to
another, births and fecundity to another, and of things to other gods."
That polytheism, no less than monotheism conceives the divine as personal, appears in
Plato's Apology. When Socrates is accused atheism, he asks whether the indictment
means that he does not "acknowledge the gods which the state acknowledges, but some
other new divinities or spiritual agencies in their stead; Meletus answers that he thinks
Socrates is a complete atheist who recognizes no gods at all. To this Socrates replies by
suggesting that enemies must be confusing him with Anaxaoras, who had blasphemed against
Apollo calling the sun "a red hot stone." As for self, he offers evidence to
show that he believes in divine or spiritual agencies "new or old, matter"; and
"if I believe in divine beings," asks, "how can I help believing in spirits
or demigods?"
Like the one God of Judaism and Christianity, the many gods of pagan antiquity have
immortal life, but they are not without origin. Zeus is the son of Kronos, and he has
offspring, both gods and demigods, who form different functions and are not of equal
station in the Olympian hierarchy. The realm of the divine includes such figures as the
Titans and the Cyclops, who are neither gods nor men; and demigods, like Heracles, who are
offspring of divine and human mating. These deities exercise superhuman powers, but none
is completely omnipotent or omniscient, not even Kronos or Zeus who cannot escape the
decrees of Fate. Moreover, with the exception, perhaps, of that of Zeus, the power of one
divinity is often challenged and thwarted by another. This aspect of polytheism and its
bearing on the intervention of the gods in the affairs of men are discussed in the chapter
on FATE.
The extent to which we think of the pagans as idolatrous because they made graven images
of their gods in human form, or regard the pagan conceptions of the gods as
anthropomorphic, depends on our interpretation of religious symbolism. Plato for one
thinks that many of the poets' descriptions of the gods and their activities should be
dismissed as unworthy, precisely because they debase the gods to the human level.
According to Gibbon, a Greek or Roman philosopher "who considered the system of
polytheism as a composition of human fraud and error, could disguise a smile of contempt
under the mask of devotion, without apprehending that either the mockery or the compliance
would expose him to the resentment of any invisible, or, as he conceived them, imaginary
powers." But the early Christians, he points out, saw the many gods of antiquity
"in a much more odious and formidable light" and held them to be "the
authors, the patrons, and the objects of idolatry."
Those who take symbols with flat literalism might also attack Christianity as
anthropomorphic and idolatrous; in fact they have. The defense of Christianity against
this charge does not avail in the case of Roman emperor-worship, which consisted not in
the humanization of the divine for the sake of symbolic representation, but in the
deification of the merely human for political purposes.
Although there are radical differences, there are also certain fundamental agreements
between paganism and Judaeo-Christianity regarding the nature of the divine. As we have
already noted, the deities are conceived personally, not in terms of impersonal, brute
forces. Conceived as beings with intelligence and will, the gods concern themselves with
earthly society; they aid or oppose man's plans and efforts; they reward men for fidelity
and virtue or punish them for impiety and sin.
Despite all other differences between paganism and Christianity, these agreements are
substantial enough to provide many common threads of theological speculation throughout
our tradition, especially with regard to the abiding practical problems of how man shall
view himself and his destiny in relation to the divine or the supernatural. We have
therefore attempted to place passages from the great books of pagan antiquity under every
heading except those which are specifically restricted to the dogmas of Judaism and
Christianity--even under headings which are worded monotheistically, since even here there
is continuity of thought and expression from Homer and Virgil to Dante and Milton; from
Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus to Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Kant; from Lucretius
to Newton and Darwin.
THE DOCTRINES known as deism and pantheism, like unqualified atheism, are as much opposed
to the religious beliefs of polytheism as to the faith of Judaism and Christianity.
Of these two, pantheism is much nearer atheism, for it denies the existence of a
transcendent supernatural being or beings. God is Nature. God is immanent in the world
and, in the extreme form of pantheism, not transcendent in any way. Certain historic
doctrines which are often regarded as forms or kinds of pantheism seem to be less extreme
than this, for they do not conceive the physical universe as exhausting the infinite being
of God. The world, for all its vastness and variety, may only represent an aspect of the
divine nature.
According to Spinoza, the attributes of extension and thought, in terms of which we
understand the world or nature as being of the divine substance, are merely those aspects
of God which are known to us, for the divine substance consists "of infinite
attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence." In the
conception of Plotinus, the whole world represents only a partial emanation from the
divine source. Yet thinkers like Plotinus and Spinoza so conceive the relation of the
world to God that--as in the strictest pantheism--the religious doctrines of creation,
providence, and salvation are either rejected or profoundly altered.
In the ancient world, the teaching of the Stoic philosophers expresses a kind of
pantheism. "There is one universe made up of all things," Marcus Aurelius
writes, "and one God who pervades all things, and one substance, and one law, one
common reason in all intelligent animals, and one truth." He speaks of the
"common nature," which is apparently divine, and of which "every particular
nature is a part, as the nature of the leaf is a part of the nature of the plant."
But, although he stresses the oneness and divinity of all things, Aurelius also at times
uses language which seems to refer to a god who dwells apart from as well as in the world,
as, for example, when he debates whether the gods have any concern with human affairs.
Another type of ancient pantheism appears in the thought of Plotinus, for whom all things
have being only insofar as they participate in, even as they emanate from, the power of
The One, or Primal Source. "God is sovranly present through all," he writes.
"We cannot think of something of God here and something else there, nor of all of God
gathered at some one spot: there is an instantaneous presence everywhere, nothing
containing and nothing left void, everything therefore fully held by the divine." The
relation between The One and every other thing is compared to the number series.
"Just as there is, primarily or secondarily, some form or idea from the monad in each
of the successive numbers--the latter still participating, though unequally, in the
unit--so the series of beings following upon The First bear, each, some form or idea
derived from that source. In Number the participation establishes Quantity; in the realm
of Being, the trace of The One establishes reality: existence is a trace of The One."
But although The One is in all things, and all things depend upon it for their very
existence, The One itself has no need of them. It is in this sense that Plotinus says that
"The One is all things and no one of them. . . Holding all--though itself nowhere
held--it is omnipresent, for where its presence failed something would elude its hold. At
the same time, in the sense that it is nowhere held, it is not present: thus it is both
present and not present; not present as not being circumscribed by any thing; yet as being
utterly unattached, not inhibited from presence at any point." Thus all things
partake of The One in absolute dependence. But The One, considered in itself, is
absolutely transcendent. Plotinus even denies it the name of God or Good or Being, saying
it is beyond these.
Whether or not Spinoza is a pantheist, has long been debated by his commentators. An
explicit, even an extreme form of pantheism would seem to be expressed in the proposition
that "whatever is, is in God, and nothing can be or be conceived without God."
But while the one and only substance which exists is at once nature and God, Spinoza
identifies God only with the nature he calls "natura naturans." God is
not reduced to the nature that falls within man's limited experience or understanding--the
nature he calls "natura naturata."
"By natura naturata," he explains, "we are to understand that
which is in itself and is conceived through itself, or those attributes of substance which
express eternal and infinite essence, that is to say, God in so far as He is considered as
a free cause. But by natura naturata I understand everything which follows from
the necessity of the nature of God, or of any one of God's attributes, that is to say, all
the modes of God's attributes in so far as they are considered as things which are in God
and which without God can neither be nor can be conceived."
God is the infinite and eternal substance of all finite existences, an absolute and
unchanging one underlying the finite modes in which it variably manifests itself. Though
God for Spinoza is transcendent in the sense of vastly exceeding the world known to man,
in no sense does God exist apart from the whole of nature. Spinoza's view thus sharply
departs from that of an orthodox Jewish or Christian theologian. When the latter says that
God is transcendent, he means that God exists apart, infinitely removed from the whole
created universe. When the latter speaks of God as being immanent in that universe, he
carefully specifies that it is not by His substance, but by the power of His action and
knowledge. But Spinoza calls God "the immanent, and not the transitive, cause of all
things," for the reason that "outside God there can be no substance, that is to
say, outside Him nothing can exist which is in itself."
These divergent conceptions of God's immanence and transcendence--so relevant to the
question of who is or is not a pantheist--are further discussed in the chapters on NATURE
and WORLD.
UNLIKE PANTHEISM, deism affirms gods or a God, personal intelligences existing apart from
this world; but, as in the teaching of Lucretius, deism sometimes goes to the extreme of
believing in absentee gods who neither intervene in the order of nature nor concern
themselves with human affairs.
"The nature of the gods," Lucretius writes, "must ever in itself of
necessity enjoy immortality together with supreme repose, far removed and withdrawn from
our concerns; since exempt from every pain, exempt from all dangers, strong in its own
resources, not wanting aught of us, it is neither gained by favors nor moved by
anger."
Such gods neither create the world nor govern it; above all they do not reward or punish
man, and so they do not have to be feared or propitiated. "To say that for the sake
of men they have willed to set in order the glorious nature of the world and therefore it
is meet to praise the work of the gods immortal, and that it is an unholy thing ever to
shake by any force from its fixed seats that which by the forethought of the gods in
ancient days has been established on everlasting foundations for mankind, or to assail it
by speech and utterly overturn it from top to bottom; and to invent and add other figments
of the kind . . . is all sheer folly. For what advantage can our gratitude bestow on
immortal and blessed beings that for our sakes they should take in hand to administer
aught?"
Divinity seems to have moral significance to Lucretius only insofar as the gods exemplify
the happy life; and religion is immoral because its superstitions concerning divine
motives and meddling make men servile and miserable.
When the deism of Lucretius is contrasted with the more familiar modern forms of that
doctrine, the influence of Christianity is seen. The modern deist affirms the supremacy of
one God, the infinite and eternal Creator of this world, Whose laws are the laws of nature
which are laid down from the beginning and which govern all created things. Rousseau
speaks of this as "the religion of man" and even identifies it with
Christianity--"not the Christianity of today, but that of the Gospel, which is
entirely different." He describes this religion as that "which has neither
temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is confined to the purely internal cult of the supreme
God and the eternal obligations of morality."
Not all deists, certainly not those of the 17th and early 18th centuries, go to the
Lucretian extreme of picturing an uninterested and morally neutral God. Many of them
believe in an after-life. But modern deism did tend toward this extreme. By Kant's time it
had even ceased to look upon God as a personal intelligence. Kant therefore takes great
pains to distinguish deism from theism.
The deist, according to Kant, "admits that we can cognize by pure reason alone the
existence of a supreme being, but at the same time maintains that our conception of this
being is purely transcendental, and that all we can say of it is, that it possesses all
reality, without being able to define it more closely." The theist, on the other
hand, "asserts that reason is capable of presenting us, from the analogy with nature,
with a more definite conception of this being, and that its operations, as the cause of
all things, are the results of intelligence and free will."
Kant even maintains that "we might, in strict rigor, deny to the deist any belief in
God at all, and regard him merely as a maintainer of the existence of a primal being or
thing -- the supreme cause of all other things." In any case, deism seems to be an
essentially un-Jewish and un-Christian or anti-Jewish and anti-Christian doctrine, for it
denies God's supernatural revelation of Himself; it denies miracles and every other
manifestation of supernatural agency in the course of nature or the life of man; it denies
the efficacy of prayer and sacrament. In short, it rejects the institutions and practices,
as well as the faith and hope, of any religion which claims supernatural foundation and
supernatural warrant for its dogmas and rituals. Deism, which "consists simply in the
worship of a God considered as great, powerful, and eternal," is, in Pascal's
opinion, "almost as far removed from the Christian religion as atheism, which is its
exact opposite."
What Pascal and Kant call "deism" and Rousseau "the religion of man,"
others like Hume call "natural religion." His Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion provide a classic statement of rationalism, which is the same as naturalism,
in religion; though, as the chapter on RELIGION indicates, it may be questioned whether
the word "religion" can be meaningfully used for a doctrine which claims no
knowledge beyond that of the philosopher, and no guidance for human life beyond the
precepts of the moralist.
THE SYSTEMATIC exposition of man's knowledge of God is the science of theology. In
addition to considering all things-the whole world and human life-in relation to God,
theology treats especially of God's existence, essence, and attributes. Throughout the
range of its subject matter and problems, theology may be of two sorts: it may be either
natural knowledge, obtained by ordinary processes of observation and reasoning; or
knowledge which is supernatural in the sense of being based on divine revelation. This is
the traditional distinction between natural and sacred or, as it is sometimes called,
dogmatic theology. The one belongs to the domain of reason; it is the work of the
philosopher. The other belongs to the domain of faith, and is the work of the theologian
who seeks to understand his faith.
These distinctions are discussed in the chapters on THEOLOGY, METAPHYSICS, and WISDOM.
Here we are concerned with different attitudes toward the problem of man's knowledge of
God. The deist, as we have seen, rejects supernatural revelation and faith; theology, like
religion, is held to be entirely natural, a work of reason. The agnostic makes the
opposite denial. He denies that anything supernatural can be known by reason. It cannot be
proved or, for that matter, disproved. The evidences of nature and the light of reason do
not permit valid inferences or arguments concerning God or creation, providence or
immortality.
It is usually with respect to God's existence that the agnostic most emphatically declares
reason's incompetence to demonstrate. He often accompanies the declaration with elaborate
criticisms of the arguments which may be offered by others. This is not always the case,
however. For example, the great Jewish theologian, Moses Maimonides, thinks that God's
existence can be proved by reason entirely apart from faith; but with regard to the
essence or attributes of God, his position seems to be one which might be called agnostic.
When men "ascribe essential attributes to God," Maimonides declares, "these
so-called essential attributes should not have any similarity to the attributes of other
things, just as there is no similarity between the essence of God and that of other
beings." Since the meaning of such positive attributes as good or wise is derived
from our knowledge of things, they do not provide us with any knowledge of God's essence,
for no comparison obtains between things and God. Hence Maimonides asserts that "the
negative attributes of God are the true attributes." They tell us not what God is,
but what God is not.
Even though Maimonides holds that "existence and essence are perfectly
identical" in God, he also insists that "we comprehend only the fact that He
exists, not His essence .... All we understand," he goes on to say, in addition to
"the fact that He exists," is the fact that "He is a Being to whom none of
his creatures is similar." This fact is confirmed in all the negative attributes such
as eternal (meaning nontemporal), infinite, or incorporeal; even as it is falsified by all
the positive attributes, expressed by such names as "good" or "living"
or "knowing," insofar as they imply a comparison between God and creatures. When
they cannot be interpreted negatively, they can be tolerated as metaphors, but they must
not be taken of expressing an understanding "of the true essence of God,"
concerning which Maimonides maintains, "there is no possibility of obtaining a
knowledge."
Aquinas takes issue with such agnosticism about the divine nature in his discussion of
names of God. Although he says that "we cannot know what God is, but rather what He
is not," Aquinas disagrees with Maimonides that all names which express some
knowledge of God's essence must be interpreted negatively or treated as metaphors. He
denies that "when we say God lives, we mean merely that God is not like an inanimate
thing" as "was taught by Rabbi Moses." On the contrary, he holds that
"these names signify the divine substance ... although they fall short of
representing Him . . . For these names express God, so far as our intellects know Him. Now
since our intellect knows God from creatures, it knows Him as far as creatures represent
Him." Therefore, Aquinas concludes, "when we say, God is good, the meaning is
not, God is the cause of goodness, or, God is not evil: but the meaning is, Whatever good
we attribute to creatures preexists in God, and in a higher way."
IF MAIMIONIDES were right that the names which are said positively of both God and
creatures are "applied . . . In a purely equivocal sense" (e.g., having literal
meaning when said of creatures but being only metaphorical when said of God), then,
according to Aquinas, it would follow that "from creatures nothing at all could be
known or demonstrated about God." Those who say, on the other hand, that "the
things attributed to God and creatures are univocal" (i.e., are said in exactly the
same sense), claim to comprehend more than man can know of the divine essence. When the
term wise "is applied to God," Aquinas writes, "it leaves the
thing signified as uncomprehended and as exceeding the signification of the name. Hence it
is evident that this term wise is not applied in the same way to God and to man. The same
applies to other terms. Hence no name is predicated univocally of God and creatures"
but rather all positives names "are said of God and creatures in an analogous
sense."
A further discussion of the names of God will be found in the chapter on SIGN AND SYMBOL;
and the consideration of the analogical, the univocal, and the equivocal will also be
found there as well as in the chapter on SAME AND OTHER. We have dealt with these matters
here only for the sake of describing that degree of agnosticism, according to which
Maimonides, by contrast with Aquinas, is an agnostic. But agnosticism usually goes further
and denies that man can have any natural knowledge of God--either of His existence or of
His essence.
So understood, agnosticism need not be incompatible with religion, unless a given religion
holds, as an article of faith itself, that the existence of God can be proved by reason.
In fact, the agnostic may be a religious man who accepts divine revelation and regards
faith as divinely inspired.
Montaigne's Apology for Raimond de Sebonde illustrates this position. Sebonde had written
a treatise on natural theology, which to Montaigne seems "hardy and bold; for he
undertakes, by human and natural reasons to establish and make good against the atheists
all the articles of the Christian religion." Though Montaigne says of his work,
"I do not think it possible to do better upon that subject," and though he
entertains the conjecture that it may have been "drawn from St. Thomas Aquinas, for,
in truth, that mind full of infinite learning and admirable subtlety, was alone capable of
such imaginations"; nevertheless, Montaigne does "not believe that means purely
human are, in any sort, capable of doing it."
According to Montaigne, "it is faith alone that vividly and certainly comprehends the
deep mysteries of our religion." In his view, reason by itself is incapable of
proving anything, much less anything about God. "Our human reasons," he writes,
"are but sterile and undigested matter; the grace of God is its form; it is that
which gives it fashion and value." The light and value in Sebonde's arguments come
from the fact that faith supervenes "to tint and illustrate" them, and
"renders them firm and solid."
Such arguments, Montaigne says, may serve as "direction and first guide to a
learner" and may even "render him capable of the grace of God"; but for
himself, skeptical of all arguments, the way of faith alone can provide "a certain
constancy of opinion .... Thus have I, by the grace of God, preserved myself entire,
without anxiety or trouble of conscience, in the ancient belief of our religion, amidst so
many sects and divisions as our age has produced."
Far from being religious as Montaigne was, the agnostic may be a skeptic about faith as
well as reason. He may look upon faith either as superstition or as the exercise of the
will to believe with regard to the unknowable and the unintelligible--almost wishful
thinking. He may even go so far as to treat religion as if it were pathological.
Freud, for example, regards religion as an illusion to be explained in terms of man's need
to create gods in his own image--to find a surrogate for the father, on whom his infantile
dependence can be projected. Freud finds confirmation for this in the fact that in the
religions of the west, God "is openly called Father. Psychoanalysis," he goes
on, "concludes that he really is the father, clothed in the grandeur in which he once
appeared to the small child."
Though the grown man "has long ago realized that his father is a being with strictly
limited powers and by no means endowed with every desirable attribute," Freud thinks
that he nevertheless "looks back to the memory-image of the overrated father of his
childhood, exalts it into a Deity, and brings it into the present and into reality. The
emotional strength of this memory-image and the lasting nature of his need for
protection"--for, as Freud explains, "in relation to the external world he is
still a child"--"are the two supports of his belief in God."
AT THE OTHER extreme from agnosticism is, as the name implies, gnosticism. Like deism, it
dispenses with faith, but it exceeds traditional deism in the claims it makes for reason's
power to penetrate the divine mysteries. Between exclusive reliance on faith and an
exaltation of reason to the point where there is no need for God to reveal anything, a
middle ground is held by those who acknowledge the contributions of both faith and reason.
Those who try to harmonize the two usually distinguish between the spheres proper to each,
and formulate some principle according to which they are related to each other in an
orderly fashion.
Whatever is purely a matter of faith, Aquinas says, is assented to solely because "it
is revealed by God." The articles of Christian faith are typified by "the
Trinity of Persons in Almighty God, the mystery of Christ's Incarnation, and the
like." With regard to such matters, which Aquinas thinks belong primarily to faith,
some auxiliary use can be made of reason, "not, indeed, to prove faith," he
explains, but to make clear the things that follow from it. Certain matters, such as God's
existence and attributes, he classifies as belonging to "the preambles to faith"
because they fall, in his view, within reason's power to demonstrate, unaided by faith.
Yet even here he does not assign the affirmation of the truth to reason alone.
Just as "it was necessary for the salvation of man that certain truths which exceed
human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation," so even with regard
to "those truths about God which human reason can investigate," Aquinas thinks
it was also necessary that "man be taught by a divine revelation. For the truth about
God, such as reason can know it, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time,
and with the admixture of many errors." Because "human reason is very deficient
in things concerning God"--"a sign of which is that philosophers . . . have
fallen into many errors and have disagreed among themselves"--men would have no
knowledge of God "free from doubt and uncertainty" unless all divine truths were
"delivered to them by the way of faith, being told to them, as it were, by God
Himself Who cannot lie."
In different ways faith supports reason and reason helps faith. On matters which belong to
both reason and faith, faith provides a greater certitude. On matters strictly of faith,
reason provides some understanding, however remote and inadequate, of the mysteries of
religion. "The use of human reason in religion," Bacon writes, "is of two
sorts: the former, in the conception and apprehension of the mysteries of God to us
revealed; the other, in the inferring and deriving of doctrine and direction thereupon
.... In the former we see God vouchsafeth to descend to our capacity, in the expressing of
his mysteries in sort as may be sensible unto us; and doth grift his revelations and holy
doctrine upon the notions of our reason and applieth his inspiration to open our
understanding, as the form of the key to the ward of the lock. For the latter, there is
allowed us an use of reason and argument, secondary and respective, although not original
and absolute. For after the articles and principles of religion are placed and exempted
from examination of reason, it is then permitted unto us to make derivations and
inferences from and according to the analogy of them, for our better direction."
In addition to all discursive knowledge of God, whether it be by faith or by reason, there
is the totally incommunicable and intimate acquaintance with the supernatural which the
mystic claims for his vision in moments of religious ecstasy or which is promised to the
blessed as their heavenly beatitude. When, at the culmination of Paradise, Dante sees God,
"my vision," he declares, "was greater than our speech."
Knowing that his "speech will fall more short . . . than that of an infant who still
bathes his tongue at the breast," he tries nevertheless to communicate in words
"one single spark of Thy glory for the folk to come." In the presence of God, he
writes, his mind, "wholly rapt, was gazing fixed, motionless, and intent, and ever
with gazing grew enkindled. In that Light one becomes such that it is impossible he should
ever consent to turn himself from it for other sight; because the Good which is the object
of the will is all collected in it, and outside of it that is defective which is perfect
there."
THE ARGUMENTS FOR the existence of the gods or of one God constitute one of the greatest
attempts of the human mind to go beyond the sensible or phenomenal world of experience.
The attempt has been made in every age and by minds of quite different persuasions in
religious belief or philosophical outlook. It is possible, nevertheless, to classify the
arguments into two or three main types.
Within the domain of pure or speculative reason there seem to be two ways of approaching
the problem of God's existence.
One is in terms of the conception of God as an infinite, perfect, and necessary being,
whose non-existence is therefore inconceivable. According to Anselm, God cannot be
conceived in any other way than as "a being than which nothing greater can be
conceived." But since "the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,"
how shall he be made to know that the God, which exists in his understanding at the moment
when he denies His real existence, also really exists outside his understanding? "For
it is one thing for an object to be in the understanding, and another to understand that
the object exists." Hence Anselm considers the consequence of supposing that God
exists in the understanding alone.
"If that, than which nothing greater can be conceived," he argues, "exists
in the understanding alone, the very being, than which nothing greater can be conceived,
is one than which a greater can be conceived"--for to exist in reality as well as in
the understanding is to have more being. But this leads to "an irreconcilable
contradiction," since "if that, than which nothing greater can be conceived, can
be conceived not to exist, it is not that than which nothing greater can be
conceived." Therefore Anselm concludes that a being "than which nothing greater
can be conceived" must exist "both in the understanding and reality."
Anselm summarizes his argument by saying that "no one who understands what God is,
can conceive that God does not exist." Since the non-existence of God is
inconceivable, God must exist. Descartes gives the same argument a slightly different
statement in terms of the inseparability of God's essence from God's existence.
"Being accustomed," he writes, "in all other things to make a distinction
between existence and essence, I easily persuade myself that the existence can be
separated from the essence of God, and that we can thus conceive God as not actually
existing. But, nevertheless, when I think of it with more attention, I clearly see that
existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than can its having its three
angles equal to two right angles be separated from the essence of a rectilinear triangle,
or the idea of a mountain from the idea of a valley; and so there is not any less
repugnance to our conceiving a God (that is, a Being supremely perfect) to whom existence
is lacking (that is to say, to whom a certain perfection is lacking), than to conceive of
a mountain which has no valley."
Spinoza defines a "cause of itself" as "that whose essence involves
existence; or that whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing." Since in his
conception of substance, substance is necessarily infinite, it is also cause of itself.
Hence he concludes that "God or substance . . . necessarily exists"; for
"if this be denied, conceive if it be possible that God does not exist. Then it
follows that His essence does not involve existence. But this is absurd. Therefore God
necessarily exists."
This mode of argument, which takes still other forms, is traditionally called the
"ontological argument" or the "a priori proof" of God's
existence. Its critics sometimes deny that it is an argument or proof in any sense at all.
Aquinas, for example, interprets Anselm not as proving God's existence, but rather as
asserting that God's existence is self-evident. Those who say that the proposition
"God does not exist" is self-contradictory, are saying that the opposite
proposition "God exists" must be self-evident.
Aquinas does not deny that the proposition "God exists" is intrinsically
self-evident. On this point he goes further than Anselm, Descartes, and Spinoza. Where
they say God's essence involves His existence, Aquinas asserts that in God essence and
existence are identical. When Moses asks God, "If they should say to me, What is His
name? what shall I say to them?" the Lord says unto Moses, "I AM THAT I
AM," and adds, "Say to the children of Israel: HE WHO IS hath sent me to
you." This name--HE WHO IS--Aquinas holds to be "the most proper name of
God" because it signifies that "the being of God is His very essence."
For this reason he thinks that the proposition "God exists" is self-evident in
itself. Its subject and predicate are immediately related. Nevertheless, Aquinas holds
that the proposition is not self-evident to us "because we do not know the essence of
God."
- Even supposing, he writes, "that everyone understands
this name God as signifying something than which nothing greater can be thought,
nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the name
signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally. Nor can it be argued
that it actually exists, unless it be admitted that there actually exists something than
which nothing greater can be thought; and this precisely is not admitted by those who hold
that God does not exist."
The writer of the First Set of Objections to Descartes' Meditations
maintains that the criticism advanced by Aquinas applies to Descartes as well as to
Anselm. Whether stated in terms of the conception of an absolutely perfect being or in
terms of essence and existence, the argument is invalid, he thinks, which asserts that God
actually exists because His non-existence is inconceivable. Kant's later criticism of the
ontological argument takes a similar course. A proposition may be logically necessary
without being true in fact.
"The conception of an absolutely necessary being," he writes, "is a mere
idea, the objective reality of which is far from being established by the mere fact that
it is a need of reason .... The unconditioned necessity of a judgment does not form the
absolute necessity of a thing." From the fact that "existence belongs
necessarily to the object of the conception," we cannot conclude that "the
existence of the thing . . . is therefore absolutely necessary merely," Kant says,
"because its existence has been cogitated in the conception .... Whatever be the
content of our conception of an object, it is necessary to go beyond it, if we wish to
predicate existence of the object .... The celebrated ontological or Cartesian argument
for the existence of a supreme being is therefore insufficient."
THE SECOND MAIN approach to the problem of God's existence lies in the sort of proof
which, Locke thinks, "our own existence and the sensible parts of the universe offer
so clearly and cogently to our thoughts." He refrains from criticizing the argument
from "the idea of a most perfect being," but he does insist that we should not
"take some men's having that idea of God in their minds . . . for the only proof of a
Deity." He for one prefers to follow the counsel of St. Paul, that "the
invisible things of God are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood
by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead."
We have, according to Locke, an intuitive knowledge of our own existence. We know, he
says, that "nonentity cannot produce any real being"; and so "from the
consideration of ourselves, and what we infallibly find in our constitution, our reason
leads us to the knowledge of this certain and evident truth--That there is an eternal,
most powerful, and most knowing Being."
Without labelling it a proof of God's existence, Augustine in his Confessions
presents a similar argument--from the visible creation. "Behold," he says,
"the heavens and the earth are; they proclaim that they were created; for they change
and vary .... They proclaim also that they made not themselves: 'therefore we are, because
we have been made; we were not therefore, before we were, so as to make ourselves' ....
Thou therefore, Lord, madest them." This second approach to the existence of God by
reasoning from the facts of experience or the evidences of nature is called the "a
posteriori proof" In the tradition of the great books, it has been formulated in
many different ways. What is common to all of them is the principle of causality, in terms
of which the known existence of certain effects is made the basis for inferring the
existence of a unique cause--a first cause, a highest cause, an uncaused cause.
Aristotle, for example, in the last book of his Physics, argues from the fact of
motion or change to the existence of an unmoved mover. He sums up his elaborate reasoning
on this point in the following statement. "We established the fact that everything
that is in motion is moved by something, and that the movent is either unmoved or in
motion, and that, if it is in motion, it is moved either by itself or by something else
and so on throughout the series: and so we proceeded to the position that the first
principle that directly causes things that are in motion to be moved is that which moves
itself, and the first principle of the whole series is the unmoved."
Aristotle's argument, unlike that of Augustine or Locke, does not presuppose the creation
of the world, at least not in the sense of the world's having a beginning. On the
contrary, he holds the world and its motions to be as eternal as their unmoved mover.
"It is impossible," be writes in the Metaphysics, "that movement
should either have come into being or cease to be." Precisely because he thinks the
world's motions are eternal, Aristotle holds that the prime mover, in addition to being
everlasting, must be immutable. This for him means "a principle whose very essence is
actuality." Only a substance without any potency, only one which is purely actual,
can bean absolutely immutable, eternal being.
Whatever has any potentiality in its nature is capable of not existing. If everything were
of this sort, nothing that now is "need be, for it is possible for all things to be
capable of existing, but not yet to exist." Hence, in still another way, Aristotle
seems to reach the conclusion that a purely actual being must exist; and, furthermore, he
seems to identify this being with a living and thinking God. "Life also belongs to
God," he writes; "for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that
actuality; and God's self-dependent actuality is life most good and eternal."
Where Aristotle argues from motion and potentiality to a prime mover and a pure actuality,
Newton gives the a posteriori proof another statement by arguing from the design
of the universe to God as its designer or architect. "The most wise and excellent
contrivances of things, and final causes" seem to him the best way of knowing God.
"Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere,
could produce no variety in things. All that diversity of natural things which we find
suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a
Being necessarily existing."
In similar fashion Berkeley maintains that "if we attentively consider the constant
regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising magnificence,
beauty, and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts
of the creation, together with the exact harmony and correspondence of the whole, but,
above all, the never enough admired laws of pain and pleasure, and the instincts or
natural inclinations, appetites, and passions of animals; I say if we consider all these
things, and at the same time attend to the meaning and import of the attributes, one,
eternal, infinitely wise, good, and perfect, we shall clearly perceive that they belong to
the . . . Spirit, who 'works all in all,' and 'by whom all things consist."' This
seems to him so certain that he adds, "we may even assert that the existence of God
is far more evidently perceived than the existence of men."
But, according to Berkeley, all the visible things of nature exist only as ideas in our
minds, ideas which, unlike our own memories or imaginations, we do not ourselves produce.
"Every thing we see, hear, feel, or anywise perceive by sense," he writes, must
have some other cause than our own will, and is therefore "a sign or effect of the
power of God." To the "unthinking herd" who claim that "they cannot
see God," Berkeley replies that "God . .. is intimately present to our minds,
producing in them all that variety of ideas or sensations which continually affect
us."
The existence of any idea in us is for Berkeley ground for asserting God's existence and
power as its cause. But for Descartes one idea alone becomes the basis of such an
inference. He supplements his a priori or ontological argument with what he calls
an "a posteriori demonstration of God's existence from the mere fact that
the idea of God exists in us."
That he is himself imperfect, Descartes knows from the fact that he doubts. Even when
doubting leads to knowledge, his knowledge is imperfect, "an infallible token"
of which, he says, is the fact that "my knowledge increases little by little."
But the idea which he has of God, he declares, is that of an absolutely perfect being,
"in whom there is nothing merely potential, but in whom all is present really and
actually." On the principle that there cannot be more reality or perfection in the
effect than in the cause, Descartes concludes that his own imperfect mind cannot be the
cause of the idea of a perfect being. "The idea that I possess of a being more
perfect than I," he writes, "must necessarily have been placed in me by a being
which is really more perfect."
The radical imperfection of man, and indeed of all creation, offers Augustine still
another proof for God's existence, which he attributes to the "Platonists."
"They have seen," he writes, "that whatever is changeable is not the most
high God, and therefore they have transcended every soul and all changeable spirits in
seeking the supreme. They have seen also that, in every changeable thing, the form which
makes it that which it is, whatever be its mode or nature, can only be through Him who
truly is, because He is unchangeable. And therefore, whether we consider the whole body of
the world, its figure, qualities, and orderly movement, and also all the bodies which are
in it; or whether we consider all life, either that which nourishes and maintains, as the
life of trees; or that which, besides this, has also sensation, as the life of beasts; or
that which adds to all these intelligence, as the life of man; or that which does not need
the support of nutriment, but only maintains, feels, understands, as the life of
angels--all can only be through Him who absolutely is. For to Him it is not one thing to
be, and another to live, as though He could be, not living; nor is it to Him one thing to
live, and another to understand, as though He could live, not understanding; nor is it to
Him one thing to understand, another to be blessed, as though He could understand and not
be blessed. But to Him to live, to understand, to be blessed, are to be. They have
understood, from this unchangeableness and this simplicity, that all things must have been
made by Him, and that He could Himself have been made by none."
The variety of arguments we have so far examined seems to fit the "five ways" in
which, according to Aquinas, the existence of God can be proved a posteriori.
"The first and most manifest way is the argument from motion," which Aquinas
attributes to Aristotle. "The second way is from the nature of an efficient
cause." Berkeley's argument or Locke's would seem, in some respects, to offer a
version of this mode of reasoning. "The third way is taken from possibility and
necessity," and seems to develop the argument from potentiality in Aristotle's Metaphysics,
and to contain the inference from mutability and contingency which is implicit in the
argument attributed to the Platonists by Augustine, "The fourth way is taken from the
gradation to be found in things." Proceeding from the existence of the imperfect to
absolute perfection, it resembles in principle the reasoning of Descartes concerning the
perfection in the cause relative to the perfection in the effect. "The fifth way is
taken from the governance of the world"--from the fact that everything acts for an
end--and so is like the argument which Newton offers from final causes and the existence
of order in the universe.
These "five ways" may or may not be regarded as an exhaustive list of the a
posteriori proofs. It may even be questioned whether the five ways are logically
distinct and independent. Aquinas himself says that "in speculative matters the
medium of demonstration, which demonstrates the conclusion perfectly, is only one; whereas
probable means of proof are many." Since he considers the argument for God's
existence to be a certain, not a probable proof, it would seem to follow that, in strict
logic, only one principle can be involved in that proof.
As already suggested, the principle--common to all the various ways in which such a
posteriori reasoning is expressed--seems to be the principal of causality. This
appears in the argument from the existence of contingent beings, which cannot cause their
own being, to the existence of a being which needs no cause of its being, because its very
essence is to exist.
- This may be the one argument for God's existence or, if one
among many, it may be the core of all the others. It has the distinction at least of
conceiving God as the cause of being, rather than of motion or of hierarchy and order in
the world.
According to the statement of Aquinas that "being is the proper effect of
God," it establishes God as the unique and direct cause of the being possessed by
every finite thing. This formulation of the proof is more fully examined in the chapter on
NECESSITY AND CONTINGENCY; and its relation to the question of whether the world had a
beginning or is eternal, and if eternal, whether it is created or uncreated, will be seen
in the chapters on CAUSE, ETERNITY, and WORLD.
THE VALIDITY OF the a posteriori argument for God's existence--in one form or
another--is questioned by those who think that the causal principle cannot be applied
beyond experience, or who think that our knowledge of cause and effect is not sufficient
to warrant such inferences.
"The existence of any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its
effect," Hume writes; "and these arguments are founded entirely on experience .
. . . It is only experience which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect,
and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that of another." But Hume
doubts "whether it be possible for a cause to be known only by its effect . . . or to
be of so singular and particular a nature as to have no parallel and no similarity with
any other cause or object, that has ever fallen under our observation . . . . If
experience and observation and analogy be, indeed, the only guides which we can reasonably
follow in inferences of this nature," as Hume thinks is the case, then it follows
that "both the effect and the cause must bear a similarity and resemblance to other
effects and causes which we know.
"I leave it to your own reflection," he adds, "to pursue the consequences
of this principle." One seems obvious enough; namely, that God -- a unique and
unparalleled cause -- cannot be proved by reasoning from our experience of effects and
their causes. Hume himself draws this conclusion when he declares that theology, insofar
as it is concerned with the existence of a Deity, has "its best and most solid
foundation," not in reason or experience, but in 'faith and divine revelation."
Like Hume, Kant thinks that our notions of cause and effect cannot be applied outside
experience or to anything beyond the realm of sensible nature. But he offers an additional
reason for denying validity to all a posteriori reasoning concerning God's
existence. "It imposes upon us," he says, "an old argument in a new dress,
and appeals to the agreement of two witnesses, the one with the credentials of pure
reason, and the other with those of empiricism; while, in fact, it is only the former who
has changed his dress and voice."
The principle of the argument from the contingency of the world or its parts Kant states
as follows: "If something exists, an absolutely necessary being must likewise
exist." One premise in the argument, namely, that contingent things exist, has its
foundation in experience and therefore Kant admits that the reasoning "is not
completely a priori or ontological." But in order to complete the proof, he
thinks it must be shown that an ens realissimum, or most perfect being, is the
same as an absolutely necessary being, in order for the obtained conclusion (a necessary
being exists) to be translated into the conclusion desired (God exists).
That "an ens realissimum must possess the additional attribute of absolute
necessity"--or, in other words, that a perfect being is identical with one which
necessarily exists--is, according to Kant, "exactly what was maintained in the
ontological argument." Hence he maintains that the argument from contingency is
invalid because it cannot avoid including what is for Kant the invalid premise of the
ontological argument as "the real ground of its disguised and illusory
reasoning."
THE CONTROVERSY concerning the proof of God's existence raises issues in logic, in
metaphysics and physics, and in the theory of knowledge. Philosophers are opposed on the
question whether a valid demonstration is possible. Those who think it possible differ
from one another on the way in which the proof should be constructed. Those who think it
impossible do not always go to the opposite extreme of making the affirmation of God's
existence a matter of faith; or of denying with the skeptic that we can have any light on
the question at all. Pascal and Kant, for example, reject the theoretic arguments as
inconclusive or untenable, but they do not think the problem is totally insoluble. They
offer instead practical grounds or reasons for accepting God's existence.
- "The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote from the
reasoning of men," Pascal asserts, "and so complicated, that they make little
impression." He will "not undertake," he tells us in his Pensees,
"to prove by natural reasons . . . the existence of God." In his view
"there are only three kinds of persons: those who serve God, having found Him; others
who are occupied in seeking Him, not having found Him; while the remainder live without
seeking Him, and without having found Him." Since he regards the first as
"reasonable and happy," the last as "foolish and unhappy," he
addresses himself to the middle group whom he regards as "unhappy and
reasonable."
He asks them to consider whether God is or is not. "Reason can decide nothing
here," he says. If a choice is to be made by reason, it must be in the form of a
wager. "Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see
which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two
things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your
nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in
choosing one rather than another, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point
settled. But your happiness?
- "Let us weigh the gain and the toss in wagering that God
is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all, if you lose, you lose
nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He is."
We are incapable of knowing either that God is or what God is, according to
Pascal, because "if there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible" and
"has no affinity to us." Nevertheless, proceeding on the practical level of the
wager, reason may lead to Christian faith, yet not in such a way as to give adequate
reasons for that belief, since Christians "profess a religion for which they cannot
give a reason."
Kant also makes the affirmation of God a matter of faith, but for him it is a "purely
rational faith, since pure reason . . . is the sole source from which it springs." He
defines a matter of faith as any object which cannot be known through the speculative use
of reason, but which "must be thought a priori, either as consequences or as
grounds, if pure practical reason is to be used as duty commands ... Such is the summum
bonum," he says, "which has to be realized in the world through freedom ...
This effect which is commanded, together with the only conditions on which its possibility
is conceivable by us, namely, the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, are
matters of faith and are of all objects the only ones that can be so called."
For Kant, then, the existence of God is a "postulate of pure practical reason . . .
as the necessary condition of the possibility of the summum bonum." The
moral law commands us to seek the highest good, with perfect happiness as its concomitant;
but Kant thinks that "there is not the slightest ground in the moral law for a
necessary connexion between morality and proportionate happiness in a being that belongs
to the world as a part of it." Since man is a part of the world or nature, and
dependent on it, "he cannot by his will be a cause of this nature, nor by his own
power make it thoroughly harmonize, as far as his happiness is concerned, with his
practical principles." The only possible solution lies in "the existence of a
cause of all nature, distinct from nature itself, and containing the principle of this
connexion, namely, of the exact harmony of happiness with morality." That is why,
Kant explains, "it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God."
IN THE TRADITION of the great books, the common ground shared by reason and faith is
marked by the convergence of the contributions made by pagan, Jew, and Christian--and by
poets, philosophers, and theologians--to the problem of God's existence and the
understanding of the divine nature, the essence of God and His attributes.
Certain attributes of God, such as simplicity, immateriality, eternity, infinity,
perfection, and glory, are usually regarded as so many different ways in which the human
understanding apprehends the divine nature in itself. Other attributes, such as the divine
causality, omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, love, justice, and mercy, are usually
taken as ways of considering God's nature in relation to the world or to creatures. But to
divide the attributes in this way, as is done in the Outline of Topics, is to make a
division which cannot be fully justified except in terms of convenience for our
understanding. God's will, for example, no less than God's intellect, can be considered in
relation to Himself. God's intellect, no less than God's will, can have the world for its
object. So, too, the divine goodness can be considered with reference to things, even as
God's love can be considered with reference to Himself.
The difficulties we meet in classifying or ordering the attributes of God confirm the
opinion of almost all theologians, that our understanding is inadequate to comprehend the
essence of God. The fact that we employ a multiplicity of attributes to represent to
ourselves what in itself is an absolute unity is another indication of the same point. The
one attribute of simplicity would seem to deny us the right to name others, unless we take
the plurality of attributes to signify something about man's understanding of God rather
than a real complexity in the divine nature.
"He that will attribute to God," Hobbes writes, "nothing but what is
warranted by natural reason, must either use such negative attributes, as infinite,
eternal, incomprehensible; or superlatives, as most high, most great, and the like; or
indefinite, as good, just, holy, creator; and in such sense, as if he meant not to declare
what He is (for that were to circumscribe Him within the limits of our fancy), but how
much we admire Him, and how ready we would be to obey Him; which is a sign of humility and
of a will to honor Him as much as we can: for there is but one name to signify our
conception of His nature, and that is, I AM: and but one name of His relation to us, and
that is GOD; in which is contained Father, King, and Lord."
Even when they are discussed by the philosophers and reflected on by the poets, certain
matters belong especially to theology because they constitute the dogmas of
religion--articles of religious faith based solely on divine revelation, not discovered by
human inquiry or speculation. That God created the world out of nothing and of His free
will; that the world had a beginning and will have an end are, for example, dogmas of
traditional Judaism and Christianity. Philosophers may argue about the freedom or
necessity of the creative act, or about the possibility of a beginning or an end to time
and the world, but Jewish and Christian theologians find in Sacred Scripture the warrant
for believing that which may not be thoroughly intelligible to reason, much less
demonstrable by it. What is true of creation applies generally to the religious belief in
divine providence and the positive commandments of God, to the gift of grace which God
bestows upon men, and to the performance of miracles.
Judaism and Christianity share certain dogmas, though the degree to which Jewish and
Christian theologians commonly understand what is apparently the same dogma varies from
great similarity of interpretation (as in the case of creation and providence) to
differences so great (as, for example, with regard to grace) that there may be some doubt
whether the dogma in question is really the same. The line of demarcation between these
faiths would seem to be more easily determined than their common ground; yet even here
such matters as the resurrection of the body -- even when we take differences of
interpretation into account -- may be regarded as a dogma shared by both.
The basic differences between Jewish and Christian theology center, of course, on
the issue between a unitarian and a trinitarian conception of the
Godhead, with immediate consequences for disbelief or belief in Christ as the incarnate
second person of the Trinity--the Word become flesh. This in turn has consequences for
doctrines of salvation, and of the nature and mission of the church, its rituals and its
sacraments. Even within Christianity, however, there have been and still are serious
doctrinal differences on all these matters. The most fundamental heresies and schisms of
early Christianity concerned the understanding of the Trinity and the Incarnation. The
great modern schism which divided Christendom arose from issues about the sacraments, the
organization and practices of the church, and the conditions of salvation.
It would seem to be just as easy to say what beliefs are common to religious Jews and
Christians, as to articulate the faith common to all sects of Christianity. If all
varieties of Protestant doctrine are included, little remains in common except belief in
the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--creator and provider, governor and judge, dispenser
of rewards and punishments.
ONE BOOK STANDS OUT from all the rest because, in our tradition, it is--as the use of
"Bible" for its proper name implies--the book about God and man. For those who
have faith, Holy Writ or Sacred Scripture is the revealed Word of God. Its division into
Old and New Testaments represents the historic relation of the Jewish and Christian
religions.
Without prejudice to the issue between belief and unbelief, or between Jewish and
Christian faith, we have attempted to organize the references to specifically religious
doctrines concerning God and His creatures according to their origin and foundation in
either the Old or in the New Testament, or in both. On certain points, as we have already
seen, the line of distinction can be clearly drawn. For example, the doctrines of God's
covenant with Israel, of the Chosen People, of the Temple and the Torah, are indisputably
drawn from the Old Testament; and from the New Testament come such dogmas as those
concerning Christ's divinity and humanity, the Virgin Birth, the Church as the mystical
body of Christ, and the seven sacraments.
Under all these topics we have assembled passages from the Bible, interpretations of them
by the theologians, and materials from the great books of poetry and history, philosophy
and science. Since the criterion of relevance here is the reflection of sacred or
religious doctrine in secular literature, the writings of pagan antiquity are necessarily
excluded, though they are included in the more philosophical topics of theology, such as
the existence and nature of one God.
Despite its length, this chapter by no means exhausts the discussion of God in the great
books. The long list of Cross-References, which follows the seventy-three topics
comprising the Reference section of this chapter, indicates the various ways in which the
idea of God occurs in the topics of other chapters. The reader will find that list useful
not only as an indication of the topics in other chapters which elaborate on or extend the
discussion of matters treated here, but also as a guide to other Introductions in which he
is likely to find the conception of God a relevant part of the examination of some other
great idea.
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