Thomism and Presuppositional Apologetics
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts in Philosophy
Mark A. McNeil
Director: Dr. John Deely
University of St. Thomas, Center for Thomistic Studies
Fall, 2004
Outline of Contents
Thesis Statement………………………………………………………………………………...... 5
I. Chapter One: The Challenge of Presuppositionalism…………………………………………..7
A. Background to the Apologetics Tradition…………………………………………...... 7
1. Historical Reflections……………………………………………………………………….7
2. Protestant Reformation………………………………………..…………………………….8
3. Nature/Grace Problematic…………………………………………………………………...9
4. Presuppositionalism………………………………………………………………………...14
B. Presuppositional Apologetics…………………………………………………………………..16
C. Gordon Clark…………………………………………………………………………………...17
1. Reason and Faith vs. Faith and Reason……………………………………………………..17
2. St. Thomas and the Cosmological Argument……………………………………………….21
a. Criticisms and Responses………………………………………………………………...21
1. Problems with “Motion”…………………………………………………………...…21
2. Circularity………………………………………………………………………….…24
3. Unmoved Mover……………………………………………………………………...25
4. Fallacy of Anticipation…………………………………………………………….....26
5. Equivocation………….……………………………………………………………....27
6. Responses……………………………………………………………………..……..28
D. Cornelius Van Til…………………………………………………………………………………..32
1. Van Til and Clark…………………………………………………………………….……...33
2. “One and Many”…………………………………………………………………….……….35
a. Abstraction……………………………………………………………………….……....35
b. Universals: The “One.”………………………………………………………….……...36
c. Particulars: The “Many.”……………………………………………………….…….....37
d. Coherence, System and the Trinity……………………………………………….…...... 40
3. Van Til’s Critique of St. Thomas…………………………………………………….……....41
a. Knowledge of God………………………………………………………………………41
b. Rationalism and Irrationalism…………………………………………………………...44
c. Creation Ex Nihilo……………………………………………………………………….45
E. Critique……………………………………………………………………………………………..47
1. Human Experience: Parts and Wholes………………………………………………………47
2. Order of Discovery…………………………………………………………………………...49
3. Circularity, Fideism and Coherence………………………………………………………….52
4. Being and Existence………………………………………………………………………….54
II. Chapter Two: God’s Existence and Attributes……………………………………………………56
A. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………56
1. Definition……………………………………………………………………………………...57
a. “Greatest Conceivable”…………………………………………………………………..57
b. Aseity…………………………………………………………………………………….58
2. God known by effects…………………………………………………………………………59
B. The Five Ways……………………………………………………………………………………….61
1. Motion………………………………………………………………………………………...62
a. Primordial Notion/A Posteriori……………………………………………………………62
b. Aristotelian Cosmology and Philosophical Theology……………………………………..64
c. Problems…………………………………………………………………………………...68
1. Astronomy……………………………………………………………………………...68
2. Physics………………………………………………………………………………...... 69
d. Response…………………………………………………………………………………...69
1. Changing Scientific Theories………………………………...... 70
2. The “Fact” of Motion………………………………………………………………….70
e. Aquinas’ Argument………………………………………………………………………..70
1. Change (Parmenides and Heraclitus)………………………………………………….71
2. Plato and Aristotle: Potency and Act…………………………………………………72
3. Infinite Regress Rejected……………………………………………………………...75
2. Efficient Causality…………………………………………………………………………….77
a. Efficient Causes……………………………………………………………………………79
b. Matter, Form and Subordinated Efficient Causes………………………………………….80
c. Infinite Regress Rejected…………………………………………………………………..81
3. Contingency and Necessity……………………………………………………………………83
a. Necessity defined…………………………………………………………………………...84
b. Chance……………………………………………………………………………………...85
c. Per se Necessity…………………………………………………………………….………87
4. Degrees of Perfection………………………………………………………………………….88
a. A priori?...... 88
b. Being and Essence…………………………………………………………………………...90
5. Governance of the World………………………………………………………….…………....91
a. Teleology/Final Causality…………………………………………………………..………...92
b. Chance……………………………………………………………………………….……….93
c. Evolution and Finality……………………………………………………………….……….95
d. Non-Cognitive Intentionality………………………………………………………..……….98
6. Summary Conclusions………………………………………………………………….……...100
a. A Posteriori Reasoning……………………………………………………………….……..100
b. “Timelessness” of the Five Ways…………………………………………………………...101
C. Attributes of God Known Through Reason………………………………………….…………...103
1. Unknowable……………………………………………………………………………………104
2. Simplicity………………………………………………………………………………………106
3. Perfection………………………………………………………………………………………108
4. Goodness……………………………………………………………………………………….110
5. Infinity………………………………………………………………………………………….112
6. Immutability……………………………………………………………………………………113
7. Eternality……………………………………………………………………………………….114
8. Unity……………………………………………………………………………………………118
9. Knowledge……………………………………………………………………………….….….119
D. Chapter Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………..…..121
III. Thesis Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………….…123
IV. Historically Layered References……………………………………………………………….…127
THESIS STATEMENT
8
Contemporary Catholic philosophy and theology have focused heavily on the relationship between reason and faith. The traditional emphasis on the complementarity of these disciplines, alongside the conviction that they are truly distinct spheres of study, has been challenged from various perspectives. These issues have special significance for apologetics. Apologetics here is understood as the discipline that engages the relationship between the truths discovered through reason and those embraced by faith. It seeks to show their complementarity and interrelationship.
One of these challenges to traditional Catholic apologetics has taken the name of Presuppositionalism. Presuppositionalism argues that reason cannot function independently of faith and therefore the truths of faith must be presupposed in order for reason to have a proper framework or context in which to thrive. Presuppositionalists often level their critiques of the traditional Catholic perspective on this matter against St. Thomas Aquinas.
As will be argued, the critiques of the Presuppositionalists are answerable in view of (a) the fact that proponents fail to truly understand the nature of St. Thomas’ natural theology argumentation and (b) the positive arguments offered in support of their theory fail to prove their extreme negativity in respect to the possibilities of philosophical reason. This failure provides an opportunity for a reexamination of St. Thomas’ natural theology. Of special interest is Thomas’ understanding of how God’s existence may be known through reason and also what attributes of this God are knowable in philosophy.
In the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, philosophical reason prepares for faith in two important ways. First, reason, when applied to the world of common human experience, yields the conclusion that a transcendent cause of the universe exists. This “cause” is fully self-explained (hence infinite) and is the “final cause” of the entire universe. The human intellect is uniquely able to reason to this cause and, upon reflection, finds its reality implicit in all intellectual activity. At the same time, however, the human intellect is incapable of comprehending this cause on account of the orientation of intellect to particular, finite things. Intellectual frustration is the result.
Second, when reason is turned to an analysis of the subjective knower, the analysis reveals that the human will, in its fundamental quest for happiness, never finds its final cause (hence “perfection”) in any finite goal. Happiness, in its full sense, is inconceivable without identifying infinite good as the ultimate intended object of human happiness. It is not immediately apparent, however, how this final state of happiness may be achieved in view of human finitude and death. Reason, St. Thomas argues, aids our study at this point with considerations supporting the survival of the intellectual soul through the death of the body.
The distinctive human capacities of intellect and will are, then, capacities that are ordered towards the discovery of the final cause of everything, but are nonetheless frustrated by their inability to grasp their final cause. For Aquinas, this intellectual and volitional “frustration” provides a context within which convincing argument can be made for the possibility of a higher level of knowledge, Sacred Doctrine, wherein human reason receives guidance from divine revelation. The very inability of the human person to achieve completion through reason (“ascension” to the highest truths) argues for a different order of knowledge (“descending” knowledge in supernatural revelation).
The focus of this thesis is the first stage of this task, wherein the philosopher considers the discovery of God in the context of the human intellect. This analysis will proceed in dialog with the alternative approach to the role of philosophical reasoning in relationship to theistic claims of divine revelation mentioned above: Presuppositional Apologetics.
I. Chapter 1:
The Challenge of Presuppositionalism
A. Background to the Apologetics Tradition
1. Historical Reflections
The attempt to establish Christian truth-claims vis-a-vis philosophical reason is called apologetics. In the early centuries of the Church, the work of apologetics typically fell to those able (by reason of training, interests and natural ability) to engage intellectually the thought-forms of their day. In response to the early Christian belief that the truths of faith were divinely revealed, there were varied understandings of how this divine revelation should be understood in relationship to the claims of reason. Some held that the two were hopelessly in conflict; but the greater majority adopted an approach that saw the two realms as, to some degree, complementary. The greatest of Christian minds during the early centuries showed how the Christian faith could be expressed in a compelling way while working within the framework of ideas prevalent in a given thought-world. The assumption at work throughout was that valid insights into the nature of reality could be assimilated into the Christian belief system.
Augustine’s synthesis of Christianity with Neo-Platonism, along with his refutation of the materialistic and syncretistic philosophy of Manichaeism, served as the primary theological world-view for the first millennium of Christianity. With the rediscovery of Aristotle’s writings among the Muslim philosophers, however, came a new challenge that required a new synthesis. As a consequence, St. Thomas became a “second” Augustine. In due course, the work of Aquinas was heralded as the supreme model of Catholic theological reflection, especially exemplifying the proper relationship between reason and faith.
2. The Protestant Reformation
The Protestant Reformation brought with it a new approach to expressing Christian faith, as well as a new approach to the work of theology itself. From its adherents came a significant challenge and shift: from the scholastic method and orientation, to a more existential approach that emphasized a heightened awareness of sin and a more pessimistic view of human nature, especially in the use of reason.[i] St. Thomas was typically considered the major representative of the Roman Catholic approach to these matters. The Roman “church,” the Reformers claimed, had lost the true meaning of the Christian message precisely because of its failure to appreciate the meaning and implications of the central themes of the Christian Gospel (i.e., Christ, sin, justification, grace). The approach of the Reformers, they claimed, was built on the Scriptures alone and consequently was more authentically Christian. Some would take this approach to the sole authority of Scripture as an implicit condemnation of every other claim to truth not rooted in the sacred texts.
In the centuries between the Reformation and the present, the relationship between faith and reason has been variously understood within both the denominations of the Reformation and the Catholic Church. The churches formed from the Reformation, as well as their many offshoots, tended to follow two distinct paths. First, a strong tendency became evident towards rationalism in theology. Second, an opposite tendency towards fideism was equally apparent. The fideists accused the rationalists of reducing the truths of divine revelation to a cloak for human reason. The rationalists accused fideists of being anti-reason and therefore unreasonable.
Another way that the faith/reason distinction has been made is by focusing on the manner in which Christian belief holds that God communicates with human persons. The trends in this regard may be identified within theological and philosophical camps, the former emphasizing divine transcendence and the latter divine immanence. Those emphasizing transcendence focus on divine revelation as extrinsic to human nature. Those emphasizing immanence focus on human nature as fundamentally and inherently in contact with the “divine.”[ii]
3. The Nature/Grace Problematic
In twentieth-century Catholicism, the faith/reason debate proceeded within the context of the terms nature and grace. Sometimes called the “nature/grace problematic,” the debate was concerned to define the difference and barriers between what is “given” in human nature and what is gratuitously added by grace to common human nature, or, as it was called, the “supernatural.” In other words, significant effort was given to show where nature ends and grace begins. If the salvation of God is something that comes from God to the human person, it cannot be present in human nature when considered on its own. In the words of the Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The theological concept of nature is primarily a negative concept that attempts to establish a boundary line.”[iii] The boundary is between what belongs to human nature and what is freely given to it.[iv]
“Grace,” then, includes everything that surpasses human nature when considered apart from God’s gracious gift of salvation. This distinction also provides some direction towards identifying the difference between philosophy and theology:
The relationship between philosophy and theology is such that we cannot move in either direction (from below to above in philosophy, from above to below in theology) to form a “totally philosophical metaphysics” or a “total theology.” The two movements point towards each other, but they can never meet in a total, unifying embrace. This very fact is proof of the difference between them.[v]
In other words, theology and philosophy are fundamentally distinct disciplines since they move in different directions. One arises from within the common human experience of human nature without making direct use of anything given in addition to this common experience. Theology, on the other hand, makes explicit use of truths believed to come “from above” human nature.
Catholic theologians of the 20th century sought to remain within the framework of a real “nature/grace” distinction, but developed very different formulations. Some sought so to distinguish between nature and grace that they made each “realm” absolutely complete in itself. The primary consequence of this was to see “nature” as having a teleology all its own: the human person has a “natural” end or completion, which is all that can be deduced using the powers of reason. The realm of grace, by contrast, disclosed a higher “end” that was possible only because of the addition of a capacity to human nature for the vision of God. There are, then, two ends of the human person, one natural and one supernatural.
This position clearly differentiated nature and grace, but it also gave rise to a powerful movement in a very different direction. This movement should be understood in light of the 19th century post-Kantian reactions of both Catholic and Protestant thinkers. Catholics tended to take Kant as a threat that needed to be answered by refutation. Many Protestants tended toward an acceptation of Kant’s approach in order to show the inability of reason either to prove or to disprove the “objects” of faith.
Most of the truly influential Catholic thinkers, however, opted to work within the framework of Kant’s revolutionary thought.[vi] Joseph Marechal, along with a host of significant followers, sought to expand Kant’s critique to include a dynamic movement of the human intellect and will towards an infinite horizon that provided the context for every other intellectual or volitional movement.[vii] The infinite is presupposed in the experience of the finite. The important point here is that this movement is understood as inherent in human nature. The movement towards God belongs to human nature from beginning to end of intellectual activity. Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, and Bernard Longergan would all add, in their own ways, to this basic approach to the human person. They would give birth to a so-called “New Theology” within the Catholic Church.[viii] The tendency of this movement was to show how the Catholic faith was consistent with the deepest longings of the human heart. Apologetics, in this framework, is the attempt to shed light on the experience of human beings that implicitly reaches for the infinite God that cannot be directly grasped in this world.[ix]
Most of these thinkers felt a need to associate their thought with that of St. Thomas. There is no doubt they received some inspiration from his thought. On the other hand, it is also evident that they were influenced by other, more contemporary, thinkers, among whom, the influence of Immanuel Kant is unmistakable. The influence of Heidegger on Karl Rahner is also unmistakable. St. Thomas was more of an inspiration to such thinkers than a pattern to be followed. Whatever the merits of their arguments considered on their own, it is clear that the Transcendental Thomists had a significantly different theory of knowledge from Thomas himself.[x]