Aquinas (Arguments of the Philosophers)

Natural Theology

---

Excellent, concise account and defense of the classic medieval understanding of God's nature, by one of today's leading philosophical theologians. Eleonore Stump is always a pleasure to listen to. After listening to her YouTube video of this lecture and being very impressed with her content and delivery, I had to have a paper copy. The size of the book is small and thin such that it is more like a hard-back booklet.

But the quality of the paper and beauty of the printing process is so high that I found myself not wanting to highlight and mark this book up with notations like usual. It is a nice little treasure to hold in the hand and a pure delight to read. Listening to the lecture first makes the read even more pleasant. It is a delight if you have a philosophical bent and are theologically traditional on matters of divine immutability, eternality, and simplicity. Thomists and Neo-Thomists will enjoy it the most, no doubt. It often seems like many evangelical Christians are losing their grip on this traditional view of God and drifting away from the classical view that Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, and John Calvin all had.

The importance of this topic is easy to underestimate but, in the future, when most Christians may be talking about a God who is always changing, always being surprised by his creatures, and often being thwarted by his creation that is no longer under his control, we will wish we had listened to Stump's attempt to steer us away from that course. As always, I appreciate and respect Stump's ability to weave Bible stories into her philosophizing.

Starting with the story of Jonah was very helpful--even brilliant. One person found this helpful. Professor Stump is clearly a scholar with both depth and breadth of knowledge and understanding. The best short explanation of the nature of the eternity and simplicity of the divine I have ever read. As everything else she writes, this is brilliant. I've read this surprisingly short excellent book twice because I'm writing an article about Dr.

William Lane Craig's theistic personalism. So I know that Dr. Sump writes objections to divine simplicity, divine immutability, divine timelessness, and the idea that a divinely simple God can't respond to his creatures. She answers each objection and criticizes what Professors William Hasker and Alvin Plantinga write about classical theism. For me, the best part of the book is Dr. Stump's admirably clear prose that I could only hope to write to explain the difficult subjects that she covers in the book. It'll help classical theists a lot, and it's a fine example of who a brilliant Thomistic philosopher thinks.

Though it's an easy read, read it slowly to learn everything you can. I recommend it highly. This is a rich and rewarding read on philosophical theology. Any Thomist will appreciate Stump's insights and those unfamiliar with Aquinas will come to love him. The attributes of classic theism immutability, eternity, and simplicity do not conflict with Christian theism and this lecture keenly captures the important, and often missed, nuances from Aquinas to illustrate. Moreover, implications of Dr. Stump's findings are far-reaching and will serve to promote a robust philosophical theology.

Stump does a great job of presenting Aquinas' arguments clearly and in a way that links them to contemporary analytic philosophy. I am working my way through this book in a reading group. For the most part, Stump's exposition of St. Thomas' thought is lucid and insightful. She leads the reader through the dense thickets of St. Thomas' thought, and is able to answer many of the traditional criticisms with grace and insight.

However, there is a great deal of historical background and tradition that she omits, which might help shed light on certain obscure areas. For instance, in the chapter on divine simplicity, no mention is made of Pseudo-Dionysius, or the nearly years of apophatic theology that provide the foundation of St.

Thomas' analysis of the simplicity of God. It seems odd to not mention this, to give some context to the discussion. In other places, I am not sure from where she's getting her information -- for example, in the chapter on goodness, she makes reference to two questions in the Summa that she claims show that the precepts of fortitude have to do with fear of the Lord.

However, when I looked up the questions, they made no such reference. Very odd, given the general lucidity and clarity of the rest of the work. Again, it's a decent introduction to Aquinas' thought, although readers might want to consult some other guides to get a better sense of historical context when reading this book. See all 8 reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers.

Learn more about Amazon Giveaway. Aquinas Arguments of the Philosophers. Set up a giveaway. Customers who viewed this item also viewed. Atonement Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology. There's a problem loading this menu right now. Get fast, free shipping with Amazon Prime. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations. View or edit your browsing history. Get to Know Us. English Choose a language for shopping. Aquinas thinks that human beings have discovered many such truths and he expects human beings to discover many more. Although there is progress amidst the human race in understanding truths of natural reason, Aquinas thinks there are truths that are totally beyond the intelligence of the entire human race.

The truths beyond reason are outside the aptitude of the natural light of reason to discover or verify. The cognitive power of all humanity combined, all humanity of the past, present, and future, does not suffice to discover or verify one of the truths beyond reason. How then does an individual or humanity arrive at such truths?

Humanity does not arrive at them. Rather, the truths arrive at humanity from a higher intellect — God. They come by way of divine revelation, that is, by God testifying to them. God testifies to them in a three-step process. First, God elevates the cognitive powers of certain human beings so that their cognitive powers operate at a level of aptitude beyond what they are capable of by nature. Thanks to the divinely enhanced cognition, such people see more deeply into things than is possible for humans whose cognition has not been so enhanced.

The heightened cognition is compared to light, and is often said to be a higher light than the light of natural reason. It is called the light of prophecy or the light of revelation. The recipients of the light of prophecy see certain things that God sees but that the rest of humanity does not. Having seen higher truths in a higher light, the recipients of the higher light are ready for the second step. Second, God sends those who see things in the higher light to bear witness and to testify to what they see in the higher light. By so testifying, the witnesses the prophets and Apostles of old served as instruments or a mouthpiece through which God made accessible to humanity some of those truths that God sees but that humanity does not see.

Five Ways (Aquinas)

The Bible makes for the third step. Third, in the present God uses the Bible as a current, active instrument for teaching the same truths to humanity. By accepting in faith God speaking through the Bible, people today have a second-hand knowledge of certain truths that God alone sees first-hand.

Just as God illuminated the prophets and apostles in the light of prophecy to see what God alone sees, God also illuminates people today to have faith in God speaking through the Bible. This illumination is called the light of faith. Just as one sees certain claims of natural reason by the light of natural reason, so the Christian faith hold certain claims beyond reason by the God-given light of faith.

In the thought of Thomas Aquinas, the traditional distinction between two domains of truths and the distinctive way of knowing truth in each domain, reaches a point of clarity. This distinction is at the basis of the distinction between theology and natural theology. Theology in the Thomistic sense , as it later came to be called, is the program for inquiring by the light of faith into what one believes by faith to be truths beyond reason that are revealed by God.

Natural theology , as it later came to be called, is the program for inquiring by the light of natural reason alone into whatever truths of natural reason human beings might be able to find about God. Theology and natural theology differ in what they inquire into, and in what manner they inquire. What theology inquires into is what God has revealed himself to be. What natural theology inquires into is what human intelligence can figure out about God without using any of the truths beyond reason, that is, the truths divinely revealed.

To see how theology and natural theology differ for Aquinas, it may help to look into faith and theology in more detail.

Frequently bought together

One seems blind in accepting on faith the truths of revelation found in the Bible. They seem blind because faith is a way of knowing something second-hand. A faithful person is in the position of believing what another intellect the divine intellect sees. Now although one does not see for oneself the truths accepted in faith, one desires to see them for oneself.

Want to learn a language?

Faith tends to prompt intellectual questioning, inquiry, and seeking into the meaning and intelligibility of the mystery held in faith. Why did God create the world? Why does God allow so much suffering? Why did God become Incarnate? Why did he have to die on a cross to save humanity? Many more questions come up. One asks questions of the truths of divine revelation without doubting those truths.

On the contrary, one raises such questions because in faith one is confident that one truth of divine revelation can explain another truth of divine revelation. Thus, one questions the faith in faith. Natural theology , on the other hand, does not presuppose faith as theology does. Natural theology does not attempt to explain truths beyond reason such as the Incarnation or the Trinity, and it certainly does not attempt to base anything on claims made in the Bible.

Rather, natural theology uses other sources of evidence. Natural theology appeals to empirical data and the deliverances of reason to search out, verify, justify, and organize as much truth about God as can be figured out when one limits oneself to just these sources of evidence. Aquinas practiced both theology and natural theology. Furthermore, he blended the two rather freely, and blended them into a unified architectonic wisdom. His architectonic contains both theology and natural theology sometimes they are difficult to sort out. Aquinas is primarily a theologian and his best-known work is his Summa Theologica.

Aquinas saw himself as using truths of natural reason to help understand truths of divine revelation. Consequently, as part of his theology, Aquinas presents and refines many philosophical arguments truths of natural reason that he had inherited from multiple streams of his culture: Aquinas saw himself as taking all the truth they had discovered and using it all to penetrate the meaning and intelligibility of what God is speaking through the bible. In his Summa Contra Gentiles , Aquinas presents in lengthy detail a series of philosophical demonstrations of the existence of God, philosophical demonstrations of a variety of divine attributes, a philosophical theory of naming God, as well as multiple philosophical points concerning divine providence, for example, the problem of evil.

For the first two volumes of the Summa Contra Gentiles , Aquinas proceeds without substantial appeal to the authority of Scripture although Aquinas does repeatedly point to the agreement between what he arrived at philosophically and what Christians hold by faith in their Scriptures.

He seems to intend his arguments to presuppose as little of the Christian faith as possible. The Summa Contra Gentiles , traditionally, was pointed out as one of the principal locations of Aquinas natural theology. One old interpretation of the Summa Contra Gentiles says that its purpose was to train Christian missionaries who would be required to engage Muslims in discussion and debate about God. Since Christians and Muslims held no common sacred texts, they would need to dispute in terms afforded by their common humanity, that is, the truths of natural reason.

Arguments of the Philosophers

That skepticism, ironically, led to several developments in natural theology. Not long after Aquinas, certain philosophers began to doubt that knowledge of God could be obtained apart from divine revelation and faith. William of Ockham — rejected central theses of Aristotelian philosophy that Aquinas relied upon in arguing for the existence of God, divine attributes, divine providence, and so forth. Ockham rejected the Aristotelian theory of form. He believed that a world construed in terms of Aristotelian essences was incompatible with God and creation as revealed in Scripture.

Nonetheless, Ockham was a Christian. Having rejected the Aristotelian theory of form and essence, natural theology as practiced by Aquinas was not possible. Of the two ways available for obtaining some knowledge of God — faith in revelation and reason without revelation — Ockham rejected the latter. Consequently, the only way remaining to know something of God was by faith in divine revelation. After Ockham, the modern period abounded in various views towards natural theology. On the one hand, there were many who continued to hold that nature affords some knowledge of God and that human nature has some way of approaching God even apart from revelation.

The scholastic thinker Francisco Suarez , for example, presented arguments for the existence of God, divine attributes, and divine providence. On the other hand, the rise of general anti-Aristotelianism for example, Bacon , the rise of a mechanistic conception of the universe for example, Hobbes , and the methodological decision to ignore final causality for example, Descartes , all made traditional theological arguments for the existence of God from nature harder to sustain. Modern philosophy and modern science was perceived by many to threaten the traditional claims and conclusions of natural theology, for example, that the existence and attributes of God can be known apart from revelation and faith.

Many Christian thinkers responded to the new situation posed by modern philosophy and modern science. These responses shared with modern philosophy and modern science a non-Aristotelian, and perhaps even anti-Aristotelian, line of thought. Descartes advanced his argument in such a way that not only did he intend to avoid any Aristotelian presuppositions about the external world, he apparently intended to avoid any presuppositions at all about the external world — even the presupposition of its existence. In Great Britain, there grew up another form of natural theology tending to use empirical starting points and consciously probabilistic forms of argument.

Two examples are noteworthy in this regard. The former latter work begins from the fact, presumably accessible empirically, that something or other has always existed. The latter work offers a probabilistic argument in favor of the existence of God and certain attributes based on analogies between what is found in nature and what is found in revelation.

Customers who bought this item also bought

David Hume — offered perhaps the most poignant criticisms of the post-Aristotelian forms of natural theology. His Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding contained a chapter criticizing the justification for belief in miracles as well as a chapter leveled against arguments from design. The latter criticism against design arguments, as well as additional criticisms of various divine attributes, was offered in much more extensive detail in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

Although Hume did not dissuade his contemporaries such as Paley from doing natural theology, Hume still had a significant impact on natural theology through his influence on Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant — found himself faced on the one side with a rationalism that made quite ambitious metaphysical claims and on the other side with an empiricism that allowed humans to know little beyond what was immediately sensible. The rationalists claimed to offer in modo geometrico, a series of demonstrations of many truths about God proceeding from a set of axioms self-evident to reason and needing no empirical verification.

Later, their approach would be called a priori. The empiricists followed a different course, and stressed the human incapacity to know substantive necessary truths, or at least Hume seems to have stressed this or Hume as Kant understood him. In his work, Kant is widely thought to have posed perhaps the most significant argumentative challenge to theology, natural theology, and metaphysics in general. For Kant, arguments for the existence of God cannot prove their point due to the limits of the human cognitive capacity. Henceforth, any attempt to do classical theology, natural theology, or metaphysics had to answer the Kantian challenge.

Natural theology after Kant took two various routes. Whether and to what extent Darwinian principles eliminate the necessity for positing a divine designer is one of the most hotly contested issues in natural theology today. But there was more to post-Kantian natural theology. In Catholic circles, natural theology went in two directions. On the one hand, there were some who intended to use modern philosophy for theological purposes just as the mediaevals had done. Antonio Rosmini - , for example, developed a theology and a natural theology using elements from Augustine, Bonaventure, Pascal, and Malebranche.

On the other hand, there were some who revived the thought of Thomas Aquinas. At first, there were but a handful of neo-Thomists. But in time Thomism was not only revived, but disseminated through a vast system of Catholic education. Thomists disagreed amongst each other on how to relate to strands of contemporary thought such as science and Kant. So neo-Thomism grew in many directions: At any rate, neo-Thomists tended to develop their own counter-reading of modern philosophy — especially Kant — and to use Thomistic natural theology as an apparatus for higher education and apologetics.

Outside neo-Thomistic circles, natural theology was generally out of favor throughout the twentieth century. Due to neo-Kantian criticisms of metaphysics, an extreme confidence in contemporary science, a revival and elaboration of Humean empiricism in the form of logical positivism, as well as existentialism among Continental thinkers, metaphysics was thought to be forever eliminated as a way of knowing or understanding truth about God or anything at all for that matter.

Natural theology was thought to have suffered the same fate as being part of metaphysics.

It is fair to say that in many places metaphysics and natural theology were even held in contempt. Towards the second half of the twentieth century, however, the tide began to turn — first in favor of the possibility of metaphysics and soon afterwards to a revival of natural theology. Natural theology today is practiced with a degree of diversity and confidence unprecedented since the late Middle Ages.

Arguments from the reality of an objective moral order to the existence of God are circulated and taken seriously. Ethical theories that define goodness in terms of divine command are considered live options among an array of ethical theories. Discussions of divine attributes abound in books and journals devoted exclusively to purely philosophical treatments of God, for example, the journal Faith and Philosophy. The problem of evil has also been taken up anew for fresh discussions — both by those who see it as arguing against the existence of God and by those who wish to defend theism against the reality of evil.

For people of faith who wish to think through their faith, to see whether reason alone apart from revelation offers anything to corroborate, clarify, or justify what is held by faith, there is no shortage of materials to research or study or criticize. Rather, vast quantities of books, articles, debates, discussions, conferences, and gatherings are available. For those who have no faith, but wish to inquire into God without faith, the same books, articles, debates, discussion, conferences, and gatherings are available.

Natural theology is alive and well to assist anyone interested grappling with the perennial questions about God. Natural Theology Natural theology is a program of inquiry into the existence and attributes of God without referring or appealing to any divine revelation. Historical Beginnings of Theology and Philosophy The story of natural theology begins where theology begins. Ancient Jewish and Early Christian Theology As philosophy was developing from the Pre-Socratics through to Plato and Aristotle, another development was taking place among the Israelites or the ancient Jews.

Distinction between Revealed Theology and Natural Theology The distinction between revealed theology and natural theology eventually grew out of the distinction between what is held by faith and what is held by understanding or reason.

An encyclopedia of philosophy articles written by professional philosophers.

Augustine , in describing how he was taught as a catechumen in the Church, writes: Chadwick, Here Augustine describes being asked to believe certain things, that is, take them on authority, even though they could not be demonstrated. Second, Pseudo-Dionysius late 5th century also raised the distinction between knowing things from the authority of Scripture and knowing them from rational arguments: Thomas Aquinas In the work of Thomas Aquinas - , one finds two distinctions that serve to clarify the nature and status of natural theology. For Aquinas, there are two sorts of truths about God: Modern Philosophy and Natural Theology Not long after Aquinas, certain philosophers began to doubt that knowledge of God could be obtained apart from divine revelation and faith.

Natural Theology Today Outside neo-Thomistic circles, natural theology was generally out of favor throughout the twentieth century. References and Further Reading a. VII was an influential text upon later conceptions of God and the Good.

Aristotle, Physics , particularly Bk. The locus classicus for the argument from motion for the existence of a first, unmoved mover. Aristotle, Metaphysics , particularly Bk. Mediaeval Natural Theology Augustine, Confessions , trans. VI, Augustine draws a distinction between things demonstrable and things to be taken on authority. Augustine, On Free Choice of the Will , trans. Hackett Publishing Company, Out of the many works of St.

Augustine considers eternal truths, the order of the world, and the nature of reason, and proceeds to discuss the relationship between these things and the wisdom the pre-existed that world. Many students find this dialogue satisfying to read.

Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. Macmillan Publishing Company, A shorter work, cast in semi-dialogue form, that synthesizes and presents a great deal of late Hellenistic natural theology. It is fair to call this work one of the principal sources of mediaeval humanism and philosophy.

Many students find this work satisfying to read. A lengthy work of neo-Platonic cosmology and natural theology. Consequently, there are many passages of a more mystical and meditative quality intended for those who have had the prerequisite perceptions of the One.

Presents the distinction between natural and mystical theology and the two ways of knowing that are proper to each. Oxford University Press, The Monologion, in its first two dozen chapters, presents a natural theology by way of unpacking what is involved in the notion of a supreme nature. Fathers of the English Dominican Province. The classic theological work by Thomas Aquinas. In part I, q. Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles , esp. University of Notre Dame Press, For these two books, a great deal of the thinking is commonly thought to proceed in the light of natural reason alone.

Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God. A short work of mediaeval natural theology.

• Goat Pie (Troll Trouble)
• Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies
• Exploring Iceland (Janes Journeys)
• Bible Plays for Children eBook
• Bittersweet Summer - Paulas Story
• Faith-Shaped Kids: Helping Your Child Grow Spiritually