Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Thomas; Nachweis Gottes aus der Welt der Erfahrung; moderne Philosophie (protestantische Position): Leugnung einer natürlichen Theologie; Konsequenz dieser Verweigerung

Kurzinhalt: The fixed philosophical attitude today is to say that a natural theology is impossible; ... it follows that the philosopher, who must stand by reason, should also stand for atheism; how odd of God ...

Textausschnitt: 73a This first aspect of Thomist thought about God-its definitional agnosticism-may possibly seem congenial to the contemporary mind, if perhaps for the wrong reasons. But a second aspect is normally repugnant. I refer to Aquinas' gnosticism with regard to the existence of God as a truth of the rational order. (Fs)

73b The whole structure and content of the first thirteen questions of the Summa are formally derivative only from the datum of all human experience, "I-with-the-others-in-the-world." Unlike the biblical problematic, which came down from heaven in a theophany, the Thomist statement rises up out of the earthly soil of experience. Moreover, the mode of argument wherewith each of the four questions is met and answered is formally philosophical. Behind both the position and the resolution of the problem of God stands Aquinas' resolute and altogether serene assurance that it is within the native powers of the human intelligence, if it be trained in the discipline of philosophy, to make and to demonstrate the highest of metaphysical affirmations-to posit and to prove the judgment that God is; that it is further possible for reason to go on to articulate a complex conception of what God is not-a conception that, despite its negative form, is of positive cognitive value. (Fs)

74a From all this, the contemporary mind, particularly within the company of professional philosophers, somehow instinctively draws back. Its inclination, on reading the lengthy argument of this section of the Summa, would be neither to agree nor to disagree with it. More likely, the contemporary mind would feel that in the intellectual climate that sustains such an argument it can only gasp for breath. The fixed philosophical attitude today is to say that a natural theology is impossible, that it is impossible for human reason, beginning only with the data of experience, to construct a valid doctrine of God, to effect a purely rational resolution of the quadriform problematic. This philosophical disposition is furthermore the common Protestant theological disposition. A philosophy of religion is indeed possible but not a philosophy of God. Between the order of rational affirmation and conception, which is the order of philosophy, and the order in which the notion of God is conceived and his existence affirmed, which is the order of religious faith, an impassable gulf is fixed. (Fs)

75a This is the position against which Aquinas firmly stands in the opening questions of the Summa, both in the name of his faith and also in the name of his reason. There may be argument about the precise intention of the famous Article 3 in Question 2, where Aquinas outlines the five ways of answering affirmatively the question whether God is. There may also be argument about the import of the cryptic phrase in which Aquinas states the conclusion reached by the different ways: "and this is what all men understand by 'God'"; "to this all men give the name 'God.'" In any event, it is obviously within the intention of the five ways-and of the whole Summa, for that matter-to demonstrate that reason is not atheist, that atheism is not the reasonable conclusion from the data of common human experience, that the twin universes of faith and philosophy, distinct as universes of knowledge, are not utterly divorced, that their cardinal point of delicate intersection is in the crucial instant when reason affirms, what faith likewise affirms, that God is. The issue here, which is formally philosophical, is of vital religious import. It concerns the statute of reason in religion. If reason has no valid statute in religion, it follows that religion has no reasonable status in human life. Therefore it is unreasonable for a man to be religious. The reasonable man is the atheist. (Fs) (notabene)

75b "How odd of God/To choose the Jews." So runs the celebrated couplet whose lightness of humor does not cancel the seriousness of its statement of the initial mystery of the redemptive economy. A greater oddity, however, could be conceived. How odd of God it would have been had he made man reasonable so that, by being reasonable, man would become godless. This brings me to my third subject-that most mysterious of all the oddities on the face of God's earth, the godless man. (Fs) (notabene)