Believe then understand
Posted on
..
Here is my latest column for the magazine "Philosophy Now," about Aquinas and the Indian philosopher Shankara, and how both thought philosophy could be pursued while presupposing principles of religious belief. So this is part, like, five hundred of my attempt to show that religion and philosophy are not mutually exclusive (see also "rule 14" of my 20 rules for history of philosophy).
Add new comment
- Add new comment
- 911 views
Blog Archive
- September 2017 (2)
- August 2017 (3)
- July 2017 (3)
- June 2017 (1)
- May 2017 (4)
- April 2017 (4)
- February 2017 (5)
- January 2017 (1)
- December 2016 (3)
- September 2016 (4)
- August 2016 (3)
- June 2016 (3)
- May 2016 (1)
- April 2016 (1)
- March 2016 (3)
- February 2016 (1)
- December 2015 (5)
- November 2015 (2)
- October 2015 (2)
- September 2015 (2)
- August 2015 (1)
- July 2015 (1)
- June 2015 (4)
- May 2015 (1)
- April 2015 (4)
- March 2015 (2)
- February 2015 (2)
- January 2015 (2)
- December 2014 (6)
- November 2014 (2)
- October 2014 (6)
- September 2014 (11)
- August 2014 (3)
- July 2014 (1)
- June 2014 (4)
- May 2014 (3)
Nice article, Peter! One
Nice article, Peter! One nuance I'd like to add: you say of the Christian mysteries that "We can at least establish that they involve no impossibilities." The view of Aquinas, as explained by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, is actually subtler: we cannot prove the Trinity to be non-contradictory but we can show that it cannot be proven to be contradictory.
For Catholics this is especially important to get right with regards to the Trinity because as the ground of all being, God contains nothing that is unnecessary. That means that anything that can be rigorously demonstrated to be possible about God, must be not only possible but necessarily true. So if a Catholic says we can prove the Trinity is possible he is implying that God can be known to be a Trinity by reason alone. But if we can know even the supernatural mysteries of God by reason then the distinction between supernatural and natural, between God and man, breaks down. We can know God's attributes by reason because they are attributes we can naturally participate in, but what belongs to the intimate life of the Deity qua Deity (not qua good, powerful etc) is unknowable by the human intellect.
The same principle (it cannot be proven possible but we can see that it can't be proven impossible) applies to things like the Incarnation too, but since the Incarnation is contingent, a free act of God, saying it can be proven possible at least doesn't cause the same massive problem as with the Trinity.