Coakley om Thomas’ fem veier

 

Introduction: Swinburne’s brave attempt to construct a ‘cumulative case’ for theism, via a re-working of the tradition arguments for God’s existence owes much of its apologetic force to its acceptance of a ‘secular’ mode of reasoning – a ‘scientific’ rationality based in statistical probability. But herein arguably also lies its seem in religious weakness: S’s God appears to be highly vulnerable to the Heideggerian critique of ‘onto-theology’. What are the alternatives, if the classical arguments are still to be taken seriously? Answer: There is also now a variety of ways of reading Thomas Aquinas’’s ‘Five Ways’ which have been devised to counteract the presumption that they must be based on, or effective only in relation to, some ‘secular’ form of rationality. This is a wrong-headed presumption, it is argued, given Thomas’s own understanding of what the arguments are meant to achieve within the life of faith. Note then the ambiguity of the term ‘natural theology’ that follows from this reconsideration.

Thesis: The historical background of Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris (1879), Puis X’s Anti-Modernist Oath (1910), and the rise of official RC ‘neo-scholasticism’, as promulgated in seminaries and official teachings up to the 1960s, present the backcloth to a subsequent reaction in Catholic thought against the idea of a deductive rational demonstration of God’s existence as a prolegomenon to a consideration of faith nd revelation. Yet note that that same ‘neo-scholasticism’ was itself a defensive reaction to the Kantian critique of speculative metaphysics. Under the influence of the Catholic movement known as ‘la nouvelle theology’, in contrast, Thoma’s Five Ways can be read as a confirmatory of an existing faith, rather than as an attempt to ground faith in a universal (secular) rationality. Or – contrariwise – it is possible to argue that reason can, after all, establish faith, but here we must understand ‘reason’ differently from the way the secular world does.

I Anthony Kenny’s attack on Thomas’:

He reads them out of the context and reads them as straightforwards versions of similar arguments in Aristoteles. Thus he can knock them off easily.

1. The argument from motion is untenable in a post-einsteinan age
2. The argument from efficient causation
   1. In the case of humans we are familiar with the idea that human ‘propel’ themselves. They are autonomous.
   2. In relation to non-human entities we can now say that the evolution theory deals with causal nexuses in the non-human world.
3. The argument rom the idea of ultimate neccesity
   • It is question begging. Only someone who already looks for the idea of a God feels the need to ask for a primal necessity
4. The beauty and the affection of natural world suggests a gradation with an ultimate ontological source
   • It’s only convincing if you are a platonist.
5. The teleological argument
   • This also not needed if we don’t presume the need of a ultimate course. With Kant, we can account for the directness of the world by the directness of ourselves. We see teleology, because we add it in seeing.

Btw: Every day he, in the morning, says his prayers! As a Pascalian wager!

• This interesting! For what should these thomistic arguments do? Shall it force you into belief? Or can we say that they already have had an effect on Kenny?

II But what does Thomas Aquinas himself intend to do with the arguments? Setting the Five Ways in the context of the Summa and of Aquinas’s lifetime.

What factors have Kenny not taking into account?

(a) The subtle relationship between faith and reason

From ST 1.a 1 Q8, r2

“But sacred doctrine makes use even of human reason, not, indeed, to prove faith (for thereby the merit of faith would come to an end), but to make clear other things that are put forward in this doctrine. Since therefore grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity.

Nevertheless, sacred doctrine makes use of these authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable»

There’s no doubt in the beginning in summa that revelation is primary. It is not the case we all exists as secularized bodies that wip up some arguments and step into faith. Rather, we are most likely to drawn into faith, and then later on, the believer asks himself how to rationally explain his faith to non-believers.

(b) The existence-argument (Davies, p 31)

Davies thinks that Thomas appeals to an intuition – how is it that thinks just are? Not simply how did it all started, but rather, why is there something rather than nothing? And if there is something, how can it be sustained? This is the fundamental sensibility of the five ways.

If you are blind to that kind of sensibility you are not going to get thomas

(c) The apophatic aspect

The five ways basically lineate the ways God does not exists. For God is not an object (that is the problem for Swinburne).  There’s an infinite ontological difference between God and object.

(d) The primary of scripture

The section of the five ways come after the section where the authority of scripture has been said to be primary. We cannot get away from a certain circularity here. Of the hermeneutics of scripture and reasons job of explicating and explaining.

(e) The word ‘poof’ is used

But it is used in such a way to say that ‘and this is what everybody calls God’. A certain presumption of what God is has preceded the argument.

In sum

Thomas tries to go the way between fideism and the attempt to persuade someone completely outside the realm of religious sensibility.

Coakley thinks Gilson is the most reliable person to read when it comes to Thomas on reason and faith.

People like Fergus Kerr is in danger of sliding towards the nouvelle-theologie interpretation, the ‘Barthian’ interpretation of Thomas. Where the purpose of the arguments is just to protect God’s transcendence. Thats an overstatement. Likewise with John Milbank, he has no time at all for arguments for God’s existence.

III Two ways to re-construe the force of the arguments (in an implicit riposte to Kant’s dismissal of them): a. As confirmatory of the rational nature of faith, given an existing faith commitment; and b. as establishing faith, but not as ‘secular’ reason has it.

Coakley’s view: 

• Return to a thomist view of relation between reason and faith is where the way forwards lies. Swinburne’s attempt doesn’t work, because it presupposes no faith at all. But the other view abandons apologetics totally.
• About Denys Turner’s book:
• • He wants to defend the statements of the 1 Vatican council. But then he does some quick footwork, as he argues that because of the apophatic has to be balanced with the kataphascisim, we have to reexamine the very nature of reason. That reason when working according to the light of faith, is always in a process of transformation.
  • This blurs the line between reason and faith, though it is a diachronic blurring.

The status of today

Natural theology can do a variety of things

1. It can attempt to start with secular science and reason. At the best it will end up with an probabilistic approach.
2. It can use argument to bolster up faith. But faith precedes reason. (McCabe, Gilson etc)
3. It can explore the tensions between rational argumentation and apophatic response. By considering whether reason itself must be reconstrued. Without throwing out rational demonstration (Turner)
4. It can argue that as a very important demand of giving an account of the faith that is in them, one has a duty to set out arguments as clear as possible for people outside the church as well as within the church. With a clear understanding that it will never go all the way, but they can lead you to a point where you have to decide: Go to church or not? (Coakley)

«Natural theology is out of fashion. Don’t follow me! I’m swimming against the tide.» – Coakley