Dr Greg Bahnsen - Ancient & Medieval Philosophy: Aquinas (Part 21)

As I was saying before we changed the tapes, there's a great magnificent and appealing character to the notion of a summa, where everything that men can know is integrated into a total system, a world and life view. Aquinas said in on the task of reconciling the best that reason had to offer Aristotle and the divine truths that are believed by faith by Christians. On the other hand, it was a grand failure, I believe, and one might expect that it's not really going to work out. His attempt to bring together a pagan philosophy and Christianity is eventually going to have to be seen as mixing oil and water. His attempt to synthesize Aristotelianism and Christianity would require radically changing points of view that are essential to Aristotle's outlook as a Greek philosopher. Aristotle's view of nature. Does not fit into a Christian understanding of creation and providence. Aristotle's view of nature involved the notion that God is nothing more but thought, thinking itself. God is nothing more but the completion of a rational system of metaphysics. He's convenient for completing the system, but God is not an object of devotion. God does not know of the world. God is not personal. So how can you reconcile that with Christianity? For Aristotle, matter was eternal. How can you reconcile that with Christianity? Moreover, how can you reconcile Aristotle's view of man or the Greek view of man as the high point of the natural world, as a being that has within himself all the natural ingredients necessary for happiness and for the life of reason? How can you reconcile the fallen view of man that we find in the Bible with the Aristotelian view of man, which for instance, says that incontinence is a very rare thing in men. Aristotle did not see man as fallen and depraved, yet the Bible does. We have to ask how could any sort of true philosophical synthesis be brought about between such radically different views of nature and radically different views of man? Okay, these are my introductory comments about Thomas. He had a grand task before him and it's one which I think we ought to hold on to the ideal of an all embracing view of human knowledge. But I cannot commend his attempt to synthesize Christianity and Aristotelianism. Well, we really do need to move along quickly. Here are some things to remember about Aquinas. First is view that there are two sources of knowledge. Two sources of knowledge. One is divine revelation. That is, we can gain knowledge through God, revealing the truth directly to us. However, there is also a source of knowledge in human reason. Thomas was very much opposed to the pietism of an Abelard, where Abelard thought that reason raises its arrogant head. Thomas encouraged men to raise their head and use their reason to prove things and to know the world. In fact, he thought it was possible to demonstrate the truth of many of the propositions believed in the theological realm, to prove the truth of them by the light of natural reason, So that you can establish a foundation in natural reasoning and philosophy, a foundation for religion upon which the truths of faith can then be placed. Reason can prove that there is a God, reason can prove certain things about the character of this God. And upon that natural foundation which would then be common to all men, and could be used to prove that much of religion to all men, then the specific truths of Christianity could be placed. The truths of the faith. Those truths of faith which are placed on the foundation of natural reason are ones which go beyond the ability of reason to prove, like the Trinity, for instance, or the Incarnation. Nevertheless, even in the upper story, if you will, of faith, those specific Christian truths that go beyond the common natural reason of men, reason can show that they are not unreasonable. That is, you can use your reasoning ability to show that it's not unreasonable to believe in the Trinity or in the Incarnation or what have you, though you can never come to those truths naturally, you can use natural reason to vindicate their rationality or reasonability. So then, some truths rest on faith in the field of theology and are not demonstrable but are defensible. Other truths in the realm of natural religion can be proved by unaided human reason to those who have faith, as well as to those who do not have faith. And that's why, in the system taught by Aquinas, we say that faith perfects or completes nature, grace, the realm of grace, and faith completes and perfects the realm of nature and reason. Natural reason takes us so far in the service of faith. And then faith completes the journey, natural reason. Then faith takes over faith, excuse me, reason precedes faith. And what we can learn through the use of our reason in the natural realm, unaided by divine grace, what we know about nature is then completed by what we learn about God's grace. So in the Thomistic system, you have a foundation. Down below, you could write in that foundation nature and reason, or, if you will, natural reason. And then above that you have placed grace and faith. Grace is based upon nature, faith is based upon reason, grace and go beyond, but nevertheless are squarely founded upon nature and reason. And so Aquinas gives us our fourth major approach to faith and reason. We've been looking at this Morning. And he stands directly opposed. I believe if you understand Augustine properly, he directly opposes the Augustinian view that faith precedes reason. For Aquinas, that may be a psychological truth, but ideologically, reason is the foundation for faith. Let me say that again. Augustine may be right psychologically, that men first have faith, and that faith guides them to develop reason and so forth, and encourages them along the way. But for Aquinas, philosophically or ideologically, reason is the foundation upon which faith is placed. Given that view, it's not surprising that Aquinas presented five proofs for God's existence. This is something for which he is famous, the five ways proving God's existence. I wish we had the time to go through all five of the proofs and discuss them. Essentially, you find the Aristotelian argument from motion to an unmoved mover in the first three proofs. The fourth proof is an argument from degrees of excellence or perfection, that if we have differences of evaluation in the natural world, there must be an objective standard. This leads to an absolute criterion for evaluation, which must be God. And then the fifth proof offered by Aquinas is the proof from the governance of the world, or what has come to be called the teleological argument. We see design in the world round about us that calls for a designer, and that's what we call God. So let me look at all five of the proofs and give you a summary of what he thinks he has proven by his natural, unaided reason, something which all men, regenerate and unregenerate alike should be able to see and and understand with the use of natural reason. Thomas thinks he has proved an unmoved mover. That's number one. Number two, that he's proved that God is the first cause of everything that is. And number three, that God is an absolutely necessary being. Fourthly, he's proven that God is the final criterion of value, the highest degree of value by which we test other things and evaluate them. And then, number five, that God is the governor and designer of the universe. Now, are these good proofs for God's existence that is understood as unaided human reason, coming up with arguments to show that there must be a God, arguments which would be acceptable to any natural man using his autonomous reasoning. Well, I would argue that they are not good proofs. They are very, very bad proofs. Just from the standpoint of unaided human reason. The unbeliever has every reason to be able to repudiate this line of thinking. If we argue for God as the first Cause. Our general background proposition is that everything requires a cause. Well, then we have to ask, why doesn't God require a cause? Well, the answer is going to be because if you have an infinite chain of causes, then there is no causation at all. Well, the unbeliever doesn't have to accept that. He can say, well, causation may be an infinite maybe. Yeah, an infinite characteristic of the universe. Or if we can't have an infinite chain, maybe we can have a cyclical view of history where things don't go in a linear way back to infinity, but we just start repeating history all over again. To hold to the Thomistic argument that God is the first cause requires you to first have a Christian view of the universe. No infinite linear background to the world before you can accept the persuasiveness of this proof. Does this prove that there is one God, or does it prove that there are many gods? There's a cause for peach trees, there's a cause for grass, there's a cause for human beings. The fact that everything has to have a first cause would not prove that everything in this world has one first cause. There may be many first causes. We cannot argue from the characteristic of the universe that everything has a cause. We cannot argue from within our natural experience that everything has a cause to the conclusion about experience as a whole, that it must have a cause because that's something that's out outside of experience, that's going beyond the realm in which we understand the truth of our premise. To say everything has a cause because I see that my natural experience does not prove that outside my natural experience there must be a cause. For instance, a cause for the whole shoot and match that we call the world. The characteristics of the parts are not necessarily the characteristic of the whole. Correct. If every Lego that went into building a ten foot high Statue of Liberty replica, if every Lego weighs one ounce, that doesn't prove that the whole statue weighs one ounce. So if everything within the natural realm requires a cause, that does not prove that the whole realm of nature requires a cause. A cause. Well, we could go on and on. I don't believe the proofs for God's existence understood in an autonomous framework such as Aquinas presented them, are good proofs for God's existence. So remember Aquinas for his distinctive answer to the faith reason question. Remember him for his five proofs of God's existence. Two sources of knowledge, the relationship of nature and grace. Remember that his philosophy is a kind of Christian version of Aristotle, a baptized Aristotle and from a favorable standpoint, remember that he presents the ideal of an all embracing sumi for human knowledge. He did want a Christian world and life view and that's very important. Okay, moving ahead quickly in our outline, we come to B after Aquinas, Roger Bacon, whose years are 1214 to 1292. So pretty much a contemporary of Aquinas, Roger Bacon is a British scholar, an English scholar who you should remember for pressing the utility of knowledge. Knowledge is not something speculative, but knowledge has power to it. Knowledge is useful to us. And so if we gain greater knowledge of the world, there are things we can do which are beneficial for the Christian faith and approaching the natural world for the usefulness of the knowledge that we can gain there. Bacon introduces the notion of testing hypotheses in a scientific fashion. This is not unheard of altogether previously, but there isn't much emphasis upon learning about the world empirically, using the method of testing, putting out hypotheses and trying to prove them or disprove them against what we learn in our empirical experience of the world. And so Bacon represents a kind of a new approach to the methodology of learning that we would call somewhat empirical and scientific in its orientation. This leading away from the speculative rational method of the philosophers. And we'll expand on this later, the significance of it and the rise of modern science. After Roger Bacon, we come see to Duns Scotus. Duns Scotus was the key opponent of Aquinas in the Middle Ages. He believed that Aquinas took a far too intellectualistic approach to his philosophy. Duns Scotus is remembered for being a voluntarist. A voluntarist who maintains that it's not reason or a rational scheme that is above all things and controlling all things in the nature of reality, but rather will. Thus voluntarism, God's will is more basic than reason or a rational plan that God is following. You see, for Thomas Aquinas, everything God does is rational. God is looking to reason or following patterns of reason, standards of reason and what he does. But for Duns Scotus, God is not bound by anything. What's most important is God's will. He is the sovereign overall. So volunteerism says that God can do whatever he chooses to do. He is not bound by anything outside of himself that answers to reason or must be provable to man's mind. This kind of thinking, voluntaristic thinking, leads to a difficult question. In medieval theology, the question can be put this Is God so free that he can send the Virgin Mary to hell. God so free that he could send the Virgin Mary to hell. After all, if the will of God is above all and answers to nothing, then God should not be bound even to save the Virgin Mary. Duns Scotus moving on to another point, quote quickly. Dunskota should be remembered for his unique view of the status of universals. According to Duns Scotus, there is. Not only a form for manness, but there's a form for every particular man as well. So there is a Platonic form that I don't mean by that, the forms taught by Plato, but there's a form for Plato and his individuality, and there is a form for Aristotle and his individuality. There's a form for everything. In fact, Dunskoda said, if you don't have a form for the particular itself, the particular person or particular horse or particular triangle, then personal immortality becomes impossible. On the approach of Thomas Aquinas, which is Aristotle's approach, matter is what individuates members of a particular class. We all have the form of humanity, but we are differentiated, we are individuated by matter. But then when we die and the material body passes away, then there's nothing to distinguish us anymore, and so there's no personal immortality. Duns Scotus tried to give an answer to that problem by saying, no, there is a form for Platoness and there's a form for Aristotleness that distinguished them as well as a form of humanity which unites them. That Aquinas believe that there was a form for the particular. No, No, no. That's one of the problems. I don't see how Aquinas reconciles his Aristotelian approach to certain Christian dogmas like individual and personal immortality. And so Duns Scotus felt that we. We needed something other than matter to serve as the principle of individuation. And so he made the particular differences between individuals a form which was knowable, rather than making the principle of individuation matter itself. Since we can know individuality, we can know the differences between particulars. I know the difference between Pete and J. What I know must be a form. So there must be a form for this particular person J and a form for this particular person Pete. Well, then, what becomes of the form of man or humanity then? Well, Duns Scotus believed there's also a form for man or humanity in general, and it is distinctive enough to be a real object of knowledge, but not so distinct as to be a separate entity in the real world. There's Only a formal distinction. Between Manness or humanity and the particular form J, Ness or Peatness. The universal form can be divided into its parts. So humanity can be divided into the parts of the J and Pete and on and on. That is to say, we can predicate humanity of J and predicate humanity of Pete, but you can't divide the form or universal of J, Ness or Peatness. That isn't predicated of anything except the particular. Now, the name given by Duns Scotus. For the end of this process of logical division, man is divided into particular men, and there's a form for each particular man is hexatas. I'll spell that. H A, E, C, C, E, I, T, A, S. The hexatus of any single particular is not its potentiality, not its matter, the individuality or thisness. The hexatus of any single thing is not its potentiality or matter. It must be a form then. I know this is rather complicated, but that's one of the distinctive doctrines of Duns Scotus, that the particularity, the individuating distinctives of things must be a form rather than matter, must have an excitus. Okay, let's move on to William of Ockham. William of ockham lived from 1280 to 1347. Occam taught that the spheres of faith and reason must be absolutely separated. Faith is one thing, reason is another, and consequently natural theology, the use of reason to prove the truths of faith, is narrowed greatly, if not eliminated altogether. According to William Balakam, Faith doesn't supplement reason, it doesn't perfect reason or take reason to its perfection. The spheres of faith and reason don't have anything to do with each other. They are completely distinct. And therefore you can come to different conclusions using faith and using reason. They can contradict each other. The fact that we are to follow faith, even though it seems contrary to reason, it seems irrational, is no problem. Because according to Occam, faith is supreme in the realm of theology and reason is supreme outside of theology, in the realm of the world. So the fact that they conflict with each other is just irrelevant. It makes no difference. You're mixing apples and oranges, you don't have to worry about the conflict. So you have a strict division of theology and reason, or a strict division between theology and science in Occam. Occam believed that the doctrine of God's omnipotence led to the conclusion that you cannot hold to the validity of what you are thinking or what you are experiencing. God is so powerful that he could be creating your image of a car driving down the road rather than there actually being a car driving down the road. So from a theological premise about God's omnipotence, you're led to the conclusion you can't trust your reasoning ability or your senses. However, since reason is dominant in natural studies and faith is dominant in theology, the fact that theology leads to that conclusion is irrelevant. Occam promoted the use of reason and rational methodology and in fact is known for a particular methodological principle known as Occam's Razor. Occam's razor maintains that when we have two hypotheses where both give an adequate account of some event or fact, we should prefer the simpler of the hypotheses. Occam's razor says, shave off all unnecessary entities. Shave off all aspects of an explanation that are unnecessary. Let's say I want to get give an account for why there are three cars in the driveway outside as I'm looking out the window. And you say, well, my theory is that three different drivers drove these three different cars and they parked them out there, then came in here into this building. I say, okay. And somebody else in the world says, oh, well, my theory is that three different drivers brought these three different cars, but in each case, a Martian was guiding the cars to the driveway this morning. Now which, which of these theories do you prefer? The three drivers bringing the three cars or the three drivers bringing the three cars with Martians guiding them? Well, if you were to follow Occam's razor, you would shave off unnecessary hypothetical entities. After all, the one hypothesis of having three drivers bring three cars will account for what I'm trying to explain. So why incorporate Martians into the story? They're unnecessary entities. Hawkins Razor says when you have two hypotheses that both account for something, the simpler is more likely to be true. Add to your notes this that Occam distinguished between sciences that deal with the world of real things like physics and psychology. That is, he distinguished between real science and what he called rational science. Logic deals with rational science. It deals with verbal signs, whereas real science deals with things like the physical world or psychology, politics, what have you. It's important to see that because this is the beginning of a prejudice that will dominate Western thinking all the way down into the 20th century. That science that deals with the external order of things, the physical cosmos, is real science. And logic is mitigated in its power as being simply a verbal science dealing with the grammar of how we relate concepts and words and so forth. What was Occam's view of universals. Occam believed that universals were just a time saving device, a convenient way of naming all the particulars. So the universal humanity is just a verbal convenience, kind of a shortcut or shorthand for saying J and Pete and Liz and and Doug and Mary and Joe and so forth and so on. Rather than naming everybody, I'll just give a general term for all those particulars and call it humanity. That's all there is to a universal then. It's simply a term that refers to other terms. It's just a tool that signifies many other things, many other terms. And that's why William Malachem's view is often called termism. The universal is a term not in the nominalistic sense, but it's a term which is a shorthand, a second intention term for the first intention terms like Pete and J and Liz and Pat and so forth. Nicholas of Cusa, 1401-1464 is E on your outline? We'll look at him more when we start Renaissance Philosophy. But for now just remember that he was an idealistic pantheistic philosopher who hold to a nominalistic view of universals. Who's pantheistic? Even as Erigina was pantheistic. However, where Erigina was a realist about universals, Nicholas of Cusa was a nominalist with respect to universals. I am sorry that we've had to rush the of the Middle Ages. I want to give you a brief apologetical assessment again from my article in the Foundations of Christian Scholarship looking at the Middle Ages from the standpoint of presuppositional apologetics. How would we evaluate what we've come in contact with? In Anselm we find the beginning of very sophisticated reflections upon the relationship between faith and reason. He understood the necessity of spiritual renewal. He held that man needs faith in order to have understanding. However, he was not consistent with that Augustinian perspective, for he did agree to write in such a way. He said that nothing from Scripture should be urged on the authority of Scripture itself, but that whatever the conclusion of independent investigation should, should be to declare to be true. He wrote that in the Monologian Anselm did not completely divorce himself from the pitfalls of autonomy. Then Peter the Venerable was the most eminent apologist of the 1300s, appealing in his arguments against Jews and Moslems to the objectivity philosophical study as a model for impartiality. Abelard complemented that theme by holding that human reason making use of evidences can pave the way for an initial Faith, which in turn prepares for the supernatural act of faith that comes about through divine grace. Abelard assigned reasoned the jurisdiction to select which authority to follow. And he maintained that the divine Logos had illumined not only the Old Testament prophets, but also the Greek philosophers, so that Greek philosophy and the Old Testament prepare the way for the revelation of Christ. In the conflict between Anselm and Abelard, Thomas Aquinas agreed with Abelard that it is possible to prove from reason the basic truths of theism, especially with the help of Aristotelian philosophy. However, in order to guarantee that there's some need for faith, Thomas went on to argue, in agreement with the Jewish theologian Maimonides, that there is a higher level level of religious truth which cannot be penetrated except by means of revelation from God. And so what you have is reason builds the lower story of religious truth. Revelation completes the superstructure. And yet, even in the upper story of the structure, reason can show the credibility and the probability of the truths which are believed by faith. The lower story is a preamble to faith. And in that lower story, Thomas used his famous 5 Ways to Prove God's existence. In the upper story, dealing with the mysteries of the faith like the Trinity, Thomas utilized arguments which were propounded many times previously, showing that the upper story was reasonable, even if not provable by reason. Subsequently, however, Thomas stopped penning his Summa Theologica after undergoing a mystical experience which he felt dwarfed all of his previous argumentation. Isn't that amazing? I presented Thomas as the model of the rationalist theologian. You know, reason builds the lower story, faith complements that and is put on top of it. But in the end, the rationalist has got to have his irrationalist side as well. He had a mystical experience which he said dwarfed all of his previous reasoning. Well, of course, the Socratic approach then in Christian apologetics is very obvious. In Thomas Aquinas, in Abelard and men like that, an appeal to neutrality, autonomy, the idea that you can subject God's word to a test, the idea that you can split the field of knowledge into what is provable by reason and what is a reasonable part of faith, a dialectical epistemology, then conflicting principles in your theory of knowledge and locating the seat of authority in the thinking process of man. Finally, I think Aquinas would have been welcome at the Areopagus where Paul was mocked. Thomas approach to reason and faith, his approach to nature and grace ends up having the Christian message absorbed into an alien philosophy of life. And in that sense he naturalizes and distorts the Christian message. I'll leave my apologetical assessment up there and just conclude by looking at the key characteristic of the Middle Ages and looking back over what we've talked about this morning. G in your outline. The key characteristic of the Middle Ages is synthesis. Synthesis. Schaeffer discusses this tendency towards synthesis in chapter two of his book How Should We Then Live? He looks at the cultural synthesis, an attempt to bring church and state together. You notice in the Middle Ages that the church comes now to be blended with the state, so that it dominates the state. The popes can dictate to kings, for instance. The Roman Catholic Church does not have a sufficient doctrine of the separation of church and state. This comes from the Middle Ages and this general tendency trend toward synthesis. You see it in the soteriological realm, as Schaeffer discusses now, men are not saved by God's grace alone. They are saved by God's grace and man's works. During the Middle Ages, theologians develop a syncretistic view of salvation. God works and man works, and their working together brings salvation. As Schaeffer points out, the Roman Catholic Church ends up teaching that men must merit the merit of Christ. So you bring together faith and works. Your merit, along with the work of Christ, believed in faith, bring salvation. So you have a cultural synthesis of church and state. You have a soteriological synthesis of grace and works. And what we've seen this morning is an intellectual synthesis of natural reason and supernatural faith. You have faith on the one hand, which is God's supernatural gift, the authority of his revelation. But that has to be synthesized with man's natural reasoning. Now, where Paul says the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit because they are spiritually discerned, where Paul says, no man seeks after God, quoting the Old Testament, Thomas Aquinas says, no natural reason can lead you to God. If men would just think with right reason, if they would just follow Aristotle and understand these five proofs and so forth, we can prove at least the lower story of the Christian outlook. Natural reason lays the foundation for supernatural faith. So that's why the key characteristic of the Middle Ages, I maintain, is synthesis. Rather than maintaining that antithesis and confrontation with the world and with worldly thinking that we saw at the advent of Christ, and which is to a certain degree the growing perspective of Augustine in his life, the Middle Ages moves the other direction, away from antithesis to a blending of the world and the church, the city of God and the city of man, a blending of faith and reason, state and church. Man's works and God's grace. I know these are very big, highfalutin abstracts, generalizations, but I think it will help you to interpret the course of intellectual history, to see the movement from antithesis in the days of the New Testament, Paul at Athens, John writing the Book of Revelation, to now at the year 1450. Roughly, the church has been corrupted, and Christian thinking has been corrupted with a synthetic motif of thinking. What we're going to need is not simply the Renaissance where pagan scholars want to go back to the pagan past of Greece. We're going to need the Reformation that takes us past human tradition to the Word of God, so that we once again see the pure faith and its antithesis to the world. And that'll do it for our comments on the Middle Ages.