Thomas Aquinas

Knowledge of God by Reason and Revelation – A Fitting Relationship

            There are few theologians who, through the corpus of their written work, not only challenged their contemporaries, but who continue to be read and discussed in the generations following their own life.  Even rarer are those theologians who are read, taught, commented on and re-examined in every generation of theologians since they lived.  Thomas Aquinas is one of these rare individuals.  Thomas’ work of course, is even more amazing when you consider that he stopped writing at what many consider the height of his theological career; not even finishing his ‘magnum opus’, the Summa Theologiae.  Regardless of which stream of Christianity informs you as a theologian, or your stance on what Thomas taught, every theologian must interact with what he wrote 800 years ago. 

            As a Protestant in the Evangelical Reformed tradition, I find Thomas’ discussion of the relationship between the knowledge of God that is known by reason alone and the knowledge that comes through faith to be particularly challenging.  It is this discussion that I would like to explore in this essay.  How does Thomas bring these two together in a way that does justice to both without excluding or encapsulating one into the other?  I will primarily focus on the Prima Pars, questions 1, 2, 12 and 13.  Finally, I will briefly look at Thomas’ view of the role of the Incarnation in the knowledge of God as discussed in the Tertia Pars, question 1. 

            When dealing with the topic of the knowledge of God, one of the biggest problems that the theologian encounters is the relationship between human reason and divine revelation in what can and cannot be known about God through reason unaided by revelation.  Theologians have dealt with this relationship in different ways.  Some have pushed back at divine revelation and said that theology is really just a task of the human mind reaching out to know who and what God is like.  Others have pushed back at human reason and said that knowledge of God must be just the task of the divine reaching down and giving the human mind the knowledge.  Thomas, as a student in the church and as learned scholar of philosophy, wants us to hold onto both.  He says that there is truth about God that can be achieved by human reason, but there are limitations.  Aquinas says, “For the truth about God, such as reason can know it, would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of errors” (ST I.Q1.A1).  There is clearly truth about God that can be known through the created world.  In discussing the demonstratable existence of God, Thomas quotes Romans 1:20, stating that “if the existence of God were demonstrated, this could only be from His effects” (ST I.Q2.A2). 

            What then is the purpose of God giving revelation?  Thomas is clearly not going to diminish the need or value of the revelation of God in the Scriptures.  Thomas reminds us that part of the issue is that sacred doctrine is not of the same “genus” (ST I.Q1.A1.RO2) as philosophical reasoning.  They are related, but not the same.  Both therefore are necessary for the full knowledge of God.  Without revelation, the most important things about God and his work – the doctrine of salvation for one – would not be known, but this knowledge is required for humans to achieve their true end (finem).  So, “it was necessary that, besides the philosophical disciplines investigated by reason, there should be a sacred doctrine by way of revelation” (ST I.Q1.A1).  This necessity should be understood as a concept that Thomas will bring to many of his discussions of necessity, fitingness (ST I.Q1.A1).  It is fitting (pointing to end or purpose) that to accomplish this end, God would give the sacred doctrine through revelation. 

            Perhaps, the opposite is true.  Perhaps we only need the sacred doctrines that come through revelation.  Thomas reminds us that sacred doctrine makes use of philosophical reasoning, “not as though it stood in need of them, but only in order to make its teaching clearer” (ST I.Q1.A5.RO2).  The ‘Queen of Sciences’ does not need philosophy to be known, but in the “lifting up” of the person to know God (ST I.Q12.A5) we as knowers need this use of the lesser sciences.  We as lesser creatures, need these ‘scaffolds’ (a term that is used in educational settings to describe teacher helps in the beginning of the learning process) to move us from material things to sacred doctrines (ST I.Q1.A9).  This is one of the reasons that Scripture sometimes presents sacred doctrine in metaphorical ways.  This is not a diminishment of the full truth of sacred doctrine, but a veiling (a concept introduced by Dionynius) so that all men, not just the few highly intellectual, can know these sacred truths (ST I.Q1.A9).  It is because of our limited capacity that the divine nature is communicated through likenesses, figures, metaphors and analogies.  It is fitting that God should communicate himself, but this communication must be given in a way that we as knowers can comprehend.  As a Protestant, this truth needs to be remembered in our understanding of the doctrine of sola scriptura.  While we must stay deeply committed to Scripture as the foundation of our faith, we must remember that in Scripture God is making a fitting accommodation to us as knowers.  We do not come know Scripture independently of ourselves and our culture.  God spoke through cultures and individuals because without this accommodation, no knowledge would be possible.  Yes sin has noetic effects, but that is also part of the accommodation that God makes.  We are not bound to culture to know – sacred doctrine speaks to us still, even in our modern culture – but God does lift us up to know him through these metaphors, analogies, likenesses and figures. 

            One of the reasons that sacred doctrine makes use of the lesser sciences is to demonstrate its truth.  These demonstrations are not proofs of the sacred doctrines, but are arguments against those who object to the sacred doctrines.  Thomas says, “Hence Sacred Scripture, since it has not science above itself, disputes argumentatively with one who denies it principles…” (ST I.Q1.A8).  The reason, “we can argue with heretics from texts in Holy Scripture, and against those who deny one article of faith we can argue from another” (ST I.Q1.A8).  The use of lesser sciences has a purpose then beyond just our knowing, it has an apologetic or evangelistic purpose. 

            This of course leads to the discussion of the proofs of the existence of God.  There has perhaps been no more contested subject that discusses the relationship between faith and reason than that of the proofs for the existence of God.  Thomas will take up the subject in Article 3 in Question 2, but before he does that, he discusses whether the existence of God is self-evident.  While there are certainly many in the Christian community who would argue that God’s existence is self-evident, Thomas says that in the most important way, God’s existence is not self-evident, because it is not evident to all.  This is “because we do not know the essence of God,” so the existence of God needs to be demonstrated by the things that are known to us, his effects (ST I.Q2.A1).  Following Augustine, Aquinas does acknowledge that there is a sense of the existence of God that is known to everyone, but that is not known absolutely (ST I.Q2.A1.RO1).  This non-absolute knowing is based on human happiness, perhaps an echo left from the nature of man before the fall.  But to fulfill this happiness, man turns to things that will not satisfy – pleasures, riches, etc. 

            Thomas gives his proofs for the existence of God in Article 3 of Question 2, which have come to be known as the Five Ways.  Theologians and philosophers of every generation have been discussing the validity and success of the Five Ways virtually since Thomas penned the Summa. The fourth way (what is today called the Moral Argument) and the fifth way (the Teliological Argument) are particular popular today and are used by apologists very effectively in the discussions regarding the new atheism.  Regardless of whether these Five Ways are actually successful at proving the existence of God or more specifically the God of revelation, we get the picture that Thomas is not going to leave anything out this discussion.  One way is easy to counter-argue, two is better, but the totality of consideration of the Five Ways is something that Thomas wants to leave his readers with the impression of the completeness.  By listing all five, there is little left for consideration.  It is interesting that the area which has occupied most of the thinking of atheism in the 20^th Century – the problem of evil – is only dealt with in single line (ST I.Q2.A3.RO1).  The task of theology to speak to every generation is evident, even in so great a theologian as Thomas.

            Knowing that God exists is not the end of the discussion for Thomas.  He also spends a significant amount of time on the issues of how God is known by us (Q 12) and how we can properly name God (Q 13).  In knowing and naming God, the relationship between nature and grace, faith and reason, is again at the center of Thomas’ thinking.  Since God is known to us through the creation (Romans 1:20), this relationship will be very important in Thomas’ development of these two subjects.  There is much in these two questions that we will not be able to unpack, but by limiting our focus on this relationship, we will be able to get the essence of what Thomas is trying to tell us about knowing and naming God.

            For Thomas, since God is pure act – with no potentiality – God is supremely knowable, even to his very essence (ST I.Q12.A1).  “But what is supremely knowable in itself may not be knowable to a particular intellect, because of the excess of the intelligible object above the intellect” (ST I.Q12.A1).  God is supremely knowable, but we do not know him supremely.  This is a very important concept in the fleshing out of the relationship between nature and grace; between faith and reason.  We know God through the mediation of his effects in creation, but we must remember that does not mean that we know God in the same way that he knows us.  The analogy that he gives is the sun.  The sun is supremely visible (there is no absence of light) but we cannot apprehend it completely because it is too bright.  We know God, but we must remember that God is beyond our ability to know completely.

Perhaps God is so far beyond our ability to know him, that we really do not know him.  Maybe we are looking at a candle thinking it is the sun.  Aquinas says no, we really can – in a limited way – know the essence of God.  His reason is beauty – the attainment of the beauty that comes from the highest function of man – his intellect (ST I.Q12.A1).  Through the beauty of the intellect, the highest beauty must be able to be known – again focusing on the concept of fittingness.  The intellect was made for knowing, what is the most fitting thing to know, the one who created the intellect.  “But if the intellect of the rational creature could not attain to the first cause of things, the natural desire would remain vain (inane)” (ST I.Q12.A1). 

            But we must square this with what we know about mankind.  Rarely does mankind achieve this level of knowledge, by Thomas’ own admission (cf. Q1).  There is a sense in which nature fails us, which is why revelation is necessary.  In articles 4 and 5 of question 12, Thomas explores this relationship between nature and grace.  To attain the knowledge of the essence of God, not only must God come down through accommodation by uniting his essence in grace to the ‘created intellect’ (ST I.Q12.A4), but he also lifts us up by adding a ‘supernatural disposition’ to the intellect (ST I.Q12.A5).  In this supernatural act of God, both in coming down and in raising us up, we are made to be more than we are by nature; we are made ‘deiform’ - like to God (ST I.Q12.A5).  This “light of glory cannot be natural to a creature unless the creature were to have a divine nature; which is impossible” (ST I.Q12.A5.RO3).  This divine light is given by God as an act of supernatural grace, allowing the non-divine creature to know the essence (at least in some way) of the Creator.  In this act of “beatific” illumination (not Thomas’ wording), we are reminded that to be what God intends us to be, we need grace.  We need revelation, for without it, what we are to be, cannot be.  And even with this act of accommodation and lifting us up to know the essence of God in the divine light, we still must recognize that we are limited in what of God’s essence we do know.  “No created intellect can attain to that perfect mode of the knowledge of the divine intellect…” (ST I.Q12.A7).  We still will only know in proportion.  Though not used by Thomas, perhaps we could call to mind the vision of God that Moses had.  Though he only saw the trailing edge of God’s glory because it was too much for Moses to see all of God, it was still enough to require that he be veiled because residual effects.  This knowledge of God that we will receive in the light of glory still does not result in full comprehension, because God will always be more than we can comprehend. 

            In the discussion of naming God, we always struggle with the concept of language and subject/object.  While there is insufficient space to deal entirely with this discussion, if we again focus on the relationship between faith and reason, we will get a good picture of what Thomas is trying to tell us about this important issue.  The main means that Thomas uses to talk about the naming of God is analogy.  He creates this because we have problems with both univocity and equivocity in the naming of God.  God is not good in the same way that we predicate the word in our normal usage – my children were good today for instance.  They are not univocal, because they are not proportional (ST I.Q13.A5).  But neither are they entire equivocal.  I cannot say that there is no relationship between good as I use it and good as it is applied to God; otherwise, there could be nothing that we do know of God (ST I.Q13.A5).  With one sentence, and a short one at that, Thomas gives us the path between the two, “For we can name God only from creatures” (ST I.Q13.A5).  With this one statement, a path between univocity and equivocity is made by the creation of analogies between creature and Creator.  There is a relationship between ‘good’ as it is applied to both God and to creatures.  Thomas calls this the ‘mean’ between what we do/can know and what we do not/cannot know.  It is the way to that we can bridge the natural to arrive at the supernatural.  It is a via of grace, by use of nature. 

            This bridge between is of course best pictured in the Incarnation itself  The supernatural act of accommodation and the supernatural act of lifting up are brought together in God taking on our nature.  In order to lift us up, God came down.  The immortal took on mortality.  Again, Thomas uses the concept of fittingness to describe the incarnation.  “It belongs to the essence of the highest good to communicate itself in the highest manner to the creature, and this is brought about chiefly by” God joining the creaturely nature to Himself (ST. III.Q1.A1).   In the relationship between natural knowledge and revelation, the ultimate act of that allows knowledge of God is the incarnation.  It is the ultimate act of revelation, and it is fitting and beautiful.  A perfection reflection of God himself. 

           

Bibliography

Aquinas, St. Thomas.  The Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Vol. 1.  Ed. By Anton C. Pegis.  Random House, New York.  1945. 

________.  The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. Second and Revised Edition, 1920. Literally translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Online Edition Copyright © 2008 by Kevin Knight.  http://www.newadvent.org/summa/4001.htm.  [Access 11/2/11].

Anselm

Why did ‘Something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought’ Become Man?

            In the history of theology, there have been people who have changed the nature of the discussion about theology very few times.  Anselm is one such theologian.  The search for a proof for the existence of God that comes outside the realm of religion and faith is one that continues to occupy the minds and writings of theologians and philosophers to this day.  The reason, if God can be proved “beyond doubt,” belief in Him, His Word and His Works will also be necessary, or at least will have to be denied for non-intellectual reasons.  Anselm explored the relationship between this God who can’t be denied and His greatest work, the work of redemption in the God who became man.  The goal of this essay is to explore this relationship and see how Anselm discusses these two issues and bring the two concepts together at the end.  We will see that for Anselm, God is not only there, but he is active in his world and his work of redemption - to piggy-back off from a title from book published 1000 years later.  The God who is and cannot-not-be, has rescued his people in the only way that it could be done – by the Son becoming man.  

            In his Proslogion, Anselm set forward his argument for God’s existence which is still being discussed and modified by theologians and philosophers today.  It has come to be known as the Ontological argument.  The essence of Anselm’s argument is in the very naming of God, His existence is not only implied, but demanded. 

            Anselm begins his journey, not as someone who is coming to the issue of God’s existence with impartiality, but as a believer who is seeking to give ground to his faith.  He echoes Augustine with his famous phrase, “I do not seek to understand so that I may believe, but I believe so that I may understand” (Pros, p. 87).  For Anselm, faith in God is not in question, even though there may be some that do have questions about the existence of God.  But the proper place to begin is with the assumption that God is, for even the fool acknowledges that existence in his denial.  The God who is “something-than-which-nothing-greater-than-can-be-thought” exists as we believe him to exist and his nature is what we believe it to be (p. 87).

            Anselm begins his argument with the fool, quoting Psalm 14:1, “The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.”  The fool therefore has some idea in his mind of God, even if he doesn’t fully grasp that concept.  “But surely, when this same Fool hears what I am speaking about, namely, ‘something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought’, he understands what he hears, and what he understands is in his mind, even if he does not understand that it actually exists” (p. 87).  Anselm acknowledges that there is a difference between conceptually understanding the name of this God and that this God really exists, in the same way that a painter has the object of his painting in his mind before he actually puts brush to canvas. 

            This becomes the crux of Anselm’s argument; that the Fool – the non-believer – can not deny the existence of a God that is ‘something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought,’ because existence in reality is always greater than existence in the mind alone (p. 87).   To say that this God does not exist in reality means that there is something greater than this God which you say nothing greater can be conceived of that you have in your mind only.  Since you can conceive of a God who does exist, this God must be greater than your in-mind conceived only God because existence is always greater than non-existence.  His conclusion, “Therefore there is absolutely no doubt that something-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists both in the mind and reality” (p. 88). 

Since you can hold both of these concepts in the mind and can evaluate that the being that can be conceived of as existing is not the same as the being that can be conceived of as not existing and that existence is greater, therefore you must admit that this being does in fact exist, and that this being is God.  We can conceive of nothing greater than God, because that would mean that the creature is above the Creator, “and that is completely absurd” (p. 88).  “In fact, everything else there is, except You alone, can be thought of as not existing.  You alone, then, of all things most truly exist…” (p.88). 

Anselm ends his famous argument with a discussion of how to deal with the fool that has said in his heart, “there is no God.”  For Anselm, the discussion really seems to be one of words that the fools says in his heart, but really knows that they do not in fact mean what he wants them to mean.  Just because the fool says the words, “there is not God” in his heart, does not mean that the fool actually believes them to be true.  “No one, indeed, understanding what God is can think that God does not exist, even though he may say these word in his heart either without any [objective] signification or with some peculiar signification” (p.89).  The idea is almost like the 3 year old who stands behind a current and believes that not only is she hidden so that the world cannot see her (even though her feet are visible) but that the world is in fact no longer there.  The fool, knowing that God is “that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought” still utters the words in his heart, knowing they do not signify reality.  “Whoever really understands this understands clearly that this same being so exists that not even in thought can it not exist” (p. 89).

For Anselm, as for all apologists, it isn’t just about the existence of God as a stand alone argument.  When the existence of God is proved (or at least the argument is deemed to be cogent) what else in the Christian religion do you have to deal with?  Anselm deals with many of these other issues in the rest of the Proslogion, including the issues of God’s justice and His mercy.  There is no question in Anselm’s mind that God forgives and that his mercy and justice are both in play in this act of redemption.  But for Anselm, if God does exist and he is who the Bible says that he is, what does he want us to do with this information?  It is never enough to simply leave the discussion at the point of God’s existence.  We must move to the rest of the implications of that truth.  If God is real, there are certain implications of that fact.

 Leaving aside for the sake of this essay whether Anselm has in fact been successful in proving the existence of God (an important consideration, but one beyond our current scope), we turn now to the answer to the question of how God’s justice and mercy work together in the redemption of man in Anselm’s essay entitled “Why God Become Man.”  For Anselm, and for everyone who struggles with the existence of God, recognizes that there is more at stake than God’s existence; everyone must also deal with the person of Jesus of Nazareth.  It’s not just about God, it’s also about the God-Man. 

The issue of God becoming man for the purpose of providing a means of salvation is one that continues today to cause controversy.  Many today echo the same sentiments of Boso, Anselm’s quester in the work: either God is not much of a God that he can’t think of another solution, or else he is a tyrant because he demands so much that we cannot ever achieve what he asks.  His difficulty in understanding is echoed by many, “For it is a surprising supposition that God takes delight in, or is in need of, the blood of an innocent man, so as to be unwilling or unable to spare the guilty except in the event that the innocent has been killed” (p. 282). 

For Anselm, the key to understanding the coming of God in the man Jesus is related to the problem that man has – sin.  If man was created for a “state of blessedness” (p. 282) which can never be attained in this life because of the sin in his life, how does man solve this problem?  “The remission of sins, therefore, is something absolutely necessary for man, so that he may arrive at blessed happiness.” (p. 282).  The only solution is for God to forgive sins.  But to completely understand how God can do that, Anselm must define sin.  To properly understand the solution, one must understand the problem. 

For Anselm, the problem is a bigger problem than most people appreciate.  Many times we want to think of ourselves as not that bad, just a little bit of a polish and clean-up and we will be fine.  Anselm defines, “to sin is nothing other than not to give God what is owed to him” (p. 283).  He further explains, “Someone who does not render to God this honour due to him is taking away from God what is his, and dishonouring God, and this is what it is to sin” (p. 283).  This dishonor must be paid back by the sinner and not just forgotten without punishment because that would mean, “the position of the sinner and non-sinner before God will be similar – and this does not befit God” (p.284).  This would mean there is essentially no law for man and which would put man and God in the same position, not being subject to any external law.

This violation of God’s honor must be dealt with, because will not allow his honor to be violated, “it is a necessary consequence, therefore, that either the honour which has been taken away should be repaid, or punishment should follow” (p. 287).  Because God’s honor has been violated, “God cannot remit a sin unpunished, without recompense, that is, without the voluntary paying off of a debt, and that a sinner cannot, without this, attain to a state of blessedness, not even the state which was his before he sinned” (p. 302). 

While this might seem unfair to us or that God is stacking the deck against us, that is because we do not understand the nature of the problem of sin.  This conception of sin and it’s consequences on man’s nature and destiny is a very large part of the problem for Anselm and is major reason for the “drastic” nature of the solution, God coming in flesh as a man.  Anselm illustrates the seriousness of the problem of sin with what appears to a simple example, looking in a place that God says “it is totally against my will to look” (p. 305).  While we might be tempted to say that is an inane rule, the key point for Anselm is the will of God.  When God has established the rule, even something so simple as don’t look over there because the totality of my will is that you don’t look, to thrust our will over God’s is the very essence of the problem.  “This is how seriously we sin, whenever we knowingly do anything, however small, contrary to the will of God” (p. 306).  Carry that over to the number of times that we break the actual, revealed will of God, and we begin to understand the problem for Anselm (and for us).  Something must be done to “give recompense” for the wrongs that we done against God’s honor, because, “God cannot raise up to a state of blessedness anyone who is to any extent bound by indebtedness arising from sin” (p. 306,307). 

The solution is “utter forgiveness” which must come through “repayment of the debt which is owed because of his sin and which is proportional to the magnitude of his sin…” (p.312).  But how can man do this?  The answer for Anselm is that he cannot.  The “whole of humanity is rotten and, as it were, in a ferment with sin…” (p. 309).  No one can save themselves, and certainly no one can save another man, let alone everybody.  The word that Anselm uses to describe this reality in man is “incapacity” (pp. 309-311).  It seems there is no solution, at least not one that we can create or carry out.  But where we find it impossible, God creates a way, the God-man.

We come to the crux of the why God had to become man, because salvation “cannot come about unless there should be someone who would make a payment to God greater than everything that exists apart from God” (p. 319).  God’s honor demands this payment be made, and without it, salvation cannot be made.  But God is going to bring to completion his intent in creating man, so a solution must be made available.  As we say with the quote above, the solution must come from outside of the normal situation – remember we do not have the capacity.  But the debt is owed by man, so the “obligation rests with man” (p. 320).  So if the only one who can pay the debt is God himself but the obligation belongs to man, these two must be brought together.  Anselm says, “no one can pay except God, and no one ought to pay except man: it is necessary that a God-man should pay it” (p. 320). 

Anselm explores what this God-man would have to be like in the succeeding chapters.  He develops why this God-man must be exactly what orthodox theology teaches – the God-man must be both completely God and completely man, “otherwise it cannot come about that one and the same person may be perfect God and perfect man” (p. 321). 

Finally, for this God-man to bring about this redemption, he must willingly lay down his life.  If death is the result of our willful rebellion against the will of God, then this perfect God-man who does no sin will not die as a consequence of rebellion.  But in place of another, he willingly lays down his life, “voluntarily and not in repayment of a debt.” (p. 329).  “Christ of his own accord gave to his Father what he was never going to lose as a matter of necessity, and he paid, on behalf of sinners, a debt which he did not owe” (p. 349). 

‘Something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought’ came as a man, fully and completely to pay our debt; a debt we could not pay, to secure a future blessed hope.  Anselm set out in his Proslogion to prove the existence of God through the mental process of conception of the greatest conceivable being.  He comes to the person of the God-man, and says, “a juster mercy cannot be imagined” (p. 354).  Perhaps, Anselm wants to remind us that our conceptions do not mean that we have God figured out.  This work of redemption is also ‘that-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought,’ brought about by the God who is ‘something-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought.’ 

Bibliography

Anselm of Canterbury.  The Major Works.   Ed. Brian Davies and G.R. Evans.  Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1998.  

Dionysius

Can We Know God or Speak of Him?

One of the problems that we have with understanding and knowing God is the language that we use to describe him.  When we assign predicates to him, we are bound to loose something of the true reality of God in our words.  When we say that God is good, we are saying something that is indeed true of God.  But do we loose something of the true nature of God’s goodness in even saying that he is good?  The pizza I had for lunch was good.  The Boston Red Sox are good.  My children are good.  We can certainly qualify and perhaps even quantify the goodness of each of these.  We could compare the Red Sox to other baseball teams this year, as well as to some of the greatest teams of all time.  I could develop a goodness scale which describes my pizza, with quantifiers for taste, crust, cheese/toppings ratios.  I may never be convinced that there is a scale on which I can test or quantify the goodness (or badness) of my children.  How do I come to the issue of goodness when it comes to describing God?  Can I develop a quantifiable scale that would describe him in the pantheon of religious deities – God is a 10, Zeus is a 3 and Vishnu a 5?  Perhaps rather, I should think of God as simply the highest of all possible goodness; he is the nth degree of goodness. 

At first this does not seem like it is not a problem, since God is revealed in Scripture as good.  However, after considering it, it appears perhaps to be a problem that is not solvable.  Since language is colored by our cultural setting, can I ever get beyond that coloring to really say anything meaningful about God?  Perhaps I need to only say that God is (reminiscent of “I AM” of the Exodus story) and leave all other statements off.  Many have thought the only way that we can properly speak of God at all is through negation, saying what God is not. 

Theologians have for many years been struggling with this issue.  Many have given up the task altogether.  Increasingly, modern theologians are returning to the writings of the early teachers of the church to see how they solved the same problem.  Dionysius the Aeropagite, often called Pseudo-Dionysius, is one such person.  We return to his writings because he took up the task of how we talk about God.  We are going to begin looking at the little book Mystical Theology (MT), which is a book that is about negative theology and then move into The Divine Names (DN) to see how he builds a positive theology.  We will briefly look at how he builds a framework to talk about God.  Our goal is help us be able to do the same; construct our own frameworks to properly speak about God.

            To begin, we must understand that knowledge of God has to be mediated, because on our own, we are unable to gain knowledge of God because we must remember who and what He is and isn’t – specifically, he is not like us.  So knowledge of God does not come to us “who think that by their own intellectual resources they can have a direct knowledge of him who has made the shadows his hiding place” (MT, 1000A).  This is an important for Dionysius because the path to knowledge is closed to those who are not worthy of walking that path.  “It is not for nothing that the blessed Moses is commanded to submit first to purification and then to depart from those who have not undergone this.  When every purification is complete, he hears the many-voiced trumpets” (MT, 1000C+D).    

            Since He is “the transcendent cause of all things” we must be careful in our descriptions of God.  It is not enough to simply ascribe to God those things that we see around us to the highest degree – God is not simply the best or highest good.  Dionysius says that we should not only ascribe to God all of the affirmations of being that we can think of, but we should negate these affirmations because they are not sufficient to describe the God who is being itself.  “Now we should not conclude that the negations are opposites of the affirmations, but rather that the cause of all is considerably prior to this, beyond privations, beyond every denial, beyond every assertion” (MT, 1000B).  In this space between the affirmation and the denials; between ‘the vast and the miniscule’ is where true speech about God lies.  It begins without speech.  For Dionysius, theology begins, not with affirmations or denials, but above, under, beneath, through and around that space.  It is only in this space that is not space, where we “leave behind … every divine light, every voice, every word from heaven, and who plunge into the darkness where, as Scripture proclaims, there dwells the One who is beyond all things” (MT 1000C).  Theology begins not as knowledge content conveyed in words and propositions, but in mystical experience.  It is experiencing God beyond knowing, into the darkness of unknowning.  To speak about God, we must unknown, renouncing all that the mind can conceive, to know the One beyond everything.  If our minds are bound to the predication of things – pizza is good and God is good – then there must be sense in which Dionysius is right.  To know God, we must unknow good as it is tangled in our cultural expressions.

            The picture of the process of unlearning that Dionysius gives is that of a sculptor who removes all the ‘obstacles’ to the pure view of the image hidden inside the stone.  By clearing away these obstacles, beauty can be ‘unhidden.’  This stripping away of the obstacles of beauty is also a journey that becomes increasingly more difficult as we progress.  Language increasingly fails us.  Even if I re-envision ‘good’ in my understanding, can I use that word to properly signify what I now know?  If not, can I create a new word to describe that which I now know?  But that new word will be devoid of meaning because it will not signify anything.  Signifiers only work when there is agreement on what is being signified, and if I cannot express what I mean, language will ultimately fail me.  The higher I move away from the stone toward the beauty hid beneath the surface, the less I can speak about it.  Eventually, language will completely fail us; silence is then a friend to beauty and knowledge because we will “finally be at one with him who is indescribable” (MT, 1033C). 

            This is not to say that language is of no value in the journey of knowing.  Rather, it is helpful for us in our journey because it helps us peel away these lesser things to find the beauty.  It is better to say that God is good, than to say that he is a rock, even though both are used properly in Scripture.  The higher one goes on this journey to the Cause, the more we are left with only negations.  It (the Cause) is not touchable, perceivable, etc., until we get to the point where we even must deny the highest and best of our words.  Words will and must fail us if we are to truly know God.  “There is no speaking of it, for it is beyond any assertion, being the perfect and unique cause of all things, and, by virtue of its preeminently simple and absolute nature, free from every limitation, beyond every limitation; it is also beyond every denial” (MT 1048B). 

            Does this mean that we should abandon all attempts at naming God?  Dionysius reminds us in the Divine Names that this is proper to name God because Revelation gives us names for the divine (DN 592C).  But we must understand the place that these names have as analogies, not actual representations of what God is.  “We must use what ever appropriate symbols we can for the things of God.  With these analogies we are raised up toward the truth of the mind’s vision, a truth which is simple and one” (DN 592D).  So do we not ascribe any names?  Dionysius reminds us that Scripture assigns every name to the Cause; everything from ‘I am being’ to ‘the rock.’  This is because “as the Cause of all and as transcending all, he is rightly nameless and yet has the names of everything that is” (DN 596 C). 

            For Dionysius, the key to our ability to understand is the Incarnation.  In the act of the Incarnation, becoming completely our human substance, we have a path to walk in the naming of God.  This is the path where the impassible suffers, where the just owns mercy.  In the Incarnation, we have a way to begin properly to know God, a way that was first walked by Christ.  And yet, we must still remember that a barrier does exist, because even in his humility, the Son surpassed our humanity (DN 649 A). 

            How do we overcome this gap?  On our own, we cannot, but God has given the angels to help us in this intervening space.  So, although language, knowledge, thought all fail us in knowing God, a way has been provided for us to know.  This knowing is increasingly accommodated to us as we move away from the One, the Cause of all things.  As we move away from essence of the One, we can assign more and more names.  The less mediation is needed, the less we truly know of the essence of the One.  The more we know, the more the use of language for naming fails us.  This is the paradoxical path of knowledge of the Divine Cause. 

            This path would seem to cause multiple problems for not only my knowledge of the Divine, but for our life in community.  If I am the only living person, my knowledge and progress in knowing is sufficiently contained in my own life.  But we live and know in a community.  Into this void, Dionysius brings the concept of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (EH).  We must understand our place in this hierarchy because the hierarchy itself is both a means of knowledge and a path to the Cause itself.

            The EH are not simply the constructions of authority, but rather a recognition of the path of discipleship, based again on the Incarnation.  “Jesus enlightens our blessed superiors, Jesus who is transcendent mind, utterly divine mind, who is the source and the being underlying all hierarchy, all sanctification, all the workings of God, who is the ultimate power.  He assimilates them, as much as they are able, to his own light” (EH 372A).  The incarnation is the means – the path – between the ultimate, the Cause itself and this world of causation, mediated through the heirarchies. 

            As each person enters the path of incarnational living, there is a movement back toward the Cause, the Good.  The hierarch – the one who receives sacred deification directly from God – mediates between subordinates and God.  In this harmony, each one is able “to have as great as possible a share in him who is truly beautiful, wise and, good” (EH 373A).  Each person is on this path in a different place, each in process of knowing God.   The hierarchy is simply a reflection of place on this path, the path of knowledge that he has previously discussed in the Mystical Theology. 

            We began with the problem of speaking about the knowledge of God.  How can we know, though language, about the God who transcends language?  Dionysius reminds us that it is through the incarnation of the Son that we have a way.  The incarnation of the Son is also the basis for our own journey of knowledge on the path represented in the hierarchies.  How can we know God – by following Jesus and by following those who follow Jesus.  The closer we are to them, the closer we are to Jesus, and therefore the closer we are to God and to real knowledge which is eclipsed by mere words. 

                                                                                   

Bibliography

Pseudo-Dionysius.  Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works.  Translated by Colm Luibheid.  New York, Paulist Press, 1987.  

Augustine on Language and Knowledge

AUGUSTINE ON LANGUAGE AND KNOWLEDGE

            One of the current struggles that is facing the world of the humanities in general and philosophy and theology in particular is the crisis of epistemological foundations.  In a post-modern, post-foundational, post-Christian, post-everything world, the quest for truth and knowledge is facing a new critique.  This is new only in a very limited sense, because it is in many ways very similar some very old critiques of the foundation of knowledge.  The search for the basis of truth and knowledge has fluctuated between the Platonic world of the Forms, the Aristotelian emphasis on empirical observation and the Skeptics who essentially gave up on the search of a basis for knowledge and truth.  The history of philosophy records this pendulum swing back and forth, sometimes pointing solidly toward one of the views and sometimes in between which creates confusion in the world of knowledge and truth.

            The current pendulum swing leaves us in just such a place, depending on who you read and how you interpret what they are saying.  Many who would call themselves postmodern are in the skeptical camp with their rejection of an ultimate basis for truth.  Such a foundation is a myth, part of a narrative that has been constructed by various groups and social structures.  But each of these groups or ideas for a foundation has ultimately been rejected.  There is no God/gods on whom we can rest truth statements.  The Church has long since been rejected as well in an enlightened world of science.  Now in a post-modern world, reason as the unshakeable foundation for ultimate truth (the sciences) has faced the same rejection.  There is no foundation, everyone is bound in a story that is bound in language; language is bound by culture and culture is always changing.  So, in our postmodern world of non-foundationalism, language itself is an impediment to knowledge.

            With this epistemological morass as a backdrop, it was refreshing to read the 4^th/5^th century Church father, Augustine, who addressed the issue of language and knowledge, with particular emphasis on the knowledge of God in revelation and reason.  If language is only a socially agreed upon construct, can we use it to gain any knowledge; especially knowledge of God.  Current Postmodern thinkers would say no, but Augustine clearly says yes.  In this essay, I would like to explore a little of Augustine’s view of language and its relationship and use in knowing, especially as he applies it to the knowledge of God.  We will explore these areas in three of Augustine’s works: On the Trinity (DT), On Christian Teaching (DDC) and Against the Academicians (CA). 

            While Augustine’s view of language is not a fully-developed, systemized study, we can gain some understanding of his subject through his discussions of signs, analogies, metaphors and predication.  In the greatest sense of communication, Augustine recognizes that humans can and do use a multitude of different methods and means, besides what we would typically think of as language.  People can communicate through what Augustine calls physical signs.  These can be a nod, a look or a hand-gesture.  These are understood to be signs when we do them to another person with the intent of making them aware of our wishes (DDG; B2, Para 5). 

            However, the great majority of communication is through words, both spoken and written.  Even with words, the majority of the words that we use are in the written form, because of the limitations of spoken words.  Augustine says, “But spoken words cease to exist as soon as they come into contact with the air, and their existence is not more lasting than that of their sound; hence the invention, in the form of letters, of signs of words” (DDG; B2, Para 8).  He repeats this idea – adding the notion of invention of letters - in On the Trinity, “But where as we exhibit these and the like bodily signs either to ears or eyes of persons present to whom we speak, letters have been invented that we might be able to converse also with the absent…” (DT; B15,Chpt. 10. Para 19). 

            Language (or at least letters), therefore, is in invention of man for the purpose of communicating via signs of letters and construction of words.  In a postmodern understanding of language, this becomes very important.  Since language is an invention of humans, it has to be culturally conditioned, because humans are intrinsically cultural beings.  We live in it and it infuses us, and we often are not even aware of it, much like a fish is not aware of the water that encompasses its life.  Our own cultural constructions become more obvious to us when we are confronted by someone who does not come from our culture.  This can be someone from our own country, such as a farm kid moving to the big city, or someone from another country altogether.  This cultural conditioning or situatedness of language creates barriers to understanding.  How can I come to understand truth through language if it not based on real objective reality?  This is the postmodern’s dilemma. 

            This problem is further complicated by the fact that our thinking itself is bound to language.  Augustine understands this well, when he talks about thoughts as being “speeches of the heart.”  “For although there were no words spoken, at any rate, he who thinks speaks in his heart” (DT, B. XV. Chpt. 10, Para. 17).   He understands this both from personal experience with his own thinking as well as from Scripture.  Jesus knew the thoughts of the Pharisees’ hearts, even though they did not say anything out loud.  He says the same idea in other place, “for the thought that is founded by the thing which we know, is the word which we speak in the heart…” (DT, B XV, Chpt. 10, Para. 19). 

            This does not mean that language can mean anything that you want it to.  It would be easy to fall into this trap, but when Augustine is discussing the Trinity, he is very careful to avoid this problem.  In his discussion on the adding a particular kind of negation to a particular statement (unbegotten vs. nonbegotten) does not change the essence of what you are saying about the substance of the thing that you are discussing.  “Wherefore, in speaking of this thing or that, we must not consider what the usage of our language either allows or does not allow, but what clearly appears to be the meaning of the things themselves” (DT, Bk V, Chpt 7, Para 8).  The particulars of a given language grammatical structure is not the issue as much as what are the real implications of what is trying to be said. 

            Language, constructed as it is (or may be), is the vehicle that we have at our disposal to speak about God.  It may seem that this vehicle is insufficient for that purpose, and indeed many in the church have stated as much, but it is in the connection between language as a signifier of ideas that Augustine brings to his discussion on both the doctrine of the Trinity and the understanding of Scripture.  It is clear that Augustine makes a strong connection between sign, signifier and language as a vehicle for the real communication of truth.  It is not perfect, but it is effective because the only reason that you use words and language is actually to communicate intended meaning (the great irony of the hard postmodern thinkers is that they write books while denying connected meaning to text).  Augustine in his treatise On Christian Teaching says, “All teaching is teaching of either things or signs, but things are learnt through signs.” (Bk 1, Para 4).  This becomes the main model that Augustine will use to teach in both On the Trinity and On Christian Teaching.  He says that whole reason that we use words is to signify something, “Words, for example: nobody uses words except in order to signify something.  From this it may be understood what I mean by signs: those things which are employed to signify something” (DDC, Bk 1, Para 5).  Let us consider briefly how Augustine applies the concept of sign to both his study of the Trinity and his study of Scripture. 

            In his discussion of the Trinity, Augustine recognizes that there is a problem with the use of words to describe the Trinity.  If language is part of our cultural heritage, and is even part of our thought processes, how do we use language to speak of God?  The problem is that God is above the mind in the first place, how do we speak about that we which we cannot form a thought.  Because we are bound to an extent to the limitations of language, our culture and our minds, can we really form an idea about God?  Augustine discusses this as the seeking of something which we can never gain.  Will we only ever seek but never find truth about God, and the Trinity?  This is the struggle of faith and understanding – “Faith seeks, understanding finds…” Augustine says.  While we will never completely understand, that should not prevent the search, because we are told by Paul that the “invisible things of Him…are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.”  This gives Augustine (and all Christians) the opportunity seek knowledge in our world, including the world of language, even while we recognize the limitations.  Part of Augustine’s solution to this is to make a distinction between knowledge and the thought of knowledge.  The problem then lies in the use of language about that knowledge, not in the knowledge itself.  He illustrates this in the following way,

“For the same reason neither do we say three greats (for each member of the Trinity), but one who is great; since God is not great by partaking in greatness, but He is great by Himself being great, because He Himself is His own greatness.  Let the same be said also of the goodness, and of the eternity, and of the omnipotence of God, and in short, all of the predicaments which can be predicated of God, as He spoke of in respect to Himself, not metaphorically and by similitude, but properly, if indeed anything can be spoken of Him properly, by the mouth of man” (DT, Bk V, Chapt 10.). 

The problem is the limitation of language, not in God or the potential knowledge of him.  We might be tempted to think that the words that we use are only metaphors, but Augustine wants to remind us that, though limited, the language that we use of God is in some way a real descriptor of God and his character.  It does matter what words we use to describe God.  We will always have problems with our language in describing God, think about how we describe the eternal God acting in time, but that does not mean the task should be abandoned. 

            This also becomes a problem when we come to the Scriptures and how we should understand them.  Augustine reminds us in On Christian Teaching that language is not universally hegemoneous, so the signs of language cannot be shared among people of different language groups until this barrier is overcome (DDG, Bk 2, para 8).  This applies to Scripture as well, “…even divine scripture, by which assistance is provided for the many serious disorders of the human will, after starting off in a single language, in which it could have been conveniently spread throughout the world, was circulated far and wide in the various languages of translators…” (DDG, Bk 2, para.9).  So the Scriptures were written in one language and cultural setting, but we speak a different language and live in a different cultural setting.  How then can the Scriptures speak to us?  An obvious answer would be translation, but that is not sufficient.  Augustine reminds his readers that there were a wide-variety and quality of translations of the Bible into Latin, so he encourages them consult many of the available translations to get a proper understanding of the text.  It is also important to Augustine that the reader spend time learning some of the meanings of the signs of Scripture that might be lost due to difference of culture.  He gives the example of this with the word bovum or ox.  We have an idea of what this word signifies.  However, Scripture also uses this sign in another way, as a worker of the Gospel (Deut 25:4, I Cor 9:9, 1 Tim 5:8).  We can work at overcoming this language barrier with study of the original languages and culture. 

            Augustine talks about the fact that there is an understanding of Scripture that at first appears “hidden” to a normal reading of language.  Again, this might seem a barrier to knowledge, but it falls to us as readers of Scripture to understand these analogies, by seeking the meaning of the sign as it was originally intended.  Animals, plants, stones, numbers, and other things can all have a second significance that needs to be understood and explored if the reader is to understand the language of Scripture.  These are all potential language barriers to knowledge, but they are only potential, not final barriers.   The reader must begin not with language understanding, but proper heart/soul orientation.  “It is therefore necessary above all else to be moved by the fear of God towards learning his will:  what is that he instructs us to seek or avoid” (DDG, Bk 2, Para. 16).  So the language of Scripture can and does give us knowledge, through the writers having an idea, communicating that through the signifiers of their language and culture and then we – through some work at times – see the beyond the signifier to the thing that is signified.  In this way, we know what the will of God is through Scripture.

            Finally, the question needs to be addressed to knowledge outside of revelation.  Augustine has been exploring the knowledge that we gain through revelation about the Trinity and how we can understand the revelation itself.  But perhaps, that is only because of the subject matter, or the person behind the revelation.  Perhaps we can overcome the situatedness of language in these areas because we have something extra.  Maybe outside of revelation, language prohibits us from knowing anything.  Augustine’s treatise Against the Academicians deals with the issue of skepticism and knowledge of the truth.  In it he deals with the issue of whether there is truth, and whether truth can be truly known.  He is arguing against the “Academicians” of the Third Academy who have taken the position of hard skepticism, much like postmodernity today. 

            While it is beyond the scope of our present essay to discuss Augustine’s argument, it is helpful to remember that for Augustine, language is the vehicle for knowing truth.  Does this apply to the discussion about skepticism?  The connection is not explicit in this treatise, but it is certainly the backdrop behind his argument.  He spends time in both Books 1 and 2 defining and reaching conclusions about understanding of words. This makes sense in an environment where knowledge comes through agreed upon understanding.  To have knowledge in language, there must be similar images or signs that the words point to (Cf, the bovum illustration).  He says, “Someone who gazes upon an exemplar does, indeed, rightly approve an image of it.  How then does the wise man give his approval to nothing, or follow the truthlike, if he doesn’t know what the truth itself is?” (CA, 3.18.40.7).  This is more clearly seen in the use of words in dialectical reasoning, “Dialectic has also taught me that there shouldn’t be any dispute over words when there is agreement on the matter for the sake of which the words are spoken” (CA 3.13.29.23).  The Academicians were using language to constantly change the agreed upon understanding of words, which Augustine calls “making a fuss about a name.”  The end of the argument for Augustine is that you cannot say that you cannot have the truth unless you know the truth.  If you know the truth, you have defeated your own argument.  The language games that the Academicians were playing (eg., seems vs. is) were just that, games. 

For Augustine, truth is known through language, even truth outside of revelation.  Language is not a constructed barrier, but rather it is a vehicle to getting at the truth.  It is humanly constructed, and culturally situated, but adequate nonetheless. 

Biblography

Saint Augustine.  On Christian Teaching.  Translated by RPH Green.  Oxford, England:  Oxford University Press, 1997.

_______.  Against the Academicians. Translated by Peter Kind. Indianapolis, IN: Hacket Publishing Company, 1995.

_______.  On the Trinity. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 3.  Edited by Philip Schaff. Translated by Arthur West Hadden. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1887.  Revised and Edited for the New Advent by Kevin Knight. <http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/130105.htm>