Hi, I'm Dr. Anadale and what you see on the screen now is a photo of the chalkboard
from one of my courses from several years ago.
This is from my introduction to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, and we are talking here
about the difference between knowledge of God by faith and knowledge of God by reason.
Let’s take a closer look at the board.
We’ll begin with this fellow over here, who's asking himself, “Does God exist?”
He's confused because he doesn't know.
There two different ways that one might arrive at an answer to that question: one can have
knowledge of God by faith or knowledge of God by reason.
With the first type, knowledge of God that comes from faith, this comes to us because
God gives us his grace.
We have a downward-pointing arrow here, indicating that we are receiving grace from God.
This is always a free gift of God.
It can never be earned or obligated or deserved.
This is of crucial importance; I’ve starred this because it's important to know that we
can never actually put ourselves in the position of definitely getting or deserving or earning
this knowledge of God by grace.
It's always a free gift of God.
As I said to a student of mine years ago: “God owes us nothing.”
And he said: “Not even a tiny little bit?”
And I said, “No, not even a tiny little bit!”
God owes you nothing; God owes me nothing.
He will give this knowledge to whom He chooses, for whatever His reasons are, to the extent
and for the duration that He chooses, and there's nothing more for us to ask about that.
So this kind of knowledge of God contains what God chooses to reveal about Himself.
This is the character of revelation.
It may be a lot to some people, it may be only a tiny little bit to other people, but
it is received, it is knowledge, it is certain and it has this particular character of knowledge
by faith.
Knowledge of God by reason, natural knowledge of God, has quite a different character, because
it uses the natural abilities of the mind.
It uses the powers of reasoning and perception that the human mind has simply by virtue of
being a human mind.
So this is not a matter of our being in a relationship with a higher being and receiving
a gift from him.
It's a matter of us simply on our own doing the human business of logical reasoning as
we naturally do.
It is the same for all people, so there's no selection bias here, where God might choose
a particular person and not choose other people, for reasons that are unknown to us.
Every person has equal access, more or less, to the ability to reason logically.
And this means that these proofs can be judged based upon rational standards.
Unlike knowledge of God from faith, where we can only accept what God gives us, here
we can evaluate different proposed philosophical proofs of God and say, “yes, that's a good
philosophy, good use of reason,” or “that's poor philosophy, bad use of reason.”
So we can have standards, logical and rational standards that we can use to evaluate these
arguments to be good or bad.
And this is where we get the philosophical proofs of God's existence in Thomas Aquinas
and other thinkers.
Thomas’ proofs are proofs that go from effect to cause.
For Thomas we begin with our knowledge of the effect of God, that is the world that
God has created.
From this we infer certain facts about the cause, the existence of God.
We acquire only limited knowledge of the cause by our study of the effects.
We know first that the cause exists, because there can be no effect without a cause.
And we know that the cause has at least the character sufficient to produce the effect.
So if I see things in motion, I know there, they must, those things must have a cause
that is sufficient to produce the motion that I have observed.
If I observe contingent beings, I know those contingent beings must have a cause that is
sufficient to produce their contingent existence.
But I am ignorant of the cause beyond that.
This is the last big difference between knowledge of God by reason and knowledge of God by faith.
One might get a comprehensive and full knowledge of God from knowledge by faith.
God might choose to reveal himself almost entirely to one particular person at a place
and time.
But nobody reasoning philosophically or logically is ever going to acquire any more than the
slightest glimmer of knowledge about God, of the full knowledge that can be had.
Basically: God exists and God has a certain type of character that is sufficient to produce
an effect.
We will see that those limits are going to shape all of Thomas's philosophical proofs
of God as we move into the Five Ways and beyond.
So that's my very quick review of this chalkboard photo from one of my classes several years ago.
I hope you enjoyed it. Thanks for watching today; goodbye.