Aquinas reconsidered

I'm going to comment on some statements by Muller in his review of Oliphint's critique of Thomism.

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/aquinas-reconsidered.php

http://www.reformation21.org/articles/aquinas-reconsidered-part-2-1.php

http://www.reformation21.org/featured/aquinas-reconsidered-part-3.php

One preliminary observation: a theologian is not an end in himself. We shouldn't devote the same attention to exegeting a theologian that we devote to exegeting Scripture. Christianity is a revealed religion. Biblical revelation is the primatial source of Christian theology. Interpreting Aquinas is secondary to interpreting biblical revelation. 

The problem is most apparent in Oliphint's highly selective use of Aquinas' commentary on John 1:9, which leaves out the portions that undermine his argument. Aquinas indicates that human beings are enlightened by "the light of natural knowledge," which insofar as it is light is such by participation in the "true light," which is the Word. He adds, "If any one is not enlightened, it is due to himself, because he turns from the light that enlightens."10 Aquinas also distinguishes this true light, given to all by God, from which human beings turn away, from the "false light" which "the philosophers prided themselves on having," citing Romans 1:21.11

But is that a valid prooftext for natural revelation/natural theology? Considered in isolation, Jn 1:9 is somewhat ambiguous: is the scope creational or Incarnational? However, in the larger context of the Gospel, the Incarnation introduces a new situation; it generates a contrast between light and shadow. Prior to the Incarnation, spiritual darkness prevailed. So I doubt this verse has reference to general revelation. That doesn't automatically falsify natural revelation or natural theology, but if Aquinas feels the need for some Biblical warrant for that category, then he needs to find a different, and better prooftext. 

Oliphint also makes several crucial mistakes in his interpretation of Aquinas' proofs of the existence of God. He dismisses Aquinas' use of Exodus 3:14 as insufficient to show the Christian context in which the proofs are deployed on the rather slim ground that, had Aquinas really intended to be biblical, he would not simply have cited the verse he would have "shown how the content of revelation grounded his arguments" instead of proceeding by "natural reason."3 But citation of texts, presumably interpreted exegetically elsewhere, is a common practice, and this understanding of Exodus 3:14, rooted in Augustine, was a commonplace--not, by the way, available to "natural reason."

Nor is the citation of Exodus 3:14 the only indication of a theological and biblical backdrop to the proofs: in the first article, on whether the existence of God is self-evident, Aquinas bases his argument with an objection drawn from John of Damascus' De fide orthodoxa and John 14:6--and then counters the objections with a point from Aristotle's Metaphysics interpreted by way of a reference to Psalm 52:1. In the second article, whether it can be demonstrated that God exists, draws objections from Hebrews 11:1 and from John of Damascus, countering them with a citation of Romans 1:20. Then, when Aquinas poses the question leading to the proofs of whether God exists, he offers no references in his objections and counters them with Exodus 3:14. The process of argument is on the basis of reason, but the argument with the objectors is an argument among Christians.

Aquinas uses the Boethian esse-id quod est distinction to indicate the same issue as his own essence-existence distinction, which points directly toward Aquinas' stress on God as "He who is" (Exodus 3:14).

Even with the post-biblical trinitarian language in view, we are quite unable to make clear "that God's essence is who he is and that there is no possibility that he could be otherwise." A series of qualifications of the term essence must be added, including the point that in God there is no real distinction between essence and existence, a point, as Aquinas indicated, that can be gathered from Exodus 3:14.

These considerations not only of Van Til's misconceptions but specifically of what Aristotle and Aquinas understood concerning knowledge of essences and of things or particulars, brings us back to the impact of Exodus 3:14 on metaphysics and, accordingly, on the framing of a Christian philosophy. Aquinas' approach, in focusing on the identity of the First Mover as "He who is," the existent One, opens up a philosophy that can argue creation ex nihilo and a doctrine of providence, specifically on the ground that the One in whom there is no real distinction between essence and existence can know the essences of potential things and confer existence.

1. Notice how much is riding on the use of Exod 3:14 to prootext Thomism. But there are two basic problems with that appeal:

i) Aquinas was not a Hebraist. He relies on his memory of the Vulgate. But there are different ways of rendering the Hebrew phrase in Exod 3:14, and there's no agreement among Hebraists on the one best way to construe it.

ii) Even if we could settle on a preferred rendering, the Thomistic interpretation overloads the statement with a lot of metaphysical freight. What reason is there to think the meaning of Exod 3:14 corresponds to Thomistic metaphysics? Isn't that specialized gloss highly anachronistic? Ironically, as Muller himself documents, Aquinas is filtering Scripture through tinted lenses that have no basis in original intent. 

If Aquinas erected a theological edifice on a nonexistent foundation, you can't remove the foundation but pretend that the ediface remains intact. Either lay a new foundation for the old edifice or build a new edifice from scratch. 

2. That doesn't necessarily falsify Thomistic metaphysics and epistemology. But if Aquinas feels the need for a biblical prooftext to anchor his position, he will have to look elsewhere.  

For Aquinas, reason, "the light of nature," is itself a gift of God to human beings in the original creation of humanity that is capable of knowing not only that God exists, but that God is good, wise, and powerful. Where reason falls short, because of its finitude, its rootedness in sense perception, and the errors brought about by sin, is that, without the aid of revelation, it cannot know the truths of salvation. 

i) Actually, the primary explanation for why unaided reason cannot know the truths of salvation is not "because of its finitude, its rootedness in sense perception, and the errors brought about by sin," but because the truths of salvation involve historical knowledge. That's not intuitive or universal, but based on a series of historical particulars. Redemptive events at a given place and time. 

ii) I, for one, deny that reason in general is rooted in sense perception. To a great extent, human knowledge depends on sense perception. But humans have innate, God-given categories that they bring to the analysis of sensory input. Human knowledge is a combination of intuition and observation. 

This "Thomistic" assumption should have a familiar ring in Reformed circles. It is paralleled by the very first sentence of the Westminster Confession--as also by the second article of the Belgic Confession, and Calvin's commentary on the passage. Oliphint's claim that Aquinas' reading has "no basis" in the text of Scripture becomes an indictment of Calvin and the Reformed tradition as well.

i) It's true that the Westminster Confession refers to the "light of nature". That doesn't authorize us to import the whole of Thomistic natural theology into that Spartan phrase.

ii) As for "an indictment of Calvin and the Reformed tradition as well," that's political jargon, as if Oliphint is guilty of sedition. But we shouldn't turn this into a loyalty oath. What matters is whether it's true, and demonstrably true. 

Both Aquinas and the Reformed orthodox writers begin with prolegomenal discussions in which Scripture is set forth as the primary authority in doctrinal matters--so that both actually do begin biblically. Neither Aquinas nor the Reformed orthodox begin with the "ontological Trinity" because both recognize that the proper beginning point of knowledge (as distinct but not separate from faith) cannot be a point of doctrine like the Trinity that is neither self-evident nor demonstrable. Oliphint has confused the principium essendi with the principium cognoscendi, and has failed to recognize that cognitive principia, more generally understood, are self-evident, incontestable notions, some directly available to reason, some given by revelation.

i) That sets the bar awfully high. In the history of philosophy, how many claims are "self-evident, incontestable notions"? 

ii) While it makes sense to begin with Scripture, to make a case for Scripture–isn't the Trinity the ultimate source of Scripture? Who's the God behind Scripture? Who's the God that inspired Scripture, if not the Trinity? So the Trinity and the Bible are inseparable, as cause and effect. It traces back to the Triune God. 

Copleston notes, rather pointedly, that it is "not true to say that the intellect, according to St. Thomas, has no knowledge of corporeal particulars." As Copleston continues, this primary object of the intellect is not the abstracted universal "as such" but the universal as abstracted from the particular.4 Aquinas rests this view, moreover, on a distinction between sensory and intellective knowing. The primary object of the intellect is the form or universal that has been abstracted from the particular, with the particular external object being known by the intellect indirectly, by means of the abstracted universal--but also with the external object being directly and concretely known to sense.5

i) No doubt we form many generalizations by sampling particular instances. But is that always or even normally the basis for our knowledge of universals? How would we derive an understanding of logical and numerical relations by process of abstraction from concrete examples? Unless we already had a sense of mathematical relations, how could we group or count objects in the first place? Recognizing a numerical sequence or numerical cluster requires something in the mind to which that corresponds. You can't very well number things without having numerical concepts to work with. 

Likewise, unless we already had a sense of logical relations, how could we infer anything from observation? You can't infer inference itself. That can't be bootstrapped. 

ii) On the face of it, isn't Copleston's description circular? On the one hand, the intellect abstracts universals from particulars. On the other hand, the intellect knows particulars via universals. 

Maybe Thomism has a way around that. I'm just commenting on Muller's representations. 

Third, inasmuch as the Westminster Confession of Faith and Reformed Orthodoxy in general are largely in agreement with Aquinas on issues of epistemology, natural theology, doctrine of God, and, indeed, apologetics, Oliphint's and Van Til's views at best stand at the margin of what can be called Reformed and, at worst, create a kind of sectarian theology and philosophy that is out of accord with the older Reformed tradition and its confessions.

i) Unless we can justify our traditions, appeal to tradition reduces to playacting. It is always necessary that tradition match reality. Truth isn't based on mutual agreement, but agreement with what is the case. We should only be true to tradition insofar as tradition is true to revealed reality. Otherwise, this is Catholicism-lite. Like a literary tradition that takes on a life of its own, based on imaginative extrapolations that have no grounding in the real world. 

ii) That's a wild overgeneralization about the WCF in relation to Thomism. The Westminster Divines are generally Puritans. Is Puritan epistemology equivalent to Thomistic epistemology? Other than a glancing reference to the "light of nature," there's not much natural theology in the WCF. 

What does he mean by Reformed Orthodoxy? Does that include Jonathan Edwards? Is he a Thomist? Is Warfield a Thomist? Or William Cunningham? What about the Augustinian tradition?