G O D A N D T H E P O S S I B I L I T Y O F P H I L O S O P H Y

In an influential and widely-read article J. N. Findlay takes a hard look at grounds for a belief in God. The picture he draws of God is not unlike that of the poet Francis Thompson's "hound of heaven." Divine Existence, if it is to be the fitting object of truly religious attitudes, must be "inescapable and necessary, whether for thought or reality. ''1 And yet, for many, there is no hound nipping at their heels. Whether as humanists or materialists or what have you, such men go blissfully to their deaths, with, perhaps, only a reverence for the realization that they had not done all there was to do, nor learned all there was to learn. The religious frame of mind is, according to Findlay, in a quandary: "I t desires the Divine Existence both to have that inescapable character which can, on modern views, only be found where truth reflects an arbitrary con- vention, and also the character of 'making a real difference' which is only possible where truth doesn't have this merely linguistic basis. ''2 The upshot of all this is that we cannot "remain agnosti- cally poised in regard to God, ''~ but are forced, if we are honest with ourselves, to deny God's existence.

It is not my purpose here to attempt to characterize Findlay's argument as either an ontological argument in reverse or an argu- ment from experience. Its primary force, for me, is that it points out certain experiences we ought of necessity to have if the God most religiously oriented persons claim exists does, in fact, exist. Yet, while plainly these experiences for many "who share a con- temporary outlook" are lacking, the hound of heaven ought to have spared no one.

Findlay goes on to remark, rightly I think, that his argument does not hold for those who deny that God must exist in a necessary and

1 Findlay, J . N. " C a n God's Existence Be Disproved?" in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. A. Flew and A. M ac l n t y r e (New York, 1964) , p. 48.

Findlay, p. 55. 3 Findlay, p. 55.

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inescapable manner. It does hold, however, for those who "accept Kant 's view that there aren't any necessary facts of existence and who also can be persuaded to hold that a God who is 'worth his salt' must exist necessa r i ly . . , or not at all. ''4 Such people, it seems to me, would be hard pressed to account for the fact that many have escaped from an inescapable God.

I would like to present an argument against some notions of Divine Existence which, I think, has certain similarities to Findlay's argument. Whereas Findlay has focused upon a lack of a certain experience we all should have undergone, and noted that religious people ought, if honest, be hard pressed to account for this lack, I would like to present an experience which, it appears, at least some have had, but which, from the theist's point of view, ought to have been accessible to none. This argument should serve to indicate that at least in some of its forms the Judeo-Christian concept of God is confused.

Succinctly, the argument runs as follows: (I) According to certain formulations of Judeo-Christian theism

there is a mode of experience exclusively divine. (2) But there have been one (or more) men who have had such

an experience, and who neither individually nor collectively appear to meet the demands for Divine Existence outlined by most Judeo- Christian theists. Therefore, either (3 a) the experience referred to in (2) is not an exclusively divine experience, or (3 b) the demands for Divine Existence outlined by most Judeo-Christian theists are incoherent.

Let us begin with (I). Most Judeo-Christian theists tell us that God is somehow responsible for there being a world. He created it ex nihilo and/or is the ground of its being. Even if the world were coeternal with God, it could not consistently be considered as having the same status as God. It appears to be an essential compo- nent of the concept of God that he be in some sensef irs t in respect to all things. This primacy manifests itself as creative activity in most theologies. Very likely, God as creator is the only kind of God Judeo-Christ ian theists could talk about and still be talking about something of that stature. This is the conclusion that is suggested when, in spite of the fact that many today may be uncomfortable

4 Findlay, p. 73.

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with any positive account of God as "creator" or "artificer", one looks at such theists' comportment before their God.

I think R. C. Cobnrn is correct in considering creative activity a "natural adjunct" of the idea of God as a "Supremely Holy" being? And his reasons for believing so are interesting and per- tinent. God becomes "radically independent of other things" if he created them. He also gets to take credit for the awesome qualities and intricacies found by man in nature. It is precisely this radical independence that I am referring to when I speak of the primacy of God.

No doubt there will be those who, having a suspicions nose about them, will attempt to undercut my argument at the outset by simply denying that I am speaking of what they refer to when they use the term "God" .

Yet, if they are about to level that objection I do not think I am being unduly demanding of them if I ask that they be able to show how their particular view of God ties in with the body of shared experiences by countless men over the centuries which have served as the impetus for Judeo-Christian theism. Such experiences depict God as Creator, Father, Law-Giver, Prime Mover, and generally outline in a family-related way a being which Findlay rightly termed the "adeqnate object of religious attitudes. ''6

It might be objected, for example, that for a significant segment of Judeo-Christian theists "creator" is not a proper predicate of "God". Hence, for St. Thomas the creatnre-creator relationship is a "real relation" from the point of view of the creature, but a "relation of reason" from the point of view of the creator. This is because "God is outside the whole order of creation, and all crea- tures are ordered to Him, and not conversely". 7 This relation, not of one being to another, is precisely what is meant by man's "crea- tureliness", or what I am referring to here as God's "priority". However, what I have to say about God as creator retains its force even if only construed as deriving from a man's-eye view.

Now, becanse God as creator is "radically independent" of all created things, that is, independent in some ontological sense, it appears safe to say that he has an "objective" or Archimedean view

5 Coburn, R. C. " T h e Concept of God," Religious Studies, Vol. II , no. I (I966), p. 64. Findlay, p. 48.

7 Summa Theologica, I, Q 13, a. 7.

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of reality. He does not entertain half-truths about the world; he sees all things and knows their innermost workings. In the pic- turesque language of Genesis we learn that God was able to stand back and survey all that he had created. It is this experience of the Archimedean objectivity of a creator that I am referring to as an exclusively Divine mode of experience.

In Thomistic thought God's objectivity is a consequence of his creativity. God's knowledge "creates" and because God is perfect he has perfect knowledge of what he "creates". Here St. Thomas is careful to note that God does not only know beings as beings, but knows them in themselves, i.e. has "proper knowledge" of his crea- tures, s St. Thomas also expresses the relation between creativity and objectivity when he notes, "the knowledge of God is the cause of things. For the knowledge of God is to all creatures what the knowl- edge of the artificer is to things made by his art. '~9 This analogy could cause Thomas concern in the light of contemporary views on the relationship between art and the creative unconscious, but I think his intention is clear here, and this is sufficient for the purposes of this argument.

To see that this experience is available to God alone we must explore more fully the relation between creator and creature. Many Judeo-Christian theists speak of God's purpose or plan in creating the world. Everything is seen as having a purpose, primarily that of serving to "glorify" God himself. From what such theists tell us it appears that we could easily enough dismiss as possible candidates for sharing the Divine experience creatures such as stones, fungi, toads and, in fact, all that is not man. After all, they were created by God for a specific purpose and are quite busily involved in their own niche in God's plan. They only "know" what is needed to know for carrying out the particular role God has set for them.

But what of man ? We are told by Judeo-Christian theists that we are mini-versions of the Godhead; we are "divine" in the sense that we are made in his "image and likeness".

And consequently we are "free agents". F. R. Tennant writes, "The best world, then, must include free agents, creatures that are in turn 'creators' in the sense that their 'utterances' are not God's

s Summa Theologica, I , Q I4, a. 6. 9 Summa Theologica, I, Q i4, a. 8.

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positings but their o w n . . . We are fellow-workers together with God in the actualisation of a moral order. ' 'l~ So why not man as enjoying objectivity as well? The reason, I think, should be obvious why man also could not share in the Divine experience. I t runs like this: the seeming cognitive superiority of man over the "brutes" is only possible within a specific context and, like other creatures, is also ordained for a specific purpose. The mini-God status of man is a gift of the creator-God to be used for a specific purpose of enabling man to participate in God's scheme. In this sense, we are really no different from the other creatures. God endowed man with all kinds of gifts enabling man to be "tool-maker" and "language-user", "good" or "evil", and so forth. He can even participate in God's moral scheme, as Tennant notes, but if there is anything man cannot enjoy, it is the objectivity and the Archimedean view of X that is a consequence of one's creating X.

The achievement of man as a thinking being could only be to re-think what God has originally thought (planned). For example, St. Thomas considered the quest for wisdom to involve the under- standing of first causes. Very likely he borrowed this from Aristotle and what the latter meant by the "reasoned fact". But for Thomas God is the First Cause of all things, and so acquiring knowledge simply means coming to know God. Also, as previously noted, for Thomas "the knowledge of God is the cause of things. ''11

This again makes the quest for Truth a quest for God. Newton would be correct, then, in holding that all we mortals could do was to think over God's thought. In short, if the best man can do is ride over the pre-determined ruts of God's thought, then the best he can hope to be is a compiler of already-established facts. God simply is not going to allow man to participate fully in divine activity, nor allow him the same Archimedean vantage point he enjoys on the world.

It is true that according to St. Thomas man is capable of knowing truth and avoiding error. Through his mental faculties man can achieve true objectivity, for when the faculty attends itself to its proper object or species knowledge is possible. Man's knowledge differs from Divine knowledge, it would seem, only in scope and

10 From Philosophical Theology, Vol. II , Ch. VII . Reprinted in Religious Belief and Phi- losophical Thought, ed. William P. Alston (New York, I963) , p. 247. 11 Summa Theologica, I, Q i4, a. 8.

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genesis. 1~ And Thomas did not consider this sort of difference in the process of knowledge to constitute a basic flaw in man's knowing apparatus. 18 But this description of man's rational faculties raises several difficulties. God grants man a wellfunctioning rational soul at creation; this soul is at tuned to the kind of material world in which man must temporarily reside. It will not lead him into error so long as it is used properly. It is clear from this that man can be a knower the way he is a see-er, but can he be a thinker the way he is a looker?

Thomas spoke paradoxically of the intellect as a "passive power".14 Yet, because "nothing is reduced from potency to act except by something in act 'uS he had to postulate an active power which, for example, could bring about the process of abstraction. And yet, that the human intellect could manifest such power is due to its "par- ticipating in that superior intellect, by which power the human soul makes things actually intelligible." This intellect, Thomas is quick to make clear, is "God Himself, Who is the souls' Creator, and only happiness. ''16 Hence, there is only one genuine thinker - God. Man can think only by proxy.

Historically, there is available a summary view of this relation between man and God that I have been trying to describe, a view which, in my opinion, emerges starkly when the metaphors, images and poetry of Judeo-Christian theism have been stripped away. This is the view of God and his relation to man we find in Spinoza's writings? 7 Spinoza understood the implications of the Judeo- Christian notion of God. And while it is true that there have been Jews and Christians who have disagreed with Spinoza, the point I wish to make is that if they were to spell out in no uncertain terms what they could mean by notions such as man's "freedom" or God's "creativity" they would find themselves more and more speaking in Spinozistic terms and developing a monistic metaphysics. But perhaps the viability of both Judaism and Christianity is that they

12 Summa Theologica, I, Q 85, a. 5. 13 Summa Theologica, I, Q 58, a. 7, reply 3. a4 Summa Theologica, I, Q 79, a. 2. 15 Summa Theologica, I, Q 79, a. 3. 16 Summa Theologica, I, Q 79, a. 4. aT I think Copleston realizes this. See his discussion of the relation between St. Thomas 's conception of God's creativity and Spinozistie pantheism in Aquinas, (Baltimore, Md., I96I), pp. I36-I43.

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have managed for so long to refrain from doing just that. For Spinoza God alone is worthy of the name "Substance".

Substance alone is the unconditioned and free. as All else is con- ditioned and must be so. 19 The intellect of man is "a fixed and definite mode of thought, therefore it cannot be the free cause of its actions. ''2~ In fact, he saw that it would be necessary to deny the "active intellect" of the Scholastics, 21 realizing that such originative activity challenged the "absolute thought" of God.

Intellection, then, became a "passive mode", such as love and desire. In short, for Spinoza the human mind becomes "a part of the infinite intellect of God. ''22 Even Leibniz, with qualifications, sounds very much like Thomas and Spinoza when he writes "we have in our soul ideas of everything, only because of the continual action of God upon us" and hence "God is for us the only immediate external object and that we see things through him. ''2~ Yet Leibniz, the mathematical innovator, turns away from the "certain able philosophers" who reject "the complete purview and independence of the soul" and, instead, reinstates the agent intellect. The soul must have not only a passive-receptive capacity, but also an "active power by virtue of which it has always had in its nature the marks of the future production of this thought and the disposi- tion to produce it at its proper time. ''z4 Presumably God also must wait to find out what the monad has on its mind.

So far, then, I have tried to show that the relation that holds be- tween God and his creatures, as described by most Judeo-Christian theists, makes it virtually impossible for any of those creatures to partake in the Divine experience just described. Let us now turn to (2).

There is an experience, or, perhaps, more accurately a family of closely related experiences, which have been available to many men, but which, if the account given above concerning the relation between God and man is correct, should have been available to none. This family of experiences is as difficult to characterize as it

is Ethics, I, Def. VII . 19 Ethics, I, Props, X X V I - X X I X . so Ethics, II , Prop. XL I I . 31 Ethics, I, Prop. X X X I . ~2 Ethics, II , Prop. XI (cor). 33 Discourse on Metaphysics, X X V I I I . ~ Discourse on Metaphysics, X X I X .

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is prevalent. Generally speaking we might say that they are the experiences of working one's way to the solution of a problem, of clearing away the unessential and then of having the feeling that one is "seeing" things "as they are".

The experience I want to focus upon as part of this family, and a major one, is the subtle and elusive experience of what is broadly called "philosophizing".

Philosophers themselves, more than anyone, have been most involved in characterizing philosophy. This should not be surprising, for the characteristic I shall consider most pecnliarly philosophical is one that puts a premium on such activity. To begin with I shall understand a "philosopher" to be anyone who is being stimulated to philosophical activity by what I shall term "philosophical mo- ments". I am not interested per se in people who "have" philoso- phies, who are, say, "Pragmatists", or "Naturalists", or "Ethical Intuitionists", but rather in how they arrived at these positions. In conjunction with this latter point, however, I also want to exclude those who had acquired a philosophy only by being schooled in one. This is not snobbery, for I am actually only excluding those who have given no thought to their philosophical position, but have accepted it uncritically.

The key, then, lies in the "philosophical moment" and in the response of philosophizing. Let me attempt to characterize the former: such moments are paradoxical; they are moments of con- fusion as well as, nearly at once, moments of clarity. They are usually, somewhere along the line, the birthplace of the basic issues in philosophy. There is a certain disturbing loneliness and with- drawal that results from such moments, as was noted by Hume. I think Nietzsche recognized what I am attempting to say when he wrote " p h i l o s o p h y . . . is a voluntary living amid ice and mountain heights." And Igor Stravinsky, in a recent interview, spoke of frustrations due to a convalescence in a hospital in the following way: "Musical ideas stalked me, but I could compose them men- tally only, being unable to write at the time and unable to remem- ber now. And the mind needs its daily work at such time, far more than the contemplation of its temporality. To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to Hell. ''25 The phil-

25 "Side Effects: An Interview with Stravinsky," The New York Review (March i4, I968), P. 3-

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osophical moment, the Heraclitean "contemplation of temporality", is what frightened Stravinsky here. In the process, insights were acquired into the nature of artistic activity as he had known it. Whether these insights were to find expression in an aesthetics or in artistic creation would, of course, depend on other factors.

Philosophical activity is characterized by transcendence. It begins with the realization that there are implications to something. From his fatigue, Stravinsky was led, so I conjecture, to a question about the nature of the mind itself, and from there he might have gone on to expand his inquiry even further. A. C. Genova comes close to what I am trying to say when he notes, "Philosophic activity, then, is the primary kind of inquiry simply because it is presupposed for any inquiry. And as such, it can be designated a transcendental activity, not merely because it shares the non-empirical status of all activi- ties, but because it is fundamentally concerned with the determina- tion of non-empirical concepts in accordance with fundamental criteria that it conceives for itself. ''26 Science does not ask, "Wha t is science?" and the healthy, active Stravinsky probably would not ask "What is art?", but philosophy not only asks these questions, but also "What is philosophy?". The "transcendence" spoken of here need not refer to an occult property of mind, the impression one gets, at times, from Sartre's use of the term, but rather can be used simply to refer to this ability of philosophy to incorporate within its domain any and all considerations, including what had previously been considered philosophy itself. Metaethics "tran- scends" normative ethics, but itself might be found to contain normative elements as well. Or philosophy may be subsumed under the Sociology of Knowledge until one begins to probe the philosoph- ical assumptions of the latter. I think E. W. Hall was referring to this sort of thing when he wrote, "Philosophy is a peculiar subject in that it includes itself in its own domain of inquiry and generaliza- tion."27

In, a way, modern trends in philosophy have attempted to check this transcending activity of philosophy. But, ironically, such attempts are invariably self-stultifying. Hence, while Hume could write, "All this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than

36 " I n q u i r y as a T r a n s c e n d e n t a l A c t i v i t y , " Inquiry, Vol . IO, no. I (1967) , p. 15. ~ Categorial Analysis, ed. E. M . A d a m s ( C h a p e l Hi l l , i964) , p. 4.

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the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or dimin- ishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience, ''~8 still he considered that his philosophy had advanced to a "new scene of thought ''~9 and was doubtless pleased when a reviewer wrote of the Treatise "Those who demand the new will find satisfac- tion here. The author reasons on his own grounds; he goes to the bottom of things and traces out new routes. He is very original. ''~~

One of the outcomes of transcendence is the production in philosophy of what I shall term "noumenal statements", statements which, on a certain account (i.e. whatever attempts to limit the scope of inquiry), say what cannot be said. The following are but a few examples from the history of philosophy: "There is a thing-in- itself, but it is unknowable", "All is illusion", or "Philosophy must start from the Unconditioned". Included also are statements claiming such statements are, for whatever reason, meaningless.

Each of these presupposes conditions for its possibility which it explicitly denies. The implications of philosophical activity are themselves of philosophical relevance.

Perhaps, one of the consequences of what I have said is that philosophy will never be absorbed into the other disciplines, simply because the attitude it takes towards its subject-matter differs from all other disciplines. Hence, although a neurologist uses his pre- frontal lobe to examine the function of the prefrontal lobe, and the psychologist uses mental processes to investigate other mental pro- cesses, from the point of view of these disciplines such phenomena are only added instances of a certain law or group of laws, but they have no implications for these laws21 And if, perchance, neurolo- gists and psychologists claim that they do have such implications philosophers would soon be on the scene to see if that is so or not.

At this point I want to make the following comments about this view of philosophy. It is not my aim to advance any particular philosophical doctrine. However, I realize that what I have said would be cause for concern among those who feel that there is nothing to philosophy except the exercise of translating disguised nonsense into patent nonsense. Yet, I submit, once we have ceased

o,8 An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Sec. I I . 29 In Hume ' s "Let te r to a Physician". 30 Mossner, E. C. The Life o f David Hume (New York, I954) , p. 119. ~1 E. W. Hal l ' s example.

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to be beguiled by such a view of philosophy, philosophical implica- tions would soon enough be found in the view that problems in philosophy are not solved but dissolved.

I want to contend now that the view of philosophical activity as growing out of philosophical moments, described above, embodies the experience of philosophizing par excellence. And such an ex- perience presupposes a condition of autonomy.

The philosopher engaged in critical activity assumes that there are no restrictions placed on his thought, at least none which he himself has not critically sanctioned. In this respect there is a sharp distinction between philosophy and the philosophizing that leads up to it. The philosopher may come to reject his position later on. He may see it in a new perspective. And he may notice flaws in the process of his formulation of that position. But he also sees that his present position is no more plausible to him now than his earlier position was to him then. He sees both as the work of his honest effort to bring together all relevant data and to assess critically any relevant areas that might bear on the issue. The dishonest or lazy philosopher is a possibility, though here disqualified as a candidate to instantiate (2). Even when he gives a philosophical position only a tentative status he does so, not because he simply lacks relevant evidence, but because he has some evidence, however slight, for such a lack. The freedom to entertain and be open to any possible relevant conditions (as evidence), the realization that such evidence can be objectively assessed, and the ability to creatively arrange the evidence into a strong argument - these are the tacit presupposi- tions of the philosopher.

Now, if what the Judeo-Christian theist has said about the relation between God and his creatures is correct, then this is just the kind of experience which should be impossible for man. Con- sequently, either his concept of God is incoherent or else t he philosophizing experience is in no way analogous to God's creative objectivity. I f man is truly a creature, with all that implies, then the quality of thought necessary in order to philosophize should be unavailable to him.

In fact, in the light of that quality of thought assumed to be un- conditioned, free and creative, all human thinking is rendered nugatory because of God. The demands of transcendental inquiry point to the conditions for philosophy as themselves groundless and

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unconditioned. We cannot qualify "objectivity" by saying that it is "objectivity for man" (recall here the problem of God's foresight and man's freedom and the way, say, it was argued between Eras- mus and Luther). And it is just this probing and innovative aspect of philosophizing that Judeo-Christ ian theists would be hard pressed to account for. But this leads to what is, perhaps, the most crucial part of the discussion.

(3a). Perhaps the experience I have described in (2) is not the one referred to in (I). Have I shown, for example, that the creative ob- jectivity noted in (I) - the objectivity that results from God's knowledge and creativity being identical - is in any way akin to what goes on in philosophizing? In other words, do I mean to imply that man, in some sense, creates the world with his thought, the way God is said to create the world with his? At the outset I noted that this argument was based on some having an experience I at tempted to describe in (2). However, in (I) I did not describe God's experience, but developed, as best I could, the implications of the Judeo-Christ ian notion of the relationship between God and man. Owing to these implications, for such theists the kind of experience described in (2), with its assumption of what James called "a curious autonomy, as if we were small active centers on our own account", 3~ was in need of serious re-interpretation.

They would have to contend that the sense of autonomy and the experience of having worked out, on one's own, the solution to a problem were at bottom illusory. The question now is - can they defend such a contention in a non-self-stultifying way ? Are they not in a position somewhat like that of Nietzsche, that they must ad- vance a philosophical argument in order to show why there can be no philosophical arguments? Ultimately, it is upon this point that the present argument rests.

There is a way out of this for the theist. He could re-define the experience in (I) to allow for that in (2). Maritain, for example, notes that the soul "contains within itself all the sources of its energies. ''~8 I f Maritain is actually making a claim for autonomy here, then it appears to me that he, and those who argue in this way,

32 The Will to Believe, Sec. X. Selection reprinted in The Development of American Phi- losophy, ed. W. G. Muelder, L. Sears, and A. V. Schlabach (Cambridge, Mass. I96o), p. 4oi. 33 The Range of Reason (New York, I952), p. 60.

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must follow through with a complete re-interpretation of man's relation to God. Berdyaev and existentialist theologians in general have been attempting this redefinition. However, these solutions raise more questions than they answer.

(3 b) appears the more plausible alternative. JOSEPH L. ESPOSITO Bradley University