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INTRODUCTION 1. 'Five Stages of Greek Religion' (Watts, 1943) P Notes INTRODUCTION 1. 'Five Stages of Greek Religion' (Watts, 1943) p. 12. CHAPTER 1 1. Diaspora means 'dispersion' and refers to Jews living outside Palestine. 2. A group of Christian theologians who wrote c. 120-220. 3. The (first) Council of Nicaea was in 325. 4. I shall quote both from the new Blackfriars edition (which I shall use unless I indicate otherwise) and from the two anthologies entitled 'Philosophical Texts' and 'Theo­ logical Texts', ed. T. Gilby (Oxford University Press, 1951 and 1955). 5. The name given to the author of Isaiah 40-55. 6. 1 Cor. 8:5-6. 7. 'ST' Ia 11, 3. 8. For such a discussion, see the volume in this series on 'Arguments for the Existence of God'. 9. The Christian Trinity and the Plotinian Triad also differ in their structure. The members of the former are, but the members of the latter are not, coequal. I shall discuss Plotinus later. 10. 'God and Philosophy' (Hutchinson, 1966) p. 47. 11. 'ST' la 7, 1. 12. 'New Essays in Philosophical Theology', ed. A. Flew and A. Macintyre (S.C.M. Press, 1963) p. 68. Hick has shown that the failure to distinguish between ontological and logical necessity vitiates Malcolm's reformulation of the ontological argument ('The Many-Faced Argument' Macmillan, 1968 pp. 341-56). 152 13. In his 'De Consolatione', 5. 14. 'ST' la 10, 1. 15. 'Timaeus', 37 D. 16. Mal. 3:6 (quoted by Aquinas in 'ST' la 9, 1). 17. So far as revelation is concerned, we have a symbol of this divine transfiguration in the manner in which the Johannine Christ (as the incarnate Word) associates 'glory' with his Passion. 18. 'ST' la 3, 7, trans. Gilby, 'Philosophical Texts', 188. 19. 1 'Contra Gentiles', 31, trans. Gilby, ibid., 189. 20. 'ST' la 4, 3. 21. 1 'Contra Gentiles', 57, trans. Gilby, 'Philosophical Texts', 297. 22. The problems I have stated become even more acute when they are raised with reference to the Incarnation. 23. 'Opusc.' 26, 'de Rationibus Fidei', trans. Gilby, 'Philosophical Texts', 310. 24. For another statement of the view that God, though in himself timeless, knows the world as a temporal succession, see G. F. Stout's 'God and Nature' (Cambridge University Press, 1952) pp. 222-30. 25. I cannot here discuss the scholastic doctrine (inherited from Neo-Platonism via Augustine) that evil is 'a privation of good'. It is enough to observe that those who adhere to the doctrine affirm the full reality of evil, and that we still have to explain how the privation arose. 26. (Macmillan, 1966). There are two further problems connected with the idea of divine omnipotence that I must also leave to my fellow-writers in this series. First, does belief in God's omnipotence entail universalism {the view that all men will be saved)? Secondly, is theism discredited because (as Flew asserts) it is not falsifiable by the fact of evil? I believe that we must remain agnostic concerning the answer to the first question, and that there is no reason for (but that there are many reasons against) the view that theistic state­ ments must be empirically testable. 27. Is. 55:8. 28. 'ST' 1a 12, 1, trans. Gilby, 'Philosophical Texts', 254. 153 29. 'De Divinis Nominibus', 1, trans. Gilby, 'Theological Texts', 482. 30. Two valuable subsequent studies in the theistic use of 'mystery' are contained in E. L. Mascall's 'Words and Images' (Darton, Longman & Todd, 1968), and H. D. Lewis's essay in 'Prospect for Metaphysics', ed. I. T. Ramsey (Allen & Unwin, 1961). 31. 'Twentieth-Century Religious Thought' (S.C.M. Press, 1963) p. 324. 32. 'ST' la 8, 1, trans. Gilby, 'Philosophical Texts', 234. 33. 'The Elements of Christian Philosophy', Mentor-Omega Books, New American Library, 1960 p. 148. 34. I do not say that all these errors are committed by all theologians who can be called 'existentialist'; but they are all committed by Bultmann, who is the most influential of living existentialists; and they unfortunately obscure his many valuable insights. 35. On the inadequacy of Jaspers and Bultmann in this respect, see Eugene Long's 'Jaspers and Bultmann' (1968). 36. I ought, perhaps, to comment on one further, purely logical, question raised by this analysis. Is 'God' a name or a description? Some philosophers (e.g. Geach in 'Three Philosophers' (Blackwell, 1961) pp. 109-10) hold that it is a description. Others (e.g. Ziff in 'Religious Experience and Truth' ed. Hood (Oliver & Boyd, 1961) pp. 195-202) hold that it is a name. The truth surely is (as Norris Clarke observes in his answer to Ziff, ibid., pp. 224-6) that 'God' has both functions. It is a name in so far as it is used (like 'John' or 'Mary') to denote an individual who can be addressed in prayer and worship. It is a description in so far as we can give its meaning by listing God's properties. Yet it differs from all finite names in so far as the being it denotes is not an in­ dividuated essence or member of a class. Equally it differs from all finite descriptions in so far as the properties it connotes can have only one referent. The ways in which 'God' names and describes are logically odd; but they are logically acceptable if the concept of God as a unique being is metaphysically valid. 154 CHAPTER 2 1. I shall discuss Whitehead's thought m detail in my section on 'Process theology'. 2. 'Religion in the Making' (Cambridge University Press, 1926) pp. 154-5. 3. 'Process and Reality' (Cambridge University Press, 1929) p. 490. 4. 'A Christian Natural Theology' (Lutterworth Press, 1966) p. 211. 5. 'Science and the Modern World' (Cambridge University Press, 1926) pp. 221-2. The ontological status of Whitehead's 'eternal objects' is also very enigmatic. 6. It is even more obvious that the doctrine of a finite god has no room for mysticism of either a theistic or monistic kind; for mysticism in all its forms implies that the object of union is an unconditioned Ground of all that exists. 7. 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16; Heb. 11:3; andJohn 1:3. 8. The Neo-Platonists developed various metaphysical and religious elements in Plato's philosophy. Plotinus's thought is contained in 'The Enneads', which I shall quote from Stephen MacKenna's translation (Faber, 1956). 9. Plotinus exercised a great influence on St Augustine and Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, and through them on medieval mystics and theologians. 10. 'Enneads', 5.4.1; 5.5.4; 6.8.11. 11. Ibid., 4.8.6. 12. Ibid., 5.1.7. 13. Ibid., 5.2.1. 14. Ibid., 2.9.4. 15. Ibid., 1.8.8-9; 2.4.6. 16. Ibid., 6.8.13. 17. Ibid., 6.8.9. 18. 'A History of Philosophy', I (Burns & Oates, 1946) 467. 19. A fortiori it is meaningless to regard me-antic matter as the source of evil. 20. In his introduction to MacKenna's translation, p. xix. 21. The writings attributed to him were probably 155 composed at the end of the fifth century. 22. See (for example) the invaluable Blackfriars sym­ posium entitled 'Mystery and Mysticism', and especially A. Leonard's essay (1956). 23. On the Christo-centric nature of Christian mysticism, see ch. 9 of David Knowles's excellent 'What is Mysticism?' (Burns & Oates, 1966). 24. It must be noted that pantheism has been (and still is) widely held in many non-philosophical forms. 'Nature­ religion' - belief in a cosmos that is itself divine (or the extension of a divine Reality) - has been present in all cultures. 25. 'Ethics', 1, def. 6. All my references are to this work in Andrew Boyle's translation (Everyman ed., 1959). 26. Ibid., 1, prop. 14. 27. Ibid., 1, prop. 33. 28. Ibid., 2, prop. 11. 29. Ibid., 5, prop. 36. 30. Sankara's teaching, and Hindu monism as a whole, is well summarised by R. C. Zaehner in his 'Hinduism' (Oxford University Press, 1962) ch 2-4. The Western philosopher closest to Sankara is F. H. Bradley, who regarded the world as a mere 'appearance' of the Absolute. It is important to realise that (as Zaehner shows) the monistic element in Hinduism has always coexisted with theistic elements. I shall recur to this point later in this book. 31. Thus Spinoza, although he formally identifies God with the world, implies that the former transcends the latter when he affirms that God loves himself through finite selves and that all things are determined by God's nature; for A cannot love himself through B or C unless his selfhood is distinct from A's and B's, and X cannot determine Y unless it is distinct from Y. At least there must be some distinction, some form and degree of transcendence of lover over loved and cause over effect. A similar ambiguity in Hegel's thought is noted by Frederick Copleston ('A History of Philosophy', vii, Burns & Oates, 1963) 195-8. Although Hegel speaks as if the Absolute were identical with the Totality, he also implies that it has an element of transcendence. As Copleston 156 puts it, 'we cannot escape making a distinction between inner and outer, between the one infinite Life, self-actualising Spirit, and the finite manifestations in and through which it lives and has its being' (ibid., p. 198). 32. 'Spinoza' (Penguin Books, 1951) p. 46. 33. 'Philosophy of Religion' (English Universities Press, 1965) p. 209. 34. Cambridge University Press, 1926. 35. Cambridge University Press, 1929. 36. 'Religion in the Making', p.
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