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PROOFS of GOD PROOFS of GOD CLASSICAL ARGUMENTS FROM TERTULLIAN TO BARTH Matthew Levering K Matthew Levering, Proofs of God Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2016. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) © 2016 by Matthew Levering Published by Baker Academic a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516­6287 www.bakeracademic.com Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. Library of Congress Cataloging­in­Publication Data Names: Levering, Matthew, 1971– author. Title: Proofs of God : classical arguments from Tertullian to Barth / Matthew Levering. Description: Grand Rapids, MI : Baker Academic, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015043725 | ISBN 9780801097560 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: God—Proof. Classification: LCC BT103 .L48 2016 | DDC 212/.1—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc .gov/2015043725 Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Matthew Levering, Proofs of God Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2016. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) To Thomas Joseph White, OP Matthew Levering, Proofs of God Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2016. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Patristic and Medieval Arguments for God’s Existence 27 Tertullian 29 Gregory of Nazianzus 33 Augustine 39 John of Damascus 44 Anselm of Canterbury 48 Thomas Aquinas 57 William of Ockham 69 2. Reformation and Enlightenment Views 79 John Calvin 82 Michel de Montaigne 87 Francisco Suárez 93 René Descartes 101 Blaise Pascal 107 David Hume 115 Immanuel Kant 122 3. Nineteenth­ and Twentieth­Century Responses 141 John Henry Newman 144 Maurice Blondel 150 vii Matthew Levering, Proofs of God Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2016. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) viii Contents Pierre Rousselot 159 Ludwig Wittgenstein 167 Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange 174 Martin Heidegger 182 Karl Barth 191 Conclusion 207 Select Bibliography 219 Subject Index 239 Name Index 243 Matthew Levering, Proofs of God Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2016. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Acknowledgments This book had its origins in a doctoral seminar on the proofs for God’s exis­ tence that I “co­taught” with Steven A. Long at Ave Maria University some years ago. In that seminar, I spent most of my time taking careful notes! Steve has profound insight not only into Thomas Aquinas but also David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, as all those privileged to take the seminar can attest. My chapter drafts were greatly improved by generous scholars who read portions of the manuscript on which they have expertise: Don Briel, Thomas Hibbs, Andrew Hofer, OP, Robert Koerpel, John Michael McDermott, SJ, Sean McGrath, Benjamin Myers, Kenneth Oakes, Kevin O’Reilly, OP, and Andrew Rosato. Michael Sirilla and Thomas Joseph White, OP, read the whole manuscript and saved me from many omissions and mistakes. I have incorporated a number of suggestions from all of these friends and colleagues. Francesca Murphy, Matthew Ramage, Emery de Gaál, Michael Sirilla, and Chad Pecknold testified to the viability of the project as a Baker Academic textbook. Bishop Robert Barron enthusiastically encouraged the project and inspired me by his own expertise on the topic. At Baker Academic, Dave Nelson supported the project from the outset, guided the book to publica­ tion, and offered wise counsel for improvement. Baker Academic’s Brian Bolger and the editorial staff did a superb job preparing the manuscript. My amazing research assistant, David Augustine, compiled the bibliogra­ phy and indexes and provided numerous corrections and suggestions that I incorporated into the text. I wrote this book for my children, in case it might ever be of use to them. May God, who in his infinite goodness is the meaning of life, give my beloved children eternal life in Christ Jesus. For my wife, Joy, my gratitude is so deep. ix Matthew Levering, Proofs of God Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2016. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) x Acknowledgments The simple words of Genesis 24:67 express what I wish Joy to know: “he loved her.” The book is dedicated to a master theologian and dear friend, born in the same year and month as myself: Fr. Thomas Joseph White, OP. Of him it may be said, “The crown of the wise is their wisdom” (Prov. 14:24). God’s blessings be upon you, Fr. Thomas Joseph. Matthew Levering, Proofs of God Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2016. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Introduction In this textbook, I offer a concise survey of the major responses, pro and contra, in the Christian tradition to the question of whether the existence of God can be demonstrated by human reason. Readers and classroom teachers should feel free to use the book selectively, rather than studying all of the twenty­one figures I have chosen. My surveys of these twenty­ one figures aim to be accurate, concise, and thorough. For readers who are interested, I give my assessment of these figures in the conclusions to the three chapters. In the surveys themselves, I try to be descriptive rather than evaluative. In this introduction (as well as in the book’s conclusion), I offer my view of where things stand in contemporary intellectual discourse and popular culture regarding the topic of whether God’s existence can be demonstrated by human reason. In this introduction, I also give a rationale for choosing to study these twenty­one figures, and I examine the key biblical and Hel­ lenistic ideas that set the terms for the demonstrations of God’s existence in the Christian tradition. To put my cards on the table, I think that the cosmos cannot be the source of its own existence. The cosmos is not a necessary being. In this regard, David Hart rightly remarks that “the contingent can only exist derivatively, receiving its existence from the Absolute.”1 When Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow claim that God’s existence is no longer plausible because 1. David Bentley Hart, The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 147. Hart helps to correct misperceptions of what Ilia Delio, OSF, critically calls “the Greek architecture of metaphysics” (Delio, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution, and the Power of Love [Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2013], xx). The misper­ ceptions are, unfortunately, apparent in Delio’s book. 1 Matthew Levering, Proofs of God Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2016. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) 2 Proofs of God all things could have come forth from the quantum law of gravity, they fail to recognize, as Hart says, that the issue is “the very possibility of existence as such, not only of this universe but of all the laws and physical condi­ tions that produced it.”2 It is not necessary that any finite thing, let alone a quantum law, exist. Finite things exist, but they are merely limited modes of being; they are not being as such. A quantum law, insofar as it is, must derive its being from a source. Hawking and Mlodinow can be excused for their failure to grasp that the issue is “existence as such.” Their misunderstanding is shared by many professional philosophers. Thus, in his Arguing about Gods, Graham Oppy supposes himself to be undermining Thomas Aquinas’s five ways for dem­ onstrating God’s existence when he remarks that “it is hard to see that there is anything in Big Bang cosmology that rules out the existence of an infinite regress of changers, each changed by another.”3 Oppy’s point would not have bothered Aquinas at all, of course, since Aquinas allows philosophi­ cally for an eternal universe. In fact, none of Aquinas’s five ways depends on the universe having a temporal beginning. A similar mistake appears in Simon Blackburn’s Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy. Blackburn devotes a chapter to God where he purports to engage Aquinas’s “cosmological argument.” But for his description of Aquinas’s argument, he rather oddly turns to Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. The 2. Hart, Experience of God, 40. See Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design (New York: Bantam, 2010). 3. Graham Oppy, Arguing about Gods (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 103. For his part, Anthony Kenny directs a set of arguments against Aquinas’s five ways, including the following claim: “If a thing cannot be moved by itself, it does not follow that it must be moved by something else. Why cannot it just be in motion, without being moved by anything, whether by itself or by anything else?” (Kenny, The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence [London: Routledge, 1969], 19). Seizing on Aquinas’s example from the transmission of heat, Kenny suggests that Aquinas depends here on outdated Aristotelian physics. Edward Feser has responded to Kenny in his Aquinas (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009), 67–69.
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