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12/22/2015 6:22 pm  #1


Thomist natural theologions who deny devine revelation?

Are there any Thomists who buy all of the Natural Theology in Thomism, but who buy absolutely none of the “sacred science” beyond that?

In other words, I'm looking for explicit, self-avowed Thomists who don't believe in any additional divine revelation. Is there anyone, now or in the past, who says something like the following?

"Hypothetical Position" wrote:

I completely agree with Aquinas about what human reason alone can tell us about God. Everything that he says about God that he attributes solely to human reason is completely persuasive to me. I also agree with him completely about what the limits of human reason are. I further agree with him that all the additional Christian beliefs that he attributes to divine revelation are logically coherent; that is, all of Aquinas's defenses of these beliefs from charges of incoherence succeed. I also agree that, when Aquinas uses human reason to draw implications from divine revelation, he makes valid conditional inferences.

BUT I don't buy any claim that any divine revelation has actually happened. I agree with Aquinas about how far human reason can take us, but I think that, beyond that point, there is no justified belief. I think that a rational appraisal of the evidence would find vanishingly little support for a divine origin of any of the purported revelations that have come down to us.

I concede that human reason leaves ‘gaps’ in our picture of God (e.g., about whether God is ‘three persons, one being’). I offer no alternative account to fill in these gaps. I agree that the Christian account is one possibility (epistemically speaking) for what might truly be the case. Certainly something is the case, some account is true, if not the Christian one. But I assert that there is no justification for believing in any account that goes beyond what human reason alone can provide.

[This post is based on a comment that I posted to Feser's blog.  But the comment there was off topic, and I'm hoping to get more detailed discussion here.]
 

 

12/22/2015 6:42 pm  #2


Re: Thomist natural theologions who deny devine revelation?

This is basically my position (though I'm more friendly to the idea that reason permits ”divine" revelation in some sense). Because of it I'm more inclined to call myself a Platonist or a Proclist than a Thomist.

Last edited by iwpoe (12/22/2015 6:45 pm)


Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
 

12/24/2015 9:54 am  #3


Re: Thomist natural theologions who deny devine revelation?

I believe Mortimer J. Adler held a position very like that describe by Tyrrell for most of his philosophical life.

 

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