I honestly don't know exactly who you're talking about when you mention classical theists and Thomists. There are indeed some radical strict observance thomists out there, but they are a very small minority when you compare to the rest. Most thomists I know are open-minded people who, although cautious about certain modern positions (otherwise they wouldn't be thomistic or aristotelian, would they?), are often eager to find new arguments and interesting positions to defend and see how they relate to A-T metaphysics. And this has been a historical trend, too, along the 20th century: Jacques Maritain interacted with many different modern philosophers, especially Bergson and others in the French tradition, and so did his followers; Norris Clarke fused thomistic metaphysics with personalism and phenomenology, defending a metaphysic of being as "being in relation", and he often also interacted with analytical arguments; Herbert McCabe, Geach, Kenny, etc mixed thomism with Wittgenstein and Frege; Germain Grisez, Finnis and other proponents of "new natural law" are still from a brand of thomism and obviously gave it their own twist; John Haldane, James F. Ross, David Oderberg, Edward Feser, Robert Koons, Alex Pruss, etc. all heavily interact wih analytic philosophy and have no problem using contemporary arguments to defend their positions -- that is common of all of them, even though some are more "thomistic" than the others. I really don't see these people telling others to "not study modern philosophy" or to think that all modern and contemporary philosophy is trash or anything like that.

Of course convinced Thomists will often criticize some modern philosophical positions and obsessions, but that's why they are thomists after all. Feser may exaggerate a little sometimes, but all he's doing is trying to bring attention to important questions and arguments that had been sadly ignored in the broad area of contemporary philosophy nowadays, confined to medievalists. And it's very fair to try to bring these questions and arguments back to the limelight.

I don't think protestants criticize what they call "moral therapeutic deism" for being unaffiliated theism, but because they think it's often lax and just a reflection of a feel-good culture. There is at least a good critique behind the term, whether one agrees with it or not; it's not just prejudice.

What person has ever insinuated cosmological arguments would take is to full-blown Christian theism? There are specific arguments for Christianity, but no one pretends classical cosmological arguments take us there. The disjunctive syllogism part may be true, but that's just there for cultural and, actually, often personal and rational reasons: a lot of people find Christianity to be be plausible with some of its specific teachings and traditions, and in particular are attracted to the figure of Jesus, but what stops them from being Christians is naturalism. When Rousseau wrote that Socrates's death was that of a philosopher, but Jesus' that of a God, for example. I am one who thinks that even setting aside historical arguments, I would expect something like Christianity (especially with the Incarnation and other elements of redemption) to be true under theism. Maybe that's why there is the disjunctive syllogism after all -- not in every case of course, but at least in some cases.

Last edited by Miguel (5/11/2018 11:09 am)

I suppose I should chime in with a serious comment. I start by flagging the distinction between Thomist philosophy and the Thomist movement, to make it completely obvious that I will sometimes use “Thomism” to talk about the latter rather than the former in the following.

Reasonable Faith and Thomism are two very different kinds of movements. Reasonable Faith is an apologetical and evangelical movement centered around a handful of arguments as “theory-neutral” as possible by design; Thomism is a movement centered around a systematic philosophy that thinks they more or less have the truth (systematically) worked out and have for hundreds of years. You would expect them to be correspondingly insular, to steer people away from “false philosophies”, and to not really be too enthusiastic about adopting new sets of terminology and distinctions (remember: they think they more or less worked it out hundreds of years ago). 

You would also expect them to mostly engage with new philosophy for “evangelical”, “outreach”, or “educational” type purposes, rather than to “push the field forward” (remember: they think they've largely worked things out, and so the task for them is to keep people from straying from the truth rather than to keep pushing towards it).* This is probably in part why Ed mostly writes introductory manuals meant for large audiences, not academic treatises proposing clever new ways of assaying trope bundles (or whatever). I'm trying to give some perspective. Craig is also on record telling people to stay away from even the academic philosophy books of the "infidels" and "unbelievers" (until they have sufficiently self-indoctrinated, anyway), and this is in line with his evangelical project, but he doesn't think he has the whole, systematic truth like Thomists do, and witness the result.

Dan's thoughts on this are precisely what you should expect someone who thinks Thomism is ultimately wrong, and contemporary work more often right (or at least pushing the field ahead), to say, and I think he should be commended for saying it. I think we need to stop insulating our philosophical views from the rest of our views, whether for the sake of not insulting the Thomist majority in our regular haunts or out of habit.

I think he might be working off some bad data on the Reasonable Faith side, though. I've interacted with both Reasonable Faith people and Thomists and the latter, for all their problems, are, precisely because Thomism pushes systematicity, usually at least somewhat more sophisticated, whereas many Reasonable Faith people seem to just sit around compiling argument maps for apologetical reasons. There are absolutely smart people on both sides, but if we're judging by overall impact on the public and young philosophers I think he's overestimating the Reasonable Faith side of things. (Sorry to talk about you in third person, Dan.) I mean, we've all met the pigheaded combox Thomist who repeats the Thomist position without actually engaging with the arguments against him, or dismisses contemporary philosophy as obviously stupid, and Humean, and infantile, but we shouldn't be surprised to see people in a movement get carried away and I think, overall, Thomism does more good for its members than its Reasonable Faith counterpart for its.

Anyway, I've repaid this thread for the jokes. So off I go.

*The same explains why Thomists tend to ignore other scholastics: they think they're wrong too and, in their case, they aren't a majority view these days and Thomists typically can't justify interacting with them in depth for “evangelical” “educational” purposes. (I think this is tragic, but you probably could have read my evenhanded inclusive views off my metaphilosophical commitments in advance.) It also accounts for Thomists working to absorb new results from sciences and other non-philosophical fields, which is one of the few "new" things left for them to do, as well as there still being individual members who incorporate results from areas of philosophy Thomism traditionally has less to say about.

Jeremy Taylor wrote:

​I certainly agree that Christian apologists often don't give enough consideration of other religions, and seem to too easily reach the position that Christianity is the best explanation. For example, huge weight is often put on historical miracles, without proper explanation why this is so important (and dismissal of miracles in other faiths). Caricatures of other faiths are still distressingly common (Buddhism is nihilistic, Islam is portrays God as simply bloodthirsty and lacking all mercy, and so on.).

I think that may be the case for Hinduism, but not so for Islam. Take David Wood for example, his main outreach seems to stem from criticism of Islam. As a general movement, perhaps the point sticks to Christian apologists in general, but there are a handful who are getting elbow deep.

I'm a little lost about a lack of explanation on the importance of historical miracles, though. The resurrection is a necessary condition for the truth of Christianity. It's pretty much the main argument for its veracity!

A quick comment on dismissing miracle reports in other faiths. Again, as a general trend among Christian apologists I have no gripe (even inclined to agree) but among those that contribute to the literature there is ample openness to the possibility of miracles in other religions (I'm thinking here of people like Tim Mcgrew who has claimed this is the majority view)