Tractatus de Deo uno secundum naturam

The Scriptures, asserting a rational knowledge of the existence of God from the works of God, in no way presuppose as a necessary condition the tradition of positive doctrine concerning God, or faith.

« The Scriptures assert both the faculty of knowing, and the fact of knowing, that God exists through the light of reason from the works of God, in such a way that they in no way presuppose a positive revelation handed down by tradition as a condition without which human reason could not reach that knowledge; nor do they teach only the recognition of a truth believed through faith, as some more recent writers interpret, but a manifestation of God through creatures sufficient for rational knowledge is taught in those same Scriptures. »

No hermeneutical principle drawn from the texts and their context, and none derived from an understanding of Christian antiquity, underlies the interpretation of Scripture which we reject in this thesis; the whole of it is brought in by certain learned men, lest the philosophical system to which they have attached themselves suffer any harm. There is no room here to set out at length that system, which is manifold and varied in itself; the points which we have here to refute come back to this view: the truths of the moral and theological order, either all of them or at least those which they call fundamental, and among these, by name, the existence of God, can indeed be received and believed by human reason, because they were first revealed by positive revelation from God to man and afterwards propagated through instruction and tradition to the whole human race; but men deprived of this instruction and tradition would perpetually and necessarily be ignorant of those truths. For those learned men deny that human reason, by its own inborn power, can come to know those truths with certainty from other truths likewise known in advance by the innate light, and therefore they deny that the existence of God can be known from the previously known¹ existence of this universe. When, however, they fall upon the doctrine of Scripture proposed in the preceding theses II. III., they try to persuade themselves and others that in the Scriptures the knowledge of God is presupposed as received by tradition, and that the one thing taught there is that reason, already informed by faith, or at least, if not supernatural, certainly natural, can find in creatures the confirmation and recognition of the truth believed. Yet the testimonies set forth above do not in any way admit this interpretation.

1° It is proved by a negative argument, that in the present matter, and considering the manner in which rational knowledge of the existence of God is declared in the Scriptures, it is in fact an argument excluding the necessity of tradition supposed by the adversaries. In no place where there is discussion of the knowledge of God's existence from creatures is there any trace or any mention of a necessary positive revelation or tradition; but always there are posited, as the necessary and sufficient elements for acquiring that knowledge, on one side the rational nature, on the other the universe as the medium through which God manifests himself and from which he is known². And so, through the consideration by which reason is occupied with this visible universe, God's manifestation is said to be completed in second act: « what is known (or knowable) of God is manifest in them » (φανερὸν ἐστιν ἐν αὐτοῖς). Then the cause is stated by which it is made manifest: « for God manifested it to them » (ἐφανέρωσε); next the mode and elements of the manifestation are described: « for his invisible things are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made » (τοῖς ποιήμασι νοούμενα καθοράται). Visible things are the medium by whose understanding the invisible things of God come to be understood, and are beheld by the mind. Rom. I. Likewise, in the book of Wisdom a general principle is laid down: « the Creator can be seen by man » (ὁ γενεσιουργὸς αὐτῶν θεωρεῖται); the medium of knowledge is defined: « from the greatness and beauty of creatures » (ἐκ μεγέθους καὶ καλλονῆς κτισμάτων); the mode of knowledge is added: to be known by concluding from creatures to the Creator (ἀναλόγως θεωρεῖται). From this general principle men who do not know the Creator are rebuked, « who have not understood him who is³. » Whence could and should they have understood? « From the good things that are seen » (ἐκ τῶν ὁρωμένων ἀγαθῶν)⁴; « attending to the works » (τοῖς ἔργοις προσέχοντες). In Acts XIV. 16 Paul expressly recalls God's testimony about himself to all nations, but restricts it to the testimony of deeds, to the testimony through natural benefits: « he did not leave himself without witness, doing good from heaven, giving rains » etc.

But a) it is incredible that the inspired writers, in so careful a declaration of the manner of knowing God, should have enumerated all the other things which, on the hypothesis of the adversaries, cannot even have a place without that presupposed knowledge through tradition, and yet never have indicated this one thing, which on that hypothesis is given to all and is very easy and by itself alone sufficient, when they were speaking of men's guilt in not knowing the true God, if they had judged that traditional knowledge to be the foundation and the necessary condition for recognising God from creatures. b) It is incredible that the sacred writers, if they had been of the adversaries' opinion, should have referred the whole crime of the Gentiles, by which they were inexcusable, to neglect and abuse of recognition from creatures, with no mention made of neglect and abuse of knowledge from the revelation handed down. c) It is still more incredible that Paul, who in a way eagerly seeks out God's testimony and manifestation (φανέρωσιν) to all the Gentiles, compared with God's testimony to the chosen people, should have neglected the testimony properly so called, which the adversaries suppose to have been the foundation of the knowledge of God for all the Gentiles, and should have appealed solely to the metaphorical testimony of creatures.

Nor can it be said that the sacred writers, in declaring the manner in which the Gentiles could and should have known God from creatures, passed over in silence the revelation about God's existence received by the Gentiles through tradition as the necessary foundation of recognition from creatures, on the ground that the impossibility of knowledge from creatures without the presupposed traditional faith was self-evident and so obvious to all that that faith was presupposed as the foundation in every discourse that treats of rational knowledge from creatures. For how can this condition of human reason be imagined so well known that it could have been tacitly presupposed even in a careful description of rational knowledge, when it was unknown, until these very recent times, to all the Gentiles of whom the Scriptures speak and all the faithful to whom they speak; and when the adversaries themselves, to whom this hypothesis is quite necessary in order to reconcile their opinion with the Scriptures, are accustomed to accuse, as the chief error of Gentile philosophy, the belief that by the light of reason alone one could arrive from the knowledge of visible things to the knowledge of invisible things?

2°. Proved by an excluding argument, by which in the Scriptures it is taught, through opposition, that the true God, although he was not made known to the Gentiles by positive revelation, could and should have been known by them through the light of reason. Already in Rom. I. Paul tacitly sets over against one another, for the Gentiles and for the Jews, the means of knowing God: manifestation through creatures and immediate revelation. For since he has the purpose of showing that both Jews and Gentiles are guilty and inexcusable, in both cases he assumes as the foundation the knowledge of God, namely that, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God. The knowledge of God among the Jews did not need to be proved; the Apostle assumes it as perfectly well known, because God had manifested himself to them by positive revelation; but what needed proof was the knowledge, or the possibility, and therefore the duty, of knowing God among the Gentiles. He proves this possibility and this duty by the fact that a manifestation of God was made not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles. The question is asked: what sort of manifestation is this? The Apostle answers: to the Jews he manifested himself by positive revelation, which is taken as known; to the Gentiles by the light of reason as the acting principle, through creatures as the immediate object of knowledge: « God manifested it to them; for his invisible things from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made. » The adversaries answer the same question: God manifested himself to the Jews by the positive Mosaic revelation, and to the Gentiles by positive revelation made to Adam and derived to them by tradition, without which there is no manifestation of God in creatures to human reason. But let them allow us to keep the words of the Apostle, and not substitute for them other words, not from the Apostle, but taken from a preconceived philosophical system. Neither here nor elsewhere in Scripture, where the knowledge of God among the Jews and among the Gentiles is treated, is there any trace of an opposition between the Mosaic revelation and a primitive revelation; but what is treated is manifestation mediated through creatures, in opposition to immediate manifestation through revelation, however and by whatever herald that revelation was made. Where, therefore, to this positive revelation there is opposed another manifestation to the Gentiles, by which « the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, » the former is not included in the latter, but is excluded by force of the opposition itself.

The same opposition is expressly set down at Acts XIV. 16, compared with 14; and XVII. 26. 27., compared with 30: between the testimony of God, which he gave concerning himself among men in creatures, that they should seek God, and the positive revelation by which the same God, living, creator of heaven and earth, is proclaimed. In almost the same way is opposed the knowledge of the wisdom of God shining forth in this created universe through rational wisdom, and the knowledge of divine things through preaching, which demands faith before knowledge, and which therefore seems foolishness to the wise, who themselves have become fools; 1 Cor. I. 21: « For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe⁵. »

Finally, the opposition is explicit and most express in Rom. II., between the knowledge of the moral law through nature and through positive revelation, as has been abundantly demonstrated in the preceding theses. In the law, however, the first of all, and the foundation of the whole law, is that: « I am the Lord your God. » Nay, even considering the moral law in general, while the promulgation which, formally as inducing obligation, is declared to be by nature is set in opposition to revelation, by that very fact the manifestation of God is no less declared to be by nature, in the same opposition to revelation; because in the manifestation of moral obligation to human reason there is already implicitly contained the manifestation of God as lawgiver, in the way that was said above.

3°. Proof from the distinction between the first, confused knowledge of God, which arises of itself, as if natural to human reason, and the more distinct knowledge which can be acquired by more careful consideration. This distinction, which the Fathers declare more fully, as we shall see in what follows, is already indicated in the Scriptures, whose teaching we are now examining. But the term knowledge of God applies not only to the more cultivated knowledge, but also to that primitive, confused notion of God derived to human reason from the consideration of creatures. According to the doctrine of St Paul set forth at the Areopagus of the Athenians, Acts XVII. 26–28., first of all this universe, in its physical and historical course, has been arranged by God for the whole human race as a term, from which for all there arises the inquiry after God. This is intrinsic to the ordered course of this world; this is its proximate and, as it were, concrete end, so that human reason, attending to these works (being already in possession of itself), seeks God: « he made of one all the race of men to dwell upon the whole face of the earth, determining appointed times (the physical course) and the bounds of their habitation (the historical course), to seek God » (cf. above p. 41. sq.). This inquiry of the maker from the things made, as Tertullian puts it, already includes some confused and obscure notion of God, and is evidently the first arising knowledge of God, which presupposes no other antecedent. But this very knowledge is said by Paul to have arisen from the consideration of creatures in their ordered course. Therefore, according to the philosophy, if one may so speak, which is apostolic and revealed in the Scriptures, this universe has been ordered by God for the human race so as to awaken that first knowledge of God, though still obscure and confused, by which men are led to further inquiry, without any other knowledge of the existence of God from tradition being presupposed to this first knowledge as a sine qua non condition and as a necessary foundation.

That first obscure and confused idea and knowledge of God, arising from attention to creatures, is common to all who use reason; and so from its very universality it is understood to arise, as it were, spontaneously and without deliberation. But in further inquiry and refinement the deliberate application of reason is now required, which pertains to the second stage of the knowledge of God. Man can and is bound, by the right use of reason, which is the image of God, to cultivate that primitive knowledge of the true God, arising spontaneously from the very consideration of visible things; but in this deliberate inquiry he can also fail through his own fault. « If haply they might feel after him, or find him, although he be not far from each one of us; for in him we live, and move, and are; as some also of your own poets have said: for we are also his offspring » vv. 27. 28; cf. Sap. XIII. 6–9.⁶ Man can therefore, because it is obscure and confused, apply the primitive idea of God, arising spontaneously from creatures, to things which are not God: « the notion of the divine being is naturally present in all⁷, but sin is committed through ignorance of what is worshipped » Gregor. Nyss. de beatitud. or. V. T. I. p. 801; Tertull. contr. Marc. I, I. c. 11. This happens only through abuse of reason, while men, as St Jerome says (in Tit. I. 10.), « pervert the good seed of minds, which naturally has the knowledge of God, by empty persuasion, » and therefore are inexcusable Rom. I. 20⁸; Sap. XIII. 8. Yet even in this perversion the primitive and spontaneous idea of the true God remains indestructible. For, on the one hand, the soul was made the image of God by the natural light of reason itself, and first (not in time but in finality) for knowing the truth of God; on the other hand, this universe is the natural manifestation of the Creator to the rational soul; this is the cause why that idea and knowledge of God both arises as it were spontaneously and without deliberation, and cannot be exterminated from a soul that uses reason. In accordance with this, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Cyprian and Lactantius bear witness that the knowledge of the true God, first conceived, remains even in the very worshippers of idols. « The soul, though hemmed in by wicked institutions ... though made a handmaid of false gods, yet when it comes to itself, as from drunkenness, from sleep, or from some sickness, and recovers its health, names God by this name alone, because it is proper to the true God » Tertull. Apolog. c. 17. Cf. Origen. de Princip. l. IV. c. 36. Hence it is also understood how not only theoretical knowledge and practical denial of the true God, but also the primitive, undeliberated, confused notion and its deliberate false application, can exist together. « They hold the truth of God in injustice: because that which is known of God is manifest in them »⁹; « when they knew God, they did not glorify him as God... and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of corruptible man; » « they did not like to have God in their knowledge » Rom. I. 18. 21. 28.

4°. Proof from the agreement of the Catholic understanding. Those who interpret the words of Scripture with which we have so far been dealing, and especially Rom. I. 19. sqq., in such a way that there is no faculty of human reason (sufficiently explained) to know God from the consideration of creatures, unless a positive revelation of the existence of God, first made to man and preserved through tradition among all the Gentiles, is presupposed: these are certainly opposed by the sense and consensus of Christian antiquity in understanding these testimonies of the Scriptures. The opposition remains almost the same, whether those more recent writers say that, from the innate character of human reason in its present state, no idea can be formed by it and no conception of supersensible things, and of God by name, can be grasped except from revelation and positive teaching about God and supersensible things; or whether, by some circumlocution, they assert that the idea and knowledge of God must be presupposed as already conceived, as a necessary element for the sufficient explanation of human reason, and that therefore reason, as not yet in possession of itself, cannot arrive at the knowledge of God unless this very knowledge of God is instilled into it through external revelation and instruction. For it is wholly certain that the Fathers and the Doctors of the Schools after them understood the words of St Paul in such a way as to assert for human reason the faculty of knowing God from the manifestation alone which shines forth in creatures, and not merely the faculty of receiving, from primitive revelation and tradition, the knowledge of the existing God « by way of faith », as the adversaries say; which faith is then presupposed as the necessary foundation and condition, without which there could be no knowledge and demonstration of the existence of God from creatures.

We shall set out the doctrine of the Fathers in what follows; meanwhile let it suffice to have consulted, among the Greek interpreters, the chief of them, Chrysostom, who declares that the manifestation of God, by which the Apostle says that what is knowable of God was manifest among the Gentiles, consists wholly of deeds and works, expressly excluding from it the tradition of positive teaching. The holy Doctor asks: « What is that which is said: because what is known of God is manifest in them? » Then he declares the sense of this apostolic teaching thus: « God from the beginning placed the knowledge of himself in men.... And how is it plain, O Paul, that God placed the knowledge in them? Because, he says, what is known of him is manifest in them. But this is an assertion, not a demonstration. Do you rather prove to me and show that the knowledge of God was manifest to them, and that they neglected it of their own accord. Whence then was it manifest? Did he send a voice to them? By no means; but he did what could draw them more than a voice: he set created things in the midst, so that the learned and the unlearned, the Scythian and the barbarian, by sight alone, perceiving the beauty of visible things, might rise up to God. Therefore he says: his invisible things from the creation of the world » etc. Chrysostom goes on to describe the greatness, beauty and order of creatures, and he says that this is « a voice crying more loudly than a trumpet, a preaching of the Creator, a great teaching set forth to the end that the Gentiles might know God » in Rom. hom. III. n. 2.¹⁰

One more of the Latin Fathers is to be set beside Chrysostom: St Augustine. « That God, he says, is a certain eternal life, unchangeable, understanding, wise, making others wise, some philosophers of this age also saw… For since they too saw, so far as it can be seen by man, the Creator through the creature, the Maker through the thing made, the Fashioner of the world through the world; the Apostle Paul is the witness, whom Christians certainly ought to believe…. But it might be said to him: whence, then, do those impious men hold the truth (that is, hold it, as St Augustine had explained a little earlier)? Did God speak to any of them? Did they receive a law, as the people of the Israelites did through Moses? Whence, then, do they hold the truth, even in their iniquity? Hear what follows, and he shows it. Because what is known of God, he says, is manifest in them; for God manifested it to them. Did he manifest it to those to whom he gave no law? Hear how he manifested it: for his invisible things are seen through the things that are made. Ask the world, the adornment of the heavens, etc. (he goes on with the enumeration of creatures)… ask all things, and see whether they do not, as it were with their own sense, answer you: God made us… What they found by curiosity (study), they lost by pride… Show, O Apostle, as you showed us whence they could arrive at the knowledge of God, because his invisible things through the things that are made are clearly seen, being understood; so now show how those who say they are wise have become fools…. You have found God and worship an idol… and what you found through the works of God, you lose through the works of man » Augast. sermo CXLI. n. 2. 3.

The Fathers therefore teach a) that it must be believed, on the testimony of the Apostle, that the Gentiles, at least the philosophers, « could arrive at the knowledge of God, » « God placed in them the knowledge of himself, » « they found the true God (by knowledge); » b) that they arrived at this knowledge not because the voice of God was present to them, not because God had spoken to any of them, not because they had received some positive law; but c) because « created things set in the midst are the voice, the preaching, the answer, the teaching of God, » so that from these they both could and ought to know the true God. Without ambiguity, therefore, the holy Fathers judged that the Apostle sets forth this visible universe to human reason as a manifestation of God, so that reason can, apart from and without the positive doctrine about God first revealed and preserved by tradition, and if other aids are lacking, is bound to know the true God from this natural manifestation alone.

5°. Declaration from the manner in which each of the two means of the manifestation of God stands: namely the tradition of the primitive revelation, and the abiding work of God the Creator, that is, the state and order of the created universe. The manifestation of God (that is, so that they might know God, for it is only of this manifestation that we now speak), made to the first men and to be propagated also to their posterity, was twofold: supernatural revelation through doctrine, and natural manifestation through creatures. Under the name of doctrine is here comprehended not only doctrine proposed from outside but also inner illumination, or knowledge infused either per se or per accidens, that is, supernatural either absolutely or as to the mode of communication; which doctrine, however, could not be propagated by the first men to their posterity except in some measure through external instruction. This means of the manifestation of God, revelation and doctrine about God and the divine attributes, to be propagated to posterity by instruction, was liable to corruption and perversion, not indeed in itself, but insofar as revealed doctrine, once handed down, could be effaced from men's minds, and in its place fictions and absurd doctrines about fabricated gods could be substituted. We know that this has indeed happened, and that throughout all nations there was propagated, by tradition and by public and private instruction, that theology which Varro calls fabulous and civil, distinct from physical or natural theology, which was cultivated by the wiser not from tradition but against the common tradition and popular instruction (cf. S. August. Civ.Dei. l. VI. et VII.).

The natural manifestation of God, insofar as it is considered objectively, is contained in the visible universe itself, and could neither be corrupted nor changed by man; therefore from the beginning it was present to human reason with the same sincerity. But human reason, whose use and abuse depend very much on the will, does not always stand in the same relation to it. As long as faith in the revealed doctrine about God handed down persists, and is preserved at least in some general notion, the revealed doctrine and the instruction drawn from revelation concerning God and the divine attributes both guard rational knowledge, which comes from the natural manifestations, against errors, and positively help and promote it;¹¹; whence it comes about that in this more fortunate condition, where manifestation and knowledge are joined from a twofold source, the powers and functions of reason considered by themselves and apart from the aid of revelation are not so easily distinguished. But in the other condition, where fictions about gods, who have nothing divine but only a false name, are substituted in place of the doctrine about God handed down by revelation, and this fictitious religion has been confirmed through long ages in public and private customs and institutions among all nations, that tradition of error received from ancestors and that instruction about most absurd gods and goddesses not only do not help reason but vehemently impede it in rightly estimating the natural manifestations of God.¹². Therefore, since in this corruption the obscure and confused idea and notion of the true divinity nonetheless persists, it must be ascribed not to the doctrine and instruction about those monstrous gods, but to the natural manifestation in creatures, which the light of reason apprehends as if of its own accord, as was declared a little before.

Thus the Fathers and the Christian Doctors teach that, not from the aid of the tradition of the Gentiles but against the hindrance of this tradition, through a natural and spontaneous apprehension of created things, there persists universally at least some confused idea and notion of the true God. « From the beginning of things, says Tertullian (cont. Marc. I. c. 10.), their Maker was discovered together with them, they having been brought forth for this very purpose, that God might be recognised… The greater multitude of the human race, not even possessing the name of Moses, nevertheless knows the God of Moses; even with so great a dominion of idolatry (the knowledge of the dominion of the true God) overshadowing, yet apart from that they call him God, as if by his own proper name, and God of gods….. God has testimonies in all this that we are and in which we are. » Lactantius speaks to the same effect (divin. instit. l. II. c. 8.). « Since to be wise, that is to seek the truth, is innate in all, those rob themselves of wisdom who, without any judgment, approve the discoveries of their ancestors and are led like cattle by others. » It is quite another thing that many of the Fathers are wont to say: that the Gentile philosophers, to cultivate the knowledge of God more perfectly, had the aiding doctrine of revelation, tasted from the sacred books; although the philosophers did not receive that doctrine « by way of faith », but by way of philosophy, insofar as they understood it by reason, and much less did they draw from it their first notion of God. Whatever you think about this, certainly in the cited places of Scripture, Rom. I., Sap. XIII., Act. XIV., XVII., the manifestation of God in creatures is regarded « while the dominion of idolatry overshadows »; and thus, with abstraction made, as it were, for reason considered in itself, its powers and the office of truly knowing God are asserted apart from the aid of revealed doctrine.