Innate Knowledge: God as Man's Beatitude

One of the most commonly quoted lines in St. Anselm’s Proslogion is “For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that ‘unless I believe, I shall not understand.’” In fact, his life’s motto appears to have been fides quaerens intelligentiam, which translates to “faith seeking understanding,” and his theological contributions involve the harmonious pairing of faith and reason. Born in 1033, Anselm eventually became the Archbishop of Canterbury and lived until 1109 after wrestling with two English monarchs over conflicts between Church and crown. He found great inspiration in the writings of Aristotle, discerning in Greek philosophy a natural complement to the Christian faith. He is traditionally hailed as the father of Scholasticism, a movement that enjoyed immense popularity during the Medieval period. In fact, during the Middle Ages, to be a philosopher was virtually the same as being a theologian, and theology was often set in a philosophic backdrop that brought order and cohesion to its tenets. Like St. Anselm, Medieval theologians held Aristotle in high regard and were devoted to the harmonious blending of faith and reason. Their work was the prevailing ideology in the realm of philosophy; such systems of thought held dominant sway until the period of the Enlightenment, the dawning of modern science. In fact, it was during this time period—namely the 13th century—that the first modern universities were founded and Aristotle’s later works, previously lost during the so-called Dark Ages, were translated into Latin from Arabic, as Arabian scholars had kept these works alive while the Western world lay in a state of dormancy. During this time period, there was no science as such, though there was natural philosophy, a division of Aristotelian study that involved natural phenomenon and its causes. It is safe to say that the intellectual world of our day owes an immeasurable debt to Medieval theology coupled with Greek philosophy.

When I first encountered the idea that St. Anselm did not seek to understand in order to believe but believed in order to understand, I found it compelling, but had no idea how it was used in the context of the Proslogion. As it turns out, St. Anselm had first written the short Monologion, which presents a form of the cosmological argument for the existence of God, before penning the equally short Proslogion. Apparently dissatisfied with demonstrating the existence of God a posteriori, Anselm wanted an a priori means of arguing the same. The Proslogion is unique in that it frames its arguments in an ongoing prayer to God; Anselm magnifies God’s attributes as he seeks to deepen his understanding by his belief; he believes in order to understand the nature of the One he loves. He also desires to understand what the Psalmist means when he writes: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’” (14:1). If this assertion is true (as St. Anselm believes), why would such a person be described as a “fool”? Such a man might be any number of other things, but a fool?

St. Anselm appears to have concluded that the only way a man who denied the existence of God could irrevocably be said to be a fool would be if the knowledge of God were somehow innate within a person. If belief in God requires external evidence, it is possible that a man could simply be ignorant or unlearned, but a fool? However, if there is something within us that innately speaks of God, then we could begin to apply our belief to our understanding. This appears to be the reason, then, that St. Anselm seeks an a priori proof of God: he is looking for some innate proof that we do not have to look anywhere else but inside our own selves to find. As he tells it in his introduction to the work, he sat meditating in his cell for days, seeking understanding. He eventually came close to despairing of ever discovering such a solution and was prepared to set the question aside permanently and devote his attention to other matters when it suddenly occurred to him how this might be so.

The result of St. Anselm’s reflections is the ingenious and often criticized ontological argument. If you are unfamiliar with the term ontology, you may remember we have defined it before as a branch of metaphysics that deals with the nature of being: in this case, it looks at “being-in-itself,” “self-existence,” or “necessary being.” These terms are very abstract, but the ideas to which they point are not: Stuff exists. Why and how?

In framing his ontological argument, Anselm wants to ensure that no one misunderstands the question of God. God, by definition, is that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. If a person genuinely has this conception in mind, St. Anselm believes it necessarily follows that such a Being exists. For what is that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought? If I can think of anything in my mind greater than this thing, then I obviously am not truly conceiving that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. Now then, what if I said that I was picturing that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought but that this thing did not exist? St. Anselm suggests that I would simply not realize what I was saying or else I would truly be a fool. For which is greater? A thing that exists only as a thought or a thing that exists both as a thought and as a reality as well? Thus, that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought must necessarily exist or else there is something even greater that can be thought. Once people clearly understand the implications of what the idea of such a Being entails, St. Anselm believes they would indeed be fools to say that this Being does not exist. For if people say such a Being does not exist, they have evidently not grasped what it means to be that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. If they have grasped what this statement means, have clearly understood it, and still deny that such a Being exists, they are truly being fools. Thus, those who says “There is no God,” in their hearts and fully understand what is meant by that statement, must be fools: they must have taken leave of their senses.

The way I have presented the argument here probably fails to satisfy both theologian and philosopher alike. The theologian will object that I have failed to adequately capture the reverence and prayer-like nature with which Anselm writes the Proslogion. The philosopher will object because I have not traced Anselm’s arguments formally, presenting them as a series of propositions that culminate in a reductio ad absurdum. To the theologian I will say that we can all agree that persons do well to read the Proslogion for themselves, for much of it is truly inspiring and tends to instill a sense of reverent devotion. To the philosopher I will say, “Be patient. Something of your objection may yet be borne out in this newsletter. Recall that many of my readers are not trained in philosophy.”

Our text for my philosophy of religion course is recommended reading for anyone who enjoys these newsletters. Entitled Ten Essential Texts in the Philosophy of Religion: Classics and Contemporary Issues, Steven M. Cahn, professor of philosophy at the City University of New York Graduate Center, has assembled ten highly influential texts that have inspired bright minds for centuries and continue to present their challenges to the contemporary world. Together with these ten unabridged texts are included the essays of a number of contemporary scholars, some who side with and clarify the classic writings, some who object often in light of more recent evidence, and others who develop their own versions or otherwise enter in to the ongoing dialogue involving the intersection of faith and reason. This reader includes Anslem’s Proslogion as well as other essays that surround it. Among these is the reply a contemporary of Anselm offered, a monk named Gaunilo of Marmoutier, France. He too was a believer, but he took issue with Anslem’s argument.

In his letter to Anselm entitled “On Behalf of the Fool,” Gaunilo asks us to imagine a legendary island, a sort of Atlantis. This island is the most perfect of its kind and is called the “Lost Island” and is even more sublime than the “Happy Isles.” Gaunilo describes the island as being “lost” because while it is purported to exist, it is thought to be very difficult to find and the few accounts of persons who have reportedly traveled there have almost become the stuff of legends. Gaunilo is quite aware of what is being claimed when someone speaks of this island: he imagines a most perfect island and finds that there is nothing particularly difficult in doing so. However, he then suggests what he considers the absurdity of someone trying to demonstrate the logical necessity of the island’s existence. If a man said to him, for example: “Gaunilo, you cannot doubt that this island exists in reality just as surely as it exists in your mind, for it is more perfect for an island to exist than to not exist and therefore, this, the most perfect of islands necessarily exists. If it did not exist in reality, it would not be the most perfect island, for even a very imperfect island that existed would have more reality than it.” His conclusion is that if a man tried to convince him in this manner, he would either think the man was joking or else wonder who the bigger fool was: himself, if he believed the man or the man for believing he could convince him in this fashion. The only way he would not entertain such reservations would be if the man had actually succeeded in convincing him that such an island existed not only in his mind but in reality as well. The implication, of course, is that just as the man cannot prove the existence of islands without empirical demonstration, so too, St. Anselm cannot prove God with a purely a priori argument.

Things do not appear to be going well for Anselm’s argument, at least until we read his reply which puts us right back where we started. He insists that there is nothing wrong with his logic and that there is a misunderstanding on the part of Gaunilo. He agrees that for anything else in the world or beyond it other than that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought, the ontological argument will not work. However, that one Being that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought belongs to a special category and cannot not be thought to exist. For there is nothing logically necessary about perfect islands or perfect dogs or perfect “anything elses” except that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. That Being alone is immune to this type of criticism, for if it were not, it truly would not be that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought.

It is at this point that we do well to share the rare and refined insight of Dr. Moran who heads up our philosophy of religion course. He told us that when he first encountered the argument, he thought it was the dumbest thing he had ever heard in his life. However, the more he thought about it, the worse it got. In sum, his rare and refined insight is simply: “One can get a mental hernia from thinking too long and hard about the ontological argument.” Yet for all this wisdom, he proceeded to investigate it no less and speak of things perhaps less profound in regard to “predicating existence as a property,” which we shall examine in a moment. And should anyone take everything in this paragraph at face value, I should not think him or her a fool but rather suspect that he or she was simply unaccustomed to my often mischievous and at times rather corny sense of humor.

The next contender in Ten Essential Texts in the Philosophy of Religion is none other than Immanuel Kant in “The Impossibility of an Ontological Proof for the Existence of God.” He argues, as Dr. Moran brought up, that existence cannot be a predicate. What he means by this statement is not as exotic as it might initially sound. If, for example, I say that “God is absolutely necessary,” there was no difficulty of my mouth forming these syllables or of your mind understanding the idea to which these words correspond. But this type of statement has given you no real understanding into the kinds of conditions that would be required for this assertion to be factual, and if I then turn around and say that it is unconditionally true, I have simply made a noise with my throat that forms a corresponding idea in your mind, but I have not helped you understand either that this is actually true or why it is necessarily so. In fact, that is precisely what we are trying to discover and by my assertion, I deny you this kind of investigation from the onset.

Let us sketch in some of the particulars. An a priori argument is one in which the premises are said to be proven internally, without any appeal to the external world. The ontological argument is like this as well: it is supposed to prove the existence of God without any kind of external evidence. If we were to use a similar argument from geometry, we could say that “a square necessarily has four equal sides.” The first part of our sentence “a square” forms the subject, “necessarily has four equal sides” forms the predicate. We can picture a square in our mind; we know what is meant when someone says “a square necessarily has four equal sides.” Not only do we know what is meant, but we know that the subject and predicate are equal to one another, for a square is by definition “that which necessarily has four equal sides.” If we tried to deny the predicate while still agreeing that there is such a thing as a square, we would be saddled with a contradiction. But if we reject subject and predicate together, there is no contradiction either internally or externally. There is no contradiction internally because we have not denied that what is meant by “equal four sides” and “square” is identical nor is there a contradiction externally, for we are arguing that while some objects have square-like shapes, they are not perfect, two-dimensional squares. They might approximate three-dimensional cubes, but there never was and never will be a real square anywhere in reality: a square ever and always is an abstraction: a mental construct to help us understand the real world but not an actual entity found anywhere within the real world. To this reply, you might object: “Yes, but I can draw a square in which case a real square would exist on paper,” to which I may reply, “Yes, and I can draw a unicorn too. That does not mean that unicorns exist.”

Now then, if someone says that “God is omnipotent,” to use the example supplied by Kant, this too is a logical necessity. Given what we mean by Deity and what we mean by omnipotence, to deny the predicate would be to deny what God is by definition. We may deny both subject and predicate together without logical contradiction, however, just as we would with the statement “hobbits are little persons who live in the Shire.” We know what is meant and Tolkien’s books or the recent movies help us visualize these little persons, but our question in accepting or rejecting these propositions is whether or not such beings appear in the real world. Yes, hobbits are in fact little persons who live in the Shire, but do they really exist in reality? Thus, how can we use “existence” itself as a predicate? To say “God exists necessarily” may accord with all that has ever been said of God before. God may be that which by definition “exists necessarily.” If we say that He does not exist, we are ultimately rejecting both subject and predicate. However, because we have predicated the very thing we are attempting to prove, we appear to have painted ourselves into a corner, for we seem to be expressing a contradiction: “The God who necessarily exists does not exist.” What we have effectively said in our initial claim, then, by using “existence” as a predicate is “A necessarily existing God”—pause—“exists necessarily.” But existence cannot possibly be our predicate if we are going to attempt to meaningfully prove anything. Otherwise, we have merely expressed a tautology, like saying: “There is a one-hundred-percent chance that it either will rain tomorrow or it will not.” No, Kant argues. In order to find out if something exists, we are going to have to go outside of the a priori claim for substantiation. Kant therefore rejects the notion of being able to meaningfully prove the existence of God solely on the basis of any kind of a priori argument.

William L. Rowe, professor of philosophy at Purdue University, is our next contestant in Ten Essential Texts with his 1974 essay entitled simply “The Ontological Argument.” Not surprisingly, his paper subsumes most of the major arguments that have come before it. The sum of his paper, or at least the part we will highlight here, tackles the ontological argument’s difficulties in a different way. It asks us to imagine a chart in which we have two columns, one labeled “Things Which Exist” on the left and the other bearing the heading “Things Which Don’t Exist” on the right. Specifically, we can diagram his construct as follows:

Any of these items could conceivably have gone in either of our columns. That to say it is possible to imagine a world in which the Empire State Building does not exist but in which unicorns do. These things are called contingent because while they either do or do not exist in reality, they could conceivably be imagined either to exist or not to exist: nothing suggests the impossibility of a universe existing without the planet Mars or a world that could not possibly contain the Abominable Snowman. In essence, there is nothing self-evidently necessary about the existence or non-existence of any of these items from the perspective of human logic. However, in keeping with what Kant said about predicating “existence” as a property, what happens when we attempt to locate “Necessarily existing God” on our list? It cannot possibly go on the side of “Things Which Don’t Exist” because existence is contained within it—existence has been predicated to it. In other words, we are trying to locate “Existing God” in the list, and if we keep the word “Existing” together with “God,” we are automatically suggesting that this concept cannot go on the right side of our column under “Things Which Don’t Exist.” It appears then, that we either have to place “Existing God” on the right side of “Things Which Exist” or else appear to contradict ourselves by denying that such a Being is possible.

Rowe then spells out for us the logical steps of St. Anselm’s argument, which should now satisfy the philosophers who objected to our earlier negligence in employing a more formal approach to the topic. As per Rowe’s essay, Anselm’s argument can be set forth as follows:

These six premises form the initial set-up of Anselm’s reductio ad absurdum, in keeping with good Aristotelian argumentation. If all of these premises are granted: God could exist in either reality or the understanding, but if it is true that He exists only in the understanding, He is not the greatest possible thing, therefore:

There are two main ways we could try to disprove Anselm here, for his logic is itself impeccable. Both involve denying one or more of the premises. The first would be to deny that God is that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought. The second would be to deny that something that exists in reality is necessarily greater than that which exists in thought alone. Neo-Platonism, for example, might argue that the forms are greater than material reality and these can be grasped by intellection alone; just today in class, for example, we again read “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by Keats in which he argues: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / are sweeter.” We may deny that Keats was really suggesting non-material reality was more real than reality, but at the least, he does appear to be suggesting that internal reality is greater than the external realm, and where does the allegedly inferior idea of that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exist except in the understanding? (See Enlightenment Thinkers: The Death of Teleology for more on the history of philosophical and theological ideas.)

Dr. Moran demonstrated for us something much like we suggested in the previous Waxing Long and Argumentatively about deductive logic; we said that in order to get a certain conclusion out, we have to have put that conclusion in, so to speak. Dr. Moran’s proof of God was very simple and logically air-tight. He proposed:

While the believer is probably not going to find the argument very compelling, he or she would be forced to say, “Yes: not only is that a logically valid argument but it is also a sound (i.e. true) argument as well.” The non-believer, however, would say, “I remain utterly unconvinced. You started out assuming that God exists, and, surprise surprise, you ended up with a God who exists. You put the rabbit in the hat and then you pulled the rabbit out of the hat; you should take up show business—you would be a barrel of laughs.” His point was that arguments can only prove something to people who are willing to grant their premises and this is to large degree a subjective thing. What convinces one person might not convince another for any number of reasons, including past knowledge, prior life experiences, differences in opinions and values, and the like. For example, if I believe that Sigmund Freud was a fraud, there are probably quite a few psychoanalytical arguments that I will disbelieve because I am not willing to grant many of Freud’s theories, however commonplace they have become in the Western world. If you say, “1. Little Johnny always was a troubled lad. 2. His daddy beat him and his mamma babied him to excess. 3. Therefore, it is no wonder he ended up behind bars as he did,” I will say “Balderdash! Demonstrate to me that Freud was right in asserting a correlation between one’s childhood experiences to one’s actions later in life.”

The last person we will examine before concluding is St. Aquinas (1225–1274) born one-hundred-and-sixteen years after the death of St. Anselm. In the most widely known section of the five-volume Summa Theologiae, he sets forth a five-fold cosmological argument for the existence of God. Aquinas appears to be answering Anselm in several ways. For one, he first suggests that Church Father Damascene (c. 675–c. 749) writes: “the knowledge of God is naturally implanted in all.” Aquinas does not refute this notion, but offers his own clarification. He suggests that knowledge of God is innately known to humanity in a “general and confused way” at least insofar as “God is man’s beatitude.” In other words, God is man’s happiness (beatitude) and to the degree that we all seek happiness and contentment, to that degree we are responding to an innate sense that there is something more, whose name, it turns out, is God. But this knowledge is not clear and distinct and there are many who never seem to find what they seek in life, for they think that riches, pleasures, or other such things will afford them happiness. Their restless spirits speak of something more, but it is a confused perception and thus we could say (though Aquinas does not) that few find the narrow gate that leads to eternal life (not necessarily in a durational sense of time without end but in a qualitative one in the here and now: see Supernatural Irrigation Systems of Eternal Life) but broad is the path that leads to destruction and many find it. This clarification on what an innate knowledge of God might entail on the part of St. Aquinas, who was very much in the tradition of the Scholastics, should already demonstrate that he is not likely to assert a purely a priori proof of God. Rather, the cosmological argument asks us to look at the cosmos for inspiration. We will not treat the cosmological argument here, though we will look at one more feature that seems to speak to Anselm’s ontological argument.

A summa is a genre in which the Scholastics tried to answer every possible objection to Christianity that could be thought. Thus, Aquinas begins each section of the Summa Theologiae with objections and then responds to them. In the Second Article of his five-part cosmological argument, three objections are raised that he must answer. The first is that it appears the existence of God cannot be demonstrated, for faith is of one nature and reason of another. To demonstrate something leads to knowledge of a scientific nature and this appears to conflict with what the author clearly states in Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The second objection is “essence is the middle term of demonstration.” In other words, if I am trying to find out if kangaroos with green fur exist, I have on the one hand a concept in my mind about what it is I am attempting to prove and on the other hand I know I must offer that proof. Between these two halves of the equation—my mental picture of kangaroos with green fur and my need for demonstration—is the actual essence or proof of green-furred kangaroos. If I am to be most persuasive in my demonstration, I will take you with me on an exploration and proceed to show you the middle term: at least one green-furred kangaroo existing in nature. But God as a middle term is something that cannot be demonstrated empirically, hence the objection. Finally, the third objection states that if God could be demonstrated in some way, it could only be through His effects. However, since He is infinite and His effects are finite, the demonstration would be inadequate and incomplete; a finite demonstration can never reach infinity.

St. Aquinas begins by noting that we can demonstrate things either from their cause (propter quid) or from their effect (propter quia). A demonstration to the existence of God necessarily falls into the propter quia category. His first reply to the apparent impossibility of ever being able to prove God because faith is of one substance and reason of another is to answer that natural reason is a “preamble” to faith. Specifically, he writes: “The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature and perfection the perfectible.” What he is saying is that in order for there to be such a thing as perfectibility, there first has to be something that can be perfected. The expression of God’s grace implies that there was first a natural tendency that prompted God to respond graciously. So too, if faith is grounded in reality, not only will it not contradict reason but it will be reinforced by reason, for a thing, whether known by faith or any other way, is either true or false. If it is true, it will not conflict with other reliable ways of acquiring truth; if it is false, there is nothing more we need to say about the matter. So then, suggests Aquinas, while the author of Hebrews was the cause of our objection, the Apostle Paul writes: “The visible things of Him are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made” (Romans 1: 20).

To the second objection about essence being the middle term, our second way of demonstration (that is, propter quia as opposed to propter quid) changes this order somewhat. For when a cause could be produced, like our green-furred kangaroo, then the essence becomes the middle term: the sighting of a green-furred kangaroo observed clearly in nature. However, suggests Aquinas, the middle term is not essence when we are demonstrating by effect, but rather the effect itself becomes the middle term. To return to our example, seeing large quantities of kangaroo tracks with generous amounts of green fur caught on the bushes and shrubbery through which the tracks pass would take the place of the middle term. This factor would be especially true if samples taken back to the laboratory conclusively revealed that this fur was indeed that of a kangaroo and that a certain strand of DNA was responsible for the green coloring, evidence that would be convincing to those living in our generation. Evidence of God’s work thus becomes the middle term.

To the third objection of the inability of a finite effect being able to demonstrate an infinite cause, Aquinas admits that this objection is a valid one. However, he points out, it would be a mistake if we thought that from this objection we could infer thereby that we know nothing of God. Our understanding may not be as clear as we like, but we can at least demonstrate to a high degree of probability that God exists in fact and even determine something of what He is like based on what we find in the world around us.

Archive note: See also Anselm and Aquinas on the discussion forum regarding this newsletter.

Our reason in framing these points from Aquinas is to suggest that he does not believe that knowledge of God can be demonstrated purely a priori. Not only does he speak of the confused idea that we have of God innately, but he also speaks of the need to demonstrate the middle term, much like Kant suggesting years later with his talk about not being able to meaningfully predicate existence as a property. Aquinas is not likely to come out and criticize another man of faith, particularly when he is a member of the very same school of thought that this man founded. However, we can infer what he might have said about the matter, could we have somehow impelled him to speak. There is some sense in which the knowledge of God is innate in all persons, but that sense is not clear and distinct, at least not by human reason alone. For that matter, in a sense it was not for St. Anselm either, for while he did think his argument to be sound, he nonetheless first arrived at it by “believing that he might understand.” In spite of our analysis of the ontological argument, Dr. Moran is correct in suggesting that one can easily develop a mental hernia from thinking about it for extended periods of time. What is more, if we are prepared to grant the premises, Anselm’s argument is almost impossible to refute. At day’s end, however, some will believe and some will not. Those who believe may think that those who do not believe are fools; those who do not believe may feel the same way about those who do believe. Whatever the Psalmist had in mind when he penned those words (and assuming that the English translation conveys a one-to-one equivalency with his native language), we can surely say that we should be very careful in our exegesis, for what appears to be a very simple matter has proven to be anything but. I suppose we should expect as much when dealing with matters of eternity.

“My God and my Lord, my hope and the joy of my heart, tell my soul if there is the joy of which You speak through Your Son: ‘Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be complete.’ For I have discovered a joy that is complete and more than complete. Indeed, when the heart is filled with that joy, the mind is filled with it, the soul is filled with it, the whole man is filled with it, yet joy beyond measure will remain. The whole of that joy, then, will not enter into those who rejoice, but those who rejoice will enter wholly into that joy.”

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Innate Knowledge: God as Man’s Beatitude