The Story of Christian Theology by Roger E. Olson

Author:Roger E. Olson [Olson, Roger E.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2014-01-13T16:00:00+00:00

Trinity, Incarnation

Grace, Supernatural Revelation and Knowledge, Faith, Salvation

Nature, Natural (General) Revelation and Knowledge, Reason, Creation

God’s Existence and Attributes

For Aquinas, the lower realm is basically Aristotle’s philosophy, and the upper realm is supernatural, divine revelation. One cannot be saved and achieve the “beatific vision of God” in heaven (similar to divinization) without arising to the second story, but one can know and understand God truly as to his existence and attributes on the basis of reason examining the natural order of creation. Through reason alone one can never know that God is triune, but belief in the Trinity is not irrational. It simply transcends what reason alone can know and is revealed by God’s grace through Scripture and church tradition. Both Anselm and Abelard had believed and argued that God’s triunity—like every other important Christian belief—is both revealed and rationally discoverable. The only reason people do not discover it rationally, they would say, is due to the effect of sin on the human mind. Aquinas was saying something different. For him, reason has a sphere distinct from grace and revelation—nature. Likewise, faith has a sphere distinct from and above nature—supernature. The arrows also represent an important part of Aquinas’s scheme. Nature points upward toward grace; reason is fulfilled in revelation. Grace and the supernatural activity of God for salvation elevate nature; revelation fulfills and completes reason. The two spheres do not contradict one another. They are separate but complementary.

God’s existence is not the only theological and spiritual truth that reason alone, unaided by grace, can discover. According to Aquinas, reason operating completely in the natural sphere can also discover the immortality of the soul and basic ethical and moral laws. These truths he found well developed in Aristotle, even if the philosopher did not know all that can be known about them with the help of supernatural revelation and faith. An excellent example of Aquinas’s Aristotelian natural theology is the natural knowledge of God. He believed and argued that while God’s existence is not self-evident, as Anselm had said, it can be demonstrated by natural reason.7 Aquinas rejected Anselm’s ontological argument because it does not begin with the senses and, basing his argument on Aristotle’s disagreement with his mentor Plato, Aquinas averred that all natural knowledge begins with sensory experience.

Aquinas presented five ways of rationally demonstrating the existence of God, and all five of them may be found in some form in Aristotle’s philosophy. All five ways appeal to experiences human minds have in relation to the natural world and state that if God did not exist, these experiences would be meaningless or impossible. In fact, what is being experienced would not exist. Because they do, God also must exist. Stated another way, God is known naturally through his natural effects as their necessary cause: “From effects not proportioned to the cause no perfect knowledge of that cause can be obtained. Yet, from every effect the existence of the cause can be clearly demonstrated, and so we can demonstrate the existence of God from His effects; though from them we cannot know God perfectly as He is in His essence.

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