Michael Roland F. Hernandez MA Philosophy PHIS003 INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Taken from John Hick 1.

What is the Philosophy of Religion? The term Philosophy of Religion could mean different things: 1. Generally understood, it could mean religious philosophizing in the sense of the philosophical defense of religious convictions. It was seen as continuing the work of natural as distinguished from the revealed theology. Its program was to demonstrate rationally the existence of God, thus paving the way for the truths of divine revelation. 2. The term, properly understood means philosophical thinking about religion. a. It is not an organ of religious teaching. The atheist, the agnostic, the believer can all philosophize about religion. b. It is not a branch of theology, but of philosophy. It studies the concepts and belief systems of the religions as well as the prior phenomena of religious experience and the activities of worship and meditation on which these belief systems rest and out of which they have arisen. c. It is not part of the religious experience itself but constitutes a reflection on it. d. It seeks to analyze the different concepts we have about God, dharma, salvation, worship, creation, sacrifice, nirvana, etc., and the determine the very nature of religious utterances compared to those of everyday life. 2. What is religion? There are many definitions proposed. 1. Phenomenological - It is a superhuman recognition of a superhuman controlling power and especially of a personal God or gods entitled to obedience and worship. (Oxford Dict.) 2. Psychological the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in whatever they may consider the divine. (William James) 3. Sociological a set of beliefs, practices and institutions which men have evolved in various societies. (Talcott Parsons) 4. Naturalistic a body of scruples which impede the free exercise of our faculties. (Salomon Reinach) 5. Sympathetically ethics heightened, enkindled, lit up by feeling. (Matthew Arnold) 6. Religious Religion is the recognition that all things are manifestations of a Power which transcends our knowledge. (Herbert Spencer) The problem with the above definition is that they are all stipulative i.e., they decide how the term is to used and impose this in the form of a definition. FAMILY RESEMBLANCES The word religion does not have a single correct definition/meaning but the different phenomena can be

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subsumed into what we call family resemblances (L. Wittgenstein). Family resemblances allows for similarities and differences to be included in a more comprehensive description of religion. Within this set of family resemblances there is a feature which is extremely widespread (though not universal). This is the concern for salvation or liberation. All the great developed world faiths have a soteriological structure (Savior, Messiah; GK. Soteria salvation). These religions offer a transition from a radically unsatisfactory state of affairs to a limitlessly better one. Fallen state reunited happy state. The soteriological structure is underlined by the Ultimate Divine Reality seen as good or gracious. Religions offer a way to the Absolute/Ultimate through faith-response to divine grace or through total self-giving to God through spiritual self-discipline and maturing which leads enlightenment and liberation. Salvation or Liberation consists in a new and limitlessly better quality of existence which comes about in the transition from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness. THE JUDAIC-CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD

MONOTHEISM the belief in one, loving and personal God who seeks a total and unqualified response from creatures. God = Supreme, Absolute Being, the Ultimate, Infinite, Perfect Being Terms used in main ways of thinking about God. (Gk. Theos = God; Lt. Deus) Negative ATHEISM (not-God-ism) is the belief that there is no God of any klind. AGNOSTICISM (not-know-ism) is the belief that we do not have any sufficient reason either to affirm or to deny Gods existence. SKEPTICISM simple means doubting NATURALISM the theory that every aspect of human experience (including moral and religious life) can be adequately described and accounted for in terms of our existence as gregarious and intelligent animals whose life is organic to our natural environment. Affirmative DEISM refers to the idea of an absentee god who set the universe in motion long ago and left it alone. For 18th century deists, they believed that natural theology is religiously sufficient. THEISM (often used as a synonym for monotheism) is belief in a personal deity. POLYTHEISM (many-gods-ism) is common to many ancient peoples and reached classic expressions in ancient Greece and Rome. There are a multitude of personal gods, each governing a department of life. HENOTHEISM is the belief that there are many gods but restricts allegiance to only one of them, generally the god of ones own tribe or people. PANTHEISM (God-is-all-ism) is the belief that God is identical with nature or with the world as a whole.

PANENTHISM (everything-in-God-ism) is the view that all things exist ultimately in God. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JUDAIC-CHRISTIAN GOD 1. INFINITE, SELF-EXISTENT God is unlimited. Paul Tillich says that we should not even say that God exists since it would be a limiting statement. 2. ETERNAL no beginning and no end. God is beyond (outside) time. 3. CREATOR God created the world ex nihilo. 2 corollaries: a. Absolute distinction between creature and Creator. b. The created realm is absolutely dependent on the Creator. 4. PERSONAL God is the divine Thou who created us as persons in Gods own image and who always deals with us that respect our personal freedom and responsibility. To speak of God as a person must be qualified however, since we might be caught up in the anthropomorphic (anthropos, man and morphe, shape) way of thinking about God. 5. LOVING, GOOD Gods love is to understood in terms of agape, the unconditional and universal. The nature of agape is to value a person in such ways as to actively seek his/her deepest welfare and fulfillment. 6. HOLY the divine reality is infinitely other and greater. God is so immense. This holy evokes the sense of awe or dread, of majesty or power, and of urgency or energy. This is what Rudolf Otto means by mysterium tremendum et fascinans. RUDOLF OTTOSS DESCRIPTION OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE 1. Religious experience in all its varying ideas and feelings is characteristically underlined by the holy as its typical element. The distinctively religious experience is the numinous experience. 2. Ottos analysis is a very good example of a phenomenological description of religion; noema, noesis and the self. 3. THE NUMINOUS is the object of religious experience. It is the mysterium tremendum et fascinans. This object does not only fill us with awe and dread but also attracts and charms. This fascination is expressed in fervor, transport which arouses stupor and amazement or wonder. In the religious sense, the mystery is the wholly other, which is entirely beyond the ordinary, the familiar, the profane, something whose kind and character are incommensurable with our own, and before which we therefore recoil in a wonder that strikes us chill and numb. The holy is experienced as both dreadful and attractive. 4. The divine, and not the human mind, is the ground of religion. This numinous is both rational and non-rational. The psychological conditions do enter religious experience and the numinous, which is non-rational, is expressed in rational ideas. The numinous is the characteristic note of all religious experience. The numinous is the sacred in the sense of a non-moral holiness as a category of value, and a state of mind and of spiritual experience special to religious experience. 5. The RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE is a category sui generis and cannot be reduced to any ordinary knowing, intellectual or rational: a unique, original feeling-response, which can be in itself ethically neutral and claims consideration in its own right. This special feeling which characterizes the religious experience cannot be the psychological

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outcome of a thrill or enthusiasm. The religious feelings are not psychological modes but are modes of apprehending the divine. The numinous is a mystery that cannot be grasped in its entirety using rational concepts/elements alone. This is something that is emphasized unmistakably in every type of religion. The divine cannot be fully comprehended by the human mind (human words/modes). The divine is called The Mystery, the inexpressible, the totally Other, the Beyond. However since experience of the divine is a human experience, it finds expressions in symbols which are of a profane sphere, by means of which the divine is attained. The holy can mean different things concretely; One Supreme God, gods, supernatural beings, spirits, deified ancestors, consecrated persons, things, places, rituals and myths depending on the faith of the particular religions. The supremely holy is the absolutely holy. All the others are holy insofar as they participate in the holiness of the supreme object of religious experience. WAYS TO KNOW GOD Edith Stein

I. MYSTICAL THEOLOGY AS KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 1. The basic idea in the writings of Pseudo-Dionysius is the idea of exitus and reditus. Every being issues from God as from the First and returns to him again 2. After this return, they flow forth again in order to raise up what is below. For him, there is the hierarchy of beings which he defines as the whole order of holy things present. 3. The hierarchy is not only an order of being but also an order of knowing. The most knowable things are closest to the Primal Being (Ur-Seiendes) (angels) and down to the lowest. Even inanimate beings are capable of enlightenment. Even those beings lacking reason and life are fit to serve as tools and being-images of spiritual and divine being and acting. 4. Dionysius gives a brief overview in his Mystical Theology about the knowledge of God. By theology he means Holy Scriptures and not a science or a systematic doctrine about God. Theologians refer to its authors, the sacred writers. 5. When he says Theologians, however, it does not mean that they are the authors of the books or letters bearing their names, say Daniel, Ezekiel; but that they are inspired: they speak of God because God has taken hold of them or God speaks through them (p. 87). 6. Everybody then who speaks about God because they are inspired can be called theologians; Christ is the highest theologian and the angels spiritual theologians. 7. From this perspective, the different theologies distinguished from mystical theology are not disciplines or fields but different manners of speaking of God and expressed in them- different ways or manners of knowing God (or not-knowing him); mystical theology itself represents the highest stage (Ibid.). 8. Mystical theology may also be best understood as a secret revelation (Ibid.). God is known only by revealing himself, and the spirits to whom he reveals himself pass on the revelation. Knowing and witnessing go together. But the higher the knowledge, the darker and more mysterious it is, the less it can be put into words.

The ascent to God is an ascent into darkness and silence. When the person stands at the foot of the mountain he can express himself in greater detail. NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE THEOLOGY 9. In Negative Theology The way to God is a negation procedure: we draw near to God by denying what he is not. Negation is an ascent too, in the sense that it begins with the lowest. And this knowledge starts with the known world of the senses (p. 88). In Mystical Theology he writes: when plunged into darkness beyond all understanding we will find ourselves not only short of words but utterly at a loss for words and understanding. 10. In Positive Theology, the process is the reverse. In order to state something about what basically lies above all affirming, we had to begin with what is closer to him. Thus we say that he is life or goodness, etc. 11. Negative Theology climbs the scale of creatures in order to state of each stage that the Creator is not to be found there. It goes further and tests all the names that positive theology has given him and of them all it must say that their meaning does not accurately describe the One who is above all meaning. Simply speaking, God is above all assertion or denial. MYSTICAL THEOLOGY AS UNION WITH GOD 12. Both Negative and Positive Theology give way to Mystical Theology which in utter stillness enters into union with the Ineffable. Both negative and positive ways, although opposed, do not exclude each other: rather, they complement each other in the different stages to lead us to the summit of union with God. 13. Positive theology is based on the parallelism between God and creatures on the analogia entis [analogy of being] as Thomas expressed it following Aristotle. 14. Negative theology rests on the fact that alongside this similitude [likeness] lies a major dissimilitude [greater unlikeness], as Thomas also repeatedly stressed. 15. In the summit of mystical theology, God unveils his mysteries but at the same time imparts a feeling of their impenetrability. 1. 2. 3. 4. II. SYMBOLIC THEOLOGY Symbolic Theology is the lowest level of positive theology for Dionysius. Here, the problem is how God, who is the Ineffable able to show himself and be understood. The truth about God is contained in images that serve as riddles or puzzles. We therefore need a key to interpret this image-language; else we may often have gross misunderstanding. The person who can see the beauty hidden beneath the image will find them full of God-revealing light. The purpose of this image-language is to conceal what is holy from the profaning images of the throng and to unveil it fort hose who are striving for holiness and have freed themselves from childish thinking and have acquired the spiritual sensitivity needed to behold simple truths. Examples of such images would be the sacraments (e.g., Eucharist, Confession, etc), parables, angels puzzle-images. By using images, we gain divine enlightenment in a way that is suited to our human nature. Our sensible faculties must be lifted up to the divine realities through typical symbols. We are to rise above

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common views and in a manner befitting the holy seek to delve into the meaning behind the sacred signs and images. 7. Fire, food and drink are some images which help us in contemplating the divine. They express in a way the very nature of God by expressing something invisible through visible signs. SYMBOLIC SPEECH 8. Symbolic speech derives its expressions from the areas of outer and inner experience as well as from what has been called life experience wherein various elements converge. 9. Names are used to get anything familiar in our experience be expressed in mental picture. These very same names are used in symbolic speech to denote something else that is unfamiliar to our everyday experience. 10. The reality to which we transfer the symbolic names are what we call the divine. The divine is made accessible to us, bound in the world of natural experience, through images from the world we know. SYMBOL AS IMAGE 11. Symbols are not only spoken words but can also be visible shapes, e.g., the Eucharist. Such symbols work according to the likeness between the shape (sign) and what it represents. However, the shapes signify not only a meaning that we can understand but also a reality that is also present. 12. Symbols then, are not ordinary signs; they do not only represent but they also participate in the reality of what they represent. 13. E.g., Moses statement that The Lord is a consuming fire. The word fire conjures the image of fire in us. The image of fire suggests an image of God as experienced by Moses. There is a likeness, something objectively common, between the inexpressible thing that happened to him and consuming fire. 14. The image has a relation with what it represents based on an objective commonness enabling us to recognize the one in the other, be it something graphic or intuitive, such as may be represented in sense perception. Even if in principle what is represented cannot be seen sensibly, the image-relation characterizes the image as such. 15. A thing can be turned into an image of something else if we know the latter. In forming images of God, we do it on the basis of our awareness which we can get from the following: a. Natural knowledge [Erkenntnis] of God, b. Faith the ordinary way of supernatural knowledge of God and c. Supernatural experience the extraordinary way of supernatural knowledge of God. 16. Natural theology is doctrine about God gained from natural experience through our natural reason. Its core is the arguments for Gods existence and doctrines on Gods essence and attributes inferable from our knowledge of the created world. 17. Faith is the acceptance and retention of revealed truth based on supernatural revelation (Scriptures). God communicates himself in the proper sense through the WORD apart from the natural ways to know God. Faith is knowledge insofar as it is a possession of the truth. However it is dark knowledge insofar as the conviction that it brings is not founded upon insight into the truth accepted on faith but on the act of believing.

Faith by itself, can be a source for the image-language of symbolic theology. 18. Supernatural experience rests on a certain feeling that God is present: one feels touched in his innermost being by him, by the One present. There is an inner certainty that it is God to whom one is speaking. This is the experience [Erfahrung] of God in the most proper sense. It is the core of all mystical living experience [Erlebnis]; the person-to-person encounter with God. 19. These personal encounters remain however unfulfilled, but points towards a higher fulfillment in higher mystical experiences and eventually in the beatific vision of God. 20. In personal encounters, one comes to know God intimately and forms images based on the experience itself. However, it is always most important to be touched by God without word and image. KNOWING GOD 21. In all genuine knowledge of God, it is God himself who draws the knower, although his presence may not always be felt as it is in experiential knowledge.. in natural knowledge he draws near in images, works and manifold effects; in faith by making himself known personally through the Word. 22. Faith is already a finding that corresponds to Gods letting-himselfbe-found. Faith is a gift that must be accepted. In faith, divine and human freedom meet. But it is a gift that makes us ask for more. Since faith is dark, it makes us yearn for unveiled clarity; as mediated encounter it makes us long for an unmediated encounter with God. Faith awakens the desire for the beatific vision. I. THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION W. Brede Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion 1. DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF RELIGION There are several ways to approach the study of religion. a. Historical one can study the historical development of a particular religious tradition e.g., Christianity. b. Geographical one can study religions in America, Asia, Europe, Africa. The focus would be on how the religion of the early settlers change through the contact with other people such as invaders, traders. E.g., early Bicolano religious traditions. c. Phenomenological one seeks the essence of religious phenomena. One attempts to describe the meaning of common themes among religions, regardless of their historical tradition or geographic location. 2. PHENOMENOLOGY OF RELIGION The purpose of phenomenological study is not to show the superiority or inferiority of one religion over others. Neither it is to show that all religions are basically similar. The effort to discover the essence of religious phenomena must be clearly distinguished from the effort to find a common religion lying beneath the many historically conditioned forms of religious expression. 3 basic things must be kept in mind with this approach. o Religion like it subject, the human person, is historically conditioned. Religion can only be understood thus, and expressed in historically conditioned terms.

o There are as many differences among religions as there similarities. o One must take note of the critical element in religion the believers take the particular positive elements of the religion to be essential to their life and faith. It is exactly the positive elements that give religion its significance. The absolute character of religious ideas and symbols makes it difficult for the outside observer to understand the essential religious elements given only to the participant in the religious experience. The problem is whether the essence that we see in the religious phenomena is also the meaning seen by those who had the religious experience. This problem is seen in the antithesis between religious commitment and critical examination of ones own belief. RELIGIOUS KN0WLEDGE Religious knowledge is participating knowledge. It is immediate and existential and is communicated through symbols. Its goal is immediate participation in and commitment to the fundamental images which orient individual and corporate existence. The religious person has the desire to live in objective reality, not only in the never-ceasing relativity of purely subjective experience; to live in a real and effective world and not in illusion. Objective Knowledge Also called philosophical knowledge, is discursive and descriptive rather than participating. It seeks to question critically the patterns of existence with which a culture articulates its experience. This reflective knowledge cannot replace or even promote immediate participation. 3 types can be distinguished in this study: historical, phenomenological and philosophical. There is reciprocal relationship among these three. II. THE OBJECT OF RELIGION: ONTOLOGICAL DESCRIPTIONS A. NATURALISTIC Gerardus van der Leeuw, Religion in Essence and Mannifestation 1. Van der Leeuws discussion centers mainly on the understanding of the religious object in terms of a phenomenology of power. a. Religion is a response of men to the elements of the empirical environment whom we can identify as power. b. There is nothing supernatural or mystical about this power. c. The task of religion is to be able to achieve that sensitivity again to this object of power. 2. Power is something that we cannot prove; we can only seek attention to it. 3. To attain his goal, he made a sharp distinction between the primordial experience of power and the constant reflection on power. a. There is a first immediate awareness of power and b. the secondary reflection on that awareness. 4. Theories about power can be different but the primordial experience of power remains the same.

5. The idea of a unified power beyond the immediately given implies a sub-substructure for the world of appearances. This leads to the idea of a world order and to the ideal of achieving harmony with the world order as a means of obtaining power. Men achieve their destiny when they conform to this world order, not when you go against it. 6. Modern men can become aware of this primordial power when they are able to go beyond theories and let themselves be involved with the power itself. 7. The self and the object of religious experience must become united. Psychology becomes united with psychology. B. SUPERNATURALISTIC Jacques Maritain, Approaches to God 1. For Maritain, the true object of religion is to be found in the realm of the supernatural order and not in the human environment or the natural order. 2. He chooses to structure his description of the object through an appeal to the Five ways of St. Thomas. 3. This description however is anchored on a pre-philosophic, prereflective primordial intuition of being. This is an awareness that is a basic element common to the everyday, normal knowing of any human being. This primordial intuition is the experience of wonder and amazement that comes to us at times when we suddenly become excitingly aware of the fact that there is something and not nothing. 4. The acknowledgement of the basic fact of being is on the one hand more than a recognition of something, e.g., I recognize that an object coming within my vision is a car. The primordial intuition is the awareness of the fact that a car is a real thing that it participates in being. He writes: What counts is to have seen that existence is not a simple empirical fact but a primitive datum of the mind itself, opening to the mind and infinite supra-observable field - in a word, the primary and superintelligible sources of intelligibility. (taken from Existence and Existents) 5. The intuition of being does not occur apart from the perception of things (beings), but it is not identical with that perception. We can perceive people without knowing who it is. In the same way we can perceive things without being aware of the fact that they exist The facticity of being is something we recognize when we see things are there apart from us. 6. This immediate recognition of intuition is described by three simultaneous components. a. Awareness of something existing out there. b. Awareness that something out there implies my own existence as a perceiver, but an existence conditioned by the object. The existence of the object is also conditioned by my own presence - it is defined as an object-for-me. c. The intuition of unconditioned existence, the recognition that awareness of being conditioned carries with it a vague hunch about unconditioned existence. 7. This leads me to realize that my own being is a being-withnothingness. Pure being on the other hand, is prior to and beyond the contamination of contingency. But since my own being is a mixture of being and non-being and I am part of the world, the world is also contaminated by my non-being. This means that the pure being

implied by my own contaminated being cannot be the world as a whole, but is somehow outside the world. 8. The origin of religion then lies in the awareness of being (van der Leeuw = awareness of power). The mental process of immediate recognition is identical. 9. After this primordial intuition of being, Maritain discusses the mental activity following it in terms of the arguments for the existence of GOD. EXIST = Lt. Existere, EKS-SISTS to stand out of something. For Maritain the word existence does not properly apply to God since it would imply that God belongs to a class of objects (beings) that have existence as a characteristic. ANALOGY Exists has different meanings when we say: GOD EXISTS. Peter exists. The plant exists. God is beyond the class of objects and hence of existence. Gods existence is sui generis. Gods existence is necessary (cannot-notexist) while that of other beings are contingent. 10. For Maritain the Five ways of St. Thomas Aquinas are not designed to provide knowledge that we do not have yet. Rather they are elaborations of the primordial intuition of being that one already has. They expand the immediate intuition into a discursive, more understandable way. In doing this, one investigates not merely some dimension of the mind nor some part of the experienced world. He is investigating a part of reality itself. 11. The laws of being have as broad an extension as being itself. This is against psychologism (which seeks to explain logical maxims a probabilities based on a number of similar empirical observations) and idealism (which seeks to explain the laws of logic and nature as products of the way the mind works). 12. Our knowledge of God is an indirect knowledge in the sense that it goes beyond what we see by our eyes. But it is not deductive. It is rather immediate and intuitive; it is a common form of knowing that we tend to overlook. 13. The proofs for Gods existence do not provide direct knowledge of God. They simply suggest that things in the world are effects: that they are not self-explanatory. Things in the world need a cause beyond. The proofs show that the world is a sign of something beyond. They show that indirectly. 14. Men cannot see God, they can only see the world in the light of Gods presence. C. PROJECTIVE Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity 1. The object of religion is a projection. God, is mans humanity projected against the sky. 2. Consciousness is mans distinguishing (unique) characteristic; it is .the ability to abstract essences not limited to thinking about immediate objects presented to it. 3. The distinction between the individual, particular object and the universal essence or abstracted genus shows that individual are limited. I am limited, imperfect in relation to the whole humanity. 4. To escape this painful comparison, men attribute their own limitations to all humanity. This leaves the idea of a perfect humanity with no place.

5. We therefore project his idea to the sky and call it GOD. This projection causes man to be satisfied with his condition, since they assume it to be natural. However since the real problems/deficiencies are not known, it lessens the chance to improve the human condition. 6. GOD is simply not the idea of human projection; it contains the notion of unlimitedness or infinity. Infinity means that we can only know things that are within knowability. One cannot know things that cannot be known. There is no beyond comprehension. 7. in this sense, he becomes the forerunner of modern scientific positivism and relativism. He emphasizes the fact that I can only know things from one perspective my own. Objectivity therefore is merely projection. 8. Similarly, anthropomorphism is contained in all language about God. When we speak of God, we attribute human qualities to him. We describe him in terms of our highest ideals.

III. THE SUBJECT IN RELIGION: PSYCHOLOGICAL DESCRIPTIONS A. RELIGION AS A FACULTY Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion; The Christian Faith 1. Schleiermacher describes religion in a radically different way. He identifies the essence of religion not by a unique object, but by the uniqueness of the human psychic faculties which operate in religious activity. 2. By identifying the exact character of human religious faculties, Schleiermacher initiated a long tradition that sought to distinguish between superstition or perverted religion and true or legitimate religion. 3. In this regard, the religious object is unimportant. What is important is the kind and quality or human response to whatever one considers the divine. 4. The distinguishing mark of the subjective descriptions of religion is the identification of religion as a real and vital part of human life. While they may reject any particular conglomeration of culturally conditioned manifestations, behind the various positive forms of religious expressions lies a true dimension of human behavior: natural religion. 5. This natural religion identifies the religious sphere of mans life which underlies all aspects of human life and experience physical, moral, mental, social, emotional. Human life is incomplete if this religious side is not developed and human existence is understood incompletely if this religious facet is not considered. 6. The psychic life has three components which have their corresponding legitimate expressions: a. Knowing science b. Doing ethics c. Feeling religion FEELING 7. Feeling according to Schleiermacher is not to be understood in the ordinary sense. To do this would be to identify religion with a particular emotional attitude or peculiar inner experience. 8. Feeling must be understood as a immediate self-consciousness that is a component of the psychic life. It is a faculty of the mind and not a mental category and therefore, a metaphysical or ontological category rather than a psychological one. IMMEDIATE SELF-AWARENESS

9. Immediate self-consciousness refers to self-awareness that accompanies all our mental activity. a. It is conscious as opposed to unconscious; it s part of our mental awareness; we are in some sense aware of ourselves. b. It is immediate as opposed to reflective; it is not a deduction of my existence but is a direct awareness. 10. Immediate self-consciousness has two aspects: a. The feeling or moment of dependence things push/bear weight on me. b. The feeling or moment of freedom I am in control (on top) of things. These two are present in varying degrees in our self-awareness though at times, one dominates and obscures the other. 11. Neither moment can be completely absent from immediate selfawareness. There is always the awareness either of the object overagainst which one feels himself to be free or the world that is threatening to overwhelm the self. 12. Immediate self-consciousness therefore contains always an awareness of the self and the other.

RECIPROCITY 13. Our relation to our environment, to our world and to everything in it is one of reciprocity. We are aware of ourselves as determined by object in the world and we are aware of ourselves as determining objects in the world. 14. But in addition to this reciprocal relationship to our environment, there is a third moment of self-awareness which Schleiermacher calls the feeing of absolute dependence or the absolute feeling of dependence. It is an awareness of the fact that w and the object in the world are in their reciprocal relation, dependent and not-selfsufficient. 15. The absolute feeling of dependence. Is not merely the feeling of dependence carried to the absolute. It is the third type of awareness. We give the name God to the correlate of this feeling of absolute dependence. 16. Comparison of Schleiermachers and Maritains descriptions of religion: Maritain Schleiermacher SIMILARITIES 1. Inseparability of awareness and content of the awareness (Intentionality). 2. Subtle awareness that accompanies our dealings with things in reality. Primordial intuition of Immediate selfbeing consciousness DISSIMILARITIES 1. Elements focused upon in the analysis Awareness of Being Awareness of the Self External Being Feeling of Dependence Being-with-nothingness Feeling of Freedom Absolute Being Feeling of Absolute Freedom B. RELIGION AS A DIMENSION

Paul Tillich, Religion as a Dimension in Mans Spiritual Life 1. Religion as a word can be used in two ways in everyday language. a. It refers to institutionalized and formalized religious groups. In this sense religion is an outwards expression, codified and institutionalized in the various historical religions. b. Also, it refers o basic attitudes and to the deepest levels of selfunderstanding. This sense focuses on the religious element in human nature behind the different religions. Within this, there is still a further distinction: i. the religious considered as one aspect or component of human existence and ii. the religious as an attitude or disposition manifest in all aspects of life but not localized in any particular component. 2. John Dewey agrees with Schleiermacher that the essence of religion is to be located subjectively. However, he would deny that there is a particular human characteristic such as feeling or immediate selfconsciousness that is uniquely religious. People are religious when they exhibit certain attitudes that lend deep and enduring support to the process of living. (Deep caring) 3. For Paul Tillich, religion is a way in which individual and societies attempt to understand themselves and to articulate this understanding. Religion is then viewed as a component of individual and social life. Religion is a style of life. 4. Cultural Theology is the effort to show that religious symbols and myths are the way people understand and express the depth dimension of human existence. RELIGION AS ULTIMATE CONCERN 5. Religion is not a component of human life it is a dimension of human existence that influences every segment of human activity. As one moves into the deepest levels of meaning, whether in art, science, ethics, or some other activity, he approaches the religious level. In this religious level, man finds his fundamental values, whatever they may be. This is why for Tillich, religion is mans ultimate concern. DEPTH DIMENSION 6. This religious level is not only located within an individuals own particular subjectivity or conscious mind but moves towards that level of the subconscious mind. This is what he calls depth dimension. 7. From this depth dimension, he moves towards the analysis of the social collective subconscious as the social aspect of religion. 8. The depth dimension is a level of experience which is common to all men but which is often overlooked. This is the primary level of experience which serves as the basis of religion. 9. The depth dimension is a level of experience accessible only through symbols. E.g., painters, poets, novelists and dramatists use symbols to open up the deepest levels of human existence. 10. Symbols are an essential part of human life if it is to be lived on the deepest levels. One participates in symbols, and through this participation, one is able to see the true dimensions of ones existential situation. METHOD OF CORRELATION 11. Tillich employs the method of correlation as a theological way of relating existential questions and symbolic answers. Both questions and answers arise together when one approach the depths. 12. The above method does not simply connect existential questions and symbolic answers. Rather it is a way of formulating the real questions of existence and understanding the power of religious

symbols. The question and the answer merge together through their correlation. 13. Theological correlation cannot supply answers to the existential questions of human existence. Theology does not solve them; rather it poses them in a way that they are open to symbolic resolution. C. RELIGION AS A SOCIAL FUNCTION Emile Durheim SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION 1. Durkheim was one of the first ones who suggested the approach for a sociology of religion. He attempted to use his description of religion to refute positivists who wanted to attribute all religious activity to superstition. 2. He contented that religion was not superstition, but was an essential component of social existence. 3. The religious mentality acknowledges some external power to which it owes allegiance. Durkheim argued that that power is the society. 4. Religious ideas and images are the symbolic representation of the dependence of the individual on the society for physical and psychic comfort. 5. Religion is not superstitious nonsense, but a vital and necessary part of social life, impressing on the individual the claims of the group. 6. Religion is therefore the way the society enforces conformity. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic Science and Religion 1. Like Durkheim, Malinowski describes religion as a function of society. It could then be called a social or a functional description. 2. Like Schleiermacher and Tillich, the attention is directed toward the subject of religious activity rather than toward the object. In this instance however, the subject is the society rather than the individual. 3. Religion is described as an expression of a social reality, useful and perhaps necessary for preserving the stability of the group. 4. Malinowski attempts at a description of how religion works. By doing this, he tries to avoid any kind of value judgment regarding any particular religion or religion in general. 5. Through functional description, one can discern/know the critical element of religion. In this case, the essence of religion is to be found in relation to the social element. 6. However, while Malinowski agrees with Durkheim that the essence of religion is to be found in the way it functions in society, he on the other hand, rejects Durkheims identification of the object of religion with society. He expands the identification of that function by calling attention to the individual elements in religious behavior and to its power to criticize and judge society. 7. The function of religion must be seen in the enhancement of social characteristics, sanctioned by tradition, which promote individual and social stability. However, against Durkheim, Malinowski maintains that religion Is not only a tool of society to enforce conformity. Rather it is an integral element in individual and social existence, working to make the difficult crises of life bearable and to preserve the practical, moral wisdom of the ages through the sanctification of tradition. THE SACRED AND THE PROFANE 8. Further, Malinowski is concerned to show that religion is not simply superstition grounded on a faulty view of nature and of the

forces that control it. Religion has sometimes been understood as a faulty view of science, based on faulty notions of natural processes. 9. He then makes a sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane in order to distinguish science which deals with the secular, profane, everyday world of causes and effects; and religion which operates in the sphere of the unknown, mysterious or sacred. 10. The sacred domain is the domain of magic and religion. But these are two forms of human activity which are radically different in their function. a. Magical acts are performed with a conscious definite purpose. They are efforts to gain a particular objective through the manipulation of supernatural forces. b. Religious rites and rituals on the other hand, appear to have no immediate purpose. The performance of religious acts are often dictated by tradition and serves a social function that is never seen or articulated by the participant. Magic, insofar as it attempts to control the environment is considered a primitive form of science. The element of control is something absent in religious activity. 11. Malinowskis definition of religion is to be seen in his understanding of what a myth is. 12. Myth is not a symbolic reality but a direct expression of its subject matter. It is a narrative resurrection of primeval reality that expresses deep religious wants, moral cravings, social submissions, assertions, even practical requirements. It has the indispensable function of a. expressing, enhancing and codifying belief; b. safeguarding and enforcing morality c. vouching for the efficiency of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man. 13. Myth is thus a vital ingredient of human civilization; it is not an idle tale but a hard-worked active force. It is not an intellectual explanation or an artistic imagery, but a pragmatic charter of primitive faith and moral wisdom. 14. Briefly then, myth functions to strengthen tradition and endow it with a greater value and prestige by tracing it back to a higher, better, more supernatural reality of initial events. IV. THE RELATION OF THE SUBJECT AND OBJECT IN RELIGION: DIALECTICAL DESCRIPTONS These definitions hold that religion can best be defined neither in terms of what a man attends to in religious behavior (e.g., power, being or projection) nor in terms of the human capabilities and facilities with which people behave religiously (immediate self-awareness, the depth-dimension, or the need for social stability), but in terms of the way in which men relate to the object of their attention. Noema/Object Power Being Projection humanity Human Faculty (Self/Subject) Immediate selfawareness Primordial intuition of being of Need for social stability Noesis/Experience itself The way the subjective and objective elements come into contact.

A. RELIGION AS STRUCTURE AND ARCHETYPE Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane 1. What makes an experience religious is the way the subject relates to the object of religious experience. This is built on the recognition of the fact that we can experience our environment in different ways. 2. For example, the difference between what is sacred and profane lies not in the object of attention (e.g. a corpse) nor by the subjective mentality (emotion, intellect, tradition, society as a whole) but in the two different ways the people experience their environment or a particular situation. 3. The idea that there can be two ways of attending to the world is a difficult proposition to comprehend because the basic presupposition of the modern world is that there is only one way of attending to our environment. 4. Modern man lives in a desacralized universe where man is limited to the environment as experienced empirically through the senses. This is a one-dimensional, profane world. 5. All over the world, societies have recognized the distinction between what is sacred and profane. It is only modern man who has the difficulty of comprehending these two realms. 6. Man relates to the sacred and the profane differently. a. Profane sphere men were involved in a give and take relationship with object that they can control even though it offers resistance to them. b. Sacred sphere men are confronted with object whom they cannot control, such as forces of nature. Their only response could be of awe and wonder. They were faced with something out there; beyond control. It would be a mistake to think that the distinction between the sacred and the profane lies in the difference between kinds of objects. 7. Modern one-dimensional man is disillusioned by the promise of control by the advent of science. The more men gain control over their environment, the more they distance themselves from the capacity to see or experience the sacred. 8. Ultimately, the difference between the sacred and the profane is a matter of the framework in which men view their world. This framework is created through the process of selectivity wherein we consciously and unconsciously select certain sense data which come into our experience of reality. Without selectivity we would be flooded with random and unconnected sensa. TRANS-EXPERIENTIAL FACTORS 9. There are trans-experiential factors that condition and shape our experiences even though they are not really part of that experience. 10. Our experience therefore is a product of the data in our environment and the images, models, ideas and expectations we bring to it. These trans-experiential factors may come from a number of places and function in a variety of ways, but they have a significant influence in shaping our experienced world. when these images and models constitute our fundamental world-view or lifestyle, they become religious. 11. Religious symbols and images provide the fundamental archetypes or paradigmatic models for organizing and shaping the religious mans environment. THE SACRED

12. The sacred, therefore, is not another world residing alongside the real world of experience. Rather, the sacred world is the world of real events and things residing within the experienced world. Religious symbols and images provide the framework for uncovering this real world. 13. The desire of the religious man to live in the sacred is the desire to live in tune with real events and not according to phony or deceiving experiences. 14. In the sacred world, things and objects are shaped by the images and symbols contained in the religious tradition. In this world, things cannot be controlled to suit our needs. Rather, we must conform to reality. THE PROFANE 15. The profane world is composed of things and objects shaped by our own mental efforts, aspirations, fears and expectations. It is organized according to the trans-experiential factors that come from our own individual or social background. 16. The profane world is a world of objects which we can control and manipulate in order to suit our needs. RELIGIOUS RITES AND MYTHS 17. Religious rites and myths are efforts on the part of the religious man to bring himself and his world into harmony with the objectively real world which he cannot control. The desire of the religious man is to bring himself and his world into correlation with reality. 18. When the profane, subjective and changing world of modern man becomes expanded and transformed by confrontation with someone or something, this intersection becomes a holy place. This means that the subjective world meets the real world. 19. The real world of the religious man is identified by the myths, images and symbols of his religious traditions. This does not mean however that he escapes the existential world into some sort of fantastic reality. The religious man is just convinced that what is real cannot be limited to what can be empirically experienced in terms of what the quantitative sciences dictate.

B. RELIGION AS ENCOUNTER Martin Buber, I and Thou 1. Buber develops a dialectical understanding of religion based on the recognition of two fundamental kinds of experiences two ways through which men relate to their environment. 2. In Bubers phenomenological philosophy, there are two basic modes of relationship: a. I-it the relationship of control and manipulation to suit our needs. The other is treated as an object. (chalk, car, prostitute) b. I-Thou the relationship of respect and love towards the other. (father and son, husband and wife) 3. For Buber, there are times when the other breaks through our worlds and confronts us as a being which exists in itself and apart from our interaction with it. In these encounters there is no longer any question of our controlling and shaping the being which confronts us: it present itself as something real in itself. This confrontation Buber calls the IThou relationship.

4. The I-Thou encounter is not some kind of supernatural numinous experience. It is a kind of experience that is common to all men, although modern men have tended to ignore it. 5. The reason why modern man cannot understand the I-Thou relationship is because we are already so used to control and predict the objects in the world around us. We have lost the immediate experience of environment prior to our theoretical modeling of it. Modern man is always obsessed with control hence, the I-it relation. 6. There is one aspect of experience which we cannot control but only predict; the future. This interaction with the uncertain, with what is new, puts us in a position over which we have no control. 7. The confrontation with the unfamiliar (not a part of the recognized and organized world) is a frightening experience and it is easy to understand why we often seek to avoid it through prediction. 8. The openness to what is unfamiliar is the possibility of the I-Thou encounter. 9. The I-Thou is an open encounter where we cannot move out to the other. Rather, we find ourselves encountered. This experience is not a projection or creation of my mind but an experience of being confronted by someone or something in such a new or profound way that it could not be experienced as an object of my own making. 10. in this encounter, the other is a new reality which meets us and shatters the pigeon holes in which we had our previous experience. This is the other as it is in itself. 11. This encounter with the other or the Thou is mans encounter with God. The divine-human encounter is not a form of mysticism in whim man somehow is removed from his everyday world. This encounter is a normal part of our worldly existence. 12. This is a unique experience which is very different from the manipulative or objectifying way by which we relate to objects in the world. In the I-Thou encounter we do not meet objects in the environment where we interact. Rather, there are subjects that we meet. 13. The Thou s not only met in persons or other human beings but also in other things. When we meet the other or the Thou, who we meet is the Eternal Thou. As it manifest itself in the other. 14. The distinction between the I-it and the I-Thou relationship is not a distinction between how we relate to objects and how we relate to persons. it is a distinction between tow ways of relating to anything within our environment. 15. It should be noted that the I-it relationship is not necessarily an evil relationship. The I-it is the relationship which we establish towards things in our world in terms of usefulness. It is only in terms of this relationship that we are able to manipulate and control our environment and therefore get anything done at all. The danger arises when the I-it threatens to obscure the I-Thou dimension. 16. Religious activity for Buber is activity which takes place on the basis of the I-Thou relationship. In this dialogical encounter, there are no formulas. This is the realm which is no longer governed by the laws of causality thus he calls it the Between. 17. Religious activity is genuine dialogue where both parties are open and no seeming comes in to destroy authenticity. It is becoming completely involved with other persons and letting them speak in the way they wanted to speak or be heard. PROOFS OF GODS EXISTENCE

ONTOLOGICAL PROOF A. St. Anselm of Canterbury was the first one to develop the argument. God, is the being than which no greater can be conceived. But, the being than which no greater can be conceived is necessarily a being that exists. if God does not exist, then any existing thing will be greater than God, which contradicts the notion of God. Ergo, God exists. He begins by concentrating the monotheistic concept of God into the formula: A being than which nothing greater can be conceived. greater means more perfect, rather than spatially bigger. It is important to notice that the idea of the most perfect conceivable being is different from the idea of the most perfect being there is. Instead of describing God as the most perfect being that there is, Anselm describes God as the being who is so perfect that no more perfect can be conceived. FIRST FORM In the next and crucial stage of the argument, Anselm distinguishes between something, X, as it exists in the mind and as it exists in reality as well. If the most perfect conceivable being existed only in the mind, we should then have the contradiction that it is possible to conceive of a yet more perfect being, viz., the same being existing in reality as well as in the mind. THEREFORE The most perfect conceivable being must exist in reality as well as in the mind. St. Anselm states this in the Proslogion: If then that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists in the mind alone, this same that-than-which-a-greater-cannot be-thought is that-than-which-a-greater-can-be-thought. But this is obviously impossible. Therefore, there is absolutely no doubt that somethingthan-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought exists both in the mind and in reality. SECOND FORM In the third chapter, Anselm states the argument again, directing it now not merely to Gods existence but to his uniquely necessary existence. Contingent being can not-exist Necessary being cannot not-exist God is the being who cannot not-exist.

The core of this notion is necessary being is self-existence (aseity). Since God as infinitely perfect is not limited in or by time, the twin possibilities of Gods having come to exist or ever ceasing to exist are alike excluded and Gods nonexistence is rendered impossible. He further says in the Proslogion. For something can be thought to exist that cannot be thought not to exist. Hence, if that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-be-thought can be thought not to exist, then that-than-which-a-grater-cannot-bethought is not the same as that-than-which-a-greater-cannot-bethought, which is absurd. Something-than-which-a-greater-cannotbe-thought exists so truly then, that it cannot be even thought not to exist. CRITICISM Gaunilon a monk (Marmoutiers, in France) who was the first to criticize Anselms argument in the reply In Behalf of the Fool. He claims that Anselms reasoning would lead to absurd conclusions if applied in other fields, and he sets up a supposedly parallel ontological argument for the most perfect island. Gaunilon spoke of the most perfect of island rather than (as he should have done) of the most perfect conceivable island; but his argument could be rephrased in term of the latter idea. Given the idea of such an island, by using Anselms principle we can argue that unless it exists in reality it cannot be the most perfect conceivable island. Anselms reply he emphasized that his ontological reasoning applies only to God based on the second form of the argument. The idea of God has an element which is lacking in the notion of the most perfect island, viz., is necessary existence. An island is by definition a material reality that can be thought not to exist.

B. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) often called the father of

modern philosophy, reformulated the argument. God is the perfect being. But, the perfect being is necessarily is an existing being. if it is not, then it is most imperfect because that which does not exists lacks the fundamental perfection, without which no other perfection can be had. Ergo, God exists. Existence is a property that necessarily belongs to the concept of God. e.g., like a triangle, by definition, has the three internal angels who sum is equivalent to the sum of two right angels (180 degrees). CRITICISM Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) he shows that the ontological proof could be proven two ways: validly or otherwise.

To do this, he makes the distinction between synthetic and analytic propositions: Analytic proposition the predicated is necessarily contained in the subject A triangle is a geometrical figure that has three sides and three angles equal to 180 degrees. Synthetic the predicate is not contained necessarily in the subject. Rod has a toy ball. On one hand, he accepted the idea that the idea of existence belongs analytically to the concept of God. The predicate is necessarily linked with the subject. But Kant replied that it does not follow from this that the subject, with its predicates, actually exists. To posit the triangle and to reject its three angles is selfcontradictory; But there is no self-contradiction in rejecting the triangle together with its three angles. The same holds true of the concept of an absolutely necessary being. At another level, Kant rejected Descartes basic assumption that existence is a predicate of God. Existence does not add anything to the concept of a particular thing or kind of thing. Example: an imaginary one hundred dollars consists of the same number of dollars as a real hundred dollars. When we say something, X, exists, the word exists does not mean it is an attribute of that X in addition to other attributes. It is just to say that there is an X in the real world.

C. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) A German

philosopher and mathematician and one of the founders of modern science. God is the necessary or eternal being. But it is impossible that the necessary or eternal being should not exist. anything that is eternal exists in such manner that it had no beginning and will have no end. Ergo, God exists. Antonio Pion, Ph. D. makes a systematic critique in his notes on Natural Theology .

1. How sure are we that the notions of St. Anselm, Descartes and
Leibniz are the correct ones? There are many competing notions of God, How do we choose one over another? a. By persuasion? b. By the Bible? c. By proof? 2. The ontological argument begs the question. To prove something based on the notion itself does not say anything since it is built upon the assumption that what is to be proven already exists. Therefore, the proof it begs the issue.

3. The notions described above might be taken for granted but to

show that they are not merely empty abstraction but describes and fits a real being needs proof. The point of the above criticisms is to show that if existence is not a predicate of things, then it cannot be a defining predicate of God, and the question whether anything in reality corresponds to the concept of the most perfect conceivable being remains open to inquiry. COSMOLOGICAL PROOFS starts with a general feature of the world and argues that there cannot be a world with this particular characteristic unless there were also the ultimate reality which we call God. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) with his Five Ways in the Summa Theologica, shows that Gods existence can be proven/demonstrated. Demonstration is process proceeding from what is already known (premises) to what is unknown (conclusion). There are three kinds/modes of demonstration: A PRIOR1 the premises are prior in being to the conclusion: From cause to effect e.g., father to a son From essence to properties rationality to thought A POSTERIORI the premises are posterior in being to the conclusion From effect to cause shoes to the shoemaker From properties to essence making choices to rationality A SIMULTANEO the premises are simultaneous in being to the conclusion. An example is the ontological argument. God cannot be demonstrated a priori because God cannot have a cause. From the Bible. No biblical theist will accept that an a priori demonstration that God has a cause. The idea is internally inconsistent. The cause of God would be more than God and if the cause of God is uncaused, it would be God in the strictest sense. There are conditions for a valid a posteriori demonstration that God exists. The demonstration must be based on a sensible fact. FACT = something actually existing SENSIBLE = observable by any of the external senses This requirement is justified because we need to proceed from the existence of an effect to the existence of its cause. Only the external senses puts us in touch with actually existing things. The sensible fact must evidently be an effect. The demonstration must proceed entirely within the order of efficient causality. E.g., SHOES MATERIAL CAUSE leather, rubber, nails FORMAL CAUSE the form (what makes it a shoe = essence) EFFICIENT CAUSE shoemaker

FINAL AND EXEMPLARY CAUSE the intention in the mind of the shoemaker and model he has in his mind (or picture). Material and formal causes are out because they are intrinsic to the thing. Final and exemplary causes are also out because they are in the order of intention (mental). Only in the line of efficient causality can we have a cause that ends in outside reality, and is moreover, really distinct from its effect. The conclusion must give us some means of identifying God; otherwise the search will be endless. The effect takes its being from its cause. Hence, the proper cause of the effect has to exhibit some feature which clearly shows the reason why the effect depends on itself. In other words, the conclusion provides us with a nominal definition of God. St. Thomas found five features or phenomena that provided him with as many ways (Quinque Viae is the term he uses) leading to God. MOTION First Way: FROM THINGS IN MOTION TO A FIRST MOVER If there are things in motion, then THERE IS A MOVER Motion is the reduction of something from potency to act. Potency involved the privation of act. Therefore, it is impossible for anything to reduce itself from potency to act. Act cannot positively come from its privation. Therefore, things in motion are reduced from potency to act by something in act. This is the MOVER. If there is a mover, then THERE IS A FIRST MOVER - Either the mover is sufficient, by itself, for the tak of reducing a thing from potency to act, or it is insufficient. - If it is sufficient, then, it is the FIRST MOVER - If it is insufficient, then, it has to depend ultimately on the SUFFICIENT, i.e., the FIRST MOVER. - In either case, a FIRST MOVER EXISTS. GOD IS THE FIRST MOVER. ORDERED CAUSALITY Second Way: FROM PER SE SUBORDINATED CAUSES TO A FIRST CAUSE Preliminaries EFFICIENT CAUSE (also called agent) is that which, by its physical action, brings something into existence. EFFECT is what is brought into existence. Causality can be: At rest

In actual exercise A cause is only a cause if it produces an effect. A man cannot be called a father until he begets a son; a writer if he writes something; a painter if he produces a painting. There is an order of cause and effect. - The cause has necessarily has something dependent on it for its being (effect). - The effect necessarily has something on which it depends for its being (cause). - These irreversible relationships are intrinsic to the notions of cause and effect. They define the order between cause and effect as one of subordination of the effect to its cause. There is also an order among causes themselves - Subordination The teacher tells the students to write a reflection. - Coordination Students help each other to finish the reflection. - Subordination with coordination The teacher tells the students write the reflection yet helps them at the same time. THE PROOF If something begins to exist, then, ITS EFFICIENT CAUSE EXISTS. - This dog does not exist. Now it does (Sensible facts) - This dog began to exist. - It is impossible for the dog to cause itself. - Therefore, it was caused by another. If something begins to exist by the action of SUBORDINATE causes, then, a FIRST CAUSE EXISTS. - There is an order of causes as follows: FIRST (ULTIMATE) CAUSE cause whose actual exercise of causality is independent of any other. MIDDLE CAUSE cause whose effecting action depends on another agent (efficient cause). EFFECT that whose coming into being is effected by another. - Infinite regress is impossible since if there is no FINAL CAUSE, there is also no MIDDLE CAUSE and therefore no effect. Since sense experience verifies that the EFFECT comes into being by the action of subordinate (MIDDLE CAUSES), there can be no infinite regress. The finite series ends in a FIRST CAUSE. This FIRST CAUSE is characterized as NEVER IN POTENCY TO ACTION. The FIRST CAUSE is always in actual causal exercise.

CONTINGENCY Third Way: FROM CONTINGENT BEING TO NECESSARY BEING Preliminaries Contingent being a being which is possible to be and possible not to be. Necessary being a being that is impossible not to be. Contingency is the possibility to be and the possibility to be-not. The contingency of a thing is experienced when we see both that it begins to be and it ceases to be. Example: A man is born and later dies. Contingency is the intrinsic indetermination either to be or to be-not. THE PROOF If some things exist, then, not all things are contingent. - If all things are contingent, then nothing has reason to be. If nothing has reason to be, then no thing exists. - But some things exist now. - It is not the case that all things are contingent. If not all things are contingent, then, some NECESSARY BEING EXISTS. - Contingency means not determined to being or to non-being. - The contingent being which exists actually (e.g., a dog) cannot not-exist = not-determined to non-being = necessary. - What is determined to non-being = nothing. - Necessity can mean two things: Intrinsic or per se within the thing itself (a pencil that exists, cannot not-exist). Extrinsic or accidental outside the thing or not part of it (the hat is hanging on the wall and not found on the floor). If there is something necessary, then, there is something that is necessary INTRINSICALLY or PER SE. - If all things are necessary only accidentally, then all things are per se or intrinsically contingent, which cannot be the case if some things are in existence. - There is something that is intrinsically necessary, not only in the sense that it exists and therefore, it cannot not-exist but in the sense that it cannot possibly be non-existent in an absolute way. What is excluded in a Necessary Being is POTENCY to Being. If it were in potency to being, then it would not have the status of existing, but only the possibility to exist (contingency).

First MOVER First CAUSE The NECESSARY BEING

cannot be in potency to

act exercise of power being

From the above, it is easy to see that if all kinds of potency are removed from the First Mover, First Cause and the Necessary Being, then God must be PURE ACT, i.e., always in act, dynamic, moving. DEGREES OF BEING Fourth Way: FROM THE ORDER OF THINGS TO THE SUPREME BEING In the world, there are beings which we can call more or less perfect (plus or minus being). - Things are seen as beautiful, good, true insofar as they participate in being. Women, who really exists can be more or less beautiful but the absolutely beautiful woman exists nowhere in the world. - Now, if there is no absolute being, what is the basis of calling one being as more being than another? If things have more or less being, then, the ABSOLUTE BEING exists. - If the basis of calling more or less being is itself caused, would it not be a part of the order more or less being? - A caused being cannot be the critters for calling more or less being. - Therefore, it has to be an UNCAUSED BEING that is Independent of any other Self-sufficient in the order of being Lacking in nothing. Possessing the FULNESS OF BEING - The Fullness of being cannot have more or less being since it is a contradiction. - It has to be outside the class of CAUSED BEING: therefore, = UNCAUSED BEING = GOD = FULNESS OF BEING = FIRST or SUPREME or ABSOLUTE BEING. The degrees of being are PARTICIPATIONS in/of ABSOLUTE BEING. What is more or less full is not full. Things in the world are participations of ABSOLUTE BEING. DYNAMIC INTENTIONALITY Fifth Way: FROM THE BEHAVIOR OF NATURAL AGENTS TO A GOVERNING INTELLECT Every agent acts for an end. (A student is studying because he has a purpose.) Now, things in this world act towards an end, i.e., they have finality or purpose. (gravity pulls things towards the earth, pencil is for writing, etc.) Things which cannot act on their own, (non-intelligent natural agents) i.e., freely, are determined by something else, viz., an intellectual agent.

An infinite regress is therefore impossible because a natural agent depends PER SE on an intellectual agent. Therefore, if the world Is governed by laws of motion, etc., they are not due to chance but because there is a SUPREME INTELLIGENCE that ordained them = GOD. DESIGN (OR TELEOLOGICAL) ARGUMENT MORAL ARGUMENT