Atheism and Theism JJ Haldane - Common Sense Atheism

148 J.J. Haldane
mankind by an inspired teaching authority there would be no reason to be
optimistic about transcending the agnostic theism arrived at and defended
through philosophical reason. Catholicism holds that this possibility has been
realized through the incarnation of God in Christ and his establishment of
a Church to which has been given, in the office of Peter and his successors,
the ‘extraordinary magisterium’ of doctrinal infallibility. The scale and profundity
of these religious claims is unmatched by any philosophical or scientific
theory and I cannot even begin to elaborate, let alone defend, them
now. 25 What I wish to urge, however, and I think Jack Smart would agree
with this, is that it is absurd to try to arrive at an intellectual assessment
of these claims, and the evidence for them, independently of taking a view
on such philosophical questions as the intelligibility of the universe, the existence
and character of evil and the possibility of miracles. The New Testament
is a set of texts admitting of many interpretations, none of which is selfauthenticating
though some of which may be inspired as, I believe, is the text
itself. Miracles aside, a reader will not find God in its pages if he is not looking
for him there. Unmistakably, however, the texts address a series of questions
– principally ‘who is Christ?’; and the reply: ‘the way, and the truth and
the life’ (John 14: 6) is an answer that should elicit from the philosophical
theist the response ‘and this is what we call God’, or in the Latin of Aquinas
‘et hoc dicimus Deum’.
Notes
1 See, for example, Smart, ‘Realism v. Idealism’, in J.J.C. Smart, Essays Metaphysical
and Moral (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), and J. Haldane, ‘Mind-World Identity
Theory and the Anti-Realist Challenge’, in J. Haldane and C. Wright (eds),
Reality, Representation and Projection (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
2 All quotations from Hebrew and Christian Scripture are taken from The Holy
Bible, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (London: Catholic Truth Society,
1966).
3 The Summa Theologiae, sometimes referred to as the Summa Theologica, but generally
known as ‘the Summa’ exists in a definitive Latin/English edition published
in association with Blackfriars (the Dominican house of study in Oxford) in sixty
volumes (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1963–75). A very good, single volume
abridgement is Timothy McDermott (ed.), Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation
(London: Methuen, 1989). More recently McDermott has produced Aquinas:
Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). As would
be expected this includes many of the philosophically most interesting passages
from the Summa, and I strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to read
Aquinas.