Paradox

AQUINAS: CAN GOD HAVE A BIOGRAPHY? 179century. Augustine’s doctrine of an eternal God had alreadybeen entrenched for eight hundred years. Although Augustinewas influenced by Plato through Plotinus, Augustine’s accountof God’s relationship with time is a Christian innovation.Aquinas (ca. 1225–1274) was responsible for integratingAristotle’s philosophy into Christianity. He mainly used Aristotle’sdistinctions and principles to consolidate extant Catholicdogmas. Aquinas was a moderate. He looked for the truth thatlies between extreme opinions. He was not interested inimporting Greek novelties. Aquinas’s aim was to achieve anoverall synthesis that would stand up to learned challengesfrom the Moslems, Jews, and heretics. He faces paradoxes withequanimity: “Since faith rests on infallible truth, and since thecontrary of a truth can never be demonstrated, it is clear thatthe arguments brought against faith cannot be demonstrations,but are difficulties which can be answered.” (1929, Ia.I.8)Aquinas’s conservativeness outraged Bertrand Russell:There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. Hedoes not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to followwherever the argument may lead. He is not engaged in aninquiry, the result of which it is impossible to know inadvance. Before he begins to philosophize, he alreadyknows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If hecan find apparently rational arguments for some parts ofthe faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fallback on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusiongiven in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading.I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on alevel with the best philosophers either of Greece or ofmodern times.(1945, 463)