As I am reviewing some of the atheistic philosophies that I have taught in a course at St. John’s University, I am very aware of what I have tried to draw from the influential atheists, even though I disagree with their vision of reality. I am always looking for insights that the atheists might have that might help me and my students deepen and broaden our view of God. The atheists are important in the history of philosophy, and some of them have been very influential. I believe that wherever truth is found, it should be accepted. One thinker whose view of God especially interested me was Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872).
The following statement is a good summary of Feuerbach’s view of God:
“Historically speaking, Feuerbach says, every new, more advanced religion always rejects what its more ancient and primitive sisters adored as God. The more advanced religions disclose that the so-called superhuman contents of the older religions were after all something human, an exteriorization and personification of man’s own powers. … All the attributes of God, then, are merely attributes of man’s own nature, viewed as if it were a being apart from man himself. But the divine being is nothing but human nature stripped of its imperfections, and then revered as if it were a distinct being (“Religion and Atheism,” William A. Luijpen and Henry J. Koren, Duquesne University Press, 1971, p. 56).
In other words, all God-talk is really only talk about ourselves.
At the time that I was teaching Feuerbach at St. John’s, I came upon a wonderful book by W. Norris Clarke, SJ, called “The One and the Many: A Contemporary Thomistic Metaphysics” (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame Press, 2001).
Clarke reflects on our experience of knowing and loving, and points out that our intellect is a dynamic drive toward all being as intelligible, and our will is a dynamic drive toward all being as good. No finite truth will ever satisfy our intellect, and no finite good will ever satisfy our will. Clarke writes the following:
“My intellect and will are such by nature that they can never be completely satisfied by any finite being or good. I must always implicitly refer each one to a wider, richer horizon beyond, to which I then spontaneously tend. It follows that only an unqualified infinity, or unlimited fullness of being and goodness, could ever satisfy this innate drive, which defines my nature as spiritual intellect and will. Thus my very nature as a human person is to be an ineradicable implicit drive toward the Infinite, which I implicitly affirm and desire in all that I explicitly affirm and desire. As St. Thomas puts it with his usual terseness: ‘In knowing anything, I implicitly affirm God. … In loving anything, I implicitly love God’ ” (pp. 226-227).
Clarke continues:
“Could not an endless supply of finites be enough to satisfy this drive? No. Once we realized that this was all there ever could be or would be, we might be forced to put up with it in lieu of anything better, but there would still remain a deep, unfulfilled void within us, a radical emptiness that nothing could ever fill. There would seem to be some deep unintelligibility, some profound lack of meaning at the root of our being human” (p. 227).
My understanding of our implicitly knowing and loving God whenever we know and love any reality is tied to what Thomistic philosophers call the five transcendentals, which are truth, love, justice/goodness, beauty, and home/being.
God cannot create any reality that does not resemble God. This means that every reality that God creates is being, one, true, good, and beautiful. So when we know or love any reality, we are knowing and loving resemblances of God, and so are implicitly knowing and loving God. God cannot create evil. God can create free beings who can do evil, but because God is Infinite Good, God cannot create evil. Whatever God creates resembles God in some way. I find that truth exciting.
I have no illusions that this particular column is easy reading, but I wrote it with the belief that anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. If Father Clarke were alive, I think I might mail him this column with the hope that he might help me write the column more clearly. I just find the truth that in knowing or loving anything, we are implicitly knowing and loving God so exciting, so wonderful, and so encouraging that I wanted to try to communicate it as best I could to readers of the column.
To me, believing that all knowing is implicitly knowing God and all loving is implicitly loving God is added evidence that we are surrounded by God even in our knowing and loving any realities.
I think that is very good news.
Father Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica. His new book, “The Cosmic Love Story: God and Us,” is available on Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble.