Questions On Natural Knowledge Of God - 1679 Words

2. Natural Knowledge of God in Insight Lonergan’s argument, I will offer my assessment of whether or not the constitution permits his philosophical means. Lonergan moves from treating God as an object of thought to treating God as an object of affirmation by way of an argument: â€Å"If the real is completely intelligible, God exists. But the real is com ¬pletely intelligible. Therefore, God exists.† I will refrain from elaborating on the argument itself; works doing this are available. What is important, given the interests of this study, is the following statement by Lonergan in the Epilogue: [O]ur first eighteen chapters were written solely in the light of human intelligence and reasonableness and without any presupposition of God’s†¦show more content†¦The question arises, however, as to what Lonergan’s assessment would be of arguments that proceed more—or at least more explicitly—on the side of the object. One wonders, for instance, how Lonergan would see his argument in relation to Aquinas’s five ways. As it happens, Lonergan makes two illuminating statements about the five ways in chapter nineteen of Insight. First, he writes, â€Å"[T]he five ways in which Aquinas proves the existence of God are so many particular cases of the general statement that the proportionate universe is incompletely intelligible and that complete intelligibili ¬ty is demanded.† Second, he writes, â€Å"[B]esides Aquinas’s five ways, there are as many other proofs of the existence of God as there are aspects of incomplete intelligibility in the universe of proportionate being.† These two statements illuminate what is central to Lonergan’s argument: the incapacity of proportionate being as such to satiate the mind’s demand for complete intelligibility. Alicia Jaramillo contends that Lonergan’s focus on this demand—something on the side of the subject—does not mark an abandonment of classical cosmological arguments. I now return to the question of whether