The Case for God

by Karen Armstrong

  35. Basil, Epistle 234.1.

  36. Paul, 2 Corinthians 3:18.

  37. Norman, “Rediscovery of Mysticism,” p. 258.

  38. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, pp. 76–300; Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 1:52–67, 172–226; Thomas Hopko, “The Trinity in the Cappadocians,” in McGinn and Meyendorff, Christian Spirituality, pp. 261–73; Lars Thurberg, “The Human Person and the Image of God: Eastern,” ibid., pp. 292–308; Raimundo Panikkar, The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man (London and New York, 1973); John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (New York and London, 1975), pp. 131–80.

  39. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29:6–20.

  40. Basil, Epistle 38.4.

  41. Basil, On the Holy Spirit 28.66; Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Oxford, 1983), pp. 85–90.

  42. Louth, Discerning the Mystery, p. 46.

  43. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 40.41; Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London, 1957), pp. 45–46.

  44. Leonid Ouspensky, “Icon and Art,” in McGinn and Meyendorff, Christian Spirituality, pp. 382–90.

  45. Rowan Williams, “The Deflections of Desire: Negative Theology in Trinitarian Disclosure,” in Oliver Davies and Denys Turner, eds., Silence and the Word: Negative Theology and Incarnation (Cambridge, U.K., 2002), pp. 128–30.

  46. Panikkar, Trinity, pp. 46–67.

  47. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London, 1967); Louth, Origins of Christian Mysticism, pp. 139–56; Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, pp. 235–37; Mary T. Clark, “The Trinity in Latin Christianity,” in McGinn and Meyendorff, Christian Spirituality, pp. 282–85; Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 50–101.

  48. Augustine, The Confessions 8.12.29. All quotations from The Confessions are taken from Philip Burton, trans. and ed., Augustine: The Confessions, intro. by Robin Lane Fox (London, 2001).

  49. Augustine, Confessions 10.27.38.

  50. Augustine, Confessions 10.25.36.

  51. Augustine, Confessions 10.6.9; John 18:25; Psalms 100.2; 99.3.

  52. Augustine, Confessions 10.7.11.

  53. Augustine, Confessions 10.6.8.

  54. Ibid.

  55. Augustine, Confessions 10.17.26.

  56. Denys Turner, Faith, Reason and the Existence of God (Cambridge, U.K., 2004), pp. 81–83.

  57. Augustine, Confessions, 7.17.23.

  58. Augustine, Ennarationes in Psalmis 134.6; Turner, Faith, Reason, p. 83.

  59. Augustine, The City of God 22.24.2; Augustine, On Contemplation 1.5; Turner, Faith, Reason, pp. 82, 83.

  60. Augustine, On the Trinity 10.11.18 in Edmund Hill, OP, trans., Augustine: The Trinity (New York, 1994).

  61. McIntosh, Mystical Theology, p. 70.

  62. Augustine, Confessions 13.15.18.

  63. Psalm 103:2.

  64. Augustine, The Literal Sense of Genesis 1.18, 19, 21.

  65. Augustine, Confessions 12.25.35.

  66. D. W. Robertson, trans., Augustine: On Christian Doctrine (Indianapolis, 1958), p. 30.

  67. Acts 17:34.

  68. Denys Turner, “Apophaticism, Idolatry and the Claims of Reason,” in Davies and Turner, Silence and the Word, pp. 16–21; Turner, Darkness of God, pp. 12–49, 252–72; Mcintosh, Mystical Theology, pp. 46–56; Andrew Louth, Denys the Areopagite (Wilton, Conn., 1989); Paul Rorem, “The Uplifting Spirituality of Pseudo-Dionysius,” in McGinn and Meyndorff, Christian Spirituality, pp. 132–49; Paul Rorem, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols Within the Pseudo-Dionysian Synthesis (Toronto, 1984); Norman, “Rediscovery of Mysticism,” pp. 454–55, 459.

  69. Denys, The Divine Names (hereafter DN) 712A—B. Quotations from Denys’s writings are taken from Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem, trans., Pseudo-Dionysus: The Complete Works (Mahwah, N.J., and London, 1987).

  70. DN 596A.

  71. Denys, The Celestial Hierarchies 141A—B.

  72. Denys, Epistle 9, 1104D—1105B.

  73. Denys, Mystical Theology (hereafter MT), 1033B.

  74. MT 1048A.

  75. DN 872A; my italics.

  76. MT 1048B.

  77. MT 1048A.

  78. DN 817D.

  79. DN 981B.

  80. MT 1000c—1001A.

  81. Rorem, Biblical and Liturgical Symbols; Turner, Darkness of God, pp. 258–59, 272; Mcintosh, Mystical Theology, pp. 45, 54–56; Louth, Denys, pp. 24, 29–31, 101–9.

  82. MT 1033C; my italics.

  83. Meyendorff, “Eastern Liturgical Theology,” pp. 358–59.

  84. MT 1000C.

  85. DN 864A.

  SIX Faith and Reason

  1. P. A. Sigal, “Et les marcheurs de Dieu prirent leurs armes,” L’Histoire 47 (1982); Ronald C. Finucane, Pilgrims, Popular Beliefs in Medieval Europe (London, 1977).

  2. R. W. Southern, ed. and trans., Vita Sancti Anselmi by Eadmer (Oxford, 1962); Benedicta Ward, ed. and trans., The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm with the Proslogion, intro. by R. W. Southern (London and New York, 1973); Ward, “Anselm of Canterbury and His Influence” in Jill Raitt, ed., Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Reformation (New York, 1988; London, 1989), pp. 197–203; Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, 5 vols. (Chicago and London, 1971–89), 3:106–44, 257–63; John Macquarrie, In Search of Deity: An Essay in Dialectical Theism (London, 1984), pp. 201–2.

  3. Anselm, Epistle 136 in Pelikan, Christian Tradition, 3:258.

  4. Anselm, Proslogion 1.143–45 in Ward, trans., Meditations and Prayers.

  5. Anselm, Monologion 32, 68 in F. S. Schmitt, ed., Sancti Anselmi Cantuariensis archiepiscopi opera omnia, 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1938–61). My translation.

  6. Anselm, Proslogion 1.150–51. Ward translation.

  7. Anselm, Proslogion 1.153–57. My translation. See Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Belief in History (Charlottesville, Va., 1985), pp. 312–13.

  8. Anselm, Proslogion 2.159. Ward translation.

  9. Anselm, Proslogion 2.161. My translation. See Macquarrie, In Search of Deity, p. 201, who argues that the idea of “perfection” is included in maius as well as “greatness.”

  10. Anselm, Proslogion 3.197–98. Ward translation; my italics.

  11. Psalm 14:1.

  12. Anselm, Proslogion 2.180–83. Ward translation.

  13. Anselm, Proslogion 2.180–86.

  14. See Macquarrie, In Search of Deity, pp. 201–2.

  15. Jean Leclerq, “Ways of Prayer and Contemplation: West,” in Bernard McGinn and John Meyendorff, eds., Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century (London, 1986), pp. 417–25.

  16. Anselm, Prayers and Meditations, preface. Ward translation.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Anselm, Proslogion, preface. Ward translation.

  19. Ibid.

  20. Southern, Vita Sancti Anselmi, p. 20.

  21. Ibid.

  22. I have discussed the philosophical movement in Islam and Judaism and explored its implications in greater detail in A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York, 1993), pp. 170–208.

  23. Quoted in S. H. Nasr, “Theology and Spirituality,” in Islamic Spirituality: Manifestations, ed. S. H. Nasr (London, 1991), p. 411.

  24. From the Rasa’il, a tenth-century Ismaili text, quoted in Majid Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy (New York and London, 1970), p. 187.

  25. W. Montgomery Watt, Muslim Intellectual: The Struggle and Achievement of al-Ghazzali (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 133–40.

  26. Maimonides, The Guide to the Perplexed, trans. M. Friedlander (London, 1936), p. 87.

  27. Moshe Idel, “PaRDeS: Some Reflections on Kabbalistic Hermaneutics,” in John Collins and Michael Fishbane, eds., Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys (Albany, N.Y., 1995), pp. 249–57.

  28. Brian Davies, The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford, 1992); Denys Turner, Faith, Reason and the Exis
tence of God (Cambridge, U.K., 2004); Denys Turner, “Apophaticism, Idolatry and the Claims of Reason,” in Oliver Davies and Denys Turner, eds., Silence and the Word, Negative Theology and Incarnation (Cambridge, U.K., 2002), pp. 23–34; Herbert McCabe, God Matters (London, 1987); Herbert McCabe, “Aquinas on the Trinity,” in Davies and Turner, Silence and the Word, pp. 76–92; Antony Kenny, The Five Ways (London, 1969); Etienne Gilson, L’Esprit de la philosophie medieval (Paris, 1944); Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 3:268–307; Ralph Norman, “Rediscovery of Mysticism,” in Gareth Jones, ed., The Blackwell Companion to Modern Theology (Oxford, 2004), pp. 463–64.

  29. Thomas, Summa contra gentiles 1.5.3. in Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings, trans. R. McInery (Harmondsworth, U.K., 1998).

  30. Ephesians 1.21; Thomas, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, trans. M. L. Lamb (Albany, 1966), pp. 78–79.

  31. Thomas, Summa theologiae (hereafter ST) i a. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations from ST are taken from Timothy McDermott, trans. and ed., St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: A Concise Translation (London, 1989), p. 11.

  32. Ephesians 1:20.

  33. ST Ia.2, pp. 11–12; my italics.

  34. ST Ia q.3 in McCabe, “Aquinas on the Trinity,” p. 77; McCabe’s italics.

  35. ST Ia.2–11, pp. 12–15.

  36. J. J. C. Smart and J. J. Haldane, Atheism and Theism (Oxford, 2003), pp. 126–37.

  37. Herbert McCabe, appendix 3 to vol. 3 of the Blackfriars edition of the Summa Theologiae; Davies, Thought of Thomas Aquinas, p. 41.

  38. ST Ia q.3.1–5 pp. 14–15.

  39. Turner, Faith, Reason, p. 226.

  40. Ibid., p. 121.

  41. ST 2.2.4.5 as translated in Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Faith and Belief (Princeton, N.J., 1979), p. 87.

  42. “Credere [est] actus intellectus assentientis vero ex imperio voluntate” (ST 2.2.4.5), translated ibid., p. 280.

  43. Smith, Faith and Belief, pp. 87–89, 294–95.

  44. ST 2.2.14.1; 2.2.1.2.

  45. ST 8.46.2.

  46. Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, 3:286, 305–6; Denys Turner, The Darkness of God: Negativity in Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, U.K., 1995), pp. 103–34; Turner, Faith, Reason, pp. 27–28, 52–62.

  47. Bonaventure, The Journey of the Mind to God (hereafter JMG) 6.2. Quotations from Bonaventure’s works are taken from Philotheus Boehner and M. Frances Laughlin, eds. and trans., The Works of Saint Bonaventure, 2 vols. (New York, 1958).

  48. JMG 3.1.

  49. JMG 5.3.

  50. JMG 5.4.

  51. Ibid.

  52. JMG 6.3.

  53. Ibid.

  54. JMG 6.7.

  55. JMG 6.5.

  56. JMG 6.7.

  57. John 13:1.

  58. John 14:8.

  59. JMG 7.6.

  60. Richard Cross, Duns Scotus (Oxford, 1999); William A. Frank and Allan B. Walter, Duns Scotus, Metaphysician (West LaFayette, Ind., 1995); Turner, Faith, Reason, pp. 85–88, 125–49.

  61. ST 1.13.10.

  62. Scotus, Ordinatio i d.3, 35 in Turner, Faith, Reason, p. 143.

  63. Scotus, Ordinatio i d.3 q.i, ibid., p. 131.

  64. Eric Alliez, Capital Times: Tales from the Concept of Time, trans. George Van De Abbeele (Minneapolis, 1996), p. 226.

  65. Scotus, Quodlibet q.5 a.7.

  66. Scotus, Ordinatio i d.3 q.1.1–2; Cross, Duns Scotus, p. 39.

  67. Thomas was not named in the 1277 Condemnations and those directed against him were withdrawn in 1325.

  68. Edward Grant, “Science and Theology in the Middle Ages,” in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1986).

  69. Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1986), pp. 10–11, 121–22.

  70. Ibid., pp. 55–58.

  71. Ibid., pp. 307–12.

  72. Grant, “Science and Theology,” p. 61.

  73. Edward Grant, Much Ado About Nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages (Cambridge, U.K., 1981), pp. 260–64.

  74. Edward Grant, “The Condemnations of 1277: God’s Absolute Power and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages,” Viator 10 (1979).

  75. Grant, “Science and Theology,” pp. 57–59.

  76. Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, p. 11.

  77. Turner, Faith, Reason, pp. 76–78.

  78. Turner, Darkness of God, pp. 214–15. The great exception was Nicholas of Cusa.

  79. Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Theology and Holiness,” Communio 14 (Winter 1987); Mark A. McIntosh, Mystical Theology: The Integrity of Spirituality and Theology (Oxford, 1998), pp. 63–69; Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050-1200 (New York, 1972), pp. 70–77, 139–52.

  80. Clifford Wolters, trans. and ed., Richard Rolle: The Fire of Love (London, 1972), p. 45.

  81. Ibid.

  82. Ibid., p. 46.

  83. Ibid., p. 61.

  84. Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge: Christian Spirituality from the New Testament to St. John of the Cross (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), pp. 140–42.

  85. McIntosh, Mystical Theology, p. 74.

  86. Turner, Darkness of God, pp. 137–85; Oliver Davies, Meister Eckhart: Mystical Theologian (London, 1991); Bernard McGinn, Frank Tobin, and Elvira Borgstadt, eds., Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher (New York, 1986); J. C. Clark, Meister Eckhart: An Introduction to the Study of His Works with an Anthology of His Sermons (New York, 1957).

  87. Eckhart, Sermon 2 in Edmund Colledge and Bernard McGinn, trans., Meister Eckhart: The Essential Sermons, Commentaries, Treatises and Defense (New York, 1981), p. 180.

  88. Quoted Oliver Davies, God Within (London, 1988), p. 51.

  89. Turner, Darkness of God, pp. 171–72.

  90. Eckhart, On Detachment, in Colledge and McGinn, trans., Essential Sermons, p. 286.

  91. Eckhart, Sermon 5b, ibid., p. 183.

  92. Eckhart, Sermon 52, ibid., p. 201.

  93. Eckhart, Renovamini Spiritum, ibid., p. 208.

  94. Julian, Revelations of Divine Love 58, trans. Clifford Wolters (London and Harmondsworth, U.K., 1966), p. 166.

  95. Turner, Darkness of God, pp. 186–210.

  96. Cloud 6 in Clifton Wolters, trans. and ed., The Cloud of Unknowing and Other Works (Harmondsworth, U.K., and New York, 1961), p. 68.

  97. Cloud 3, pp. 61–62.

  98. Cloud 6, p. 67.

  99. Ibid.

  100. Cloud 7, pp. 68–69.

  101. Cloud 6, p. 68.

  102. Cloud 45, pp. 113–14.

  103. Ibid.

  104. Cloud 52, p. 122.

  105. Cloud 68, p. 142.

  106. Ibid.

  107. Ibid.

  108. Cloud 68, pp. 142–43.

  109. Cloud 68, p. 143.

  110. Ibid.

  111. Cloud 3, p. 61.

  112. Denys the Carthusian, De contemplatione 3.3; Turner, Darkness of God, p. 218.

  SEVEN Science and Religion

  1. Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World, 1100-1350, trans. Janet Sondheimer (London, 1962), p. 318.

  2. Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (London, 1987), p. 229.

  3. Yirmanyahu Yovel, The Marrano of Reason, vol. I of Spinoza and Other Heretics (Princeton, N.J., 1989), pp. 17–18.

  4. Ibid., pp. 19–24.

  5. Ibid., pp. 75–76.

  6. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (London, 1955), pp. 246–49.

  7. Ibid., 245–800; Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (New York, 1971), pp. 43–48.

  8. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah (London and Princeton, N.J., 1973), pp. 37–42.

  9. Ibid., pp. 23–25.

  10. R. J. Werblowsky, “The Safed Revival and Its Aftermath,” in Arthur Green, ed., Jewish Spirituality, 2 vols. (London, 1986,198
9), 2:15–19,21–24; Lawrence Fine, “The Contemplative Practice of Yehudin in Lurianic Kabbalah,” ibid., 2:73–78, 89–90; Louis Jacobs, “The Uplifting of the Sparks in Later Jewish Mysticism,” ibid., 2:108–11; Gershom Scholem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (New York, 1965), p. 150.

  11. Werblowsky, “The Safed Revival,” in Green, Jewish Spirituality, 2:17; Jacob Katz, “Halakah and Kabbalah as Competing Disciplines of Study,” ibid., 2:52–53.

  12. Marshall G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization, 3 vols. (Chicago and London, 1974), 2:334–60.

  13. Robin Briggs, “Embattled Faiths: Religion and Natural Philosophy,” in Euan Cameron, ed., Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1999), pp. 197–205.

  14. Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas That Have Shaped Our World View (New York and London, 1991), p. 230.

  15. Ibid., pp. 240–42.

  16. Valla, Encomion Sancti Thomae Aquinatis, in James D. Tracy, “Ad Fontes: The Humanist Understanding of Scripture,” in Jill Raitt, ed., Christian Spirituality: High Middle Ages and Renaissance (London and New York, 1988), p. 244.

  17. Petrarch to his brother Gherado, 2 December 1348, in David Thompson, ed., Petrarch, a Humanist Among Princes: An Anthology of Petrarch’s Letters and Translations from His Works (New York, 1971), p. 90.

  18. Stephen Toulmin, Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (New York, 1990), pp. 25–32.

  19. Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Oxford, 1983), p. 54.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Tracy, “Ad Fontes,” p. 249.

  22. Alister E. McGrath, The Intellectual Origins of the European Reformation (Oxford and New York, 1987), p. 200; Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (Oxford and New York, 1988), p. 20.

  23. Tarnas, Passion of the Western Mind, pp. 239–40; McGrath, Intellectual Origins, p. 197.

  24. John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400 to 1700 (Oxford and New York, 1985), pp. 91–93.

  25. McGrath, Reformation Thought, p. 73.

  26. Richard Marius, Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1999), pp. 73–74, 214–15, 486–87.

  27. McGrath, Intellectual Origins, pp. 27, 199.

  28. Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17.

  29. McGrath, Reformation Thought, p. 74.

  30. Bossy, Christianity in the West, p. 94.