Known by Nature: Thomas Aquinas on Natural Knowledge of God by Anna Bonta Moreland (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 162 Known by Nature: Thomas Aquinas on Natural Knowledge of God. By ANNA BONTA MORELAND. New York: Crossroad, 2010. Pp. 207. $22.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8245-2481-4. Determining whether or not Thomas Aquinas thought that God can be known naturally by humans is a worthwhile endeavor. It not only provides a proper understanding of a principal concern in Aquinas’s writings, but also—and, perhaps, more importantly—it prepares for a recovery and revitalization of natural theology in the contemporary milieu. In this monograph, expanded from her dissertation, Anna Bonta Moreland refutes the claims made by postliberal theologians George Lindbeck, Bruce Marshall, and Eugene Rogers that Aquinas denies the possibility of natural knowledge of God, and holds rather that God can be known only by faith. By means of a meticulous and responsible exegesis of Aquinas’s writings, Moreland establishes that he did indeed think natural knowledge of God possible for humans even after the Fall. It is beyond the scope of her work to determine whether any arguments Aquinas mounted actually succeed in demonstrating God’s existence. Most historical commentators on Aquinas have not understood him to allege that knowledge of God comes only by faith. The postliberal interpretation was developed in the latter part of the twentieth century and it might appear somewhat preposterous at first glance, since a cursory reading of relevant texts in Aquinas seems to indicate that he thought that such natural knowledge was possible. In chapter 1 of her book, Moreland uncovers the reasons behind the postliberal interpretation through a careful reading of Lindbeck, Marshall, and Rogers on the matter. Her summary is a handy guide to the opinions of these important thinkers, copiously referenced. All three agree that for Aquinas there is no possibility of natural knowledge of God, strictly speaking. No one can arrive at any knowledge of God apart from grace. Incidentally, this reading of Aquinas squares with the position of Karl Barth. In an early work on the subject (“Discovering Thomas,” 1967), Lindbeck notes that Aquinas does not distinguish the first eighteen questions of the Prima Pars (even though they employ arguments from natural reason) from his overall project of sacred theology in the Summa Theologiae as a whole. In Lindbeck’s estimation, Aquinas allows no autonomous role for natural reason when it comes to knowledge of God. Accordingly, Lindbeck interprets the quinquae viae as only probable,not demonstrative, arguments in which Aquinas uses Plato and Aristotle much the same way that Barth makes use of Kant. Solidifying and further developing this position in his later work (The Nature of Doctrine, 1984), Lindbeck argues that since the cultural a priori framework of different religions definitively shapes the subjectivity of their adherents, thereby giving rise to radically different experiences of God, there can be no knowledge of God available to all. Adopting a “cultural-linguistic approach,” he argues that there is no inner experience of God common to all religions and all human beings. Thus, Christian doctrine divorced from its ground in liturgical praxis BOOK REVIEWS 163 affirms nothing directly true or false about reality. For Lindbeck, theology does not deal directly with ontology or truth, but only with second-order discourse. Expanding on Lindbeck’s work, Bruce Marshall contends that, for Aquinas, non-Christian proofs of God’s existence do not enable the philosopher to know anything meaningful about God, as such knowledge comes only from the theological virtue of faith (“Aquinas as PostliberalTheologian,” 1989). This claim is grounded in his reading of STh II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3, where Aquinas argues that unbelievers cannot properly be said to believe in God since “they do not believe that God exists under the conditions that faith determines.” Moreland appreciates this line of reasoning as an important challenge, drawn from Aquinas’s mature work.She counters it by identifying a distinction Aquinas draws in the same article between what unbelievers are “said” (dicentur) to know or believe about God and whether their claims about God are true. He begins his reply to the third objection by saying, “Unbelievers cannot be said ‘to believe in God’ as we understand it in relation to the act...