St. Thomas and the Existence of God. Three Interpretations by William Bryar (review)

BOOK REVIEWS St. Thomas and the Existence of God. Three Interpretations. By William Bryar. Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1951. Pp. ~77. $5.00. To date, the role of modern logic in the development of Thomistic thought has been little more than negligible. The work of I. M. Bochenski in logistics has thus far been the dominant contribution, and that mainly in the history of formal logic. Now we have another significant study in the field of semantics, this time by a student of Rudolf Carnap and pointed directly at clarifying the prima via of St. Thomas. The result is as stimulating as the enterprise is unexpected. By reason of its heterogeneous background, Mr. Bryar's book is one that can be easily misunderstood. It must be read in the context of modern logical thought, particularly in the light of recent theories propounded by the University of Chicago school. Even then the mixture of scholastic terminology and technical expression peculiar to semiotics is a fecund source of confusion. Add to this the fact that the study is tentative, exploratory, and employs a style of writing that is so " conscious of itself " as to be extremely artificial, and the difficulty of comprehending the thesis becomes not inconsiderable. Yet the author sincerely addresses himself to a real problem that has merited the attention of numerous commentators in the Thomistic tradition . Moreover, he claims to throw light on the meaning of a most important text of the Angelic Doctor. For these reasons, if for none other, his work merits analysis and evaluation from the viewpoint of traditional logic. The complexity of Mr. Bryar's argument suggests that an exposition first be made of his general position and source material, then a description of the technical details of his systematic interpretative study, and finally a summary of his conclusions. These will then be set off against the traditional position in an attempt to evaluate the work as a contribution to current Thomistic thought. * * * The general position of the author may be highlighted by the following observations. He is not concerned directly with demonstrating God's existence. Rather he limits himself to the precise logical study of analyzing the meaning of St. Thomas' text, determining presuppositions and basic options, and ascertaining the interpretation of the prima via most consonant with his findings. His work is descriptive and explicative, not 269 270 BOOK REVIEWS argumentative. He does not reject traditional interpretations, nor does he intend to supplant them with this study. His aim is simply to elaborate a more or less neutral interpretative mechanism that would reconstruct the thought process implicit in St. Thomas' work. This he attempts through a study of the structure of the first twenty-six questions of the Prima Pars, which is the basis for his systematic interpretative study. The latter is only a hypothetical construction; yet it suggests three lines of meaning implicitly contained in St. Thomas' argument from motion. Thus the author concludes to a pluralistic interpretation of the prima via. The implementation of Mr. Bryar's theoretical plan depends heavily on his source material, viz., an analysis of the tract in the Summa entitled De Deo Uno, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, an exegesis of chapter thirteen of the first book of the Contra Gentiles (Appendix I). Space limitations prohibit an extensive report on either of these studies, yet some illustrations from the former will be of interest. For instance, relative to I, q, 2, a. 1, the author contrasts St. Thomas' fundamental option with one that would allow self-evident knowledge of God. As to a. 2, he notes that it builds up a knowledge of God's existence which is taken to involve no knowledge of God's essence, and he is prompted to ask what function demonstration quia will have in the case of setting up different answers to the question quid sit. Apart from the five ways in a. 3, he observes from the objections that St. Thomas takes a b~oad enough field of vision to embrace a God whose infinite goodness would exclude all evil from the world, or a God related to the world as nature to aU natural things. The particular...