God Beyond Knowledge by Arthur Herbert Hodges (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 499 process. It was, in fact, the belief in God and the soul which Buddhism so vehemently argued against in its early days. The attribution of a transcendent dimension to Buddhism is not the only thing which proves so fatal to de Silva's argument, however, but the overvalued ethico-social dimension as well. To be sure, the communal element is there in both traditions , but to argue that anattii, for instance, is an ethical concept or that the goal of early Buddhism was a communal eschaton with primarily social implications is to recast the original material into unrecognizable form. While de Silva's book is a thought-provoking introduction to BuddhistChristian conversation, its reworking of the original material is on most accounts inauthentic. ELLISON FINDLAY Trinity College Hartford, Connecticut God Beyond Knowledge. By ARTHUR HERBERT HODGES. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979. Pp. xii + 181. $22.50. In his posthumously published God Beyond Knowledge, Herbert Arthur Hodges (1905-1976), late Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, undertakes to examine the origin of the ' God ' concept, to explore the standard several dimensions of man's reputed knowledge of God, and, perhaps most importantly, to answer the question of our ability to know Him metaphysically. Although this position is not always argued consistently, the author's conclusion about natural theology is basically negative. Given Hodges's presumably early exposure to the British Empirical tradition and his ready acceptance (albeit a pragmatic one) of the scientific model of knowledge, this conclusion would not be surprising except for the fact that Hodges himself was a devout Anglo-Catholic, a lay theologian, and the author of several apologetic works on the Christian religion. Consequently, while he will employ the traditional philosophical concept of God throughout much of the discussion in this book and even make use at times of the Thomistic doctrine of analogy, ostensibley to counter religious anthropomorphism and agnosticism, his true philosophical position finally unmasked is a form of Pyrrhonian scepticism. Consistent with this scepticism, he will embrace Hume's analysis of cause and thus deny the possibility of any a posteriori proof of God's existence. For Hodges, then, one's acceptance of God's existence and of a particular religious creed are both equally choices of the will-the standard Protestant view-not intellectual assents with a foundation in reason. In reviewing this book I will focus upon those chapters in which philosophical material particularly is dominant. In describing the origin of the' God' concept (Chapter 5, "The Genesis 500 BOOK REVIEWS of ' God ' ") Hodges seems primarily concerned with the one prevalent in Western philosophy and theology and in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, although he sees his remarks as applying, mutatis mutandis, to Hinduism as well. This concept, according to Hodges, is that of an "All-Agent" and arises because we tend to view being as essentially connected with activity or agency and to think that the mind-unified reality we call " the world " depends upon a superior being. Why we think it is (1) caused by a single (2) Personal Agent (3) Who transcends finitude Hodges explains respectively through our desire for a unity of pattern or design, our recognition of the perfection of person, and our impatience with limitations and consequent need to find the absolute realized. Thus, " We form the concept of God as being which is wholly self-sufficient and whose activities amount to nothing less than creating and sustaining all that is. God, so conceived, is being in an unqualified sense. He is not something as distinct from something else-that would be limitation-he is without qualification, he is That Which Is, ipsum esse subsistens" (p. 54). Yet Hodges recognizes that such a concept must also be supported by proof of God's existence if it is not to be only a fantasy, "valuable perhaps as poetry or drama but still not a cognition of reality." Consequently, he finds it necessary to re-examine, " but in the light of the present situation," the traditional natural theology's arguments for God's existence. In Chapter 6 (" Metaphysical Arguments for God's Existence ") Hodges considers four traditional arguments for God's existence (to the...