- Infideles et Philosophi:Re-Reading ST II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3
He who thinks about things otherwise than as they are, is wrong.
—Aristotle, Metaphysics Θ1
In 1967, Victor Preller published his “reformulation” of Thomas Aquinas’s account of God and religious language in his Divine Science and the Science of God.2 In it, he pushed back against many of the more traditional interpretations of Aquinas regarding, for instance, the quinque viae and divine naming. One of Preller’s more significant emphases, and the primary concern of the present article, is his suggestion that Aquinas, rather than defending natural theology apart from the grace of faith, denied its effectiveness, going so far as to deny that pre-Christian pagan philosophers can be said to know that God exists at all. He states, “The proposition, ‘God exists,’ … takes on such utterly new significance for faith that Aquinas is willing to say that the pagans … cannot be said to believe in God.”3 [End Page 653]
In support of such an interpretation, Preller and others direct us to the Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3. This particular passage seems to function, for Preller and others, as a smoking gun (if not the smoking gun) showing that Aquinas did not hold that Pre-Christian pagan philosophers, such as Plato or Aristotle, could be said to know that God exists. Bruce Marshall maintains that this passage “was the point of departure for my analysis of Aquinas.”4 The impact of this reading of Aquinas is far reaching. It is present—explicitly and implicitly—in the writings of, to name a few, George Lindbeck, Stanley Hauerwas, Marshall, Eugene Rogers, and D. Stephen Long.5
One might get the impression, given the list of scholars above, that the acceptance and appropriation of Preller’s interpretation of Aquinas here is a largely Protestant and/or Barthian phenomenon.6 Yet, this interpretation is utilized—with and without reference to Preller—by Roman Catholic Thomists as well. Fergus Kerr states, “The interesting point for us … is that Thomas clearly thinks that the proposition ‘God exists,’ held as true by a non-Christian, on the basis of theistic proofs, does not mean the same as the proposition ‘God exists’ held by a believer.”7 With respect to this ST passage and Preller’s influence, [End Page 654] Kerr observes, “Victor Preller brought this remark to the fore.”8
More recently, John P. O’Callaghan marshalled this same passage in order to argue that the existence of the “God” (proper name) of faith cannot be philosophically demonstrated.9 The claim by these and other scholars is quite strong. As Frederick Crosson observed, “It’s not just that [the philosopher, e.g., Aristotle] in fact failed to [know God to exist], but that he couldn’t have done so.”10 Apart from faith, one does not and cannot know that God exists; insofar as one assents to the proposition “God exists,” as Preller and others have argued, apart from faith, it means something “radically different.”11
Given the work that this ST passage does for those who—like Preller, Marshall, Kerr, and others—argue that Aquinas denies that the pagan philosophers believed that God exists, it is crucial to have interpreted Aquinas rightly here. But have they done so? In this article, I will argue that, in fact, Preller and the others have misinterpreted [End Page 655] the ST passage. Aquinas does not have pagan philosophers in mind at all. They are not even on the radar. Rather, the infidels in question are simply heretics and the like: those who are said to hold that God exists, otherwise than by faith, while also holding other false opinions about God and matters of faith. Furthermore, I will argue that the common interpretation of the passage from Aristotle’s Metaphysics in which deficient cognition of a simple thing is said to be ignorance of that thing has also been misinterpreted and mis-utilized to buttress the broader misinterpretations about pre-Christian pagan philosophers.
The discussion will be fivefold: (1) I will present a brief discussion of the act of faith...