Brahmanism
The oldest concept of God, of high quality, is found in Vedic literature starting from the 14th century BC, written by unknown authors who claim to transmit a sacred tradition (smrti) received through revelation (sruti).
This notion expressed by the word Brahman has a dual semantic orientation: on the one hand, it leads to theism, and on the other hand, it suggests pantheism. Thus, in the first sense, it is a salvific concept because the self (jivan) or soul (atman) is distinct from Brahman. We then have the "dual" vision (dvaita) supported by Ramanuja in the 13th century, a realistic tendency favorable to Transcendence.
Conversely, if the self or the soul is seen as the sensible and phenomenal appearance of Brahman as the true, profound, and absolute Self (see the transcendental Self of idealists), we have the "non-dual" (advaita) vision, which we could call monistic, paralleled in the West by Parmenides. This is the approach of Shankara in the 8th and 9th centuries.
Brahman is "nirguna," i.e., without attributes for the Brahmins, who are the mystic seers. Veda has the root vid, which means video, to see or vision. The Platonic idea (v-idea) is a vision. The Brahmins remain silent. But there is also the "saguna" Brahman, with conceptualizable attributes and thus expressible in words. And this is Vedic literature.
It is necessary, therefore, to distinguish ‘Brahman’ from ‘Deva.’ Deva, or God, is the avatar, the multiple appearance of ‘Brahman’; it is ‘Brahman’ as it can be worshipped, prayed to, and invoked by the common believer in religious rites. The main avatar of Brahman is the Trimurti, the sacred Triad of Brahman, Shiva, and Vishnu, corresponding to the three main ontological attributes of Brahman: Sat (Being)- Chit (Intellect)- Ananda (Love).
The path of liberation for humans is different in advaita and dvaita. In the former, Brahman appears in Deva, who is a "You" to whom the faithful offer sacrifices, prayers, and supplications. The soul, through reincarnation, —the samsara— at the end of the purification path, liberated forever from the body, beyond the appearances of maya, the illusion of matter, merges and disappears forever into the Absolute, like a drop of water in the ocean.
In the latter, the initiate, under the guidance of the guru, carries out a path of becoming aware of his true being, the divine being, or his being ‘Brahman’ [1], eternal being, eternal becoming, cyclical being, which in the end is what it was at the beginning, as in Hegelian dialectics.
Here, spiritual perfection is like a wheel, where spirit becomes matter, and matter becomes spirit, life dies, and death resurrects to life, an endless succession of yes and no originated from Brahman, attracted by ‘Vishnu,’ activated by Shiva, symbolized by the swastika, a symbol adopted by the Nazis to represent eternal return, a fundamental principle in Nietzsche's thought, a master of Nazism [2].
Plato
Knowledge, for Plato, exists on a dual plane: one, low, earthly, common, uncertain, that of the becoming and the corruptible, deceptive and illusory sensible appearance, passionate, tempting, and seductive —the doxa— preventing the vision of the upper plane, the higher, secure, and celestial, of the eternal and immutable, of the perfect and incorruptible, of intellectual, beatific, and liberating vision—the episteme—, the result of the vision of ‘eidos’ or intelligible idea—the noetòn—, the supreme model of perfection, at the summit of which is the Idea of the Good, beyond essence —epèkeina tes usias— which is God.
Aisthesis, sensation, has the body—the soma—, the corporeal reality, as its object; noesis, intellection, has the idea—the on—, the being, as its object; pathos, passion and eros, love—epithymia—, desire, and will, —bùlesis—, have as their object the agathòn, the good, respectively, the sensible and the intelligible.
The sensible is an image—eikòn—, participation, mèthexis, imitation, mimesis of the intelligible. In Plato, there is, therefore, both a contrast and a continuity between the sensible and the intelligible, between passion and eros: the intelligible is hindered and obscured by the sensible, but at the same time, the intelligible can become sensible, and the passionate can identify with the voluntary. Thus, an understanding that is a feeling and a feeling that is an understanding, knowledge that is love, and love that is knowledge can arise. This concept of knowledge infused with emotion is already present in the Bible.
In this way, Plato theorizes a knowledge of the God of Love, which will be used by Christian mystics, starting with St. Augustine and Dionysius the Areopagite, to express how it is possible to feel and taste God even though He is immaterial and invisible [3].
While Aristotle arrives at God starting from the experience of the senses, looking at things that exist outside the mind, and moving from the effect to the cause, Plato arrives at God by abandoning the experience of the senses and entering consciousness, where he finds the Idea of the Good, the sun of the mind, above the mind, the model of the mind, and from which the mind depends. Both Plato and Aristotle ascend to God from things and the self: the former by passing from the participant to the participated, the latter from the effect to the cause.
Finally, note the difference between Platonic and German idealism: while in Plato, the self depends on the absolute Idea, which is the rule of the moral conduct of the self, in German idealism, the absolutized self ("transcendental self") regulates itself because it produces the absolute Idea and identifies with it.
Saint Augustine
Regarding Augustinian enlightenment, in which God enlightens the mind in the truth about God, similar to what happens in Plato, it does not know, as in St. Thomas Aquinas, the activity of the agent intellect that abstracts the universal and immutable essence from the particular, but it does not deny it either and even implies it, as Augustine acknowledges that our ideas presuppose sensory experience and, at the same time, their eternity, which makes us understand that our intellect participates in the eternal divine truth, lumen publicum.
The Augustinian notion of God as the supreme Essence and supreme Idea, God as the wise and omnipotent creator of heaven and earth, the highest Good and subsisting Love, is entirely useful for salvation, although the action of the First Cause on secondary causes remains in the shadows, so it is not clarified how free will remains free under the influence of grace.
Dionysius the Areopagite
A notion of God sufficient for salvation, although imperfect, is that of Dionysius the Areopagite [4]: sufficient because it is accompanied by all divine attributes, as found in his treatise on divine names; imperfect because it is too loaded with negations, to the point where it seems to negate the existence of God itself because Dionysius overly emphasizes excluding finiteness. However, in doing so, since our conception is connected with the finite, in the overly pronounced desire to eliminate the finite, it ends up removing even the concepts. Now, given that it is through the concept that we grasp the being, the excessively apophatic theism risks turning into atheism and nihilism. Is it possible that Heidegger's apparent atheism is motivated by a similar demand? Could this instance also be found in Rahner, albeit formulated in idealistic-pantheistic terms?
The Islamic God
The Second Vatican Council [5] recognized that the God of the Quran is the true God, one and only, creator of heaven and earth, wise, provident, just, and merciful, who reveals himself and speaks to humanity. However, this concept of God is imperfect because it makes the Trinity of divine persons impossible and because it possesses a will that is not wise but despotic, whose commands inflict violence and provoke violence. Under the pretext that God governs everything, Muslims adopt a deterministic and fatalistic conception of existence, where humans no longer act freely but are constrained by divine will, whether they go to paradise or hell.
The Council remains silent on this aspect, which Benedict XVI brought to light in his famous speech in Regensburg. This point of contrast with the Christian concept of God is at the root of the persecution of Christians by Muslims, a persecution that began since their inception and continues to be implemented by those Muslims who accept it.
Conversely, Muslims who embrace the concept of God outlined in Nostra Aetate live peacefully with Christians, albeit with a complex of superiority that hampers their freedom and activities in various ways.
The flaw of the Islamic God depends on the fact that it is not based on an analogical notion of being, and thus of the true, reason, good, and will, but on a univocal notion, which, to preserve plurality, admits equivocality and contradiction. Moreover, the divine unity is understood so monistically that it excludes the Trinity, because, again due to univocity and the denial of analogy, the Trinity appears as a denial of unity.
If there is an attempt to save the principle of non-contradiction here, the Muslim does not hesitate to violate it when conceiving a benevolent and violent God, sincere and deceitful, motivated and unmotivated, holy and sinful, provident and destructive, reliable and unreliable, rational and irrational, wise and foolish, faithful and unfaithful, just and unjust, liberator and oppressive, despotic and tolerant, authoritarian and permissive, cruel and merciful.
In this way, under the pretext that God is our Lord and Legislator, who decides what is good and what is evil, who can do and has the right to do whatever He wants without explaining the reasons to us or being accountable to us, it is a God who has the right to impose His will on us, so we cannot know why divine commands are what they are. Hence, the Muslim confuses the incomprehensibility and mystery of divine decrees with the idea that God can command or permit sin and forbid or punish justice.
It is evident, then, that the Muslim, starting from the concept of a despotic and arbitrary God who exercises violence and irrational power, feels authorized in turn to indulge in illicit things and behave with others with the same license, violence, and cruelty that he supposes God behaves with him.
If the concept of God is assumed by Muslims in the terms described by the Council, relinquishing the flawed aspect denounced by Benedict XVI, the concept can be salvific. The agreement of Abu Dhabi, signed by Pope Francis with the Grand Imam of Cairo, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, implies the adoption of such a concept.
St. Anselm
This notion of God remains salvific, albeit derived from a vicious circle, as happened to St. Anselm because we stay within the realm of realism: God is not an idea of the mind but really exists outside of me and is my creator. This is not accepted by the idealist whose God is a product of their mind, a pure reified idea.
A defective but salvific notion of God, even found in a Church Doctor like St. Anselm, is the famous one that was successful in idealism from Descartes to Hegel. In this perspective, God is conceived as the supreme and most perfect being, necessary, immutable and eternal, wise and omnipotent, creator of the world, but it believes that His existence can be proven based on the same concept of God as the most perfect being.
While Hegel's theology rightly falls under Feuerbach's criticism because Hegel identifies being with thought, making God a product of thought, St. Anselm, who initially seems to have some resemblance to Hegelian idealism, is a realist. For him, being, and thus God, transcends human thought. Although he derives the affirmation of God's existence from his concept of God, he is immune from Feuerbach's critique against idolatry and the imaginary God.
Anselm is a realist; he acknowledges the distinction between thought and the extra-mental being and therefore admits God exists outside the mind and as the creator of the mind. Anselm has a complete and lofty concept of God. His God is not an arbitrary product of his mind; it is not an idol. Its only flaw is not realizing that it falls into a vicious circle by admitting the identity in God of the essence and being, an identity that seems founded only once the existence of the creator is proven, starting from creatures.
The flaw in this notion does not lie in the content of the concept as such, but in the fact that this content is considered by the thinker to be derived not from external reality but from his simple activity of thinking. While it is true that the concept is formally produced by the mind, the content of the concept, if it intends to represent external reality, is not necessarily produced by the mind. If the two coincided, it would follow that we, with our thoughts, produce reality, and in this case, we would produce God.
Saint Bonaventure
In the Itinerarium mentis in Deum Saint Bonaventure focuses not so much on the transition from effect to cause, but rather on the purification of the concept of being. Instead of an inductive process, he follows an abstracting process, as if God were being liberated from all its sensory, imaginative, quantitative, limited, formal, and qualitative determinations. It is as if, already in the notion of any sensible entity that falls under the senses, the notion of God as pure Being was hidden, which Bonaventure unequivocally identifies with the ipsum Esse. Therefore, Bonaventure follows the Anselmian procedure: the concept of pure being signifies the most perfect being, which cannot but exist in reality.
Blessed John Duns Scotus
Duns Scotus [6] admits two possible proofs of the existence of God: one starting from external reality, i.e., from the experience of contingent sensible things (a posteriori) by applying the principle of causality that leads to affirming a first cause. The other starts from the possible, conceivable, or thinkable, i.e., the concept of the absolutely necessary, which can not be and must necessarily exist. This is the same argument as St. Anselm's, thus tainted by the same defect: instead of forming the concept of God starting from the experience of things, one pretends to affirm the existence of God starting from the concept of God.
Scotus claims that the a priori argument is better, more certain, and more rigorous than the a posteriori. While the first would be based on the contingent, a source of uncertainty, the second would be based on the necessary, which is the form of scientific knowledge.
However, Scotus is mistaken here; the truly rigorous, necessary, and scientific argument in the case of the problem of the existence of God is not the a priori one, which, as we have seen for St. Anselm, is a vicious circle, but the a posteriori argument, consistent with biblical teaching (Romans 1:20; Wisdom 13:5). In this case, the absolutely necessary, whose existence is necessarily proven based on the principle of causality by induction, starting from the effect, is what is really necessary and necessarily existent, namely God.
No one doubts that scientific knowledge is founded on necessity and proceeds by rational necessity. To obtain this knowledge, it is not necessary to start from an a priori given, such as an irrefutable intuition or an evident or already proven thesis; one can also start from a contingent datum of experience. The important thing is that the conclusion is necessary, as we discover an essential entity, necessary not because we started from necessary concepts, intuitions, or theses, but because, after the argument, we realize that to conclude rigorously, we must necessarily admit the existence of a necessarily existent Being whose essence coincides with its being.
One thing is the necessary process of scientific demonstration and thus the necessity of concluding reasoning, a process that can be a priori as well as a posteriori. Another thing is to recognize, through a posteriori method, that the existence of the contingent necessarily demands the affirmation of the existence of the necessary.
Now, to prove the existence of God, the only method is the a posteriori one, because it is not a matter of starting from an already given necessary thesis but of asking oneself what the reason for the existence of the contingent. Only by answering this question can we affirm, necessarily, legitimately, reasonably, and scientifically, the existence of God as the absolutely Necessary.
Duns Scotus has little trust in the ontological value of the principle of causality and too much trust in the ontological consequences of our concepts. He prefers the a priori to the a posteriori, essence to existence, the possible to the actual, the univocal to the analogous, and the logical to the real.
This reflects a simultaneous distrust and uncertainty towards the senses, a subtle rationalistic presumption, and a lack of humility towards reality, of which the Blessed is certainly unaware, thinking that he is giving greater rigor to metaphysics and theology. However, this weak conviction of the value of causality will prepare skeptical empiricism Ockham's metaphysical doubts and Hume's rejection of metaphysics, while excessive trust in the power of the concept will first prepare the aprioristic rationalism of Descartes, Leibniz, and Wolff
[ Christian Wolff (Breslau 1679 - Halle 1754), a student of Leibniz in Leipzig, is considered his successor both in the field of ethics and rationalism. With his concept of philosophy as the "science of all things, of the mode, and the reason of their possibility," Wolff provided a philosophical system with an encyclopedic and eclectic character, founded on the tradition of the metaphysicians or "deductive" and "dogmatic" philosophers of the seventeenth century, culminating in theism based on the "cosmological" demonstration of the existence of God. (Cf.: https://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/christian-wolff/ Ed.)],
and then the German idealism of the 19th century.
Gregory Palamas
The notion of God in Gregory Palamas can be considered salvific [7]. He aims to interpret the Christian God, understanding the divine essence not as absolute but endowed with energies, similar to rays emanating from the sun. These energies are not the sun itself; yet, they are part of the essence of the sun. According to Palamas, the energies do not compromise the simplicity of the essence, which is the essence of the being whose essence is to be, a pure act of subsisting being. Indeed, they do not add to the essence and do not constitute a composite with it, although they are distinct from the essence. However, this is a distinction of reason, as between two intelligible aspects for us, but which in God are one.
This distinction is ignored by the Latins, who prefer to adhere to the simplicity of the ipsum Esse, while the energy is identified with the essence itself. What is unacceptable in Palamas is that, in the beatific vision, the intellect sees the energies and not the essence because this contradicts the Johannine perspective: "We shall see Him as He is" (1 John 3:2).
Palamas fears that if we saw the essence, we would be God. The energies would allow us to say that we see God by participation and not by essence. But there is no need for these precautions to avoid pantheism because the act of our intellect, although its object is the Infinite, is finite. Seeing the essence does not mean that our vision is an essential, divine vision.
Palamas probably confuses the heavenly grace of the blessed with the beatific vision. Since grace is participation in the divine nature, he believes that the intellect in heaven sees a participation in the divine nature, precisely the energy. In addition to this, he seems to confuse intentional being with real being. In heaven, the intellect effectively identifies with the divine essence, but only intentionally, that is, cognitively, not really. From this point of view, it is clear that there remains a real distinction between the intellect and God.
In this way, it seems that Palamas confuses the order of essence with that of participation. This is deduced from the fact that Palamas believes that in heaven, the intellect does not see the divine essence but a participation in it. He fears that by admitting the immediate vision of the divine essence, our intellect is no longer a finite understanding by participation, hence a knowledge by participation but becomes an intellect by essence, infinite, knowledge by essence, like the divine one.
But by confusing vision with grace, he risks confusing grace with vision. So, if vision is the vision of God, then grace becomes God. Palamas does not see in grace the aspect of participation, the created aspect, but only the divine aspect. In the end, grace identifies with God. Then the intellect in grace becomes God. Thus, Palamas, perhaps without realizing it, with his theory of grace and vision based on energies, ends up falling into the pantheism he wanted to avoid.
To justify Palamas' conception of the vision of God, it could be said that the vision of the energies represents what of the divine essence we can see, while the ignorance of the essence means what of the essence we cannot see. This would correspond to the difference that St. Thomas Aquinas makes between the limited vision of the essence, which belongs to us, and the unlimited and total vision of the essence, which belongs only to God.
Of course, this does not mean that such partial knowledge implies that the essence is partially known, given that it is absolutely simple, either known entirely or not known at all. This partiality or limitation refers instead to the limited way of knowing the essence.
Fr. Giovanni Cavalcoli OP
Fontanellato, November 3, 2023
Source:
https://padrecavalcoli.blogspot.com/p/ateismo-e-salvezza-quarta-parte-410.html
[1] See Raphael, Tat tvam asi, You are That, Asram Vidya Editions, Rome 2001.
[2] The point of contact between Nietzsche and Hitler is not the question of God because Hitler is a pseudo-theist, and his God is Hegel's God, while Nietzsche is an atheist. The point of agreement is the primacy of the Germans over humanity. The German is, for Nietzsche, the Übermensch (superman), and for Hitler, it is the Nazi. It is necessary to remember, however, that the spiritual roots of Nazism are not only ideological and political but also, and more profoundly, mediatic, magical, and occultistic. The fact that Hitler, a practitioner of occultism, managed to galvanize and fanatize millions of Germans with his oratory, not by convincing them with rational arguments but by triggering irresistible psycho-emotional processes, suggests a magical-mediatic power guided by preternatural or demonic forces. See, for example, the studies by René Alleau, The Occult Origins of Nazism, Mediterranee Editions, Rome 1989, and by Giorgio Galli, Hitler and Occult Culture, BUR, Rizzoli, Milan 2016.
[3] Cf. Marco D’Avenia, Knowledge through Connaturality in St. Thomas Aquinas. ESD Editions, Bologna 1992.
[4] See Dionysius Mystical Theology and Epistles I-V, San Clemente-ESD Editions, Bologna 2011.
[5] Nostra aetate, 3.
[6] See Efrem Bettoni, Duns Scotus Philosopher, Vita e Pensiero, Milan 1966; Etienne Gilson, John Duns Scotus. Introduction to His Fundamental Positions, Vrin, Paris 1952.
[7] See, for example, Palamas' Light of the Tabor and Defense of the Hesychast Saints, San Clemente-ESD Editions, Bologna 2022.