08.26.07
Cornelio Fabro, Saint Thomas and the Problem of God
Better than anyone else, Cornelio Fabro has been able to define the speculative essence of Thomism as the comprehensive overcoming of Aristotelianism and Platonism by bringing their fundamental principles and conclusions into agreement. His genetic, historical and critical study of original Thomism drove him to assert the centrality of the metaphysical notion of participation, through which the metaphysical understanding of creatures must be read.
b) The defense of the main thesis of authentic Thomism
The discovery of the metaphysical notion of participation as the essence of Thomism provided Fabro with the opportunity to show in a new light the extremely important distinction between essentia and actus essendi in its real composition, and also to give a physiognomy of esse as emergent act. This is the first and last act, the act of all acts, of all forms and of all perfections. In direct relation to these speculative achievements, we have to mention the accurate defense of perseity”, which is inherent to the principle of causality and which rigorously demonstrates God’s existence as ipsum esse subsistens (fourth way) as well as the ontological dependence of every ens on God (creation), always in strict relation to the texts of St. Thomas.
c) The denunciation of the formalist trend among Thomists
Fabro also can be credited for denouncing the formalist downward trend of the Thomistic school, which was increasingly adopting the terminology of its opponents in order to ease the pressure created by several controversies. In this way, the school ended up reducing the value of the Thomistic thesis and sometimes even encouraging the opposite position (Gaetanistic principle of the mihi aliter dicendum est).
d) Dialogue and confrontation with modern thought
The clear definition of the identity of original Thomism, as well as a profound comprehension of the Thomistic esse, allowed the philosopher to establish a consistent dialogue and confrontation with the sharpest instances of a thought inspired by the modern principle of conscience. Among some of the numerous fruits of this dialogue are: the valorization of the Thomistic ens as the “commencement” of thought and the presentation of the exceptional character of Thomism as philosophia essendi. Both themes are connected with the Hegelian doctrine of the Anfang and with the accusation of the “forgetting of being” (Vergessenheit des Seins), which Heidegger will launch against the whole of Postparmenidian Western philosophy.
e) The blame of the atheist root in the principle of immanence
With unequalled dedication Fabro also denounced the intrinsically atheistic value of the principle of conscience, or principle of immanence. In addition, his vigorous accusation of the anthropological downward trend in progressive theology, which had devoutly subjected itself to modern principles, may be considered a corollary of this denunciation. The same may be said about the theology of Rosminian immanentism.
Taken from The Philosophical Relevance of Cornelio Fabro
Elvio Fontna, IVE
The Incarnate Word at http://www.theincarnateword.org/index.htm
How is the problem of God the “keystone or crux” illuminating human existence for Fabro? He explains that in contemporary man one sees how God is scorned and man instead prefers to find himself in the finite goods of the world, the arts, science and politics. Yet these only mask an inner void through a lack of any standard of truth or value that can support man against despair over being able to resist the forces of the world. The conclusion that Fabro draws is:
If God really does not exist, then there are no essences; there are only existents that time relentlessly propel and pillages.[3] Therefore, there is nothing at once more pressing and more demanding than the problem of God, nothing at once more immediate and more far–reaching, more concrete and at the same time more universal, nothing more urgent for the substantiation of any value and at the same time more nuanced and difficult to define univocally in its problematic.[4]
2) The universal, inescapable and yet optional problem of God
The problem of God as universal, inescapable and yet optional confronts us with the essential core of man in the thinking of Fabro. When we say, “God is universal” we say that the average person can access the reality of God. It is not as if one needed any special type of training or be raised in a particular cultural environment to encounter God. God is rather there before these considerations. To say, “God is inescapable” is to say that all problems relating to being and truth must find their ultimate grounding in God. For God is the “Beginning, Source and Principle of all being, truth and justice.” Finally, to say, “Yet God is optional” is not to say he is like a choice of particular occupation or profession. Rather Fabro says, “The problem of the knowledge of God is optional in the sense that man must seek it over and beyond the evidence provided by the visible world and must retain it despite the hobbles of the finite reason and the difficulties that may arise from the practical sphere of existence.”
Reflecting on this Fabro calls the problem of God the “existential problem par excellence.” For He is the foundation of all existence and once we admit God in it “decides and alters the inmost bent of freedom itself by grounding it in transcendence.”[5] In the existential problem, He is “The First Principle” and “Final End.” Thus, Fabro concludes, “God is the crucial problem of man as such…in the sense of being the problem of the ontological foundation of all else, imparting meaning for man and, indeed, a special meaning to everything; this problem of God is the problem of «man as such» and «Everyman.»”[6]
3) The universality and transcendentality of the problem of God
Fabro explains further, what he means by “the universality and transcendentality of the problem of God.” He understands these in an existential and methodological sense rather than in a formal systematic sense.[7]
The universality of the problem of God he explains is “accessible to each and every kind of human knowledge and cognitive activity, whether it be the «immediate cognition» of the child, the primitive man and the common man, or the «reflective» cognition of the scientist, the moralist, the politician, the philosopher or the like.” This means for him that the problem of God is accessible to every one of these types of person using their particular methods of study and that none of them can claim it entirely. This question always pursues man in whatever field of study or stage in life he finds himself.
Though this is the most complex of all problems it is open to all minds. What is strange about this, Fabro says, is that “this problem of God does not present itself in a rigorous ascending succession of degrees of conceptual clarity, with philosophy as the supreme zenith of its lucidity and perspicuity, and immediate cognition as a mere flickering gleam that pales into insignificance on the appearance of reflective thought.” Rather it is a “primordial property” of man similar to man’s desire for self–preservation. He finds God and seeks the “not–self” and communication with other fellow human beings.
The transcendence of the problem of God signifies for Fabro that one cannot grasp the fullness of religion through any particular method of study or form of knowledge. He says that the religious element cannot be grasped even by “the most sublime and universal, like philosophy or even theology and mysticism; there is always a something more, always an unarticulated remainder.” This does not mean the various areas of study and forms of knowledge are isolated from each other in an indifferent manner as if they were all symbols such as purported in agnosticism and the various relativistic schools of philosophy. He says, rather, that the problem of God, as it cannot be contained by any one of these fields, “engages the whole gamut of knowledge and the mind at all levels.” Thus as it transcends all of them, it orients each one in a dynamic way for the other.
Fabro explains, “Atheism is thus the dissenting stance assumed by man in the theoretico–existential area when faced with the problem of the admission of the existence of the First Principle…” In order to safeguard the real nature of God in his metaphysical essence we must further recognize that God is the only way. Fabro then explains how one should consider the concept of God.
The admission of God ought to have a univocal bent and be manifested in one way only, i.e., with a content excluding all ambiguity.[8] This demand will result in a vast dilation of the scope of atheism, for it will not only brand as atheists those who assert outright that God does not exist, that the concept of God is contradictory, but it will also clarify as atheism all those conceptions of God that are demonstrably erroneous and inadequate, i.e., those that deny or erode any of his fundamental attributes. Whereas the explicit denials of God constitute an atheism “by defect”, these other conceptions constitute an atheism “by excess”, inasmuch as they corrupt the very notion of God and attribute to him a way of being in contradiction to his nature.
4) The mandatory conditions of an adequate concept of God
Fabro proposes five conditions for an adequate notion of God in order to prevent a slide toward Atheism. They as follows:
(1) That God is recognized and admitted as the Supreme Being
(2) That God is One and Supreme
(3) That God is Spirit who actualizes the perfect degree of being
(4) That God is declared as transcendent in himself and not merely the sum of the world or part of a world force or a universal Mind
(5) That God is recognized as a supremely free, personal being in his relations with the world.
Read the entire essay at: The Incarnate Word: http://www.theincarnateword.org/vol%202/Atheism%20and%20dialectic.htm
Blogged with Flock
