Philosophia Basic Philosophical ConceptsAnselm Ramelow (Editor) GOD Reason and Reality ISBN 978-3-88405-109-2 © 2014 Philosophia Verlag GmbH. München________________________________________________________________Contributors Biographies Robert SokolowskiRobert Sokolowski is the Elizabeth Breckenridge Caldwell Professor of Philoso-phy at The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, where he began teaching in 1963 after earning his doctorate at the Catholic University of Lou-vain. He has taught as a visiting professor at the Graduate Faculty of the New School, the University of Texas at Austin, Villanova University, and Yale. Among his books are Moral Action: A Phenomenological Study (1985), Pictures, Quotations, and Distinctions: Fourteen Essays in Phenomenology (1992), Eu-charistic Presence (1994), Christian Faith and Human Understanding (2006), and Phenomenology of the Human Person (2008). His main interests are in phe-nomenology, which he interprets as the study of the human person as involved in truth. He has used this approach to consider such topics as words and pictures, artificial intelligence, measurement in science, and moral action, as well as theo-logical issues such as the Christian understanding of God, the Eucharist, and the relation between faith and reason. Robert SpaemannRobert Spaemann (* 1927, Berlin) did his doctorate under J. Ritter in 1952 (Mün-ster) and taught after his Habilitation (1962) at the Universities of Stuttgart, Hei-delberg and Munich until 1992. He received honorary doctorates from the Uni-versities of Fribourg, Washington, Santiago de Chile, Navarra, Salzburg and Lub-lin, as well as the Karl-Jaspers-Preis of the city and university of Heidelberg (2001). He has published numerous books and articles, particularly in the areas of bioethics, ecology and human rights. A major concern of his are questions of anthropology and personhood in the context of modern science and the relevance of a rearticulated Aristotelian notion of nature (human and other).His books include: Der Ursprung der Soziologie aus dem Geist der Restauration. Studien über L. G. A. de Bonald (München: Kösel, 1959), Reflexion und Sponta-nität. Studien über Fénelon (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1963), Rousseau - Bürger ohne Vaterland. Von der Polis zur Natur (München: Piper, 1980), Die Frage Wozu? Geschichte und Wiederentdeckung des teleologischen Denkens (Munich: Piper 1981).[Books in English: Basic Moral Concepts, trans. T.J. Armstrong (London: Routledge, 1990); Essays in Anthropology: Variations on a Theme, trans. Guido De Graaff and James Mumford. (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2010); Happiness and Benevolence, trans. J. Alberg (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000); Persons: The Difference between "Someone" and "Something", trans. Oliver O'Donovan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).]Thomas Joseph White Thomas Joseph White (D.Phil) is a Dominican priest. He is Director of the Thomistic Institute at the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception (PFIC), Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. He read theology at Oxford University and is the author of Wisdom in the Face of Modernity. A Study in Thomistic Natural Theology (Sapientia Press, 2009). He is the editor or co-editor of several works of theology, including The Analogy of Being. Invention of the Anti-Christ or the Wisdom of God? (Eerdmans, 2010). He has also authored essays on topics pertaining to Christology, sacraments and natural theology, pub-lished in journals such as Pro Ecclesia, Nova et Vetera and The Thomist.Lawrence DewanLawrence Dewan, O.P., Ph.D. (philosophy, Toronto) is professor of philosophy at the Dominican University College, Ottawa, Canada, and a member of the Pon-tifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, Vatican City. A native (1932) of North Bay, Ontario, he studied philosophy at the University of Toronto, the University of Paris, and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS). His teaching career has included p

Philosophia Basic Philosophical ConceptsAnselm Ramelow (Editor) GOD Reason and Reality ISBN 978-3-88405-109-2 © 2014 Philosophia Verlag GmbH. München________________________________________________________________Content PageForeword: The Name of God R Sokolowski 09 What Do We Mean When We Say "God"? R Spaemann 17 Monotheistic Rationality and Divine Names: Why Aquinas' Analogy Theory Transcends both Theoretical Agnosticism and Conceptual Anthropomorphism T J White 37Thomas Aquinas and Knowledge of a God as the Goal of Philosophy L Dewan 81Bayesian Theism and the Interpretation of Bayesian Probabilities S Gerogiorgakis 127The "Suppositio" of Motion's Eternity and the Interpretation of Aquinas' Motion Proofs for God J FX Knasas 147Shades of Simplicity P Thom 179The God of Life, the Science of Life, and the Problem of Language M Dodds 197Divine Impassibility W Wainwright 233Divine Foreknowledge and the Metaphysics of Time L Zagzebski 275The God of Miracles A Ramelow 303Abstracts 365Contributors Biographies 371

Philosophia Basic Philosophical ConceptsAnselm Ramelow (Editor) GOD Reason and Reality ISBN 978-3-88405-109-2 © 2014 Philosophia Verlag GmbH. München____________________________________________________________Abstracts to the new contributions in this collection Robert SpaemannWhat Do We Mean When We Say "God"?Before we can answer the question, whether God exists, we need to understand what we mean by this question, i.e. what we mean by "God." Different religions use the term "God," yet whether this term has the same referent, depends on its sense. Not all changes of the sense seem to imply a change of reference. The most basic sense seems to aim at a unique and inextricable unity of omnipotence and goodness, both of which are taken as absolute and yet dependent on each other.Thomas Joseph White, O.P.Monotheistic Rationality and Divine Names: Why Aquinas' Analogy Theory Transcends both Theoretical Agnosticism and Conceptual Anthropomorphism This essay examines the philosophical thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas' regard-ing analogical names for God. Aquinas' philosophical theory of analogy takes its shape from conversations with Aristotle, Proclus, Dionysius and Maimon-ides. The balance Aquinas strikes on analogical names for God seeks to avoid the twin extremes of a theory of divine names that is excessively apophatic, leaning toward agnosticism, and one that is excessively anthropomorphic, un-derstanding God through the prism of a univocalist conceptuality. The poise of this position is applicable in a contemporary context. After Kant and Heidegger it is common place to label all theistic projects as forms of onto-theology, in-evitably dominated by what some have termed "conceptual idolatry." Mean-while, influential trends in analytic philosophy often seek a clarity regarding the concept of God at the expense of a sufficient acknowledgement of the apo-phatic quality of all natural knowledge of God. Aquinas' arguments provide a way to think about affirmative knowledge of God that is not anthropomorphic and apophatic knowle Theoretical Agnosticism dge of God that is not agnostic. The project of analogical naming of God in the Thomist tradition remains one of enduring value and is formative for avoiding problematic ways of theistic and atheistic thinking.Lawrence DewanThomas Aquinas, and Knowledge of a God as the Goal of PhilosophyThe present paper is meant to recall the Aristotelian doctrine of the natural human desire to know as finding its complete fulfillment in knowledge of the highest cause, otherwise called "a God". The most truly "philosophical" knowledge will grasp things in the light of the divine, the supreme cause. Phi-losophy as its most philosophical is best understood as "theology" or "divine science", as Aristotle indicated.I show how this is seen by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century A.D., but that many, both then as still today, have taken the doctrine of a creator God as nec-essarily involving a doctrine of finite duration of the universe (looking towards the past). Thus, for such people God as creator seems unknowable to someone who allows no temporal beginning of a created universe.Thomas was able to understand a doctrine of creation of the eternal (in the past) Aristotelian world, and saw that doctrine as professed by Aristotle. He could thus also understand the truth about the highest philosophy being "theol-ogy" (in one quite appropriate meaning of the word).The god I find Thomas presenting in an Aristotelian philosophical portrait is quite readily viewed as creator and providence, knowing all things other than himself through and through. This does not mean that there is no affirmation by Thomas of a realm of theology "beyond philosophy." We show at the very outset that one must distinguish between natural and supernatural "theologies."Stamatios GerogiorgakisEvidence and Principles in Bayesian Theism I present Bayesian theism, i.e. Richard Swinburne's arguments for the exis-tence