Human logic in relation to God – Part 1
To understand the process by which human logic attempts to ascend to God, it will be most beneficial to start with a classical argument for God’s existence, which has been presented by many thinkers over time, known as the ontological argument. This argument is found in various forms, some of which are stronger and weaker than others, but for our purposes let us consider the argument more or less as it is framed by Anselm in the Proslogion:
(1): That-than-which-none-greater-c an-be-conceived (Hereafter TTWNGCBC) is a being which cannot be thought to lack any conceivable perfection.
(2): Being is a conceivable perfection
(3): If we imagine TTWNGCBC as non-existent, then we are imagining that TTWNGCBC is lacking a conceivable perfection.
(4): But this is absurd by (1) and (2), therefore if we think of TTWNGCBC, we must think that it is an existing being.
Notice that Anselm uses a “reductio ad absurdum” argument in his formulation. The argument might be more simply (though less precisely) stated as: God has every perfection; existence is a perfection; therefore God exists. It’s worth noting that Anselm figures proving the existence of TTWNGCBC is sufficient to prove the Christian God, although TTWNGCBC is a rather weak being compared to later philosophical formulations of God by Christians (especially Thomas Aquinas’ “ipsum esse subsitens”).
Of course, the fundamental assumption which is made by Anselm’s argument is that TTWNGCBC can be thought of. To address the implications of this argument, it must be asked: Can the human mind conceive TTWNGCBC? This is an epistemological question with, as we can see, important metaphysical implications.
With regard to epistemology, reason is a discursive process by which the human subject comes to know himself and the world around him. More precisely, it is a process by which man relates himself to the world around him, abstracting from his sense data to know the intelligible part of being (called “form” in an Aristotelean/Thomist metaphysics). Yet the world in which man finds himself is full of imperfection, finitude, mutability, and temporality. If man’s reason abstracts from his senses of this imperfect world, then how could he know God, whom he has called perfect, infinite, immutable, eternal (atemporal), etc.? If he can know God’s infinitude, perfection, etc., it is only by exception or negation in relation to those things in the world.
At this point it will be beneficial to consider the difference between
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