Knowing God by Reason Alone?

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PioMagnus

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Does the Church hold that the existence of God can be known with certainty from reason alone?
 
I suspect that is going to depend on exactly what you mean by “knowing”. To know OF is different than to know about. To know about is different than to know intimately. To know intimately is different than to know from within.
 
Yes, but this is scandalous to most because they typically assume that reason is meant in the usual abstract modern sense, to logistikon, calculative reason; whereas the reason that is capable of knowing God with certainty is necessarily an organic faculty that has developed so as to possess intellectual virtue (vision), and also that is aided by moral virtue, rather than impeded (darkened, distorted) by moral vice. Of course, the latter requirements on reason will also often seem scandalous, but in a different way!
 
Its possible to know that God exists, but its impossible to know anything of God through reason.
 
The Church - dogmatically - holds that natural reason is sufficient to know the existence of God. This is a critical point when it comes to debating atheists who argue that we beg the question by asserting that faith is a supernatural virtue. It is, but merely accepting that existence has a supernatural source is not faith.
 
Formosus said:
Its possible to know that God exists, but its impossible to know anything of God through reason.
Click to expand...
I thought that we could know a lot of things about God by reason alone. For example, the unity of God, the omnipotence of God, the eternity of God, to name a few.
 
To clarify, by ‘God’ in this sense is meant the what, but not the Who. With Reason alone we can be lead to the knowledge of the divine nature: we can know there is some supernatural something, but reason alone could not introduce us to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We need the light of Faith to come to know the Personhood of God.

In other words - we can know naturally that there is something there but not Someone. God has to introduce Himself to us first.
 
Neithan said:
To clarify, by ‘God’ in this sense is meant the what, but not the Who. With Reason alone we can be lead to the knowledge of the divine nature: we can know there is some supernatural something, but reason alone could not introduce us to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We need the light of Faith to come to know the Personhood of God.

In other words - we can know naturally that there is something there but not Someone. God has to introduce Himself to us first.
Click to expand...
I am not sure that this is true, because God’s creation somehow has to be a reflection of Himself and since we are conscious of being someone, then we can infer that God is Someone and not merely something.
 
Formosus said:
Its possible to know that God exists, but its impossible to know anything of God through reason.
Click to expand...
That’s not actually true.

Logically, if you’re good at it, you can derive;
  1. God exists
  2. God determines
  3. God loves
  4. God is “omniscient”
  5. God is “omnipotent”
  6. God is “omnipresent”
  7. God is immutable
  8. God is consistent
  9. God “causes” the universe
  10. God “creates” all things
  11. God “requires” of you (Father)
  12. What God requires of you
And quite a number of other things. But very few people can even follow logic well, much less derive from it very well, so logic is for the analytical thinkers, not the wishful thinkers.

The issue is how to convey or communicate the logic.
 
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