David Burrell

The main lines of this exploration are quite simply drawn. That the God whom Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship outstrips our capacities for characterization, and hence must be unknowable, will be presumed as uncontested. The reason that God is unknowable stems from our shared confession that ‘the Holy One, blessed be He’, and ‘the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth’, and certainly ‘Allah, the merciful One’ is one ; and just why God's oneness entails God's being unknowable deserves discussion, though that will occur as we move along. The issue facing us is the one which preoccupied al-Ghazali: how does a seeker respond to that unknowability? The root meaning of the Arabic word for ‘student’ means ‘seeker’, and that attitude of ‘seeking the face of God’, along with the indescribability of the face, will be presumed throughout our discussion. That's why we are struck with the clumsy term ‘unknowable’ rather than its more euphonious Greek form ‘agnostic’. For Western agnostics are such largely because they cannot find God sufficiently compelling, while they ‘would not have the impudence to claim to be atheists’ – as one contemporary seeker puts it. So theologians feel it necessary to enclose the term in quotation marks when discussing, say, Aquinas' ‘agnosticism’ regarding divinity. Yet a genuine unknowing does lie at the heart of the inquiry of the Jew, Christian or Muslim seeking after God; indeed, it is the unknowing which distinguishes a search for God from lusting after idols. So let us follow al-Ghazali in an effort to discover the lineaments of both search and seeker after an unknowable God

As an exercise in comparative philosophical theology, our approach is more concerned with conceptual strategies than with historical “influences,” although the animadversions of those versed in the history of each period will assist in reading the texts of each thinker. We need historians to make us aware of the questions to which thinkers of other ages and cultures were directing their energies, as well as the forms of thought available to them in making their response; but we philosophers hope to be able to proceed without having to arm ourselves with extensive knowledge of the surrounding milieu, trusting that others more knowledgeable will correct and extend our efforts. Our contribution should then be one of offering perspectives within which further discourse may profitably proceed, suitably challenged and amended in the course of a common inquiry. Since my familiarity is with Aquinas, and since he comes chronologically first, I shall begin with him, though there is no discernible connection between the two thinkers other than their preoccupation with establishing the primacy of existing in a metaphysical discourse which had hitherto obscured its significance.

It is not often that one is graced with a mini-symposium upon reception of an article for publication, and for this I am grateful to Bill Hasker, who had to wait until after his editorship to respond to my provocative piece, and equally grateful to Richard Cross, whom Bill solicited for an assist. Since my piece called for a “radical transformation of standard philosophical strategies,” and Bill addressed that perspectival issue from the outset, while Richard focused on some axial semantic and epistemological contentions, I shall begin with Bill Hasker’s overall puzzlements, proceed to address some issues on which Richard Cross and I seem fated to disagree, and close by addressing the neuralgic point of created freedom, which both Hasker and I find axial to attempting to articulate the creator/creature relation. What gratifies me is the opportunity to interact with such sterling critics, and to try to ascertain whether we can advance a discussion (as Bill Hasker suggests) of issues which no sane human inquirer can ever pretend to “get right.”

This work offers a bold and illuminating exercise in philosophy as narrative, and in doing so presents itself quite consciously as an alternative mode of explanation to the "rationalist paradigm" which dominated Greek philosophy. Yet while acknowledging the inspiration of Hegel, the work hews far more closely than the author of Phänomenologie des Geistes to the actual dialectic of explanation as it worked itself out from Aristotle through Plotinus to Aquinas--to mention only the most prominent milestones. In that respect, the book offers an apparently independent and certainly more lyrical orchestration of the themes elaborated in such careful counterpoint by Edward Booth in his Aristotelian Aporetic Ontology in Islamic and Christian Writers. Indeed, for each author, it is a stubborn aporia inherent in Aristotle's project, yet resistant to resolution in terms of that same project, which fuels the resultant "historical dialectic." Booth's formulation focuses on the metaphysical clash between Aristotle's assertion that existing individuals bear ontological primacy and his insistence that form alone is intelligible, however, while Madigan pinpoints the explanatory lacuna in the project of Aristotle's Metaphysics as he intended it to complete the Physics. Yet I would suggest that these two formulations manifest a single metaphysical impasse for Aristotle; in fact, the very one which was to come to the fore in the debate which emerged within Islamic, Jewish, and Christian philosophical theology regarding the origins of the universe. As Madigan summarizes it: "a theory of creation or the production of the world through efficient causality is necessary to explain the world, or to render Aristotle's system complete. This is what Plotinus' philosophy lacked. But given creation or the free production of an independent world, a theory of salvation is necessary to make creation itself for the first time rational".

This paper examines how the faith/reason discussion can be expanded by means of culture and analogous language. The author argues that rationaldialogue can occur between different faith traditions, and without having to raise reason to the ideal of enlightenment objectivity or having to jettison reasonthrough some form of relativism. He argues that cultural shifts effect alterations in our very “criteria of rationality” so that our efforts to grasp others’ practices inmatters that challenge our presumed categories often reveal lacunae in our very own presumptions. The author further argues that a prerequisite for dialogue isa shared interest in pursuing the truth; thus the pursuit of truth transcends any given conceptuality. Accordingly, rationality can show itself in practices that canbe followed and understood by persons operating on the basis of different grounding convictions.

The author of The Reality of Time and the Existence of God turns his critical conceptual acumen to finding an intellectually viable path between the current polarities of dualism and materialism. By considering human beings as language-using animals he can critically appraise “representational” views of concept formation, as well as show how current “research programs” which presuppose a “materialist” basis stem from an unwitting adoption of a dualist picture of mind and body. His alternative is rooted in classical thinkerslike Aquinas and responsive to the critiques of Wittgenstein, yet constructive in ways in which those critiques failed to be. This essay aims to help readers undertake a taxing inquiry by guiding them through its main theses.

It would be difficult to find two more paradigmatic interlocutors of Christian theology and Jewish thought than Thomas Aquinas and Moses Maimonides. Yet we are privileged to have in our midst a contemporary philosopher who can be said to have mastered the thought of both and can present them in dialogue. This essay offers a glimpse into Avital Wohlman’s reading of the rich exchange (or lack of exchange) between these two medieval thinkers, assessing the implications of her presentation of their interaction for the “unending discussion between Judaism and Christianity.”