Thursday, December 29, 2005

Vatican Council I on the Existence of God

I thought all my fellow Thomistically-minded Christians would appreciate this dogmatic decree from the First Vatican Council concerning the existence of God. I think there is an enormous amount of overlap between what the Council pronounces and how many Thomists themselves would reason, whether or not they are Catholics. The following is from the opening line of chapter 2 of the Council's decrees:

The same holy mother church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason [lat. naturali humanae rationis lumine]: ‘ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made,’ (Rom. 1:20). {source: Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, v. II, Fr. Norman P. Tanner, S.J., ed.}

As Boston College philosophy professor Peter Kreeft (himself a convert to Catholicism) once said, "It is a dogma of faith that the existence of God is not just a dogma of faith."

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