Charles Johnson
Puritan Board Junior
I'm wondering if any can help me resolve my confusion regarding an aspect of classical apologetics. It seems that treatment of the existence of God as self-evident and axiomatic is a pretty standard part of reformed scholastic prolegomena. I've seen such statements in Junius and John Brown of Haddington, for example. The Leiden Synopsis puts it this way in thesis 1.30:
"Theology is not only intellectual and semantic, but indeed discursive. For frequently, it uses many arguments for convincing naysayers, and from its principles, from its prior, per se indemonstrable things, it either elicits conclusions for proving the truth or explanations for refuting the deceptive objections of the sophists. Mt. 22:32-33; 1 Cor. 15:20-22."
(translation my own).
So these authors believed that theology has certain indemonstrable principles. Junius, in Mosaic Polity, explicitly states that the existence of God is one such principle. Is it inconsistent, then, for classical apologists to attempt to use arguments like Thomas's five proofs to demonstrate the existence of God? Or does this represent two distinct schools of thought within the classical school?
"Theology is not only intellectual and semantic, but indeed discursive. For frequently, it uses many arguments for convincing naysayers, and from its principles, from its prior, per se indemonstrable things, it either elicits conclusions for proving the truth or explanations for refuting the deceptive objections of the sophists. Mt. 22:32-33; 1 Cor. 15:20-22."
(translation my own).
So these authors believed that theology has certain indemonstrable principles. Junius, in Mosaic Polity, explicitly states that the existence of God is one such principle. Is it inconsistent, then, for classical apologists to attempt to use arguments like Thomas's five proofs to demonstrate the existence of God? Or does this represent two distinct schools of thought within the classical school?