What Ludwig Feuerbach described as the essence of Christianity, later identified by Marx as the ideological character of religion, can from a theological point of view be equated with idolatry. Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity was essentially that it was the worship of man by man, but in an unconscious form. That is, Christianity was man’s first degree of self-consciousness, but it was, so to speak, an unconscious self-consciousness, for under Christianity man worshipped himself as other than himself. He worshipped himself as other, not recognizing that the other whom he worshipped (“God”) was in fact no more than a projection of his own self-understanding. Everything that he therefore religiously affirmed of God was in fact attributable to himself, though he did not yet know it. His religion was really no more than idolatry, though he did not yet know it. Feuerbach, by seeking to expose this true essence of Christianity, might be said to have advocated the adoption of a truly and completely self-conscious self-idolatry: the worship of man as man, without any of the theological pretensions of divine otherness that clouded and distorted this self-consciousness under the form of religion.
No doubt scandalous at first to any pious and believing Christian, Feuerbach’s critique is nonetheless extremely useful — even critically important — for any self-respecting practice of Christian theology. For if it were true that, under any form of Christianity, man were in fact unconsciously worshipping himself under the disguise of an imagined “God,” then it should be of the utmost concern to the believing Christian’s that he discover how not to do so, in order that he might worship the true God. That is, irrespective of the scandal (even blasphemy) of Feuerbach’s apologia for undisguised and self-conscious self-idolatry, Christians have every reason to be concerned to eradicate even disguised and unconscious idolatry, as described by Feuerbach, from the practice of their religion. Feuerbach’s critique, which Marx later utilized in his analysis of ideology, has provided Christian theology with a superb criterion for identifying idolatry itself: ideology itself is nothing other than unconscious idolatry. Thus, it is supremely in the interest of Christianity and an authentic Christian theology that we pay attention to Feuerbach’s critique (and Marx’s, and Kojève’s, and later deconstructivist critics of “ontotheology”), which may effectively be integrated into the method of theology itself.
Arguably, it is precisely in view of such considerations that Thomas Aquinas begins his Summa Theologiae in the manner he does, anticipating Feuerbach’s critique by a few centuries. The beginning questions of the Summa are intended to set up the parameters of theology, the formal boundaries beyond which it would trespass into the domain of idolatry. In an article that inquires what the object of theology is, Aquinas could not be clearer that, indeed, the object of theology is God. But he distinguishes between the material and the formal object. The material objects of theology are many things: “either things and signs; or the works of salvation; or the whole Christ, as the head and members…” (I., Q.1, a.7, corpus.) In more modern language, we might simply refer to these things as the “content” of theology. But what sets theology truly apart as a science is its formal object, that is, the “aspect” (ratio in Latin) under which its content is considered. That aspect is, of course, God: theology is the science that considers all things sub ratione Dei. The most important preliminary to the study of this science, then, is to clarify in just what this ratio Dei consists.
Ordinarily, this would be analogous to the act, preliminary to any science, of defining the object of that science. One presumably has to know what it is about which one is speaking; and since theology is “speaking about God,” one might think the same thing applies in this case. However, it is precisely of this presumption that Aquinas’ first several questions set about to disabuse the beginning student of theology. Theology, properly conceived, is unlike any other science in that it resolutely refuses to define its object. Indeed, because God is undefinable, one of the objections to the article 7 of Question 1 (which I cited above) maintains that God cannot be the object of this science: “For in every science, the nature of its object is presupposed. But this science cannot presuppose the essence of God, for Damascene says (De Fide Orth. i, iv): ‘It is impossible to define the essence of God.’ Therefore God is not the object of this science.” Aquinas’ reply at first strikes the reader as somewhat unsatisfactory, for it states merely that “in this science we make use of His effects, either of nature or of grace, in place of a definition, in regard to whatever is treated of in this science concerning God.” (I., Q.1, a.7, ad.1)
Yet as the text progresses, it emerges that perhaps this is exactly the point. In the second article of Question 2, on the existence of God, the same objection arises in response to the question “Whether it can be demonstrated that God exists.” Says the objector in objection 2: “Further, the essence is the middle term of demonstration. But we cannot know in what God's essence consists, but solely in what it does not consist; as Damascene says (De Fide Orth. i, 4). Therefore we cannot demonstrate that God exists.” Rather than disputing that God’s essence cannot be known, Aquinas fully accepts this premise and replies instead that God’s existence cannot be known except as the cause of his effects; and in any such proof “[the] effect takes the place of the definition of the cause in proof of the cause's existence.” (I., Q.2, a.2, ad.2) In other words, what exactly is proven when God’s existence is proven is not anything knowable in itself, of which we might be able to have a definition either before or after the proof. No identifiable entity is hereby discovered or revealed. Rather, the only distinct knowledge that is really gained is that all things are caused; and their cause, whatever it is, is “what we call God.” (I., Q.2, a.3, corpus)
The very next question after the existence of God, Question 3, regards the “simplicity” of God. Thomas introduces the question by stating what must now be done is to discuss, not what God is, but what he is not: “When the existence of a thing has been ascertained there remains the further question of the manner of its existence, in order that we may know its essence. Now, because we cannot know what God is, but rather what He is not, we have no means for considering how God is, but rather how He is not.” (I., Q.3, intro.) Among the things that God is not, he lists composition and motion. It is in denying composition of God that he thus discusses the divine simplicity. Often among readers of the Summa, it is simply accepted that once Thomas has discussed the definition and method of theology in Question 1, proven the existence of theology’s subject matter in Question 2, he need only then go on to demonstrate the various attributes and names of God in Question 3 and thereafter — the “real business” of theology.
But careful attention must be paid to the order in which he discusses the divine attributes, for even though in various places Thomas will state that “Being” is the most proper name of God, or that “the Good” is the highest name of God, or some such thing, it is notable that he does not begin his discussion of the divine attributes with any of these names. He begins with the divine simplicity, and his discussion of God’s simplicity is not merely the “real business” of theology that begins after the preliminary methodological points have been settled. Rather, the divine simplicity is crucial to get straight precisely as part of the methodological setting of parameters that is necessary in order to set theology apart from any other science as sub ratione Dei. It is in the articles on simplicity, where Aquinas makes a number of unique claims about God’s absolutely uncomposed nature, that he explains exactly why God cannot be defined. Being utterly incorporeal (article 1), composed neither of form and matter (a.2), nor of subject and quiddity (a.3), nor of essence and existence (a.4), nor nor of genus and specific difference (which, incidentally, are the element of a classical definition) (a.5), nor of subject and accident (a.6), nor of any other possible combination (a.7) — being so absolutely simple, it follows immediately that God is utterly undefinable. And being so undefinable, it is impossible to state what kind of thing God is, as something set apart from any other kind of thing. For that is what a definition is: to set limits round a thing and to identify the borders that separate it in kind from anything else. It is to mark off those characteristics that make it other than anything else. No such defining, delimiting, boundary-setting, or setting-apart can be applied to God. There is no meaningful way to say that God is “other” than (or the “same” as, for that matter) anything else — except to say precisely that while anything else can be defined or identified as other than something else, God cannot. Yes, this is paradoxical; no, there is no way around it.
The important takeaway is that in order for theology to be theology and not idolatry, the God whom it proposes to study — or under whose aspect it proposes to study all things — must be a God who resists absolutely all definition, all attempts to identify it as “some kind of thing,” all attempts to identify it at all. It is a God upon whom, from the outset, no created and definable attribute — not even “otherness,” however sincerely such an attribution might be intended to protect God’s “transcendence” — may be projected, lest God become merely “God,” an idol of our own making, like the “God” of Feuerbach. The simplicity of God is the basic condition of denial attached to every affirmation that might be said of God, and Thomas is careful to set it forth at the outset in order to stave off, ahead of time, the danger of idolatry that necessarily comes with any such affirmation. All the attributes and names of God which we might subsequently go on to explore are conditioned by this fundamental incomprehensibility of the divine essence, on account of its absolute simplicity — a theme which will therefore, unsurprisingly, continue to pop up now and again through the course of Thomas’ treatises, like a reminder to ourselves of just little we know despite all the claims we are making. The only ratio Dei under which theology can rightly claim the name of theology is that of absolute negation: a God whose essence is absolutely resistant to all capture by our powers of language, conception, or reason.
This conception of theology is notable in that the character of apophaticism, i.e. negative theology, is structurally embedded in its methodology from the very beginning. The apophatic is not relegated to the “mystic silence” that occurs at the very end of the process, like a great gap in the circle of knowledge which can never be filled by the power of unaided reason. Rather, apophatic denial is structurally tied to the very method of theological discourse as such, if it is to be truly theological — and this applies to the theology that is done under the auspices of “reason” (i.e. “natural theology”) as well as “faith” (revealed theology). A one-sidedly cataphatic discourse, severed from its dialectical apophatic partner, risks reducing God to something “sayable”; whereas in the dialectic of cataphasis and apophasis, that which is said of God is always also un-said — that which is known is always un-known. Not because what we can say or know about God is untrue, and therefore must be denied; but rather, what we can say or know of God is true only if it is also denied. The entire truth of theology is constituted by this dialectic of saying-unsaying, knowing-unknowing, the discursive manifestation of its object’s utter transcendence to discourse.
The Christianity which Feuerbach deconstructs in The Essence of Christianity is one whose God is, ultimately, a definable God, a God who is all-too familiar to man, a projection of man’s ego as something “other.” Such a version of Christianity is a form of Christian idolatry, albeit an unconscious idolatry, but an idolatry that deserves to be eradicated root and branch. Its eradication requires Christians themselves to adopt a self-critical attitude — really a type of asceticism, a disposition of constant vigilance over their own utterances about God, lest they find themselves worshipping a domesticated God. To be sure, this is an all-too easy temptation for a religion whose God became Man: yet as so many saints and mystics have reminded us (Saint Thomas’ great friend, Saint Bonaventure, comes especially to mind), the true purpose of Christ’s revelation is not to make God more familiar and relatable to us, but to draw us down the path of the via crucis only deeper into the darkness of divine unknowability. And if even the true God must die, so much the more must all our idols die. Further yet, since our idols, as Feuerbach demonstrated, tend to be glorified projections of our own selves, so much the more must we ourselves die.
A whole critique remains to be written of contemporary examples of domesticated counterfeits of Gods, in the many forms they take. Christianity has never been free of such idols, but the forms in which they appear are in large part ideological manifestations of the prevailing social conditions. The task of theology as a historically embodied practice is to be ever aware of these conditions and their ideological formations, insofar as those ideologies may infect religion itself and produce idolatry out of the very stuff of theology: the same content of theology, but sub ratione hominis. Modern (or postmodern) Christianity’s idols are of a peculiar sort, and they are many, and the atheisms of (post)modernity are just as many (if not more). The latter, even (perhaps especially) where they openly and scandalously embrace the ratio hominis, may be enlisted as allies to theology in identifying those idols where they appear. But that will have to be for another blogpost or article, or series of them.
the more I learn about Bonaventure the more I like him.
"Modern (or postmodern) Christianity’s idols are of a peculiar sort, and they are many, and the atheisms of (post)modernity are just as many (if not more). The latter, even (perhaps especially) where they openly and scandalously embrace the ratio hominis, may be enlisted as allies to theology in identifying those idols where they appear.." woah