"The Careful Rationality of Monotheism: Thomas Aquinas on Analogical Knowledge of God"
A lecture by Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Dominican House of Studies) given on February 26, 2013, at the University of Chicago.
How can philosophers speak about God in a reasonable fashion? Does speech about God exceed the capacities of human reason? In responding to these questions, Thomas Aquinas develops a path between the extremes of apophaticism (rejecting the applicability of human language to God) and rationalistic optimism. This lecture will argue for the validity of the Thomist doctrine of divine naming and its relevance to contemporary debates in analytic theism and to Heidegger's critique of "onto-theology" (the theology of being).