Beauty of God Pt. 1
What distinction does Anselm recognize in the definition of 'thought' and which form of 'thought' allows a person to say 'God does not exist'?
C. Thought is both 'thinking the word that signifies something' and 'understanding what exactly the thing is' and God can only be denied in the second sense.
Approximately how many witches were burned in the early middle ages—that is between 1000 and 1200 A.D. or C.E.— as a result of the Inquisition?
D. 0
Which of the following best describes the acceptance of one's transcendental relativity, but interprets it through an erroneous conception of God so as to reach no conclusion whatsoever?
D. Absolute Agnosticism
How did Anselm understand art?
D. As a power available to all persons, providing the conditions for human intervention into the given.
What does Anselm conclude about the possible non-existence of the Supreme Being?
D. Because God's existence is so true, it is not possible to conceive of his non-existence.
Why is it impossible to think about something that does not exist, whether naturally or artificially?
D. Because all language, and thus all thought, is derivative from either nature or the synthesis of nature called 'art'.
Why does Gaunilo call the island in his thought experiment, 'the Lost Island'?
D. Because of the impossibility of finding it since it does not exist.
What is the relevance of understanding that Anselm was a monk and Archbishop of Canterbury?
D. Both 'A' and 'B'
Which of the following is the best definition of the secular?
D. Both 'A' and 'B'
Which of the following statements about prayer is accurate when considered in light of the classical theistic model
D. Both 'A' and 'B' - Any good that arrives is necessarily an answer to a prayer, since prayer is opening oneself to the good. - The doer of good is praying, whether she knows it or not, and the one who prays is already bringing about good.
Which of the following is the most accurate representation of how Anselm understands existence, or being itself?
D. Existence is diverse, giving itself in a plurality of kinds, making it impossible to think about or speak about any unified conception of existence.
Where does the movement known as 'scholasticism' get its name?
D. From the university, or schooling, system which emphasized an open engagement with objects of inquiry.
Which of the following is the best mathematical analogy for how Anselm understands God?
D. God is like infinity in that he is the plenitude of all numerical content.
What is Guanilo's first primary object to Anselm's claim that it is not possible to even doubt the existence of God (TTWNGBT)?
D. He believes that if it were impossible to doubt then Anselm would not need to prove anything in the first place.
How does Anselm characterize Gaunilo as a thinker/scholar?
D. He calls him a "Christian who is no fool" but who only argues on behalf of a fool.
How does Hart view the existence of many religious traditions?
D. He is open to the possibility that one faith might be truer than all others, but this does not and could not then mean that all other religions are simply false
Which of the following forms of causality, described sequentially below, is incorrectly defined? I. Final Cause: The causal principle that derives from the end being soughtII. Efficient Cause: The cause of a thing's matter, or physical properties.III. Formal Cause: The cause of a thing's form, or essence.IV. Material Cause: The first and most basic cause, or agent, of real change in a thing
D. II and IV
At one point in his analysis, Gaunilo claims that it is not possible to have the TTWNGCBT in one's understanding because...
D. It cannot be mediated through genus or species; that is, there is nothing familiar to provide a basis for knowing it.
Which of the following would Aquinas say best characterizes religio?
D. It is a disposition of a person that nurtures a set of skills through bodily and spiritual discipline
According to Hart, what is the primary distinction between monotheism and polytheism
D. It is a distinction between two qualitatively immeasurable kinds of reality: monotheism espouses God who is the ground of being itself, while polytheism espouses gods as an agent who has being.
Which of the following is the MacIntyrean understanding of Tradition?
D. It is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined.
Which of the following best characterizes the principle of non-exhaustability?
D. It is not necessary to have exhaustive knowledge/understanding in order to have knowledge/understanding of something. - i think might be wrong, I dont think we went over this yet
What is the ultimate aim of Anselm' s natural theology?
D. Knowledge in the sense of acquaintance or relationship.
How does Anselm understand the relation between an essence and existence?
A. Since one is able to understand the essence of something without knowing whether or to what extent a thing exists, it means that in all creatures, essence and existence are separate.
What is the primary false premise that Gaunilo begins with, according to Anselm?
A. That neutrality is the only way to ensure one 'begins' to think TTWNGCBT.
What justifies the claim that the liberal tradition exercises an authoritative power unrivaled even by the Medieval Church?
A. The Medieval Church always saw itself under the authority of God, while the liberal tradition espouses no such external authority over itself.
According to Hart, what sort of god is it meaningful to NOT believe in?
A. The One, transcendent god who is the ground of all existence and reality.
Which of the following is the best description of the "genetic fallacy"?
A. The reductive expalnation of a thing to only its material history
Which of the following best characterizes Anslem' s metaphysics, or philosophy of being/existence?
A. There is one thing that must exist of itself, while all other things that exist do so through this one existing thing such that existence is fundamentally a unity-in-diversity.
How does Anselm view the association between existence in reality and existence in the understanding.
A. They are quite different things.
Which of the following best captures why Anselm dwells on the words 'from' and 'through'?
A. To better understand the relation between origin and continued sustenance.
Which of the following summarizes Hart's methodology and intentions?
A. To clarify the concept of "God" so that those who believe understand better and those who reject God have a clear concept of what they don't believe
Which of the following best describes Aquinas' s understanding of a self-evident proposition?
A. When the predicate or attributes are included in the definition of the subject
Can human reason demonstrate that God exists?
A. Yes, but only by means of demonstration quia, through which we move from the effects, which are known better to us though are less intelligible in themselves, to the cause (God) who is more knowable in himself, but less knowable to us.
Which of the following is an attribute unique to the Catholic tradition, rather than Christianity as a whole?
A. belief that priests are part of the Apostolic succession and that the pope is in a lineage traceable back to Peter
What is the best definition of "naturalism"?
Also known as physicalism and materialism, it is the belief that there is nothing beyond the physical order, and there can be nothing supernatural at all
According to Hart, what do current popular debates over belief in God constitute?
An argument between faith and reason, and faith is the far less rationally defensible of the two
Which of the following is NOT one of the signals of beauty in the scholastic method?
B. It bears a sense of 'being in the eye of the beholder' because the truth that it is designed to uncover is really whatever a person wants to believe about it.
Which of the following statements MIScharacterizes the ancient view of religio?
B. It identified a list of beliefs that ordered a person's individual spirituality
When it comes to the way that things exist in the mind and the way things exist in reality, which of the following expresses Anselm' s belief?
B. It is better for something to exist both in the mind and in reality.
Which of the following best characterizes Anselm' s use and belief about language?
B. It is more than semantics because it is always in the service of a better understanding of God that leads to closer intimacy with God.
Which of the following is INcorrect with respect to Aquinas' s 5th way, the way of governance and order?
B. It most fundamentally concerns the way in which a particular inexplicable part of nature points to the need for a higher intelligence to have created it, or put it there, so to speak.
What does it mean to say that "religion is not simply discovered, it is invented"?
B. That it is a category, constructed within a certain worldview and with a certain ideology
According to Anselm's response, what follows necessarily from the fact that TTWNCBT can in fact be thought?
B. That it must exist, otherwise how is the mind able to even think it?
According to Hart, what is intended by the word God by classical theistic faith traditions?
B. The One who is the very ground of all existence, in whom we live and move and have our being.
Which of the following anthropological principles provides evidence for one's transcendental relativity?
B. The fact that human nature, the essence of a person, is self-transcending
According to Williams, what is Anselm' s view of faith with respect to his motto "Faith seeking understanding"?
B. Understanding does not replace faith, but rather faith provides the very conditions for ever deepening understanding by feeding or nourishing it.
Which is one of the disagreeable consequences of our modern failure to understand what method is, especially as it concerns the limits of the method of the sciences, and in particular Dawinian evolution?
B. We as a culture become more tolerant of wild ideas that claim to derive from, or disguise their claims erroneously within, the credibility of various scientific theories like evolution
Which of the following best describes how Anselm understand the relationship between a word and thing it identifies?
B. Words are images of thoughts, and thoughts are images of things.
Which of the three points made by Laudato Si concerning the relationship between human knowledge and the world is most difficult for Americans to hear and why?
That our assumptions about human knowing and desiring are shaped according to scientific methodology, because the US, believing that the 'scientific method' is the only paradigm of real knowledge, is one of the countries least critical of the culture of scientific expertise
According to Shiffman, what does it mean that Francis chose St. Francis's "the Canticle of Creatures" as the point of departure for Laudato Si"?
That the Pope is emphasizing the importance of poetic speech that gives loving attention to created beings in grateful praise of their creator
What are the two components of the picture of the world that naturalism gives us?
That the cosmos of space and time is purely mechanical reality that is utterly deterministic, and that this mechanical reality floats upon a quantum flux of ceaseless spontaneity and infinite indeterminacy
What are the three reasons that Hart adopts the Sanskrit triad of 'sitchatananda' (being, consciousness, bliss) as his definition of the Godhead?
They are an elegant summary of the divine nature found in many traditions; they capture the human experience and knowledge of God; they identify human phenomena that resist philosophical naturalism
Which of the following best describes Hart's belief about language, grammar, and whether human rationality is common to all cultures and all times?
He retains a belief in a sort of universal grammar of human nature, making it possible to overcome cultural and conceptual misunderstandings.
How does Hart assess the relationship between how reason is understood in the late modern West, and how it has been understood in previous times?
Reason (and nature) were radically changed by the various directions alterations pursued and made in the Modern period
Which of the following statements about critical theory is false?
B. It advanced a position that stood against the Marxist and Frankfurt schools of thought.
Which of the following is NOT one of the 5 ways that Aquinas establishes God' s existence?
C. The Way of Morality
Which Gospel parable is put forward as a helpful allegory for liberalism as a tradition?
C. The parable of the prodigal son
Which of the following is wrong about Thomas Aquinas?
B. His parents wanted him to be a Dominican but he secretly became a Benedictine
Which one of the following is true about acts of sensing, knowing and loving?
A&B. They all provide something other to, or transcendent of, the one performing them AND They all provide the person something he or she is seeking
Which of the following best capture Anselm' s notion of truth, according to Williams?
A. A Person
Which of the following images best conveys the sense of reason that Anselm adopted?
A. A hammer, because he believed reason was like a tool used to construct the variety of mental equipment necessary for thought to function.
What is the primary new development that liberalism brings into the world?
A. An anthropology, that is, a new vision of the human person.
How is religio viewed in the Middle Ages?
A. As a virtue added to justice concerning what we ought to render to God
Which of the following comments best explains Hart's assertion: "If there is a God he can presumably reveal himself to seeking minds, but if there is not then there can be no "natural" confirmation of the fact"?
A. Atheism cannot rest its case on any evidence found in nature, but can only remain a pure assertion, conviction, or blind assurance in an inaccessible beyond, despite the fact that its very claim rests upon purely material evidence
Why is it more accurate to say that Anselm' s eureka moment revealed to him a demonstration of God' s presence, rather than proof that God exists?
A. Because God is not some object alongside other object, and so not subject to some alleged neutrality that is alone guarantees the truth being established.
What are the only two objections to God' s existence Aquinas believes poses a worthy challenge?
A. Evil and Superfluity
Which of the following best characterizes the mono-polytheistic, or theistic-personalist, model of God?
A. God is simply a numerically restricted version of the model of the gods found in many ancient cultures
According to Aquinas, is God' s existence self-evident?
A. God's existence is self-evident in itself, but not to us.
How does Gaunilo interpret the role of art vis-à-vis the painter?
A. He claims that before a picture is painted it is in the craft of the painter, which is nothing but a part of his own intelligence.
With respect to the MacIntyrean notion of tradition, how ought the notion of defining and redefining be understood?
A. In terms of development and refinement rather than change and alteration.
Which of the following best expresses the meaning of an "unthematic experience of God"?
A. It is an experience of transcendence that has not yet been made thematic by means of a narrative or concepts or categories
What did the church do to Galileo?
A. Put him under house arrest
Which of the following is accurate with respect to how Anselm understands reason in relation to images, metaphor, and imagination?
A. Reason is a tool of discernment over images and metaphors, without which one's conception of God can only come from the imagination leading to idolatry rather than true faith.
Which of the following best describes the functionalist approach to religion?
A. Religion is defined based upon how it functions in a given social context
How can the Catholic tradition's understanding of the world as created help to recover "our human capacity for contemplation and reverence"?
As one of the most rational claims every made, it tells us the world is orderly and coherent, coming from a single source who speaks it into existence, establishing a home for speech and reason.
From the perspective of the classical faith traditions, how is the relationship between God and being (existence as such) related?
B & C. God is beyond being, if by "being" one means the entire set of all finite entities AND God is "being" itself because God is the inexhaustible source of all reality
Which of the following best summarizes the notion of tradition as understood in the Catholic Tradition?
B. An argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined
Which theologian has the most influence on Anselm' s way of thinking?
B. Aristotle
According to Hart, why has the materialist metaphysics that has emerged from mechanical philosophy endured as it has?
B. Because it determines in advance which problems of interpretation are to be avoided
In what ways can the liberal tradition be understood as a (quasi) religious tradition?
B. Because it has originating texts, makes claim about good and evil, human nature, and how best to be saved from evil.
Why is positing an infinite regress of movers no more rational, perhaps even less rational, than positing a first mover?
B. Because positing an infinite regress of finite movers posits an infinite power in finite time and space, which is a contradiction. Thus, it is irrational as contradictory.
How can God be both omnipotent AND unable to do certain things?
B. Because those things that our speech would allow us to articulate as things that God cannot do, are actually weaknesses rather than strengths; therefore, God's inability is not inability but rather 'the ability to always be strong'.
Which of the following is NOT one of the ways in which the proper sense of tradition can be identified?
B. Beliefs justified by their repetition
Which of the following principles best summarizes the first phase of Anselm' s demonstration?
B. Comparative being implicates superlative being.
Who was the first to posit the heliocentric theory (that the sun is the center of our solar system)?
B. Copernicus (15th-16th c.)
You are facing the challenge of the 'mutilated chess board' puzzle: a chess board can be completely covered with 32 dominos, since one domino covers two squares. When the board is 'mutilated' by having two black squares on opposite corners removed, the challenge is to cover the whole board with 31 dominos, with no overlap and no going over the edges. You proceed to experiment several times, and after 10 tries, you conclude it is not possible based on repeated failure to do so. Which sort of demonstration have you used?
B. Demonstration quia
The definition of Tradition as "an inheritance from our forefathers" comes from what Modern figure?
B. Edmund Burke
What is the primary way that Aquinas' s fourth way, the way of worldly gradations, differs from Anselm' s approach to demonstrating God' s existence?
B. For Aquinas, God is never the abstract maximal but that which causes the maximal.
According to Anselm, at what level in the cognitive process does the 'falsity' of false thing reside?
B. Gaunilo wrongly claims it resides at the level of understanding, but Anselm claims it resides at the level of thought.
Which of the following is the "working" definition of God that Anselm proposes and why?
B. God is that than which nothing greater can be thought, a definition he acknowledges is what the tradition ("we") believed.
How is it possible for God to perceive anything if God is not a body in any way?
B. God perceives things by being himself supremely percipient as the one who supremely knows all things, not as we know or perceive but in a divine way.
Which of the following is evidence that, as Anselm asserts, Gaunilo reifies TTWNGCBT?
B. He puts it into the same category as a 'false thing'.
Which of the following most accurately characterizes the opening of Anselm' s Proslogion and the method that it indicates?
B. He sketches out an ontology—an account of being—which is why he calls it the 'ontological argument' in the opening chapter.
How does the author assess the contemporary debates about God that abound in our late modern culture?
B. He thinks there are a great deal of such debates, yet the concept of God that occupies most of these debates is obscure and rather incoherent
Which of the following best characterizes Galileo's relationship with the Church of his time?
B. He was on friendly terms with many in the Church and a respected intellectual
According to Shiffman, why is it disturbing that an astrophysics professor would engage in contempt for Aristotle under the belief that modern science has proven him wrong?
Because not only did Einstein prove Aristotle was correct, but that contempt for Aristotle shows that a physicist does not know the history of his own discipline nor the meaning of its discoveries.
How does Hart describe the grammatical and linguistic conditions of today's debates about God?
Because there are no obvious linguistic barriers to be overcome, each side understands the other just well enough to be deceived into thinking that both are working within the same conceptual frame
Which of the following best explains the meaning of transcendental relativity?
C. A relationship that every person has with something transcendent
What is the best characterization of negative thinking?
C. A way of thinking and speaking about God that focuses on what God is not rather than on what God is.
What is the principle that justifies Aquinas' s assertion that 'if it were possible for everything to not exist, then nothing would exist now'?
C. All possibility presupposes actuality; that is, the human intellect can only know what is actual by examining what is first possible and from there making it happen.
Which of the following is NOT an order within the Catholic Tradition?
C. Baptists
According to Williams's introductory remarks, why is Anselm' s project of natural theology "fishy" from the start?
C. Because Anselm was a monk writing for those who already believed in God.
Why is it important to stress that the Catholic tradition is a part of the now broader Christian tradition?
C. Because certain forms of contemporary Christianity, influenced in large measure by the liberal tradition, have become suspicious as to whether or not the Catholic tradition is Christian.
Why did the Church oppose the views of Galileo?
C. Because he was scientifically in error, promoting ideas that conflicted with the accepted Airstotelian-Ptolemaic model of the universe
Which of the following is NOT true with respect to Aquinas' s famous 5 ways argument for God' s existence?
C. Each way begins with a 'working definition' of God and from there proceeds to deductively demonstration that God must exist once the definition is understood
How did Anselm understand the relation between faith and reason?
C. From the aesthetic, or open dialectic, habit of mind: faith and reason are mutually enriching dimension of human thought and experience.
Within the classical theistic tradition, which of the following best explains God' s attributes?
C. God does not possess or 'have' his attributes; rather, God IS his attributes: God IS goodness, God IS beauty, God IS truth, God IS love
Which of the following does Ganilo claim about the existence of the TTWNGCBT and thought vs. understanding?
C. He claims that, since false things, properly speaking, cannot be understood, Anselm ought to have said that the TTWNGCBT is such that it cannot be understood not to exist.
How does Hart assess the relationship between reason and revelation?
C. He sees them as only one and the same, with no distinction whatsoever
Beyond establishing THAT God exists, which of the following best characterizes how Anselm understands reason's powers with respect to the mysteries of the particular Christian faith like the Trinity?
C. He thinks that once reason is enlightened by faith, it can come to see that they mysteries are in some sense inevitable and fitting.
What was the general attitude of early Christianity around the 4th or 5th century to the pagan philosophies of Greek and Roman thought?
C. It sought to learn from it and engaged in critical dialogue with it
Which of the following is TRUE with respect to the liberal tradition?
C. Its classical form identifies its conservative members, while its more progressive form identifies its liberal members, as it advances itself as a tradition-less tradition.
Which of the following is an inaccurate characterization of the particular dimension of cognition in question?
C. Knowing is the judgment that a person makes upon the various content that is thought.
According to Hart, what is the "glory" of human reason over and against the often outrageous expectations we today put onto the sciences?
C. Reason's power to exceed any particular frame of reference of single perspective and instead employ an immense range of intellectual faculties while remaining open to the whole horizon of being's potentially infinite intelligibility
In what way can atheism be said to be a companion in the human experience of beauty?
C. Since beauty involves a plentitude of intelligibility that, as a unity-in-plurality, requires a destabilizing power to open one to transcendence, atheism can be said to communicate these
What is meant by Francis Fukuyama' s titular phrase "the end of history"?
C. That liberalism is the final stop of human advance, that is, because liberalism concludes all historical aspirations by bringing liberation and technological advancement, humans have come to the end of history.
Which of the following is an accurate reason that the author of the Experience of God, David Hart, will restrict his analysis to the most classical definitions of God?
D. Not only does this God stand upon the authority of centuries of reflection, but this God is beyond the empirical sciences such that there is no opposition between science and belief in this God, and this is the God that most common believers espouse in some way as the God they worship.
Aquinas' s way of demonstrating God' s existence by examining how all inanimate things are in some way ordered toward an end by some transcendent intelligence is called the way of:
D. Order/Governance
According to the author, Shiffman, what philosophical tradition has influenced Pope Francis's Laudato si' not to mention the thought of both previous popes (Benedict and JPII)?
D. Phenomenology
Which of the following best describes the substantivist approach to religion?
D. Religion is defined for what it is based upon its beliefs about the nature of reality
Which of the following best articulates the principle of "linear non-linearity"?
D. That knowing, thinking, and understanding are processes where the end/goal are in the very undertaking of the process itself.
Which of the following most accurately identifies the god of deism?
D. The God who, like a watchmaker, winds creation up and lets it run without any intervention
According to Anselm, what is the relationship between the diverse goods of the world and the good itself?
D. The diversity of goods in the world, when compared to each other, demonstrate that there must be some one good that they all share and in which they all participate.
Which of the following is true concerning the "wars of religion" in Modern period (15th, 16th, 17th cs.)?
D. They were really wars of contested political sovereignty that eventually created religion as we know it.
Which of the following was the Church's principal role in the witch hunts of the early modern period (late 14th, early 15th c.)?
D. To simply identify who was and who was not a witch in order to be sure that a valid charge was brought forth
Which of the following statements, according to Aquinas' s definition, is a self-evident proposition (either in itself or to us)?
D. Wholes are greater than their parts
According to Hart, what does it mean to speak of "God" properly, that is, to use the word of "God" in a way that corresponds to the teachings of the major faith traditions of the world?
God is the infinite source of all that is, perfectly transcendent of the world and for this very reason also perfectly immanent to the world
According to Hart, why is it the case that "a plurality of gods could not constitute an alternative to or contradiction of the unity of God"?
God is the only one who identifies something real, while "gods" identify a mythology created by primitive human beings
How does Hart view the association between human reason and God?
He asserts that it makes sense to believe in both, or neither, but it is contradictory to believe in one and not the other.
According to Shiffman, what is one of the primary problems with the paradigm, established in large measure by modern science, of an ethic of control?
In promising humanity an increase of control over nature, it can blind us to the claims that nature makes upon us
Which of the following best articulates the distinction between God and god, according to Hart's analysis?
It is a distinction between two entirely different kinds of reality, belonging to two entirely different conceptual orders.
Which of the following is an accurate articulation of Hart's view of fundamentalism?
It is a particular pathology of our late modern Western culture, deriving from the power of abstract ideas, and infecting everything from religion to economics, to politics, social theory and other discourses
In which of the following ways is God's presence like beauty itself?
It is so close that it often goes unnoticed.
What does Hart contend is the primary difference between today's brand of atheism and older forms of atheism?
Older forms of atheism had a developed sense of the faith ad beliefs they rejected, while today's atheism not only is ignorant of the faith and belief they reject, but they seem not even to know that they do not know
Which of the following best characterizes the primary point about humanity's relationship to nature as expressed in the excerpt from Franscis's Laudato si'?
Once, men and women had an attunement to the natural world enabling them to respect its possibilities, but the power of modern science has transformed attunement into control, manipulation, and possession
For both Goethe and Pope Francis, what is at stake in conflicting understandings of what it means to know?
Our very humanity
Which of the following best summarizes Gaunilo's argument of self-existence?
Since I know with equal certainty my own existence and the existence of TTWNGCBT, IF I can think my own non-existence (which I can) then I should be able to also think the nonexistence of the TTWNGCBT since it has the same certainty of existence; if I cannot think my own non-existence, then God (TTWNGCBT) is not the only one whose existence cannot be thought not to exist.
Which of the following human powers recognizes a way of knowing that is in excess of discursive patterns of thought?
Storying
According to Hart, which is only subtly implied, which of the following identifies the god of Intelligent Design?
The Demiurge of Greek philosophical thought
Which of the following best characterizes the habit of mind that is favored by the scholastic method?
The aesthetic mind, because it is formulated according to an open dialectic and thus orders both the univocal and the equivocal mind.
What does Hart say is the truly interesting question about modern philosophical reflection on God?
The assumptions that all sides tend to share and how they have been shaped by larger currents of cultural history
Under the new scientific paradigm of knowledge as scientific abstraction and mastery/manipulation, why does something like beauty get overlooked?
The new scientific paradigm stands upon a reductive methodology, which often results in overlooking whatever we cannot measure.
Why is it the case that a theory like natural selection cannot of itself account for the existence of the universe?
The question of being cannot be answered by a theory that applies only to physical realities
According to Hart, which of the following challenges the materalist picture of the world?
There are a multitude of things that we know that are not material in any significant sense, such as the truths of mathematics
