As the three personas enter into a discussion then as to the nature of God, the discussion turns to a debate on the epistemology of theology. Demea argues against anthropomorphism remarking that rather than using the same language that one employs concerning man for God’s attributes “we should say that he comprehends the perfection of matter without being material; comprehends perfection of spirits without being spirit; Being without restriction.” Philo adds that man’s belief in God essentially comes down to the fact that all things require a cause and that cause man names God, to which he attributes all perfections and notions. To derive His nature man’s only choice is sound piety and just reasoning by which he can understand the incomprehensible and mysterious nature of God. He cannot look to use experience to attribute qualities to God since man has no experience of the divine attributes and operations.
As hinted at earlier in the dialogue, however, Cleanthes feels that man must use the world and his experience in it to begin to understand the supreme Deity. Creation and its many complexities afford man the ability to draw analogy to his own complexities and faculties thereby attaining glimpses of the Divine Faculties and Intellect. He argues that workings of the world and their complexity resemble workings of man: simply a complex system of machines subdivided into lesser machines, which are divided into lesser machines, etc. Man is “led to infer…that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man: though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he has executed.” 6
Philo counters that man’s experience in the world is too limited to truly have a grasp for the complexities of the universe. Hume’s theories from Enquiry concerning the unnecessary conjunction between cause and effect come into play through Philo’s rebuke. “Order, arrangement, or the adjustment of final causes is not, of itself, any proof of design; but only so far as it has been experienced to proceed from that principle.” In other words, just because human experience and natural “laws” have proceeded by consistent methods does not mean that one can assume it will continue to do so. Furthermore, if one extends this logic to the higher, incomprehensible intellect of the supreme Being, one cannot make any such supposition of His methods or qualities.
Experience teaches, in Philo’s mind, that there is an original principle of order in mind, not matter. The foundations of all Creation, therefore, lie in the Creator and His intellect. This does not, however, allow man to presume how Creation came about. For Philo, man bears witness to the all the aspects of the universe he has access to. This experience dictates that there must be a supreme Deity who is the cause of it all and that He brought it about by His intellect, hence the source of all order is “mental” not “material.” Man’s knowledge of God ceases here, however. Thought, design, and intelligence found in men are only offspring and subdivisions of the original principle. Though man’s basic experience reveals to him the existence of a Creator (Romans 1:20) his intellect can take him no further. Philo offers an illustration:
From observing the growth of a hair, can we learn any thing concerning
the generation of a man? Would the manner of a leaf’s blowing, even
though perfectly known, afford us any instruction concerning the vegetation
of a tree?
Whereas Cleanthes would offer that by the powers of analogy man can discern the processes by which God formed Creation and thereby understand elements of his nature, Philo argues that the powers of human reasoning have proven by experience to be weak and fallible. Any conclusions or conjectures summoned by the human mind about the supreme Deity by such a process are incapable of withstanding the skepticism necessary for philosophical thought. The mystic, Demea, offers then that man’s only response, in the dearth of any particular knowledge of God, consists of perfect worship and mysterious self-annihilation or total extinction of all man’s faculties.
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