DiNoia, Postmodern Thomism and its Failures

DiNoia finds several interesting roles for the existence of God which intend to remove the typical rejections they receive from typically modern critiques, such as the Kantian undercutting of metaphysics. DiNoia argues that one role for traditional arguments, which can be found even in Thomas Aquinas and his “Five Ways,” is that these arguments should be understood as internal expressions of the ecclesial life, and not as rigid apologetics that ought to be used to combat modern critiques. For example, Thomas’ “Five Ways,” are not merely apologetic but also, “Rather, such arguments function to locate Christian worship, nurture, practice, and belief on the widest possible conceptual map: the God who is adored, proclaimed, and confessed in the Christian Church is none other than the cause of the world.” Hence, DiNoia places the Thomistic arguments for God in what we might now call an existential horizon, as an internal expression of concepts that bring to life the internal world of the liturgy to the real world of causality. Another role that traditional arguments for the existence of God can have, according to DiNoia, is also found in Thomas’ work, namely his use of analogical relations. The appeal of such relations, as I understand it, is that it uses a semantic framework which no longer speaks in what is perceived as univocal and absolute language (although this seems to be a caricature of medieval thought), and instead embraces a more nuanced approach that keeps in mind the limitless gulf between created and creator, and hence between object and subject. One can see the appeal of this to a postmodern audience, as it directly appeases a hermeneutical horizon that seeks a larger role for enculturation and subjectivity, and distresses the more ontological and objective role of arguments. With this said, one can still ask the question, is this “postmodern-friendly” role for Thomas’ arguments really what Thomas himself had in mind? If not, and I think there is good reason to question if it is, then using postmodernism’s own caution for the subjective context of place and situation, one would assume that such a re-appropriation of Thomas’ work undercuts his own historicality and neglects the very subjectivity that such a postmodern approach seeks to preserve.