How To Be An Agnostic
a mystical experience at the altar. But perhaps the truth of the
matter is found in the response he gave to the colleague who
begged him to continue: ‘Reginald, I cannot, because all I have
written seems like straw to me,’ Aquinas said.
The comment has been taken as a rejection of his oeuvre,
from the master’s own mouth, as if for ‘straw’ one should read
‘rubbish’. But that would be to misunderstand what was said.
Straw was, in fact, a conventional metaphor for a literal reading
of the Bible. It expressed the conviction that a straightforward
treatment of scripture might provide the believer with comfort,
or some basic material upon which to build their faith, but that
such a use of the Bible was only a fi rst step. The implication of
Aquinas calling his work straw is therefore positive, not nega-
tive. His goal had been to understand God. He had made many
attempts at the summit. But while they had produced wonderful
insights – such as the refl ections around the so-called proofs –
he had reached the point at which he was able to appreciate
the most profound truth of all. The peak lies beyond the clouds.
God is unknown. Not in spite of, but because of, all his efforts –
with its theological sophistication, subtlety and seriousness –
the best interpretation of what happened to Aquinas on St
Nicholas’s Day, 1273, was that he had reached as profound an
appreciation of this mystery as was possible. Even his enquiries
into how God is not would now stop. His new silence was not a
rejection but the culmination of his life’s work.
Bonaventure, Aquinas’s contemporary, had argued some-
thing similar. If God can be said to sustain the universe, then
God would also have to be invisible in the universe. As God
said to Moses, no one can see God and live. It’s that notion of
God as the ground of existence. If God is such a ground then
God cannot be said to exist. Neither can God be said not to
exist. God is somehow beyond existence, being the reason for
existence.
Move forward just over 800 years, to a seminar room in an
Oxford college. Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Nolloth Professor
of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion, is about to continue