Date of Award

4-1929

Degree Type

Bachelors Essay

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Philosophy

First Advisor

John F. McCormick

Second Advisor

William J. Grace

Abstract

After all, the mystic's position is not wholly unintelligible. For while his imagination serves him as an immediate perceptive faculty with which he sees God in his every glance at the universe, his view is not without a philosophical basis. It is from the data furnished us by the universe of our experience that Natural Theology is able to arrive at the knowledge of the existence of God. In doing so it may employ either of three ·types of arguments. If it begins with a consideration of the primary attributes proper to all finite beings as such, it is metaphysical; if it establishes the reality of order and argues from its consequent imulicationa, it is physical; if it aupeals to the consciousness of man and there finds phenomena that must have their source in God, it is moral. And while the metaphysical is the most fundamental, the other arguments necessarily employing its first principles, yet it seldom appeals to the ordinary mind with the poignancy of conviction, entailing, as it does, much abstract reasoning, and arriving at a very impersonal concept of God. In this respect, the physical argument, which we intend to outline, is undoubtedly the more popular in that it deals with a very evident reality and concludes to the existence of an Intelligent Will, a concept that is more in harmony with our idea of a personal God.

Comments

An Essay submitted to the Faculty of the College of Liberal Arts, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts. MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN

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