Believing the Incomprehensible God: Aquinas on Understanding God’s Testimony

Rooney, James Dominic

doi:10.5840/acpaproc202088101

Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association

ONLINE FIRST

published on August 9, 2020

Fr. James Dominic Rooney, OP

https://doi.org/10.5840/acpaproc202088101

Believing the Incomprehensible God
Aquinas on Understanding God’s Testimony

There has been recent epistemological interest as to whether knowledge is “transmitted” by testimony from the testifier to the hearer, where a hearer acquires knowledge “second-hand.” Yet there is a related area in epistemology of testimony which raises a distinct epistemological problem: the relation of understanding to testimony. In what follows, I am interested in one facet of this relation: whether/how a hearer can receive testimonial knowledge without fully understanding the content of the testimony? I use Thomas Aquinas to motivate a case where, in principle, the content of received testimony cannot be understood but nevertheless constitutes knowledge. Aquinas not only argues that we can receive testimonial knowledge without understanding the content of that testimony, but that we have duties to do so in certain cases.

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