The Master of Those Who Know

Aristotle's Theology: The Primary Texts

Aristotle

Hackett Publishing Company

2022

0. Introduction

Aristotle is 

“the master of those who know” 

(as Dante put it). 

This was his way of saying:  

compared to him, we’re all hacks.  

1. Early Intimations

De Interpretatione 4.17a3-4

Prayer is a sentence 

that is neither true nor false 

(it is something else).  

So, truth or falsity is 

not found in every sentence.  

De Interpretatione 13.23a23-24

The activities 

sans potentialities 

are very unique. 

They are designated as 

the primary substances. 

Prior Analytics 1.36.48b35-37

The opportune time

for a god is opportune,

but is not needed.

This is because for a god

nothing is ever needed. 

Topics 1.11.105a5-7

Those who so puzzle

over whether snow is white

lack clear perception.

Those who so puzzle over

honoring a god must pay. 

Topics 2.2.109b33-35

Since a god cannot

be harmed, he also cannot

suffer injustice. 

This truth is found by asking

"What is doing injustice?"

Topics 2.11.115b30-35

All will say with no 

exception that honoring

a god is noble. 

But some will say it’s noble 

to sacrifice one’s father.

Topics 4.5.126a34-b1

A god and a good

person are both capable

of doing base things. 

But they are unlike the base

because they do not choose them. 

Topics 5.1.128b19-20

A man is only

a rational animal

(brighter than the brutes).

A god is an animal

too, but an immortal one. 

Topics 5.4.132b10-11

What can truly be

said of a god that also

can be said of men?

They share in scientific

knowledge as living beings. 

Topics 5.6.136b6-7

Since all living things

are perceptible, this is 

not a special thing. 

So, being intelligent

is not special for a god. 

2. The Immovable Mover

Physics 8.1.251a8-252a5

We say that movement

is the activation of

what is movable.

For each movement, there are things

that are capable of it. 

Physics 8.4.255b31-256a3

All things that are in

movement, are moved by something

and not by nothing. 

They are moved by nature or

not by nature but by force. 

Ménage à Trois

Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict

Christiane Tietz

Oxford University Press

2021

"At this very time we are witnessing the beginning of the end of Protestantism, the breaking of that bubble of 'Bible-Christianity.'" (Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman)

“The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who proclaim Him with their mouths and deny Him with their actions is what an unbelieving world finds unbelievable.” (Karl Rahner SJ) 

Barthianism is Dialecticism dressed in Calvinist drag. And considering what Christiane Tietz has disclosed about Karl Barth's private life in her 2021 biography Karl Barth: A Life in Conflict, we can no longer take his gesticulated words at face value, let alone give him the benefit of the polygamous doubt. It is now clear in hindsight that his thirty-year long deliberate engagement in adulterous spousal abuse (what Tietz describes as the troubling “Ménage à Trois” between him, his wife Nelly Barth, and his mistress/assistant Charlotte von Kirschbaum), is nothing but the reductio ad absurdum of the “White Whale” (his Kirchliche Dogmatik) that is now beached and continues to rot on the sinking sand of modern protestant theology.

In fact, Barth’s mother demonstrated far more theological discernment than he did when she confronted him about his domestic triangle and asked: “What good is the most discerning theology when it suffers a shipwreck in your own home?” His dialectical handwaving about what he called the notgemeinschaft (the "emergency association" between him, his wife, and his mistress), and his all-too-convenient use of what he called a “boundary case” as applied to the seventh commandment (neither marital fidelity nor adultery), clearly demonstrate that it is (almost) good for nothing, except perhaps to show how absurd it is.

For example, in a letter to Nelly in which he attempts to explain how their notgemeinschaft is an instance of an ethical "boundary case" he writes: “each one - bound and not bound in a particular fashion with the other two - has a special place, a special security, but also a special burden and pressure, without having to end our marriage legally and outwardly, and without having to deny and suppress that which connects me to Lollo.” How sentimental of him ("Lollo" was his pet name for his mistress). And how dialectical of him (there is no either/or here, only neither/nor). I leave it to the reader to assess the persuasiveness of this disturbingly self-serving apologia for adultery. "Your problem does not become my emergency" comes readily to mind as the appropriate response. 

Barth tried and failed to theologically justify the "permanent crisis" of the ménage à trois he forced his wife and his mistress to endure for over thirty years while the three of them lived and moved and had their being under the same roof (along with his and Nelly's five children). And to add intimate insult to ironic injury, the three of them were ultimately buried together in the same "family” plot in the Hörnli Cemetery in Basel, Switzerland, according to Barth's wishes.

Tietz's biography could be used to both condemn Barth's polygamy and defend his theology. His critically realistic dialectical narrators have used versions of this divide and conquer strategy ever since Eberhard Busch intimated about Barth's intimacy with his mistress in his 1976 biography Karl Barth: His Life From Letters and Autobiographical Texts. However, Tietz's book can be put to much better use.

The real value of her work consists in giving us very serious pause over whether the entire vocabulary of Barth's theology is still worth using. His abuse of words like "emergency association" and "boundary case" suggests not. To borrow and theologically apply Gottlob Frege's context principle from his Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik is helpful here: one must never ask for the meaning of a theological word in isolation, but only in the context of a dogmatic system. Hence the reductio. 

You shall know them by their fruits, and not by their own version of the Institutes (speaking of Calvinist drag). Of course, Barth's dogmatics is not the only protestant instance of this brand of dialectical absurdity. Tillich's apologetics also suffers from a similar ultimate concern in the shadow of his sadomasochism (but I digress).