Beyond Agnosticism

There is a healthy dose of agnosticism in my worldview. There is much that I don’t know, and I am aware that I don’t know, and that some thing I think I know, I do not know with certainty.

Yet ultimately I self-identify as a Christian and not an agnostic. I recently came across a nice quote that articulates why. Aidan Kimel quoted Victor White as follows:

St Thomas’s position differs from that of modern agnostics because while modern agnosticism says simply, ‘We do not know, and the universe is a mysterious riddle’, a Thomist says, ‘We do not know what the answer is, but we do know that there is a mystery behind it all which we do not know, and if there were not, there would not even be a riddle. This Unknown we call God. If there were no God, there would be no universe to be mysterious, and nobody to be mystified.’ (Victor White, God the Unknown, pp. 18-19)

Kimel added:

An answer that is not an answer, an explanation that is not an explanation, a reality whose nature we cannot comprehend, a riddle from which we cannot escape. Or in Thomas’s words: “God’s effects then are enough to prove that God exists, even if they are not enough to help us comprehend what he is” (ST I.2.3).

From the blog post, “Can Reason Prove The Existence Of God?” HT Dănuț Mănăstireanu.