Professor Geach and the Gods of the Heathen

Extract

In several essays published recently, Professor Geach argues against the thesis that ‘God’, in its Christian use, is a proper name and produces considerations in favour of ‘God’ being a ‘descriptive, predicable, term’; a nomen naturae in Aquinas's vocabulary: a ‘concept’ in Frege's sense (Begriffswort). I have no dispute with Geach concerning ‘God’ not being a proper name, but there seems to me to be a serious difficulty in one argument which he uses to establish his positive thesis. This argument appears in all the essays mentioned; I give the appropriate quotations:

(i) ‘Only because of this (i.e. “God” being a descriptive predicable term) can the heathen say that his idol is God and the Christian contradict him and both be using “God” in the same sense: if “God” were a proper name it would be a logically impossible, not a lying, wicked act, to predicate it of sticks and stones (Ia q 13 art. 10).’

(ii) ‘When St Augustine and his companions landed in England they found the English paying latria to Woden, Thor, and other imaginary beings to each of whom they applied the word “God” and the missionaries taught them not to apply this word any more to Woden and Thor and the rest, but solely to the Blessed Trinity.… This makes it clear that in the mind of the Church the word “God” is not a proper name, as the word “Woden” was meant to be, but a descriptive term, true of the blessed Trinity and not true of Woden.’

(iii) ‘The name “God” as thus introduced is regarded by Aquinas, not as a proper name, but as a general term (nomen naturae) so far as its mode of significance goes … Aquinas rejects the idea that “God” is necessarily used equivocally by polytheists and by monotheists: he holds the view that the polytheists may be using the word “God” in the same sense when he says his idol is God, as the missionary when he says that the idol is not God but a senseless block.’