How to Think about God: A Guide for the 20th-Century Pagan

National Review, Oct 21, 1991 by Matthew Scully

CHAOS? Few of us are likely to dust off Aristotle's Metaphysics, Prologium for extended reflection on their various arguments for belief in God. We're in luck, though, because we have Mortimer J. Adler to do some of the work for us. Newly re-issued, Mr. Adler's How to Think about God: A Guide for the 20th-Century Pagan (Collier, 175 pp., $7.95) leads step to step to the conviction, "I have reasonable grounds for affirming God's existence." Beyond this "philosophy cannot go," writes Mr.

Adler, author of a mere 46 other books, but along the way one is reminded that reasoning too can be an act of piety. And, maybe because the trait is so rare, there's something endearing in his methodical, assume-nothing approach to argumentation--as when he distinguishes between proper nouns by noting that his cat is named "Thomas Aquinas": Even when the creature is "not visibly present and I use that name to call him to me, I know that I am not summoning a medieval theologian to reappear on earth." Ergo, "without direct acquaintance" we too may henceforth use the name to mean "a cat that has now been identified as the pet of Mortimer Adler, the author of this book." Rigorous standards of proof in the spirit of Aquinas (the medieval theologian, not the Thomistic tabby) do not confirm the publisher's claim that the book is "now available for the first time in paper-back"--a 1982 Bantam edition is sitting in front of me. But this is the only imprecision the reader will encounter.