Brentano, Franz Clemens (1838–1917)

7. Philosophical theology

Brentano’s philosophical theology depends upon a combination of the traditional arguments from motion and from contingency (see God, arguments for the existence of §1). He attempts to show that there can be no uncaused events and that the hypothesis according to which there is just one necessary substance, upon which all contingent things depend, has a probability approaching certainty. He combines this proof with an appeal to the evidence for design that we find when we contemplate ourselves and other living beings. Any sound epistemology, Brentano believes, will concede that there is such evidence. He then argues that the necessary substance is personal in that it is an intelligent being having both intellectual and emotive consciousness. It is also an immaterial being and is not a subject of accidents.

What distinguishes Brentano’s conception of God from that of most theologians is the thesis that God, like everything else, is a temporal being. Brentano describes an instance of God’s temporal consciousness this way: