7
contemplate Gods works, since he has been placed in this most glorious theater to be a
spectator of them, it is fitting that he prick up his ears to the Word, the better to profit."
9
Understandably, Thomists expressed displeasure at the new configuration of the
philosophical landscape, and have been understandably complaining about it ever since.
Unfortunately for Occam and the Reformers, their critics have only increased in number
in recent years. In addition to his Thomist and Roman Catholic detractors, Occam and
the residue of voluntarism in the Reformation draw the fire and ire of evangelical
philosophers and those who have inspired recent evangelical philosophy. The list
includes many writers I greatly admire, including, variously, Richard Weaver, Arthur
Holmes, William Dembski, Craig Gay and others.
10
All of these point to Occam and the
Reformers as the either witting or unwitting fountainhead for all of the subsequent
problems of modern (and now postmodern) philosophy. As Richard Weaver breathlessly
(and quite peremptorily concludes) in Ideas Have Consequences, "It was William of
Occam who propounded the fateful doctrine of nominalism, which denies that universals
have a real existence. . . . the practical result of nominalist philosophy is to banish the
reality which is perceived by the intellect and to posit as reality that which is perceived
by the senses."
11
By focusing on the particulars apart from the traditional medieval
synthesis, Occam, or so Weaver and others charge, precipitated an unhelpful empirical
9
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.6.2.
10
See for example, William A. Dembski, Intelligent Design (Downers Grove, Ill.:
InterVarsity Press, 1999), 110ff; Craig Gay, The Way of the Modern World (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 65ff, 237-270; Arthur Holmes, Fact, Value, and God (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 68ff.
11
Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, 3.