Reading: The AAA View

What I now want to do is begin to sketch out for you what I think a theory of reality should look like. If we were to begin with belief in God, rather than just work up a theory of reality and then try to tack God on the end of it, like the tail on the birthday party donkey, it won't be the controlling, guiding, and directing belief. This approach doesn't work if we take the view of God that I have described as the prevailing one in the Western Christian church. So, let's start again by thinking about theories of reality.

Here are a few points. Oh, did any of that record? Yes, you should be good. So to start over, you can just pick up from where you introduced the theory of reality if you want.

Alright. Let's remind ourselves of a few points about the theory of reality. First, we regard reality as having levels. The term "Capitole" suggests existence. That's a point I made earlier, but it might have been too brief. It's crucial to understand we don't regard things as equally real. While it might sound odd to say that, since something either exists or it doesn't, there are different modes of existence. For instance, a mirror image of you isn't as real as you. The mirror image depends on your appearance and doesn't have its own causal effects. Therefore, it's less real than the object it reflects. Historically, distinctions have been made in theories of reality between entities that exist, exert causal effects, and adhere to laws, and those that are "dependently real." From a Christian perspective, everything but God is dependently real. God is the independent, unconditionally non-dependent being, or as I often describe it, self-existent. Historically, people have sought this self-existent reality that everything else relies on. This concept is regarded as divine in every religion, marking an overlap between theories of reality and religious belief.

All religions search for the unconditional reality that has birthed everything else. While there's consensus on the pursuit, there's disagreement on what occupies that role. As Christians, we identify it as the Triune God incarnate in Jesus Christ. Only God possesses divine existence, being entirely independent, while everything else depends on Him. Historically, seekers have explored the universe for the divine element upon which everything else rests. If we use a dotted line to represent dependent reality and a solid line for what's independent, then only a portion represents the divine. We've seen theories suggesting that the fundamental elements were earth, air, fire, or water. Around 500 BC, Lucifers posited that it was atoms — minute particles that combined to create the elemental components and more.

I want to emphasize that we've previously discussed Plato and Aristotle. Their theory of reality suggests that all non-dependent entities in the universe rely on divine entities, forms, and matter. In their view, matter is independent and uncreated, and all forms are also independent and uncreated. Their interactions give birth to everything else in the universe. According to Plato, and later Aristotle, a reality exists outside this universe, which is pure form, and they named it God. This should be a review, but I hope it helps refresh your memory.

As we traverse the history of theories of reality, we find that with the rise of Christianity, the philosophical tradition of debating the nature of reality and the essence of knowledge — ontology and epistemology — were well-established. When Christ came, the gospel began to be preached, leading to Christian congregations sprouting throughout the Roman Empire. Among these Christians were intellectuals familiar with these theories. They realized the existing theories were incomplete as they identified parts of the universe as divine. This was contrary to the belief that only the transcendent God is divine and all of creation is dependent on Him. These intellectuals found the traditional theories unacceptable and sought to revise them. I will now introduce a new illustration to explain their perspective, but first, we need to clear the board of the old illustration.

They looked at this kind of scheme. And they said, "Well, look, here's if we take this to be the created universe, then what we want to say is the created universe depends entirely on God. Who stands outside of space and time, and above all creatures, and is called into being, space, time, matter, all the laws that govern it, and everything within the realm of the universe, including human beings, of course."

But when they looked at this old-timey way of explaining things, the way that said, "Well, things are partly form and partly matter. And maybe that explains everything in the world." They said, "You know what, we don't have to get rid of this idea. We could take it over, all we'd have to do is say that the form and the matter, themselves are created by God. So maybe what we have here is something in which the form and the matter is more real than the rest of creation, all the rest of creation depends on form and matter. And God created the forms in the matter."

Now, if we do that, we can keep the strategy for explanation that was set up by such giant thinkers as Plato and Aristotle. We can refine it, we can improve it, by adding the even forming matter don't aren't self-existent. They depend on God, God created the forms. God created the matter. And God oversees how they combine. So we get a view that says everything else depends on this candidate here for the in the case of Plato and Aristotle, its form and matter. But we could do the same thing. If we were materialists. And we said, it's only matter. Or if we were some kind of idealist and said no, it's only form or there are other options that we could list here in the history of philosophy.

In fact, almost any ism, in the theory of reality, can now be reconciled with belief in God by simply adding the expression. And I'll write it here. That whatever goes in this slot here, whatever it is, inside the universe, that everything else depends on, if we simply add, and this in turn depends on God. Then it's not objectionable from a Christian point of view, right? You've said everything depends on God. But in the universe, some things are more real than others. Maybe it's just matter, maybe it's forming matter, maybe it's sense perceptions and logic, all sorts of things that have been tried the history of philosophy, virtually any ism, whatever, can be reconciled with belief in God by simply adding that whatever it is in the universe, the rest of you depends on that it in turn, depends on God. And won't that do.

And indeed, some of the major Christian thinkers propose doing exactly this. And I'm going to explain now how that got started. And what kept it going. This is, it's this scheme of things. That is the reason why almost all Christian thinkers have always thought there was no such thing as a Christian philosophy. See that this sort of scheme can be reconciled with any theory of reality, any theory of reality, could have a non-theistic version, that is, you say, this stuff inside the universe, the form in the matter if that's what you're using, explains everything else, or you add, and this in turn depends on God, and then you've Christianized it. So any theory of reality could have a theistic Christian interpretation, or be solidly naturalist pagan.

Now, there's a reason why Christian thinkers began to think of this as the right way to do it. And I want to explain that as well. And we need the board clear to do that again. See, I have my trusty eraser here. And it even erases everything, without giving me white lung disease.

To understand this, we have to go back once more, to the doctrine of God as that was developed. And I'm going to pick on one theorist in particular, and that person is St. Augustine, personal, very great ability, a very sharp philosopher, and one who gave his backing to this scheme of doing things. Remember that what Augustine had done, and we looked at this in some detail, was to read about the forms in Plato's theory, and say that the form the supreme form was the same as God in Scripture. The supreme form would be the form of all forms. And the forms are perfections. That's the easier way to think of this. If it's, there is goodness than the maximum or infinite goodness would be perfection. Kindness, mercy, love, justice. All these things have a maximal degree, a highest possible degree, the infinite mode of that, that property would be a perfection. And then there is the supreme perfection that includes all the others. The Agustin looks at that in Plato, and he says, Plato hit on our God, Plato hit on the God of Scripture. It's God, that is the being that includes has includes all the perfections and only perfections. Only perfect perfections are true of God, and God has all of them, not all of them that we know about all of them that there are whether we know about them or not. So that becomes the definition of God. The being with all and only perfections of perfection, once again, is the infinite mode of some good property, some property that makes something better to have it than lack it. So it's better to be good and just and loving and merciful. It's better to be all knowing and all powerful. And Agustin follows Plato and saying, God only knows all the perfections. But the laws of logic and of mathematics, the places where we think we encounter truths that just couldn't be otherwise. All those necessary truths are in God. They're all parts of God's being. This is this is still review, but I hope it it's becoming clearer.

This view of God identifies God with the perfections. It identifies the laws of logic and math as parts of the being of God. So when God has to be consistent with himself, it's not because there are some laws outside of God that he must conform to, they are parts of his own being. Agustin realized that if he took Plato's sort of view, what he'd be saying is that there are perfections. And then if there's a being named God, God has to have them to be God. And he didn't want to say that that would make God dependent on something else. He rightfully saw that that needed to be rejected. But there are actually two ways to avoid that bad consequence. One way would be to say, God created the perfections. They're true of God. But they're still creations of gods. And you could say God created the laws of logic, God created the laws of mathematics. That's why those laws govern all creation. And it's why we can reliably use them to gain knowledge and understand the creation, construct proofs, and so on. That would be one way. Another way would be to say that God doesn't have these properties. God is them. That means God is identical with all the perfections. And since there's only one God then in God, there's only one perfection. What we experience as different goodness, justice, love, mercy, power, knowledge. So we experienced these as different properties because of the limitations of our minds. But in reality, in God, all these properties are the same property. And God is that one property.

That's what Augustine does. Augustine takes the second route, not the first route. He identifies God with the one perfection that includes all the perfections. So in God, all the perfections are one, and they are God. There's no distinction between God and the properties that he has. There is no difference. That's why Augustine can say, God is simplicity itself. The deepest truth about God is that he's simple. It means undivided. There's no parts, no distinctions, no differences. All the properties are one property. They are God. That's Augustine's view. And then he's in this doctrine of God with the Platonism that he knew.

What we're going to look at is what that did to Christian thought, and why Augustine thought he was so sure that this was right, and what that led to, but that's a topic for another time.

They looked at this kind of scheme and said, "Well, look, if we take this to be the created universe, then what we want to say is the created universe depends entirely on God." God, who stands outside of space and time, and above all creatures, calls into being space, time, matter, all the laws that govern it, and everything within the realm of the universe, including human beings, of course.

However, when they scrutinized this old-timey way of explaining things, the way that proposed things are partly form and partly matter, and maybe that explains everything in the world, they pondered. "You know what, we don't have to get rid of this idea. We could take it over; all we'd have to do is say that the form and the matter themselves are created by God." So maybe what we have here is something in which the form and the matter are more real than the rest of creation, and all the rest of creation depends on form and matter. God created the forms and the matter.

If we do that, we can keep the strategy for explanation that was set up by such giant thinkers as Plato and Aristotle. We can refine it, we can improve it, by asserting that even form and matter aren't self-existent. They depend on God. God created the forms, God created the matter, and God oversees how they combine. So, we get a view that says everything else depends on this; in the case of Plato and Aristotle, it's form and matter. But we could do the same thing if we were materialists and said, it's only matter. Or if we were some kind of idealist and said no, it's only form.

In the history of philosophy, there are other options that we could list here. In fact, almost any "ism" in the theory of reality can now be reconciled with belief in God by simply adding the expression, and I'll write it here, that whatever goes in this slot here, whatever it is inside the universe that everything else depends on, if we simply add, "and this in turn depends on God," then it's not objectionable from a Christian point of view. Right? You've said everything depends on God. But in the universe, some things are more real than others. Maybe it's just matter, maybe it's form and matter, maybe it's sense perceptions and logic, all sorts of things that have been tried in the history of philosophy. Virtually any "ism" can be reconciled with belief in God by simply adding that whatever it is in the universe, the rest depends on, it in turn, depends on God.

Indeed, some of the major Christian thinkers propose doing exactly this. And I'm going to explain now how that got started and what kept it going. This scheme of things is the reason why almost all Christian thinkers have always thought there was no such thing as a Christian philosophy. This sort of scheme can be reconciled with any theory of reality. Any theory of reality could have a non-theistic version, that is, you say, this stuff inside the universe, the form and the matter if that's what you're using, explains everything else, or you add, "and this in turn depends on God," and then you've Christianized it. So, any theory of reality could have a theistic Christian interpretation or be solidly naturalist pagan.

Now, there's a reason why Christian thinkers began to think of this as the right way to do it, and I want to explain that as well. And we need the board clear to do that again. See, I have my trusty eraser here, and it even erases everything, without giving me white lung disease. To understand this, we have to go back once more to the doctrine of God as that was developed. And I'm going to pick on one theorist in particular, and that person is St. Augustine, a person of very great ability, a very sharp philosopher, and one who gave his backing to this scheme of doing things.

Remember that what Augustine had done, and we looked at this in some detail, was to read about the forms in Plato's theory, and say that the form, the supreme form, was the same as God in Scripture. The supreme form would be the form of all forms. And the forms are perfections. That's the easier way to think of this. If there is goodness, then the maximum or infinite goodness would be perfection. Kindness, mercy, love, justice—all these things have a maximal degree, a highest possible degree; the infinite mode of that property would be a perfection. And then there is the supreme perfection that includes all the others. Augustine looks at that in Plato, and he says, "Plato hit on our God, Plato hit on the God of Scripture." It's God that is the being that includes all the perfections and only perfections. Only perfect perfections are true of God, and God has all of them, not all of them that we know about, but all of them that there are, whether we know about them or not.

So that becomes the definition of God: The being with all and only perfections. A perfection, once again, is the infinite mode of some good property, some property that makes something better to have it than lack it. So it's better to be good and just and loving and merciful. It's better to be all-knowing and all-powerful. And Augustine follows Plato in saying God knows all the perfections. But the laws of logic and of mathematics, the places where we think we encounter truths that just couldn't be otherwise—all those necessary truths are in God. They're all parts of God's being.

This view of God identifies God with the perfections. It identifies the laws of logic and math as parts of the being of God. So when God has to be consistent with Himself, it's not because there are some laws outside of God that He must conform to; they are parts of His own being. Augustine realized that if he took Plato's sort of view, what he'd be saying is that there are perfections, and then if there's a being named God, God has to have them to be God. And he didn't want to say that; that would make God dependent on something else. He rightfully saw that that needed to be rejected.

But there are actually two ways to avoid that bad consequence. One way would be to say, "God created the perfections. They're true of God, but they're still creations of God’s. And you could say God created the laws of logic, God created the laws of mathematics. That's why those laws govern all creation. And it's why we can reliably use them to gain knowledge and understand the creation, construct proofs, and so on." That would be one way. Another way would be to say that God doesn't have these properties; God is them. That means God is identical with all the perfections. And since there's only one God, then in God, there's only one perfection.

What we experience as different—goodness, justice, love, mercy, power, knowledge—we experience these as very different. But in God, they're all identical. There's one perfection because there's one God, and these just are God. And that avoids making God dependent on the perfections; it identifies Him with them. Now, those are two very different ways of treating the imperfections. One is that God is the supreme perfection and that includes all the others. It's the supreme perfection that includes all the others. That's the one Augustine opts for. And it seems to me that Augustine should have gone for the other one.

The other one is to say, there's a God and God has created the perfections. They're true of God, but God still created them. And the laws of logic, God created them. The laws of math, God created them. Why think that? Well, for this reason, Augustine took God to be a Platonic form, the form of all forms, the supreme form. This makes God something less than personal. There are other reasons for thinking that Plato's forms are not personal; we don't have time to go into them here. But it's clear from the way that Augustine describes God, that God is less than personal.

God has all the perfections, knows all the necessary truths. But does God know contingent truths? Does God know that, for example, I have a free choice to make, that I'm free, and that I choose to do this rather than that? Does God know those kinds of truths, contingent truths, that could be otherwise, that might not have been true? It's hard to see how Augustine's God would know those things. Augustine's God knows all the necessary truths, and in knowing them, He knows Himself because He is those truths. He knows all the forms, all the perfections, because He is them.

This makes God something that's less than personal. But a person is more real than a non-person. And a personal God would know all truths. The God of the Bible, the God that speaks to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God that speaks to Moses, that God knows everything, and God is not just a bunch of perfections, a bunch of properties. God is a personal being. The God that is revealed in Scripture knows everything, including contingent truths.

Augustine, in identifying God with the perfections, made God something less than personal, and made God something that doesn't know contingent truths. It seems to me the right way to go is to say, there is a God. That God is the being who knows everything. God knows all the necessary truths, and God knows all the contingent truths. God knows all the things that are true, whether they had to be true or not. God is a being who knows everything.

Now, if we put that into this scheme here, what we're going to have to say is that the laws of logic and math are not identical with God. They are parts of God's creation. They're true of God. They're parts of God's nature, but they are creations of God. And that means we can't use them to construct proofs that will lead us to God, unless we've already got God in the picture. If we have God in the picture, then the laws of logic and math are true of God. They reveal something about the nature of God. But they don't lead us to God unless God is already in the picture. If God isn't in the picture, then all we're going to get from them is a kind of logical construction, a mathematical construction.

Now, this is very important for where the history of philosophy went. It's because of this conception of God that Augustine gives his backing to, that Christians decided that they would try to construct proofs of the existence of God that used the laws of logic and the laws of math, to move from what we experience in the world to the existence of God. If those laws are identical with God, then using those laws in constructing proofs should lead us to God. But if they're not identical with God, if they're just part of God's creation, then the best they're going to do is lead us to the highest level of the creation. And that's a very different thing than leading us to God.

Now, let's see why he might say a thing like that. What can be said? We've heard Augustine's arguments that all the perfections are in God. That sounds right. It doesn't seem as though there are any deep problems with it. However, I'm going to show in a moment that there are.

Why would St. Basil say, "If there are perfections, God created them"? What would be the reason for that? I think the answer here is that while Scripture doesn't frequently discuss how God possesses his attributes, occasionally it does. There are moments when Scripture provides vital remarks that we should consider. There are sections in Scripture that touch upon this question, as abstract as it may seem. One such section is the eighth chapter of Proverbs. In this chapter, wisdom is personified. Though it's a poetic passage, its meaning is clear. Let me read a section which speaks of God's wisdom. Wisdom says of herself:

"While as yet God had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world, when He prepared the heavens, I was there; when He set a compass on the face of the deep... I was by Him, as one brought up with Him."

This passage reflects God's wisdom being exercised in the creation of the world. But just prior, wisdom declares, "I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning... when there were no depths, I was brought forth."

This concept was significant for Basil and his associates, notably Gregory of Nyssa. Gregory, along with his sister Macrina who acted as secretary and editor and penned essays herself, laid the foundation for what is termed Cappadocian theology. They resided in a region called Cappadocia, present-day Turkey, and their writings heavily influenced the theology of the Eastern Church.

Their perspective diverged notably from Augustine, who had integrated the ideas of Plato and Aristotle. Augustine believed in a realm that is purely rational, encompassing all forms. This theoretical realm creates a dividing line between what's rational and what's perceived by our senses. Basil and his associates contended that such a perspective was erroneous. If there are rational entities, then the actual divide exists between God and creation. Creation encompasses laws of logic, math, and if there are any perfections, God created them.

Now, one should avoid basing an important doctrine on a singular text. However, I'd argue that Proverbs chapter eight presents ideas that figures like Augustine, Anselm, or even Thomas Aquinas would not have endorsed. I'm not grounding the Cappadocian perspective solely on this passage. Another foundational Christian belief supports this view: the doctrine of the Incarnation. This tenet states that God not only created the universe and humanity but also incarnated as Jesus Christ to fulfill covenantal demands on behalf of humanity.

This belief affirms that God took our humanity into Himself, meaning the divine absorbed our human essence. The doctrine emphasizes that the divine nature of Jesus is God, while his human nature is Jesus Christ. This perspective suggests that God, in some way, integrated created attributes into His essence. This doesn't mean there was a time when God lacked these attributes, but rather He assumed them outside of time.

The question arises: why is this distinction crucial? The problem with asserting that these attributes are intrinsic to God is that they would also be uncreated. The same attribute, like goodness, cannot be uncreated in God and created in humans. If God possesses uncreated goodness and bestows finite goodness upon humans, then this goodness in humans would also be uncreated. On the Augustinian view, part of our essence shares an attribute identical to God's being, leading to theological complications.

Remember that Augustine came upon this doctrine of Plato's forms, and thought that it was the same thing as what Scripture was saying about God. He recognized that he couldn't say — didn’t want to say — that God exists, and the forms are self-existent, and God has to have them to be God. If he did, that would make God dependent on the forms, on the attributes; he didn't want to say that. And he was right not to say that. But then, instead of saying, "that's not true, what's true is that God created them," he made them identical with God.

And then immediately, he saw that he would have to say that they are all one in God; they're all identical with the very being, the absolute self-existent being, of God, the Creator. That means then, that if you and I have any degree of goodness, whatsoever, we have a finite degree of a property that is the very being of God. I hope that raises all kinds of red flags and sounds warning bells. That can't be right. There is nothing about us that is identical with the self-existent being of God. That, ladies and gentlemen, is called pantheism. And it's only a partial pantheism. To be sure, it means insofar as we possess properties God has, we're identical with God. But that's bad enough; there can be other things true of us, that are not identical with God, but part of us ends up being identical with God, if we accept this approach, this theory. That's a serious, serious charge.

I see the people who have championed this view, Augustine, I picked on Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, as the greatest thinkers who have held and champion this view, and we see them struggle with it. Aquinas, in particular, worries about that and tries to wiggle out of it. In my opinion, there's no way to wiggle out of it. Either goodness is the same property in God that we have, and imparts goodness to creatures, as Aquinas says he does. And that property then is completely self-existent, eternal; it's identical with the very being of God. Then, if we have the same property, then we have to be partly identical with God.

Now, I read a recent article that argued that Aquinas only says that what we have is something like the property God has, but not the same as the property God has. So it's not the same thing; it's only like it. My reply to that is that for one thing to be like another, I'm going to try to schematize this for you too. If one thing is like another, for that to be true, there has to be some respect in which they are alike. There can be many respects in which they're not alike, but if the likeness is true at all, there has to be some way, some respects, in which A is just like B. And whatever this likeness is, this respect in which they are alike, will be a common property; it'll be common to A and to B, and it will be the same thing that's true of A and B. Unless something is true of A that's also true of B, they can't be alike. It's self-contradictory to say they're like each other, but they share nothing in common. If nothing is true of both of them, then they're not alike.

So if that is Aquinas' position, I'm not sure it is, some scholars think it is, then the position is self-contradictory because to say that God is like us or we are like God, but there is no respect in which we are like God is self-contradictory. That’s saying we're alike, but we're not. Now, this is getting into some detailed theology, but I think you're up to it by now. So we want to be careful that this is as clear as we could possibly make it.

Let's review what we've got here as the position that dominates the Western Church, and I'm going to call that position the "A-A-A position." This is for Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas; they're the major thinkers who have held it and contributed to its spread and its persistence.

God is the being defined as the being with all perfections and only perfection.

God shares some perfections with humans.

If the perfections are the being of God rather than being properties God possesses, then it follows humans share the being of God.

That's my argument. And clearly, in the view of the scriptures, there's nothing about us that's uncreated and self-existent. Nothing about us. We are created mortal beings. And God establishes his covenants with human beings in the first place to rescue us from death, and then in the second to rescue us from the sin that ruptured the first covenant. Human beings do not share the being of God. That's the crux of my argument.

Since point four is false, it follows that either one, two, or three, or all of them are false. And I think it's all of them. No, it's one and three that are false. I don't believe that scripture identifies the being of God with perfections at all; it tells us that he has great attributes, he has great goodness, and power, and knowledge, and so on. But it never makes it perfect in this sense. This sense is the very Greek, ancient pagan Greek sense of a perfection, that some characteristic is in the infinite degree. Scripture never talks about the infinite degree of anything. In fact, it rarely uses the word "perfect." The only place I can think of in the New Testament is when Jesus says to His disciples, "you should be perfect because your Father in heaven is perfect." Now if He meant what Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas take this to mean, He would be telling them to be gods. But that's not what He's doing.

"Perfect," in the Jewish sense, always meant complete, not in an infinite degree. So what Jesus is telling His disciples is that you should be completely faithful to your end of the covenant, as God is faithful to His end of the covenant. It has nothing to do with having properties in an infinite mode. That doesn't occur anywhere in Scripture. And it's foreign to the thought that we do find in Scripture. That is a pretty terrible consequence of this theory, this theory that God's attributes are to be regarded as Platonic or Aristotelian perfections. The identification of God with the theory that Plato and Aristotle came up with, that is a pretty bad consequence. And it's bad enough all by itself to reject that view.

I think that what we find among the Cappadocians is quite a different view. And let me try to sketch that and give you a kind of schematic that will help you to remember that also. Scripture tells us, for example, I'm going to put this up here, Scripture tells us that God created time. But then it also tells us that God created a presence of himself in time. God takes on time; God exists not only outside time but within the whole realm of time. Scripture tells us that God created space, that actually does this in Romans eight heights and depths are said to be specifically to be creatures

Let's stick with Plato and Aristotle's candidates for that. They said it was form, forms, plus matter. And how the forms combined with matter explains everything else in creation. So, everything else is dependent on combinations, the form matter. For the Californian combines with the matters, the explanation of everything else, and God created form matter. And this in turn depends on God. That makes something in creation more real than the rest of creation.

Now, that alone may not seem to be too terrible a consequence. You say to yourself, "Well, why is that bad? Why can't a Christian hold that there's something in reality, in created reality, more real than the rest of created reality?" And it's possible, isn't it? I mean, what's so bad about that?

I'm going to explain now what's so bad about that. That I want to do in some detail.

Here is the way the argument goes, let's take a candidate form. Let's take "goodness". Let's say goodbye. And let's suppose that it's a perfection. And this means it has independent existence. And that's excused by saying that's okay. Because it's part of it's the being of God. It's not anything other than God. God's not different from his goodness, he's identical with his goodness, just as he's identical with his mercy and justice and power and knowledge and all the other attributes that he has, they're all identical with his own being. Okay, that made a severe difficulty with respect to us sharing them is that made it sound as though we are partly divine.

But here, we're going to just take it with respect to explanations of the world, theories of reality. Now, you remember that I explained to you the general scheme for theories of reality, which was developed by non-Christians from a pagan point of view and naturalist point of view. The theory of reality is very like the beads on a necklace. We look at all the different kinds of properties and laws that are true of the world around us. The world around us has quantity. And the world around us is spatial. And the world around us is physical. And it's also subject to logical laws. And in human experience of the world around us, it's also social because we socialize it. And it can be economic, and ethical, and so on.

We have all these different sides to reality. And then we want to know: well, what's the string? What links them all together? One very prominent philosopher of science put it this way: Philosophy is about how all things, in the widest sense of things, hang together in the widest sense of hanging together. And I explained to you how that works out. It works out in a theory, a theory of reality, because that theory wants to know, what do they all have in common? What's the reality of which they are all different sides, aspects or facets? Or it works out in the general theory of knowledge. Many different kinds of knowledge: mathematical knowledge, spatial knowledge, physical, logical, social, economic, ethical, and whatever. But theory of knowledge wants to know, what's the common core to all of them, which if we get hold of its nature, we can tell when we're entitled to be certain of a belief and when not, and define what counts as truth.

Now, these two kinds of theories then, look on this analogy as the way it works. They're all the different sides of reality, Aristotle calls them special sciences, special branches of knowledge. And then we want the general theory of what unites them all in reality, and what unites them all in knowledge. That picture of things depends upon saying that some one, one or two of the facets of reality, as we experience it, are not just facets, they are the string, they are the very nature of reality and knowledge. It takes some one or two of them and makes them more real than the rest, because it says it's the interaction of them that produces all the rest.

So, if it's true that nothing in creation is divine at all, and not semi-divine either, then our theory of reality would be very different. It would look like an interwoven necklace comprised of different strands, all of which are mutually dependent on one another, and no one of which is any more real, or produces any other. But that all depend only on God. It would be a different sort of theory of reality altogether.

Now, as a matter of fact, this view, the view that says we pick out some one or two of these, suppose form is a combination of logic and math. And matter has to do with the physical. So here's the matter. Here's the form. And now we explain all the rest as generated by these two. But if it's not true that anything is divine, or semi-divine, then this is not the way to go. This is a dead end, that requires us to explain all the other beads of the necklace, in terms of these two. That has a specific name in the history of philosophy, that's called that is trying to explain everything, terms, somewhere to a reduction argument. That's an odd term to use, I know. It makes it sound like it's a weight loss program, instead of a philosophical agenda. But it's the term that's been given to explaining everything that's not divine as produced by what is. Here's everything that's not divine, and it is all explained by what is divine that is self-existent or semi-divine, more real than the rest, even if it in turn depends on God.

And reduction arguments are notorious for running into dead ends. How do you explain say, goodness in terms of just matter, or even form and matter? How do you explain that? Well, you have to end up making some part of reality, either divine or divine except for its dependence on God. And that is the issue that I now want to address. What are the difficulties with trying to make any aspect of reality as we experience it, either the divine reality or more real than all the rest of reality, even though it in turn depends on God? What's involved there?

And I want to argue that such reductions are not possible. And I want to give you good reasons for thinking that they're not possible. So, that will be our next session. We'll start with this and will spell out step by step by step. What's wrong with trying to support the view that any aspect of reality as we know it, whether that's mathematical or logical, whether it's the physical, whether it's the sensory, the biotic, spatial, whatever it is, can neither be conceived of as divine nor semi-divine. Neither one will succeed.

Orginal Unedited Version

What I now want to do is begin to sketch out for you what I think a theory of reality should look like. If we were to begin with belief in God, rather than just work up a theory of reality, and then try to tack God on the end of it, like the tail on the birthday party donkey wants to be the controlling the guiding and directing belief. But it's not going to work. If we take the view of God that I have described as the prevailing one in the Western Christian church. Let's start again by thinking about theories of reality.

Here are a few points. Oh, oh, none of that, then any of that record? Yes, you should be good. So to start over,

you can just start from where you introduced the theory of reality if you want.

Alright. Okay. Let's remind ourselves a few points about theory of reality. First of all, it sounded weird to say that, that we regard reality as having levels. Of in the backward Capitole means existence. And that's a point that I made earlier, but maybe it went by too fast. And I want to be sure that it's clear. We don't regard things as equally real. And that may sound weird, because you'd say what something either exists or it doesn't. Well, that's true. But there are modes in which things can exist. So for example, a mirror image of you is not as real as you, the mirror image is entirely dependent upon what you look like. And it doesn't exercise any causal effects of its own. So it's less real than the objects it's the image of, and then the distinction has been made in the history of theories of reality, between those things that that really exist, and exercise causal effects and laws applied to them, and so on. But our dependently real, and here, the Christian wants to say everything, but God is dependently real, God is independent. God is the being that's unconditionally non dependent, or I often use the term self existence as a shortcut term for that. But in, in his in the theory of history, in the history of theories of reality, people have always made this distinction and they have looked for the self existent reality, that all else depends on. And I pointed out that that is what is regarded as divine, in every religion. So now there's an overlap between theories of reality, and religious belief, religions all look for the unconditional reality that has generated everything else. They all agree on what that's what they're after. They don't agree on what fills that position. But it's what we know to be the Triune God, who has come incarnate in Jesus Christ, God, only God has the rank of Divinity has divine existence is completely independent, and everything else is dependent on God. But in the history of theories of reality, they have looked to for what is divine at looking in the universe in the world, trying to find that which is the divine element, that everything else depends on. And I even gave you a schematic drawing about that, if we use the dotted line to represent the reality that is dependent and a solid line to represent what is independent, then that looks like this. All of reality is non dependent except for here, the divine reality. And then we get theories as to what that is. Remember, we got theories that we saw, the earliest theory said was earth, air, fire, or water. And then about 500 BC Lucifers came up with no it's atoms, tiny little things that combined so as to make water, fire, earth, air, and other things, what they're looking for the independent reality everything else depends on. That much should be review and I hope that that is clear. I want to point out that then we spent some time with Plato and Aristotle, and that their theory of reality diagrammed like this

that all the non dependent things in the universe depend on how the divine things interact on the divine things are forms. matter. Matter is, in this view, independent, uncreated, and all the forms are independent and uncreated. And how they interact, produces all the other things in the universe, all of which are partly form and partly matter. Of course, there then is a reality not in this universe, that is pure form, says Plato and Aristotle after him, and the pure form, they call God. I hope that that much is just review. It's not new to you, but maybe it will jog your memories. And you'll remember that this is stuff we've already covered. Now, what has happened in the history of theory of reality is that Christians came upon this task. With the rise and spread of Christianity, that means that this philosophical tradition of arguing about the nature of reality and trying to find the ultimate nature of knowledge, those two things, ontology and epistemology that had been around for hundreds of years, when Christ came, and then the gospel was begun to be preached, and congregations of Christians popped up all over the Roman Empire. Some of the Christians were intellectuals who dealt with this sort of thing. And they looked at this and said, Well, as it stands, it's unacceptable. It regards part of the universe, as the divine part, that all the rest of and so on. And that's not right. The Divine is only the transcendent God, God who stands outside the hole of creation, and the whole of creation depends on God. So they saw that this, as it stood was unacceptable. And they wanted to do something about that. And I'm going to describe now with a new illustration, what it was they came up with. First, we need to clear the board of the old illustration.

They looked at this kind of scheme. And they said, Well, look, here's if we take this to be the created universe, then what we want to say is the created universe depends entirely on God. Who stands outside of space and time, and above all creatures, and is called into being, space, time, matter, all the laws that govern it, and everything within the realm of the universe, including human beings, of course. But when they looked at this old timey way of explaining things, the way that said, Well, things are partly form and partly matter. And maybe that explains everything in the world. They said, You know what, we don't have to get rid of this idea. We could take it over, all we'd have to do is say that the form and the matter, themselves are created by God. So maybe what we have here is something in which the form and the matter is more real than the rest of creation, all the rest of creation depends on form and matter. And God created the forms in the matter. Now, if we do that, we can keep the strategy for explanation that was set up by such giant thinkers as Plato and Aristotle. We can refine it, we can improve it, by adding the even forming matter don't aren't self existent. They depend on God, God created the forms. God created the matter. And God oversees how they combine. So we get a view that says everything else depends on this candidate here for the in the case of Plato and Aristotle, its form and matter. But we could do the same thing. If we were materialists. And we said, it's only matter. Or if we were some kind of idealist and said no, it's only form or there are other options that we could list here in the history of philosophy. In fact, almost any ism, in the theory of reality, can now be reconciled with belief in God by simply adding the expression. And I'll write it here. That whatever goes in this slot here, whatever it is, inside the universe, that everything else depends on, if we simply add, and this in turn depends on God. Then it's not objectionable from a Christian point of view, right? You've said everything depends on God. But in the universe, some things are more real than others. Maybe it's just matter, maybe it's forming matter, maybe it's sense perceptions and logic, all sorts of things that have been tried the history of philosophy, virtually any ism, whatever, can be reconciled with belief in God by simply adding that whatever it is in the universe, the rest of you depends on that it in turn, depends on God. And won't that do. And indeed, some of the major Christian thinkers propose doing exactly this. And I'm going to explain now how that got started. And what kept it going. This is, it's this scheme of things. That is the reason why almost all Christian thinkers have always thought there was no such thing as a Christian philosophy. See that this sort of scheme can be reconciled with any theory of reality, any theory of reality, could have a non theistic version, that is, you say, this stuff inside the universe, the form in the matter if that's what you're using, explains everything else, or you add, and this in turn depends on God, and then you've Christianized it. So any theory of reality could have a theistic Christian interpretation, or be solidly naturalist pagan. Now, there's a reason why Christian thinkers began to think of this as the right way to do it. And I want to explain that as well. And we need the board clear to do that again. See, I have my trusty eraser here. And it even erases everything, without giving me white lung disease. To understand this, we have to go back once more, to the doctrine of God as that was developed. And I'm going to pick on one theorist in particular, and that person is St. Augustine, personal, very great ability, a very sharp philosopher, and one who gave his backing to this scheme of doing things. Remember that what Augustine had done, and we looked at this in some detail, was to read about the forms in Plato's theory, and say that the form the supreme form was the same as God in Scripture. The supreme form would be the form of all forms. And the forms are perfections. That's the easier way to think of this. If it's, there is goodness than the maximum or infinite goodness would be perfection. Kindness, mercy, love, justice. All these things have a maximal degree, a highest possible degree, the infinite mode of that, that property would be a perfection. And then there is the supreme perfection that includes all the others. The Agustin looks at that in Plato, and he says, Plato hit on our God, Plato hit on the God of Scripture. It's God, that is the being that includes has includes all the perfections and only perfections. Only perfect perfections are true of God, and God has all of them, not all of them that we know about all of them that there are whether we know about them or not. So that becomes the definition of God. The being with all and only perfections of perfection, once again, is the infinite mode of some good property, some property that makes something better to have it than lack it. So it's better to be good and just and loving and merciful. It's better to be all knowing and all powerful. And Agustin follows Plato and saying, God only knows all the perfections. But the laws of logic and of mathematics, the places where we think we encounter truths that just couldn't be otherwise. All those necessary truths are in God. They're all parts of God's being. This is this is still review, but I hope it it's becoming clearer. This view of God identifies God with the perfections. It identifies the laws of logic and math as parts of the being of God. So when God has to be consistent with himself, it's not because there are some laws outside of God that he must conform to, they are parts of his own being. Agustin realized that if he took Plato's sort of view, what he'd be saying is that there are perfections. And then if there's a being named God, God has to have them to be God. And he didn't want to say that that would make God dependent on something else. He rightfully saw that that needed to be rejected. But there are actually two ways to avoid that bad consequence. One way would be to say, God created the perfections. They're true of God. But they're still creations of gods. And you could say God created the laws of logic, God created the laws of mathematics. That's why those laws govern all creation. And it's why we can reliably use them to gain knowledge and understand the creation, construct proofs, and so on. That would be one way. Another way would be to say that God doesn't have these properties. God is

them. That means God is identical with all the perfections. And since there's only one God then in God, there's only one perfection. What we experience as different goodness, justice, love, mercy, power, knowledge. So we experienced these is very different. But in God, they're all identical. There's one perfection because there's one God and these just are God. And that avoids making God dependent on the perfections. It identifies him with him. Now, those are two very different ways of treating the imperfections. One is God created them. The other is God is them. And it's of the greatest importance to the history of this subject. That Agustin took the first one. He said, God, I'm sorry, he took the second one. God is them. That's Augustine. And following him, the entire Western Christian Church, Catholic and Protestant, sees God this way. The Eastern Church, however, did not they took this first option. St. Basil of Surya famous remark on this point is, if there are perfections, God created them. Now, let's see why he might say a thing like that. What What can be said we've heard the Agustin his arguments that all the perfections are in God. That sounds right. It doesn't sound as other any deep problems with it. I'm going to show however, in a moment that there are what why would St. Basil then say, if there are perfections God created them? What would what would be the reason for that? And I think that the answer here is that while while Scripture does not say a lot about how God possesses his attributes, once in a while it does. Once in a while it has some important remarks to make that we need to take into consideration is at times there are places in Scripture that do bear on this question, however, abstracts and it may seems, one of those is in the eighth chapter of Proverbs. What we have here is wisdom speaking. And so wisdom is personified. It's a poetic passage to be sure, but it still has a clear meaning. And I want to read you what it says, because it's speaking of God's wisdom, and wisdom says of herself. While as yet God had not made the earth, nor the fields that are the highest part of the dust of the world, when he prepared the heavens, I was there, when he said, a compass on the face of the deep. When he established the clouds above, when he strengthened the foundations of the deep, when he gave his decree to the sea, that the waters should not come past what He commands, then he appointed the foundations of the earth, I was by him, as one brought up with him. Now all this is about wisdom, God's wisdom, and being exercised in the creation of the world. But just prior to that, he listened to what wisdom says. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was, when there were no depths, I was brought forth. When there were no fountains abounding with water, Before the mountains were settled before the hills I was created.

That's what loomed large in the minds and the thinking of Bazley. Basil and his associates, and associates were Gregory of Nyssa.

Gregory knows the answers. And his sister Macrina, who acted as secretary and editor for the other three men and wrote essays herself, these four people are the basis for what is called the Cabot ocean theology, because they all lived in an area called capital, Shia, that would be in Turkey today. And they wrote a great deal on theology, it became the basis of the theology of the Eastern Church. So they saw this very differently. One of the things that they emphasized was that, whereas Augustine had taken over the, the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, and therefore, agreed that there is a realm that is purely rational, and that includes all the forms. And the chief form. The Plato calls the God and Father of all things, the highest form that Aristotle also gives the name God, and that makes the great dividing line in reality, between the rational and what's perceived by the senses, and as physical and exists in space. That's the great dividing line in reality, and Gods on this side. And what what basil and his associates said was, that's a serious mistake. If there are rational things, and there are the dividing the great dividing lines between God and creation, and creation includes the laws of logic, the laws of math, and any perfections if there are such things God created them. That means that the nature of God, the being, the being of God can't be identified with anything that we find in creation. God may have highest goodness that we can imagine the highest justice, knowledge, and so on. But we are we are not entitled to say, God, he possesses them in the infinite, to the infinite degree in the infinite mode. Scripture doesn't say that it just tells us God is all knowing and all good. God is has created every power in heaven and earth. What we ought not to theorize and identify that stuff with a what was, in effect, a pagan theory and naturalist theory that it doesn't get beyond nature. And this passage in Proverbs seems to support that. If you reflect back on what I just read to you wisdom, saying of herself that before God created the heavens and the earth, wisdom was brought forth by God, wisdom was created. Before all the other things that God created there, he generated his own wisdom, then that's not consistent with identifying God with logic math in the perfections. Now, it's never a good idea to base an important doctrine on just one text. What I would point out to you that that text as it stands in Proverbs chapter eight, is not something that Agustin could have written, or Anselm could have written nor Thomas Aquinas could have written, even roaring drunk, they couldn't have written that, let alone sober, because they, they disagree entirely with it. And I'm not basing the second view the view of the capital xi and fathers, and which was later adopted by the reformers, Luther and Calvin, I'm not basing that view solely on this text. There's something else that this this text, I'm sorry, that the textbook, this view of God is supported by. And that's nothing less than the doctrine of the Incarnation

an important keystone of Christian thought, that God is not only created the entire universe and human beings, but God came in, entered into the form of our existence, took on himself as a full human person, Jesus Christ, and came and fulfilled the covenant demands on behalf of the entire human race, and has redeemed all mankind and all of creation. That's the document of the Incarnation. And theologians east and west, Gregory of Nyssa, Thomas Aquinas doesn't matter. They all recognize this means that God has taken our humanity into himself. God has taken something created, and brought it into and become part of himself. Indeed, one of the ways that the commentary on the Athanasian Creed puts this is to say, it is not that in the Incarnation, our humanity became divine. But but the divine took our humanity into himself. So we're not saying that qua a human being, that insofar as Jesus Christ was a human, he was self existed. But that's true of His divine nature. The divine nature of Jesus Christ is God. And the human nature of God is Jesus Christ. That's the doctrine of the Incarnation. And it turns on, or is it best explained by God takes something created into himself.

It's a whole human being in the person of Jesus Christ. But what I'm suggesting now is that that's the best way to understand God having these so called perfections. I don't know that we're entitled to say, he has them in some infinite degree, Scripture doesn't go that route. It just tells us that God is good, just all knowledgeable, all powerful, and so on. And these then would all be let's call them properties or attributes

that are

attributes of creation. God has created the world in which there's such such a thing as goodness, such a thing as justice, such a thing as mercy. Knowledge, power, and he is what he has taken them on first, and then given them to creatures. It's not that he creates them, and they're they exist among creatures and then God borrows them. But God creates these characteristics and takes them on himself. And then creates a world in which to which he gives these in a lesser degree than he possesses them. That part's right. But what's not right, is to say that these are uncreated and just are the very being of God. That has no biblical basis, whatever. And I think the alternative view that God has created them, and then taken them into himself, is supported not only by specific texts, like the chapter of Proverbs, but it's supported by the doctrine of the Incarnation. It's nothing strange to Christianity to say that God has brought something into existence. So it is created, and depends on him for its existence. And it's taken it in as to himself as a characteristic of himself. Now, one of the things this doesn't mean is that there was a time when God wasn't good, just and powerful. And then he became that I'm not suggesting that at all, since God created time, and we have at least six or eight texts in the New Testament that affirmed that God created time, he took on all these characteristics, eternally, outside time, independently of time. So there never was a time God didn't have them. And there ever will be a time God won't have them. But they're still dependent on him. Not identical with him. Now I'm making a lot depend on this. And you might say, Well, why is this so important? And I hope to explain that right away. There are some terrible consequences of saying that these attributes that God has just are gone. They were not created. They're eternal, they're uncreated. They're uncreated, because God is, and they just are gone. There's nothing in Scripture to say that what little scripture does have to say on this topic, such as proverbs eight counts against it, a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith, the doctrine of the Incarnation counts against it points in another direction. And I'm suggesting we should go the other direction. But my argument for that is also the following really bad consequences of identifying God with those properties. So let's, let's give a schema for this again, let's say that God, and then we want to talk about God's attributes. We'll call them that. And, and these are the perfections. are true of God, on the view that they just are God. Then when God oops. When God sees to it, that creatures have one of his attributes, let's say it's the attribute of goodness. God has infinite goodness, according to the Augustinian view of things. And he gives finite goodness. To creatures, human beings, at least occasionally are good, they do good things, then they have a finite degree of goodness, God may have the infinite degree, but the goodness, that's true of God is uncreated. In that case, the goodness that is possessed by human beings will also have to be uncreated. The same characteristic can't be both created by God. That is dependent depends on God for its existence. And it doesn't depend on God for existence, that can't be true. It can't both be and not be. The degree to which God possesses it can be different. But we're still talking about the same attribute goodness. If it's the same attribute, then it can't be uncreated in God and created in humans. It has to be uncreated and both are created in both. And that's the first major issue that on the Augustinian interpretation, some part of us has A property that is identical with the being of God.

Remember that Augustine, no sinner came a hit upon this doctrine of Plato's forms, and thought that it was the same thing as what Scripture was saying about God, that he recognized that he couldn't say it didn't want to say that God exists, and the forms are self existent, and God has to have them to be God. If he did, that he made God dependent on the forms, on the attributes, he didn't want to say that. And he was right not say that. But then instead of saying, that's not true, what's true is the God created them, he made them identical with God. And then immediately, he saw that, then he would have to say that they are all one in God, they're all identical with a very being the absolute self existent being of God, the Creator. And that means then, that if you and I have any degree of goodness, whatsoever, we have a finite degree of a property that is the very being of God. I hope that waives all kinds of red flags and sounds warning bells. That can't be right. There is nothing about us that is identical with the self existent being of God. That ladies and gentlemen, is called pantheism. And it's only a partial pantheism. To be sure it means insofar as we possess properties, God has were identical with God. But that's bad enough, there can be other things true of us, that are not identical with God, but part of his part of us ends up being identical with God, if we accept this, this approach this theory. That's a serious, serious charge. And I see the people who have championed this view, or gustan. I picked on Gustin and Salman Aquinas, as the great thing, the greatest thinkers who have held and champion this view, and we see them struggle with it. Aquinas in particular worries about that, and tries to wiggle out of it. And in my opinion, that there's no way to wiggle out of it. Either goodness, is the same property and God that we have a imparts goodness to creatures, and a coin says he does. And that property then is completely self existent in eternal it's identical with the very being of God, then if we have the same property, then we have to be partly identical with God. Now, there is a I read a recent article that argued that Aquinas only says that what we have is something like the property God has, but not the same as the property God has. So it's not the same thing. It's only like it my reply to that is that for one thing to be like another, I'm going to try to schematize this for you too.

If one thing is like this, another for that to be true. There has to be some respect in which they are alike. There can be many respects in which they're not like, but if the likeness is true at all, there has to be some way some respects in which A is just like be. And whatever this like this is, this respect in which they are alike, will be a common property, it'll be common to a and to B, and it will be the same thing that's true of A and B. Unless something is true of a that's also true V. They can't be alike. It's self contradictory to say they're like each other, but they shared nothing in common. If they if nothing is true of both of them, then they're not alike. So if that is quite a supposition, I'm not sure it is. Some scholars think it is. Then the position self contradictory because to say that God is like us or we are like God But there is no respect in which we are like God is self contradictory. That saying we're like, but we're not. Now this is getting into some detail theology, but I think you're up to it by now. So we want to be careful that this is as clear as we could possibly make it. Let's, let's review what we've got here as the, the position that dominates the Western Church and I'm going to call that position. The, ay, ay, ay. position. This is for Agustin Anselm And Aquinas, they're the major thinkers who have held it and contributed to its spread and its persistence. And we're going to put down here God is the being defined as the being with all perfections and only perfection

Alright, God shares some perfections. with humans.

Third, if the perfections

are

the being of God rather than being properties God possesses are

the very being of God, then it follows human humans share the being of God. That's my argument. And clearly, in the view of the scriptures, there's nothing about us that's uncreated and self existent.

Nothing about us. We are created mortal beings. And God establishes its covenants with human beings in the first place to rescue us from death. And then the second to rescue us from the sin that ruptured the first covenant. Human beings do not share the being of God. That's the way my argument we continue. Since you since four is false, it follows that one, either one, two, or three, or all of them are false. And I think it's all of them. And no, it's one and three that are false. I don't believe that scripture identifies the being of God with perfections at all, it tells us that he has great attributes, he has great goodness, and power and knowledge and so on. But it never makes it perfect in this sense. This sense is the very Greek, ancient pagan Greek sense of a perfection, that, that some characteristic is in the infinite degree. Scripture never talks about the infinite degree of anything. In fact, that rarely uses the word perfect. The only place I can think of in the New Testament is when Jesus says to His disciples, you should be perfect before because your Father in heaven is perfect. Now if he meant what, Agustin and Selma Aquinas take this to mean, he would be telling them to be gone. But that's not what he's doing. Perfect, in the Jewish sense, always meant complete, not an infinite degree. So what Jesus is telling his disciples is that you should be completely faithful to your end of the covenant, as God is faithful to his end of the covenant has nothing to do with having properties in an infinite mode. That doesn't occur anywhere in Scripture. And its foreign to the thought that does we do find in Scripture, that is a pretty terrible consequence of this theory, this theory that God God's attributes are to be regarded as platonic or our civilian perfections. The identity identification of God with the theory that Plato and Aristotle came up with that is a pretty bad consequence. And it's bad enough all by itself to reject that view. I think that that what we find among the Kappa notions is quite a different view. And let me try to, to sketch that and give you a kind of schematic that will help you to remember that also.

Scripture tells us, for example, I'm going to put this up here

Scripture tells us that God created time. But then it also tells us that God created a presence of himself in time. God takes on time, God exists not only outside time, but within the whole realm of time.

Scripture Scripture tells us that God created space, that actually does this in Romans eight heights and depths are said to be specifically to be creatures, but God is everywhere in space.

decapitations pointed out that number in the realm of mathematics has to do with the quantity of things, things have quantitative properties.

God has created a world in which there is really quantity. But God has taken on being one in three. And we can keep on going this way.

That the different characteristics that pervade creation are also characteristics God has because they're created characteristics. They depend on God to exist. And he possesses them. And that's how we know him, we know him, we can't know the uncreated being of God, because it's subject to no laws of thought. But we can know the creative characteristics God has taken into himself in the same way as later on, he's going to take into himself the whole person of Christ. So the name I've given to this is to say

is the call it in creature ation, God has first taken on characteristics that he shares with creatures, so and share so that we can understand them. And it's how he can enter into our form of life. And then preacher preach duration, then, is in anticipation of the Incarnation, in which God has all of these characteristics, and all of the characteristics of Jesus Christ. So it's to see the characteristics that we can know when which God possesses prior to the incarnation as already true of God for the same reason that the incarnation is. So I call this view of the language of Scripture uses of God, the incarnational model, to understanding how language about God is something that we can understand and know it's because what he's revealing to us are the characteristics that he has in virtue of increased rating himself and then incarnating himself in the person of Jesus Christ. And this is an alternative view of our gods possesses his attributes. It's in perfect accord with Proverbs chapter eight, and in perfect accord with the New Testament doctrine of the Incarnation. It does not have the consequence that when we share a property God has, we also share His Holy Being, that's blasphemy and false. Now bad is that is it has another consequence, which is equally bad for theory of reality. And I need to come to that now. So bad consequence number one. Is it makes us and I'll put partially identical with God

But now we're going to come to another bad consequence. And the consequence, that is that accrues to theories of reality, because that's what we were. That's what that's our subject. And I hope we haven't lost track of that. We've gotten some heavy theology here, but it's necessary to come back down and consider it for theory of reality. And, and that is, it makes some something in in the in creation

more real than the rest of creation. Remember, that was how we get around, saying that it's divine, it's not divine, it's only semi divine.

Let's stick with Plato and Aristotle's candidates for that. They said it was form, forms, plus matter. And how the forms combined with matter, explains everything else in creation. So everything else is dependent on combinations, the form matter, for the Californian combines with the matters, the explanation of everything else, and God created for me matter. And this in turn depends on God. That makes something in creation more real than the rest of creation. Now, that alone may not seem to be too terrible consequence, you say to yourself, Well, why is that? Bad? Why can't a Christian hold that there's something in reality in created reality, more real than the rest of created reality? And it's possible, isn't it? I mean, what's so bad about that?

I'm going to explain now what's so bad about that. That I want to do in some detail. Here is the way the argument goes, let's let's take a candidate form. Let's take goodness.

Let's say goodbye. And let's suppose that it's a perfection.

And this means it has independent existence. And that's excused by saying that's okay. Because it's part of it's the being of God. It's not anything other than God. God's not different from his goodness, he's identical with his goodness, just as he's identical with his mercy and just, and justice and power and knowledge and all the other attributes that he has, they're all identical with his own being, okay, that's, that made a severe difficulty with respect to us sharing them is that made it sound as though we are partly divine. But here, here, we're going to just take it with respect to explanations of the world theories of reality. Now, you remember that I explained to you the general scheme for theories of reality, which was developed by non Christians from pagan point of view and naturalist point of view, is that theory of reality is very like the beads on the necklace. We look at all the different kinds of properties and laws that are true of the world around us. The world around us, has quantity. And the world around us is spatial. And the world around us is physical. And it's also subject to logical laws. And it is in human experience of the world around us. It's also social because we socialize it. And it's it can be economic, and ethical, and so on. We have all these different sides to reality. And then we want to know well, what's the string? What links them all together? One very prominent philosopher of science put it this way. Philosophy is about how all things in the widest sense of things hang together, in the widest sense of hanging together. And I explained to you how that works out. It works out in a theory, a theory of reality, because that theory wants to know, what do they all have in common? What's the reality of which they are all different sides aspects or facets, or it works out in the general theory of knowledge. Many different kinds of knowledge, mathematical, mathematical knowledge, spatial knowledge, physical, logical, social, economic, ethical, and whatever. But theory of knowledge wants to know, what's the common core to all of them, which if we get hold of its nature, we can tell when we're entitled to be certain of a belief and when not, and define what counts as truth. Now, these two kinds of theories, then, look on this analogy as the way it works. They're all the different sides reality, Aristotle calls them special sciences, special branches of knowledge. And then we want the general theory of what unites them all in reality, and what unites them all in knowledge. That picture of things, depends upon saying that some one, one or two of the facets of reality, as we speak, as we experience it, are not just facets, they are the string, they are the very nature of reality and knowledge. It takes some one or two of them and makes them more real than the rest, because it says it's the interaction of them that produces all the rest. So if it's true, that nothing in creation is divine at all, and not semi divine either, then our theory of reality would be very different. It would look like an inner woven. Necklace comprised of different strands, all of which are mutually dependent on one another, and no one of which is any more real, or produces any other. But that all depend only on God, it would be a different sort of theory of reality altogether. Now, as a matter of fact, this view, the view that says we pick out some one or two of these, suppose form is a combination of logic and, and math. And matter has to do with the physical. So here's the matter. Here's the form. And now we explain all the rest of generated by these two. But if, if it's not true that anything is divine, or semi divine, then this is not the way to go. This is a dead end, that requires us to explain all the other beads of the necklace, in terms of these two. That has a specific name in the history of philosophy, that's called that is trying to explain everything, terms, somewhere to a reduction argument. That's an odd sort of, term to use, I know makes it sound like it's a weight loss program, instead of a philosophical agenda. But it's the term that's been given to explaining everything that's not divine

as produced by what is here's everything that's not divine, and it is all explained by what is divine that is self existent or semi divine. more real than the rest, even if it in turn depends on God. And reduction or humans are notorious for running into dead ends. How do you explain say, goodness in terms of, of just matter, or even forming matter? How do you explain that? Well, you have to end up making some part of, of reality, either divine or divine except for its dependence on God. And that is the issue that I now want to address. What are the difficulties with trying to make any aspect of reality as we experience it, either the divine reality, or more real than all the rest of reality, even though it in turn depends on God. What's involved there? And I want to argue that such reductions are not possible. And I want to give you good reasons for thinking that they're not possible. So, that will be our next session. We'll start with this and will spell out step by step by step. What's wrong with trying to support the view that any aspect of reality as we know it, whether that's mathematical or logical, whether it's the physical, whether it's the sensory, the biotic, spatial, whatever it is, is can neither be conceived of as divine nor semi divine. Neither one will succeed. That's where we will take up next time.