Beginning Metaphysics: First Philosophy as ‘Lord of the Sciences’

Introduction

“The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold” [1] wrote Aristotle in his De Caelo. It is to this that St. Thomas refers when he begins his own brilliant metaphysical treatise, De Ente et Essentia, by stating: “A small mistake in the beginning is a big one in the end” [2]. His point is that we must start our metaphysical inquiry from the right place (which for him means noting the distinction between essence and existence) or else we will go awfully awry by the time we reach the end. But on an even broader level, we might say that we must begin all rational inquiry with a solid metaphysical foundation, or else our entire understanding of reality will be, ultimately, completely skewed and fundamentally flawed. So despite the fact that the word “meta-physics” literally means after physics, Aristotle was right all along when he originally named it “first philosophy”, to which physics is “second”, with all other sciences proceeding therefrom.

Brief Thoughts on Meaning, Purpose, and God

Yesterday, Justin Schieber–author, founder of Real Atheology, former cohost of Reasonable Doubts, and all around very respectable advocate for naturalism and philosophy of religion in general–made the following statement about God and purpose in life, via his twitter account:

“Does God have purpose in his life if he has no higher god imposing it? If his subjective purpose is objective, so is ours.”

This is similar to statements he has made elsewhere, and indeed he has a whole video on a related argument, which can be found here. The purpose (no pun intended) of the statement is to suggest that common assertions to the effect of “life is meaningless without God!” or “if you don’t believe in God your life can’t have purpose!” are actually a double-edged sword, in that the same reasons underlying those assertions could actually be turned around and applied to God Himself, such that if human life is meaningless/purposeless without God, then the life of God Himself must likewise be meaningless/purposeless.

While I think this is an interesting idea, I think a closer evaluation of relevant concepts shows the counter not to be analogously applicable to God.

Aquinas’s Argument from Degrees of Perfection Part 2: Goodness and Being

In the first post in this series on Aquinas’s Fourth Way, we discussed modern “moral” arguments for the existence of God, considered how such arguments are based on the modern “fact/value distinction”, and how this modern assumption is completely antithetical to the classical view of “the good” as an entirely objective feature of reality. In this post, we will examine the classical view of the good.

As we saw, Hume famously posited that one cannot derive an “ought” from an “is”; in other words, we cannot say something about what ought to be the case based purely on what is actually the case. “Oughtness” thus comes to have a certain level of subjective sentiment involved. How far removed this is from Plato’s theory of knowledge, in which the highest, purest, most real knowledge is the knowledge of the Good itself, while knowledge of other things is more obscure and not as definite:

Christmas: To the End of the Way of the Wandering Star

Behold our universe: the horizons of which we cannot perceive, the intricacies of which we cannot plumb. The entire cosmos dances to some profound, utterly divine melody; it dances and it sings along in the harmonious chorus of existence. The stars shout the glory of light and warmth. The planets circle their suns, pulled in by their radiant beauty. The very atoms and molecules, the stones from which this majestic palace of the universe was crafted, sway with the winds of an eternal breath. All beings ordered to their time and place and way, all things directed to their specific ends, all in jubilant obedience to their Maker and Sustainer.

The galaxies shout praises to the Creator in their fiery exultation. The planets sing hymns of laud to their God and King as they sweep from one end of the solar system to the next. The oceans roar, the mountains rise, the birds soar and fish dive, the creatures saunter and crawl, all to the glory of the Lord.

And yet all these beings, though the very innermost depth of their being flows directly from, and is constantly directed to, God as their Creator and Sustainer, the First Cause and Final End of all things, this is done in them without conscious knowledge, an open awareness of both their internal selves and the external world. In all of creation, this privileged position of knowledge has been granted to mankind. And with this honorable position comes immense duty.

A duty which we have squandered.

All of creation succeeds in that every being therein is itself, exists as itself, as it was meant to, and fulfills its intrinsic ends/purposes. This is the ultimate duty of all beings: to be itself, as it was so designed and intended by the Divine Craftsman. It is the duty of all stars to shine, the duty of all planets to orbit, the duty of all trees to grow and bear fruit, the duty of all bees to buzz and pollenate and produce honey, the duty of all ants to crawl and march and build and protect their queen, the duty of all mice to scurry and squeak, the duty of all birds to flap wings and fly, the duty of all waves to crash upon the shore. All these beings, down to the most minuscule of subatomic particles, all have their purpose, all have their duty, and in ordered obedience to this duty they glorify God in their very being.

And of all creation, humans alone were granted the gift of knowing their own existence, knowing their own duty and purpose, and, ultimately, thereby knowing their Creator and Sustainer. This knowledge and will are the distinctive human gifts. It is the duty of man to know God, the duty of man to will the good in obedience to God. All other beings enact their existential dramas and fulfill their duties unconsciously, automatically, without choice or awareness. Human beings were given the opportunity to do so fully consciously, freely, with knowledge. And thus human beings alone were given the opportunity of the ultimate good and happiness and joy of all existing things: the Beatific Vision, conscious experience of and union with the Divine Reality. To know God as God.

It was the duty of man to know God and to consciously glorify God to and for all creation. We, as rational animals, as immortal souls in mortal flesh, were meant to be the ambassadors between God and creation. On this very speck of death, mankind was meant to be the mouth from which all creation could pour forth the wondrous joy it held inside, the ecstatic delight of its own mystical existence.

Placed as such above all creation, to lift all creation to God, how disastrous then becomes our fall! For in thus falling, we become actually the lowest of all creatures, lower than all other beings in creation. For all other beings in the entire universe are themselves, are what they were truly meant to be; and in falling, humanity fails to be humanity. Humanity fails to be what we were meant to be. In falling, humans don’t just become something less than human–we become something less than creation itself. For creation in its very essence is good, the gift of existence flowing from Divine Source. But in our fall, mankind rebelled against this divine gift of existence. We chose to be something other than what we are, because to be what we truly are would require the one thing for which we were made: obedience to the Divine Will. How easy for a bird to fulfill the Divine Command to chirp! But what great burden for man, with his own knowledge and will, to submit that will to Another.

Evil, essentially, is disordered existence. Evil is the lack of Goodness which is humanity being as it is meant to be. Evil is humanity failing to be truly human. Evil is man being less than man.

Imagine the horror if the stars rebelled and refused to shine! Imagine the tragedy if the particles and atoms and molecules all rebelled, and refused to join in their chemical community to produce our cosmos! So how terrible, how monstrous, how dark, how absurd it is, for man to rebel and refuse to be man! The wondrous song and dance of creation suddenly was thrown out of tune into a horrid tension. The humans fought and killed each other, they were angry and sorrowful and wretched and lustful and prideful and selfish and hateful, the exact opposite of what they had been meant to be. They created societies and civilizations, driven by greed and fear, ruled by oppression and injustice. They fought wars and enslaved fellow men. They tore at the earth and at each other.

And so how infinitely, overwhelmingly profound is it, that God should save man by not refusing to be man, by Himself becoming man to teach us how to be man! Jesus Christ, the God-man, was the first truly and fully human person in the history of our race. He was the second Adam, who overcame our broken nature, to restore our ruined flesh. When we look to Christ, we see God. But equally as true: when we look to Christ, we see humanity, as it was truly meant to be. The wonder of the Incarnation is not just Divine; it is also human.

How incomprehensible that which God accomplished in Christ! Human reason cannot capture Him, and yet a manger held Him. Human hands cannot reach Him, and yet a mother swaddled Him. The human mind cannot contain Him, and yet our lowly planet enclosed Him. Death cannot touch Him, and yet nails pinned Him to a cross.

St. Irenaus wrote: “Gloria Dei est vivens homo.” The Glory of God is living man. Christ was the first and true living man, the man who fulfilled the duty of men and thus completed the purpose of all creation. The man who tasted and defeated death, so that all men can become living men.

G. K. Chesterton wrote this beautiful poem, The House of Christmas:

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home [1].

Much could be said about these words, but that line towards the end specifically stuck out: “To the end of the way of the wandering star”. It’s referring, of course, to the star of Bethlehem, which guided many to see Christ. But in another sense, I think we could say that planet earth is the wandering star, the star which went rogue, the lone star of all stars in all the heavens which abandoned its way and fell from its light and life. And Christ is thus the end of the way of the wandering star. In Christ, our wandering is over; our Home is found.

And now my own, original Christmas poem:

Lo, the dawn! The sun doth shine

Upon hills blanketed in snow,

And all creation, sprung from Divine

Rises forth, from darkness low.

Glistening horizon, wreathed in flame

Marches onward in triumphant shout;

Come to bring light and day back again

Come to water our souls so long in drought.

The snow, the leaves, all do shine!

For light of sun in infinite fullness

Cannot but share its Glory Divine

To pour out from indivisible wholeness.

Lo, the Dawn, birthed from woman!

In a manger the Sun doth lay;

For in Christ, God made man,

The night can ne’er stand up to day!

To the end of the way of the wandering star,

On this rebel planet, in Bethlehem,

Immanuel, God with us, He is not far!

All death and darkness conquered by the Lamb!

 

Notes

[1]. Chesterton poem found online here: http://www.journeywithjesus.net/PoemsAndPrayers/GK_Chesterton_House_of_Christmas.shtml

 

 

Advent and the Silence of God

*Note: this post contains spoilers for the book/movie “Silence”.

Last week, I finished Shusaku Endo’s  highly acclaimed 1966 novel “Silence”, the long expected movie of which is being released next month (see the trailer here). The book was fantastic–beautifully written, hauntingly profound, and deeply thought provoking. I’m not going to discuss too much of the actual plot here, since I highly recommend reading/seeing it for yourself. Rather I want to consider perhaps the central thematic point of the story: the silence of God (thus the book’s title).

Throughout the novel, as the characters experience extreme hardships, difficulties, and suffering, often times as a direct result of their Christian faith, they are left to wonder: where is God? Where is the God in whom they have placed their trust and hope? Where is the God for whom they are currently offering their lives, having given up everything for the sake of the Gospel? Where is the God who all their lives they have been told is loving, who is supposed to care for His people, who has commanded prayer and promised to answer? Where is this God?

But they are met only with silence.

Arguments for Atheism #2: Material Causation and Creation Ex Nihilo

A little while back I began a series examining different arguments for naturalism/atheism, using as a starting point this list of arguments compiled by the respected defender of naturalism Jeffery Jay Lowder. In the first post, we looked at the “Unimpressiveness of Humans” argument. I then responded in another post to Mr. Lowder’s own reply to my article. Next, I also examined the “Epicurean Cosmological Argument” posted by the ex-apologist, which argues for the necessity of matter. The present post concerns another argument from Mr. Lowder’s list, which is similar and related to the Epicurean argument in several ways.

Aquinas’s Argument from Degrees of Perfection for the Existence of God: Introduction

Over the course of the last eight months I’ve written around fourteen articles on the first three of Aquinas’s famous “Five Ways” or arguments for the existence of God. Those first three, collectively, are all categorized as Thomistic cosmological arguments, because of their similarities in structure, method, and end point. All three argue from some feature of the world to the existence of a Being of Pure Act, or Subsistent Being Itself, based on the impossibility of infinite regress in essentially ordered causal series. Their individual distinctiveness comes from their starting points: the First Way starts from motion, the Second starts from efficient causation in general, and the Third from generation and corruption of beings.

The Fourth and Fifth Ways, however, are markedly different from the first three, and are not considered cosmological arguments. The Fifth Way, as we shall see when we turn to it, is often classified as a type of “Teleological” argument (although it differs greatly from most modern formations of such), thus leaving the Fourth Way as the “odd man out”, a unique species of argumentation in its own right.

The Person of Jesus Part 7: The Life of Jesus

So far in this series, we have examined Jesus’s impact on the world, introduced the academic field of historical Jesus work, shown that the existence of Jesus of Nazareth is so firmly established in history that virtually all scholars accept it, examined the various criteria and methods which historians use in determining historicity, and looked briefly at the nature of the gospels as sources. To remind, the purpose of this series since its beginning was the look at the identity of Jesus, not necessarily the historicity of all the events in his life or the reliability of the gospels, etc. We have very briefly touched on these things (having to leave out much) in order to set up and provide a foundation for our ultimate turn to questions of identity. In this post, we will look at several events from the life of Jesus and try to determine their historicity.

The Prime Mover and the Nature of Immutability

An interesting objection to the Prime Mover argument is that its conclusion is self contradictory. The underlying question in this objection is how a being can cause movement without being moved itself. So the issue is that any being which causes all motion (change) would itself have to change in order to cause change, thus requiring another cause outside of itself. But this being is supposed to be the cause of all change, so how can something else be the cause of change in it?

This is a question I’ve heard several times in response to the Prime Mover argument, including once recently. Along with it came several corollary objections, which I’ll list below:

1. How can an immutable being do anything at all, let alone create?
2. Doing anything at all requires change. Pure action is change.
3. Cause without time is, by definition, incoherent. Without change there cannot be cause-effect
4. Without time you’d be stuck in an eternal state, unable to affect anything at all. Even thought and personality aren’t possible.

These are some pretty hefty claims about the nature and limitations of an immutable being, which, if accurate, do render the Prime Mover argument inert. The problem is in the understanding of what an immutable being actually is. And in order to understand what an unchanging being is, we have to first understand what change itself is.

Epicurean Cosmological Argument

Over at the ex-apologist blog, another highly respected online advocate for naturalism/atheism has posted a very interesting argument which is much more up my alley than some of the more contemporary type arguments I’ve been responding to (although Mr. Lowder also has an argument which is related to this present one that we’ll look at within a few weeks or so). The ex-apologist labels the argument an “Epicurean Cosmological Argument for Matter’s Necessity”, and it acts as a kind of metaphysical counter argument to some of the theistic cosmological arguments, including Aquinas’s first three Ways, which I’ve written about on this blog.

The basic argument goes like this:

“One can find, through the writings of Lucretius, a powerful yet simple Epicurean argument for matter’s (factual or metaphysical) necessity. In simplest terms, the argument is that since matter exists, and since nothing can come from nothing, matter is eternal and uncreated, and is therefore at least a factually necessary being” [1].

This argument, apart from being interesting in its own right, is actually pretty significant, in that the materialism (atomism) of ancient philosophers such as Epicurus is one of the main adversaries to the Platonic/Aristotelian transcendental worldviews adopted by and implicit within classical theism. And, unlike some of the more contemporary arguments I’ve been examining recently, this argument gets down into the very fundamental nature of reality.