Video Transcript: The Nature of God

The second strand in theology, the younger one, by 100 years or so, the really  has its precursors before St. Augustine, but it's Augustine, who's the great  champion of this view, and it is the is his writing, that really makes this the  dominant view in the Western Church. So here's, here's the way, you know,  Augustine is very impressed with the pagan philosopher Plato. And what Plato  argued for is that every characteristic that we find in the world in which we live,  you and I would say, creation. Plato wouldn't because he didn't know God. He  wasn't either a Jew or a Christian or a Muslim. But every characteristics,  characteristic we find in this world is imperfect is an imperfect copy of a perfect  example of that in another realm. So Plato, not only believes that there is this  world, that the universe in which we live, in which there are things and events  and things change that come into being and pass away. But he also believed  that there was another realm in which there are perfections. In other words, in  this world, there are many things that are blue. And we recognize that they're  more or less blue. The reason that there are many blue things is that they are all imperfect copies of The Perfect Blue, in the other world. In the other world, there is the perfect, what it is to be a tree or a horse. The model was formed were  perfect, for perfect example. And the trees and horses that exist in this world are imperfect copies of that perfection. When Augustine was a young man, he didn't  believe in God, and he was pretty much a materialist. And he said that these  arguments by Plato convinced him that there were non physical realities. It's not  the case that everything is physical, and that's the end of it. No, there's, there  are other realities that are just as real or more real. They just don't exist where  we can see them. So there is this realm of perfections. And the realm of  perfections somehow influences the world in which we live the world in which  things change and come into being and pass away. Although those never  change. They never pass away, they're eternal, they were never created, and  they act on the matter that is in the universe, in time, in space, in order to  produce the kind of Cosmos we see around us. Not only did Plato argue that  says Augustine, this is ate the City of God, he says this, he says, Plato held that  there were layers among the perfections, and that there was a supreme  perfection which Plato called the God and Father of all things. And in this  chapter of Augustine's, famous and influential work, he says there Plato has  realized that our God, that's what he's found there, our God is the being that has all the perfections. Plato thought the perfections, we're all individuals. There's  the greatest possible, good, justice, mercy, love, knowledge, power, and so on.  But what Plato missed is that it's the one supreme perfection, the Supreme  Being that has them all. They are all characteristics of God. So what he does to  get his doctrine of God is take the biblical revelation of God as creator, who  stands who makes a covenant with human beings to redeem them from sin and  that and he combines that with Plato's perfections and comes up with a more  complete view. He thinks. I'm going to argue later, just so you know, where all 

this is going. I'm going to argue that that was fateful and regrettable day when  Augustine did that, that that spoiled, biblical theology. It wrecked the idea of God it didn't save it. It didn't make it more plausible. It was a tragic mistake. And the  older theology that denied that one of the theologians there's Basil of Caesarea,  comment about perfections. If there are perfections, if they're real, he's not quite sure they're the that they are in the way Plato described. But if there are  perfections, God created them. Not they are uncreated, and they constitute God  in His being, which is what Augustine proposed. So when we return, I'm going to try to explain in greater detail how these two theologies contrast and why one of  them is opposed, leads to rejecting the idea of a Christian philosophy and the  other supports it. Now I'm going to give you a second opportunity to look at your  notes rewind, listen again, and look forward to the contrast. After which I think all this will fall into place. It'll be clearer for you