Video Transcript: The C/R Theology

What I'm going to do now is a little more of a contrast, draw the contrast out  between these two lines of theologies. And, of course, I guess it's perfectly plain  to you that I side with this one, you have to make up your own mind. This  certainly has the majority on its side, the majority of thinkers, this has fewer, but  I think their arguments carry the day. You have to make up your own mind, of  course. Let's draw this, contrast out a little bit more, and then see some of the  main consequences of it. For the Cappadocian and reformational theology, I'll  just call it the C/R theology from now on, it's that we know God as he really is.  But there is that about God, which is unknowable. So all of this is God, as he  has accommodated himself to us. Without accommodation, we wouldn't have  any knowledge of God. But He both accommodates himself to humans, and  reveals that accommodation, we need both things, we need God to be knowable by us to have characteristics that are created and subject to the laws of creation, so we can understand them. And we need him to tell us what that what those  are. So those are perfectly. They're perfectly stuff that again, they're perfect  requirements, they are requirements that, that fit this completely in perfectly. So  what I was trying to say, and and we can rely on this, because God has  promised He will never change. In this tradition, the approach is a bit different.  Since the laws of logic are part of the being of God, we can expect that there's a logical proof of God. It's okay to apply logic to God, because logic is part of what he is, on this view, applying logic to God, to try to prove his existence is  demoting God into being another creature governed by laws, which God  created. On this view, they're going to say whatever can be proven, with their by  not be God, because it wouldn't be the creator of the laws of logic. Over here,  they're going to say there is no creator of the laws of logic, but just part of God.  Every perfection, and every necessary truth, all of mathematics is part of God,  all of logic is part of God, it's perfectly possible to go ahead and try to construct  a proof of God's existence. So let's, let's let's list some of these. Our number one difference is going to be over here. No proof is possible. It reminds me of that  old comment, to those who believe no proof is necessary. To those who do not,  no proof is possible. Here proof is possible. And I think they'd want to say and  actual, that is a really are proofs of the existence of God that succeed. We're  going to look at some of those, perhaps, if we have time, that's one difference.  Over here, notice, God has only perfections. Over here. if there are perfections,  God created them. And God does things and acts and enters creation in ways  that aren't perfect. When Jesus Christ comes into the world, he takes on the  form of a servant says the book of Philippians, he becomes servant to all he  subjects himself to the laws of creation, including the Jewish law, the laws of  Moses, in order to be the Messiah and to fulfill God's covenant, covenantal  requirements. So here there are characteristics of God that are not perfections.  God coming incarnate is the maximum degree of any property that makes a  thing better to have it than not have it. So, Jesus Christ coming as God the son 

incarnate is not maximal, goodness, justice, truth, knowledge, power, Mercy.  Jesus Christ as a human being, possesses his characteristics as a human  being. Now, the AAA theology would want to come back and say, but in His  divine nature, he was all those maximally good things. So here they're attractive, but God can still take on characteristics in this Cappadocian reformational view, whether or not perfections this tradition insists God is only perfect. Let me tell  you quickly what this means. Here we believe that God enters into space time  deals with people. God speaks to people. And God not only knows his creation,  he reacts to his creation, in the personality that God has taken on, there are  times that he gets royally angry with somebody. There are the times he rejoices  over their repentance. At other times, he's kindly to them, as a father pities his  children, so the Lord pities them that fear him. The AAA theology says that all of  those, all that kind of talk is only anthropomorphic. God doesn't really have any  feelings. Because all he has is perfections. He really knows everything. But he  doesn't have emotions, that God doesn't fly off the handle and get angry. No.  Seems to me the Bible records the number of times God did that. Step aside,  Moses, I'm gonna wipe them all out. No, Please, Lord, don't do that. They're  your people. Moses intercedes. Abraham intercedes for the towns that were  wicked, where his nephew lived, and he didn't want them destroyed and so on.  AAA theology has to say all of that is anthropomorphic talk. God doesn't really  love. Because that would make him susceptible and vulnerable. And it's not a  perfection. This view says, Yes, God made himself vulnerable for us. And he  really feels joy over sinners that repent, and he really feels let down when we  who know him let him down. So that's another big difference. I'm going to  summarize that by saying God's relations to us are real. And I'm going to  summarize the position over here, the way St Thomas Aquinas did. He went on  to say more, this is St. Thomas. God has no real relations to creatures,  creatures really relate to God. They depend on him, for example, for their  existence. And in the case of humans, that we look to God for salvation and  other things that's real in us, but not in God. Because God can only have  perfections relating to me and you isn't the perfection. So God has no real  relations to creatures. And when I read that, at that point, I just feel like tossing  the book in the air that undercuts the entire Gospel. There's nothing left if God  has no real relations to us. It's the very reverse of God so loved the world, that  He gave His only begotten Son so that whoever believes in Him will not perish  but have eternal life. No, this says, God didn't really love the world. And he  doesn't know. I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. There's no way to fudge that. And  then, the book that I wrote where I mentioned this, the next after I quote  Aquinas, the next paragraph begins this way. I do not see how any Christian  could write those words, and not realize that something had gone horribly wrong with the assumptions that led to them. And as far as I'm concerned, those  assumptions go right back to identifying God with the perfections that Plato 

postulated in his theory. My theory, my guess is there are perfections in another  realm. And I liked St. Basil's remark about that if there are perfections God  created them. And here they want to say there are and no, he didn't create them as though he just is them. And since they're the only things that can be true of  God, God has no real relation to creatures. Now, it's this view, that leads to the  conclusion, there's no such thing as a Christian philosophy possible, this view,  just about requires it. And I'll show that a bit later, when we start the actual  philosophy that Dooyeweerd presented. He did so by constructing an ontology,  you remember, not epistomology, but a theory of reality. And he's going to base  it on this sort of view of God, what I call Cappadocean reformational. Meanwhile, however, there is another problem that arises from this view. And the other  problem is phrased as one of the great criticisms of belief in God. And so we're  going to start there next time, we're going to take up this challenge, this  argument that God isn't real. If, if this is what God is, then I think I can prove  he's not real says Porphyry in a book titled Against the Christians, and we're  going to look at his criticism, and see how the AAA theology tries to handle it  and how the C/R theology can handle it. And then we're going to come to how  each of them relates differently towards the project of a Christian philosophy. So  I hope you're all with me now. And you'll review what we've done and that it's  clear to this point