Video Transcript: The Role of Divinity Beliefs in Theories

We're now at a point where we can actually begin to penetrate into the area of  the territory of Christian philosophy, all the preliminary material that we've  covered so far, are to show why that's possible and make it plausible. And now  we're right at the door or the entrance way, we're only a couple of things to go  over. And then I'm going to show you exactly what we mean, when we say that  theories are regulated by some divinity, belief or other, and that that's the best  way to understand what's going on in them. And then, to go ahead and say that  Christians should be theorizing with their belief in God in that slot of being their  divinity, belief that regulates their theories. So we're going to start with this idea  of the role of divinity beliefs in theories. Let me just show you what I have in  mind. In ancient in the ancient world, when philosophy first arose, then as far as  we know, by the ancient Greeks, they all started by trying to think of the cosmos  as a whole, and identify within the cosmos, the divine reality that everything else depends on. That's why they start by trying to claiming that it's matter, for  example, and then there are debates about the nature of matter is it essentially  earth, air, fire, water, or atoms. Others want to say there is not just one divine  principle, there's not one reality that's self existent, there are two and it's matter,  plus. And here, they put logical laws, or mathematical laws, or both something  that was both logic and math, and they call them rational. But at any rate, this is  the divine element for them two elements, these two interact and produce all the rest of the cosmos. That was the strategy for explanation. You want to  understand the things in the cosmos, then first, you identify what they all depend on, which is the cause of them all. And then you trace the causal pathways that  can be very indirect, this causes that causes that cause and then this depends  on the divine, or can be that the Divine is thought of as permeating all things.  There are all kinds of ways to slice that. But this is the way theories originated.  So some 300 years after they originated, Aristotle was still doing that, for  example, he says, in the metaphysics, so there really is a science about that  which has independent reality, and cannot change. And he says, And here, if  anywhere, is divine metaphysics 1064 B, if you want to know where that is. So  he's doing just as his teacher Plato had. For Plato, there's another realm,  remember that there's another dimension to reality that stills is perfection. And  things in this world, imperfectly, copy that perfection. Aristotle didn't like that. No, the perfections are in the things that exemplify them. They're not in another  realm. That's an important difference between them, but not crucial to what  we're doing right now. I'm pointing out this is a strategy for explanation, find what everything depends on and then look for the causal pathways of that of those  dependencies. In this view, for example, this not only viewed the cosmos, as  matter, plus rational laws, it viewed human beings that way too. In a human  being, this is their reason and this is their body. So there's mind or soul and  body and humans are a duality like everything else in the cosmos. So you want  to be able to get a glimmer now for how identifying one or two of these sorts of 

things as divine, permeates your understanding of the whole cosmos and of  human nature. Of course, when Christians encountered philosophy, philosophy  had existed for 500 years or more. And Christians immediately saw that  identifying any part of the cosmos as the divinity that generates all the rest of it  is not right. Not by their lights. It's God that the cosmos depends on. And the  cosmos is all creation is all created, only God is uncreated. They're very clear  about that. So they're not about to buy any of these proposals. So the previous  500 years, they're going to say, Is God on whom everything, whatever depends.  And then here, they could echo the point that I made earlier from Colossians 1.  God has created everything, whether visible or invisible. So God is the creator  not only of space, time and matter, but of all laws, and so on. I never clear about that. But, there's a big but here. But even though this isn't divine, it still could be  many of them thought that there's something in the cosmos that everything else  in the cosmos depends on. This is no longer divine, it doesn't have self  existence. It's created by God. But then everything else depends on that. And  that strategy meant that they could take most of the pagan theory, they can  explain, just like the guys who held this stuff, 500 years earlier, if they wanted to  take a dual, a dual view of what's divine, they could say, Oh, look. Let's say it's  true that everything is made of matter and subject to logical or mathematical  and, or mathematical laws. And that's the way you explain all the rest of reality  as the interaction of these two, as long as you add, and God created them  you're, okay? What's the matter with that? Why isn't that a Christian view, so we  can to all the rest of our explanation can be just like this. And then we can say,  oh, but you missed the fact that these two things, in turn depend on God, that's  your mistake. And these guys will reply. And no, that's your mistake. Because  the explanation works, whether you tack God on the end or not. And that's just  what they did reply. This then becomes a fifth wheel. Right? This way of doing  theories doesn't start with God, it starts with theories that are already around  that deify some part of the world, and they say, well, as long as we don't deify it,  they could still be whatever else depends on, we keep the same strategy for  explaining creation and things in creation, we just add, and that in turn depends  on God. And what that little formula, we have baptized any theory into Christian  respectability. That doesn't make it a Christian theory. But acceptable. And I  guess, you know, anticipate I'm going to say no, it's not Because Chapter One of Colossians, not only says the God created everything, visible or invisible, it also  says that He created everything through Jesus Christ. Everything was created  for him and by him. And he makes all things hang together. And that's the point  that was missed. That if you tried to reduce all the rest of creation to these, you  explain all the rest by these. And then try to say that it's through these two things that God mediates his power to all creation. Everything depends on God. But  these depend directly it everything else is indirectly they depend on these and  then those in turn depend on God. But then these become a substitute for Jesus

Christ, according to Colossians 1 and that the Eastern Church said, is  intolerable. So St. Gregory Palamas says, The Christian can tolerate no  mediating substance between God and creatures. But the western church  bought this lock, stock and barrel. And so we get Christian Platonism, Christian  Aristotelianism, Christian Neo Platonism, we get Christian dualism, Christian,  rationalism, Christian, even materialism, there have been theorists who were  Christian who said, I think matter is the essential characteristic of all creation,  and that's what God created. but then they are explaining everything within  creation, by saying it's reducible to is caused by produced by the purely  physical. And that in turn depends on God. And keeping that pagan strategy for  theories should be inimical to Christians. They should not accept that. I hope this is clear, it's clear that what I'm going to be arguing for is that not only is there  nothing in creation that's divine, there's nothing in creation, that everything else  in creation depends on other than Jesus Christ. And so when the Christian  philosophy starts out, it wants to look at what causal pathways we can trace,  what depends on what what produces what, how does this work. And so in  many sided way, we're not trying to say that the essential characteristic of all  creation is physical, or physical plus logical, physical plus rational, or any of the  other substance that can be put in here. There is no one overall characterization of all creation, except to depend on God. And it does so directly. So there's  going to be a lot more diversity in this, in this ontology, we're going to allow for  all the things that we experience is real. And we're going to take them as they as we experience them, and then examine them, see if we can get a better  understanding of their natures. And they're going to be many types of them. It's  not true that everything in creation is going to be essentially any one thing. But  there are types of things that are whose natures are very different from one  another. Now, when, we're going to take a break. And you're going to think about that. And then we're going to come back. And I want to show you just how  theories in mathematics do depend on one's divinity belief. We're going to look  at a mathematical formula, that you are all familiar with and is not intimidating.  It's one plus one equals two. We don't have to go any further than that, to see  the differences among mathematicians, as to what it is we're talking about and  dealing with. When we say one plus one plus one makes two, and that there are many different ways to interpret it. And those are in turn controlled by the  thinker's divinity beliefs. That's what's coming up next. So make sure you have a grasp of everything prior. This is why the idea of a Christian philosophy got  derailed. This is what undercut it, if you can keep the pagan strategy and explain everything just the same as you would, whether you tagged God onto the tail of  the donkey or not, then what's the difference? For Christians, there's no uniquely Christian philosophy. But if that's forbidden, as I take it to be by the New  Testament, then we've got a new project altogether and a new strategy for  explanation. That's what we'll come to next.