James White's Debate with Jalal Abualrub, Part 1

Bravo!!!

The Influence of Greco-Roman Culture on Early Christianity

It is frequently urged by both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists and theologians that the beliefs and teachings of the church fathers provide a better picture of true, apostolic Christianity than the beliefs that came out of the Reformation. It is argued that the earliest fathers were the successors of the Apostles and received apostolic teaching in the form of unwritten traditions from them. They then passed that tradition on faithfully to the next generation of Christians and so on to the present day Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Contrary to this, it became clear to the Reformers and those who succeeded them that some aspects of the Christianity of the church fathers (and hence, the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches) better reflect aspects of the thoughts, languages, and customs of their cultural environment. It is the purpose of this paper to show that, on many of the distinctive issues that separate Protestants from Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox, the church fathers were heavily influenced by Greco-Roman thought and culture to believe what they did.

I am not saying that the influence was total (contra Harnack). Indeed, they rejected many (but not all) of the conclusions of Greek philosophy, but the point is that they still accepted and worked within the categories of Greek philosophy and the ontological scheme that it taught. With such a framework in place, it became impossible for the church fathers to see such things as juridical justification by faith alone. It was only with the Reformation and its “ad fontes”, “back to the sources”, approach that men started to question the categories of theological thought that they had learned, and Biblical exegetes saw that the beliefs of the church fathers were all too fallible and not a completely reliable guide to apostolic Christianity.

General

“The earlier patristic period represents the age of the exploration of concepts, when the proclamation of the gospel within a pagan culture was accompanied by an exploitation of both Hellenistic culture and pagan philosophy as vehicles for theological advancement. This tentative exploration of the conceptual world is particularly well illustrated by the rise and subsequent decline of the Logos-Christology. The use of such concepts in Christian theology was not, however without its risks: it was not sufficient merely to baptise Plato and Plotinus, for the tension which existed between the essentially Hebraic concepts which underlie the gospel and the Hellenism of the medium employed in its early formulation and propagation remains unresolved. Whilst it is evident that some form of adaptation may be necessary in order to give the gospel more immediate impact on its introduction to an alien culture, it is equally evident that such an adaptation may result in both compromise and distortion of the characteristic and distinctive elements of the gospel. An excellent example of the influence of a Hellenistic milieu upon Christian theology is provided by the doctrine of the [apaueia] of God, which clearly demonstrates the subordination of a biblical to a philosophical view of God.…Indeed, by the end of the fourth century, the Greek fathers had formulated a teaching on human free will based upon philosophical rather than biblical foundations. Standing in the great Platonic tradition, heavily influenced by Philo, and reacting against the fatalisms of their day, they taught that man was utterly free in his choice of good or evil…It is quite possible that the curious and disturbing tendency of the early fathers to minimize original sin and emphasize the freedom of fallen man is a consequence of their anti-Gnostic polemic…Justin’s anti-fatalist arguments can be adduced from practically any of the traditional pagan refutations of astral fatalisms, going back to the second century B.C.”

–Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.17, 19, 20.

“Especially through Origen and the Alexandrian school (with roots in Philo), Christian theology was influenced by the notion of the cosmic ladder of being, with lower forms of existence participating in higher forms, deriving ultimately from the absolute. Creation, in this scheme, is an emanation (for Origen, eternal) of divinity from the one God reaching all the way out to the extremities of being. Specific scriptural teachings challenged or qualified aspects of the metaphysical heritage, but the worldview was essentially that of Middle Platonism, Stoicism, and Neoplatonism.”

-Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union With Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), p.184.

“In the West, Rome, its institutions, and its language had been imposed, whereas the cities in the Greek East had tended to absorb Roman values and to transform them into a common Greco-Roman culture in which the Greek element predominated. In much the same way, we find Christianity tending to absorb Greek philosophical values, until by the end of the third century the line between the beliefs of the educated Christian and the educated pagan in the East would often be hard to draw. After the conversion of Constantine, the empire now directed from New Rome (Constantinople) moved with astonishing ease from the patronage of the immortal gods to that of the supreme God.”

-W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, p.368.

“However, he does not limit himself to scriptural and traditional sources; he also borrows something from ancient Greek philosophy. Echoes of Plato are discernible in the following text:
I believe the words of the wise, that every fair and God-beloved soul, when, set free from the bonds of the body, it departs from here, at once enjoys perception and contemplation of the blessings which await it... and goes rejoicing to meet its Lord... Then, a little later, it receives its kindred flesh... in some way known to God, who knit them together and dissolved them, enters with it upon the inheritance of the glory there. And, as it shared, through their close union, in its hardships, so also it bestows upon it a portion of its joys, gathering it up entirely into itself, and becoming with it one spirit, one intellect and one god... Why am I faint-hearted in my hopes? Why behave like a mere creature of a day? I await the voice of the archangel, the last trumpet, the transformation of the heavens, the transfiguration of the earth, the liberation of the elements, the renovation of the universe.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_11

Language Issues

“The general tendency among Latin-speaking theologians was to follow Augustine of Hippo…in interpreting iustificare as iustum facere…While this may be an acceptable interpretation of iusificare considered in isolation, it is not an acceptable interpretation of the verb considered as the Latin equivalent of [dikaioun]…it would appear that the Greek verb has the primary sense of being considered orestimated as righteous, whereas the Latin verb denotes being righteous, the reason why one is considered righteous by others…[I]t is necessary to observe that the early theologians of the western church were dependant upon their Latin versions of the Bible, and approached their texts and their subject with a set of presuppositions which owed more to the Latin language and culture than to Christianity itself. The initial transference of a Hebrew concept to a Greek, and subsequently to a Latin, context point to a fundamental alteration in the concepts of ‘justification’ and ‘righteousness’ as the gospel spread from its Palestinian source to the western world.”

–Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification, 2^nd edition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, reprinted 1998), pp.14, 15.

Doctrine of God

“In Justin the oneness, transcendence and creative role of God are asserted in language strongly coloured by the Platonizing Stoicism of the day. It was apparently his sincere belief that the Greek thinkers had had access to the works of Moses.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.86.

“The Apologists’ originality (their thought was more Philonic than Johannine) lay in drawing out the further implications of the Logos idea in order to make plausible the twofold fact of Christ’s pre-temporal oneness with the Father and His manifestation in space and time. In so doing, while using such Old Testament texts as Ps. 33, 6 (‘By the word of the Lord were the heavens made’), they did not hesitate to blend with them the Stoic technical distinction between the immanent word (logos hendiathetos) and the word uttered or expressed (logos prophorikos).”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.96.

“[Clement of Alexandria] clearly distinguishes the Three, and the charge of modalism, based on his lack of any technical term to designate the Persons, is groundless; and if he appears to subordinate the Son to the Father and the Spirit to the Son, the subordination implies no inequality of being, but is the corollary of his Platonic conception of a graded hierarchy.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 127-128. [I will note that the Reformed are sometimes chastised by the Eastern Orthodox for not believing that the Son receives His Being from the Father. However, as Kelly notes, this idea comes out of Platonism. The next quotes will reinforce that.]

“No doubt he tries to meet the most stringent demands of monotheism by insisting tht the fulness of unoriginate Godhead is concentrated in the Father, Who alone is ‘the fountain-head of deity’… As it is formulated by Origen, however, the underlying structure of thought is unmistakably borrowed from contemporary Platonism.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.131.

“In a more limited field the impact of Platonism reveals itself in the thoroughgoing subordinationism which is integral to Origen’s Trinitarian scheme. The Father, as we have seen, is alone [autotheos]; so St. John, he points out, accurately describes the Son simply as [Theos], not [ho Theos]. In relation to the God of the universe He merits a secondary degree of honour; for He is not absolute goodness and truth, but His goodness and truth are a reflection and image of the Father’s.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 131-132.

“[Athanasius’s] anthropology, it should be pointed out, which was thoroughly Platonic and treated the soul as having no necessary connexion with the body, was perfectly consistent with the latter hypothesis.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.287.

The Fall and Soteriology

“As we might expect, the [Fall] account [Athanasius] gives is a blend of Platonizing metaphysics and the Genesis story. Its most interesting feature is the contrast presupposed throughout between man considered as a creature, i.e. in his natural state, and as the recipient of God’s bountiful favour.…Instead of keeping their gaze fixed on God, however, the first human beings, Adam and Eve, allowed themselves to be distracted by the material world which was closer to them, particularly by their bodies. They turned away, in other words, from Him Who alone is being in the true sense to things which have no real being of their own. So they fell. Deprived of the grace of the divine image, they were reduced to the corruption which, after all, was their nature, lapsing into ignorance and idolatry.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.287.

“Like Athanasius, they call in philosophzing allegory to aid them in interpreting the Biblical story. For Gregory Nazianzen the Garden is clearly the Platonists’ intelligible world of ideas, its plants being ‘divine concepts’. Gregory of Nyssa carried speculation to the point of proposing, on the basis of Gen. I, 26f., a double creation. The first consisted in the production of the ideal of archetypal man, in the Platonic sense, perfect and without sexual differentiation, comprising in himself all possible men and women. It was because God foresaw that, being creaturely and therefore mutable, he would sin, that He subdivided him, by a second creative act, into male and female, thus inaugurating the actual race of men.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.348.

“According to this, human nature was sanctified, transformed and elevated by the very act of Christ’s becoming man. Often, though not quite correctly, described as the characteristically Greek theory, it cohered well with the Greek tendency to regard corruption and death as the chief effects of the Fall. In its strict form it tended to be combined with the Platonic doctrine of real universals, in the light of which it was able to treat human nature as a generic whole.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.375.

“All the fathers, of whatever school, reproduce this motif. The physical theory, it is clear, is an elaboration of it, only parting comparny with it when, under the influence of Platonic realism, it represents human nature as being automatically deified by the incarnation.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.377.

“Athanasius’s language often suggests that he conceived of human nature, after the manner of Platonic realism, as a concrete idea or universal in which all individual men participate. From this point of view, when the Word assumed it and suffused it with His divinity, the divinizing force would be communicated to all mankind, and the incarnation would in effect be the redemption. Such is the clear implication of numerous passages, such as, ‘Forasmuch as the Word became man and appropriated what belongs to the flesh, these affections no longer attach to the body because of the Word Who assumed it, but have been destroyed by Him’…There is little doubt that Athanasius’s Platonism tended at times to lose touch with his Christianity.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 378-379.

“Like Athanasius, too, [Gregory of Nyssa] translates the Biblical idea of solidarity into the language of Platonic realism. The whole of human nature, he claims, constitutes as it were a single living being…so that the experience of a part becomes the experience of the whole. In this way all mankind is seen to share in what Christ achieves by His resurrection.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.381.

“Hilary, for example, can write, ‘It was we who needed that God should become flesh and dwell in us, that is, by taking a single flesh to Himself should inhabit flesh in its entirety’. The Platonic conception of human nature as a universal clearly lies in the background here. We can see it again in his statement, ‘For the sake of the human race the Son of God was born from the Virgin and Holy Spirit…so that by becoming man He might take the nature of flesh to Himself from the Virgin, and so the body of the human race as a whole might be sanctified in Him through association with this mixture’. The same Platonic realism inspires Victorinus when he writes, ‘When He took flesh, He took the universal idea of flesh (universalem [logon] carnis); for as a result the whole power of flesh triumphed in His flesh.…Similarly He took the universal idea of soul.…Therefore man as a whole was assumed, and having been assumed was liberated. For human nature as a whole was in Him, flesh as a whole and soul as a whole, and they were lifted to the cross and purged through God the Word, the universal of all universals.’ Elsewhere he argues that, since Christ’s body is ‘catholic’, i.e. universal as opposed to particular, all individual human bodies were crucified in it, and His sufferings have a universal quality.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), pp. 386-387.

“[Cyril of Alexandria’s] argument, we observe, was influenced by the Platonic realism which affected the thought of Athanasius and Gregory of Nyssa. Human nature was treated as a generic whole, so that when the divine Word assumed it at the incarnation it could reasonably be said, ‘By virtue of the flesh united to Him, He has us all in Himself’, and, ‘We were all in Christ; the common person of humanity comes again to life in Him’.”

-J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.397.

Allegorism

“Allegorism was well established in Alexandrian Judaism, and Philo, as we have seen, made a systematic use of it to bridge the chasm between the Old Testament revelation and his own Platonizing philosophy. In the hands of such a second-century Christian writer as ‘Barnabas’ Philonic allegorism was able to detect a Christian significance in the least likely passages of the Old Testament.”

–J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.70.

“The inherent difficulties of typology, however, made the transition to allegorism extremely tempting, especially where the cultural environment was Hellenistic and impregnated with Platonic idealism, with its theory that the whole visible order is a symbolical reflection of invisible realities. Hence it is not surprising that most of the fathers injected a strain of allegory, some of them a powerful one, into their typology.”

–J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, reprinted 2003), p.72.

Catharsis

“The two theologians were indebted to ancient Greece for the idea that the chastisement inflicted by the gods is not punishment but rather a means of education and salvation, part of a process of purification. In Plato’s view this chastisement is a boon offered by the gods. Clement and Origen deduce from this the idea that “to punish” is synonymous with “to educate” and that any chastisement by God contributes to man’s salvation…Their Platonic idea of Christianity led Clement and Origen to take a comforting view of the matter…In keeping with this attitude, the two theologians give a soothing interpretation of the Old Testament passages in which God explicitly uses fire as an instrument of his wrath...Origen develops to the full the theory of purification, catharsis, which came to him from Plato, the Orphics, and the Pythagoreans.”

-Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp.52-53, 55.

“The theme of illumination is, in turn, inseparable in his thought from the theme of purification (katharsis). Gregory inherited an interest in this theme from his studies of ancient Greek philosophy, where katharsis is one of the key notions.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_8

Universalism

“[Universalism] was picked up by Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-220), one of the founders of the Alexandrian schools of theology which tried to reconcile Christianity and Greek philosophy by creating a synthesis between the two. Although there is a possibility that he later came to believe in eternal punishment, it is generally conceded that Clement was the first to teach Universalism in the Christian Church.”

-Dr. Robert A. Morey, Death and the Afterlife (Bloomington, Minnesota: Bethany House, 1984), p.223.

“The term [apokatastasis] is found in Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and developed into a doctrine of universal salvation by Origin. Origen was condemned by a synod in Constantinople…the general concept of a final apokatastasis is, however, found in Gregory of Nyssa and persists in a modified form in Byzantine theology, notably in Maximus the Confessor. It recurs in Modern Russian thinkers such as Solovyov, Bulgakov, and Berdiaev,”

- The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, p.36.

“As the implacable opponents of Eunomius, the Cappadocians were nevertheless dependent on Origen both for their biblical learning in the succession of his Hexapla and for their speculative thought; that becomes evident above all in the formulation of the doctrine of apokatastasis put forward by Gregory of Nyssa, which was spared the official condemnation visited upon Origen’s doctrines,”

- The Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, p.482.

“Hell exists as a final possibility, but several of the Fathers have none the less believed that in the end all will be reconciled to God. It is heretical to say that all must be saved, for this is to deny free will; but it is legitimate to hope that all may be saved. Until the Last Day comes, we must not despair of anyone’s salvation, but must long and pray for the reconciliation of all without exception. No one must be excluded from our loving intercession. ‘What is a merciful heart?’ asked Isaac the Syrian. ‘It is a heart that burns with love for the whole of creation, for men, for the birds, for the beasts, for the demons, for all creatures’ (Mystic Treatises, edited by A. J. Wensinck, Amsterdam, 1923, p. 341). Gregory of Nyssa said that Christians may legitimately hope even for the redemption of the Devil.”
http://orthodoxeurope.org/page/11/1/6.aspx

Apophaticism and Mysticism

“Athenagoras described God primarily with negative attributes. This is, he explained what God is not rather than what God is. Later Christian theologians labeled this approach “apophatic theology,” and it became a major part of the story of Christian theology. Apparently Athenagoras and later apophatic thinkers assumed that God’s perfection means being unlike anything created. Thus God can only be truly described by saying what He is not rather than what He is. He is not imperfect, and to change or suffer or even be comprehensible to the human mind is to be tainted by creaturely imperfection. The result, of course, was a gradual diminishing of the Biblical God’s personal nature. Of course, neither Athenagoras nor any other Christian thinker rejected God’s personal being, but some of the ways in which they began to describe God seem to be more like the transcendent origin and ground of all things (arche) in Greek philosophy, which is rather abstract, than the very concrete, personal and interactive God of the Hebrew Bible and apostolic writings.”

-Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, p.63.

“A remarkable combination of Platonism with Christianity, to the injury of the latter, appears in the system of mystic symbolism in the pseudo-Dionysian books, which cannot have been composed before the fifth century, though they were falsely ascribed to the Areopagite of the book of Acts (xvii. 34), and proceeded from the later school of New-Platonism, as represented by Proclus of Athens († 485). The fundamental idea of these Dionysian writings (on the celestial hierarchy; on the ecclesiastical hierarchy; on the divine names; on mystic theology; together with ten letters) is a double hierarchy, one in heaven and one on earth, each consisting of three triads, which mediates between man and the ineffable, transcendent hyper-essential divinity. This idea is a remnant of the aristocratic spirit of ancient heathenism, and forms the connecting link with the hierarchical organization of the church, and explains the great importance and popularity which the pseudo-Dionysian system acquired, especially in the mystic theology of the middle ages.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 3.9.117

“The image of the sun, which derives from Plato, is one of Gregory’s favourite images when he speaks of God. Gregory uses this image in particular when he speaks of the human person’s striving to God as the highest good:
...From many and great things... which we receive and will receive from God, the greatest and the most generous is our inclination and our kinship to Him. In the realm of intelligible things God is the same as the sun in the realm of sensible. The sun illumines the world visible, while God illumines the world invisible; the former makes bodily sights sunlike, while the latter makes intelligible natures godlike. The sun, while giving a seer to see and a seen to be seen, is itself incomparably more beautiful than what is seen; in the same manner God, while giving a thinker to think and an object of thinking to be thought of, is Himself the climax of everything intelligible, so that every desire finds its end in Him and nowhere else reaches forward.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_7

“To understand this text, one should remember that in the Platonic tradition the way to perfection was perceived as one from multiplicity to simplicity, from duality to unity. Plotinus, in particular, claims that in order to come to the knowledge of the Unity we must become one from many. Contemplation of the One is, according to Plotinus, a total unity with the One which excludes all multiplicity or diversity:
‘There were not two; beholder was one with beheld; it was not a vision compassed but a unity apprehended. The man formed by this mingling with the Supreme...is become the Unity, nothing within him or without inducing any diversity; no movement now, no passion, no desire, once this ascent is achieved... It was a going forth from the self, a simplifying, a reunification, a reach towards contact and at the same time a repose’. The highest stage of the mystical ascent is a state of ecstasy, a total mingling with the One and diffusion in Him. The vision of the highest Intellectual-Principle is connected in Plotinus with the experience of the vision of light emanating from it. One can, of course, point to the disparity between the ecstasy of Plotinus as a diffusion in the impersonal One and the mystical contemplation of Gregory as an encounter with the personal Deity, the Trinity. Yet one cannot but see a startling similarity of language, terminology or imagery between the two authors.”

http://en.hilarion.orthodoxia.org/6_5_8

Asceticism

“The church fathers were also infected by this virus, too enthusiastic about the potential of Greek philosophy as preparation for the gospel, according to Balthasar. For Dionysius and Maximus, despite a formal adherance, ‘the Trinity plays almost no role whatever in the living-out of the Christian life. In fact what Maximus does is to get past the Cappadocians and Nicea and consciously link up with the Origenist schema of Logos theology.’

Closely bound up with this is their version of the incarnation, which despite the Antiochenes and Nestorius, constantly was inclined to a docetic and Eutychian view. The incarnation is consequently thought of as the most extreme point of “egression” of God from himself. The self-emptying back home to the Godhead.…In this schema the incarnation must appear as something provisional and transitional. The resurrection of the flesh, formally confessed and maintained, appears like a disturbance of the systematic lines and usually was subtilized in one or another form.

Hence come ‘its asceticism and mysticism,…a movement of the ascending, step-by-step return of the world potencies into God, unambiguously away from the material to the spiritual. Spiritualization, presented in a thousand different colorations, is the basic tendency of the patristic epoch,’ with early monasticism already providing ‘the peril of this movement.’ ”

- Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union With Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), pp. 206-207, quoting Edward T. Oakes, Pattern of Redemption, pp. 113, 115, 116, 119, 120.

“Yet there are abundant examples also of a quite different emphasis on the ascent from matter to mind, which funded asceticism and monasticism. According to Maximus, for example, ‘deifying’ is equivalent to ‘nonmaterial,’ and sexual propagation itself was a result of the fall. ‘For this reason the Logos of God became man, to set man free from this passion and to restore him to the condition for which he had been created.’ ‘Through “practical philosophy” or the active life of the Christian,’ Pelikan explains, ‘some believers rose from the flesh of Christ to his soul; through contemplation others were enabled to go on from the soul of Christ to the “mind” of Christ; and through mystical union some few were able to move further still, from the mind of Christ to his very Godhead.’ ”

-Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union With Christ (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), pp. 304-305.

“Even the Grecian philosophy was conceived by the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, and the Stoics, not as theoretical knowledge merely, but also as practical wisdom, and frequently joined itself to the most rigid abstemiousness, so that “philosopher” and “ascetic” were interchangeable terms. Several apologists of the second century had by this practical philosophy particularly the Platonic, been led to Christianity; and they on this account retained their simple dress and mode of life. Tertullian congratulates the philosopher’s cloak on having now become the garb of a better philosophy.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.9.104

“The orthodox or catholic asceticism starts from a literal and overstrained construction of certain passages of Scripture. It admits that all nature is the work of God and the object of his love, and asserts the divine origin and destiny of the human body, without which there could, in fact, be no resurrection, and hence no admittance to eternal glory. It therefore aims not to mortify the body, but perfectly to control and sanctify it. For the metaphysical dualism between spirit and matter, it substitutes the ethical conflict between the spirit and the flesh. But in practice it exceeds the simple and sound limits of the Bible, falsely substitutes the bodily appetites and affections, or sensuous nature, as such, for the flesh, or the principle of selfishness, which resides in the soul as well as the body; and thus, with all its horror of heresy, really joins in the Gnostic and Manichaean hatred of the body as the prison of the spirit. This comes out especially in the depreciation of marriage and the family life, that divinely appointed nursery of church and state, and in excessive self-inflictions, to which the apostolic piety affords not the remotest parallel. The heathen Gnostic principle of separation from the world and from the body, as a means of self-redemption, after being theoretically exterminated, stole into the church by a back door of practice, directly in face of the Christian doctrine of the high destiny of the body and perfect redemption through Christ. The Alexandrian fathers furnished a theoretical basis for this asceticism in the distinction of a lower and higher morality, which corresponds to the Platonic or Pythagorean distinction between the life according to nature and the life above nature or the practical and contemplative life… Clement of Alexandria, otherwise remarkable for his elevated ethical views, requires of the sage or gnostic, that he excel the plain Christian not only by higher knowledge, but also by higher, emotionless virtue, and stoical superiority to all bodily conditions; and he inclines to regard the body, with Plato, as the grave and fetter of the soul.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.9.105

“But how little such views agreed with the spirit of that age, we see in Clement’s own stoical and Platonizing conception of the sensual appetites, and still more in his great disciple Origen, who voluntarily disabled himself in his youth, and could not think of the act of generation as anything but polluting.”

- Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church 2.9.107

“As Richardson noted, philosophy meant virginity, and in its earlier usages, did ‘not refer to Christian virginity, but primarily to philosophical celibacy.… The Neo-Platonic philosophy of the times, through its doctrine of the purification of the soul by its liberation from the body or sensuous things, taught celibacy and ascetic practices generally. So Plotinus (d. A.D. 270) practiced and taught to a degree, and Porphyry (d. 301+) more explicitly.’ As Prestige noted, pagan mystics ‘prayed to be delivered from the flesh rather than sin.’ Hellenized Jewish hermits appeared well before Christian hermits lived in the Egyptian desert, and there was a Hellenized Jewish colony of hermits in the Egyptian desert, and there was a Hellenized Jewish colony of hermits near Lake Mareotis. From the second century B.C., the ‘immured ones’ of Serapis lived incarcerated in cells near their god, receiving food through small windows and living and dying in their holes. This pagan asceticism, deeply rooted, infiltrated into Christianity.”

- Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many (Thoburn Press: Fairfax, VA., 1978), p.165.

“In Salvian, regrettably, we find the weakening of the body required, ‘for the health of the body is inimical to the soul.’ The soul is ‘an attribute which is divine,’ and the body ‘an enemy which is of the earth.’ ”

- Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many (Thoburn Press: Fairfax, VA., 1978), p.169.

“Knowledge in us is from the soul, which has its origin from heaven; ignorance from the body, which is from the earth: whence we have something in common with God and with animal creation. Thus, since we are composed of these two elements, the one of which is endowed with light, the other with darkness, a part of knowledge is given to us, and a part of ignorance. Over this bridge, so to speak, we may pass without any danger of falling; for all those who have inclined to either side, either towards the left hand or the right, have fallen.”

-Lactantius, Institutes 3.6

"The Knowledge of God" Series

Here are the links to "The Knowledge of God" series posts:

Scriptural Derivation

Introduction: The Necessity of Theology and Apologetics (1 Peter 3:8-17, “A Ready Defense”)
Part A (Intro.)
Part B (1 Peter 3:8-17)

The Doctrine of God
Part A (Unity, Eternality, and Aseity of God)
Part B (Incomprehensibility, Immutability, and Holiness)
Part C (Creator and Sustainer, Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omnipotence)
Part D (The Lord of History, Incomparability, and the Personal Nature)

Creation and Man
Part A (Genesis 1:1-2:3)
Part B (The Enuma Elish, Genesis 2:4-25, and Genesis 3:1-24)
Part C (Genesis 4-10, and Genesis 11:1-9)
Part D (Christ: The Assault and Triumph Over the Continuity of Being)

The Irrationality of Sin (Romans 1:18-32, “The Exchange”)

The Wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:18-2:16, "The Wisdom of the Wise")
Part A (1 Corinthians 1:18-31)
Part B (1 Corinthians 2:1-16 and Excursus on Various Other Passages)

Pressing the Antithesis (Acts 17:22-34, “The Covenant Lawsuit”)

Philosophical Application

Overcoming the Anti-Metaphysical Bias

A Refutation of Scientific Realism

The Transcendental Argument for God, Part I (God’s Existence)
Part A (Materialism)
Part B (Dualistic Atheism, Vitalistic Atheism, Pan-psychism, Polytheism, Dualism, Monistic Pantheism, Dualistic Pantheism, and Panentheism)
Part C (Platonism, Aristotelianism, Post-Modernism, A Possible Objection, Conclusion, and Appendix: The Problem of Universals)

The Transcendental Argument for God, Part II (The Necessity of Special Revelation)
Part A (Rationalism, Empiricism, Kantianism, and Modern Idealism)
Part B (Logical Positivism, Probability Theory, Conclusion, and Appendix: Which Revelatory Theism?)

The Knowledge of God, TAG, Part C

Platonism¹

Platonism was the philosophy of Plato, an Athenian who was the student of Socrates and the teacher of Aristotle. His philosophy is complicated in its detail, and like every worldview that I have described above, I will keep it short.

In Platonism, there are two separate and autonomous ‘realms’ of existence: the realm of matter and the realm of forms. Matter is considered to be a shapeless, changing, time-bound, and ‘unintelligible’ or chaotic surd. The ‘forms’ or ‘Ideas’ were impersonal, eternal, unchanging, timeless, abstract archetypes of all things and the source of all knowledge. The forms take matter and give it shape and substance, and matter “participates” in the forms. Thus, all dogs are ‘formed’ by the form or ‘Idea’ of ‘dog-ness’. All red apples are formed by the forms of both ‘apple-ness’ and ‘red-ness’.

As to man, Plato taught that man’s soul, being quasi-‘divine’, “participated” in that realm of forms but that it was imprisoned in the mortal body. Thus, the goal of man is to be rid of his evil material body so that he can return to his ‘heavenly’ home.

Platonism was and probably still is the closest attempt at building a successful, autonomous and non-theistic worldview. However, there are a great number of problems with Platonism, a number of which Plato’s student, Aristotle, pointed out:

1. Instantiation: The first and most obvious problem with Platonism is the problem of instantiation. If the forms are impersonal, inactive, abstract things, then how could they cause matter to participate in them? At this point, Plato had to resort to admitted myths, namely a ‘divine’ personal being called the demiurge.

2. Man’s Intellect is Changing: If man’s intellect learns, then it changes. But if it changes, then by Plato’s own standard, it is unintelligible and knowledge is impossible.

3. Man Reasons in Temporal Categories: Related to (2) is the fact that man’s intellect has to reason in sequential and temporal categories, not unchanging and immutable ones. Thus, by Plato’s own standard, man’s reasoning process is incapable of reaching true conclusions.

4. Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: If the only ordering powers in the universe are impersonal forms², then man’s cognitive faculties would have had to come about through an impersonal manner, and thus, the chance that they would be reliable is, at best, inscrutable (see Argument 2. from “Materialism” above).

5. Both Realms Ultimate: If both realms are ultimate, then the forms cannot fully rationalize matter, and so, rationalism would be canceled out by irrationalism. Thus, because there is still some degree of unintelligibility in the sensory world, knowledge of that world is impossible.

6. A Form of Evil?: In Platonism, the forms are morally good, and matter is morally evil. However, the very concept of ‘evil’ requires its existence as a form in the realm of forms. As Greg Bahnsen noted:

“This is embarrassing for Plato because he conceived of the realm of Ideas (the Ideal realm) as that which is good or of positive value. For evil things to be intelligible, there must be an Idea for them, but that awkwardly suggests that such Ideas are in their nature both evil (as to substance) and good (as to form) simultaneously.”³

7. As Many Forms as Particulars: If there is a black cat, then that cat participates in the forms of ‘blackness’ and ‘cat-ness’. However, in order for the two forms to ‘form’ the cat together, those forms must both participate in the combined form of ‘black cat-ness’. But the cat isn’t simply black. It also has eyes, ears, teeth, enamel on those teeth, etc., and those things have a certain size, shape, color, etc. Thus, there must be an ultimate form for which all the more general forms participate in such that it describes the cat down to its very detail. So, for every particular in the universe, there must be a specific form just for it. Not only that, but since those particulars change, the particular-specific forms must change as well. However, if there are as many forms as particulars, and the forms must change with the particulars, then the forms are just as transient and thus unknowable as the matter which participates in them. Because of this, knowledge would be impossible.

8. Infinite Regression of Participation: Again, Greg Bahnsen explains:

“If relationships are intelligible on Plato’s terms, they must be an instance of a general Idea. The relationship between particular things and their Idea is that of “participation,” said Plato. Similarly, each participation must itself participate in an Idea of participation, and that participation must in turn participate in its own Idea of participation, and so on ad infinitum. Thus, as Van Til indicates, on Plato’s own terms a man cannot know any one particular thing without having infinite knowledge.”⁴

9. Unity or Diversity in the Realm of Forms?: Do all forms ultimately participate in each other making the realm of forms one giant form, or are all forms separate from each other with their own realms of existence? If they are separate from one another, then there is no way for them to interact with one another. This would mean that all particulars that participate in different forms⁵ would have their own separate realms of existence with their own ‘truths’. If they are, on the other hand, all ultimately one, then they would simply be, as Van Til put it, a completely colorless mass. It would be a bland Idea that said nothing, an ultimately irrational unity.

Ultimately, Plato had eternal, immutable, abstract thoughts without the necessary eternal, immutable Thinker from which those thoughts can be instantiated perfectly in the contingent universe without confusion. These problems can only be solved by placing the forms as ideas in the mind of the immutable God.⁶

Aristotelianism⁷

Aristotle was the student of Plato and an instructor in the Academy at Athens until Plato’s death. Afterwards, he tutored Alexander the Great and later started his own school in Athens, the Lyceum. Aristotle tried to improve upon Plato’s philosophy by locating the universals in the particulars themselves instead of in a mysterious realm of Ideas. Thus, every object is composed of both an intelligible form as well as individual, transient matter. Knowledge of this object comes through the senses which “draw out” its intelligible form through mental abstraction. While this solves many of the problems with instantiation and the transient nature of man’s intellect in Plato’s philosophy, it fails to solve all the other problems and even creates some.

1. Both Realms Ultimate: Aristotle kept Plato’s idea that universals and matter were both equally ultimate, and as with Platonism, the universals could not make matter fully intelligible. Because of this, all knowledge of contingent things would be impossible (see Argument 5. from “Platonism” above).

2. As Many Universals as Particulars: Aristotle still had the same problem as Platonism of requiring as many universals as particulars (see Argument 7. from “Platonism” above). As Greg Bahnsen notes:

“If one devised a “complex” universal (e.g., the form or Idea of man weighing two hundred pounds, having a snub nose, etc.) for every particular met in one’s experience, there would be as many universals as particulars and no point to distinguishing between universals and particulars. Moreover, the problem would then arise of how the universal of snub-nosedness relates to the complex universal of Socratesness (and to every other universal that incorporates snubnosedness).”⁸

3. Person-Specific Truth: “On Aristotle’s own assumptions, what an individual man knows (i.e., the abstraction, the intelligible species) is a result of the internal activity of his own mind and thus private to himself.”⁹

4. Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: Aristotle still has the same problem as Platonism when it comes to the creation of man’s cognitive faculties (see Argument 4. from “Platonism” above). Although, in Aristotelianism, there is a ‘god’ called the Prime Mover, this ‘god’ simply puts everything in motion¹⁰ and is only aware of his own existence (making him functionally impersonal).

5. Evolution of Truth: Because man must come into existence through an impersonal process (as noted in 4.) and is still subject to that process, it follows that the way that he apprehends and forms beliefs about ‘truth’ will change as the process changes his mind (see Argument 3. from “Materialism” above).

6. Knowledge of Events Impossible: According to Aristotle, knowledge of things is only of their universals through abstraction, and thus, knowledge of individual particulars as they change through time is impossible. Again, Greg Bahnsen:

“Since eternal and unchangeable things are entirely unlike – indeed, contrary to the character of – brute and contingent facts, they would be destructive of the non-Christian’s conception of history as well. This is the dialectical tension inherent in Aristotle’s version of empirical knowledge. If the historical facts are knowable, they are eternal and unchangeable – and thus not historical at all. But if the facts are brute, contingent, and always changing, they are “historical” (in the sense given to that term in unbelieving worldviews), but unknowable.”¹¹

Post-Modernism

Post-Modernism is basically unbelieving man’s recognition that true knowledge through autonomous means is indeed impossible. It accepts naturalism, and as a result, it states that all truth is relative because man is the product of his environment. Thus, any view of reality, or “meta-narrative”, which claims to be objective is simply a belief that is culturally conditioned, and so, there is no reason to believe in it. Post-Modernism is commendable in that it recognizes that truth cannot be apprehended through autonomous means. However, instead of surrendering through repentance to the God of Special Revelation who is Himself the Truth, it denies everyone knowledge by jumping into the abyss of epistemic nihilism. Of course, this too, has its problems:

1. Post-Modernism is Itself a Meta-Narrative: By the post-modernists’ own standard, if all beliefs are socially conditioned, then the belief that all beliefs are socially conditioned is itself socially conditioned, and thus, there is no reason to believe in it! If the post-modernist makes a less sweeping claim that there is no way to know that a meta-narrative is true, then they are still refuting themselves since it amounts to the objective claim that objective knowledge is impossible. This would require them to possess complete, total knowledge of the universe in order to claim that they can’t have any knowledge of the universe! Reductio ad absurdum.

2. Naturalism as Absolute Truth!: Most Post-Modernists are naturalists, and in order to believe in naturalism, Post-Modernists must accept evolutionary theory (in neo-Darwinian or some other naturalistic form) as objective truth. In fact, they must go beyond evolutionary theory and assume metaphysical naturalism as absolute truth! (See the lesson, “Overcoming the Anti-Metaphysical Bias” which goes into more detail.)

And of course, because most Post-Modernists accept naturalism, usually in the form of materialism, the four arguments against materialism mentioned above follow. These, along with (1) would question how the post-modernist came to ‘know’ naturalism is true in the first place:

3. Argument from the Illusion of Thoughts and Self: (see Argument 1. from “Materialism” above.)

4. Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: (see Argument 2. from “Materialism” above.)

5. Argument from ‘Evolving’ Truth: (see Argument 3. from “Materialism” above.)

6. Argument from ‘Person-Specific’ Truth: (see Argument 4. from “Materialism” above.)

A Possible Objection: Is TAG a Skeptical-Threat Argument?

The main objection to the Transcendental Argument for God’s existence has been to accuse it of being a “skeptical-threat” argument. A skeptical-threat argument is basically an argument that throws out the possibility of a hypothetical situation in which human knowledge of the actual world (and the self!) would be impossible. An example of this would Rene Descartes’ Cartesian Demon scenario made popular by the movie, “The Matrix”.

However, this objection, or counter-argument, represents a fundamental misunderstanding of TAG. TAG is a transcendental argument which is, in fact, an *anti*-skeptic argument. In other words, the transcendental argument seeks to root out those pre-conditions for which knowledge would be possible and skepticism would not be warranted.

Not only do they have TAG wrong, they have the accusation facing the wrong direction. It is the unbeliever’s worldview that is a skeptical scenario which leads to epistemic nihilism. As shown above, TAG simply points this out.

Basically, this objection seeks to bar anyone from pointing out to the materialist (or any adherent of any worldview with an impersonal beginning to the universe for that matter) that he is committing the self-excepting fallacy. It seeks to allow him to get away with making the naïve assumption that he is a third-person, objective viewer of the universe. So, not only is this not a real objection to TAG, it is an argument against believing in non-theistic worldviews.

Conclusion

Ultimately, to allow for the possibility of man possessing knowledge¹², the following conditions must be met:

1. There must exist one¹³ personal Being who exists in Himself and created the universe out of nothing.¹⁴

2. This Being must possess complete or analytical knowledge of both Himself as well as the universe.

3. This Being must have created the universe and continue to uphold it in such a way that it is intelligible.

4. This Being must have personally created man in such a way that man’s cognitive faculties are attuned to his surrounding environment and geared toward truth.

In short, this is Theism.¹⁵ In order to be justified in believing in anything, you must first believe in God. As one scholar put it:

“[I]n an order created by a perfect, omnipotent, and totally self-conscious Being, God, truth is both final, specific, and authoritative. God’s word can then be, and is inevitably, infallible, because there is nothing tentative about God himself. Moreover, truth is ultimately personal, because the source, God, is personal, and truth becomes incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ and is communicated to those who believe in Him. Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, as the way, the truth, and the life, is also the Christian principle of continuity. The Christian doctrine, therefore, involved a radical break with the pagan doctrine of the continuity of being and with the doctrine of chaos. It also involved a break with the other aspect of the dialectic, the pagan, rationalistic concept of order. Order is not the work of autonomous and developing gods and men but rather the sovereign decree of the omnipotent God. This faith freed man from the sterile autonomy which made him the helpless prisoner of Fate, of the relentless workings of a blind order.”¹⁶

Appendix: The Problem of Universals

The basic problem which gives rise to the arguments from the ‘Evolution of Truth’ and ‘Person-Specific Truth’ against the worldviews mentioned above is the problem of universal truth. If truth is not universal, that is, constant throughout space and time, then it ‘evolves’ with time or is relative to each person. The problem boils down to the fact that if a worldview does not locate absolute, eternal, changeless truths in the mind of the eternal, personal God, then the apprehension of truth becomes impossible. Here are some quotes from well-known atheists and non-theists who acknowledge this¹⁷:

“Thus the question “Why science?” leads back to the moral problem: Why have morality at all when life, nature, and history are “not moral”? No doubt, those who are truthful in that audacious and ultimate sense that is presupposed by the faith in science thus affirm another world than the world of life, nature, and history; and insofar as they affirm this “other world”—look, must they not by that same token negate its counterpart, this world, our world?—But you will have gathered what I am driving at, namely, that it is still a metaphysical faith upon which our faith in science rests—that even we seekers after knowledge today, we godless anti-metaphysicians, still take our fire, too, from the flame lit by a faith that is thousands of years old, that Christian faith which was also the faith of Plato, that God is the truth, that truth is divine.”¹⁸

“Whereas the quarrel about universals and ontogeny had its meaning and significance within the context of medieval Christian culture, it is an intellectual scandal that some philosophers of mathematics can still discuss whether whole numbers exist or not…No, there are no preordained, predetermined mathematical ‘truths’ that just lie out or up there. Evolutionary thinking teaches us otherwise.”¹⁹

“Recent troubles in the philosophy of mathematics are ultimately a consequence of the banishment of religion from science…Platonism…was tenable with belief in a Divine Mind…The trouble with today’s Platonism is that it gives up God, but wants to keep mathematics a thought in the mind of God…Once mysticism is left behind…Platonism is hard to maintain.”²⁰

“The very idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature – one which the physicist or the poet may have glimpsed – is a remnant of the idea that the world is a divine creation, the work of someone who had something in mind, who Himself spoke some language in which He described His own project. Only if we have some such picture in mind, some picture of the universe as either itself a person or as created by a person can we make sense of the idea that the world has an “intrinsic nature.” ”²¹

For Further Reading/Listening:

http://radioapologia.com/archives/Metaphysics_and_Meaning_by_Russell_Manion.mp3

http://www.home.earthlink.net/~gbl111/knowledge.htm

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1 This worldview is critiqued here not only because it is a worldview in itself but also because some non-Christians, especially atheists, modify their worldviews by adopting Platonism. So, for example, the resulting worldview would be Platonic atheism.

2 Unless, of course, we want to include Plato’s admittedly mythical demiurge.

3 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.325, ftnt. 129.

4 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), pp.326-327, ftnt. 133.

5 Which would be, as per (7), all particulars.

6 And of course, in Christianity, matter is not evil.

7 Like Platonism, some non-Christians, especially atheists, modify their worldviews by adopting Aristotelianism. So, for example, the resulting worldview would be Aristotelian atheism.

8 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.330, ftnt. 143.

9 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.331, ftnt. 145.

10 Thus, he is not involved in the creation of man.

11 Greg Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic: Readings and Analysis (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 1998), p.333, ftnt. 155.

12 i.e., warranted true belief

13 Contra Dualism (see “Dualism” above).

14 That is, the material or spiritual universe cannot be equally eternal and thus ultimate as this Being. There cannot be an equal ultimacy like there is in the worldviews of polytheism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, etc.

15 This, of course, would not eliminate Deism which will be the subject of the next and last lesson, “The Necessity of Special Revelation”.

16 Rushdoony, op. cit., p.143.

17 This is in addition to those cited above in the main lesson.

18 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science.

19 Yehuda Rav, ‘Philosophical Problems in the Light of Evolutionary Epistemology’ in Math Worlds, ed. Sal Restivo (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1993), pp. 81, 100.

20 Reuben Hersch, What is Mathematics, Really? (Oxford, U.K.: The University Press, 1997), pp.42, 122, 135.

21 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 21.

The Knowledge of God, TAG, Part B

Dualistic Atheism

Dualistic atheism still says that there are no deities in the universe, but it does allow for the existence of the soul in order to deal with some of the problems with materialism such as the “Illusion of Thoughts and Self” problem. However, because this view still has an impersonal origin of man, all of the problems with Materialism remain:

1. Argument from the Illusion of Thoughts and Self: Because the soul still has its origin in the impersonal cosmos, the most we can expect out of this soul is impersonality, and thus, there is a still a denial of the self-conscious, cognitive ego (see Argument 1. from “Materialism” above).

2. Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: (see Argument 2. from “Materialism” above.)

3. Argument from ‘Evolving’ Truth: (see Argument 3. from “Materialism” above.)

4. Argument from ‘Person-Specific’ Truth: ‘Truth’ would still be relative to each individual soul since there would be no common, personal origin of these souls but an impersonal one instead (see Argument 4. from “Materialism” above).

Vitalistic Atheism

Vitalism, or rather neo-Vitalism, is the belief that the material cosmos has an unseen, inherent property, or “life force”, which causes matter to give rise to life. A small minority of scientists within the scientific community of the early twentieth century played around with this belief to deal with the “origin of life” problem. However, it still cannot avoid the problems associated with an impersonal universe as the origin of life and cognitive faculties:

1. Argument from the Illusion of Thoughts and Self: Because the ‘mind’ (which is still nothing more than matter) came from an impersonal cosmos, and thus, could only be as personal as the cosmos that gave rise to it, then it too would still be impersonal (see Argument 1. from “Materialism” above).

2. Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: Because the universe which gave rise to the cognitive faculties of man was impersonal, and an impersonal force is not concerned with truth (since truth is an abstract idea of a mind), then it follows that the reliability of man’s cognitive faculties is unreliable or inscrutable at best (see Argument 2. from “Materialism” above).

3. Argument from ‘Evolving’ Truth: (See Argument 3. from “Materialism” above. Of course, this would apply only if there was some element of non-teleological evolution involved as well.)

4. Argument from ‘Person-Specific’ Truth: ‘Truth’ would still be relative to each individual brain since there would be no common, personal origin of these brains but an impersonal one instead (see Argument 4. from “Materialism” above).

A Vitalistic Atheism that is also dualistic (i.e., including the soul) would still have all of these problems since, as I showed above, adding a soul but keeping its origin (as well as that of the body and its cognitive faculties) in the impersonal cosmos does nothing to solve these problems. (See the arguments against both “Dualistic Atheism” as well as “Vitalistic Atheism” above.)

Pan-psychism

Pan-psychism is a form of naturalism that attributes both a mental as well as a material aspect to all things. Even atoms have a degree of consciousness.¹ Like Dualistic Atheism, this is an attempt to avoid the “Illusion of Thoughts and Self” argument that plagues materialism. However, because Pan-psychism’s cosmogony has an impersonal origin of the universe, man, and his soul, then it still suffers from the problems with man’s non-teleologically formed material body and mind interacting with the material universe.

1. Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: (see Argument 2. from “Materialism” above.)

2. Argument from ‘Evolving’ Truth: (see Argument 3. from “Materialism” above.)

3. Argument from ‘Person-Specific’ Truth: ‘Truth’ would still be relative to each individual mind since there would be no common², personal origin of those minds (see Argument 4. from “Materialism” above).

Polytheism

Polytheism is the belief that there exist many separate finite deities that came into existence in the distant past from the chaotic void or substance.³ To quote one scholar:

“All non-biblical cosmogonies, according to Keil and Delitzsch, ‘are either hylozoistical, deducing the origin of life and living beings from some primeval matter; or pantheistical, regarding the whole world as emanating from a common divine substance; or mythological, tracing both gods and men to a chaos or world-egg. They do not even rise to the notion of a creation, much less to the knowledge of an Almighty God, as the Creator of all things.’ The consequences of this non-biblical perspective are far-reaching. In this concept, being is evolving and in process. Because being is in process, and being is seen as one and undivided, truth itself is tentative, evolving, and without finality. Since being has not yet assumed a final form, since the universe is in process and is continually changing. A new movement or “leap in being” can give man a new truth and render yesterday’s truth a lie.”⁴

Also inherent in this worldview is the dialectic between the two eternal, impersonal principles of chaos and order causing the events of the cosmos. Thus, history proceeds in an impersonal fashion without end due to these principles of chaos and order ‘balancing’ each other out. Because of this, polytheism suffers from all of the same problems as materialism, only instead of the ground of existence being the material cosmos, it is the impersonal (and irrational!) chaotic void.

1. Argument from the Illusion of Thoughts and Self: If everything, including the soul arose from the chaotic void, its thoughts and even the self-conscious ego would be an illusion. It would be nothing more than the result of the outworking of the two impersonal cosmic principles of order and chaos (see Argument 1. from “Materialism” above).

2. Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: Although most polytheistic systems say that the gods or some personal agent created man, this only takes the problem one step backward since those very gods were themselves formed from an impersonal, non-teleological process (see Argument 2. from “Materialism” above).

3. Argument from ‘Evolving’ Truth: “Because being is in process, and being is seen as one and undivided, truth itself is tentative, evolving, and without finality.”⁵ (see Argument 3. from “Materialism” above.)

4. Argument from ‘Person-Specific’ Truth: Because each soul derives its identity and its relation to the ‘outer’ (i.e. material) world individually from the impersonal, chaotic cosmos, ‘truth’ would be relative to each individual soul (see Argument 4. from “Materialism” above).

Dualism

By dualism, I mean a form of polytheism in which there are two equal and opposing deities that fight over the universe. The form of Zoroastrianism under the Sassanid dynasty would be a kind of dualism. Because the two deities share space and interact in the universe, the universe must be more ultimate than they. Thus, either the impersonal universe gives birth to these deities, or there is some aspect of the universe which they cannot control (not to mention the two deities battling for control over it). Under the first scheme, there are all the problems associated with polytheism. As for the second, it would suffer from all the problems associated with metaphysical dualisms such as Platonism (see “Platonism” below).

Monistic Pantheism

Monistic Pantheism, or simply Monism, is the belief that everything is ultimately one and without division, and thus, all divisions are ultimately illusory. This view usually involves reincarnation. Buddhism and Hinduism are examples of this worldview (though they have serious differences).

1. Argument from the Illusion of Thoughts and Self: Because everything is an illusion, then you and your thoughts are also an illusion. Of course, this means that the belief that your thoughts are illusory is also an illusion, and this results in an infinite regress of illusory beliefs. Second, any supposed reason to believe in monistic pantheism is also non-existent since it too would be illusory. Finally, the belief in monistic pantheism would be an illusion as well, and thus, the belief completely defeats itself. Reductio ad absurdum.

2. Argument from Truth: Since there are no differences, there is no contrast between ‘truth’ and ‘falsehood’:

“Panikkar maintains that Indians cannot really accept the principle that might be called the backbone of western philosophical thinking: the principle of contradiction. For Indians, Panikkar insists, things can indeed ‘be’ and ‘not be’ at the same time. …This seems to be close to the Taoist idea of yang and yin, where all things participate in the reality of their opposites: light and darkness, male and female, good and evil, flesh and spirit, and so forth.”⁶

“There are those who argue that these Eastern patterns of thought are inviolable and Christianity must adapt to them completely. Jung Young Lee has argued that in Asia we must get out of the habit of thinking in terms of either/or; we must be able to think of both/and. Change, he believes, may be the key to the universe, and ambiguity and differences merely the reflection of aspects of reality. In traditional Chinese thought, yin and yang are believed to be complimentary modes of being….He seeks to apply this to his view of God.”⁷

“Zen is one thing and logic another. When we fail to make this distinction and expect Zen to give us something logically consistent and intellectually illuminating, we altogether misinterpret the signification of Zen.”⁸

If there is no difference between ‘truth’ and ‘falsehood’, then everything and its opposite would be both ‘true’ and ‘false’ in the same sense at the same time. To make it even more absurd, this belief destroys itself: if everything is both ‘true’ and ‘false’ in the same sense at the same time, then that very belief would be false at the same time as being true! Thus, there is no reason to believe in this view (as opposed to not believing in it) since every reason to believe in it also presents us with a reason not to believe in it in the same sense and at the same time. Thus, knowledge (including the belief that monistic pantheism is true) would be impossible. Reductio ad absurdum.

3. Argument Against Reincarnation: If everything is ultimately one and thus, an illusion, then man is also an illusion. That means that all of his experiences and actions of good and evil are illusions as well making the possibility (not to mention the very idea!) of reincarnation impossible. Furthermore, if all is one, then everything and its opposite are the same as well. This means that good and evil are simply two sides of one coin. Ravi Zacharias explains a story from the Bhagavad-Gita:

“There is a classic passage in the Bhagavad-Gita in which Krishna counsels young Arjuna, who is on the battlefield, facing the possibility of killing his own half-brothers. He struggles and cannot bring himself to do this. Krishna, who comes as his chariot-driver, talks to him about his duty. This was his duty, to fulfill his caste’s responsibility as a warrior. This is the way life moves on. But he told Arjuna not to fear to do his duty, for all good and evil are fused in the one ultimate reality, Brahman. In Brahman, says Krishna, the distinction breaks down. That which appears evil is only the lesser reality. In the end, all life, all good, all evil, flow from God and back to Him or it.”⁹

Thus, reincarnation is made impossible since there can be no ascending the scale of being for doing right or descending for doing wrong since all actions, whether good or evil, are both good and evil at the same time and in the same way. Reductio ad absurdum.

Dualistic Pantheism

This ontology posits the existence of both matter, spirit, and an impersonal power that controls the history of the material and spiritual universe. This would be your “Star Wars” type world (though I don’t know how many real religions like this are out there). In this worldview, like the chaos/order dialectic of paganism, the impersonal power would cause the events of history to fatalistically go back and forth between chaos and order, good and evil.¹⁰ Thus, this worldview would have all the same problems as materialism except that the hard determinism would come about through the impersonal force rather than through matter and physical laws.

1. Argument from the Illusion of Thoughts and Self: Because of this fatalism, man and his thoughts, being a part of the universe controlled by this impersonal force, would simply be a puppet to the swinging pendulum of history controlled by the impersonal power. Man would simply think and believe whatever the impersonal power needed him to believe in order to bring the cosmos back into “balance”. Man, as a personal ego, would technically not exist since he is simply the outworking of the impersonal force (see Argument 1. from “Materialism” above).

2. Argument from the Reliability of Cognitive Faculties: Like materialism, man and his cognitive faculties would come into existence as the result of an impersonal process moved along by this impersonal power (see Argument 2. from “Materialism” above).

3. Argument from ‘Evolving’ Truth: Because man would come about via some form of evolution, ‘truth’ would ‘evolve’ (see Argument 3. from “Materialism” above).

4. Argument from ‘Person-Specific’ Truth: Corollary to (1) is the logical conclusion that ‘truth’ would be relative to each individual (see Argument 4. from “Materialism” above).

Panentheism

This is the worldview in which the material universe is God’s ‘body’. This could take a number of forms. The first is one in which ‘God’ is not a personal being and would be the same as the “Dualistic Pantheism” mentioned above. But the most popular form of panentheism would be the view that ‘God’ is a personal but changing being that evolves along with the rest of the material cosmos (since it is his ‘body’). Thus, his cognitive faculties would be unreliable, and what he believes to be ‘truth’ would evolve with him. Likewise, it is usually held by those of this view that this ‘God’ had nothing to do with the emergence of man, and so, man came about as the result of a non-teleological process of evolution.¹¹ This view would have the same problems as “Dualistic Atheism’s” enumerated above.

Another (unpopular) form taken would be to give priority to this ‘God’s’ spiritual nature over his material one. This would allow this ‘God’ to be an unchanging being that could make man with properly functioning cognitive faculties. However, that view would simply be a form of theism and somewhat similar in terms of the affect on epistemology (but still vastly different in many other important ways) to Christian theism’s doctrine of God’s omnipresence.

In summary, if this God is impersonal or personal but evolves or learns of himself¹², or if he had nothing to do with the emergence of man, then man is doomed to epistemic nihilism for the above mentioned reasons. The opposite of that view would simply be a form of theism.

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1 There are typically two views of pan-psychism. The first says that each entity down to the very particle has its own consciousness. The second says that the entire material universe possesses a collective consciousness like an organism. I will be dealing with the first view under this heading. The second view can range from Dualistic Pantheism to Panentheism, and thus, it would be susceptible to any of the arguments I list under those headings below.

2 Since each thing down to the very atom has its own consciousness which is limited in scope, knowledge of the universe would be specific to the individual composed of those individual atoms. If, however, one argues that the material world has a collective consciousness, then this view would reduce to something akin to panentheism (see below).

3 I am not dealing, here, with another polytheistic view like that of Tolkien’s Middle Earth which says that the gods were created by an eternal, self-existing Deity. This would actually be a form of Theism. In fact, there is a slight similarity in Scripture to this since God did create other ‘mighty beings’, namely the angels.

4 Rousas John Rushdoony, The One and the Many (Thoburn Press: Fairfax, VA., 1978), p.143.

5 ibid.

6 Stephen B. Bevans, Models of Contextual Theology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1992), p.5.

7 William A. Dyrness, Learning about Theology form the Third World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1990), pp.140-141.

8 D.T. Suzuki

9 Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message (Nashville: W Publishing, 2000), p.119.

10 This would not be the same as Divine Providence since, in the Christian doctrine, God causes all things to come to pass through both secondary as well as primary means. Thus, while both of these views are deterministic, the Christian Providential view would be a form of compatibilism which allows for free, human actions but the pantheistic view cannot avoid being a form of hard determinism.

11 One could hold to a view in which this ‘God’ created man, but it would still suffer from arguments 2 and 3 since, like polytheism, it would place the problem one step backward to the ‘God’ who is himself evolving.

12 That is, if this ‘God’ either does not have complete knowledge of himself or the material universe (which, in this case, would also be part of him), then it follows that there could be some remnant of unknown potentiality, whether in his own spiritual being or the material universe, which would affect his ability to know and create humans with properly functioning cognitive faculties attuned to man’s environment.