The God of the Bible versus the God of the Greek philosophers
Over this series we have been looking for a sufficient reason to account for reality as it is. In the last for sessions we have looked at four possibilities for one could look at reality. We came to see that it was not illusion and it was not that reality is self-created. Of the last two on deals with a self existent eternal “something” and the other deal with a self existent eternal “transcendent being.” In philosophical terms transcendence means a higher order of being. We left this last session with the question the notion if we come to this understanding it is a long way from the ‘personal being’ we encounter in Judeo-Christian scripture. All we have been able to establish so far is something akin to the ‘God of the philosophers.’ An abstract concept of a ‘seeb.’ That leaves us with two serious problems that we have to look at briefly. 1. The differences of relationship between what we have established so far and what is promoted in the ‘God of the Bible’ and 2. How do we get from a seeb to a personal God. We will start with the first one.
In the early church Tertullian was noted for saying, “I believe because it is absurd.” Tertullian at that point was trying to show the radical difference between the God of the Bible and Greek philosophy. He raised a rhetorical thought of ‘what does Jerusalem have to do with Athens‘? and his rhetorical answer -- Nothing. There is no real point of contact between the God of Israel and the vagueness of principles found in the Greek philosophers. So this objection to dealing with this question was held by early Christians but also in 19th century with the liberal school of theology. And certain of these schools objected and said that early Christians were corrupted by this intrusion of Greek philosophy. You can go back to the council of Nicea where the Trinity was defined. Stating, as they did in Nicea, that God was One in essence and Three in person were using categories to define the Trinity and the two natures of Christ, the term Homo-usesious, was laden with Greek concepts. These 19th century liberal’s said we should break free of the strangle hold of this philosophy that was apart of the theologians of that time period. This view has made enormous inroads into the contemporary evangelical church of today where we have this new sense of the rejection of systematic philosophy because it seeks to have a rational coherent understanding of the whole scope of scripture. Today’s churches fight against the same concepts as they did in general. Because they say the systematician imposes a philosophical thread on the bible to fit into a preconceived system that is borrowed, they say, from the Greeks and their philosophy.
Sproul, with a smile, says that he is a systematic professor and he ‘represents’ that remark. He here’s these criticisms all the time. But Sproul says that his task is never to impose a foreign system on the scripture and then force the scripture to fit its form. But rather what true systematizing try to do is to look at the whole scope of scripture and have a coherent understanding by finding the system of thought that IS in the Bible. That does presuppose that when God speaks He speaks coherently. It presupposes that God has given us minds that can understand coherently what He gives. In rational measures and not absurd ways of thinking which are disjointed and irrational. Yet this very mainline anti-systemic concept today is linked to this antipathy that people have to Greek philosophy.
God the Holy Spirit chose the Greek language
This is a must to understand: that for better or worse, God the Holy Spirit chose the Greek language to have the New Testament written. And as long as that is the language then it will always be with us. In terms of our understanding the gospel. It doesn’t mean that you interpret the scripture, the new testament in the Greek language, in terms of Greek philosophy. No, the concepts developed come from the Hebrew world. They were simply communicated through the Greek language. It is true that the Hebrew language tends to be more ‘imaginative, more pictorial and graphic than abstractions, it would be a mistake and an insult to the Jews to say that the Greeks were coherent but the Hebrew’s were incoherent. The Hebrew mind was rational and sought to be coherent. The mind was of supreme importance to the Jewish understanding of the things of God right along with the Greeks.
A. Having conveyed this we are still left with the problem of concepts in Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, and the ideas put forth in Christianity. Where Aristotle defined God as 1. thought -- word and thinking was his cause. 2. He defined God as the unmoved mover or the first cause of all things. 3. He says that God doesn’t voluntarily create but creates out of necessity but remains completely remote and impersonal and removes Himself from his creation. 4. All human beings, by nature, desire to know. 5. All human beings, by nature, desire to know.
B. While the Bible and Christianity describe God, even in the first sentence of the Bible, 1. as one who acts to create all that is. 2. He acts in a reasonable propulsive manner to bring things to pass. 3. That which is created is sustained and committed to. 4. It is a story of creation and redemption. Is intimately involved with the affairs of history. 5. He is committed to managing the universe.
There are then, sharp differences in these views of God beyond the ‘first mover‘ similarity.
There is also the concept in philosophy of the Logos referred to as the ‘word or logic.’ For Greeks it functions as an abstract idea that is necessary for giving order and harmony to the world. Where as in biblical Christianity the Logos is the incarnate word of God and a person. A great difference in regards to the pre-Socratic’s and their representation.
So when R.C. Sproul hears Christians object to this type of apologetic in that it only gets us to a “first cause.” To the front door of Lyceum School of Aristotle where this eternal self existent being is demonstrated. Which those who object will say that all you have done is find Aristotle’s God. And on this regard of this assumption agreement will reject the process of apologetics that Sproul has been laboring on. So Sproul has to remind people that one of the first principles in the ‘doctrine of God’ in systematic theology is the “incomprehensibility of God.” Which means that none of us, either now or at anytime, will have an exhaustive and comprehensive knowledge of God. Being that God is infinite in His excellence and we are finite we will not be able to have limitless understanding.
The case against the construction of a self existent eternal being is false and the conclusions are false because it is not the compete picture; but it is just a partial picture. The question Sproul asks is do we have to have a comprehensive understanding of God to have ‘true’ understanding of God?
So you go back to our 1st principle and do you have to have total comprehension? For we certainly don’t have or can have full comprehension. Partial knowledge doesn’t mean that our principle is not true. It is true as far as it goes. We grant that what we have achieved so far in our reasoning process is that we have got to a seeb and that is part of what the Bible reveals to us about the character of God. It discloses that He is eternal and self existent and the one responsible for what is made. This position is the same as the biblical notion of who God is.
At this point, where we have come to in stating this claim, a man like Aristotle would say - amen. Detractors, is Aristotle wrong in his reasoning? Of course not. Just because he is a 2,400 year old pagan philosopher and agrees that there has to be a seeb does not vitiate the truth of the Christian claim of the same insistence. The fact is he agrees with the claim. Therefore, the both agree that there has to be a first cause, that first cause has to be self existent, that first cause has to be pure actuality, that first cause is caused by pure being, the first cause has to be eternal. So thank you very much Aristotle we agree with you, you agree with us on the cardinal point - which is only a partial point - of our knowledge of God. But this partial point is crucial to our knowledge of God because, ladies and gentlemen, precisely this aspect of Christian understanding of God that is constantly under attack by atheistic systems of thought. Where atheists attack Christianity is at the point of Creation or at the point of a Self existent eternal Being. So Sproul thinks there is great value in establishing the faith as well as the reason that demonstrates for the logical necessity for having a seeb. So the battle field over which the doctrine of God wages is one where the Christian comes out victorious rather surrendering so much of his truth claims.
We are not playing philosophical games
In summation, Sproul is granting that getting to the conclusion that there must be a seeb does not get us to a full understanding of God or even as much as the God of the Bible supplies. But what this does is under gird the most crucial aspect of the doctrine of God that the bible does reveal. The bible reveals, along with our agreement with Aristotle, that there is a self existent eternal being. We are not doing this for philosophical gamesmanship we are defending crucial aspects of the biblical doctrine of God, to this point.
How do you go from abstraction to personality?
The question then is how do you get from a self existent eternal ‘something’ to a personal God. Well that will take a more complex and difficult investigation. One of the most famous arguments for the existence of God is the ‘teleological’ argument.' From ‘telos’ for end, puporse or goal. The argument from design. We should remember that 2 of the greatest skeptics in history were Immanuel Kant and David Hume and they both thought that the strongest argument from history was found in the Teleologic argument. Kant said that he couldn’t get past 2 things, “the starry skies above and the moral law within.” Kant was not only a philosopher but a scientist. He was overwhelmed by the manifest evidence of design in the world of nature. It is extremely hard to speak of design in nature without begging the question of a ‘designer.’ Saying, “can you have design unintentionally.” A contemporary philosopher Anthony Flew has a story about explorers going through uncharted territory and cutting their way around dense brush and rainforest and came to this opening with a beautifully manicured garden. Rows and rows laid out in perfect order and symmetry. They said there must be a gardener somewhere and when they couldn’t find one they speculated that he was gone or invisible or something. Flew says that what is the difference in a God and no God that can be found. Well, the obvious answer is the garden. The story didn’t account from the garden that it had design. All enlightenment philosophers couldn’t get away from this argument and went from Christian theism to Deism. Because they couldn’t naysay the implications of design. For they say it ran like a perfectly constructed clock. So whether it is the eye or anything else, the designs had intelligence purpose to them and couldn’t find an answer for to cover their thinking. Going back to Aristotle where he said, ‘ the single most important characteristic for personality is ‘intention.’ Something to act with intention needs a mind and a faculty of choosing what the mind plants. The essence of intention is found in mind and will.’ Impersonal forces have no mind or will and cannot design anything. When we try to reduce God to a mere force of unintelligence and unintentional is to escape judgment of the indictment and try to find an escape hatch.
You cannot have purpose accidentally. You cannot have intelligence from unintelligence. Impersonality cannot produce personality. For that would be unintentional intention. Which bears to our possibility of Self Creation which we found to be absurd. So as we look at these things more closely and if we find design in the universe then this self existent eternal something that is responsible for generating the universe must be a self existent eternal ‘intelligent’ being. And if intelligent, then, personal. And if personal, then, we have moved away from abstraction and landed squarely on the pages of Sacred scripture.
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