Below is a very helpful comment left by an astute reader of the post, "Haworth 10 Ways #1: The Cosmological Argument". In pithy, clear terms this comment states the conumdrum with which we set out: logic and reason, in and of themselves and unaided by divine revelation, can lead us to a god who is a conceptual idol and not the living God of Scripture. God is the Triune God who has revealed himself in the acts recorded in the Bible and the words recorded there which interpet these acts for us. This God is so different to the god who is merely the "cause" of the universe.
But, of course, (and I never thought of this as I am more-or-less philosophically illiterate) the concept of causality we begin with will dictate the god we end up positing as the creator of the universe. See the inventory below: Aristotle, Plato, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Aquinas...Hinduism - each begin with a different conception of causality which inevitably moulds their conception of deity in radical ways. None of the definitions of God these philsophers/theologian/elephantine religious culture offer is a conception that accurately squares with, or reflects fully, the God revealed in the Book of Scripture. This, as noted below, is not surprising: in each case, a particular conception of causality moulds a particular conception of deity. For example, for Marx, causality is the strictly physical motion among material bodies. This conception of causality is purely materialist; God, therefore, is a mere figment of the human imagination.
We must recognise that even the most sophisticated emloyment of reason and logic will only in the end demonstrate the reasonableness of belief as opposed to the reality of the Triune God. However, to demonstrate the reasonableness of belief in God does perhaps go some way to open the mind of the unbeliever. Apologetics and rational argument, in that sense, are very much preliminaries; challenging the mind-set of scepticism in a bid to prepare the ground for a more open-minded hearing of the gospel.
Read on...
Hi Jeremy,
I think that the cosmological argument (and the other traditional proofs) are an encouragement to the faith of believers. But if the syllogism looks something like this:
If there is causality, God exists
There is causality
Therefore, God exists
then an unbeliever is already starting with an idea of "God" that is something other than the Triune God of Scripture, and therefore, his or her definition of "causality" will be different, too. Consider what the following people believed about "God":
Aristotle: "impersonal, unmoved mover" or "thought thinking itself"
Plato: "demiurge who made the world according to metaphysically ultimate forms"
Hume: "unprovable hypothesis"
Kant: "hypothetical and rationally unknown lawgiver"
Hegel: "combination of temporal and eternal reality in process"
Marx: "figment of the human imagination"
Hinudism: "sum total of reality"
Aquinas: "first cause or unmoved mover"
In light of those definitions, it should not be surprising what those men believed about causality:
Aristotle: "impersonal principle of explanation"
Plato: "principle which yields opinion and not knowledge"
Hume: "mental habit"
Kant: "constitutive synthetic a priori category of the understanding"
Hegel: "provisional category in the development of the Absolute"
Marx: "strictly physical interaction among material bodies"
Hinduism: "illusion"
Aquinas: "principle that objects move when acted upon by another"
I would think that the Christian theist would want to say that "God" is the Triune God who has revealed himself in redemptive deeds in history and interpretive words in the Bible. Therefore, "causality" is the providential outworking of His eternal decree.But you'll notice in the video in the next post, that the gentleman from Western Michigan doesn't have a category for God being the cause of the universe. He wants some sort of natural explanation precisely because he is starting with a something like a Marxian definition of "God." I don't even think William Lane Craig would be comfortable with the definition of causality I've given above. But that is because he is starting with some "divine" attributes that he wants to start with, not taking into account the totality of what God has revealed about himself.
Hmm. Well said.
No comments:
Post a Comment