Metaphysics, Ontology, Philosophical Theology

The Being of God and Christian Metaphysics

by Dave Seng

What cannot be measured by physicists does not exist in reality. – Stephen Hawking

No scientific discipline can hope to equal the seriousness of metaphysics. Philosophy can never be measured by the yardstick of the idea of science. – Martin Heidegger

One cannot escape the fact of being. Being, or existence, is the first thing we experience when we wake up. Being is encountered whenever we change the tire on a bicycle. Being is what we experience when driving our children to school, when we ask about the diameter of the sun, or inquire about the difference between perception and reality, or wonder about the kind of being that numbers have but numerals do not. We experience the significance of being whenever we encounter its first principles such as the law of noncontradiction, the principle of predictive uniformity, or the principle of causality. Try as we might, we can not escape the reality of being. Nor does it do much good to deny reality. Descartes’s doctrine of the Cogito demonstrates that one would have to exist in order to deny existence. Even if one were a complete solipsist or if even only one sentence existed in the universe, the fact of that one particular thing, mercilessly points us to the reality of being. Before we get to science, law, or economics, there is an ontological priority to being.

Metaphysics is the philosophical field that studies the ultimate ground of being. The task of the metaphysician is to explain the principles which ground all of reality and make it possible in the first place. Aristotle called metaphysics, “first philosophy” because it examines the first or most basic principles of reality. Metaphysics makes the study of being its central concern. It is not concerned with the particulars of science, law, or economics, but rather seeks to understand the first principles which make those fields possible and seeks to understand them in the light of all existence. The question of being is not one of genera or species, because being incorporates all other particulars. It is a singular question and cannot be divided into many. Science, law, or economics can give us understanding in a particular realm or field, but the metaphysician seeks to understand these things as a whole. As Martin Heidegger explains, “Every relationship to what-is thus bears witness to a knowledge of Being” (What is Metaphysics, 307). Being is the precondition for the particular sciences and yet points us back to Being. In this sense, metaphysics and the study of being point us to the wholeness of reality. The particular sciences can only provide portions of reality.

Science itself is grounded on philosophical and theological principles. One of the greatest metaphysicians and philosophers of science in the twentieth century, Alfred North Whitehead explains,

Induction presupposes metaphysics. In other words, it rests upon an antecedent rationalism. You cannot have a rational justification for your appeal to history until your metaphysics has assured you that there is a history to appeal to; and likewise your conjectures as to the future presuppose some basis of knowledge that there is a future already subjected to some determinations. – (Science and the Modern World, 156)

Since it is impossible to deny being, and given the fact that we live and move and have our being in existence, how do we understand it? Aristotle and Aquinas (among others) believe that the law of noncontradiction (nothing can both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect) is the first law of reality or being. Why is the law of noncontradiction the first principle of reality? It is impossible to deny existence and at the same time affirm it. Something either exists or it does not, being either is or is not. Given that we have the same meaning for our terms, if something does exist, then the laws of identity (a thing is what it is; a true proposition is true) and excluded middle (something either is or is not, with nothing in between; a proposition is either true or false) logically follow. The laws of logic are simply properties of being. Because the structure of reality does not change, these laws are just as true when Aristotle discovered them as they are today. In the same way, this is why the principle of uniformity and the principle of causality are true – they correspond to the structure of being. One may not have to be a Christian theist, however, to understand and accept the ultimate laws and principles of reality, although it would make it difficult to defend materialism because these principles are not of a physical or material kind.

Since the majority of metaphysicians were either theists of some sort (Xenophon, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero) or specifically Christian theists (St. Paul, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, Aquinas, Dante, Descartes, Pascal, Leibniz, Berkeley, Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, T. S. Eliot, not to mention Jesus of Nazareth), in what sense is it possible to speak of a Christian metaphysics?

Metaphysics, which explores the ultimate principles, axioms, and foundation of all reality and seeks to understand all existence in a unified whole, is not a specifically Christian endeavor. The earliest philosophers, the Pre-Socratics (Thales, Parmenides, Heraclitus among others), explored these questions usually in the context of the problem of the one and many. In addition, the use of reason, which philosophy and metaphysics depend on is not unique to Christianity. The fields of mathematics and grammar are shared by everyone. Our shared humanity and common sense give us the intelligibility of the universe, language, science, and culture. The laws of logic and structure of reality are the same for everyone at all times and places. To speak of a “Christian mathematics,” or “Christian grammar,” or “Christian engineering,” does not make much sense, using a strict definition of philosophy and metaphysics.

In a broad sense, I think it is possible, reasonable, and good to speak of a Christian metaphysics. Philosophy is not done as an abstraction, in the strict sense (simply understanding the right use of reason). It is explored by people who utilize the basic laws and principles of reality and seek to understand existence as a complete system. People choose the questions they want to explore and apply a good amount of thinking to them. That is why we can speak of Marxist philosophy, Feminist philosophy, or Post Modern philosophy in general. Different social groups engage in the great questions of humanity as well, and that is why we can talk about Muslim philosophy, Jewish philosophy, or Hindu philosophy. Perennial questions and those who are curious about them and think deeply about them often reflect their historical context. That is why it makes sense to identify Christian philosophy in the middle ages contrasted with Muslim or Jewish thought. It is why we can speak of the Christian philosophy of St. Augustine contrasted with various Roman philosophies such as Stoicism or Manicheanism. In a very general and broad sense, Christian philosophy is that philosophy which understands that reason, correctly used, is a support and handmaid to theology. Clement of Alexandria is correct in this regard–reason everywhere supports the Christian faith.

To the degree that Christian philosophy reflects truth, it will reflect truth that is common to all, based on the common sense of mankind. That is, it will take Being, or existence, as its starting point as did the first metaphysicians, the pre-Socratics. Being is absolutely undeniable. Christians take as their starting point that God is being. The definition of God as Being comes from the Scriptures. One of the most significant verses in the Bible for Christian metaphysics is Exodus 3:14 – God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” Another correct translation reads: “I am who causes to be” That is, God is Being in itself. It is God who causes to be. This is also the language St. Paul uses in Acts 17. He is the source and ground of all reality. God is existence itself. Jesus himself confirms this concept in Mark 14:62, when Jesus was asked whether or not he was the son of God, he said, “I am” and John 9:5 “I am the light of the world.” The “I am” of Jesus and the implication it has for Christian metaphysics is important. Being, in the absolute sense, is God. We cannot utter a sentence or think a thought without reference to reality or being. We cannot correctly write a sentence without the verb “to be.” The laws of logic (logos) come from God as the ground of Being. One implication for Christian philosophy, apologetics, and metaphysics is that we must understand that God is ontologically prior to any miracle or discussion of the deity of Christ. Why? Because it is pointless to argue from miracle unless we understand that there is a God who can do miracles. Likewise, it makes little sense to argue that Jesus is the Son of God unless we have a prior understanding of who God is. This is why the great creeds of our faith, our confessional statements, and the Lutheran Scholastics all begin with the concept of God. God’s self-disclosure to Moses means we begin with metaphysics and understand that God is the ultimate source of all reality and history. Why is Christian metaphysics important? We cannot understand what evil is unless we have a prior understanding of what good is. In the same way, we cannot understand who we are and the nature of grace and salvation without the ontological priority of God’s existence.

Next time, I’ll discuss Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics as theology (or, at least, the relationship between the two).

For further reading:

Daniel J. Sullivan, An Introduction to Philosophy: Perennial Principles of the Classical Realist Tradition, (TAN Books, 2009).

Intellectual History, Metaphysics, Philosophy

A Very Short History of Being

by Dave Seng

Descartes reduced the notion of Being through his skepticism of essences and final cause. Kant reduced the notion of Being by conflating existence with Being. Sartre got the idea of Being completely backward. Why? Because things and people have an essential nature simply because of what they are.  Deny this truth as much as you want but reality has its own intractable way of being.

Intellectual History, Metaphysics, Philosophy

Aristotle’s Actual Answer to Plato

by Dave Seng

Science can never dispense with Reality in the metaphysical sense of the term. — Max Planck

In many introductions to philosophy courses and textbooks, it is typical, to begin with Plato and Aristotle. The textbook or instructor always begins by comparing and contrasting the differences each thinker had regarding the ultimate nature of reality. This is done for good reason and is important for a foundational understanding of philosophy itself. I have covered these differences in my writings (here and here). It is correct to say that Plato believed in an ultimate transcendent realm of the forms (or universals, or Ideas), while Aristotle, his student, stressed the concrete nature of reality itself and the fact that forms and essences are in the objects themselves. In this sense, concrete means “grown together” or the “coalition of particular things”. For Aristotle, all physical objects have an essential nature to them, which makes them the kind of thing they are. “How else would we understand what a horse is without the nature of the horse inherently existing in the horse itself”? Aristotle would ask. A dead horse is a corpse, not a horse. Horseness is the formal constituent element of the horse just as humanity is the shared essential nature of President Trump, Queen Elizabeth II, and Dave Mustaine. Of course, essence is not limited to living things but that is a topic for another post. The broader point is that being is common to all things and I think that is Aristotle’s real answer to Plato. It is Plato’s misplaced universal. It is an answer which goes beyond the common textbook discussion.

Aristotle’s actual answer to Plato rests in a passage from his Metaphysics, Book VI, chapter 1. In his quest for the universal and the unity of being, Aristotle explains that the concept of being goes beyond mere genus and nature:

One might raise the question whether first philosophy is in any way universal or is concerned merely with some genus and some one nature. In the case of the mathematical sciences, their objects are not all treated in the same manner; geometry and astronomy are concerned with some nature, but universal mathematics to all. Accordingly, if there were no substances other than those formed by nature, physics would be the first science; but if there is an immovable substance, this would be prior, and the science of it would be first philosophy and would be universal in this manner, in view of the fact that it is first. And it would be the concern of this science, too, to investigate being qua being, both what being is and what belongs to it qua being.

Aristotle was right. All the immediate objects of human cognition are sensible things. In response to Plato’s notion of transcendent forms, Aristotle would reply that being itself is universal because it is common to all things. Being is common to all because it can be applied to any act of existing (in Aristotelian terms, “to be in act” means to exist). Additionally, to exist means to stand out of nothing, and to exist means to have being. Being is the universal that participates in all concretely existing things. That there is a metaphysical reality uniting all physical things should not be a surprise to modern readers. The German physicist and mathematician Max Planck said something very similar, “Metaphysical reality does not stand spatially behind what is given in experience, but lies fully within it” (Planck, Scientific Autobiography, 98, italics in the original). Planck was certainly a kindred spirit with Aristotle.

Aristotle teaches us, in response to Plato, that since metaphysics studies beings insofar as they are beings, the science of first philosophy will always have being in the concrete as its subject matter. The true universal of being in itself, understood in the concrete sense, is common to all. This, at least in part, is what unites the one with the many, and one of the most significant insights Aristotle shared with the Western intellectual tradition. Aristotle brings us the missing piece of reality which Plato missed. The study of being as being is the true science of metaphysics.

Metaphysics, Philosophical Theology, Uncategorized

A Few Thoughts Regarding the Principle of Causality

by Dave Seng

The principle of causality states that everything that comes into being is caused by virtue of something outside itself. However, the effect can not be greater than the cause. Let us apply this to human existence. If there is intelligence in the effect (humanity), there must be intelligence in the cause (because like produces like). But a universe ruled by blind chance has no intelligence. Therefore, there must be a cause of human intelligence that transcends the universe, a divine mind behind the physical universe.