Did God Make Himself?

The philosopher theologian Thomas Aquinas insisted that we cavort about God in major. What was significant for Thomas was those who had attacked the Christian view of God leveled their attack chiefly the doctrine of creation because of creation can be denied, then the very first teachings of the biblical record would fall with it. Thomas pulled his view of God in nature. Natural theology, but many biblical scholars are critical of them.

Because they see allows for revelation apart from the Bible. So who's right. Let's listen as Dr. RC Sproul continues his series.

The consequences of ideas in our last session, we look briefly at the theology and philosophy of Thomas Aquinas recall is known in the Roman Catholic Church is the angelic Dr. and is been the most important theologian I think in the second millennium.

Certainly, in terms of Roman Catholic development, but his thinking at the philosophical level has impacted not only Roman Catholic thought, but also classical Protestant thought, although in our day. There is often strong negative reactions against Thomas. I don't share in that negativity with respect to his philosophical contribution and we looked in our last session at the charge against Thomas of separating nature and grace and of his development of the concept of natural theology and I like to review that little bit more and expand upon it today. The idea of natural theology is a concept that is been much under attack in the 20th century, particularly from Protestant theologians because they have the tendency to see in natural theology, a departure from the purity of biblical revelation and too much of a dependence upon man's unaided intellect by which he in philosophical speculation develops his ideas of God and so on. But again, for Thomas Aquinas. He based his view of natural theology on the plain teaching of the apostle Paul in the first chapter of Romans in which Paul speaks about a knowledge of God that is derived through nature now for Aquinas, Aquinas qualified his understanding of the natural theology that is available to us by reflecting upon the cosmos. He said that the knowledge of God that we gain through nature is what he called incomplete media and it is analogical but true… Take a few moments to look at what he meant by these qualifying terms leave the incompletes a little bit later, he argued for what is called immediate natural theology meaning by that that the knowledge that we gain from nature about God is not a direct, immediate knowledge by which we would know God directly when he talks about immediate he's not talking about something that happens instantly with respect to time, but he means by it. The term immediate means without a medium we use the term media today to refer to the press to television to radio and so on. Because those are media through which we learn things and so the term immediate and immediate here has no reference to time. It is a reference to whether there is an intervening mediator or by which the knowledge is acquired and so when he speaks of natural theology. He says it's immediate. That is, we don't get it directly from God, but rather indirectly that God reveals himself in and through the creation, the psalmist says the heavens declare the glory of God the firm and shows forth his handiwork Paul in Romans one speaks of the knowledge of God that comes through the things that are made is through the creation through the creature. So whatever knowledge of God.

We have from nature is a mediated knowledge that comes through nature itself.

Second of all, it is analogical and I'm going to pass over that for a second because I wanted to explore that more deeply. He says it's immediate, incomplete and analogical, and let's look at the word now incomplete. What he means by that is that the knowledge of God that we gain through the creation is not a complete and comprehensive knowledge of God. It is incomplete. Nevertheless, it's true.

This was the point he was trying to make that the knowledge of God that we gain from nature.

Though it is not as fast or as deep as the knowledge of God we get from Scripture. Nevertheless, it is true as far as it goes.

Now why is that significant wealth significant, particularly in light of today's debates about natural theology. Many of the things that are said about natural theology is that not only is it inadequate and worthless.

But many see it is positively harmful because any knowledge of God that is gleaned from nature remains stripped of so much of the important content of our understanding of God that is given to us in the Bible. And so it can give us. Perhaps Aristotle's first cause, but there's a long way from an abstract first cause to the personal redeeming father of Jesus Christ was revealed in Scripture. But as I've already mentioned what was significant for Thomas was those who had attacked the Christian view of God leveled their attack chiefly at the doctrine of creation. And that's true today that if one is an atheist.

The most important item of Christian doctrine that needs to be demolished. Is this item of creation because of creation can be denied, then the very first teachings of the biblical record with respect to the character of God would fall with it. Genesis 1 begins with the affirmation in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, so that if you can attack the idea of a first cause, or of a creation altogether, then you demolish the very foundation of Christian thought. So what Aquinas is saying is simply this, yes nature may not prove the full content of God that we get from sacred Scripture, at least what nature does yield us through a rational treatment of the created realm is enough truth to stop the mouse of the atheists and of the skeptics because natural theology. According to Aquinas clearly demonstrates that God is the author of the universe and though that doesn't tell us everything there is to know about God. It tells us something that is true as far as it goes. That's what he means when he says natural theology is incomplete, but true, and that true as far as it goes is vital to the historic philosophical debates that have gone on between various forms of theism and various kinds of atheism.

Now before I come back to the analogical one.

Let me remind you again what I covered briefly in our last session, namely that in Aquinas's arguments for the existence of God.

The five classic arguments that he gives a talked in part about God's being necessary being and I didn't have a lot of time to develop that, but the technical phrase that was used by the theologians in the Middle Ages was the phrase and means necessary. Now that just is a fancy way to say necessary being, but if you recall from Anselm and Aquinas.

There are two ways in which God is said to be a necessary being and we need to keep that in mind, because sometimes these two ways of necessity are confused among people God is a necessary being ontologically going to Aquinas and logically. What does that mean to say that God has ontological necessary being is almost the redundancy ontology is the study of being weak mentioned that from the very beginning when we look at the struggle for understanding reality that began with Thales and through the pre-Socratic's and the struggle of being and becoming that we found in Plato and Aristotle, and so on so that ontology focuses attention on the question of being what Aquinas and others meant by necessary being was to describe a being whose being is not dependent derived or contingent, and I remember I mentioned the difference between supreme being and human beings. The difference between the supreme being and a human being is a difference in being that a human being is dependent you can't live for very long without oxygen. Without water and without food and so on so that you have certain needs that you must have met for you to continue to be not only that you are not the cause of your own being. You are derived through the normal process of procreation. You were born you have a birthday and you are contingent being meaning that it's possible, at least theoretically, that you didn't exist. There was a time when you were not in there is a time when you will die, and in between those two poles you will undergo changes which are all indicators of contingent being one Aquinas speaks about God's being necessary being, he means that God is not derived not dependent not contingent. He is the unconditional one who has the power of being within himself eternally indebted as being from someone else or something else and since he has the power of being within himself is said that he is self existing often talk about the two children that were having a dispute about these questions and one little boy said to the other little boy were to that tree come from, and another boy said will God made the tree well worded that fish come from God made the fish. Where did we come from, will God made us until finally, after this discussion reached a breaking point. The one child set available. Where did God come from another child said God made himself and that's supposed to communicate to us a profound level of insight from a small child.

Unfortunately, it's an erroneous thought, God did not make himself nothing makes itself again for something to create itself would require that it existed before. It was, it would have to be and not be at the same time, and even God cannot bring himself into being from nothing. The answer is that God is not caused that in order for us to apply causal links or a causal chain.

We do that routinely when were trying to trace the origins of various things in the world in which we live.

But sooner or later you're going to have to come to that which is uncaused, that which has the power of being in and of itself, and if it has the power of being eternally in and of itself.

It cannot not be.

That is its being is of ontological necessity and ontologically necessary being is a being who cannot not be.

That's the simple explanation for what Aquinas is getting it. The second way in which he speaks of necessary being is logically through his arguments for the existence of God. Aquinas was trying to show that not only is God ontologically necessary, but it is logically necessary that there be an ontologically necessary being, because without an ontologically necessary being nothing could possibly be in this presupposes one assumption and that the assumption is that something exists that there something rather than nothing.

So that if something exists, anything exists right now than there never could've been a time when there was absolutely nothing because if ever there was absolutely nothing. What could logically possibly be now absolutely nothing nice. Notice I said what could logically possibly be now is of absolutely nothing. That's for the simple reason that if ever there was a time when there was absolutely nothing and now there is something somewhere along the line. Something would've had to pop into existence by its own power and for something to create itself. As we said, is rationally impossible. It's a logical impossibility. I know people speak that way but talked about the launching of the Hubble telescope and listening to a very respected physicist on the radio, who said 12 to 15 billion years ago the universe exploded into being unless what's if it exploded into being from what did it explode nonbeing is this respectable physicist trying to pass off the idea that something came absolutely from nothing that would destroy the most important logical axiom.

We have actually he'll only go for it out of nothing. Nothing But if something is here than logic demands that something somewhere has this power of being within itself or nothing could possibly be so for Aquinas, he argues that from reflecting on nature, we come to the conclusion that there is both a ontologically necessary being, whose necessary being is why logically necessary postulate.

Now let's go then to this word analogical. This is so important to understand Aquinas's contribution to the history of theological and philosophical thought when he talks about the knowledge of God that we have as being analogical course, the word that he has in view there. This is the adjectival form of the word analogy.

Now when we talk about analogies we talk about things that have similarities to other things such as such is analogous to something that means it's like it participates in certain similarities is not identical with it, but it's similar to how Aquinas distinguished among three different ways of speaking descriptively what's called. First of all, the univocal, or sometimes pronounce universal. The second is the equivocal and the third is the analogical univocal unit focal language is when a word is used to describe two different beings and the meaning of the term remains exactly the same.

I like to use the illustration of the word good. We talk about good people, we say that God is good and we say that our dogs are good idea of a dog.

Roger no sir you don't, so you can help me with my illustration that anybody have a dog. Anyone I have a dog and my dog's a good dog and I tell them that every day.

Ask good and what I mean by that. He's a good dog that he has a highly advanced ethical sense whereby he is impeccable in his morality. No I mean when I say that my dog is good I mean by that that becomes; sometimes he's housebroken.

He doesn't bite the mailman on the link now and I say that the Fred back. Here is a good man do I mean by that, simply that he comes when I: or that he's housebroken or that he doesn't bite the mailman on the life obviously not.

So that when I describe two different beings a dog in a human being and use the same word good.

I am not using it in a univocal sense I don't mean exactly the same thing in both circumstances. Now the term equivocal is where the meaning of the word is vastly different from the beings being described. For example if I said I want to a dramatic reading the other night and I came back and said that the narrative was bald. What I mean by that that the story didn't have hair on its head. Of course not. I would mean the something is lacking just as hair is lacking on a bald head so drama or pizzazz was lacking from this dramatic reading. In that case hear the terms differ radically when applied to two different being.

So you have radical discontinuity with the equivocal language and radical unity with unit focal language and in between those two extremes exists. What Aquinas calls analogical language that is language of analogy and that's the basis upon which we can communicate with each other and it's even because the we are all human, all of our experiences of certain realities in this world do not match exactly the same. Nevertheless, there is enough similarity to your experience at the my experience that we can communicate in a meaningful intelligible way.

Well, what Aquinas is saying is that the language we use about God is the language of analogy when the Bible calls godfather, it doesn't mean by that that he's exactly the same as an earthly father, but nor does it mean that the differences are so vast that the language is worthless and equivocal, and inadequate but rather that there are similarities between God's fatherhood and human fatherhood and enough similarities to make discussions and language meaningful was very important because in our day were living in a time when some critics have argued that all language about God is meaningless and that this is all based on what Aquinas called the analogy of being looking to Scripture that says we are created in the image of God. We are not God's. God is not exactly like we are, but we have some point of contact some point of similarity with God, or we would not be able to speak meaningfully at all about God, so that point is been critical in the history of philosophy, but because there is some similarity between human being.

This and divine being. This there is some ground there meaningful conversation and communication. As one writer put it, is Aquinas is the theologian. Some Protestants love to hate and others love to love no matter where you land on the matter. Dr. RC Sproul's message today has shown is why Thomas is such an important figure in the history of Christian thought. Glad you joined us today for Renewing Your Mind all week. We have featured portions of doctors ProSeries the consequences of ideas is survey of Western philosophy we like for you to have this 35 message series for your own library as you view the videos you will begin to see how these thinkers influence the way we think.

Every day you give a donation of any about Tlingit or ministries. We will be glad to send you this nine DVD set there a couple of ways you can reach us to make a request was by phone at 800-435-4343 or if you prefer to give your gift online or web address is Renewing Your Mind.Ward you know studying philosophy can seem a bit daunting at first, it that was for Kitt who is one of my colleagues here and would get her ministries. When I first started working at link near the this thing that really grabbed hold of me from RC was that serious consequences of ideas and is much as anything it challenged me to think through where the ideas that I had a been coming from and I hadn't had really been, thoughtless about the whole thing and suddenly realizing that these ideas that come from what I thought were, brainiac, academic towers were actually in the culture and I was swallowing it all and that even thinking about it.

So, thinking through those things are. She's kind of heeds put me in a place where I started thinking biblically and it's really change the way I look at anything and I have to think with that filter are now what is it that God is saying versus what is the culture. Tony and I appreciate you ensuring that with us. That's an important point for us to consider studying these things helps us discern when restring from a legal worldview. Tomorrow we'll wrap up doctors ProSeries as he concentrates on the Renaissance, when the church and society experience massive so make plans to join us Friday for Renewing Your Mind